What Happened to that Sweet Trend

I am Mixing Data Sources, I missed the spending totals as a monthly basis and am using the reported total for October from the recovery website in addition to the data sourced in my previous post.

Because I was missing data I assumed even spending between July and October. You can check out data for your self at www.recovery.gov or if you don't like the government recovery.org

If you find spending totals by month let me know.

We Have Death Panels

Who do you think works at insurance companies. The entire staff is part of a large bureaucracy. The goal of a health care company is to make money. Their revenue comes from their clients you and me. Their costs are paying all their employees including millions to CEOs, paying their stockholders, and paying out claims when people get sick. To pay stockholders and CEO's more they have to cut the only thing left: claim payments. The entire bureaucracy of an insurance company is driven to find ways not to pay claims.

The future of healthcare in America, according to Sarah Palin, might look something like this: A sick 17-year-old girl needs a liver transplant. Doctors find an available organ, and they're ready to operate, but the bureaucracy -- or as Palin would put it, the "death panel" -- steps in and says it won't pay for the surgery. Despite protests from the girl's family and her doctors, the heartless hacks hold their ground for a critical 10 days. Eventually, under massive public pressure, they relent -- but the patient dies before the operation can proceed.

It certainly sounds scary enough to make you want to go show up at a town hall meeting and yell about how misguided President Obama's healthcare reform plans are. Except that's not the future of healthcare -- it's the present. Long before anyone started talking about government "death panels" or warning that Obama would have the government ration care, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, a leukemia patient from Glendale, Calif., died in December 2007, after her parents battled their insurance company, Cigna, over the surgery. Cigna initially refused to pay for it because the company's analysis showed Sarkisyan was already too sick from her leukemia; the liver transplant wouldn't have saved her life.

That kind of utilitarian rationing, of course, is exactly what Palin and other opponents of the healthcare reform proposals pending before Congress say they want to protect the country from. "Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote, in the same message posted on Facebook where she raised the "death panel" specter. "Health care by definition involves life and death decisions.

From

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/08/11/denial_of_care/

For those of you who cant read the caption in the video here is a transcript of that Nixon Tape:

This is a transcript of the 1971 conversation between President Richard Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman that led to the HMO act of 1973:

John D. Ehrlichman: “On the … on the health business …”

President Nixon: “Yeah.”

Ehrlichman: “… we have now narrowed down the vice president’s problems on this thing to one issue and that is whether we should include these health maintenance organizations like Edgar Kaiser’s Permanente thing. The vice president just cannot see it. We tried 15 ways from Friday to explain it to him and then help him to understand it. He finally says, ‘Well, I don’t think they’ll work, but if the President thinks it’s a good idea, I’ll support him a hundred percent.’”

President Nixon: “Well, what’s … what’s the judgment?”

Ehrlichman: “Well, everybody else’s judgment very strongly is that we go with it.”

President Nixon: “All right.”

Ehrlichman: “And, uh, uh, he’s the one holdout that we have in the whole office.”

President Nixon: “Say that I … I … I’d tell him I have doubts about it, but I think that it’s, uh, now let me ask you, now you give me your judgment. You know I’m not to keen on any of these damn medical programs.”

Ehrlichman: “This, uh, let me, let me tell you how I am …”

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: “This … this is a …”

President Nixon: “I don’t [unclear] …”

Ehrlichman: “… private enterprise one.”

President Nixon: “Well, that appeals to me.”

Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. And the reason that he can … the reason he can do it … I had Edgar Kaiser come in … talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because …”

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: “… the less care they give them, the more money they make.”

President Nixon: “Fine.” [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: [Unclear] “… and the incentives run the right way.”

President Nixon: “Not bad.”

[Source: University of Virginia Check - February 17, 1971, 5:26 pm - 5:53 pm, Oval Office Conversation 450-23. Look for: tape rmn_e450c.]

Kenyan Birth Certificates

So now you through the power of the internet can get the government of Kenya to certify your Birth Anywhere.

I did one for Phillip J. Fry of Futurama

Tim Noah Write SO I dont Have to

Please Please Please Read everything Tim Noah at Slate writes about the Healthcare System and its ongoing congressional slog.

A quote from his most recent article.

