Highway to the mild peril zone
15-Apr-05
Quicktime movies:
High Resolution (44 MB)
Medium resolution (17.4 MB)
Low resolution (6.1 MB)
MPEG format (150 MB) (for my Linux homies)
[Note: I did not pick the music. Text to come.]
Seasteading talk in Boulder, CO
15-Apr-05
Patri Friedman will be giving a talk on seasteading on Monday, April 18th, 2005, 7:00-9:00 pm
Colorado University – Boulder, MCDB A2B70, (Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Room A2B70)
Mission Possible: Creating New Countries in Ocean Waters
Imagine building floating cities in the ocean! It sounds like a wild idea, but with every passing year, technology makes it more feasible. Within our lifetimes, we will likely see the reality of mankind colonizing the ocean! This lecture will include a practical approach to building floating cities as well as some of the financial and political considerations. The approach is interdisciplinary and will include various aspects of the endeavor including engineering, structural design, business models, and funding.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/business/worldbusiness/07health.html?adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1112900630-M5h+LPG+1WE3zCkygOh1hQ&pagewanted=print&position=
April 7, 2005
Low Costs Lure Foreigners to India for Medical Care
By SARITHA RAI
BANGALORE, India, April 6 – Until recently, Robert Beeney, a 64-year-old real estate consultant from San Francisco, lived in pain. But when he finally decided to do something about the discomfort, he spurned all the usual choices.
His doctors advised that he get his hip joint replaced, which his insurer would pay for, but after doing some research on the Internet, he decided to get a different procedure – joint resurfacing – not covered by his insurance. And instead of going to a nearby hospital, he chose to go to India and paid $6,600, a fraction of the $25,000 he would have paid at home for the surgery.
This winter, Mr. Beeney flew to Hyderabad, in southern India, and had the surgery at Apollo Hospital by a specialist trained in London, Dr. Vijay Bose. Two weeks later, Mr. Beeney said that he was walking around the Taj Mahal “just like any other tourist.”
Mr. Beeney's story is becoming increasingly common, as Europeans and Americans, looking for world-class treatments at prices a fourth or fifth of what they would be at home, are traveling to India. Modern hospitals, skilled doctors and advanced treatments are helping foreigners overcome some of their qualms about getting medical treatments in India. Even as politicians and workers' groups are opposing the corporate practice of outsourcing, Mr. Beeney and patients like him are literally outsourcing themselves – not only to India but also to Thailand, Singapore and other places – for all kinds of medical services from cosmetic to critical surgeries.
About 150,000 foreigners visited India for medical treatments in the year ending in March 2004, the Confederation of Indian Industry, a leading industry group, said. That number was projected to rise by 15 percent each year for the next several years. The consulting firm McKinsey & Company, a management consultant based in New York, said foreign visitors would help Indian hospitals earn 100 billion rupees (about $2.3 billion) by 2012.
“Health is an emotional issue; it's not like buying a toy or a shirt made abroad,” said a health care analyst for McKinsey, Gautam Kumra, who is based in New Delhi. “Nevertheless, you cannot deny the power of economics.”
For some foreigners, like George Marshall, a 73-year-old violin restorer from Yorkshire, England, India's hospitals also offer speedier treatments. Last year, Mr. Marshall said that he started having trouble finishing a round of golf. An angiogram showed two blocked arteries in his heart. With the British National Health Service, Mr. Marshall would have had to wait three weeks to see a specialist, and six more months for coronary bypass surgery. “At 73, I don't have the time to wait,” Mr. Marshall said. “Six months could be the rest of my life.” Nor could he afford the £20,000 ($38,000) for surgery at a private hospital.
After an Internet search and a chance meeting with a businessman who had gone to India for surgery, Mr. Marshall traveled to the Wockhardt Hospital in Bangalore in southern India last winter. His surgeon, Vivek Jawali, had trained at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The men chatted about British politics and Dr. Jawali gave Mr. Marshall his cellphone number and said that he was available 24 hours. A surprised Mr. Marshall said that in the British health system, “you are just a number, but here you are a person.” Travel expenses included, the surgery cost him £4,500 ($8,400).
