* SF geek: Animation of multiple-star systems. (From a Firefly thread.) How to show time-lagged STL comms on screen.
* Cute studies: Children of lesbian mothers less susceptible to mental illness. Take with as much salt as a single study deserves, but cute result anyway given the debates.
* Politics geek: Overseas departments of France. Unlike the American empire, or the American capital, they get representation in the legislature.
* Hope: Confucian enviornmentalism?
* Less Hope: Spain limits universal jurisdiction.
* Tech: Bicycle cars!
* Human interest: Gay Iraqi Jew Israeli who helps Palestinians.
* Current events: Honduran 'coup'. You've probably seen the standard version (military coup!), see the other side. I've been looking at bad translations of the Honduran Constitution (Google Translate is a bit less bad than Babelfish) and yeah, it *does* look like the President disqualified himself from office -- and that there's no formal impeachment mechanism. Noel Maurer
* RPG geek: 4e D&D for taking a shit
* Rainbow flag: not just for gays
* "Gayby boom": the wave of kids who've grown up with gay parents.
* How the media incorporates blogs on Iran.
* Corporate crooks: travel protection fraud. Bankrupted with health insurance.
* Freedom, Environment: now legal to collect rainwater in Colorado
* Mad Science!: hot rock projects underway, and causing earthquakes. Geo-engineering. The global ant super-colony.
* Retro-tech: 13 year old experiences Walkman.
* Interrogating Saddam Hussein
* Gay sex decriminalized in India for now. Illegal (10 years in prison) under British colonial law; Delhi High Court has overturned. Religious leaders object; case may be appealed to the Supreme Court.
* Forced marriages and Britain
* CBO analyzes plan with public option, hey, this time it works. President of the AMA comes out in support, sort of.
* Swine flu: US deaths (updated Fridays). Spread in Argentina.

Previously I linked to this article comparing the VA and Medicare, to VA's advantage. I'd only skimmed a bit into the article before; reading it properly now, I feel it could use some quotes. A lot of it is about the wonders of electronic data systems. It's embarrassing, at least for the $6000/capita, "best in the world" private side of US health care. But it's also about systematic market failure: most US doctors and insurance companies don't have an incentive to keep you health, especially over the long term.

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Summary

The article finishes by musing that rather than closing VA hospitals as veteran populations fall, we should open them to the general public in return for public service of some kind.

For my part, I've generally assumed that Medicare For All would be the best and simplest way out for the US. Probably is simplest, but now I wonder if it's best. Canada's Medicare seems to do better than UK's NHS -- well, Canadians live longer -- but the VA's own history shows quality of a centralized system can vary widely. Wish I knew more about France and Sweden's systems.

One difference is arbitrary legalism -- the VA is allowed to negotiate drug prices down, Medicare isn't.

But this goes to show how the current US system is almost optimized for poor outcomes overall. Employer-tied insurance and adverse selection of individuals means depression of entrepreneurship, self-employment, and small businesses; it also leads to employer and insurer unconcern for long-term outcomes, since you'll likely have left them; for the really long term, everyone switches over to Medicare, so there's really a disincentive to care about your long term health. And of course per-service for-profit care gives an incentive to the doctors to do as many tests and procedures as they can get away with, which when it comes down to tests and surgery for microtumors that would kill you by the time you were 130, are likely harmful for your health.

Reportedly, in small towns, people don't lock their doors much. In cities, we do. In college I had a friend who didn't lock her dorm room, which struck me as weird (though I happily took advantage to drop off surprise flowers.) Sometimes I've wondered about the need for locks; I'm home a lot, and it's not like people come to try the door. (Of course, I live in a good neighborhood.) And it'd probably look weird to go down a street or hallway trying door after door.

But, of course, if no one locked their door, you could just go to any home that looked empty and enter to plunder it. It's the fact that everyone locks their door that means an individual can get away without it, like skipping on vaccination if everyone else gets shots.

SF has a notable anti-democratic trend, with Future! Space! Empires! with hereditary rulers and nobles. Asimov's Galactic Empires, Pournelle's CoDominium and Empire, Poul Anderson's empire. Often an empire falls, to be replaced by a second empire.

