perfidy

The AP is reporting that sales of cloned cattle are increasing in anticipation of an FDA ruling that cloned beef is safe to eat. Personally, I don't see how the FDA could rule otherwise, given that a clone is by definition an exact copy of another animal. If the original ambulatory steak was edible, so will its identical twin. Of course, we must get ready for the deluge of dirty hippies screaming, "Frankenfood."

Meanwhile, I eagerly await my first cloned steak. It has such 50s retro science of the future feel to it. I arrive home from work in my jet car, park in the garage of my circular, all-glass home of the future, tell the robot butler to hold all calls on the videophone, and sit down to a meal of cloned beef and genetically engineered potatoes. What could be better?

You can't resist reading something entitled "Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass", can you?

Standard but faltering Republican rhetoric on the drug issue is twofold: First, safety is compromised by using those nasty Canadian pharmacies; everybody knows millions of people die every year in Canada from taking bad drugs (right). Second, it's really about the research dollars; the rest of the world is mooching off of the US.

I heard an interview this morning on NPR with the Republican governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty. His plan is a state-sponsored mail-order program that will import drugs from Canada. Citizens (I refuse to call them consumers) order their drugs from a web site maintained by the state, which selects the Canadian pharmacies that are eligible to participate. The state is then able to maintain a significant amount of control over the quality of the pipeline.

Much of the free-for-all that exists in the American drug distribution system simply does not exist in Canada. If you've been following the Washington Post article on the subject, you realize by now that the American drug system is full of tiny suppliers who keep medicines in the back of their Honda Civics, and sell them to whoever will ask. The "chain of custody" for medications is something that the pharmacy distribution system has been fighting for years. Why? They want to preserve their ability to get gray-market drugs, and enhance their bottom lines.

Tamoxifen is one of the most widely prescribe drugs for treating breast cancer. In Germany, in that country's national health care system, the drug costs around $60 US for a month's supply. In Canada, a month's supply costs about $50 US. Here in America, that exact same drug costs about $350 for a month's supply. How many thousands of women are dead because they could not get the medicine? A very large number. And as the number of uninsured increases, the number of deaths increases.

But why does this happen? How can the drug cost seven times as much here as it does elsewhere? The reason is that there is no global cost-benefit analysis within the American system.

If a drug, like Tamoxifen, is the best course of action for a given health situation, the doctor must prescribe it. The cost is simply not a part of the equation. If the doctor doesn't prescribe it, he/she will be sued. The insurance company must pay the bill; if they don't pay, there can be severe consequences. What we effectively do is prevent any form of cost-monitoring, in the system. The drug companies love this, and know this...and they know that they are able to raise their prices almost at will; insurance companies will be forced to pay, because doctors are forced to prescribe. Perhaps it is incorrect to say that doctors are forced to prescribe; they are prescribing what they believe to be the best available medication.

In Canada, Germany, and other National Health Care systems, the system works a little differently. In these systems there is global cost monitoring. What the system does, in effect, is examine the cost-benefit ratio of a medication like Tamoxifen. At $350 for a month's supply, there is a measurable benefit to the administration of the drug. The health care system is going to look at what else it could have done with that much money. If it can gain better care elsewhere (save more lives, increase quality of life) with the same money, that's what it's going to do. In effect, the health care system itself becomes the consumer, allocating scarce resources where it can find the most benefit.

The price of Tamoxifen in Canada is $50 because that is the benefit it provides to the health system. It is not about price controls; the Canadian health care system will not pay more than $50, because at that point, the money is better spent elsewhere. The German health care system has set this boundary at $60.

I submit that the American health care system needs this kind of global control; or, at least, it can become statistically aware of the efficacy of the drugs it uses, and construct an index of the cost-benefit of medications. The lack of caps on spiralling medical costs in the current American system is due to the lack of global cost-benefit analysis.

Very cool Java applet demonstrating the wonders of the universe, from the very large, to the very small...hopefully you have installed Java! If so...

