2011 archive
Weather 0
The description in the story is understated (link fixed):
I got home from DL only by driving through two of the deepest puddles I’ve ever encountered on a roadway, if you can call something 100 yards long and up to the running boards if I had running boards “puddles.” The worst one was on a side street where alternative routes were readily available. The neighbors were all clustered along the road, but did any of them bother to warn drivers? No, tow truck breath.
It took my friend five hours to make the 16-mile drive home from her work. She did encounter neighbors who were standing in the floods warning drivers to turn back or keep to the left or so on.
Her experience also confirmed my prejudice against electric everything in cars. Her electric windows and locks failed (they are working again now).
While poised at the edges of flooded areas, she several times had the dubious pleasure of watching macho men and wonder women in their macho trucks and studly SUVs (and one potent Prius) come up behind her, honk angrily, drive around, and stall in the water (with the Prius, it was more like float away).
Break Time 0
Off to drink liberally.
State Department Security Theatre 0
Peter van Buren, author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, tells of his experiences being intimidated investigate by the State Deparment’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
As we sat in a small, gray, windowless room, resplendent with a two-way mirror, multiple ceiling-mounted cameras, and iron rungs on the table to which handcuffs could be attached, the two DS agents stated that the inclusion of that link amounted to disclosing classified material. In other words, a link to a document posted by who-knows-who on a public website available at this moment to anyone in the world was the legal equivalent of me stealing a Top Secret report, hiding it under my coat, and passing it to a Chinese spy in a dark alley.
Attempts to classify documents that are already public would seem somewhere between laughable and stupid, except that those attempts are backed by the life-crushing police power of the state.
Read the whole thing.
The Blood Lust Party 0
Shaun Mullen wonders how it got this way:
Have I got that right? Yes I do, but the question arises as to how the GOP got itself tied in such seemingly contradictory knots.
That’s easy: Obeisance to ideological purity no matter the circumstances, an unwillingness to listen to the views of others and a win-at-all-costs mentality as the GOP continues to devolve from a traditional political party to something resembling a religion.
Facebook Frolics 0
The Chicago Tribune wonders:
Which brings us back to the crossroads.
Market research is nothing new. The concentration of data in the hands of one company is, though, and it should raise concern. The data (and those patterns) provided by his 750 million users — us — is marketing gold that will be parlayed into enormous financial gain for Facebook and its partners (there’s a Facebook IPO just around the corner).
Swept up by the feel-good effects of “friends” and “like” buttons, 750 million of us have unwittingly allowed a business model that relies on our giving away information and then celebrating the “free” access we have to it.
Shouldn’t Mark Zuckerberg be paying us?
The (Job) Creationism Myth 0
Your altruistic “job creators” at work:
In an announcement on Tuesday morning, the company said it is seeking a buyer for the 185,000 barrel-per-day facility.
ConocoPhillips said it will immediately being the process of idling the facility and will “permanently close the plant in six months if a sales transaction is unsuccessful.”
Drinking Liberally Wednesday in Virgina Beach 0
New location: We are still checking out locations to find a place with a good mix of menu, location, and layout.
Fun and fellowship for liberals. Join us.
When: Wednesday, September 28th, 6 p
Where:
The Jewish Mother
600 Nevan Road (Map)
DIY 0
Seventy-three linear feet of shelving and an 8×4 pegboard installed to south side of garage.
Regular insanity resumes tomorrow.
We Need Single Payer 0
Life insurance has been described as a wager: You bet that you are going to die, the life insurance company bets you won’t, and you hope that they win the bet.
Of course, you know the death rate is the same everywhere, as Mark Twain observed: One per person.
Nevertheless, the gag points out what gets forgotten: insurance companies don’t want to pay claims; they want to pay the bosses’ country club memberships. Their business model is founded on not paying.
The Philadelphia Inquirer details the attempt of a severely crippled 27 year old woman–one whose hands and legs are too weak for her to maneuver herself–to get a modern wheelchair.
People who evaluate and fit patients for wheelchairs say cases like hers have become more common in recent months. They say many requests for the kind of chairs that patients like Lorey use – expensive, motorized units with multiple custom features – are being denied because insurers and Medicare officials are worried about high costs and fraud. Doctors, physical therapists, and patients must appeal the decision, or else the patients give up and accept lesser chairs.
“It’s gotten to the point where words are not enough to convince the medical directors” of insurers, said assistive technology professional Robert Townsend of Jeff Quip, a Boothwyn company that supplies complex chairs.
Experts said patients who fight – especially those who appeal in person – often can get the chair they need, but during the bureaucratic battle, they must make do with loaner chairs or lie in bed.
The Power of the Stink 0
Read Anne Laurie on Making a Stink in Public. A nugget:
More Light Bloggery 0
Home improvements continue through the week.