The Holistic Economy

The Best Movies We Watched During 2011

2012-01-22T15:36:00.004-05:00

Once again, time for our best movie list from the past year. These are movies we watched last year, not necessarily movies that came out last year. Do you really care?

Once eight choices this year. I only put those films that really rocked our world and there just weren't ten of them like in previous years.

We watch movies on Netflix and Hulu Plus. Most of the choices below are movies we saw on Netflix, but not streaming. Of course, Netflix continues to expand its streaming collection, so check to see if the one you want to see is there or not. I'd love to stop doing the DVD-by-mail thing and just stream everything. I know that's where Netflix is going, I can't wait until the movie studios catch up to their thinking.

August Rush

An extremely emotional film. August Rush tells the story of a young boy who does not know his mother and father, but feels that they speak to him through the music that he hears. Even though he has no musical training, he finds that he is able to play guitar and other instruments just by tapping on the wood and plucking the strings. A street musician (Robin Williams) finds him and helps him improve. The boy continues to think of ways he might get to meet his parents, whom he is sure are both musicians themselves (they are). The back story shows how his parents met and the decision they had to make about giving the boy up. A lovely story, great acting (especially by Keri Russell as the mother) and wonderful music throughout.

Hot Fuzz

An ambitious London police officer gets transferred, against his will, to a small English village. Just as he is mourning the lack of action, he notices some strange events occurring that can't be coincidental. This film is a combination of raucous police action and very funny characters and scenes in the village.

Young@Heart

Another musically-oriented movie, and another heartwarmer. Elderly people get together to sing an interesting mix of rock and roll hits, including songs from the Clash, Chuck Berry and The Ramones (imagine a bunch of old codgers singing "I Wanna be Sedated"). It's a documentary of a real group that has been touring for several years. Well done, and you'll really get to like the old folks making people laugh and enjoy the music.

Conviction

Asking the question of all of us "What lengths would you go to for your sibling?" this movie is based on the real-life situation of a sister who puts herself through law school for the sole purpose of freeing her (she believes) innocent brother from jail. Hilary Swank is in top form (when isn't she?) and Sam Rockwell has always been one of our favorites. Puts you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.

Country Strong

I guess this was the year for musical movies for us. Country Strong features a country singer (Gwyneth Paltrow) who has been in-and-out of rehab and is trying to put her career back together. Along comes a young, beautiful, talented songstress (Leighton Meester of Gossip Girl) and trouble starts brewing. Both women are amazing performers and the movie rocks (or twangs) from the first song to the last. Neither my wife nor I are big country music fans, but we can recommend this film to anyone who enjoys American music.

Invictus

Set in South Africa at the time when Nelson Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman, of course) is released from prison and subsequently becomes president of the country. He is looking for ways to unite the whites and blacks and seizes on the Rugby World Cup coming up. Black people are surprised at this since the team is entirely white, and the team is just as surprised to find out they will be a political tool in this way. Matt Damon plays the captain of the rugby team. The film helps us think about ways we can all pull together as one team, one country, one people. Very, very worthwhile movie --- you will enjoy it deeply.

Never Let Me Go

A movie based on one of those science fiction novels that gives us a picture of what could happen in the future if governments and corporations go whacko (not entirely fictional). Several young people appear to be students in a strict, parochial school. But they are actually part of a grand experiment, cruel, disgusting and inhumane. The students find out and try to find a way out. Keira Knightley stars. It's beautifully done and very touching.

Breast Picture

I'll have to ask all my female blog readers and friends to forgive me, but this movie was really, really good. My wife liked it too. It's about a porn director who almost accidentally writes a great non-porn script. He has no intention of making the movie, but is convinced by several co-workers to give it a try. He sneakily fits scenes of the non-porn into the filming of his latest porn, and chaos ensues. The acting and writing is quite good, the premise is silly and the characters are lovable. I'm trying to remember if there is an actual nudity in the movie --- I think there isn't. It's a gas.

Google Chromebook Review

2012-01-22T15:17:00.003-05:00

My motivation for trying the Chromebook was that I realized that I live in Google's world. I use Google search, maps, Android, Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Google Apps at work, YouTube - everything Google. I even switched from iTunes to Google Music recently. Realizing this caused me to think about using the Chrome OS and the idea of a nice, light ultrabook with no data on it was also very appealing.

Hardware

Let's look at the laptop first. This Samsung Chromebook (white), first of all, is gorgeous. Well, the outside shell is. The keyboard and screen bezel are very utilitarian once you open it up, but the outer shell is amazingly beautiful. This is true for the white version, I think the black versions are not as nice. (Update: last I checked the white Samsung is no longer being sold.)

Screen clarity and brightness is very readable. Brightness is adjustable to any room lighting. The keyboard is very comfortable. People talk about how large the trackpad is, which is true, but the extra wrist-rest is very convenient. The trackpad is not stellar. I find it a bit laggy, but it is useful enough. Much more important is that the trackpad supports multitouch gestures. This is a MUST for me being a former MacBook Pro user.

The laptop is 3.3 lbs, which seems featherweight to me, but then again I use a giant black HP laptop at work, so anything would feel light after using that.

Battery life is absolutely stellar. I've been using the computer for hours today unplugged and I am down to 64% remaining, which is about 4.5 more hours. I've never used a laptop with battery life this good. It must be because of the solid-state hard drive. Anyway, Samsung, nice job on the battery life. I am totally impressed (and this is a do-or-die feature for me on laptops).

Graphics quality is excellent. I played 720p videos in YouTube, Netflix and Hulu and none showed the slightest lag or jerkiness. Once I tried 1080p video, it started to get jerky.

Chrome OS

But what about the operating system, Chrome OS?? I like it. It reminds me of Jolicloud, which was an operating system that was meant to operate "in the cloud" several years ago. It never got popular, but I tried it for a while. It was too buggy to be useful, but I liked the idea of it.

Well, Chrome OS is Jolicloud done right. You can "install" apps from the Chrome store, but they are really just "links" on the splash page of the Chrome browser. The closest you get to actual apps is some of them get installed as Chrome browser extensions. What did you expect? The browser is the OS. Stuff like Settings is just another browser tab. It is genius. Simplifies things greatly. I probably spend 85% of my time inside a browser, why not make it 100%?

As for the advertising and hype, I am here to tell you that Chrome OS on the Chromebook really does boot up in 8 seconds. I timed it. Friggin' unbelievable. That changes everything. Turn off your computer whenever you are not using it, because it takes no time at all to bring it back up. This isn't some "sleep mode" like on Windows PCs, this is really "OFF." So it is 8 seconds until you see your user login, then another 2-3 seconds after logging in and you see the browser. Super fast.

I am blown away by the variety of apps in the Chrome Store. I was expecting I would have to live without the functionality of my MacBook Pro in certain areas, but that turned out not to be true. Astoundingly, I found a GIMP-like app in the store called Pixlr. It does layers, filters, the whole bit. I haven't dug into it yet, but I use GIMP a lot (GIMP is an open source alternative to Photoshop) and I'm so happy to still have at least some of that functionality. Also, Netflix and Hulu work GREAT, thank you very much. No problems at all. No goofy plug-ins to load, they just work. And Hulu sees the Chromebook as a computer, not a mobile device, so you have a much wider variety of programming. The Chrome Store even has Angry Birds! (sorry I mentioned it). It makes you realize that "apps in the cloud" are going to be so much cooler than the crap we load onto our local hard drives. Sky's the limit.

My employer uses Google Apps corporately, so I use two Chrome logins, one for my personal Google ID and one for work. What I used to do on my MacBook Pro was to have the Chrome browser and Firefox open at the same time and be logged in to one Google ID on one and one on the other browser. This was very fast and easy, just flip between spaces on the Apple desktop. With Chrome OS, it is not as easy. You have to log out of one Google account and log in to the other. (You can actually have two IDs in a single browser but it doesn't seem to work well for me.) I'm being picky here, because it is probably a 10 second process total, but still a lot slower than what I'm used to. A good side-effect is that that extra hassle actually keeps me focused on work when I need to be focused on work, and also focused on my personal stuff instead of constantly checking work e-mail and notifications. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

You can actually have multiple windows open on Chrome within one login. Two is the maximum, I think. I guess this would be useful if you have too many tabs open at a time, so you can spread them across two windows. There's also a nice extension called "Too Many Tabs" that lets you take browser tabs offscreen and then you can bring them back anytime. Another possibility for multiple windows is if you want one window as normal and the other as "incognito," which is Chrome's word for no tracking, no history.

The idea of the "desktop' is really gone now. Well, sorta. The landing page when you start the machine (or open a new tab) is your "desktop." It shows icons for all your apps and you can easily click on the one you want.

Now, after owning a Chromebook for three months, I am really loving it. Obviously, I cannot use Word or Excel documents very well. Google Docs is great for unformatted stuff, but if I need to create a proposal for a client, I have to be using MS-Office on Windows or Mac. But for the rest of my work, this Chrome cloud-world is just fine. Preferable, even. And the freedom of not loading anything locally feels so good. My MacBook Pro crashed, so even though I had everything backed up with Carbonite, I still keenly felt the vulnerability of having data locally. I guess I'm a cloud guy now. And dangerously close to being an annoying Google fanboy.

I mean, Chromebook? Seriously??

Review of Google Music

2011-12-28T12:20:00.004-05:00

I was one of those people who jumped on the Google Music bandwagon as soon as it came out in beta. Now that I've been using it for a few months I thought I would post a review of it for others who may be interested.

Google Music is amazing. I love it so far. I have completely switched away from Apple iTunes and have no regrets. My switch was forced upon me, though, because my MacBook Pro died on me and so I had to think about whether to buy a new Apple product or to switch to a Chromebook. I made the choice to flip over to Chromebook (which I will review separately) and then decided to go whole-hog into the world of Google. I was already using many other Google services, so iTunes was a sore thumb sticking out from a mess of Google stuff.

Here is what is great and beautiful about Google Music:

Excellent integration with my Android phone (Motorola Droid Bionic). The user interface is so easy to use, so intuitive. It takes the old iPod interface up a level. If you have an Android phone, I strongly suggest you get rid of iTunes and switch to either Google Music or Amazon Music.

Very easy to buy music on the Website (no desktop app needed)

Being cloud-centric. I am so happy that Google Music sits in the cloud. It is so cool to buy a song but not have to download it anywhere. Certainly my Chromebook would not know what to do with an mp3 file, but, amazingly, downloads to my phone are also unnecessary. Songs stream instantly to my phone, thanks to 4G networking. Also, I can mark a certain playlist as "available offline" and Google takes care of the rest behind the scenes. Cloud support as an add-on or a clumsy syncing activity like iCloud is so retro compared to this.

Here are some things I don't like about the beta:

The store is still missing a lot of music. Universal Music Group hasn't signed on yet, plus many of the independent artists have not uploaded their songs here yet, they are assuming that iTunes is all they need.

The search is actually kinda sucky. C'mon Google, search is your thing! Certainly, if you put in an artist name or song name it will come up, but it seems treat the clutter the same as the real thing. For instance, you'll see a bunch of karaoke and K-tel-type remakes of your song and then the actual original song will be somewhere among the mess. And, of course, since Google doesn't have every popular artist, lots of searches end up with nothing but karaoke and K-tel.

Shopping for music on Android is terrible. When you click "Shop for this artist" you'd think you would go to Google Music, right? You don't. You go to Google Shopping, which gives you the 24 online sites that have music by that artist. Whaaa?

There is no choice of where to store your "available offline" songs. You should be able to put them on an SD card, but I'm only able to store them in my limited phone memory. Apparently, some Android users have the opposite problem, only able to store songs on SD but can't switch to internal memory.

Since Google's music store doesn't have all the music I want, I often go to Amazon's amazing music store and pick it out there. Transferring the music from Amazon's cloud to Google's cloud is a true pain in the ass. Google's music uploader does not work on Chromebook (Ugh!!) so I have to use my wife's Mac Pro to get the whole job done.

Now, people like Leo Laporte are saying Google Music is too little, too late. Why would someone want to "own" music when they could use streaming services like Pandora or Spotify? he asks.

Sorry, Leo, but I ain't buying it. If you are a person who puts on music just to have noise going, then I'm sure streaming services are fine. But I am a more serious listener. I don't like to hear the same song twice in one week. I like independent artists, which are not well-represented on streaming services. I love mashups, which are totally missing from all streaming. I'm just very fussy about my music. I am a paying customer of Pandora and do listen occasionally, but it could not be my primary source of music. I like to have music that I own, I just don't want it to be on my machines (still smarting from my MacBook Pro crash...yes, it was backed up...to Google Music and Amazon Music coincidentally).

As a sidenote, I've found a wonderful music discovery streaming service called EarBits. They have a lot of independent artists and they randomly stream them on various genre channels. Most wonderfully, they have some curated channels like "Scott's Chick Singer Channel" which are excellent. The whole service is free (for now, I guess) with no ads whatsoever. I don't know how they make money.

The biggest thing I like about Google Music is that I feel like I'm using the next generation of music playback. Never worrying about downloads, syncing, duplicate copies of songs (iTunes was horrendous for this), and hard drive crashes.

My prediction is that consumers flock away from iTunes in the coming years and half of them move to streaming services like Pandora and Spotify, while the other half move to music systems like Amazon Music and Google Music (which are almost identical, by the way). "Managing your music" can and should be something we don't have to worry about anymore. These new services make it possible, friendly and even fun to listen to your music again.

Should "Occupy Wall Street" Become "Dismantle Wall Street?"

2011-11-26T17:16:00.007-05:00

I've been paying close attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement in America and other parts of the world. Could we be experiencing an "Arab Spring" right here in our own backyard?

Well, maybe. But it's hard to figure out what these American kids are really asking for? Mainly because, they won't say. They produce a wide-ranging list of social cures, many which seem to lead towards socialism and away from free market capitalism to the casual observer. For me, that's a non-starter. I love capitalism and, being from Canada originally, am no fan of anything that smells like Trudeau-style socialism.

But what if we refocused on the initially defined villian for a minute - Wall Street. The true extent of the global damage that these clowns inflicted on the world was not apparent to me until I read the book "Boomerang" by Michael Lewis. Wall Street "geniuses" intentionally wound up a giant time bomb of free-flowing money that not only wreaked havoc in the U.S. but in many other countries as well. Iceland tried to remake itself as a investment bank, using the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) from Wall Street, bankrupting itself in the process. Ireland caught the real estate bubble fever and, using free money from the U.S. investment banks, created enormous debt for its banks, and, subsequently, the Irish taxpayers. And, most damningly, the Wall Street firms cynically played the German banks for suckers right up until the entire debt crisis came crashing down.

So what should we do with these assholes? I, personally, am not a fan of political witch hunts. I have no interest in tracking down "the guy" who is responsible for it all and throwing him in jail for twenty years. There is no "one guy." It's the whole Wall Street system.

I propose that we immediately begin engineering a "Dismantle Wall Street" policy in the U.S.. Here's what we should do:

Execute a one-time fine against all the Wall Street firms, the maximum amount that will still allow them to continue operations but that will help bail our federal government out of the mess it is in (at least a drop in the bucket).

Break up all Wall Street firms into tiny little shops maybe 1/50th the size they are now. Dismantle the fucking place. Wall Street dudes are so well known for their highly competitive nature, well, let's see it! Compete against one another as 600 or 700 itty bitty firms and let's see you tear each other apart. No investment bank needs to be $45B. If ever an anti-trust break was required in our history, this is it.

Increase transparency of derivatives. I know some of this is already in progress, but the 2008 answer of "I didn't know what was in the thing" has got to be fixed. Derivatives must be transparent, understandable, taxed at a high rate and regulated like hell. Derivatives do not add to the benefit of the country, they are just card tricks to try to make some money. That's fine, fiddle away, but we're going to tax your ass and watch your ass, so keep it clean (pun intended).

I think these three steps would really help to change how things work on Wall Street. Thomas Friedman says in his new book "That Used to be Us" that the U.S. needs some "shock therapy" like we've been so eager to administer to other countries that get into financial trouble of their own making. Let's take our medicine. Let's start with Wall Street and make some big fixes. See what happens and incrementally keep fixing our institutions.

Wall Street fat cats will howl. Newt Gingrich will have to cry. But who cares? All Americans want to see something get fixed after the 2008 financial crisis. This is at least a step towards that.

Why I Use an Android Phone

2011-08-28T11:31:00.012-04:00

I work in a technology company so we talk a lot about new tech and gadgets. There is no shortage of discussion about mobile. Starting a flame war in our Socialcast forums (like an internal Twitter) is as easy as postulating that one phone is better than another in some way.

But trends have emerged. In general, our company leans heavily towards the Apple side of the argument. With Apple and Google's Android becoming the de facto leaders in the mobile space, the camps are digging in and the vitriolic is ramping up.

I've never considered myself a fanboy of either camp. The gadgets don't make me swoon. I don't know why. Or, I didn't know why until now.

Although I tend not to be a fanboy of gadgets, I am definitely a fanboy of companies. Apple is a company that has revived us from decades of sameness and has vaulted the entire computer industry into a place that's exciting and awe-inspiring. When the iPad was announced, I was more interested in how Apple had come up with such innovation than actually using the gadget itself. I, personally, could not think of a use for the iPad. I already had a Kindle for reading eBooks and a phone that could do everything the iPad could do. I ended up buying one for my wife once I realized that the iPad was the perfect portable television for her as she moved from room to room in our house. She enjoys it a lot. (I know Apple fans will assume I'm using her iPad constantly but I really don't.)

Google occupies a similar status in my mind to Apple. The Google search engine is a thing of beauty. Many of Google's follow-on products -- Docs, Blogger (which I'm using now), Maps, Earth -- you name it -- have been so tremendously useful for me in my life. I'm just listening to an audiobook called "In the Plex" that delves into Google's short life as a company and it is just making me appreciate how much I depend on their technology day-to-day.

Which brings me to my point (finally). I own an Android phone. I don't think the features of my ancient Motorola Droid are so much more fantastic than the features of a comparable iPhone. As far as I can tell, they're about the same. I have to agree with Steve Jobs initial assessment of the Android operating system - they really did copy a lot of stuff from Apple. They are so similar.

And yet, as it is now time to upgrade (I'm a faithful Verizon user), I have the choice to wait for the next iPhone model or the next Droid (which is the Bionic, pictured above). Part of the decision is made easy. The Droid Bionic will definitely be an LTE phone, the next iPhone most likely will not.

But that's not my biggest reason for choosing to stick with Android. My biggest reason is because I live in the Google universe. I use Google's services from end-to-end. I live in them, I work in them, I want to use all of them on my mobile phone.

I made a list of the Google and Apple services I use. In each case, I tried to find a comparable service from both.

Service	Google	Apple
Search	Google Search	use Google on iOS but contemplating switching to Bing
Maps	Google Maps	use Google Maps on iOS
Documents	Google Docs	Pages, Numbers, Keynote
Browser	Chrome	Safari
Music	Google Music Beta	iTunes
Social Network	Google+	Ping
News Reading	Google Reader	a feature of Safari
Payment System	Google Checkout	a feature of iTunes
Voice Calls	Google Voice	N/A
E-mail	Gmail	MobileMe
Video Viewing	YouTube	Quicktime
Book Reading	Google Books	iBooks
Calendar	Google Calendar	iCal
Chat	Google Chat	iChat
Home Page	iGoogle	MobileMe
Photos	Picasa	iPhoto

Here's what I've realized. In sixteen categories (not meant to be all-inclusive) I use Google services in twelve cases. I use Apple services in two cases (iPhoto and iTunes). In two cases I use some service provided by another company (Amazon Kindle for book reading, Facebook/LinkedIn for social networking).

(The music situation is complicated. I only buy music on the Amazon MP3 store, but I play it on iTunes and my iPod Classic.)

I sure look like a Google fanboy. I don't know how this happened. I think a big factor was that my employer decided to start using Google Apps as our primary collaboration toolset a few years ago, including Gmail, Google Docs, Sites, etc. I've been really happy with the switch (we were using Exchange and some wiki product). A few months prior I had switched my personal e-mail account to Gmail. Everything seemed to culminate after that.

Apple fans will point out, of course, that you can use Gmail, YouTube and other Google services on the iPhone. This is true. However, Apple's clear message to its user base is "You will use what we tell you to use." Note the discussions last year of Apple possibly switching to Bing as the iPhone search engine. Bing? Blecch, that would disorient me terribly. All my search history and preferences is with Google. Not to mention that Google is still a better search engine. I could easily see Apple switching to non-Google defaults or, worse, banning certain Google apps for arbitrary reasons, as they did with Google Voice for several months.

So that's why I use Android. Not for the features of the phones, but for the services that come integrated so nicely. A friend with an iPhone was fretting that he had lost all his contacts saved to his phone. My contacts are in Gmail. It's that integration that I love.

And truthfully, I'm looking to get off of iPhoto and iTunes as well. I think the Droid Bionic has lots of memory so maybe I'll get DoubleTwist and ditch my iPod Classic. Or maybe use Songbird? And I've got to get a cloud repository for my photos. Most likely, it ain't gonna be iCloud.

