Quantum Computer

I went through Geordie Rose's blog and picked out all the posts that had something to do with actually building a quantum computer.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgz3q3nn_1039kcnqxwhf

I arranged them in chronological order, instead of the reverse chronological order used in the blog. There are several nice pictures, along with some diagrams.

Medical Costs

The New Yorker has a story on medical costs this week:

The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande

where I found this:

“The greatest threat to America’s fiscal health is not Social Security,” President Barack Obama said in a March speech at the White House. “It’s not the investments that we’ve made to rescue our economy during this crisis. By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. It’s not even close.”

My favorite villain for our economic debacle is the Military-Industrial Complex and their billion dollar high-tech creations, but what do I know? Maybe we are all going to be working at the hospital, eating hospital food, wearing hospital uniforms.

But Senor Gawande explores the issue at some length. It's a well written story, and I would never have suspected that it was written by someone with the name of Atul Gawande. I've been attending some seminars at Portland State recently and half the people there have names I cannot pronounce and accents that are difficult to decipher. Funny how that works.

Anyway, the main point seems to be that some doctors are more concerned with making money than providing good health care, and it seems to be a community based thing: doctors influence other doctors. Why some communities go for the bucks and some for good care is something of a mystery, but having peer groups that meet regularly to share information seems to push the group more to the quality of care side of the balance.

So then I had a big idea, and I wrote a letter to the editor:

Strikes me that there is an opportunity for an insurance company here: work with physicians groups to contain costs and improve care, ala the Mayo Clinic and Grand Junction models. This would enable them to beat their competitors over the head in the advertising arena on both issues. Secondly, if they could successfully contain costs, then they would be able to charge less for their insurance and then possibly attract more customers. It would be a long row to hoe.

On the other hand, even if we can contain costs, and improve the quality of care, is it going to be enough? That is, can we afford to treat everyone in country? I am not sure, but I think our medical costs for our family of five have been between 10 and 20,000 dollars a year recently, including what the insurance company pays on our behalf, and we haven't had any serious problems. I have three teenagers who all went through braces, and that was a chunk of change, but other than that it is just run of the mill stuff.

Cheers.

"Millennium 3001" Edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davis

The stack of books I am finished with has been piling up since the first of the year. I started some posts about them, and now I am cleaning house.

A collection of science fiction short stories I got from Dennis. I started this one some time ago, but recently picked it up and finished it. Pretty easy reading, though there were a couple that were a little rough around the edges. They were hard to finish, but I did anyway because they were short. The theme is what is the world going to be like in a thousand years? Most of the stories portray a fairly grim future. There was one story that raked Henry Kissinger over the coals pretty good, but then dismissed that section of the story as just so much political clap-trap. That was amusing.

Automobile Manufacturers & Dealers

American auto manufacturers are having some financial problems these days. A common complaint about American cars has been their poor quality, especially as compared to Japanese imports.

I wonder if maybe a bigger part of the problem is the dealers. For a long time there has been a current of distrust of automobile salesmen, and it seems to me that it applies mostly to salesmen working at dealers of the the Big 3 (Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler).

On the other hand, when we bought our Mitsubishi (a Japanese make), we had to deal with the worst kind of salesman, just like the ones I dealt with at the Dodge dealer when I bought my truck.

Dustbury writes that there is more than one party interested in acquiring Saturn from the going-down-in-flames General Motors. Saturn was supposed to be a "different" kind of car company. I wonder if their salesmen are any better.

Buying a car should not be a hassle. You shouldn't have to listen to hours of blather designed to wear you down so you will pay an extra $200. Post the price on the car. Sell it for that price. Make the experience quick and painless.

I won't be going back to the Dodge dealer, and the Mitsubishi dealer has gone out of business.

Update December 2010: I just noticed that the picture had been replaced by the source website by something obnoxious/different/not relevant. Here I was giving them a free link and they treat me like that. Phooey on the them, so now we have the stolen picture and no link to the originator, if they even were the originator. They probably stole it from someone else, or maybe their site was hacked. The address displayed on the replacement was the not the one I originally linked to. Dag nab whippersnappers anyhoo.

Update October 2016 replaced missing picture.

"Let There Be Blood" by Jane Jakeman

A historical murder mystery. Entertaining, a little uneven. Took me a couple of days to read it. There was one unusual word I encountered: homunculi. I carefully wrote down the number of the page I found it on, but when I went back to find the context, someone had moved it. Dad burn commies.

"Marilyn the Wild" by Jerome Charyn

Marilyn the Wild by Jerome Charyn

This is a very unusual book. It is story about the police in New York City, but it's not like any murder mystery I have ever read. The writing is a little hard to describe. It's like the opposite of the dialog on Dragnet. It's everything but the facts, it's all the emotion, hyperbole, rumor and innuendo. Sometimes it seems to be a little over the top (did the chief of detectives really just threaten to kill the chief of police?), but it all flows together fluidly. Occasionally a bit of fact will find it's way in, and you notice it because it interrupts the flow. A lot of it is wrapped up in New York Jewish culture, which makes it a little confusing. I mean some of these things are just bizarre. An easy, enjoyable read.

Update July 2022 replaced missing image.

Stavros Flatley

Here is a video that you might enjoy, especially if you have ever seen Michael Flatley, "Lord of the Dance". This version suffers from a mild case of the jaggies (AKA pixelation). YouTube has a clearer version but embedding has been disabled, and my Pirate-Fu is weak.