Howardcounty

For those of you who haven’t heard, the Howard County local blogosphere has a new entrant, as Corey Andrews has started a new “HoCoLibertarian” blog, “to get a foot in the door for libertarians and libertarian-leaning conservatives in Howard County.” (Note that Andrews is also planning to run for the Board of Education in 2012; for more information see his campaign blog.) To help welcome his new blog I’m going to devote this blog post to libertarians, more specifically to Bleeding Heart Libertarians, a great new group blog I’ve been following avidly (and occasionally commenting on). ...

HoCo Rising has been teasing us all week about his “big announcement.” It turned out that he’s not just raising consciousness through his blog but he’s also raising money, in this case to help eliminate homelessness in Howard County. It’s a worthy cause, and the recipient of the funds, the Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center, is a worthy organization. I just donated $50 (which I’m proud to say put the campaign past the halfway mark on the way to the goal of raising $1,500) and I encourage you to donate too if you haven’t already. ...

A while back I lost a fair amount of weight and got back into the “normal” range of BMI. Since then I’ve regained some of the weight and am now just a tad above the normal range. I’ve been trying to get back down to where I was before, with not much luck. So I’ve decided to try something different: I’m entering into a “commitment contract,” a concept that’s been the subject of academic research and is being commercialized by StickK. StickK itself sounds like an interesting service, but since I have a blog I figured I could do this myself. ...

I’m interrupting my blog hiatus to discuss direct-to-consumer (or DTC) genetic testing, an issue that has recently become a cause célèbre (at least among the relatively small group of people concerned about it) and that I think deserves wider attention, as it’s an early indicator of some of the disruption that will occur around health care in the 21st century. In recent years the cost of sequencing human genomes (i.e., the DNA information that makes you you) has been dropping like a rock. While getting your complete personal genomic data is still relatively expensive (thousands of dollars), the cost of getting less complete data is now at the point where it’s almost an impulse purchase; for example, the startup company 23andme offers a service for $199 plus $5 per month that provides information on various places where your genome might differ from other peoples (“single nucleotide polymorphisms” or “SNPs,” pronounced “snips”) and some interpretation on what such differences might mean. ...

After posting lots of information it’s time for me to turn around and ask my few readers a question: I’m currently considering establishing a new bank account—not replacing my current account but supplementing it as a dedicated account out of which to pay recurring expenses. Those of you who’ve traveled Route 40 west of US 29 know that there a lot of banks on that stretch, and there must be one for me. (I’d like to bank with a bank that has a local physical presence.) ...