TravelTuesday

10 Tuesday Feb 2026

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Since 2016 I have, on occasion, been traveling  in my little blue Yaris hatchback.  AND like every other blue 2008 Yaris it has a clear coat paint peeling problem. AND despite its looks the little bugger seems to putter along ok.

I am planning a slow drive across America. From Arizona to the tri-state area … arriving around the beginning of springish. I will be stopping at some historical, spiritual, and interesting sites. Between here and there …. it’s over 2000 miles so ……..
    !!Looking for suggestions!!

As a deeply spiritual person I like to spend a part of each day in prayer, just as I have done since I was a teen. Hopefully that will at least occasionally be at a community of faith and likely more often at a rest area on the interstate or at a park along one of the blue highways. [see: William Least Heat Moon].      !!Looking for suggestions!!

See: https://richardbbrunner.com/2025/09/13/excited-to-begin-trip-planning/

Medicare and Med prices

10 Tuesday Feb 2026

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The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) included a “non-interference clause” that officially prohibited Medicare from negotiating prescription drug prices directly with manufacturers.

This law established Part D and required private insurers to handle negotiations, allowing higher prices to prevail until the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA)

The IRA partially reversed this, enabling negotiations for specific drugs starting in 2026.
Key Details on the Law and Reversal:

• The 2003 Prohibition: The MMA stipulated that the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) could not interfere with negotiations between drug manufacturers and private Medicare plans, effectively barring direct federal price negotiations.


• The Impact: This restriction, often called the “non-interference clause,” allowed pharmaceutical companies to set prices that Medicare plans were forced to accept.


• The Reversal (2022): The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) allows HHS to negotiate prices for a limited number of high-cost, single-source drugs, beginning with 10 Part D drugs in 2026, and more in subsequent years.


• Ongoing Legal Challenges: The pharmaceutical industry has filed lawsuits to challenge the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program created by the IRA.

Past and Present: Natural Ice

22 Thursday Jan 2026

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In the 19th century, ice vendors used to ship blocks of ice from frozen rivers to more southerly cities. When refrigeration was invented, ice barons disparaged the ice they made as “artificial ice,” fake, not the real thing. But it didn’t work: Artificial ice was seen as cleaner, less impure, safer. When it also became cheaper to produce, it replaced the “natural” stuff rapidly. “To our 19th-century ancestors,” writes Postrel, “‘nature’ was a source of peril rather than purity.”

Different Cultures Enhances Creativity

15 Thursday Jan 2026

Posted by in creative, Mental Health, Mood, Research, Uncategorized

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Creativity can be enhanced by experiencing cultures different from one’s own, according to a study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (published by SAGE).

Three studies looked at students who had lived abroad and those who hadn’t, testing them on different aspects of creativity. Relative to a control group, which hadn’t experienced a different culture, participants in the different culture group provided more evidence of creativity in various standard tests of the trait. Those results suggest that multicultural learning is a critical component of the adaptation process, acting as a creativity catalyst.

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The researchers believe that the key to the enhanced creativity was related to the students’ open-minded approach in adapting to the new culture. In a global world, where more people are able to acquire multicultural experiences than ever before, this research indicates that living abroad can be even more beneficial than previously thought.

“Given the literature on structural changes in the brain that occur during intensive learning experiences, it would be worthwhile to explore whether neurological changes occur within the creative process during intensive foreign culture experiences,” write the authors, William W. Maddux, Hajo Adam, and Adam D. Galinsky. “That can help paint a more nuanced picture of how foreign culture experiences may not only enhance creativity but also, perhaps literally, as well as figuratively, broaden the mind.

The article “When in Rome… Learn Why the Romans Do What They Do: How Multicultural Learning Experiences Facilitate Creativity” in the June 2010 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.