Was it the Hospital lobby that pushed for the shift in costs of treating the poor from ER rooms (Hospitals) to the Health Care Insurers?

 What do the Republicans really want out of the Middle East? Is it peace? I find it hard to defend a philosophy of which equates spreading peace with dropping bombs.

Obama was buying the beers yesterday for Merkel. The gang was all there to talk about what to do with the guy that wasn't there.

What to make of China's 180 in fiscal policy regarding banks and lending. They are going to meet that 7% growth goal one way or another! But $4 trillion in regional debt? What global repercussions will this have? Will it be a ripple effect or a tsunami (is that Japanese?)What would America look like if had that kind of debt? Leetonia had better get a public pool for under a Billion.

More money! Chasing more stuff! I like it. I missed the roaring 20's and was too young to appreciate the 80s. I want my monopoly money decade!

If there is more money chasing more things, employers seemed to miss the memo about sending more of that "more money" to WAGES. Walmart and McDonalds have caved, but is that the crack in the dam that leads to a flood of wages? Middle class wages are worse off than 20+ years ago inflation adjusted. That just sucks.

And speaking of Job creators. Uber's concept could do it for sure. I know a school teacher who quit because he made more money at Uber!  ahhh Capitalism. ....

Wiki and Bitcoin won't create more jobs. Just shift them. AirBnB is going to turn us all into hoteliers?

Technology has got a little sham in it's DNA.   When you provide computers to school children, the technology almost never catches the bottom learners with the top. It almost always serves only to distance the top learners even more from the middle to lower end children.

Technology didn't make American Pharoah run faster than 42 years ago. (Secretariat).

 

 

We can't retrain the humans fast enough now.  Does the merry go round eventually spin too fast and everyone falls off after losing their grip? Or do we all get to spend the days on the beach drinking Zombie Margaritas?

We were promised more leisure time!

Jack White lives up to Hype.

I don't like hippies and I like hipsters even less. My least favorite part of all the Grateful Dead shows, and Phish shows and all the Dave Mathews shows I've been too has always been the dirty, smelly hippies. It's not their hemp clothing or veggie burritos that bother me. It's the smell. They just don't get the time to bathe  when they're on the road, dedicating their lives to catching the next show in the next city.

I hate hipsters. They're a different animal. Hipsters are supposed to be pioneers of culture. Shunning conformity for individualism. The sad irony is that being cool is their only desire. If a place is the cool place, then they have to be there, if a hat is the cool hat, then they have to wear it. If a band is the cool band, then they have to love them.

Jack White is the coolest dude on the planet. Everything he does is cool. From his style to his music, to his graphical design choices for his Third Man Records. He has the best selling Vinyl album on the charts. Vinyl is climbing the hipster charts with a bullet. But there is a problem with being cool. As soon as everyone thinks your cool, some people won't think you're so cool anymore. 100% saturation on the cool charts is the beginning of the end.

So my excitement and exuberance was mixed with a pinch of trepidation as his current tour is in support of his 2nd solo album Lazaretto (which is an isolation hospital for people with leprosy). I suspected his coolness had peaked. And there was no doubt the show would be crawling with hipsters.

The lines were shockingly long. The hipsters abundant. The fedoras ubiquitous. Black frame glasses.... well those are timeless.  My anxiety grew.  And then Jack White took the stage. The first thing I noticed was the energy. It was quickly evident that this was a rock and roll show. Like a REAL rock and roll show. The MC had told us that cell phone cameras were not allowed. The justification being that it's better to be in the moment than to be documenting being in the moment. It was hard to look away. White moved, and bounced, and jumped and pumped his guitar like a rock star should. He paced his set list perfectly. The crowd took a breath when White allowed us too. Then took our breath away with his next choice from his entire catalog. The bass drum thumped and was the engine that drove the train foreword. But it wasn't just that. Jack White has tapped into the vein of music that fed Blind Willie McTell, Johnny Cash and Jimmy Page. His abiding love for blues guitar is evident even under a mountain of distortion and effects pedals.

