Routine Revelations

What, if any, relationship is there between free speech and cable TV, and in particular news or opinion shows on cable TV? Cable TV is not the public square nor is it public airwaves, it is corporate owned and exists for the purposes of making money. The primary method for making money is advertising.

If people opt to make note of the advertisers and decide to not purchase products from those advertisers, which is known as boycotting their products, I don’t see how in any way that infringes on a person’s free speech rights. At most it infringes on that person’s ability to make money on cable TV.

Furthermore, free speech is a protection for citizens from government. If cable TV is not part of the government, then frankly I am not clear on what free speech rights apply to anything on cable TV. Claims about being “fair and balanced” is marketing and not statements of facts nor rights.

Twenty states have filed suit against the federal government basically because there is no business model in healthcare insurance. Before we can fix problems we have to:

1. Agree on what is the problem
2. Agree that the problem needs to be fixed
3. Understand that the solution to every problem (healthcare) is not a hammer called capitalism
4. Agree on fundamental principles

Fundamentally, the business model for insurance is based on the premise that a company pays out less money than it takes in through people buying insurance. Property insurance works because it is possible that people who pay for it never need to file a claim through their life time. Likewise auto insurance works because there are people who never have to file a claim over a lifetime of driving.

In context, there really is no such thing as health insurance because every health care transaction is paid by the “health insurance” companies and just about everyone has one or more healthcare transactions per year. In other words, how does a “health insurance” company make money? If auto insurance was like healthcare, ever time one took their car in for an oil change or a tire rotation they would file an auto insurance claim.

Basically, we have to stop thinking that there is a capitalistic solution to the cost of health care. Just about all other countries around the world came to this realization and did something about it. We in the United States have drunk the capitalistic koolaid so much that we have forgotten our own history and just run around trying to hammer away every single problem.

Michigan Tech’s annual Winter Carnival is in progress, with the snow statue competition completing this morning. I attended Tech from 1984-89 and have good Carny memories. The number of hours students put in to building these statues is incredible and the results are fantastic. Check out the photos!

A couple of thoughts about OmniFocus after reading Omni’s roadmap for 2018. As an iOS user but not a Mac OS user, I have long heard about OmniFocus and how great it is but never tried it out. A few weeks ago I discovered I could install the iOS version and try it out for free for two weeks, which I did and frankly, it didn’t seem much better than Todoist or 2Do.

My main requirement is multi-platform support because while use an iPad as my primary personal computer, I also use Android smartphones and Windows notebook computers. The inability to get to info in OmniFocus from Windows has been a show stopper, and web access, which is on the roadmap, will help, however I am concerned about the “minimalist” plan.

A simple way that Omni could solve this problem is by syncing with Toodledo. While there is a Toodledo iOS app, it is not very efficient so I use 2Do on my iPad that syncs my data with Toodledo. The benefit is that there are Toodledo apps for other platforms, and the Toodledo web app is one of the most advanced web apps that I use.

I am also surprised that OmniFocus doesn’t use an outliner for editing projects and tasks, given the existence of OmniOutliner, which I do use.

I’ll keep a watch out for the next release of OmniFocus and probably check it out.

The American Dream is Over. This is the Age of the European Dream.

One might not agree with the entire premise of the above article, but I think there is something to the point being made that we wrongly think markets/capitalism is the solution to every problem in our country. In fact, one can make the argument that capitalism is the root of much that is wrong in our country.

For example, the reality is capitalism (read revenue and profits) is the true reason why the NRA agressively opposes any gun control; the NRA’s corporate supporters make a lot of money off the sale of guns and ammunition and logically do not want any of that money to be at risk. Just like capitalism drove the tobacco industry to ignore studies showing smoking causes cancer.

For a long time I have been saying that we tend to confuse capitalism with democracy. I think this is reflected most prominently by the Citizens United SCOTUS ruling that says corporate spending on politics is a form of free speech, and thus corporations have a right to free speech.

Corporations are a construct of capitalism, they are not in themselves men or women of any race. In otherwords, corporations are not citizens.

Citizens United may be the worst SCOTUS ruling of my lifetime. Worse, it is reflects a flawed understanding that frankly skews society in favor of corporations and the oligarchs that profit from them.

blog.alexellis.io/serverles…

This entry is coming from Feedbin, does this get posted to my blog or just added to the Timeline? Update: So, this did end up on the blog, interesting. I wonder if the same thing happens with Evergreen?

The lesson to be learned from the false missile alert in Hawaii is not how someone screwed up, a bad communication plan, nor bad UI design. The lesson that should be learned is that the possibility of a nuclear strick on the United States is much more plausible today that it has since the cold war. We appear to be nearing Cuban Missile Crisis territory with incompetent leadership in the government.

It’s the beginning of the year and therefore the time for my yearly ritual of trying to find a to-do (task management) app that I like and think that I will use. I am again finding myself with Toodledo, mostly because it has more filtering features that other apps and because it has a robust web app. However, Toodledo does not have a robust iOS app.

The Toodledo iOS app does the job but doesn’t have the best UI. However, I have found that 2Do syns with Toodledo so I am giving that a try. At worst I can toggle between the two apps because they sync with the same data.

Unfortunately, 2Do does not sync Toodledo’s statuses, so if I want the same functionality I need to create tags rather that statuses.

I am interested to see how well received Psion’s Android clamshell device will be at CES. Psion is a blast from the past, at it’s height it was competing with Palm and Windows CE with its own operating system, and now it will be running Android. If it is priced around $300, I might be interested in buying one.

And it’s British, so there is that.

Later today Michigan Tech will play Bowling Green in the championship game of the 53rd Great Lakes Invitational hockey tournament. It is the first GLi at the new Little Caesars’s Arena and is hosted by Michigan Tech.

Either of the potential opponents for Tech in the championship presented interesting story lines. Had Michigan won Tech would be facing their former coach, Mel Pearson, who just left his Alma mater to become Michigan’s head coach. Tech’s return to college hockey prominence started when Pearson took the helm.

Pearson’s last game as Tech’s head coach was the 2017 WCHA championship game in which the Huskies beat Bowling Green to take the Broadmore Trophy and the NCAA tourney bid. What better way for the Falcons to gain revenge for that loss than by beating Tech in their tournament in the new arena and carry home the MacInnes Cup, named for legendary Tech coach John MacInnes?

Google has stopped selling the Pixel C, and there is no replacement Android tablet in the Google Store. Consequently, you will now see articles about the demise of Android on tablets and/or how bad Android has been for tablets.

He died for our debts, not our sins

If we think deeply about the consequences of debt you see meaning. Holding debt over a person is to have power over that person. The person in debt therefore is more or less a slave to the person (or thing) that has power over them. One of the earliest themes of what Jesus did for us was to set us free.

As we in the United Stated look more and more like the Ferengie every day, it may be helpful to replace the word “sin” with “debt” more often.