Health Benefits and the costs thereof. I won't even pretend to be anal enough to have managed to have wrapped my head around the unnecessarily over-complicated subject of health benefits, but I did just go through an experience regarding that topic that I feel is worthy of sharing.

The Scenario
I am the non-custodial parent of several children for which I provide support and medical benefits. Since my ex spouse had the children covered under her plan at work, I opted not to purchase benefits through my present employer in order to save several hundred dollars a month. Well, the Texas Attorney General's child support branch recently mandated me to procure health benefits for my children, despite the fact that I provided them proof that my ex spouse already had them covered. Since I had no choice in the matter and since a legal mandate qualifies as a life status change event (enabling a health care provider to allow someone to enroll in benefits outside of their normal bogus "open enrollment" period), I decided to just go ahead and cover the whole family. I submitted my application and waited for a response. Finally after several days, I was told "no, we will only allow the mandated children to be covered". Hmmm. Okay, so I'm going to have to pay the already high premium to cover children, but Blue Cross and Blue Shield is only going to allow me to put  the non-custodial children on? Not my other children for whom I am the primary custodian? In a word, that's BS, and a senseless, arbitrary, judgment-less decision made by some heartless BCBS bonehead in a padded leather chair somewhere.

My Plan 

Refusing to give Blue Cross and Blue Shield one dime, I then decided to explore the alternative of purchasing my OWN health insurance as an individual. Now, I had always been brainwashed to believe that purchasing insurance on your own was so outrageously expensive that it couldn't possibly be affordable, so prior to this I had always just opted to tell my employer to "give me the works" and pay whatever I had to. But after inquiring among my peers and family, I found that there were LOTS of affordable options out there, none of which cost me any more than my employer was charging me, and all of which were comparable in coverage benefits! I finally settled on using United Health Care (www.uhc.com), and in so doing was able to speak directly to a rep who helped me design a custom benefits package that fit my budget and my needs to a tee, and at an EQUAL cost to what my employer was charging me! I lost nothing and I gained freedom from the "group" by which healthcare providers judge employees when deciding their rates.

Employers: Consider This

Here's food for thought, too, for any of you out there who have employees and who provide company sponsored benefits: Stop doing it. Instead, what if you simply told your employees to go out and get their OWN benefits, and then you reimburse them half of their monthly premiums? Let's look at some numbers.

My employer currently graciously covers a full 50% of what they are charged to provide me health benefits. If they're charging me $450 a month, then they are paying $450 themselves. Times the twelve employees we have, they're dropping $5,400 a month on us AFTER factoring in what they deduct from our paychecks. If instead they allowed each of us to go out and get our own, and let's say between us all (some single, some healthy, some ill, some old, some with families) we all managed to acquire a premium that averaged $600, they would spend only $3,600 a month, and each employee would only spend $300 a month. The employer saves $1,800 a month, the employee saves $150-200 a month...win win, right????

So then why isn't this happening? Why haven't more employers caught on to such an approach? Am I missing something? I know my nature is to simplify things, boil them down to their true core...but is it really this simple, or am I just incapable of "appreciating" an overly complex scenario? Is the emperor naked, or does he really sport a gorgeous new wardrobe? lol. Actually, I think it's the whole "herd" mentality prevailing in this industry, where every employer does it the way they do because every other employer does it that way too. Bah.

Bottom line, I don't think I'll ever elect employee sponsored benefits again, unless of course they are picking up enough of the tab to make it the best deal for me. I encourage all of you to at least explore the option yourselves, too, and approach your employer about adopting a similar reimbursement policy for their company.

 

The collective abilities of the many always surpass the few. This is common knowledge, and pervades every aspect of life so much so that we probably don't even take note of it. A pride of lions takes more game than one hunting solo; the most correct answer is the distillation of many people's opinions rather than that of a single individual; the list could go on ad finitum. So why then is it that so many people who catch the entrepreneurial bug tend to want to go it alone? Rather than seek out like-minded individuals to strengthen and further their causes, they segregate and ostrecize themselves, professionally speaking, and attempt to "build the ark" all by their lonesome, dreaming of the day when they alone (and those few souls with whom they select to share their success) will find themselves sitting atop Mount Ararat?

Okay, a somewhat deep intro into the subject of this post, but I do believe the principle is relevant. I have good ideas. I'm sure many, many of you out there have good ideas, too. Ideas that, if we ever find ourselves with all of the needed time, resources, expertise, and perpetual motivation to make the idea tangible, we'd be gazillionaires.The fact is, though, that the solo road from concept to real product is very, very long and most never complete the journey. So then: why not break away from the pack and become part of a very small, very select alliance of like-minded inviduals, pooling your resources, planning together, and executing that plan as a single unit? It's a model that has served nature quite well, with a success rate that has brought mankind himself to his present state.

