Important Stuff

Bottling water

We stopped buying bottled water about a year ago. Here’s a few good reasons why: From Think Outside the Bottle: Worldwide, consumers spent $100 billion on bottled water in 2005. Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil last year – enough fuel for more than 1 million U.S. cars for a year – and…
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Important Stuff

Thinking about electric cars

Not long ago I was having a group discussion with my family about electric cars. Cheryl and I had just seen the movie, “Who Killed the Electric Car,” which prompted the long follow-up discussion. We were all over the place… taking about the differences between emissions from autos versus power-plants (one of the nearby power-plants in Tampa has long been considered one of the…
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Important Stuff

Bettor, Better or worse?

There’s an editorial in the November 5th issue of The New Republic which addresses a few of the global warming doubters out there. The article mentions researchers who were surprised to find evidence that the world’s oceans are no longer absorbing as much carbon dioxide as they used to. (Just in case you missed the memo, that’s potentially a very bad thing.) The editorial…
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Important StuffPolitics

Science according to Bush

I’ve heard time and again about the White House censoring government reports to fit their view of the world, so I shouldn’t be surprised by this… Dr. Julie Gerberding is the director of the CDC, and she was in front of Congress to give testimony about the potential impact of global warming on our health. According to the AP, her testimony focused on the CDC’s action…
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Important StuffPolitics

Bush’s EPA Is Pursuing Fewer Polluters

Bush’s EPA Is Pursuing Fewer Polluters – washingtonpost.com: The Environmental Protection Agency’s pursuit of criminal cases against polluters has dropped off sharply during the Bush administration, with the number of prosecutions, new investigations and total convictions all down by more than a third, according to Justice Department and EPA data. The number of civil lawsuits…
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Important Stuff

Here I go again - lets talk about health care

Twice in two days! That’s how many times someone said (to me) some variation of: “don’t people who live in countries with universal health care have almost half of their pay taken in taxes, to pay for their health care?” If this was just one person who said it twice, or even one person who was relaying it from someone else, then I wouldn’t be writing this post. But…
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Family and FriendsImportant Stuff

Health insurance and mental health

One of the supposed hallmarks of the U.S. system of providing health care is choice. “Don’t let the socialist boogeyman come and force you to see a doctor trained in Guatemala!” You may not realize it, but that’s pretty funny (not the bit about Guatemala… the part about choice). Well, it doesn’t quite rise to the level of expelling fluids through your…
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Family and FriendsImportant StuffPolitics

Broken

Earlier this week my mother was hospitalized involuntarily under the provisions of a Florida Law known as the “Baker Act.” When the legal requirement for the hospital to hold her expired, and they determined that her benefits (through her health insurance) had been used up, she was shipped out to the first facility that would take her. It was an assisted living facility, which…
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Family and FriendsImportant Stuff

Coverage caps

There’s a law in Florida called the Baker Act; a law which gives law enforcement and medical professionals the authority to hold people with mental illness – specifically those who show signs of being a danger to others or themselves. There are few (if any) public facilities to provide this emergency care, so patients are cared for in private facilities… usually a floor set aside…
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