Notes from Howard's Sabbatical from Working. The name comes from a 1998 lunch conversation. Someone asked if everything man knew was on the web. I answered "no" and off the top of my head said "Fidel Castro's favorite color". About every 6-12 months I've searched for this. It doesn't show up in the first 50 Google results (this blog is finally first for that search), AskJeeves says it's: red.
Fraser Spears wrote a pretty funny article Can the MacBook Pro Replace Your iPad?. It's a review of a MacBook Pro in the tone of many of iPad Pro reviews I've seen. A sample:
Firstly, consider the hardware. The huge issue with the MacBook Pro is its form factor. The fact that the keyboard and screen are limited to being held in an L-shaped configuration seriously limits its flexibility. It is basically impossible to use a MacBook pro while standing up and downright dangerous to use when walking around. Your computing is limited to times when you are able to find somewhere to sit down.
I've played with an iPad Pro and it is really nice. I love looking at the big the screen and the on-screen keyboard is definitely an improvement. But I don't love holding the big screen. It's a bit awkward to hold one-handed and it's a bit heavy to hold for a while.
My sister wanted to replace her iPad 2 and spent a couple of hours in the Apple Store last week debating between the Pro and the Air 2. She didn't need cellular and 64GB was plenty; of course that would have meant a 128GB Pro. Watching her play with each I noticed she typically held the iPad in one hand and typed with the other; but with the Pro, she let it tilt so the other corner leaned against the table. She didn't realize she was doing it until I pointed it out. While the Pencil is amazing to use, I think it's really for artists. The keyboard cover does seem a thing to get. Everyone types and no one likes typing on a glass screen, and why invest $59 or $79 in a cover or case only to get the keyboard one later. With the Air there's no keyboard option and I find a cover (as opposed to a case) has been good enough. A Pro also means getting a new bag to carry it in. So including AppleCare+ the price difference is a significant $480.
I suspect the next generation of iPad Pro will be more interesting. A 64GB model would bring down the price $100. Like all things Apple I suspect it will get thinner and lighter. If they add ForceTouch to the keyboard it could be really interesting (so I'd be happy with a cover rather than the keyboard one). At $1007 ($849 + $59 + $99) it seems a more reasonable splurge, being just $270 more than the Air. A thousand dollars is still a lot for an additional device but it's also a good deal less than a MacBook.
Today I learned about this setting in Safari on OS X to turn off web sites asking permission to send push notifications. Uncheck that box at the bottom.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is not a treat or an executive agreement,a nd is not a signed document. The JCPOA reflects political commitments between Iran, The P5+1 (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China), and the European Union. As you know, the United States has a long-standing practice of addressing sensitive problems in negotiations that culminate in political commitments.
The success of the JCPOA will depend not on whether it is legally binding or signed, but rather on the extensive verification measures we have put in place, as well as Iran's understanding that we have the capacity ro re-impose -- and ramp up -- our sanctions if Iran does not meet its commitments.
Everything in the JCPOA and its annexes are commitments Iran made, and must keep, to remain in compliance. If Iran breaks these commitments, we can snap back both unilateral and UN sanctions.
The part Lederman is confirming is that Republicans knew of this arrangement, and aren't arguing the constitutional aspects of such a commitment:
But here's what's so interesting to me, and what I meant to stress in my last post: Despite the general, deep polarization Mark describes, there is no such polarization on the constitutional questions that Jack and Sandy raised, because of a remarkable settlement that has been established over the past 100 years of U.S. foreign policy and diplomatic practice--a settlement that, I might add, was unknown to approximately 99% of all law professors (myself included), ignorant as most of us are concerning the way that the government actually functions in foreign affairs. (For much more on the extraordinary disconnect between the academy's hidebound, "received wisdom" views and the actual constitutional practice of foreign relations as conducted by the U.S. Department of State, see Harold Koh's terrific 2012 Ryan Lecture here at Georgetown.)
Physicists Can Now Achieve Quantum Entanglement at Room Temperature. "A team from the University of Chicago have demonstrated that it’s possible to entangle electrons at room temperature in a silicon carbide wafer. To do that, the team used infrared laser light to align the magnetic states of thousands of electrons in a 40 micrometer-cubed volume of the semiconductor, then applied magnetic pulses to entangle them."
