"If all possible scientific questions are answered, our problem is still not touched at all."
--Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 week ago
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Welcome to the Neighborhood
A new portrait of the central Milky Way using infrared and X-ray photography, a composite with contributions from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, and Chandra X-Ray Observatory. [Click on the photo to enlarge. Credit: NASA, ESA, SSC, CXC and STScl.] It's enough to make you wonder--which, it turns out, even the Vatican is doing, at their conference on whether there is other life in the universe. Could Galileo being orbiting in his grave?
The Hypocritical Oath
There's a war on Americans that has killed twice as many U.S. veterans in one year as were killed in Afghanistan since 2001. It's the war against universal health care.
A new Harvard Medical study finds that 2,200 vets under the age of 65 died last year because they didn't have health insurance.
This is only one item in the scandalous treatment of veterans. I'm not going to join in all the hyperbole about soldiers that's customary on Veterans Day. The military is not the only way to serve and protect, and heroism used to mean something more than the pious name given to every member. But the hypocrisy of a country that doesn't take care of its veterans, that skimps on care and allows huge loopholes in coverage, is simply disgusting.
But this is a specific instance of the war against universal health care now being waged, which even victimizes the veterans that the hypocritical patriot mouths will praise today. It's a war on the many--especially the least powerful--by the very powerful few, as most wars are.
It's a war that has already watered down even the strongest health care reform proposals currently being considered. But former President Clinton is right--something is better than nothing. If universal health care had become law in 1997, those veterans would not be casualities of this war, nor would the estimated 45,000 Americans who die each year because they have no health care coverage. And as baskeball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said Tuesday, as he revealed his serious medical condition that fortunately he can afford to have addressed, "It’s a just and noble cause to make health care available to everyone."
A new Harvard Medical study finds that 2,200 vets under the age of 65 died last year because they didn't have health insurance.
This is only one item in the scandalous treatment of veterans. I'm not going to join in all the hyperbole about soldiers that's customary on Veterans Day. The military is not the only way to serve and protect, and heroism used to mean something more than the pious name given to every member. But the hypocrisy of a country that doesn't take care of its veterans, that skimps on care and allows huge loopholes in coverage, is simply disgusting.
But this is a specific instance of the war against universal health care now being waged, which even victimizes the veterans that the hypocritical patriot mouths will praise today. It's a war on the many--especially the least powerful--by the very powerful few, as most wars are.
It's a war that has already watered down even the strongest health care reform proposals currently being considered. But former President Clinton is right--something is better than nothing. If universal health care had become law in 1997, those veterans would not be casualities of this war, nor would the estimated 45,000 Americans who die each year because they have no health care coverage. And as baskeball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said Tuesday, as he revealed his serious medical condition that fortunately he can afford to have addressed, "It’s a just and noble cause to make health care available to everyone."
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
The Dreaming Up Daily Quote
"Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience."
--Albert Einstein
painting: "The Boulevard" by Gino Severini
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