As Congress gears up to try it once more with more feeling (and fewer benefits), it’s worth rereading what they tried to do just three weeks ago: “Obamacare Lite.”
Category Archives: Random Access
You Peed in the Pool!
And we have proof. Swimming pools are full of piss but rarely vinegar.
Olympic swimmers do it. Babies do it. Elderly great-grandmothers do it. A 2012 U.S. study verified that nearly one-fifth of Americans do it and an American Chemical Society study performed at the University of Alberta confirms that everybody pees in the pool.
It’s just the amount that might surprise you.
At the same time, our beach club owners are bumping heads over whether to install an outhouse. It is not a trivial question. There is a real concern among beachgoers about people peeing in the ocean but our beach is a nice sandy lot with neither electricity nor sewer. Planning for accessibility, the engineering and construction costs, a sewer hookup, and running water and electricity are all significant issues.
Does it really matter if you pee in the ocean? Or your pool?
The environmental toxicology experts at the University of Alberta found a way to measure the concentration of urine in pools thanks to our lurve of sugary snacks, particularly sugary snacks at the seashore.
Calling Ace K. Snackbuster!
Acesulfame potassium, better known as “Ace-K,” is an artificial sweetener now commonly found in the much of what we eat and drink.
Sales of diet sodas have dropped by nearly 20% since reaching a peak of $8.5 billion in 2009 while energy drinks grew from $12.5 billion in 2015 to an expected $21.5 billion this year.
Whether your soda pop has sucralose or aspartame the chances are good it also has ace-K which is around 200 times sweeter than sugar. Other foods that contain acesulfame potassium include fruit juices, non-carbonated beverages, and alcoholic beverages, baked goods, cereals, chewing gum, condiments, dairy products, desserts, ice cream, jam, jelly and marmalade, marinades, salad dressings and sauces, tabletop sweeteners, toothpaste and mouthwash, and even yogurt and other milk products.
Acesulfame K isn’t broken down or stored in the body. Instead, it’s absorbed into your system and then passed unchanged in your urine.
The researchers determined how much of the water was urine simply by measuring the concentration of Ace-K in the water.
So how much urine is in your pool? Or my beach?
All of the pools and hot tubs the team tested contained urine. The study found that typical backyard pools contain about 20 gallons each.
Your kitchen trash can holds about 7 gallons. Imagine if one of your (very productive) friends filled it three times and dumped it in the pool!
We all know that urine is sterile but the other compounds we pass, including urea, ammonia, and creatinine, become dangerous when mixed with the pool chemicals. They can lead to eye and respiratory irritation and even asthma in those exposed long enough.
It’s worse in the ocean where they can turn the water green.
Rule 39
“There is no such thing as coincidence.”
—Leroy Jethro Gibbs
I often sit on my inch of beach of the afternoon with my arse in the water and toes in the sand and I keep running into people I didn’t know I know.
A couple of beach buddies had friends down from the frozen north last week. The friend, Romulus, has been to Vermont several times on bike trips so he wanted to know if he had ridden past our house. He came close but the bike trail cuts a few miles east of us. He got off the trail and found himself in Canada at one point. That story involves men with guns and searchlights but that’s for another day.
Romulus is a high end woodworker in real life. We got to talking about southeastern Pennsylvania and he told me about a set of bowls he made from a walnut tree the owners had cut down in the front yard of a stone house at the corner of Street and Shiloh Roads.
“That was a lovely tree,” I said. “But it was in the back yard over the dog house and it dropped walnuts into the driveway that split under all the tires.”
Romulus was amazed.
“Not so hard to know. I grew up in that house and wore a towel as a cape when I learned to ‘fly’ off the dog house roof.”
He comes from around there and has done a lot of work so he knows the area well.
Coincidentally, I answered the phone yesterday because I recognized the name on CallerID, although I haven’t spoken to him for 20 or more years. It was 
, the current owner of the stone house at the corner of Street and Shiloh Roads.
“The township Gazette is doing a history of these old houses,” he said.
We reminisced and caught up and told some lies. They, too, were in Vermont last summer but they didn’t get as far north as Romulus so they didn’t run afoul of Border Patrol. And I told him about meeting the maker of the bowls.
“We still have them,” he said. “The Gazette photographer took photos that will be in the article.”
I went back to the beach after the call. There was still plenty wind but my jetty shielded me nicely so I sweated a bit sitting in its lee in the sun. And the water temp is up a degree to 76° at the Vaca Key buoy VCAF1 so it didn’t feel quite as penguinish to swim. Nice.
A couple of other beach buddies joined me and we talked a little about the people we meet coincidentally. I pointed to another couple walking down the beach and said, loudly enough for them to hear, “see, here are people we might know.”
Turns out they’re from Michigan and rent a beach condo every year here in South Puffin. I didn’t recognize them but they recognized me. I may have to mix it up a bit. Or at least buy new Speedos™.
Here’s a history of the house.
“At the northeast corner of Shiloh and Street Roads … is a dignified two story stone mansion which overlooks the valley. In the south wall of this house, some four feet above the ground level, is a stone inscribed ‘1734.’
“In January 1699/1700, in this area, Thomas Mercer, an immigrant from Northampton County, England, bought 230 acres of land. His son, Thomas, inherited this land and built the 1734 house in which, it appears, he lived until his death about 1758. Among his ten children were two sons, Daniel and David. Near the stone marked “1734” there is another one on which is inscribed “D heart symbol M.” It seems likely that this identifies either Daniel or David Mercer and that it was the handiwork of an ambitious boy.
“The Mercer family owned several hundred acres of land in the Township. In early deeds the property with the 1734 stone is sometimes referred to as “the mansion tract.” This remained in the Mercer family until 1860. Between 1875 and 1896 it was owned by William Cronin. His ownership is reflected by an inscription “W C 1876” which is painted in the south gable of a carriage house which he built in 1876.
My great-grandfather, “Enos H.
“In recent years it has been the home of Dr. and Mrs. Wilbur
–excerpted from Arthur E. James’ Chester County Histories
OK, the real reason the early structure, with its choice woodwork and fireplaces, wasn’t spoiled by inroads of modernity is that neither the Cronins nor my family had the money to do more than change the front windows to the large-pane Victorian style. The owners since us did.
The current owners bought the house from the flipper who bought it from us. The intermediate owner took down the plaster ceilings to expose beams, tore down the “modern” frame addition and built a new one that more than doubled its size. The current owners bumped up a full length dormer on the north side of the attic, changing that to livable space. The house is a lot bigger now than it was.
DiNozzo said that Rule 39A is “There is no such thing as a small world.”
Uh huh.
SPROING
The Puffin saw its shadow this morning.
Spring sprung at 6:29 a.m. as the Sun crossed directly over the Earth’s equator. OK, the Earth tilted so the equator was pointed directly at the Sun, Rufus. Jeez.
For that brief moment in time, there are equal periods of sunshine and darkness all over the world. Assuming the sun is “out.” Not “of the closet,” Rufus. Jeez.
People have recognized the vernal equinox with ritual and traditions for thousands of years. The Puffin is not that old.
The first day of astronomical Spring is a day of special gravity. The ancient (and many modern) Chinese believed that you can stand an egg on its end on the first day of spring. That’s (probably) less violent than the people in Poland who drown the Marzanna or the Swiss who burn a snowman at the stake. Google has a doodle. A smart doodle.
On the other hand, people in Vermont are still betting on when the ice will go out on Joe’s Pond. The ice thickness on was 14 inches a couple of weeks ago and Kyle thinks more ice will form with the coming cold temperatures.
The Puffin saw its shadow on the beach this morning.
Students generally head for sunshine for Spring break, so there are lots of young, bikini clad bodies cavorting on beaches here.
There were a couple of pretty, fair weather clouds early but the temp was hovering at about 69 in sunshine first thing. It will be sunny with a high around 77 again and 10-15 mph of northeast wind. Mostly clear tonight and nice for the rest of the week.
Hmmm. Ice out or beach and beer?
The sun was definitely “out.” The Puffin saw its shadow which means we’re in for four more weeks of sunshine here in South Puffin and, sadly, you’re not.
Lying Liars #2,749
Welcome to the first day of Spring, the day when day and night are the same length and politicians tell you one is the other.
“The affordable health care’s purpose was to lower costs, expand access, and improve benefits,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on Face the Nation yesterday. “It has succeeded in all three.”
It has succeeded? Succeeded? Really?
Let’s take how Ms. Pelosi knew the facts and said just the opposite. Out here outside the Beltway, we call that “Lying.”
• “[Its purpose was to] lower costs…”
Health care cost Americans $2 trillion in 2008; ObamaDidn’tCare grew it every year so health care will cost Americans $3.6 trillion in 2017. Alabama premiums jumped 28% from 2015 to 2016 for individual plans purchased through the marketplace. They went up another 36% this year. The cheapest “Bronze” plan here in south Florida costs $4,660 this year, almost double the unsubsidized cost in 2013. A Bronze plan comes with a $6,000 medical and $500 prescription deductible and $12,500 out of pocket maximum costs. And your premium skyrocketed anyway! True believers can’t accept those facts but the NY Times does.
• “[Its purpose was to] expand access…”
Enrollment tumbled in 2016 at a faster rate of decline than in 2015 as people got kicked off for not paying premiums. UnitedHealth Group dropped out of almost every ObamaDidn’tCare market.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2016 that ObamaDidn’tCare would leave 27 million uninsured through 2019.
• “[Its purpose was to] improve benefits…”
Slightly true. Some of the 20 million folks who never had insurance before ObamaDidn’tCare definitely got better benefits. Anything more than nothing is “better.” The rest got stuck with far less. And for the 75 million Americans who got their insurance through large companies in 2013, according to NBC News, ObamaDidn’tCare caused companies with the most generous plans to cut benefits.
Lying liars who lie a lot.
Ms. Pelosi’s definition of “success” seems a wee bit different than ours, I’m thinking.
“[The Unaffordable Care Act] should be respected for what it does,” she said.
We’ve seen what it does. In that, for once in the past nine years, Ms. Pelosi told the truth.
No matter what the true believers think, ObamaDidn’tCare — the original Unaffordable Care Act — is disintegrating. It’s collapsing politically. It’s collapsing financially. It’s collapsing medically.
As we learned last week, the new Unaffordable American Health Care Act doesn’t address the biggest issue: cost. It needs bring costs down and to do that it needs to address [wait for it] American Health Care. So far it doesn’t do that any better than what we had foisted on us in 2013.