Update: I finally had a response that wasn't canned text, Facebook Payment operations admitted that there is a "glitch" sometimes when you click the link in the e-mail. Even after this admission they are still unwilling to do anything at all. They are keeping the money they stole.

Five part series by CTV edmonton on healthcare in Alberta. It is a shame they did not get more questions in or dug into some specific instances but all in all this is a great snapshot of the arguments for a new care delivery mechanism.

Pt. 1: Alberta Health Video 1
Pt. 2: Alberta Health Video 2
Pt. 3: Alberta Health Video 3

If there was a category called awesome, this video would fit into it.

Ricky Gervais
Ron Howard
Richard Burton
Jimmy Stewart
Former President George W. Bush
William Shatner
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Woody Allen
Boris Karloff
George Clooney
Tom Brokaw
Harvey Keitel

This is about how it works when setting goals with your manager in a large company. I think performance appraisals goal setting is important in a semi-informal way, but it always worth poking fun at individuals that take it too seriously.

It is hard to argue that libertarianism making a come back in the US, big government advocates argue that it was free markets and deregulation that led to economic calamity but no matter how you splice it there was government involved all along. The social 'safety net' has become a much larger expense in both the US and Canada, but few are thrilled about what the systems offer. The bulk of Canadian electorate seems to be satisfied with the general state of things when compared to the rest of the world, but one could argue that less Canadians are in the, "well it can't happen to us", camp.

Stats are great, line graphs, bar graphs, and pie charts can be magnificent things. But what happens when the interpretations of these numbers becomes the central focus of an organization? It seems to me they become increasingly more important to people when the organization goals are vague and unclear. Perhaps these stats give us some hope that we are still working towards something, or in many cases used by politicians or other officials to convince people they have made that 'change' they were hired for.