Andrej Karpathy's "NeuralTalk" code github.com/karpathy/neuraltalk2 slightly modified to run from a webcam feed. I recorded this live while walking near the bridge at Damstraat and Oudezijds Voorburgwal in Amsterdam.
All processing is done on my 2013 MacBook Pro with the NVIDIA 750M and only 2GB of GPU memory. I'm walking around with my laptop open pointing it at things, hence the shaky footage and people staring at themselves. The openFrameworks code for streaming the webcam and reading from disk is available at gist.github.com/kylemcdonald/b02edbc33942a85856c8
Every Frame a Painting looks at Buster Keaton - The Art of the Gag. A few years ago I set up a TiVo Wishlist for Buster Keaton (and others for Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd) as TCM often shows a short or a feature or does a marathon for a day. They're really rewarding. As the 8 min video below points out, most still hold up and while I got to see several films with classic scenes, I also saw several less well known gems. The last one I discovered is Chaplin's The Circus, which I thought was hilarious, one of his best, and I had never heard of it before.
I didn't know Keaton did each stunt once and only once (and if he didn't get it, he removed it from the film). The stunts at 6:40 and 7:30 are amazing. To think that a star did (or attempted) them in a movie is crazy. Recently the only actor coming close to Keaton was Jackie Chan. Now I'd have to say it's Tom Cruise, and I give him lots of credit for it. But both of them do multiple takes. To realize that every stunt we see Keaton do in a film was accomplished on the first take is incredible.
I had so many questions. Why hadn’t they announced themselves? Why had they pointed guns at me? Why had they refused to answer when I asked repeatedly what was going on? Was it protocol to send more than a dozen cops to a suspected burglary? Why hadn’t anyone asked for my ID or accepted it, especially after I’d offered it? If I hadn’t heard the dog, would I have opened the door to a gun in my face? “Maybe,” they answered.
I demanded all of their names and was given few. Some officers simply ignored me when I asked, boldly turning and walking away. Afterward, I saw them talking to neighbors, but they ignored me when I approached them again. A sergeant assured me that he’d personally provide me with all names and badge numbers.
I got no clear answers from the police that night and am still struggling to get them, despite multiple visits, calls and e-mails to the Santa Monica Police Department requesting the names of the officers, their badge numbers, the audio from my neighbor’s call to 911 and the police report. The sergeant didn’t e-mail me the officers’ names as he promised. I was told that the audio of the call requires a subpoena and that the small army of responders, guns drawn, hadn’t merited an official report. I eventually received a list from the SMPD of 17 officers who came to my apartment that night, but the list does not include the names of two officers who handed me their business cards on the scene. I’ve filed an official complaint with internal affairs.
The Wikipedia page on the history of Telephone tapping is pretty interesting. There's a constant back and forth between new technology and about 10 years later government wanting easy access. There's also a long history of government exceeding legal means to tap private communications. Also this:
In the Greek telephone tapping case 2004–2005 more than 100 mobile phone numbers belonging mostly to members of the Greek government, including the Prime Minister of Greece, and top-ranking civil servants were found to have been illegally tapped for a period of at least one year. The Greek government concluded this had been done by a foreign intelligence agency, for security reasons related to the 2004 Olympic Games, by unlawfully activating the lawful interception subsystem of the Vodafone Greece mobile network. An Italian tapping case which surfaced in November 2007 revealed significant manipulation of the news at the national television company RAI.
Republicans have started to say that we shouldn't take in Syrian refugees because they might be terrorists.
Bullshit. First off, this just shows how afraid (and stupid) they are. The refugees are the people fleeing ISIS. And young orphans aren't terrorists. And they say we're taking too many (Trump said hundreds of thousands). In fact we've said we'd take only 10,000, way less than other nations and the vetting process is quite extensive, taking 18-24 months, they must have UN refugee status, go through various interviews and background checks, biometric data and involving "the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, the National Counterterrorism Center and the Federal Bureau of Investigation". Yes we should have strict vetting and we do, it's slow enough that we're way behind schedule. And now (Republican) governors are saying they won't take them into their state, as if they have any control over this. Though the Washington Post points out How Republican governors could again make life miserable for Syrian refugees. Republican Presidential hopeful (and asshole) Ted Cruz and front runner Jeb Bush have said we should only let in Christian refugees. Nope, that's not religious discrimination at all. Seriously these guys should never lecture anyone on the Constitution.
