My husband had a weird job many years ago doing this very thing. He worked (via a temp agency) for the federal government. They reviewed hospital billings for their agency's workers and send mildly threatening letters if they charged $12,000 for a procedure that averaged $5,000.
It had some success, but some states had outright outlawed this sort of thing. Texas.
The "conventionally attractive" Marx brother, who usually played the straight man. Still better known than Gummo, if I were to guess.
We're personally fans of Harpo, mainly because of the metaphorical whiplash that comes from watching his scenes. One minute you're laughing at the comical clown or admiring his musical skill, and the next you realize that he's actually a dangerous maniac. (Run, children!!!! He is not safe!!)
Not a doctor, but I'm interested in the subject. I think the current consensus is "yes and no."
200 years ago, people may have answered yes. Thirty years ago it was popular to discount the idea entirely because germs are what make you sick. Can't deny that.
Lately I've been hearing some acknowledgement that a stress to your body may make you more susceptible or less able to fight off an infection. The wiki article includes a recent study that pointed to poor sewage treatment near the White House in Harrison's day. For whatever reason WHH wasn't able to fight that off but the rest of the residents seemingly were.
People have been making the connection of "he stood outside for hours in the snow and drizzle, then caught the dropsy and died" for centuries. I don't think they lacked for sense or couldn't make the obvious connection between exposure and sickness. I do think they lacked for microscopes.
I'm probably being annoying, but I'm a lapsed space/astronomy nerd. And I'm old.
When I think of cheap and fast, I think of the soyuz program.
It's just that 30 years ago I heard so much public boosterism about the promise of private space flight and nothing much of substance has seems to have materialized in the subsequent 30 years. Older nerds that I knew (in their 30s or 40s at the time) were pretty skeptical of that '90s narrative. To be fair, most of them worked at Fermilab or Argonne NL rather than NASA. It's not exactly an insider's view. It was just nerd gossip overheard by a teenager.
I was born into a world where people had been to the moon a few years earlier. They had launched Voyager, Mariner, and that Venus one. My family ate weekend breakfast at a restaurant called Skylab (it was shaped like it). The shuttle flies. Shuttle explodes. Shuttle flies again. All before I graduated middle high school.
Had to look that last one up. 1988. It seemed like an eternity at the time.
When Harrison came to Washington, he wanted to show that he was still the steadfast hero of Tippecanoe.... He took the oath of office on Thursday, March 4, 1841, a cold and wet day.[104] He braved the chilly weather and chose not to wear an overcoat or a hat, rode on horseback to the grand ceremony, and then delivered the longest inaugural address in American history
In the evening of Saturday, April 3, Harrison developed severe diarrhea and became delirious, and at 8:30 p.m. he uttered his last words....
The prevailing theory at the time was that his illness had been caused by the bad weather at his inauguration three weeks earlier.
Wasn't the first shuttle launched 45 years ago? Or is this talking about something else?
I honestly haven't been paying that much attention since the '90s, but to this casual observer it looks like it has taken 45 years to find a different way to reach low earth orbit.
What's funny is that I also think I'm on the spectrum.
And to continue the conversation - my husband and I have been talking about visiting a South American country this summer where roasted guinea pig is on the menu. I honestly think I could give it a try even though I try to save any mice that my cats corner.
Food choices are both weird and personal. I'll always respect that.
I sort of like snakes, but am hesitant to handle them because 1) they're wild creatures and therefore unpredictable and 2) I heard that they will poo on you if they're alarmed. I don't need that. It's more practical than visceral.
Spiders? Hell no. It's not even an option.
Most people I know fall on either one side or the other. It's not a bad ice-breaker or conversation starter.
So I've got some cats. They're small, but they can fuck up your day.
That being said, I rely on them solely as an early warning system. If I'm home alone and hear a strange sound that may be cause for alarm, I look for cats. If they're sleeping peacefully there's no external threat. If they can't be found, someone is nearby. It may just be the mail delivery, but they know when a human is in the vicinity.
Spiders of the sea. Crabs too. I wouldn't want to touch one that wasn't cooked.
Although I find the comparison discomforting to think about, the sea spiders both go well with butter and are generally regarded as delicious.
That introduces the question: if there were a land spider large enough to nullify the risk/reward/deliciousness equation, would I give it a try? My gut answer is no, but I think the realistic answer is, "I'll wait and see what my fellow apes do with it first. If they have any good recipes, probably yes."
Have you ever wished that you were personal friends with a 16th century French petty nobleman and diplomat? His essays are more interesting and more accessible than that sounds.
I trusted my drug dealer's recommendation on that one and was not disappointed, so I'm passing it on.
Also, I will never not recommend Pliny the Younger's account of his uncle's death by volcanic eruption (Vesuvius) and his own story of surviving it. PDF versions are widely available.
If this is the guy I'm thinking of, he's doing both.
Extreme workouts, diets, medical interventions (blood transfusions, etc.), general body weirdness that would be classed as some variety of anorexia nervosa if he were younger and poorer, and a regimen of pills. He's selling the pills.
Oh, and ladies? He's looking to to reenter the dating market. I guess that's neither here nor there, but for some reason he's available!!!
My apologies if you happen to be a SLAMS/BLASTS/BREAKS HIS SILENCE bot and are just following your programming. It's just beyond tiresome because we know. We fucking know. It's a lazy and hyperbolic headline filler. But now we have lazy headline writing followed up with a lazy comment pointing out that the former is lazy.
And it's starting to break my mind in the same way "This" did on Reddit.
One more apology for me being bitchy tonight. It's not so much this comment, but every single identical one that came before it.
My husband had a weird job many years ago doing this very thing. He worked (via a temp agency) for the federal government. They reviewed hospital billings for their agency's workers and send mildly threatening letters if they charged $12,000 for a procedure that averaged $5,000.
It had some success, but some states had outright outlawed this sort of thing. Texas.