Interesting question
Why do conservatives want people to prove citizenship before buying health insurance, but not before buying guns?
Little piggy goes to Market
It’s a recession, in case you haven’t heard. Time to save money. But, it’s also a time to eat better, stay home instead of going out, and get some enjoyment out of simpler things.
Last year I started going down to Detroit’s fantastic Eastern Market for groceries. This worked out somewhat well in that I ate a lot of fresh vegetables. But it was hard to make it a weekly habit because it’s a half-hour drive, the parking situation is a pain, and it’s just not convenient enough for it to be a regular errand.
This year, I found localharvest.org, which will tell you about all the farmers markets in your area, what vegetables you can get at what times of year, whether it is a co-op, growers only, etc. This worked out much better for me. I don’t do well with schedules, so sometimes I do my shopping on Saturday, sometimes I don’t feel like going that day and I wait until Sunday. Now, I know where several growers markets are near me, and I can go when I feel like it.
My daily bread
The famous “no-kead” bread recipe has been making the rounds for a while now, and let me tell you, it’s awesome. I’m lazy. I don’t want to knead, I don’t want pots, pans, bowls and mixer parts to wash. So, this recipe is perfect for me. I tweaked a little to make it even easier. My version takes a TOTAL of about 5 minutes of work and the entire process uses ONE pan:
3 cups flour (I use regular old enriched flour because that’s what they sell at Aldi)
1 5/8 C water, room temperature
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp dry yeast
Equipment needed: A large oven-safe pot (I use a big Pyrex glass bowl – it works GREAT. Others use a dutch oven), a spatula, a fork, and a clean surface.
1. In your bowl or pan, dump in all ingredients and mix with a fork. You will have a wet dough, about the consistency of biscuit dough. Cover the bowl with plastic and put it in the oven overnight.
2. The next day, after the dough has sat for at least 12 hours (I let it sit for 18 hours) take it out of the oven. It should have taken the shape of the bowl and at least doubled in size. Sprinkle flour on your work surface and then gently scoop out the dough with a spatula. Do NOT rip or tear the dough…just gently work it out with the spatula. Once you get it out, sprinkle it with flour and fold it over on itself three or four times. Congratulations, that’s all the kneading you’ll be doing!
3. Place the bowl upside down over the dough so that it’s covered. Let it rise for 90 minutes.
4. After it has risen for 90 min, turn on the oven, set at 450. Take the same bowl you’ve been using, rinse it out and put it in the oven. Loosely cover the dough with the plastic wrap to keep it from drying out, and let it sit for 30 more minutes while your bowl/pot heats up.
5. After 30 minutes are up, take the bowl out of the oven (careful, it will be HOT HOT HOT) and place the dough in it, again being careful not to rip or tear the dough. Don’t worry about how it looks – you will not have a smooth, round ball of dough in the bowl. It’s going to be ugly, but that’s just fine.
6. Bake for 30 minutes with the bowl covered, and then for 15-20 more minutes uncovered, until you see a beautiful golden-brown crust. Once it’s done, take it out, shake the bowl a couple times and the bread should come right out – no sticking. Let it cool for about 30 minutes and you have delicious fresh white bread.
Some tips and things I like about the recipe:
- You can turn right around and make another loaf in the same pan. I like to do that…after the bread is done, I let the oven and bowl cool for about 30 minutes and then your next dough can go right in and has a nice, warm rising environment. (Test the oven….if the inner wall is too hot for you to rest the back of your hand on, it’s too hot for your dough to go in.)
- Pay attention when you take the bread out. Listen closely and you will hear an awesome crackling sound of the crust cooling. To me, that sound is like being hugged by a thousand kittens. The crispy crust and soft inside is my favorite part of this bread.
- I use a big cutting board for my work surface; this way I can take the dough out of the bowl, fold it, cover it, and put the whole thing back in the oven.
- You can experiment. I have added in flax seed just to add some fiber – the bread was still very good, but it was slightly more dense and soft inside. Next I’ll be trying to add in some wheat flour.
- This bread will not stick to a smooth pot or bowl, so there should be no need to spray, grease, or flour the bowl before you bake in it.
- I mix my dough before I go to bed at around midnight. This way, I get home from work the following day and can immediately pull the dough out for the fold and second rise. The fresh loaf is finished at around 10 pm, which is just enough time to let things cool and start another loaf. My household will not go through a whole loaf in a day, so I give them away, or skip days. If I end up with a surplus, it can be used for french toast, it can be seasoned and re-baked to make home made croutons (which are delicious), or you can let it get more stale and then use it to make dressing or stuffing.
- I like that this recipe is forgiving. You don’t have to sweat over the exact amount of flour, the humidity in the oven, the minerals in your tap water, etc. As long as your yeast is not too old, this recipe is completely reliable.
You really can’t beat it. 5 minutes of work for an upscale bakery quality loaf of bread that only costs about twelve cents. Why pay ten times more for a lame-ass loaf of wonder bread?
Rescission is rare – except for when it’s not
Rescission is a practice used by health insurance companies that basically means your policy is rescinded (hence, the name.) The reason usually given is that you lied or omitted information when you got your policy, and thus the contract is voided – the insurance company doesn’t have to pay your claim and can walk away from your policy.
In practice, what this means is that you can get an insurance policy and pay your premiums for years without any objection from the insurance company. But the moment you look like you’re going to cost money, the insurance company can launch an investigation into your medical history with the express purpose of finding a reason to rescind your policy. This is entirely legal.
The insurance companies, and many anti-reform pundits and bloggers, tell us that rescission is very rare, affecting only one half of one percent of policies.
Sounds rare, right? Think again.
Health care spending in the US is highly concentrated. Half of all health care expenditures are spent on the top 5% of spenders. 50% of spenders spend under $700 per year on health care and account for only 3% of all health expenditures.
So, maybe if you select a random person with health coverage and try to estimate their chance of having a claim denied or a policy rescinded the chance will look low. But, because it is the most expensive claims that get investigated, the chances for it to happen to a very sick person are much higher.
It is probably true that most of the insurance company efforts at rescission take place among the top 1% of spenders, as these represent 22% of total expenditures and cost about $35k per year per person. This is where the big savings come in.
If we grant that rescission affects around one half of one percent of policies (which is what the insurance companies claim), and if it is true that rescission efforts are concentrated in that top 1% where the insurance company saves money, that means that if you get seriously ill your chances of experiencing it are 50/50.
If we decide to be more generous, and figure that these “half of one percent” rescission cases are spread out across the top 5% of spenders (which encompasses almost everyone who makes a serious claim) and not only the top 1%, then that means your chances of experiencing it as a member of that group are 1 in 10. I think this is generous.
It’s rare only in that people who require expensive medical care who are not covered by Medicare are rare. Sure, they’re a small percentage of the population. But I have a hard time watching the anti-reform lobby argue that it’s not significant when we can safely say that if you are under 65 and you get seriously sick or injured you’ve got somewhere between a 10% and 50% chance of having your coverage rescinded.
Linux File System Podcast
A couple of posts back I talked about how the organization of the Linux file system was an obstacle for switchers. I posted a link that helped me get it, but I just listened to the latest episode of Going Linux and they do a great job of explaning each top-level folder in Linux. I’d encourage any recent convert to listen.
Linux Update
Two obstacles down. First, Quickbooks. Got QB 2002 to work in WINE with no effort. There is an error message that pops up every time you open the program, but if you dismiss the error it seems to work fine. Now, this may make some people uncomfortable, as Quickbooks is one of those programs where you definately do NOT want to corrupt data. But I have been making regular backups; the files open in windows just fine, so I’m going to keep using Quickbooks in Linux.
Second, Photoshop. CS3 does not work whatsoever. But, I had an older copy of photoshop 7 that works flawlessly. GIMP is going to work for most people, but I am a developer, so whenever I need to create an image I’m on a time constraint and I simply don’t always have the time to explore GIMP and figure out how to do something that would take me 2 seconds in Photoshop. I’ve got photoshop 7, and I can live with that.
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