Category Archives: Society

Why Your Premium Just Went Up

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AmbulanceMy friend Kay Ace got a ride in a diesel truck with a siren last night. She doesn’t remember too much of it.

The “episode” started at a meeting in Milton, Vermont. She says she felt queasy, asked for a chair, sat down, and still felt upset of tummy and clammy. Passed out. She woke up in an ambulance on the way to the hospital in Burlington. She said she was still woozy for her first hour in the ER.

Dx: Vasovagal Syncope

That’s the common big Latin word most doctors use to describe fainting. A faint is a brief loss of consciousness caused by a sudden drop in your heart rate and blood pressure, which reduces blood flow to your brain.

“A fainting spell?” her friend Rufus asked. “And these are real doctors? I’m surprised they didn’t diagnose her with the vapors. Sheez.”

Vasovagal syncope is usually harmless and requires no treatment, according to the Mayo Clinic.

So, of course, Milton took her for a $700 ambulance ride to a $2,000 trauma center where they performed a $900 EKG and (maybe) a few $65 dollar blood tests. All for something a $1.99 bottle of smelling salts would have fixed as little as 20 years ago.

“More like 45-50 years ago,” Rufus said.

We still had smelling salts around the house as recently as the 90s; certainly until 1990 because my grandfather was still alive then. For anyone of that generation as well as many of our parents age, it was just something you had in the medicine chest.

“And you took someone to the hospital if they needed it… in your own car,” he added.

Sure, although an ambulance (and the state police) came when that same grandfather cut his foot halfway off at the ankle with the spinning Gravely flywheel. That was in 1958 or so. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure my mom drove my dad in when he cut his fingers off. Both times.

Smelling salts not required either time.

Kay fainted. No one is worried that it might happen again. People faint occasionally and it’s not often a sign of any underlying problem. The over-reaction to her fainting will happen again because that is a sign of any underlying problem.

Kay is still just fine, by the way, although her wallet lost some weight.

I guess they’re not $1.99 anymore.

Some at-risk groups, such as pregnant women, are
currently advised to keep smelling salts close to hand.

Burn Baby Burn

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Everybody I know is either in Black Rock City today, on their way to Black Rock City today, or packing to leave for Black Rock City today. OK, everybody but Rufus and Fredo “Two Fingers” Caronia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BurningMan-picture.jpgBurning Man builds Black Rock City, Nevada, this week.

Liz Arden left Friday to get assure she would arrive exactly when The Gate opened yesterday at 6 p.m. Brockley Mann, South Puffin’s police chief, won a ticket from his radio station and is a “Burgin”; he arrives Tuesday. Ms. gekko left many hours before sunrise yesterday and should be setting up by the time you read this.

“I counted a dozen vehicles that clearly had Burners,” she said of her trip through northern Arizona and southern Nevada. “I also counted a half dozen dead javelina. Untold numbers of bits of unidentifiable critters.”

Here in Vermont, the state Highway Department scoops fresh killed deer off the highway, cleans out (most of) the glass and other bits, and gives them to the Department of Corrections. I’m thinking the inmates get more venison than the licensed hunters.

And mmmm, javelina. The other white meat. Clean up on Route 95, please!

Burning Man has ten core principles from Radical Inclusion and Radical Self-reliance to Leaving No Trace.

Anyone may be a part of Burning Man; an individual should “discover, exercise, and rely on his or her inner resources.” Perhaps most important is the commitment to leave no trace behind. They clean up after themselves and try to leave the playa in shape than before.

They have a word for that: MOOP (noun) — Matter Out Of Place.

MOOP especially applies to Black Rock City and its citizens. It can be anything: cigarette butts, bottle caps, glowsticks, fireworks, upside down art cars, excess laws. The Burning Man survival guide shows trash and recycling options for Leaving No Trace. Everything that came in gets packed out.

A lot comes in.

Americans in general have a lot of stuff and we are jealous of it. We have junk mail and catalogues and newspapers. Everyone keeps a couple of objets from d’art to d’trash that we could use to fix the furnace or make a collage. Closets overflow with really nice clothes that might be worn again. And who can resist a freebie? To have and to hold, baby.

Since the No Puffin Perspective™ often covers news and politics, here’s the part that makes this piece tax deductible: Today, scholars don’t even know how many federal criminal laws exist, let alone how many civil and tax and trade and regulatory mandates do. One of my clients, a Vermont attorney, has a law library of state statutes alone that fills a room.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Compulsive_hoarding_Apartment.jpg/220px-Compulsive_hoarding_Apartment.jpgThis computer has 337,252 files listed in 45,071 folders. Of course 164,484 (in almost 34,000 of those folders) of them are for Windows 7, but still. Oh, and Rufus has more than that in his AOL inbox alone.

Burning Man is the most successful cleanup and restoration of any United States event monitored by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management although no trash disposal is provided or available on site. It is contained in one, solitary, remote, dry lake bed about 110 miles north of Reno, Nevada. We can’t all move our stuff to Nevada.

But. A little spread of radical self-reliance and MOOP cleanup wouldn’t hurt us.

