The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos has put together a great list, including ways you can text money to agencies. Go see.

No one does photojournalism better than The Big Picture from Boston.com. See for yourself.

The blog Marginal Revolution asks the question and provides some possible answers.  But don’t just read the post: read the comments. The comments provide alot more ideas on the difficulties that Haiti has faced over the centuries, and I thought they were better than the original post.

As for Haiti, the saying “if it’s not one thing, it’s another” certainly applies to this country and the people who live there. 

Among the many good articles the NYTimes has on Haiti is this one: Flawed Building Likely a Big Element – NYTimes.com. One of the likely reasons that there will be so many deaths in Haiti will have to do with the architecture of their buildings. The quality of the buildings are constrained by the  cost and availability of materials, and as a result, the buildings are not made to withstand such an earthquake. Not only that, but because they may have been designed to withstand hurricanes by using concrete roofs, that may have also contributed to more deaths.

(Image Newscom/PTSPhoto from TPM)

Doctors Without Borders /Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) are a world renowned group working worldwide to provide humanitarian assistance, including Haiti. Even better, they are already in Haiti, which means they can provide assistance as fast as anyone looking for your support in helping Haitians. Based on reports, with the damage that has occurred to hospitals, they are going to need help.

You can find out more about them at the tumblr site I linked to.

And more importantly, you can donate here: https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/SSLPage.aspx?pid=197&hbc=1&source=ADQ1001E1D01

Posted via email from Bernie Michalik’s posterous site

Warning: Avatar spoilers!

It appears that this idea is getting more consideration, Some see racist theme in alien adventure ‘Avatar’ – Yahoo! News. I leave it to you to make your own judgment. I am surprised by comments like this, though:

“Avatar” is being criticized by a small but vocal group of people who allege it contains racist themes — the white hero once again saving the primitive natives.

This comment itself seems wrong to me, since I don’t see anywhere where the Na’vi are “primitive”. If anything, Cameron suggests they are superior to the humans. I also don’t see him “saving” the Na’vi: indeed, at the end, his life is saved by them. There is the idea of the outsider saving the community, but that theme can be seen in many films. But more than that, the forces that rise up to defeat the human military seemed to be so much more than just the human in the mix.

Maybe I am naive, but I thought “Avatar” is richer and more complex than how it is portrayed here.

More and more I hear: privacy is dead, over, finished. Case in point: Facebook’s Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over. But is it true? If I think about the arguments for privacy being over, or the arguments against privacy, I get something like this:

Privacy is over because people share so much now: it is true, people do share alot more. But while people do share much more, they may also be sharing more selectively. For example, I find that I share alot more information via the various social media available (e,g, blogging, Facebook), but I am also aware of what I do share and where I share it. For instance, I assume everyone can and might read my blog and as a result, I am very selective of what I share there. Unlike Facebook, there is little personal information there. I do (or did) share more information with family and friends on Facebook. However, when I first used Facebook, the understanding I had — supported by Facebook — was that I would have much more control over who could see my information. However, it appears Facebook is reneging on that understanding. As a result, I am sharing less information on Facebook, and I am planning to share less there, and I am encouraging everyone to be mindful and selective of what they share there. I still like sharing information with people using technology, and there are alot of different sites and tools that allow me to do that and I will continue to do that, but I will strive to do it on my own terms.

This not just true for me and my generation, but younger people as well. When I see teens (like my own) sharing information, they often do it cryptically. (And not just teens.) They may do this for exclusive reasons, but they may also do it in order to maintain privacy. They are exerting their rights to control who gets to see information about them. Just like I do and others do with the privacy controls that they have available to them. People like and need privacy.

Another mistake people make is assuming that behaviors that were once private but no longer are therefore equals/means privacy is dead. It is more likely the case that what was once considered shameful or embarrassing or otherwise detrimental to a person now no longer is. I think sexting is a terrible idea, but if enough young people do it, people will eventually shrug, they way they now shrug at ads for birth control or topless beaches. It won’t be that people don’t value privacy: it will just mean that they don’t think such things needs to be private any longer, and dinosaurs like me can complain all they want about sexting because let’s face it, no one wants to see me with no clothes on anyway. 🙂 (No doubt they will also poke fun at me for paying for music on iTunes, too.)

