The New One

Just a test nothing to see here. Move along

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 07 May 2010 11:18:00 +0000

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noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:24:00 +0000

This is quite cool I dl'd the whole thing last year. Quite a bit of fun. http://sites.google.com/site/sxswtorrent/2010

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noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:53:00 +0000

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 359864

The best films of the decade Roger eberts Top 10 of the decade. A list with "elevation" read all the way thru

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:02:00 +0000

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Elevation. why you feel good after seeing a great movie.

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The best films of 2009 - Roger Ebert's Journal

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:29:00 +0000

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http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/12/the_best_films_of_2009.html
Don't go to movies often but I love his reviews. Wonderful words.

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The Big Picture Year in review series

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:11:00 +0000

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One of the annual highlights. This is part one of three. Watch for them all.

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Way Cool :: "Seafood Express: Getting Mediterranean Fish to Las Vegas � Fast"

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:43:00 +0000

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Chef Paul Bartolotta wants you to eat like an Italian villager. Never mind that facilitating such a modest act will require speeding refrigerator trucks, thermal microchips, and an on-staff marine biologist. His Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare in the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel offers species that rarely make it onto US plates. Some menu regulars: three different kinds of lobster, Mediterranean snapper baked in a shell of its native sea salt, and grilled Sicilian amberjack, which is firm like swordfish but even moister. Here's how a typical shipment gets from pier to platter in just 53 hours.

Get Set, Go! A fisherman catches a particularly nice specimen�perhaps a blade fish (great for grilling)�and emails a pic to Bartolotta, who texts his buyer to add it to his order. � Hour 5 Cruising the market in Milan, the buyer spots other interesting species, like the strong-flavored Mediterranean horse mackerel, and Skypes his finds to the chef. � Hour 6 More than 45 species are packed up: Live crustaceans are wrapped in damp towels and straw, the swimmers in waxed paper. One fish in each container is microchipped.

Hour 10 The shipper books several flights to ensure the cargo gets on the first plane to take off. At the last second, he tells the racing driver which of Milan's three airports is optimal. � Hour 11 During the 14-hour flight, crabs, lobsters, and langoustines reach a semidormant state. The microchips take temperature readings every 20 minutes. � Hour 25 The flight lands at LAX. Handlers unload Bartolotta's coolers and place them in a waiting refrigerator truck, which zooms off through the desert to Las Vegas.

Hour 31 At the restaurant, kitchen staff review the chip data to make sure container temps stayed cold en route. Bartolotta checks the fish for odor and appearance. � Hour 33 A marine biologist tests the crustaceans for liveliness. Healthy specimens are transferred to a saltwater tank. Weaker ones might end up in sauce. � Dinnertime The next evening, waiters unveil the chef's specials: blade fish, turbot, spiny scorpion fish�all around $60 and all so fresh they're practically twitching.¹

Illustrations: Rafael Macho

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Very interesting article.

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To the Moon, Alice! Totally amazing

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:59:00 +0000

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Just ridiculously cool

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A neat overview of "

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:34:00 +0000

Observations on key-value databases

with 5 comments

Key-value databases are catching fire these days. Memcached, Redis, Cassandra, Keyspace, Tokyo Tyrant, and a handful of others are surging in popularity, judging by the contents of my feed reader.

I find a number of things interesting about these tools.

There are many more of them than open-source traditional relational databases. (edit: I mean that there are many options that all seem similar to each other, instead of 3 or 4 standing out as the giants.)

It seems that a lot of people are simultaneously inventing solutions to their problems in private without being aware of each other, then open-sourcing the results. That points to a sudden sea change in architectures. Tipping points tend to be abrupt, which would explain isolated redundant development.

Many of the products are feature-rich with things programmers need: diverse language bindings, APIs, embeddability, and the ability to speak familiar protocols such as memcached protocol.

I think there are more solutions here than the ecosystem will support, and in five years a few will stand out as the most popular.

This process of paring down the gene pool is win-win because they’re open-source, and nothing will be lost.

Choosing which one to use is no easy task even for a highly skilled, technical, up-to-date person. Perhaps the decision-makers will choose on the availability of commercial support and consulting.

Many of them offer built-in, dead-simple, distributed, synchronous replication. This is very difficult to achieve with traditional relational databases. What makes key-value databases different? They don’t have MVCC, for one thing; but I’m not sure of the complete answer to that question, to tell the truth.

We live in interesting times.

Written by Xaprb

September 20th, 2009 at 2:57 pm

Posted in SQL

Tagged with cassandra, distributed, key-value, Keyspace, memcached, NoSQL, redis, replication, synchronous, Tokyo Cabinet, Tokyo Tyrant

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5 Responses to 'Observations on key-value databases'

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I’m kind of surprised you didn’t mention MongoDB – it’s probably the NoSQL database I’m most interested in. It answers your ‘is it going to be supported?’ question quite well – there’s a company (10gen) behind it.

