Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Five Interminable Years

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Every now and then, some company will produce a commercial that’s designed to stir up nostalgia and humor among the masses: typically, the commercial will be pushing cars, or soft drinks, or some other consumer item, and it will show cliched scenes from decades past. For each crowd shot of each decade, everyone – and I mean everyone – will confirm rigidly to whatever stereotype exists for that decade. So the 60s crowd will all be hippies and flower-power, the 70s will have everyone disco dancing, the 80s will have everyone playing Rubiks Cubes and Pac Man, the 90s will have everyone dressed for a grunge concert…….. (more…)

I Guess I’m Not the Only One

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I’ve mentioned here and there what a nightmare – – I’m talking Kafka-esque, living hell, nightmare – – it has been to deal with the broken, malfunctioning, poorly-planned, and poorly-executed labyrinth known as Covered California and Healthnet. Insurance companies are good at TWO THINGS: (1) collecting premiums (2) saying no to making payments. It’s an amazing business, and it’s no surprise these stocks do nothing but go up. What a scam. (more…)