uite the addition to my site, if I do say so. Courtesy of Jessica Hische at Daily Drop Cap. They’re all pretty sweet, but that Q up there to start this post is my favorite so far. Thanks, Jessica.

A drop cap is also called an Initial:

In a written work, an initial is a letter at the beginning of a work, a chapter or a paragraph that is larger than the rest of the text. The word comes from the Latin initialis, which means standing at the beginning. It is often several lines in height and in older books or manuscripts sometimes ornately decorated.

rom where I sit, the Google Navigation solution for Android 2.0 looks to be essentially the final nail in the coffin of the current generation of GPS navigation devices. I want it on my iPhone yesterday.

I’ve read a lot today about how the requirement for a constant data connection makes the app basically useless. I don’t think so. For one thing, a huge chunk of the potential users live and will only use the device in cities or other places with adequate coverage. I’ve used the MotionX-GPS Drive application which is available right now for a mere $2.99 (about $200 less than the full TomTom iPhone solution). It works pretty well when in a data coverage area. Unfortunately, it acts just like a traditional GPS unit, and as of today, that’s not enough. The Google solution will be just as functional but with all the sweet added features leveraged from other parts of the Mountain View campus (voice recognition, street view, satellite views). Game changing.

But what about routes that do go beyond data coverage? Maybe I’m just being too simple, but I would think that for 99% of use cases, the following solution would work:

1. You pick a destination, gNav calculates a route.

4. It just works.

Perhaps you have some preferences to set (always cache maps for entire routes v. only for areas of probably data loss, cache maps to 5 miles beyond the route v. to 10 or 60 miles, remember that I’m on AT&T and be freakishly conservative when you look at the coverage maps) but it seems this is a pretty easy nut to crack.

And with the head start Google has on satellite imagery and especially Street View, this game is over.

The only real disadvantage I can see to this solution is that for a heavy navigation user, this may take your phone out of commission for too much time, but what’s to stop someone from building a dedicated Android GPS drive.

Look, I’m not a rocket surgeon, but I don’t think you need to be one to see that the Wall Street reaction to the Google Nav announcement was completely appropriate.

Google will own the Navigation market within 5 years.

o my nurse calls me and says, “[NAME REDACTED] just called. She says the medicines are controlling her nausea enough to stop throwing up, but she’s still too nauseous to eat much. She wants you to write a note to her probation officer telling him it’s okay for her to smoke marijuana so to expect it in her urine drug test.”

And, just to be clear, I do not live in a state where medical marijuana is legal.

‘ve figured it out. Either Obama is wicked wise like good old King Solomon, or he’s just willing to have a disastrous hybrid bag of hurt be the required next step to universal health care in the United States.

Here’s what I mean.

The current healthcare proposals (with or without a true public option) are really just adjustments or evolutions of the current way healthcare is funded in this country, and the way healthcare is funded is broken. These proposals will not work. How do I know this?

1. Healthcare insurance companies are not benevolent, and have gotten on board with the plan. I won’t elaborate, but ask just about any doctor in America if they think healthcare insurers are out for anyone but themselves. In other words, if they are for it, it will make them money. There is no other rationale by which they make decisions.

2. Pharmaceutical companies are not benevolent, and have gotten on board with the plan. There’s a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, disinformation) associated with pharmaceutical companies, and a lot of it is not accurate, but the bottom line is this. When deciding which study to fund, which results to publish, which research to pursue, and which healthcare plan to back, they are also only on the lookout for their own bottom line.

3. It won’t be fair. No matter how you regulate it, there’s no way so many different payors can be involved and have it be fair. Some will pay more or less. Some doctors will participate in some care plans and not in others, as is the case now with the public (Medicare, Medicaid) and private options. Some things will be covered under one plan but not under another.

4. Costs will go up. Case in point: Massachusetts.

I could go on, but I’m a simple guy and simple points seem adequate. The system is way too broken to use its parts to reassemble a working machine.

So, back to Solomon and splitting the baby. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the second and third paragraphs of this wikipedia entry spell it out. I think the current hybrid proposals are analagous. They will kill the baby.

Perhaps President Obama and company know this, and are hoping one side or the other will say, “Wait, wait, don’t hurt my baby, I concede, do it their way.” But the reality is that politics in this country don’t work that way and both parties are so infiltrated with lobbying worms that neither will ever try to bother to see through to true clarity.

So, since I don’t think either side will give in (heck, I don’t even think they know what they’re fighting for, just that they’re fighting against each other), I’m left to conclude that President Obama, who is not a moron, knows that this is just the incredibly painful step we have to take to get to the final goal, nationalized healthcare.

From my seat, then, the best path seems obvious. A majority of Americans feel healthcare is a right. I guess I agree (I agree that it’s a part of the sanctity and dignity of human life, but I’m not clear that it’s a right that should be associated with/mediated by the state), and in any event, numbers don’t lie. There are numerous other polls that agree. This is a democracy; majority rules.

So, if healthcare is a right, and the current system is broken (ask any doctor, if you doubt the politicians), then we just need to accept a purely public single payor system. Period. Nothing else will make for universal fair coverage. But can we please just skip this godawful painful stage they’re trying to implement now?