While the number of patients from the West is still small in India, the trend is expected to grow as populations age and health costs balloon. In India, cardiac surgeries cost about one-fifth of what they would in the United States; orthopedic treatments cost about one-fourth as much and cataract surgeries are as low as one-tenth of their cost at American hospitals.
Mr. Kumra, the McKinsey health consultant who also advises the auto industry, noted that a corporation like General Motors spends $5 billion on health care annually. “When you buy a G.M. car, you are helping G.M. fund $2,000 or $3,000 towards health care costs of retired workers,” Mr. Kumra said.
To curb spending, corporations are being forced to look at creative low-cost solutions. For instance, radiologists working for Wipro, a software and information technology company based in Bangalore, analyze X-rays and scans from United States hospitals for a fraction of the cost. A diagnostics firm, SRL Ranbaxy, based in New Delhi, tests blood serum and tissue samples from British hospitals. Health specialists say that sending patients to India for treatment is not as unthinkable as it was 20 years ago.
“India is well-positioned to expand into this area of outsourcing,” said John Lovelock, an analyst in Ontario on global industries for Gartner. “India is equipped to provide long-term in-patient rehabilitation services, which are very labor intensive, require large facilities and are under serviced in North America,” he said.
In the last four years, the Apollo Hospital chain, which has 18 hospitals throughout Asia, has treated 43,000 foreigners, mainly from nations in southern Asia and the Persian Gulf. Last year, 7 percent of its 5 billion rupees ($114.9 million) in revenue came from medical services provided to foreigners.
Apollo's founder, Dr. Prathap C. Reddy, 73, a surgeon trained at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said that health care in India had drastically changed from the time he returned to open his first hospital in 1983. “Then, all rich Indians rushed overseas for medical help,” Dr. Reddy said. Now, he has 200 doctors on his staff who are qualified to work in the United States, and has many wealthy Indian expatriates as clients.
Still, some hospitals in India are discovering that affordable costs and foreign-trained doctors may not be enough to make India a global health care destination. The country's dilapidated airports, garbage-strewn streets and overcrowded slums can put off even the hardiest foreigners.
“Some foreign patients arrived at the airport and took the next flight back,” said Dr. Reddy, who has been trying to persuade the local government in Chennai, formerly known as Madras, to clear a slum next to his hospital there. “I can change the insides of my hospitals, but I cannot change the airports and roads,” Dr. Reddy said,
The challenge, said Harpal Singh, chairman of Fortis Healthcare, a chain of hospitals based in New Delhi, is to get the world to understand that India is a complex country. Acknowledging that foreigners might feel more at home having surgery in sleek hospitals in Singapore or Thailand, which are competing to woo them, Mr. Singh said, “We have to project that India is capable of delivering first-rate as well as shoddy work.” Fortis, part owned by the country's biggest drug firm, Ranbaxy Laboratories, has a chain of four hospitals in India and another six on the way.
Indian hospitals are also working to ensure that they meet international standards. The Indian Healthcare Federation, a group of 50 hospitals led by Dr. Reddy, is developing accreditation standards for hospitals.
One doctor in India held up as first rate is Dr. Naresh Trehan, a cardiac surgeon based in New Delhi and the executive director of Escorts Heart Institute and Research Center. Dr. Trehan, 58, who studied cardiac surgery at the New York University School of Medicine and worked there for a decade, returned to India in 1988 to open his own cardiac hospital in New Delhi. The hospital now conducts 4,000 heart surgeries a year with 0.8 percent mortality rates and 0.3 percent infection rates, on par with the best of the world's hospitals.
Last October, Dr. Trehan performed surgery on Howard Staab, 53, an uninsured self-employed carpenter from Durham, N.C., to repair a leaking mitral heart valve. Mr. Staab paid $10,000 for his surgery, his round-trip fare to India and for a visit to the Taj Mahal. In the United States, his options included surgery costing $60,000 at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.
