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Is it just me, or do working relationships seem to be getting slowly but steadily worse for the rest of you lately, too? Mostly in little ways yet, without any clear reason thus leaving one asking “why?” Why now? It seems like, if it isn’t just my imagination, it probably has something to do with economic conditions. I know I’m reluctant to put my foot down, even after many incremental moves towards “suck,” given the daunting prospect of trying to find replacement income. Multiply this millions of times over, and you’ve probably got means, motive and opportunity, as they say. Reported trends for “productivity” probably back this up too, to the extent that “productivity gains” are in many cases a matter of squeezing anxious workers to do more work for the same compensation.

What doesn’t seem to be getting slowly but steadily worse, though? Anthem jacked up my premiums by “only” 12% this year; I guess I’m just going to put up with that, too, for the time being. I’ve tried shopping around in recent years, and just ended up raising my deductible a couple of times. I don’t feel like I want to do so yet again, so I suppose I’ll just eat the extra expense and hope that maybe, somehow, something will offer relief in another year, or another year after that. Arguments over what, if any, cost-control effects will result from “Obamacare” or were even intended to result from it, as well as the long timeline for implementation, keep my expectations low.

Some things get cheaper, of course, particularly information technology products and services, though this is partly offset by the fact that we end up needing more and better versions of them to maintain their utility in a networked world. Meanwhile it’s just those few outlier categories of things one actually needs which keep going up, up, up in cost; The Atlantic had an item about this a while back. Health care, education, food (even if most Americans are still rich enough to take little notice), fuel (rather more obvious). How long can this go on?

Small wonder that a protest movement has finally erupted in America, with the great majority of us getting relentlessly squeazed from the direction of both income and expenses, for, oh, most of my life, give-or-take? (more…)

Another in a series of posts which I basically wrote and finished except for putting them in WordPress or actually, y’know, posting them, and then forgot about as weeks became months. In this instance, I examine the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, and maybe get a bit carried away (or maybe not?) in regards to the federal judiciary.

So, once again, America’s media have done a wonderful job of finding an inflammatory and attention-getting “storyline” while doing an inexcusably piss-poor job of actually informing people about reality.

The headline-narrative of their reporting, “health care reform ruled unconstitutional,” will undoubtedly prove effective in getting people riled up and generating a lot of clicks and forwards and comments and retweets and Facebook whatevers. So, presumably the fact that it creates a deeply misleading impression is considered irrelevant.

A fuller and more-accurate description of the situation, if anyone cares about such things and is willing to look for the buried lead (hint: try the end of the story) would actually take in the fact that rulings on challenges to the Affordable Care Act are thus far evenly split, 2-2, along effectively partisan lines.

What’s particularly dismal about journalism’s blithering idiocy, in this case, is that the partisan split in judicial rulings on health care reform is not merely important as context for the most recent ruling, but is also a rather significant and I would even say interesting story on its own. (more…)

From the Cleveland Clinic:

GERD – Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease

When you swallow, food passes down your throat and through your esophagus to your stomach. A muscle called the lower esophageal sphincter controls the opening between the esophagus and the stomach, and remains tightly closed except when you swallow food. When this muscle fails to close, the acid-containing contents of the stomach can travel back up into the esophagus.

To treat GERD, we recommend the following:

Limit consumption of fatty foods, chocolate, peppermint, coffee, tea, colas, and alcohol — all of which relax the lower esophageal sphincter.

Fat, chocolate, tea and alcohol. Uh-huh. I guess that’s plausible given that I frequently consume all of these things. Okay.

So, what’s left to make my life worth living…?