Citizen Tube

Yes, the Health Care Summit is theater and no real negotiating or deal making will occur but it looks great on Citizen Tube from You Tube. Color me impressed.

I'd imagine that there's plenty of activity on the twitter and live blog arenas if you want commentary on the proceedings.

The Future - Holy Crap

So I don't know what the DICE Talks are (something to do with video games) and I'm not sure who Jesse Schell is (again, he does something with games probably of the video variety), but his 28 minute talk is fascinating.

It reminds me a lot of some of the best TED Talks I've seen. Think of the Malcolm Gladwell one about the different types of tomato sauce, only instead of telling us a cute story about marketing Schell is describing how the world will work...

(the facebook intro stuff is cool too)

Wii Games - E3 2010 - Guitar Hero 5

(via kottke)

I'm not sure whether I'm hopeful about the future now or just terrified.

How The Game Is Played

Jon Stewart takes apart the Republicans demands on health care reform and helps the Democrats do some math on last night's Daily Show...



House keeping note: Jon gets pretty much right to it (the first 6 or 7 minutes) but I've offered you the whole episode to watch because Hulu's embed codes work and Comedy Central (which offers segment clips) has crappy embed codes that are full of problems.

Getting Schooled...

In case you were curious here's the official bio of my school's Dean, who is a pretty cool guy based on our limited interactions.

And here is his IMDB page.

Yeah, interesting huh. Wait until you see the trailer...



Update:
I forgot to mention he has a blog as well.

Read This Now - It's So On...

At least according to Greg Sargent who reports that White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer just annouced on a conference call that the President "believes that the American people deserve an up or down vote on health care reform."

Go read Sargent's round up. Bottom line is that it's looking more and more like health care reform is going to happen and that the Administration and Democrats in the House and Senate are finally willing to do what it takes to overcome Republican obstructionism.

Read This Now - The Winter Games

Ok people, that Canada - US prelim round hockey game that just finished (and I managed to miss) wasn't even a medal game so lay off the exclamations about how exciting it was. Actually scratch that, all of you who thought it was so exciting need to start watching hockey regularly.

Everyone though, should be reading Nick Paumgarten's dispatches from Vancouver and environs. All of them have been fantastic. His latest is on skeleton racing, which I hold to be the most insane of the winter sports (hey I know how we could make this luge thing more dynamic, let's strip the sled down some and go head first, yeah!)...

At the sled track, the skeletons (sorry, I’m calling them that) zipped by like mail canisters in a pneumatic tube, and it was easy to get distracted by the socializing along the edge of the track. If you are standing at a turn, you hear a rumble—the sled approaching—and then a streak of color shoots past, so fast you’re hardly sure you saw it. You can get really close. If you’re used to luge (and who isn’t, by now?), the fact that the skeleton sledders are face down and face first (as opposed to face up and foot first) is disorienting; they look like mannequins being flung down the course in a Letterman segment—their feet are all floppy.

I've been reading them through the New Yorker's News Desk feed, but they appear to be gathered under The Sporting Scene, which has no links or site. Wherever you find them, enjoy.

A Leap Forward?

Stop the presses! Health care reform might not be all dead, but only mostly dead, and it's looking like we won't need Miracle Max to pull this one out either.

Between the letter calling for an up or down vote on the public option making the rounds in the Senate, President Obama's weekly address, and this new announcement from Harry Reid that the Senate will use the reconciliation process to reconcile the Senate and House bills, we may finally take a vital step forward in bringing our health care system up to par and providing care to the millions of Americans who lack it.

Actually just watch the weekly address here:



Fingers crossed etc, and what took so long?