At Random

Just a few things that caught my eye this morning.

First, from Dave Dayen, the skinny on health-care cost increases vis-a-vis Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance -- the short form:

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that Medicare and Medicaid spending has decelerated in recent years, and not just because of the Great Recession. The public programs have seen their cost growth slow significantly compared to private health insurance. And this is expected to continue for the coming decade.

This is so important because, as Paul van de Water of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains, the public debate has focused on transforming Medicare and Medicaid in the coming years, constraining cost in the very programs that are the most cost-efficient. If anything, the opposite should be true, and more and more of the system should be converted into public programs to increase the risk pool, allow for greater bargaining leverage on prices, and provide stability.

From a couple of days ago, Equality Illinois has gone to the fair:

There is nothing so quintessentially all-American than the State Fair. Moms and Pops with kiddies in tow are treated to award winning sheep and cantaloupes, midway carnival rides, and food booths full of kettle corn, Belgian waffles, and deep fried artery-clogging delight.

And this year, along with listening to the sweet sounds of the Steve Miller Band or Blue Oyster Cult, watching the Twilight Parade, and betting on your favorite pony in the horse races, you can also stop by the Equality Illinois/Lambda Legal booth and pick up an “I Do” sticker to show your support for marriage equality.

You'll inevitably hear cries from the radical left about how gays are allowing themselves to be "mainstreamed," as though there were something wrong with being an integral part of the culture. That's the whole point, and it's been the whole point from Stonewall on. I think it's a brilliant move on the part of Equality Illinois.

The Perseids. Damn! I miss them every year. If you're someplace you can actually see the night sky, check this out. Chicago has too much ambient light, unless I want to hike over to the lake. (I actually did that one year, only to discover that the sky over the lake was completely overcast.)

And more science. If you thought your parrot was smart, you were right. From Smithsonian:

When we think about the smartest animals, chimpanzees are usually the first to come to mind. Experiments show that they can memorize sequences of numbers, learn the meaning of words and associate particular voices with specific faces. Crucially, previous studies have found that chimps and other apes are the only non-human animals capable of making abstract logical inferences based on cues from their environment.

A new experiment, though, might make us recognize that an entirely different species belongs in this exclusive group: the African grey parrot.

I don't do enough entries on science here. Have to fix that.

And finally, manga/amime. Jan Suzukawa has a good heads-up on the release of the new Ai no Kusabi. It's a solid, very informative post on the series. That's one that I've always meant to get to and never quite managed to -- it's not easy to find online, and I do like to check them out before I buy them.

Speaking of which, I really need to get back to my adaptations of the German editions -- Ze 7 arrived, and I'm still in the middle of Der Beste Liebhaber.