10 thoughts for December 26, 2013

1. Been busy.  Many things have happened over the past week, but I just haven't had the time to dedicate towards even writing down some thoughts about them.
2. Went to IKEA to grab a white Spontan magnetic board.  They were out.  I just called to find out more information, and it turns out the white color has been flagged to be discontinued.  I don't know if this means that new colors will be coming in???  I don't like the silver, though -- too masculine and industrial for what I'm chasing after.
3. Seahawks lost to the Cardinals.  The circle is oddly complete: The coach -- Pete Carroll -- whose hiring sparked a remarkable resurgence in the student's -- Carson Palmer --career as quarterback at USC, turning him into a Heisman winner, has lost to the student.  I had a feeling this might happen, as the Cardinals have undergone a massive turnaround from last year's failure.
4. The media and pundits are too focused on December ACA numbers.  The fact of the matter is, December isn't even the real deadline.  It is the deadline if you want coverage starting January 1st, but the law doesn't require you to have coverage starting January 1st.  I have to wonder just how much the media understands about the ACA.
5. A 13 year-old girl suffered from surgery complications that led to doctors declaring her brain-dead.  I used to believe that these tests to show brain activity were correct and that holding on to brain-dead patients was a misguided hope.  But in recent years, some patients have recovered from a brain-dead confirmation, which spooked the hell out of me.  Can you imagine, you're on a ventilator as your organs are about to be removed?  It's actually happened before.  
6. By odd coincidence, I told my friend -- who works at Kaiser -- that rather than using Oracle, Oregon's health insurance exchange should have used a healthcare company -- I suggested Kaiser -- that is knee-deep in this sort of complex back-end systems.  She replied that, in fact someone just left Kaiser to go work for the state to fix Cover Oregon.  I have many other thoughts about why several exchanges were unprepared, but that's a longish post.
7. The "Pay it Forward" meme is detached from its meaning.  These days, it refers to a long chain of people paying for the person after them, until someone breaks the chain -- the person who presumably couldn't afford to pay for it, but nonetheless was in line.  What its supposed to mean, is that you pay for someone else who can't afford to pay.  For instance: If there was a bucket -- we'll call it a Salvation Army kettle -- that collected money that was then disbursed to the needy, by putting money in the bucket you're paying it forward.
8. I've read and heard a lot of complaints that A&E got the Duck Dynasty issue all wrong; that conservatives are being punished for expressing free speech.  Funny thing is, in the run up to the Iraq War, the Dixie Chicks were severely punished by conservatives for being anti-war.  So it seems, conservatives enjoy cherry-picking their information to build their false narrative.  But for the record, conservatives complaining about free speech have twisted the meaning of free speech in the first place.  Speech is protected from government censorship, only.  Political correctness is the act of the majority to exercise conformity to social norms.
9. As I mentioned previously, once Pinterest started dropping pins in from strangers, I began losing pinning interest.  These days, I don't pin nearly as much as I once used to.  
10. Induction cooking is a very fast and safe method of cooking, plus, it's clean since it has no exposed parts -- just a glass surface.  But it's usually very expensive.  So this IKEA induction cooktop sure looks like a great deal.  Anyone have it installed?