A Personal Take on the Medicare Debate

Medicare payments to doctors are currently under threat because the two parties in Congress cannot agree on how to avoid an “automatic” cut in payments even though neither side claims to actually want the cuts to go into effect. The deadlock is usually described as a conflict between the interests of poor sick people, represented by Democrats who want to cut funding for the semi-private Medicare Advantage program, and the interests of insurance companies, represented by Republicans who want to cut benefits to Medicare recipients. If the situation were really that simple, I, a low-income, disabled Medicare beneficiary would have no trouble whatsoever deciding which side to be on: I don't want to lose my benefits! In addition, I am a long-time Democrat and am in favor of a government-managed single-payer system of health care. I have lived in France, which has a national health system, and have friends in England and Canada which each have somewhat different single-payer systems. I have seen the advantages of these systems first-hand.

I offer this account of my own experience choosing a Medicare health plan, complete with the boring and confusing details, in order to show that the decision facing Congress regarding Medicare funding is a complex question requiring analysis of the details of costs and benefits to (different groups of) recipients. It is not, as most commentators seem to think, fundamentally an ideological issue involving a choice between public and privatized models of care, or between serving taxpayers or poor people.

Newly co-published by Furtherfield and The Hyperliterature Exchange: an examination of the new genre of art computer games, dealing with The Princess Murderer by Geniwate and Deena Larsen, The Free Culture Game by Molleindustria, The Marriage by Rod Humble, Samorost 2 by Amanita Design, The Graveyard by Tale of Tales and Gravitation by Jason Rohrer.

"The fundamental question, which haunts all attempts to create art from computer games, is whether it is really possible to reconcile the two. It could be argued that art requires a different kind of concentration from a game, and uses a different part of the mind - and that the more intensely you play a game, the less inclined you will be to pay attention to any artistic qualities it may possess"

To read the whole article, go to http://www.hyperex.co.uk/reviewgamesasart.php or http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=345 .

- Edward Picot
personal website - http://edwardpicot.com

I have now finished revising The Puzzle Box, as follows:

1. A new interface/front cover
2. One new Help Card animation and a couple of minor amendments to other animations
3. More sparing use of the box-icon within the chapters: it now only appears at those points where the box is mentioned in the narrative, and where readers will find something new if they click to open it
4. The page-background for Chapter Three has been redesigned
5. The text has been thoroughly proof-read and various minor amendments have been made
6. On the back of this (show me the money!), a print version is now available via www.lulu.com and will soon be available from Amazon

http://www.edwardpicot.com/puzzlebox/
(If you don't see the new interface, with lots of pictures on it, when you get to the Puzzle Box index-page, click CTRL + Refresh to update.)

Some recommended videos:

Recently, largely under the tutelage of the film-maker Michael Szpakowski (http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/vlog/ScenesOfProvincialLife.cgi), I've been looking at a lot of experimental videos, and I've been really surprised and excited by some of the work. Below is a selection of some personal favourites, and it seems to me that one of the most noteworthy things about them is how different they are from each other in terms of their style:

OK Charlie by Brian Gibson - http://lucidunison.com/baio/okcharlie_web.mov: A portrait of the video artist Doron Golan by his fellow-artist Brian Gibson. Golan chinks his coffee-cup and says "OK Charlie"; the sequence is looped; and suddenly we're listening to a tune. Manages to be fingerclickin' funky and toe-curlingly clever at the same time.

Journey by Robert Croma - http://robertcroma.com/2008/09/24/the-journey/: Commuters on a tube train: profiles, the backs of heads, shoulders, sliding doors. About halfway through this video there's an extremely subtle transition from observational realism to something symbolic and metaphysical, leading up to a magical moment at the end.

Her Morning Elegance by Oren Lavie - http://www.myspace.com/orenlavie: A video, co-directed by singer-songwriter Oren Lavie, to go with his song of the same name. The song is pretty good, but the video is really lovely, a supremely inventive piece of stop-motion animation featuring a girl on a bed and a lot of pillows and laundry.

The 9th Allegro by Doron Golan - http://www.the9th.com/04/the9th_allegro/allegro9.mov: All of Doran Golan's videos are worth seeing, but this is one of the most outstanding, and contains many of his most important themes: a sense of place, a sense of character, a sense of culture and history, a really complex, stereotype-free attitude towards politically explosive material, and above all tremendous qualities of composition, structure and control.