That’s right, a religious doctor who lives in Texas just suggested we go all the way to a single nationalized healthcare system. You read it here first.

Here are a few of the implications that matter to me; again, just a simple list of the seemingly obvious.

Will the lives of doctors change? Probably.

Will the applications to medical school drop? Probably.

Will costs go up? Yes. But recovering the profits of insurance companies and the more outrageous profits of pharmaceutical companies might mitigate this.

Will healthcare get measurably worse in this country? Check out this article comparing outcomes in the US and the UK. It intends to dispel right-wing myths, and is reassuring overall. From a Catholic point of view, though, it still hints at a potentially scary situation in terms of possible “rationing” of care. See the next item.

Will all fetuses with Down be aborted, or will all old people be pushed out on ice floes? Goodness, I hope not, but these are potential risks, and we should fight like hell to preserve the sanctity of life if we allow the government to take over healthcare.

Once it’s available, will everyone avail themselves of healthcare? The Massachusetts story seems to point to folks using their newfound benefits. On the other hand, I was just talking to one of our residents who delivered six babies over the weekend and only one of the moms had any prenatal care. That’s scary, because anyone in this country who’s pregnant can get funded prenatal care with just a minimum of effort. These moms weren’t unable to afford prenatal care. They just couldn’t be bothered. Funding won’t solve that problem.

In the end, I’m worried about the implications of universal healthcare, but I’m also worried about folks who cannot or do not receive healthcare for financial reasons. And, in this country, where we’ve come to the conclusion that healthcare is a right, I think going down this bastardized hybrid path is just splitting the baby. So I’ll be the true mother, who was willing to give up her baby rather than see it split in half. I’m a capitalist and libertarian at heart, but on this issue, I give. Don’t kill my baby. Let’s just bite the bullet and go to a purely public single payor healthcare plan. And let’s knock ourselves out fighting to make it work.

he world in which/on which we live is a glorious creation and I thank my God for it every day.

However, a lot of what I read today, on Earth Day was either too over the top tree-huggy or too right wing nut job dismissive. The only thing that rang true was a little piece by a certain bike commuter in NYC.

When I thought about it, I realized I really didn’t want to do anything that was bad for the environment. Unfortunately, though, since simply washing your taint in the shower is enough to destroy the world, it seemed the only thing I could do to be environmentally friendly (or at least benign) was pick a small plot of land, never leave it, and subsist entirely on rainwater and whatever plants I could manage to grow. Even then, I’d have to figure out what to do with my waste. I supposed I’d have to compost that.

The whole thing’s worth a read.

s requested by Carol in the comments of the last post, here’s a version without the tasks box.

ecent evolution in my job has me attending what I would consider to be too freaking many meetings. And they really aren’t that bad but what has required some workflow adjustment for me is figuring out whether and how to take notes during these meetings and most importantly how to capture the tasks that will fall on me after the meeting.

Before getting into my current solution, though, let’s step back a year or so to my discovery of Doane Paper. Chad Doane is either a clever fellow who’s discovered a paper design that is perfect for a substantial portion of the folks who write/draw, or he’s in my head like some kind of Cusack in Malkovich and our brains just happen to function alike. I suspect it’s the former. Whichever; Doane Paper is ruled paper combined with graph paper and, at least for me, it just works.

So, back to the meetings. I doodle. I think it helps me concentrate. Some might disagree, but I won’t stop. And I have to capture those tasks. Long story short, I started informally dividing my Doane Paper into sections for these functions. It worked pretty well, but I had ideas for customizing it just a bit more. So, I fired up my favorite Mac app, OmniGraffle, and in literally 10 minutes had a Doane Paper Hack (Chad’s description) that I thought would work. It’s completely customized to what I want, I don’t know nor care if it works for anyone else, but if you fancy downloading a .pdf and checking it out, here it is.

Notes from the first of 4 freaking meetings yesterday (taken with my crappy iPhone camera – my apologies) below.

UPDATE: Chad Doane approves, and says he gets about one Doane Paper hack a week and this is the first he’s liked and granted “official” status.

A few weeks ago at around 2 pm, on the first Saturday of SXSW Interactive, I got to Austin. It was a brief and hastily planned trip, and I timed my arrival to coincide with the likely wake up time of my son, who had worked his usual 11pm-7am shift ending that morning. First on our agenda, a late lunch at Chuy’s. Next up, several hours sitting in a mostly empty coffee shop just talking about life and the future and music and movies and the family. For me, it was much more than a blast.

For parets, days like this are rare. For one thing, it’s not often I get this much time with just one kid. But even more delightfully for Dad, my eldest is right now uniquely equipped for this kind of encounter. Old enough and educated enough that our talks are intellectually stimulating and challenging, and just at the point where his youth and wisdom have intersected to make me a viable mining resource.

It was a great freaking day.

