Performance Reviews

The Onion News Network has a hilarious satire on improving the economy.  The "news feed" explains that Obama is going to hold a performance review with every American and is placing motivational billboards all around the country.

It's a Hot One!

 

I clipped my iGoogle homepage weather widget... and the verdict is: "it's hot!"  The thermometer in my truck read 104F in the shade earlier.

104F = 40C

Recipe / Testing Flickr's Slideshow

I'm testing Flickr's embedded slideshow:

 

These photos are of some recent recipes.

Taxed to Death

I remember hearing how middle class Americans wouldn't see tax increases under Obama?  Maybe I was mistaken?

I dismissed the notion when I originally heard it.  Democrats are notorious for raising taxes, not just on the rich, which actually decreases the velocity of circulation, but on the middle class and poor as well.  The trick, though, is to give you a cut in one area and then tax the hell out of you somewhere else. 

Our politicians are spending money in ways that are unfathomable.  I honestly don't think the politicians and bureaucrats responsible for this drunken spending binge have any concept of what money is.  None the less, a spending they will go.  TARP funds, GM bailout, Fannie/Freddie, GMAC, increases here, spendulus there and finally we're gearing up for Obamacare⁷.  This entitlement will be the granddaddy of them all.  In 20 years 100% of government spending will be taken up in entitlement programs Medicare, Medicaid and Universal Healthcare when it passes.  That doesn't include infrastructure, defense, or any other near and dear government programs.  Think about that for a second.

So how the hell do these retards spending OUR money plan to pay for Obamacare if they're not going to raise income taxes on the middle class?  Here's a list of proposed taxes in other areas^1&7:

• taxes on food items: such as soda, sugar based drinks, alcohol
• a possible VAT tax
• taxes on employer based health insurance

While these taxes aren't directly affecting your income, they will affect your disposable income as the price of goods go up.  And as taxes are applied to goods, whether VAT or otherwise, fewer of those goods will be purchased.  The result will be declining revenue for the Treasury and eventually the government will find new taxes to levy on all of us. 

Sometime later today, or possibly next week the government will release their proposed Obamacare bill.  Next week ABC will run their government propaganda machine straight from the White House⁸.  It's being promoted as a Special on Obamacare: "Questions for the President: Prescription for America".  What ABC has refused to do, though, is offer an opposing viewpoint to government run healthcare, such as Rick Scott's CPR.  Scott apparently contacted ABC about running a commercial during the time slot, but ABC refused. 

CPR has been running infomercials recently against government run healthcare².  Just today on their website is a post about the pending ABC News program⁵:

As the administration prepares for its health care program on ABC News, the one steadfast detail about their health care agenda is: no one knows the details. What we do know is a government-run health care system will increase health costs and crowd out private insurers, leaving American health care in the hands of bureaucrats and not doctors. Reports of partisan bickering and exploding costs are hindering the proponents of a government-run health care system. The incomplete budget score has left Democrats on the Hill doing anything they can to cut costs, except creating a plan that doesn't include a $1.6 trillion government-run health system.

http://www.cprights.org/2009/06/government-run-health-care-system-is-not-the-solution.php

Isn't it enough that the government is going to spend $2 TRILLION ⁴ dollars this year?  When is it enough? 

Even the AMA opposes government run healthcare⁵ .  That should be an eye-opener. 

 

Resources:

1. The AP: House eyes new taxes as senators pare health bill
2. Fox News: Health Care Infomercial Airs Despite Objections
3. CPR: Conservatives for Patients' Rights
4. USA Today: Benefit spending soars to new high
5. CPR: Government-Run Health Care System is Not the Solution
6. NSO: The AMA Opposes Government Health Plan
7. CATO: Intensive Obamacare
8. Fox News: ABC News Teams Up With Obama White House to Present President's Health Care Plan

Google Makes Maps Easier to Navigate

The Google Maps team has made navigating in Street View a lot easier (and much quicker).

 

More photos from Ike

Over at Flickr thejulius has posted photos from the Bolivar Peninsula that document the devastation from Ike all these months later.

Below are three photos from the set, but hit the jump and check out the rest of the photo stream: Ike: Forgotten Hurricane

 

The Bolivar Peninsula:

The AMA Opposes Government Health Plan

The AMA has finally taken a public stand against the government's plan to provide universal health coverage in the United States.  An article in the New York Times, Doctors’ Group Opposes Public Insurance Plan, discusses the AMA's discontent with the plan:

While committed to the goal of affordable health insurance for all, the association had said in a general statement of principles that health services should be “provided through private markets, as they are currently.” It is now reacting, for the first time, to specific legislative proposals being drafted by Congress.

