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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Saturday, April 05, 2008
Getting the Hang of Machining 6061 Aluminum What may have aggravated the problems was that mill vise was mounted to a tilting table (which lets you put the workpiece at any angle from 0 to 90 degrees). The tilting table wasn't quite as stationary as it should have been--I noticed that one of the holddowns was either breaking or broken. Even a little bit of motion of the tilting table, in conjunction with the leverage problem I previously mentioned of trying to machine a piece much taller than the vise jaws, would cause shaking. This would then allow the workpiece to vibrate up, and grab the cutting tools. One of the suggestions was to build a "vise stop"--and here's an example of how to make and use such a device specifically for the Sherline mill vise, just like the one that I have. The primary purpose of a vise stop is to make it easy to put multiple workpieces at the exact same position relative to the cutting tool each time. Thus, you figure out where zero is on the first article, and you don't have to rezero your mill when you put the next workpiece in the vise. The suggestion for using the vise stop was that it would prevent motion in the X-axis, while the vise prevents motion in the Z-axis. I can see using one on each end of the mill vise to prevent motion in either direction. I still think some taller vise jaws might help. Anyway, I clamped down the tilting table a little more rigidly, and now I can mill the way that it is supposed to be done. There are still limits--don't try to take off more than .020" in conventional milling, and perhaps .005" in climb milling, but I only had a couple of stoppages while making some really, really beautiful cuts. It's unfortunate that the early cuts were made with less knowledge, so I have a pretty clunky and ugly piece with a few finely machined sections. Oh well: remember IBM's motto about mainframe operating systems: build two; the first one to throw away. Labels: machining The Melting Pot It's a fondue restaurant at 200 N. 6th Street in Boise. We went there for a reunion with a number of my wife's former students. This has always been one of those places that we think about, but never get around to going to--and I admit, it's reputation for being pricey was part of the reason we just never got around to it. Of course, I've never had fondue before, so it was worth going just for reasons of curiosity. And yes, it's pricey. The only more expensive meal that I have ever eaten was at John Ash & Co. in Sonoma County, which has an ambience and reputation that it richly deserves--and even makes a cheapskate like yours truly say, "Okay, not a place to eat very often, but almost worth the outrageous price." My wife and I escaped for slightly over $100. We ordered the combo that included a pretty awesome salad, fondue, a selection of entrees that you cook at the table in boiling oil, and a collection of sweet things that you dip in molten chocolate sauces. The waitress suggested that since we expected ten people, we should order what is effectively four of the couple combos. One person didn't show, so there was only nine of us, but I would say that ordering three of the couple combos would have been more than sufficient--and maybe even two. There is actually quite a bit of food involved. This would have brought the price down to a reasonable level, that's for sure. Fondue, for those not familiar with it, is a Swiss dish where various cheeses are melted with wine, beer, various spices, etc. at the table, and then you dip pieces of bread, fruits, vegetables, small unattended pets, etc. into it. I was expecting something a bit more flavorful and exotic; perhaps my taste buds aren't sufficiently sophisticated to get terribly excited by this. I ordered the California salad, which was the only part of the people that I can say really got me excited--and you understand, I'm not exactly a salad person. But it was a combination of romaine and iceberg lettuce, Gorgonzola cheese, walnuts, and raspberry dressing that was pretty impressive. The entree selection we ordered included a wide variety of bite-sized items, ready for cooking in the various oils. One of them was essentially a coq au vin sauce, the other was a Caribbean inspired combination of spices and flavors. There were chunks of steak, pork, chicken, Jamaican jerk pork, lobster, and shrimp, potatoes, celery, and a few other odds and ends. You use your fondue forks (color coded, so that you can figure out which of the items in the pot belongs to you, and which belongs to your fellow dinner guests) to drop these items into the pot in the middle of the table--and in about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes, your item is done. The concept is really cool. I can't say that any