I had a professor in an anthropology class that I took during my undergrad at UCSD who had the class draw a map of San Diego. It was an interesting exercise since it wasn't prefaced with anything at all. The wide range of maps produced was staggering, with different things out of scale, etc. Mine, I recall, had an emphasis skewed particularly towards freeways that defined my usual routes of travel, combined with major thoroughfares that I would take . . . Genesee, LJV Dr., Nobel, etc.
Given that culture is, more or less, just a set of shared expectations, it's interesting concept.
If I felt more strongly about it, or had more energy, I'd run some statistical or regression analysis to ascertain similarity between different cultures.
Look, a free market is what is good, pure, and true.
If you don't like the terms, don't apply or comply. This has no bearing on anyone else. In the end, it will work itself out.
If you make a stink but don't *really* do anything about it, it's an exercise in futility. If you're hoping to do a work-study for an organization for which it would be a significant risk to employ a convicted felon (or comparable point of contention), perhaps you should look at alternative options.
Well, we DID have Tom McClintock (now a Congressman) run for governor. State Assembly and State Senate do fall victim to the gerrymandering though, and most of them are an embarrassment to the state.
This time around, we'll hopefully have Steve Poizner as a candidate on the main ticket for Governor, and we finally have a decent option for US Senator with Chuck DeVore.
So, this time around, a lack of options won't be an excuse. We'll see what happens though.
Medical expenses, even those that are the incremental dollar triggering a bankruptcy, are not the "cause" of the bankruptcy. There's always choices in medical care, and often it's a trade-off---treat, or don't treat, expensive experimental treatment, or traditional drug therapy, etc., but a choice none the less.
[...]
They ARE perfectly able to change jobs. They just CHOOSE not to for whatever reason.
No need for "whatever"; it's not a mystery. Specifically, as I explained, the reason is that they'd lose their health coverage if they did so.
Look, choice is a fun word to throw around, but it isn't a root password. When a karate master grabs your wrist and "forces" you to the ground, technically you aren't being forced at all, because you have a choice: you can either fall to the ground, or stand there and let him break your wrist. But that isn't much of a choice, now is it?
I wouldn't say "choice" is a fun word to throw around, but in keeping with the UNIX-ish motif, i'd say it's apropos.
With regards to the karate master analogy, it's a combination of a) physics, and b) reflex that comes from the acute onset of some painful stimuli. Nothing is keeping them from calling "UNCLE."
Life's not fair, sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, and sometimes it's just time to surrender and give up. So yes, I would say it's still a choice.
Do you have data that specifically show the difference of the cost of medical insurance for a changed job versus the incremental salary increase? How do you classify a job as "better?" More family time? More money? Better health insurance? "Better" is a dangerously subjective word in this context.
If you're going to argue that none of this is a problem, because people can always choose to let their health problems go untreated instead of bankrupting themselves, all I can do is laugh, because that argument makes a mockery out of the word "choice". You can't rationally expect people not to bankrupt themselves to pay for health care, when their only alternative is not to pay for it at all.
They can go with an alternative, that may be less-expensive in the short-run, or they can be not selfish, think about their families and look at it from a cost-benefit perspective. "Hmmm, if I do this, sure i'll live an extra couple of years, but my family's screwed after that." If you read fully, I presented a couple of options with regards to treatment options, beginning with the boundaries that set the range. By no means did I say that they are the only options. They can choose to treat, just in a less-expensive fashion. Now, these lower short-run-cost options may, or may not, be as efficacious, but they are treatment.
At a certain point, one needs to get a grip on the inevitable.
A market-based approach does guarantee that you'll be able to be treated as quickly as you want to be.
Um, no. There are millions of people who want health care but can't get it. Perhaps you meant "as quickly as you are willing and able to pay for".
If you hadn't snipped the sentence immediately following for melodramatic effect, yes, you will see that that is what I meant. That's how markets tend to work.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that medical care isn't a Constitutional right, any more than gasoline, flush toilets, running water, or food are, and those are certainly basic needs as well that are neither Constitutionally addressed, nor provided to the masses by the government for no cost beyond one's tax contribution.
Of course. No one said it was a Constitutional right; that's a strawman.
Most people don't subscribe to the minimalist libertarian view that the government is only there to run the courts and defend the borders: they believe that government can, and in many cases should, also be a parallel system to accomplish things that the market can't or
In other words, it doesn't matter to you that millions of people are unable to afford routine preventive health care, and are forced to wait until their problems become emergencies (because the ER can't turn them away for non-payment), driving up costs for the rest of us.
Although certainly anecdotal, I've seen a number of people who "can't afford routine preventative health care" who actually would be able to if they were to make sound financial decisions. Rather than wisely spending their money, they would purchase what, in the long run, amount to "toys."
Out of curiosity, do you perchance have a study that takes into account spending habits and financial management in addition to income, or similar study?
It doesn't matter to you that medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States, and for millions of Americans, getting sick or injured at the wrong time can destroy their savings and ruin them for the rest of their lives.
I would venture to say that the leading cause of bankruptcy is NOT, in fact, medical expenses. Recent housing market ah...issues aside, greed is the most common cause---living beyond one's means. Medical expenses, even those that are the incremental dollar triggering a bankruptcy, are not the "cause" of the bankruptcy. There's always choices in medical care, and often it's a trade-off---treat, or don't treat, expensive experimental treatment, or traditional drug therapy, etc., but a choice none the less.
It doesn't matter to you that millions of people are unable to move to better jobs, even when those jobs are available, because they're dependent on their current employers for health insurance.
It's all about choices, isn't it. They ARE perfectly able to change jobs. They just CHOOSE not to for whatever reason.
Hmmm, I'm sensing a trend here---do you actually have hard data for these claims that you're making? Or are you just expressing some kind of entitlement mentality?
No, apparently all that matters to you is how well the system works for the wealthiest individuals, and to hell with everyone else.
Apparently, and rightly so, what matters to them is market dynamics and the ability of said dynamics to effectively manage quality better than a bureaucrat.
Actually, they often do. Private health insurance (especially HMO) doesn't guarantee that you'll be treated any more quickly than people in Canada or the UK.
A market-based approach does guarantee that you'll be able to be treated as quickly as you want to be. Now, whether or not you can afford to be treated THIS INSTANT is another question altogether.
In a nutshell, with a socialized system, and even to a degree government-subsidized systems, top-line revenue is effectively capped by reimbursement * capacity, as opposed to market rate * capacity. The only incentive to boost bottom-line revenue is cutting costs, either through operational efficiencies, or by reducing overall quality. HMOs try to do both.
If your private insurer won't pay for a facility that can provide those "basic services" immediately, I suppose you can shop around and find a facility that will, but you can also do that under the national health care systems that Obama and Clinton are proposing.
Shop around? As I mentioned previously, because reimbursement is basically the same (there is SOME variation based on geography, etc.) you'll probably find a quality-based market, with shortages and long waits for the medical professionals you WANT to see, and a glut of those who'd make you prefer to tough out being sick than actually go see.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that medical care isn't a Constitutional right, any more than gasoline, flush toilets, running water, or food are, and those are certainly basic needs as well that are neither Constitutionally addressed, nor provided to the masses by the government for no cost bey
I would say that a richer set of (relevant) data would generally generate a better result than an improvement of algorithm. Granted, different statistical models and algorithms do work better on certain kinds of data (there's almost an art to picking a good model).
But, as a past professor of mine was fond of saying, "the best data wins."
charts and graphs are meant to be compiled --- use R. Seriously though, it's got a bit of a steep learning curve, but overall, it's pretty useful. Generates prettier graphs, too. The price is just as good as oo.o's, as well.
I noticed some folks have mentioned Edward Tufte's work with graphs too, and there's some work done to generate Tufte-esque graphs from R. I've been playing around with some myself after reading his books.
while not exactly a hardware sticker, this is still somewhat marginally apropos...in the building where i worked for a NASA project whilst I was an undergrad, someone had stuck a Powered by Microsoft Windows sticker on the top of the urinal.
There are LaTeX contributions that'll do all that for you. All you do is input the questions and the answers, and it'll randomize the answers, make the different versions, etc. Never used them, since I'm not in a teaching position, but if I were, I'd use `em.
absolutely. I know some ophthalmologists who are actually ethically opposed to Lasik. Basically, Lasik is a procedure that has no real medical benefit, and the risks associated come in conflict with their "do no harm" mentality. They don't see the point in operating on a perfectly good eye (in that it's nothing that putting some optics in front can't "fix").
the ability to effectively run interference for the team, allowing them to focus on their tasks at hand is *very* valuable trait for a leader to have.
there are some terrific books on leading technical teams - Debugging the Development Process (Steve Maguire), and Peopleware (Timothy Lister and Tom DeMarco) come to mind.
