ebooks

I have been frustrated in my attempts to DL a copy of Hurlbut's Life of Christ to my phone or pc in epub format

this is my best attempt before moving on to another task.
the book was published in 1915. It is unarguably in the public domain.

• related, I also created an RSS Feed for "My Utmost for His Highest" it should provide a link to the devotional for the day you view it.  I have not tried it tomorrow yet, but today, it works.
  

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and so it goes

###

Imdb

My friend. Claude Miles is on IMDB.  I was an extra in one of his movies.  http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3014429/

---
Kevin,  
sent by my Droid

Best of Gadgetwise

From: "NYTimes.com"

Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:01:21 -0400



Subject: Personal Tech: Taxi Tidbits and Techno-Tales

If you have trouble reading this e-mail, go to:




September 17, 2009

Personal Tech




Taxi Tidbits and Techno-Tales



By DAVID POGUE



This week, I had the honor of hosting a most unusual panel. It was at

the annual conference of the International Association of Transport

Regulators--basically, the governing bodies of taxi systems all over

the world--and it was hosted by the New York Taxi & Limousine

Commission (the TLC). The panel was about the future of taxi

technology.



I've always thought that it's cool to meet the people at the center of

huge operations that touch thousands of lives a day. Meeting the

people who run the world's most famous taxi operation--the TLC--is

like meeting whoever runs the subway system, or the tax system, or the

weather.




I'm obviously not a taxi-industry person. So I did what any sane

panel-hoster would do: beforehand, I pinged Twitter for ideas.



A number of the responses addressed one screamingly obvious problem:

matching up taxis with people who want them. Until the two parties

have a more efficient way to connect (GPS? smartphone app? text

message?), both will continue to spend way too much time fruitlessly

hunting for each other.



Lots of people want Wi-Fi in the cabs. Lots want GPS on the back-seat

screen, so you can monitor the cab's route and avoid being swindled.

There were many hopes for quicker payment methods, too,

pay-by-cellphone systems.



In the discussion that followed, and in various chats with TLC

staffers, I learned all kinds of interesting things about New York's

taxi system:



* There are 13,000 taxis in New York--and three times as many "black

cars" (freelance drivers for hire). The average cab makes 55 trips a

day, averaging 14 minutes.



* There's a good reason why there's no GPS navigation in cabs: the

drivers of New York's 13,000 taxis despise the idea. It makes them

feel monitored, spied on. It's a toxic hot-button issue for them.



* There's a good reason why there's no still no wireless way to let

taxi drivers know you want a cab. Or, rather, a bad reason.



In the 1970's, New York made a deal with the taxi drivers and the

"black car" drivers. The rule: Black cars aren't allowed to pick up

passengers spontaneously hailing on the street; those people are for

the yellow cabs only. On the other hand, in New York, you can't call

ahead for a yellow cab; that would eat into the black cars' business.



There are, in fact, smartphone apps that let you summon a cab to your

position, like TaxiMagic for the iPhone. But they can't call cabs in

New York. Why? Because summoning a taxi like this is against the law.

That's not hailing; it's prearrangement, and that's the domain of the

black cars.



I don't know. If I were the taxi union, I'd argue that the definition

of "hailing" has to change with the times. Surely sending out an "I'm

here! Come pick me up" signal, by Taxi Magic, text message or

whatever, is little more than a modern-day version of sticking your

arm out at the curb.



* Know what over 50 percent of the consumer calls to the TLC are

about? Want to guess? Anybody? Anybody?



Things left behind in taxis.



Allan Fromberg, deputy commissioner for public affairs at the TLC,

told me that *stringed instruments* make up a bizarrely

disproportionate number of the things people leave in cabs. Violins,

violas, and cellos. "Nobody knows why," he told me. "It's a Bermuda

Triangle thing."



I could not stop grinning when he told me what he had planned for the

third day of the conference, yesterday: a concert performed entirely

by musicians using the instruments they'd left in taxis--and later

recovered.



* One of my Twitter respondents asked for a return of the celebrity

recordings that, for six years in the 90's, greeted everyone who

entered a NYC taxi and urged them to buckle up. Danny DeVito, Eartha

Kitt, Elmo--there were 38 different celebrity recordings in all.



"How come you discontinued that?" I asked Mr. Fromberg.



"Because people hated it," he said with a hint of disappointment.



* You can't believe how much behind-the-scenes lobbying and regulating

goes on in the NYC taxi business: safety, anti-corruption policies,

work rules, and on and on. You have to get your car inspected every

four months. Windows can't be more than 70 percent tinted. And so on.



For example, dispatchers can send messages to the screens of

individual taxis. But they don't show up until the car is going 0

miles an hour. To prevent distraction, they pile up until the car is

stopped. (Emergency messages can blast past this limitation.)