Inaugurationanimation by Pall Thayer - http://www.vimeo.com/2917641: Television coverage of the US Presidential Inauguration, slowed down and processed until it acquires a rich painterly texture. Redolent not just of American history and American politics, but the history of American art too. The slowness of the action seems to bring out the patrician, studied aspect of the ceremony: the intensely aspirational quality, the feeling that individuals can make a difference, that the human spirit is inherently noble, and that the world can be made a better place if we just make a sufficient effort - along with the intense theatricality, the self-regard, the sense that these gestures are being made with the whole world for an audience, and that if you can just get the gestures right it almost doesn't matter what you actually do.

U cant hold me down by Donna Kuhn - http://digitalaardvarks.blogspot.com/2009/02/u-cant-hold-me-down.html: The dancer and artist Donna Kuhn has gradually been evolving her own completely individual style of experimental video, and this is one of the best examples. Glimpses of dance, glimpses of sea-shore, and glimpses of Donna's spiky, Klee-style drawings combine into something mysterious, tense, sad and poetic.

- Edward Picot
http://hyperex.co.uk - The Hyperliterature Exchange
http://edwardpicot.com - personal website

“All of yesterday I feared for my husband's life,” said the Queen. “I carried him to my palace beneath the earth, and gave him food and drink. Ice-cold water from the well beneath the world-tree, and manna from the deserts of the moon. Tonight he stood up and asked what time of year it was. Then he went roaming out into the world, as he used to in the old days. I went up to the moon, to keep watch, and it seemed to me that the world already looked different. Then I remembered the puzzle that you had shown me, Dora, and I guessed the answer."

The secret of the box is revealed, the children see Father Christmas, and Dora learns what she has to do to get her Dad back.

"The Puzzle Box has all the magical numinous quality of Lewis, Tolkien,
and L'Engle." - Millie Niss, writer and new media artist, http://www.sporkworld.org .

Chapter eleven is online now: please note that chapter twelve will be uploaded on Christmas Eve. I shan't be posting any notices about it, so please remember to check back.

http://www.edwardpicot.com/puzzlebox/
(If you don't see links to all the chapters when you get to the Puzzle Box index-page, click CTRL + Refresh to update the page.)

- Edward Picot
http://hyperex.co.uk - The Hyperliterature Exchange
http://edwardpicot.com - personal website

Newly co-published by Furtherfield and The Hyperliterature Exchange: an appreciation of David Daniels, the great shape-poet, who died in May 2008.

"Daniels is one of those figures who straddles the divide between digital and pre-digital art and literature... His art is about liberation, uninhibited outpouring, spontaneity and fun."

To read the whole article, go to http://www.hyperex.co.uk/reviewdaniels.php or http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=323 .

A page of tributes to David Daniels (entitled "Tributes to David Daniels by divers hands") is also being compiled at http://hyperex.co.uk/reviewdanielstributes.php . If you would like to add a tribute of your own (in whatever form you prefer), please send it to edward at edwardpicot.com - a small prize will be sent to the best one received before 1st March 2009.

- Edward Picot
personal website - http://edwardpicot.com

"Urizen is trapped by his own laws. He no longer truly believes in anything outside himself. His only way of relating to the outside world is either to fear it or to steal something from it. He has turned the infinite possibilities of the human heart into a little machine of self-interest. And because of that, his life is a life without hope.”

In search of Dora's box, the children find their way right to the heart of Urizen's headquarters, and discover something entirely different from what they were expecting.

"A wonderful story... This is one for reading aloud, or working with online." - Judy O'Connell, HeyJude (Learning in a Online World), http://heyjude.wordpress.com/ .

The tenth chapter of twelve.

http://www.edwardpicot.com/puzzlebox/
(If you don't see links to all ten chapters when you get to the Puzzle Box index-page, click CTRL + Refresh to update the page.)

- Edward Picot
http://hyperex.co.uk - The Hyperliterature Exchange
http://edwardpicot.com - personal website

“At the base of the back wall, between the skirting-board and the floor, the corner of something was poking out. It was pure fluke that she noticed it, because the skirting-board and the floor were both white, and the poking-out corner was white too. She crouched down and slid it free. It was like the back of a white credit-card, with a black magnetic band running across it. She turned it over. It was like an identity-card, except that there was no writing. At the left-hand end there was a picture of someone's face. Rather a disconcerting face: pale, white-bearded, with mournful, haunted eyes. People always look bad in identity-card photographs, but this face was especially ghoulish-looking. And she had the odd feeling that she'd seen it somewhere before.”

