You see the total devastation visited on people who’s lives are already so much worse than yours. Please consider making a donation to Doctors without Borders.
One of my heroes is Steve Jobs. Always will be. I never want to meet him. I want him to remain larger than life and an inspiration for me.
A year or so ago, Disney bought Steve’s Company Pixar Studios and set Pixar up as the center of Disney’s Animation strategy. This deal gave Steve a seat on Disney’s Board of Directors. A few days ago a story made the news that Steve had a hand in re-mapping the strategy for the Disney retail stores.
As a background, Disney retail stores were created during Mike Eisner’s tenure. Mike was all about volume. Putting as much product in the field as possible equals the most sales. He was about the path of least resistance. Do it as easily and cheaply as possible. As a result, Disney stores saw some initial success, but in recent years have languished because they really didn’t represent Disney so much as SELL Disney. Today they seem the epitome of late 90′s consumerism: Stale and Tired. Whored out.
Steve gave the retail branch of Disney two words: Dream Bigger.
Have you ever worked for a company where your boss says your plans aren’t ambitious enough? I know I haven’t. We’re in the middle of the worst economy since the great depression. Every day another report that 300k+ jobs are lost and the message Steve gives both his staff at Disney and Apple is “Dream Bigger.” Everything about our surroundings tells someone to buckle down and hold on because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
I am challenged. What am I doing now for which I need to “Dream Bigger”?
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| CNN Leaves It There | ||||
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As an experiment in using the @font-face support in modern web browsers, I’ve done screenshots of the navigation’s reference render and each browser’s rendering of embedded fonts.
Photoshop Reference Render
Font Rendering Using Safari/Mac
Font Rendering Using Firefox 3.5/Mac
Font Rendering Using IE6/Win XP
Font Rendering Using IE7/Win XP
Font Rendering Using IE8/Windows 7
The central question surrounding the health care debate is so often undiscussed in the current townhall discussions surrounding healthcare reform. That question goes something like this:
Do you believe in the profit motive for companies that provide healthcare-related products?
There’s a strong case to be made on either side. Nothing happens without money. Nothing. Without a profit motive, wave after wave of AIDS drugs would have been impossible because the virus mutates so quickly and becomes unresponsive to medication in a relatively short amount of time. Companies like Pfizer and Eli-Lilly justify much of their high cost for their newest drugs on the vast amounts of money they pour into R&D, each one dreaming of creating the next Prozak or Viagra… or for that matter, the pill i’m on right now Januvia. Januvia is fantastic. I can honestly say it’s wonderful for people who are diagnosed diabetic. It is, however, without insurance $200 for 30 days supply. With my insurance discount, I pay $30/month, but still. $200 is a big chunk of change. And there are many people living with diabetes who can’t afford it and who are either under-insured or in no drug program that covers it.
There’s also a strong case to be made for altruism. It seems wrong to benefit financially because of someone else’s misfortune. It’s goes against our basic ideas of what is right and wrong in humanity. No one can argue that a health insurance company that makes 2 billion dollars in a given year should decline claims of legitimate policy holders who are in desperate need of care, and yet it happens every day. People are denied necessary care for any number of reasons and, yes, it is a national disgrace. But does it rise to the level of “right”? Do those policy holders have any right other than to leave and go get insurance with someone else (if they can)?
Does any American… Do all Americans have a RIGHT to healthcare? That is the question we should be asking, but no one is. This current debate consists of highly emotional (mostly women) at town hall meetings crying about how they “want their country back.”
No one has “taken” America. It is not dead nor does the current national discuss warrant any bloodshed, but it does warrant a good debate free of disruption. My prayer is for statesmen. On both sides of the debate, Dear Lord give us statesmen who can inspire us to think rationally about the course of our nation’s healthcare system for the next 100 years.
