In which a reader named Fred Hudson asks himself some questions in order to elucidate his reading style.
1. Do you dog-ear pages?
No, I do not. The practice is repulsive to me.
2. What about book marks?
Yes, I love book marks. I have a drawer full of them and always place one where l left off the last time.
3. Do you read footnotes as you proceed, or do you read them all at the end?
I've done it both ways but prefer to read them as I go. If necessary, I'll have two book marks going, one for the footnotes if they are at the back of the book.
4. Do you go on reading binges---particular authors, particular subjects?
Yes, occasionally, but they usually don't last too long. Two books typically temporarily extinguishes my binge.
5. Do you prefer hardbacks or paperbacks?
It really doesn't matter to me.
6. Do you ever feel guilty about what you've read if, say, you read a mass market book or something considered "trashy?"
No, because I make it a point to never read anything I would feel guilty about.
7. Do you read in long sessions or short spurts?
Most typically short spurts.
(To be continued)
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Krugman Says
As usual, Paul Krugman is on target.
March 6, 2009, 6:15 pm — Updated: 6:15 pm -->
Party of uh-huh-huh-huh
I’m as cynical as they come. Even so, I’m shocked by the total intellectual collapse of the Republican Party in the face of this economic crisis.
I suggested a little while ago that the GOP has become the party of Beavis and Butthead, reduced to snickering at line items in legislation that sound funny. And we’re not just talking about the usual crazies: we’re taking about Saint John McCain, cracking jokes about “Mormon crickets” and “beaver management” when a minute or two on Google reveals that these are, in fact, serious issues.
But it’s getting truly serious when the House minority leader — essentially, the nation’s second-ranking Republican (after Rush Limbaugh) — declares that the answer to the economy’s downward spiral is a spending freeze. That’s not a retrogression to Herbert Hoover; even Hoover knew better than that.
I’d really like to see some genuine bipartisanship in America. But that can’t happen until we start having at least somewhat sane partisans
March 6, 2009, 6:15 pm — Updated: 6:15 pm -->
Party of uh-huh-huh-huh
I’m as cynical as they come. Even so, I’m shocked by the total intellectual collapse of the Republican Party in the face of this economic crisis.
I suggested a little while ago that the GOP has become the party of Beavis and Butthead, reduced to snickering at line items in legislation that sound funny. And we’re not just talking about the usual crazies: we’re taking about Saint John McCain, cracking jokes about “Mormon crickets” and “beaver management” when a minute or two on Google reveals that these are, in fact, serious issues.
But it’s getting truly serious when the House minority leader — essentially, the nation’s second-ranking Republican (after Rush Limbaugh) — declares that the answer to the economy’s downward spiral is a spending freeze. That’s not a retrogression to Herbert Hoover; even Hoover knew better than that.
I’d really like to see some genuine bipartisanship in America. But that can’t happen until we start having at least somewhat sane partisans
The Self-Destruction of Rush Limbaugh
With great pleasure I watch the self-immolation of Rush Limbaugh. Anybody who supports this cretin is a cretin themselves.
Comments
On his radio show Friday, Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would be dead by the time health care reform legislation passes. "Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill," the talk show host says. He says President Obama has moved on to health care because he can't solve the economic crisis. Listen, via Media Matters:
Kennedy was at the Senate Thursday for President Obama's health care summit, where he made an impassioned plea for universal coverage.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Executive Director Brian Wolff released a statement in response:
"Rush Limbaugh's reprehensible remark that, ' before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care bill' is truly outrageous.
"Leader Limbaugh minimizes the struggle of hardworking Americans without access to affordable health care and demonizes a patriotic Senator who has spent his life fighting so that every person has the opportunity to live the American dream.
"Leader Limbaugh crossed the line. National Republicans must stand up to their leader, Rush Limbaugh, and tell him that enough is enough."
The Democratic campaign arm has also launched a petition, asking Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele to denounce Rush Limbaugh "once and for all" in light of his latest comments.
Comments
On his radio show Friday, Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would be dead by the time health care reform legislation passes. "Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill," the talk show host says. He says President Obama has moved on to health care because he can't solve the economic crisis. Listen, via Media Matters:
Kennedy was at the Senate Thursday for President Obama's health care summit, where he made an impassioned plea for universal coverage.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Executive Director Brian Wolff released a statement in response:
"Rush Limbaugh's reprehensible remark that, ' before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care bill' is truly outrageous.
