John Lott does yeoman duty reporting the facts. Bookmark him for a daily read if you haven't already. Just be sure to be up on all your meds -- esp your blood pressure pill.

This (and other) tidbits on his recent blog showing the dirty details of the bill passed by the House last Saturday night (hack, spit)...

Buried in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 1,990-page bill is a provision that provides "incentive payments" to each state that develops an "alternative medical liability law" that encourages "fair resolution" of disputes and "maintains access to affordable liability insurance." Sounds encouraging. Read on, however, and you come to this nugget: The state only qualifies if its new law "does not limit attorneys' fees or impose caps on damages." . . .

Heavenly medical care

A man suffered a serious heart attack and had open heart bypass surgery. He awakened from the surgery to find himself in the care of nuns at a Catholic Hospital . As he was recovering, a nun asked him questions regarding how he was going to pay for his treatment.

She asked, 'Do you have health insurance?'
He replied in a raspy voice, 'No health insurance.'

The nun asked, 'Do you have money in the bank?'
He replied, 'No money in the bank.'

The nun asked, 'Do you have a relative who could help you?'
He said, 'I only have a spinster sister, who is a nun.'

The nun became agitated and announced loudly, 'Nuns are not spinsters! Nuns are married to God.'


The patient replied, 'Send the bill to my brother-in-law.'

Golleee Sgt Carter!

Look what I woke up to this morning! I wasn't paying much attention to Epiphyllum buds with all the work going on with concrete on the other side of the house. MY other plants are done blooming a bit earlier in the year. LINK This is the first bloom ever for this plant. I planted it as a cutting several years ago.



Look at that color! That's a nice addition to my red and ivory blooming plants. I'm trying to figure a way to organize them all better on this back patio. Maybe there's some attractive way to hang them between shade sail poles I've been setting up.



The cutting was a gift from an older gentleman at church. He had lost his wife of 50 plus years and was clearing out his house and the last of his Epi collection (had almost 150 at one time) before moving to an elder care facility. He was the prototypical "Tender Warrior."

A plankowner in the 10th Mountain Division, he fought his way through Italy, was at Monte Casino and then went on to father two fine sons, and had a distinguished career as a marine biologist and Elder in our church. He was a Tuna expert professionally and a lover of God, people and flowers (esp. Epi's) personally.

But for his encouragement and example of temperate gracious manliness I wouldn't have become the man I am.

Pain Free

Well, mostly. It's Thursday, 3 days after my Monday adventure with a field mower and by the grace of God my back is holding up. Years of daily postural therapy are paying off. Yee-hah! This is some serious progress at last.

Pete Egoscue is "da Man!" His method has done for me what years of chiropractic and physical therapy failed to accomplish. I started out in response to backpain and sciatica. Along the way it cleared up 25 yrs of knee pain, and more recent onset of tennis elbow and carpal tunnel.

If you're aching anywhere in your body, give Pete's book "Painfree: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain" a look. If you do the work faithfully, you WILL feel better.

Seriously, the change in my posture and gait over the past few years is hard to believe without seeing the pictures taken to document the progress. There has been a direct correlation in how I feel with how my posture has changed.

Egoscue® is simple and the results are remarkable. It is a unique and very effective program designed to treat musculoskeletal pain without drugs, surgery, or manipulation. Egoscue is a process which involves a series of stretches and gentle egoscuecises ("e-cises") designed specifically for each client. This process strengthens specific muscles and brings the body back to its proper alignment and functioning the way it was designed—pain free.


"Pete Egoscue has totally changed my life. Never have I experienced such complete pain relief as I have by following the Egoscue Method."

- Jack Nicklaus
Legendary Golfer

Sounds like Tiger needs to get over to Pete after that ACL surgery to get that knee position/motion fixed and prevent reinjury. Here's wishing Tiger the best. Worked for The Golden Bear.

Does the chewing gum loose it's flavor...

...on the bedpost overnight?
That photo there is of 2 similarly overpriced pieces of nightstand hardware. Well maybe the 1911 isn't that overpriced but the hearing aides are ridiculously overpriced. The hearing aid industry has to be one of the greatest "Guild type" scams currently being perpetrated on the public. You have to buy from a closed loop of "certified" technicians. The industry is dominated by a few large suppliers and the pricing power they maintain results in insane cost to the consumer.

On the other hand, the pistol price is pretty much driven by open market simple supply and demand. Demand remains high for the classic John Browning design (nearly 100 years later) and so prices continue to stay high.



Each of those hearing aides is made up of a few dollars of electronics (max!) and a dollar or so of molded plastic and elastomer and has very little touch labor. What there is of touch labor is relatively cheap/low skilled assembly line labor. I'd be surprised if there's more than $20 in each aid (parts and conversion cost). Add to that an hour or two labor by a skilled hearing aid tech for individual customer testing, fitting and programming. Add it all up and they retail for $1500 -- EACH! I'll be lucky if they last a year or two before failing. At least this pair has a better warranty than the 3 pairs I've gone through since 2001.



That's just a guess on my part but I should be a pretty good guesser in this area. Professionally I've helped source electronic parts for nigh on 20 years and have been involved in sourcing injected molded parts. At one time I was something of a specialist in molded elastomeric parts (having written my employer's elastomeric keypad qualification and reliability document and qualifying some of our earliest keypad suppliers in Taiwan and Mainland China).



By way of contrast, the Springfield Armory "loaded" US Government Model of 1911 has in it 10's of dollars of material and a hundred dollars or so of machining and hand finishing and sold for just north of $500 when I bought it 6-7 years ago. Today that model retails around (i think) $800.

Compare that to the hearing aides and I'll let you guess what I'd rather have spent $3000 vs $800 on.

Now if I could only figure out where my hearing went...

It's down >40dB down through the midrange so hearing aides are an all day thing for me. Can’t think why…
Nothing to do with sitting next to the drum riser running lights and effects for a dance/rock band in the 70’s, shooting unprotected many days as a kid and left with ringing ears for 48 hours, troubleshooting & launching a/c on the roof of a carrier or 500+ hours radar time sitting between 2 T-56’s.

Nah, just bad genes.