Two-tier health care in a post-Roe US

When the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent, we knew that it would result in the red states proceeding to ban abortion in almost all instances, even in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the mother is in danger from the pregnancy. What may not have been anticipated is how wide ranging the ripple effects might be. We seem to be moving into a situation where we have two health care systems, one for the blue states and one for the red states, where the red states do not just not have access to abortion but also lose other services as well as lose people who can afford to move to other states.

Idaho is a good example of what is happening where small towns in red states are in danger of losing all obstetrics and gynecological services since physicians are worried that by providing medical care for problematic pregnancies, they may be laying themselves open to criminal prosecutions.
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Coincidences happen all the time

I had been trying for a couple of days to remember the first name of someone I knew but had not met for a while and it had slipped my mind. I find it frustrating when something is on the periphery of my brain but I cannot quite haul it in. The name I was seeking was Shira, which is not a common one. Then I got an email from one of the many advocacy mailing lists that send me stuff and the first name of the sender was Shira. If I were one of those people who think that there is some grand cosmic plan at work and that there are messages revealing its secret workings that could be decoded, I might have thought that this coincidence had some secret meaning, though the only one I could come with was that the universe felt it was important for me to recall the name.

Of course, I dismissed this as just a coincidence but some people tend to be impressed when, for example, they dream about someone they had not been in contact with for a long time and then they hear from them or learned that they had died. There is a tendency to give enormous weightage to events of this sort, seeing them as premonitions.
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Benefits of walking

While I am generally aware of the negatives of a sedentary lifestyle and the benefits of exercise, my own physical limitations rule out all strenuous forms of exercise. Hence I was interested in a new study that says that just walking, which I can do at least in limited amounts, can provide significant benefits.

The study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, suggested that walking at least 3,967 steps a day started to reduce the risk of dying from any cause, while 2,337 steps a day reduced the risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases.

Above these cutoffs, each increase of 1,000 steps a day was associated with a 15% reduction in the risk of dying from any cause, while an increase of 500 steps a day was associated with a 7% reduction in dying from cardiovascular disease.

“Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better. We found that this applied to both men and women, irrespective of age, and irrespective of whether you live in a temperate, subtropical or subpolar region of the world, or a region with a mixture of climates,’ Banach said.

“In addition, our analysis indicates that as little as 4,000 steps a day are needed to significantly reduce deaths from any cause, and even fewer to reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease.”

For younger age groups, the sharpest improvement in health was seen in individuals taking between 7,000 and 13,000 daily steps, while for those aged 60 years and over, it was between 6,000 and 10,000 steps.

For some time now I have been experimenting with how many steps a day I am capable of realistically doing. Too high a goal can become onerous and result in getting discouraged and giving up, while too low a goal may not help much. I finally arrived at an average 6,000 steps a day as my optimal level so I was glad to see that it seems worthwhile.

I do not do the steps all at once, though. I do it in four or five stages a day and try to mix up indoor and outdoor walking. I also used to, when driving somewhere, try and park my car closest to the destination but now I actually park far away just so that I have to walk a bit. Little things like that can increase the step count without becoming a burden.

It struck me that this is something that technology has helped a great deal. We now have pedometers that can count steps automatically, either built into one’s phone or as a cheap separate unit, making the targeting of goals easy. Before we had them, one would have to specify goals either in terms of the distances walked per day, which are very hard to estimate, or one would have to specify the total time that one walks, which is hard to keep track of.

Some good news about the Sackler bankruptcy case

The Sackler family are a really odious bunch, making enormous amounts of money by having their company Purdue Pharmaceuticals aggressively push the opioid OxyContin that their company made and providing all manner of inducements to doctors to overprescribe them, resulting in the massive opioid drug addiction problem that exists right now in the US. They then posed as philanthropists, giving money to various institutions and having their names plastered all over various buildings in universities and museums and galleries. I have written about the actions of this disgusting family many, many times.

The law finally caught up with them and they were sued and the company subjected to massive fines. But even then, they exploited the bankruptcy laws to shift the burden to the company after siphoning off money to them personally while not having to admit guilt, and getting total immunity from future lawsuits that will leave their personal fortunes intact. They did this by making sure that their bankruptcy case was heard by a bankruptcy judge who is notorious for letting wealthy people off easily.
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The quiet death of the incandescent light bulb

On August 1st, the incandescent light bulb finally went away and hardly anyone noticed or said anything. Although you can still use them if you have them, it is illegal to manufacture or import or sell them. It is hard to remember that the proposal to do away with these bulbs created right wing outrage that the government was trying to eliminate people’s freedom of choice, even though its initial replacement of halogen bulbs and now LED bulbs are far more energy efficient. Neither the incandescents nor the halogens meet the strict new energy efficiency standards.

Incandescent bulbs create illumination by running an electric current through a filament that heats it until it glows. Edison’s first practical light bulb used a carbonized cotton thread for that purpose; modern bulbs use tungsten filaments in an inert gas.

