there's a lake of stew and soda-pop too and you can paddle all around in a big canoe

On Sunday, Obama pushed through the much simonized the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, and I have hope that this is a good thing for America.  A lot of compromise and negotiation went into this and are still to come, surely there are more to come with Senate input.  I just hope that this does not go the way of other recent, historic overhauls like the Department of Homeland Security or Rumsfeld's mad-bomber approach to reforming the civil service system with NSPS (National Security Personnel System), which is now being rescinded or the half a dozen changes of nomenclature promulgated by the Ministry of Revisions.  One can read the full text from the Library of Congress here.
There has been a virtual landslide of commentary on both sides.  Here is a bit of point/counterpoint.  First Reuter's News Services issued this fact box with a timeline.

...WITHIN THE FIRST YEAR

-Insurance companies will be barred from dropping people from coverage when they get sick.  Lifetime coverage limits will be eliminated and annual limits are to be restricted.
-Insurers will be barred from excluding children for coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
-A temporary reinsurance program is created to help companies maintain health coverage for early retirees between 55 and 64.
-Medicare drug beneficiaries who fall into the "doughbut hole" coverage gap will get a $250 rebate...
WHAT HAPPENS IN 2011
-Employers are required to disclose the value of health benefits of employees' tax returns...
There is a virtual landslide of commentary on both sides, and here is a little bit of point/counterpoint.

Investors' Digest Daily has issued the counter-argument:
-You are young and don't want health insurance?  You are starting up a small business and need to minize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego personal insurance?  Tough.  You have to pay $750 per annum for that "privilege."
-Health insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person's health status.
-Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them cost sharing, despite customer wishes.
-As a hospital administrator, you can only expand your facility if and only if it is located in a county whose population has grown 150% in the last five years proportionally to the population of the surrounding state.
-Employers can no longer offer flexible spending plans, even if that's what the worker wants.

H and I talked about these developments a little bit, and suspects that German who abandon its social healthcare system, if they could get away with it, no matter how equitable it is.  I just hope there is some convergent evolution on the part of America.

orange, lemon, cherry, lime

Coinciding with United Nations Water Day, astronomers report that water on the Moon, like water under the ocean, comes in more than one flavour.  There was also some spectacular magic-lantern images of glacial formations on Mars, ice walls hewn to pristine artic craters, courtesy of the Daily Mail.

playbill

The UK Independent has a swank article on the revitalization of the graphic arts--that film posters do not have to tow a specific, formulaic line and can be creative and evocative without cramming in the static contents of the beta version of the trailers or credits over some windswept plain or cast cameo.  The article also points to this brillant artist who has meshed 80's movies with pulp fiction style book jackets, which I have blogged about several times before.  Advertisements and concert posters were quite creative little bundles and there's no call for marketing to be boring or painfully cogent and transparent.

spring funk

For this past week, I've not felt motivated to take much advantage of the nicer weather, and H told me about a phenomenon called Frühjahrsmüdigkeit, Spring time tiredness--like a seasonal affective disorder.  I've just been sleepy, and although warmer and squandrons of migrating water fowl are overhead, the sun is still conspicuously absent and threatens prolonged periods of rain.

MKUltrée

Last week, the Telegraph circulated a story that really reignites all those old covert spook stories of secret US government experimentation.  Concensus is leaning more towards the CIA lacing grain with LSD to study its effects on a village, Pont-Saint-Esprit, in rural France one late summer day in 1951, rather than ergotism blamed on the village baker as was thought for decades.  The whole population suffered were plagued with violent hallucinations, and some did violence to themselves or were committed to mental institutions after the singular episode.  The public knows there is truth behind the CIA operations with those MK- designations.  France, however, has had its history of mania and mass-hysteria without US government interference.  In Strausbourg and then in Metz in the 1518, there were cases of seemingly enchanted dancers, where hundreds of people jived and gyrated until they collapsed from exhaustion.  The victims were compelled to keep moving against their will, and it was nothing like dated crazes like flag-pole sitting or crowding into phone booths or apparently spiking the grain supplies of other nations with mind-altering drugs

tiajuana

It is break week for my MBA programme, and I wonder what one does traditionally for spring break for an on-line course of study.  I understand the usual bastions of sophomoric excess in the States, Mexican border towns, have become far too dangerous, like tinderboxes tempting violence, ransom or murder for their US holiday-makers.  What surprised me most about this news item was not the spill over of drug violence, but that there is no limit for capacity to scare white people--I could not believe the xenophobia and frightful nationalism and ugly asides in the comment, buzzed-up section after the article.  Careless behavior should not invite violence, but peripheral violence should not justify reactionary fears and useless stereotypes.

urban legend

Slowly and without much notice, it is being revealed that the coalition of the willing fighting in Afghanistan have significantly inflated news of the taking of Marjah in Helmand Province, not a metropolitian stronghold of some 80 000 souls but rather a dusty little village with a mosque and a few shops.  This success was touted as a major turning point for the allies and was hoped to justify the prolonged effort.

what's up, buttercup?

To counter the general mood of the weather that's yet heavy and gray, H and I are trying to brighten up the place a bit with some flowers--actually, call them Narcissi, jonquils or daffodils.  I like the round-about etymology of daffodil the best: like the mythology of Narcissus, the name daffodil comes from the Greek word asphodel for the ghostly flowers that grew in the fields of the purgatory of Hades where mediocre souls grazed on them, and things were perfectly neutral and gray, like today's sky.  Maybe that's why the flowers bloom at this time of year, just before world is gob-smacked with the full force of Spring time, as an early signal that nature is about to re-awaken.