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Olbermann vs. Coulter
Our media class has a hard time focusing on more than one subject at a time. Keith Olbermann's latest column suggests that the media's (and political elite's) mad quest to convict Bill Clinton of adultery helped push more important topics -- like our vulnerability to terrorist attack -- off the national agenda. It's a great piece: "Ann Coulter didn't cause Sept. 11... But with hindsight one has to ask why the prospect of a country unprepared for terrorism wasn't a sexy enough topic for her and the others to use to pound Clinton and the Democrats." Remember, during Monicamania, any time the Clinton administration decided to do anything in the international sphere -- like firing missiles at bin Laden's Afghanistan training camp -- it was accused of pulling a "Wag the Dog" stunt to divert the national dialogue from the more pressing matter of the presidential genitalia. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]

America's Finest News Source:

There's renewed interest these days in this prescient article from "America's Finest News Source" (dated January 18, 2001).

"WASHINGTON, DC—Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that 'our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.'"

[A Public Space for Self Expression]

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Big Brother. You GOTTA read this whole article! It is just too rich. Lovin' every minute of it and I'd quote the entire thing here if it wasn't plagiarism itself. Go on, read it! You know you want to... Miasma

"if George Bush should be hit for plagiarism of George Orwell" [Daypop Top 40] San Franscisco Chronicle [...] Here's a question for constitutional scholars: Can a sitting president be charged with plagiarism? As President Bush wages his war against terrorism and moves to create a huge homeland security apparatus, he appears to be borrowing heavily, if not ripping off ideas outright, from George Orwell. The work in question is "1984, " the prophetic novel about a government that controls the masses by spreading propaganda, cracking down on subversive thought and altering history to suit its needs. It was intended to be read as a warning about the evils of totalitarianism -- not a how-to manual.

[Miasma in the House of Bite Me]

Stay out of hospitals if you can.

and if you can't, have someone with you at all times.

I was listening to Terry Gross on Fresh Air today, and she had a terrifying show. She had investigative reporter  Michael J. Berens, who recently did a series on how infections in hospitals are rising rapidly, and needlessly killing tens of thousands of patients each year. Excerpts from his reporting on infections:

"in 2000, nearly three-quarters of the deadly infections — or about 75,000 — were preventable, the result of unsanitary facilities, germ-laden instruments, unwashed hands and other lapses. ... 

Within the average U.S. hospital today, about half of doctors and nurses do not wash hands between patients, a dozen recent health-care studies show...In thousands of cases observed by federal or state inspectors, surgeons performed without washing hands or wearing masks. Investigators discovered fly-infested operating rooms where dust floated in the air during open-heart surgeries in Connecticut.

Because of cost-cutting measures, U.S. hospitals have collectively pared cleaning staffs by 25 percent since 1995. During the same period, half of the nation's hospitals have been cited for failing to properly sanitize portions of their facilities ...

Today, about 2.1 million patients each year, or 6 percent, will contract a hospital-acquired infection among 35 million admissions annually, CDC records show."

How bad does this have to get before we as a society do something about it? Laurie Garret wrote an excellent book about 5 years ago, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, where she laid out this problem. There are lots of causes for the problem, but the biggest obstacle to fixing it is that the government permits hospitals to keep their infection rates secret. I don't care how laissez-faire you are, a market requires information to function. How many people do you think would go have open heart surgery in a hospital where they knew 22 percent of the people who did so came down with infections? Especially when the hospital across town had a 1% rate? But lobbying from hospitals and the medical establishment has made sure that information is kept proprietary, and public health officials have been rendered increasingly powerless vis-a-vis hospitals, as documented in Garret's recent work,
Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health. (Both Garrett books are very well written and well documented, although very depressing. Highly recommended.)

For the second part of the show, Terry Gross had Berens talk about research he has done on what the lack of nurses and their replacement with untrained $9/hr nurses aides is doing to health care in hospitals. Even more terrifying. This one chilled me to the bone, probably because I experienced something like it:

"[Since 1995] At least 418 patients have been killed and 1,356 others injured by registered nurses operating infusion pumps, which regulate medicine flow. In each of these cases, the nurse either lacked the training to operate infusion pumps or claimed to be burdened with too many patients. The pumps can be misused in several ways, and sometimes nurses punched in the wrong amount of medicine on the built-in touch pad. Calculation errors are so prevalent that some nurses called them "death by decimal."

