I decided the title of my last entry is misleading. It is not what Posner is smoking, but what is he NOT smoking. He needs to lighten up a little, and experience some aspects of the world and life (like perhaps suffering and the “poor” as opposed to the “nonpoor” he refers to.),

On the other hand, the Chicago Maroon needs to get a better fact checker or their reporters need to be smoking less dubbie when writing thier articles. This is the third article they have written about SOSHI and this is the third time we will be writing them to tell them they got simple facts *wrong.* So in this article they claim that:

SOSHI estimated that if effective changes are not made, graduate students could pay up to $1,375 for their insurance by the 2009-2010 academic year.

Well, that would be AWESOME being that the basic rate is currently over $1600. Though I wont be here in 2010, it would be pretty nifty if students only paid 1,375 in the future. Fat chance though.

I actually admire the Maroon staff more than I portray here. These kids spend like 20 hrs a week, slaving away unpaid and produce a good solid newspaper. But three times in a row is starting to look like a pattern.

There is a man on the other side of the midway as we say here in U of C, whose name is known in many circles, Judge Posner, and whose theories on medicare are over the top, insane. In a nutshell he believes:

As a matter of economic principle (and I think social justice as well), Medicare should be abolished

Here is the core of his “rosy’ view in which individuals are “free riders’ while corporations and the free market will be able to provide in a way that is just and equitable for those otherwise hardworking Americans.

hen the principal government medical-payment program would be Medicaid, a means-based system of social insurance that is part of the safety net for the indigent. Were Medicare abolished, the nonpoor would finance health care in their old age by buying health insurance when they were young. Insurance companies would sell policies with generous deductible and copayment provisions in order to discourage frivolous expenditures on health care and induce careful shopping among health-care providers. The nonpoor could be required to purchase health insurance in order to prevent them from free riding on family or charitable institutions in the event they needed a medical treatment that they could not afford to pay for. People who had chronic illnesses or other conditions that would deter medical insurers from writing insurance for them at affordable rates might be placed in

Don’t be falling in love, because if you get jilted, you may you, know find yourself in need of major medical treatment and while it may save your life, it may ruin your wallet, leaving you in bankruptcy.

Cory at Boing Boing asks Why is American Airlines gathering written dossiers on fliers’ friends? . Well given the changing state of governmental surveillance, one has to ask whether AA will need to collect such data with the existence of a new privately run data collection organization/program the Matrix or perhaps it is just that AA is collecting this information not for the TSA but to sell to the Matrix who will then provide the information to the TSA… Nothing like a robuts market based on the buying and selling of your private information.

Some chastise Christmas for being grossly inauthentic, dominated by crass commercialism. And this is almost impossible to deny In fact, the traffic to the largest shopping mall in the Caribbean (which happens to be where I am. Puerto Rico), is SOOOOOOOOO insane, that it only confirms the more banal aspects of this holiday that I tend to ignore as best as I can.

At the same time, I think it is quite nice that we have a

So as it turns out, I am going for the impossible: Finishing my dissertation by June. Whether or not I achieve it, I will be a lot less available for my other passsions and pursuits, karaoke, blogging, biking, SOSHI, and most notably, wasting time.

I have a feeling my blog entries will plumment in numbers so I might as well make them as absurd as possible (since I am doing something absurd why not mimic my life) and hopefully still have them reflect on what is going on in my life.

So, I am spending more time than usual in the library and since they have recently renovated the bathrooms, the University has provided its students with the latest and not so greatest advancements in toilet technology.

Like all postmodern bathroom gadgets, the toilet detects the user through sensors, but these new ones are like extra, no, I mean EXTRA sensitive, so that with any movement of your body, the toilet flushes and with such force, that it resembles less of a flush and more like a weak geyser.

This is totally absurb. You either have to launch into acrobatics while using these state of the art toilets or use the one toilet (in the handicapped section) in order to avoid what you are trying to place neatly away.