It's Christmas Eve, and Dora is trapped in a huge tower-block in the middle of London. She's lost the puzzle box, and she still can't find her Dad. But at least she's got Adam with her again.

The ninth chapter of twelve.

http://www.edwardpicot.com/puzzlebox/
(If you don't see links to all nine chapters when you get to the Puzzle Box index-page, click CTRL + Refresh to update the page.)

- Edward Picot
http://hyperex.co.uk - The Hyperliterature Exchange
http://edwardpicot.com - personal website

“The wind was blowing harder now, and the snow was coming down in thick flurries, which quickly turned the fronts of their clothes white and made it difficult either to see or hear; but Dora thought she heard a snatch of music. Then one of the little boys started jumping up and down and pointing. 'Look! Look! They're dancing! They're dancing!' Everyone looked where the little boy was pointing. On the far side of the snow-field, next to the fir trees, the snowmen and snow-women were moving.”

“They landed in a huge circle of white dust, with a rim of sharp-looking rocks all the way round the outside. Everything was bathed in harsh colourless light, like moonlight but ten times as powerful. In the middle of the circle of rock was a massive square stone slab, and on the slab, flat on his back, lay a giant with his eyes closed.”

The children fly with some owls to the moon, where they meet the Queen of the Night and hear the story of Pandora and Prometheus. The seventh chapter of twelve.

"This is wondrous" - Joel Weishaus, http://web.pdx.edu/%7Epdx00282/
"I am reading your 'The Puzzle Box' and loving it." - Regina Celia Pinto, http://www.arteonline.arq.br/

http://www.edwardpicot.com/puzzlebox/
(If you don't see links to all seven chapters when you get to the Puzzle Box index-page, click CTRL + Refresh to update the page.)

“Tired as they were, they almost ran up the last part of the stair, and found themselves in another cave; but it was completely different to the one with the snake in it. As far as they could see by the light of the box, it was crammed with old bric-a-brac: bits and pieces of every possible description, some of them valuable but most of them not, thrown together in a horrendous jumble, stacked up high above their heads, and covered in dust and cobwebs. There were walking-sticks, pith helmets, books, dolls, carpets, bottles, pens, games of Monopoly, stuffed animals, false teeth, family photographs, toy trucks, maps, birthday cards, pram wheels, diaries, screwdrivers, umbrellas, plugs, pianos, old coins, kettles, picture frames, odd shoes, Gladstone bags, wooden legs, rocking chairs, someone's PE kit, and so on and so on and so forth and so forth – like the contents of the biggest, dirtiest and most badly-organised second-hand shop in the world.”

The children encounter a shape-shifter called Ratatosk, who tells them about the snake they have seen, a tree called Yggdrasil, some owls, and the Queen of the Night. Dora rediscovers one of her old dolls, and Ratatosk explains how possessions get lost so easily, and why things don't always work when they ought to.

The sixth chapter of twelve.

"We are enjoying The Puzzle Box very much!" - William, www.artselector.com

http://www.edwardpicot.com/puzzlebox/

- Edward Picot
http://hyperex.co.uk - The Hyperliterature Exchange
http://edwardpicot.com - personal website


NEW FROM MY LINKS PAGES:

Title: Fundamentals (http://www.deenalarsen.net/fundamentals/)

Description: From hypertext fiction author Deena Larsen, an introduction to the fundamentals of hyperliterature. This is intended as a teaching aid, and it's not just for students of the genre but for those who are interested in producing hyperliterature themselves. As such, it provides a relatively jargon-free approach with lots of practical exercises and examples of work from here and there around the Web. It seems a trifle oldfashioned in its assumption that hyperliterary texts should generally have mazeliks structures of multiple links and nodes, in the style popularised by Eastgate, but it remains a thoroughly useful primer all the same.



Title: http://www.realitycpu.com

Description: From Tabor Robak. As described by Rhizome (www.rhizome.org), this is "like stumbling upon a scrambled memory bank of images captured sometime around 1993: a dream-arcade of faux vector graphics, neon color schemes, Uzi-blasting last action heroes and gratuitous drop-shadows". I'll go along with that. The same writeup goes on to attempt to ascribe some deeper meaning to the piece, which I'm not so sure about - but it's an absolute blast anyway.