Canadian Healthcare – a first-person perspective…

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Amidst the whole healthcare debate, I found this post really interesting because whenever we start to talk about true universal healthcare, the opening argument is that the service and quality are terrible in places like Canada and Europe, and that ultimately the USA somehow still has a better system, despite being ridiculously expensive and unavailable to far too many of its citizens.

It’s a story of basically one woman coming around on the idea of universal healthcare after moving to Canada and using the system firsthand herself for having a baby…

How I Lost My Fear of Universal Health Care
http://ayoungmomsmusings.blogspot.com/2012/07/how-i-lost-my-fear-of-universal-health.html

Not for nothing, but both parents being able to split a year of paid maternity leave is enough to get me listening!

The moral of the story – let’s actually hear some real world examples before we knock universal healthcare because in nearly every scenario I’ve ever read, it’s always Americans saying how the concept is horrible and unfair and anti-freedom in other countries, whereas the people actually using it for the most part seem pretty happy.

(be sure to read through the comment thread, too – lots of good perspectives from a variety of nations who are successfully on single-payer systems)

Internet Cafe Gramps Was Heroic, But Also Reckless

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I know since the horrific shooting in Colorado on Friday, there have been loads of discussions about gun laws and open carry rights and all of that, but let’s get one thing straight – if you’re in favor of open carry laws, the incident that happened with the old man stopping the Internet cafe robbery in Ocala, Florida IS NOT a shining beacon for the right to carry a firearm that you’re trying to promote.

Watch the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t5f5AwkkiY

Firing random shots in an enclosed building with dozens of innocent bystanders is not a tenet of responsible gun use. Chasing after an assailant once they’re on the run is not a tenet of responsible gun use. Florida’s Stand Your Ground law ends when you’re no longer acting in self-defense, which is pretty clear when the robbers turned to run out the front door.

In short, you shouldn’t be carrying a gun if you don’t know when it’s appropriate to pull the trigger.

I don’t necessarily want to argue the whole gun rights debate here, per se, but let’s be honest – not every example where somebody draws a gun within his rights is a proponent of the right to open carry.

Dream Journal : Traveling with a Thief

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This was kind of a weird one…

So I was on this road trip with some friends. I’m not entirely sure how many people were traveling with us – it seemed like a lot, but only a few faces were actually recognizable. We were traveling by car, though, and in true road-trip-sense, the car I was in was absolutely packed.

At one point we found ourselves picking up a couple of random strangers. I have no idea why we did this, but one was a young, redheaded girl with kinky hair and the other was this huge, black dude who didn’t say much that she was traveling with. Again, I have no idea why we would randomly take these strangers into our group, but along the way I started to get the suspicion that they weren’t who they said they were…

She had told us that she needed a ride cross country or something to get away from an ex-boyfriend. No real explanation on the other guy, but at one point I did some snooping and discovered that the big guy actually had the same name of the “ex-boyfriend” whom she had told us she was running from. Things weren’t adding up, so I went to the Internet and – amusingly enough, I found her LinkedIn profile, which listed her occupation as Thief.

Another link on her profile showed the huge guy as a known associate.

(Something tells me that if it were really that easy, local law enforcement would probably spend a lot more time looking for criminals on LinkedIn!)

Anyways, this was a bit confusing to me because I had thought that she actually liked me … we had flirted a bit and I liked the attention, but now I was more concerned that she had just showed an interest so that she could later take advantage of us.

Once I figured out that we were all in danger by traveling with these two, I tried to tell the others without letting on that I knew. I don’t know how I did this, but the next thing I knew I was trying to clean out the car – perhaps to make a quick getaway – and there was a small flood because I kept dropping things and had to reach down into several inches of water to retrieve them.

As I was finishing repacking, my friend came up to me and told me that I needed to see something, and he led me into the basement of where we had been staying. The group was all sitting around on boxes, and the big guy and a new colleague of his were there, who was doing a lot of yelling with one of our other friends. I knew that shit was about to go down because our friend was accusing them of profiling us – I guess it was like the shorter one was literally going around the room saying how much each of us had in the bank in cash, but saying it out loud instead of to himself.

I’m pretty sure that a fist fight was about to break out, but I woke up just before anything actually got resolved.

I never saw the redheaded girl in the second half of the dream when things got ugly. Maybe she was just bait to get us to let our guards down and then got out herself, or maybe even awake I’m still a little naive and she was actually the mastermind of the whole thing.

The moral of the story is – a cute girl can get away with pretty much anything.

Serving Sizes Around the World (or DAMN, Americans sure are pigs…)

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I know that one of the other huge differences in obesity from my parents’ and grandparents’ generation to my own is that they tended to work more manual labor-ish jobs (“down on the farm…”), whereas I for one these days pretty much just sit in front of a desk all day, but these accepted serving sizes certainly don’t help, either! We’re taught to empty our plates and go back for seconds at the buffet because it’s a good value, and at the same time we’re often consuming more calories than we should all day in a single meal…  😯

I think part of the problem is that many Americans don’t want to be healthy – or they do, but not enough to put down the 1,200-calorie cheeseburger and go for a walk instead. Sure, maybe it would be easier for people to be healthy if corporate America as a whole encouraged healthier foods with 400-calorie burgers and smaller portions all around, but really they’re just giving the people what they want, even if ultimately it’s terrible for us in the long run.

I honestly don’t really know what the answer is at this point except more education like this – a lot of people are just always going to eat crap because they like it or it’s all they can afford, and most (sometimes myself included) just don’t have the willpower necessary to do any better. I don’t think that silly regulations of the size of soda cups like they’re trying to do in New York City are the answer because we Americans love our freedom, even when it’s the freedom to eat foods that are likely to shave 20 years off of our lives.

Definitely an eye-opening infographic, that’s for sure!

(by InsuranceQuotes.org, via GrubGrade)

10 Killed, Another 40 Injured

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I just finished writing my review of the new Batman movie, but I also wanted to write just a few words about the horrifying news that I’m now hearing of about the shooting that took place at one of the midnight premieres of the film out in Aurora, Colorado.

So far they’re saying that 10 people were killed, with another 40 injured, including a 3-month-old baby. (this part confuses me, but I suppose now’s not the time…)

He was a lone gunman – 24 year-old doctoral student in neuroscience – and he basically kicked in the emergency exit of one of the theaters, threw a smoke canister across the room, and then started shooting at people.

Until the actual shots were fired, many thought that it was just part of the theatrics associated with the movie premiere.

…

I don’t really know what to say, except that I hope the movie doesn’t get pulled from theaters because of this. I kinda doubt it will because not to be insensitive, but you don’t spend four years making a $250 million movie to shelve it after a senseless tragedy that you couldn’t have possibly had any control over. I’m seeing a lot of random rumors flying around that Warner Bros. is canceling a premiere over in Paris and other talks about pulling the movie from US theaters entirely, but they’re all just rumors so I’m not even going to bother with links to anything.

The thing is, it was a great movie, albeit very dark and sinister, but you can’t be responsible for how people choose to react after they’ve consumed your content. There have been a lot edgier movies than this (Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, anyone???) and they didn’t result in any real world violence, so it’s silly to associate the motives of one lone lunatic with a story from Hollywood.

Besides, in a way silencing the movie really just gives the shooter even more power that he doesn’t deserve. You can’t shut everything down and call it a day in the face of terror – you have to take a moment to honor those lost, and then persevere. It’s crazy to think that this happened, for one, because my wife and I were at one of those midnight premieres ourselves last night, too. You never think when you go out to enjoy a nice movie with friends that the night could end in tragedy.

It’s really just a very sad, shocking story, and that’s all there is to say.

First the Spider, Now the Bat…

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Last night was a lot of fun!

