Health Care Cost

The US has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the US pays for paperwork, overhead, and other non direct-health related expenses.


The US spends 17.6 percent of its GDP on healthcare. The Netherlands is the next highest, at 12 percent of GDP. Ten percent of Canada’s GDP is spent on health care. The average among OECD countries was almost half that of the US, at 9.5 percent of GDP.

OECD

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has a mission to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world. It was established in 1961 and has membership of 35 countries. Its annual budget is EUR 374 million and has a staff of 2,500. It publishes 250 new titles per year.

The OECD provides a forum in which governments can work together to share experiences and seek solutions to common problems. It works with governments to understand what drives economic, social and environmental change. It analyses and compares data to predict future trends. It sets international standards on things, such as agriculture and tax, to the safety of chemicals. It seeks to foster globalization and promote the 'green agenda' by working with the countries involved in the Paris climate agreement.

It looks at issues that directly affect everyone’s daily life, like how much people pay in taxes and social security, and how much leisure time they can take. It compares how different countries’ school systems are readying their young people for modern life, and how different countries’ pension systems will look after their citizens in old age.

In addition, it tries to make life more difficult for the terrorists, tax dodgers, crooked businessmen, and others whose actions undermine a fair and open society.

From its web site "Today, we are focused on helping governments around the world to:
    Restore confidence in markets and the institutions that make them function.
    Re-establish healthy public finances as a basis for future sustainable economic growth.
    Foster and support new sources of growth through innovation, environmentally friendly ‘green growth’ strategies and the development of emerging economies.
    Ensure that people of all ages can develop the skills to work productively and satisfyingly in the jobs of tomorrow."

Cutting the Cord

Cord cutting refers to those who give up their cable TV plan and find TV and movie watching over the internet, TV antenna, smart phone, computer, etc. The research firm eMarketer says that by 2016 year end, 16.7 million U.S. adults had already cut the cord and that by the end of 2017 it will be 22 million. The five biggest TV providers are projected to have lost 469,000 customers during the third quarter of 2017.

Sixty one percent of 18 to 29 year olds say the primary way they watch television now is with streaming services on the internet, compared with thirty one percent, who say they mostly watch via a cable or satellite subscription and five percent, who mainly watch with a digital antenna, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in August 2017.

The main cause for cord cutting has been the high cost of cable, bad service, annual price increases, and lack of competition in many areas of the country. Cost reductions average about 50% savings and range from a few dollars a month to as much as a 90% drop in monthly fees.

In addition, many are finding better picture quality and more diversity of offerings. Even TV antennas provide a sharper picture than offered by any of the major cable companies, because the signal is not compressed. With the coming proliferation of reasonably priced 4K TVs, picture quality is even more important and cable companies offer virtually no 4K content, with the exception of some sporting events.

Light Me Up

We have all read the light fixture warning not to use anything higher than a 60-watt bulb, or 75, etc. The newer LED bulbs still fall under that fixture rating, however since the equivalent LED bulbs use much less wattage, you can choose a watt equivalency that is higher than that of the old bulbs. As an example, a 60 watt bulb equivalent is a 9 watt LED. They both put out 800 lumens.


You can replace an old 60 watt bulb with a 100-watt equivalent LED bulb (or higher), which is about 17 watts and therefore well under the safety limit of a 60-watt maximum fixture. You get lower energy bills and almost twice the light. One limiting factor might be bulb size, so be sure to check the physical size of new bulbs to make sure they fit the socket. Every now and then I come up with a bright idea.

Happy Friday

Happiness on the whole, soothes a sad soul.

I never have a sad soul, especially on a Happy Friday!

International Day of Failure

October 13th is International Day for Failure. A new holiday intended for people to share stories of failure and learn from them. The goal of the people organizing the event is to have it be an internationally-recognized holiday by 2020. The holiday was created in Finland in 2010.

