August 2010
this ain't livin': Eavesdroppers Seldom Hear... →
Dr. Chen’s piece brought up a point I see coming up a lot in the debate about access and transparency: The attitude that patients are not intelligent enough to understand medical records and notes, and thus that doctors will have to waste time writing in plain language. I think that’s a big discredit to patients, because, well, for one thing it assumes that we aren’t capable of learning things...
Gregory B Hladky at Fairfield Weekly: Gag Response →
Next time you visit your doctor’s office and they hand you that clipboard with a sheaf of papers to fill out, you better read them closely. You could be signing away your right to tell your Facebook friends about your physician’s screwups.
“This is disturbing on so many levels,” state Sen. Andrew McDonald says of the idea of doctors asking their patients to sign contracts that would...
Chris Vogel and Patrick Michels at LA Weekly:... →
Later that day, December 30, 2008, Sarah, her mother and her two brothers walked up to the Paseo Del Norte Port of Entry in El Paso and turned themselves in, requesting asylum.
Sarah was separated from her family and placed in a detention center for more than a year while she waited for her day in immigration court. When a judge finally heard the case, her claim for asylum was denied and ...
FWD/Forward: Dear Imprudence: Why Yes, Your Mother... →
A reader wrote in to ‘Since you asked…’ on Salon last month about her 90 year old mother; I’m going to summarise her letter, because it’s a bit long. The letter writer’s mother has some health conditions and is living independently with a little bit of assistance from the family, but has recently been diagnosed with a new medical issue. A specialist wants the mother to undergo some testing to...
Do you live in the US and are between 13 & 30?
imissedtumblr:
I actually just forwarded this CFP to a bunch of people, but I wanted to give it some more opportunity to get attention. Basically, if you have a disability, live in the US, and are between 13 and 30, I hope you will consider submitting something to it.
I am in no way associated with this except that I want to see it get published and then I can read it.
Call for...
That's Ok, Tumblr
I don’t have, like, a system for how I manage my queue or anything. It’s totally fine for you to keep randomly pulling things out of it and publishing them, instead of following the actual order I have arranged my queue in.
Shay Totten at Seven Days: Recession? Not in the... →
To read campaign finance reports detailing the millions being raised in the Vermont gubernatorial contest, you’d think the recession was a figment of your imagination.
For sure, it’s a good time to be a millionaire candidate — at least when it comes to financing your run for office.
Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin continues to be his own biggest fan and...
Greg Hambrick at Charleston City Paper: Romney... →
When you list front-runners in the 2012 race, there’s none higher than Mitt Romney. With a national campaign already behind him, it’s going to be difficult for any opponent to make a dent in the early goings of the presidential horse race. Their best hope for is a John Kerry moment.
Campaigning across the country in ‘06, Kerry was vilified for telling students at one...
Bitch Magazine: Push(back) at the Intersections: I... →
Apparently the ‘T’ seems out of place to a lot of other people as well, because organizations that examine the depictions of LGBQT folks on television often ignore problematic depictions of trans characters. And some actively celebrate shows for having ‘good representations’ while evidently ignoring the fact that those shows actually don’t have such great...
this ain't livin': Disability and the House Key:... →
This isn’t legal, but it happens anyway. Just like it’s not legal to refuse to rent to a single mother, or a young Black man, or a woman, on the basis of those traits alone, and it happens anyway. Housing discrimination is widespread and it’s entrenched. A lot of landlords are ignorant of the fact that there are laws governing this kind of activity, and others know, but don’t care. Because they...
Tom Bowman at NPR: Marines Need To Regain... →
For more than 200 years, the Marine Corps has prided itself on dramatic amphibious landings.
That ability is enshrined in the first lines of the Marine Corps hymn, “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli,” celebrating 19th century landings in Mexico and Libya. Marines went on to storm the beaches in places like Tarawa in World War II, Inchon in Korea and Da Nang...
Chris Faraone at The Boston Phoenix: Is micro-news... →
Estimates of what the hyper-local market may be worth vary. New-media researchers at Borrell Associates in Virginia forecast that nearly $15 billion will be generated from local online ads this year, and even more important, that this number has been growing — by $1 billion since 2009. Publishers are betting on hyper-local ventures on the basis of two beliefs: first, that consumers want ...
