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September 25, 2006

Video: Bill Clinton and Fox's Wallace; 35 artists morph in 7 minutes; Facing Medicare drugs 'moat'; How Digg works

YouTube has the videos of Chris Wallace's Fox News Sunday interview with former President Bill Clinton:

Chris Wallace Interviews Bill Clinton Pt 1 (09:20)

Chris Wallace Interviews Bill Clinton Pt 2 (06:51)

Chris Wallace Interviews Bill Clinton Pt 3 (05:47)

Transcript

Morph on: Joan C. Gratz, Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase, 1992, Academy Award Winner for Best Short Film (Animated), 1993. Gratz morphs, merges and melds the work of 35 famous artists in just under seven minutes, but this isn't digital morphing. Her site, gratzfilm.com describes "her unique animation technique, clay-painting. Working with bits of clay as if they were oil paints, she blends colors and etches fine lines to create a seamless flow of images. "

A brief clip of a more recent animation, Dowager's Idyll, is described here as "painted tapestry of kaleidoscopic images, set to the music of The 3-Leg Torso Sextet," reminds me of a kaleidoscope screen saver I used to use.

Thanks to wood s lot for unearthing this eyepopper.

Bottom drops out: WP: Millions of Seniors Facing Medicare 'Doughnut Hole'.

Millions of older Americans are confronting a temporary break in their Medicare drug coverage this month that will require them to pay the full cost of their prescriptions or face the painful prospect of going without.

This is the "doughnut hole" in the new Medicare drug benefit that began in January, and advocates for seniors say there is nothing sweet about it. Some seniors knew nothing of the coverage gap until they were hit with a bigger drug bill, advocates say....

A few more-expensive plans have no doughnut hole, and low-income beneficiaries can receive extra help from Medicare that eliminates the gap. Under the standard plan, however, the government picks up the bulk of drug costs only until the beneficiary and the government together have spent $2,250 for the year. At that point, beneficiaries must pay 100 percent of costs until they have spent a total of $3,600 of their own money. Then the federal subsidy resumes, paying 95 percent of any additional expenses.

Sounds more like a moat than a doughnut hole to me: Get across this stretch and you're home free.

The cost per pill, cheaper alternatives and alternative medications also deserve scrutiny.

This is dangerous. I can imagine patients rationing their medications -- take every other dose, for instance, and hope it helps enough. After a spate of people are hospitalized and perhaps die from the conditions their medication ought to keep in check, the system may change.

(It's not like asking people to manage a food budget that can be trimmed by paying attention to sales and skipping dessert.)

Digging into... How Digg Works, at How Stuff Works:

"Digg.com... a user-driven news Web site that brings together hundreds of thousands of people to do the work of finding, submitting, reviewing and featuring news stories drawn from every corner of the Web."

The huge Digg community is made up of users who play different, often overlapping roles. There are submitters who post news stories that they find in blogs, professional news sites and random postings around the Web. These stories land in the Digg queue. There are casual reviewers who look for interesting stuff in the queue and "Digg it" -- meaning they click a button to let Digg.com know they think it's cool. Once an article gets enough Diggs (and meets a bunch of other secret requirements), it's promoted to the homepage. There are truly dedicated reviewers who spend hours every day combing the queue to actively promote good stories and report bad stories (which will eventually get removed with enough reports against them). These people really drive what ends up on the homepage and therefore what gets thousands and thousands of people clicking through to read the story, sometimes crashing unsuspecting Web servers....

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 4:45 AM | Permalink