To take advantage of patients like Mr. Staab, Indian hospitals are expanding. In the Gurgaon suburbs of New Delhi, Dr. Trehan is building a $250 million multispecialty hospital modeled after the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. In the same neighborhood will be Fortis Healthcare's Medicity, a 43-acre hospital complex for foreign patients, which will have special immigration and travel counters and interpreters, with the idea of branding itself the Johns Hopkins Hospital of the East.
“We're gearing up, and the doors of Indian hospitals are wide open to the Western world,” Dr. Trehan said.
Parachute virgin
14-Apr-05
[Note: this was mostly written on 04/03/2005]
I almost died today.
Just not in the way I expected.
I woke up before my alarm clock went off, and looked out the window. The sky was clear and sunny, not a cloud to be seen. “parachute girl” (PG) showed up at precisely 8:30 a.m. She's about 5'4″, wearing a pink suede jacket and khaki shorts. Her brown hair is cropped very short — her head looks like Demi Moore's in “G.I. Jane”. She seems a little groggy. “I only got about 3.5 hours of sleep last night. I didn't go to bed until late, then I woke up early because I was so excited about the jump.”
 |
| The woman who almost killed me. |
It took 50 minutes to drive to the private airfield, halfway between Louisburg and Franklinton. We were about 1/2 hour early, and PG had not yet had breakfast. So we backtracked to the Circle K. PG bought a diet Coke and some mini-donuts. We walked to a nearby cemetary and talked while we munched on the donuts.
Me: “You know, in retrospect, maybe it isn't a good idea to visit a cemetery just before we're about to leap out of plane. It's like we're thumbing our nose at death.”
It was the first time I had been to a cemetary in the south. As in most cemeteries I've been to, some of the graves were bedecked with American flags. But about an equal number of them flew the Confederate Union Jack.
PG: “Yeah, you see a lot of those in Mississippi.”
PG has lived in number of places. “I've probably moved 25 times so far in my life. But Mississippi is like a black hole — even though I've left, something keeps trying to pull me back. My Mom lives there. Plus, it's so cheap to live there! You can buy a nice house for $50 K.”
She lived in Seoul, Korea for two years, teaching English as a second language. “It pays really, well, and it's cheap to live there. I saved about $12,000 each year I lived there. They paid housing, airfare. All I had to cover was food, and entertainment.”
Right now she lives in Durham, in a house she bought with the money she saved in Korea. She lives with her brother and a dog named Sky. “We named him 'Sky' because we got him after my brother and I went skydiving the first time.”
She and her friend B refer to their respective paramours by codenames. B's boyfriend is “Scottie the Hottie”. My codename: Squirrel Man. Named after my answer to the question in personal ad “If you could be anywhere you wanted, where would you be?” which was: “Making love with my future wife like pair of crazed squirrels.”
She has been skydiving four times.
Carolina Sky Sports looks like a warehouse from the exterior. Except for the rather large airplane parked next to it.
We knocked on the door, and a woman came to the door and welcomed us in. A group of about 15 people were watching a video of stunt chutists navigating a mountain course.
“You're here for the 10:00 a.m. jump?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I have some bad news. We've got 30 mph winds, right now. Too strong to jump safely. According to the weather report, the winds won't let up until this evening. If you want to wait, you can stay to see if the winds calm down. Or you can take a rain check.”
After a bit of dithering, we decided to reschedule the skydive.
So, sadly, I'm still a parachute virgin.
However, she was still up for doing something else. Hiking? Going to a movie? Biking?
We decided to bike. So we drove back to her house in Durham. She showed me around the house. I got to meet her brother Zack and Sky. Sky looks like a pit bull/golden lab mix. He's got the pit bull shape, but golden lab fur.
After juryrigging her bike so that the front brake cable would work, we were off for downtown Durham.
I'd like to blame it on the tires. The front tire was almost flat, after all. And we had a heck of a time finding a gas station with a working air pump.
But I hadn't been on a bike much in over two years. And, man, I felt it. And it was embarrassing, because there I was, huffing and puffing, while PG blithely pedaled along, seemingly effortlessly.
The trail went through sections of Durham with, um, great potential. For example, one of the gas stations we stopped at had a sign in the window that read (paraphrased) “Attention! If stopped by police, please drop your weapons immediately, and put your hands behind your head. Failure to do so could result in injury or death.”
