Key among the grievances mentioned, of course, was how the system is inherently flawed because every state gets at least one representative. This is especially true for states like Wyoming vis-à-vis Montana, seeing as both have one rep but one has half the population of the other. E.g. Wyomians have double power in the House as do Montanans.

But the problems don’t stop there. How is the single-member first-past-the-post system supposed to deal with Las Vegas’s district, with over a million habitants, when the average district has only 700.000, and Wyoming and Rhode Island both have districts below 450.000?

All valid points. But the solution mentioned in the article, expanding House membership, isn’t the way to go. Could you imagine a 1700 member House? Would anything, anything get done?

Why do we have this winner-take-all system in the first place? Hasn’t it given us a overly partisan system where our noble representatives seek to enrich their districts over the needs of the nation? Hasn’t it also stamped out any opportunity for third parties to enter the system? (e.g. Liberal Democrats in Britain are seriously underrepresented compared to their share of the vote)

It seems to me that if we’re talking about House reform, let’s get serious. Since American politics are now essentially national in scope, it makes sense to change our representation system to represent the nation as a whole, not 50% + 1 groups in 435 arbitraily chosen, gerrymandered districts.

Thus, I propose scrapping all congressional districts in the nation. That’s right: all of them. Instead, we should implement something that  many European nations have implemented: proportional representation.

(for a quick lesson, proportional representation means that a given political party receives a set number of seats in the legislature based on the proportion of the vote it received. A party winning 30% of the vote would get 30% of the seats; a party winning 18% of the vote gets 18% of the seats)

Think about it: we get rid of the system that places inordinate value on a few “swing” districts and lets incumbents win, unchallenged in many cases, with 70%+ of the vote. Also, the people writing national policy will be actually be representing the nation (as the candidates of every party would no longer be chosen locally), instead of the petty interests of their district. That means less pandering to the coal lobby or the corn lobby or the tobacco lobby and more smart national policy.

Obviously, my system has its flaws. Please point them out to me, by all means. However, it is an interesting intellectual exercise to consider the benefits of some fundamental reform to our system

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that parts of America function like third world countries, especially when it comes to water:

Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va. In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.

Next, a thoughtful article on health care from the Atlantic. Once again, more evidence of shoddy care killing 100.000 Americans a year.

My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals

Too bad we don’t have Soviet-style care (I’m being facetious, but still, 100.000 to hospital-borne illnesses? That’s terrible)

But in terms of cost v benefits, America’s education system is just like its health care system: we spend way too much and get back way too little

Take a look at this article from the WSJ. It’s mostly numbers, but it’s still pretty interesting

Below appears a portion of an article that appeared in the school newspaper last year. I wrote this following a long letter from a certain school teacher vehemently denying global warming.

In this country, unfortunately, our politicians and media want to acknowledge that there is some “debate” on global warming: does it exist or not? Is it our fault or not? By assuring ourselves that it is some unverified “theory,” it is much easier to ignore while we live in massive McMansions and lay down ever-wider asphalt strips of highway.

Newsflash: human-induced global warming from carbon emissions is about as scientifically true as gravity.

It is undoubtedly true that the Earth has been warming in recent years. In just these last 100 years, we can see that the Earth is heating up, a period far too short to allow for some long-term geological explanation. Of the hottest ten summers on record, eight have all been within the last decade, and the rolling five-year average earth temperature has been constantly increasing since 1960.

What could possibly explain this phenomenon? Never in Earth’s history have climate conditions changed so quickly in such a short span of time, so we must turn to the human use of carbon dioxide, a gas that is known to be a ‘greenhouse gas,’ a gas that allows solar energy in but not out, thus warming the Earth.

Over the last 500.000 years or so, carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere have never risen significantly above 290 parts per million (ppm), or the number of carbon dioxide particles per million particles in the atmosphere. 200 years ago C02 levels stood at 280ppm, which has been constant since the year 1000. With the coming of the industrial revolution, as coal and wood were burned at ever-increasing rates, C02 levels began accelerating at a dangerous rate, passing the 300 mark in the early 19^th century and 350 around 1950. Today, they stand at 380ppm, and continue to accelerate.