"Leader Limbaugh minimizes the struggle of hardworking Americans without access to affordable health care and demonizes a patriotic Senator who has spent his life fighting so that every person has the opportunity to live the American dream.
"Leader Limbaugh crossed the line. National Republicans must stand up to their leader, Rush Limbaugh, and tell him that enough is enough."
The Democratic campaign arm has also launched a petition, asking Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele to denounce Rush Limbaugh "once and for all" in light of his latest comments.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Book Links
Here is a list of ten book sites that you might enjoy. They are similar to Shelfari and LibraryThing.
http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2009/10-websites-for-book-lovers/
http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2009/10-websites-for-book-lovers/
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Toward a Definition of "Pragmatism" (2)
A practical approach to problems and affairs. An American movement in philosophy founded by C.S. Peirce and William James and marked by the doctrine that the meaning on conceptions is to be sought in their practical bearings, that the function of thought is to guide action, and that truth is preeminently to be tested by the practical consequences of belief.
From Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary
From Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary
Monday, March 2, 2009
Franklin Delano Obama
I like to read the columns of Nicholas D. Kristof from the New York Times. Here is his most recent:
Most presidents are tacticians, but President Obama is a strategist. His budget suggests that he aspires to be an echo of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, harnessing his charisma, vision and political capital to transport America to a different place.
The best measure of that is Mr. Obama’s “down payment” to move closer to universal health coverage from womb to tomb. That is something that Roosevelt also sought, a lifetime ago.
The absurd system of health coverage we now have is a historical accident from World War II. Because of wage controls, employers competed for workers by offering health insurance as a fringe benefit — and so we’re stuck today with a system in which the loss of a job is compounded by the loss of health insurance.
Titanic ambitions encounter titanic opposition, and opponents of health reform are already rehearsing the arguments that they successfully used in the past:
We have the best health care in the world, and you want to create a socialized bureaucracy? You want to wait months for a necessary operation, as in Canada? And you really want higher taxes to pay for this, stifling the economy and undermining our long-term competitiveness?
So let’s examine those arguments.
It’s true that the existing system offers top-line medical care. The top five American hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals put together in any other country in the O.E.C.D., the club of industrialized nations.
Yet over all, it is preposterous to argue that we have the best medical care in the world. Partly because so many Americans fall through the cracks and don’t have insurance, life expectancy is higher in most of Europe than in the United States. Even the people of Cyprus live longer than Americans, according to United Nations figures.
Meanwhile, American children are twice as likely to die by the age of 5 as children in Portugal, Spain or Slovenia. And the World Health Organization found that an American woman’s lifetime risk of dying in childbirth is more than three times that of a woman in Greece, Spain or Germany.
Meanwhile, Americans spend $6,800 per person to get these second-rate results, about double what is paid in Canada or much of Europe.
It’s true that Canadians and Britons wait longer for non-urgent medical procedures than we do. But we have to wait a bit longer than Germans do.
McKinsey Global Institute found that the United States spends about $650 billion more on health care each year than one would expect for a country at its income level. That’s $2,100 per American, and it’s one gauge of the waste of our existing system.
Repairing the system is thus not only a moral imperative but also an economic one. American businesses are at a competitive disadvantage when they have to pay for health care and foreign companies don’t. Among General Motors’ burdens is that it has to pay health costs equivalent to $1,500 for each car it sells.
Sometimes the financial incentives for aggressive care even lead to excessive treatment. One study found that Medicare patients admitted to high-spending hospitals were up to 6 percent more likely to die than patients admitted to lower-spending hospitals.
So if our health system is broken, is it really so awful that we increase taxes for the wealthiest Americans to make repairs? In 1980, the top-earning 1 percent of Americans accounted for 8 percent of the total income pie; by 2006, they grabbed nearly 23 percent.
Think of the way the system treated Michelle Morse, a full-time student at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. Michelle was found to have colon cancer in 2003, and her physician recommended that she take a leave of absence for chemotherapy.
But if she took a leave, she would lose her insurance. Michelle stayed in school and underwent her treatments, while campaigning bravely for a law (eventually passed nationally last year) to let students remain on their parents’ health insurance while on medical leave from college. The law came too late for her: she died in 2005.
Would it have made a difference if Michelle had been able to take a leave and focus on treatment? “We’ll never know,” said her mother, AnnMarie Morse.
“It was horrible,” she said of her dealings with the insurance companies. She said that when one executive told her indignantly that the company had already paid out a lot of money for Michelle, she responded, “I would give my life for you not to have to pay one cent for my daughter.”
