nullsleep: View video
September 28, 2009
Fascinating approach to reducing healthcare costs. Thanks Adam!
I’ve been interested in retail clinics for years. It’s a wonderfully simple idea: there are a range of conditions for which a doctor just isn’t the right tool for the job, any more than you need a trained engineer to change a light-bulb. If someone has inflamed tonsils (pharyngitis), a urinary tract infection or an ear infection (otitis media – you’ll need the vocab for the next section) sending them to a physician or an emergency room makes no sense – you have an expensive provider delivering by-the-book care. And in the event that the patient has something serious masquerading as something common? They’ll almost certainly get the basic care anyway and end up coming back in later.
From Dresden Codak: some ideas on how to behave.
- If you go the “prisoner who’s escaped the future” try shaving your head and putting a barcode on the back of your neck. Then stagger around and stare at the sky, as if you’ve never seen it before.
- Walk up to random people and say “WHAT YEAR IS THIS?” and when they tell you, get quiet and then say “Then there’s still time!” and run off.
- Stand in front of a statue (any statue, really), fall to your knees, and yell “NOOOOOOOOO”
NOOOOOOO!!
Dr. Hok writes “As more and more renewable energy enters the grid, it gets increasingly difficult to match supply and demand 24/7. The answer of German power company Lichtblick and Volkswagen is a swarm of 100,000 flexible base load generators. These fridge-sized CHP (Combined Heat and Power) generators that will be installed in people’s basements in Hamburg starting early next year feed electricity into the grid and the waste heat into their home’s water/heating. The “ZuhauseKraftwerk” (HomePowerPlant) features a vanilla VW Golf natural-gas engine that generates 20kW electrical and 34 kW heat with an efficiency of 92%. The units are remotely controlled via a mobile network or DSL, they can ramp up in a minute if needed. A water tank ensures that heat is continuously available, while electricity is produced on demand. The swarm will replace two nuclear plants, they say. And your old oil heating that needed replacement anyway.”
Computing moves into the cloud. Power generation moves oppositely?
The emails are pretty fascinating reading. From Slashdot:
A Schneier blog post notes that three would-be bombers were recently convicted in the UK thanks in large part to e-mail communication that was intercepted by the US National Security Agency. This was the second time the men had faced criminal charges; in the first trial, the prosecution was unable to make part of their case because they didn’t yet have the e-mail evidence. “Although British prosecutors were eager to use the e-mails in their second trial against the three plotters, British courts prohibit the use of evidence obtained through interception. So last January, a US court issued warrants directly to Yahoo to hand over the same correspondence.” The BBC posted a number of e-mails used as evidence in the trial. The communication is coded, and some of it looks like what you might find in your spam folder, but the article also provides the prosecution’s explanation of what they mean.
Seen on JWZ’s Livejournal: “Why Delhi’s buses are so deadly: an economic analysis“.
At least 115 people were killed by Blueline buses in 2008. The Blueline’s grim numbers stem entirely from two perverse economic incentives: the driver’s salary is wholly dependant on how many fares he picks up, and each bus is in direct competition with every other bus on the route.
I know Beekey was really thinking of me when he marked this article “shared”. Still, I enjoyed it. Thanks Beekey! Source:
We love this column from Marty Nemko over at Kiplinger because it’s sort of a go-get-’em morale booster to the ugly—only instead of boosting morale, it just gets more depressing as it goes on. But funny depressing. And after all the weird advice on watching your weight and avoiding hairpieces and wearing moderate makeup, Nemko makes an interesting case for why “ugly” people are better hires.
Bit Shifter? Engadget Podcast? WTF? Source:
See Bit Shifter at a Engadget Podcast Taping! http://tinyurl.com/mr2luy #
File under: proxies within proxies. Source:
Parker wondered how I’m keeping these all up to date. Here’s what I do:
- I send an IM to update@identi.ca.
- Identi.ca posts to the Identi.ca feed.
- Identi.ca cross-posts that to Twitter.
- rss2email running on my server wakes up every hour, checks identi.ca’s RSS feed, and sends an email if necessary.
I love CNN.com. Does this article qualify as pandering? Source:
It’s Geek Pride Week in Atlanta as thousands of fans take over four downtown hotels for Dragon*Con, an annual celebration of science fiction, fantasy, comics and gaming.
