January, 2021 archive
A Tune for the Times 0
H/T to my brother in Virginia’s Northern Neck.
The Great Expulsion 0
The Roanoke Times editorial board remembers.
Legacy, Headline of the Day Dept. 0
A new term enters international discourse.
Aside:
I do not know enough about the politics of Brexit (other than I think Great Britain has shot itself in the foot) to have an opinion on the substance of the news story.
Nevertheless, I find it simultaneously appalling (because I’m capable of shame) and amusing (because I know poetic justice when I see it) that the name of our previous federal executive is now a portmanteau for “arbitrary, capricious, petty, and stupid.”
Enter the Thought Police 0
Cancel culture, Republican style:
Much more at the link.
The Fee Hand of the Market 0
David Lazarus investigated a hospital bill. A snippet:
Summers received his insurer’s explanation of benefits recently.
There are any number of things we could nitpick about. But what really jumped out at me was a charge of almost $77,000 for “medical services,” a mysterious fee above and beyond the roughly $5,000 billed separately by Summers’ surgeon and anesthesiologist.
Follow the link for the story of his quest to find out what “medical services” warranted charges at the rate of $25,666.66 an hour for a three-hour outpatient procedure.
Geeking Out 0
Installing OPENSuse into a VirtualBox virtual machine on Mageia v. 7 under the Fluxbox window manager. The wallpaper is from my collection.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
As we all know by now, politeness is child’s play.
Twits on Twitter 0
One more time, why does anyone pay attention to David Brooks?
Vaccine Nation 0
In a thoughtful article at The Seattle Times, Danny Westneat compares the different approaches to delivering COVID-19 vaccines in the neighboring states of Washington and Oregon and the larger implications thereof.
Here’s a bit:
At its core is an uncomfortable question that nobody wants to fall on the wrong side of: Who really is essential in a society?
So who’s up next?
Here in these parts we are seeing similar arguments being played out on a much smaller scale as neighboring cities struggle with questions of, for example, reopening schools and restarting high school sports. Westneat offers a reasonable and reasoned assessment of the situation.
QOTD 0
Fiona Gillies, in the voice of Susanna Aurifaber:
In this world, what receive and what we deserve are rarely the same.