But incandescents are not very efficient. Only roughly 5% of the energy used by an incandescent bulb produces light; the remaining 95% or so is lost as heat. This is why you let an incandescent bulb cool off before unscrewing it.

They also burn out frequently, requiring replacement roughly every year.

The light-emitting components in LED bulbs, by contrast, are manufactured via the same process used to make computer chips, which makes them extremely efficient. They generate almost no heat and use up to 90% less energy than incandescent bulbs while lasting up to 25 times longer, according to the Energy Department.

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Adopting a healthy lifestyle for longer life

There seems to be an insatiable appetite for advice on how to improve one’s health and longevity, so it is not surprising that news items that claim to purport scientific research on the benefits of this or that diet or exercise or lifestyle choices appear regularly. The advice can sometimes be contradictory and thus can be confusing and lead people to tune out altogether, which is unfortunate. Since my personal motto is to act in moderation in all things, I tend to ignore recommendations that require taking extreme steps,

This article suggests eight lifestyle choices that can prolong life by as much as 20 years. Many of the recommendations seem like common sense, which appealed to me.
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Extra-terrestrials are obviously English speakers

Given all the depressing news in the world right now, it is refreshing to read about things that are really silly but taken seriously by people who should know better, like the members of Congress. I am referring of course to the hearings on so-called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). On the surface is nothing remarkable about things in the sky that we have not as yet identified. But they have become identified in the minds of true believers with visitations by extra-terrestrials. Furthermore these people are convinced that the US government knows about these things but is hiding it from us.
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Green flash

I have never seen the so-called ‘green flash’, the brief appearance of green light just as the sun sets over the horizon. It requires special conditions for it it occur and although those conditions are not that rare, your chance of being in the right place for those few seconds is low. Fortunately with cameras, you can now capture the green (and even more occasionally blue and red) flashes as can be seen in this video compilation by Dutch filmmaker, photographer and artist Michiel de Boer.

The slipperiness of conspiratorial rabbit holes

A supporter of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) who was also an avid consumer of Fox News is suing the media company saying that he was defamed by Tucker Carlson.

Fox News was hit with a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday by Trump supporter Ray Epps after former host Tucker Carlson repeatedly called Epps an undercover FBI agent who orchestrated the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

Carlson said Epps, an Arizona resident and former marine, “helped stage-manage the insurrection” – a conspiracy he broadcast in nearly 20 episodes.

Carlson also told viewers that Epps was recorded urging the mob to enter the Capitol building, but that he never entered himself.
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Epps claims he and his wife, Robyn, have received death threats and that their lives were ruined because of Carlson’s conspiracies.

The lawsuit reads: “As Fox recently learned in its litigation against Dominion Voting Systems, its lies have consequences.”

The lawsuit describes Epps as a “loyal Fox viewer and Trump supporter” and rejeted [sic] the notion he was a federal agent.
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Legal experts noted earlier this week that while Epps will have to prove that Carlson’s claims damaged his reputation, he presents a strong argument and therefore probably has standing.

David D Lin of the Lewis & Lin LLC law firm said he believed “there is a lot of potential risk here to Fox and they need to take the claims very seriously,” before adding that Carlson could be personally liable if the suit included him.

Epps could face charges himself for his role in the January 6 insurrection. He was questioned by the House January 6 committee, though a criminal investigation is still ongoing.

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The allure of extreme temperatures

Parts of the US, especially in the southwest and west, are going through record-breaking heat waves. I am not personally affected by it since where I live in California, because it is on the coast, temperatures have so far not exceeded 70F (21C) this year. But as you go inland, the temperatures start rising dramatically even within just a few miles. Salinas Valley has been seeing temperatures of 100F (38C).

Death Valley National Park in California is notorious for its high temperatures even in normal years, and global warming has just accentuated it. But many people are drawn to visit it on even the hottest days precisely because of the heat.

Death Valley is hardly a stranger to elemental extreme and has long attracted those drawn to the edge. The park bills itself as the “hottest, driest and lowest” – the hottest place on Earth, the driest place in the United States and the lowest point in North America. Visitors make the trek there from around the world to experience its surreal, lunar-looking landscapes and dramatic temperature swings. A famously difficult ultramarathon, the Badwater 135 sees runners race across the cracked salt flat of the park each July.

But even by Death Valley standards, this has been a remarkable summer. The park, which set the world record for the hottest air temperature (a withering 134F, or 56.67C) more than a century ago, approached modern heat records this week. An excessive heat warning, involving daytime temperatures “well over” 120F and nighttime averages still hovering around the triple digits, remains in effect until Sunday.
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This week, tourists congregated around a display thermometer in front of the Furnace Creek Visitor Center, posing for photos as the temperature ticked from 123F to 124F. The impenetrable wall of desert heat, a shock to the system after being inside a chilled car, forced each group into the shelter of the visitor center after only a minute or two.

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