Powers Of Ten

The President is attending a fundraising event for Haley Barbour, who's running in Mississippi. Barbour, you will recall, was recently photographed smiling and enjoying himself at a CCC event. CCC is one of the more openly racist/freako organizations out there today; any google search will bring you information leaning in that direction. You will also recall that not so very long ago our good friend, the former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, was thoroughly raked over the coals for his association with the group.

Bush is "accepting" Barbour's explanation that "he didn't know who the group was", when he attended the event.

Let's summarize: The Republican President is accepting as an explanation that the Republican National Chairman was not aware of the political firestorm that erupted around the Republican Senate Majority Leader on racism issues; that he (the RNC chairman) didn't keep track of the "details".

The President knows full well that Haley Barbour knew exactly who he was meeting with.

Earth To Barbour: "Hey, Haley, Trent Lott is taking heat for being associated with the Coalition of Concerned Citizens. They're freaky and racist."

Barbour: "I have no idea who that political action group in Mississippi is. OK, we'll deal with it."

Earth to Barbour: "Why are you hanging out with the CCC? Didn't we cover this already?"

Barbour: "Who? I have no idea who you're talking about. But I can assure you that my intentions are honorable."

Earth to Barbour: "Stop doing fundraising events with the CCC and pandering to them to get their votes. It looks really bad."

Barbour: "Who? I have this funny blank spot in my mind. There's something that I just can't quite remember."

Bush: "I am the goddamn President, and if Haley says he can't remember, then he can't remember, alright? Haley won't be doing anything with the CCC any more."

Barbour: "Who? Everybody keeps talking about this like I should know who this racist group of my old friends is."

Bush: "Shut up, Haley. Didn't I give you and Allbaugh a totally cushy way to make millions funneling Iraq contracts? Aren't you supposed to be quietly making a killing? Stop making me look bad with this CCC business."

Barbour: "Who?"

I just read that there's another mass email worm on the loose. Yeah, denial of service is bad and all that, but this one apparently targets DarkProfits.com. They're the friendly folks who sent me (and my mother) a few dozen emails that loudly proclaim, in the subject line, "your credit card has been charged $247.35 for child porn", and provide a convenient HTML form where you can enter in your credit card details if you disagree with that charge.

It's an anti-spammer worm, which is an interesting development. It's sort of a stupid one, though...it makes no sense whatsoever to create a worm that only does one thing. You really want the bot army if you can get it, and it's a lot simpler to build something that morphs itself from one form to another, that is very general, that has little for scanners to get a hold of.

The bottom line is that Windows-based computation is in some pretty severe danger right now. Microsoft has absolutely insisted that the default state of the OS be that processes can do whatever they want, wherever they want. Unix takes the opposite view, that much of the system is protected from processes unless they can get rooted. Guess which one makes for a more secure system?

Of course all of that can be subverted, instantly, by one crappy program running setuid root. C may be a good language for writing bits and pieces of an OS, but it's lousy at security.

As always, the Onion has it straight.

This is cool beyond words. If you're a geek, and I know you are or you wouldn't be here. This website allows you to create things like this: 

I live north of Boston, and commute to the city every day to work. So imagine my consternation when I find that North Station, the only train station I can get to from where I live, will almost certainly be closing for the duration of the Democratic Party convention in July of 2004. Traffic will be re-routed as well, but that's an everyday thing around here.

I'm glad that the city of Boston got the convention, as it's quite the moneymaker. But can't they figure out a better way to accommodate thousands of commuters than to shut down their only conduit in and out of the city? Oh, I COULD take a bus, but I'm already up at 5:30 to commute as it is. I realize it's not the fault of the Democrats, but since I can't vote against the people who did this in Boston elections...

In the comments to a post by Ross below, I noted that the level of discourse around here is rising sharply with the addition of him and GeekLethal to our numbers. I am delighted that is the case.

On the topic of discourse, I came across a reminder by Daniel Drezner today of this oxblog post by Josh Chafetz about the verbal petards launched between left and right. Chafetz asks for a little civility, please, when talking across the aisle. His particular instance is taken from Matthew Yglesias' comments, in which his readers opine that there is no such thing as an intelligent conservative.

