Wednesday Bible Study: False prophecy
Psalm 87 is rather opaque. What seems to be going on here is that Zion, i.e Jerusalem, is envisioned as essentially the capital of the world -- that is, the world as it was known to the ancient Judeans. Obviously that never happened. It ' s not clear when this was written or what the intent really is. " Rahab " apparently refers to a legendary monster supposedly slain by Yahweh, as mentioned later in Psalm 89, not the helpful brothel keeper of the Book of Joshua, and it is thought to be a metonym for Egypt, though I ' m not sure why scholars think so. Regarding Psalm 88, nobody knows whatMahalath Leannoth means. Mahal...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 27, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Medicine as a public good
Medicine is unlike most other goods and services in the extent to which it has important positive externalities – that is, benefits for people outside of the transaction, who are not the providers or consumers. (Of course it has negative externalities as well, including carbon emissions and notably, a huge quantity of plastic waste.) A straightforward positive externality is infectious disease control. Prev enting or curing infectious diseases prevents them from being transmitted to others. This is an immense benefit to society that goes far beyond the direct value to people who are vaccinated or treated.Another positive...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 25, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Weird Theology
Now we say goodbye to Asaph, and start what was evidently originally a new hymnal. " Gittith " is probably a musical instrument, but it could be a tune. The meaning is unknown. Anway, whenever these were composed, they aren ' t monotheistic. In psalm 84, Yahweh is the " God of gods " in verse 7, and otherwise the " Lord of hosts, " referring to an assemblage of god over which Yahweh is supreme. Psalm 85 is another of those that refers to some unspecified time in which the nation is afflicted and God seems to have withdrawn his favor. It does not seem to refer to the Babylonian exile, however, because the people seem s...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 24, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Medical Economics
Sorry for missing a couple of days, been bizzy. Anyway, to continue with our trashing of the " discipline " of economics (which is actually more a branch of theology than a science),it should be obvious that Medicine exists in a world even
less like Economics 101 than most industries. To begin with, while our basic
needs for food, clothing and shelter are predictable and roughly similar for
everyone, our need for medical services is largely unpredictable, and it varies
radically from person to person and time to time. Some people go for decades
without really needing any at all, although there are some preventive measures
...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 23, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: QAnon
Psalms 81 and 82 are pretty standard fare. 81 is written for a specific observance, and it reminds the Israelites that they are God ' s chosen people and to be faithful. 82 calls on God to punish the wicked and reward the righteous -- as if he wouldn ' t do it unless we asked. Psalm 83, however, is getting a whole lot of attention right now, from people who probably don ' t read this blog and who you probably are barely aware of. It describes a broad alliance against Israel, bent on its destruction, and calls on God to exterminate them, referring to the massacres of the Midianites in Numbers 31, and the massacre of th...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 20, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Disability Activist: Take Great Care When Seeing Bias Toward Disabled Citizens
By RANDY SOUDERS
During the years I served as Chairman of the Board for Jean Kennedy Smith’s Arts and Disability program, Very Special Arts (VSA at the Kennedy Center), I had there opportunity to meet a wide range of remarkable and courageous disabled Americans. Among the lasting friendships is a painter and visual artist, Randy Souders, who was rendered quadriplegic at the age of 17 in a 1972 accident. His concerns of late have been heightened by Trump and MAGA Republicans. I share his communication with his permission here in the hope that tech designers and others will be alert to the fact that great care is requir...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 20, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Disability eugenics Holocaust Mike Magee Randy Souders Trump Source Type: blogs
Mark your ideas to market
That means that if you make a claim about what is possible or inevitable, you need to check it against reality. Here is reality. (I ' ve put this graphic up before, but apparently some people have a short memory.)Every single country on that list has one form or another of universal, government-funded health care, with a single exception. Every country on that list has a longer life expectancy at birth than the single exception, and every country on that list spends less on health care than the single exception, by a lot -- on average, they spend half as much. Furthermore, their citizens spend far less out of po...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 19, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The Latest AI Craze: Ambient Scribing
By MATTHEW HOLT
Okay, I can’t do it any longer. As much as I tried to resist, it is time to write about ambient scribing. But I’m going to do it in a slightly odd way
If you have met me, you know that I have a strange English-American accent, and I speak in a garbled manner. Yet I’m using the inbuilt voice recognition that Google supplies to write this story now.