Michael Roberts at Denver Westword: Police... →
Jessie Ulibarri, a longtime activist focusing on gay issues and anti-violence who served as the event’s spokesman, doesn’t know for certain. But as he and others made clear at a press event beginning at 11:30, the DeHerrera-Johnson assault hardly qualifies as an isolated incident.
According to the Colorado Anti-Violence Program (http://www.coavp.org/), Ulibarri says,...
this ain't livin': I Read Romance Novels. So What? →
So, you know, you can mock people for reading romance novels and sit smug in intellectual elitism and pride that you don’t touch ‘garbage,’ but keep in mind that many highly praised authors and books are pretty trashy, if you ask me. I care about what’s between the covers, not who wrote it, not the category it’s found in at the bookstore, not the lurid cover art.
Some of the most socially...
Rhiannon Bowman at The Clog: What the heck is... →
Simply put, deflation is an economic term that means prices are falling. It’s also a time when credit gets tighter. We’re all familiar with inflation, where prices rise, right? Well, deflation is inflation in reverse. And, on the surface, it probably sounds like a good thing to most consumers. But just the mere mention of deflation makes some folks — like economists — freak out, even though...
Aaron Mesh at Willamette Week: The Geek Cure →
And open source has become big business. Microsoft, Google and IBM now dedicate departments to open-sourcing portions of their software. Last year, North Carolina-based corporation Red Hat became the first open-source software company on the S&P 500.
That shift was readily evident at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, or OSCON, which returned to Portland for a week this July, after a...
Matt Davis at Gambit: Spike Lee's: If God Is... →
Gambit: How did it feel, asking Ray Nagin how he thinks he’ll be judged by history?
Lee: For me that wasn’t the hardest question. The hardest question to ask him was to ask what he thinks about the most. And I think it was his best, when he talked about the eight-hour window to call the mandatory evacuation, and he waited until the eighth hour, and I know … well, he...
Mimi Williams at Vue: Two ways of knowing →
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo didn’t mince words. “When we open a door to a school, we close a door to a jail cell,” he told the provincial and territorial premiers at the Council of the Federation meeting in Winnipeg earlier this month. Atleo implored the leaders deal with what the AFN had been, for years, describing as a national crisis: the...
Alice Klein at NOW Toronto: Bring on nature’s... →
The biomimic asks nature how it accomplishes the different functions we humans need to carry out, like making fibres stronger than steel at low temperatures the way spiders do, out of carbohydrates with no toxins, or making solar cells that imitate the way leaves turn sunshine into energy.
Years ago Benyus started to collect little pieces like this that she noticed in the scientific...
William J. McGee at Consumer Reports: Cuba travel... →
It seems more likely than ever that Americans could soon be traveling freely to Cuba, the Communist nation just 90 miles from U.S. shores that has been a forbidden destination for nearly 50 years. Earlier this summer, the House Agriculture Committee voted to reverse the long-standing ban on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba, which was first imposed during the Kennedy Administration at the...
Andrew Blankstein and Kate Linthicum at LA Times:... →
The medical forms, detectives said, point them in the direction of a woman named Jean M. Barrie, who lived in the area and may have worked as a nurse. She was born in San Francisco in 1916. Detectives said they found postcards in the trunk addressed to a Jean M. Barrie from a brother, Thomas, in San Francisco. LAPD sources said one of the biggest challenges will be to determine whether a...
this ain't livin': Urchins and Indicators →
The urchin is one of the canaries in the coal mine. Tracking urchin populations gives people warning, and an opportunity to intervene before a situation careens out of control.
Tracking urchins, however, requires cooperation with commercial fisheries, and this has turned out to be a sticking point in some communities. Some crews don’t want government representatives or scientists on board, even...
Franz X. Vollenweider & Michael Kometer at... →
After a pause of nearly 40 years in research into the effects of psychedelic drugs, recent advances in our understanding of the neurobiology of psychedelics, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin and ketamine have led to renewed interest in the clinical potential of psychedelics in the treatment of various psychiatric disorders. Recent behavioural and neuroimaging data show...
Brian Handwerk at National Geographic: Titanic Is... →
The 20-day Expedition Titanic will use remotely operated submersibles to complete an unprecedented archaeological analysis of the two- by three-mile (three- by five-kilometer) debris field, including Titanic’s two halves. The ship’s bow and stern separated before sinking and now lie a third of a mile (half a kilometer) apart.