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I had a professor in an anthropology class that I took during my undergrad at UCSD who had the class draw a map of San Diego. It was an interesting exercise since it wasn't prefaced with anything at all. The wide range of maps produced was staggering, with different things out of scale, etc. Mine, I recall, had an emphasis skewed particularly towards freeways that defined my usual routes of travel, combined with major thoroughfares that I would take . . . Genesee, LJV Dr., Nobel, etc.
Given that culture is, more or less, just a set of shared expectations, it's interesting concept.
If I felt more strongly about it, or had more energy, I'd run some statistical or regression analysis to ascertain similarity between different cultures.
Look, a free market is what is good, pure, and true.
If you don't like the terms, don't apply or comply. This has no bearing on anyone else. In the end, it will work itself out.
If you make a stink but don't *really* do anything about it, it's an exercise in futility. If you're hoping to do a work-study for an organization for which it would be a significant risk to employ a convicted felon (or comparable point of contention), perhaps you should look at alternative options.
There is no "right" to work.
Suck it up and deal with it.
Well, we DID have Tom McClintock (now a Congressman) run for governor. State Assembly and State Senate do fall victim to the gerrymandering though, and most of them are an embarrassment to the state. This time around, we'll hopefully have Steve Poizner as a candidate on the main ticket for Governor, and we finally have a decent option for US Senator with Chuck DeVore. So, this time around, a lack of options won't be an excuse. We'll see what happens though.
Medical expenses, even those that are the incremental dollar triggering a bankruptcy, are not the "cause" of the bankruptcy. There's always choices in medical care, and often it's a trade-off---treat, or don't treat, expensive experimental treatment, or traditional drug therapy, etc., but a choice none the less. [...] They ARE perfectly able to change jobs. They just CHOOSE not to for whatever reason.
No need for "whatever"; it's not a mystery. Specifically, as I explained, the reason is that they'd lose their health coverage if they did so. Look, choice is a fun word to throw around, but it isn't a root password. When a karate master grabs your wrist and "forces" you to the ground, technically you aren't being forced at all, because you have a choice: you can either fall to the ground, or stand there and let him break your wrist. But that isn't much of a choice, now is it?
I wouldn't say "choice" is a fun word to throw around, but in keeping with the UNIX-ish motif, i'd say it's apropos.
With regards to the karate master analogy, it's a combination of a) physics, and b) reflex that comes from the acute onset of some painful stimuli. Nothing is keeping them from calling "UNCLE."
Life's not fair, sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, and sometimes it's just time to surrender and give up. So yes, I would say it's still a choice.
Do you have data that specifically show the difference of the cost of medical insurance for a changed job versus the incremental salary increase? How do you classify a job as "better?" More family time? More money? Better health insurance? "Better" is a dangerously subjective word in this context.
If you're going to argue that none of this is a problem, because people can always choose to let their health problems go untreated instead of bankrupting themselves, all I can do is laugh, because that argument makes a mockery out of the word "choice". You can't rationally expect people not to bankrupt themselves to pay for health care, when their only alternative is not to pay for it at all.
They can go with an alternative, that may be less-expensive in the short-run, or they can be not selfish, think about their families and look at it from a cost-benefit perspective. "Hmmm, if I do this, sure i'll live an extra couple of years, but my family's screwed after that." If you read fully, I presented a couple of options with regards to treatment options, beginning with the boundaries that set the range. By no means did I say that they are the only options. They can choose to treat, just in a less-expensive fashion. Now, these lower short-run-cost options may, or may not, be as efficacious, but they are treatment.
At a certain point, one needs to get a grip on the inevitable.
A market-based approach does guarantee that you'll be able to be treated as quickly as you want to be.
Um, no. There are millions of people who want health care but can't get it. Perhaps you meant "as quickly as you are willing and able to pay for".
If you hadn't snipped the sentence immediately following for melodramatic effect, yes, you will see that that is what I meant. That's how markets tend to work.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that medical care isn't a Constitutional right, any more than gasoline, flush toilets, running water, or food are, and those are certainly basic needs as well that are neither Constitutionally addressed, nor provided to the masses by the government for no cost beyond one's tax contribution.
Of course. No one said it was a Constitutional right; that's a strawman. Most people don't subscribe to the minimalist libertarian view that the government is only there to run the courts and defend the borders: they believe that government can, and in many cases should, also be a parallel system to accomplish things that the market can't or
In other words, it doesn't matter to you that millions of people are unable to afford routine preventive health care, and are forced to wait until their problems become emergencies (because the ER can't turn them away for non-payment), driving up costs for the rest of us.
Although certainly anecdotal, I've seen a number of people who "can't afford routine preventative health care" who actually would be able to if they were to make sound financial decisions. Rather than wisely spending their money, they would purchase what, in the long run, amount to "toys." Out of curiosity, do you perchance have a study that takes into account spending habits and financial management in addition to income, or similar study?
It doesn't matter to you that medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States, and for millions of Americans, getting sick or injured at the wrong time can destroy their savings and ruin them for the rest of their lives.
I would venture to say that the leading cause of bankruptcy is NOT, in fact, medical expenses. Recent housing market ah...issues aside, greed is the most common cause---living beyond one's means. Medical expenses, even those that are the incremental dollar triggering a bankruptcy, are not the "cause" of the bankruptcy. There's always choices in medical care, and often it's a trade-off---treat, or don't treat, expensive experimental treatment, or traditional drug therapy, etc., but a choice none the less.
It doesn't matter to you that millions of people are unable to move to better jobs, even when those jobs are available, because they're dependent on their current employers for health insurance.
It's all about choices, isn't it. They ARE perfectly able to change jobs. They just CHOOSE not to for whatever reason. Hmmm, I'm sensing a trend here---do you actually have hard data for these claims that you're making? Or are you just expressing some kind of entitlement mentality?
No, apparently all that matters to you is how well the system works for the wealthiest individuals, and to hell with everyone else.
Apparently, and rightly so, what matters to them is market dynamics and the ability of said dynamics to effectively manage quality better than a bureaucrat.
Actually, they often do. Private health insurance (especially HMO) doesn't guarantee that you'll be treated any more quickly than people in Canada or the UK.
A market-based approach does guarantee that you'll be able to be treated as quickly as you want to be. Now, whether or not you can afford to be treated THIS INSTANT is another question altogether. In a nutshell, with a socialized system, and even to a degree government-subsidized systems, top-line revenue is effectively capped by reimbursement * capacity, as opposed to market rate * capacity. The only incentive to boost bottom-line revenue is cutting costs, either through operational efficiencies, or by reducing overall quality. HMOs try to do both.
If your private insurer won't pay for a facility that can provide those "basic services" immediately, I suppose you can shop around and find a facility that will, but you can also do that under the national health care systems that Obama and Clinton are proposing.
Shop around? As I mentioned previously, because reimbursement is basically the same (there is SOME variation based on geography, etc.) you'll probably find a quality-based market, with shortages and long waits for the medical professionals you WANT to see, and a glut of those who'd make you prefer to tough out being sick than actually go see. Anyway, the long and short of it is that medical care isn't a Constitutional right, any more than gasoline, flush toilets, running water, or food are, and those are certainly basic needs as well that are neither Constitutionally addressed, nor provided to the masses by the government for no cost bey
I would say that a richer set of (relevant) data would generally generate a better result than an improvement of algorithm. Granted, different statistical models and algorithms do work better on certain kinds of data (there's almost an art to picking a good model).
But, as a past professor of mine was fond of saying, "the best data wins."
charts and graphs are meant to be compiled --- use R. Seriously though, it's
p hics/fancyaxis.html
got a bit of a steep learning curve, but overall, it's pretty useful. Generates
prettier graphs, too. The price is just as good as oo.o's, as well.
I noticed some folks have mentioned Edward Tufte's work with graphs too, and
there's some work done to generate Tufte-esque graphs from R. I've been playing
around with some myself after reading his books.
One of them is here:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/projects/gra
while not exactly a hardware sticker, this is still somewhat marginally apropos...in the building where i worked for a NASA project whilst I was an undergrad, someone had stuck a Powered by Microsoft Windows sticker on the top of the urinal.
1) don't code before you have to
2) draw pictures
3) consider extreme cases
4) only use the data you have
Of course, there are plenty of other practices, but those are some good ones to start with, especially if you have relatively new folks.
There are LaTeX contributions that'll do all that for you. All you do is input the questions and the answers, and it'll randomize the answers, make the different versions, etc. Never used them, since I'm not in a teaching position, but if I were, I'd use `em.
absolutely. I know some ophthalmologists who are actually ethically opposed to Lasik. Basically, Lasik is a procedure that has no real medical benefit, and the risks associated come in conflict with their "do no harm" mentality. They don't see the point in operating on a perfectly good eye (in that it's nothing that putting some optics in front can't "fix").
the ability to effectively run interference for the team, allowing them to focus on their tasks at hand is *very* valuable trait for a leader to have. there are some terrific books on leading technical teams - Debugging the Development Process (Steve Maguire), and Peopleware (Timothy Lister and Tom DeMarco) come to mind.