I myself have caught the entrepreneurial bug, the innate desire to turn my ideas into reality and what were once only dreams into realistic, achievable goals. Having this desire, I often explore different plans of execution, trying to find the best way to invest my resources so that I create a stair step approach to reaching my desired end. But  no matter how I slice it, traversing that road as a solo individual is a lengthy prospect. If I had one, or two other individuals, though, who had the same goals and with whom I could combine allocated resources, I know that we would shorten that road exponentially. We would each bring to the table our own professional and personal networks; or own talents, skillsets, and areas of expertise; our own collection of ideas that we have been mulling over and evolving for the past umpteen years; and our own cache of resources to contribute to the cause. We would form our own elite "brain trust", advancing the causes that would become a legacy to our posterity.

Now, if my treatise has given rise to any hot sparks of interest or a chorus of "hallelujah" whispered under the breath, then perhaps we should begin a dialogue to explore our chemistries, alignment of goals, and how well our ideas complement one another. I for one am READY to make something happen, but would love for it to be the passion of several individuals rather than just myself, for the benefit of all involved.  Any takers?

I'm sure by now we're all of the opinion that we have GOT to find an alternative to gas powered vehicles. I was musing on this very topic last weekend while sunning myself on the banks of the Guadalupe river, and came up with what I think is a GENIUS idea (though my wife whole heartedly disagrees for some reason):

A giant wind up car.

We know how the little wind up cars work...wind up a spring, then utilize the potential energy as the spring uncoils. Well, why not make one that's big enough to seat two or four people? Of course, we'd have to engineer the "perfect" spring, perhaps a pair of them to work in tandem. I'm thinking some elongated, layered, torsion type spring, working similar to those airplanes that use a rubber band that gets twisted. And we'd need some really good gear ratio math in place to get the most bang for our potential energy. And here's the cool part: each passenger is fitted with a set of pedals, so when the spring gets to say, 50% or less of its total wind-up, the passengers and driver start pedaling to wind it back up again (from its center, or opposite end) and the car just keeps rolling along.

Now tell me that isn't PERFECT! It isn't like you'd have to pedal yourself around, just pedal on occasion to keep the spring wound up. and with good gear ratios on the pedals (and even a shifter so you could choose how hard or easy to make the pedaling), it shouldn't take a lot of leg work to keep things going.

Whadayathink???? NO pollution, NO high tech, NO noise, EASY maintenance (like a bike!)...sheesh, what's not to love? Let's make this thing happen. Any high torque spring engineers out there in whose brain I have spawned the beginnings of a blueprint???

:0)

(This is slightly off topic to those readers arriving from the technical aggregators, but nevertheless is an item of interest to all, I believe)

Okay i've been holding off on sharing this information for a little while now until things really began to materialize, but the time is now right to let the world know about S.E.E. ... Signed Entertainment Enterprises.

The organization was started by my brother Randy Boude in an effort to rally the entire city of Branson, Missouri together to make themselves extremely accessible to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Since Branson boasts more shows than even Las Vegas, it is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the midwest and has up to this point, been at best (and like nearly every other city in America)  minimally ADA compliant. Well, S.E.E. is changing all that, and thanks to the evangelizing of Randy Boude, two hotels and one theater have already become "S.E.E. Certified". They have invested in TTYs and Face to Face communication devices, trained their staff in basic ASL and deaf culture, and have made numerous other changes to further enhance the quality of the services and entertainment rendered to their deaf and hard of hearing patrons. Many other shows, restaurants, theaters, and even the city government are already on board and submitting to S.E.E.'s audits to ensure their own "Deaf and Hard of Hearing Friendliness".  Here's a link to my brother being interviewed via webcast.

In addition to having the nearly unanimous support of the Branson business community, S.E.E. has also been endorsed by several non-profit deaf and hard of hearing organizations, including The Deaf Welcome Foundation, who is, in cooperation with S.E.E., opening Branson's first official Deaf Welcome Center. Grand opening for that is near the end of January, 2008.

An awesome day trip to Branson's first official "Deaf and Hard of Hearing Friendly" establishments is planned for January 18th and 19th, including some shows, tours, and meals. If you're anywhere in the vicinity, show your support for these efforts by attending!