Not surprisingly, Mrs. Morse fervently hopes that Mr. Obama will be able to move the country toward a national health care system. If he can lead us there, even gradually, he has a chance to join the pantheon of truly great presidents like F.D.R. himself.
Most presidents are tacticians, but President Obama is a strategist. His budget suggests that he aspires to be an echo of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, harnessing his charisma, vision and political capital to transport America to a different place.
The best measure of that is Mr. Obama’s “down payment” to move closer to universal health coverage from womb to tomb. That is something that Roosevelt also sought, a lifetime ago.
The absurd system of health coverage we now have is a historical accident from World War II. Because of wage controls, employers competed for workers by offering health insurance as a fringe benefit — and so we’re stuck today with a system in which the loss of a job is compounded by the loss of health insurance.
Titanic ambitions encounter titanic opposition, and opponents of health reform are already rehearsing the arguments that they successfully used in the past:
We have the best health care in the world, and you want to create a socialized bureaucracy? You want to wait months for a necessary operation, as in Canada? And you really want higher taxes to pay for this, stifling the economy and undermining our long-term competitiveness?
So let’s examine those arguments.
It’s true that the existing system offers top-line medical care. The top five American hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals put together in any other country in the O.E.C.D., the club of industrialized nations.
Yet over all, it is preposterous to argue that we have the best medical care in the world. Partly because so many Americans fall through the cracks and don’t have insurance, life expectancy is higher in most of Europe than in the United States. Even the people of Cyprus live longer than Americans, according to United Nations figures.
Meanwhile, American children are twice as likely to die by the age of 5 as children in Portugal, Spain or Slovenia. And the World Health Organization found that an American woman’s lifetime risk of dying in childbirth is more than three times that of a woman in Greece, Spain or Germany.
Meanwhile, Americans spend $6,800 per person to get these second-rate results, about double what is paid in Canada or much of Europe.
It’s true that Canadians and Britons wait longer for non-urgent medical procedures than we do. But we have to wait a bit longer than Germans do.
McKinsey Global Institute found that the United States spends about $650 billion more on health care each year than one would expect for a country at its income level. That’s $2,100 per American, and it’s one gauge of the waste of our existing system.
Repairing the system is thus not only a moral imperative but also an economic one. American businesses are at a competitive disadvantage when they have to pay for health care and foreign companies don’t. Among General Motors’ burdens is that it has to pay health costs equivalent to $1,500 for each car it sells.
Sometimes the financial incentives for aggressive care even lead to excessive treatment. One study found that Medicare patients admitted to high-spending hospitals were up to 6 percent more likely to die than patients admitted to lower-spending hospitals.
So if our health system is broken, is it really so awful that we increase taxes for the wealthiest Americans to make repairs? In 1980, the top-earning 1 percent of Americans accounted for 8 percent of the total income pie; by 2006, they grabbed nearly 23 percent.
Think of the way the system treated Michelle Morse, a full-time student at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. Michelle was found to have colon cancer in 2003, and her physician recommended that she take a leave of absence for chemotherapy.
But if she took a leave, she would lose her insurance. Michelle stayed in school and underwent her treatments, while campaigning bravely for a law (eventually passed nationally last year) to let students remain on their parents’ health insurance while on medical leave from college. The law came too late for her: she died in 2005.
Would it have made a difference if Michelle had been able to take a leave and focus on treatment? “We’ll never know,” said her mother, AnnMarie Morse.
“It was horrible,” she said of her dealings with the insurance companies. She said that when one executive told her indignantly that the company had already paid out a lot of money for Michelle, she responded, “I would give my life for you not to have to pay one cent for my daughter.”
Not surprisingly, Mrs. Morse fervently hopes that Mr. Obama will be able to move the country toward a national health care system. If he can lead us there, even gradually, he has a chance to join the pantheon of truly great presidents like F.D.R. himself.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Toward a Definition of "Pragmatism"
Pragmatism - A label for a doctrine about meaning first made a philosophical term in 1878 by C.S. Peirce. "Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conceptions to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object." The term was soon borrowed by William James, F.C.S. Schiller, and John Dewey, who all in their different ways made pragmatism a their of truth. Thus in his PRAGMATISM James said, "Ideas become true just so far as they help get us into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience."
From A DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY by Antony Flew
From A DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY by Antony Flew
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)