flynn23 wrote:
This is not something that can be solved in one legislative session.

In some sense I agree. I certainly agree with you about the complexity of the issue. I thought about writing up my real thoughts on this a few days ago and I came up with a conception of the healthcare situation that involved interactions between 7 primary groups of people that I though represented the issues fairly well, but then I tried to explain McCain's proposals from the election in my framework, and I realized it needed more detail, and things started to fall apart conceptually and I decided not to post.

You're right, dealing with something this complex *democratically* would need to be done very gradually so that people could take in each issue separately.

This is a *republican* approach - not politically, structurally. They are making the decisions for us. We won't know what they're really doing until we have to deal with it in our daily lives. I don't know if they had a choice.

They kind of tried to float this as a dialog 15 years ago with Hillary Care, and the Republicans responded with a pretty effective oversimplification:

1. Canada has national healthcare.
2. Canada is a socialist country.
3. Socialism is the same thing as Communism.
4. We've spent most of our lives fighting the Communists.

People all across America bought this hook, line, and sinker - because Americans simply don't know anything about Canada.

As a Canadian, I can't tell you how annoying it is to hear people say things like "Canada is a socialist country." At first it wasn't annoying because I thought it was a joke - a sarcastic hyperbole - but it turns out most of these people are really serious. They really believe that Canada is a socialist country.

Your next thought is "Really? I really have to respond to that?!" Its like the time I learned that several college educated American friends of mine had no idea, like literally did not know, that Canadians had fought in the Second World War, and were somewhat incredulous when I corrected them about it.

You start out slightly amused, but when you realize that they aren't joking your amusement turns into amazement. Like, where the hell have these people been?

But it gets worse with the socialism thing because they're emotionally convicted about the idea and they won't let it go. They argue with you about it like they know what they're talking about or something!

The Republicans effectively found something that everyone in America is totally ignorant about, and they filled it up with fear, and pointed it at this issue. There simply is no reasoning with that. No amount of fireside chats are going to bring people around to thinking about it differently. They've been fighting communists for generations and if this is communism they don't want it and they don't want to talk about it. If there is no room for dialog, we can't have one.

RE: Healthcare "debate"

janelane wrote:
This is why I don't watch town hall meetings on TV. Nobody with at least a halfway informed opinion shows up.

I've been waffling about posting on the Keep your Goddamn Government hands off my Medicare crowd. I have to admit that I take some pleasure in watching them look stupid.

I watched this debate unfold first in Tennessee before watching it unfold nationally, and I'm both angry and tired of it. I'm tired of being called a "socialist" by people who have no idea what they are talking about. I'm tired of the lies and the punditry and the over simplifications, and I'm tired of arguing with friends who have absolute convictions about an issue that they can barely explain.

I do think the way things work right now is fucked up and I'm tired to trying to explain it to people who aren't interested in listening. There are a lot of policy objectives of the Democrats that I'm not too happy about. I'm skeptical of the climate change legislation, and the EFCA's ban on anonymous ballots for unionization seems blatantly and overtly crooked. But I'm glad they are able to push through healthcare reform. Its opponents have demonstrated consistently for 15 years that they aren't interested in engaging in an intelligent discussion about the issue. Eventually, the time for conversation is over, and they must loose.

RE: Healthcare "debate"

Brian Ulrich:

Not if, but when.

Over the past 7 years I have been engaged with a long-term photographic examination of the peculiarities and complexities of the consumer-dominated culture in which we live.

Thom Andersen:

Perhaps "Blade Runner" expresses a nostalgia for a dystopian vision of the future that has become outdated. This vision offered some consolation, because it was at least sublime. Now the future looks brighter, hotter and blander. Buffalo will become Miami, and Los Angeles will become Death Valley at least until the rising ocean tides wipe it away. Computers will get faster, and we will get slower. There will be plenty of progress, but few of us will be any better off or happier for it. Robots won't be sexy or dangerous, they'll be dull and efficient and they'll take our jobs.

Gregory Clark:

The economic problems of the future will not be about growth but about something more nettlesome: the ineluctable increase in the number of people with no marketable skills, and technology's role not as the antidote to social conflict, but as its instigator.

Niall Ferguson:

Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky.

Even Felix the Cat's luck ran out during the Depression.

Jared Diamond:

When you have a large society that consumes lots of resources, that society is likely to collapse once it hits its peak.

David Piling, at lunch with Jared Diamond:

I am famished, and opt for a bit of everything.