* Taxi drivers aren't allowed to drive more than 12 hours a day. In

this economy, nobody's putting much energy into enforcing that

particular rule. But it's interesting to note that, if necessary, the

fleet operators can turn off a taxi's meter remotely--or even, in some

systems, the engine as well.



Wild, huh?



Anyway, as you can tell, the air was full of interesting taxi tidbits

and techno-tales; I'm sure there's enough more to fill a book.



In the meantime, I'll look forward to the day Wi-Fi comes to the

already tricked-out techno-cabs of New York City.



Visit David Pogue on the Web at DavidPogue.com »

Get home delivery of The New York Times for as low as $3.15 a week.

Personal Tech

Taming Your Digital Distractions



By FARHAD MANJOO



Programs to improve productivity range from those that monitor your

habits to those that block time-wasting sites.



State of the Art

Tuning In a Zippier Zune



By DAVID POGUE



Despite new features, Microsoft's Zune music/video player may still

play second fiddle to the iPod.



Adding Memory to Vista



By J. D. BIERSDORFER



I upgraded the RAM on my laptop to four gigabytes, but when I check to

see how much memory I have now, it only says about three gigabytes.

Could there be something wrong with the chips?



Tip of the Week: Opera Offers Faster Surfing Away From Home



By J. D. BIERSDORFER



If you travel frequently and are at the mercy of a dial-up connection,

tethered cellphone or an overloaded Wi-Fi network, loading up a copy

of the latest Opera browser might help.



Go to Personal Tech »

Best of Gadgetwise

App of the Week: Turn Your Phone Into a Mouse



By ROY FURCHGOTT



The Mobile Air Mouse turns an iPhone into a trackpad or mouse. It's

useful, though not always easy to master.



Kodak Introduces Money-Saving Photo Printers



By RIK FAIRLIE



Kodak says its new all-in-one printers can save you $110 a year in ink costs.



Microsoft Portable Keyboard Cuts Down on Heft, Logic



By STEPHEN WILLIAMS



Microsoft will gladly sell you a portable keyboard to go along with

your portable computer. Yes, you read that right.



Gadgetwise Blog

Sony's First Wireless Blu-ray Player



By ERIC A. TAUB



Sony introduces new slim TVs and a Blu-ray player that can connect to

the Internet wirelessly.



Multimedia

Video: Distracted Drivers



Most people are aware of the dangers of trying to multitask while

driving, but most continue to do it anyway.



Go to Series: Driven to Distraction »

Interactive Feature: Gauging Your Distraction



A game illustrates the potential consequences of distractions like

texting on your driving ability.



Driven to Distraction: Previous Articles in the Series »

Multimedia



To watch David Pogue's latest video, please visit nytimes.com/pogue.



Product Directory

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NYTimes.com: How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?

MAGAZINE   | September 06, 2009 How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? By PAUL KRUGMAN The Great Recession was the result not only of lax regulation in Washington and reckless risk-taking on Wall Street but also of faulty theorizing in academia. Advertisement Whip It The directorial debut of Drew Barrymore, starring Ellen Page (Juno) as Bliss, a rebellious Texas teen who discovers the rowdy world of roller derby. Click here to view trailer Copyright 2009  The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

Fly in the ointment, as threat, or cure

Health care. Everybody wants it, nobody wants to pay too much for it. "Too much," is an indefinable term. Any amount is "too much" to someone. How many times has a person heard "I wouldn't take that for free?" In that instance even free was "too much."

I am going to make the following assumptions. My entire treatise is based on these assumptions.

1. A) People want everyone to have access to health care.
2. B) Nobody wants their own access to health care compromised.
3. C) Nobody wants to pay "too much" for it.
4. D) People want superior health care.

Now the funs stuff begins. I will state a few challenges.
How many of the protesters at the town meetings have health care, through jobs, unions or other?
How many of these are subject to assumption B?

Currently the health care delivery system has three basic payers for services.

1. 1) Self-pay
2. 2) Private 3rd party payer (Insurance through work or self policy)
3. 3) Government (Medicare, Medicaid, VA Chp etc).

The providers can be grouped into two broad categories. For Profit and Non-Profit. The latter is a misnomer, in that they still need to cover their expenses, and hold onto reserves for expansion. Just no shareholder wealth is created by the organization. How non-profits create huge profits is a subject for another blog.

These players all charge and bill and pay each other and ultimately the nation's health care system continues. Payers #s 2 & 3 negotiate or impose fee schedules for services based on "usual and customary" charges. There is some controversy as to how those are computed, which I will not get into here. The end result is 2 & 3 pay what they pay, and the provider must write off the rest. Its not unlike having a coupon. A shopper with a coupon is like a patient with a 3rd party payer. The example is not 100% true because retailers can treat some of those coupons like vouchers in which the manufacturers reimburse the retailers for the discount. But from the customer standpoint the experience is the same.

