27. July 2009 by admin.

Recently, the city has had its contractors running around painting the streets green in my neighborhood to designate bicycle paths:

But my neighborhood is just an instance of a larger pattern.  New bike paths are being set up all over the city.  In some streets in Manhattan, pavement markings call for cars to park in what seems to be the middle of the street, so that the curb lane can be given over to cyclists.

On the one hand, I’m a bicyclist, and I appreciate anything the city can do to make my trip easier and safer.  But given that the city supposedly has a budget crisis, there are other things that I’m sure would be a better use of scarce funds.

Maybe it’s stimulus money: our tax dollars at work.  At least it’s work and jobs for people.

Still, I’m suspicious of this flurry of activity.  Are there plans for gasoline to go up to $50/gallon next year so we’ll all have to ride bicycles?

Posted in Bicycling, New York City | No Comments »

23. July 2009 by admin.

I could give chapter and verse on how rotten I believe health care is in this country.  I had the devil’s own time getting health insurance when I went into business for myself, and the premiums went up about 20% when the policy renewed this spring.  Hospitals are most unpleasant places; most of them seem to run on the ragged edge of malpractice.

And the price of all this rottenness?  Governments (Federal, State, and local) in the US collectively spend more per capita than in countries with ’socialized medicine.’  Private payers spend again as much: in total, we spend more than twice as much per capita on health care than in other industrialized countries.

And the cost goes up and up, faster than the general rate of inflation.  My insurance company isn’t raising my premium by 20% to tick me off: they do it because their costs went up similarly.

This is the ‘unsustainable’ condition that President Obama is warning us about in his efforts for ‘health care reform.’  Unchecked, the costs will upend government budgets, and indeed the private economy as well.

Last night, Our Fearless Leader addressed the nation to address the issue.  He sounded all the right notes, but one thing troubles me:

The President noted that we pay more for health care than in other countries, and that lowering health care costs is a key goal.  He then asserted that two-thirds of the cost of health care reform is what is currently being paid in the existing system, and that one-third will have to come from cost savings or taxes or some other new funding.

So he’s contemplating a 50% increase in expenditures.

How, exactly, is this a savings?

Unfortunately, a real solution to this problem necessarily involves limiting the actual cost of health care, and nothing in the current plans seems to do more than nibble around the edges.

The problem is that the current system is an immense self-licking ice cream cone, and there are are politicial constituencies that earn their living from it.  Until an effort is made to actually contain costs, and not just find newer and cleverer ways to fund them, we’re still stuck.

Posted in Health Care, Dysfunctional Government, Barack Obama | No Comments »

20. July 2009 by admin.

Yesterday I finally got around to seeing the new version of The Taking of Pelham 123, the story of a New York City subway hijacking.  The original 1974 version, with Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau, was one of the touchstones of my adolescence, and the first R-rated movie that my parents took me to see.

The reviews of the new version were all similar: it’s a good movie, but don’t compare it with the original.  Alas, such a comparison is inevitable: the new version sucks.

When the original was made, the Transit Authority was afraid that someone might actually try to hijack a train.  While much of the movie was actually filmed on the subway, a disclaimer at the end indicated that the TA did not render any technical assistance. Nevertheless, the movie presented an authentic view of the subway and its operation.

The current version was made with the full cooperation of the TA, and they seemed to go our of their way to get the details wrong.  If you ride the real subway regularly, the version in the current Pelham will seem ass-backwards.

Some of the biggest howlers come from the abject rearrangement of the city to fit the script.  There is no Federal Reserve Bank in Brooklyn, and the police car delivering the money appears a half-block from its destination (Grand Central Terminal) before getting wrecked on First Avenue.  And a train can’t go from the Lex line to Coney Island without backtracking.

While John Travolta and Denzel Washington put in good performances, they’re done in by the script.  Travolta is Ryder, a former Wall Streeter who was thrown in prison for embezzlement and now sports a tough-guy tattoo.  He is violent, but strangely philosophical when he talks on the radio.  The real Ryder (like the one in the 1974 movie) would have known to state his demands and shut up.  (But then, of course, there wouldn’t be a movie.)

Denzel Washington is Garber, a manager demoted to the Control Center because of an alleged bribe.  At least the scriptwriters tried to make him a realistic Control Center operator: he talks the talk and looks plausible through the made-up procedures.  But we lose him, too, when he turns into an action hero.

In brief, the charm of the original Pelham is that it feels real.  The new version does not.  The original turns on crisp dialogue, much of which has been replaced with psychobabble.  Perhaps if I had watched it in another frame of mind, I could have laughed at all their stupid mistakes. But as it was, I just found it annoying.

Nevertheless, I’ll probably get the DVD when it comes out, and keep it as a benchmark of how far we’ve gone down since 1974.

Posted in New York City, Movies | No Comments »

9. July 2009 by admin.

I’m on vacation this week in the Berkshires, staying in a comfy bed-and-breakfast in western Massachusetts.

One of my colleagues asked me, “Why go there?”  It’s an escape from the heat of the city (although it’s been a cool summer so far); the people are friendly; and there are places and things to do that interest me and my wife.

So this past weekend, I rented a car for the trip.  I told the guy where I was going, and he asked me if I’d like to rent a GPS box for the trip.

Thirty years ago, if you had asked me what sort of gizmo I’d like to have in my car, I would have salivated at the thought of a device that established my location and displayed it on a map.

Alas, now that one can buy a GPS box for $200-$300, I don’t want one.  I still think the idea is cool, and I will watch the GPS display if I’m riding in someone else’s car.

I always thought that a basic element of driving is knowing where you are, and where you want to go.  I don’t like it when someone tells me to follow them; I want to know the way myself.

So when I travel by car to a place I’m not familiar with, part of the exercise is to get out the maps and understand the route.   And it works: I’ve never gotten lost.

OK, in fairness, I can’t quite say that: I’ve sometimes lost track of where I was exactly, but I knew I was heading in the right direction, and eventually came to a spot that I did recognize where I could continue onward.  I’ve never had to backtrack in such cases.

And last night, I did, indeed, go around in circles, but that was because the place I was visiting advertised itself as being located on one road, but was actually on an adjacent road.

But neither of those cases really counts as ‘lost.’  Navigation is part of the joy of driving, and I don’t want to give that up, least of all to a made-in-China, value-engineered, plastic turd.

Except that I’m sure that most people who buy GPS boxes do it for exactly that reason: to save themselves the trouble of thought.

Posted in Travel, Life Goes On | No Comments »