tylee78
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12 years ago
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on: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online
the German welfare system (healthcare included) is taxing the living hell out of the working families. It's insane. I'm pretty sure that like anything else, there is a ton of beaurocracy in Germany that loves to "list" prices. Unfortunately, in the beaurocracy side of it, the US is in a worse state. Hopefully this is the beginning of free market competition in the healthcare sector.
tylee78
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12 years ago
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on: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online
yes. that's an amazing piece of research. this article really opened my eyes. after studying that article it's much clearer how healthcare can and should be reformed.
tylee78
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12 years ago
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on: The Cost of an ACL Injury
this is an industry not just ripe for disruption but instead ripe for some anti-trust laws and investigation for fraudulent behavior
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens
indeed. again, looking at world affairs, that might be a greater motivational force than anything else.
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us
I just went through some of the posted reports. There is one that caught my eye. Someone developed a "bidding" portal to reduce cost. Quite intriguing:
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-930984
At least it seems that getting a handle on the prices is the way to go.
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: Philadelphia budget data visualization
maybe they should increase the 'streets' budget (and not just have 1 company get all the contracts) and then clean up that gigantic pile of trash that the city is. never seen a more filthy city than Philadelphia
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: Elon Musk: Vegetarians only on Mars colony
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: Jon Kabat-Zinn's Science of Mindfulness [audio]
Buddhism does not really fit the (Western) context of a "religion" anyways - probably that's why. That is especially true for the more ancient forms of Buddhism - which the author of this book subscribes to.
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: Stop Generalizing About Europe
...my experience (originally from Germany, in the US since 2005) as well. It's a question of mentality. While in the US a vast number of people want to create their own business or already did when they are quite young, running a business or starting one is a herculian task in Germany. And you get punished when you fail. And you get taxed to death when you don't. Running a company can easily become a social stigma too. Even if starting your company happens to be easier now then it was 10 years ago, still the majority of people are rather focused on finding a secure position in a larger company with lots of benefits then "creating" something "new".
Numerous reasons I guess for why that came to be (I don't think it was like that in the 50s/60s) - maybe as society ages there is less of a "drive" for radical innovation and a risk-averse mentality becomes mainstream. Either way, before I came to the US I had heard about "the difference in mentality" but I could not believe how "different" it really was and how much of an impact that meant on a daily basis: the biggest eye-opener was the completely different attitude towards things that needed to be changed and people just "did it".
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: Thinking the unthinkable
no. just a "honor" murder each week. usually knives though, so does not count.
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: Thinking the unthinkable
I really am surprised by most of the (young) parents I have met so far in the US. My father used corporal punishment for even little things on us and left a (psychological) scar - I could never touch my kids - on the other hand, in our home (4 kids of my own) discipline is an extremely high (positive) value.
This has nothing to do with submission but with self-control - a rare quality which kids have to master. The so-called "timeouts" and disciplinary measures by our American friends don't work - resulting in children which cause so much more suffering for everybody - they don't work because the parents just do not establish a sense of authority and strict rules. Forget physical punishment for a moment but at home the parents and in school the teachers have to be able to establish their authority. I have seen so many parents, themselves using mental pharmaceutica who let their kids get away with things that were purely evil. At the same time I feel the sub-human stimulation (TV, games, etc.) many kids are flooded with over decades is considered less (negatively) habit forming than the application of simple repetitive acts of cultured manners, polite expressions and self-restraint.
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
Happens to me all the time. I am working on a piece of code in the afternoon, and can't move forward or looking to identify a bug or optimizing some algorithm - wasting hours. After a meditation session I walk back to the computer screen, take a seat, and my hand clicks around the tabs, my fingers scroll around, my eye catches one obscure line of code which is EXACTLY where the problem sits. I had this happen so many times, it's a given by now. The article (and I am sure all who do meditate) shares the same kind of experience.
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite
...which goes to show that socialized health-care can even be worse.
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite
nice system! sounds like it has a market principle built into it...
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: Greg Knauss's 10-year-old son's $23,800 bug bite
After 15min ER due to a strained wrist the bill was $4100 dollars. We demanded detailed itemized bills and send letters to the doctor (billed separately) and the hospital. The doctor dropped his bill from ridiculous $900 dollars (for saying everything was alright and taking 5 mins to open a tiff file on his computer) to $200 after our complaint. His bill and the hospital had up-coded our visit and tried to hide the costs of their ill-managed hospital by billing a piece of cloth (made in Guatemala) with $500, the price of an iPad.
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: What Happens to Stolen Bicycles?
compared to Germany the percentage of criminals seems the same - it's just that our criminals are on the streets, yours in prison.
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: The German Model
being German myself, I cannot agree more. I was sometimes wondering if the author of this article was in the same country that I left. But I have seen this tendency before: people who visited Germany in the 60s, 70s and 80s have a "mental picture" of Germany that only partially fits reality. The structural unemployment is still very high, the educational system is a mess, the tax rates and regulations are borderline insane.
tylee78
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13 years ago
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on: Julian Assange Seeks Asylum In Ecuador Embassy
one example: it is used that way in Germany and applied (mostly) to right wing parties
tylee78
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14 years ago
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on: Learn to read a sentence of Chinese in 3 minutes
Yes, was going to mention it too. It's incredible and works so well... It's basically a khan academy for Latin and a shame not more people know about it. Definitely the way to go if you want to learn Latin the way a roman child learned it :-)