Terry then had two experienced nurses on the show share some of their horror stories of what it was like working in hospitals today, and how hard it was to do a good job, even with the best of intentions, and how that was driving nurses out of hospitals. Both nurses said that when they had to go into the hospital, they had shifts of friends with them so that they had around the clock coverage by somebody looking out for them, and said that would be their number one piece of advice to patients - always have someone with you, 24 hours a day, and have them double check everything that is going on.

The radio show really struck me, and I have blogged on longer that I usually do, probably because I had a personal experience with this kind of problem, where I was not given the right medication by a nurse after surgery. The nurse spoke very limited English and refused my requests to have the doctor summoned. Then she managed to knock over the monitor on the table next to my bed, so she disconnected it. I spent a night in agony and fear. It brings chills to my spine just remembering it.

I wonder, how bad will we let our heath care systems get before we really start addressing some of the root causes, such as how it is financed? If our public schools are any indication, we will let it get pretty bad. Not a cheery thought.

 

[Geodog's Radio Weblog]

posted by MiguelCardoso July 30 8:48 AM | 2 comments. Play The Britney Spears vs. Shakespeare Game: This is more than a bit of fun from The Philosopher's Magazine. After answering a few questions on your definition of what makes a great work of art, you get to choose two artists and rate them both. ( Yes, you can even pit Britney against Shakespeare). You'll then get a final score on who is, according to your criteria, il miglior fabro. Julien Baggini's essay, Who's The Greatest?, is well worth reading beforehand. [I pitted T.S.Eliot against Miles Davis and Miles Davis won hands down...] [MetaFilter]

Epicurean time travelers should beware ancient times because aparently Ho-hos and Deviled Eggs were only recently invented. [Memepool]

William Shakespeare. "We know what we are, but know not what we may be." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

posted by anastasiav July 29 9:45 PM | 4 comments. The Linguistic Fun Page. If you're stuck on a cube-farm somewhere, I especially recommend the Hellatine Dictionary of Bureaucratese. The remote links are much better than the local ones, although I did especially enjoy The Collective Nouns Page (An anthology of prostitutes, a smuth of jellyfish) [MetaFilter]

In no one we trust.

James Surowiecki is my favorite business journalist. His one page gems in the New Yorker are one of the best things to happen to that magazine in a long time. Unfortunately, his stuff isn't always easy to get to online. He really outdid himself this week with his brilliant piece IN NO ONE WE TRUST. Highly recommended. An excerpt:

"Trust reduces the friction in an economy. Without it, the gears grind to a halt. To establish trust, you need to be able to identify those who are undeserving of it. [What happened in the 90's was that] In effect, investors stopped watching the watchmen, and the watchmen stopped watching, too. ... The independent knowers told investors that they could trust corporate America. Corporate America did not reciprocate. And now we're all paying for it."

There is a saying, I forget the exact wording, to the effect that one of the measures of a person's intelligence is how much they agree with you. By that rank James Surowiecki is a genius. One of the consistent themes of this weblog, reflected in its motto, "who will guard the guardians" is the need to counterbalance power. It was a fundamental principle of the American Constitution, and it has frequently served us well, but people are always arguing that "things are different now, because [the new economy, the war on terrorism, we are the good guys, etc], so we can get rid of those wasteful hindrances to [capitalism, business, going after terrorists, etc]. Ancient and recent history shows that isn't true.

Tip o the hat to annleslie for the link.

[Geodog's Radio Weblog]

Chocoholics' delight.

I took a tour of the Scharffen Berger chocolate factory in Berkeley today. It's a neat operation, the tour is very informative, and you get as much great chocolate as you can eat in one sitting. I'm not sure that I would drive across the Bay for the tour, but if you are planning to be in Berkeley, it makes a nice addition to a day of wandering through bookstores or visiting the shops on 4rth Ave. You are supposed to book the tours in advance, and can do so online, but it seemed like a pretty relaxed operation, with people signing up in person at the last minute. Recommended.

[Geodog's Radio Weblog]

This Modern World. The history of the dot-com economy and the history of the war on terror -- recounted in a single cartoon! [Salon.com]

Typorganism: never will http://www.typorganism.com/ you have more fun with words. [Memepool]

Mathematician Fills in a Blank for a Fresh Insight on Art. Maurits Cornelis Escher fascinated by visual mathematical concepts and often featured them in his art. By Sara Robinson. [New York Times: Science]

More Important Shit...

This from AKMA today:

"CAMBRIDGE, MA—Jon Rosenblatt, 27, a Harvard University English graduate student specializing in modern and postmodern critical theory, deconstructed the take-out menu of a local Mexican restaurant "out of sheer force of habit" Monday...."

[A Public Space for Self Expression]

Bushwatch.

Today I found Bushwatch. I don't know how I could have missed it before. It is fiercely partisan, but also incredibly funny. If Dubya did it or said it, it's here. It varies from the incredibly detailed graphic of how Bush made his money to a collection of Dubya's better one liners in the Bushlexia section. Highly recommended if you are a partisan democrat, or if you just like funny stuff.

Tip o the hat to Coco Conn of Strangelove for the link.

[Geodog's Radio Weblog]

What's the time, Mr Woolf?

Word Time Server is a damn useful site if you need to know the time where you are or anywhere else (on Earth, obviously).

A world map showing the location you are querying is also displayed on a map, which is nice.

[Outwardly Normal 2]

posted by owillis July 28 4:19 PM | 10 comments. Clinton Fires Back at Republican Accusations "There was corporate malfeasance both before he took office and after. The difference is I actually tried to do something about it and their party stopped it. And one of the people who stopped our attempt to stop Enron accounting was made chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission." He also talks about the Middle East and the related "Blame Clinton" movement. I can hear the teeth gnashing already. [MetaFilter]

The Magic Liberal Eightball [FARK]

NYT slams Operation TIPS.

Monday's NYT editorial on TIPS concludes:

The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism tactics — secret detentions of suspects, denial of the right to trial and now citizen spying — have in common a lack of faith in democratic institutions and a free society. If TIPS is ever put into effect, the first people who should be turned in as a threat to our way of life are the Justice Department officials who thought up this most un-American of programs.

Strong words for the gray lady, as the NYT is sometimes called. I'm glad to see opposition to TIPS from all political sectors. Right wing zealot Dick Armey is even sponsoring an amendment that would ban the administration from proceeding with TIPS.

[Geodog's Radio Weblog]

Pioneer Space Plaque Redesign by Edward Tufte. Edward Tufte, well known amongst information & Web designers for his trilogy of ID bibles, puts a bit of magic [kottke.org]

posted by Su July 23 1:23 PM | 18 comments. When the Japanese do ice cream, you end up with flavors like...well, whatever you're thinking, it's probably not too far off.
Mmm, wasabi. [MetaFilter]

The non-tortilla..

Brigitte Eaton on her new mannah:

for anyone that is on the atkin's diet, you must get La Tortilla Factory low-carb tortillas. they only have 3g net carbs each. they taste good and you can use them to fill the place of desperately needed bread. thankfully, my local grocery store, zanotto's has them.

[aka food]

[a klog apart]

The Economist The great telecoms crash. "The telecoms bust is some ten times bigger than the better-known dotcom crash: the rise and fall of telecoms may indeed qualify as the largest bubble in history. Telecoms firms have run up total debts of around $1 trillion. And as if this were not enough, the industry has also disgraced itself by using fraudulent accounting tricks in an attempt to conceal the scale of the disaster." "The danger is that the traumatic scale of the telecoms crisis will cause the pendulum to swing back too far in [snowdeal.org | conflux]

Perseid Meteor Showers, August 12-13, 2002..

