anonymous dude

The GOP has collectively dug its heels in and refused to entertain any idea the democrats have put forth. This suggests that they either deny that there is a problem or have much better ideas of their own. When cornered, here is what they will say:

*Allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines: So far every bill the democrats have written has been centered around the establishment of a national health insurance exchange in which private insurers could offer policies (so long as they meet certain minimal standards) and anyone could buy them. Moreover the house bill lifts the status quo anti-trust exemptions that health insurance companies currently enjoy. So aren't we all in agreement on this point?

*Tort reform: This could be a good idea, depending on how it is implemented in practice. Obama even signaled an interest in tort reform during his speech to congress a few months ago. But it is also not enough - it does nothing about the abuses perpetrated by the insurance companies against their consumers (dropping coverage, denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions, etc.) nor does it affect the inefficiencies and bureaucratic overhead in the private sector that are driving up costs. Why is tort reform a reason to kill this health care bill?

*Government takeover isn't the answer: This really is a silly objection, but let's just set that debate aside. Whatever we get when the House and Senate bills are reconciled, there will be no single payer system, no public option, and no expansion of medicare. There might be some sort of subsidized insurance co-ops at the state or federal level, but the insurance system will still be run by private industry at least as much as it is today. What government takeover are you talking about?

*No new taxes!!!: Taxes suck, it's true. If you can find a way to control health care costs in the long term without throwing some money at the problem now, then let me know and I'll see you at the next tea-bagger rally. But otherwise, if we don't pay now then we are going to pay huge later; that's just the way it is. You people are all about the free market; aren't you familiar with the notion that investing a little now can save you a lot later?

*Don't cut medicare: First, since when are the conservatives all about defending medicare? This is the first time in the history of medicare that conservatives (yes, you too libertarians) have advocated anything but slashing medicare spending. If medicare is so great, why did you all scream at the top of your lungs when the democrats tried to expand it to the 55-65 age group? Second, the proposed medicare cuts don't actually affect coverage, only the way prices are negotiated between insurers and providers. In other words, the goal is to trim some of the waste in the system that conservatives are always complaining about. Do you want to fix medicare or don't you?

So is there some other idea that I missed? Or are you only against health care reform because you think it will give you a better shot in 2010 if it dies on the floor? Just to warn you: even if you gain ground in 2010, you'd better come up with some ideas then or it's your butts that will be thrown out the door in 2012.

I don't think any progressive in America is happy with the prospect of delivering 40 million federally-mandated customers into the hands of the same insurance companies that are abusing their power in the status quo, even if there are new consumer protections. So I'm wondering if, once the bill is passed and the exchange established, democrats could use budget reconciliation to create a public option in the exchange. I don't really understand the procedural status of budget reconciliation, though, so it's hard to say. Anyone know?

According to my understanding, the democrats helped the last 5 cloture votes by caving into demands for tougher abortion restrictions. Specifically, I believe the bill allows states to forbid abortion from being covered by plans in the health insurance exchange. Assuming all health insurance policies will have to be routed through the exchange (true of earlier versions of the bill; maybe not the case now?), this in effect allows states to prevent insurance companies from covering abortion, even if they want to.

Assuming this is all correct, let's stand back and look at what happened here. Conservatives have gotten their panties in a knot since the very beginning of this debate over two issues: first, they think that government reform will give the government the power to "ration" health care by dictating what procedures can and cannot be covered; and second, they refuse to allow any public money to be spent on abortions. Those two arguments are actually consistent (barely), but not if you give the government the power to stop you from spending YOUR OWN money on abortion. The official conservative position is now "DON'T LET THE GOVERNMENT CONTROL YOUR LIFE!!! (except in the ways that we specify)". Would anyone care to try to defend this blatant hypocrisy?

Hi,

I am a graduate student in mathematics, and I am submitting a paper for publication on heat kernels and groupoid algebras. I'm a little worried, however, because I've been reading the news lately and it seems that we need to let conservatives weigh in before something can be admitted as scientific truth. I mean, I've never really even read the bible; how can I know if one of my theorems contradicts something in it? Are there any certified republican arbiters of scientific truth on this site who would be willing to take a look? I suppose you'll probably need to hack into my e-mail account before you can reach a final conclusion; I just ask that you stay away from the ones from my girlfriend as some of them are a little dirty. Thanks in advance!

http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93122?fp=1

I mean, I get that some of you out there are conservative and are looking for someone who will validate your frustration with Obama and the democratic control of Congress. But for the sake of democracy can you at least get your news and information from somebody who makes a distinction between a reliable source and a prankster with a blog? If this doesn't make you suspicious of everything he says, I would be glad to help you find a list of the lies, distortions, and half-truths he's passed off as the gospel over the years. And no, Glenn Beck is no better... sorry. I would even be willing to help you find a reputable source for conservative commentary. All you have to do is ask.