I think Apple is better at making innovative gadgets than anyone else, including Google/Motorola/HTC/Samsung. Apple will always be first in coming out with cool new hardware. But I want to use the hardware that is easiest to connect to the services I use. And the services I use are at Google.

GE's Connected Home Unveiled at CES This Week

2011-01-09T10:56:00.003-05:00

Looks like GE is really moving along with their smart grid / smart home strategy. Seems like it might be time to buy GE stock?

How to Cut Your Cable TV

2011-01-01T16:13:00.008-05:00

We cut our cable TV two and a half years ago. We've never been happier with our TV choices after doing it. Here is our story.

I posted a "how to" blog post back in 2009 a few months after we cut the cable. It wasn't actually "cable TV" that we cut, we were using DirecTV at the time. And we didn't cut it by choice, it was mainly because our neighbor's trees had grown too high and were blocking our view of the satellite.

That said, let's move on. Our current configuration is much different than it was back in 2009. Also, you need to pay close attention to the type of content we watch, because if your preferences are a lot different, this might not work for you.

What We Watch

To be clear, we have specific TV viewing habits. My wife, Tamara, and I watch movies and TV shows but not sports. We don't watch soap operas, daytime talk shows or kid's programming. If you are like us, read on. If not, let's give you some quick advice here. Some sports are available over the Internet. Major league baseball has programming on the Roku unit, as does NHL hockey. But football is not available (as far as I know), nor is soccer. There are some international channels on Roku that claim to have cricket and football/soccer coverage, who knows how good it is.

For soap operas and daytime talk shows, check to see if Hulu offers access. Otherwise, you might be out of luck.

Okay, back to "what we watch."

We love to watch movies. We aren't the type of people who rush to see the latest releases. Basically, we are too cheap to pay for movie tickets, plus the experience of the movie theater (cell phones, sticky floors, etc.) is not inviting to us at all. We are very happy to wait 6 to 18 months until those movies come to DVD.

But movies are more of a weekend thing for us. During the week, we will usually try to catch one or two TV shows each night. Our favorites are:

King of Dirt
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
The Philanthropist
Sons of Anarchy
Running Wilde
Biography
American Dad
Family Guy
South Park
Brothers and Sisters
No Ordinary Family
Glee
Lie to Me
Mad Men
True Blood
United States of Tara
Desperate Housewives
Weeds
Six Feet Under
Rome
Boston Legal
The Wire
Entourage
The L Word
Dr. Katz

You'll notice several things about our list. There are network TV shows here (Desperate Housewives, Lie to Me) but also cable favorites (King of Dirt, Biography, etc.). Many of these are available on Hulu. You'll also notice lots of TV series that are long dead (Six Feet Under, Rome, etc.). We are recycling these fantastic shows and loving them just as much the second (or third) time around. Again, we are not the types who need to be up-to-date on the latest TV shows or movies. If you are, make sure your choices are on Hulu, which keeps up-to-date very well. Netflix TV shows are also 6 to 12 months after the shows have been on HBO or Fox or whatever.

What We Pay

I made kind of a big deal in my first post about how little we were paying. Well, it has gone up a LOT since then. Originally, we were paying about $110/month for our DirecTV subscription. That's about average when you have all the movie channels and a DVR/TiVO service.

We dropped down to only $17 a month for our Netflix service back in 2008, which includes 2 DVDs at a time plus full access to streaming. Netflix has raised prices a lot since then, and we have also increased our DVD limit to 4-at-a-time, so now our Netflix costs us $32.99 (including Blu-ray access).

Also, we've added a paid Hulu Plus subscription, which costs an additional $8.99 a month. In total, we are paying $41.98 a month for our entertainment. This still isn't equal to HALF of what we paid for DirecTV, but it is higher than what we started with.

Here is how our current plan is still an improvement over DirecTV (or cable):

Most entertainment has no commercials. Netflix has zero commercials and Hulu has commercials in everything. However, even with Hulu, the commercial breaks are usually 30-60 seconds, not the maddening 3-4 minutes you have to deal with on cable. It is quite tolerable. Plus, it is only ever national commercials (Nissan, Crest, e-Trade, etc.) These are so much easier to handle than the locally-produced garbage coming from car dealerships, carpet stores, etc. This makes a big difference in my mind.

Everything is on-demand. There is no need to wait for a certain show to come on. Even with DVRs, you are still waiting for a certain show so it can get recorded and you can wait it later. On Hulu and Netflix, everything is at your fingertips. Hulu can be a bit frustrating, because they will often put certain shows on "expiry" for no apparent reason. For instance, Archer, an animated sitcom about a spy agency, has produced two seasons so far. But Hulu only has three episodes of the first season. These quirks are not Hulu's fault. The TV networks are absolutely wacky about this stuff, and so Hulu has to pull down and put up particular episodes of TV shows depending on the whims of the network executives. It is okay as long as you don't mind "taking what you can get" rather than desperately seeking one particular episode of one particular TV show.

The user interface is dead simple. It is a big clumsy to navigate between Netflix and Hulu, trying to figure out which show is where and why. But the Roku interface is easy to use and does not get in the way. Plus, we've even found ways to include YouTube and TED Talks onto our Roku boxes as separate channels. Very fun!

Then there are certain very popular shows that aren't available at all on Hulu. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report are two great examples. They were previously available on Hulu but suddenly Viacom, who owns Comedy Central, took them down. The shows are available on the Comedy Central Website, but of course the technology on the Comedy Central site is much harder to use, less reliable and not available on devices like the Roku. Plus, the commercial breaks are 300% longer. Ugh. As a result, we just don't watch them anymore, even though we were once daily viewers of those shows. Too much trouble!

Another example is South Park. This is a great animated series about potty-mouthed school children in Colorado. It isn't available directly on Hulu either, and certainly not on Roku devices (except older seasons on Netflix). You can go directly to the South Park Studios site for access to (almost) immediate fresh content, but this doesn't help us much.

Equipment

Here is the equipment we use in our house:

4 normal TVs (some are 10+ years old)
3 Roku boxes
1 RF modulator
1 Wii
1 iPad
1 home wireless network

Here is our thinking. We have an HDTV projector. That is where we watch our Blu-ray disks that come from Netflix in the mail. We can also easily hook up a Roku box to it and project HD content from Netflix or Hulu. Then we have a 55" SDTV where we watch most TV shows. We have another two TVs in other rooms and each TV needs its own Roku box. Roku recently dropped their prices to $55 for the regular box, but it is worthwhile to get the $99 super HD box (we got ourselves two at Christmas last week). This means that each person can watch their own selections simultaneously in different rooms, although you need to be careful of bandwidth overloading. Generally, we find that if we are both watching different televisions downloading streaming content, we run into a lot of wait times. Our connection to the Internet is just standard 3Mbps DSL, so if you have a faster cable or fiber connection, you will probably have no problem downloading onto two TVs at the same time.

We briefly looked into the Boxee Box. It has the potential to aggregate content from all over the Web: Netflix, Hulu, Comedy Central, South Part Studios, YouTube, etc. I say "potential," because, currently, Boxee is having problems getting licensed content from the two biggies: Netflix and Hulu. Neither one works on the Boxee Box at this moment, so that's why we didn't purchase one. Once they have that worked out, we may buy a Box just to see how it is different. And to get yet-one-more TV connected to our wonderful world of Internet entertainment...

The RF modulator is necessary if you want to connect a Roku device to an older television. We have one TV that is so old the only input it has is an ancient coaxial cable connector. That's when you need an RF modulator (about $30 at Radio Shack).

Why the iPad? Well, actually, this is our "TV on the go." If my wife wants to watch a show in bed, or at the kitchen table, or on the deck, she can easily do so with the iPad and the Netflix and Hulu apps. These are the "killer apps" for the iPad, if you ask me. I couldn't think of a single use case for an iPad until the TV idea hit me. We bought the Wi-Fi iPad because we can easily use a MiFi device whenever we want to connect to the Internet via cellular. Has anyone bought a 3G iPad??? Doesn't seem to make much sense to me.

The Wii is a very nice Netflix streaming device. We use that in one of our rooms, it works great. No extra cost for the Netflix app on the Wii.

I think that covers it. I hope this is a worthy sequel to my original post. Please make a comment if you have a question or clarification. Let's get all of you cutting your cable, paying less and enjoying more!!

The Best Movies We Watched During 2010

2010-12-29T16:14:00.013-05:00

Once again, I'll give you my movie recommendations from what my wife and I watched this past year. We primarily see movies on Netflix or Hulu, not in theaters, so my list is always out-of-date. However, we tend to get into some pretty esoteric and oddball choices, so you may benefit by finding some hidden gems among this list.

Here we go!

The Ramen Girl

This is a beautiful, sweet, quiet movie that we loved. I'm sure it was made more emotional by the fact that the leading actress, Brittany Murphy, died last year. She was known for several forgettable movies that she had done (Clueless, Riding in Cars with Boys), but this was one seriously talented actress we lost. Her performance in this movie (Ramen Girl) is heartstopping. The story is that a slacker American girl comes to Japan where her life is turned upside down. She takes comfort in visiting a little soup kitchen across the street. She decides she will start working with the soup chef, much to his chagrin. The soup chef (played by Toshiyuki Nishida) is a crusty old bastard, very cruel to the young girl but a great soupmaker. He's so good that people sometimes laugh or even cry when they taste it. The movie is about the long road to learning how to cook ramen, which in Japan is apparently a big deal (don't think of American ramen noodle packages I guess). The journey of learning for her is excruciating, but eventually...well, let's just say she perseveres. This was a top movie for us in 2010. Lovely film, excellent performances, you'll never forget it.

As It Is In Heaven

This Swedish movie was nominated for an Oscar back in 2004. It is the story of an orchestra conductor who migrates back to his tiny home village after a health crisis. He tries to decide what to do and eventually connects with the church choir. The musical number near the end of the movie is very moving. I guess it is a typical story of someone looking for a second chance in life, but the desolation of this little village really gives it a strange, beautiful flavor.

Whip It

Compared to my first two selections, this is a better known film, but still amazingly good. Ellen Page, of Juno fame, stars as a young misfit girl whose mother wants her to do pageants but she knows it just isn't where she belongs. She falls in with a crowd of rowdy girls who participate in a semi-illegal roller derby league. The young girl learns how to skate and becomes a pretty good roller derby player. The team and player nicknames are hilarious (prompting us to try to come up with 5 or 6 more after the movie). If you want a happy-go-lucky sports movie with a bunch of crazy women, this is your movie for sure.

Inglourious Basterds

We like blockbuster movies just as much as the indie films. Quentin Tarantino's latest movie is absolutely incredible. Brad Pitt stars as the leader of a particularly brutal brigade of soldiers in World War II. As you would expect with Tarantino, the violence is graphic and gratuitous. The movie is so interesting and the various plotlines so intricate that we were completely absorbed. If you're one of the five people who haven't seen Inglourious Basterds, you ought to do yourself the favor and rent it. Get it on Blu-ray if you can.

Pirate Radio

Philip Seymour Hoffman, who we always like, stars in this movie about a pirate radio station off the coast of England during the 1960s. Apparently, these stations moored in international waters were where many of the newest artists' music appeared during that turbulent decade. Of course, the government did everything they could to shut them down, but the pirates carried on until the new music started making it on the traditional radio stations. The cast is hilarious and the story is fun. This film is 10 out of 10 in every way.

The Reader

Another movie focused on World War II. Kate Winslet is consistently good, but her work in this movie is outstanding. She plays a young woman who has an affair with a very young boy. Along the way, they become friends as well as lovers, but suddenly she is gone. The boy discovers that she has been accused of some heinous war crimes and he tries to find a way to get her off the hook. It is an emotional rollercoaster, especially because Winslet's character is a strange combination of sexy, gruff, cold and vulnerable.

Precious

Another well-known pick here. What can I say that hasn't been said? Gabourey Sidibe, who plays the young girl, is a wonderful actress. She embodies the resolve of someone who is going to make it through life no matter who stands in her way. But the real star is Mo'Nique. Her character, the mother, is a monster. Somehow she completely becomes that monster, probably because she (the actress) was abused as a child and that rage and hurt must be still simmering. Every time you think the young girl is going to catch a break, she gets knocked down again (usually by her own mother). Life in poverty is very rough. Although this is a fictional plot, I'm sure it is representative of life in America, and I was glad to be able to see it and begin to appreciate my own life just a little bit more because of it. The scene at the end of the movie, in the welfare office with Mariah Carey (yes, that Mariah Carey) is probably one of the most emotional scenes I've ever witnessed.

The Blind Side

Sandra Bullock received a much-deserved Oscar for her role in this movie. It is another tear-jerker, to be sure. Sandra's character is a mother who adopted a young African-American boy. He becomes an excellent football player and his white parents are with him every step of the way. I don't want to ruin the plot twists, but suffice it to say that the family runs into a lot of trouble with the boy's football career, to the point where he might not be allowed to play at all. Another great sports movie, teaching us lessons about kindness and about family. Bullock's character is that steely, persistent Southern woman who has a heart the size of Texas.

Swimming Pool

Speaking of plot twists, holy cow! Okay, so this is a story of a famous British mystery writer who decides she needs a break from it all. She visits her publisher's villa in the south of France, a beautiful place with a nice pool in the back. While she's there, the publisher's daughter also drops in and then things start to get complicated. But the left turn that the movie takes in the last five minutes is so subtle, so jarring that you might not even get it until the credits are finished (like it was for us). It took us five or ten minutes after the movie was done before we figured out what we had just been subjected to. The movie is nice enough, but the reason it is on this list is that wacko plot twist at the end.

Absurdistan

A very delightful German movie about a small town where the men are so lazy they let the infrastructure of the town get dilapidated to the point where their water wells stop working. This pushes the women of the town to the point of madness. The women make a pact that no woman will have sex with her husband until they fix the water situation. In the face of all of this, a young couple are hoping to have their first sexual encounter. The timing of their tryst coincides with the no-sex protest, of course. You'll really enjoy this film. Do what you can to get your hands on this DVD or get it on Netflix streaming. What a delight!

Smart Grid Trends for 2011

2010-12-24T13:44:00.005-05:00

Pike Research (free registration required for download of report), the energy consulting firm in Colorado, has issued a report with their view on smart grid trends for 2011. Includes:

An increased focus on smart grid security

"The Bakersfield Effect," which is the name for the luddite backlash against smart grids, will continue and amplify as smart grids are rolled out and become more visible

Standards (like USNAP) will begin to catch up with deployment

A "data tsunami" will be created from all the data coming from smart grid systems, requiring massive investment in data management and analysis

As a software consultant, the last point is very interesting. I hope my employer is able to jump into this field as opportunities accelerate.

Smart Grid - The Next Platform for Software Development

2010-12-17T16:43:00.002-05:00

Apple has led us into the world of platforms and app stores. Seven years ago, who would have thought of a cellular phone as a software development platform? And yet, we know now that these new platforms are absolutely the future of consumer-oriented and enterprise software (as we've discussed on this blog). No vendor can introduce a new electronic device without all of us asking "Do you have an SDK (software development kit)?" You'd better. Amazon introduced the Kindle e-book reader a few years ago and developers complained until Amazon created a platform for custom apps on the Kindle. Ford and Microsoft build a complete driver-support system for Ford vehicles called Ford Sync. "Can I build an app for that?" Turns out you can.

It is exciting enough to envision everything we'll be able to create on these platforms that already exist. That's what my last blog post was about. But what are the platforms yet to arrive??? The biggest one on my horizon is the smart grid. The smart grid is an electricity grid that is soaked in information technology. Instead of today's grid, which simply transmits electrical current one-way with no information, the smart grid contains nodes that can talk with one another. Each power meter becomes a smart meter. Each appliance in your house (fridge, stove, television) becomes a smart appliance.

And guess what??? Each meter and appliance becomes a platform. Where you can run apps!

I'm just sitting here imagining a future conversation between two home owners.

"I just downloaded an app for my fridge. I've only been using it for 3 days but it has already been saving me $5 a day in energy costs!"

"Oh yeah? Was the app created by the fridge company?"

"Heck no. Probably done by two guys in a garage somewhere."

Everything that's happening on our phones today will start happening in our cars and our houses. Why not? We couldn't sit around waiting for AT&T or Blackberry/RIM to innovate? Let somebody else move technology ahead.

Smart meters are a reality in more and more places. Westerville, the city where I live, has been implementing them. Astoundingly, the effort has been stalled (for now) by technology luddites questioning the value of them. The luddite issue will be a tough one all across the U.S. until people are sufficiently educated on the technology.

Predictably, Google is already at the forefront of this not-yet-an-industry. They've built Google Power Meter, an open source information hub that talks to smart meters. Open standards will be important, and companies are getting behind an open standard protocol called Open Smart Grid Protocol that will allow devices/nodes to speak to each other. They've said that Google employees who've started using it have noticed a 17% decrease in personal energy costs just by virtue of knowing what power they're consuming and when. Imagine what they could do with app stores full of power-saving apps!!

(Photo courtesy first-utility.com)

The Best Movies We Watched During 2009

2009-12-31T15:27:00.004-05:00

My wife and I only watch movies through Netflix, so this list won't represent any new releases.

Our favorite movies that we watched in 2009 (although not necessarily made in 2009):

Amelie (French): A young girl finds a boy's box of toys in an old apartment and tries to return it. This movie is the sweetest, most touching comedy I've ever seen.

The Darwin Awards (American): Winona Ryder and Joseph Fiennes in a funny movie about people who are culling themselves from the herd, so to speak. This is a must-see.

Danny Deckchair (Australian): A loser ties a bunch of helium balloons to his deckchair and floats away, establishing a new life for himself in a new town. Laugh-out-loud funny.

Children of Heaven (Iranian): a brother and sister in a poor family share a pair of tennis shoes. The interaction between these two kids is amazing.

Iron Man (American): big budget action flick with Robert Downey Jr. Flawless action, special effects, Downey's acting is superb as always.

The Wrestler (American): Indie-style film with Mickey Rourke. Past-his-prime fourth-tier wrestler tries to make a living getting punched and drop-kicked.

Mongol (Mongolian-ish): About Genghis Khan's early life. A movie made by a Russian director about a Mongolian emperor featuring a Japanese lead actor and Chinese extras. Epic story, great acting, authentic feel.

Tsotsi (South African): A gangster shoots a woman and steals her car only to find a newborn baby in the back seat. The acting is outstanding, the climax in the last 10 minutes is heart-rending.

The Dark Knight (American): Batman movie. Heath Ledger rocks (rocked).

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (American): Kristen Bell and Jason Segel is a rom-com that is mostly ad-lib dialogue. The stuff that comes out of these actors' mouths is so funny...

Why I'm Waiting for Android

2009-09-16T18:27:00.003-04:00

My friend on LinkedIn just asked me why I was so excited about Google's Android smart phone operating system coming to Verizon Wireless soon.

I wonder if he's sorry he asked? Here's what I said:

Geoffrey,

Android is an open source smart phone operating system from Google. A bunch of phone manufacturers are using it for their upcoming phones, including Motorola, Samsung, LG, HTC --- you name it.

Android is a game changer for these reasons. a) It will be a common operating system on multiple handsets. b) It has an application store where third parties can sell (or give away) applications. c) It is open source so it doesn't add to the cost of the phone and also as handset makers innovate with the platform, their contributions go back into the stack for everyone else's usage. d) It is tightly integrated with Google's applications (search, maps, documents, Gmail - which are all my preferred apps).

This may sound similar to Apple iPhone, and it is. The differences are 1) It exists on many handsets from many manufacturers. 2) Innovation is coming from every handset maker to every handset maker. 3) The Android app store is loosely controlled, whereas Apple's app store is tightly controlled. 4) It's available on multiple carriers (Sprint, T-Mobile, soon Verizon) not just one. 5) The open source nature of Android will help it adapt quickly to problems (viruses, malware, security holes) and opportunities (new hardware, new types of networks, new apps, corporate uses, etc.).

I can't help seeing the Apple Macintosh vs IBM PC war replaying itself. Apple has the innovative but closed platform, then another competitor comes along that is more open (the IBM PC was open to multiple vendor hardware components, sound cards, memory boards, even full clones from Compaq/Dell, etc.). The more-open competitor trounces the closed competitor.

You can see I'm excited about it. I don't know if you wanted to hear all this.

Hope this helps.

Daryl

Hey, Cell Phone Driver --- H.U.!!!

2009-08-09T12:24:00.004-04:00

We've all seen them. People who are constantly driving while talking (or texting) on their cell phones. This shit has got to stop.

Talking on the cell phone while driving is equivalent to driving over the legal alcohol limit, while texting and driving increases your chances of an accident by twenty-three fold.

I have an idea. Maybe we can start a trend. Whenever I see a person talking on their cell phone, I'm going to beep my horn as follows:

**** **-

That is four short beeps, then a second, then two shorts, and one long. It is Morse Code for H-U --- Hang Up!!

Whaddya think? I think if everybody starts doing this, first of all, it is annoying for the cell phone driver, cuz people are beeping at them. Second, the person on the other end of the line hears it, so they know the person is cell phone driving.

I don't know. Could work.

If you do it, put a comment below to say how it worked.

How to Switch from Cable/Satellite TV to 100% Internet TV (with pictures)

2009-05-01T13:56:00.021-04:00

Summary: When it came time to abandon our much loved satellite TV service (DirecTV) we made the big decision to go completely IPTV – all our television entertainment from Internet sources. It took some research and some fiddling with gadgets and TVs, but it was worth it. Now, almost a year later, we couldn't be happier. We went from paying $110/month with DirecTV down to only $17/month. Read to find out how you can do the same with just a normal broadband Internet connection. FAQ at the end of the article.

We Like TV

We were pretty happy. We had a good TV life. My wife, who is a seamstress, really likes to have the TV on while she does her cutting and sewing. Background noise, but also giving her the ability to look up and see the show whenever she wants.

I like to watch a movie almost every night, plus I love watching Jon Stewart's Daily Show. On the weekends, we usually watch one or two movies on Saturday night and something on Sunday night as well.

So we are not TV-o-phobes. We like our TV.

We have three main places where we watch TV in the house: my wife's cutting room (used to be a dining room), her sewing room (kind of a den) and the loft (living room).

The Trees, The Trees

What happened was our neighbor's trees grew too high and blocked our satellite reception. It also happened last year. At that time, we asked our neighbors if they would mind if we trimmed the tops of their trees, they said it was no problem. But this time, we realized it was going to keep happening every year, and we'd have to ask them to chop the trees down, which they wouldn't agree to. So we needed another solution.

From Satellite to Cable?

Should we go to cable? My wife and I had both used cable services before moving in together, and we hated them. Bad quality reception, bad customer service. No thanks. But what was the alternative?

Finally we decided to make the move to 100% Internet television. But this was going to take some research.

Our questions were:

Could we get television in all the rooms we needed (cutting room, sewing room, loft)?
Did the Internet have the particular TV shows that we liked?
Was the bandwidth of our connection fast enough to provide full screen video?
Was the equipment to get us set up going to cost too much for the savings per month?

The answers were Yes, Yes, Yes and No.

The Equipment

After looking on the Web for articles (one like this one would have been good!) on people's experiences (not vendor success stories), I decided to get the following equipment:

Eee PC (Linux)

Roku Player

A GigaWare PC-to-TV Converter (Radio Shack)

and a DVD player (no photo)

The Eee PC cost about $400 (then, now it's below $300). The Roku Player was $99. The DVD player was about $50. The GigaWare converter was around $100 once you got all the cables with it. It seems like GigaWare doesn't sell that box anymore, so maybe this would work instead.

$650 Invested in Equipment

Total investment = $650. Equal to about 6 months of DirecTV.

The purpose of the Eee PC is to act as a television for my wife's cutting room. It is super-portable, so she can carry it around if she wants to watch TV elsewhere, like our screened-in porch. She does that a lot after she finishes her work.

The Roku Player we set up in our loft / living room. It connects easily to a television with composite video connectors (there are a bunch of options). We have a 55” rear-projection TV (about 12 years old) and this combination works great.

By the way, we have wireless Internet all through our house. This is a NECESSITY for this plan. Roku depends on it, as does the Eee PC.

The reason for the GigaWare PC-to-TV converter is to be able to connect one of our laptops to a TV. To explain that a little more, we will have to get into the next topic: Content.

Can We Still Get the Movies, TV Series and Specials We Want (Need?)

We knew that we had a diverse set of content that we really wanted to get with our new setup. Here was a sampling of our regular watching (just to get this list took some analysis!):

Movies, movies, movies – from the latest releases on DVD to foreign films to back catalog
The Riches
The Daily Show
The Colbert Report
South Park
The Simpsons
King of the Hill
Nip/Tuck
Weeds
Sledge Hammer
Married with Children
Desperate Housewives
Dancing with the Stars
Family Guy
American Dad

Neither of us watch a lick of sports, nor do we pay attention to the local or national newscasts. No soap operas, daytime talk shows or kids' programming (unless you count South Park).

This was our target list. As it turned out, we were able to use Hulu.com to get most of the TV shows (Riches, Daily Show, Colbert, Simpsons, King of the Hill, Nip/Tuck, Married). For others, we were able to use ABC.com (Desperate, Dancing). South Park actually has its own Website, where their content is available a few weeks after it airs on Comedy Central (SouthParkStudios.com). Cost so far? Nothing.

Now for movies. Hulu definitely has some movies, but not much. Especially when we were doing this experiment (early 2008). We needed a bigger variety. So we decided to get started with NetFlix. We knew that NetFlix had a dual service, where you could get DVDs in the mail and also have simultaneous access to another set of movies through an Internet download service. This sounded like the ticket. The price was nice: $17/month for three DVDs at a time. (Now it's gone up a bit - $17/month for only 2 at a time, including access to Blu-Ray).

And NetFlix had another advantage. Now we had access to the HBO and Showtime series we were missing on Hulu and elsewhere. We have always liked watching the pay-TV series throughout the years, like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Weeds, Huff – you name it. Now, through NetFlix, we had access to these series either through instant download or as a mailed DVD.

Now we had it! For $17/month, we had as much content available to us as before, but most of it was on-demand - even better!! We could pick from a few hundred movies on Hulu.com or over 10,000 on NetFlix download. On mailed DVD, we had over 120,000 to choose from. And for TV series and specials, it was all there.

Frequently Asked Questions

In this section, I'll try to ask some of the questions I've heard from friends as I've described our set-up (my friends are bored hearing about this already).

Q. Isn't the picture jerky on movie downloads?

A. Depends. Hulu had lots of problems with jerky pictures early on, but they seem to have fixed this. All you have to do is bring up the show initially, let it cache for a minute or two, and you can proceed with no jerkiness. NetFlix download through Roku is never, NEVER, I mean NEVER jerky. I don't know how they do it.

Q. How is the picture quality?

A. On Hulu, the picture quality is excellent. They even have some of the shows available in HD. On NetFlix download, the picture is okay to good, depending on the day. No complaints, unless you are a very picky TV watcher.

Q. Do you have to have Windows for this all to work?

A. We do not allow the Windows operating system in our house. Everything runs either Mac OSX or Linux. Hulu runs everywhere, even Linux on the Eee PC. It just requires Flash or an open-source Flash player equivalent. The NetFlix player works on the Roku, but you can also watch any download on your computer. The NetFlix player is very picky. It works on Windows, of course, as well as Mac OSX (Intel only). It does not work on Linux nor on the older Mac PowerPC boxes (we have a Mac Mini like that). Has something to do with DRM (digital rights management).

Q. Why didn't you go with Apple TV or Cinema Now?

A. I've heard the Apple TV is very nice. Easy to use, fast to set up, lots of content choices. The reason we didn't go that route is that my wife is a penny pincher. If we sign up for a monthly “all you can watch” system, she will watch shows freely. But if we had a per-download cost (like on Apple TV or Cinema Now) she would penny pinch and end up postponing watching her TV show for days and days to save money. So, to save us both that headache, we stuck with everything being all-you-can-watch.

Q. Why still use the NetFlix mailed DVDs if you have so much online?

A. I can't give a logical answer to that logical question. The only logical reason could be that there is a much larger library on DVD than from NetFlix download. The real reason is an emotional thing. We like the excitement of getting a DVD in the mail. Even though I know what it's going to be. I can't explain it.

Q. What about other basic cable channels like Discovery, SciFi, Food Network, HGTV, PBS, etc.?

A. At the time last year, most of these networks were not online yet. But now they are. You can find at least some content for all these networks these days. Just check their “full episode” line up to make sure they have your favorites online.

Q. Don't these Websites force you to identify yourself as a cable or satellite subscriber? How can they give this away for free?

A. None of this content is truly free. On Hulu.com, ABC.com and SouthParkStudios.com, all shows are supported by commercials. And you cannot really skip the commercials (without some additional effort and hacking). The good thing, though, is that the commercial breaks are very short. Usually only one 30 second ad per break – that's it. I'm sure that will change. With NetFlix, the downloads are part of your paid service, so no commercials there. As a result, we tend to watch NetFlix downloads a lot more than Hulu (except when it's my wife by herself, then Hulu is usually her choice). We are certainly concerned that the cable companies will see all this revenue escaping from them and put demands on services like Hulu to make sure that every Hulu viewer is also a subscriber of a cable TV service. But so far, that has not happened. (Please, please, don't let it happen!)

Q. What about sports?

A. Sorry, I don't have a clue. Do some research on ESPN, etc. maybe they have some options. I think the NHL has an online viewing package for all the local games.

Q. How long do you have to wait before a show begins on download?

A. On NetFlix, it is usually about one minute. Then it starts, and never skips, jerks or has to reload. Hardly ever. With Hulu, you put it on pause at the beginning, wait for about two minutes to let it load, and away you go.

Q. Does this work on slow DSL connections?

A. Yep. That's what we have. We probably have the slowest broadband you can get. (If you still have dial-up, stop reading now.) However, if you have the slowest cable connection, you might have trouble. I think most cable Internet providers have higher bandwidth choices, so definitely factor that additional cost into your calculations before switching.

Q. Do you watch other content besides the professionally produced TV content?

A. Oh yes. We watch video podcasts and other TV series that are only available on the Web, like the excellent “Something To Be Desired” (now in its sixth season). Most YouTube videos we watch are on our computers, not through the TVs. It's funny to find old, dead networks like The WB on the Web as well. This was their opportunity to recycle all that old content, some of it is pretty good. You can also use directories BlinkX.com to find new independent video.

Q. What do you do about high-definition (HD) content?

A. It costs $3/month extra at NetFlix to get Blu-Ray DVDs, which we gladly pay. We have an HD projector and a Blu-Ray DVD player, so we use these on special occasions (most weekends) to play some big epic movie or whatever. It projects out to about a 6 ft by 5 ft image – really impressive. It's so nice to have a big white wall. NetFlix has HD downloads on some movies (very few) and the Roku can easily connect to our HD projector. Hulu also has HD content, for that we connect our Eee PC or other laptop to the HD projector. I would say we watch less than 10% of our content on HD. Even the HD movies seem to download in a reasonable amount of time and do not have jerkiness thereafter. Amazing - I don't know how that's possible with just a normal DSL connection.

Q. Is the Eee PC powerful enough to watch full-screen video?

A. We've never had a problem. The only problem is with the bandwidth coming in, and that is solved by pausing the show for a minute or two to let the content cache, then it's fine.

Q. What about when you travel?

A. I'm a computer consultant, so I travel a lot. No problem. My NetFlix downloads and Hulu come with me on my laptop. Hotel Internet connections are always too slow, however, so I always use my wireless modem from Verizon Wireless.

Q. How does this work for people outside the U.S.?

A. Not worth a crap. Sorry.

Q. Do you use Boxee, Square Connect or another service as an content directory?

A. We don't. I just set up a Web page for my wife and we left it at that. These services are very intriguing, and once they have Hulu and the NetFlix content all integrated into one service, we will probably switch.

Q. Are you happy with Internet TV?

A. Yes, extremely. It's been almost a year post-satellite and we don't miss it one bit. It is scary to think if our Internet connection would ever go down, we'd have no e-mail, Web surfing or TV. But, luckily, that hasn't happened yet.

Systems Thinking on the Credit Crisis

2009-04-30T11:55:00.004-04:00

This diagram is from a white paper written on the current financial crisis. The R's mean reinforcing feedback, the B's are balancing feedback, the S's (same) are where more of one thing lead to more of another, and the O's (opposite) are where more of one thing lead to less of another.

The most interesting effects occur when you have a delay in a loop, where you initially don't know if the link does anything or not, you have to wait.

The Dreamer - A Graphic Novel about the American Revolutionary War

2009-04-19T19:11:00.003-04:00

I visited the S.P.A.C.E. graphic novel and comic book convention in Columbus, Ohio today. What a treat!

One of the most unique finds there was "The Dreamer" series of graphic novels, done by a young woman named Lora Innes. The artwork is exquisite and the story is very fun. Lora remarked that she has accumulated a very well-informed fan base which includes "Thomas Jefferson fan-girls, Alexander Hamilton fan-girls the fights between them!" Lora started out with a short graphic novel including some vague historical references, but the further she got into it, the more she found she had to improve her own knowledge of America's history. Soon, she (and her fans) were delving into the battles, lives and loves of many of the heroes and heroines of 1776 and the surrounding era.

I was truly impressed with Lora's work. You can view her The Dreamer series online here. If you like her work, donate here.

Luis Gutierrez is Outed as a Payday Loan Patsy

2009-04-15T16:30:00.004-04:00

Stephen Colbert nails Congressman Luis Gutierrez's involvement in the payday loan industry and his new Bill "regulating" the industry in an extremely favorable way. Colbert does a great job of this, he's amazing. The segment is about 3 minutes long, I edited it for you.

Fox News Is Making Stuff Up

2009-03-21T18:32:00.005-04:00

Fox News has been reporting that the Dow Jones Average went down during a speech by the President when the stock average actually went UP. Hey, Fox-holes - it's one thing to show the "other side of the story," but you can't just make stuff up to suit your purposes!

Wake up, Fox! We can tell when you're lying!

All this after showing a six-month old clip of Joe Biden and pretending that it was current (shows at the end of the clip).

The Beautiful Truth - Movie Review

2009-03-18T21:07:00.002-04:00

This is a good movie to see for anyone even slightly open to
alternative medicine / holistic health. It was interesting to hear the
success stories of people who were saved by Gerson Therapy, which I
don't doubt a bit (I know people who have survived cancer using similar
means). However, I wish the film hadn't given the impression that
--everyone-- gets better with Gerson, which of course isn't truth for
any therapy.

It surprises me that some people are still so hostile to the fact that
changes in diet can change a diagnosis like cancer. If you think about
how you got cancer in the first place (just coincidence??? just
genetics??? C'mon...) then it is easier to think about diet as cause,
complication and/or cure. I guess it will just take time for more
people to come around.

The movie was pretty well done. Very heavily biased towards the
positive side of Gerson, very little airing of people dissenting
against it, just a few seconds of those interviews, and unfortunately,
focusing on guys like Stephen Barrett, who have been completely
discredited in the medical field. I wish they would have had some good
back-and-forth discussion on the pros and cons of Gerson without just
throwing up a straw man like Barrett who is so easy to disparage.
Unfortunately, stuff like Gerson Therapy tends to be a very emotional
topic for Western medical specialists, so it must have been hard to
find a person who could talk intelligently and somewhat calmly about
it.

The movie tries to make this a personal journey for this young man, as
he discovers what is going on with Gerson Therapy and food as medicine.
I think the movie was paced nicely and it wasn't too preachy. Overall,
quite good.

8 stars out of 10

Snorgtees.com Return Policy Stinks

2009-03-06T16:53:00.006-05:00

I ordered two shirts from Snorgtees.com a few weeks ago. The shirts arrived but the two shirts for my wife fit much, much smaller than expected, probably 3 sizes too small. Not normal. We decided to return both of them and get our money back.

Oops! No returns from Snorg!! Well, that sucks. So then we decided to just get the men's sizes instead, which we could judge from the shirt I ordered (which did fit). But then we found out that Snorg wants the customer to pay for shipping for returns BOTH WAYS!!

These were some expensive shirts by the time we were done. Nice stuff, the shirts are from American Apparel, but that return/exchanges policy really sucks. Next time we're going to use somebody else (although I still think the Snorg girl above is superhot).

These guys are big advertisers on Digg.com, which is where I saw them. Too bad their policies are too customer-hostile.

An Eee PC in Every Room? Twenty Uses for Netbooks in Your Home

2009-02-28T16:11:00.005-05:00

These Linux Eee PCs are so cool. They are getting cheap enough that you could practically have one in every room of your house. If you could, what would you do with them all?

Here's what I'd do (most of these things require you to disable the Eee PC's screensaver, which you can do quite easily):

Watch TV. The main purpose of our Eee PC right now is to use it as a very portable television. We watch Hulu mostly, as well as South Park when a new episode comes out. We originally bought the Eee PC because we lost our DirecTV (neighbor's trees in the way) and we didn't want to have to run a cable to the far room, so we just set up the Eee PC in that room and streamed content from Hulu. We love it. But you need a set of cheap speakers plugged into the Eee PC to really get sound. Otherwise it works great. My wife isn't a very confident computer user so I built her an easy menu of the sources of entertainment. (Yes, Flash for Hulu and YouTube runs fine on the Eee PC out-of-the-box.) Plus, the Eee PC has a port to connect to a larger monitor or TV (VGA).
Listen to streaming music. Pandora works on the Eee PC. If you haven't used Pandora, you should really give it a try. It is a free streaming music service where you can construct your own radio station of cool songs. You can pick a number of your favorite artists and then it will play music that is similar to those artists (as well as the artists themselves). It can go for hours with enjoyable tunes, and if you don't like something, you can vote it down and it will jump to the next song.
Listen to the radio. If you have a favorite radio station locally (or around the world), the Eee PC has a function built-in that will take you straight to the MediaU Website.
Tape recorder. My wife has a lot of cool ideas throughout the day and she likes to have a tape recorder to record them on the spot before she forgets. The Eee PC has a great microphone and simple sound recorder application built-in that works nicely.
Play video games. Okay, you're limited to games that work on Linux, but still. The Eee PC has a cute little penguin bodysurfing game that is quite fun.
Alarm clock. When traveling, you don't have to pack an alarm clock, just use your Eee PC. Here are instructions (look further down on the page after the business about the potato).
Digital picture frame. This works pretty well. Go into Flickr and use the slideshow feature. If you want just certain files to repeat over and over (like a standalone picture frame) you can use OpenOffice Impress (called Presentations on Eee PC) which works similarly to PowerPoint.
E-mail station. Like to look at your e-mail while you're eating breakfast? Why lug your laptop from your home office to the dining table? Just use your Eee PC (dining room edition)! Eee PC uses Thunderbird, plus has desktop links to Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL. Of course, you can get to any POP server through Thunderbird and any Web-based e-mail through the browser (Firefox).
Listen to podcasts and music. The Eee PC does not have a podcast catcher built-in, but you can download a Linux-compatible application like Songbird (sorry no iTunes on Linux but Songbird is really nice). Installation is a bit tricky, follow the instructions in this thread. Most Eee PCs do not have much storage space, so once you've listened to a podcast, delete it immediately. You won't be able to store your whole music collection on the Eee PC drive either, but you could use a flash drive (Eee PC has a USB port).
Watch tutorials. There are so many awesome video tutorials on technology tools (like this set on GIMP) but who has time to sit still and watch them? Take your Eee PC with you from room to room and have the tutorials playing while you make dinner or cut your toenails.
Read your own personalized newspaper (RSS). Google Reader is an incredible time-saving (time-wasting) tool. I've used it to create a personalized newspaper for myself. I don't care about 90% of the stories in my local newspaper, I care about other stuff, like stories about Agile development, business travel, Canadian news, systems thinking, holistic health, open source software, renewable energy, software productivity tools, Web 2.0, etc. So I was able to construct a constant stream of these types of stories using an RSS Reader like Google Reader. The only trouble with doing this on the Eee PC is that the screen is a bit small to see enough of the stories, but you can fix that. Hit F11 on the Eee PC and then click on the border in the middle and you should have lots of reading room.
Read your recipes. There are so many good recipe sites on the Web, but AllRecipes is my favorite. Use your Eee PC as a recipe station, eliminating the need to print them out.
Read PDFs easily. The Eee PC cannot be called an e-book reader, but it does a good job of reading PDF files. With my job (computer consulting), I often have to get through a massive PDF file and I don't like sitting in my office reading it on the screen. It is sometimes nicer to use the Eee PC to pull it up and read it anywhere, even in my La-Z-Boy chair in the loft. The Eee PC comes loaded with Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Mirror. Umm, you can use the built-in Webcam on the Eee PC as a mirror to see if you have something in your teeth. (Gettin' lame, I know.)
Social network status. If you are totally into a particular social network (Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Ping.fm, etc.) you can keep that page loaded on your Eee PC and see what's going on realtime with your friends.
Encyclopedia. Nice to have an on-demand encyclopedia in every room, eh? Wikipedia is the obvious choice here.
IM station. The Eee PC comes with an instant messaging client, but you'd have to have it running only in one room, otherwise you get logged out elsewhere. Still, nice to be able to IM anybody anywhere in your house (maybe??).
Phone. Skype is loaded on the Eee PC, you can use your Eee PC as a phone, but you will definitely need the speakers (as mentioned previously). Although it has a Webcam, you have to go through some additional steps to get video Skype working. Maybe the newer Eee PC don't require this, I don't know.
To do list. Nice to have your favorite to do list right in the room with you. My favorite is Remember the Milk, but any Web-based system or Linux-compatible download will work.
Real-time information feeds. Things like weather or election results can be nice to have on-demand in the room you're in.

