#1066 Paid Market

I recently came across one of those “instant polls” on a website. You know the ones I’m talking about; they ask you to choose from three really simplistic answers to a complex question. Two of the answers are absolutely ludicrous, or phrased in such a way that to choose them would make you seem like you were either exceptionally cruel or a total idiot.
The last choice always seems mild, comforting, reasonable, and familiar. In this case the question was, “What do you think is a best solution to the healthcare reform issue?” And the mildest, most comforting, and simple answer was, “Let the free market do its thing.”
Now I’m a big advocate of the free market, I think it’s one of the most natural and responsive economic systems there is. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s far from free, as the manipulations of the Madoff’s and the AIGs of the cratered economy have pointed out.
There are all kinds of un-free forces at work in healthcare and every other enterprise, as various groups roll out the dough to capture their biggest slice of the un-free pie.
In any event, about the time I saw the survey I saw an interesting statistic. The insurance industry and some medical groups have hired more than 350 ex-government staff people and retired congress-folks to help them lobby about aspects of new healthcare legislation. It is a record-breaking influence campaign by those in the health-care industry who stand to lose the most profits.
And here’s the most sobering statistic in these near-depression times. They are spending 1.4 million dollars a day on lobbying. That’s right, 1.4 million dollars a day. Talk about economic stimulus.
Now 511 million a year is a pig in the poke compared to the billions in bailouts AIG and their ilk got, but still, that whole 511 million is being spent on only 535 congressmen and senators. That’s nearly a million a piece. These are the same congress people, by the way, who already have the best personal healthcare plan on the planet.
It may not be a free market, but it looks like a certain group might get what it paid for.
America, ya gotta love it.

#1065 Twitter Twaddle

You would have to be living under a rock not to have heard how everyone is all-atwitter over Twitter. But now the horror stories are starting to emerge.
Twitter is essentially a gossip network. You can only send out messages of 140 characters. You can send your messages from your phone, if you like, to your Twitter page, which then can be automatically accessed by the computers or phones of your “followers.”
You send, and they get, “tweets.”
I suppose I’ve avoided twittering for primarily that reason. I’m almost okay with sending a short status message to all and sundry. I’m not comfortable with sending a tweet.
But my Luddite tendencies and dignity sensibilities notwithstanding, Twitter has caught on in the world of gossip like a profane union of People Magazine and the National Enquirer on Octomom fertility drugs.
Actors, particularly, are jumping in with both thumbs, managing their publicity (or having it managed for them by paid tweeter minions) and garnering thousands of followers. Which they then compete with each other to compare. Kevin Spacey has 800,000 followers, Ashton Kutcher has a million.
But like all gossip, it can go terribly bad. There are no controls. Jeff Goldblum was reported dead by the New Zealand media on the basis of what turned out to be a bunch of Twitter Tweet twaddle. Jonah Hill has someone impersonating him, sending bogus tweets and getting him in trouble with various friends and movie directors.
Some folk on Twitter briefly fulminated a Tweet storm of gossip, urging people to visit not Sarah Palin’s Twitter page but her Qwitter page.
Corporations are hiring Twitter fishers, monitoring the webwaves for bad PR.
But I saw something the other day that really worried me. A young lady had her flip-phone open and she was texting something. But she was resting her phone on the shelf of her bulging extremely pregnant belly. Don’t they tell people that phone waves are dangerous to your brain? And tell guys not to keep their cellphones in their front pants pockets?
I know it sounds like a cutesy-pie harmless thing to do. But is tweeting over your fetus a good idea?
America, ya gotta love it.

#1064 Mooning

In the light of the silvery moon-talk about the anniversary of our first trip there, it’s interesting to note some of the cultural effects of that technological endeavor.
For one thing, we compare it to almost every human challenge. “If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we make soft toilet paper.” “If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we make a good-tasting decaffeinated coffee?” Stuff like that. Not a day goes by that someone somewhere doesn’t utter that whiny gripe-by-comparison.
And why is it that someone can be mooning over someone else and its love, where one feels exposed and vulnerable, but when that person moons someone else it’s a different type of exposure altogether?
But there really have been amazing strides in technology thanks to the nationwide effort to get us to the moon. And I’m not just talking Tang. Today’s recapture water and filtering technology would never have received such an impetus if the problem of recycling personal waste hadn’t been dealt with in cramped Apollo capsules.
In fact, I saw something in a public restroom the other day that may be moon related. I was in one of those giant warehouse stores. The place was huge and the restroom was so far away, by the time I got back to where I started, I had to go again.
But in the restroom, I used this incredible space age hand dryer.
They called it the “air knife” and it used a focused and honed blast of air to squeegee the water from my hands—like those giant focused air blasters in carwashes, but tiny. Scary though, as you have to stick your hands deep into these openings that have the words “air knife” on them.
Since it was next to a diaper changing table I wasn’t sure if it was a pamper shredder or a hand dryer. But I used it anyhow because I was in a hurry. I’d left my dessert on a table back at the eating area.
All I can say is, thanks Apollo people.
My hands were clean and dry, so I could enjoy my Moon Pie.
America, ya gotta love it.