Privacy is over because technology deprives you of it: why is this true? People do put their privacy at risk by adopting new technologies that they can’t/don’t understand or control. However, they make a deal, explicitly or implicitly, with the organizations that they are sharing that information with, be it a business, the government, or some other organization. If customers think that the banks cannot protect their financial privacy, they are going to find other ways to do financial transactions. Indeed, the offering of enhanced privacy becomes a valuable commodity, and companies that offer it will have a competitive advantage. Likewise, if citizens think that the government cannot protect there personal privacy, they are either going to elect a new government or find ways to not share information with the government. Right now criminals do this as a matter of course. However, if people mistrust their government and feel there privacy is being compromised, everyone may do it as a matter of course.

And if they can’t come to an agreeable arrangement with newer technologies that threaten to take away privacy, people will adopt a number of stances to deal with that. One is to hide your identity. People do this often now. Indeed, most people participating in social media use handles without photos instead of using their real name and image. Another way is to adopt proxies of some sort. Any networking technologies — which will more and more come to mean all technology — are open to the use of proxies. If privacy becomes scarce, than proxies will become valuable.

Finally, people will just avoid, not use or misuse technologies that try to rob them of their privacy. It will be a struggle at first, but privacy is an elemental need of people.

Why do you need privacy? You must have something to hide. That may be true, but anyone who thinks that this is all that privacy is about has a limited understanding of the value of privacy. Privacy is not hiding something you have done wrong. Privacy is about controlling your life on your terms. Privacy is about having sovereignty over your life and what you do with it. To illustrate this, let’s take some simple examples.

You need privacy to control your financial affairs: in the course of your life you have to share financial information about yourself with others (e.g., the government, the bank, your employer). However, in a progressive society, it is in your best interests and the society’s best interest to limit how much of that information you share. If you were not able to keep this information private, than in the worst case, criminals would know that you have valuable property, and they may decide to rob you. If you did not have alot of valuable property, people might discriminate against you based on that fact. (Indeed, that happens now to people whose appearance discloses this fact). And regardless of your financial standing, full disclosure of your financial affairs puts you at a disadvantage in all sorts of business dealings and allows you to be taken advantage of. If you can’t mind your own business, others will do it at your loss.

You need privacy to control your identity: If you are not able to keep things like passwords or other information about yourself private, people could find out this information and either use it against you, or they could engage in identity theft and pass themselves off as you. People can also take information about you and by putting it out of context, use it against you to your disadvantage.

You need privacy to escape social norms: Other than a very limited number of people, most people would not want to have their lives filmed and on display 24 hours a day. For it is not just being on display: it is being judged and acted upon based on what you display. You might have a position in society that expects you to behave a certain way in public. (And it could be as simple as being well groomed, conservative and exceedingly polite.) But when you in your own home, you might want to give that up and be another way, even if that other way is relaxed. Privacy allows you to do that. Maybe you want to wear the same sweatpants from Friday night to Monday morning. Maybe you want to dance around in (what to you is) an embarrassing way to some music few people like. Maybe you want to clean your house in the nude! Whatever the behavior is, privacy allows you to do that.

You need privacy to negotiate difficult situations: Likewise, let’s say there was a disagreement in your family, and some people unfairly insist you do not speak to others in your family. You are caught in the middle of an unfair dispute, and you hope to resolve it by talking to both sides. Privacy allows you to do that. Indeed, to be effective in negotiations, privacy is essential.

You need privacy to prevent or reduce prejudice and discrimination: As a young adult, let’s say your friend posts images of you and your friends out drinking and having fun. They post them on Facebook, but just to your friends, because they don’t want everyone to see them. In other words, they want some degree of privacy regarding this.  However, one of your friends is related to someone who works for the new company you want to work for, and in doing a search on Facebook, is able to see you out partying. Now, you may be a very responsible individual at work, but this person assumes the worst about you because of these pictures and screens you out of the position. This is not really fair, but because of a lack of privacy, you are stuck.

Likewise, let’s say you are socially conservative and you are a strong supporter of right wing parties in the country you live in. You join some groups on Facebook and you express your political opinions there. As it turns out, the new position you want to go work for in your company is managed by someone whose political views are the direct opposite of yours. That person does a search for you in Google and sees some of the things that you have been saying in the Facebook groups and then finds another reason not to take you on in that role, even though you were a very strong candidate.

