Monday Musings: January 24. 2011

This should be an interesting week, what with the State of the State by newly minted Nevada governor, Brian Sandoval this evening, and the State of the Union, tomorrow night by newly minted centrist president, Barack Obama. The casual observer might walk away with the notion that half-measures, baby steps,  middle of the road, lukewarm is what will save the day. We wouldn’t want bold, decisive, “I said it, and I own it” action. Nosirree.

Keep cutting, gutting and slashing essential services like education and Medicaid - often referred to as ‘greater efficiencies’. As though that’s ever worked in the past. This is the oldest trick in the bureaucratic books. Make the little guy squeak, then he’ll be happy to have his taxes raised to get the local roads plowed - while the untouchable defense budget and the military-industrial complex goes right along fat and happy.

There are some that ‘get it’ however. PLAN (Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada), with their director, Bob Fulkerson leads the way, bearing the flag of reality. Watch and remember during tonight’s State of the State:

“No new taxes, means no solutions”. Never a truer word was uttered, Bob. As Fulkerson points out, slashing programs and budgets to reduce the states’ budget deficit, unfairly places a disproportionate share of the burden on those who can least bear it.

And this same logic extends from the local and state level to the federal and national level.

On Sunday mornings, Mr. Maven and I enjoy our coffee while watching CBS’ ‘Sunday Morning’ - and have done so since the days of it’s original host, the late Charles Kuralt. Yesterday, I thought “Oh, great. Let’s suffer through another annoying commentary by Ben Stein…”. Normally, this is where I’d go refreshen the coffee.

This cut a bit too close to the bone. When the ever-monotone, to the right of Atilla the Hun, Ben Stein thinks Obama might just be the choice of a revitalized GOP, I know we’re in trouble.

Saturday evening was interesting. We attended a MeetUp of the Reno Skeptical Society, Skeptics in the Pub. The venue has got to change - the Sierra Gold was far too noisy and, once we moved to the patio, too frigid. However, this looks to be a good group with a positive agenda - to promote the use of critical thinking/reason in our culture and community. We had 21 attendees, and were we not shivering too hard to think clearly, it would’ve been a neat opportunity for discussion, observation and discovery. I was a little ‘skeptical’ of the youthful tilt of the group, but found them to be warm and welcoming.

To this end, I’ll be posting more content related to skepticism on this blog (see the Baloney Alert category ). I hope you will consider attending with us next month. Until their website is up, you’ll have to follow them on MeetUp.

I want to let you know about a couple of upcoming events, which I plan to attend:

On Thursday, February 3, 7:00 p.m. Director of the Hayden Planetarium, Neil deGrasse Tyson, author, skeptic and astronomer, will speak at the Redfield Auditorium in the Davidson Mathematics and Science Center. His topic: “The World as Seen Through the Lens of a Scientist”

deGrasse Tyson follows in the footsteps of his mentor, the late Carl Sagan, making science accessible, and encouraging critical reasoning skills. He has appeared many times on PBS’ NOVA, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show and more.

In February, date and location to be announced, the Reno Skeptics plan a showing of the BBC documentary, ‘Creation’, about the extraordinary life and times of Charles Darwin. Stay tuned.

Later tonight, we plan to watch what may become a favorite tee-vee program - and successor to ‘Boston Legal’ - Harry’s Law with Kathy Bates. We saw the series premier last week, and though the premise is a real stretch of the imagination (poverty law office and shoe store ) it’s great fun to watch Bates and her cohorts romp through it. File under: ‘improbable but entertaining’.

Also new, I’m looking forward to seeing Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais’ ‘An Idiot Abroad’. File this under ‘cruel but potentially gut-wrenchingly funny’, as they send round-headed naif Karl Pilkington (gotta love the name) to the ends of the earth- just to see what happens when Karl ‘encounters’ stuff.

On Tuesday, February 1, the Urban Institute is offering a really timely webcast:”What Policymakers, the Public, the Press, and Parents Need to Know about Economics … in 90 minutes or less”. Should be great. You can sign up at the Urban Institutes’ website, or just watch the video afterward. I’ll try and post it here. Why watch this, you ask. Because economics in the driving force behind it all, dearie. Everything that keeps you awake at night, has economics at the root. Well, most of it. Economics didn’t have anything to do with why you drank that late cuppa joe. Hmmm. Or maybe it did … while you were getting the tax receipts out of the shoe boxes.

As you may have noticed, I’ve gotten Religion. See, Brent … I can be saved. I’ve joined the Pastafarians, hence the FSM symbol. That’s the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Ladybird Kat has taken over the house, as undisputed queen, now that poor little Asta is gone. This isn’t bad except that I have to wash and change the sheets and pillow cases more often. Sneeze. This cat has the most eerie resemblance to Alfred E. “What me worry?” Newman.

Finally, I’ll be posting some yummy recipes and foodie ideas today and tomorrow, so stay tuned for that. And I’ve posted a few of my backyard birding photos to the gallery in addition to Facebook. Enjoy.

The knee is about ready to test on the slopes. Too bad there ain’t any new snow. I’m waiting for some new, as the frozen corduroy won’t be the best thing to test it out on.

Cheers. Stay employed, stay healthy.

-maven

Talking points: A fact sheet on health care reform issues

In today’s Reno Gazette-Journal there was an article entitled: ‘Competition absent among private insurers’. This wasn’t a surprise to anybody that is actually sentient and intellectually concious, and a fact that seems to be repeatedly missed by the purveyors ofthe neo-con dogma.

Once again, I’d provide the link if I could find the article on the RGJ cum USA Today site.

Here’s the bottom line: opponents of health care reform say that a public option would doom the private insurers by squashing competition. The idea being, I guess, that the public option would be so great that we’d all flock to it? Isn’t that the whole idea of competition in a free marketplace? I mean, the Big Insurance Companies would have to get off their backsides and really provide service and a product. Wow, just how unfair is that?

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