That, at any rate, is what Allan Brett sets forth in an essay posted July 29 on the New England Journal of Medicine's Web site. Brett makes the case that single-payer insurance (whose proponents, we now learn, include the president's former doctor) is not only superior to America's market-based system; it's also superior at serving the paramount value of that system, which Brett identifies as freedom of choice. He writes:

Incremental reforms preserving the private insurance industry and employer-based insurance would probably perpetuate the restricted choice of health care providers that many Americans already encounter: private plans typically limit access to certain physicians or hospitals, and physicians often refuse to accept certain plans. In contrast, single-payer proposals eliminate those restrictions.

This is quite true. Under a single-payer system, the government doesn't care which doctor or hospital you use because none is going to be more expensive than the others. Granted, the government may deny choice in tests and treatments, but Brett judges that reality as no more restrictive than with market-based medicine; the only difference is whether the gatekeeper is public or private

Go read it and his other articles:

http://www.slate.com/id/2223911/

Last.FM

One of my favorite things about amarok was that you could look up lyrics and wikipedia info about a song playing in the Last.FM client that was built into the player. Last.FM provides players that are usally clunky memroy hogs and dont fit in with your overall desktop be it windows mac or Linux.

I found scrobblepod right when I got my mac to scrobble out of itunes on a smaller system footprint than the last.fm client.

Just recently I found amua a last.fm player that is lightwieght and functions by passing the last.fm stream you select to itunes to play.

In Amarok the trackname, artist and album names were passed to the scripts correctly when listening to aac streams like those from last.fm and WOXY.com Itunes displays the artist and album name but cant seem to pass those values to Dashboard scripts or automator actions.

Website

http://amua.sourceforge.net/

Ipodding My Env2

So I have a Macbook and a LG ENV2 (VX9100) And have been trying to get them to work together.

XNJB stepped up to the plate where itunemywalkman and USB support failed. I also tried running Windows in a virtual machine. It was during this effort I noticed that Windows Media Player 11 was loading the phone as an MTP device. I found XNJB by looking at the MTP entry on wikipedia.com

XNJB is a sweet program designed for use with Nomad Jukeboxes and Creative Players and other MTP devices. It implements libmtp that alows Linux and other POSIX systems to read and load MTP devices.

MTP is a standard protocol developed by microsoft for the transferring of media to portable devices. Luckily for me the folks at LG and Verizon included it in the Music Software on the phone for use with Windows Media player and the VCAST Rhapsody Client.

There is LG ENV2 phone info here in this flash presentation.

The hardware included on the LG ENV2 can decode MP3 WMA and AAC files. The software developed by Verizon on the phone cannot read AAC tags. So you can only put MP3s on there.

You can use iTunes to re-encode files be careful to not lose your AAC versions. I think the easiest way to do this is to use itunemywalkman to create a separate sync folder for your phone.

BEFORE YOU START YOU MAY WANT TO READ INFORMATION on the XNJB and ITUNEMYWALKMAN SITES TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE DIRECTIONS

Create MP3 Copies (Skip This IF your Itunes Library Is Mostly MP3s)

1. Start Up itunemywalkman ITMW
2. Edit Preferences
3. On General Change the Audio Folder Path to some local Folder (Not the Itunes music Folder!)
4. Set Up the Playlist you Want to Sync in Itunes and then Select it in ITMW Preferences
5. Folders Tab: Set Directory Levels to 0
6. Encoding Tab: Set .mp3 Bitrate Limit 192 Set .m4a Limit to 1 Re-encode with mp3 encoder
7. In Itunes set the MP3 encode rate to 128. Then re-select your favorite encoder. Even though it is not active the MP3 encoder setting is saved for when ITMW calls it from with in the script.
8. Save the the Preferences of ITMW and click Sync

Configure XNJB

1. Open the XNJB menu: Preferences
2. Check iTunes Intergration if your library is mostly MP3s
3. If Not Set you Music Directory to the folder where your MP3 copies are from ITMW.
4. Make Sure the Filename Parameters Dont include a / . You do not want subfolders!
5. Under Albums make sure Create Albums is Unchecked. The Phone will create the album database from the tag information.

