Yeah! Congress passes Health Care reform

Health Care Bill passes House.

New 18 button mouse simplifies computer use

From the geniuses at OpenOfficeMouse.com:



How does Apple have a chance with their Magic Mouse?

Hat tip about the 18 button thing goes to Daring Fireball.

Nosy about what Google knows about you?

Google Dashboard:

At Google, we are keenly aware of the trust you place in us and our responsibility to protect your privacy. As part of this responsibility, we let you know what information we collect when you use our products and services, why we collect it and how we use it to improve your experience.

10:10 Campaign's simplicity is brilliant

It doesn't get much simpler than this! From 10:10:

Aren’t individual efforts just a pointless drop in the ocean?
Not if they’re part of a mass movement. 10:10 makes the efforts of individuals meaningful by ensuring that lots of people will be pledging to make the same cuts, and shows politicians that we as a people are taking the threat of climate change seriously.

What’s the point of just getting people in the UK to sign up when the country accounts for only 2% of world emissions?
10:10 is being launched as a UK campaign but scientists say it is the right target for the whole developed world. The hope is that the campaign will spread to other countries, and we’ll be making it as easy as possible for that to happen.

Breathing technique to help folks with asthma

The NYTimes.com most emailed story for the last couple days is about a Russian doctor's breathing technique to help folks with asthma reduce medications and breathe easier:

Then, last spring, someone told him about the Buteyko method, a shallow-breathing technique developed in 1952 by a Russian doctor, Konstantin Buteyko. Mr. Wiebe watched a video demonstration on YouTube and mimicked the instructions shown.

“I could actually feel my airways relax and open,” he recalled. “This was impressive. Two of the participants on the video were basically incapacitated by their asthma and on disability leave from their jobs. They each admitted that keeping up with the exercises was difficult but said they had been able to cut back on their medications by about 75 percent and their quality of life was gradually returning.”

About the Buteyko Method:

In 1952, Konstantin Buteyko found out that people often consume five to ten times more air than their bodies require. An extensive amount of air creates an insufficiency of carbon dioxide in the lungs and bloodstream, which badly impacts metabolism and the immune system gradually rendering them dysfunctional. Carbon dioxide deficit also affects respiratory gas exchange and diminishes the amount of oxygen carried by the blood to the brain, heart and kidneys. This situation can cause asthma, allergies, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, cardiological problems, growth of tumors, etc. - after a life-long research, Dr. Buteyko came to the conclusion that about 150 out of all known diseases are the result of hyperventilation. Ironically, those 150 diseases are the most widespread.

A BCC story about it.



TheBreathingMan.com is a resource for The Buteyko Method.

Growing up with childhood asthma, I remember teaching myself to relax and use shallow breathing to "catch my breath". I guess I was using this technique and yes, it worked for me then.

Make Congress READ THE BILL by signing the petition

Read The Bill from Sunlight Foundation on Vimeo.

ReadTheBill.org sez:

ReadTheBill.org is an effort to gather individuals and groups, luminaries and everyday folks, conservatives, liberals and independents behind the simple concept that all non-emergency legislation should be available online for 72 hours before debate begins.

Please hold your Government accountable - sign the petition!

A take on using a CDS Clearing House

From nakedcapitalism.com:

And I must confess, they sound deceptively appealing (I was a proponent early on) until you dig further into how they would work for CDS. They need to be regulated intrusively, with the intent of shrinking the market considerably over time, and like insurance, with tough capital requirements and frequent examinations of the capital adequacy and claims-paying ability of the sponsor.

Essentially, that CDS should be viewed as insurance and not as an "investment vehicle". Makes sense as CDS allegedly is used to hedge, ie. insure, and us tax payers own AIG since they did not have any where near the collateral to pay off the obligations they received premiums for, ie. insurance companies must have plenty of capital behind their products. Therefore, a Clearing House is not to solution to reign in the CDS market. And to think, this market has been and still is unregulated.

Read all or parts of H.R.2454 - American Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009

Thanks to Open Congress, you can read all or parts of any Bill working their way through Congress.

About Open Congress:

OpenCongress brings together official government data with news and blog coverage, social networking, public participation tools, and more to give you the real story behind what's happening in Congress.

OpenCongress is a free, open-source, not-for-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement. OpenCongress is a joint project of two 501c(3) non-profit organizations, the Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation.