You need privacy to express yourself fully: this is again related to norms. Let’s say you wanted to create something that is not harmful, but would be disapproved of by people you normally want to associate with. Maybe you belong to a religious family, but you want to study art and eventually draw nudes. Maybe you want to learn how to become a lawyer, even though your family hates lawyers. And maybe you fell in love with someone who makes you feel more alive than you ever felt before, but you feel constrained from being public with showing this feeling due to censure from others. Privacy again comes to the rescue.

Privacy supports greater equality and greater freedom: In societies where there is a political imbalance, and one side has power over another and lords it over them, privacy can help restore balance. If one sides tries to unfairly prevent the other from seeking a better education or a better deal or a fairer distribution of power, privacy can provide the cover needed to allow change to occur.

Privacy can be abused, too. People can commit crimes and hypocritically treat people badly away from others. But to throw out privacy because of these things is to throw out the baby to get rid of the bath water. Likewise, people can say giving up privacy can be worth it in order to gain all these new technologies or ways of doing things. But I think we can have both the new things and privacy.

Anyway, if you’ve read to here, thanks. There are, without a doubt, better sources on privacy that will argue a much better case for it than what I have done here. If you know of them, please comment here. But even with my limited arguments, I hope you will think about why privacy is important and why self serving people like Mark Zuckerberg is wrong when he argues that privacy is over. I like Facebook, and I would be happy for it to succeed. But it should do so and respect — and that is the key word: respect — people’s wishes and need or privacy.

A great live version of this great tune:

YouTube – Save Your Scissors – City And Colour

It’s easy. Got your postal code? Good, then go here: Find your Member of Parliament using your Postal Code

And tell them to get back to work.

can be understood by going here: Colors on Facebook status

Are you running out of space on your hard disk? Have you lost track of what you had and wish you had an easy way to see just what is on your machine and how much space it is using. If so, then you want to get JDiskReport. JDiskReport is a fantastic tool that could do it for you. As the web site explains:

“JDiskReport enables you to understand how much space the files and directories consume on your disk drives, and it helps you find obsolete files and folders.

The tool analyses your disk drives and collects several statistics which you can view as overview charts and details tables.

This is ad-free uncrippled no-charge binary multi-platform software that never expires.”

It’s very powerful and quickly helps you see how you are using — or in my case, wasting — your disk space. After running it I found many GBs of files that I could either delete or move to a removable disk drive. 

I highly recommend this tool.

As you can see from this post, Tiny house = affordable house « view from the greg, some communities place a lower limit as to how small a place you can put on property in that district. If your dream is to build a tiny home likes the ones featured at tinyhousedesign.com  in such a district,  you might find your dreams and reality don’t match up. So please investigate further before you sink your money into a place.

You’ve made your New Year’s Resolutions: now it’s time to track them. Well, if you are looking for a good way to track your new year’s resolutions and you already use twitter, I recommend you check out: your.flowingdata / Quick Start Guide. This guide will show you how easy it is to do this using this site. (I am starting to sound like a bad infomercial). For example, if you want to track weight loss or amount of cigarettes cut back on or even the amount of sleep you are getting or the amount of time you exercised, you can track it here in seconds.

It’s a good tool, and it’s been around for awhile. Give it a try. The visualizations will help give you a better sense of your progress. Hey, every little bit helps.

YouTube – Telepopmusik – Just Breathe

David Carr points out why he thinks Twitter Will Endure in the NYTimes.com. It’s a great read, and I found myself agreeing with most of it. (I’ve been using twitter for a little over 2 years now and have over 9000 tweets at this time.) And naturally I found this via @eric_andersen on twitter. (If you are on twitter, follow Eric: you will learn alot!)

In this mildly negative story on the Obamas Hawaiian Trip in the WSJ.com, there is this:

On New Year’s Eve, the Obamas watched “Avatar” in a shopping-mall theater cleared of people. “I must admit that when you close down shopping centers you’re pushing the envelope of the patience that people might have otherwise,” said Hawaii Democratic state senator Clayton Hee.

Now you don’t want to be like Senator Hee or the WSJ, for if you read this: First Family Sees ‘Avatar’ in 3-D – The Caucus Blog – NYTimes.com, you’d see:

The Secret Service cleared one of the 10 theaters at the Windward Mall’s multiplex in Kaneohe for the Obamas, who arrived for the special screening around 9:20 a.m., well before the day’s regular showings get underway so as not to inconvenience other moviegoers. The other nine theaters at the multiplex are open as usual.

