Life: Under Construction

Ryan Jenkins Found Dead in Motel Room

via www.people.com

People.com is just reporting that Ryan Jenkins has been found dead in a motel room in Canada. Right now authorities are suggesting that it looks like a suicide. I suppose we can't be completely surprised by this. Suicide is an act of the desperate and Jenkins was certainly desperate. Part of me feels thankful that he's dead and it's over, the state of California has just been saved the cost of a lengthy murder trial and yet it feels as though the U.S. judicial system has lost out. Here is a man that for what ever reason (probably jealousy) took the life of his wife. As if that wasn't bad enough, he then mutilated her body to try and throw the police off the scent. I'm sure Jasmine Fiore's family and friends will think that Jenkins got off lightly. Rather than have to face the music and pay for what he had done, he took the coward's way out through suicide. Clearly, Jenkins is someone who is deluded in thinking that death solves problems whether it's an imperfect wife or being hunted for her murder.

At the end of the day, I can't help but feel how wasteful and pointless violence is.

Is the NHS really such a great model?

via www.guardian.co.uk

Anyone who has ever been to an emergency rooms knows that the people they will see are the non-breathing comatose patients. Next, the nurses will see any patient spewing blood from their body. Broken bones will be seen to next, after them it will be patients who can't stop puking. And so on it goes, down the list of ailments moving from life-threatening to life-inconveniencing (what else would you call a splinter?).

During this continuing debate on health care, many people are pointing to Britain as an example of success: no one has to worry about being able to afford medical treatment. Before we all leap on the bandwagon and start arguing that the US should have its own centralized medical system, it is important to remember that the NHS is like an emergency room. What I mean by this is that the NHS is an organization of limited resources that has to prioritize. This means that if you're about to die and need a triple-bypass, your ailment will be seen to. If, however, you have an orthopedic problem that requires a new hip or repairing of the ACL, you may be waiting countless months before you are seen. The point is that, like an ER, the NHS pushes non-critical patients to the back of the queue.

It is not just the wait that is an issue in England. To both minimize costs and simplify the system, patients do not always get a choice about how a problem will be addressed. If you have fibroids, your NHS doctor may just tell you that alternative options are not available, your only choice is to have a hysterectomy. It is because of these problems that it has become standard in England for people to purchase supplemental insurance which gives patients additional choice over treatment and medical practitioner.

I am not saying that our health care system, as it now stands, is perfect. Obviously there are huge sections of the population who are uninsured and need the government to step in and help create an insurance pool for them. What I do think is important for us to appreciate is all the choices our current system does offer that NHS does not.

A Ponzi Grows in Brooklyn

via www.nydailynews.com

The problem with any Ponzi scheme is that at a certain point, the mastermind will no longer be able to gather enough new investments to pay all his previous investors the interest payments that they have come to expect. Whether this scarcity of new funds occurs because the economy shrinks or because the mastermind has run out of people to swindle, a Ponzi scheme is like a house of cards that because of a slightly breeze or shake collapses to the ground. The victims of the swindle are then left to try and pick up the pieces.

A group of about 40 of Philip Barry's investors sued him for stealing their money when he had told them that he was investing it. While Barry maintains his innocence and pledges that he just needs time to liquidate property that he invested in, a Brooklyn Federal court judge has ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered Barry to pay hundreds of thousand dollars in damages. While this is a moral victory for his victims, it will do little to ease the financial hardships that they are now facing. Most of the people that walked into Barry's grubby storefront were retired, investing their future in Barry. That future now looks pretty grim.

This is yet another reminder to all of us to be careful. Buyer Beware! The only riskless asset out there is something like a T-bill issued from a reliable government (like the US) that promises to pay out X-amount on a specific schedule. For any asset or person that is offering you a return greater than what you would get on government issued debt, there is risk involved. If someone is telling you that they can guarantee you 10% on your investment, at the very least take it with a grain of salt. Ask yourself how they are able to guarantee something like that. Consider that most large mutual funds that are hopefully optimally diversified will not guarantee you anything. Instead they will show you what their performance has been in the past.

While the shrinking economy has exposed some of these crooks, I have no doubt that there are plenty more out there. Please, be mindful and be careful with your money...it is your future.

Tougher Penalties Sought for Driving Drunk With Children - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com

via cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com

You would think that the risk of getting yourself in an accident and seriously injuring yourself would be enough of an incentive to prevent people driving while intoxicated. Clearly, given the number of drunk-driving accidents, it is not. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) report that in 2007 nearly 13,000 people died in accidents that were in part caused by drivers who were impaired by alcohol. That number is staggering. Obviously, we need tougher punishments to make people think twice about grabbing those car keys. This includes both tougher penalties if you are caught driving drunk and also if you cause harm while driving under the influence.