of the results were terribly impressive. Of course, when it comes to fine dining, I'm something of a Philistine. Perhaps others with more refined palates will rave about the results. The waitress was friendly and helpful in a genuinely nice way rather than, "I will be your server tonight. My name is Chad, and I'm going to pretend to be your friend because this is a fancy restaurant, and if I ingratiate myself enough to you, you'll leave me a big tip." One of the owners wandered over to sit down and say hello--but didn't overstay her "get acquainted and find out what this big group is doing here" visit. I noticed that much of the clientele seemed to be couples that were dressed like this was a first or second date. I suspect that if you need a place to impress a first date by showing her that money is no object, and that you are sophisticated enough to go some place really different, this might be a good choice. I would suggest if you feel like doing the fondue thing, take another couple, order enough for one couple (with a couple of spare salads). I suspect that you will walk away with your appetite satisfied, your taste buds educated--and your wallet only lightened a bit more than going out to Carino's or Da Vinci's. Labels: restaurant reviews Boise: Terrorism Target? I think I saw this mentioned a while back, but found it so incredible that I didn't pursue it any farther. From April 5, 2008 MSNBC: Quick: Name the Western U.S. city most vulnerable to a terrorist attack. Is it Los Angeles, with its crowded roads that make quick escape impossible? San Francisco and its iconic bridge? Or Seattle with its Space Needle and busy port?There was a lot of liberal ridicule of Governor Kempthorne for putting up concrete truck barriers around the statehouse after 9/11. Maybe he wasn't so far off, after all. Labels: Idaho politics, terrorism Bulletproof Hoodies As a fashion statement, hoodies have never really done it for me. Crimes, Guns, and Videotape pointed to me this article about bulletproof hoodies. When I saw that someone was starting to market bulletproof hoodies, I was underwhelmed. Ah, you are thinking, all your liberal friends can start clucking about evil America is, failing to get guns under control--and look where it leads! Except that the company marketing bulletproof hoodies isn't in America. From the April 4, 2008 London Times:
This is a tragedy--that Britain--which completely banned handguns in 1997--has reached a point where parents are buying these for their kids. There is one point where I will agree with Stevenson: they will give a false impression of protection. A bulletproof vest will generally stop a handgun bullet, but it doesn't cover every part of the body. A criminal who shoots someone, and doesn't see consequences, will aim at an uncovered part of the body. Police officers wear bulletproof vests mostly to give them time to draw their weapon and return fire. On someone who can't draw a handgun--after all, they are illegal to possess in Britain--the benefits seem somewhat dubious. UPDATE: A reader suggests that this might be useful if you are worried about being an innocent bystander. Yes, this might be a good reason to wear one if not able to return fire. Labels: gun self-defense A Terrifying Increase in Unemployment The April 5, 2008 Idaho Statesman reports this terrifying news: the largest one-month increase since March 1982, when the nation was in the midst of a 19-month recession.But don't panic: here's the beginning of the sentence: Idaho's jobless rate jumped two-tenths of a percentage point to 3 percent in March,Do you remember the 1970s when pundits were explaining that the changing economy meant that there was no realistic chance that we would ever get unemployment down to 5-6%? It had been doctrine among economists for many decades that a 4% unemployment rate was nearly optimal for a modern economy, since most of that unemployment is what is called "frictional"--people who have lost one job (perhaps even by quitting) but have not yet found a new job. If unemployment rates went too low, the theory went, it would start to drive up inflation, as employers had to increase wages to attract workers away from existing jobs. If you are part of this population that loses a job, yes, this increase in unemployment rates is a bad situation. But a 3% unemployment rate really means that some workers may need a few weeks to find a new job. This is not a crisis, no matter how much the news media would like it to appear to be one. Labels: economics, Idaho politics Friday, April 04, 2008