The other big thing in the news is about how terrorists use encryption and since Snowden is gotten worse and Paris is his fault. Again, bullshit. Glenn Greenwald rips this argument to threads in Exploiting Emotions About Paris to Blame Snowden, Distract from Actual Culprits Who Empowered ISIS. Terrorists use lots of technology just like anyone does. We know the terrorists used cars to travel during their attacks, why is no one talking about banning cars, or giving governments a kills switch to disable cars when we're in a yellow alert? Also, the terrorists assume the US is listening to all their electronic communications, so they don't use them much.
And Snowden's revelation wasn't that the NSA listens to terrorists (or even foreigners), that's what they're supposed to do. What Snowden revealed is that the NSA is listening to every American. Putting "backdoors" in everything will make your communications less secure to everyone, like hackers and terrorists and China. Your health care records, bank accounts, employment records, photos, emails, etc. And lets be clear, U.S. Mass Surveillance Has No Record of Thwarting Large Terror Attacks, Regardless of Snowden Leaks.
Despite the intelligence community’s attempts to blame NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for the tragic attacks in Paris on Friday, the NSA’s mass surveillance programs do not have a track record — before or after Snowden — of identifying or thwarting actual large-scale terrorist plots.
But the reason there haven’t been any large-scale terror attacks by ISIS in the U.S. is not because they were averted by the intelligence community, but because — with the possible exception of one that was foiled by local police — none were actually planned.
Yes, Terrorists Use Encryption But That Doesn't Mean It's A Bad Thing. "According to Canetti, Boston University cryptography professor: “[Law enforcement] developing better encryption-cracking tools is a very good thing. But they should concentrate on encryption made by bad guys. Making the everyday encryption of the general public weak isn’t going to get you what you want, [not] when it comes to coordinated terrorist attacks. There’s no silver bullet answer. It took us hundreds of years to get democracy right…It’s going to take time for us to get this right.”"
And to the idiots that can't distinguish between ISIS and Islam; would you rather fight ISIS who's size estimate is about 50,000 to 250,000 people, or Islam with over 1,500,000,000 followers. Can you keep it straight now?
Smart on Terrorism by Nancy LeTourneau. "Because once again, the Republicans are attempting to drag us into making stupid moves in order to avoid being labeled “soft on terrorism.” So it’s time for Democrats to get out ahead of this kind of fear-mongering. I’d suggest they do something similar to what former Attorney General Eric Holder did to combat the “soft on crime” message…he began a Smart on Crime initiative. When it comes to terrorism, we’d don’t need the bellicose chest-thumping we’re hearing from Republicans, we need leadership that is smart on terrorism."
The new dialog between the US and Russia is a case in point. While before, the US couldn't help Russia and Russia couldn't help the US, it turns out it might be possible for both the US and Russia to help France. And maybe even Iran, Saudi Arabia and China could too.
Here are some other interesting articles on how we shouldn't overreact.
And finally, he's a wonderful father explaining all of this to his young son. Lots of people could learn this lesson (and no you're not supposed to take flowers v guns literally).
Japan is back in recession. The country's GDP shrank 0.8 percent in the third quarter of 2015 after shrinking in the second quarter, so it meets the technical definition. On its surface, this looks like a damning indictment of "Abenomics" — a program of aggressive money printing that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered upon taking office a few years back in order to jolt the Japanese economy out of its doldrums. But look closer and you'll see that the opposite is the case.
"Senate Republicans stopped Democrats from advancing a bill that would have expanded healthcare and education programs for veterans. In a 56-41 vote Thursday, the motion to waive a budget point of order against the bill failed, as Democrats fell short of the 60 votes needed to overcome the Republican roadblock. GOP Sens. Dean Heller (Nev.) and Jerry Moran (Kan.) voted with Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) refused to allow a GOP substitute amendment to get an up-or-down vote because it included Iran sanctions, which he said were unrelated to veterans’ issues."
While this case also has the Iran sanction angle, the reason for all of these kinds of disputes is how is the bill paid for. If Democrats had their way, I'm sure they'd just raise a tax, and to help veterans I'd hope the American people would be okay with that. But no, Republicans hate all taxes, feeling we pay enough already and so the current rules are that all expenditures must be paid for by eliminating something else we currently pay for.
