Interlude

Just some interesting reading links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12whales-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&em

Fabulously interesting, and just one more reason to go to Mexico.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?scp=6&sq=peter%20singer&st=cse

I think Peter Singer is an ass, but from time to time he makes a good point. I thoroughly enjoyed this article, and I think we need a better and more open discussion of what health care rationing means, and how our current rationing (based on personal wealth) might be reformed under a new healthcare system. And the argument that you can't put a price on human life is a red herring: when our society denies its poor(er) members access to life saving or at the very least life-enhancing medical care, we are simply saying that the price of human life is equal to that persons net assets plus projected future earnings. Sounds like a price has been set, and for millions of uninsured Americans, that price is far lower than it would be using the NICE metrics.

I'm still on pay-as-you-go, because I simply cannot convince myself that the initial purchase costs and crappy contract are worth owning an iPhone for. Maybe if it ran push-notification for incoming Skype calls and Apple didn't keep applying for new patents suggesting another iphone update, possibly by the end of the year. However, this bad boy I can get excited about: free on a contract, much better contract than the iPhone, free European roaming (at least until the end of September), and supporting video conferencing on the phone, this is basically a mobile computing solution, not just a phone. So I'll probably be buying that in the coming days.