From Elsewhere . . . .
Line made by walking 1967, Richard Long.
Buying out the health insurance industry would save us money? From Doug Henwood at Institute for Public Accuracy:
A friend pointed out to me earlier today that the market capitalization—the value of all the outstanding stock—of the publicly traded health insurers is about $150 billion. Add a little premium to sweeten the pot and you could nationalize the lot of them for about $200 billion. The total administrative costs of the U.S. healthcare system, which are greatly inflated by all the paperwork and second-guessing of docs’ decisions generated by the insurance industry, are about $400 billion a year. Those administrative costs are about three times what a Canadian-style single payer system would cost. So that means we’d save about $250 billion a year by eliminating the waste caused by our private insurance system.
In other words, the nationalization could pay for itself in well under a year.
- Dave Vontesmar is an ass (or an ape.) His car has been captured many times on speed cameras. The person behind the wheel in the pictures is wearing a mask. Preserving the god-given right to speed without consequences.
- The first multi-speed bicycle produced in the U.S. (it's chainless) has been restored and is going on display.
- The history of the (American) gyro in the NYTimes.
- I've looked for the East Denver Eruv every now and then when I was in the general area. Yesterday I discovered the boundary that runs just west of Holly along the Cherry Creek path just before Four Mile Park. It's fishing line that runs along the top of slender posts perhaps 12 feet high. Check it out.
The Eruv (as it matters to me) and the art of Richard Long have a lot in common:
My first work made by walking, in 1967, was a straight line in a grass field, which was also my own path, going 'nowhere'. . . . my intention was to make a new art which was also a new way of walking: walking as art. . . . Each walk, though not by definition conceptual, realised a particular idea.
Walking also enabled me to extend the boundaries of sculpture, which now had the potential to be de-constructed in the space and time of walking long distances. Sculpture could now be about place as well as material and form.
I didn't know Muhammad Ali started boxing because of a bicycle:
On an October afternoon in 1954, a 12-year-old Clay attended an annual convention of the Louisville Service Club . . . . He arrived at the black merchant bazaar upon a new $60 red and white Schwinn. However, after Clay and his friend indulged themselves with free popcorn and ice cream they left the auditorium to find that their bicycles had been stolen. A tearful Clay was directed to the basement of the auditorium where a policeman was manning the boxing gym. Joe Martin listened to young Cassius boast about a statewide hunt for his precious bike and heard the threats he was making to the thief if he was ever caught. After a while, Martin asked of Clay, “Well, do you know how to fight?” Clay quipped back, “No, but I’d fight anyway.” Martin’s best advice to the hot-tempered preteen was to come back around the gym and learn to fight. “Why don’t you learn something about fighting,” Martin suggested, “before you go and make any hasty challenges?”