Morgan Tocker

20 Sep 09 at 8:18 pm

I wasn’t trying to give a complete list, just drop some names to hand-wave so people would know what category I’m talking about.

Xaprb

20 Sep 09 at 8:37 pm

Mongo is a great product but it’s a tad different in the DB graph (i.e., feature versus raw throughput). Mongo would probably perform really well in a simple key/value (versus the more sophisticated Mongo document design) scenario but I haven’t seen any numbers published.

Ryan

20 Sep 09 at 8:39 pm

afaik CouchDB has mvcc

Jo

21 Sep 09 at 2:57 am

It does.

Xaprb

21 Sep 09 at 8:42 am

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Magnificent photos from space probes Oh boy at work cant look yet but the first one is a stunner!

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:21:00 +0000

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Magnificent

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Internet "relief kit" brings sweet, sweet connectivity to disaster sites WOW!

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:04:00 +0000

Mike Outmesguine -- wireless guru, author, and veteran -- is one of the most knowledgeable people out there with regard to post-disaster connectivity know-how. I am digging the instructional piece he has in the current issue of MAKE about "worst-case-internet" kits, with details on what to include, what each component costs, how to set it up, and why.

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DIsaster internet preparedness. Looks pretty serious!

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Pentax rolls its own colorware for the Pentax K-x DSLR ((BUTT UGLY))

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:20:00 +0000

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UGH

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Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage | Backblaze Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:45:00 +0000

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Truly remarkable open source hardware. The first Consumer hard drive I ever saw was Corvus 5 megabyte unit that cost about 10k. 5 Megabytes. That was 1982. This is so wild. And a wonderful deep writeup.

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An intelligent take by Canadian ongoing � Taking Care of Alison

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 22:06:00 +0000

The US is consumed with discussion of health-care alternatives, and in US politics it seems to be OK to knowingly tell bald-face lies, and in US media it seems not OK to call a lie by its true name. Here�s a small bit of first-hand reportage about the working of another approach to health-care.

My mother-in-law is in her late seventies, suffering from progressive dementia, has always been thin as a rail, and is strong-willed and sometimes difficult. She lives on a farm in a fairly remote part of Saskatchewan.

She collapsed at home this week and has been diagnosed with a perforated ulcer. She�s also dramatically more disoriented and doesn�t seem to see properly, so maybe there was a little stroke or some other neurological misfortune in parallel.

She was taken to the nearest hospital, which happens to be a Catholic-run institution, where she�s receiving compassionate and competent care. They�re making it easy for her husband and daughter to be near her as required.

She immigrated to Canada in the nineties and hasn�t become a citizen yet. Interestingly, Lauren tells me that quite a few of the doctors and other hospital staff are also immigrants.

The key points are these:

She�s getting high-quality care.

The costs are covered by our public-sector health insurance.

The facts that she�s a recent immigrant, that her income is negligible, and her prospects for long-term recovery are poor are not considerations.

No civil servants are in the loop.

Canada spends a dramatically smaller proportion of its national income on health-care than the US.

The American conservatives who are fighting health-care reform are filthy hypocritical lying scum.

Please feel free to contribute a comment on this fragment.

Updated: 2009/08/22
Serif / Sans-Serif

Contributions

Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Sam J (Aug 22 2009, at 14:27)
s/Canada/Australia/g and the story is quite similar. Same for France, Ireland and the UK...
In fact it's true for pretty much any part of the civilised world I've spent more than a short amount of time in. Of course conversely, the alternative is far from civilised. In fact it can be hard to differentiate between a society which abandons those less fortunate than themselves from the savages who went before them.
Thailand have some of the best and cheapest healthcare in the world so far as I can tell too, so it's not limited to the western world either.
Sam

[link]
From: Martin Heller (Aug 22 2009, at 14:41)
Tell us what you really think, Tim. ;)

[link]

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A smart man takes an interesting look at us.

