Category Archives: Life

Electrocardiograms ‘R Us

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I saw my primary care doctor last week. She decided that I needed an EKG. She also personally called my cardiologist’s office and got me an appointment the following day.

When I arrived at the cardiologist’s office, the first thing they wanted to do was an EKG. I pointed out that I had just had one yesterday. The nurse went away, presumably to get a fax of my EKG from my other doctor.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. My cardiologist ordered her own EKG.

Both EKG’s were normal. Our insurance company will be billed for two tests, one of which wasn’t necessary.

Paul Krugman points out that the US and Canada used to spend about the same amount on health care, but we don’t anymore. Our system, supposedly based on free market competition (and as many EKG’s as possible?), now costs more than Canada’s, even though the Canadian single-payer system gets better results and Canadians are happy with the health care they receive.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/health-systems-and-health-costs/

Some Things Are Too Important To Lie About

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Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan has been widely criticized for not just bending the truth during his recent acceptance speech, but for stomping all over the truth, leaving it for dead. It’s possible that he might have gotten away with lying about Medicare, the auto bailout and the national debt, but there was no way he’d get away with lying about running marathons. People like the editors at Runner’s World take running very seriously.

In a recent radio interview, Ryan implied that he had run more than one marathon and that his best time was under three hours:

PR: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or less.
HH: But you did run marathons at some point?
PR: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
HH: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?
PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.
HH: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…
PR: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.

http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/3229320e-2c55-4122-93f1-2ebe4fbc8663

Running a marathon in less than three hours is quite an achievement. Unfortunately for Ryan, Runner’s World did some research, which they presented to the Ryan campaign, which resulted in the following:

A spokesman confirmed late Friday that the Republican vice presidential candidate has run one marathon. That was the 1990 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, where Ryan, then 20, is listed as having finished in 4 hours, 1 minute, and 25 seconds.

http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/08/31/paul-ryan-says-hes-run-sub-300-marathon/

It was 20 years ago, but runners remember their best times. Running a marathon in 4 hours is a lot less impressive than running it in 2 hours, 50 minutes. Running 1 marathon is less impressive than running 2 or more.

So the evidence multiplies. Paul Ryan is a serial liar, someone who regularly lies to advance his agenda or make himself look good. Many politicians do that. They shouldn’t be Vice President.

Do You Want Fries With That?

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Most of the jobs lost during the Great Recession paid relatively decent wages. Most of the jobs added since then pay low wages.

From a report by the National Employment Law Project:

We find that three low-wage industries (food services, retail, and employment services) added 1.7 million jobs over the past two years, fully 43 percent of net employment growth. At the same time, better-paying industries (like construction; manufacturing; finance, insurance and real estate; and information) did not grow, or did not grow enough to make up for recession losses. Other better-paying industries (like professional and technical services) saw solid growth, but not in their mid-wage occupations. And steep cuts in state and local government have hit mid- and higher-wage occupations the hardest.

http://www.nelp.org/index.php/content/content_about_us/tracking_the_recovery

In the Dark

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It is possible that you have never heard of the most famous person in the world. Your life just worked out that way. You went about your daily affairs, lived a perfectly normal life, grew old and grey, but you were always distracted when X was mentioned in conversation, you were always out of the room when X appeared on television, you never noticed an article about X on the internet.

Of course, the odds are extremely small that this might have happened to anyone who is plugged into contemporary culture, but it might. One day someone refers to Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe or Abraham Lincoln, and all you can say is “Who’s that?”.

This strange possibility doesn’t bother me when I think about you being in this situation. But if I think about myself being ignorant in this way, I feel a little whiff of anxiety. Is it possible that there is someone incredibly famous who I’ve never heard of? Could I be that ignorant, that different from everyone else? Like what if I had never heard of Cassandra Calliope? How bizarre would that be?

I was reminded of this unlikely possibility when I saw a reference to something called “Star Wars Uncut” this morning. Am I the only one who has never heard of this? Obviously not, but I might be.