Author: dave Page 6 of 75

Health care costs are out of control everywhere. At the city, provincial, federal, world level – no one has figured out how to come to grips with the rising costs of delivering health care to citizens.

In Canada, we pride ourselves on our healthcare system, but if you talk to a small group of people about their experiences in the system, you realize that there are serious issues out there.

Wait times, lousy service, surly staff, problems with facilities – the list of complaints can grow long very fast.

Still, at least we’re not like the US, Canadians like to believe. But despite the rhetoric of the health care debate in our neighbour to the south, they did pass new legislation that could change the game. Whether the legislation – Obamacare – survives, is an open question. But it does give some people hope.

I came across The Hot Spotters in The New Yorker that looks at a small group of doctors and health care professionals who are applying some exciting (and common sense) ideas to caring for the neediest patients and in the process lowering overall costs dramatically. But although the benefits seem obvious, they face huge hurdles in implementing their changes on a larger scale.

Not everyone, it seems, thinks that controlling costs, or making sick people healthy, is good for business.

This is a fascinating issue and a very well-written (and lengthy!) article. But if you’re interested in this topic, you’ll find the ideas outlined here worth considering. I hope that we start to see programs like these starting up in Canada (perhaps they already are?) where one hopes the political climate will be more open to implementing them.

Here’s the link to The New Yorker article.

Here’s delightful little video from NPR.I particularly like the quality of this piece. The audio and video are excellent – one of the hallmarks of NPR, as it moves so much of its programming to the web.I listen to a number of NPR podcasts regularly and their production quality is the gold standard for everyone else.A Mystery: Why Can’t We Walk Straight? from NPR on Vimeo.Try as you might, you can’t walk in a straight line without a visible guide point, like the Sun or a star. You might think you’re walking straight, but as NPR’s Robert Krulwich reports, a map of your route would reveal you are doomed to walk in circles.(Via DaringFireball.)

This post might not mean much to those of you that have nice, new hardware. But for anyone who is making do with an older computer, be it a Mac, Windows or Linux machine, I just came across a great resource called Oldapps.com

I did a very dumb thing and tried to upgrade the version of Skype on my laptop. But the new Skype v5.0 for Mac requires an Intel chip and won’t run on my old PowerBook. I didn’t notice that before I pressed the button. Big mistake.

No problem, I thought. I’ll just download a copy of the old version. But when I went looking for an older version to download and revert back, I couldn’t find it anywhere on the Skype website! I needed to have Skype working and I started to panic, because my backup disk is at my house and I’m not there.

However, a quick Google search turned up Oldapps.com, or more specifically mac.oldapps.com. It’s a great resource that seems to have a whole lot of software which has been updated. There are lots of programs for Mac, Windows and Linux.

So if you’re not running the latest and greatest hardware, you may find something that you need there.

I was able to download the latest version of Skype 2.8 for Mac and its working just fine.

Whew!

Well, this is embarrassing.

I’m attending Wordcamp Victoria 2011, which is a tremendous 1-day event for people who are using Wpordpress.

In the session I’m in right now, the presenter was asking about how often we visited sites that weren’t updated. And isn’t that a pain?

Then I realized that I haven’t updated my blog for awhile.

For that matter, anyone who has visited my website at davetraynor.com is likely mortified by what they find. I know I am.

So here’s the thing. I am working on a new home site for me. It will be up soon with a new picture.

In the meantime, I’m still active on places like twitter.com/davetraynor and Facebook.com/DCTraynor.

But blogging is still important to me, really.

There, now I can tell people to visit The DailyUpload.

I was sitting in my office today, working on some very mundane office things, and feeling just a bit dejected. It seems that despite all my best intentions, I often end up working on stuff that just isn’t that inspiring.

Why is that? Why, despite a list sitting beside me of things that I consider to be important, do I end up working on stuff that seems so, well, ordinary? For example, I’ve just spent a couple of hours getting my calendar to synch up across all my various computers. I mean really…

It’s probably just the usual post-holiday doldrums, when things always seem a bit bleak. Fortunately, they won’t last long.