What bothers me about the current proposed changes in the wake of the Taconic State Parkway accident is that it is focusing on the victims who were children. Gov. Paterson is proposing legislation that would make it a felony to drive while intoxicated with a minor in the car. My issue with this sort of legislation is that it puts a higher value on the life of a child than on the life of an adult. I love kids, and my heart goes out to the family who lost three daughters in last week's crash but is their grief any more real or intense than the families of the men in the SUV that Diane Schuler hit? Those victims were all adults but does that make the pain their families feel any less? I think the answer is no and so I say, don't just make it a felony to have kids in the car, toughen the penalties if you have ANYONE in the car. The judgment of these politicians has been clouded by the image of the innocence that has been lost when a child is murdered. Innocence is lost, lives are shattered when anyone's, no matter their age, life is stolen.

Trousers Nix Travel Plans

Yesterday, I wrote a post commenting on France's restrictions on swimwear, today I was glancing through Yahoo's Odd News page looking for something amusing when I came across something that was not amusing at all. Lubna Hussein was at a party with some other women back in July when she and 12 others were arrested for being indecently dressed. Hussein lives in Sudan where a woman's indecency is a criminal issue. The problem for Sudanese women (apart from living under an oppressive religious regime) is that there is no clearly defined definition of indecency. This means that police officers can use their own discretion in arresting women on these grounds. Hussein currently faces 40 lashes for wearing trousers on that night. While she is in the midst of trying to fight this case, Hussein as a journalist was invited abroad. She got to the airport only to find that the government had put her name on a blacklist that prohibited her from being allowed to travel. Hussein is now stuck in Sudan. Who knows if her name will be removed from the list once this case is settled in court.

Stories like this make me very thankful that I live in a world where women have choices and am not subject to the objectifying notions of sexist men. I for one am hopeful that Lubna gets the support she needs to beat this wrap. Going back to France's fight against Islam that I began discussing yesterday, I think the problem with having the swimwear restrictions that they do and making an issue about girls wearing head scarves to school, is that it actually makes France seem just as fervent and unaccepting as the countries whose influence they are trying to keep out. Sudan forbids trousers, France forbids burkinis while French citizens have much more freedom than Sudanese, on this issue at least, they seem similar. Given the disdain with which France seems to regard nations that are ruled by religion, you would think they would want to prove that they are nothing like them. 

Come on France, whatever happened to 'Liberté, Equalité, Fraternité'...rise above these petty issues!

China gets slapped on the wrist, too bad it won't hurt!

The New York Times reports today that the WTO has ruled against China in motion brought by the United States which argued that China's regulation over the importing of books and movies was in violation of the free trade agreement. The ruling means that China will have to sell American and European DVDs and books along side the domestic versions. While this may be a small win for the US, it does not level the playing field. Currently, even when American DVDs are allowed into the Chinese marketplace, they cannot compete with the cheap pirated versions of the same movies. Chinese consumers are used to purchasing DVDs at exceptionally low prices. It is not clear whether American sellers will be able to match those low prices. If they cannot, it will not matter that if American DVDs are placed on a shelf next to Chinese DVDs. Since they are perfect substitutes, consumers will go with the one that costs less and importers into China will not be afforded any additional market share. Until China honors movies and books as copyrighted products, the US will not win this war.

This feels like a clear sign that, for the first time in a long while, the US is not dictating the terms of international trade. It's China's party and they'll cry if they want to!

A step back for Burma

News agencies are buzzing, well, faintly humming with the news that Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced today to 3 years hard labor. That sentence was almost immediately commuted to 18 months of house arrest which she will probably serve in the house in which Myanmar's current ruling junta has kept her for 14 of the last 20 years. This latest arrest was prompted by the arrival of an American man at Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi's compound. This man stayed with her for two nights telling her that he had to protect her from assassins. This visitors arrival worked out very well for the junta since it provided them with an excuse to sentence the pro-democracy Burmese leader to a term of house imprisonment that will prevent her from being able participate in the parliamentary elections to be held at the beginning of next year.

Groups that had been hoping the upcoming elections would be a sign of progress are now crying foul and asking the international community to take action. Most members of the Western world can agree that it is a shame that Myanmar is controlled as it now is and it would be a boon to civilization to release Aung San Suu Kyi and allow the people of Myanmar to participate in their system of governance*. That said, what should we do to bring this about? Given the fiasco Afghanistand and Iraq turned into, I doubt anyone would vote for military action. The only other course of action involves trade sanctions. The problem with trade sanctions is that you not only hurt the ruling party, you hurt everyone in Myanmar. Resources become scarce and it is more likely to be the lowly citizens that suffer rather than the powerful elite.

