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Medicare/Efficiency?

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http://www.examiner.com/a‑564555~Is_Medicare_the_more_efficient_plan_.html

Inter­est­ing edi­to­r­i­al and I absolute­ly don’t trust it.

Here’s why: Matthews’ arti­cle here reads like a cri­tique of Medicare’s effi­cien­cy and throws around a lot of num­bers that indi­cate that Medicare is far more effi­cient than pri­vate-sec­tor health care admin­is­tra­tion. This inclu­sion sug­gests two fac­tors that sup­port the author’s integri­ty if not his premise. First, includ­ing the num­bers and some dis­cus­sion about what they mean and how they were come by indi­cates that Matthews was actu­al­ly look­ing at … Read the rest

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On Composition

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This morn­ing by email a friend asked me to tell her what I know about com­po­si­tion. It’s a tough sub­ject to sum up in a few words, not because I know so much about it, but because there’s not real­ly a right or wrong way to arrange a drawing.

My take is that it’s all about bal­ance, but there are a lot of things to con­sid­er when you talk about bal­ance. There’s the bal­ance of the “weight” of the pos­i­tive … Read the rest

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Posted onOpinionated Junk

Viva Something or Other

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Today marks the 44th anniver­sary of the trade embar­go on Cuba. Now, I know that they aren’t doing all that well there, and Cas­tro is, shall we say, a leader of mixed virtue, but every time I think of the trade embar­go I am impressed with the resilien­cy of the Cuban peo­ple. Every time it cross­es my mind I also think that Com­mu­nism must be more sta­ble than we like to think if it could sur­vive all this time … Read the rest

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Finally, a sex scandal I can get behind

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I’m writ­ing about this a full week (or more) late, but hey, you don’t come read Mono­chro­mat­ic Out­look for the news.

I try to ignore sex scan­dals about pub­lic offi­cials. For the most part, I think they are a hys­ter­i­cal waste of ink. Bill and Mon­i­ca? Don’t care now, did­n’t then. Does it both­er me that POTUS lied? Yeah, a lit­tle. It would both­er me more if it were about pub­lic pol­i­cy (say some­thing about the rea­sons for invad­ing anoth­er coun­try? … Read the rest

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700 feet on two feet

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Today’s run: Twin Peaks. As best as I can tell from some low-res topo maps on the web, I ran from 150 feet above sea lev­el to 850 feet in two miles, then back after a flat loop, totalling 4.1 miles in 44:34. That’s a 10:52 pace, hard­ly what I’d nor­mal­ly call speedy, but I don’t nor­mal­ly run hills these days so I call it a resound­ing vic­to­ry. In fact, con­sid­er­ing how long … Read the rest

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3.8 miles in 35:44

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Got out on the road for the first time in ages. I’ve been get­ting over being sick for entire­ly too long now and it’s kept me from run­ning. Hope­ful­ly today was­n’t too ear­ly, but I’m get­ting real­ly tired of being inac­tive. I feel fine on a moment-by-moment basis, I just keep on cough­ing. So cau­tion went to the wind and I got out there and had fun.

Also: vanil­la Pow­er Gel is like eat­ing cake frost­ing right out of the can.… Read the rest

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Impunity

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Less than a half hour ago San Fran­cis­co Police Depart­ment cruis­er #576 was parked in front of the fire hydrant at the cor­ner of 22nd and Ten­nessee. While the hair on the back of my neck stood up at the thought that law enforce­ment offi­cers are basi­cal­ly exempt from the laws they are sworn to uphold, I calmed myself down by remind­ing myself that it was very pos­si­ble that the cruis­er was there respond­ing to some call, and … Read the rest

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What I’ve been up to in the studio

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I took a dif­fer­ent approach with this por­trait of my rock­star friend Pauli. I enjoy the free-form pen work and it has def­i­nite advan­tages, but it has its lim­i­ta­tions as well. Work­ing this way feels like paint­ing with lines and the result is a lot more organ­ic than straight hatch­ing, but I have a lot of trou­ble bring­ing out con­trast. Like­wise I real­ly like the look of a deren­dered draw­ing with­out out­lines, but the trade­off is detail.

Suc­cess­ful exper­i­ment, the … Read the rest

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Everything I Need to Know About Dating I Learned on a Motorcycle

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  • Be com­fort­able on your own before bring­ing some­one else along.
  • Go too slow and be left behind; go too fast and crash.
  • No mat­ter how thrilled you are, nev­er for­get that you can be hurt badly.
  • No mat­ter how care­ful you think you should be, nev­er for­get to have fun.
  • If your heart isn’t in it, go home.
  • Trust what you ride.
  • Buy the object of your affec­tion plen­ty of accessories.
  • Nev­er cut cor­ners with maintenance.
  • Pay full atten­tion 110% of the time.
  • Always wear protection.
… Read the rest
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A Ten Mile Warmup for a 5K Run

Against all odds I dragged myself out of bed at 5 a.m. Sun­day morn­ing and got myself down to the start­ing point of the US Half Marathon. It’s a fan­tas­tic course start­ing on the Munic­i­pal Pier and going through the Mari­na to the Pre­sidio, around and up to the Gold­en Gate Bridge, then across, down a trail that leads under the Bridge and back up, then back to San Fran­cis­co on the West­ern side­walk and back to Aquat­ic Park.

I fin­ished … Read the rest

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