haze of agenda

Lately I’m just so frustrated with so much surrounding politics.  I’m both frustrated with the politicians on all levels, but also the public for being narrow minded, shortsighted, and generally uninformed.

I understand the supposed reason for a two party system, but it’s f—ed up to the point of dividing our nation based on incorrect information on both sides (propaganda is there on all sides people).  I’ve been seeing too much blindly taking inaccurate claims to be fact.  Living in a society with so much free information makes it harder for some to see through the haze of agenda.  It’s just what the political parties and special interests are counting on.

Recently, the hot topic is the health care debate.  My personal perspective is complicated, and much of it hasn’t been represented to my personal satisfaction.  That’s right, I’ll take the power back and blog.  Time to bust out some bullet points…

Socialized health care already exists in America

• Medicare
• Medicaid
• VA
• Prison

Compared to other industrialized countries (who all have national health care):

• We have higher infant mortality rates than industrialized countries – sometimes by as much as 50%
• American life expectancy is less than most industrialized countries – even the cheese and wine culture of France lives for 3 more years than us

Am I advocating any of the current plans? No.  There are problems with them because of the back and fourth nature of our partisan system that’s more concerned with painting the other party in a negative light than doing their f—ing jobs.  That and the special interests have already had a go at slanting any legislation currently considered.

What I do know is that doing nothing is more costly in dollars and lives in the short and long term.

My personal experience is such that I have doctors and other health care professionals in my family.  I know how good our system can be, which is pretty damn good.  We have some of the best doctors and institutions in the world (i.e. Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, etc.).

Despite that, I also know how messed up our system is it is thanks to many things.  Basic statistics show that our system isn’t that good based on big things like infant mortality and life expectancy among a few (I bet we have the lowest rate of erectile dysfunction though).  Starting my own business and also having family and friends with health problems shows how bad the insurance industry and state regulations are.  I’ve seen doctors in public afraid to administer emergency care because of malpractice insurance concerns.  There are a lot of problems.

I fall on the side that something needs to be done for the good of society as a whole.  I see the failure as a result of bureaucracy on three fronts: hospitals, malpractice insurance, and general health care insurance.  All three represent corporate profit interests, and reforming one at a time will do no good to a system already costing too much money and too many lives.

Our crown jewels of health care (i.e. Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, etc.) are protected by referral and acceptance policy like every other national system.  But we don’t vilify them for those practices despite being kinda socialist in nature.  Our insurance companies decide what is and what isn’t covered – doesn’t that make them a practitioner of death panels or socialist principle on some level?  Does that mean we’re fine with out insurance coverage the way it is, or just happy to have any in the first place?

What always seems to be forgotten?  No matter what, there will always be extra services available to those willing to pay for it.  It happens everywhere, and it would be no different here.  If you want supplemental insurance to cover a different hospital or benefits, someone will provide it.  If you want to pay for that extra test that’s most likely non-essential, no one is stopping you from finding a way to have it done.  It doesn’t matter wherever you are, you can get so much if you’re willing to part with your money.

I’m personally not completely jazzed about the possibility of putting my tax dollars towards paying for health coverage of those that do not contribute to society in some valuable way… But it would benefit myself and most of society more than the current system costs us.

Let’s take a hypothetical… Lets say that we all have to go to another country to live.  I wonder how many would choose a country without national health care since it is such a pariah on the existence of freedom.

Robert McNamara

CNN is reporting that Robert McNamara has passed away.

This is hitting me harder than any of the other recent deaths because The Fog of War really influenced my intellectual evolution.

I realize that he’s was considered a controversial individual for his perceived role in bringing about and perpetuating the Vietnam war, but his ability to openly talk about the past in great detail, admit mistakes, and apply lessons learned to future relations is extremely admirable.

Here’s his 11 lessons as shown in The Fog of War:

1. Empathize with your enemy
2. Rationality will not save us
3. There’s something beyond one’s self
4. Maximize efficiency
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war
6. Get the Data
7. Belief and seeing are both often wrong
8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil
10. Never say never
11. You can’t change human nature

When just reading this list, it seems pretty cold and callous, but if you haven’t seen the movie, please do. It’s context is very powerful with lots of perspective and evidence.

I’m going to watch it again soon.

CNN, Swine Flu, and Twitter

Apparently this swine flu thing is a big deal.  I’m not saying it isn’t, but it certainly getting a lot of press.  Then I came across this article on CNN titled “Swine flu creates controversy on Twitter” (link here).