But while I’m not feeling all that excited about what I’m doing, I am delighted to be able to share with you a charming story about someone who has decided to do something extraordinary.

“An isolated wait in the mountains for the perfect shot” is a delightful story about a Victoria-based photographer who has started a unique project to capture mountain portraits. It’s shared by another Victoria writer, Tom Hawthorn on his blog.

Each summer for the past three years, Mike Andrew McLean trekked up alpine paths with heavy camera equipment in search of spectacular vistas.

Acting as his own sherpa, the Victoria photographer carried with him a 1960s-era Linhof Technika IV field camera. It has a bellows, stands on a tripod, and requires a black cloth to be draped over the shooter.

After setting up near summits, he then waited for a passerby.

Sometimes, hours passed. Winds whipped along ridges. The photographer was exposed, though not always his film.

Mr. McLean, 34, was working on a project he calls “Range: Mountain National Parks Photographs.” He returned to the Rockies he had explored as a youth, seeking to make photographic portraits of strangers against a breathtaking backdrop.

In an age when wafer-thin cellphones take snapshots, a photographer with a large-format camera is an odd sight to stumble across in so isolated a site.

“This camera is a magnet for conversation,” he said. “You set it up and people are drawn to it. It is a spectacle, a surreal image.”

The resulting photos are extraordinary. Some of them are posted on Mike’s website, where you can see a slideshow of the exhibit, as well as read a commentary about the project.

I highly recommend Tom’s blog, which is always full of unique stories. A few more of these and maybe I’ll come up with something to shake myself out of the January blah’s.

Enjoy.

Maybe it’s just me, but I doubt it. No matter how old you get, a well done fart joke can still make you laugh. Or a nicely timed joke in bad taste. Sometimes the cruder the better.

And even funnier are the unintentional crude comments – those wtf? moments – that come up in real life.

You know I’m right, right?

To prove it, I dare you to visit this website and not laugh. If you’ve ever used a smart phone with autocorrect turned on, you’ll be able to relate. And you’ll laugh – guaranteed!

So, since it’s Friday afternoon, go to damnyouautocorrect.com and check out the Top 10 whoppers from 2010.

Here’s the link.

Enjoy

As much as the Wikileaks saga has ended up being one of the biggest stories of the latter part of 2010 – and looks likely to continue well into 2011 – I continue to be surprised at how much of the story seems to be avoiding much media scrutiny.

On the one hand, you have Wikileaks, the website which is dedicated to giving whistleblowers of all stripes a place to turn if they want to “leak” some sensitive documents or point the finger at something they think is wrong. No one seems to be entirely sure how that process works, nor did any of the major media organizations seem to pay much attention until this most recent “leak” of US government diplomatic cables.

On the other hand, there is a well-designed and straightforward campaign to discredit the Wikileaks organization and especially its founder, Julian Assange. You’re likely familiar with that part of the story.

But there is a tremendous backstory developing, which is being told by some – even if its not gaining enough traction with the “traditional” media venues.

One of those doing an impressive job of exploring and detailing the entire Wikileaks saga is Glenn Greenwald, a US lawyer, columnist, blogger, and author, He writes a blog at Salon.com and he’s also appeared on network TV news shows.

I’ve linked to a few articles, by Greenwald and others, about the Wikileaks story as it’s developed. Recently, Greenwald posted “The worsening journalistic disgrace at Wired,” about U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning,  who is alleged to have leaked the Apache helicopter video and the diplomatic cables to Wikileaks.  His column explores some fascinating – and seemingly ignored – issues with  the connections between Wired Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen and Adrian Lamo –  the chief source of the charges against Manning.