Side note: I dictated this whole thing on my phone while watching my kids water polo game, which has a fair amount of background noise. And I think you’ll be modestly amused about how terrible the original transcript was. But then...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 18, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Matthew Holt abridge AI Ambient Scribing Anthropic clinical care Coding Google Microsoft Nabla Nuance OpenAI Suki Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Moar Anachronism
Psalms 79 and 80 are attributed to Asaph. As you will recall, Asaph was purportedly one of David ' s chief musicians, but the setting of these psalms is evidently the fall of Judah to Babylon, so that makes no sense. These must have been written during the exile, after Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem and kidnapped the elites. It ' s also possible, though less likely, that the setting is the sack of Jerusalem by the Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak in the 10th Century BCE, in the reign of Rehoboam, but Asaph, if he ever existed, would certainly have been long dead by then. In general, most of the psalms seem to be responses to even...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 17, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Distributive justice
One last point about Economics 101 may be the most important, is likely to be overlooked or even denied in the U.S. today. Economists claim they can show that if all their assumptions are true – perfect information, willing sellers and willing buyers, perfect competition, no externalities – the hypothetical free market will create what is called a Pareto optimum. That is a situation in which no person can be made better off without making someone else worse off. This is the basis of t he claim that the free market allocates resources “efficiently.” But there can be a Pareto optimum in which everybody has an equal o...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 16, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Goodness!
The essential, first-order or pure concept of " public goods " is whatever we benefit from that is " non-excludable " and " non-rivalrous. " That means you can use it without paying for it, and if you use it, it ' s still there for others. An example, at least for the time being, is the oxygen in the air. Back in the good old paleolithic, there was a lot more of that. Basically, the land and the water and the plants and animals were there for the taking, and there was usually plenty so rivalry was uncommon. Of course, this only worked within your own tribe -- sometimes people of different tribes tried exclusion and rivalry...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 14, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
History Lesson
Psalm 78 is, I believe, the third longest psalm. It ' s also one of three so-called " long history " psalms. It basically recounts events from Exodus and Numbers, in chronologically confused order, and then skips ahead to touch on the establishment of the reign of David. The listing of the plagues of Egypt does not exactly correspond to the canonical version of Exodus we have today -- there are no caterpillars or frost in Exodus. This may just be a fanciful addition, or it may be that it draws on a lost version of the story. Once again, keep in mind that there were no printing presses and any document would have existed in...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 13, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
How do we stop a resurgence of fascism?
Is it bad to write for hard-right outlets?
There is no doubt that the Overton window has shifted to the right during the last decade or two. It is now common to hear people saying things that, even in 2010 would have been thought to be frankly fascistic.
I recall a conversation with the great biophysicist, Sir Bernard Katz, in 1992. He had come to UCL in 1936 to escape from the Nazi regime in Leipzig. When I suggested to him that he must have been very pleased about the reunification of Germany, he pulled a long face and said “hmm, let’s wait to see what crawls out from under stones”. ...
Source: DC's goodscience - March 11, 2024 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Uncategorized Alan Sokal anti-vaccination antiscience Deborah Cohen fascism Margaret McCartney Paul Marshall Quillette sceptics skeptics Spiked Toby Young transgender UnHerd Source Type: blogs
The ‘Barbie Speech’ – How Much Has Really Changed For Women in America?
By MIKE MAGEE
In our world where up is down, and black is white, there is a left and a right – it’s the middle we appear to be missing. Does it exist, or was it make believe all along?
Into this existential despair enters Britt Cagle Grant, the 47-year old Federal Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. The Stanford Law graduate, blessed by the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo, and former clerk of Hon. Brett Kavanaugh, was nominated by Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate on July 31, 2018.
Now six years later, her words in rejecting DeSantis’s “Stop Woke Act” (otherwise kno...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 11, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Barbie De Santis feminism Mike Magee Terry Sciaivo Source Type: blogs
The worst assumption of all
Before getting back to Econ 101, I won ' t keep you in suspense. Aaliyah Edwards didn ' t play yesterday, so Auriemma had only 7 players suited up, which meant that Ice Brady had to play 40 minutes. The most minutes she has played in any game previously is 14. Ashlyn Shade also played 40 minutes, while Bueckers and Muhl played the entire game until Geno pulled them in garbage time. No problem. Marquette scored zero points in the last 14 minutes of the game, which means the box score shows a bagel for the fourth quarter. UCONN won 58-29. Apparently there ' s precedent for zero points in a quarter in women ' s college ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 11, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