My Letter to President Obama

2008-11-16T16:49:00.002-05:00

Okay, we elected you, Mr. President-Elect. We're really happy that you made it to the White House, but now it's payback time, big guy.

I'm going to give you my Top Ten Issues to work on. How you do it is your business. But these are the issues that are most important to me.

Revoke all harmful environment deregulation from the Bush era. I need you to take back all those horrible laws and policies like the "Clear Skies Act" and "Healthy Forests." We know what they really were - giveaways to the corporations who wanted to do logging in our national parks and pollute our drinking water and air.
Stop all the wars. I know you've said you will create a plan to bring our troops home from Iraq. To tell you the truth, fighting a war in Afghanistan isn't going to help find bin Laden either. This is a matter of cooperation with those governments, not a policy of war.
Restore America's luster abroad. This is so important. I would like you to meet with foreign leaders worldwide and tell them that we want to be their friends again. Start with the top twenty most important countries, and don't forget the former Eastern Bloc countries like Poland and the Ukraine.
Use the Internet to involve the citizens. Help us redefine what it means to be a citizen of America. Help us think of ourselves in terms of being citizens instead of consumers.
Move our healthcare system toward cheaper, safer, more effective holistic healthcare and away from drugs and surgery. You haven't mentioned this in your campaign, but I think it is definitely one of my Top Tens.
Make it cool to work for the government. You said you could do this in a Rolling Stone interview. Public service should be a badge of honor. I know you see it that way. Now help the rest of us to see it that way also. Teachers and government workers of all walks of life should feel so proud to be serving their country. I believe you can help us make that happen.
Put your renewable energy plan into effect. From everything I can tell, you have followed the Apollo Alliance plan pretty closely. Solar panels, wind turbines, hybrid plug-in cars, getting utilities off coal (including "clean" coal), a mixture of decentralized and centralized power generation, etc. I couldn't be happier about that. Now put it into place, as an absolute top priority.
Rebuild our country's infrastructure. We need new bridges, roads, public transit. I know that these things need to happen largely within states and communities, but you can help with funding tweaks and using the bully pulpit of the presidency.
Put a strong focus on civil rights and women's rights. I trust you very much to do this, Mr. President-Elect. Give us Supreme Court justices who will uphold Roe v. Wade and let's continue our helpful policies towards minorities and women in the community and the workplace. I don't think quotas and most affirmative action are that helpful, however, but you've mentioned a number of ideas in your books and on your Website that make more sense for all of us than those older ideas of civil rights.
Put a sharp focus on Internet policies. Revise outdated laws like copyright and patent to reflect the Internet age, and please make net-neutrality a reality.

My Photos from Obama Rally in Downtown Columbus Today

2008-11-02T20:41:00.003-05:00

Here are my photos on Facebook from the Obama Rally that I went to today in Columbus, Ohio.

Photos

Why You Should Vote for Barack Obama

2008-10-30T08:09:00.002-04:00

Here's why you should vote for Barack Obama. We so seldom get a chance to put someone in office who is simultaneously a) smart, b) has good morals and c) is hard working. This is our chance to do that by voting for Barack Obama.

Oh - and you get a chance to tell your grandchildren that you gave American racism a good, hard kick in the teeth when you made history by putting a black man into the White House.

Review of The Predator State

2008-10-26T00:52:00.011-04:00

Here is my review on "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too" by James K. Galbraith.

What an interesting book. The American Economy was in a much different state when I began reading this book than when I finished it (last night). I think what I learned from this book has helped me think about possible solutions for our economic meltdown.

Here are some points from Galbraith's (yes, Kenneth's son) book. I'll give indication of my opinions on his ideas as well.

I had no idea how long this post was going to be (even though my notes while reading the book were copious.) Maybe I should summarize my summary as well. Here goes:

Galbraith says that liberals who are for the following things should reverse their thinking: balanced budgets, free trade, open markets / monetary policy, tax cuts and the importance of savings.

He attacks each idea with an obvious depth of economic prowess and an even more obvious bias towards big government thinking.

His argument against balanced federal government budgets is perhaps his most compelling. He provides a simple equation that shows that the U.S. federal government (unlike all other countries) is positively incapable of balancing its budget and should not even try. To do so results in pain for consumers and business in the U.S. Galbraith actually won me over on this point. (See below for details.)

Galbraith isn't exactly against free trade itself, but against the unfettered access we seem to have as a goal where environmental and labor regulations aren't part of our agreements. He seems to have a fairly typical liberal view on this point, and I agree as well. He aggressively debunks the notion that the free trade agreements are remotely linked to job loss in the U.S. Instead, he blames deregulation and union-busting for the job losses.

Galbraith deftly points out the failures of the "open market" and, in many ways, foreshadows what happened in the weeks and months after his book was published in August 2008. He was right on almost every account on this point. Just this past week we saw Alan Greenspan admitting to the "flaw" in his own thinking about markets and monetary policy. Galbraith must have had a giggle about that. He points out that the countries where open markets were most vigorously applied were dramatic failures (Argentina, Brazil, Chile). He says that Milton Friedman's motto of "freedom to choose" is actually just "freedom to shop." He shows how the big industrial companies lost their brain trusts in finance and technology to Wall Street and Silicon Valley respectively, and the damage this has caused. He shows how extravagant CEO pay has been a destructive force in the economy. He says that government "planning" is needed because "markets cannot think ahead."

I didn't take many notes about tax cuts. He saw the George W. Bush tax cuts as irresponsible and, in general, the trickle-down economics as a joke. I think most people would agree, including me. On financial inequality in general, he says that we must use government controls to close the gap between the rich and the poor, and if we do so, we will experience a better and better economy. He uses Denmark as an example of high equality and low unemployment.

With the importance of savings, I think Galbraith is of two minds. It seems that he is opposed to supply-side economics, which emphasizes the importance of savings, but he also, later in the book, says that he is in favor of the government having some control or influence over how/when people save money, so I ended up a little confused on this point. I, personally, am a crazy saver and I think Americans need to have more of a saving/investment mindset than we currently do.

When I first picked up this book, I did so because the title and sub-title was threatening and abusive to my own thinking. I had to find out what an accomplished economist knew that I didn't know about my deeply held beliefs about capitalism and economics.

I found out a lot of things. Perhaps only a handful of books I've read in my life have forced a bigger shift in my thinking than this book. I cannot say that I am a far-left liberal like Galbraith himself, even after reading this book. However, I can say that I've shifted left-ward knowing what I know now, and I'm sure my opinions have also been drastically impacted by the lurchings of the American economy this fall of 2008.

With that said, here now are my detailed notes on Galbraith's book.

Galbraith says that this book is for the liberal who today says they are for a) balanced budgets, b) free trade, c) open markets and monetary policy, d) tax cuts and e) the importance of savings. (Hey, that's me.)
It all started with Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker.
Together, they gave the American economy a type of "shock therapy" when the Fed raised the interest rates extremely high in the early 1980s. They thought that this would encourage savings (supply-side economics) and all the market to work most efficiently. It failed. America fell into a recession immediately and they abandoned the supply-side theory very quickly thereafter.
He says that the combination of open, perfectly efficient markets and supply-side economics is incompatible. If we need to encourage savings, the markets must not be perfectly efficient. (This seems very academic to me, kind of objecting to it based on purely theoretical terms. The question for me is if they work together in reality or not).
He says there are no economic conservative academics left, and certainly none in the Bush administration.
One of the problems is that the only people who benefit from encouragement to save are the very rich. Tools for encouraging savings are things like IRAs and 401(k)'s. (I don't really see how these things only benefit the super rich.)
A good point that he brings up is that the countries who followed the Washington Consensus, like Argentina, Chile and some African countries, failed economically, while the countries who followed other paths, like China, did much better.
As a result, no countries trust the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to work with them anymore.
Liberals need to create their post-Reagan economic policy (this is so true. In fact, it needs to be neither socialistic nor Reaganistic, but something really different.)
Hurricane Katrina was to conservative government what Chernobyl was to communism
Milton Freidman's "freedom to choose" is nothing more than just "freedom to shop"
What is a free market anyway? It is a negation. "Not" government.
The only beneficiaries of a free market are the largest corporations (as a former small business owner, I can say this is very true).
To the free market proponent, there is simply something offensive about the redistribution of wealth from a moral point of view, since it robs a person of property to which the market has assigned a natural claim.
Supply-side causes companies to move capital out of their retaining earnings and into executive salaries. As a result, society gets mansions and yachts instead of factories and office buildings.
Galbraith actually advocates wage and price controls. (Yecch.)
He says that "deficit spending works." (More on this later. It isn't as ridiculous as it sounds.)
Macroeconomic principle --- A country's internal deficit - public deficit plus private deficit - equals its international deficit. (This was a big realization for me.)
Very interesting how, in the 1990s, consumer and business deficit (credit cards, loans, mortgages) drove economic growth even as the federal government cut their deficit to zero.
The surplus of the late 1990s did what government surpluses always do: a government running a surplus necessarily subtracts in taxes from private spending more than it injects in payments to private incomes. This forced the private economy to finance the expansion with a buildup of debt. (My comments: 1) This makes sense except, b) why doesn't he mention the cost of maintaining a debt (public or private), c) why does he advocate consistently using deficits, never surpluses, and therefore going into a neverending abyss of red ink for the U.S.?)
The budget deficit no longer depends on the federal budget policy decisions, but rather on international trade and the financial position of the private sector. So long as American foreign trade remains in a permanent state of deficit (an overall trade deficit with all countries), which the U.S. has to do, actually, so long as a growing and unstable world economy requires U.S. dollar reserves, then the federal budget deficit is basically permanent!! (This is huge. We have to run a federal budget deficit otherwise we force consumers and businesses to run up their debt. The non-U.S. countries use U.S. dollars as their reserves, and those dollars have to come from somewhere - that's us.)
Eventually, we may change the global financial system to alleviate this. This would be a very dangerous change, however, because the reason everyone uses the U.S. dollar for its reserves is because everyone else is using the U.S. dollar as their reserves.
(This is my own thought.) It is possible to look at George W. Bush's presidency as a resounding success. Remember when he claimed he would be the first CEO President? Well, if you look at what corporations do, they try to get value from a market in whatever way possible, and give value back to their shareholders. If you look at Bush's campaign as the corporation, as America as the marketplace, and at his contributors as the shareholders, he did everything he should have. He took money from the market (America) into his corporation (his campaign) and gave it to the shareholders (his contributors in energy, pharmaceuticals, insurance industries, etc.).
Back to Galbraith's ideas, NAFTA did nothing as far as job loss or gain. It simply made permanent the maquiladora system in place since 1965.
China's success has to do with their lack of mature capital markets. When a Chinese company does not turn a profit, their management is not automatically fired. (I don't get this. I guess he is saying that managers aren't worried about the super-short term like here in the U.S., but to me you would want some type of accountability and not just losses year after year, which is what he's implying.)
Labor markets do affect people's paychecks, but income inequity is only partly due to differences in pay. Other factors, such as capital gains, interest, dividends and proprietor's income have a large effect as well. So it is somewhat incorrect to say that the market forces of the labor market are solely the cause of income inequity. And further, to say that we will cause massive disruption in the labor market if we institute minimum wage increases or wage controls doesn't make sense. (It is a good point when he says that differences in pay are just part of the picture. But I do think that raising the minimum wage causes disruption, the question is just whether we are willing to live with the disruption.)
When California and New Jersey increased their minimum wages, unemployment dropped. (Yeah, okay, but what about other states?) The U.S. tends to have increasing pay inequality during bad times and decreasing pay inequality during good times. (That's an interesting statistic if true.) And, of course, unemployment rises during bad times and drops during good times.
In Denmark, there is high equality and low unemployment. (And what are their productivity numbers??)
Inequality means a few "good" jobs and a lot of "bad" jobs by definition. So a lot of people queue up for the good jobs, causing inefficiency, unemployment and market disruption.
It seems like Galbraith is against people donating to their alma maters and using it as a tax deduction. (I really don't get this.)
He sees universities most important contribution as a way to keep young people busy and diverted while they are at their least employable. (What???) Keeping young people occupied and away from the streets is more important than the skills they gain while in class. (What???) Schools provide a similar function in society to prisons and the military, all three of which keep our young people from causing disruption. (I guess I can see a glimmer of logic here, but I do think that universities - the good ones anyway - provide skills that help us when we go into the workforce, as well as business connections and social skills on top of the technical skills we may learn. This point is a bit crazy, I think, or maybe just overstated for effect.)
He says that when you add up the heavily government-influenced sectors of the economy - military, schools, universities, social security, healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid), and housing (HUD I guess?) - it makes up more than half the economy. And it has been a stabilizing force which has kept us from falling into another Great Depression. (I am willing to acknowledge this point, although he is very loose in defining what is "government-influenced. But I will agree that the private sector is not as large and as independent of government-influence as we might think it is.)
It was not our social institutions that had been damaged during the Republican presidencies in the 1980s and 2000s. It is the corporation that has been decimated (This is super interesting. Read on...)
The best financial people used to work inside the large corporations (Ford, GE, Sears, AT&T, etc.). But in the 1980s, 90s, and 00s, they all left the large companies and went to work for Wall Street. (Interesting point - I had never considered this.)
The best technical people used to work inside the large corporations. But they, too, left to join Silicon Valley startups like Microsoft, Cisco and now, of course, Google. (I would also say consulting companies too, because it is often noticeable that consulting staff seem to be more technically advanced than the staff of the client companies they serve. Maybe that's just my bias as a consultant!)
As a result of losing all this talent, the big corporations switched from being producers to consumers of financial knowledge and technical knowledge. They had to acquire the expertise of how to run their business financially from Wall Street and consulting firms, and they had to rely on technology solutions from custom software and packaged software from outside entities like Microsoft or IBM. (So they've had their heart and lungs removed and are on a kind of life support to these outside service providers.)
The big industrial companies have to rely heavily on Wall Street for their finances and therefore Wall Street is able to dictate how a corporation should perform without ANY ACTUAL UNDERSTANDING of how the corporation works. This causes the "short termism" we can all see in the stock market that is killing the long-term viability of all public companies.
The crooked goings-on at Enron, Tyco and WorldCom were not only not understood by Wall Street firms, but actually encouraged. The dual inability of Wall Street to understand the various industries (energy trading, telecom, etc.) and their singular focus on "the numbers helped to destroy these firms. (Remember that Galbraith is writing all this months before the economic meltdown of late 2008.)
CEOs, instead of being specialists in a particular industry, have become specialists in cutting costs and raising stock prices for Wall Street's approval. This new breed of CEOs often not have the slightest clue to the long-term implications of their decisions. And the capital markets, not understanding business needs for investment, do things like overinvestment in fiber optics installations by sixty-fold that happened in the late 1990s.
Galbraith explains the sub-prime mortgage crisis (this had already begun in early 2008 when he was still writing this book). Interest rates were set extremely low, which made T-bills unattractive. Big investment banks bought packages of home mortgages from traditional mortgage lenders as investments. These mortgages were on ultra-low teaser rates set up during the low interest period after 9/11. Once these teaser rates expired, homeowners could not pay the adjusted mortgage payments, as they had often been poorly qualified by the mortgage lenders, and the investment banks (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, etc.) were left holding the bag.
The Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations have not actually destroyed the public institutions of social security, Medicare, etc. What they have destroyed is the modern corporation. By pulling back on all types of regulation, they have encouraged the Enrons, WorldComs, Tycos, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers of the world. They've allowed transient, unaccountable CEOs to deplete the corporate coffers for their own personal gain. And by giving control of government to a subset of industry - the worst polluters, the flagrant monopolists, the technological footdraggers - they've made life worse for the businesses that have played by the rules. (I have to agree.)
Galbraith says that job training doesn't help! (He doesn't mention how many firms are searching for qualified people during times of high unemployment, but my own experience is that this is constantly happening. Employers cannot find the qualified people they need and simultaneously we have millions of unqualified or wrongly qualified people out of work.)
Galbraith quotes Keynes as saying "A supply curve for labor doesn't exist." (I don't understand this. All my experience says that there is definitely a supply-and-demand relationship with labor like anything else. Galbraith does a very poor job of explaining this point.)
He states that preschool isn't a help to anyone. (Really?)
He says, overall, he isn't advocating "abandoning the free market." He is really saying that "government planning" shouldn't be considered an evil thing and some relic of communism, but instead should be combined with the free market and used as a counterbalance to the problems of the free market.
He advocates planning a number of things: a) how much to save/invest, b) directions for new technology, c) how to deal with environmental issues, d) scientific knowledge, e) and culture.
Government planning is needed because markets cannot think ahead. (I have to agree here.)
Markets have two big flaws. Markets convey their signals only in proportion to the purchasing power of the individual, so the rich guy gets a thousand times more votes in the marketplace than the middle class guy. (Yeah, but there are a thousand times more middle class guys though. He doesn't mention this fact.)
The second flaw is that markets don't have a way to represent the next generation, the not-yet-born. (Very true.)
Galbraith argues in favor of certain wage regulations. In Norway, you are free to import, export and outsource as you like. But you are not free to cut your employees' wages. You can't go after cut-rate workers, whether native or immigrant. You cannot undercut the union rate. The effect of this on business discipline is quite wonderful. Businesses must find ways to compete that do not involve running down the wage standards of their workforces.
The middle class in America was built by unions, regulations and wage standards and it will be rebuilt the same way. (You know, this is kind of a good argument.)
Galbraith actually aggressively debunks the notion that free trade (NAFTA, CAFTA, etc.) has caused a loss of jobs. Instead, he blames deregulation for those issues in America.

Benjamin Barber - How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole

2008-10-25T20:14:00.006-04:00

I heard Benjamin Barber's speech on the great, great podcast Big Ideas. This guy is worth listening to. I mourn my free market idealism as it fades thanks to this guy, Naomi Klein, James Galbraith and the damn American economy these days...

Fuel Cells Powered by Sewage?

2008-10-19T19:48:00.003-04:00

The ever fascinating blog EcoGeek gives us a story today about how sewage has been found to be a very cheap way to do hydrogen electrolysis by some researchers. Read on here.

Colin Powell Endorses Obama

2008-10-19T10:15:00.002-04:00

Obama's Energy Plan

2008-10-12T09:26:00.007-04:00

I hear people say that they aren't exactly sure what Obama's position is on this issue or that one, so I thought I would blog about his positions. How do I know? It's on his friggin' Website, detailed in minute detail. But who's got time to read his Website? (I guess)

Here are the high points of Obama's energy plan (infested with my opinions on each point):

Short Term Fixes

Emergency gasoline rebate ($500/individual, $1000/family) to consumers paid for with a windfall profit tax on energy companies (I'm not crazy about this, it is politically expediency, but hey, it'll get him some votes)
Crack down on energy speculation a-la Enron-style by (this is important) closing loopholes and increasing transparency (this isn't our biggest issue in energy but the loophole-closing aspect of it is good)
Swap light and heavy crude, release oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve (again, a short-term fix [as they note on the site] but might help bring prices down a bit)

Longer Term Strategies

Cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions - goal - 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 (I would prefer a commons trust approach, but cap-and-trade is a great start)
Work through the U.N. to make the U.S. a leader on climate change (smart)
Accelerate commercialization of plug-in hybrid cars, encourage energy efficiency, invest in low-emission coal plants, advance next generation biofuels, build digital electricity grid (this is cool stuff, except for the stupid, stupid, stupid clean coal stuff, but it is there to grab votes, so okay)
Create a "Green Vet Initiative." Job placement for vets of Afghanistan and Iraq to gain skills in renewable energy jobs (love this soooo much - why isn't it talked about more on the campaign trail???)
Invest $1B per year into switching manufacturing areas over to renewable energy (how many birds did you just kill with that one stone??? Love this)
Increase fuel economy standards 4% a year (great)
Put 1 million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015. How can a government do that?? Well, guess how big the government's fleet of vehicles is? Obama is going to switch the entire White House fleet to plug-in hybrids in one year, then half of the entire government fleet by 2012. $7,000 tax credit for people buying plug-in hybrid cars!! (great idea)
A focus on "next generation biofuels" read: cellulosic, not corn. (smart)
Better prioritization of current drilling efforts for oil and gas (this is good, although not that exciting)
Require 10% of all electricity produced to come from renewable sources (that ain't "clean coal")
Safe and secure nuclear energy (I personally am in favor of this, although I know a lot of liberals aren't - it is part of the entire energy self-sufficiency picture)
Big focus on energy efficiency (biggest, fastest payback)
A new building code, all buildings carbon-neutral by 2030 (great)
Reduce federal energy consumption. The U.S. Federal Government is the largest energy consumer in the world. Why not start there????? (can you see why I love this guy??)
Build more livable, sustainable communities (super long-term, but what is wrong with thinking super-long term??)

I really have to apologize for my cheerleading on each point, but, Jeez, I can't help it. This is one great energy policy. Half the points are things I've been wishing to see from candidates for years and years, and there are a lot of points that I hadn't even considered until I read them in the PDF.

