Obamacare goes into effect Oct 1st – I’ve Got the Skinny if You Have a Question!

    Good Day World!

Despite this being the time of year for the annual return of the Screeching Tea Party Loon, Obamacare goes into effect tomorrow.

 If you already have insurance, nothing will change. It’s that simple. No sneaky Democrat is going to force you to cancel your insurance. So take a deep breath. 

 Already have Medicare? You’re golden. Already have a company health insurance plan? You’re good.

Don’t have any insurance plan and are one medical emergency away from bankruptcy? Guess what? This new law is going to help you! Even if you have a pre-existing condition.

If you are uninsured, the key to complying with the Affordable Health Care Act, aka Obamacare, could be the new online health insurance marketplaces, which will open tomorrow  - Oct. 1 - for shopping.

(You can window-shop here now but you can’t buy until Tuesday). Policies will go into effect Jan. 1. Seven million Americans are expected to find coverage there.

Many people will qualify for subsidies to make coverage more affordable You can find your state’s marketplace at www.healthcare.gov.

Each plan covers 10 “essential health benefits,” which include prescription drugs, emergency and hospital care, check-ups, maternity and mental health services, rehabilitation and lab services, among others.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

the last time Republicans caused a government shutdown in 1995..

McDonald’s WTF Menus Around the World!

    Good Day World!

 If you think McDonald's sells the same burgers and fries everywhere in the world, think again.

 Concessions to local tastes is the way McDonald’s has been able to become the biggest fast food business in the world. Here’s just a few examples: 

In Singapore (Left), the national obsession with rice extends to having rice cakes in your burger! Try taking a bite out of this towering concoction!

When in McDonald’s Japan, try some Seaweed Flavored Fries and don’t forget to taste their yummy tentacle snacks! (Right)

Perhaps the biggest WTF menu item (Weird and Troubling Food) that can be found at a McDonald's is in the Philippines (Left).

They have McSpaghetti on the menu, which of course you’d expect in Italy, and the way they make it is rather unusual.

 A Filipino friend explained to me that it was incredibly popular and basically consisted of spaghetti soaked in sugar.

 Ewwww.

(McSpaghetti screen grab, Philippines)

Let me repeat this: Spaghetti - Soaked In - Sugar!

Peas and potatoes make up the patty in the McAloo Tikki at McDonald's in India. Mickey D’s knows that cows are sacred, so they simply adapted. Let nothing stand in the way of making money! 

There’s a great travel site called Trifter which shows more international Mac food variations: among them guacamole (avocado paste) McPollo burger in Chile.

(McAlooTikki image via) (McPollo image via)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Concussions & Football: Is the risk for your child really worth it?

     Good Day World!

Friday means high school football.

Saturday means college football.

Sunday means professional football.

Football is only rivaled by baseball in popularity. It’s entwined into the very fabric of our society. Children begin playing at ridiculously young ages.

Last year, 3 million kids from the ages of 6 to 14  played organized youth tackle football, according to USA Football. Even some 5-year-olds are in helmets playing in the Tiny Mite division of Pop Warner (which insists that its gladiators weigh at least 35 lb.)

Tomorrow I’m going to watch my 12-year old grandson play football. He’s a defensive end. Because I’m aware of the dangers involved I’m going to be nervous throughout the game – praying nothing happens to him. He wanted to play football. His parents didn’t push him into it.

I use to be a football fan, only recently losing interest in following college and the pro games. I admit it has a lot to do with the research I’ve done on football-related concussion injuries. They scare the hell out of me! I’ve had two serious concussions in my life, and feel lucky to be typing this piece right now.

The following articles illustrates what I’m talking about. It’s sad. And it really makes you think:

 It was a question with no right answer that tugged heavy at the hearts of Damon Janes' teammates when the 16-year-old died after a hit in a high school football game: Should the season go on?

Should the players rally and play every game for their star running back, whose motto was "Giving up is simply not an option"? Or should the teenagers forget about football and take time to mourn their friend?

The Westfield-Brocton Wolverines' varsity players took a paper-ballot vote and decided that the pain was too great, that their season would end after just two games.

"I wanted to play, I love the game," said teammate Stevie Wisecarver III, a 16-year-old quarterback who has played football since third grade. "But it just wouldn't feel right without him. The team just didn't feel right." Damon took what hospital officials would later describe as a "helmet-to-helmet" hit during the third quarter of Westfield-Brocton's Sept. 13 game against Portville, a 32-6 loss. He was able to get on his feet but lost consciousness on the sidelines. He died three days later at Women & Children's Hospital in Buffalo.

Concern about increasingly hard hits among the 1 million boys who play high school football has brought renewed attention to concussion management and a national initiative to teach the "Heads Up" tackling technique. An average of 12 high school and college players die annually, according to a recent study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.

Damon's was at least the fifth high school football death this season, but his was the only team to cancel the season because of it. Read whole story here

Related:

* Last month, in one single Pop Warner football game, five preadolescent players on a team from Tantasqua, Mass., suffered serious head injuries.

* The Problem with Football: How to Make It Safer

* Concussions and Our Kids

Time for me to walk on down the road…

I’m not being snotty, but what’s with growing noses on foreheads?

          Good Day World!

Have you ever heard the saying, “It’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face?” For some bizarre reason it came to mind when I read about noses grown on foreheads yesterday!

It never entered my wildest thoughts. Noses that were destroyed by various means could be reconstructed and grown on one’s forehead. Whoever heard of such a thing?

Apparently, according to the following article, it’s not that uncommon. Where have I been then? Have you ever seen anyone walking around with a nose on their forehead? I sure haven’t. Maybe people wear floppy hats to hide the misplaced proboscis while it’s growing. Will wonders ever cease?

Despite his perhaps bizarre appearance, a man in China who is growing a new nose on his forehead is the beneficiary of a rather common nose reconstruction technique.

The man suffered damage to his nose and an infection after a traffic accident, and the infection had eaten away at the cartilage in his nose, making it impossible to for doctors to fix his original nose. There was no alternative but for doctors to grow the man an entirely new nose on his forehead, according to Reuters.

But despite its extreme appearance, this method is not that different from plastic surgery techniques used all the time, said Dr. David Cangello, an attending plastic surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital and Manhattan, Eye Ear and Throat Hospital in New York. read the whole story here

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Playground Terrors! Some real creepy places where kids play

           Good Day World!

 Like most children worldwide, I had an active imagination when I was young.

 I use to watch scary movies on television and spend the rest of the night with the light on in my room and wondering what kind of monster might be lurking in the closet!

 The little girl in the photo (left) doesn’t look too concerned that she’s sitting on a lap of a hideous H.P. Lovecraft-like gargoyle. Probably because she doesn’t know what a gargoyle is and the sculpture doesn’t move.

I may be wrong, but I think it takes a lot more to scare kids nowadays. They’re flooded with images in our society of monsters and the like via television, games, and movies.

The following creepy masterpieces of sculpture and landscaping can be found in playgrounds not only in Russia (even though this is where the majority of photos come from) but also in China, East European Countries, and even in the US - anywhere the grass-roots creativity goes bad and the bad taste gets promoted, often unintentionally.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the bizarre stuff for kids, and some of the sculptures here are downright fascinating; but others are... well, ugly as hell.

Not only kids, but some more impressionable adults are in danger to become psychologically scarred from thinking too much about these monsters and letting them into their dreams.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Finger-Print Scan Hacked within 72 hours – what took so long?

  Good Day World!

It took three days. 72 hours.

On Sunday, after the iPhone 5S went on sale, a German hacker collective became the first to claim victory over the gadget's much-buzzed-about Touch ID fingerprint security system.

And they did it pretty much the same way Bane's flunkies breached the biometric passcode on Bruce Wayne's stock exchange account in "The Dark Knight Rises," — using a copy of Batman's fingerprints (created by Catwoman after she did some light dusting around Wayne Manor).

Even before the Chaos Computer Club, one of the largest and well-known hacker collectives, crowed victory via the tried-and-true "fake finger" method, Apple's first foray into biometric security wasn't getting a lot of respect. Amid concerns over privacy — Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., asked if Apple might share stored fingerprintswith third parties or the government, the way tech companies do with other customer info — and hacking, the jokes kicked in.

A cat's paw, a nipple and a crowd-sourced bounty to the first person to hack Touch ID are likely just the beginning of a running gag at Apple's expense. In this day and age no gaffe gets by social media.

When I first heard about the fingerprint idea I knew that it was stupid idea, and it would only be a matter of time before being exposed. Who would want to voluntarily give up such a personal ID marker for “convenience and supposed security?” Well I guess there were some naïve consumers out there and they’re probably feeling kinda sheepish today!

Time for me to walk on down the road…

OUCH! The Financial Pain of Childbirth in 2013

  Good Day World!

It’s just capitalism at work the financial experts explain.

But when I look at the rising cost of childbirth in America I have to wonder why we lead the world in this category?