Anita Rowland says:

It's not too soon to start planning your Perseid Meteor Shower viewing expedition. (BrainDan, I promise it won't be as cold as last fall!)

"This year the shower peaks on August 12th and 13th. Experts say it should be remarkably good. The Perseids have been strong in recent years--a promising sign for 2002. And the moon sets early in mid-August; lunar interference will not be a problem. Sky watchers can expect to see dozens to hundreds of meteors per hour."

Science at NASA:

The best time to look for meteors is when Perseus is highest in the sky--between 2 a.m. and dawn. On August 12th, set your alarm for 2 o'clock in the morning. Go outside; lie down on a sleeping bag or a reclining lawn chair with your toes pointed northeast; and gaze upward. Soon you'll see shooting stars racing along the Milky Way.

 

[aka events]

[a klog apart]

posted by nofundy July 22 11:11 AM | 20 comments. How Bush made his millions. A short story by a very conservative journalist. "It is the story of a man who has been rewarded for repeated failures by having money shot at him through a fire hose. It is the story of a man who talks with a straight face about having "earned" a fortune of tens of millions of dollars, without having ever done an honest day's work in his life." [MetaFilter]

The universe is stranger that we can imagine.

The Cellar's image of the date site led me to this photo on the Hubble Space Telescope site.

This is apparently the remnants of the explosion of the star Cassiopeia A.

If this is what the universe looks like, than I agree with the astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington, who said "not only is the universe stranger than we imagine , it is stranger than we can imagine."

(It may have been J. B. S. Haldane who said it first, I have seen both citations. I remember it from reading the science fiction of Arthur C Clarke).

[Geodog's Radio Weblog]

posted by Su July 22 1:53 AM | 0 comments. Do you seem to feel anxious lately? Well answer a few questions, and Hello Kitty will provide a psychological analysis for you!
This is just a bit scary. The questions are a little bizarre, too. [MetaFilter]

Listen.com wins

I've subscribed to listen.com, a.k.a. Rhapsody. For about $100 a year you get unlimited music, legally. They don't have absolutely everything, but they do have the five major labels and there's really tons of stuff to listen to. One day I played every recorded work by Cat Stevens. Now I'm working through Gary Numan and Orchestra Manouevres in the Dark. Oh, wait, there's the new Tori Amos CD. Click! The UI is much better than anything Napster/KaZaa/Gnutella had, it's especially easy to find new things to listen to because everything is nicely cross-indexed and reviewed. If you can't figure out what to play, you can listen to a preprogrammed radio station, fast forwarding through any songs that bore you, and when you find something you like you can listen to the whole album, other recordings by the same artist, recordings by artists who influenced that artist, and on and on.

The service works extremely well. Songs start playing in seconds and get downloaded quickly in the background; unlike the streaming services there are never "hiccups." (To be fair, I'm using a T1 at work from Savvis which is extremely reliable).

Finally, the recording industry (under extreme duress) has given us a reasonable way to pay for digital music. Yes, things are missing (Madonna!) but that doesn't mean it's not worth $100 a year for access to 15,000 good albums.

Cool new stuff

Dave's Google whatchamacallit keeps getting better and better. It's the command line for the world wide web. It shows the time and date when idling, so you can turn off your toolbar clock and save real estate. There are zillions of command line options now. I use it to find articles on Joel on Software ... type "joel schedules!" (the ! means "I'm feeling lucky") and the article pops up in a new window.

[Joel on Software]

The Pattern on the Stone by Daniel Hillis. A one-paragraph explanation of how a computer works from Danny Hillis's The Pattern on the Stone (which you should read [kottke.org]

Here is a good article on battery life when useing .... Here is a good article on battery life when useing wireless network cards in Pocket PCs. [PocketPCHow2 Log]

Meet the Nigerian E-Mail Grifters -  Nigerian e-mails 'respectfully requesting your assistance' and promising great rewards actually do work -- for the Nigerians.   An admitted scammer explains how it works.  "I was told to write like a classic novelist would," Taiwo explained. "Very old world, very thick sentences, you know?"  [Wired News]

I knew these guys were craftsmen, but I had no idea of the intricate scope of their operations.  I wonder if, one day, in a crusty academic room a professor will be dissecting the literary handiwork of these scammers?   I wonder which "classic novelists" they were influenced by?  Alas!  So many questions, and so much to learn.   I'll guess I'll just wait for the History Channel special to come out.