Note that the only one of the 10 theatres were shutdown and that it was shutdown at 9:20 in the morning! Wow. I can see how that would really push “the envelope of patience” of the millions of people who want to be in THAT theatre at THAT time in the morning.

(Don’t read this if you haven’t seen Avatar).

Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic highlights an idea that has come up with regards to Avatar (Avatar As Dances With Wolves – Ta-Nehisi Coates). The idea centers around one of the “white guy goes native” and talks about how this comes up in Avatar and Dances With Wolves. I’ve also seen it come up in discussions around “District 9”.

It’s odd to me, because while I can see how Cameron borrowed from the Western genre, by placing the film in the future and by borrowing images from other genres and events, he dilutes the ability of someone to say that the protagonist represents white Europeans. If anything, when the great tree is destroyed, I thought of the Na’vi as being New Yorkers and the great tree being the World Trade Towers. (The parallels in the imagery is strong.) So are the Na’vi a) native peoples, or b)  New Yorkers or c) something unique?

I  think they are something unique. I think Cameron is drawing from a number of sources in order to tell his story. That’s one of the great benefits of the SF genre, and one of the freedoms that artists have generally. Likewise for the director of District 9, Neil Blomkamp. With SF, you can break free of history and current events to examine ideas the way you would like to explore them. They can help shed light on history or current events, but there is as much divergence as there is convergence. Likewise, as an artist, you can make things up, and as an artist working in SF, you can make things up even more. (Though even SF has it’s limits). The audience is free to interpret your work as they will. But  that also means that people can agree and disagree about the intent of the work and the creator. That is the wonderful thing about the elusiveness of science fiction and art.

Why? Well, it has some of the masterpieces of film available on DVD and BluRay. Works by Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Buñuel, and many more. You can buy these films, but if you didn’t want to or weren’t sure you wanted to buy these films, there is another choice.

 I found out via their FAQ that you can do this:

“I’ve never watched a movie online at the Criterion online cinematheque. How does it work? What does it cost? What do I get?

Watching movies at criterion.com is easy. Click on FILMS, choose a film, and click where it says “Watch movie $5.” You’ll be asked to enter a credit card, and for $5 you can watch the movie right in your browser or full screen, as many times as you want for a full week. For a year after that, we’ll keep a $5 credit on file for you and apply it to your purchase of that film on DVD or Blu-ray disc. Use it as a way to explore different parts of the collection, get a little daring, or just “try before you buy.” And best of all, each dollar you spend on online rentals gives you points in our loyalty program.”

This is a great feature. You can see some of the greatest masterpieces of all time for $5 a pop. Hopefully you will love them and buy them. Either way, it’s a great deal.

I should add, there seems to be a bug in terms of what is “Now Playing”. If you don’t like what you see, click Refresh on your browser and you will get a different list of films. Not sure why that is, but otherwise, it is a great site.  Go to The Criterion Collection for more info.

I think this is brilliant. Taken By Trees takes Animal Collectives “My Girls” and remakes it into something all their own and appropriately renames it as well. Here they are in a video that is perfectly suited for the song:

YouTube – Taken By Trees – “My Boys”

The NYTimes.com has a great piece on a writer who had struggled like many people to give up smoking. Anyone who has this resolution in mind for January 1 should read this: Hurry Up, It’s Time. Let me expand that and say anyone who has any resolution they want to make on New Year’s should read it. I think this applies to anyone, for it is not about the quitting. Rather..

“I looked around the faces in the classroom. Sure enough, everyone would eventually quit smoking, I thought. Everyone except me.

Then, at some point during the meeting, it hit me. I didn’t just want to quit smoking. I wanted much more. I wanted something new in life — call it a new deal, a new me, new rituals, new friends, new clothes, a new home, a new career, new everything. This was my crazy reason. I told no one.”

It’s good. Read it. And good luck to you and to us all.

Since alot of people come to this blog because I once wrote why I buy suits from Zara — alot of people! — I thought they might also be interested in taking lessons from a real master, Bill Blass. I saw this in Vanity Fair and thought his closet provided some good tips for people acquiring men’s suits.

First, look at suits he has in his closet. If you are going to have a number of suits, you would be well off to stick with mostly blacks and dark grays and navy blues, while mixing up the striping and perhaps the cut. The key is “mostly”. Notice he does make room for lighter suits of browns and grays and plaids.

