Now when arrows don't penetrate, Cupid grabs the pistol

Happy Valentine's day, from me and some gentleman from Atlanta (note the video was made by a fan, and is not an actual music video...which should be really obvious after about three seconds). Tonight, I learned a crucial romantic lesson: if due to the combined effects of bad weather (we covered this yesterday), changes in planning (my wife had a meeting in Peoria today that got cancelled last minute), distractions (my car got stuck half in/half out of the parking spot in the snow), and all around failures on the part of a husband to arrange a Valentine's Day dinner for his wife, hope is not lost. Pick a nice restaurant in town (Biaggi's in this case, an somewhat upper midscale Italian chain, but this is Champaign, after all) and get there early!!! 5:30pm does nicely, getting us a 20-minute wait at what actually passes for a nice restaurant around here. Tiramisu for dessert will make sure that dinner ends happily for all involved.

A brief bit of history: according to the Wikipedia, Valentine's day as we know it was actually not invented out of whole cloth by Hallmark, like Sweetest Day (may those who invented it and ask us to celebrate it be accursed through the ages), but rather by Chaucer. Apparently, he made reference to a non-existent Romantic holiday in May to commemorate the first anniversary of King Richard II's engagement on May 2, the saint's day of Valentine of Genoa. This was confused with the feast of St. Valentine, on February 14, which fell coincidentally near a Pagan holiday, and was eventually used to mirror it, much like Christmas/Yule.

I'll note that starting tomorrow, dkon is welcome to name the second Rooted Cosmopolitans Charity of the Month, which will be features in our right-side sidebar up at the top. In honor of the final day for Kiva.org, I finally made my promised donation to Christina Schuster of Samoa, who is trying to expand the store that allows her to lead an independent life and support her family. I ponied up my $25, and all she needs is $50 more to get her loan. C'mon people, it's Valentine's day, so show the love to her and all the other people who want the chance to live a better life.

Just so I don't forget it, Ezra Klein has a summary from McKinsey about why the US healthcare system is so frickin' expensive. Essentially, they find we pay too much for basically everything. From the blog post:

The very short answer is that we pay more for units of care. McKinsey estimates that it is not higher disease prevalence. Differences in health account for only about $25 billion of the variation -- a drop in the bucket. The difference really is that we pay higher doctor salaries, higher drug costs, higher operation costs, more per day in the hospital, etc, etc. In essence, we're getting a terrible deal.

With that, peace and love to all y'all and remember to be nice to people and especially not to kill anyone if you can avoid it. My New Year's resolution is still going strong (click the link and scroll all the way down if you've forgotten about it)!