I’m downloading Star Wars: The Old Republic as I write this. I’m not even sure how accessible the game is, so this may be a mistake. But it’s Star Wars, so I’m helpless to resist its Force grip. At worst, I’ll be out $60. At best, the next couple weeks will disappear down a black hole of gaming goodness. Now, do I first roll a Smuggler or Sith Inquisitor?
I’ll post a few thoughts on the game in the next couple days.
Health care advocates are frustrated with the Obama administration’s decision to let states define the essential health benefits that will be offered through the exchanges. The politics of this move are plain enough: the Affordable Care Act remains relatively unpopular and the administration doesn’t want to expose itself to charges that it’s “taking over” the health care system as an election year approaches. But it also undermines one of the ACA’s core goals: providing a uniform set of health benefits to all uninsured Americans. Instead, we’ll likely see the same disparities that currently exist across state Medicaid programs. Some states will require insurers to offer comprehensive benefits while others will be content with bare-bones packages that fail to address the needs of people with more significant health care needs.
This is bad policy and I’m deeply disappointed in Obama for choosing this path. It will only complicate matters for those of us working to implement the next law.
I’m working on my holiday wish list, so I’m keeping today’s entry short. I’ll be back next week with updates on my winter vacation adventures.
One of the benefits of working for the state for nearly a decade is that I’ve accumulated quite a bit of vacation time; enough to afford me a two-week holiday that begins now. I’m still trying to figure out what I’ll do with myself, but I have a few ideas:
The fact that nerds are taking over the world is already well-documented. But in case you need more evidence, the Times reports that television and movie studios are willing to pay a pretty penny to linguistics geeks who can develop fully-realized fictional languages like Dothraki for Game of Thrones. Of course, we true geeks know that The Klingon Dictionary blazed the trail for this sort of thing, but Hollywood now seems to be taking the whole world-building process rather seriously, creating lucrative opportunities for talented geeks who wrote their doctoral dissertations in Esperanto.
More and more, I’m second-guessing my decision to go to law school.
Here’s a great article about how the fashion and pop culture of today is almost indistinguishable from the fashion and pop culture of twenty years ago. I’m not sure I completely agree. Television shows have become more densely plotted and thematically complex than anything that was on in 1991. But in other regards, the author makes a good point. The best way to date a movie/TV show from the past 20 years is to study the technology the characters are using, not their clothing or hairstyles. We don’t seem to have a distinctive trend that peaked and then disappeared, like bell bottoms or finned cars. Have we simply hit the aesthetic pause button? Or is our culture going to stagnate until our alien overlords arrive?
Xeni Jardin, one of the editors of the vital BoingBoing blog, was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Her moving account of receiving her diagnosis can be found here. Several years ago, Xeni and her colleague Susannah Breslin took an interest in my blog and linked to it from BoingBoing. If not for Xeni, the 19th Floor might never have enjoyed such a long run. My thoughts are with her and I hope you’ll send a little good karma her way.
The unemployment rate for people with disabilities has remained persistently high for years and the weak economy makes it even more difficult for people with disabilities to lift themselves out of poverty. The federal government hopes to improve matters by issuing a proposed rule that would require federal contractors to establish goals to hire people with disabilities. No specific hiring quotas are imposed, which means any goals are aspirational. As might be expected, conservatives are complaining that is yet another regulatory burden for the private sector. But federal contractors are already required to establish hiring goals regarding race and gender. Incorporating disability into those goals shouldn’t be terribly burdensome.
Whether this policy will actually improve employment opportunities for people with disabilities is difficult to determine. Contractors may excuse themselves for meeting hiring goals by stating that they can’t find enough qualified applicants. Future budget austerity measures may also reduce the number of positions that contractors can fill. Still, it’s good to see that the Obama administration is giving more than lip service to the notion of hiring people with disabilities.
Director Ridley Scott comments on the state of streaming movies and how streaming is still no substitute for physical media (and Blu-ray in particular). While I certainly enjoy the convenience of streaming, I can’t disagree with Scott’s argument. Nearly every film I’ve streamed on Netflix has suffered from pixelization and blurry camera sweeps. It’s great for old television shows, but I still prefer to watch movies in Blu-ray format. I’ve even begun purchasing more Blu-rays recently because I think the format will be a standard for at least another decade before streaming can begin to compete.
As an aside, I highly recommend The Lord of the Rings Blu-ray set. It looks and sounds spectacular.
Are Republicans seriously considering nominating Newt Gingrich as their presidential candidate? The latest polls seem to indicate just that. The conservative GOP base, in such a froth over Romney’s Mormonism and moderate tendencies, seems oddly eager to throw away the election by throwing its support behind an egomaniac with a history of ethics investigations and who has spent the last decade lobbying on behalf of various corporate interests. Obama is certainly vulnerable next year, but Gingrich is not the candidate to exploit those vulnerabilities. The man’s towering narcissism and raging dickishness will undo his candidacy by next summer, but by then it could be too late for Republicans. If nothing else, a Gingrich candidacy could be the bitter medicine that will force Republicans to rediscover reality and start acting like grownups once again.