Spread the good news! In another year or two, Branson could very well be setting the standard for cities all across the country. Oh, and just so you know, Las Vegas is next on S.E.E.'s radar!

Doug out  :0)

So I'm sitting on the couch the other night watching a documentary on Gigantism...a condition in humans where uncontrolled growth occurs due to a genetic defect...when the narrator says that "unfortunately it is beyond the scope of our current abilities to correct this condition at the genetic level...". Suddenly I have an epiphany, that indeed it should be within the scope of our ability to correct this or any other genetic defect, as long as that defect occurs in a part of the human genome that we already have mapped! Now bear in mind, if I, a non genetic scientist can come up with a solution in a matter of literally seconds, why is it that the entire world BOK (body of knowledge) couldn't have already come up with it? Allow me to elucidate the process I propose....

The first breakthrough came to me when I altered the context I give to the human body. Rather than think of it as a pulsing mass of jellies and chemicals, I rather visualized it as a database. In the IT world, a database is a collection of individual records, each with a common structure, yet each also having its own unique value. This entire collection of records IS a database. The human body is a collection of individual cells (records), each with a common structure (human DNA), yet also having its own unique value (liver cell as opposed to a skin cell, etc.). This entire collection of cells (records) is the living body (database). Okay, so here's where the first major bridge takes place.

Let's say for example's sake that my database stores birthdays. I have one million individual records, each one stores a name, social security number, and a birthday. Well, somehow my database was "off" from the beginning, and every one of the birthdays I have stored is one day ahead of what it should be. How this happened is irrelevant; what IS important is that I need to correct it...globally. In the database world, when we need to make the SAME change to every record in the database, we refer to this as a "global update". We create a routine that will go throughout the entire database, one record at a time, and for each one it will make the correction we need.  Now then, let's take this same approach and apply it to the human database.

Using Gigantism as our example, every cell in the human body has the same identical defect: a section of a gene is slightly malformed. The solution would be to go throughout the entire body and, for each cell, correct that defective gene. The idea of doing this is already a reality and is called gene therapy. WHY it isn't in a more advanced state, though, I'm a bit befuddled. The crux of my proposed "global update" rests upon a little fella that we all live with and who is quite intimate with us all at a cellular level: Mr. Virus.

For eons we, as husbandmen, have been doing selective breeding. We've practiced it with dogs, cats, cattle, horses, and even on each other at different periods in time. The results of selective breeding are known before the process even takes place: we're trying to take an existing life form and, by leveraging nature's own process, guide the transformation of that species into something more advantageous for ourselves. Sheep with more wool, cows with more meat, cats with no hair...whatever it may be. Let's introduce our subject at this point, and illustrate the remainder of my idea. His name is Dieter, and he was born with Gigantism.

Dieter is 17 years old now, and stands 7 feet tall. His particular form of Gigantism has resulted in extremely exaggerated facial features and super elastic joints that cause his muscles to work extra hard trying to hold him physically together. Dieter needs a global update to correct the genetic malformation he's carrying. So let's send a sample of Dieter's DNA to the "Circle O" virus ranch to begin the process.

Circle O receives Dieter's DNA and immediately isolates and marks the defective section of the gene. They then construct a replacement section that corrects the defect, and begin the process of creating a virus that is specific to Dieter himself...one that is unable to reproduce or thrive in any host except Dieter. Since the lifecycle of a virus already includes the injection of its own DNA into its human host cell, this makes it the absolute perfect means of performing Dieter's global update. The trick now is to selectively breed this generic virus (itself selectively bred from the common influenza virus) until we have a batch whose DNA includes the genetic "patch" needed for Dieter. Oh, and in order to alleviate any unforseen propogation of our customized virus, we also breed in a 'self-destruct' mechanism that makes it non-viable after X number of replications...embed a "counter", if you will, within the DNA of the initial virus batch that will render it incapable of reproducing at a pre-set generation of itself. Additionally, since we have selectively bred this virus to Dieter specifically, Dieter's immune system will take longer to actually recognize it as an invader, thus giving the virus time to perform its duties.

After three months of selective breeding, Dieter's custom virus is ready to be introduced to its host. Dieter will experience mild flue-like symptoms throughout the process, but because of the rate at which viruses replicate and execute their lifecycle, within the course of two weeks the global update will be complete. It won't be necessary to reach 100% of the cells in Dieter's body; having affected 90 to 95% will be sufficient due to the body's own natural design of replacing itself. After two weeks, the virus fails to reproduce further due to its own built-in self-destruct mechanism, macrophages clean up what's left, and Dieter's gene therapy is complete.

