apple juice

if you’re interested in reading more on the subject, including comparisons to other health systems around the world, here’s a good article…

In his new book The Healing of America, the journalist T.R. Reid employs a clever device for surveying the world’s health systems: He takes an old shoulder injury to doctors in various countries.

Health, American-style

Remember back to July of 2001, if you can. Do remember the massive $1.5 trillion dollar tax cut that President Bush signed into law?

Lines up pretty nicely with the $1 trillion dollar health care plan, doesn’t it…

It’s all about choices. More over at TPM — Let the Record Show

The problem is… who owns it and what is it worth?

“This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.”

(Via Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others – Pogue’s Posts Blog – NYTimes.com)

The traditional media industry will be totally remade in the next ten years. Every major creative industry (music, movies and tv, words) is going to have to come to grips with what it is that they are really selling (or what it is that people are really interested in buying.)

In fact, it’s not only the traditional media companies that are being put through the blender, but also all of the pipe providers: comcast, Mark Cuban, Qwest, Verizon, AT&T, etc are going to have to come to grips with what they are really selling: Bits.

What is Amazon selling? Bits.

What are newspapers, magazines, albums, movies, sitcoms and books? Bits.

Does the value of the bits change depending on what they can be decoded in to?

What is the revenue to be made from making 1 more digital copy of something?

What is the incentive for people to create something that can be copied, if they aren’t compensated for every copy?

This is a big swirling topic, but I find it incredibly interesting. I’m confronted with this on a daily basis when it comes to student work, teacher use of copyrighted material, and my own media-consuming habits.

The two (copyrighted) books I purchased:

Free
by Chris Anderson (“In the digital marketplace, the most effective price is no price at all, argues Anderson”) and Remix
by Lawerence Lessig (“He frames the problem as a war between an old read-only culture, in which media megaliths sell copyrighted music and movies to passive consumers, and a dawning digital read-write culture, in which audiovisual products are freely downloaded and manipulated in an explosion of democratized creativity.”)

I love how he has identified the fundamental hypocrisy of “judicial activism”. (Emphasis mine)

I agree with Senator Feingold and Senator Whitehouse that we hear a lot about judicial activism when politicians talk about what kind of judge they want in the Supreme Court. But it seems that their definition of an activist judge is one who votes differently than they would like. Because during the Rehnquist Court, Justice Clarence Thomas voted to overturn federal laws more than Justices Stevens and Breyer combined.“

(Via TPM.)

Classilla: Building a Secure Web Browser for Mac OS 9
and the Classic Macintosh OS

I know I’m a total nerd, but I love this stuff…

Malcolm Gladwell reviews Free by Chris Anderson: Books: The New Yorker: “And there’s plenty of other information out there that has chosen to run in the opposite direction from Free. The Times gives away its content on its Web site. But the Wall Street Journal has found that more than a million subscribers are quite happy to pay for the privilege of reading online. Broadcast television—the original practitioner of Free—is struggling. But premium cable, with its stiff monthly charges for specialty content, is doing just fine. Apple may soon make more money selling iPhone downloads (ideas) than it does from the iPhone itself (stuff).”

This is a very good critique about the concept of “free” information. It’s definitely challenged a few of my thoughts on the future of “free” ideas. I am someone who still buys music (on vinyl, no less) and I’m willing to subscribe to magazines that I can get for free on the internet.

It’s very clear that this is still playing out, and as Gladwell puts it, there are no iron laws as to how all of this will play out as newspapers, television and publishing continue to get ripped apart by the internet.