Worse still, if we compare the C02 levels against the average surface temperature (both collected from ice core samples) during those 500.000 years, the record confirms that the two move in tandem. When there is a lot of C02 (280ppm instead of the 180ppm), the temperature goes up by over 5º C, the difference between a comfortable climate and an ice age.

Maybe I’m wrong, but there really shouldn’t be a problem understanding that the threat exists. The evidence is blindingly obvious. But then again maybe I’m wrong. For all I know, America might as well declared today that it no longer believes in gravity and thought it was right

Seriously

Let’s try to be mature adults here. I can understand there existing a debate over the best possible course to address the problem, or even whether we should address it at all, but this? Denying it actually exists? And then throwing in words like “socialist” and “global governance” for good effect? Just because you don’t like Al Gore doesn’t mean you should be stubbornly ignorant of an obvious issue

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong

I will just quote a Boston Globe blog to make my point, since the headline kind of speaks for itself

Really?

Swastikas?

A district office for Representative David Scott, Democrat of Georgia, has been vandalized with a four-foot swastika, the congressman’s office says.

As a thinker fiercely devoted to the old liberal ideas of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and freedom to petition the government to redress grievances, I respect every American’s right to speak out on the matter of health care.

But this is taking it too far. We’ve left the bounds of civility and rationality and entered the realm of mobs and propaganda.

A swastika? Come on, really? Do we know what that even means nowadays? That indicates a brutal slaughter of 12m innocents, not a plan that will prevent 50m people from being healthy.

Also, let’s put this in perspective. As a nation, we are currently having a hissy-fit over a president’s health-care proposal. Over the last 10 years, as a nation we did not throw hissy fits over arguably more offensive policies:

• an everlasting war claiming 4000 American lives
• Plan D Medicare, a plan conceived to be as cost-ineffective as possible
• Massive tax cuts which destroyed a budget surplus
• Torture? Oh yeah, that…..
• Guantánamo? Oh yeah, that too….

Some of the misinformation has also gotten me angry. For instance:

• the elderly will NOT be euthanized
• socialized medicine will not happen (since ignorant pundits do not know that the United States will not take over every single medical practice in the country)
• health care will not be rationed (although that’s what the free market does: allocate resources)
• babies will not be eaten

I expect better of America. We shouldn’t be tossing around Nazi symbols and blatantly lying about the plan

One thing that has always irked me about the United States health care debate is how the term “socialised medicine” is bandied about recklessly. Frequent critics of health care reform/critics of others’ proposals use the term “socialised medicine” as some sort of insult by invoking the failed example of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), without really understanding what it means.

Let me be clear: for modern health care proposals in the US, virtually none are an example of socialised medicine.

“Socialised medicine” is fairly straightforward, practiced in places like the UK. Basically, the government or the government holding company owns ALL hospitals and clinics in the nation, administers the above, and directly hires, pays, and fires each and every doctor and nurse. The health care system is simply a company owned and run by the government.

Contrast this to a single payer system. Under a single payer system, practiced in places like France or with intermediary government funds as in Germany and the Benelux countries, America’s health care infrastructure would remain largely intact. Doctors would still be privately or self-employed, hospitals managed normally, etc. The difference would be that the government would sell basic subsidised insurance, instead of receiving insurance through their employer or insurance company.

Since all legitimate proposals (including Obama’s) fall under that second category, the catchphrase “socialised medicine” truly is just a scare tactic. Please don’t listen to it; please don’t believe it. The images of long lines and shoddy health care really have nothing to do with current American health care reform proposals, since our system for dispensing care would not change substantially under a single-payer plan.

While informing yourself and listening in to the debate in Washington, please take this into consideration.

That being said, it’s painfully obvious that something is wrong with our system.

I apologize for not having a pretty graph available right now, but to see what’s wrong, all we need to do is look at per capita government spending on health care. Notice how “government” is italicized

If we do so, it turns out that the United States government devotes about as much as Germany to health care per capita, a bit more than France, and somewhat more than the UK. Sure, that works. Western Europe is about as rich as we are and has a similar quality of life

But guess what? That massive federal spending on health only guarantees coverage to a small portion of America. The majority of America is forced to accept whatever insurance their employer provides (since it’s totally discouraged to pay employees to pick their own coverage by the tax deduction on employer coverage), destroying the concept of a free market. On top of that, over 45 million more are totally sans coverage. And, worst of all, in total the US spends about twice as much as the typical West European nation, to get a product that cannot be described as twice as good, to put it mildly.