[Ernie the Attorney]

The Puzzling Red Wine Headache. There are many theories about what causes the syndrome known as Red Wine Headache, or R.W.H., but few facts. By Marian Burros. [New York Times: Health]

Scary Gov't Logo. Check out this nifty animated logo on the US Patent and Trademark Office website. Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)
[Boing Boing Blog]

How To Write Unmaintainable Code. If you've every programmed, you must check out How To Write Unmaintainable Code by Roedy Green. A quote: [Paul Holbrook's Radio Weblog]

The End of History Sucks.

The Dialectic

• Thesis: Communism.
• Antithesis: Free Market Capitalism. 
• Synthesis: Plutocracy, the systematic looting of both systems.

History Ends at a Bank in Bermuda, frequented by American CEOs, Russian Gangsters, and the Cali Cartel.  

Mr. Fukuyama, this is about Trust -- the necessary precondition of Free Markets, the Conmen who rig them, and the Thinkers who serve them. 

[Wealth Bondage]

See? 

Maddie points to Tony Pierce's latest photo essay. It's brilliant.

Here's Tony on the L.A. blogbash where we failed to meet.

[Doc Searls Weblog]

Note:  Click on photos to advance

Q  U  O  T  E  D "Every day I get dozens, sometimes hundreds, of e-mails from these people, almost always trying to sell me one of four things: (1) pornography; (2) Viagra; (3) a product for the man who is not satisfied with his natural self and would like to increase, by as much as three inches, the size of his endowment; or (4) a low-interest mortgage. Why are there so many e-mail ads for these products? Does anybody buy them? Is there a town somewhere, called Spamville, where the men consume Viagra and pornography in bulk quantities, then lurch around in a lust-crazed frenzy, their huge artificially enhanced endowments knocking holes in their walls, so eventually their houses fall down, forcing them to purchase new ones, using low-interest mortgages?" -- Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry

[quoted in GMSV]

posted by Slithy_Tove » July 16 6:04 AM | 3 comments. It was a dark and stormy opening paragraph; the extravagant tropes and preposterously periodic sentences fell in torrents. The 2002 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest awards have been announced! If you secretly love prose so bad it's good, the Bulwer-Lytton is for you. A taste:

The blood dripped from his nose like hot grease from a roasting bratwurst pierced with a fork except that grease isn't red and the blood wasn't that hot and it wasn't a fork that poked him in the nose but there was a faint aroma of nutmeg in the air and it is of noses we speak not to mention that if you looked at it in the right profile, his nose did sort of look like a sausage.

[MetaFilter]

posted by djacobs » July 16 7:11 AM | 2 comments. "Can I see pictures of the actual demining team being sponsored by GYWO?" Yes, another Get Your War On post, but this time to spotlight the benefit work the incredible success of the comic has enabled. [MetaFilter]

posted by vacapinta » July 15 7:07 PM | 3 comments. The Breakfast of Champions! Drinking too much lately? Menudo (tripe) (not these guys) has been touted as one of the best hangover cures known to mankind (mefi'ers agree). Not to be confused with its kinder gentler cousin Posole, Menudo is part of the canon of authentic Mexican food (what mexicans eat). [MetaFilter]

posted by LuxFX » July 15 8:01 PM | 7 comments. New Starbucks Slogan: "For Your Health".... new research shows that three cups of coffee or more every day might reduce risk of alzheimers by 60%. I'm sure dedicated coffee drinkers really need another reason.... [MetaFilter]

Anonymous. "Better to get up late and be wide awake than to get up early and be asleep all day." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

Joe Conason off to a good start at Salon.