This hasn't been without rationalization. The usual line is that with poor communications, a feudal structure is good for long-range government. This never felt right, but I was thinking about it in the past day. Really... what? Europe's feudal realms were in rather smaller areas than the Roman Republic at its pre-Imperial height. Roman used pro-consuls and pro-praetors, so there was local autocracy, but appointed by the Senate, not hereditary. And why couldn't a democratic/republican federation handle the needed decentralization? Local governance, representatives sent to the capital. A bit like the early US, or the Commonwealth (though that has a weak Crown still, and had steamships and telegraphs relatively early.)

Iran may have a decades-long democratic past but it's looking bad at the moment. Ahmadinejad had been polling at 40%, but the gov't claims a 60% win. Fraud seems likely given various factors, analogous to Obama winning Arizona or McCain winning Chicago.

* In other news, GOP denounces climate change plan as an energy tax. Half-right: we need a *fossil carbon* tax, to harness market forces in making people use it less. They propose

In the GOP's weekly radio and Internet address, Indiana Rep. Mike Pence said Congress should instead open the way for more domestic oil and natural gas production and ease regulatory barriers for building new nuclear power plants.

Nukes are fine (though "easing regulatory barriers" needs a wary eye), but encouraging more oil and gas production? No, that's the exact opposite of what you need in a climate-change bill. We need to replace production, not expand it.

* Voting in Iran. Mousavi, the reformer, has claimed victory though it's not official. 538 calls this a maturing of Iran's democracy, though let's remember history: Iran had a Parliament from 1911 ending in 1953 thanks to a CIA coup. The next time you hear someone say Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, remind them (a) of Turkey and (b) that Iran was democratic and *we broke it*. And then funded their dictatorship and state terror structure, making us calling them "Axis of evil" and "terrorist state" now a real laugh.

* US and UK deregulated finance and got a bust. Canada didn't and has stable banks. Hmm.
* Effect of minority judges on the Court.
* Outline of Predictably Irrational, a collection of cognitive bias experients and results.

* AMA continues the fight against reform, has contributed heavily to the GOP.
* US care as viewed by a Canadian. Supplements an older piece in the opposite direction. And a comparison with France.
* Tobacco to be more regulated now. Also.

* Militants respond positively to Obama's speech

* Scott Roeder warns of more murders of abortion doctors. Can we call him a terrorist yet? Should we waterboard him?

* Would gay marriage support be higher if framed as "should the government have the power to prevent gays from marrying?"

* From Randy: Portugal's empire superimposed on Europe.
* Moonshine resurgence. Article ends covering the one legal moonshiner. Authorities were pretty helpful when someone asked how to make corn whiskey legally. *shock*

* "Jesus killed Mohammed" More on evangelicals in the military. Evangelical crusaders, in this case, waging a Christian jihad. And trying to turn the Air Force Academy into a madrasa.

* A Christian, he explained in full earnestness, “is someone who chooses to be a slave, essentially.”
Gee, sounds like... submission. Islam.

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* Mikey's Military Religious Freedom Foundation

* Haruhi Suzumiya in the Palestinian territories
* Bert and Osama
* Failure of US rail. Slower than it was in the 1920s.
* Liberals and conservatives have different reactions to authority and disgust.

* Marijuana legalization bill!
** Ambiguity about Obama's enforcement

* Closing of the Canadian border
* Newsweek criticizes Oprah's gullibility
* Republican car dealerships
* Long term whiteness of the GOP, with 98% of Reagan's 1980 votes being white. Though Nate's "always" doesn't see as far back as pre-FDR black Republicans.
* GOP lawmaker claims liberal media is biggest threat to America.
* Health insurance companies invest in tobacco companies.

* Reagan's role in the financial crisis
* Stagflation myth

* Cats don't understand strings
* One man's experience with taking female hormones
* Grilled cheese as metaphor for sex.

anima just ran an Unhallowed Metropolis. Went well, but she said we were all experienced RPGers. I objected that I'd had maybe a couple dozen sessions in my life, though compared to Gencon newbies that's probably good. But it got me actually counting, so as not to speak nonsense.