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Myths and falsehoods about health care reform | Media Matters for America (a keeper)

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:24:00 +0000

MYTH 1: There is no health care crisis

CLAIM: The health care system currently works fine, and only a purportedly small number of uninsured people would benefit from reform.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: "There really isn't a crisis in health care in this country. The crisis in health care that -- if you wanna say, that does exist -- is the fear that a major illness or catastrophe could wipe you out, which isn't gonna change. In fact, the odds of you being wiped out by a catastrophe or accident once the government gets started running this stuff is greater than if the private sector -- but day-to-day, there's no health care crisis in this country. You can get it. So, it isn't about health care, per se. This is just about gaining control, taking money, and controlling people's lives, and wiping out Republicans -- a nice cherry on top." [Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show, 6/18/09]

STEVE DOOCY: "Currently, 90 percent of all Americans have got some sort of health care coverage, which means they are effectively blowing up the system for 5 percent. Now, the 5 percent, you gotta worry about them -- you gotta worry about everybody who doesn't have it. But is it worth all of this for 5 percent?" [Fox News' Fox & Friends, 7/30/09]

REALITY: Roughly 25 million Americans were underinsured in 2007. According to Cathy Schoen, senior vice president of The Commonwealth Fund, "From 2003 to 2007, the number of adults who were insured all year but were underinsured increased by 60 percent. Based on those who incur high out-of-pocket costs relative to their income not counting premiums despite having coverage all year, an estimated 25 million adults under age 65 were underinsured in 2007." [

The underinsured do not receive adequate care and face financial hardship. Schoen explained that the "experiences" of the underinsured were "similar" to those of the uninsured, noting that "over half of the underinsured and two thirds of the uninsured went without recommended treatment, follow-up care, medications or did not see a doctor when sick. Half of both groups faced financial stress, including medical debt." [Schoen

Insurance companies currently rescind policies when their insured customers need treatment. Insurance companies restrict or deny coverage by rescinding health insurance policies on the grounds that customers had undisclosed pre-existing conditions. On June 16, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee held a http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1671:energy-and-commerce-subcommittee-hearing-on-terminations-of-individual-health-policies-by-insurance-companies-&catid=133:subcommittee-on-oversi">hearing exploring this practice, with the goal of examining "the practice of 'post-claims underwriting,' which occurs when insurance companies cancel individual health insurance policies after providers submit claims for medical services rendered." The committee also released a http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090616/rescission_supplemental.pdf http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090616/rescission_supplemental.pdf">memorandum finding that three major American insurance companies rescinded 19,776 policies for over $300 million in savings over five years and that even that number "significantly undercounts the total number of rescissions" by the companies.

Currently, insurance companies deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen wrote in a May 14 CNN.com

MYTH 2: Health care reform will impose rationing

CLAIM: Progressive health care reform proposals will introduce a system of "rationing" into American medicine.

SEAN HANNITY: "We're gonna have a government rationing body that tells women with breast cancer, 'You're dead.' It's a death sentence." [Fox News' Hannity, 6/19/09]

MICHELLE MALKIN: "Big Nanny Democrats want to ration health care for everyone in America -- except those who break our immigration laws." [Malkin column, 7/22/09]

REALITY: Insurance companies already ration care. Insurance companies acknowledge that they ration care, restricting coverage of procedures and tests like MRIs and CAT scans and denying coverage for pre-existing medical conditions.

Sanjay Gupta: "I can tell you, as a practicing physician ... who deals with this on a daily basis, rationing does occur all the time." As Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, explained: "[P]eople always say, 'Is there going to be rationed care?' And I can tell you, as a practicing physician, as someone who deals with this on a daily basis, rationing does occur all the time. I mean, I was in the clinic this past week. And I -- you know, at the end of clinic, I get all this paperwork that basically says, 'Justify why you're doing such and such procedure. Justify why you're ordering such and such test.' And if the justification is inadequate, the answer comes back, 'Well, that's not going to be covered.' Which basically is saying that the patient is going to have to pay for it on their own, which is, in essence, is what rationing is, in so many ways." [CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, 8/12/09]

Insurance companies ration care by rescinding coverage. As former senior executive at CIGNA health insurance company Wendell Potter explained in June 24 Senate restrict or deny coverage by rescinding health insurance policies on the grounds that people had undisclosed pre-existing conditions. President Obama recently cited one such example, noting that "[a] woman from Texas was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer, was scheduled for a double mastectomy. Three days before surgery ... the insurance company canceled the policy, in part because she forgot to declare a case of acne. ... By the time she had her insurance reinstated, the cancer had more than doubled in size."

MYTH 3: Health care reform provides for euthanasia, "death panel"

CLAIM: House health care reform bill mandates end-of-life counseling that will pressure seniors to end their lives.