Thousands of high-resolution photos and video will be...
FWD/Forward: Dear Imprudence: Who Appointed You... →
So, here’s the dealio, parking police: stop it.
No, really, that’s about all I have to say. A person with a disabled placard or plates owes no obligation to you. Is not required to specify and explain, in detail, the nature of ou disabilities. Period. Placards get assigned to people who need them, and plenty of people who don’t have, ah, ‘visible handicaps’ do in fact need to take advantage of...
ACLU: Defending the 14th Amendment →
The attacks on the 14th Amendment that are being mounted today aren’t new. Even prior to its passage, some people objected to extending citizenship to the native born children of various immigrant groups, but these objections were soundly rejected. They were rejected again in the late 19th century when Chinese-Americans came under attack, and they must be rejected today when Latinos...
Tim Redmond at the San Francisco Bay Guardian:... →
Six years after the Guardian filed a lawsuit accusing SF Weekly and its chain owner of illegal predatory pricing, the California Court of Appeals has issued a precedent-setting ruling that not only affirms the Guardian’s claims but strikes a dramatic blow for small independent businesses in California.
A three-judge panel concluded Aug. 11 that the state’s Unfair Practices Act...
Isaiah Thompson at Philadelphia City Paper:... →
It all began in the 1970s, when — partly under the tutelage of Ralph Nader — liberal student groups began to incorporate their activities into statewide “public interest research groups,” or PIRGs, to advocate for progressive causes. They wanted to beat the right at its own game, to become a powerful progressive lobby that could stand up to greedy corporations, industry-bought...
this ain't livin': The Unrelenting Misery of... →
Here’s something that a lot of misery policers don’t know: Being poor is work. When people talk about how people on government assistance should ‘just work for a living,’ they are missing the fact that they are working. Getting government benefits? Requires work. There are a lot of hoops to jump through. Lines to sign. I’s to dot. You must do everything exactly right or you will be bumped right...
Amanda Hess at TBD: Suffragettes return, rally for... →
Today, members of the League of Women Voters gathered in front of the White House dressed in head-to-toe white. Then, they donned striped boater hats, twirled umbrellas, and walked around in circles in an attempt to convince unsuspecting tourists that Washingtonians deserve a vote in Congress. One demonstrator arrived in full Victorian-era suffragette garb, clutching a lace parasol in her...
All you people...
…sending me mash notes via the Tumblr ‘ask’ function are making me blush. I just wanted to say thanks. They brighten my day more than I can even begin to tell you.
Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones: Why is Obama Siding... →
The Obama administration has repeatedly vowed that tackling climate change is among its top priorities. But in a landmark legal case that could force the nation’s dirtiest power plants to clean up their acts, the administration this week sided with some of the biggest polluters in the country. This latest development has left a number of environmental advocates wondering whose side...
FWD/Forward: Following Up: Auggie on Covert... →
I am nothing if not scrupulously fair to shows I enjoy shredding, so when numerous people informed me that I had to watch this week’s episode of Covert Affairs and write about it, I complied, although I confess I armed myself with a bowl of English peas first so I would have something to throw at the screen. (Loki stationed himself eagerly by my chair in the hopes of hoovering up any dropped...
Kai Wright at Colorlines: Al Franken Shows Dems... →
It’s a lot more than other party leaders have said. The closest thing to a defense of Muslim Americans we’ve seen is President Obama’s legalistic parsing of rights versus wisdom. Harry Reid came out against the Cordoba House development, in what seems a plainly cynical effort to steal the issue from his November challenger, Sharon Angle. As did Howard Dean, whose explanation of how he’s...
Bitch Magazine: Push(back) at the Intersections:... →
One could argue that one aspect of feminism is sexual autonomy, and it’s notable that one of his partners is a woman in an open marriage, but there’s also a bit about these books that sticks in my craw; Blomkvist is an iteration of the Nice Guy who is oh so progressive and Helps Women and, by golly, has lots and lots of sex with them too!
Even as the characters resist oppression,...
Andrea Appleton at Baltimore City Paper: Nowhere... →
“It should be viewed as an incredibly important issue in Baltimore City,” says Vignetta Charles, a former researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Adolescent Health. “The level of unstable housing for youth should be unacceptable for us who live in the community.” The outlook for youth who experience homelessness can be bleak. According to Charles, one of the number one predictors of...