Endril's Exalted game -- maybe half a dozen sessions?
Z's Exalted -- at least 10 sessions, not hugely more
fergusop's Ars Magica -- ditto
Guild one-shots
* anima: Unhallowed Metropolis, D&D 4e (3 sessions), Spirit of the Century, Adventure!, 7th Sea, D&D Tomb of Horrors (very partial, stepped in)
* Josh's Candlewick Manor (partial, stepped in)
* anima/Prime's Qin
* someone's Aeon/Trinity
* multi-G nWoD (two sessions, streamlined combat my ass)
(36+2/2)

Caltech: Shadowrun, then Vamp/Werewolf, probably at least 10 sessions between the two.

LARPS: mystery LARP at Caltech that Fanw and I don't remember well; <6 Changeling sessions initially; 2 Changeling one-shots; 5 widescreen oWoD multi-splat sessions as a Void Engineer.

Adds up to... about 60 sessions, not counting a few rounds of Amber PBEM and lots of LARP or Ars e-mails; majority at Guild. So, quite a bit more that I thought, something over a year-equivalent of weekly sessions. Mind you, spread out over several years and in many games, and not much at all compared to people who've gamed regularly for multiple years, sometimes at multiple games per week (so much time...) I've never had a long game; I bailed out of the Changeling LARP and all the other potentially long games bailed out on me.

Today has reports of a study that not only do girls do as well as boys in math on average, but in some countries they do as well at the extremes, or have as much variability, contra the "males are more variable, with more geniuses and more morons" hypothesis. I shared this with friends on AIM, got different reactions, and figured I'd open a space for them to talk to each other, along with anyone else interested. Let me know if friends-locking this post would make it safer to talk openly.

The researchers speculate about cultural effects such as prejudice in teachers and guidance counselors; a friend thinks women keep each other down, by punishing exotic behavior.

I have little direct opinion or facts of my own to contribute, though my parents raised me with a belief that girls get told they're bad at math. A Texas girl at Caltech told me of her mother teaching her to play dumb to catch guys. A couple of female students at IU whom I tutored in "finite math" claimed they'd done okay in math until 5th grade (age 10); I think one mentioned discouragement from the teacher.) Me, I find "I'm bad at math" to be a big turn-off, especially if pitched as an inherent failing, rather than as a lack of practice a la my own minimal art skills. My default assumption is egalitarian, but "males are more variable" seems pretty plausibly on reproductive logic grounds; if you can manipulate a risk-reward tradeoff in one's offspring, it makes sense to roll the dice more for your sons than for your daughters. Though we're not a harem species, so that's somewhat bounded.

Tangentially, googling finds this article alleging Finnish girls get better math scores (grades?) but don't know it as well.

* "only eight of 180 tenured professors at the nation's top five mathematics departments, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, were women"
* "Math prepares you to do just about anything"

Must read
* Letter from an ex-slave to his master. A thing of beauty.
** Tolkien's reply to Nazi Aryan inquiries
* Girly editions of Scrabble, Monopoly, Uno et al.

History
* 25 May was the 40th anniversary of the decriminalization of gay sex in Canada.
** Like Orson Scott Card, John Wright apparently misses those days.

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* Evil chicken

I got a box of books today: Buck Godot PSmith, and the 3 volumes of the Crest of the Stars novels. I have now read all 4 items. I'd read the Godot before, not sure where, I hope I don't find a duplicate copy hiding somewhere.

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Ok, I'm getting annoyed by all these people bemoaning how they thought California was progressive, because the court didn't over turn Prop 8. Let's review the timeline:

* Hawaii's Court says gay marriage should be legally allowed. Lots of states, including HI and Iowa, passed laws or amendments to head that off. In California, this was the initiative-law Prop 22, passing with 61% of the vote.
* Mass. Court strikes down their law, and this sticks. Lots more states rush to amend their constitutions.
* California's legislature votes to legalize gay marriage. Arnold vetoes this, on the grounds that the voters had spoken, and that there was a court case already pending.
* Court case happens, Prop 22 struck down: gay marriage is now legal.
* Prop 8 happens, amending the constitution. Now it's illegal. Prop 8 passed with a whopping 52%, and would have failed anywhere with sane constitutions.
* The exact same court that legalized gay marriage when there was just a law, now bows to the state constitution, since that's what constitutions are for. Equal protection arguments aren't invoked by the plaintiffs, since that's federal legalism and they don't want to try their luck in Federal court. It's argued that between the two cases, the Court has said gays have the right to all the rights of marriage, except the name. I lack an opinion on the amendment vs. revision debate, since that's a legalism with precedents.