Sipping on a bottle of champagne that he set on the drum riser, White told the crowd that someone backstage had told him to save some energy for his 2 night stint in his hometown Detroit. He told to the crowd, that wasn't him. He was going to give it all he had TONIGHT! As White and the band were ripping into a 5 song encore filled with improvisational blues and mind thumping energy, I found myself jumping and shouting right along with every damn hipster in there. He had lived up to the hype. He was worth the price. He was still cool. And my ears are still ringing for it.

Warby Parker

I've worn glasses since I was 6 years old. I tried contacts and I hated them. So glasses have always been where it's at and important for me. As long as I can remember I've always went to Lenscrafters. There big thing was lenses in about an hour. Which I thought was cool because they had that lens laboratory behind the glass windows that you could watch people in white lab coats working on your lenses. SPACE AGE. You might not know this but an Italian company called Luxotica owns Lenscrafters along with almost 90% of every frame brand in the market. Ray-ban, Oakley, Coach, Gucci, EVERYTHING, if you wear glasses, you are wearing a Luxotica brand. It's one of the biggest monopolies I've seen in the market today. And they're expensive now too. Nowadays I get the nice frames with the special space age technology lenses. And recently I went to Lenscrafters to get my new pair. Eye exam with my insurance was $20. Not bad. The lenses and frames would cost me, out of pocket, $425. As I said, space age lenses are needed.
     But recently on CNBC, a small start up company called Warby Parker was featured. They advertise $99 for frames AND lenses. Hmmm. Cheap. No space age. No thanks. Their business model is weird. But on a whim,  I surfed their website and decided to try it. Here is how it goes.

1. You browses a ton of frames on their website, and choose 5 of them you think you'll like. They have  different shapes, sizes and styles, but skew towards urban hipster. The funniest thing is the frames all have WASPy names such as Burke, Felton, Walker, Crane, Winston, Beckett, Huxley. I laughed because if I were writing a novel, or story I could simply pick any two frame names and have my character's. Winston Beckett grew up in Bucks County Pennsylvania and spent his summers on the Jersey shore. His friend Burke Huxley was a bit of a thrill seeker.

2. My five frames arrived in the mail about a week later. I quickly narrowed it down to 2. And with a little help I chose a frame that I actually liked. They didn't look cheap at all.  The Preston Whiskey Tortoise.  yes that is the name of the frames. I put them all back in the prepaid box and sent them  back to Warby Parker.

3. Next I ordered the Preston's on the website. I had my eye exam on paper and they required me to scan it and send it. I was contacted the next day by email saying that my lenses required their upgrade to the SPACE AGE technology lenses. They were exactly the same as the Lenscrafters. The cost? $25. So my total for the transaction would be $125.

4. Now the weird part.

This is the picture I had to take using my webcam. That is a credit card over my mouth, as per Warby Parker's instructions. This is to help measure pupillary distance so as to help align the lenses properly with my eyes. Doing this was a pain to get right.  It took 3 people. We couldn't do it on an Ipad because the program uses Flash. There was a moment when I questioned my decision. But we got the picture, and I sent it off with my order.

5. The next day I recieved an email saying that my glasses were being made. 2 days after that they shipped and 4 days after that I received them in a fancy embossed box that contained a fancy embossed glasses case that said Warby Parker on it.

6. The glasses fit fine. They work fine and look fine. I've very happy. The frames are made in China and Warby wouldn't tell me where they get their lenses made. But I am guessing it's in America based on the turnaround time. Overall, not a bad deal. So cheap that I could order a second pair, or a pair of sunglasses and still not be near what the Lenscrafters pair would have cost me. Not ready in an hour and they don't say Armani on the side, but a third the cost. Is Luxotica worried about Preston Crane or his troubled older brother Felton? They should be.

So the next time you see me, ask me about my glasses. If you even notice that I got them changed.