Sunday, July 12, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

High-ranking insurance PR flack defects, explains dirty tricks used to fight universal healthcare

Posted: 12 Jul 2009 05:08 AM PDT

Ross sez, "A high-placed insider (ex VP of PR at Cigna) describes the machinations the insurance industry has used to keep us from getting a decent health care system."

This guy literally wrote the talking-points memo that the anti-universal-health-care crowd uses. He had a conversion experience and has now come clean. Remarkable.

BILL MOYERS: Was [Michael Moore's SICKO] true? Did you think it contained a great truth?

WENDELL POTTER: Absolutely did.

BILL MOYERS: What was it?

WENDELL POTTER: That we shouldn't fear government involvement in our health care system. That there is an appropriate role for government, and it's been proven in the countries that were in that movie.

You know, we have more people who are uninsured in this country than the entire population of Canada. And that if you include the people who are underinsured, more people than in the United Kingdom. We have huge numbers of people who are also just a lay-off away from joining the ranks of the uninsured, or being purged by their insurance company, and winding up there.

And another thing is that the advocates of reform or the opponents of reform are those who are saying that we need to be careful about what we do here, because we don't want the government to take away your choice of a health plan. It's more likely that your employer and your insurer is going to switch you from a plan that you're in now to one that you don't want. You might be in the plan you like now.

But chances are, pretty soon, you're going to be enrolled in one of these high deductible plans in which you're going to find that much more of the cost is being shifted to you than you ever imagined...

WENDELL POTTER: And [Wall Street thinks] that this company has not done a good job of managing medical expenses. It has not denied enough claims. It has not kicked enough people off the rolls. And that's what-- that is what happens, what these companies do, to make sure that they satisfy Wall Street's expectations with the medical loss ratio.

Wendell Potter on Bill Moyers (Thanks, Ross!)
Previously:


Sarkozy brings back crazy three-strikes Internet law

Posted: 12 Jul 2009 05:00 AM PDT

The French "Three Strikes" law is back on -- a law that can punish you for being accused of copyright infringement by cutting off your internet connection, fining you, and putting you in prison. It also criminalizes offering free internet access because pirates might use it.

Ed Felten nailed it: this is like a law that lets publishers take away all reading material from you and everyone who lives in your house if you're accused (without evidence) of infringing on three books.

Not content to let the idea die, President Nicolas Sarkozy's administration reworked the law in hopes of making it amenable to the Council--instead of HADOPI deciding on its own to cut off users on the third strike, it will now report offenders to the courts. A judge can then choose to ban the user from the Internet, fine him or her €300,000 (according to the AFP), or hand over a two-year prison sentence.

Those who are merely providing an Internet connection to dirty pirates can be fined €1,500 and/or receive a month-long temp ban from the online world. (A group of French hackers has already begun to work on software that cracks the passwords on locked WiFi networks so that there's an element of plausible deniability when law enforcement tries to go after home network owners.)

French "3 strikes" law returns, now with judicial oversight! (Thanks, Jeremie!)
Previously:


Attention philanthropy: shining lights on human rights, urban planning, citizen media and renewable energy

Posted: 12 Jul 2009 04:56 AM PDT

Alex from WorldChanging sez,

We've just released our 2009 "Attention Philanthropy" grants, our effort to shine a light on awesome work that's undeservedly obscure. 100 nominators from around the world helped us find amazing projects in fields as diverse as human rights, urban planning, citizen media and renewable energy. There's a day's worth of interesting reading just going down the whole list, but even a quick visit will probably turn you on to some cool things you didn't know existed.

Attention philanthropy is a gift of notice. In a noisy world, deluged in advertising, overrun with PR flacks and crowded with the superficial, one of the biggest barriers to success for a small, good idea or noble enterprise can simply be getting noticed in the first place.

Here's your chance to do a simple, good thing. If the work you find on these pages inspires you, learn more. Visit their websites, contribute to their projects and, above all, help us spread the word far and wide.

Attention Philanthropy 2009 (Thanks, Alex!)