BETSY McCAUGHEY: "And one of the most shocking things I found in this bill, and there were many, is on Page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory -- absolutely require -- that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner, how to decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go in to hospice care. And by the way, the bill expressly says that if you get sick somewhere in that five-year period -- if you get a cancer diagnosis, for example -- you have to go through that session again. All to do what's in society's best interest or your family's best interest and cut your life short. These are such sacred issues of life and death. Government should have nothing to do with this." [FredThompsonShow.com, 7/16/09]

HANNITY: "Now, she [McCaughey] actually uncovered in this bill a particularly outrageous provision -- and by the way, there will be more to come in the Obamacare plan. According to McCaughey, she's saying under the House provision and the House version, perfectly healthy senior citizens are going to be forced to undergo, quote, 'end of life counseling,' apparently to encourage them to check out before their time is up." [ABC Radio Networks and Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show, 7/17/09]

REALITY: Advance care planning is not mandatory in the House health care bill. Section 1233 of America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 -- which includes "Page 425" -- amends the Social Security Act to ensure that advance care planning will be covered if a patient requests it from a qualified care provider [America's Affordable Health Choices Act, http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Ffrwebgate.access.gpo.gov%2Fcgi-bin%2Fgetdoc.cgi%3Fdbname%3D111_cong_bills%26docid%3Df%3Ah3200ih.txt.pdf%23page%3D424 http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h3200ih.txt.p" target="_blank">Sec. 1233]. According to an analysis of the bill produced by the three relevant House committees, the section "[p]rovides coverage for consultation between enrollees and practitioners to discuss orders for life-sustaining treatment. Instructs CMS to modify 'Medicare & You' handbook to incorporate information on end-of-life planning resources and to incorporate measures on advance care planning into the physician's quality reporting initiative." [waysandmeans.house.gov, accessed http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Fwaysandmeans.house.gov%2Fmedia%2Fpdf%2F111%2Fsbys3200.pdf%23page%3D18 http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/sbys3200.pdf#page=18" target="_blank">7/29/09]

PolitiFact: McCaughey's claim that seniors would be encouraged to end their lives "is an outright distortion." "McCaughey incorrectly states that the bill would require Medicare patients to have these counseling sessions and she is suggesting that the government is somehow trying to interfere with a very personal decision. And her claim that the sessions would 'tell [seniors] how to end their life sooner' is an outright distortion. Rather, the sessions are an option for elderly patients who want to learn more about living wills, health care proxies and other forms of end-of-life planning. McCaughey isn't just wrong, she's spreading a ridiculous falsehood." [PolitiFact.com, 7/23/09]

CLAIM: Health care reform would establish a "death panel."

GLENN BECK: "So, why is there no more discussion than there is on Sarah Palin and what she said over the weekend that there would be ... [a] death panel for her son Trig? That's quite a statement. I believe it to be true, but that's quite a statement." [Premiere Radio Networks' The Glenn Beck Program, 8/10/09]

BRIAN KILMEADE: "[E]veryone's talking about seniors, and they're talking about the middle class and affordable health care. If the upper class is paying for the next two classes, and are seniors going to be in front of a death panel? And then just as you think, 'OK, that's ridiculous,' then you realize there's provisions in there that seniors in the last lap of their life will be sitting there going to a panel, possibly discussing what the best thing for them is." [Fox & Friends, 8/10/09]

REALITY: "Death panel" claims have been conclusively discredited. In one of more than 40 media reports debunking claims of euthanasia and "death panels," PolitiFact wrote: "We've looked at the inflammatory claims that the health care bill encourages euthanasia. It doesn't. There's certainly no 'death board' that determines the worthiness of individuals to receive care. ... [Palin] said that the Democratic plan will ration care and 'my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care.' Palin's statement sounds more like a science fiction movie (Soylent Green, anyone?) than part of an actual bill before Congress. We rate her statement Pants on Fire!" [PolitiFact.com, 8/10/09]

MYTH 4: Health care reform legislation will cover undocumented immigrants

CLAIM: Under health care reform, you will be denied care, and it will be given to undocumented immigrants instead.

DICK MORRIS: "The point about these death panels is that if you restrict the amount -- the lifesaving surgeries, and you tell someone, no, you can't have that bypass surgery -- but I'm going to die if I don't have it. Well, here's the grief counselor. That will happen. And whether they fund the grief counselor or the end-of-life counselor or not, the rationing will take place when they tell you, no, you can't have the surgery because we have to give it to a 40-year-old illegal immigrant instead." [Hannity, 8/17/09]

REALITY: House bill stipulates that those "not lawfully present" may not receive subsidies to purchase insurance. Under the "Individual Affordability Credits" section of the
CHRIS WALLACE: "Well, aren't those both true?" [Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, 8/2/09]

REALITY: The surtax in House bill applies only to income exceeding $350,000 per year for joint filers. The House health care legislation would http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/catext3200.pdf#page=196 http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Fwaysandmeans.house.gov%2Fmedia%2Fpdf%2F111%2Fcatext3200.pdf%23page%3D196 http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf" target="_blank">establish a 1 percent tax on joint income exceeding $350,000 but not greater than $500,000 per year; a 1.5 percent tax on joint income exceeding $500,000 but not greater than $1 million per year; and a 5.4 percent tax on joint income exceeding $1 million per year. Single filers would be subject to the surtax starting at income exceeding $280,000 per year. In a July 15 Huffington Post http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-george-miller/gop-pushing-hidden-health_b_234259.html http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Frep-george-miller%2Fgop-pushing-hidden-health_b_234259.html http://" target="_blank">piece, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) stated that "[o]nly the highest earning 1.2 percent of American households will pay a surcharge."