By the way, I'm hoping my short post here encourages you to read the original PDF on Obama's Website. This was put together by some really smart people.

photo credit: Felix Francis on Flickr (creative commons)

Watch John McCain's Role in the Savings and Loan Crisis of the Early 1990s

2008-10-06T21:26:00.004-04:00

This was produced by Barack Obama's campaign, which you can donate to here.

The Singularity is Not Going to Come

2008-10-05T09:02:00.007-04:00

Kevin Kelly's excellent blog "The Technium" featured a post this past week about Ray Kurzweil's idea of "the Singularity" when artificial intelligence will become so great that basically all of our problems will be solved.

In this post, Kelly shows how the Singularity may come and go, but it won't be the event that Kurzweil is hoping. In general, Kelly's blog is a must read. Although Kelly doesn't mention Gödel's incompleteness theorems actually mathematically disproved everything that Kurzweil is claiming could happen with artificial intelligence, now or ever.

Flickr photo thanks to GTM.

Electoral Vote

2008-09-27T09:32:00.003-04:00

I find the Website Electoral-Vote.com to be sooooo useful. I refer to it everyday. It shows a map of red and blue states as compiled with the latest polls of the day. It changes every single day and shows which presidential candidate is leading based on the electoral vote count (which is the only thing that matters). My impression is that too many of the news outlets are focusing on popular vote counts and ignoring the electoral vote count, especially now that Tim Russert is gone. He was very good at giving us run-downs of how things could play out with this-or-that state going red or blue. We miss ya Tim!!

(By the way, Barack has been ahead on electoral votes counts almost the entire time, with a very short Palin-bounce for McCain after the convention. The badge at the top of my post is accurate for the day you are reading this.)

The site also has great information on the close congressional races as well, although it does not focus on the individual polls for those.

And, if you're trying to figure out who should get your vote in November, go to GlassBooth.org. It looks at the various issues-of-the-day and tries to match your views to Barack Obama or John McCain. This was especially fun when the primaries were going on. A lot of people I know found out that their views closely matched Dennis Kucinich, and boy, were they surprised!!

The Hemp Revolution

2008-09-20T14:01:00.003-04:00

We just watched a sort-of documentary called "The Hemp Revolution." It looks like it was produced in the 1980s but it is really informative on the many, many, many uses of hemp. A source of Omega-3 oils, of protein, the best fiber for making clothing (from silkier-than-silk to jeans) and a great way to produce cellulosic ethanol. And it is illegal to grow hemp in the U.S. ... why???

(No, it isn't good to smoke. Hemp is different from marijuana.)

You've gotta see this movie.

NOTE: I say "sort-of-documentary" because it is really slanted toward the good side of hemp and doesn't give any information on the (there's gotta be) downsides of the crop.

Cutting the Cable

2008-09-07T20:39:00.002-04:00

Okay, we are trying something new. We stopped out DirecTV satellite TV service this month and we're going without. We are going to use the Internet and NetFlix as our only entertainment sources.

Wish us luck! I'll update this blog as we progress.

(photo by afred on Flickr)

Darwin Awards - One of the Best Movies

2008-09-07T20:32:00.003-04:00

My wife and I just watched one of the best movies we've seen in a long time. The Darwin Awards with Joseph Fiennes and Winona Ryder is billed as a "dark comedy" and, while a lot of people do die, it is truly funny and insightful. Fiennes is hilarious (don't miss the shower scene) and Ryder is lovely and a great kick.

I can't recommend this movie highly enough. Why didn't I hear about it in 2006 when it came out?? And why does it only get 5.8 / 10 on IMDB.com??

T. Boone Pickens Has An Energy Plan, Dammit!

2008-08-28T15:43:00.002-04:00

T. Boone Pickens, recalcitrant oilman, has a plan to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It involves wind power and natural gas. Click below to hear him tell it plain-like.

My Review

2008-08-09T13:13:00.001-04:00

Originally submitted at More Mailboxes

Beautiful Mailbox Post

By Daryl Kulak from Westerville Ohio on 8/9/2008

Pros: High Quality, Good Value, Durable

This mailbox post is so beautiful. We installed it with the Hummingbird Curbside Mailbox and the two go together great. We're so happy with the results. Our neighbors are jealous.

(legalese)

My Review of Hummingbird Curbside Mailbox

2008-08-09T13:10:00.001-04:00

Originally submitted at More Mailboxes

Special Lite mailboxes have quality you can see. The striking Hummingbird details on both sides of this piece make it stand out far more than the average mailbox. The deeply embossed designs show your love of nature and will last through a lifetime of weathering. It is also available ...

Best mailbox in the neighborhood

By Daryl Kulak from Westerville Ohio on 8/9/2008

Pros: Attractive Design, Sturdy

Describe Yourself: Novice

This is such a great mailbox. Our mailman even said that he likes it because it has an extra lip over top of the door so the water won't leak into the box on rainy days. We love it. The design and color is so beautiful and the box is very sturdy and well designed.

No complaints! We've installed it already with the Albion Mailbox Post and Floral Bracket. The two go nicely together.

(legalese)

Barack Obama Comments on How the Internet Will Assist His Government

2008-07-03T20:05:00.003-04:00

These comments, taken from an article just published in Rolling Stone (available online) show that Obama is taking the role of the Internet very seriously in terms of shaping policy, getting feedback, increasing accountability.

A few times in the past few years there have been "anonymous holds" on bills going through the Senate. How slimy is that? Some senators want to keep a bill from getting voted on but they don't want to do it publicly, for shame of what they're doing. Hopefully we can stop this type of behavior.

Here are a few lines from Obama's interview with Rolling Stone:

How are you going to connect your support among young people to the governing process?
This is where the Internet is so powerful. One of the things that surprised me in this campaign is how well we were able to use technology to organize people. There's enormous promise — but we've just scratched the surface of what's possible when it comes to making government work for people. Virtual town-hall meetings, increasing transparency, accountability on legislation. You think about all the inefficiencies in government. We basically have a New Deal government in a 21st-century economy. We've got to upgrade it.

So you're consciously aware that this will have to be part of how you govern?
Yes, absolutely. The Internet gives young people a tool to be informed continuously. It gives them an opportunity to speak to each other and mobilize themselves. It gives them the opportunity to hold me accountable when I'm not following through on promises that I've made. It gives me a powerful ally if Congress is resistant to measures that need to be taken.

Rethinking Health Insurance

2008-06-30T11:55:00.002-04:00

Health insurers have certainly been beat up in the past few months by the political candidates. In some cases, I think it's right, when insurers are withholding payments for legitimate operations that might save a life. But in other cases, I don't think health insurers are the only ones to blame.

Here is an article written by Dr. Pam Popper, nutritionist, naturopath and President of the Wellness Forum in Columbus, Ohio.

I think she is right on with some views on how insurance companies could easily become the real innovators in our move to a better healthcare scenario.

There is so much wrong with health care that it is almost impossible to fix the existing system. And, in my opinion, we are focusing on the wrong things and blaming the wrong organizations for some of our problems.
For example, health care reform often involves criticizing insurance companies for not paying for certain types of treatments. For the record, I'll state that insurance companies are guilty of many things and do their part to contribute to the poor state of health care today. But forcing these companies to pay for any treatment offered by drug companies and desired by patients may be causing our problems to worsen, not get better.

For example, I have written before about Avastin, originally approved for colorectal and lung cancers, and recently granted "accelerated approval" by the FDA for metastatic breast cancer. It's actually almost worthless for all cancers. Avastin extends life by a few months for colorectal and lung cancer patients, and about 5.5 months for metastatic breast cancer patients. The side effects, according to an article in The New York Times, include death. Offered by Genentech, the drug costs $92,000 per year. Genentech acknowledged in an editorial that it "does not claim that the drug is cost-effective for advanced breast cancer but believes it will be clearly worth the cost if shown effective in earlier stages of breast cancer."

In spite of this, Avastin has already been prescribed off-label to over 11,000 cancer patients with advanced breast cancer, and the recent FDA approval would increase the number of patients who qualify for it to 43,000. Genentech acknowledges that the drug only extends life for only a few months. Using half of the $92,000 annual cost of the drug (since patients are almost always dead within a few months), the revenues to Genentech for this drug have grown to a potential of close to $2 billion dollars per year. Where does the money to pay for this drug come from? Insurance companies and Medicare/Medicaid. And if some of our political candidates get their way, we will add universal health care coverage, meaning more taxpayer-financed reimbursement, to the pool of available funds.

This is not the only example. Billions of dollars are spent annually on unnecessary back surgeries and other procedures, mammography and other useless diagnostics, as well as drug treatments that are completely ineffective, and often hurt people. Can you blame the insurance companies for refusing to pay for this?

Unfortunately, the insurance companies also deny reimbursement for treatments that do work, such as dietary intervention. They've thrown the baby out with the bath water, attempting to deny coverage for anything different or progressive.

Insurance companies are in a great position to be innovators in the health care field if they decide t do so. They could develop policies for people who choose to practice dietary excellence and optimal habits, and reimburse these people for the counseling and other support needed to learn how to do so. There is evidence that this will work, and can save enormous amounts of money. The average patient who gets bypass surgery spends $86,364 over a 5-year period; the average patient who has angioplasty spends $63,897 during a comparable period of time. A consultation with Dr. Esselstyn (who has an excellent track record reversing cardiovascular disease through dietary intervention) costs $500; a membership to The Wellness Forum, complete with books, CD's and DVD's costs only $221. Reimbursing for these types of services and refusing to pay for bypass surgery and angioplasty unless the need is clearly demonstrated (it rarely is) would result in huge savings for both private carriers and Medicare.

I'm not upset with the insurance companies for saying enough is enough as it pertains to reimbursement for medical services that do not work. And I do not think universal health care, which will result in all of us as taxpayers shouldering more of the burden for useless diagnostics and treatment is the answer either. The answer is to continue to educate people to make different choices, and to target the purveyors of misinformation as the real culprits - our government, national health organizations, medical schools, unenlightened doctors and others who continue to promote ineffective and harmful treatment.

How To Get GIMP to Work on Mac OSX Leopard (And Get Focus Follows Mouse)

2008-06-15T10:13:00.009-04:00

NOTE: This post is fairly old. One of my commenters below (Green) has given a solution that seems to be working for people more so than what I suggest here. I would say read my post briefly and then jump to his comment.

When we upgraded my wife's Mac Mini (PowerPC) to Apple's Leopard, we needed to reinstall X11 so she could run her favorite graphics program GIMP.

This turned out to be quite a hassle. Let me tell you how we should have done it.

Upgrade to Leopard using Apple's DVD.
Apple will immediately ask you to upgrade to 10.5.3 (or the latest version of Mac OSX), so do that through Software Update. Trigger it yourself if you have to.
DO NOT use the X11 in the Optional Installs folder on the Leopard DVD! This is old and GIMP will not work.
Instead, go here and get XQuartz (use the link that says X11-2.2.2.pkg), which is a newer version of X11 that works much better.
Now download the latest version of GIMP from here. As of this writing it is Gimp v2.4.
Ah, but now you've lost your additional brushes, haven't you? Well, you can re-download those, our favorites are here and here. (Remember, GIMP can now use Photoshop brushes seamlessly). You just copy them into the right directory of the GIMP application.
Now GIMP should work pretty well in X11. However...you will find that you need to click on each GIMP window twice because you need to bring focus to the window first before you can do anything.
Ha! This is a fun one. I could not actually find the right command to fix this, but eventually we figured it out. Open up the Mac OSX Terminal (in the Applications folder) and then type this command on the command line:

defaults write org.x.x11 FocusFollowsMouse -string YES

If you find that this was a mistake, you can go back to Terminal and type the same command with the word NO instead of YES. That should reverse it so that focus does not follow the mouse in X11.

I think that's it! I'll continue this post if we find any other problems, but for now, it looks like GIMP is working pretty well in Leopard. This is all running on an old Mac Mini with a PowerPC chip. You just have to make sure to download the right executable of GIMP for the PowerPC vs Intel.

Good luck. Please post a comment if this works (or doesn't work) for you.

Quote from Barack Obama's Book "The Audacity of Hope"

2008-06-14T19:28:00.003-04:00

Here's why I'm voting for Barack Obama. I see him introducing Politics 2.0, in word and in deed, an end to the partisan bickering and gridlock.

Just wait until he introduces Government 2.0.

A quote from his second book "The Audacity of Hope:"

Maybe the critics are right. Maybe there's no escaping our great political divide, an endless clash of armies, where any attempt to alter the rules of engagement is futile.

Or maybe the trivialization of politics has reached a point of no return, so that most people see it as just one more diversion, a sport, with politicians as our paunch-bellied gladiators, and those who bother to pay attention, just fans on the sidelines. We paint our faces red or blue and cheer our side and boo their side, and if it takes a late hit or cheap shot to beat the other team -- so be it. For winning is all that matters.

But I don't think so.

They are out there, I think to myself, those ordinary citizens who've grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles but who've found a way, in their own lives at least, to make peace with their neighbors. And themselves.

I imagine the white southerner, who, growing up, heard his dad talk about niggers this and niggers that, but has struck up a friendship with the black guys at the office and is trying to teach his own son different; who thinks that discrimination is wrong, but doesn't see how the son of a black doctor should get admitted into law school ahead of his own son.

Or the former Black Panther, who decided to go into real estate, bought a few buildings in the neighborhood, and is just as tired of the drug dealers in front of those buildings as he is of the bankers who won't give him a loan to expand his business.

There's the middle-age feminist who still mourns her abortion, and the Christian woman who paid for her teenager's abortion, and the millions of waitresses, and temp secretaries and nurses' assistants and Wal-Mart associates who hold their breath every single month in the hope that they'll have enough money to support the children that they did bring into the world.

I imagine that they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and what cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility. Between those things that last, and those that are fleeting.

They are out there, I think, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.

The Benefits of Train Travel

2008-06-07T11:53:00.003-04:00

EcoGeek points out the unexpected benefits of train travel. Watch this mode of transportation (for shipping and people transport) come back in a big way.

Time to buy train stocks?

What To Do With All That Carbon Dioxide? Make Chalk!

2008-05-01T11:39:00.005-04:00

EcoGeek reports that a new startup called Carbon Sciences is proposing to make chalk out of excess carbon dioxide, preventing the CO2 from going into the atmosphere.

Their idea is to turn the CO2 into chalk, or calcium carbonate, which is used in toothpaste, yogurt, PVC piping, paper, wallboard and many other things.

Click over to my new favorite blog EcoGeek for more details and an interview with the founder of Carbon Sciences.

Top 10 Trends in Healthcare

2008-04-13T14:58:00.005-04:00

America is undergoing a dramatic shift in healthcare. Actually, ten distinctly different shifts.
Although the changes are unsettling, and will cause dislocations in our economy, the overall trends are positive and will help us all be healthier and wealthier when it all shakes out.

1. Western Medicine Costs Continue to Rise

It's hard to imagine, but the cost of going to a regular MD or hospital is going to get more and more expensive. This is not because doctors or hospitals are getting greedy, but instead because their own costs are rising every year. Malpractice insurance for risky surgical procedures, pharmaceutical drug reactions and deaths with accompanying lawsuits, complex medical equipment for diagnostic testing – everything is rising dramatically in cost. Pharmaceutical drug costs will continue to escalate also, leaving consumers holding the bag, because...

2. Health Insurance Opt-Outs Surge

For many years, corporations and small businesses have provided health insurance as an employee benefit. Often, employees would choose a job based on who offered the best health insurance. No longer. Small businesses have almost completely opted-out of the insurance game, and large corporations are not far behind. General Motors complains that health insurance costs them more per year than steel for their cars. In a few years, health insurance through your employer will be only a memory. Everyone will be buying health insurance the same way they buy home insurance or car insurance – independently.

Because of this shift, consumers will begin treating health insurance the same way they treat car and home insurance. Which is to say, they will treat it like INSURANCE.

Today, many Americans run to their doctors for even the smallest maladies, and they expect their health insurer should pay for everything. In fact, they're incensed when they don't. “What, you're not paying for this bottle of antibiotics for my kid's ear infection? How terrible!”

This is opposite of how we treat car insurance. Imagine expecting your insurer to pay for oil changes, car washes, pockmarks in the paint job, a broken cupholder. Can you picture it? Of course not. It would be ridiculous.

Yet, with health insurance, it's been okay. Why? Because the employer is picking up the tab. Not anymore, they're not.

As a result, Americans will pay more attention to preventive healthcare, like regular exercise, good diet and meditation, etc. They will also do more cost comparisons between all their healthcare options, including a trip to the doctor, or...

3. Alternative Medicine Becomes the Dominant Healthcare System in America

I feel bad calling this a future trend, since this has almost already occurred. Alternative medicine, including naturopathy, hypnotherapy, Chinese medicine, chiropractic, yoga, etc. is fast overtaking Western medicine (drugs and surgery) as the dominant healthcare system of America.

Several studies have shown that Americans spend more out-of-pocket on alternative medicine than on Western medicine. They've also shown that people are making more trips to these alternative practitioners than they are to regular MDs. These are positive developments. The downside is that people are reticent to mention their alternative therapies to their doctors, because they're afraid of disapproval by their doctor.

But the trend is clear. Alternative medicine is often less expensive (especially outside of insurance), equally effective and produces less harmful side effects, as was evidenced by the flurry of pharmaceutical drugs this past year that were removed after being prescribed to hundreds of thousands of patients.

People's trust in Western medicine is diminishing, and their relief in finding alternatives is rising.

Major institutions are now doing large numbers of studies on alternative medicines, including herbal remedies, bodywork, meditation, dietary changes and many others. Randomized, controlled studies are available on almost every type of alternative healing practice, and they typically show good results.

The rise of alternative medicine and the opting-out of employer-funded health insurance has led us inevitably to an era of...

4. Consumer-Driven Healthcare

People are making their own choices in healthcare and health insurance. They want to make their own decisions.

This is extremely positive. One study after another shows that hospital patients who are disruptive, picky, nosy and non-compliant are the ones who fare best with any surgery or recovery from illness. The patients who are compliant and put their fates in the hands of their doctors are the ones who fare most poorly. Taking charge of one's health is part of consumer-driven healthcare.

This term also refers to how people are deciding to use whatever treatments they think will work best, based on their own research. Fewer people simply accept their “doctor's orders” and instead they find out for themselves what is available and make informed choices. This also means they are deciding to use a different kind of health insurance, which is more compatible with their free-will healthcare style...

5. High-Deductible Health Insurance and Health Savings Accounts (HSA)

As corporations drop their employees' health plans, the employees are choosing to buy high-deductible health insurance policies, which are much cheaper.

In fact, a high-deductible policy ($2,500 deductible or higher) is almost always so much cheaper, that even if you had to pay the entire deductible yourself every year, you'd still save thousands of dollars. The monthly premiums are reduced MORE than the amount of the deductible.

Along with high-deductible policies, people are choosing to use the Health Savings Account (HSA), introduced in 2003. This is a tax-deductible savings account that can be used for any medical treatment (Western medicine, actually), which is basically a tax savings for everyone who buys their insurance independently.

High-deductible policies and HSAs allow people to have Western medicine waiting in the wings when they have serious health problems that require expensive drugs, tests and surgery. But until then, they are able to use alternative medicine as the best service for prevention and small day-to-day health problems.

Alternative medicine provides a “first line of defense” while Western medicine provides the expensive, dangerous, but necessary backup.

Since alternative medicine has taken such a major role in healthcare, the state and federal laws have had to adjust, which has meant...

6. The Rise of Health Freedom Laws

Health freedom is a term applied to a particular kind of legislative bill. It is a bill that allows alternative medical practitioners to practice their healing arts, as long as they stay out of the areas where extensive Western medical training is required:

performing surgery
prescribing pharmaceutical drugs
administering injections (like vaccinations)
knowingly contradicting an MD's orders

If alternative medical practitioners are caught doing any of these, they can be arrested for practicing medicine without a license. But otherwise, they can use any other type of healing art, including bodywork, dietary changes, movement therapies, hypnosis, etc. to help their clients.

This bill is needed in many states, because current laws state that no one can practice medicine except medical doctors, and the definition of practicing medicine is anything that helps people with their health! This means that if someone has a cold, and they go to a massage therapists who recommends echinacea, that massage therapist is breaking the law! Ridiculous? Practitioners have been shut down in many states for doing less.

Health Freedom laws are common sense. They've been passed in four states already – Minnesota, Rhode Island, California and Idaho. These states have had excellent results from these bills, including patients from neighboring states making trips to their states to seek relief from health problems. Can you say “boost to the economy?”

For more information about Health Freedom initiatives, visit the National Health Freedom Website.

With Health Freedom information, and alternative medical options available, it is only natural that people turn to...

7. The Internet As a Healthcare Information Resource

The Internet has become the first stop for someone who has a health concern. Feeling low? Do a search on depression remedies on the Internet. Just been diagnosed with cancer, and the doctor says it's chemotherapy or die? Jump on the Internet and see what your other options are.

