Scenes from the Leaf Festival 2016

Healthcare in the USA (II)

Seven years ago I wrote a blog entry about Obamacare. It basically expressed a feeling - that the system in Europe, problematic as it is, at least gives one the feeling of security when it comes to healthcare. If you get ill, you go to the Doctor’s, period.  There is never any question of not being treated.

Now Obamacare has been tested I think it was an improvement on the previous situation,  with about 10 million more insures, I believe, but we could, eventually, aim to replace it. Thinking about things, in an idealistic world, the ‘individual mandate’ would indeed not exist.  That is, one should really be able to opt out of buying health insurance if one wishes. People should have the right to take a big, maybe stupid, risk, keep their insurance premium money, and not pay health insurance, even if they can afford it; just as they have the right to not insure against damage of their own car.

Now, the problem is, that if that right - to not buy insurance - is going to be given, for it to work you really have to not treat someone who is sick or injured, could afford insurance but decided not to pay for it, and doesn't have the money to pay for their treatment. You really have to leave them to their own devices, and even, if necessary, to die. And that's, of course, not what happens, even in the bad old USA.  Emergency rooms always treat patients; it’s basic compassion. And thus, a large part of the motivation for getting insurance in the first place disappears, and on top of this we get the consequences of enormous unpaid costs, medical bankruptcy nonsense  etc.

So the USA really needs to decide. Either you make insurance compulsory, as does the rest of the first world, or you don't treat people who don't get it.  Having it both ways doesn't work. Either we have the individual mandate or dispassionately insist on no treatment for the uninsured.   The US individual mandate, as in Europe, works better than the pre-Obamacare zoo. However, although I know of no precedent, the insurance-or-no-treatment model could conceivably work better, while giving people more freedom of choice. What you’d find, maybe, is that, the extra motivation might even lead to an even larger proportion of people getting insurance, and voluntarily, than they do under Obamacare. But it would be scary as hell. So guys, keep the individual mandate for now, but work to building a system where it is no longer necessary i.e., where health costs are so low  that everyone voluntarily buys insurance anyway. This requires bringing bring costs down, through increasing flexibility, introducing cross-state and international competition, dissociating insurance from employment, tort reform, preventive care incentives, analytics, targeted therapies, innovation etc. But that discussion, as they say, is another kettle of fish.

On the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare's Passing

                    Here's a modification of one of his better known sonnets;  documenting the current plight of one's favorite soccer team:

Ode to Norwich City

Shall I relegate thee on a Summer's day?

Thou art so pointless and so desperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And Premier time hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of City fans,

And oft now is their bright complexion dimmed,

As every loss from win sometime declines,

By chance, with City's downward plunge untrimmed:

But thy eternal yo-yo shall not fade,

Nor gain possession of that ball thou ow'st,

Nor Ipswich brag thou wander'st in their shade,

Tho’ thy eternal shots shall hit the post,

 So long as fans can breathe, or fans can see,

 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Palermo's Rapid Fire Prez!

Palermo FC are in Serie A, the top Italian league. Their president, Maurizio Zamparini, is a calm and patient role model. He likes to give a coach time to develop his squad, instill his playing style in the team and slowly gel together.

Their coach at the beginning of this season was Beppe Iachini, but, unfortunately,  Zamp felt he had to quickly fire him, and replaced him by Davide Ballardini, but he also had to be  axed, then Guillermo Barros Schelotto, who was sadly laid off, then Fabio Viviani, who was, er,  sacked quicker than you can say Bettino Craxi, then Giovanni Bosi again, who got his pink slip post haste, too, then Giovanni Tedesco, who had to be, regrettably, also relieved of his duties, then Beppe Iachini, who also had to be, er, released, then Walter Novellino, who was thrown out of the pram a couple of days ago.

Nine coaching changes in the season, one every 4 games.

Davide Ballardini is now back for the Juventus game tomorrow.

According to Novellino "Juve don't give anything to anyone. The team is lacking organization. They're a little bit afraid".

You don't say!

At least they don't have to face the perplexed Sicilian tifosi.
Novellino says "Maybe they can find some calm by playing away from home."

Am I missing something?

Am I missing something?

Several recent articles have been decrying the pay gap between the US Men's and Women's Soccer Teams, noting that in 2015 the women were paid less than the men even though they won  the World Cup.

Now, soccer players are paid pure and simply according to how much revenue they bring in. The fact is that, averaged over the year, far more people watch the men's game.  Therefore, the male professional game in the USA is alive and well, whereas nobody wants to watch the women outside of the World Cup. As for the World Cup itself, the 2014 men's winners (Germany) took 6.6% o the revenue whereas the 2015 women's winners (the USA) took home 11%. Hopefully the situation for women professionals will change, and the women's game will improve, attracting more spectators. But, until then....

Where's the discrimination? Am I missing something?

Johan Cruyff

The Dutch Master - coaching.

So Johan Cruyff passed on today.  He wasn't the greatest soccer player ever. Only maybe the fourth or fifth greatest (!). But if you combine his playing prowess with his coaching career (he made Barcelona great)  he's definitely Number One Of All Time.  He was always My Number One anyway. Simply because of one quote, that Jerome Baudry reminded me of today:

"Technique is not being able to juggle a ball 1000 times. Anyone can do that by practicing. Then you can work in the circus. Technique is passing the ball with one touch, with the right speed, at the right foot of your team mate"

You see, I can pass the ball pretty well, always could. But for the life of me I can't juggle the cursed thing. So I really appreciate Cruyff's vision. Lets me off, you see. Flashy young teenage jugglin' show-offs be damned!......

Creepy-Crawly Biophysics

Mojave Shovel-Nosed Snake: shovels through the sand

We do molecular biophysics. But although biological molecules are incredibly interesting and useful to understand, physicists can also look at larger things - cells, organs, and how whole organisms move.

So check this out. It's Dan Goldman's  "CRAB" lab (Complex Rheology And Biomechanics) at Georgia Tech. They study lizards (cute), crabs (ouch), cockroaches (yuck) and snakes (lovely) and ask how they move on tricky stuff like sand, bark, leaves and grass.

Now I thought that the basic principles of snake locomotion had been worked out a long time ago, by, among others, the great Nicolas Rashevsky, but, apparently there's more to learn, especially when one takes into accounts physics of the terrestrial substrates as well. Recently Goldman's lab figured out how sidewinders manage to get up steep sand slopes.

Cute stuff - creepy-crawly biophysics.