Just Repeat After Me: "More Power" And say it like Tim Taylor in Home Improvement. I just couldn't get the Sherline to machine 6061 aluminum. Even spraying cutting oil as I was working just wasn't doing the job. Fortunately, most of the semiprecise work was done. The only real issue left was taking .025" off the thickness of this piece of aluminum, so that it would fit in between the "ears" of the mount base. I discovered that I could sand it thinner with a belt sander--although it wasn't blindingly fast. Still, I wanted a faster solution. As an experiment, I chucked up the end mill in the drill press, set the speed to 200 rpm, and dropped the workpiece into the drill press vise. Perhaps because the drill press vise was able to hold it down more tightly, when the end mill hit a patch that might have caused the Sherline to stop, or to jerk the workpiece out of the vise, it just kept going. The X and Y controls on the drill press vise aren't as precise as the Sherline vertical mill, and there simply isn't the flatness with the drill press table, but I was about to rough cut (and let me emphasize rough) enough material that it is now thin enough to slide into position. I also ran the rough surface over the belt sander a bit. It still looks bad, but not quite so bad. I do think a better mill vise would help a lot. At least one reader suggested that since the mill vise is holding the workpiece in one direction (in this case, the Z-axis), I should use a clamp to hold the workpiece in the X-axis as well. This seems like a good idea--although I didn't have a clamp small enough to do this without interfering with other parts of the mechanism. Another reader suggested that because of the relatively light frame of the Sherline tool, the vibration from the milling (especially when doing "climb" milling) might be jostling everything loose. There's some merit to that claim as well, I suspect. It does seem as though the Sherline vertical mill, as cute as it is, may simply not be up to tasks like this. I'm sure that there's a vertical mill that is 50% larger and more powerful than the Sherline--still something that you can mount on a bench--but I fear that it isn't just 50% more expensive! Oh yes: I mentioned that I had ordered a .600" reamer and a .59375" drill bit. I wasn't reading the list at McMaster-Carr carefully enough. The drill bit arrived as expected; it was actually a .060" reamer--a bit small for this application! One of my readers suggested a technique that was very clever, and actually worked well. Put the .59375" drill in the chuck slightly offset by a shim. The drill will now turn around a slightly different center, making a larger hole. The shim that I used was several layers of sandpaper. This enabled me to enlarge the hole to .598"--almost big enough. But I couldn't find a shim that was just a little thicker, without being way too big. So I was reduced to a technique that sounds more dangerous than it is (I think). I set the drill press to 200 rpm, and pulling the workpiece slightly to one side, rotating the workpiece in a circle. Remember that nearly all the cutting power of the drill is near the bottom, so you are getting nearly all the benefit there. It did enlarge the hole, and kept it quite round, to .602". A little polishing with sandpaper and I now a press fit for the cross piece. UPDATE: Over in newsgroup rec.crafts.metalworking, I poured out my woes, and received several very useful responses--one of which was that if the workpiece was substantially taller than the jaws of the mill vise, this wasn't going to work because leverage would be against me. This seems to be part of the problem--maybe most of it. I put in a piece of 6061 scrap that I cut off the workpiece with a bandsaw, one small enough that it was just barely above the jaws--and I was able to run an end mill across the surface just fine. At .010" slices, it worked just great--not a single snag, stoppage, or loosening. I tried one pass at .015" and while it didn't stop, I could see that this was the upper limit of what I could do. When I turned that scrap on end, so that there was about 3" sticking above the jaws, the old problems started to appear. I think this means that if you have a workpiece that is fairly big, you should get yourself a mill vise with very tall jaws. Does someone make a mill vise for micromills with varying height jaws? Obviously, you should turn a workpiece the direction required to get maximum grip from the jaws, and mill vertically rather than horizontally--but sometimes that's just not possible. Labels: machining KIDO 580 AM Will Be Interviewing Me Saturday Morning At 7:00 AM Mountain Time. Why, I believe some of you in other states may even be able to hear this! Labels: Idaho politics Thursday, April 03, 2008