With Congress battling over defunding Obamacare, the future looks bleak for a resolution to this problem. There’s thousands of Americans without insurance and unless we do something about it healthcare costs will continue to cripple families in this struggling economy.

My wife and I had three children from 1975 to 1980. During that time, my job provided healthcare insurance and we had one less financial challenge to contend with as young parents. Parents today are faced with sky high medical costs and many are not insured because they’re self-employed. The result can be a cash catastrophe to a family’s finances. 

Over the last 15 years, the cost of vaginal deliveries has practically doubled in the United States, shooting up from $4,918 to $9,294, while the cost of C-sections has increased 70 percent from an average of $8,268 to $14,055, according to Truven Health Analytics.

By contrast, the average cost for an uncomplicated vaginal delivery last year in Switzerland was $4,039 and the average cost in France was $3,541, according to the International Federation of Health Plans (IFHP). That's nearly half to a third of what it cost in the U.S.

In fact, the United States is the most expensive place in the world to give birth, according to the IFHP. The reason, experts say, has to do with the way hospitals calculate our bills.Worse yet, there was a huge variation in costs for the same services from hospital to hospital. Estimates for the cost of a C-section, for example, ranged from $6,000 to $28,000.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Human Pixel Art - Monumental Camera Shots Before WWI

                                                Good Day World!

I’ve got some photos for you this Monday that are really impressive. You may have seen some modern versions of people art by artists like Spencer Tunick who makes his artistic formations from thousands of naked people. But the vast scale of these early group photos is really awesome. And just think how crude the cameras were back then! They used a 11x 14” camera. No special lens or settings like we have now. Enjoy…

"The Human American Eagle, 1918" -12,500 officers, nurses and men; Camp Gordon, Atlanta, Ga.

Just before the World War One the country needed patriotic images, aiming to recover national identity with the help of the rising art of photography. Arthur Mole (1889-1983) together with John Thomas used their 11 x 14-inch view camera to create the so-called "living photographs", done on a monumental scale.

By arranging thousands of soldiers (reservists, or nurses) in various patriotic symbols and photographing them from above, they were able to use lines of perspective to transform meaningless masses into artistic shapes and even portraits.

(Left) Living Emblem of the United States Marines, 1919"

(Right) "A Living Flag, 1917" (Mayhart Studio, Chicago)

Based in Zion, Illinois, Arthur Mole visited many army, marine and navy camps across the country, carrying out his inspired & monumental work.

He was clearly influenced by the patriotic spirit of his fellow Americans during a "life during wartime", as well as driven by his personal spiritual convictions. In the end, Mole and Thomas donated the entire income from their endeavors to the families of the returning soldiers and the government's efforts to re-build their lives.

(Right)"The Zion Shield, 1920".
All images courtesy Chicago Historical Society.

(See more images at the Library of Congress gallery, not copyrighted)

One of the most notable photographers of "living people groups" was Eugene Omar Goldbeck.

Along with the large scale work, he also took photographic portraits of important personalities, such as Albert Einstein.

A detail of larger group, made as late as 1947:

Photo-Indoctrination Division, Air Training Command, Lackland

Air Base San Antonio, TX, 1947

 Time for me to walk on down the road…

There’s No Such Thing as ‘Black Dog’ Syndrome !

    Good Day World!

 See the adorable little pug on the left? Her name is Molly, and she makes my wife and I very happy. She’s only one-year old and we look forward to having her company for many years to come.

Just look at this little scamp. She’s always ready to play. Yet if you listen to some people, if she were in a shelter her chances of being adopted wouldn’t be as good because she’s black!

That’s right. Some call it puppy prejudice because black dogs are supposedly more likely to be the last picked in an adoption situation. I never heard this before. So I did a little reading.

It’s myth busting time! Don’t believe those sad shelter stories. The ones about black dogs being the first to go isn’t true:

It’s a common story animal welfare workers will share: Black pets are often the last left on the shelter floor and the first to be euthanized. The idea is so pervasive there’s even a name for it — black dog syndrome.

“It’s not news to people who have been in animal welfare for a while that black cats and dogs are a little harder to place,” Brenda Barnette of Los Angeles Animal Services told TODAY.com.

“I think it’s for the very simple reason that they’re harder to photograph.”

Nonprofits have been founded specifically to find homes for black animals, and several shelters across the country have made special efforts to promote the adoption of black animals, from providing them with better lighting to running special promotions.

But despite much media attention and anecdotal evidence from shelter staff, recent research suggests that coat color, be it black, white or brown, has little impact on an adopter’s decision.

