mikehudack:

squashed:

jeffmiller writes:

How could a public option drive private options out of business?  Simple:  The Government has the ability to tax citizens to obtain money to subsidize a public option.  Private business do not have a similar coercive way to raise money.  This provides the Government with a significant competitive advantage.  Sadly, this advantage has nothing to do with the quality of care.

Why can’t we set up the public option to force it to be competitive? It’s easy. Put the money in a separate pile.

1. Give the public option sufficient money to get set up and to start enrolling people.
2. After a few years, cut off its supply of money.
3. Require that any subsidies for those who cannot afford insurance are also made available for private plans.

We can make sure there’s a level playing field between government and private industry. Of course, the insurance industry doesn’t want the competition.

• Reblogged from Mike Hudack

cwphoto:

amyjowisehart:

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait aroud for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work.

I actually disagree fully and think this sentiment sounds like it was spoken with the tongue of a 40-something ex-artist who never actualized his dreams.  Forcing inspiration, at least for me, just doesn’t work.  It has to be fluid for me to even attempt anything.  When I’m not inspired, the shit I create ends up being just that and nothing more. Vast piles of shit.  And the photo work I have to do to make money usually turns out shitty too, because that kind of thing does not inspire me creatively at all.  I know that isn’t the greatest testimony or anything, but art has to be on the person’s own terms creating it.  Forcing such is, in essence, lying.

Quality over quantity.  Always.

Interesting conversation piece, maybe?

Whoever is responding to Chuck Close is clearly an amateur. You have to make plenty of “bad” work while practicing if you expect to make anything great. If you wait for inspiration you are a prisoner to external forces. A huge part of the job of being a creative artist is showing up…every day…and all the time.

Chuck’s work is brilliant. Look it up if you don’t know it…and look up his biography.

• Reblogged from Cody Weber Writes Things

notesandlinks:

-When do we consider a work/an idea complete?

-How do we value/evaluate a work/an idea? What is aesthetic value?

-Why should we ask questions?

-Why is it important to constantly search for who, why, what, where I am, and what it means to be human? How does art help in this process?

-What is meant by inclusive, accessible, and approachable artwork? How can an artwork accommodate all these qualities, i.e., in its process of making, visual composition, conceptual structure, etc.?

-What is meaning? Does everything have meaning? How do we access it?

-How does the process of naming/defining influence our view of the particular thing that is being named? How does this process contribute to reality as a whole?

-Can we simultaneously be aware of the overall unity, and the arbitrary separation that is caused by the process of naming/defining?

-Is reality unified, or collection of separate entities?

-Where do we choose to draw the line between two items, in order to separate/name them? In a rainbow where does yellow become red?

-Why do we have this process of naming anyway?

-Do we have names in order to be able to identify?

-What is the relationship between an identity and a name? That is, is an artwork’s identity summarized in the name? Is it “political art” political, and “aesthetic art” not political? Where do we draw the line between the two?

-What is “political art”? Does it include the landscape painting on the wall?

-How do we determine that a work of art is political, social, ethnic, classical, contemporary, modern, folk, craft, outsider, visionary, etc.?

-What is expressing oneself? When do we say that a rosebush is expressing itself? When it grows leaves, develops roots, produces branches, buds and flowers, and/or when the flower fades and the leaves turn yellow?

(via burntbythesun)

• Reblogged from Casey A. Gollan: Notes & Links