Finally, we made it to downtown Durham. It was early Sunday afternoon, and felt like a ghost town. There were very few cars on the streets, and most of the shops that weren't boarded up, were closed. After wandering around a bit, we found Toreros, a Mexican joint, that was still open. So we had tacos and enchiladas. Delicious!
Then we biked back to her place, which fortunately, was mostly downhill. Then she drove me home.
At which point, I was so exhausted, I fell asleep for four hours.
I didn't get to go skydiving. And biking for two hours nearly killed me.
But it was a good day.
I love the south
07-Apr-05
I love the South.
(Via )
I'm alive!
05-Apr-05
Just a note to those who may have been concerned. I've been really busy since Sunday, and haven't had much time to post.
Parachuting
05-Apr-05
I almost died today.
Just not in the way I expected.
I woke up before my alarm clock went off, and looked out the window. The sky was clear and sunny, not a cloud to be seen. “parachute girl” (PG) showed up at precisely 8:30 a.m. She's about 5'4″, wearing a pink suede jacket and khaki shorts. Her brown hair is cropped very short — her head looks like a blonder version of “G.I. Jane”. She seems a little groggy. “I only got about 3.5 hours of sleep last night. I didn't go to bed until late, then I woke up early because I was so excited about the jump.”
It took 50 minutes to drive to the private airfield in Louisburg. We were about 1/2 hour early, and PG had not yet had breakfast. So we backtracted to the Circle K. PG bought a diet Coke and some mini-donuts. We walked to a nearby cemetary and talked while she munched on the donuts.
Me: “You know, in retrospect, maybe it isn't a good idea to visit a cemetary just before we're about to leap out of plane. It's like we're thumbing our nose at death.”
It was the first time I had been to a cemetary in the south. As in most cemetaries I've been to, some of the graves were bedecked with American flags. But above an equal number of them flew the Confederate Union Jack.
PG has lived in number of places. “I've probably moved 25 times so far in my life. I lived two years in Mississippi before I went to college.
She lived in Seoul, Korea for two years teaching english as a second language. “It pays really, well, and it's cheap to live there. I saved about $12,000 each year I lived there. They paid housing, airfare. All I had to cover was food, and entertainment.”
Right now she lives in Durham, in a house she bought with the money she saved in Korea. She lives with her brother and a dog named Sky. “We named him 'Sky' because we got him after my brother and I went skydiving the first time.
She and her friend B refer to their respective paramours by codenames. B's boyfriend is “Scottie the Hottie”. My codename: Squirrel Man. Named after my answer to the question in personal ad “If you could be anywhere you wanted, where would you be?” which was: “Making love with my future wife life pair of crazed squirrels.”
She has been skydiving 5 times.
Despite living overseas for two years, skydiving 5 times, living all around the U.S. How does she get her most serious injury? From a fucking squirrel. She was biking near her house, when a squirrel jumped in front of her. She swerved to sharply, and flew over the handlebars, landing on her face. One of bicuspids chipped, and she suffered short term memory loss. Yet, she had the presence of mind to call her brother on her cell-phone. “Find my tooth!” Fortunately, it was at her feet.
Her brother persuaded her to go to the emergency room. “For six hours, new memories would disappear every two minutes.”
Where am I? How did I get here?
My brother learned to answer my questions in a way that would not freak me out. I'd always ask “Have I been conscious the whole time?” Initially, my brother would say “Yes.”, and I would get very upset. He learned to say “Yes, but you've been in a semi-conscious state. You're experiencing short term memory loss, which the doctor's say is normal, and from which you should recover. Periodically, the doctor whould ask me 'I'd like you to remember the color Blue and the number 7. I'm going to ask you to repeat those numbers to me in a few minutes — please try to remember them. At first, I had no memory of them. But eventually, I knew I was forgetting them, so I determined to make sure that I wouldn't forget by walking up and down the hall muttering “Blue!” “Seven!” to myself. Finally, the Doc asked me to repeat the words, and I blurted “Blue! Seven!”
