Digital Diary: Travel, Photography, Music, Politics, Humor and General Life around me
I took these just before I left for California. I never got a chance to process them and update the site so here’s just a few from the 5th Avenue store window displays for the 2009 Holidays:
Of course all these stores are not spots I shopped this season… I’ll have to stick to my local young designers markets and thriftshops:
Voodoo Glow Skulls – Thrift Shop Junkie
[audio:https://austinvegas.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/10-Thrift-Shop-Junkie.mp3]
The healthcare debate seems to have quieted some since the holidays. I understand the Senate and House are trying to reconcile the two bills passed, however, based on the diverse versions either has introduced I’m concerned the end result will be too weak of a bill to amount to any real reform. As someone that currently doesn’t have proper health coverage (Cobra is quite expensive for what I actually receive), I’m again distraught with the modern political process to get anything meaningful passed for the people of this country.
The National Geographic Blog had an interesting graph posted on the difference in just costs of healthcare vs. life expectancy for many world countries (FiveThirtyEight.com also posted a similar graph today but the NG one is clearer to me). Most countries have some form of universal healthcare coverage which can’t be said for the US. Regardless of quality, if you live in another country you’re going to get some help without the fear of having to loose your house to get patched up.
The U.S. has a fee-for-service system—paying medical providers piecemeal for appointments, surgery, and the like. That can lead to unneeded treatment that doesn’t reliably improve a patient’s health. Says Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies health insurance worldwide, “More care does not necessarily mean better care.”
T.R. Reid a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post and author of The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. had a good discussion with NPR on Fresh Air about the differences between what’s offered here in America verses other countries such as France, Japan, Britain, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, and other western countries as compared to what’s offered in communist countries or other less industrialized countries. A big reason why our healthcare is so expensive is that we have all 4 types of healthcare vs. these countries only offer one type of healthcare. Having a system that requires four types of services (4 types of forms etc.) which alone is an administrative nightmare.
I recommend going to the NPR site and downloading this 30 minute podcast to listen to on the way to work or at the gym to just get a brief idea of what’s actually offered in the world. To get more, read the full book.
Operation Ivy – Healthy Body
[audio:https://austinvegas.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/25-Healthy-Body.mp3]
I haven’t written many blog posts for the last few months of the end of ’09. Mostly because I’ve been traveling and visiting with with family and friends I haven’t seen in over 6 months. When I travel my primary way to interact with people is in-person. I check email, social sites and twitter less frequently as I fill my time with meeting people for personal or business reasons. I’ve become aware in both my work and personal life, one of the few problems I have with so much reliance on [social] technologies is it separates people from the in-person nature of relationships.
We write an email, chat and even phone in a call to catch up but I and many psychologists agree that this can never equal the chemical, emotional and physical bonds created when people are engaged at a close proximity or in-personal relationship.
There are five human senses (hearing, sight, touch, smell and taste) and of those, social technologies only cover one, if you count reading someone’s thoughts put down in text some kind of hybrid of sight and sound. Of course video conferencing will bridge some of the sensory intake, but you can’t shake someone’s hand to get a sense of their confidence, smell their sweat if they might be nervous or… well I don’t recommend trying to taste your business partners and friend but there are reasons you may want to taste someone.
The integration of all these senses along with a mysterious 6th, intuition (which can be just as important in nurturing relationships with people), have the ability to create robust profiles of in-person interactions that singular communication via text, web and even video chat can’t substantiate.
Realistically, social networks and internet content services like Twitter are hear to stay (interesting article by David Carr NY Times on reasons why Twitter is hear for good) but we should all keep in mind that these services are still tools to be used to improve information exchange, facilitate personal or business relationships and transactions. However, eventually we’ll all have to step outside the house/apt and have a few pints with friends, catch up with the family over dinner or engage with your mate for some…. carnal knowledge.
Here’s to getting out in public more in 2010.
Yelloman – Physical
[audio:https://austinvegas.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/20-Physical_Zunguzung.mp3]