In this case, "Sanders paid for the more than $20 billion bill by limiting overseas contingency funds from 2018-2021. Republicans have said the early troop withdrawals in Afghanistan and Iraq have overextended funds in the Overseas Contingency Operations account. They argue it’s not a real pay-for because those funds are essentially “off budget” and not subject to discretionary spending caps."
So now we're arguing semantics instead of helping veterans. Jon Stewart would be bringing this up on The Daily Show. He might still in whatever new capacity he can (maybe an op-ed). I doubt Trevor Noah will. Maybe John Oliver will. In the mean time, veterans pay the price.
I think Democrats should propose a bill that straight up pays for it with a tax on high frequency trading and when Republican lawmakers reject it, make them explain it to the American people.
The WGA lists 101 Funniest Screenplays. I've seen them all and while I can disagree with the order of some (Bridesmaids and Something About Mary would be much lower for me), it's a pretty solid list.
A few years ago, going into an Apple Store was kinda boring for me. I had a new iMac, a recent iPhone and iPad and an AppleTV. There wasn't much there for me to covet, and even playing with stuff wasn't that interesting because it wasn't customized for me.
Today I went into the Apple Store to look at the new iPad Pro. Since getting my iPad 2 I've wanted a bigger iPad for two principle reasons. First I wanted a full sized on-screen keyboard. The one on the iPad and now the iPad Air is a little smaller. Second, I wanted the page to be a full 8.5 x 11 so that magazines and particularly comics could be seen at full sized. Lots of magazine apps found ways to cope, either by basically being a full page pdf that you zoomed and scrolled around (which sucked) or by doing that and having an Instapaper-like "reading mode" which seemed dumb. If you're a magazine and you need a separate reading mode, you're doing it wrong. Or some, like Entertainment Weekly (best) and Wired (good, at times odd) did a lot to redisign their magazine for the iPad screen. In comics, once iPad's got retina displays I could mostly read the page shown in full, though they also had a mode that zoomed in on each panel with a swipe. Comics are designed to show the whole page at once, so panel-by-panel was a lesser experience.
The Apple Store didn't have a comics app on the iPad Pro so I couldn't check that out, but it seems it does show a full page at full size. Double page spreads are still an issue compared to paper. I did play with the on-screen keyboard and it is definitely nicer than the one on the iPad Air 2. But it's still a glass keyboard with no feedback. I played with the keyboard screen cover and it was surprisingly nice. Definitely an improvement over the on-screen one. If you're going to do a lot of typing, I'd definitely consider it.
I also played with the pencil and as the reviews have all stated, it's great. It feels very responsive while writing, much better than any stylus I've used and I had no problems with palm rejection.
I didn't try the speakers
In general I agree with all the reviews of the iPad Pro I've seen. It's big. It's heavy, though lighter than you'd expect. The pencil is great. The keyboard is good (though there need to be some more keyboard shortcuts). It seems little too big to comfortably hold with one hand, though it's doable and it might get more natural with practice. After having the iPad 2 for several years, the iPad Air 2 is practically ethereal. It would be great to use at a desk, I'm not sure about on a couch.
My iPad Air 2 is just about a year old, and runs great, even better with the new iOS 9 features. So I can wait a few years before upgrading to a Pro. Maybe the price will come down a little, and the weight, and I'm sure iOS 10 and 11 will add significant improvements to it. The on-screen keyboard could be very interesting if they could get the haptic feedback from the new touchpad or Apple Watch.
But visiting the Apple Store I realized there are lot of toys I don't have. I played with the new Apple TV and the remote is pretty nice. Since I'm all in on TiVo and movie channels from FiOS I don't really need to consume TV or movies from Apple. I looked at the Apple Watch again and it's nice. I can still wait for an update or two. While I love my 27" iMac, I'm interested in a small laptop for use when not at my desk (in the living room or while travelling). A MacBook seems like the right device, but I can wait a revision or two for a little more power. The 15" MacBook Pro seemed huge, the 13" seemed nice but a little more than I need. The Air would be pretty good, though a retina screen is starting to be the minimum for me. I suspect Apple will sort all that out in the next year or two. I tried the new keyboard and trackpad and they're nice, but I see no need to upgrade. I do wish they'd make a full keyboard with a number pad.
