We Suck!

…at hospitals anyway, according to some organization:

Researchers at the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London examined data on 38 developed countries.

The experts focused on four key patient safety indicators for their rankings: maternal mortality, treatable mortality, adverse effects of medical treatment and neonatal disorders.

For those who are too lazy to follow the link, here’s the table:

Yeah, I know:  our hospitals are ranked lower because we take on more hopeless cases than most other countries will accept.  (Whenever you read about some Third-World mope who needs to have the extra toes growing out of his neck removed, it’s always off to the U.S. and not to Sweden, because they just won’t take the case.)

I also note with some skepticism the high rank of the Netherlands, which is the absolute last place where I’d go to hospital because of the Dutchies’ fondness for involuntary euthanasia.

Finally, not being of a medical bent myself, I have no idea whether the criteria of “maternal mortality, treatable mortality, adverse effects of medical treatment and neonatal disorders” are the best pointers towards judgement of hospital quality;  I’ll leave that to my Sawbones Readers to comment on.

Rats Etc.

Here’s a little bit of news:

New York City has imploded, with crime soaring and homeless people everywhere. Every day brings a new tale of an attack against an innocent person on the city’s street or subway.

To make matters worse, New York City is losing its top taxpayers. According to a study by the city’s Independent Budget Office, the city has lost 10% of taxpayers who earn more than $750,000 and 6% of those who make between $150,000 and $750,000.

The New York Post said many taxpayers are fleeing New York’s sky-high taxes.

And the latest study by the Budget Office only included data up to 2020. There’s no telling how many more have left since the COVID lockdowns that crushed the city.

The exodus is costing New York City billions. The Post reported in June that some 300,000 of the city’s wealthiest residents “earned $21 billion in total income in 2019, according to new data released by the Internal Revenue Service.”

That sum, the paper said, “represents the largest flight of capital from the Big Apple ever recorded.”

Now while I’m sure while that my Readers will share my chuckles of schadenfreude, there’s also the worrying caveat that these rich liberal assholes will infest parts of Free America that, quite frankly, shouldn’t have to put up with their baleful influence on our hitherto-happy, Constitution-loving homeland.

Unless, of course, they just increase the Liberal Asshole Quotient in places like Austin TX or Miami FL.  It’s when they start voting in places like Plano or Boca Raton that the barrels of tar need to be warmed up and the pillows emptied of feathers.

I should point out too that these high-dollar asswipes’ incomes are of little actual value to places like Florida and Texas because unike NYFC, we don’t tax income.  No, their only economic effect (and it’s a dubious one at best) is to drive local real estate prices higher — which helps sellers, of course, but also moves housing out of the reach of local middle-income folks.

Still, I guess anything that hastens NYFC’s slide into the abyss is welcome.

Weimar Redux

Annnnnd the Germans are in deep shit:

According to release statistics from the German economic ministry, energy prices in August were more than double the same period last year, up 139%. The monthly increase was more than 20.4% higher than July. Additionally, producer prices for electricity rose 174.9% compared with August 2021 and by 26.4% in a single month.

This jaw-dropping increase in energy cost has resulted in German manufacturing prices for industrial goods jumping 7.9% in August alone, with a year-over-year increase in the cost to manufacture goods at 45.8%. That is the highest rate of price increase since Germany began recording their statistics in 1939.

It’s a pity they didn’t start in 1919, because then we could have compared today (and tomorrow, from the looks of things) to the numbers from the Weimar Republic.  Nonetheless, Germany’s in for a rough ride.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of watermelons.

2D/3D

From the Comments to yesterday’s post about the two- vs. three dimension concepts came this, from Reader Harry (no relation):

Vertical projects (buildings, towers) do have 3 dimensions. They are described as vertical projects, even though their height does not always exceed their length or width.
Horizontal projects (roads, airfields) also have 3 dimensions. They are described as horizontal projects, even though their length does not always exceed their height or width.

I understand that perfectly, especially when viewed in Platonic terms.  You may call a table a “quadripod eating-surface”, but that does not negate its “table-ness”, which exists outside any definition.

A road, almost by definition, needs no thickness — it is a line that connects a starting point and a destination, and thus requires no third dimension.  (This is not true in Britishland, however, where a road can start in the middle of nowhere, meander all over the countryside and then just expire — probably out of sheer exhaustion — never having reached an actual destination.  And one may still encounter traffic jams on said roads because while they are theoretically bi-directional, their width is usually less than that of a single car — thus proving the statement that a line may have length but not width.)

Because buildings have no ending point (projecting upwards into thin air), they must have a third dimension.  A wall cannot exist without thickness — even when joined to the ceiling.  (Just because you need only two of its dimensions when hanging a picture, for example, doesn’t mean it needn’t have a third, as a moment’s thought will show.)

And now I need to quit, because I’m starting to get a headache.