Oh, please. I know this kind of thing is common as dirt, and that it happens on both sides of the debate (Instapundit, Li'l Green Footballs, I'm talking to you), but just because everyone does it doesn't make it any less crass or lazy. Is it really such a stretch to assume that people who disagree with you have actually thought through what they believe? To assume otherwise is disingenous, yet it happens all the time, and it makes me sad and tired.

What brings this on? Yesterday, Instapundit linked to a techcentralstation column about the comic strip "Day by Day", noting that "it's starting to get the attention it deserves."

The main point of the TCS article is that Day by Day is an exemplar of the breakdown of the "political left's near monopoly on the dissemination of information." The strip features a 24-year-old black conservative who is "a one man wrecking crew when confronted with liberal shibboleths...[is] highly articulate, radiates droll coolness, but has thoroughly rejected hip-hop culture, and his usual foil, " Jan, who is Damon's age, but a young white leftist, believing every platitude generated by the DNC: that only the left can solve environmental issues; that the NAACP is the only solution to racial issues (in the strip's second comic, where Jan met Damon, she greeted him by saying "Power to the people!" Damon quipped that he thought she was discussing California utilities); that liberating Iraq was bad; capitalism is bad; meat is murder; free trade is bad, etc. Like much of the current far left, she's very much standing athwart history, yelling stop."

I read Day by Day from time to time, and agree it's pretty good. But part of author Chris Muir's stock-in-trade is pandering to its ostensibly conservative-leaning audience using by one of the favorite tropes of the new conservative movement: we're SMARTER than they are.

As I mentioned before, all sides in the debate engage in such ankelbitery. But really. Casting a 24-year-old "meat is murder" protectionist nonintrospective liberal as the foil is a pat and easy move for Muir to make. Wow! Watch the smart guy demolish the naive liberal! Bang! Smash! ZIng! Oooh, the DNC better watch their ass, cuz Muir's on a tear!

I realize I'm asking a lot of a comic strip to achieve a finely nuanced dialogue about politics, but this happens too often, and this time I have some free time to write about it.

Writers on the left, especially issue-driven radicals, tend to lean toward an earnest, sometimes smug, wild-eyed evangelism: "don't you get it? We're all doomed! Are you stupid, or just evil??" kind of thing. Lesser writers on the left, like Atrios' commentors, Maureen Dowd, and the folks at NPR do this all the time.

The right's preferred stance is the smug, weary, irritable condescention plied so well by Jonah Goldberg, the Instapundit, and in a debased form Billy O'Reilly: "Jesus, they're all beyond hope. Good thing we can count to twenty without using our feet." Each trope is totally unconstructive and incredibly wearying.

The problem is that the Left, such as it exists today, only gets big press when evil idiot fucks like ANSWER hold a rally calling for a US military defeat and nobody takes them to task for it. I mean, come on! I read a story last week about the most recent anti-war rally in DC, and most of the people there either didn't know or didn't care too much what ANSWER's platform was. In that regard, the left is guilty of a horrible lack of self-scrutiny, but the foolishness of picketers should not reflect poorly on the greater mass of left-leaning people.

(Naturally, others would counter that the press in general is too liberal, but I don't give a crap what others think about this. I see a lot of bias both ways.)

I'm very glad that my cobloggers are intelligent, reasonable people who realize that "reasonable people may differ." As the left/right political spectrum breaks down, leaving evil idiot fucks like A.N.S.W.E.R. in charge on the left and further enboldening the right to condemn all and sundry as Stalinist dupes, this becomes ever more important.

I don't blog about politics and war much anymore because keeping up with the stories makes me sad and tired, and I'm not in blogging to be sad and tired. Buckethead, Windy City Mike and I started this thing way back in March to give ourselves a sandbox to play in. Although I'm not taking my ball and going home-- oh, no, no!-- I do expect to not blog so much about the "partisan" side of "partisan" politics for a while. It's a clusterfark, and, Jesus, Jim! I'm a musician, not a pundit!