This seems like magic, Incredible hack could give Apple Watch ability to detect objects you touch “Apple Watch is great at interacting with other smart devices, but a cheap hack allows it to recognize everyday (dumb) objects based on their invisible electromagnetic signals. All it takes is a $10 chip that can be installed on any smartwatch. Check out the demo below:”
Last month I went to a Harvard Symposium on The Past, Present, and Future of DNA. They’ve posted the video of the event so here are my raw notes from it (any mistakes are mine).
The one-day science symposium will focus on the explosion of knowledge about past and present DNA, and will include discussions about possible directions and applications for future research. The event will include experts in ancient DNA, de-extinction, human origins, population genetics, forensic science, ethics, business, future synthetic life, and the personal genome.
9:30am WELCOME
Lizabeth Cohen, Dean of the Radcliffe Institute and Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies, Department of History, Harvard University
First isolated in 1869
Microbes Hunters and The Eighth Day of Creation books
INTRODUCTION
Janet Rich-Edwards, Codirector of the Science Program, Radcliffe Institute; Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Adding nucleotides to code more codons
Mitochondria have their own DNA, inherit item just from mom. Have less repair mechanisms than nuclear DNA.
Mitochondrial Eve, 150,000 years ago in Ethiopia
Spider-goat - transgenic goat whose milk can be strung into fibers 10x stronger than steel.
Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School
John Hawks
Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Achievement Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Has a blog, runs a MOOC
Goram caves, sites of Neanderthals
In last 20 years we have finally agreed on role of Neanderthals in our evolution
Living people today have Neanderthal ancestors, regionally distributed in surprising ways
East Asians more, then European, then African
Neanderthals come from European as well as central Asian sites
Denisova caves show a new humanoid species, that coexisted with Neanderthals
Field guide to Pleistocene Hookups
Every archaic human group interbred with each other
Every population before 40,000 years ago has been through a period of very high inbreeding
Neanderthals did not survive unaltered for 100,000s years. Much more dynamic
Europe has more mixing in it than we thought. Lots of colonization from other places, post-farming
Today’s populations are a mixture of ancient progenitor populations that no longer exist
Interbreeding with ancient populations provided raw materials for human adaptations
Changing excavation practices to get DNA
Beth Shapiro
Associate Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz
How to Clone a Mammoth
Sequencing the Dead
Found DNA in old stuff, like dinosaur DNA in Amber, wasn’t real. DNA decays
Organisms have DNA repair processes but of course these require energy
Cold helps. Oldest known DNA from Dawson Yukon, 700,000 years old (ash layer from volcano eruptions). In bad condition but were able to sequence whole genome. A horse.
Field is Ancient DNA. She started in 1999. Works in Beringia (Alaska, Russia)
Collect bones from animals, with DNA can find population size over time
Modern sequencers can do amazing things with short fragments. Other fields don’t like this, but these guys only have short fragments
Found a new camel species
Looked at horse domestication history
Can we clone a mammoth? No.
Asian elephants are closest relative to mammoth. 6 millions years of difference , not very much, just 1%
Hemoglobin difference is in three places, expressed these, found mammoths were better at delivering oxygen when it’s cold
Pleistocene Park. Guy introduced big animals like were there and just their presence over a few summers has brought back grass.
Spencer Wells
Scientist, author, entrepreneur, and former explorer-in-residence and director of the Genographic Project at National Geographic
The Human Journey -migration patterns
Apes 23m yrs ago
~16m years ago africa bumped into Asia and species spread
Humans are 99.9% same genetically
African Adam and Eve 140,000–200,000 years ago
Only left Africa 60,000 years ago
The Genographic Project
700,000 participants
Questions
While we each might have 3% Neanderthal genome, we each have different parts of it. Combine people in this room and you probably get close to half of Neanderthal genome.
~75,000 years ago humans had a near extinction event, down to just 10,000 of us and we came back, so that’s a reason there’s so little variation.
Clinical Professor of Law; Director, Criminal Justice Institute, Harvard Law School
Greg Hampikian
Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Joint appointment in Department of Criminal Justice, Director of the Idaho Innocence Project, Boise State University
Happy Wrongful Convictions Day
Average time on death row before exoneration is 9 years
We know the genes and base pairs that do eye color (blue and brown, hazel is a little more difficult)
Databases with DNA, crime scene DNA, can look for exact match, but if none, look for half match to find family members.