Granted, we didn’t get to bed until almost four o’clock in the morning, but still – it was totally worth it.  :mrgreen:

First and foremost, I was definitely glad that we had an opportunity to see the previous two movies first because there were a ton of details that I didn’t remember – I mean, they were from 2005 and 2008, respectively, and I don’t think I ever even saw Batman Begins in the theater (plus, Sara had never seen it at all), so that was kinda cool, too! It was also a big help with continuity (except for Rachel getting swapped out from Katie Holmes to Maggie Gyllenhal!) … for some reason, I guess I didn’t really associated the first and second one together because they didn’t keep the naming consistent, but overall it was just a nice way to really absorb the trilogy that I didn’t super get into the first time around, but really enjoyed this time.

For the record, I think that Batman Begins was actually my favorite of the three.

### And now on to the Dark Knight Rises spoilers… ###

Continue reading →

Nine Hours of Non-Stop Batman

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I’m kind of excited – the wife and I are heading out to the theater tonight to watch lots and lots of Batman, leading up to the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises at midnight.

I’m honestly not super into Batman or anything, and I don’t think that I’ve ever actually been to a midnight premiere before, but more so it just sounded like a fun excuse to hang out at the movie theater for an evening and Sara readily agreed. We both would’ve loved to see the one that they did for The Avengers because in the weeks to come I think we ended up re-watching all of the previous movies anyways, but that one was six movies long and started at something like noon, whereas at least this one is just the three movies that make up the Dark Knight trilogy, starting at 7pm.

Only a few more hours to go!  😀

Pixar Problems

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Is anyone else increasingly disappointed with the direction that Pixar has been heading recently???

I didn’t really care for Brave when I finally got around to seeing it in the theater last week, but at least it was an original story. It wasn’t a very good original story – at least not of the caliber that I hold the makers of Toy Story and The Incredibles to, but at least it wasn’t a movie in which they ride the coattails of a previous success and simply place a number at the end, assuming that the franchise will continue to crap out cinematic masterpiece just like the original did.

That’s why this article bothers me because apparently the exact thing that John Lasseter said he wouldn’t do when Disney bought Pixar is becoming a flash in the pan, with Toy Story 3 and Cars 2 already in the books and now sequels for both Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc. to come as well. No sequels is a far cry from four sequels!

I guess the thing is, I’d be ok with them if they could actually do a good one – Pixar actually did a really great job with the Toy Story franchise, and even though I was a super skeptic when I heard about Toy Story 3, the end result was such a nostalgic tear-jerker that I was happy to eat my own shoe by the end of it simply because of just how perfectly they had capped off the series.

But now there are rumors of a TOY STORY 4 somewhere on down the pipeline as well?!?!?!

It’s the difference between artistic integrity versus simply doing something to make a quick buck. I personally can’t bring myself to watch Cinderella 3 or Pinocchio 47 because I think all of those straight-to-DVD movies are a bastardization of the animated classics that so many generations have grown up on, and yet Disney continues pounding them out because most kids under 10 don’t give a shit about the story because more Cinderella is “better,” and parents don’t give a shit because it shuts their kid up for another 90 minutes.

But me, I’m a huge fan of Disney animation and I don’t want to see them churn out garbage simply for the sake of a little extra profit. I’m a Disney shareholder, and I would much rather see this company be about quality instead of quantity, because even the less successful Pixar films like Wall-E and Ratatouille and Brave are worth more in my mind than the merchandise grab that was Cars 2. If you’ve got an amazing story that feels like a sequel, then so be it – Toy Story was the movie that introduced the world to Pixar and millions of people fell in love with Woody and Buzz, but are people really sitting around wondering what Sully and Mike Wazowski were like in college?

Or what it would be like for Nemo if his Dad lost him again in a display of child neglect eriely similar to the Home Alone sequel fiasco of the late 90s?!

Pixar is better than that, and they’ve got a catalog of 10 fantastically unique animated features to show for it. And I just hate to see them tarnish that amazing track record by living in the past instead of going out and finding new stories to tell us…