Ironically, at the same time we sat down with chips and salsa at Chuy’s, John Gruber and Merlin Mann opened their “duet rant” at SXSW. I had known this session (ridiculously titled HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility!) was coming, and were it not for the clearly more wonderful opportunity I had in place, I might have thought this one session worth the price of SXSW admission. These guys produce some of my favorite stuff. Gruber’s Daring Fireball is THE source for Mac nerdery; it’s written with a craftsman’s care and skill. Mann’s widely varied products are often genius. One example; You Look Nice Today, with Adam Lisagor and Scott Simpson, a podcast which rarely fails to burn my nostrils with spewing Diet Coke (if your sensibilities are even slightly modest, though, stay away, as there’s nothing politically correct or safe for work about the show).

Anyway, long story short, I had my cake and now I get to eat it too. The Gruber/Mann session’s available as part of the 43 Folders podcast. Check it out, ’cause it’s a doozy.

In fact, my few gentle readers, it’s sparked in me an enthusiasm to tilt this site towards a political/spiritual/ethical obsession of my own. Stay tuned.

MacHeist has announced their latest bundle. And, as with each previous iteration, discussion and criticism have ensued. I’d like to weigh in with some thoughts from a slightly different vantage point.

First, a very brief summary. The main accusation against MacHeist has been that it undervalues the work of Mac developers by offering their products for sale at a massively discounted price. Marco Arment describes this. Apologists for MacHeist point out the advantages for consumers (cheap goods) and developers (cash infusion). No one denies that the folks running MacHeist do very well themselves.

This criticism, careful observers of the Mac world know, has evolved over time. A couple of years ago, Gus Mueller pulled no punches in blasting the offering, but this year his Acorn (a wonderful program for which I’ve already paid the regular price) is part of the package. He says all his concerns about underpaid developers have been addressed. I’ll take his word for it. Elsewhere, John Gruber of Daring Fireball, a former critic, has since accepted advertising from MacHeist. Gruber’s not known for kowtowing; obviously his reservations have also been resolved. There is no doubt that MacHeist has made changes with each iteration. For example, developers are now paid a percentage of sales rather than a flat rate. As such, I can accept that these former gadflies feel their concerns have all been addressed, but that the shift in opinion coincides with money changing hands is nevertheless worth noting.

As for me, the whole thing continues to poke at a corner of my conscience.

First, it’s the organizers. Specifics are easily googled (start with MyDreamApp) and I won’t elaborate, but MacHeist isn’t the first experience these folks have had with ethical criticism and hurt feelings.

Second, I still don’t think it’s best for developers. Okay, I get it, they’re adults, they can decide what to do with their software, it’s their choice. Fine, but just because an adult with free will decides to go to a payday lender/loan shark to borrow money doesn’t mean that loan sharking isn’t morally bankrupt. It is. Even if there are people who’ve been happy with their loan shark experience. That’s not an exact analogy of course, but my point is that doing something of my own free will doesn’t rule out the possibility that someone’s taking advantage of me. In fact, isn’t that how con men work; deceiving the mark into freely making a bad decision. One might even argue that the ultimate con man is the one whose victim who doesn’t even know they’ve been had.

Third, in direct response to one of the apologies made in favor of MacHeist, I have actually already planned to purchase The Hit List and Espresso, so I cannot claim that a fraction of the retail price is more than these developers were going to get from me anyway. Nope, those are both right near the top of my Mac Software shopping to-do list.

Finally, Simone Manganelli sums up a part of how I feel. For me, his conclusion is true:

Fundamentally, what it comes down to is that those consumers who are participating in the MacHeist bundle are tightwads.

So here we are, MacHeist 3 has rolled around, and I don’t think any rational person would say it hasn’t gotten more fair to developers with each iteration, but still, as I outlined above, I won’t be buying it with a clear conscience. If you have no misgivings about doing business with this enterprise, then we can, as Arment also put it, respectfully disagree.

But here’s the rub. My conscience was really ablaze with the first MacHeist. Mueller and Gruber are folks I respect and their criticisms rang true. But guess what, temptation got the better of me. I bought the bundle. Great freaking deal for me, right? By MacHeist 2, I had listened to a MacBreak Weekly series of pros and cons, read some new opinions, seen the Daring Fireball ad, and felt that some of the issues had been addressed. Still, it didn’t feel quite right as I punched in my credit card number and made the purchase. Nice bundle, though. Great deal.

Now, round three, and, despite improvements, as outlined above, I can’t purchase this package with a clear conscience. But will I purchase it anyway?

I’m reminded of my all-time favorite Steve Jobs quote, in regards to “stealing” music:

People need to have the incentive that if they invest and succeed, they can make a fair profit. Otherwise they’ll stop investing. But on another level entirely, it’s just wrong to steal. Or, let’s put it another way: it is corrosive to one’s character to steal.

I’m not all that worried about the developers in this deal.

I’m certainly not worried about the folks at MacHeist.

I’m worried about me.

It drives me crazy when TV show medical folks call an injury a GSW. That is the written shorthand for gun shot wound that is used on ER charts or paramedic reports. It’s stupid to say it out loud because gun shot wound is three syllables long and GSW is five. Language like that, along with every single second of the TV series House is proof that the medical consultants on most TV shows are not who you want to see if you get sick.