MYTH 6: Health care reform would tax all small businesses

CLAIM: The House Democrats' bill will raise income taxes on small businesses.

Wall Street Journal editorial: "The health-care bill is a jobs killer, with its 5.4-percentage point income surtax that would hit small business especially hard." [Wall Street Journal, 8/9/09]

REALITY: Ways and Means committee stated that according to JCT, only 4.1 percent of small-business owners would be affected by surtax. The legislation would stated, "Using the broadest definition of a small business owner (i.e., any individual with as little as $1 of small business income), the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that only 4.1% of all small business owners would be affected by the health care surcharge."

CLAIM: House Democrats' bill would subject all small businesses to an 8 percent payroll tax as a penalty for not providing insurance to employees.

GRETCHEN CARLSON: "[T]he real victim, potentially, of this health care reform ... is the small business owner. ... [T]hey are going to be hit potentially with this health care reform if they don't offer health care to their employees -- an 8 percent penalty on them." [Fox & Friends, 7/16/09]

REALITY: Companies with annual payrolls of less than $250,000 would pay no penalty under the House bill. The House bill would establish a 2 percent payroll penalty for employers with combined payroll between $250,000 to $300,000 that don't offer health insurance to employees; a 4 percent penalty for employers with $300,000 to $350,000 in payroll; a 6 percent penalty for employers with $350,000 to $400,000 in payroll; and an 8 percent penalty for companies with annual payrolls exceeding $400,000. Additionally, the bill establishes tax credits for small-business employers that do provide health care.

MYTH 7: Health care reform would add $1 trillion-plus to deficit

CLAIM: Health care reform "would add around $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years."

AP: "But even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that none of the health plans pending on Capitol Hill would control long-term spending, and that ones with the elements Obama wants would add around $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years." [Associated Press, 8/3/09]

Karl Rove claimed that House Democrats are "planning on a 1 trillion, 420 billion -- 420 million dollar price tag of additional spending over the next 10 years, and what they've done is, today, supposedly -- we haven't seen the details -- but they've trimmed that by 10 percent. So we're only going to beggar ourselves by $900 billion over the next decade and that's assuming they get all of the tax increases and all of the Medicare cuts that are built into this." [Hannity, 7/29/09]

REALITY: CBO found that House bill would increase the federal budget deficit by $239 billion over 10 years -- not $1 trillion. In a July 17 http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbo.gov%2Fftpdocs%2F104xx%2Fdoc10464%2Fhr3200.pdf http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10464/hr3200.pdf http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10464/hr3200.pdf http://mediamatters" target="_blank">cost estimate of the bill as introduced, the CBO explained that its "estimate reflects a projected 10-year cost of the bill's insurance coverage provisions of $1,042 billion, partly offset by net spending changes that CBO estimates would save $219 billion over the same period, and by revenue provisions that JCT estimates would increase federal revenues by about $583 billion over those 10 years." CBO thus concluded the legislation "would result in a net increase in the federal budget deficit of $239 billion over the 2010-2019 period." The CBO has not released full cost estimates of the health care reform proposals being considered by the Senate.

MYTH 8: House bill would ban private individual insurance

CLAIM: House health care reform bill would "outlaw individual private coverage."

An Investor's Business Daily editorial falsely claimed that the House bill includes "a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal." The editorial later stated that the "provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage." [IBD, 7/15/09]

HANNITY: "The one thing that we do know in the health care bill is that it's gonna literally -- the bill says -- Investor's Business Daily had an article today -- and the bill says that if you don't have your insurance the year this legislation is implemented, you can't have a private insurance company. So that will end -- hang on -- that will end private insurance." [Hannity, 7/16/09]

REALITY: The bill does not "outlaw" private individual insurance. The IBD editorial referred establishes the conditions under which existing private plans would be exempted from the requirement that they participate in the http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Fwaysandmeans.house.gov%2Fmedia%2Fpdf%2F111%2Fexchange.pdf http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/exchange.pdf" target="_blank">Health Insurance Exchange. Individual private health insurance plans that do not meet the "grandfather" conditions would still be available for purchase, but only through the exchange and subject to those regulations. As Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius noted, the assertion "that individuals would no longer be able to keep their personal coverage" is "just not accurate. It's not in any version of the House bill; it's not in the Senate bill." [MSNBC's Morning Joe, 7/22/09]

MYTH 9: Obama said he didn't read House bill

CLAIM: Obama "admitted" that he has not read the House health care reform bill.