337,252 files. That might be a good place to start. Right after I figure out what’s up with these shorts stacked on the living room window fan.

Liars Lie

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Why do people fib to us?

Gregory House, M.D., taught us “Everybody lies.” Oh, sure, we may start with the little “white” lies, but according to Dr. Gail Saltz everyone lies or “omits the truth” at least some of the time. “We start lying at around age 4 to 5 when children gain an awareness of the use and power of language. This first lying is not malicious, but rather to find out, or test, what can [be] manipulated in a child’s environment. Eventually children begin to use lying to get out of trouble or get something they want.”

It has gotten so bad that we expect some people to lie to us outright.

How do you tell if a politician/lawyer/used car dealer is lying? Their lips are moving.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center project FactCheck.org monitors TV political ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases for accuracy. The Washington Post grades politicians on their command of the facts with one to four “Pinocchios.” Each state Bar Association can tell you if an attorney is in good standing, what grievances have been filed, and so on. And databases like CarFax, AutoCheck, and the NICB VINCheck offer an accurate look at a used car’s history.

(On the other hand we expect scientists, the clergy, and our mothers to tell us the truth.)

I’m looking for a Corvette but I got caught up in a search for a nice, mid-size, generic, American-made convertible. Found this ad on Craigslist:

used carV6, Automatic,
ONLY 42K MILES
Power Everything!!! Leather, Alloy Wheels
Runs and Drives 100%
Power top, windows, locks. Auto. Cold Air.
Very clean and Needs Nothing

Wow! I ran a Carfax and emailed the seller some questions:

How long have you owned the car and why do you want to sell?
“I purchase it new. Sell because I need 4 doors car I have kids,” the seller responded.
Carfax reports the first owner drove only 31,000 miles in 10 years and the current owner has had it just 7 months.

What accident damage has been repaired?
“Car runs perfect.”
Carfax reports an accident (damage unknown) in 2006.

Is there an extended warranty and is it transferable?
No answer from the seller.
Carfax reports an ECM check, A/C system check and recharge, and a service contract purchased just last month.

I emailed the seller back to ask for the Vehicle Identification Number. I haven’t heard back.

Even if the liars we deal with don’t have a moral issue, why do we let them get away with it?

OK, don’t ask me how that dress fits.

Roads to Riches

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I didn’t want to write this column but I snoozed through most of the Monday n00z.

Everybody’s writing about how Olympic “cyclists covered a 156 mile course through the English countryside and towns south of London including the town of Dorking, which is home to the world-famous Dorking Cockerel” and I’m tired of politics because none of those airheads is doing anything new. They all went to Dorking Cockerel, too, I think, but they didn’t stay there.

This photo is making the rounds on the Interwebs.


political poster

Half the blogosphere thinks President Obama is a traitor for trashing entrepreneurs and the other half thinks Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is a traitor for supporting entrepreneur-politician Mitt Romney.

What, are you nuts?

The least little reading of history — even a World Book Encyclopedia entry — not to mention economics should have taught us how American business followed the river, the trail, the railroad, and then the highway. See, you don’t have trade without transport.

Mile 0Business success drove some roads. Indiana entrepreneur Carl Fisher dreamed up the Lincoln Highway, a road that would make a bee-line coast-to-coast from Times Square to San Francisco. It was first officially recorded in 1913 only about 40 years after the first steam powered, carriage-sized “automobile” drove the existing wagon roads in Wisconsin. About the same time Mr. Fisher was pushing roughly along the 40th Parallel, the Atlantic Highway was established to connect Quebec and Miami. We know that road today as U.S. 1.

Mr. Fisher drove down the Atlantic Highway and did a little bit of real estate development around Miami. Fisher Island, for instance.

Automobile traffic increased. Trade grew. Trade increased. Automobile traffic grew. Planners started drawing a nationwide highway system in 1921. The New York parkway system, Route 66, and other famous routes were built in the twenties as local or state highway systems but we needed the interconnected national system to supplement the existing United States Numbered Highways system.

Yeah, yeah. Dr. Paul maybe wants to make the point that Korea builds roads for different reasons than we do. And the Rightie-Tighties apparently want to remind us that Mr. Obama wants to build more roads with our money.

Or something.

Regular visitors may recall that I abhor negative advertising. I dislike stupid advertising even more.

My grandfather would not use Dial soap because their TV ads trumpeted, “Don’t you wish everybody did?”

He didn’t wish that and so he didn’t use the product.

If your political ads piss off the voters, they won’t vote against the other guy. If your political ads lie to the voters, they won’t vote against the other guy. They simply won’t vote. And that’s a vote for the other guy.

Mr. Obama, speaking in Roanoke on July 13, said, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

The North Korean highway photo doesn’t answer that. The North Korean highway photo just annoys anyone even a little economically literate. At least posters like this one are a far better play on that theme:


political poster

Thursday Thoughts

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parking meter46 years ago today, the St. Albans City Council approved $100 for training meter maids.

On Monday, the St. Albans City Council praised the police department for its investigation into the death of Christopher Davis. The inquiry and five arrests “took the entire department” and cost $36,000.

St. Albans no longer has meter maids.