So if a provider has a price for a procedure of $1000 and payer number 2 only pays $800 and payer number 3 only pays $750, why does the self payer still get billed the full $1000? Same reason you don't get double coupons if you don't bring the coupons. Because.

The $1000 price is a result of the provider needing to pool all the payments received for that service against all the costs associated with providing that service. If there is not enough profit (or reserves in the case of NonP), then something must happen. What about the self pay people that do not actually pay? Noncollectable debt is factored in as a business expense as well. Perhaps for example, of every $10,000 billed to patients, the provider can expect $7000, then $3000 is an expense of doing business. Not unlike sales commissions, visa charges or license fees.

So in a simple example of three patients, John uninsured, Beth insured, Chris Medicare each get the $1000 procedure. The provider can expect $2250 of the $3000 billed.

But there is another more insidious price policy other than the time honored supply and demand. What the market will bear. Supply and demand is great when people pay attention to prices. But when someone is paying for you, it is real easy to ignore inflation. Plus since the providers are really not getting 100% of their prices anyway, the "real price" is the average price after discount not the posted price. in my example $750. Think Manufactures List Price on a car. The price above the "real" price at Wal-Mart. Have you ever been to a department store to see a 25% off sign on something that months ago cost 30% less at full price?

So people with Insurance are not sensitive to price increases. This is the main reason behind co-pays. To put a price of transactions so that consumers will remember they are spending money, if just a nominal amount.

OK, so what is my fly in the ointment?

Forbid health benefits with employment or union membership. Require all providers of said benefits, to put that money in a tax free account for the recipients and let the consumers shop around for their own health care. My idea is once people realize HOW EXPENSIVE it really is, even though they will be no worse off in the end run, they will be more sympathetic to the plight of those without benefits. There may be an added benefit to the self pay insurance market with this too. Risk pooling will be out of whack. Currently large corporations with vast numbers of employees get preferred rates from insurers because of pooling the risk across the board of the smokers, the women of child bearing age, the healthy young guns and what have you. But when someone like me, applies for insurance, I may be considered a poor risk because of th mere fact I am applying for it. Am I simply that risk averse, or do I know something.

I am not sure if anyone knows the feeling of finding out I had heart disease, 2 months after letting my health insurance lapse due to a temporary budget crisis. But it was pretty horrible. I racked up 6 figures of debt with no realistic out. I was being responsible, right up until I made a fateful decision that I was "healthy enough" and I would catch up in a few months, better pay for my heat instead this winter. I am not bringing this up to garner sympathy, in fact it may have the effect of tainting the reader's view of my position as being self serving. Currently I live on disability and receive Medicare parts A,B & D.

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Taxes on students

 sourced 9-6-9

I read today that the mayor of Providence RI wants to institute a head
tax on students to the order of 300 dollars a year. The stated
assumption is that students do not pay their fare share toward the
government services that they consume. I will use municipalities common
revenue sources in my argument.

All renters pay property tax as part of their rent. True not an extra fee, but as a cost of doing
business, landlords include property taxes as one of there inputs. ie
Buyers of bread indirectly pay for the wheat to the farmers. Colleges
do not pay property taxes, but some, Brown included, pay cities funds
in lieu of taxes. On campus students indirectly already contribute to
those payments. Cities also like to point out that College land is
tax exempt. Is it safe to assume adjacent commercial ad residential
property would be valued as high if the college wasn't there? Payroll
taxes are paid by the many students that work. Sales tax is paid by
student purchases.
The average citizen pays for city services in the exact same way.
College aged citizens pay about the same in this way as do the
students. The use tax idea falls flat to me. It looks much more like
a discriminatory tax toward a class that may not be registered to vote
in the city, that may not be able to speak out in a ongoing basis. It
may also be a Town & Gown war, where the "poor" townies want to
extract as much cash from the "Rich" students. An unlikely worst
case scenario students choose to learn in cities that value their
presence. Enrollment drops, Instructors are laid off, move. Schools
have moved localities as well. I would think P,RI is a big enough boy
to not be threatened by they student body that is no different in
fundamentals than the year round residents. I live in Lexington, KY.
Here we have a massive student body. If something like this would
ever be raised here, I will counter my surprise with much more
examples than in this small blog.--
-RK
Kevin ... K3vin ... Ke7in
http://twitter.com/ke7in
"Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a
friendship" - Chaim Potok, The Chosen

Caleb Kalev

The other night the name Caleb popped into my head. I recognized it
as biblical. Tonight, I looked the name up. I found the bible story.
The Hebrew form of the name is Kalev, which is also a name common in
Estonia. Both Estonia and Finland are part of a region known as
Kaleva. The epic Kalevala is based on the oral traditions of that
region. Just more coincidences.

