The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Steve <b style="color: black; background-color: rgb(255, 153, 153);">C</b>.:

If masturbation is an inward activity, what about nocturnal emissions? Those should make one twice as gay.

If you have a moment, send some good vibes to Joe and Gay Haldeman -- Joe's in the hospital in Cinncinati, and had surgery for some abdominal problems.

http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=read&group=sff.people.joe-haldeman&artnum=13905

Beautiful post.

I'm close enough to my workplace to bike it, except the insane traffic would end my life, and the SE Texas heat & humidity (for eight months out of the year) would make me want to end it.

I haven't hidden anything in code itself, but I've entertained myself by posting comments in code, such as:

WARNING: IF YOU NEED TO CHANGE ANYTHING IN THE PROCEDURE BELOW, BE DAMNED SURE OR THOU WILL BE SURELY DAMNED.

Has anyone known a poster on a forum who ever reformed his or her bullying ways and became an polite, constructive commenter on the forum?

My guess is that kind of reform is extremely rare, and that the bully, troll, or what have you just left.

Stefan @ 610 -

Yep. That's Jemaine Clement, of Flight of the Conchords. He's going to be in Gentlemen Broncos, about a SF writer who rips off a fan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentlemen_Broncos

Don't know if anyone's seen this yet:

http://ronaldchevalier.com/



World's Coolest SF writer

James Surowiecki has an interesting piece in the New Yorker about the public's attitude towards health care reform.

Status Quo Anxiety

Excerpt:

Last year, a Rasmussen poll found that only twenty-nine percent of likely voters rated the U.S. health-care system good or excellent. Yet when Americans were asked the very same question last month, forty-eight per cent rated it that highly. The American health-care system didn’t suddenly improve over the past eleven months. People just feel it’s working better because they’re being asked to contemplate changing it.

abi @ 251 -

Let's talk about boxer shorts. How do guys cope with the feeling of them wrinkling against their thighs under their trousers?

I used to wear briefs until about 5 years ago, and then switched to boxers. Partly it's because boxers have a little more "give" in them for the expanding middle-age girth, and partly because briefs started to seem, oh, juvenile.

The wrinkling of the material around the thighs isn't noticeable because it's relatively light and loose. However, I have been annoyed at the tendency to ride up in back instead of firmly hugging the waist. For that reason, I've been thinking of checking out the boxer briefs.

This episode of True Underwear Confessions has been brought to you by Jockey(tm) and Fruit of the Loom(tm).

Is seampunk anything like the New Weave of the 60s?

Television news ceased to be journalism some years ago. I don't give a rat's ass who they hire.

Albatross @ 25 -

The only known supply is in the mountainous nation of Nonfindonia.

It may be a happy number, but maybe not for the 129 mice, who have a "high incidence of spontaneous testicular teratomas."

I'm sure that Dave Barry would point out that Spontaneous Testicular Teratomas would be a helluva good name for a rock band.

Down here in Texas, one of the things you can always count on in the relentless expansion of the suburbs is that you will see new hospitals, clinics, labs, imaging facilities following close behind.

That's one of the key things about health care -- it's growing, and it's growing at a faster rate than the rest of economy. And it's providing jobs, a good many of them well-paid jobs. All those hospitals, clinics, labs, etc., are growing because the current business model of health care is pumping in loads of money.

We're in a health care bubble, and one day it's going to pop. No one enjoying the ride right now wants it to end, and they are doing anything to keep it going as long as they can.

Unlike the Internet bubble or housing bubble, consumer demand for health care has room to grow, particularly as the Boomers hit their peak years for health care demand.

But it can't grow forever, and I'd guess that we have about ten years before the bubble collapses. And the results won't be pretty.

Abi @ 764 -

So, still in between having a cat and not.

Maybe her name should be Schrodinger?

It'll be the zombie mimes that herald the apocalypse.

Quietly, of course.

I don't know if anyone has posted this, but I found it interesting.

http://surgeonsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/fee-for-service.html

In it, the doctor talks about how the way medicine is paid for and how that can affect treatments.

The is an interesting piece by Uwe Reinhardt about how so-called common sense about health care is anything but.


Common sense health reform

A non-profit hospital may not be paying its executives as much, but that doesn't mean that they don't make a buck. They don't call it "earnings" or "profit", but rather "reserve", as in reserves for capital expenditures. Some non-profit hospitals can have reserves of hundreds of millions of dollars.

When there's a $2.4 trillion pot on the table, look for the players with the biggest pockets to win.

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