Also note how well he spaces the suits in his closet. He doesn’t have them jammed together. This is smart. Obviously you need space for this, but it is a good way to use your closet space.

Finally, don’t do what Bill does: wear pants instead. 🙂

If you want to know more about the photo, go here: A Jonathan Becker Retrospective | vanityfair.com

..is filled with great photographs. Even at full screen mode, the clarity and the brightness and of course the composition is wonderful. See it here.

..and as usual, Andrew Sullivan is doing a superb job of covering it. It’s way more in-depth than anything the majors will have in terms of coverage, although to be fair to them, they are covering it. What I think is really significant is this post, Why The Regime Is Rattled. If this is true, then expect more major events and changes in Iran.

As an aside, there was a critical — and facile — article in Salon recently stating “There’s no evidence that the hot social networking site played any role in Iran’s spring revolt”. It’s hard to criticize it, since it is not so much factual as it is sophisticated name calling. One thing it did get wrong though, is this: “Sadly, though, six months later, things still haven’t changed much in Iran.” Things have changed alot in Iran since the election: what you have right now are two strongly opposing forces pushing up against each other, and while there is not much movement, there is alot of effort and pressure. In such circumstances, it would be wrong to assume nothing is changing. Instead, there will eventually be a big snap one way or the other and one side will be badly damaged.

If you don’t believe that, go to Andrew Sullivan’s blog and check out the posts and the YouTube video. Or follow Iranians on Twitter. You know, all those social networking things that Salon says don’t matter but for some reason both sides continue to use and try to stop.

(Image from the Nytimes.com)

Quite alot, when you take the whole world — or large parts of it — into account:

Just one of the great things on the posterous blog, – ReflectionOf.Me

This article, The Chocolate Wars – NYTimes.com, has a great rundown of the state of affairs when it comes to chocolate in the world today. The article starts with the fight for Cadbury, with Kraft on one side and Hershey on the other. This is not appealing to the British, I suspect, based upon the comments of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnston, who says they…

“…face an appalling choice of succumbing either to Kraft, makers of the plastic flaps of orange cheese, or to Hershey, whose Hershey bars have been likened in flavor — by independent experts — to a mixture of soap powder and baby vomit.”

Ouch!

Chocolate is big business, especially as places like India start substituting traditional treats for chocolate ones. (Think of all the cultures that don’t have chocolate desserts: those will be the countries and cultures that the big chocolate makers will go towards.)

But it’s not just business. The article has a summary of the history of chocolate over the 20th century and some guesses as to why we find chocolate so appealing. So break open a box of Christmas chocolate — or heck, have the last one! — and check out this article.

You thought singing “12 Days of Christmas” was difficult? Watch these guys sing “it”.

Anything the Three Tenors sing is rich and worth listening to, including the Christmas classic, Sleigh Ride.

BTW, Pavarotti muffs a line around the 36 second mark. He sings “Hoo Hoo” instead of “Yoo Hoo”. Carreras notices this: watch his expression!

YouTube – CARRERAS DOMINGO PAVAROTTI – Sleigh Ride

Folks, as you relax and unwind over the holidays, I strongly encourage you to check out the first edition of LETTER TO JANE Magazine.

Honestly, it’s great. Go take a look: it’s a visual feast.

And hats off to Tim for putting together such a strong digital publication.

Back in the 1980s when I worked on VM as a system programmer, people used to send around VM executable code like the CHRISTMA exec that people would run. The execs (as we called them)  would show a text message like the one in this picture. Pretty harmless and nice.

However, the CHRISTMA EXEC was different. It was not harmless or nice. It was dangerous and sneaky. It would not only display a Christmas message, but, without you being aware of it, would read a file (the NETLOG file) that would find out email addresses of people who sent and received email from you and send itself to them as well. A worm, essentially. Since people were used to getting scripts as Christmas greetings, they ran it without looking at it (indeed, the comments even tell people: “browsing this file is no fun at all       just type CHRISTMAS from cms “…sneaky). The next thing we knew, this worm was showing up all over the place. A nice way to spend Christmas time, killing this worm.

So to the CHRISTMA EXEC I say, “Bah Humbug!”.

But to everyone else I say: Merry Christmas!

