The Letter D

Columbo has always been a hero of mine, and the sad death of Peter Falk at the age of 83 left me hugely upset. With very little deliberation a few weeks ago, I decided I needed to have some tangible memento of him. Pretty much as far back as I can remember, I wanted to be Columbo. He showed that you could be a hero without violence – sometimes all you needed was a brain.

So a good few weeks ago at work I gave a learning group on “British Stuff” – broken down into some general British trivia, some of the differences I’ve encountered over what’s called what, the history of the english language, and then a short introduction to Cockney Rhyming slang.

I finally got around to getting the videos, so here they are!
If you hit play on both at the same time, you should be good to go – either that, or go here and let youtube doubler take care of (basically) everything for you.

Hmm… I get the feeling that I spend a lot of time moving stuff around…

In a previous post I talked about creating a load of image thumbnails by running a custom script. Each time you added a new image to the directory, it would be necessary to run the script again.

Suppose that the images and thumbnails are being kept on a remote server – transferring the images from your local machine to the remote machine using scp might be one way you could do it, but if what you really want to do is have your remote folder in sync with your local folder, then it rsync is probably the tool you’re after.

1

rsync -rv local_image_folder/ you@your_remote_server:~/path/to/remote/image_folder

now you only have to worry about keeping your local folder in order, and your remote one will be happypants.

So a long while ago, I bought a Chumby. Interesting little device, for a while at least – its primary function right now is that of an alarm-clock/mp3 player.

When I’m going to sleep, I usually need something to listen to. The Chumby has a usb socket in the back which allows you to stick a thumb-drive in there and play mp3s off it. As much as I love the portability of thumbdrives, sometimes you just want to be lazy efficient and sit on the couch transferring the relevant mp3s from your laptop to the chumby.

1

scp some_audio_file.mp3 root@DuncChumby:/mnt/usb

Let’s do some resolutions:

• I weigh 180lbs right now – could definitely lose a few! Aiming to be below 170.
• I’ve wondered at Lisp from afar. Let’s see if I can learn it and do something non-trivial.
• I’ve had a website idea stuck in my head for a while. Let’s see if I can Django it together.
• Should really start writing some music again. Aiming for at least one (GOOD) song.
• Be a bit more arty again – paint something.
• Blog more.

That’ll do it for now.

Just over a month ago, I took wifey Jennifer to the ER. She was having chest pains and was pretty freaked out because we didn’t know what was causing it. It was obvious that is wasn’t a heart attack, but she was understandably scared.

At first, though, she didn’t want to go to the hospital. We didn’t have the money.
Me:-”But you have insurance?”
Her:”It’s not very good.”

I was more than puzzled. As it turns out, there are different levels of coverage, presumably so that people who plan on being very ill in the future can plan by paying more, whereas people who plan to be fairly healthy can pay the least amount, but still have coverage, you know, just in case they get ill or something

o_O

I sat with her in bed as she was doubled over in pain for about two hours until I managed to persuade her that we should really go to the hospital, at least find out what was wrong. an ECG, an X-ray and some blood-tests said: There’s nothing wrong – it was probably stress related. Lucky for us. But it made me think – How many people in this country have *NO* insurance (47 million – 1/6th of the population), who would’ve stayed home fearing large bills, hoping the pain would go away, only to die from having a more serious illness? It made me angry. It’s unthinkable that such a developed country could treat its citizens like this. It’s unconscionable.

Who is to blame? Surprisingly, there are a large group of people completely opposed to a US-NHS, citing a reduction in the quality of healthcare; some even claim it is a stepping stone to out-and-out communism. Then of course, the for-profit healthcare providers and health-insurers stand to lose out. But an NHS doesn’t exclude private healthcare. They fail to realise that even with universal coverage, private healthcare can still be an option.

Drug companies. Not only am I dumbfounded daily by the medical advertising which serve only to spread fear (“Those symptoms sound familiar! I must have neurosyphilis!”) to an already over-medicated population, but also makes medicine a consumer-based economy. If I’m suffering from a serious condition, I don’t want to have to choose medications I’ve seen on TV – I want a qualified medical professional, my doctor, to make that decision. Marketing to a vulnerable demographic willing to try anything to alleviate *their suffering* is purely immoral.

The World Health Organisation publishes some statistics on healthcare spending:
The gross national income per capita for the US is $41950, the UK – $32690

The US spends 15.4% of its GDP on healthcare – a total of $6096 per capita
The UK spends 8.1% of its GDP on healthcare – a total of $2560 per capital, startlingly less than the US

The US spends so much more on healthcare per person yet, it has a lower life-expectancy and a higher infant mortality rate. Why? One study concludes that administration accounts for approximately 30% of healthcare costs, compared to 16% in Canada, under a single-payer national healthcare system similar to the UK’s.
Some estimate that it may be as high as 50%.

Just before being discharged, the doctor suggested a course of antibiotics for Jennifer – a just-in-case measure. 10 days worth of pills. $100. We didn’t take it.

A few days ago, we got the final, unitemised bill for the visit.
An X-ray, an ECG, blood tests. The grand total was:-

$6806

Her insurance paid for just over half of it, leaving us with a bill for about $3300.

When I start working (fairly soon, once the permit gets through), we’ll both be covered, through work, by an awesome health-coverage plan. Thankfully, we’ll probably never again have to worry about dialling 911 while worrying how much the ambulance ride will cost. But that says nothing of the 47 million with no coverage, and the many more millions with coverage which is insufficient.

Sources:-

http://www.who.int/countries/usa/en/

http://www.who.int/countries/gbr/en/

http://www.pnhp.org/publications/nejmadmin.pdf

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthins/hlthin06/p60no233_table6.pdf

http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=235948