Limbaugh asserted that Obama "doesn't know what's in the bill! He admits he doesn't know." [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 7/21/09]

"Obama Admits He's 'Not Familiar' With House Bill" [Heritage Foundation, 7/21/09]

HANNITY: "The president even admitted before the press conference -- the day before -- he hadn't read the bill." [Hannity, 7/24/09]

REALITY: Obama actually said he was "not familiar" with opponents' false talking point that bill would ban private individual insurance. During a July 20 conference call, a blogger asked Obama to comment on the claim made in the July 15 IBD editorial -- which is false -- that the bill, in the blogger's words, "will make individual private medical insurance illegal." Obama responded, "You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you're talking about."

MYTH 10: Co-ops are an adequate substitute for a public option

CLAIM: The co-op "compromise" eliminates the need for the public option.

REALITY: Progressive experts argue public plan is necessary for successful reform. Numerous media figures and outlets have characterized Sen. Kent Conrad's (D-ND) cooperative health insurance proposal as a "compromise," "hybrid," or bipartisan "alternative" to a public insurance option without noting the view by progressive experts that a public option is necessary for health care reform to be successful and that any departure from that will result in the failure of reform efforts. These experts dispute suggestions that Conrad's co-op proposal is a plausible midway point between competing methods of addressing health care reform, because, they say, it precludes a fundamental component of effective reform: bargaining power against the health care industry. For example, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich described the co-op proposal as a "bamboozle" and said that "[n]onprofit health-care cooperatives won't have any real bargaining leverage to get lower prices because they'll be too small and too numerous. Pharma and Insurance know they can roll them. That's why the Conrad compromise is getting a good reception from across the aisle." And University of California-Berkeley professor Jacob Hacker argued that Conrad "has offered no reason to think that the cooperatives he envisions could do any of the crucial things that a competing public plan must do." Additionally, ABC's Charles Gibson reported that "several health care experts" have said, in Gibson's words, "[I]f you take out the public option in terms of insurance, there's going to be no restraints on the cost of insurance." [ABC's World News with Charles Gibson, 8/17/09]

MYTH 11: Obama is pushing a system like the U.K. and Canada

CLAIM: Obama is pushing a single-payer system like Canada's or a nationalized health care system like the United Kingdom's.

BRET BAIER: "President Obama spent a good deal of time at that news conference [on June 23] talking about health care reform, and Canada's medical system has been cited as a possible model." [Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier, 6/29/09]

Hannity said, "I think Obama certainly" wants a Canadian-style "single-payer system." [Hannity, 7/20/09]

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: "[Obama]'s a man who's expressed ... a radical domestic agenda, which involves, as he puts it every time, a holy trinity of health care reform, by which he means nationalizing health care. ... And this is all in the service of leveling the differences between rich and poor and leveling the differences between classes." [Special Report, 4/29/09]

JOE SCARBOROUGH: "Of course -- of course it's -- not only is it na�ve, it's reckless to suggest that in the midst of a banking crisis that may have a $2 trillion price tag that you are going to choose this time to nationalize health care with a $635 billion down payment." [Morning Joe, 3/9/09]

REALITY: Obama has rejected Canadian-style single-payer system and U.K.-style nationalized health care. During a March 26 http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fthe_press_office%2FRemarks-by-the-President-at-Open-for-Questions-Town-Hall%2F http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Open-for-Q" target="_blank">online town hall discussion, Obama was asked: "Why can we not have a universal health care system, like many European countries, where people are treated based on needs rather than financial resources?" He replied, in part, "I actually want a universal health care system," adding that rather than adopting a "single-payer system" like Canada's, "what I think we should do is to build on the system that we have and fill some of these gaps." Indeed, Obama has http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009healthcare.ltr.rel.pdf#page=2 http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.boston.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Fpoliticalintelligence%2F2009healthcare.ltr.rel.pdf%23p" target="_blank">embraced the creation of a federally funded "public plan" as one of many insurance options available in the health care market, not the sole option, as in "single payer" systems such as Canada. And as PolitiFact.com noted in a March 5 http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/mar/05/tom-coburn/obama-health-plan-does-not-include-government-run-/" target="_blank">post, "Obama's plan leaves in place the private health care system, but seeks to expand it to the uninsured" and "the plan is very different from some European-style health systems where the government owns health clinics and employs doctors," as in the United Kingdom.

