Ideationizing

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Scooters in the Snow

OK, so I don't ride my scooter in the snow. I used to be able to when I had a much lighter scooter. But that is another story.

This is just a story about how darned reliable my 2007 Genuine Buddy 125 scooter is. As everyone in the U.S. knows, the Midwest has been gripped in a winter freeze for a few weeks. I live in an apartment so my scooter has been sitting in the parking lot buried in a snow drift a couple of feet deep for a couple of weeks at least. I loose track of things like that.

Anyway, I just decided to try to start it up. After a few tries it started up pretty well.

Now, I do have to say that the battery is not the original battery. The original battery did not last past the first winter. So this is also a testament to the quality of the batteries available at Batteries+. When the original started giving out I went down to my local Batteries+ and bought the most expensive battery they had that would fit my scooter. It was just under $90 but it was worth it. I have never had a problem since.

So, if you are looking for a scooter, a Genuine Buddy 125 is a pretty good deal and a really good scooter. I love mine. However you may have to spend about $100 more for a new battery soon, as the battery is not covered in the warranty. And, no, I am not being paid to say any of this. I was just so happy that my scooter started up so easily that I had to come in and blog about it. Even though I know that only a couple of people in the world are ever going to see this.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The coolest non-gadget things for thinking people.

OK, I'm not usually one for product recommendations on blogs, and I haven't actually used either of these products myself. I just found them on the internet after reading this LifeHacker post. But I am so excited just knowing that they exist. The products are:

A "magnetic" paint from a company called Magamagic™.
- Actually it has iron filings in it so magnets can stick to it.
- I'm just guessing but it probably blocks WiFi and other microwave frequencies as well.
Whiteboard paint from a company called ideapaint.
- Although certain people I know might not like the idea of drawing dry-erase drawings all over the house, I would definitely like to have some major surface area covered with this stuff.
- It comes in more colors than just white. They are actually pretty nice, subtle colors.

I freaking LOVE whiteboards. I used whiteboards extensively when working out various aspects of DEMML™ and my Trinary Space concepts (not posted yet). And being able to stick a magnet to the wall anywhere? How cool is that?

Monday, December 21, 2009

Non-Profit Health Insurance

So, why is it that we currently seem to think that insurance companies must be some kind of giant, for-profit, mega-corporation or run by the government? Until recently, a lot of companies were self insured. Those insurance programs were usually run as a non-profit-earning segment of the company. Well, why not go one step further. Why can't someone start up a health-insurance company that is entirely not-for-profit? The only real difference would be that the company doesn't earn more than it spends and pay that difference out to investors. Customers would still pay premiums and co-pays. They would simply pay based on what they could afford rather than how badly the insurance company wanted to ream them for profit. The company would still earn a lot of it's money by investing in other things, just like a regular insurance company and just like a non-profit endowment.

But where would such a company get the initial seed money to start operations? Just like any other company, they would get that money from investors. Except those investors would be foundations and individuals who where not expecting a cash return on their investment. As with other non-profits, this is usually called a donation.

But here is the twist: Rather than those "investors" simply giving money to the Non-Profit Insurance Company (NPIC), they would buy what I am going to call "Non-Profit Stock" (NPS). That stock purchase would not be directly tax deductible. Instead, the NPIC would calculate how much money they would have paid out in dividends based on the insurance premiums they received, the claims they paid out, and the average profit earned by other, for-profit, insurance companies with similar premium/claims ratios and volumes. Then, the NPIC would offer that "Non-Profit Dividend" (NPD) back to the "Non-Profit Investor" (NPI) with a choice. The "investor" could use the "dividend" to "purchase" more "stock" in the NPIC, thus ensuring that they would receive an even larger "dividend" in the future. Or the "investor" could simply give that "dividend" to the NPIC as a pure donation, thus taking the tax deduction on the cash value of the "dividend." So, it is a way to defer tax deductions into the future while ensuring that the potential deduction will grow over time.

I realize that this may require a change in the tax code but I think it would be worth it to promote the creation of many different, competing, NPICs. The tax code could even allow for other types of "Non-Profit Stock" in other types of non-profit companies that would normally earn a profit but choose not to in order to serve more of the public. Heck, the code could even allow for people to sell their "stock", thus allowing someone else to take that tax deduction in the future.

The contents of this post is Copyright © 2009 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.
However, anyone is welcome to use this idea to go out and reform health care using the principles of competition that the conservatives pretend to be so fond of.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Spiderman?

I am often anxious about everything that will be involved when I finally start getting some attention for DEMML and start actually implementing it. When I feel this way I am reminded of a classic Spiderman line and encourage myself with my own modification:

With a great idea comes great responsibility.

Conflating Two Freedoms

Freedom of the people should always trump businesses freedom to make money. Conflating the two inevitably leads to reversing them.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

A word to describe me.

In my graphic design class one of my first assignments was to take a word that I felt described me and stylize it in some aesthetically pleasing way. Most of the other students quickly sat down, typed a word, tried different fonts, and then used some of the fancy tools in Adobe Illustrator to mess with the outline of the word and add drop shadows and such. I went home to think.

I really don't believe that I can be described in only one word. On top of that, most people see me one way based on my outward appearance but I think I am actually quite different and more nuanced than they usually think. Sure, most everyone thinks they are unique. But I am a pretty unassuming guy and I tend to get pigeon-holed quite a lot. And, if you have read any of the other posts on this blog, you will see that I am not your average Joe either. So I decided that people usually think I am predictable while I feel that I am actually pretty indecipherable. So I set out to design a graphic that made that point. Here is what I came up with:

(You can click on the picture for a full sized view.)
At first glance it looks as if the word is "Predictable." But, if you look closely, you can find the word "Indecipherable."

In critique, my teacher said that, although the design was simple, it was the only one that was actually "Designed" and that was what the class was really about. I thought that was pretty cool

Thursday, November 5, 2009

HTMLzip

You know how some "books" are published as a folder full of HTML files with an index.html at the root of that set of folders? That makes for a heck of of a lot of files that are really compressible, just sitting there on your hard drive uncompressed. This is necessary because browsers can't see into .ZIP files. Well, I say, why the heck not? The compression algorithms seem to be everywhere except in the browsers. We could zip up a folder full of HTML files (and their accompanying images, etc.), give it an extension like htmlzip, and then just point the browser to that file. It would open the index.html file by default and there you go. An HTML book all in one file simply by zipping it up and changing the extension.

I know there are programs that will convert a set of HTML files to a .chm help file and various other things. But these are often proprietary and platform specific. This would provide a completely open, cross-platform, and really convenient way to do the same thing.