Office of Planetary Protection

This department is part of NASA and is responsible for preventing outer space organisms from contaminating Earth and simultaneously stopping Earth-based organisms from contaminating outer space. NASA has been employing a planetary protection officer since the Outer Space Treaty was signed in 1967.

A candidate must have at least one year of experience as a top-level civilian government employee, plus have "advanced knowledge" of planetary protection and all it entails. Planetary protection officers are tasked with making sure humans do not contaminate planets, moons, and other objects in space. The salary is $125,000 to $187,000 annually.


NASA and the European Space Agency currently hire permanent planetary protection officers.

Pizza Hack

When ordering, remember that one 18 inch pizza contains more pizza than two 12 inch pizzas.

A Road by any Name

The difference between names like street and avenue are the size of the path, what surrounds it, and how it intersects with other roads. Road is a general term for any throughway that connects two points. Streets and avenues are types of roads.

Streets are public roads that have buildings on both sides. They are often perpendicular to avenues, which historically were grander and wider. These days, the difference tends to be directional.

Denver, Colorado dictates that Streets run north-south and avenues run east-west.

In Manhattan, New York avenues run north-south and streets run east-west. In Washington, D.C., avenues run diagonal to the street grid.

Tucson, Arizona named some roads as stravenues, which run diagonal to the normal north-south/east-west grid.

Boulevards are grander than avenues and designed to funnel high-speed traffic away from residential and commercial streets. Boulevards have trees on either side and a sizable median.

Smaller roads are named way and they are a smaller side street that splits off from a road. A place has a dead end, as does a court (UK close), which usually ends in a cul-de-sac. A lane or byway is narrow and lacks a median, usually found in rural areas. A drive tends to wind around a natural landmark, like a mountain or a lake. A circle usually circles around an area and is an open road intersected by multiple roads.

Pinocchio

Was originally a book published during 1883. The story of the little wooden boy with a nose that grew if he told a lie was one of the best-selling books in the world, with 35 million copies sold.

Wireless Charging

To fully understand how wireless charging works takes understanding the concept of an electromagnetic field and electromagnetic induction. Electromagnetic induction is an energy transfer system, meaning that it can be stored or used.
Think of a person making waves with the rope, the other person will receive the waves as they travel down the rope. This is like electromagnetic induction: a force sends energy from one point to another. The base unit (powered by electricity) transmits energy to the smartphone via electromagnetic fields. The sensors on the smartphone recover the energy and channel it to the battery for storage.

Qi is the most popular wireless charging technology. It is not restricted to a particular manufacturer. Qi uses electromagnetic induction charging and magnetic resonance technology.

Kentucky Fried Recipe

A Sanders-signed copy of the recipe is inside a vault in KFC’s Louisville headquarters, and even the manufacturers do not know what goes into it. Half of the mix is made by Griffith Laboratories, and then it is sent to McCormick, where the rest of the mix is added.

What's in a Name, Knocker-Upper

There were a lot of ways to wake up before the alarm clock was invented. People living in towns had chimes from the church bells, and people living on farms had roosters to crow them awake. In some places, people made getting up in the morning a much stranger experience.
Native Americans would make sure they got up early by drinking as much water as physically possible before falling asleep. That way, the water would fill up their bladders while they were sleeping. Pretty soon, they would be so full that they needed to get up. So they would get up early.

In England, you could pay a “knocker-upper” to get you up in the morning. Your knocker-upper would come to your house first thing in the morning and bang on your window with a long stick. If he wanted to make his shilling, he would keep banging until you got up and shared with him the money (about 12 pence) and customary curse words of morning.

Boston Cream Pie

Armenian-French chef M. Sanzian was credited for creating the first Boston Cream Pie in 1856 at the Parker House Hotel. The dessert acquired its name when cakes and pies were cooked in the same pans, and the words were used interchangeably.
It is really a cake, a yellow butter cake that is filled with custard or cream and topped with chocolate glaze.


The Boston Cream Pie was proclaimed the official Massachusetts State Dessert on December 12, 1996.