Hmm. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea after all.

Posted: 12 Jul 2009 04:12 AM PDT

Susannah Breslin is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. She is a freelance journalist who blogs at Reverse Cowgirl and is at work on a novel set in the adult movie industry.

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UFC fighter Frank Mir exhibits the unfortunate consequences of what happens when you step into the ring with six-foot-three, 265-pound human monster Brock Lesnar after last night's UFC 100 heavyweight bout.

If UFC 100 represents mainstream, the world has changed.

Brock Lesnar, the former World Wrestling Entertainment fighter and current UFC heavyweight champion, battered Frank Mir in a second-round knockout to set aside a festering year of bitterness.

With a likely million more watching on pay-per-view, Lesnar gave the 11,000-plus a doubly obscene hand gesture and stood firm as the disdain continued.

"Lesnar, St-Pierre claim victories at UFC 100." (Image credit: John Locher/Associated Press.)

Talking to bureaucracies considered as a corporate fitness factor

Posted: 11 Jul 2009 06:03 AM PDT

Seth Godin eloquently describes the fitness factor that makes a restaurant suited to getting placement in an airport: they have to be run by corporations whose primary skill is dealing with bureaucracies. I wonder why this competency appears to exclude a comparable competency in preparing edible food?
Have you noticed that most airports feature the same restaurants? It's not an accident. The people who run these chains have organized themselves to be good at dealing with municipal organizations. Same thing goes for design firms, creative firms, accountants etc. that deal with large corporations.
The art and skill of working with bureaucrats

Visualization of US consumer spending

Posted: 11 Jul 2009 06:00 AM PDT


Here's a nice dataviz of US consumer spending as of April 2009. How depressing is that minuscule slice labelled "reading"?

How The Average U.S. Consumer Spends Their Paycheck (via Sociological Images)

Bletchley Park codebreakers recognized by British government

Posted: 11 Jul 2009 05:58 AM PDT

The codebreakers of Britain's Bletchley Park have finally been officially recognized by the UK government for their critical contributions winning WWII. Now, if we can only get the British government to put some money into preserving the shockingly decayed site itself...

"These people made an enormous contribution to the outcome of World War Two, the 20th century and freedom in the West," said Simon Greenish, director of the Bletchley Park Trust.

"After many years of having to keep their critical wartime work top secret, it is tremendous that this contribution has finally achieved recognition."

Heroes of Bletchley included Tommy Flowers, who built one of the world's first programmable computers, Colossus, largely using his own funds, and Dr Alan Turing, who designed the bombe cryptanalysis machines.

Flowers received an MBE and an award of £1,000 for his work while Turing was arrested for homosexuality in 1952 and committed suicide shortly afterwards, having received no official recognition for his work in his lifetime.

Government honours veterans of Bletchley Park at last (via /.)
Previously:


Wandering minds are active minds

Posted: 11 Jul 2009 05:56 AM PDT

UCSB brain researcher Jonathan Schooler has an intriguing theory about why our minds wander:
The regions of the brain that become active during mind wandering belong to two important networks. One is known as the executive control system. Located mainly in the front of the brain, these regions exert a top-down influence on our conscious and unconscious thought, directing the brain's activity toward important goals. The other regions belong to another network called the default network. In 2001 a group led by neuroscientist Marcus Raichle at Washington University discovered that this network was more active when people were simply sitting idly in a brain scanner than when they were asked to perform a particular task. The default network also becomes active during certain kinds of self-referential thinking, such as reflecting on personal experiences or picturing yourself in the future.

The fact that both of these important brain networks become active together suggests that mind wandering is not useless mental static. Instead, Schooler proposes, mind wandering allows us to work through some important thinking. Our brains process information to reach goals, but some of those goals are immediate while others are distant. Somehow we have evolved a way to switch between handling the here and now and contemplating long-term objectives. It may be no coincidence that most of the thoughts that people have during mind wandering have to do with the future.

The Brain Stop Paying Attention: Zoning Out Is a Crucial Mental State (via Kottke)
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