SL(2,R) contains F_2, but it doesn't seem possible to find generators with integer entries. Anyone know?

It's a simple question. I just want one example - any example will do. I'll even allow things that Obama has not yet done but has publicly advocated. I am asking because people CONSTANTLY assert without ANY justification that Obama is undermining the bill of rights and outlawing freedom. So you all should have no trouble giving me lots of examples.

Oh, just one little preempt: before you start going on about the 10th amendment, check out the "general welfare" clause of article I section 8 as well as Alexander Hamilton's interpretation of it in the Federalist Papers (1787). I would also refer you to the Supreme Court's interpretation of the general welfare clause in US v. Butler (1936) and South Dakota v. Dole (1987). I'm sure you have just delightful ideas about the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution, but just to warn you I'm probably going to side with one of the founding father's own commentary as well as 70 years of legal precedent.

Baucus' plan has no government option, even stronger language about illegal immigrants than HR 3200 (which already outlawed federal funding for them without specifying enforcement), provides no federal money for abortions, offers federal funding for state malpractice reform experiments, and pays for itself. As far as I can tell that answers EVERY republican criticism of health care reform so far - it panders so much to republican concerns that some DEMOCRATS won't support it. This might all be worth it if this compromise bill got the republicans to set aside their differences with Obama and support a bill that will get people health care. But no - minority leader McConnel called it a "partisan proposal" and Enzi rejected it outright.

When will the republican party realize that, at least for now, their opinions don't actually matter? I mean, the democrats are going to be back up to 60 votes again soon... soliciting republican input is just a courtesy. Not only was that courtesy paid, but republican input constituted a SIGNIFICANT portion of the fundamental structure of the bill. I don't think I will ever understand the GOP.

...other than Y!A trolls and left wing hacks? It certainly isn't Obama himself, anyone in his administration, anyone in Congress (that I'm aware of) or even any mainstream political pundit whose work I've read (and 75% of what I read is left wing). But it can't be NOBODY, because if that were true then conservatives wouldn't b**** about it ALL THE TIME, would they? I mean, every other "question" on here is somebody whining about being called a racist. Who keeps "playing the race card"? All I see are people playing the "playing the race card" card.

I keep hearing that the government is going to "ration" health care and euthanize elderly people. I also hear the word "freedom" get thrown around, as if the plan is going to shackle us to the whims of some government bureaucracy. But I have browsed through the house and senate plans front to back and read a lot of analysis of both plans, and all I really find are financial reforms, some consumer protections, and some extensions of medicaid. It looks to me like the same old insurance companies will be rationing our health care as usual, only now they'll be forbidden from dropping coverage, arbitrarily hiking premiums, or telling us what doctors we can go to. Would somebody mind showing me what specific provisions will give the government any authority over our actual health care?

Einstein calculated that if light of frequency f descends up on a photoelectric surface then the maximum kinetic energy E of a resulting photoelectron can be calculated from hf = phi + E where h is Plank's constant and phi is the "work function" of the surface. Suppose our equipment is so precise that we can aim a laser with a frequency of exactly phi/h at a single atom in the surface. It seems to me that we will have a good estimate for the location of the electron while, at the same time, knowing its velocity is precisely 0 since its kinetic energy is 0. This appears to conflict with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Any ideas how to deal with this?

http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/denied_coverag...

My favorite part was the bit on "recissions":

QUOTE

When a person is diagnosed with an expensive condition such as cancer, some insurance companies review his/her initial health status questionnaire. In most states’ individual insurance market, insurance companies can retroactively cancel the entire policy if any condition was missed – even if the medical condition is unrelated, and even if the person was not aware of the condition at the time. Coverage can also be revoked for all members of a family, even if only one family member failed to disclose a medical condition.10

A recent Congressional investigation into this practice found nearly 20,000 rescissions from three large insurers over five years, saving them $300 million in medical claims11 – $300 million that instead had to come out of the pockets of people who thought they were insured, or became bad debt for health care providers.

