Jonas Carlson shares a beautiful Quicktime VR scene of the convent church of Varnhem in Sweden.
Monthly Archives: August 2004
Interview with Grateful Dead Lyricist John Perry Barlow
Reason posts a useful interview with John Perry Barlow (currently vice chair of the EFF):
Every existing power relation is up for renewal with cyberspace, and it was only natural there would be an awful lot of fracas where cyberspace met the physical world. EFF has been the primary mediator on that border. We have been very successful at protecting against excessive government encroachment into the virtual world.
Copyright and intellectual property are the most important issues now. If you don?t have something that assures fair use, then you don?t have a free society. If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite and an ignorant mass.
Healing Garden(s)
Susan Fornoff writes about Topher Delaney’s healing gardens:
Lavender flanks an antique French urn that serves as a fountain in one corner; lemons climb on the two antique French gates that delineate the garden’s three “rooms,” each with a terra-cotta colored bench designed by Philippe Starck.
There are tomatoes growing; bay, rosemary, a rose bush, nasturtiums, too. Aloe and opuntia elaborate on the medicinal theme, and jasmine surrounds the base of the visual centerpiece, an Italian fountain surrounded by a shelf of Haifa limestone.
“This is very beautiful stone, from Jerusalem,” Delaney says. “You see it in very lovely homes; you never see it in a hospital.” She looks around. “This is as good as it gets in the most fancy house you could ever find. This is as good as it gets.”
Weatherblogs from Florida
Interested in the Floriday Hurricane? Visit these blogs:
via instapundit
Paradise off Highway 10
The Hertz airport shuttle brought a must unexpected surprise today. The inquisitive driver asked if I was flying to Denver. No, I said, San Francisco was my destination. “It will be 40 degrees cooler there than it is here in Phoenix.” I replied that it was 107 last night, when I landed.
“My place is wonderful, and cool. I have cottonwoods on my property which provide a very pleasant shade. In fact, during June, I put up a hammock under the cottonwoods, setup a fan and slept outside at night with my three golden retrievers. Beautiful.”
Where might this paradise be?
“50 miles west of Phoenix, 2 miles north of I-10, the other side of the White Mountains. I bought the 10 acres 50 years ago for $250.00 (!). I bought it and planted those cottonwoods.” My annual property tax bill is $60.00. Those golden retrievers keep an eye on the property during the day.
How’s the commute?
“I drive 65 (the I-10 speed limit is 75). I arrive before all those people flying past me.”
I asked if civilization has encroached on his paradise?
“There’s no one within 5 miles.”
With that, I continued my journey to San Francisco.
San Francisco Ferry Building Photos
San Francisco’s Ferry Building recently re-opened after an extensive (and well done) renovation. I took a walk through the building and snapped these photos recently.
I noticed a growing selection of soy milk products in one of the establishments.
Using the Tax Code to Fix Health Care
Interesting ideas, certainly worth discussion:
We propose a simple change that will fundamentally alter the way people buy health care. All individually purchased insurance and out-of-pocket expenses would become tax deductible for persons who have at least catastrophic insurance coverage. The tax deduction could be taken by persons who claim the standard deduction on their tax returns and those who itemize deductions. All purchases of health care would receive the same income tax treatment.
With a level playing field, workers will no longer have a tax incentive to take their compensation in the form of expensive health insurance with low copayments and will shift to health plans with higher deductibles and higher coinsurance rates. Market forces will ensure that the insurance premium savings will be passed on to workers in the form of higher money wages. Just as workers have borne the burden of rising health care costs, so will they reap the benefits when costs are brought under control.
Cable TV – Charter loses subscribers
Local Cable TV monopoly, Charter Communications reported higher-than-expected subscriber losses for the second quarter, according to Peter Grant.
I recently thought about adding direct tv or charter cable to our home – largely for the Olympics (we don’t watch a whole lot of TV). I found the direct tv customer service folks to be excellent, while my charter interactions were not great (lots of rather hard upselling). I really only wanted local channels, espn and msnbc. They don’t evidently unbundle. Bummer that unlike other parts of the world, we won’t be watching live Olympic internet streams.
Medical Risk & Windows Software
Ellen Messmer on the substantial health care costs/risks of keeping Microsoft Windows systems patched
According to Network World: ‘Amid growing worries that Windows-based medical systems will endanger patients if Microsoft-issued security patches are not applied, hospitals are rebelling against restrictions from device manufacturers that have delayed or prevented such updates. Device makers such as GE Medical Systems, Philips Medical Systems and Agfa say it typically takes months to test Microsoft patches because they could break the medical systems to which they’re applied. In some instances, vendors won’t authorize patch updates at all.’ This is the typical patch vs. crash problem. Unfortunately, the stakes here could be human lives.
Smell the roses without maintenance?
Amy Chozick reviews the controversial use of shrub roses (9 million sold last year), cross bred to require little maintenance
he new varieties are controversial, with some long-stem-rose purists saying that even planting them is cheating. Still, shrub roses are now the fastest-growing segment of the rose market, with the nine million plants sold last year accounting for 30% of all rose sales — double the market share for shrub roses in 2002, according to the American Rose Society.
“These kinds of numbers are unheard of for roses,” says Keith Zary, director of research at wholesale rose distributor Conrad-Pyle, which sold 1.8 million of its “Knock Out” red-rose shrubs in 2003, up from 135,000 in 2000, the year it introduced the variety. Historically, a popular rose wouldn’t even hit the half-million mark, he says. At Jackson & Perkins, a nursery based in Medford, Ore., shrub-rose sales are up 6% this year, and the nursery’s multicolored “Garden Ease Rose Blankets” — $39.95 carpets of color that bloom into the fall — are now one of the company’s biggest sellers.