The effects of the defective gene won't be taken away...Dieter won't shrink back to a normal size, nor will his joints become less elastic. He WILL, however, cease to grow at an uncontrolled rate and will resume a normal metabolism. Interceding at an earlier age, before puberty, would ensure that the adverse effects of Dieter's condition would have been minimal, at most. Heck, for that matter, the condition could have been detected during Dieter's first trimester, the virus created, and his gene therapy performed before his due date.

Now tell me...WHAT was so hard about that? Hmm? WHY after twenty years (or however long it's been) of sending money to Jerry's kids do we STILL have Jerry's kids???? I don't know, perhaps..PERHAPS...I'm over-simplifying things just a bit. But generally speaking, is there a flaw in my approach to performing human global genetic updates?

The floor is now open to feedback. Thanks for humoring me.

We all have one, don't we? A favorite protist. One protozoa out of them all that just stands out in our minds as THE protozoa, the one that captures our imagination and intrigues us to no end. Well, I must say that personally I have a list of about five protozoa that are at the top, but one has just recently topped them all: Triconympha. Oh yes, Paramecium with his 'oral groove' and cilia-covered body is amazing to behold as he swims about sucking his smaller cousins into his gullet; and Euglena...wow, a pioneer in the protista kingdom, blurring the line between plant and animal in a very politically incorrect manner. But Triconympha is my all time favorite as of late because, through MUCH experimentation, I have finally succeeded in breeding a strain that can survive in the stomach of a human being! Namely, me. You may be thinking "gross", or "wtf?!?", but allow me to elucidate. Triconympha has been a long time symbiotic partner of our little-loved friend the termite. He lives in his stomach and does Mr. Termite the favor of digesting the wood that termite eats. I learned this in sixth grade, and from that moment onward it has been a constant source of meditatory food for me as I marveled at how perfect their relationship was. I also longed to have that same kind of relationship with Triconympha. But alas! My gastric crib was quite inhospitable to the little guy! Every time I munched a sunflower seed (and ate the hulls, as is my habit), I longed to be able to receive not only the benefit of the huge amount of roughage the hulls provided me, but also the nutritional sustenance that I KNEW was locked in their, too! The only way I could do this would be by having my own personal colony of Triconympha living, breeding, and dying within me. Hence the experimentation that has led to my success!

I'm no gene splicer myself, so I relied on the gene splicing that's built into every living thing: reproduction. Since these little guys are single celled, they don't actually exchange genetic material during reproduction, but simply divide in half, producing two from one. So what I had to do was find individual specimens that exhibited unusually high tolerance to travel through my gut and intestinal tract. Once I had found several such specimens, I would give them time to multiply into yet another thriving colony, then perform another iteration of the "gut travel" procedure, until finally I had a thriving colony that were perfectly at home inside of ME! The entire process took about five years. At the rate that Triconympha reproduces, that actually equates to about four thousand years of evolution in human terms. I acting as the "natural selection" mechanism managed to guide them into exactly what I wanted them to be. Following are a few details of the experiment as it progressed, for your entertainment value.

Step one: Establish a thriving colony.
Where does one find a starter colony of Triconympha? Inside the stomachs of termites, of course! That is their natural habitat, and so that is where I went. Several days of searching the uninhabited lands around my subdivision resulted in the collection of thousands of donor termites. Now, how to extract the Triconympha...hmmm. Well, the first obvious approach was to just grind a bunch of termites to mush and hope the Triconympha could find their own way out. Microscopic examination revealed that, although the Triconympha were indeed emancipated from their gastric domains, they didn't do so well on the outside. What I needed then was some way of emulating a termite's stomach environment, only on a larger scale than the termite itself. Something maintainable, and preferably non-decaying. So, I determined the PH of the termite's stomach content and through a combination of white distilled vinegar, non-iodized salt, and distilled water, produced a solution with an equivalent PH; I produced what looked to be an approximate substitute for decaying wood chewed and swallowed by a termite by combining sawdust from sawing old wood with a diluted solution of off-the-shelf hydrochloric acid and my own saliva. Yep, that is gross, BUT it was precisely what the doctor ordered. I didn't know it at the time, but it was ALSO the first step in producing Triconympha that were acclimatized to the human body as a host. As a matrix in which to combine the "stomach juices" and "food", I used a sterile, non-lubricated or powdered surgical glove. A small piece of new sponge was sealed up in the opening of the glove so that  a free exchange of gases could take place. I know, I know, the danger of microbial invasion existed at that point due to the fact that the sponges pores are monstrous compared to the tiny openings that serve to exchange gases and nutrition within the mucous membranes of a termite, but it never seemed to be a factor in my experiments. I got lucky on that one.  Now, with the glove prepared, I tossed in a pre-measured amount of freshly ground termites and let the process begin. After three days I did a microscopic examination of the contents and found that the Triconympha were doing absolutely marvelous. I measured the PH again and found that adding the termite bodies had lowered it a bit, so I created a new matrix that had a slightly higher PH prior to the addition of the termites. That one, after three days, had a colony of Triconympha that were multiplying like crazy. I had found the magic balance and was ready now to set up the endurance test.

Step two: Endurance testing.
Now, how to find out which of these little buggers would be most prone to live in MY gut? I decided to gradually alter the environment of the matrices towards the environment of my own gullet. But what was that environment? I could look it up online, the PH of my stomach...but to be even more accurate, I had to measure it myself. I won't go into the gory details, but I did measure the PH of my OWN stomach and found it to be about actually a bit higher than the averages: I'm a 3.5. This actually made it a little easier for me since the PH of a termite's stomach is around 4.3. I set up ten test matrices, and decreased each of their PH by .1 every four days. Just prior to decreasing the PH, I would do a culture exam to see who was thriving and who wasn't. As soon as I saw a decrease of between 10 and 15% of active Triconympha, I would cease the PH adjustment schedule, remove a small sample of Triconympha from that matrix, and place them into a matrix that was .2 PH higher than what they had just come from. That culture would be allowed to grow for two weeks, after which the PH decrease regimen would begin again. Eventually, I had seven colonies of Triconympha who were living, breeding, and thriving in a PH of 3.5, which put me at the precipice of the final step in my experiment.

Final Step: Introducing The Colony to Doug Boude.
While I left the seven colonies to thrive, I now proceeded to do some preliminary wood digestion experiments on myself with which to compare results after introduction of the protozoa to my gut. Since sunflower seed hulls had been the catalyst for the experiment in the first place, I used them. Again, I won't go into the gory details, but suffice it to say that the process involved eating a pre-measured amount of sunflower seeds on an empty stomach, then closely monitoring and collecting appropriate stool samples for examination. As you may have envisioned (he he he he he), without Triconympha present, all I got was a neatly packaged lump of chewed sunflower seed hulls, with a slightly malodiferous disposition. I then introduced Triconympha into my stomach. It was an early Sunday morning. I filled three sterile gelatin capsules with samples from three of the matrices, and swallowed them down with a distilled water chaser. I then quickly ate a pre-measured amount of sunflower seeds, and waited. Although I thought I could imagine feeling the little guys working in my stomach, all I really felt was a bit hungry. Hours passed. I believe this was the first time ever I was actually giddy with anticipation at taking a poo. Finally, late that night, nature called. The results were astounding! The amount of fibrous hull present in my stool was a mere 5% of what it had been prior to Triconympha's introduction! The remainder of the mass more closely resembled what you might consider a "normal" poo consistency and texture, and with the same essence about it. Microscopic examination of the stool sample revealed some dead trace representation of Triconympha, but not nearly enough to indicate a complete evacuation of the critters. As a final test to conclude that they guys had indeed taken up residence within me, I forced myself to vomit. You guessed it: There under the microscope, within my own vomit, were living, swimming, happy Triconympha. SUCCESS!

So now I do believe that I'm the only living human being who has the benefit of being able to receive sustenance from the consumption of wood. Pretty cool, eh?

Doug out.

Any conductor cutting through magnetic lines of flux induces a current in the conductor. A true statement and the principle of most electrical generators.

Water is a conductor.

What if I took narrow plastic tubing filled with water and treated it as if it were copper wire, coiled it around a ferrous core, and then passed a magnetic field over it. Would I induce a current to pass through the water? I believe I would. And if I'm passing a current through the water (DC), then I am also creating polarity in that coil, with one end being an anode (positive) and the other being the cathode (negative). If I seal each end of the water filled coil with a common conductive metal such as copper, then it must be true that as the induced current passes through the water, hydrogen will collect on the cathode end while oxygen collects on the anode.

I'm just exploring an idea here on a possible way to perform electrolysis without the need for a high electrical current source as is currently required to produce hydrogen from water. So many nay sayers out there with their list of reasons why "it can't be done"...just trying to come up with ways to silence the naysayers.

Anybody ever done any experiments like this?