Really, this is shameful. It’s also pretty difficult to take these representatives/senators seriously in their criticism of other nations’ health systems when they get posh US government coverage.

I have a few other tidbits on my mind about this whole debate on health care, but to frame the debate, we absolutely must consider how atrociously expensive the US system is right now. More to follow tomorrow

Our conditional offer for students from the US would normally be: [some test scores]
We would also expect: [some more test scores]
As the application procedure is so competitive, even excellent grades will not guarantee a place at Oxford. Applicants’ extra-curricular activities are not considered during selection. [emphasis mine]

Applications are made online through a central service called UCAS (University and Colleges Admissions Service), which deals with all university applications in the UK…

Wow.

I’m now just entering the entire “college” process, and nothing seems more intelligent to me than this wonderful British system. The entire application process is handled through an online system known as UCAS, which covers the admissions process for the entire UK. You enter your test scores, write an essay, find a reference or two, pick your top five universities/campuses/courses of study, and presto! You’re done

Contrast this to the US system. Each university/college/system has its own application (the Common Application doesn’t count: just look at the length and the depth of the individual supplements to get a sense of what I mean). Not only do you have to do the essays, the references, and the test scores, but you also have to stress out writing down extracurricular activities, writing multiple essays, and dealing with the stress of early application and/or hugely varying due dates. And even then, you hear about the kid who draws a picture on his essay and gets into Stanford/Harvard/etc.

Seriously, the system we have is ridiculous. And the British system seems to work perfectly well, seeing as Oxford/Cambridge are always in the top 10 lists of best universities around the world usually beating out Berkeley and UCLA. As a student about to suffer this process, I would have no problem if US colleges borrowed a bit from England

Apollo 11 mission insignia

As you might have heard, today is the anniversary of a pretty extraordinary event in world history. If you couldn’t guess from the picture to the right, 40 years ago the Eagle lander of Apollo 11 reached the moon’s surface, and humans walked on a heavenly body other than their own for the first time

Pretty exciting stuff. Maybe even bordering on the magical

One bit of the commemoration of the event that I don’t quite agree with is the calls for more human space exploration. Some of the first astronauts are calling to reinvigorate the US’s space program (which is in a Space Shuttle-inspired funk right now) and to send a manned spaceship to Mars.

For me, I love the idea of the US strongly backing mathematics & science (which isn’t the best in our country: we lag behind every industrialized country when it comes to math & science education), and I love the idea of inspiring young school kids much as young school kids back in the 60s were inspired by the Apollo program. However, I truly do not believe sending someone to Mars is the way to do it

True, we sent people to the Moon using the computing power of a modern handheld calculator, so it’s entirely feasible to build something that could take a man to Mars. The problem I have with the plan is how extraordinarily expensive it would be and how little it would produce over manned robotic flights.

Some problems are logistic. For instance, when Mars and the Earth are opposite from each other in their orbits and the Sun is directly between them, it takes, I believe, a painfully long 45 minutes to send radio or light signals from mission control to Mars. In the event of an accident or for having meaningful conversation, that would be problematic

Also, there really isn’t just anything special humans do in space that a robot can’t do much better and for much lower cost. When a human goes up in space, that human needs to be very well protected from the cold, from the vacuum of space, from radiation, from hunger, from disease, and all other sorts of hazards that weigh down spacecraft with life support machinery and food, while a robot can take it all without damage. Robots are also disposable: there’s no need for expensive return provisions that a human would need.

Robots can also do more; the probe Cassini was a smashing success at exploring Saturn, and no human could have undertaken the same seven year, one-way task. Likewise with Mars: Mars Pathfinder and Viking I & II were all highly successful; all completed at considerably less cost than using robots

Personally, it really seems silly to spend all this money on endeavors for which much cheaper solutions are available just to inspire. Ladies and gentlemen, we already have enough problems on Earth as it stands; these problems (global warming or appalling third-world underdevelopment, for instance) aren’t being seriously addressed. We can stare at the stars as much as we want, but really, let’s try to fix the numerous issues we already have rather than spending money on something that really doesn’t make sense