We knocked on the door, and a woman came to the door and welcomed us in. A group of about 15 people were watching a video of stunt chutists navigating a mountain course.
“You're here for the 10:00 a.m. jump?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I have some bad news. We've got 30 mph winds, right now. Too strong to jump safely. According to the weather report, the winds won't let up until this evening. If you want to wait, you
After a bit of dithering, we decided to reschedule the skydive.
So, sadly, I'm still a parachute virgin.
However, she was still up for doing something else. Hiking? Going to a movie? Biking?
Whoa!
03-Apr-05
Terri Schiavo died.
Okay, I didn't think I would get a response to this one. Generally, if you don't hear back within a day or two, she's not interested. I wrote her on 03/20, and she just responded today.
Her ad:
I am a thin, attractive, 26 year old girl who is looking for a nerd.
About you:
In your life, you should have been really into one of the following:
-Magic: The Gathering
-Anime/Manga (Pokemon counts)
-Star Trek/Star Wars
-Buffy the Vampire Slayer
-Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
-Monty Python
-Dungeons and Dragons
-Comics
-The Simpsons
-LOTR (if you don't know what this stands for, this isn't for you)
-The X-Files
-All of the aboveYou should have strong, passionate opinions about the following:
-sub vs dub
-mac vs PC
-Linux vs DOS
-Enterprise vs Next Generation vs Old School Captain Kirk
-old vs new star wars (if you don't hate Jar Jar Binks, this may not be for you)
-All of the aboveYou should own a t-shirt with one of the following
-a physics/math/chemistry equation that only makes sense to 5% of people who see it, but it makes those 5% laugh
-something japanese
-an obscure internet joke (homestarrunner.com counts)
-something sci fi
-All of the aboveYou should have gone to a convention at some point in your life. That convention should have been for one of the following (dressing up optional)
-D&D
-Anime
-Comics
-Cartoons
-Science Fiction
-All of the AboveYou should identify w/ Dilbert.
You should have good friends from the internet you've never met, or met only once.
If you don't occasionally make references to the Simpsons or Monty Python or a video game from the 80s, this probably isn't for you.
You should know how to code.
You should have had and maintained a website at one point in your life. This does not have to have been your job. (bonus points if it was a fansite of one of the categories mentioned above)
You should be the guy your friends call when they're having computer problems.
You probably didn't get laid in high school.
about me:
Fraternity guys, military men, type-A executives, gym rats… they're ok. I've dated them. I don't like 'em. Give me a skinny, glasses-wearing, sensitive-emo guy who can beat video games anyday.Come, baby. Come and be the guy my “I love my nerd” baby-doll t-shirt is talking about.
(kindof wish I was kidding)
To which I responded:
My God, I think you've created the perfect personals ad. (At least if you want to attract nerds.)
I think that the following story will illustrate the height of nerdity I've achieved.
As you've probably noticed, most teenage boys, at some time or another, get in trouble for staying out too late–drinking beer, cruising main street, partying down.
Not me. I was home by 10:00 p.m. almost every night. I spent most nights reading–Piers Anthony, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, among many others—in my room.
Except for one week during my sophomore year. That year, my friends Troy, Josh and I entered a mousetrap car contest. The object? To build a model car powered by the common Victor mousetrap. The winner would be the car that traveled the farthest, the fastest.
So, for one solid week, I stayed over at my friend Josh's house, bending coathangers, winding fishing twine, soldering joints. Saturday night came, and as I made preparations to go over to my friend Josh's house once again, my Mom put her foot down.
“You've been out every night for the past week. It's time you stayed home and spent some time with your family.”
So I did. And worked on my mousetrap car in my room.
James Dean I was not.
So, to recap, the one time I got in trouble for staying out too late in high school, it was because I wanted to build a model car. Out of a mousetrap.
Are you ready for that level of nerdiness?
As for your other criteria, here's a sampling of responses:
* I visit HomeStarrunner religiously every Monday. Moreover, I own the games on which Peasant's Quest was based.
* I have over 500 friends on my Livejournal friends list. Most of them I've never met.
* I regularly watch the Simpsons, South Park, and The Family Guy via Bittorrent downloads.