Anway, I know this is somewhat gross but I wonder if the university can get their money back, and if they do, would they replace the state of the art for the state of the retro? Or will U of C students, especially the women, develop some really fine leg muscles from using the toilets in our library?

Why do psychiatrists feel compelled to include every “deviance from the norm” in the DSM ( the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), and by this why do they abnormalize everything?

So a group of ‘chiatrists (probably after quitting coffee or something) have decided that coffee withdrawl might be a pyschiatric condition worth listing in the DSM. Now I have quit coffee numerous times, and yes, it is painful, mentally so, but what is the point of inclduing this in the DSM?

Sept. 30, 2004 — Researchers are saying that caffeine withdrawal should now be classified as a psychiatric disorder.

A new study that analyzes some 170 years’ worth of research concludes that caffeine withdrawal is very real — producing enough physical symptoms and a disruption in daily life to classify it as a psychiatric disorder. Researchers are suggesting that caffeine withdrawal should be included in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), considered the bible of mental disorders…

“The withdrawal symptoms can be mild or severe, but it’s estimated that 13% of people develop symptoms so significant that they can’t do what they normally would do — they can’t work, they can’t leave the house, they can’t function,” he says.”

I think one of the most fundamental incorrect premises of the DSM is that we are supposed to “function” normally all the time. Life is too rich and full of surprises in both those good and horrible ways for that to ever be the case. Now I am not one to say that no mentall illness exists (believe me there are too many literally crazy folks in my family for me to ever say that) but I wish they would stop wasting their time by putting everthing under the DSM bag and concentrate on the stuff that matters, which is also not just shoving medicines down people’s throats but that is another story…

After not looking at my dissertation for one month, I finally took a look this morning. And it stuck me a little like a big bad wolf coming to devour me. But the messed up thing is I am that wolf, I mean, I wrote the darn thing, no? Hmmm, I better develop a healthier relationship to my dissertation, soon

So as if it were not bad enough that the cute little rodents in my kitchen (a pair of adorable mice, yet to be named ..) have started to crap all over my drying dishes as revenge (yes, revenge, ever since I started being ultra clean they engaged in guerilla warfare: crapping all over the place), now they are flesh eating ants in our house. I got bit by one today and my wrist doubled in size. Ok not that much, but it still swelled….

Chicago urban mega-opolis of the midwest, with towering buildings, incessant traffic, grime and grit, more trucks than should be allowed on planet earth, pavement in nearly every corner and crevice, is also infested with so many bugs, that I am surprised there are not more entomologists stationed here. There are these asian lady bugs that sting the hell out of you when you least expect it and then there are the creepiest centipedes ever. They are so creepy that every time I see one, my heart stops a few beats and I think that I must “escape Chicago.”

Occasionally you see the ultra cool fire fly but otherwise, Chicago is home to the “creepy bug” (and look, I lived in the tropics, and I still find Chicago to have more creepy bugs)..

Anyway, before my apt becomes home to all sorts of questionable non-human species, anyone have advice on how to trap my cute mousey friends without killing them? The humane traps are indeed fully humane, in otherwords totally ineffective…

The other night I had dinner with my friend who told me a heart wrenching story that confirmed everything that I despise about American psychiatry. A couple of years ago while she was in graduate school her sister, only in early twenties was diagnosed with cancer. She returned home to Europe to be with her sister while she underwent incredibly life sucking and painful treatment. Her sister did not live and my friend’s pain already so raw was magnified 10 fold. My friend unsurprisingly was devastated.

Once back in Chicago, she went to see a psychiatrist who put her on anti-depressants which seemed like an appropriate remedy in so far the depression was really getting in the ways of day to day functioning. Now of course, it was only super normal for her to be devastated and beyond function; what is less normal is that we don’t give people adequate time and room to grieve in our society. Pain must be personal and it must be brief, so you know we can get to our