Of course, the Internet has its benefits and its problems. There is a tremendous amount of misinformation about healthcare on the Internet. Much of it comes from well-meaning entrepreneurs who have been sucked into a multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme and are trying to pitch some health elixir or other. A second source of health misinformation comes from the Western medical establishment, who seek to discredit alternative medical therapies that could take significant revenues away from their invested therapies. A third source of misinformation comes from the anecdotes of individuals who experienced relief from one therapy or another, but who do not (and cannot) actually represent a proven cure to a particular health problem.

Even with all these caveats, the Internet's influence in healthcare decisions will gain momentum. People will understand the “good sources” and “bad sources” of information and new portals will crop up that separate the wheat from the chaff.

The reason people are turning to the Internet in such numbers is due to a lack of trust...

8. Distrust in Existing Medical Institutions

At one time, you could hold no position of higher trust than to be a doctor. My wife's father was a doctor in a small town in Ohio. When he died, the funeral was packed with his patients over the years. People appreciated his caring and his dedication to keeping them healthy.

Now, doctors are viewed with suspicion. Will my doctor let me die by not revealing an alternative therapy that could help me? Is my doctor getting kickbacks from the cute, young, female pharmaceutical rep who visits him twice a month?

The system has gained the pallor of corruption, even when it's not really true. Big medicine has become big business, and the number one concern is no longer the patient, it's dollars and cents.

But hospitals and doctors are not the only things that Americans distrust...

9. Distrust of Socialized Medicine

People in government and in society seem to feel that some brand of socialized medicine will be the magic solution for America's healthcare problems. The “single payer system” of healthcare, successful in other countries, must be implemented here, they say.

But America is a different kind of country, from its very beginnings. Americans praise the independent spirit, the entrepreneur, the underdog.

Socialized medicine will not work in America. And Americans know it. They do not want a government-run system. What is the least efficient organization you can imagine? It's the government. Do you really want a government worker making decisions for you about healthcare?

Yes, America needs to find a way to insure every single person in this country. But socialized medicine is not the cure for this illness. Having been born in Canada and living there for the first twenty-eight years of my life, I can say that Canada's socialized medicine program leaves much to be desired. It does cover every person, but in a way that benefits no one.

I understand that the person in the middle of this entire crisis, the professional who has the most to gain or lose, is the doctor, the general practitioner. They will be devastated by a socialized medicine system, and they will also be affected greatly by the other trends in this article.

Because of this, I see the emergence of a final trend...

10. Doctors Incorporate Alternative Medicine Into Their Practices

Doctors will have no choice but to use pieces and parts of alternative medicine in what they do day-to-day with patients. “The customer is always right,” as they say, and the customer definitely wants a choice.

Although doctors are increasingly using alternative medicine in their own practice, and hiring alternative practitioners to work in their offices, the independent alternative practitioner will still be the rule, not the exception. There are just too many alternative practitioners (massage therapists, chiropractors, yoga instructors, etc.) for doctors to absorb everyone. And people will want a choice. A Western medical experience, or perhaps an alternative medicine experience.

And a choice they will receive.

The Western medical practitioners who are clearly leading the way are nurses. Nurses are much more open to alternatives than doctors, and they are increasingly opening their own offices, as nurse-practitioners sometimes, and treating patients with a wide variety of healing methods. Patients appreciate the nurses Western medical knowledge, and also their openness to a new set of options.

Overall, the outlook for healthcare is extremely positive for everyone involved. Tremendous change, yes. But upheaval can create some wonderful new circumstances.

Daryl Kulak is the author of Health Insurance Off the Grid, a book that provides a simple, effective plan to reduce insurance costs for the self-employed and underinsured. The book puts the new Health Savings Account (HSA) together with alternative medicine to create a workable, cost-effective plan for many Americans. The book is available at this Website.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Top Ten Trends in Healthcare

2008-04-13T14:56:00.001-04:00

10 Big Problems We Must Overcome to Make Alternative Medicine the Major Healthcare System

2008-04-13T14:42:00.004-04:00

(photo courtesy of feelgood_paradise at Flickr)

There is no doubt that alternative medicine is becoming a popular option among patients in the U.S. and Canada. We love it! We are choosing it in greater and greater numbers, even though we have to pay for many of these services out-of-pocket. Americans spend over $27 billion on out-of-pocket expenses on holistic healthcare each year. Fully one-third of us use some form of holistic services, and total visits to holistic providers exceed the number of visits to medical doctors each year.

But Western medicine is still considered the “major healthcare system” in Canada and the U.S. What will change this?

I've discovered that there are at least ten factors holding holistic healthcare back. In this article, I'll outline each factor, in the hopes that this will spur you, my readers, on to action to fix each of these ten issues.

#1 – Get Organized

Holistic healthcare, for all its popularity among clients, is extremely disorganized. In my city of Columbus, Ohio, we have various cliques of practitioners who isolate themselves from others and seem to consciously limit communication and interaction with other practitioners. I know this is true in many communities. Holistic healthcare must become a “profession.” It must have univeral standards, professional associations across modalities, and lots of professional networking. This is what makes Western medicine so powerful. They have a very organized and powerful professional association, in the American Medical Association (AMA) and they have strong links in to all levels of government and community. Holistic healthcare must do the same, although we must do it in our own way. We are an industry. We are professionals. We must act this way. We must get organized, professionally and politically.

#2 – Change the Laws

The laws in many U.S. states and Canadian provinces discourage use of holistic services. Here in Ohio, everyone from naturopaths to reflexologists to nutritionists are illegal, according to the letter of the law. It's antiquated, yes, but the licensure boards feel they must enforce these antiquated laws and they often do, shutting down legitimate practitioners who are helping their clients and not harming anyone, just because the law is wrong.

We've organized the Health Freedom Coalition of Ohio here in this state, and many other states have similar groups. Check the national Health Freedom Website for groups in your area. Join us in changing the laws to reflect the needs and wants of holistic healthcare patients and practitioners. As far as I know, no Health Freedom groups exist in Canada. However, international laws like those coming from Codex Alimentarius are threatening healthcare freedoms everywhere.

#3 - Reject the Gold Standard of Controlled Trials

Holistic healthcare is, by definition, holistic. Controlled trials, also called randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled controlled trials, are meant to measure patients' reactions to drugs. In a vain attempt to “fit in,” many holistic healthcare advocates are submitting holistic practices to these controlled trials to provide “objective proof” to Western doctors that these practices work.

Using positive results from controlled trials is a reasonable short-term strategy to making holistic healthcare pallatable to Western doctors and their followers, but it will not work in the long term.

The reason it can't work for holistic practices goes back to the nature of holism. A holistic practitioner treats a patient as a “whole person – body, mind, spirit, environment.” These aspects of the person are inseparable. You can't reduce a person down to a single organ, a single disease, or a single symptom. And, unfortunately, reductionism is inherent in the nature of controlled trials. Each controlled trial attempts to eliminate all “outside causes” and reduce the study down to “the effect of one drug on one part of the person.” This is categorically impossible in a holistic perspective.

Holistically, energy fields exist. We must take a person's energetic profile into account with their physical body. We must understand the person's relationships in the family and society. We must know their history. We must understand their mental state.

No controlled study can eliminate all these factors. Controlled trials are not the way to test holistic healthcare modalities. We must come up with a better way of testing our modalities, which is every bit as scientific and rigorous as controlled trials, but does not have the downsides.

#4 - Patients Need Road Maps

Holistic practitioners must be able to provide each patient with a road map of treatment, given the patient's problems and circumstances. This is a marketing issue. If the practitioner asks the patient just to “play along” with the practitioner tries this and that, patients will not likely stick with the program, because there really isn't a “program” that they can see.

Practitioners need to give patients an understandable set of steps that practitioner and patient will take together that are likely (although not guaranteed) to solve the problem at hand. The roadmap will include the services the practitioner can provide, the services needed from other practitioners, and the activities the patient needs to accomplish.

#5 - We Need Truly Integrative Clinics

A true integrative clinic is not just a bunch of practitioners sharing the rent and referring patients.

True integration means that a patient sees themself as a patient of the clinic, not a patient of a particular practitioner. The patient expects that the clinic will provide him with the right services at the right time, and feels that he is supported and led through the maze of various modalities to the right ones for his situation, background, needs and beliefs.

This means that the clinic has what I call a “holistic patient manager,” who is independent of holistic modalities and who's sole purpose is to guide the patient through the process of getting healthier. The patient manager works with the patient to create a road map (see Point #4) and answers their questions and concerns throughout the process.

It also means that the practitioners working in the clinic have faith in the overall processes, and are constantly giving their input to improve it. It means that practitioners compare notes on each patient and strive to give consistent advice to the patients (NOTE: HIPAA compliance on patient record confidentiality will be necessary.)

#6 – Practitioners Must Serve Their Clients' Need Above All

I've noticed that many practitioners feel that the main reason they are practicing their particular modality is for the love of that modality. For instance, a massage therapist feels that the whole reason for her practice is that she can “do the work she loves.” While it is important to do what you love, the main reason for a holistic practitioner's business is to serve clients. When times get tough, and the practitioner needs to do things that they don't love (taking out the laundry, collecting money, etc.), this incorrect focus gets messy. A practitioner must remember, first and foremost, to focus on the needs of the clients, and then to focus on enjoyment of the work. If this is backwards in the mind of the practitioner, the business will not survive.

Here's a test to see if your business is client-focused or modality-focused. Look at your list of services. If the list is simply a list of modalities (massage $50/hour, reflexology $60/hour, nutrition counselling $70/hour, etc.) then you are modality-focused. If your list of services is a list of client problems (fatigue revitalization $200, headache relief $250, etc.) then you are client-focused.

#7 - Health Insurance Must Change to Include Holistic Healthcare

The day that health insurance begins to include holistic practices will be a major step towards our becoming the major healthcare system in North America.

Health insurers are well-advised to include holistic practices like naturopathy, massage therapy and herbal remedies into their programs. Their insured clients will be healthier, will cost less, and happier.

However, there is a limit to what insurance should provide. Insurance, by definition, is meant for expenses that we (the insured) can't pay for ourselves. That means that when a car accident occurs, and my legs are broken in five places, this is a time for insurance. When I am diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, insurance needs to be there for me. When I fall down the stairs and need an emergency room visit, insurance should help.

But insurance is NOT for day-to-day health needs. The yearly or twice-yearly trip to the doctor or naturopath should NOT be covered by insurance. Monthly massage therapy appointments should not be included in health insurance, unless they are a defined part of a recovery from injury or trauma.

Why? Because if we include regular medical needs in our insurance plans, the costs will be unaffordable. There is no reason to pay your insurance company extra money, only to have them pay it right back to your doctor, naturopath, massage therapist or nutritionist. It doesn't make sense. The insurer will take their cut out of the money and you'll be paying much more for that regular care than if you had paid the practitioner out-of-pocket. Insurance has no place in the world of day-to-day prevention, health maintenance and wellness.

I feel very strongly on this point, and I hope that insurance companies take heed as they begin to step into the world of holistic healthcare. I've written a book on this subject called "Health Insurance Off the Grid," which you can reference at the bottom of this article.

#8 - Separate Holistic Healthcare From New Age Religion

To look at a person holistically, it means that you see the person's body, mind and spirit. The last one, spirit, seems to say that religion must somehow be involved in healthcare.

That assumption can be a costly mistake. Many Americans and Canadians are frightened of holistic healthcare for exactly that reason. They think the holistic practitioner will try to “convert them” to some new and exotic religion , which they don't want. They're perfectly happy being Protestants, Catholics or Muslims. They don't want religion encroaching on their healthcare, they just want a reiki session.

Practitioners must understand this. Religion of any type, but especially new age religions, must be kept away from the practices of holistic healthcare. Yes, spirit is involved in any type of healing, but that doesn't mean the practitioner needs to feature it front-and-center and go on and on about their particular religious icons, symbols and beliefs.

Mixing religion and healthcare is bad for business. I urge holistic practitioners to separate the two. Holistic healthcare will never thrive in the U.S. or Canada unless it is decoupled from religion.

#9 – Practitioners and Clinics Must Focus on Quality Marketing

The majority of holistic practitioners and clinics I've been exposed to have poor marketing practices. There often is no marketing plan, and the practitioners and clinic owners often have a distaste for the overall idea of marketing and sales.

No business can survive without high-quality sales and marketing. There does not need to be anything distasteful about marketing or sales. In fact, it is easy to see that these activities are actually “acts of love” in many ways.

I urge all holistic practitioners and clinic owners to learn everything possible about marketing and sales. The best sales training I've found is at the Sandler Sales Institute. You will not find a more “holistic approach” to sales. I can also say that the Sandler approach is decidedly a low pressure approach and something that anyone can feel comfortable working with in a holistic practice. Locally, here in Ohio, I can say for certain that the best sales training affiliate of Sandler Sales is Growth Resources, serving Central Ohio.

#10 - We Need High-Quality, Long-Term Apprenticeship Programs

In China, when a person decides to become a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, they go to school to learn the basics and then they become an apprentice of an experienced practitioner for many years before striking out on their own. The same is true for ayurvedic practitioners in India.

Although North America has a variety of schools teaching various modalities from massage to acupuncture to polarity therapy to energy healing, we do not have any long-term apprenticeship programs. Holistic healthcare modalities that I've encountered are multifaceted, complex therapies that often require years to master. The best practitioners are those who have practiced for many years, and who have attended one training class after another, year after year. They also usually found a mentor who was willing to teach them the subtle details of the modality, the art of it.

If we are to produce high-quality practitioners, we need a strong apprenticeship program like China and India. This will take time to create and may be resisted by young practitioners who wish to jump into independent practice too quickly. But it's a very necessary step to making holistic healthcare more popular in North America.

These are my thoughts about the ten major problems facing holistic healthcare today. What can you do? Can you join a Health Freedom group in your area? Can you help your holistic clinic become more client-focused? Can you help to change health insurance to include holistic alternatives?

Please consider what you can do to help holistic healthcare to become the major healthcare system in North America. This is something that will save many lives, people who are now dying because they aren't being helped by drugs and surgery, and yet aren't aware of the options.

Daryl Kulak is the author of "Health Insurance Off the Grid", a book to help people buy health insurance that will maximize the out-of-pocket money available for holistic services and products.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daryl_Kulak
http://EzineArticles.com/?10-Big-Problems-We-Must-Overcome-to-Make-Alternative-Medicine-the-Major-Healthcare-System&id=72974

The Tide is Turning

2008-03-28T20:01:00.001-04:00

The Tide is Turning (Roger Waters on the album Radio KAOS, 1987)

Using Saltwater for Energy

2008-03-28T18:45:00.003-04:00

Find more how to and instructional videos on 5min.com

Super incredibly interesting video. It leaves me wanting to know more! Things like this make me realize that there is no excuse for us not jumping into renewable energy to solve our oil crisis.

Of course, the big question is, how much energy does his machine require?

Understanding the Issues in this Election

2008-03-18T20:39:00.005-04:00

If you'd like more of a focus on the issues in this election than the horse race or "poo flinging" aspects, read on.

A new Website has introduced a unique and simple way to evaluate the candidates on the issues.

With GlassBooth.org, you fill out two fairly short questionnaires (it will take you five minutes) and it tells you which candidate is closest to your views. Even better, it gives you a next best candidate, and the next, etc. It even will show you exactly how the candidate differs from your views, and what their basis is for determining the candidates views (text of speeches, Website, etc.).

Take the quiz. Wouldn't it be great if we all voted based on which politician was most likely to implement the measures we cared about, rather than based on fear or who made the best speeches?

For me, my top candidate was Mike Gravel. (Didn't know he was still in the running!) Second place was Barack and third was Hillary. McCain was a distant third (but I still love the guy - I'm sorry.)

As I've said before, this is a no-lose election for me. Any of the three top contenders will be a massive step up from what we've been dealing with for the past seven years.

In a related story, ThinkProgress has established a new blog called The Wonk Room. This will be a place where focus is placed squarely on the issues of the election, with no attention to the horse race or poo flinging. All from a decidely liberal perspective, of course, but it's better than nothing.

Hulu Doesn't Suck!!

2008-03-18T20:15:00.004-04:00

The first part of this story is familiar. Young startup companies (e.g. YouTube, BrightCove, etc.) produce amazing Websites that are able to host television shows (or snippets), movies and homemade videos. The Websites become hugely popular. The television and movie studios, owners of the copyrights to the content, sue the startups.

With me so far?

The way the story is supposed to continue is like this. The television and movie studios finally (years later) come out with their own Website to host their own content and blow it. The Websites are hard to use, are cluttered with ads and nobody goes there.

But, this time, that didn't happen.

Fox and NBC did a joint venture, no less, to produce a Website to feature their content. This Website, announced long ago, would start out with a little bit of content, including movies, television series, news programs and even snippets of popular segments. It would be viewable online but no content would be downloadable.

Well, it's here. It's called Hulu. And guess what? It doesn't suck.

In fact, it's pretty amazing. I personally love the site. But my wife, she's gone bananas. Let me back up a second.

My wife is a seamstress. She does a lot of work in what we call "the cutting room" where she has a TV to keep her company during some of the most boring parts of sewing. That TV had gone on the fritz recently and we decided to replace it or change our service to fix the problem.

But Hulu fixed the problem for us. Now she takes one of my laptops into her cutting room, fires up Hulu and watches a show while she's cutting. Simple.

Here are Hulu's benefits:

Hulu is incredibly easy to use. The placement of every button is intuitive, the behavior of every widget is predictable. It just works. It's the iPod of online video.
Hulu is free. Every TV show and movie is delivered for no charge.
Hulu's commercials are non-intrusive. There are commercials in every Hulu movie and TV show. But the commercial breaks are short (one commercial per break) and not that annoying. You cannot fast forward through the commercial. For me, that might actually be a problem, because I hate watching any kind of commercial, but my wife doesn't care. She's only half-listening most of the time anyway.
Hulu's content is good enough for now. Hulu has a nice mix of new and old TV series, plus a couple of pages of movies. The on-demand feature is so nice. Just decide which movie you want to see and it starts right there. For free. And I am sure that Fox and NBC are working to continue populating the site with more and more content. I see the series and movies coming on-stream every day.
There are even social aspects to Hulu. You can send a movie to a friend (e-mail them the link). You can send a snippet that you choose (a minute or an hour) to a friend (again - with a link).
Hulu video is good quality. Jump to full-screen video and you've got nearly television quality video. It's quite nice.

Congratulations to Fox and NBC. Great job! I could give a rundown of the downside of Hulu but that is documented sufficiently elsewhere. For now I just want to give a high five to Fox and NBC for a job well done.

By the way - there are even competitors to Hulu. Veoh and Joost are in this same space - what you could call "legal commercial video" and also doing well. I still prefer Hulu, but it's nice to see several services popping up like this.

Barack Obama Makes His Speech on Race - March 18, 2008

2008-03-18T19:35:00.004-04:00

Barack Obama made his historic speech on race in America today, partially to address comments made by his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, made in a sermon last year.

I thought Obama's speech was eloquent and effectively brought the conversation back to how we can heal our current issues, including race relations. So many of these issues have dogged our nation for decades or centuries, and my view is that Obama is the only politician talking about Politics 2.0 and Government 2.0 where we will rethink our approach to each and every problem, without limiting ourselves to a Red Solution and a Blue Solution.

View Obama's speech right here:

Why I'm Voting for Barack Obama

2008-03-08T14:39:00.005-05:00

I think what is missing from the debate over the Democratic presidential contest is brought to light best by a seemingly unrelated NPR series that ran last week.

They profiled the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In the report, NPR said that the FCC is trying to wedge all Internet services into a "type of cable service" while they are assuming that wireless frequencies are just for cell phones.

Professor Bankler, one of their guests, says that the FCC is actually charged with promoting the American communications industry as well as regulating them. How can they continue to operate like this?

Try explaining network neutrality or the success of YouTube to an agency that is stuck in a forty-year-old paradigm like this.

Barack Obama is the only candidate that I hear who is talking about rethinking politics and government. He is bringing a fresh perspective to the problems that ail America. The arguments about experience and years in office are distractions from the fact that American government needs to experience a Renaissance. Who has the politic courage and will to execute this Renaissance? I don't think it is Hillary Clinton or John McCain, because they are dismissing Obama's calls for change as "eloquent but empty." Is that what we need? Small tweaks to today's systems? Or simply to choose the Red Team or the Blue Team and then fight the other's ideas to the death?

I say no. We need to rethink government. We need to rethink the political process. To rethink the FCC, FAA and EPA. To rethink industry and commerce and pollution and our approaches to global warming. Rethink airports and roads and cars. Rethink intellectual property rights and "the commons." Rethink how we approach everything and look for ideas for better ways.

All three politicians are calling for an increase in "green collar jobs" by investing in renewable energy. But is it that simple? Just throw some money at this nascent industry and it'll flourish? Didn't Jimmy Carter do that in the 1970s? How did that work?

