buckdata – news and views for an unquiet age

I have decided that 65 is the new 30. Age 30 was a watershed.  Age 65 or thereabouts will be one too.
Many of us who after 30 “got serious,” raised our children, bought a house, and worked at jobs we may not always have loved to try to hang onto it, get another chance. Those [...]

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Why can’t health care be more like firefighting?
Firefighters, you did great. California’s Lockheed Fire, which extended over more than 12 square miles,  is 100% contained.  It took the labor of thousands of you to battle back the blaze before it spread to homes, injured people, and destroyed farms. Although outbuildings and some seasonal cabins burned, [...]

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Citizen journalism has taken leaps since last year.
We are living in some smoke today, but safe. The big Santa Cruz County wildfire you have probably seen on the news remains  miles off and over the ridge.  I know, because I can see it on the Internet.
I found this  link to a satellite  fire map via [...]

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There is heated debate in Washington these days over what to do about our country’s recent unsavory dabbling in torture as an information-gathering strategy.
As with many other instances during the George W. Bush administration in which legitimate duties of government (such as statesmanship) became conflated with and ultimately displaced by punishment, pure and simple, we [...]

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Friends, family, and acquaintances are raising questions about whether President Obama  can accomplish  what we helped elect him to do. Will the wars end in Iraq and Afghanistan? Will clean energy really be funded? Will Bush-era wiretap and other privacy violations be sufficiently curtailed?  Will single payer health care get endorsed or merely sidelined? Will [...]

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Buckdata.com will soon be on Twitter?  Stay tuned.

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Huffington Post does it. Raw Story does it. Obama does it, and so too, reportedly, do Republicans like Karl Rove. They all use Twitter.
Twitter is software which allows a registered member to send out very brief messages to others, either from twitter.com’s website or from a cell phone. Recipients can get the messages either on [...]

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Monterey Bay Area writer Pat Hanson delivers some practical suggestions for handling a Christmas when material resources are short.
Virtual Christmas Giving: A True Story
I prefer Halloween to Christmas.  You can dress up any way you like, pretend, and have an excuse for putting on a mask.  As soon as retailers start luring us with Christmas [...]

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The sight of candidate Sarah Palin blinking and winking as she uttered buzzwords and previously-owned soundbites at the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate with Senator Joe Biden was not a reassuring one. It has set off another round of blog commentary, this time discussing what her Oct. 2 performance might foretell about a possible McCain [...]

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On July 17, President George W. Bush visited California to view damage from the recent wildfires in the state. Speaking in Redding, California, the president said: “One, I always come to make sure that the federal government is coordinating closely with the state government. I know Governor Schwarzenegger well enough to tell you [...]

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