Milling 6061 Aluminum Even using a two-flute end mill isn't working real well. The fly cutter isn't doing any better. I see from articles like this that aluminum is really hard to mill (thanks, I know that now) and that either cooling fluids or air flow are necessary both to cool the part and the end mill, and to keep chips from clogging the mechanism. I don't think the problem is the mill vise; I think the problem is that the end mill is failing to clear the the metal quickly enough. Because the chips are hot, they aren't flying away; instead, they are perhaps hot enough to "stick" to the workpiece. I could have a stream of water pouring over the workpiece, but that sounds messy. I'll trying using the shopvac to keep a flow of air through the area, and see if that helps. Labels: machining Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Mill Vise Problems I have never been able to get the mill vise on my Sherline vertical mill to hold pieces of aluminum tight enough to actually do any milling. It doesn't matter how tightly I clamp a piece of aluminum (and often, this is true for Delrin and other hard plastics)--one I start milling anything, it either pulls it right out, or loosens it enough that it is no longer in the same position it was before. I'm using a four flute end mill. Is this perhaps the problem? Even taking off a .010" layer is sometimes as much as I can do. The only way to get around this to hold the workpiece in place with my hand--which is definitely not a recommended procedure! I'm wondering if a different mill vise might be a better choice--or perhaps there is something wrong with my technique. Aluminum is pretty gooey stuff, and climb milling is even less happy than conventional milling. UPDATE: Yes, two flute end mills are the preferred method of cutting aluminum. I'm still not happy with how this vise works, but it's better with the right endmill. Labels: machining Advantages Of Running For Public Office A stack of lobbyists want to take me out to lunch next week. I'm sure that their motivations are entirely and exclusively for the public interest, of course. Labels: Idaho politics It Is Barely Possible... That these statements by this teacher were taken out of context. Fox News played some recordings this morning, and I confess that as much as I tried to imagine framing statements that would make these appropriate for a classroom (except, perhaps, in the Soviet Union), I just couldn't quite figure out how. From the March 11, 2008 Christian Post: Dan Spradlin, attorney for Advanced Placement European history teacher James Corbett, had asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the teacher's former student. After Monday's ruling, however, the lawsuit will go to trial.This article in the March 11, 2008 Orange County Register has some more inflammatory statements: Court papers cite statements tape-recorded by Farnan such as "Conservatives don't want women to avoid pregnancies – that's interfering with God's work" and "When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can't see the truth." The Christian legal group that filed the lawsuit, Murrieta-based Advocates for Faith and Freedom, released additional quotes Monday attributed to Corbett, including "When you pray for divine intervention, you're hoping that the spaghetti monster will help you get what you want."The tape recording that Fox News played this morning included the statement that the goal of Christians was to have women barefoot and pregnant until their bodies give out. Again, perhaps there's some framing context that might make this acceptable in a classroom--but I don't find it implausible that this suit accurately reflects the situation, since this does reflect the left's dominant prejudices against Christianity (see this example from a defender of Idaho public education): Same group that wants to keep women barefoot, pregnant and abused. Perhaps their hidden agenda is to eliminate public schools. Tuesday, April 01, 2008
When You Can't Tell An April Fool's Joke From News You know that the reporter is covering Los Angeles politics. From the April 1, 2008 Los Angeles Times: Council members had been asked by a handful of activists to declare a 40-hour ban on murder and other forms of violence, a concept one critic quickly derided as "silliness."Gee, isn't making murder a felony enough of a symbolic statement? The fact that this got anything from the Council but, "Mr. Hutchinson, we're engaged in serious business here. Ask your Mommie to take you home, give you some cookies and milk, and put you to bed" really shows how absurd the politics of Los Angeles have become. If the prospect of lethal injection (for certain first degree murders), life in prison (for most other first degree murders), or seven years in prison (the manslaughter penalty under California law) isn't enough to make you not commit murder, why would anyone think that a resolution against murder "for forty hours" would do any good at all? A Disturbing New Form of Extortion I'm used to receiving letters promising me millions of dollars from the Swiss bank account of former African political leaders, etc. written in sometimes hilariously bad English--especially by people pretending to be American soldiers in Iraq. Here's one of many such