Y-STRs are tied to last name, mitochondrial DNA is tied to mother. Public genealogy database combine these.
Sperm cells are different from other cells and we can separate them from others in samples
Given a profile, is a sample included or excluded or inconclusive. A statistics problem and it’s not always clear
Given tests to different labs, get back wildly different results
Director, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, and Professor, Department of Government and Graduate School of Education, Harvard University
Arthur Caplan
Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor of Bioethics; Director, Division of Medical Ethics, Department of Population Health, NYU Langone Medical Center, NYU School of Medicine
Genetic Testing For Neurological Disorders: Ethical Challenges
We can test for Down’s syndrome and have been able for a while
It’s faced the ethical challenges that other testing will face
Given a prenatal tests, parents could do a lot of different things, some good some bad
Lookup Down’s on web, get different answer per website, Down’s, CDC, WebMD
Some states with laws about informing parents about down fetus and some banning aborting of down fetuses
Thomas W. Smith Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Jacob Corn
Scientific Director, Innovative Genomics Initiative; Assistant Adjunct Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley
The Genome Editing Revolution
Passed around a model of some enzyme (Cas9)
Reading DNA is faster than writing. Reading is growing faster than Moores law.
1990s Zinc Fingered clueless
2009 TAL Effector Nuclease - protein based recognition engineered Nuclease
Seems to work everywhere, bacteria, virus, yeast, mice, chickens, cows, humans, etc.
Good for science testing. On organisms that we don’t know much about can use this to edit genes and see effects.
A German man was cured of HIV by getting a transplant from someone with a particular mutation (by coincidence), now looking to do this via editing
Alison Murdoch
Professor of Reproductive Medicine and Head of Department, Institute of Genetic Medicine, International Fertility Centre for Life, Newcastle University (United Kingdom)
The Science and Politics of Mitochondrial Donation (In the UK)
Large variety of mtDNA caused diseases
Nuclear DNA encode 32,000 genes
mtDNA encodes 37 genes
Mitochondrial transfer in embryos idea is 5 years old
Done in monkeys in 2009
Still not legal in UK on humans, is it ethical?
Just became legal in Oct 2015, treatment in a few months
Floyd Romesberg
Professor, Department of Chemistry, The Scripps Research Institute
Expanding the Genetic Alphabet
Predominantly hydrophobic nucleotides
Details of finding bases that pair well and don’t interfere with existing ones
Robert Reich wrote What I Learned on My Red State Book Tour and I found it encouraging. Sure, someone going to a Robert Reich book signing is self-selecting, but it’s nice to see overlap between the left and right on economic issues.
The two women are co-workers with the same insurance plan. By coincidence, they happened to become pregnant around the same time and gave birth at the same hospital. They both selected in-network obstetricians to deliver their babies. Both chose to receive an epidural from an anesthesiologist as they gave birth — and that’s where things began to diverge. Here’s more from their co-authored blog post at Health Affairs:
Layla received an unexpected bill for $1,600 for anesthesiology services and warned Erin to expect the same. Yet Erin’s bill never came. Layla happened to deliver on a day when an out-of-network anesthesiologist was on call, while Erin was seen by an in-network anesthesiologist. Purely by chance, one of us received an expensive physician bill and the other did not have to pay a dime.
The two later figure out what happened: While the hospital they chose was in-network for the health insurance plan, Layla’s anesthesiologist was an out-of-network provider. Just because he worked at the hospital, that didn’t guarantee that he was one of the doctors that the insurer had in contract."
It’s the obvious problem of treating healthcare like a market, you can’t always shop around (even if you did have enough information to compare providers or treatments). The out-of-network doctor at an in-network hospital hadn’t occurred to me. She also pointed to this NY Times story, After Surgery, Surprise $117,000 Medical Bill From Doctor He Didn’t Know.
In operating rooms and on hospital wards across the country, physicians and other health providers typically help one another in patient care. But in an increasingly common practice that some medical experts call drive-by doctoring, assistants, consultants and other hospital employees are charging patients or their insurers hefty fees. They may be called in when the need for them is questionable. And patients usually do not realize they have been involved or are charging until the bill arrives.