Check out the Conservatives for Patients' Rights site, an opposition group headed by Rick Scott.  CPR is a non-profit group that wants health care reform, just not government mandated health care reform.  From their website:

Conservatives for Patients' Rights is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating and informing the public about the principles of patients rights and, in doing so, advancing the debate over health care reform. Those principles include choice, competition, accountability and responsibility. We believe the path to effective health care reform must be based on the patient-doctor relationship and not from a top-down, big government perspective. Anything that interferes with an individual’s freedom to consult their doctor of choice to make health care decisions defeats the purpose of meaningful health care reform.

 

Rick Scott has been featured in Fortune magazine as well: "Who is Rick Scott trying to heal?"  Scott was once CEO of the Columbia hospital corporation.  He was ousted as the CEO in the late 90's, but is back in the healthcare arena with the Solantic Urgent Care centers in Florida.

Solantic is a novel approach to health care:

 

Google Wave

Have you heard about the new app being developed by Google? 

It's called Google Wave.  I first came across it on Lifehacker's post "The Google Wave Highlight Reel".  Lifehacker has eight short YouTube clips taken from the 80 minute preview given during Google I/O 2009.

Here's Google's description of Wave:

Google Wave is a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where users can almost instantly communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. Google Wave is also a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services and to build extensions that work inside waves.

I watched through the highlights first and then played the whole demonstration in the background.  It's really amazing. 

The team stated their goal was to answer the question "What if e-mail were invented today?"  E-mail was created 40 years ago simulating snail mail.  It doesn't take into account many of the technologies we use today to communicate: SMS, IM, blogging or social networking, or any combination of these technologies. 

Google Wave is the answer to that question.  And it is open source.  Google wants developers writing code for Wave. 

The demonstration highlights will give you an overall understanding of how the team combined these different technologies into a single real-time collaborative communication tool.  That's a mouth full of jargon, but what it comes down to is that Wave starts off like any other email client, but allows you to reply to specific parts of the message, with that reply posted under that section of the message.  And you get to see the reply real-time like in an IM.  Only it's better than IM because the letters are transmitted real-time... not when the message is complete.  And since it's one message and the replies are kept inline with the thread or "wave", someone who's added later to the thread can see EVERYTHING that everyone else has discussed.  There's even a playback feature that allows a late comer to the thread to play the entire event back, starting with the original message and progressing through each progressive comment and reply.

To top it all off they have redefined the spell-check dictionary.

To start with, check out the short clips of Google Wave: The Google Wave Highlight Reel

Here's the full demonstration given by the Google development team on day 2 of Google I/O:

 

Additional Resources:

• Product:  wave.google.com
• Platform:  code.google.com/apis/wave 
• Protocol: www.waveprotocol.org 

8 Months After Ike

Here's a photo from a Flickr site of the last house standing on the Bolivar peninsula after Hurricane Ike.  Two friends had flown to Lake Charles in a Cessna and on the way back passed by the peninsula with a camera:

Click on the photo to read his description.

G1 Android Cupcake Release

Last Saturday I finally received the much anticipated OS release codenamed "Cupcake" for the Android OS on my G1 phone. 

 

There were some aesthetic upgrades to icons, backgrounds and such. 

What I noticed immediately was that there were much needed improvements to the camera:

• a more intuitive GUI
• video capabilities
• faster shutter speeds
• additional "sharing" capabilities, although I use Flickr and Google owns Picasa... so Picasa made the cut and Flickr didn't

Intel's Medfield

I read an article in Fortune this morning titled "Intel's Secret Plan".  Intel has a hush-hush program codenamed "Medfield" in Austin, Texas that they believe is going to push them into the forefront of mobile computing chips.

Intel has been there with the 386, the Pentium and now the Atom to push personal computing to the next level.  If they're able to come out with a small, uber-powerful yet power efficient chip capable of processing complex tasks for the mobile market they just may redefine handheld gadgets.

I'm eagerly awaiting the unveiling of the new chip.

In the meantime, here's a look at Fortune's timeline for Intel:

 

 

Saturday Morning Updates

I've been swamped lately with moving into a new place, taking care of work and domestic duties that I am just now trying to catch up with my postings. 

Today's the 65th Anniversary of D-Day.  

A Teardown of the G1

I came across the site iFixit via Lifehacker.  It's all about tearing down mobile electronics for hacks, upgrades or plain curiosity.

Here's a disassembled G1: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/T-Mobile-G1/782/1