When I was a child I had some Pink Floyd^•.¹ On cassette tape of course. I’ve long since had to replace it, but I can’t remember now whether I own it on vinyl or compact disc. Which is beside the point, the point is, to get the full impact of turning the corner in the University parking lot and seeing the light streaming from the clouds, you really have to be listening to the instrumental portion of Pink Floyd’s^• Comfortably Numb while still not fully awake.

When I was a child, I caught fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye… I turned to look but it was gone, I cannot put my finger on it now, the child is grown, the dream is gone…

The child may be grown, but the dream isn’t completely gone yet. And the child still has his toys, pretty much the theme of this week’s photoblogstream.² I saw the end times riding hard upon us, stopped the car, and snapped a photo of it with my phone, which I carry with me at all times. Now I’m writing this blog post up in iaWriter which will sync between that phone which would amaze the child to a desktop computer that the child would recognize as possible, and a tablet that the child would consider the greatest in science fiction.³

Meanwhile, on the revelations front, insurance companies around the country are sending out letters telling people that their rates are going up and their plans are being canceled to meet the requirements of the new laws all at the same time that Politico is raving about how prices are going down due to that law, but if you read it closely, all it’s saying is that spending is starting to rise more slowly. Which itself is a bit weird, prices only started rising like mad about a year ago. I mean, we through they were rising like mad before that, but this year we found what rising like mad really meant. Ours went up over 30% due to “the requirements of the new laws” this year.

On the other hand, maybe people are just spending less because costs have driven care out of reach. Read this first paragraph:

The historic slowdown in health-care costs is continuing. Earlier this month, the government’s actuaries found that total national health spending continues to grow at the lowest rate we’ve ever seen.

Ignoring that rises costs are still rising costs, that’s a big logical jump to “cost” increases slowing from “spending” increases slowing.

Revelations and fleeting glimpses of the future. If you had told the child listening to Pink Floyd that he’d grow up to see this blatant sophistry among the press, he’d certainly recognize it—he had already read 1984—but he really thought 1984 was pessimistic and would never happen. In fact, it was optimistic. It supposed that a Pravda-like press required government control. He never thought he’d see a Pravda-like press voluntarily form itself.

Strange thoughts on this nervous morning in San Diego.^•

Revelations.