Regulate the Banks? What?

States Refusing Medicaid Expansion

What are the states that won't accept Medicaid expansion going to do?  Wow...check out their fantastic ideas!  Spoiler:  they are awful and won't cover people.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Bizarre Borders: Canada and the United States

Thank you C.G.P. Grey!
http://www.cgpgrey.com/

Just Got Our OUYA

This Drummer Did It His Way

38 Common Spelling and Grammar Errors

from Mental Floss

Crash Course: Slavery

A pretty depressing part of our nation's history.

The 'Buddy Cup'

Because Facebook hadn't quite degraded the notion of friendship enough.

The Colbert Report
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Why are Congresspersons Idiots?

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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CrashCourse US History: The Market Revolution

Watch the latest installment of CrashCourse U.S. History:  The Market Revolution


And really you should watch the entire U.S. History series:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtMwmepBjTSG593eG7ObzO7s

Lessen the Grip of Terror...Turn the TV Off

Peter Jackson Directing Doctor Who?

Possibility that future Doctor Who shows may have Peter Jackson's involvement?

Also, I didn't put together that Sylvester McCoy (the 7th Doctor) played Radagast the Brown in "The Hobbit". Sheesh.



http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv/8546834/Time-Lords-rally-for-Sir-Peter

New Pedal on the Board

My Lovepedal OD Eleven Custom showed up yesterday and I got to try it out today. It has a fantastic sound! Full and awesome.

Harsh Words about the VNA Debacle

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Doctor Who Uses Ubuntu Linux

Hank Green on Friendship

The best commentary on genuine friendship that I've stumbled across in quite some time:

Calorie Detective

Casey Neistat picks out a few items that he might eat during a typical day, but finds that many of them understate the number of calories in the product, and suggests that if we are going to mandate the printing of number of calories, that they should also be mandated to be accurate.

"Calorie Detective"
Casey Neistat, NY Times, Feb 13, 2013.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/opinion/calorie-detective.html

Video link without the article:
http://nyti.ms/Y7QiqH

Caffeine Toxic Dose Very High

A couple notable statements about caffeine, they note that there isn't a lot of hard data about caffeine and its specific effects.  It is clear that everyone has someone different reactions to it.

The only mention in one quote that it is 'generally accepted' to be an addictive substance, though again, from other articles that seems very unclear too.

It appears though that around 10g (10,000mg) of caffeine is the toxic dose for caffeine.  A 16oz cup of drip-coffee from Starbucks has 330mg of caffeine in it.  A 20oz Mountain Dew has only 90mg.  So, that is a long-shot off of 10,000. 30 Starbucks coffees in just a few hours, or 110 Mountain Dews.

http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i5/Caffeine-Jitters.html

The Ubuntu Phone

The announcement of the Ubuntu phone has my interest at the moment.  I'm inclined to believe, as many people have already pointed out in countless articles, that it will suffer from very poor adoption.  But should it?

Android phones are really my favorite presently because nearly everything I do is online inside Google's vision of online computing.  Even when on a tradition OS (and not my Chromebook), I spend much of my time inside the Google Chrome browser.  And that is true whether I'm on Windows, Linux, or MacOS.

But lets take this back to the question of where your stuff is. Android ends up being such a fantastic choice because all your contacts, email, documents, music, and books all sync up with the Google online services from which they originate (for the most part).  Other services that are more 'file-based' (we'll call it for now) have slightly more effort to sync up with their services, say in the case of iPhones that are paired with iTunes, or Windows phones which are also largely paired with a single computer.  Android has no need to be paired with any computer, since Google considers their online services to be your end destination anyway.

So, the point here is that the Ubuntu phone, syncing with Ubuntu One online services doesn't seem that different in how things sync up than Apple iCloud or Microsoft Live.  And depending on how they implement the final product, it may not operate too much differently than does Android with Google.  So, at that point, I think that it is safe to boil your choice down to what presentation and experience do you like the best?

I think that Ubuntu's phone has the best presentation out of all the phones, at least from the demo videos that I've seen.  They have asked all the questions that I have with some of the more clumsy functionality of iOS or Android,  and certainly the clumsiness of the Windows phone.  And then they have come up with some pretty simply, but clever solutions.  So, if nothing else...since Ubuntu is in the public domain...I hope that Google and the other phone OS makers learn and imitate.

The Ubuntu phone, on whatever phone hardware they end up settling on to brand is a year off still.  So there is room for the OS to continue to be developed.  The Ubuntu phone OS for Android compatible hardware will come out later this year.  So, give it a look in this trailer below and see what you think.



Also, here is the overview of the phone with Engadget with Ubuntu on a Samsung Galaxy S3:

Brain Software