Dave Winer with some interesting insight into what Apple may really be doing:

I said it's a lot simpler and more insidious. Apple doesn't care about web standards, nor do any other large companies. That term, and "open" are just fig leaves that cover up what they're reallly doing. Instead of opening things up, they're doing just the opposite. Closing as many holes as they can as quickly as they can. Because they're doing what the media business wants to but hasn't been able to do, yet -- control and monetize user programming of content. Apple and many (if not all) of the tech companies want to get the control back from the users. Of course they can't say this, and they won't. But actions speak louder than words.

Winer's take is that Apple is trying to close as many open holes as it can so that it, with the continued blessing of the entertainment industry, can provide a tidy way to monetize digital content moving forward.  It's about closing the many paths that are now open and only leaving one road, albeit likely paved with gold, open.  It's a curious analysis, one that has baked into it a certain amount of (well placed) tinfoil-hattery.

Winer's opinion runs counter to John Gruber's, who states that Apple is closing the Flash "hole" in the iPhone/iPad platform to 'enforce web standards.'  I tend to agree with Gruber, because with Apple, it's all about platform control.  The quicker Flash gets relegated to wherever it is that Flash opponents wish it would crawl, the faster, the argument goes, open web standards like HTML5 and h.264 can become mainstream.

It will be very interesting to see what's in the middle of all of this, where the truth often lies.

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Here's an interactive/generative data visualization that does a great job of breaking down which health food supplements are backed by strong scientific evidence and which are not.  Note that a supplement can appear more than once in different positions: you need to mouse over it to see what application (e.g. diabetes, ADHD, IBS, etc.) its orb is representing.

Based on what I know about supplements and nutrition, this is pretty spot-on.  I would like to see CoQ10 have some representation above the 'worth it line' cellular energy and general health, because it has a poor showing at the bottom for diabetes and a moderate showing for migraines and blood pressure.  I also like seeing probiotics and beta-glucan in such strong positions.

Read the explanation behind the balloon race image, and when you're ready to play around a bit, check out the interactive version.  This is Information is Beautiful's first generative image, and I look forward to more from them.  Great stuff.

(More of my posts on nutrition.)

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The best sign I've seen in some time.  Go free market, right?

(Via Chris)

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Penguin Group CEO John Makinson steps forth and minces exactly zero words:

The iPad represents the first real opportunity to create a paid distribution model that will be attractive to consumers.

We will be embedding audio, video and streaming in to everything we do.

The definition of the book itself is up for grabs.

This is better than the equivalent print agency model, in which publishers let retailers keep 50 percent.

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(Via Tom Nixon)

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The Reagan romanticism from the right continues, even though Reagan, by today's GOP standards, wouldn't be welcome.  They like to beseech him, but they wouldn't like him.

But no matter.  In the outrage-fueled war to keep Americans excitable and hostile to anything the GOP opposes, facts have no place in such a discourse.  They're pesky, and the more facts you have, the more arrogant and wrong you are.  That's where we are today.

Also where we are today is in a place where Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) is proposing to dump Ulysses S. Grant -- our 18th president and decorated civil war hero -- from the $50 bill in favor of Ronald Reagan.  McHenry's rationale:

President Reagan was a modern day statesman, whose presidency transformed our nation's political and economic thinking. Through both his domestic and international policies he renewed America's self confidence, defeated the Soviets and taught us that each generation must provide opportunity for the next.

Let's keep in mind that McHenry is a guy who used to say he doesn't have enough evidence one way or the other to know if Obama is an American citizen.  After a fairly heavy amount of blowback, he softened his position.

Oh, and one last set of pesky facts, before I forget.  Bill Clinton left office with slightly higher approval ratings than Reagan as well as a balanced budget.  But, you know, details.

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I, like others, feel this is a bad move for Apple.  Wil Shipley says it best:

But when you sue someone for doing something you do yourself, you become one of the bad guys. Can you name a company you admire that spends its time enforcing patents, instead of innovating? Remember the pirate flag you flew over Apple's headquarters when you were building the Mac? Is Apple part of the Navy now?

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This gets better every time you hit play.

(Via DF)

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Tom Jefferson, an epidemiologist with the distinguished Cochrane Collaboration in the Britain, explains that we don’t really know what protection flu vaccines offer. Fascinating interview.

But, getting to the key question: What should people do to prevent the flu?

If they want to base it on good evidence, they should wash their hands.

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Salon's Andrew Leonard:

It's amazing the effect Wal-Mart can have on entire industries.  And headlines like this one, among many others, are why I will only eat fresh caught/wild salmon.  I won't touch the farmed stuff.

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