Salon Magazine (recommended) recently hired Joe Conason to do a daily political blog, and Joe is off to a good start. I love people who can write with an edge -- I wish I could do it. Read this:

"When George Bush talks, people listen -- and sell. When Bush stopped talking for a few hours, the market eventually rallied, although not quite enough to erase the sickening 439-point plunge that followed his speech. Listening to the president dish out platitudes in Alabama could make any intelligent American despair. He still boasts about his tax cuts, and complains about the inheritance tax, with considerably more conviction than he can muster when he finally mentions corporate corruption. He still talks about reining in the trial lawyers, as if they're somehow to blame for the drifting economy." More

Go Joe Go.

[Geodog's Radio Weblog]

Why is the media only now questioning Bush's shady stock dealings.

A brilliant article and question from Harold Evans: Why didn't the media question Bush's shady stock dealings before he became president?

Apparently Talk magazine (edited by his wife Tina Brown) ran a long special on the Harken stock scandal and the Rangers sale about a month before the election, but nobody in the media picked it up. The answers he suggests:

"The 2000 election was notorious for the way beat reporters got themselves trapped in a narrative that was throughout impervious to real news: the narrative that Gore was a braggart and a poseur and Bush was an amiable Forrest Gump. Anything that did not fit the preconceived pattern had little chance of seeing ink or breathing air. Throughout the entire campaign, the political reporters and their editors were typically less concerned with the integrity of Bush than Gore's decision to wear earth tones.

Second, they were suckers for spin when the Republican campaign managers shrewdly cottoned on to the material needed to keep the Gore stereotype going.

Finally, there was surely an element of political and personal prejudice against Clinton and Gore. The then-head of CNN said the network "would not dream of touching" the story; to do so would be unfair to Mr. Bush so close to the election."

The entire article is worth reading if you are interested in a complete picture of Bush the shady businessman trading in on his Dad's name to make money.

[Geodog's Radio Weblog]

posted by owillis » July 15 9:50 PM | 4 comments. I'm Skeptical. UFOs, psychic phenomenon, Bigfoot, or miracles got you down? Consult the Skeptic's Dictionary. Debunker James Randi is online as well, while psychic Sylvia Browne just refuses to take $1 million dollars. [MetaFilter]

If you haven't read this basic essay on the Singularity, it is a fun entry article on the topic. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Here is my Blogchalk

 

Google! DayPop! This is my <b>blogchalk</b>: English, United States, Lexington, Kentucky, Beaumont Circle, Richard, Male, 51-55!

 

What are they up to now?.

What is the Bush administration up to now? According to a US government website, http://www.citizencorps.gov/, they are setting up Operation TIPS:

Operation TIPS - the Terrorism Information and Prevention System - will be a nationwide program giving millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees, and others a formal way to report suspicious terrorist activity. Operation TIPS, a project of the U.S. Department of Justice, will begin as a pilot program in 10 cities that will be selected. Operation TIPS, involving 1 million workers in the pilot stage, will be a national reporting system that allows these workers, whose routines make them well-positioned to recognize unusual events, to report suspicious activity.

On one hand, this makes a lot of sense. Why not have one Federal Government contact point that people can report "suspicious" activity to? On the other hand, it is very reminiscent of the Communist bloc "Neighborhood Watch" committees, where 10% of the population was set to spy on the other 90%. And, to quote Declan McCullagh of Politechbot, "Why is it that the most revealing news reports about the USA are coming nowadays form the UK, Aussie, and other non-USA media?" This one was first reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, of all places.

Well, I am volunteering, and I encourage you all to do the same. Although be warned when you do - Mozilla asserts that the FEMA certificate on the site is not valid - perhaps somebody else is intercepting the offers to volunteer?

[Geodog's Radio Weblog]

posted by percine » July 14 5:04 AM | 0 comments. Can't seem to finish your thesis?Then this site may be for you. It's a support group for those of us who just can't seem to write up and finish off that Ph.D./Masters degree. It'll either give you hope and motivation or it'll make you more complacent. "Well, I guess I'm not the only one who's taking a long time; I won't stress out about it anymore". [MetaFilter]

great quote about the Bush doings.

"at least Clinton never spoke out against infidelity"

-- Robert K. Brown

[Geodog's Radio Weblog]