With no reasonable means of recourse, we are left to conclude that at the end of the day, one nation cannot control the actions and behavior of another nation. (The one caveat to this statement being, if one nation is endangering the safety of other nations, they may have good reason to go to war).

*I actually think it is egotism that makes Westerners believe that every other country in the world should operate under a democratic form of government rather than anything else. Democracy does work here in the US and over in Europe but different countries have different histories and different attributes. It would be ludicrous to expect them to all operate in similar ways and yet that is just what we do when we criticize other regimes. Perhaps before we take action against Myanmar, we should ask ourselves what was it about Burma that made them vulnerable to this sort of military regime?!

Tourists or Trouble-makers?!

It has been confirmed that three American citizens are being detained in Iran. The story is that the Americans had been hiking in the Kurdish border hills of Iraq and had unwittingly strayed into Iran. Apparently the Ahmed Awa tourist resort is known for beautiful vistas, including waterfalls. This is no doubt the tale these Americans told their Iranian captors but I would argue that they were not in Iraq to sight-see, they were in Iraq and later Iran looking for trouble!

My reason for saying this is that there are pleanty of gorgeous and exotic locations travelers can visit, it is a very particular type of traveler that would choose to visit such an unstable region of the Middle East. I think it is no coicedence that one of the detained Americans is described as a freelance journalist. I take this to mean that he was traveling in search of a story. Given this, these Americans can hardly complain that they were detained by Iran...they wanted a story, they were looking for action and they have gotten it.

Now the US government is asking its allies to negotiate for the release of the detainees. Valuable diplomatic skills that could be used for other endeavors are now being used to try to get them released. While I would not wish the horrors of Iranian prisons on anyone, the fact is, these Americans unlawfully (even if unknowingly) entered Iran, a nation that has a very tense relationship with their homeland. Why is anyone surprised that they were detained?! Also, given their lack of care and caution, why shouldn't these Americans spend a little time in jail?! Many Americans are outraged at the way South Americans infiltrate their nation, paying no respect to the border that divides us from them, how is that so different from the reaction of Iran to these wandering opportunists.

At the end of the day, travelers should beware. You make your bed by deciding where to go and what to do. It should come as no surprise that at the end of the day, you will have to lie in that bed conceived of too little heed and caution.

A Day Of Goodbyes

The funeral for the last surviving soldier from WWI, Harry Patch, was held in England today. In his memoirs, The Last Fighting Tommy, Patch writes about the horrors that he witnessed. The experience of that terrible war prompted Patch to regard war as 'organized murder'. With his passing, it feels as though a link to the past has been severed. I can only hope that with his death, we remember and take to heart what Patch was trying to tell all of us: the price of war is just too high. In the last half century wars have been fought far afield. On the one hand this has been fortunate for us, only our soldiers have been forced to witness the atrocities of war. On the other hand, this distance from war has meant that we don't fully appreciate the costs the war.

Today also saw the passing of Sam, the Koala. Sam became a worldwide celebrity when she was photographed being rescued from the Australian bush fires this past winter (summer for Australia). She was initially taken to a shelter when her badly scorched paws were looked after. Recently it was discovered that Sam had developed cysts. The veterinary doctors whose care she was under opened her up to try and remove the cysts but discovered that her condition was too severe and inoperable. Her condition meant that she would be in unbearable pain. Her caretakers made the decision that it would be humane to euthanize Sam so that she was out of pain. (On a side note, I wish the medical profession would extend this level of care to humans).

Both of these passings feature beings that came to represent the humanity and positivity that can come out horrible situations.

Lockerbie Leniency

Kenny Macaskill, the Scottish justice minister, visited Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi in prison earlier today. Macaskill is considering releasing Megrahi on compassionate grounds because the prisoner, who is just 10 years into a 25-year sentence, has developed terminal prostate cancer. Megrahi was convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103. On Wednesday, December 21, 1988, a Pan-Am Boeing 747 took off from Heathrow airport in London, on its way to New York. Soon after 5pm, all contact with the plane was lost. It would later be discovered that an explosion had ripped a hole in the plane's fusilage. The plane went down quickly, killing all 259 people on board as well as 11 people on the ground.

Megrahi does have an appeal in the works and there are those familiar with the case who argue that he was a convenient scapegoat. But this fact is beside the point when considering his request for early release. Right now, he is a convicted man who has been found guilty of murdering hundreds of people. It is my opinion that if you commit such a heinous crime, you lose the right to die in your own bed, surrounded by family members. You lose the right to determine any external aspect of your life. This is what being sentenced to prison entails. The fact that Megrahi has an appeal in the works shouldn't effect how he is treated under the current conviction that has not yet been appealed.

Perhaps I am being cold-hearted but I believe that early release should never be allowed for compassionate reasons. Criminals are handed their time and now it's time to serve!