When I have to deal with a paper bag or a paper tube, I think: I need to recycle this. Yuken Teruya thinks: how can I make this into a beautiful work of art (like the Happy Meal bag above). If you go to the site, Notice – Forest Series – Yuken Teruya Studio, you will see many more works like this. Stunning. (Via Swiss Miss).

..can be found here: xpostfactoid: Eight rebuttals to “10 reasons to kill the Senate bill”

I think Hamsher makes some good points, and even this rebuttal cannot overturn them all. That said, I still think the HCR bill before the Senate provide a great benefit to Americans. I was going to say, “despite it’s flaws”, but like all legislation, it goes without saying it has flaws. (Even the U.S. Constitution has its flaws (and the Amendments to correct them)).

People on the left who are agreeing with Hamsher should check out the link above.

According to the great tumblelog, Inspire me, now!, that’s 3604 cups of coffee put together to make an amazing rendition of the Mona Lisa.

I came across three great links on a tweet from @gkofiannan who was retweeting @emeka_okafor and pointing to African graphic novels that will be interesting to anyone interested in Africa, graphic novels, or smart things in general. “aya” is one, and you can find it here: Africa Unchained: Search results for aya.  As well the Guardian has a story on “Marguerite Abouet’s hugely popular series of books, centred on the life of a young woman in a cheerful Ivory Coast suburb, show an Africa far from stereotypes of war and disease” which also sound interesting. Finally there is a good blog post on “The Shadow Speaker”, another such work.

I believe France has a strong tradition of graphic novels. And I noticed that two of the authors here are associated with Côte d’Ivoire. I wonder if there is any connection there? Regardless, they look great. Check them out.

CNET News has a great story on NORAD tracking Santa with some good gems in it, including this one!

“…it actually began in 1955 with a wrong number.

One morning that December, U.S. Air Force Col. Harry Shoup, the director of operations at CONAD, the Continental Air Defense Command–NORAD’s predecessor–got a phone call at his Colorado Springs, Colo., office (see video below). This was no laughing matter. The call had come in on one of the top secret lines inside CONAD that only rang in the case of a crisis.

Grabbing the phone, Shoup must have expected the worst. Instead, a tiny voice asked, “Is this Santa Claus?”

“Dad’s pretty annoyed,” said Terri Van Keuren, Shoup’s daughter, recalling the legend of that day in 1955. “He barks into the phone,” demanding to know who’s calling.

“The little voice is now crying,” Van Keuren continued. “‘Is this one of Santa’s elves, then?'”

The Santa questions were only beginning. That day, the local newspaper had run a Sears Roebuck ad with a big picture of St. Nick and text that urged, “Hey, Kiddies! Call me direct…Call me on my private phone and I will talk to you personally any time day or night.”

But the phone number in the ad was off by a digit. Instead of connecting with Santa, callers were dialing in on the line that would ring if the Russians were attacking.

Before long, the phone was ringing off the hook, and softening up, Shoup grabbed a nearby airman and told him to answer the calls and, Van Keuren said, “‘just pretend you’re Santa.'”

Indeed, rather than having the newspaper pull the Sears ad, Shoup decided to offer the countless kids calling in something useful: information about Santa’s progress from the North Pole. To quote the official NORAD Santa site, “a tradition was born.””

The whole article in CNET is good. Go see!

As if we don’t have enough examples of why it is bad to break the law or the rules and post it on Facebook, here comes another example where police in Wisconsin used Facebook to catch underage drinkers by friending them. You can see the details here on Wired Campus.

You know those hundreds of friends you have on Facebook? Some of them are not your friends. Beware.

I believe that HCR is actually great for the rest of the world. Because with HCR, Americans will be spending more of their money on Health Care, versus other Things (Things = cars, houses, etc.). As more money gets devoted to Health Care, there will be a greater focus on Health Care generally. I believe the result will be more innovations in the area of Health, with more cures and better ways to deliver health care. This will benefit Americans, but indirectly it will benefit the rest of the world as well.

I used to be envious of Americans because they received tax deductions on their mortgages. Sadly, this likely led to the Great Recession we are just starting to pull out of. If Americans put their money into better Health Care versus better houses and better cars, we all will benefit.

Simple. It will mean they get Health Care, and they get it for alot less money than if there was no HCR. See this chart:

Whatever else people say about HCR, it looks like a good deal for Americans. Will it cost them? Certainly. But the alternatives are surely worse. See The Senate Bill Saves Families Money – Kaiser Health News for the details.