examples I received today: Dear Frend,But this is the first letter that I have received that went directly to the kind of threats that anyone foolish enough to engage those (usually) Nigerian-based scamsters usually experiences: HELLO Oh yeah--he knows enough about me that it is addressed to XXXXXXXX. Solving Idaho's Uninsured Problem I've added this to the campaign web site--I thought the rest of you might find this interesting. It's an expansion of what I wrote here a few days ago. What Is The Nature Of The Problem? How big is the problem of uninsured Idahoans? A website sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which wants everyone covered, claims that the 2006 Current Population Survey data indicates that 14.7% of Idahoans are uninsured. That's actually better than the national average (although not by much). Here's a report put together by Mathematica Policy Research for the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee last year. It estimates that 16-18% of the "non-elderly population" of Idaho was uninsured as of 2005. (People over 65 are covered by Medicare; hence the discrepancy with the 14.7% figure.) Characteristics of the uninsured are unsurprising: the 18-24 and 25-34 populations seem to be especially prone to being uninsured, while only 10% of the 0-17 population are uninsured. This is probably, at least in part, because large numbers of Idahoans graduate either high school (and don't go on to college) or graduate college, and lose eligibility under their parents health insurance plan. While no report gives a breakdown of illegal immigrants versus legal residents, the combination of low pay and lack of knowledge of our system means that illegal immigrants in California are disproportionately uninsured. I would be surprised if that is not the case in Idaho as well. Fixing the illegal immigrant problem would certainly make some progress on fixing this problem, too, both by encouraging illegal immigrants to leave Idaho, and because doing so would drive up the wages of legal workers who compete with illegal immigrants for low-paying jobs. We should not overemphasize the part that illegal immigrants play in this problem. Federation for American Immigration Reform (an advocacy group) estimated in 2007 that there were about 35,000 illegal aliens in Idaho. Even if none of them were insured (which seems unlikely), this would be, at most, about one-seventh of Idaho's uninsured population. I'm not thrilled that 10% of the 0-17 population are uninsured, but that also means that 90% of children are insured, either privately, or through governmental insurance programs such as Medicaid or SCHIP. Why are there Idahoans who are uninsured? I was uninsured for a few months, back when I was 19 years old, mostly because I wasn't thinking about it. I worked for an employment agency with no benefits. Ijust never thought about the need for health insurance--I was in good health, and seldom saw the doctor. After a few months, I did start to think about it, and I went out and bought individual health insurance that covered just hospitalization. I figured that I would pay everything else out of pocket. It made the cost of coverage a lot more reasonable. I'm guessing that many of Idaho's uninsured are in that situation because of poverty. The statistics in that Mathematica Policy Research study shows that 45,000 adults with incomes below $15,000 per year were uninsured--or 49% of that income group. I would expect that most of these couldn't afford health insurance, and were too well off to qualify for Medicaid. Ditto for the roughly 70,000 uninsured adults with incomes in the $15,000 to $25,000 per year When I looked into this last year (when I was considering retiring), I found that a basic individual health insurance policy will cost about $300 to $400 a month for an adult, with deductibles in the $2500 per year range. You should consider such a plan to be coverage for serious things that go wrong--and you will be paying for your prescriptions and office visits. I'm told that if you can tolerate a $9000 per year deductible, you can get coverage for $99 per month (at least in some parts of Idaho). Still, while much of the under $25,000 per year group may not be able to afford health insurance, there are still uninsured adults making more than $50,000 a year. Not as many, or as high a percentage--but whatever is causing 4% of people in this income bracket to be uninsured, poverty isn't likely the reason. That's a net income of at least $3000 per month. You can afford to buy health insurance with that kind of income--and if you can't, that's a foolishness problem, not a poverty problem. Much of the uninsured problem seems to be with unemployed people, those living in rural areas, and working for small employers. Of employers with less than 10 employees, only a bit more than 30% offer health insurance to their employees. Part-time employees, also unsurprisingly, are disproportionately uninsured. Most group health insurance plans are only available to full-time employees (either 30 or 32 hours per week, depending on the plan). SolutionsWhat can Idaho government do? I'm still scratching my head about this, but I can see several possible solutions:
Labels: health care, Idaho politics Monday, March 31, 2008
And They Had Such Clever Television Ads! I try not to be as angry and cynical as my daughter's rant about pharmaceutical companies (caution: not work safe, especially if you work for Big Pharma). I don't regard Big Pharma as evil. America's pharmaceutical companies have been busily developing a lot of new and often quite effective drugs. Because of severe price controls in much of the rest of the world, American consumers have been paying for this development--creating a lot of really astonishing drugs, and subsidizing the rest of the world. Some day, I hope, the rest of the world will thank us for this. That's why I get very upset when I see this report: CHICAGO (AP) -- Full results of a failed trial on Vytorin, a medicine taken by millions of Americans to lower cholesterol, left doctors stunned that the drug did not improve heart disease even though it worked as intended to lower three key risk factors.Gee, could it have something to do with the really, really clever ads that they have been running for Vytorin, selling a drug that apparently doesn't work [UPDATE: doesn't work any better than statins alone]? They were very clever ads--about how cholesterol can come from the food that you eat, and from genetics--and they would have "your Aunt Madge" dressed in a way that parallels some cholesterol-rich food. "A lot of us thought that there would be some glimmer of benefit," said Dr. Roger Blumenthal, a Johns Hopkins University cardiologist and spokesman for the American Heart Association.This really bothers me. Was there some financial incentive behind this? UPDATE: A reader reports: I think there was money somewhere. Labels: health care What is "Priority Doctrine"? One of the humbling aspects about running for public office is you discover how many aspects of public policy about which you know nothing. I received a questionnaire from the Idaho Farm Bureau today, and one of the questions that they asked was my opinion about "priority doctrine." What the heck is that? It turns out that Idaho, unsurprisingly, has long had a policy that the first user of a water source has priority over later arrivals when it comes to arguing who gets how much. It appears that the Idaho Department of Water Resources had other plans. My first reaction is to giving priority to the first user of a water supply is that this seems fair. I can imagine that there are circumstances where this might not be appropriate, and I'm sure that environmentalists would insist that the first user of some of these water supplies have scales. Labels: Idaho politics Never Underestimate How Irritated Voters Are I was in town today (or should I say, "in village?") and someone that I see pretty regularly approached me to ask, "Are you running for state senate?" I admitted to the crime of being a politician, and discovered that he shared my view that the incumbent is voting for bills like he represents Boise--not like he represents the very conservative people of his district. To my surprise (and perhaps I shouldn't be surprised), this voter knew that Senator Corder had introduced the "sexual orientation and gender identity" bill--and was not happy about it. Labels: Idaho politics Recession? My wife has noticed that all the talk of recession seems intended to help the Democrats in the general election. Economist John Lott points out the historical record on media manipulation about this in a March 31, 2008 Fox News column: During the 2000 election, with Bill Clinton as president, the economy was viewed through rose-colored glasses. According to polls, voters didn’t realize that the country was in a recession. Although the economy started shrinking in July 2000, most Americans through the entire year thought that the economy was fine. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Sunday, March 30, 2008
