Gift Card Tips

If you have a gift card with a balance of less than ten dollars, most states have laws that stores and restaurants are legally required to give you the balance in cash if you ask for it. Some states have a $5 or other lower limit.

Most gift cards cannot contain an expiration date or a service fee. Tip - fold your receipt around the card to remember the balance.

Political Correctness

I have always lacked my fair share of political correctness, mainly because it defies logic and common sense. Here are a few passages I have come across that describe it rather well.
The 2007 winning entry from an annual contest at Texas A&M University calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term 'Political Correctness'. The winner wrote: "Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."

“No one should ever underestimate the stupidity induced in bureaucrats by the procedures they are enjoined to follow.”

"The perverse incentives that bureaucrats are often given nowadays are also worth a mention. On the false grounds that it is better to measure something than to measure nothing, the work of a bureaucracy (and therefore bureaucrats) is judged by some target or other plucked from the ether of political vacuity by their bosses."

Medical Paperwork

A PricewaterhouseCoopers study for the American Hospital Association chronicled more than 40 layers of paperwork associated with caring for a typical Medicare patient who arrives at an emergency room with a broken hip and receives treatment until recuperation. Some of the findings:

• Roughly 60 minutes of paperwork were performed for every hour of emergency department care, 36 minutes of paperwork for every hour of surgery and acute inpatient care, 30 minutes of paperwork for every hour of skilled nursing care, and 48 minutes of paperwork for every hour of home healthcare.
• “Each time a physician orders a test or a procedure, the physician documents the order in the patient’s record, and the government requires additional documentation to prove the necessity for the test or procedure.”
• “Many forms … must be completed daily by clinical staff to submit to the government to justify the care provided to skilled nursing facility patients.”
• Medicare and Medicaid “rules and instructions” are more than 130,000 pages (three times larger than the IRS code and its associated regulations), and “medical records must be reviewed by at least four people to ensure compliance” with Medicare program requirements.
• “A Medicare patient arriving at the emergency department is required to review and sign eight different forms, just for Medicare.”
• “Each time a patient is discharged, even if only from the acute unit of the hospital to an on-site skilled nursing unit, multiple care providers must write a discharge plan for the patient. This documentation, as long as 30 pages, applies to all patients, regardless of the complexity of care received within the hospital or required post-hospital setting.”
• In addition to regulation by state agencies, local agencies, private accrediting organizations, and insurers, hospitals are regulated by more 30 federal agencies.

First Martini

Like many drink recipes, Martini origins are fuzzy. The precise origins of the martini remain obscure, with a number of people and locations vying for the honor of being home to the cocktail. The town of Martinez, California put up a plaque to proclaim itself the birthplace of the Martini. According to the plaque, situated at 911 Alhambra Avenue, the very first Martini was mixed on that spot.

The plaque records the story: “On this site in 1874, Julio Richelieu, bartender, served up the first Martini when a miner came into his saloon with a fistful of nuggets and asked for something special. He was served a 'Martinez Special'. After three or four drinks, however, the ‘Z’ would get in the way. The drink consisted of 2/3 gin, 1/3 vermouth, a dash of orange bitters, poured over crushed ice and served with an olive.”

Another theory suggests it evolved from a cocktail called the Martinez served sometime in the early 1860s at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco, which people frequented before taking an evening ferry to the nearby town of Martinez.

Others assert that the drink was named after “Martini & Rossi” vermouth, which was first created in the mid-1800s. Apparently in the interest of brevity, the drink became known as the 'Martini'.

Quote

Another of my quotes someone made into a poster.

Happy Friday

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”  ~Isaac Asimov

There is wisdom in celebrating every Happy Friday!

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Wordology, Cornicione

The outer edge of pizza is called the cornicione, pronounced - "cor-nee-cho-nay", which means cornice or molding. The crust is the name for the base that the toppings are added to.

Care by the Numbers

Medicaid and Medicare are similar programs that are publicly run. They cover 62 million and 43 million Americans, respectively. They each use their large membership to negotiate lower prices with hospitals and doctors. Medicaid tends to have the lowest payment rates. On average, Medicaid pays 66 percent of what Medicare pays doctors.

Incidentally, US Census Bureau as of 2015 shows population of about 318 million Americans, including 23 million non-citizens.