So: legislature approved, court approved, only a bare majority of voters and the malleability of the state constitution block gay marriage. That's pretty progressive, especially considering that not a single state has had the voters approve gay marriage. If you had a choice between marriage and civil unions in Massachusetts right now, five years later, I'm not sure marriage would win.

Iowa? The legislature barred gay marriage years ago, the court overturned it now, the current legislture isn't acting. Massachusetts and Connecticut were court driven. Vermont was spontaneous legislature, though the original civil unions were forced by the courts. New Hampshire and Maine will be spontaneous, if they pass and stick respectively.

And, honestly, while California even as a whole has lots of liberal things about it, one should beware of generalizing San Francisco and Berkeley to the whole state. This is the state where Ronald Reagan was governor in 1968, where Prop 13 tax revolt gutted the schools, where conservative voters in the Central Valley and San Diego more than counterbalance the hippie utopia. Some would say California's never been liberal, but crazy. Sometimes crazy left, sometimes crazy right.


ETA: I guess the heart of what annoys me is the monolithic thinking. "Ooh, Iowa is more progressive than California", as if the two were coherent and comparable entities. "I'm disappointed in California today." At the narrow though important level of the legal status, yes, Iowa's currently more progressive. In terms of what happened, it's not. "Iowa" did not legalized gay marriage, the supreme court did, and the rest of the state can't do anything about it quickly. "Massachusetts" didn't legalize gay marriage, the court did, and the legislature has prevented amendments from going to the people. California's government did almost everything it could to promote gay marriage rights, but in a real sense, "California", the voters, did speak against it. But so has every other state where the voters have spoken. The places where it's legal are the places where the court, legislature, or both, have acted or conspired to make it legal and/or keep the voters from getting to vote on it. They've done what they could in California, but the voters are more powerful there.

And, at that, California voters were AFAIK less vocal in banning gay marriage than any other state. 52% to 48%. Flipside is, they can pass it by the same margin, while most other states that amended their constitution will be a long time in flipping over the other way.

I've moved on from Crest of the Stars to Banner of the Stars. Observations: more battles, less character; OTOH, there are more characters, so the development is spread beyond Jinto and Lafiel. The Baronh opening voiceover doesn't change much -- the same for 8 episodes, then switched to a different sameness; this is vs. continually new information in Crest. There's a lot of countdowns from 10. A few episodes have overly-long recaps, of course that's aggravated by watching the episodes back to back, not separated by a week. Still, I'm liking it, and excited to watch it, as in "eeee I'm going to go home and watch Banner."

But some scenes of note, relevant to the subject:

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Dark
* Bishops were covering up for abusive priests back in 1957. here and here (pdf).
* And the current Pope led much of the obstruction of justice.

* The high costs
of being poor

* Man pleads guilty to manga porn. Also, and Neil Gaiman.
* Inverse correlations between rapes and porn; rape rates have apparently declined, either modestly or drastically.

* David Brooks: "Cheney lost to Bush". Says the high point of torture was in the early years, and the policies Cheney is publicly defending now were largely backed away from in the Rice years, with Obama continuing those policies.
* Conservative Erich Muller calls waterboarding torture after 7 seconds of exposure. That's him and Chris Hitchens. Torture defenders say "we waterboard our troops". Yes, in torture resistance school.

* Permission slips required for schoolgirl to give a talk on Harvey Milk

* Headline: "U.S. EPA to rely more on scientists for air rules". (As opposed to the political appointees of the Bush administration.)

Cool
* Military not as Republican or polarized as thought, though old officers kind of are.
* Obama's security speech
* Southern contraction of the GOP
* Where a Marine friend will be leading troops in Afghanistan.
* Back to manual trades?

Silly
* David Frum on mustardgate. This is a Bush speechwriter calling the thing silly.

I have a USB stick, Kingston Datatraveler 4GB. I've had it since November. It was never used that much. It has now become "read-only", unwriteable when mounted. There's no hardware toggle to have caused this. This seems a not-uncommon problem, online. Kingston fail.