MYTH 12: Obama, Dems pushing "socialized medicine"

CLAIM: Health care reform proposals are socialist and will lead to socialized medicine.

GLENN BECK: "President Obama has his massive $1.5 trillion health care plan. It's hogging up the news cycle. The Republicans and, you know, a lot of people are starting to say, 'Isn't this socialist here? I mean, this is pretty crazy.' The answer to me on that one is really easy: Yep, it's good old socialism. You know, pretty much raping the pocketbooks of the rich to give to the poor. I think that's socialism." [Fox News' Glenn Beck, 7/21/09]

LIMBAUGH: "The Obama budget also funds the relentless drive toward socialized medicine. And all that is just the beginning. The way to look at this budget is not with an economic lens, it is with a philosophical one. Liberals want to make America -- remake it in their image. And this is how you will pay for it." ["Rush's Morning Update," 2/27/09]

Guest-hosting The O'Reilly Factor, Laura Ingraham stated: "Powerful arguments against socialized medicine have been around not for months, but for decades. Ronald Reagan was saying this back in 1961." After playing a clip from Reagan's recording, Ingraham added, "I have to believe that Ronald Reagan is smiling down on these town hall forums where law abiding and hard-working Americans are standing up for freedom." [Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, 8/14/09]

REALITY: Conservatives have trotted out "socialized medicine" smear for 75 years -- and it's never been true. Numerous conservative media figures have revived the "socialized medicine" smear to undermine the efforts of Obama and congressional Democrats, most recently by promoting Ronald Reagan's 1961 attacks on a legislative precursor to Medicare. But as the Urban Institute wrote in an April 2008 Media Matters for America analysis found that dating as far back as the 1930s -- with respect to at least 16 different reform initiatives including President Franklin D. Roosevelt's American Morning, 6/24/09]

ELIZABETH MacDONALD: "I want to go to my next guest. She's terrific. We're going to go fair and balanced now. She's Betsy McCaughey. She says that cutting health-care costs will only lead to worse care not better. Betsy is founder and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infectious Deaths." [Fox Business' Cavuto, 5/11/09]

REALITY: Betsy McCaughey is a serial misinformer who has perpetuated numerous falsehoods about health care reform. The Atlantic's James Fallows has pointed to McCaughey as an example of someone for whom there "seems to be almost no extremity of being proven wrong which disqualifies" her from being given a platform in the media. Most recently, McCaughey falsely claimed that the House health care reform bill would "absolutely require" end-of-life counseling for seniors on Medicare "that will tell them how to end their life sooner" -- a claim that many in the media repeated. McCaughey repeatedly falsely claimed that the Senate HELP committee's bill "basically" "pushes everyone into an HMO-style plan." Additionally, McCaughey concocted the false claim, which was nonetheless widely repeated in the media, that a health IT provision in the economic recovery act enabled government bureaucrats to "monitor treatments" or restrict what "your doctor is doing" with regard to patient care. On multiple occasions, after being challenged on her false claims about health care legislation, McCaughey reportedly insisted that she was right about the ultimate effect of a bill despite misrepresenting what it actually said. McCaughey's influence over the health care debate is not new. As Fallows has written, "In the early 1990s McCaughey single-handedly did a phenomenal amount to distort discussion of health-care policy and derail the Clinton health bill. She did so through an entirely fictitious argument about what the bill would do."

CLAIM: Rick Scott is a credible health care expert.

REALITY: Rick Scott was chairman of a scandal-plagued hospital firm. Scott has repeatedly been quoted by CNN, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal opposing Democrats' health care reform efforts. Frequently, media outlets that have hosted or quoted Scott have failed to note that he resigned as chairman of the nation's largest for-profit health care company in 1997 amid a federal Medicare fraud investigation. According to a July 26, 1997, Los Angeles Times article, Scott resigned from his former position as chairman of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. "amid a massive federal investigation into the Medicare billing, physician recruiting and home-care practices of" Columbia/HCA, "the nation's largest for-profit health care company." According to a December 18, 2002, Justice Department press release describing a tentative settlement with HCA to resolve civil litigation, "When added to the prior civil and criminal settlements reached in 2000, this settlement would bring the government's total recoveries from HCA to approximately $1.7 billion." Media Matters has also documented repeated instances in which media outlets and figures have uncritically repeated or aired Scott's health care misinformation, including that of his advocacy organization, Conservatives for Patients' Rights.

CLAIM: Newt Gingrich is a credible health care expert.

REALITY: Newt Gingrich has a financial stake in opposing Democrats' reform proposals. Gingrich has been quoted by Politico opposing the public plan, but Politico did not explain that his Center for Health Transformation is a for-profit entity that receives annual membership fees from several major health insurance companies, which have a direct interest in whether a public insurance plan is part of health care reform. Moreover, Gingrich himself reportedly profits from his involvement with the group. Indeed, the group's website repeatedly spread misinformation about health care reform.