I’m not going to give an opinion about the flu, but this title and a statistic brought up in the article gave me a little reason for pause.  According to Nielsen: Nearly 2 percent of all Twitter messages Monday concern swine flu, and this was the main justification for the writer to allude to Twitter causing hype of the situation.  Here’s the second paragraph:

Some observers say Twitter — a micro-blogging site where users post 140-character messages — has become a hotbed of unnecessary hype and misinformation about the outbreak, which is thought to have claimed more than 100 lives in Mexico.

My simple point is that only 2% of Tweets yesterday were in concern to the swine flu are tantamount to hype, then what about the hype caused by CNN (or any news outlet).  It’s my contention that the stories produced by CNN and all the other news organizations yesterday accounted for much more than 2% of readily accessible stories published and promoted online.

So CNN is alluding to Twitter in a negitave light because the infrastructure for causing hype may exist somewhere else?

lack of originality

So in watching this most recent episode of Diggnation (#199), I was very quickly pissed at one of the hosts (Alex Albrecht) for a project he’s undertaken.  He’s part of a team creating an iPhone app that’s just of a dog licking a screen (so it looks like your iPhone has a little dog inside it licking the glass from the inside).  It has the oh so creative name if iLick.  Sounds like one of those little apps that you don’t really care about, but you know there are countless others out there willing to drop a buck or two to have this on their phone for whatever reason…

But anyway, here’s the rub.  This is exactly like a web site/video with a claimed copyright of 2005 (link).  So someone else did it years ago.  That shows a lack of originality on the part of the app developers.  It gets worse in my opinion due to the fact that one of the two major podcasts Albrecht co-hosts featured the video just referenced over a year ago (Diggnation #136).

I have no idea what level of intellectual property protection is available to the original creators, but regardless of that it shows an overt hijacking of an idea for profit.  Sure, it’ll be on a small scale with little to no profit for the developers – but its the disregard for the originality of someone else’s idea that tick’s me off…  And I know you can make the argument that his idea is different in specific ways – but it’s pretty clear that this idea looks a hell of a lot like another piece of media as well as his becoming specifically aware of it a long time ago in a very public forum.

So that got me to thinking about the whole notion of inspiration, borrowing, infringing, and stealing in terms of originality.  That’s the whole purpose behind intellectual property laws, but intellectual property protection is so weak and useless unless you have lots of money to fund lawyers to establish and enforce such protection.  To that end, intellectual property protection is a luxury to an extent…  Sure, it’s inherent once you create something – but to protect it and enforce it takes more time and money than most have…

Using or taking the original ideas of others has advanced a lot of things…  Television…  Electricity…  Transportation…  Computers…  While the act of doing so may be  accepted to an extent, it is a definite window into the character of a person or company.

This is probably my biggest frustration and concern over all things internet based.  Once you put something out there, there’s no 100% way to ensure that whatever you create won’t be stolen or misused to whatever ends.  I love the creative commons movement, but it’s still got a ways to go.

Child Support Tactic

The most common manner to collect child support here in the US is by wage garnishing.  Despite this, there are always the those who find a way to fall behind on support payments…

Apparently there’s another way to attempt to get support payments in Tennessee through the Department of Human Services called “license revocation”.  Basically, if a party ordered to make support payments that are 90-days overdue and owe more than $500, their state issued licenses can be revoked.

Think about how pissed some would be to have their hunting or fishin’ licenses yanked…  It can go one more step in revoking professional drivers license (wouldn’t doing this possibly hinder the generation of funds to make support payments?)…  The same agency can even get into lottery winnings…

I’m all for it, I’m just applauding the license revocation as a new angle against what are usually deadbeat parents.

[source]

European Art (is more like it)

A small group of us decided to go to the Indianapolis Art Museum (IMA) on Saturday to see the European Design exhibit.  As someone who has spent a lot of time in the worlds of art and design, I went into the exhibit with a note of skepticism.

Snap review of the show is that I’m a bit disappointed.  It’s floor plan didn’t flow well, and the contents of the exhibit begged the question of what is design and what is art.  That’s not to say that the exhibit isn’t worthwhile, but it plays too much into the subjective definitions of art and design and thus takes on the pretentious stance of defining both things for the exhibit attendee.

You can hear it now…  Me getting on my inconsequential soapbox…  Give it a chance, but it’s no biggie if you don’t want to bother with the ramblings…

For me it all boils down to two things…

First is the standard understanding of design being the relationship between form and function.  There are lots of artists creating things for themselves and corporations throughout history.  If something is created with the function being the form, then it’s art and not design.  The function has to have a relationship with the form and vice versa.  Lots of people can make a chair with a unique form, but it would only be an aesthetic piece if it has no real function in that it’s not a practical and/or a usable chair.

