PicoBlog

If you have been reading my analyses of large health insurers’ 2021 earnings reports, you know that the last 10 years have been incredibly profitable for the four biggest: Anthem, Cigna, CVS Health (which now owns Aetna), and UnitedHealth Group. Today we’ll take a look at two other companies that round out the Gang of Six: Humana, where I used to work, and Centene, a company I hadn’t even heard of when I was at Humana and, I would wager, a company most Americans still haven’t heard of.

A recent episode of “the audible,” a podcast by “The Athletic” featuring Bruce Feldman and Stewart Mandel, the latter a frequent and clearly oblivious target of mine, mentioned me and a term I once made up. They were asked by a Tennessee reader about the Vols’ “Veer and Shoot” offense. The mention of the “Veer and Shoot” moniker had stood out to Mandel, who indicated that his best efforts on Google to trace the term lead him to an article written on Football Study Hall of SB Nation by an Ian Boyd.

Today’s edition of Discourse Power includes two full translations of two truly fascinating reads. The first was published in 2017, but it is just as relevant today as the second, which was published more recently. If you also find them interesting or helpful for your own research or reporting, please take a minute to spread the word about this free newsletter. In other discourse power news, I am thrilled to share my paper for Sage's China Report journal, titled A Xinderella Story: Turning the Chinese Dream Into China’s Master Narrative.

This post explores the business impact of the Oneida Community. A follow-up will explore the political impact that has profound ramifications to current events. Businesspeople are expected to look and act a certain way. There’s a not-so-subtle amount of racism, sexism, and ageism in this belief which research shows is oftentimes a lousy predictor of business success. My research includes countless innovators who built enormous businesses or changed the world but looked and behaved in a way most investors would shun.

Our poem this week is one that every schoolchild in America used to know, as it had entered the hearts and minds of the people, expressing much of what we considered to be best in our land.  It’s Longfellow’s “The Village Blacksmith.”      And it was a part of what once was a real folk culture in America.  So much so, in fact, that George Orwell, in… ncG1vNJzZmiZnqm1sLrYnqqopJWje7TBwayrmpubY7CwuY6pZq2glWLDqrjLmp6eZZKhrqS30qagraA%3D

Earl Grant loved Malcolm X. On February 21, 1965, moments before giving a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City, Malcolm asked Grant for a favor — he needed a phone call placed on his behalf to a fundraiser and insisted Grant make it from a phone booth away from the stage. “Do this for me, brother,” Malcolm pled, trying t… ncG1vNJzZmiokam%2Fqq%2FKsKCtrKljwLau0q2YnKNemLyue89oq6GdXau2sLjEp6tmnZ6ZerCyjKaYpZufobpuxA%3D%3D

Share What makes a man brave? Something good that he loves and wishes to keep or attain. That is the simple answer that comes to us from the classical tradition. Fortitude (also called bravery, courage) as a virtue is not the love of display or the enjoyment of pain and suffering. Nor is fortitude the absence of fear. A brave man may fear death and yet be willing to face and endure death for something he holds dear like his friend, his family, or his country.

Horror movies are filled with tropes. Those tropes contribute to the lack of critical acclaim for the genre as a whole, but they are also what make it largely popular. There is a twisted kind of comfort that comes from watching a movie and having some idea how it’s going to go. The “Scream” series has been successful largely based on exposing those tropes and then performing them well. The trope that I am the biggest sucker for is any kind of demon possession or antichrist type theme.

Directed by Na Hong-jin South Korea, 2016 ReidsonFilm have had a cluster of new subscribers this week. We wanted to say welcome and thank you. If you are new to our review you can take a look at our back catalogue here - archive. We also have branched out with a Spotify playlist, and last but not least we made a podcast. If you have any friends (or enemies) who you think might benefit from our weekly dose of film badinage, you could press this button and share: