inkbluesky

directions to buddist temple poster

Just playing around with an evaluation version of Illustrator. The poster gave me a chance to do something with this great photo where the temple with all the reds really contrasts with nature's greens and browns.

Share Your OPML

The idea is similar to bookmark sharing sites, except you're sharing opml files. The top 7 in popularity,

1. TechCrunch
2. Google Blog
3. Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger
4. Engadget
5. Joel on Software
6. Scripting News 410
7. Wired News: Top Stories

Of which I read two on a fairly regular basis. Hard to be an individualist if you always follow the herd.

Google wants to act more grown-up

Google still feels like a startup company, but it's time to make changes that reflect its stature as the world's pre-eminent search business, executives said at the company's annual media day Wednesday.

Some of the changes reflect the harsh scrutiny faced by the idealistic young company over its business practices in China, where it complied with government censors. The changes also result from investors who want more details about the company's operations.

Consumers are also confused sometimes about the nature of Google products released in beta, or test, version, said co-founder Sergey Brin.

"We've sort of abused the word beta a little bit," he said, explaining that people both inside and outside Google "have put more expectations on the things that we throw out there."

Brin and other executives told reporters that test products are often released in rough form to see how they work and to gather feedback from customers. They're not intended to be as bulletproof as the company's flagship search engine, but that's led to confusion by customers who start counting on test products, such as Google's messaging service.

I like Google, given a choice bewteen a Microsoft world and a Google world they are far and away the lesser evil. It was kind of funny that I went over to download Desktop Search v4.0 and it says beta.

US Healthcare Gets Shamed Again

That study released in the Journal of the American Medical Association last week that compared the health of U.S. and British citizens spoke volumes about America's health care system.

Researchers from the U.S. and England were just trying to discover why poor people are less healthy than rich, but were astounded when their studies showed that poor people in England are actually as healthy as rich people in America and healthier when it comes to cases of diabetes, blood pressure and cancer.

But even more astounding to them was when comparing all white Brits with white Americans, regardless of income, the Americans have more diabetes, more heart disease, more respiratory problems and many more other diseases as well.

"It was a bit of a big shock," Michael Marmot of University College in London told National Public Radio's "Morning Edition." "I just didn't imagine we'd find it consistently across the board, with worse health in the United States compared with England."

Jim Smith of the Rand Corp. and one of the Americans who worked on the research added that, at first, no one wanted to believe the data.

But the results were quite clear it just isn't clear why.

For example, smoking rates are about the same for both countries. The British have a higher rate of heavy drinking, but more Americans are obese.

Yet, the per person spending on health care in the United States is nearly double that of England, which, of course, has a national health care system that covers every citizen of the country.

Maybe its time to move to some kind of national healthcare. America is in my biased view pretty much the best at everything, we could look around at the different models and create the best national healthcare system. Some doctors might have to settle for a BMW instead of a Porsche, oh well.