For more than six months, Wired’s Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen has possessed — but refuses to publish — the key evidence in one of the year’s most significant political stories:  the arrest of U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning for allegedly acting as WikiLeaks’ source. In late May, Adrian Lamo — at the same time he was working with the FBI as a government informant against Manning — gave Poulsen what he purported to be the full chat logs between Manning and Lamo in which the Army Private allegedly confessed to having been the source for the various cables, documents and video that WikiLeaks released throughout this year. In interviews with me in June, both Poulsen and Lamo confirmed that Lamo placed no substantive restrictions on Poulsen with regard to the chat logs:  Wired was and remains free to publish the logs in their entirety.

Despite that, on June 10, Wired published what it said was only “about 25 percent” of those logs, excerpts that it hand-picked. For the last six months, Poulsen has not only steadfastly refused to release any further excerpts, but worse, has refused to answer questions about what those logs do and do not contain. This is easily one of the worst journalistic disgraces of the year:  it is just inconceivable that someone who claims to be a “journalist” — or who wants to be regarded as one — would actively conceal from the public, for months on end, the key evidence in a political story that has generated headlines around the world.

There is a lot of stuff to explore in this story. I recommend you take some time to follow the links and look into some of the issues for yourself.

And there’s plenty of fodder on the other side of the issue as well, by people who think that Julian Assange is the problem. Salon, to its credit, is giving all sides of the issue the space to make their cases.

You also might want to watch this video of Glenn Greenwald on CNN on Monday, to get a taste of the kind of biased, shoddy journalism that seems to be the norm on TV these days. Watch the video, then read Greenwald’s thoughts about it in his latest post, “The merger of journalists and government officials.” (UPDATE – I was going to link to the video on YouTube but I can’t find it anymore. Strange. However, there is a link to it at the end of Greenwald’s blog post.)

As this debate (or non-debate) continues, what is galling for me is that we seem to be losing our ability to debate an issue thoroughly. We all used to laugh at those kids in the debating club in high school, but true debate is a valuable and worthwhile skill. In fact, our democratic system is built on it. But we are rapidly evolving into a polarized society – where there are only two sides on an issue. Period.

That’s not a good thing.

Here’s a terrific piece of reporting from Mary Rogan in GQ magazine:

Brian Burke isn’t just a legend of the NHL. He’s a fists-up, knock-your-teeth-out gladiator. But when his hockey-loving son came out of the closet and died soon after, he was thrust into a strange new role: advocate for gays in a macho sports culture. He’s no cheerleader—he looks like he hates every minute of it—but locker-room homophobia may have finally met its match

Link to the full story.

Remember the adage – Content is King! (or Queen)?

It’s a phrase I’ve tried to keep front and centre throughout my career as a communicator. While the vehicle of choice to deliver the content keeps evolving – it’s the message that matters.

Unfortunately, that’s something that many folks are losing site of again these days, as new technology brings us lots of new toys and exciting new ways to create, share and discover our content.

So it was a pleasure to discover this essay about why those who are sceptical about Google’s latest toy – the Chrome OS – are missing the point.

While I still love books and my old laptops, I also have an iPad and I can easily imagine myself embracing Google’s cloud vision in the future.

The content that we all seek to create and consumer should not be limited or defined by the devices we use.

Settle in for a wonderful read.

Unevenly Distributed: Chrome, the iPad and the Crossroads of Civilization

I’ve written a number of times during the past year or two about the adventures of Roz Savage, Ocean Rower.

She’s been working on her latest book about her Pacific Ocean adventures and hasn’t been blogging a lot lately, but she just posted an update about a great honour she’s received.

Roz has been named an “Adventurer of the Year” by National Geographic.

Here’s a link to her blog post about it. And here’s another to the National Geographic announcement. It’s a very impressive group of people!

In her post, Roz asks everyone who has followed her adventures this year to vote for her as the People’s Choice winner for this current crop of adventurers. Voting runs through to Jan 15 and you can vote every day. If you want to vote, here’s the link.

Congratulations Roz! We’re all looking forward to the next adventure.