Skip to main content

The perils of socialized medicine (and just because it's Monday)


Comments

Anonymous said…
This story is at best decade-old error-filled news. If you read the original (try Google Translate on the Dutch: http://www.bt.dk/nyheder/penis-forbraendt-af-en-prut), you'll see that it was not a permanent injury. Contrast that with some cases under non-socialized medicine in the U.S. where guys have had permanent injury to their penises.
Is it tough living out your life with no sense of humor?

You'd probably have been even more upset if I had printed the headline from Thailand, "Hippo eats dwarf."
Anonymous said…
What was the humor of it? You find it intrinsically funny for people get hurt? Then this story of a woman who caught on fire during her C-section should make your day: http://news.msn.com/us/doctor-not-liable-for-patient-catching-fire-during-c-section/

Or was this just the Ann Coulter-type defense of "You're calling out what I said, so I'm going to say that you can't get a joke, because of course I was joking!"

"Hippo eats dwarf" has at least 3 obvious aspects of humor: the word "hippo," the word "dwarf," and the twist (a la "man bites dog") of an animal who eats a human rather than the other way around. Even if you think I have no sense of humor, I can analyze why someone would find something humorous. Please try such analysis on your post and see if it actually holds up as humor rather than as an after-the-fact defense.

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...