Second is whether the market accepted the item as a result of it’s form and function.  There are plenty examples of very cool design that made it to market, but failed because its form wasn’t appreciated or its function wasn’t enough.  This would then fall into the category of unsuccessful design and shouldn’t be celebrated as design unless it’s impact can be traced to future design.

This exhibit contains way too much conceptual art that I didn’t feel qualified as design for any number of reasons.

Take a look at the IMA website section for the exhibit.  This link will you to a video immediately displaying a quote from the IMA’s Curator of Design Arts, R. Craig Miller:

“People often forget the extraordinary power that a wonderful design can have on their daily existence.”

This is exactly what I’m talking about in terms of this show.  Most of the pieces never had a daily impact on the lives of more than a very limited number of art collectors or the artists that produced them.  Why?  Because they were singular (or limited) pieces created for form rather than their function.

There are definite examples in the exhibit of true, established design that did have an impact – but they were dwarfed by the examples of conceptual art in terms of physical size and relative importance within the exhibit.

Take this last image on the right.  It’s my favorite piece in the exhibit from an aesthetic sense, however it’s bad design in that it has an impractical function…

I was hoping the exhibit would be centered on examples of European design that both had a wide impact on daily life and the progression of the aesthetic across distance and time.  Instead, the exhibit was at least 75% furniture or concepts that either: never made it to market, was never accepted by the market, never had much of an impact on implementation of design, or borrowed too heavily from previous design.

It would have done the museum a service to take a stance something akin to the NYC MOMA and their rotating display of design icons.  They show examples much more accessible and understandable as design that have used and admired for the form and function impact on every day life.  Less chairs, lamps and tables – and more phones, transportation, and every day items that have permeated far and wide.

Hell…  Showing examples of European architecture in the same time era would be a better representation of European design than most of this exhibit.  Architecture is more about design than most art thanks to its obvious relationship between form and function.

But then again…  As with all art…  This is all subjective.

talk about FPS [video]

The video below is just a bunch of examples of extremely high rate video…  Somewhere in the 5,000 to 10,000 frames per second (the typical video a normal camera takes is in the 24-30 frames per second).

Apparently this is a commercial with a political message, hence the category inclusion…  And while I agree agree with the message, it’s posted mostly for the video…

I’d love to be the production staff that gets to specialize in this type of video.  Imagine the daily meetings where the question is always “what are we going to shoot next?”

Oh yeah, the opera is a nice touch as well…

interesting comparisons

Click on the image for a much larger representation…

It’s an image created by The Atlantic that shows comparisons figures between the beginning and ending years of the GWB era…  it’s not all one side or another, but it still is interesting nonetheless…

Quite the stretch of days

Yesterday was a weird day. It was surreal to see the events in Washington, and more so to have a chance to speak to my mother who was there in the midst of it all.

The speech has been resonating a little more with me than it did when he gave it, but it still comes nowhere close to calming my apprehension about the continually deteriorating economy. Part of me want to ask how things can be so bad with so many people able to afford the trip to DC. How can things be so bad with 10 inaugural balls in DC alone? Think of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent over the past 3 or so days by the government and by private citizens.

I also was around on Facebook a few times throughout the day, and I’m still flabbergasted by the overreaction from the hardcore right. Someone I went to high school with commented at around 1 am yesterday morning that she couldn’t sleep because all this “change” scared her. Someone else was going on about increased tax dollars going toward paying for abortions in 3rd world countries. I just don’t get it. These are all supposedly educated people as well.

But I’ll put all that behind me because another hope of mine comes to fruition tonight. How do you ask? It’s the season premiere of Lost.

Hell yeah!

I know that my most loyal commenter has never regained an affinity for the show, but I’m really past the point of return.  Even if the show sucks from now until the end of season 6, I’ve put in too much time to not see how things work out.  That’s not quite the most optimistic of statements, but I am looking forward to the show.  I’ve liked each season for different reasons, and I’m 90% sure that I’ll like it from here on out.

I know I’ll get to see Locke die at least once.

is it raining man?

Just browsing stories on Jalopnik, and I came across this image which made me laugh out loud…  Not only because it’s aligned with some of my economic beliefs, but because it brings R. Kelly into it.

If you’re interested, this was taken outside of the Detroit Auto Show.  The group protesting is the UAW. I’m not going to go all editorializing on this anymore, but the issue is far from going away.  I’m still unsure on what to make of all sides of the government / auto company / union love-hate triangle.

Just ask yourself if watersports is really the answer?

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