Obviously you want doctors to help each other when needed, but there has to be a more rational way to compensate them. Particularly when in and out of network fees are so staggeringly different:
If a person is in their network approved hospital they should not be charged for services by people who have not contracted with that hospital. Period. This should be something that the insurance companies battle out with the hospitals not something about which an individual should even be aware. You follow the rules and go to your designated facility that should be the end of your responsibility. How it isn’t already is just mind-boggling.
The hoops you have to go through if you’re travelling or if you’re taken to a hospital out of network are already ridiculous. Emergencies should be paid by insurance without question wherever we are in the country. But this takes it to a whole new level. You’re in an emergency medical situation and you’re expected to inquire as to whether your doctors are in your network? And what if they aren’t? Are you expected to stop treatment until they offer you someone who is? It’s crazy.
Oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil is the target of a new state investigation that seeks to determine whether the company deliberately misled the public about the risks of climate change. The New York Times reports that New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued a subpoena to the company on Wednesday, in which he demanded access to financial records, emails, and other documentation, dating back to the late 1970s.
The investigation will include a ten-year period from the mid–1990s to 2007, during which Exxon Mobil provided funding to groups and scientists who rejected or attacked climate change. Speaking in the wake of the subpoena, Kenneth P. Cohen, Exxon Mobil’s vice president for public affairs, said that the company ‘unequivocally reject[s] the allegations that Exxon Mobil has suppressed climate-change research.’ But recent reports have indicated that Exxon Mobil was indeed conscious of the risks of climate change, choosing to fund groups that denied concepts of global warming even as it conducted its own research that showed climate change was a real problem. In the wake of these reports, members of Congress called for an investigation into the company.
“Jon Stewart and HBO have concluded an exclusive four-year production pact, it was announced today by Michael Lombardo, president, HBO Programming. The partnership marks the next phase of Stewart’s groundbreaking career, beginning with short-form digital content, which will be showcased on HBO NOW, HBO GO and other platforms, and includes a first-look option for other film and TV ventures.”
Yay! More Jon Stewart!
“Conclude Exclusive Four-Year Production Pact”? WTF?
Who calls such a thing a “pact”? Is this like a suicide pact?
And how is this concluding? They’re announcing the beginning of a partnership. Concluding the negotiation process is not something you announce or anyone but your lawyers care about.
I guess John Oliver had nice things to say about working with HBO.
Business Insider reports The disappearing middle class is threatening major retailers “‘While overall consumer confidence is trending up, lower income consumers continue to be fragile as income and wage growth has been minimal,’ he said. ‘Higher income and more confident consumers are driving premium growth, while cost-conscious consumers are driving the value segment.’”
This is what happens when the middle class is destroyed. Hershey is having difficulties because the 1% buy better stuff and the increasing poor 99% are buying cheaper stuff (and it’s not like Hershey’s is particularly expensive). It’s true, it’s not a zero-sum game, but when all the gains go the top 1% over the last 40 years, it means the economy suffers because consumers can buy less.
Star Trek New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017 “CBS Television Studios announced today it will launch a totally new Star Trek television series in January 2017. The new series will blast off with a special preview broadcast on the CBS Television Network. The premiere episode and all subsequent first-run episodes will then be available exclusively in the United States on CBS All Access, the Network’s digital subscription video on demand and live streaming service.”
No idea how I feel about this. They don’t have a writer so I doubt they know what the show is at this point. Since the movies are based on a reboot of the Kirk crew on the Enterprise, I doubt the series will be that. So a different timeframe like TNG was? Or a different ship like Voyager? Or something else like DS9?
Kurtzman was involved with the reboot movies but his long time collaborate (and 9/11 truther) Roberto Orci isn’t. So I guess that’s good?
And this being on CBS’ streaming service instead of regular TV seems like a stunt to get Star Trek fans to pay $6/month. “We’ve experienced terrific growth for CBS All Access, expanding the service across affiliates and devices in a very short time. We now have an incredible opportunity to accelerate this growth with the iconic Star Trek, and its devoted and passionate fan base, as our first original series.” Of course, the ST fanbase is probably one of the most capable of pirating the episodes. I might wait for the end of the season and binge watch it in one ($6) month.