Ginia Bellafante:

There used to be a time if you didn't have money to buy something, you just didn't buy it.

Rebecca Brock:

People say to me, "Whatever it takes." I tell them, It's going to take everything.

Dark Stores

I was particularly impressed with #8 and #28. If you're into the hard stuff, click here. The terminator story line, sans time travel, seems realistic.

More Robots - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Change your market, pivot your product. Rebuild. More contact. Iterate, iterate, iterate.nullnullnull

Building a Startup Means Building More Than One Thing — TechDrawl

Two people have been successfully prosecuted for refusing to provide authorities with their encryption keys, resulting in landmark convictions that may have carried jail sentences of up to five years.

Two convicted for refusal to decrypt data • The Register

I've been trying to figure out exactly when U.S. Customs started searching the belongings of travelers. In researching the matter Palindrome and I found this short piece which was published by the New York Times in 1879. Not only does it describe an inspection process similar to the modern one, but it mocks it quite mercilessly.

There is no doubt that the real object which our Government had in view in establishing the existing rules in regard to passengers' baggage is not the collection of revenue but the education of the traveling public in the elegant and useful accomplishment of perjury.

This essay is a useful datapoint, but I'll have to push further back in time for my answer.

(When you open the PDF, scroll down - the article starts in the left column.)

Here is a reference from 1864.

There was but one obstacle that we foresaw would interfere with our immediate departure from New York, and that was the examination of the passengers' baggage, which we anticipated would be diligently overhauled by the officers. Doubtless through the heavy demands on the United States Government for the continued support of the expensive war now being waged upon this continent, a strict and rigid system of searching emigrants' luggage for contraband articles, is enforced; the officers charge for almost everything besides what individuals are clothed with.

A prewar reference to customs inspections of travelers.

Emigrants who prefer going into Canada by way of New York will receive advice and direction by applying to the British Consul at New York (James Buchanan, Esq.) Formerly this gentleman could procure for emigrants who were positively determined to settle in the Canadas, permission to land their baggage and effects free of custom-house duty; but in a letter dated 16th March, 1835, he says-
"In consequence of a change in the truly liberal course heretofore adopted at this port, in permitting, without unpacking or payment of duty, of the personal baggage, household, and farming utensils of emigrants landing here to pass in transit through this state to his Majesty's provinces, upon evidence being furnished of the fact, and that such packages alone contained articles of the foregoing description, I deem it my duty to make known that all articles arriving at this port accompanying emigrants in transit to Canada, will be subject to the same inspection as if to remain in the United States, and pay the duties to which the same are subjected. I think it proper to mention that all articles suited to new settlers are to be had in Canada on better terms than they can be brought out and such as are adapted to the country."

A GALLANT DEED. - Article Preview - The New York Times

Just to throw a hand grenade into the discussion - I honestly don't think it matters if people go to Mars - at least not right now. People can't live on Mars. Or on the Moon. Or anywhere else that we know of except Earth.

The distance between here and where ever the hell else in the universe people can live is so far, that in the absolute best case scenario it would take many, many, many times longer than written history to reach such a place using any propulsion system that we can currently imagine constructing.

Its a total fantasy. In order to make it a reality you need one of three things:

1. New physics.
2. Artificial BioSpheres that are sustainable for multiple generations.
3. Post-Humans.

You're not going to find any of these things on Mars. The first may not exist at all. The second is enormously risky, expensive, and far fetched. We're going to build cities under the sea long before we know how to build sustainable space craft that can last thousands of years, and we're aren't working on the former as far as I know. The later seems like the most likely bet.

We should be focusing on genetics and robotics - not space craft.

We'll build things with human like intelligence that can live comfortably in alien environments before we'll build vessels that enable humans to live comfortably in those same environments.

Who cares if people go to Mars?

More than half of the internet’s top websites use a little known capability of Adobe’s Flash plugin to track users and store information about them, but only four of them mention the so-called Flash Cookies in their privacy policies, UC Berkeley researchers reported Monday.

Awesome! Thanks Adobe!

You Deleted Your Cookies? Think Again | Epicenter | Wired.com

IF Thomas M. Siebel can accurately see the future, computer science students with the entrepreneurial gene may want to look for a different major. And investors who think that information technology is a sector that will produce outsized returns should wake up.

In Mr. Siebel’s view, I.T. is a mature industry that will grow no faster than the larger economy. He contends that its glory days are past — long past, having ended in 2000.

Digital Domain - Are the Glory Days Long Gone for I.T.? - NYTimes.com