Uninsured Idahoans I saw a letter to the March 26, 2008 Idaho World from Walt Minnick, the Democrat intent on unseating Bill Sali, attacking Sali for his approach to solving the problem of uninsured Idahoans. In that letter, Minnick complained about "the 40% of Idahoans who don't have insurance." That sounded high, but I just assumed that Minnick is as careful as I am when making factual claims. I guess not. Here's a website sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which wants everyone covered. It claims that the 2006 Current Population Survey data indicates that 14.7% of Idahoans are uninsured. That's actually better than the national average (although not by much). Here's a report put together by Mathematica Policy Research for the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee last year. It estimates that 16-18% of the "non-elderly population" of Idaho is uninsured as of 2005. (People over 65 are covered by Medicare; hence the discrepancy with the 14.7% figure.) Characteristics of the uninsured are unsurprising: the 18-24 and 25-34 populations seem to be especially prone to being uninsured, while only 10% of the 0-17 population are uninsured. My guess is that this is because large numbers of Idahoans graduate either high school (and don't go on to college) or graduate college, and because they are now either not full-time students, or are too old, are therefore no longer covered by the health insurance that their parents have. Been there, done that, long, long ago. I'm not thrilled that 10% of the 0-17 population are uninsured, but it is pretty obvious from the numbers that 90% of children are insured, either privately, or through governmental insurance programs such as Medicaid or SCHIP. Why are there Idahoans who are uninsured? I was uninsured for a few months, back when I was 19 years old, mostly because I wasn't thinking about it. I worked for an employment agency with no benefits (but they paid me so well that I couldn't spend money as fast as I made it) and I just never thought about the need for health insurance. After a few months, I did start to think about it, and I went out and bought individual health insurance that covered just hospitalization--figuring that I would pay everything else out of pocket. It made the coverage a lot more reasonable. I'm guessing that many of Idaho's uninsured are in that situation because of poverty. I see that 49% of the roughly 45,000 adults with incomes below $15,000 per year are uninsured--and I would expect that most of these can't afford health insurance, and are too well off to qualify for Medicaid. Ditto for the 48% of the roughly 70,000 adults with incomes in the $15,000 to $25,000 per year range. Health insurance is going to run you, even for a very basic policy, at least $300 to $400 a month. But there are still uninsured adults making more than $50,000 a year. Not as many, or as high a percentage--but whatever is causing 4% of people in this income bracket to be uninsured, poverty isn't likely the reason. That's a net income of about $3000 per month. You can afford to buy insurance with that kind of income--and if you can't, that's a foolishness problem, not a poverty problem. Much of the problem seems to be with unemployed people, those living in rural areas, and working for small employers. Of employers with less than 10 employees, only a bit more than 30% offer health insurance to their employees. Part-time employees, also unsurprisingly, are uninsured. Most group health insurance plans are only available to full-time employees (either 30 or 32 hours per week, depending on the plan). If we want a solution to the problem, the focus needs to be on: 1. Reminding those that can afford health insurance, but don't have it, that this is really, really foolish. 2. Seeing if there something that can be done to make it possible for the group health insurance to be offered on some basis other than employers. I don't know all the details of how and why group health insurance is tied to employers and labor unions, but I know that the Bush Administration repeatedly tried to get federal law changed to allow Association Health Plans to cross state boundaries, for this very reason. 3. Pretty clearly, there are a lot of young adults who are not insured, and in many cases, may not be able to afford to pay for their own insurance. I'm not thrilled at the idea of the government going into the health insurance business. On the other hand, being uninsured just results in hospitals transferring costs from uninsureds that can't, or won't pay their bills to people who have insurance. Perhaps we could persuade health insurers to market a bare bones insurance plan that at least covered hospitalization and emergency room visits to these uninsureds? There are some people covered by health insurance that is abominably bad. The health insurance that BSU offers to its students is really health insurance for those who aren't going to need medical care. If a private employer offered a policy this absurd, the left would be screeching about capitalists engaged in fraud. Labels: health care The Part I Need To Make This is the part that I need to make to replace the broken part.  