A Canadian filmmaker is developing a method to place a camera inside his prosthetic eye. I might be able to pull off something similar by sticking a camera inside my trach tube, as long as I’m not required to shoot for more than three or four minutes at a time. Imagine all the undercover work I could do for local television news outlets. Then again, people might get suspicious when they notice me turning blue.

The video below is an excerpt from the documentary Playing for Change that I first caught while watching Bill Moyers’ Journal. It features musicians from around the world performing a cover version of “Stand By Me”. The editing skills on display here are impressive and the song has always been a favorite of mine.

And if the economy still has you stressing out, might I suggest…puppies!

Let’s say you’re a factory worker and you’ve just learned that the factory is going to shut down in a matter of days. Your employer-based health insurance is also going to disappear, even though you’re pregnant and due to deliver any day now. In a desperate attempt to avoid getting stuck with a huge medical bill, you tell your doctor to induce labor. Absurd? Absolutely, but it also is a true story. And the poor woman ended up getting stuck with the bill anyway.

When the next administration takes office, I’m hopeful that we can finally stop arguing about whether our health care system needs repair and get to the business of actually repairing it. I’m not expecting miracles, but I hope a first step is providing states with additional funding for Medicaid and SCHIP. Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor at MIT, makes a powerful case for viewing health care spending as economic stimulus. Universal insurance coverage gives families greater discretionary spending power and more freedom to change jobs or careers. At the very least, a cash infusion into Medicaid and SCHIP might give overburdened hospitals and emergency rooms a little relief.

I’m pleased to see that Obama’s plans for rebuilding the country’s infrastructure include the expansion of broadband access. People in rural America still lack affordable, reliable, and reasonably speedy pipelines to the Internet. In urban areas, broadband access remains unaffordable to many low-income households. We’ve been extolling the virtues of telecommuting for well over a decade, but businesses won’t truly commit to the concept until high-capacity broadband is as ubiquitous as the old copper-wire telephone network.

It will come down to implementation, of course. I certainly don’t favor rewarding the telcos for their monopolistic practices and any funds they receive should have strong consumer safeguards attached. Internet service providers are delivering a utility vital to the country’s economic health and they should be regulated as such.

You sometimes have to credit American businesses for the sheer audacity they show in their drive to make a buck. A gun manufacturer is trying to win government approval to classify a handgun adapted for people with disabilities as “durable medical equipment”. Such a classification would qualify the manufacturer to receive payment from Medicare and private insurance companies. The company has vanishingly little hope of actually getting this approval and I don’t have a problem with that. But I do smile when I imagine a physician sitting at his desk and trying to write a letter of medical necessity for Aunt Ruthie’s 9mm.