g m g D e s i g n . c o m

… Because terrorists are attacking Saudi princes. If there’s one thing that’s going to push the Saudi leadership toward reform of their crappy model of subsidizing the arrogant and anti-western Saudi citizenry, it’s the fact that the Saudi royal family has been in the crosshairs of Al Qaeda and other whacko groups for the past few years (practically speaking).

Maybe their misogynistic society will even allow women to walk outside without a male relative. That would certainly be pretty “progressive” by their standards.

It’s a wonder why feminists in this country (the US, that is) are so hung up on infanticide (“abortion”) but fail to internationalize their movement. As I recall, Thomas Barnett predicted the rise of the “feminist neo-con” who would fit neatly in this role of “international feminist.” Hence, the feminist movement could resume doing something useful and laudable (as opposed to what they’re doing now). I wonder why this movement hasn’t really materialized yet…?

As I’ve stated before, I am in favor of real reform in the medical/health sector. Like it or not, that reform will include:

• higher deductibles
• cap on tax deductibility and option for non-employer sponsored medical insurance to be deductible (i.e., employer-sponsored insurance is no longer automatically advantageous)
• mandated HSAs
• the freedom to go to a specialist without having to, absurdly, get a referral every time
• removal of the mandatory licensure regime (that reduces new entrants into the medical field unnecessarily)
• price transparency (ability to shop around for best price for procedures; think of how easy it is to do this for Lasik but difficult it is for heart surgery)
• reduction in role of Medicaid and Medicare (the government programs that have so radically distorted medical pricing and other areas of healthcare economics)
• mandated catastrophic coverage (our choices here are either a) mandated, or b) “universal,” so choose the lesser of the evils)
• mandated insurance non-discrimination (we will need a way to prevent people from just buying insurance when they’re sick, such as a substantially higher deductible for pre-existing conditions)

Did I miss anything?

Every time I see a headline like this one I am reminded of the verbal manipulation used by the media. We hear a lot about healthcare reform. Prior to the medical insurance debate, we heard a lot about the economic stimulus package.

Do you see the Orwellian thought manipulation here? It’s not outlandish government spending, it’s a stimulus package. I.e., the government is giving us something for free—like magic!—and it goes without saying that it will have a stimulating effect to the economy, all without any rational justification for this conclusion.

The even thornier subject of “healthcare reform” is fraught with similar manipulation. First, it’s apparently “reform” to introduce yet more government in an already heavily regulated system. Second, apparently, healthcare is synonymous with medical insurance.

Oh, and did I mention that those who rationally oppose the current Big Government effort to overhaul healthcare are extremists?

Great editorial on medical care (“healthcare”) and insurance here in the States. Editorial is very long, but worth reading, regardless of what side of the healthcare war you’re on (and, apparently, there are only two sides, both diametrically opposed to the other).

My summary of editorial (basically corresponding with my existing opinion):

The current system of medical care in this country is already broken. Notwithstanding all of the hyperbolic debate, the government is already deeply entrenched in medical care, from arbitrary regulations defined at the federal and state levels, to insurance regulations, to the government-operated medical insurance behemoths Medicaid and Medicare. The government-sponsored market distortions would be worse with “ObamaCare” (to use the admittedly more pejorative title), but the market distorting mechanisms already exist in our current system, hence reducing innovation and greatly driving up costs to consumers.

The system is broken, and the government-sponsored initiatives (namely a “public option”) would cement our broken system rather than reform it.

Read the article for more insight, including his proposed solution, which he admits would have to be phased in over a period of many years (decades, really). I’m personally very skeptical that his (reasonable) solution will get adopted. I don’t think fears of “socialist-style medicine” will happen either, at least in the short or intermediate term. I think there are too many people tied to the status quo for any substantial reform, so for now we’ll have our current (awful) system, only to be replaced with a more socialized system (a la Britain) in the years ahead, as people really reject personal accountability (“developed world complacency,” I call it) in favor of nanny-statism. So, enjoy the current system while it still exists, and stuff money into that HSA; you’ll need it.

Brilliant blog article on risk assessment by Bruce Schneier.

First para:

People have a natural intuition about risk, and in many ways it’s very good. It fails at times due to a variety of cognitive biases, but for normal risks that people regularly encounter, it works surprisingly well: often better than we give it credit for.

That first para reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. In Blink, Gladwell delineates the important role of the adaptive unconscious (intuition) in making instant judgment calls. He also points to situations where such intuitive judgment calls were superior to judgment calls made after weeks of research! Somewhat tangentially, I’ve noticed that it’s become almost politically incorrect to say that one is using intuition, or that one “just has a feeling” about someone, as that person will likely be deemed “prejudiced” or perhaps simply thoughtless for using his “gut” rather than his “reason.” Gladwell, however, points to examples where using one’s intuition led to rueful consequences, and expounds on why one approach is sometimes superior to the other.

Anyway, Schneier goes on to describe attending a security conference, where the speaker bemoaned the fact that employees at his company were not taking security seriously enough (emphasis in second paragraph added by me):

It seems to me that his co-workers understand the risks better than he [the speaker at the conference] does. They know what the real risks are at work, and that they all revolve around not getting the job done. Those risks are real and tangible, and employees feel them all the time. The risks of not following security procedures are much less real. Maybe the employee will get caught, but probably not. And even if he does get caught, the penalties aren’t serious.

Given this accurate risk analysis, any rational employee will regularly circumvent security to get his or her job done. That’s what the company rewards, and that’s what the company actually wants.

So, that’s why employees don’t follow security procedures. Solution: fire them, and do so publicly. If following procedure is truly critical, then making an example out of someone is the most efficient way of changing the company culture (thought: make an example out of the guy who wasn’t doing a very good job anyway, just to minimize the impact to the company).

This “evilgrade” is definitely not new:

Researchers here tomorrow will demonstrate a way to hijack the application update process via WiFi and replace the updates with malware.

But when the “hypothetical” becomes the easy and pragmatic, the threat is taken more seriously.

The solution is for software companies to digitally sign their updates:

Microsoft apps are immune to the attack because Microsoft digitally signs its application updates, Kotler says. "If [an application developer] distributes a public key and signs every binary with their own private key, it’s safe" from the attack, he says.