Put broadly, the main problem we seek to address with OpenCongress is that the Congressional legislative process is largely closed-off from timely and meaningful public input. For most people, finding out what's really happening in our democratically-elected Congress is a difficult and discouraging task. The rules by which bills become laws are notoriously arcane. What's more, Congress offers few channels for people to make their voices heard on consequential publicy policy matters before, during, and after the legislative process. This disconnect results in deep-seated public disapproval of Congress -- and worse, malignant apathy about politics as a whole.

As with any Bill, there are rumors circulating about what one can and can not do once a Bill is passed.

One example is that H.R. 2454 will:

In effect, this bill prevents you from selling your home without the permission of the EPA administrator.

You can easily read sections or the entire Bill at Open Congress to read what it really says.

SEC. 202 Building Retrofit Program.

SEC. 204. BUILDING ENERGY PERFORMANCE LABELING PROGRAM.

(f) Creation of Building Energy Performance Labeling Program-
(1) MODEL LABEL- Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator shall propose a model building energy label that provides a format
(A) to display achieved performance and designed performance data;
(B) that may be tailored for residential and commercial buildings, and for single-occupancy and multitenanted buildings; and
(C) to display other appropriate elements identified during the development of measurement protocols under subsections (d) and (e).

(2) INCLUSIONS- Nothing in this section shall require the inclusion on such a label of designed performance data where impracticable or not cost effective, or to preclude the display of both achieved performance and designed performance data for a particular building where both such measures are available, practicable, and cost effective.

Goldman Sachs made money on housing crash

Of course they did. That is how capitalism works. There are winners & losers. Goldman has weathered the Great Recession far, far better than almost anyone.

Yet, from McClatchy's article:

"The Securities and Exchange Commission should be very interested in any financial company that secretly decides a financial product is a loser and then goes out and actively markets that product or very similar products to unsuspecting customers without disclosing its true opinion," said Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor who's proposed a massive overhaul of the nation's banks. "This is fraud and should be prosecuted."

Let's assume they're innocent just out to make a buck.

Here's the fun part. On their "public books" is it that far fetched they sell crap while simultaneously "hedging" in their opaque off balance sheet unregulated dark pools?

What motivation would they have not to drive the economy off a cliff if they saw everybody speeding to it?

Madison, Adams & Jefferson documents offered online for first time

University of Virginia Press' Rotunda:

Rotunda today releases Founders Early Access, our first open-access publication. Founders Early Access makes available for the first time thousands of unpublished documents from our nation’s founders in a free online resource. Collected over many years by the Founders documentary editions, these letters and other papers penned by important figures such as James Madison, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson offer Americans of all ages and interests a wider view of the early Republic.

The Founders Early Access portal.
Hat tip to Virginia Coalition for Open Government.

Ikea Heights, a melodrama

Not up on the latest happenings in Burbank's Ikea, catch up at Ikea Heights.

Ikea Heights is a melodrama shot entirely in the Burbank California Ikea Store without the store knowing.

Bill heading to Congress that could change the web & your privacy

According to studies, most of you do not block 3rd parties from viewing your online surfing habits. Do you care about your privacy? Do you know everything you do online can be tracked? Do you care who has that info?

Great article at Poynter Online about an upcoming Bill including links to get you thinking about your privacy while surfing:

The crux of Boucher's bill for the advertising industry is a plan to prevent Web sites from sharing information with "unrelated third parties.

And:

"Congress' position is that consumers are not appropriately aware of what is being done on their machines, and the use of cookies delivered by a third party is something consumers have not been appropriately informed of," Simulmedia CEO Dave Morgan, who heads the Interactive Advertising Bureau's privacy committee, said in June after meeting with Congressional staffers.

He was on the opposite side of the debate from Wise at the conference, and he pointed out how much data is collected and shared -- everything from our bank account and credit card balances to the pharmaceuticals we've purchased -- without our knowledge.

Firefox, as an example, has features like blocking of 3rd party tracking and private browsing:

Customized Security Settings

Control the level of scrutiny you’d like Firefox to give a site and enter exceptions—sites that don’t need the third degree. Customize settings for passwords, cookies, loading images and installing add-ons for a fully empowered Web experience.

Takedown Hall of Shame at EFF.org

The Takedown Hall of Shame and why:

Bogus copyright and trademark complaints have threatened all kinds of creative expression on the Internet. EFF's Hall Of Shame collects the worst of the worst.