To Connect your Phone to your Mac:

1. Start XNJB
2. Plug in the Phone using the micro USB cable
3. On the Phone Navigate to MENU: MEDIA CENTER: MUSIC&TONES: SYNC MUSIC
4. The Phone will Read the Database ->Intializing... -> Connecting... When it gets to connecting start clicking Connect on the XNJB screen. If it doesnt catch hit OK to retry the connection on the phone and keep clicking Connect on the XNJB window.
5. Once the phone connects the current songs on the phone will be listed in the top window and the songs on your computer will be listed in the bottom
6. Use the Arrow and X buttons to move songs to the phone
7. Click Disconnect when done

Now you can start enjoying your Music Phone.

OTHER NOTES

Playlists in XNJB probably wont work because LG and Verizon do not use m3u or pls formats for playlists on the phone.

This will probably work with other Verizon Music Phones. To check plug the phone in a PC with WMP 11 installed. An MTP device it will show up in My Computer with a cute Icon like a phone or musicplayer.

Keysnian Graphs

Clearly More spending has to be done on graphs.

Heres a little graph I was guided to by a salon article

But I dont think it does the scale of spending yet to occur justice so I made this graph:

Source:

Power of Stimulus Slow to Take Hold
Rising Joblessness Blunts President’s Plan for Recovery
Lori Montgomery
Washington Post July 8, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/07/AR2009070703182.html

Converse Shoes: Dye How To.

This is a guide to dye you chuck taylor allstars.  Most other guides I looked at were not very helpful.  If you follow the guide and avoid my mistakes you should be happy with your new colored shoes.

MATERIALS:  

Chuck Taylor Shoes:  

I bought a pair at a DSW that were cheap and fit my feet but had a pattern on them I was not fond of.  The pattern looked like the picture above with the logo repeated all over in shades of grey.  I actually bought low tops and didnt think to photgraph them before i started.

RIT DYE: 

In order to alter the shoes I chose black hoping to get a uniform color.  The box warns you this is impossible and they are right.

SALT: 

Required by the Dye

DETERGENT:  

Required with the Dye I chose Arm & Hammer Perfume and Color Free

Hardware:

Gloves: so you dont dye your skin

Large Pot: for dye preperation stainless steel is your best choice

Large tub or bucket: for dyeing process

Electrical tape and petroleum jelly: for shoe prep

Dying and Drying Area: Area with paper to catch drips and spills.

STEP ONE: Preperation

1. Assemble Your Materials
2. Prepare Work area by laying down paper
3. Read dye instructions, you are going to stove top dye

STEP TWO: Shoe Masking

1. Lightly grease the the soles of the shoes with the petroleum jelly *
2.  Tape over the soles using the electrical tape. Toe Area First then around the perimeter of the shoe. The photo at the right was taken late but the tape is the shiny bit on the toe.
3. Jelly and Mask any other parts you want to preserve.  The lace rings will change to purple so you may ant to grease them.*
4. Soak the shoes in cold water until saturated

* I did not do these steps and got a few stray marks on the soles and purple lace grommets

Step Three: Dye Prep

1. Follow the Dye instructions to heat and prep the dye.
2. You may only need half the package.
3. Transfer the hot dye to your dying tub

STEP Four: Dye the Shoes

1. Place both shoes in the tub.
2. If you can only fit one dye each for ten minute stints rotating several times until final color is reached
3. Remeber the shoes will looker darker wet than when dry.
4. Move shoes to drying area. Place them upside down to prevent drips onto the sole rubber.
   
   

STEP Five: Drying and touch up

1. Let the shoes dry completely
2. In several places arounfd the sole the glue the manufacture uses may have prevent the dye from reaching the material as in the photo. I touched them up with a sharpie pen.

Finished Product

The shoes after two and half months after the dyeing process. Notice the pattern still shows through.

April Bring May what what June?

So its been a while heres what happened.

April: School - Study For Qualifier

May: Really Study for Qualifier, Pass Qualifier, Go to Europe

June: Come back From Europe, Go to Friends Wedding

All in there is me trying to get work done on my dissertation topic

Europe was alot of fun.  Most of the pictures are on my girlfriends camera. 

Its almost time...

Hey its a new president, the economy is poor and impotent rage is gripping the nation. If you were thinking man I wish people were more hyperbolic and irrational fear not. The TARP money, the stimulus bill, the budget, the 4% increase in defense spending are all mere parlor games before the big dance, Health Care Reform.

Here is a primer from Tim Noah at slate.com

I cant wait to mix it up with folks around town.