MYTH 14: Government can't run a health care program

CLAIM: Medicare has failed, and so the government can't be trusted to "run health care."

HANNITY: "But why would you have so much faith, trust, hope, and confidence? Are you happy when you go to the DMV? Are you happy with the Postal Service? Social Security is bankrupt. Medicare is bankrupt. Why do people have faith that the government can run health care?" [Hannity, 7/20/09, from the Nexis database]

REALITY: Medicare costs have risen more slowly than private insurance. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman noted, "since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8% -- but insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9%. The rise in Medicare costs is just part of the overall rise in health care spending. And in fact Medicare spending has lagged private spending: if insurance premiums had risen 'only' as much as Medicare spending, they'd be 1/3 lower than they are."

Medicare is extremely popular. A May 2009 Commonwealth Fund study concluded that "elderly Medicare beneficiaries reported greater overall satisfaction with their health coverage, better access to care, and fewer problems paying medical bills than people covered by employer-sponsored plans." And as Mark Blumenthal National Journal, a survey by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that in 2007, "56 percent of enrollees in traditional fee-for-service Medicare give their 'health plan' a rating of 9 or 10 on a 0-10 scale. Similarly, 60 percent of seniors enrolled in Medicare Managed Care rated their plans a 9 or 10. But according to the CAHPS [Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems ] surveys compiled by HHS, only 40 percent of Americans enrolled in private health insurance gave their plans a 9 or 10 rating." Blumenthal added, "More importantly, the higher scores for Medicare are based on perceptions of better access to care. More than two thirds (70 percent) of traditional Medicare enrollees say they 'always' get access to needed care (appointments with specialists or other necessary tests and treatment), compared with 63 percent in Medicare managed care plans and only 51 percent of those with private insurance."

The government currently provides the "best care anywhere." In a 2005 Washington Monthly article headlined "The Best Care Anywhere," Philip Longman wrote of the Veterans Health Association (VHA): "Outside experts agree that the VHA has become an industry leader in its safety and quality measures. Dr. Donald M. Berwick, president of the Institute for Health Care Improvement and one of the nation's top health-care quality experts, praises the VHA's information technology as 'spectacular.' The venerable Institute of Medicine notes that the VHA's 'integrated health information system, including its framework for using performance measures to improve quality, is considered one of the best in the nation.' "

via mediamatters.org

via DailyKos(mcJoan) you are gonna need this close ny as the days wear on

Posted via web from willythewise's posterous

Elis Regina & Tom Jobim- Waters of March - English subtitles Maria rita's mother

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:43:00 +0000

via youtube.com

Maria Rita's mother Elis Regina the queen of Brazilian music

Posted via web from willythewise's posterous

Maria Rita "Cupido" marvelous.

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:16:00 +0000

via youtube.com

Chatting with my baby sis MJ today and talking about Music. I love this one I think i have about 3 of her albums.

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Amazon.com: Tuff Gong Worldwide World Music Sampler: Various Artists: MP3 Downloads

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:00:00 +0000

via amazon.com

Oh how i love these freebie samplers on Amazon. Discovery is a wonderful thing.

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Brooklyn Brewery Experiments With Bacon Beer -- Grub Street: New York Magazine's Food and Restaurant Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:50:00 +0000

Check out this website I found at newyork.grubstreet.com

Posted via web from willythewise's posterous

What's Capacity got to do with my City? (Frumination)

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:30:00 +0000

via frumin.net

via @kottke. AN amazing look at NYC traffic with visualizations of the parking IF there were no subway. Thought provoking look at our madness.

Posted via web from willythewise's posterous

Exile on main street. Album of the day.

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:07:00 +0000

A quiet moment of elegance from the stones. Sweet tunes with
complicated undertones. There are songs here that are elegant yet
bluesy. Nice.

Posted via email from willythewise's posterous

Hiroshima, 64 years ago - The Big Picture --- Sobering very Sobering

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:47:00 +0000

via boston.com

Amazing

Posted via web from willythewise's posterous

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:00:00 +0000

As an avid procrastinator I often find my self lost in the editing stage. My inner hemingway takes over. I dilute to the knowledge.

Sometimes it feels awful, I so want it to be perfect.

Items like the "Cult of done" give me hope.

Hilarious

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:36:00 +0000

Bad sense of humor

http://tinyurl.com/dx3sg6

Odabe young agian

noreply@blogger.com (Bill) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:30:00 +0000

when we (some of us) were a tad younger

These would have seemed even cooler.

http://bit.ly/HbIRj