At least one insurance company has been found to evaluate employee performance based in part on the amount of money an employee saved the company through rescissions.12 Simply put, these insurance company employees are encouraged to revoke sick people’s health coverage.

QUOTE

Wouldn't an organization that has at least some itty bitty amount of accountability to the public do a better job of providing health care than an organization that is motivated ONLY by profit?

Suppose f is a smooth real valued function defined on the real line. Prove that if for each point x there is a number N such that the nth derivative of f at x is 0 for every n >= N, then there is a nonempty interval (a, b) on which f restricts to a polynomial.

I know the solution, and it is amusing enough that I thought I would share it with the world. 10 points to the first correct answer. :)

The rule is a proof must have been published some time in the 20th century. Theorems that were conjectures in the 20th century and but not proven until the 21st century don't count; theorems that were conjectures before the 20th century and proven in the 20th century do.

My personal favorite is the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem, which is good because it's pretty much my job to think about that theorem. But I have a soft spot for the Jordan Curve Theorem (not proven rigorously until 1905!), and I really wish I understood Deligne's proof of the Weil conjectures.

My least favorite theorems are the four color theorem and the classification of finite simple groups. In the words of Hardy, "There is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics".

There are three uses of the word spectrum that I am interested in, all related to each other.

1. Atomic spectrum: the specific frequencies of light that an atom will radiate when stimulated

2. The spectrum of a linear operator T: the set of complex numbers e for which the operator T - eI is not invertible, where I is the identity

3. The prime (maximal) ideal spectrum of a commutative ring R: the collection of prime (maximal) ideals of R, equipped with the Zarisky topology

I want to know who invented each of these uses of the word spectrum, when they did it, and whether or not they were conscious of the other uses.

It would seem like too much of a coincidence for three different people to independently come up with the same word, given how closely (and yet surprisingly) related the three ideas above are. One of the most convincing early accomplishments of quantum mechanics was to show that the spectrum of an atom (first use) can be computed abstractly as the spectrum of a self-adjoint linear operator on Hilbert space (second use). Moreover, one of the most fundamental results in the theory of operator algebras is that the the spectrum of a linear operator on a Banach space (second use) is the same as the maximal ideal spectrum of the commutative C*-algebra generated by that operator (third use).

That is why I think there must be some interesting history going on here. If anybody knows about any piece of it, please let me know.

I think the answer is no, but I can't prove it. Any ideas?

I recently had the opportunity to attend lectures on mathematical physics by Cumrun Vafa and Edward Witten, and one idea that they both alluded to explains supersymmetry in terms of a geometric formulation of the standard model. I guess the idea is that the electromagnetic, weak, and strong fields are realized in quantum field theory as principal U(1), SU(2), and SU(3) bundles respectively, so that the standard model has structure group (gauge group) U(1)xSU(1)xSU(3). I am also acquainted with the notion that Maxwell's equations can be formulated in this context as the Bianchi identity for the curvature of a certain connection on the principal U(1) bundle in question, and I gather that one can obtain similar results in this fashion for the weak and strong nuclear forces. The idea that Vafa and Witten both kind of mentioned in passing is that to properly choose a connection on the principal U(1)xSU(2)xSU(3) bundle in such a way that matches physical observation one must take energy as a free parameter and that supersymmetry is the statement that something geometrically special happens at a certain (high) energy level. Does anybody know the full story, or at least have some references? I am coming at this from a mathematical background, and I have a lot of trouble with physics language (for example, I have no idea what a particle actually is, let alone fermions or bosons). I also posted this question in the physics area. Thanks!

I've been told that Fermat's last theorem (x^n + y^n = z^n has no nontrivial integer solutions for n > 2) is easy to prove for those n with the property that the ring of integers in the algebraic number field obtained by adjoining a primitive nth root of unity is a PID. I recall reading this is Pierre Samuel's "Algebraic Theory of Numbers", for example. Does anybody know the proof or where it can be found?

To the best of my knowledge there haven't been any huge and exciting breakthroughs like the Green-Tao theorem or the geometrization theorem in the past few years, so I can't even guess who will win. Would anyone care to speculate?

I drive a 2007 Hyundai Elantra, and I would guess most of my mileage comes from highway driving. I don't usually drive in hilly areas or on unpaved roads. So is it really necessary for me to get an oil change every 3000 miles? What's a good rule of thumb?