I think our solutions will be much more complicated than a Red Solution or a Blue Solution. It will be a complex intermix of ideas from both sides, plus perspectives that neither side has even considered yet. I feel like my approach to health insurance is an example of this (free e-Book here). Parts of it are probably despised by liberals (it includes Health Savings Accounts) and other parts are anathema to conservatives (although I'm not sure what). And even other parts probably seem strange to both Red and Blue (all this stuff about holistic healthcare). But it might be just the solution we need to help solve our healthcare crisis.

Anyway, enough of my self-promotion. The reason I like what I hear from Barack Obama is that he is starting the conversation we need to have - about a Renaissance in America. (By the way, Barack, or anyone else - feel free to use that line!)

The Holistic Economy Endorses Barack Obama

2008-02-09T22:03:00.000-05:00

I'd like to take this opportunity to express my support for presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Obama has inspired me along with hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Americans. I believe there is nothing more important than a leader who can inspire us to do great things. I believe Obama is a person who is comfortable in his own skin. He is a competent manager, judging by the effectiveness of his campaign. And he is a good person.

His speech in New Hampshire after his loss to Hillary Clinton was especially riveting. If you haven't seen the video done by several musicians and actors setting part of that speech to music, please go watch it now. It is an emotional and important tribute to Obama's words.

Beyond pure inspiration, I urge you to examine Obama's Website. His positions on every issue, from renewable energy to security to immigration are sensible and well-considered.

I've included the words from Obama's speech below.

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation: Yes, we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights: Yes, we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness: Yes, we can.

It was the call of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballot, a president who chose the moon as our new frontier, and a king who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the promised land: Yes, we can, to justice and equality.

Yes, we can, to opportunity and prosperity. Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can repair this world. Yes, we can.

Deepak Chopra Says Barack Obama is "Self-Aware"

2008-01-06T10:34:00.001-05:00

Deepak Chopra, well known New Age spiritualist, holistic health advocate and author, has provided a great insight into Barack Obama in his blog "Intent Blog."

Deepak cites Obama's quality of self-awareness as his best qualification for president. There is something about Obama that is unquantifiable, and maybe that's it. Obama just seems comfortable in his own skin, and maybe that represents true self-awareness.

Deepak quotes Benjamin Disraeli in saying that in order to be successful in politics, you need to know yourself and you need to know the times. Deepak adds that you also must be sought out by the times, which seems like it is happening with Obama as well.

I must admit that I've been so hopeful for 2008 (the entire year, not just the election) after I saw that Obama win the Iowa caucuses. I think he might be the person to make a difference in our country. And, as Deepak says, maybe America will become more self-aware in the process.

A Hospital is not the Best Place to be if You Have a Heart Attack

2008-01-06T09:16:00.000-05:00

The New England Journal of Medicine released a study recently that showed that heart attacks in hospitals are more often fatal than for people who have heart attacks elsewhere.

The study goes so far to say you would be better off to have a heart attack in a hotel or casino than a hospital. The reason is the delay. In a casino, the staff usually responds more quickly and uses a newer, smaller defibrillator which works well. Many hospitals rely on an older, clumsier defibrillator and they are dealing with many other patients, so the delay in responding to you may be a life threatening three, four or five minutes.

ABC News report is here.

Carbon Tax vs Carbon Markets vs Commons Trust

2008-01-05T12:47:00.000-05:00

There is a debate as to whether carbon taxes or carbon markets are better to reduce our greenhouse gas problem.

Carbon tax means adding a tax amount at the retail level that will be directed to fixing the environment. The arguments for it are that it is pretty simple and it is harder for the oil companies to play games to avoid it. The arguments against it are that it is an uphill battle politically (more taxes! is this communism??) and that it would impact the poor more than the rich. For an argument in favor of carbon taxes see this article and this advocacy Website.

Carbon markets are where the goverment sets up a bunch of permits to pollute and gives them to corporations based on their current pollution amounts, then the corporations are allowed to trade them amongst themselves. When this occurs, say the advocates, the corporations start to compete among themselves to use fewer permits so they can sell more of them to the greater polluters.

People who like the idea of carbon markets say that it is a true market-based solution to the problem. People who are against it say that it will take a long time to reduce pollution because the permits represent the current level of pollution and it will take years before this system will get us down to the levels we need to be. For an article showing carbon markets in a positive light, see this.

But there is a third view on how to reduce greenhouse gases. Peter Barnes, co-founder of Working Assets, wrote a book recently called Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons (Bk Currents) where he states that both carbon markets and carbon taxes are too problematic to be helpful in the long term battle against pollution. He sees a better alternative with establishing a commons trust. This would be where a third type of institution (not government, not private) is built in the United States (or any country) that is solely responsible for preserving the commons. In global warming terms, the commons refers to the atmosphere, clean water and healthy forests - the general ecosystem. The trustees represent all of us, including the future unborn generations, as well as the non-human species and the ecosystem itself. Their responsibility it to those stakeholders.

Each year, the trust would collect money from corporations who "use up" our commons in any way, either through polluting our air or water, chopping down trees, contaminating the soil or any other usage of the commons. Barnes calls this "commons rent." Those fees would go into three places: towards restoration of the commons (planting trees, cleaning up polluted areas), checks to all citizens and also investments. Yes, he is suggesting that each of us receive a check each year (or month) representing our share of the commons that was used during that period.

Commons trustees would not be government employees and would not have any connection to the government or the current political party in charge. Commons trustees would have a written contract with the U.S. citizenry and future generations that would keep them from violating the commons in any way. Trustees would be appointed by the federal government and then have long terms of duty, similar to Supreme Court justices.

I think this is an interesting idea, and certainly is different than carbon taxes or carbon markets. It has a lot of benefits, but I'm sure it would take a long time to educate people/voters about it. The nice thing is that you could start small, say, just the forests in southeastern Ohio, and then see how the small experiments work and move to bigger goals later.

Systems like this are already in place today. The largest is the Alaska Permanent Fund, set up to allow citizens of Alaska to participate in oil revenues. Each Alaskan gets a check of about $1,000 a year representing their share of the oil taken out of Alaska.

Let me know what you think of these three options. Probably the best idea is to try them all in small ways and see which ones work best.

Peter Barnes' blog is here.

2008-01-04T20:34:00.000-05:00

I received this article as an e-mail forwarded from a friend. I thought it was so appropriate for the holiday season and also for our work lives in general. I requested and received permission from the author to post it on my blogs. I don't think I have ever simultaneously posted something on both my blogs, but this article seemed to fit (for my "other" blog, see here):

Here's the article.

Counterbalance

Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D.

During one of AT&T's many transformations, I interviewed the woman in charge of Employee Health Services to find out what she'd observed about the most resilient people in the organization. I asked her if she noticed anything that these employees had in common that helped them deal so successfully with change: Did they work in a particular geographic region? Had they reached a certain level of the hierarchy? Did they perform similar functions? Were they male? Female? Younger? Older?

The manager told me that none of those factors made a difference. She said, "People who thrive on organizational change have two things in common: They take good care of themselves and they have outside interests."

As I continued talking with professionals in thirty organizations (and seven industries), the same theme kept repeating in my interviews. People who were the most adept at dealing with organizational change, not only had a career -- they had a life.

A definition of the word compensate is "to provide with a counterbalance or neutralizing device." Change-adept individuals compensate for the demands and pressures of business by developing counterbalancing activities in other areas of their lives. They engage in exercise programs and healthful eating habits, they cultivate interests outside of the workplace -- sports, hobbies, art, music, etc. -- that are personally fulfilling, and they have sources of emotional support. Because employees with counterbalance have fuller, richer lives, they handle business-related stress better and are more effective on the job.

They also have a source of stability - external to the organization - which many refer to as their "anchor" or "rock."

One of the most memorable interviews I conducted on this topic was with the CEO of a cellular telephone company: "I've got one of those 'anchors' in my life," he told me. "It's my sock drawer." I must have looked startled because the CEO continued quickly. "I mean it," he said. "All hell can be breaking loose at work, but when I come home at night I open my sock drawer to find everything in color-coded, neat little piles. I tell you, it does my heart good."

I've included this story in my speeches for years, and only once have I had someone take offense at it. I had addressed the national convention of a real estate firm in Florida. A sales manager from California came up to me after the speech and wanted to book a similar program for his division. "I really enjoyed your talk," he said. "But when you speak to my group, please don't make fun of the sock drawer."

I told the sales manager that I would be happy to do as he asked, but was curious about the reason for his request. He looked at me sternly. "I don't want you to make fun of it because it works! I tell all of my sales people that if they are having a terrible day, where nothing is going right, they might as well go home and straighten out their underwear drawer."

After thinking about that comment, I had to agree. It doesn't matter if the source of counterbalance sounds silly to others; change-adept people know what works for them.

Leaders who encourage employees to develop counterbalance find that, beyond building a more change-adept workforce, there are additional business benefits. The president of CalTex in Kuala Lumpur told me that his company pays for any kind of training course that employees want to take -- the only exceptions being martial arts and cooking classes. He said that the most popular course is singing lessons. This was not totally unexpected since Malaysian employees regularly frequent karaoke bars after work. What he didn't anticipate, however, was the degree to which employees' singing lessons improved their ability in giving work-related presentations. People conquered stage fright and became comfortable with standing in front of groups and expressing their ideas. In fact, the only complaint from the president of the company was, "Now they think they can sing!"

So, as this holiday season progresses, remember to take good care of yourself. Encourage your staff, co-workers and team members to visit friends, to play, to laugh, to straighten out their underwear drawers - and to sing. Doing so will result in a more resilient organization. And that is very good for business.

Happy Holidays!

Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D., is a coach, consultant, and keynote speaker who helps her clients thrive on change. She addresses association, government, and business audiences around the world. She is the author of ten books including "This Isn't the Company I Joined - How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down." Her newest book, "THE NONVERBAL ADVANTAGE - Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work," will be published by Berrett-Koehler in May 2008. For more information, contact Carol by phone: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or through her website: http://www.CKG.com.
--
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D.
Kinsey Consulting Services

Carol coaches executives, facilitates management retreats, helps change teams develop strategies, and delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. She can be reached by phone: +1-510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or through her website: www.CKG.com.

Author of nine books, including:
* This Isn't the Company I Joined -- How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down
* Ghost Story: A Modern Business Fable
* Creativity in Business
* Change-Busting: 50 Ways to Sabotage Organizational Change
* Adapting to Change: Making it Work for You
* The Human Side of High-Tech

Are You Wasting Money on Annual Physical Exams?

2008-01-04T20:03:00.000-05:00

Don't feel too bad if you missed having your annual physical exam with your doctor last year. In fact, no major North American clinical organization actually recommends doing an annual checkup. US News and World Report says that annual physicals might very well be a waste of your money and time, in the minds of many doctors.

The good thing about doing an annual checkup is that the doctor might find something that can be looked into further before it progresses. However, the bad aspects of the annual physical seem to outweigh the good: a) it costs money and time that are usually a waste, b) there is an excellent chance that there will be false positives for conditions you don't have, causing stress and more money and c) most diseases are caught when patients come in for other minor ailments anyway.

It's up to you. I haven't done annual physical exams with Western medical doctors for many years. I use a naturopathic physician and she has a more natural protocol that I prefer. To me, the false positives issue with Western medical tests is enough of a deterrent to keep me away from doing annual physicals.

Please Take a Moment to Question the Safety of Your Vaccines

2008-01-04T19:54:00.000-05:00

When vaccines were first invented, we hailed them as a modern medicinal miracle. But in the last few years, people have been questioning a) whether they really still work and b) whether they may be harmful to children.

T his article, posted on NewsTarget.com, brings some good discussion topics to the fore. Please give it a read and form your own opinions.

My Workout Promise...is Working!

2007-12-30T11:43:00.000-05:00

Hi. Just wanted to let you know that my promise to myself to start working out is really happening! I have consistently worked out five to six times a week since that original blog post.

I'm seeing the benefits too! My waist has gone from 46" down to 40.25". My goal is a long ways away, but I don't mind. I have a great workout partner who holds my feet to the fire and I'm happy to be going on the right path again after soooooo long.

Is Globalization Working?

2007-12-30T11:20:00.000-05:00

John Ralston Saul, a novelist from Canada, wrote an aggressive takedown of globalization in Harper's magazine several years ago that I've just gotten around to reading.

I've always been firmly behind globalization, but his article has caused me to rethink some of my most valued suppositions about it. Here is an interesting paragraph in his article:

This determinist approach toward agriculture as an industry rather than as a food source--toward the implications of everything from fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides to genetics, hormones, antibiotics, labeling, and sourcing--became the flash point for a far broader concern among citizens. This was the context in which a growing percentage of people judged the handling of key issues as different as mad cow disease, the availability of pharmaceuticals in the developing world, and global warming. They were beginning to feel that what was presented as an argument of Globalism versus protectionism was often just a confused opposition of personal choice and abstract corporate interests. So Globalization, put forward as a metaphor for choice, was organizing itself around not consumers but corporate structures, structures that sought profits by limiting personal choice.

I've always known firsthand that corporations are more efficient than government departments. As a computer consultant, I've seen the belly of both, and, while neither is pretty, corporations have the ability to get things done by at least a factor of twenty-to-one compared to government departments.

However, if a corporation takes over a function that a government department was once responsible for, and the corporation has a different (and wrong) goal, will it still be more efficient? This is a point that Ralston Saul brings up that I stupidly hadn't considered before.

Ralston Saul says that in our efforts to globalize, we've paid attention (and measured) only the commercial aspects of things, ignoring the human and social aspects. This has caused us to be quite helpless when events that are economically insignificant but socially important occur, like the genocide in Rwanda.

Good God! Will I turn into just another liberal big-government stooge? I hope not. This stuff is always more complex that I want to admit. But thanks anyway, John Ralston Saul, for making me think about my positions once again.

You can read much more from Ralston Saul, as well as see his collection of fiction and non-fiction writings, at his Website. I was first drawn to his work after hearing his lecture on the excellent podcast from TV Ontario called Big Ideas.

Sticking Your Kids With Your Debt

2007-12-16T17:43:00.000-05:00

I typically have two big issues which I judge political candidates on: the environment and the national debt.

Almost every year, both issues have been completely overlooked in the election process by both parties. However, this year, the environment actually is being talked about and the Democrats seem to have some plans to improve things.

The national debt has had no discussion whatsoever. Have we forgotten that the yearly budget deficit, brought to zero under President Clinton, is now higher than it's ever been? President Bush and the Republican Congress ran up a massive amount of debt that we are going to have to pay back.

Correction - our children will be paying it. Which brings me to a point, brought up eloquently by Oliver "Buzz" Thomas, a minister, lawyer and author of the book "10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can't Because He Needs the Job)."

Thomas wrote a blog post for USA Today earlier this month about our penchant for debt. He feels that we are violating fundamental religious principles by running up this debt and putting in no effort to pay it back. Essentially, it is like building up a $30,000 credit card bill and then leaving it to your children.

Would you do that? Probably not. But, as Thomas points out, it is just easier when it is a distant, shapeless blob like the national debt. And our politicians, especially the spendy Republican President we have, don't help. Can't blame it on the war either. This administration has increased the national debt every year without even counting war expenses.

As Thomas puts it, "Whether you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Zoroastrian, your tradition has taught you at least this: a) Pay your bills and b) Provide for your children. Right now, we are doing neither.

So why aren't our politicians talking about it? Probably because it will be uncomfortable to pay back the debt. Services will have to be cut. Taxes will have to be raised (sorry W - your way ain't-a workin').

We have to re-insert this into our national discussion again. Do we need to resurrect Ross Perot to bring back the topic of paying the debt? I hope not.

How to Be a Glam-Granola Girl

2007-12-02T13:47:00.000-05:00

What do you get when you cross a glamour queen with a granola girl? Wendy Roy, author of the new book "You Know You're a Glam-Granola Girl If..." says that is exactly what she is - A Glam-Granola Girl.

Wendy also feels that there are many others like herself. Women who delight in being beautiful, feeling sexy, and also have a deep respect for nature and the environment.

Wendy recently read my article on natural cosmetics, and we've had a number of chats through e-mail. She seems like a chronic overachiever - singer, composer, author, entrepreneur, instructor, you name it. She's even sung at Boston's Fenway Park regularly and composed a song that was sung on Idol, South Africa. Amazing woman!

But you might be most interested in her book. Published just in time for Christmas, her book "celebrates the glamourously earthy ladies of the world."

The book costs $14.95 and is available from Wendy's Website. Click here to order.

Here's a quote from Wendy on what a Glam-Granola Girl really is:

We are ultra-stylish in appearance, yet comfortable in our shoes, and our skin. We encourage ecological responsibility, and promote inner peace, as we understand that this is from where external peace grows. We are the ladies who break all molds, and feel elated by, and proud of it.

We are intelligent, we are women of substance, and we are quite extraordinary, actually.

We are Glam-Granola girls.

I've Started Exercising - For Real!

2007-10-07T15:21:00.000-04:00

I've finally started working out on a regular basis. My wife and I have always gone for walks pretty much a couple of times a week, but it is never fast enough to be a "workout" for me and I've been getting fatter and fatter.

Right now I weigh 240lb and I have a 46" waistline. I don't have a weight goal, but I'd like my waistline to be a lot smaller. That means burning fat and building muscle.

And thank God I found a great workout partner. My buddy at work, Walt, is working out with me at 5:30am every weekday morning.

Maybe I'll take some before and after shots of myself and post them here (and maybe I won't - LOL).

We are following Walt's workout plan, which means lots of free weights, 30 minutes of cardio and working opposing body parts each day.

I'm looking forward to it. We've done one week so far and I haven't quit nor have I caught a cold (which is a usual thing for me starting workouts).

I'll keep you up-to-date on what happens.

My goal is to look good before I go home to Canada for Christmas, because the rest of my family is all totally fit and I'm not. Hey, vanity is an excellent motivator.

Who "Should" Be in the Atlas Shrugged Movie

2007-10-07T14:43:00.000-04:00

After hearing that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had bought the rights to the Atlas Shrugged movie, and that they were planning to star in it themselves, I couldn't help but think of who the actors for each character really --should-- be.

Erin Daniels as Dagny Taggart. I think Erin would have the perfect look and that she could play Dagny's personality most effectively. Her thin body, beautiful face and quiet but assertive nature would be a great fit for the role. I think Angelina, as beautiful as she is, seems a little too ethnic and too showy for the Dagny role. But maybe she will be able to pull it off (we hope).

Tate Donovan as Jim Taggart. Tate has the right look of youth even though he's in his forties and also can play the panicked executive very well. Plus, the guy's ex-girlfriends are Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Aniston - he must have something going for him!

My choice for Lillian Rearden is truly inspired. Joely Richardson has the cold eyes and elegant thin body to play the ultimate bitch of the story.

Mark Humphrey as Hank Rearden. Mark is a journeyman actor who would look good as a blonde and has the right face for the stoney responses Hank is always giving to people.

John Galt is actually pretty easy. All you need is a really good looking guy and put green contact lenses into his eyes. Brad Pitt is planning to play John Galt - he could be okay. My choice would actually be Christian Bale.

The rest of the people are pretty easy too. Oren Boyle can be any old fat guy. Wesley Mooch is a simpering fool. It goes on. If they can get those top roles right, the movie could be worth watching. I'm asking you, Brangelina, please reconsider acting in the movie yourselves. You might do Ayn Rand better justice if you stay behind the cameras on this one (as pretty as you both are).

The Four Boneheaded Biases of Stupid Voters (And We're All Stupid Voters)

2007-09-28T06:04:00.000-04:00

Reason magazine is fast becoming one of my favorite news/opinion sources. They have a nice RSS feed and excellent articles.

I was especially taken by this article on the biases we all have about voting, and hopefully this explains how we end up with free-spending, policy-deficient politicians like George W. Bush.

Anti-Market Bias

I first learned about farm price supports in the produce section of the grocery store. I was in kindergarten. My mother explained that price supports seemed to make fruits and vegetables more expensive but assured me that this conclusion was simplistic. If the supports went away, so many farms would go out of business that prices would soon be higher than ever. I accepted what she told me and felt a lingering sense that price competition is bad for buyer and seller alike.

This was one of my first memorable encounters with anti-market bias, a tendency to underestimate the economic benefits of the market mechanism. The public has severe doubts about how much it can count on profit-seeking business to produce socially beneficial outcomes. People focus on the motives of business and neglect the discipline imposed by competition. While economists admit that profit maximization plus market imperfections can yield bad results, noneconomists tend to view successful greed as socially harmful per se.

A Speech on the So-Called Evil of Money from "Atlas Shrugged"

2007-09-16T11:42:00.000-04:00

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth."

For the rest of the speech (it is very long, philosophical and extremely well-put) go to Capitalist Magazine online. Wikipedia has a good article on the book "Atlas Shrugged" and a list of the characters in the book for background to this quote.

Should I Be Buying Railroad Stock?