UPDATE: The more I look at this, the more it just looks like a pain to make--lots of careful thought before I go on to each step. The biggest struggle is going to be making that .606" diameter hole. A 19/32" drill bit is .5938"--just a little small. There are .600" reamers available, and for only $27.38 from MSC Direct. I suspect that you start out drilling the hole with a 19/32" drill bit, then use the reamer to enlarge the hole. Or it is possible that I can just use the 19/32" drill bit, and then put a great big piece of sandpaper on a smaller drill bit, and run it in and out of the hole until the sandpaper takes off .0061" of aluminum--which might happen pretty quickly. Labels: machining, telescopes What Ever Happened To The Big Bertha Rebuild? This state senate campaign has just gobbled up way too much time (as you might expect), so something had to give--and what gave was Big Bertha 2.0. But I did receive the 4" wide aluminum channel, and after a bit of examination, I concluded that there really wasn't a need to epoxy the 1/8" thick piece of aluminum into the channel. Here you can see the channel bolted to the tube rings:  Click to enlarge Of course, none of the existing 1/4"-20 bolts were the right length (some too long, some too short). Here you can see the top side of the channel, where the bolts holding the dovetail plate go:  Click to enlarge And here's the saddle plate side:  Click to enlarge There are a total of four 1/4"-20 bolts attaching the saddle plate to the channel, and since two should have been theoretically more than enough, four is way more than enough. However: my wife is anxious to get the enormously huge Big Bertha 1.0 tube assembly out of the garage, so we went ahead and tried to put Big Bertha 2.0 on the Celestron CI-700 mount this afternoon. It turns out that: 1. I don't have enough counterweights to balance Big Bertha 2.0. I have two 23 pound counterweights that came with the CI-700, as well as an 11 pound, and an 8 pound weight that came with the Losmandy GM-8. It's close, with all 65 pounds at the end of the counterweight shaft, but not quite. So I need to buy some more counterweights. Probably one of the Losmandy 23 pounders should do the job, allowing the 11 and 8 pound weights to go back to the GM-8. 2. Remember that I knocked the CI-700 over a few weeks back, breaking one of the parts, which I then had to get welded? It turns out that the welds didn't survive the load of the counterweights on one end of the shaft, and Big Bertha 2.0 on the other end--and the parts that broke off the end, broke off again. I had noticed when I got the part out last time that it was almost something that I could machine myself, if I needed to do so. It might not be as elegant as the original, but it would be close. I guess that I need to do so. I'm sure that if I machined this part from a solid piece of aluminum, it would be strong enough to handle the load. I confess that I am tempted to machine it out of a piece of steel, however, just to make sure. If I could find the part for sale, I would buy it. Today being the Sabbath, I think I'm going to concentrate on relaxing instead. Labels: machining, telescopes Involuntary Commitment Laws I'm writing the chapter on how the pendulum on involuntary commitment laws has began to swing back--at least a little. Wisconsin, in 1996, added a fifth standard to their involuntary commitment law, allowing persons who were not in imminent danger to be committed if they were mentally ill, and were headed down a path of deterioration that could put them in imminent danger. This was upheld by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in State of Wisconsin v. Dennis H. (Wisc. 2002). Does anyone know of any other states that have made similar efforts to ease involuntary commitment over the last twenty years? There are a number of states that have adopted what are termed "involuntary outpatient commitment laws" over the last decade or so. These laws are a method of provided increased supervision over mentally ill persons short of hospitalizing them. In some cases, this means requiring them to accept treatment as a condition of staying outside of a hospital or jail. Here in Idaho, some counties have something called Mental Health Court for mentally ill persons who have committed minor crimes, and which have the authority to require treatment to stay out of jail or prison. New York has Kendra's Law, which applies to mental patients with a history of violent or self-destructive behavior. New York State Office of Mental Health, Kendra’s Law: Final Report on the Status of Assisted Outpatient Treatment, March 2005, is a detailed report on the results of the program. California has something similar, although only some counties have implemented it. (San Francisco, of course, which has the most need to do so, refuses.) Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia, all experimented with similar programs in the 1990s. If you can point me to any official documents or discussions of these programs, I would be much obliged. If you know of other states that have made similar efforts to reform involuntary commitment laws, please let me know. Labels: deinstitutionalization |