* Mac's all the way, baby.
* Linux is okay too. DOS sucks.
* I've seen all of the original Star Trek series episodes several times, though I haven't kept up with the new series. In a cage match, Kirk would kick Picard's ass.
* I've attended the annual Society for Cryobiology convention, where every year a Japanese scientist gives an update on the state of some bull sperm he froze in the 1950's.
* I own a pre-production draft of the Engines of Creation by K. Eric Drexler. And if you know what book that is, I will be impressed.
Enough nerd cred for you? If not, you may wish to check out my Onion personals ad, which has a more (God, so much more!) about me, including pictures:
http://personals.theonion.com/profile.aspx?bookmark=nToxAPRJu4k%3d
Like what you see? If so, maybe we could get together for coffee. Feel free to send me an email, or give me a call.
She wrote today:
:D
you had me at “check out my “theonion personals ad”'
nice work. Between Theonion.com and the daily show, that is where I get about 100% of my news. I'm remarkably well informed, considering. AND can offer (stolen) witty commentary! :)
about me:
ok, the confession is that my ad was written after a lazy afternoon of reading 'Best of CraigsList' and saying to myself, “you know… if i wrote what >I< am honestly looking for... I bet I'd get on the best of..." :)
so far, no Best Of, but about a million replies! If nothing else, I'm glad I could make someone chuckle or at least give a little hope that there's a girl out there who is totally turned on by a guy who knows all the lines to the Simpson's “Monorail” song. :)
your reply cracked me up, by the way. thanks for writing! And if nothing else, have a little feel good moment, that you got a response from me. I'm bad at that. I'm not trying to be jerky, it's just that I've got a job that takes up all of my time, and those few other hours are for sleepin!anyway, just wanted to say hello and I enjoyed your reply — my favorite was your description of high school, and “James Dean I was not.” :)
write back if you want to know more, or tell me more about yourself! I'm pretty new to the triangle area, and always lookin to meet people who aren't coworkers – AND who know the Trogdar song. :)
seeya~!
p.s. my favorite sbe is “a different kind of cool”. yours?
And if nothing else, have a little feel good moment, that you got a response from me.
I am pleased that I got a response, but “Ugh, who does she think she is?” I guess a million responses from a bunch of nerds can go to your head. I'll still write her back though. A name search suggests she's a resident, which explains the delay.
Never ask a six foot tall woman if she played basketball in high school. “Everybody asks me that! Not a week goes by that I don't get asked 'Did you play basketball?', 'Did you play volleyball?', 'Are you a model?' I'm so tired of it.” That's what I learned on my date with KT. KT's 22 years old, 6 ft. tall (as you might have guessed), with shoulder length brown hair. She's not model thin, but is nicely proportioned.
We had dinner at “Taste of Thai” on Falls of Neuse in Raleigh. She grew up in Knightdale, has some college, works as a legal secretary. She's a huge “Alias” fan. “I even got arguments with people on the Alias fan sites. But then I realized that I was spending way too much time arguing with people about fictional characters.”
She likes South Park, which is a big plus. She voted for Kerry in the last election because she wanted “anyone but Bush”. She doesn't agree with the War in Iraq, and thinks Bush's policies are bad for the environment. But she detests Nader who she thinks “cost Kerry the election”.
Her Mom's baptist and her Dad's Catholic, but she stopped going to church when she was in her teens. She's currently “doing her own investigations.”
We had a pleasant evening, but I didn't feel a great deal of chemistry between us. When the check came, she let me pay without comment. It was the first time in a long time that I had been on a date with a woman who didn't insist on going Dutch. As I walked her out to her car, she did say that she had a good time, and that we should get together for lunch sometime. However, before we could give each other a goodbye hug another car pulled up, waiting to take her parking space. So she rushed to get in her car so the new car could get her space. I waved goodbye, and started walking back to my car. The guy in the waiting car realized what had happened, and said “Sorry, dude.” as I walked by, but I just smiled and said “S'okay.”
Now it's time to watch “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle”
P.S. The food at “Taste of Thai” was delicious, and not too pricey. Recommended.