2007-09-10T19:30:00.000-04:00

I've been hearing a lot lately about the resurgence of rail. With gasoline prices rising now and almost certainly skyrocketing in the near future, railroads look like a fantastically efficient way to move goods around the country again. They can haul triple the amount of freight for the same amount of fuel as a truck.

St. Petersburg Times writes about it here.

Warren Buffet and Carl Icahn are investing in railroad stocks according to the Daily Reckoning Website.

Forbes talks about railroad companies reinvesting here.

All this while I'm re-listening to book mp3 of Atlas Shrugged, a 1950s era novel which centers on the railroad industry of the time. I love to listen to it everytime I need a shove in my level of productivity. This book makes me want to work harder.

Bandidas Movie - How Did I Miss This?

2007-08-27T20:50:00.000-04:00

Two women whom I love dearly starred in the same movie in 2006 and, somehow, I missed it. Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek came together in a turn-of-the-century Western played out in Mexico called Bandidas.

I haven't even seen the whole movie but I know I'm going to love it. We recorded it on TiVo and it's waiting for me...patiently. My heart is still beating fast...

UPDATE (Sep 10) - I've now watched it twice all the way through. Friggin' loved it. Honestly, these are two of my favorite women in the world.

New Study on Dairy Badly Flawed

2007-07-29T13:20:00.000-04:00

"Drinking Milk Cuts Diabetes Risk" blare the headlines. The University of Cardiff in England just completed a study that showed that the more people drank milk the lower their incidence of metabolic syndrome, which is essentially a grab bag of symptoms that can lead to diabetes and heart disease: insulin resistance, obesity, high blood pressure, etc.

One problem. The study did not specify what the control group drank. Think about it. If there was one group drinking more milk, what would the other group likely be drinking? Water with stevia? Doubt it. They were probably drinking more soda and sugared energy drinks.

So, perhaps the headlines should have read "Milk Better Than Soda." Yeah, well, what isn't?

Further, the study reports that the number of people in the control group versus the milk-drinkers was virtually the same as far as who was actually diagnosed with diabetes during the study. The metabolic syndrome rate was lower in the milk-drinking group, but the rate of diabetes was the same, even given the twenty-year span of the study.

A better-conducted study from 2000 showed that cow's milk actually increases the incidence of diabetes by a factor of three. The results of that study are here.

Taking Drugs for Your Disease Can Cause...Another Disease

2007-07-28T10:06:00.000-04:00

Public Citizen's excellent Website WorstPills.org features an article this week on the various "side effects" caused by today's most popular pharmaceutical drugs. As if that's not enough, they also have written anecdotal stories of people harmed by drugs, including people who developed additional diseases caused by the drugs.

Larry, an otherwise healthy 58-year-old man with diarrhea believed to be due to “irritable bowel syndrome,” was given Stelazine, a powerful antipsychotic tranquilizer to “calm down” his intestinal tract. Stelazine is not even approved for treating such medical problems. Six months after starting Stelazine, Larry developed severe parkinsonism and was started on L-dopa, a drug for treating Parkinson’s disease. Presumably, the doctor did not realize the parkinsonism was drug-induced, and the Stelazine was continued. For seven years, Larry took both drugs. Then a neurologist specializing in Parkinson’s disease saw Larry, recognized the real cause of his problem, stopped the Stelazine, and slowly withdrew the L-dopa over a six-month period. Larry’s severe, disabling parkinsonism cleared completely.

Read WorstPills.org entire article here.

Review of Side Effects Movie

2007-07-22T20:20:00.000-04:00

I finally bought the DVD for the movie "Side Effects." I have been wanting to see this movie for a long time. Dr. Pam Popper at the Wellness Forum introduced me to it, but I haven't had a chance to see it until now.

Side Effects is a movie about the drug industry. It is based on a true story, the budding career of a pharmaceutical sales rep named Kathleen Slattery, who also happens to be the director of this movie.

The story begins with Karly Hert's (Kathleen's character) start in the pharma business. The initial pay and perqs get her excited, but she isn't really good at the job for a while. Finally, she decides to tell the doctors the unvarnished truth about the drugs she's selling, being upfront about all the side effects. It works, and Karly becomes the top sales rep, earning top dollars selling their marque drug, named Vivexx (named suspiciously like Vioxx, the arthritis drug that killed tens of thousands).

Karly finds out that the drug company withheld important side effect information, and does some digging to find out the real facts. She does some great detective work and at the end, makes a difference in a big way (trying to avoid spoilers here).

The movie itself is quite entertaining. That is for one reason and one reason only. Karly is played by Katherine Heigl, who is from Grey's Anatomy on TV and recently starred in Knocked Up. Katherine is an amazing actress. She holds the entire film together. I can sympathize that Kathleen Slattery is a first-time director, and as such, she does an okay job. But the movie has many problems, which can all be traced back to the director. Awkward ten-second scenes that mean nothing, strange interviews with doctors interspersed throughout, and awful performances by almost everyone except Katherine Heigl. The actors who play Karly's boyfriend and her two bosses are especially painful to watch. Again, it's understandable that, with a budget of less than $200,000, you're not going to get great actors to surround a star, but it doesn't make it any easier to watch.

I have one more bone to pick. As a red-blooded guy, it pains me to complain about this, but why does Katherine Heigl have to get undressed on-screen a half-dozen times or more with no connection whatsoever to the plot? It seems like a very cheap way to get our attention. Yes, Katherine has a beautiful body, but even a sex-crazed guy like myself can tell when he's being manipulated.

Having said all that, my wife and I still watched the whole thing and we still liked it. We both thought it was a tribute to one of the best new actresses of the twenty-first century, Katherine Heigl.

And, setting my inner movie critic aside, the story is good and the message is incredibly important. I suggest that, if you want to buy the DVD, you consider getting a combo-pack with Kathleen's companion movie called "Money Talks," which is a documentary on the same issue of pharmaceutical companies' undue influence on doctors.

Both movies are worth watching. We all need to learn more about this issue and find out what we can do to mitigate the risks.

Aspartame Linked to Cancer Again

2007-07-15T00:22:00.000-04:00

In a study conducted by the Ramazzini Institute in Italy, aspartame was found to be linked to malignant tumors and leukemia in rats.

The link is a PDF, so you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is a free download.

Vinegar for Weeds

2007-07-14T17:57:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm putting my money where my blog is. I tried using this vinegar, soap and water solution (see recipe under "Vinegar and Dish Soap" heading) on my weeds today, mostly thistles and dandelions. I'll let you know how well it works.

Oh, it was great to get out in the sun for a few minutes. I used to hate yard work with our house, because there is so much of it. But now I actually like it because it gets me out of the house and into the sun.

And, no, I do not wear sunblock. A lot of the news reports about sun and skin cancer are wrong, wrong, wrong. As the Journal of the National Cancer Institute at Oxford states, sunscreen appears to be linked to skin cancer more closely than sun exposure to skin cancer.

Whoa. Where the hell did that rant come from?

50 Uses for Vinegar

2007-07-14T11:57:00.000-04:00

This blog entry has fifty uses for vinegar. It cleans. It softens. It kills weeds. It freshens. Let me know what works for you.

There's also a book that has tons of uses for apple cider vinegar, specifically. It is supposed to be good for your health. Strange how something as acidic as vinegar would help your body alkalize. The book is in its Fifty-Fifth edition.

I'm Deleting My Post about Sicko

2007-07-14T11:44:00.000-04:00

I made a post on this blog about Michael Moore's new movie "Sicko" and I am now deleting that post from my blog. I have not seen the movie yet and I need to do that before I make my comments.

I read some very thought-provoking comments on Moore's Website that made me realize I may be speaking out of turn.

This deletion is a result of my own research. I have not been contacted by Michael Moore's organization or anyone else, this is my own decision.

Thank you.

I Found a Salsa Without Cilantro

2007-07-08T14:40:00.001-04:00

UPDATE: Frontera has stopped selling this product, as far as I can tell. They switched the shape of the bottle, stopped selling this salsa flavor, and now EVERYTHING has cilantro and/or "spices" in it. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.

I finally found a salsa that contains no cilantro!

Why am I so excited? Especially considering that I love cilantro?

Well, the reason is that my wife is allergic to cilantro. This sad fact took the two of us several months to determine, but it became quite obvious when I purchased a bunch of fresh cilantro and she put it into a chili that she ate for several meals in a row. She broke out in a red, itchy rash on her neck and chest, and this happens now to a lesser degree whenever she eats something with the fragrant, tasty herb in it.

I say "sad fact" because both of us enjoy the taste of cilantro. There are apparently many people who don't like the taste of it, but for us, it is just because of my wife's allergy that we stay away from it.

And staying away is not easy. Cilantro has become the herb of the decade in restaurant food and any type of prepared grocery store food. Indian food almost always contains cilantro. The Chinese call cilantro "Chinese parsley" and use it liberally.

And Mexican food has cilantro in everything. Especially salsa.

So, for those who don't like the taste of it, or, God forbid, are allergic, take heart. Frontera Kitchen's Red Pepper and Garlic Salsa has no cilantro listed on the ingredients (available at Whole Foods Market). I'll report back later if Tamara starts having reactions to this too.

By the way, cilantro and coriander are from the same plant. Cilantro is the leaves and coriander is the ground-up seeds. My wife is allergic to both.

Group of Presidential Scholars Give President a Letter Asking to Cease Torture

2007-07-08T10:16:00.000-04:00

(Mari Oye second from right)

The Presidential Scholars of 2007 visited the President this summer like they do every summer. But this time, several of them (almost a third) signed a letter asking the President to stop torturing prisoners and enemy combatants.

Mari Oye (second from right in photo) was the one to hand the letter to him. To his credit, the President read the letter right there in front of her. His only response was "America doesn't torture people. America doesn't torture people."

This has to be the most underreported story of the summer. Why are the networks all Paris Hilton's butt and totally missing this story? I heard it originally on the Democracy Now! podcast but also found an article on the Boston Globe Website that is pretty good.

Democracy Now! has the entire transcript of Amy Goodman's interview with Mari Oye and one other scholar who was involved.

Democracy Now! is my new favorite podcast. Here is some background on the Presidential Scholars program.

Rare Earth Magnets Act as Possible Shark Repellant

2007-07-01T17:58:00.000-04:00

Since 2001, SharkDefense has been working on a chemical shark repellent. The co-founder of this small company was playing around with powerful rare-earth magnets in 2005, when he dropped one next to their shark research tank in Oak Ridge, New Jersey. The lemon and nurse sharks inside instantly darted to the opposite wall.

Bewildered, the two scientists began to investigate. The results of their studies are at a site called Ocean Magnetics (their spinoff company).

They've found that sharks dramatically avoid magnets made from neodymium, iron and boron. They think the magnets overload a shark's ampullae of Lorenzini, small vesicles and pores around the head that form part of a subcutaneous sensory network.

Nice alternative to chemical shark repellants. Better for everyone.

Link.

Socks for your Sandals

2007-07-01T17:51:00.000-04:00

So, it's too cold to go barefooted but you still want to wear your flip flops? You need Flip Flop Socks!

I can see that these could be useful for those in-between weather days. Or if you want to hide your ugly feet from view, but still want to be comfortable?

Insulation Made from Mushrooms

2007-06-26T19:25:00.000-04:00

Discovery Channel gives us a view into what could potential replace our current types of "pink" home insulation: mushrooms.

Mushroom spores, actually.

Although excellent insulators, traditional polystyrene and polyurethane foam blends are made from petroleum, are expensive to produce, and are not biodegradable.

The patented Greensulate formula is an organic, fire-retardant board made of water, flour, minerals and mushroom spores. It not only hinders heat flow but could also be modified to produce sustainable, "growable" homes.

It's been developed by a couple of kids from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. They claim that these spores grow very quickly, couple of weeks, and that the end product will be quite cheap to produce. They're creating the company to market this...as we speak.

Another article on the topic here.

Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way - Ahh, We'll Follow, Thanks

2007-06-23T14:28:00.000-04:00

Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan and Renault automakers, has said that he wants to pursue a "wait and see" strategy on hybrid cars. He says that consumers are still deciding whether they want a hybrid gasoline-electric car, like the Lexus RX400h (which I personally love), or a "clean diesel" (assumably biodiesel) car. Ghosn says "When the market will shift, we will follow."

As the clever Dvorak Uncensored article put it, Nissan is hoping to "outperform GM at falling behind." This decision just might do that.

Toyota, meanwhile, has sold over one million hybrid cars now. And when Toyota looks in their rearview mirror, if they really look hard, they'll see Carlos Ghosn trying to decide whether to wear the red socks or the green socks today.

Help for an Embarrassing Problem

2007-06-23T13:55:00.000-04:00

Hi. I'm Daryl. And I have an embarrassing problem known as Hemorrhoids. (It pisses me off that I've dealt with it long enough to even know how to spell it.)

I've had it for years, and tried various treatments, conventional and alternative, but everything seemed to make it worse. Each option was more painful, embarrassing and unproductive than the last. (Actually, it does help to use baby wipes instead of toilet paper, though. Just make sure to get the flushable kind.)

When I read the testimonials for Healing Natural Oils product "Heal Hemorrhoids," I sent in my order. Forget the fact that the damn tiny little bottle costs $70 (33ml). Forget the fact that nothing else had worked.

Well, I wish I could say that the oil totally eliminated the problem. It didn't. However, it did several very positive things. First, no more bleeding. That stopped almost immediately. And the pain also stopped very soon afterward. But the hemorrhoids themselves have not gotten smaller or disappeared, as discussed in the testimonials for the product.

That said, I wouldn't go without this oil. When I ran out of it recently, the bleeding and pain started up again quickly. For me, this is not a cure, but it is relief. The $70 bottle lasts about a year, so it isn't a huge price to pay for relief from pain and embarrassment.

My understanding is that the oils use aromatherapeutical and homeopathic principles to help heal the problems. With my excellent results from a homeopathic remedy for motion sickness, I'm happy to continue trying these various homeopathic products.

If it's so embarrassing, why the hell am I blogging about it??

NOTE: At this moment, Healing Natural Oils is offering 25% off their ridiculous prices, which makes the whole experience a big less ridiculous. Shop for your items, then enter "save25" as your customer code when you get to the order page.

I make no money from the links in this post. I am not an affiliate of Healing Natural Oils.

1,637 Adverse Reactions to New "Miracle" HPV Vaccine

2007-06-16T15:51:00.000-04:00

This was just a matter of time. Certain U.S. States and the country of Australia have instituted legislation forcing young girls to take a vaccine produced by Merck against the human papillomavirus (HPV).

The deaths and bad reactions are starting to roll in. Three girls died shortly after the vaccine was administered to them, and over a thousand have had "adverse reactions" according to the FDA.

These sad facts were reported in the British Medical Journal as well as on Dr. Joseph Mercola's blog.

For a detailed look at the problems with vaccines, check out Dr. Sherry Tenpenny's Website.

Curry vs. Cancer

2007-06-16T14:57:00.000-04:00

The ingredient in curry that gives it its bright yellow color is called curcumin. This ingredient has long been known in naturopathic medicine to offer help in avoiding or reversing cancer.

Now scientists have come up with a way to embed curcumin into nanospheres, ultra small particles, so they can be injected into the bloodstream, hoping to help cancer patients.

Or, umm, you could just eat curry. Or a quarter teaspoon of turmeric in a smoothie for breakfast, which is what I do. The studies quoted in the article vastly overstate the amount of curcumin needed for health, similarly to the way studies often state a much higher amount of green tea intake than necessary.

Turmeric, the plant that contains all the curcumin, can be a bit expensive to buy. However, my trick is to go into the imports aisle of your grocery store (Giant Eagle has it) and buy a huge bag of it for a few dollars. It is a lot cheaper than buying the little spice bottles.

Why I Had to Cut Down Four Trees So My Wife Could See the Sopranos Finale

2007-06-16T13:50:00.000-04:00

Our neighbor has lots of mature trees. In fact, that was one of the reasons for us moving here. But once in a while, a tree (or four) has to be sacrificed for a higher purpose. In this case, my wife's Sopranos addiction.

Our satellite TV reception (through DirecTV) had been getting worse and worse for the past month or two. I knew what it was. I called the DirecTV support line just in case, but we both quickly came to the same conclusion - our trees were getting in the way of our satellite minidish's view of the southern sky.

It got worse and worse until our satellite system completely shut down. We were getting no programming whatsoever. In a way, it was nice not having a TV to turn to for entertainment. But I could not foresee an imminent disaster that was about to overtake our little household.

The Series Finale of the Sopranos was coming up on Sunday, and my wife dearly loved the series. I had watched some episodes of previous seasons, but had missed every episode of this current, and known to be final, season.

My wife missed the previous week, but when she found out that the Season Finale was coming up, she demanded that we get our satellite system fixed, come hell or high water.

I ditched whatever weekend plans I had had and set to work on figuring out what to do. We could call a tree service and probably get it all cleaned up, but that would probably cost a few hundred dollars. Besides, I had a handy electric chainsaw (that I enjoyed using), so why not try it myself?

The trees were no more than 6 inches wide at the base, so I cut each one down with the chainsaw. It worked pretty well. The trees were thin but pretty tall - 25-30 feet (which was the whole problem).

I didn't damage anything with trees falling all over the place, and then proceeded to cut them up into small pieces.

I got the job done in about 4-5 hours, then went into the house and gingerly turned on the TV and satellite receiver. It worked! We had almost flawless reception.

I say "almost" because the Sopranos came in perfectly (imagine our panic when the screen blanked out in the diner as Meadow was walking in!!) but this past week we've had one or two digital "blips" that indicate there's more cuttin' to do.

It will be constant battle now. Hopefully we can just cut the tops off the trees as they get bigger. With the four trees I cut down, they were actually "volunteers" in our neighbor's yard that they wanted to get rid of anyway. But the next time, it might not be so simple.

Damning Studies on Splenda

2007-06-14T18:05:00.000-04:00

A good friend recently asked me why I avoid Splenda. I've actually never tasted it! (I hear it tastes good.) The reason is that although there have been only a few studies done on this manmade chemical sweetener, the studies I've read have not been kind.

So, for my loyal blog readers, I'll give you the links that I shared with her. Splenda studies, with a nice little aspartame study thrown in for good measure!

Journal of Head and Face Pain (Sep 2006)
- This is just the abstract of an article done by Mercer University School of Medicine showing that sucralose (i.e. Splenda) triggers migraines.

Journal of Food Chemical Toxicology (Jun 1990)
Journal of Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology (Oct 1994)
- This is a very comprehensive article, written by an MD, summarizing the research done before 2000. Look towards the bottom of the article for the journal references. There are also some interesting, but clinically inconclusive, personal stories listed at the end of the article.

Journal of Food Chemical Toxicology (2000)
- A detailed abstract of a study where sucralose was tested on pregnant rats and rabbits. Gastrointestinal damage caused two mothers and four fetuses to die. This study was actually paid for by McNeil Specialty Products, the makers of Splenda.

Journal of Mutation Research (Aug 2002)
- Concludes that sucralose caused DNA damage in mice.

International Journal of Obesity (Jun 2004)
- Interesting study that says that artificial sweeteners actually make us want more sweets

Environmental Health Perspectives (March 2006)
- Aspartame found to cause cancer in rats at very low levels of ingestion (PDF version)

A Network of Holistic Moms

2007-06-03T14:52:00.000-04:00

Here is a neat new organization that is a support group for parents who want to use holistic methods in their parenting.

It's called Holistic Moms. It was founded in 2002 and has 85 local membership chapters in the U.S. and Canada, including chapters right here in Ohio. They provide support and information on natural living, health and wellness, informed and mindful parenting, sustainable environment and balance in life.

Membership costs $35.00/year, but you can't pay online, you have to download their form, print it out and mail in your membership check.

Former Head of the Chinese FDA Sentenced to Death

2007-05-29T20:31:00.000-04:00

In a surprisingly harsh decision, the former head of China's food and drug agency was given a death sentence for the corruption of his department.

Zheng Xiaoyu was convicted on charges of taking bribes and dereliction of duty.

The severity of the sentence probably had something to do with China's embarassments over the pet food poisoning scandal as well as others involving toothpaste manufactured in China, but Xiaoyu's corruption apparently predated these events by years.

Xiaoyu was convicted with taking bribes from pharmaceutical companies amounting to more than 6.5 million yuan ($850,000 US). There is a long list of Chinese patients who died from drugs that were approved by his department and later found to be unsafe.

This is quite a story. It speaks to a lot of issues in China as well as issues we deal with in the U.S.

Massage Therapy Lowers Blood Pressure in Cancer Patients

2007-05-28T12:28:00.000-04:00

In a study conducted at the University of Minnesota, patients undergoing chemotherapy were given massage therapy (MT) and Healing Touch (HT).

Both therapies were found to lower blood pressure, respiratory rate and heart rate. In the 230 patient trial, pain rates were also lower in a 4 week period with these therapies than without.

Another study, quotes in the April/May 2006 issue of Massage Magazine, conducted at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, found that sixteen healthy males had significantly lower blood pressure after the first two massage therapy sessions in the controlled trial.