“New pieces of research have found that there is no indication that they are less likely to be adopted,” ASPCA Vice President of Shelter Research Dr. Emily Weiss told TODAY.com. “We just conducted a piece of research looking at various traits that drive people to adopt and color did not play a role at all. It busts this myth completely.”

Time for me to walk on down the road…

During this Weekend of Peace Let’s Stop the Violence in our Cities

   Good Day World!

On this Peace Day Weekend (see Learnist board to the right) I thought I’d point out how violent our world is in the United States. The rest of the world is also embroiled in wars and crimes continue to take a deadly toll.

This week Chicago earned the title of being the nation's murder capital in 2012, according to the FBI. Chicago had more than 500 homicides in 2012, according to FBI data, more than any other American city. Chicago's total exceeded that of New York City, which recorded 419, and Los Angeles, which saw 299. Both cities have populations greater than that of Chicago.

The murder rate in Chicago in 2012 was still higher than the murder rate in 1929, the year of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, when Al Capone was the city’s crime kingpin and the streets were awash in blood as gangsters battled over illegal liquor sales during Prohibition.

The 1920s saddled Chicago with international image for murder and violence that we still haven’t shaken off. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was so shocking it led the nation to reconsider whether Prohibition was worth the gang warfare it caused.

Today Chicago has more than just a bad image – it’s sliding into a sinkhole of crime and poverty with no end in sight. the really scary thing is, there’s numerous other cities that are only slightly better!

The city of Chicago registered more homicides than any city in the nation in 2012, surpassing even New York — despite the fact that the Second City has only one third as many residents as the Big Apple.

But residents of Chicago and New York were much less likely to be victims of a homicide than residents of Flint, Mich. Sixty-three murders occurred in 2012 in Flint, a city of 101,632, meaning one in every 1,613 city residents were homicide victims. Detroit, which experienced 386 homicides in 2012, was almost as unsafe; that’s enough murders to account for one in every 1,832 residents.

Fifteen cities reported more than 100 murders in 2012. Alongside Chicago, New York and Detroit, Philadelphia (331), Los Angeles (299), Baltimore (219), Houston (217), New Orleans (193), Dallas (154), Memphis (133), Oakland (126), Phoenix (124), St. Louis (113), Kansas City (105) and Indianapolis (101) had the busiest homicide departments.

Washington, D.C., which once suffered some of the worst crime rates in the nation, reported 88 murders in 2012. If we could see some gun bills passed in Congress these numbers may start going down – or at the very least stabilize. But that, sadly enough, is as unlucky as the Democrats and Republicans making peace and working for the people of this country instead of their parties!

Peace!

Time for me to walk on down the road…

TV Zombie: Are you lost in the TV Viewing Hole?

          Good Day World!

 I recently got Dish TV. It comes with a thousand channels. At least it seems that way. I haven’t counted them yet.

 They threw in a 90 day FREE premium channels preview, and now there’s even more choices for me to make. Help…

  I’ve been hooked up for two weeks and have used  maybe six channels. I’ll never use all of them. I’ve tried surfing through them, but after awhile my eyes blurred along with my brain cells. I keep asking myself if it’s possible people actually use all those channels?

Apparently it is. More and more TV viewers are escaping into those channels…never to be the same again. They turn into TV zombies. Reports of people disappearing down the rabbit hole of made-for-TV-movies keep coming in.

This following article proves my assertion: 

"Breaking Bad" didn't turn us into binge-watching TV addicts, and neither did mobile devices, or even the Internet. Just ask anyone who bought the Special Edition "Twin Peaks" Box Set on VHS in 1993. Many a lost weekend were spent in the Dark Lodge, absorbing all 29 episodes, when David Lynch's six-tape set of noir surrealism hit the Blockbuster shelves.

Yet as with many things, advances in technology have only made it easier to crawl inside the TV viewing hole, allowing us to spend more time in an alternate universe of someone else's fiction.

Videotapes gave way to DVDs, and DVDs gave way to video on demand. Cable television forced us to chose whether we'll spend Memorial Day watching ABC Family's "Special Harry Potter Event" or TNT's "Law & Order: A Very Elliot Stabler Weekend."

And Netflix is in the business of building buzz-worthy original shows and making the entire seasons available via streaming right at the premiere. We're left with little choice but to lose whole days to "House of Cards," "Arrested Development," and "Orange is the New Black," lest we see spoilers in the Twittersphere. Whole story here

Time for me to walk on down the road…