--
-RK
Kevin ... K3vin ... Ke7in
http://twitter.com/ke7in
"Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a
friendship" - Chaim Potok, The Chosen

Be Nice

It sounds simple or hokey. Belief that it works makes a difference. When I was driving a taxicab, I made a decision to be nice. I believe there is a famous quote in HARVEY on that and I found it in the script and highlighted it when I gave it as a gift to the lady that opened a place named after the play/film.

Deciding to be nice takes practice. Especially for a smart alec like myself. Sometimes it started with acting nice or playing nice. Soon the rewards started being noticed. Eventually it wasn't an act. But being nice is not being a doormat and giving in. One my most difficult challenges is learning when being nice is really doing more harm than good. Enabling does more harm in the big show.

its NICE to be NICE.
MEAN PEOPLE SUCK.
LOVE your ENEMY
PAY it FORWARD
BRAKE for POSSUMS
VISUALIZE a NICE WORLD

----------KEVIN
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Samsung SCH-U740 device.

Crazy Insanity

Some time ago I heard an opinion that stated that our world is so insane that going insane is an ex officio sane act.

Currently I am struck by the apparent rapid rise in mass killings. Parents killing children, children killing parents, workers killing bosses, strangers killing ministers and I will not go on. Are there that many people so close to snapping? What happened to world society?

The world is in many types of turmoil. It is easy to say "Its the economy stupid" But I don't buy that argument. I believe the loss of hope is the culprit. Persons that derive their feelings of worth externally are also part of this. Constant need for attention or recognition or points which can even be cash, all play into what I am thinking.

This hopeless or loss of external life points seem to drive people to extend their misery to others in their sphere. I have no idea how this can be fixed and can only hope this purge will remove the elements from the grand plan. I have weathered a good number of setbacks and have got past them with a number of external intervention. While it is difficult for me to ask for help when I need it, I force myself to seek it when I have lost hope. I am afraid I may be losing hope over these crazy killings. I don't know who can help. Maybe we all can.

Be nice. We cannot know what is going on in someone else's life. A cruel remark or even indifference may be what it takes to set off a volatile soul.
----------KEVIN
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Samsung SCH-U740 device.

Blue Shirts

SEARS is touting their appliance blue crew on recent TV Ads. I can't miss the comparison to BEST BUY associates. I wonder if consumers will see the shirts and subconciously associate the blue with low prices? Intriging I know, just wish I had more to back up my hunch.

----------KEVIN
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Samsung SCH-U740 device.

Fwd: NYT: The Maggots in Your

NYT: The Maggots in Your Mushrooms

"You may be grossed out, but insects and mold in our food are not new. The F.D.A. actually condones a certain percentage of "natural contaminants" in our food supply - meaning, among other things, bugs, mold, rodent hairs and maggots. "

For more: http://s.nyt.com/s/DfAzNIoo

at&t 2009 Real Yellow Pages

Phone books by their very nature are out of date immediately upon
printing. People move and businesses close. But for that very reason
they should at least be fact checked. Windstream is the land based
network for the majority of addresses, the data custodian. It took
over from Alltel which in turn took over from Verizon which grew out of
GTE. In the new book, Alltel is still listed as the local carrier.
This despite their exit from all land line service years ago to become
a wireless only company. The Lexington non emergency number only has
six digits.

The Perfect Friendfeed for Ke7in

The Perfect Friend may already be here. I believe it suffers from the do everything for everyone mentality that bloats the Redmonsters product. I have always been a multi-tasker, and I have long had multiple blogs on multiple topics.

The way I think friendfeed should work, is, as a new user, you should be prompted to add your feeds. Once you have a coherent feed, then look for your friends. But by default channels be you + friends or just you. Chances are, the friends you find (at this time) will be power users that do it in excess, and that can be intimidating to someone that just wants to combine his facebook status and diggs into an easy RSS feed. Can a for dummies book be requested? Can you get that vidiot professor to give away a cd-rom on it?


At the risk of sounding like a self aggrandizing sop, I think of friendfeed as my effortless way of creating my own personal version of daVinci's notebooks. An easier analogy may be how Dracula the novel is arranged. Thats what friendfeed does for me. It pulls everything from my disparate sources and puts them in a one stop shop. sometimes I will come up with a revolutionary and clever something, and I will send out a twitter one shot, refer to it in Facebook Note then clarify direct to Friendfeed, as comments. such that FF is the only place you need to go, IF you actually want to know what I am talking about.

I am not out to change the world. I hate proselytizing to others about how I think they should do things or how things are. So I create my metaphorical mountaintop, and let seekers come to me for the answers. If they know how.

Incidentally, I have my ff rss feed shipping out to another twitter account that I never post directly, well, I do, but only when I want the seekers to have a bit more info than my standard run of the mill followers.

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and so it goes

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