Vermont has started Single Payer health care. This article, from 2011, aptly sums it up: Vermont Passes Single-Payer Health Care, World Doesn't End.

Americans have a problem understanding anything that doesn't fit squarely within the Democrat/Republican ideology, and the media ensures the dialog remains polarized. Fortunately, Vermont has Bernie Sanders, an Independent, to go to bat for them in the Senate. His famous quote on the subject is "if you are serious about real healthcare reform, the only way to go is single-payer."

"Nashville tuning" is where the high strings from a 12-string guitar are put on a regular 6-string guitar. The tuning is the same as a regular guitar, from low to high, E - A - D - G - B - E, but the E - A - D - G string are tuned an octave higher, requiring a smaller gauge of string. The E - B strings are tuned normally.

In a previous blog post, I mentioned that SSL proxy servers, deployed in 1999, were used for finding and monitoring the downloading of porn. In the context of that blog post, this was originally done to find employees who were wasting work time, and provide a solid reason for terminating a non-productive employee without the unions pitching a fit.

Fast forward to 2013, and that same tech is being used to "undermine a target's credibility, reputation and authority"...

Imagine what this would look like crossed with Nanobots...

inFORM - Interacting With a Dynamic Shape Display from Tangible Media Group on Vimeo.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3021522/innovation-by-design/mit-invents-a-…

Here's a gem:

According to revelations about the QUANTUM program, the NSA can “shoot” (their words) an exploit at any target it desires as his or her traffic passes across the backbone... Which means the rest of us — and especially any company or individual whose operations are economically or politically significant — are now targets. All cleartext traffic is not just information being sent from sender to receiver, but is a possible attack vector.

There are several methods floating around the Interwebthingy, but this is the method that worked first time for me after several other methods failed miserably.

Here are 3 unexpected uses for the music of Britney Spears:

Number 3:

According to reports, Britney's hits, including Oops! I Did It Again and Baby One More Time, are being employed by British naval officers in an attempt to scare off pirates along the east coast of Africa. Perhaps nothing else – not guns, not harpoons – is quite as intimidating as the sound of Ms Spears singing "Ooh baby baby!"

Allison Schrager proposes that America should end Daylight Savings and consolidate its timezones into just two time zones:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/daylight-saving-tim…

Since the government shutdown, the National Weather Service have started including a plea for help "please pay us" in their weather service bulletins: