January 2009
37 posts
TheStar.com | News & Features | Health plan funds... →
“ast year, doctors prescribed $54 million of OxyContin – called “hillbilly heroin” by street dealers – under a provincial program that provides free medications to people on social assistance, seniors and people with disabilities. That’s nearly triple the $19 million handed out five years before.”
The military should close its torture school. I... →
“SERE conditions servicemen to expect nothing but the worst from their captors; Durant’s life depended on his ability to understand his captors and find ways to manipulate them psychologically.”
To eat or not to eat? That is the question when... →
Jonathan Raban: How did Obama's inaugural speech... →
Argues (correctly I think) that the main point of Obama’s inaugural was to put aside the last eight years.
Best Week Ever » Blog Archive » 10 Songs Raped,... →
This is simply the awesomest.
“It’s called Lemon Socialism. Taxpayers support the lemons. Capitalism is...”
– TPMCafe | Talking Points Memo | How America Embraced Lemon Socialism
Pope Rehabilitates Holocaust Denier - NYTimes.com →
The Health Care Blog: The Truth About Health IT... →
“This idea of separating health data from the applications is very important, and a better way to frame the discussion about how to achieve data liquidity than is the term “interoperability,” which we find cumbersome and opaque.” ++
The Risks of Releasing Detainees - Room for Debate... →
The Inauguration, Through Matthews's Eyes (And... →
“What a metaphor. What a metaphor. What a metaphor.” A latter-day Dan Rather.
Flat N All That →
‘And who cares if it doesn’t quite make sense when Friedman says that Iraq is like a “vase we broke in order to get rid of the rancid water inside?”Who cares that you can just pour water out of a vase, that only a fucking lunatic breaks a perfectly good vase just to empty it of water?’
TheStar.com | What was Barack Obama like in 1990? →
Feature on Obama from 1990… fascinating.
Provocation of the day: sweatshops are good →
“[L]abor standards are zero sum. Keeping them high means fewer children offend our conscience by working in sweatshops and more children spend their days in the stench of the landfills”. That may be true, but I don’t think it’s thinking hard enough.
Let’s Talk Health Care » Blog Archive » Health... →
“Putting billions into Health IT without putting the plans together first - which is, in fact, what health care reform is all about - seems exactly backward to me.” Though I don’t agree with everything here (e.g. the last paragraph; I think the problem is that who pays, gets to choose, without having to use the damn thing).
How Cook's Illustrated thrives while others are... →
Awesome magazine about food.
And now for something completely different →
“McGuinty has given Ontarians pep talks, reminiscent of an actor in some Depression-era movie gathering the family together in their about-to-be repossessed home to tell them that it’s all darkest before the dawn and everything will turn out in the end.”
“If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and...”
– How the Susan Crawford interview changes everything we know about torture. - By Dahlia Lithwick and Phillipe Sands - Slate Magazine
Simon Jenkins: Indiscriminate slaughter from the... →
The title speaks for itself. Regardless of how one feels about Israel’s right to respond, what is happening in Gaza is an abomination.
Macleans.ca - ‘But … nothing!’ →
“While many of the problems of Darfur lie outside of our scope of intervention as Canadians, the emergence of these refugees from eastern Darfur present an opportunity to literally save thousands of lives.”
The Health Care Blog: New NRC Report Finds "Health... →
Somewhat surprisingly, this sounds like a good and reasonable report.
Macleans.ca - Let the games begin →
It gets repetitive linking Wells all the time, but lines like this make it worth it: “Meanwhile, in Washington, that killjoy Obama will be sitting down for a bunch of “meetings” with his “advisers” to look for “solutions” to “problems” that can be addressed with “legislation” in the hope that citizens’ “lives” will “improve.” BORING.”
“Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYNs...”
– The top 25 Bushisms of all time. - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine
Macleans.ca - Testing governments’ commitment to... →
“The report reveals what anyone who has tried to access information from Canadian governments and institutions already knows: just because you pay their salaries and fund their projects doesn’t mean many of them feel obligated to explain what they do.”
Macleans.ca - M. Pelletier (Wells) →
“… the Monday after the secret Regal Constellation meeting and the Liberal convention of 2000, Jean Chrétien showed up at Senior Staff breathing fire and carrying a list, on paper, with many familiar names, of Paul Martin associates he wanted dismissed before lunch. Pelletier told the boss to wait until Wednesday and, if he still felt the same way, Pelletier would sack Paul Martin’s entire...
In Which This Blog’s Head Explodes →
Barack Obama, foodie.
The Minimalist - The Latest Must-Haves for the... →
Good ideas, but the convenience (of stock powder, say) makes me cook more often in the first place.
McMahon: Hogan Was A "Terrible" Wrestler - Marc... →
Watch The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (January 08, 2009) - Mental Health Break
The Health Care Blog: The Five Myths of Healthcare... →
"Food Matters," Mark Bittman | Salon Books →
“In brief, our current meat-heavy system of food production is unsustainable, a waste of resources and a source of pollution”
“My brother took a picture of the room where my boys, 2-year-old Hikmet and...”
– The best reporter in Gaza | The Telegraph | JTA - Jewish & Israel News
An Ounce of Prevention? | The American Prospect →
“the standard story is that prevention saves health-care dollars. But the standard story is wrong”
Pharmaceutical Innovation →
“No one wants to be against “innovation.” The word is practically a synonym for “awesome.”“
'Most E-Mailed' List Tearing New York Times'... →