Remember when pro wrestling was big? Some folks really seemed to believe it was all spontaneous.
Reminds me of the belief that wealthy celebrities and politicians actually "tweet" ...Gail Collins - The Love Party - NYTimes.com
... it is highly unlikely that anybody actually gives a fig about Mark Sanford. (Including, perhaps, his beleaguered staff, which spent the last week fending off calls from the lieutenant governor and diligently filing Sanford’s daily Twitter.)
I just received 40 LinkedIn updates in 24 hours (via Feed) distributed across a fair number of my connections.
I used to get 0-1 a day.
The update volume has been growing exponentially as my friends and colleagues scramble for new jobs.
It’s tough times for many, but good times, so far, for LinkedIn.
China blocks Google services for an hour | World news | guardian.co.ukThis is desperation. China's tyrants are afraid of what China's economic upheaval is going to mean. Their worried about North Korea collapsing, they're worried about the Iranian example and they're trying to turn off news from the world. It's craziness born of panic.
Google suffered intensive disruption in China tonight just days after it was warned by the authorities to scale back its search operations.
Search functions and Gmail were inaccessible for more than an hour in a move seen by web watchers as a warning shot across the bows by China's censors...
Almost as an aside, Krugman delivers the bad news at the end of a blog post …
Green shoots, 1930 - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com
…I thought everyone paying attention to this stuff was familiar with the Eichengreen-O’Rourke work. EO point out that the original Great Depression was most severe in America, while this one is more severe in a number of other countries. So you want to do a world comparison — and if you do, we’re actually tracking the first year of the GD quite closely. Here’s world industrial production …
Nicely is an understatement. By this chart world output is cloning the first 12 months of the first Great Depression. I really don’t think we’re appreciating how bad things are getting in China.
We should all be very, very nice to China.
It took 3 years for world industrial output to bottom out in GD I, falling about 40% during that time. We’re down about 13% judging from the graph Krugman provides.
I don’t think we should be worrying about the stimulus package being too big. (Not that anyone paying attention is worrying about that.)
A surgeon expresses the thoughts on the mind of every physician who’s heard that Steve Jobs received a liver transplant (per WSJ) for a metastatic neuroendocrine tumor …
What's wrong with Steve Jobs, revisited : Respectful Insolence
… How many people are capable of getting themselves listed for transplant in a state nearly 2,000 miles away from their home? When a liver becomes available, there isn't much time to get to the hospital. That means a person seeking a transplant in another state either has to stay in that state for as long as it takes to get an organ or be within a distance to be able to fly there within a very short period of time. Moreover, organs eligibility and availability are determined by the United Network for Organ Sharing, which maintains the donor lists. When an donor is identified, regional and state organizations (in my home state, for example, Gift of Life, where one of my relatives works), obtain consent, arrange for organ harvest, and decide, based on fairly strict criteria published by UNOS regarding medical need and practical matters like how long it will take to get the organs out and to the hospitals where they are needed, which people on the waiting list for the state will receive each of the organs harvested. If this story is true, what Jobs did is not illegal, but it sure does leave an unpleasant stench of the rich and powerful taking advantage of regional differences in organ availability, perhaps at the expense of a lifelong Tennessee resident who needs a liver…
… Worse, the indication is somewhat shaky. For one thing, as was pointed out in the article, neuroendocrine tumors are generally very slow growing and take a long time to metastasize. One of the more "common" subtypes of the rare neuroendocrine tumor in particular, a carcinoid of the appendix or the rectum, is particularly prone to metastasize to the liver and is notorious for causing carcinoid syndrome, which is due to serotonin secretion by these tumors and causes flushing, diarrhea and other unpleasant symptoms…
In the United States organs are gifts from the dead to strangers. Most of the donors are not wealthy. In this country we don’t, yet, seem to have much of a commercial market in organs – though the organ trade is growing in much of the world (the sale of sperm and eggs, by contrast, is a very active US market, sure to be increasingly global).
The story of Jobs liver transplant has two interesting aspects. Both demonstrate what power can achieve.
One aspect is that it was kept pretty much out of the media, though clearly thousands must have known the details. In this regard it resembles the seven month media silence about the imprisonment of a senior NYT journalist in Taliban-occupied Pakistan . The modern world is better at keeping secrets than many imagine.
The second aspect is that it shows that we need to talk more about organ distribution. The rich will always have access to more health care options – though, as in this case, it may lead them to make medically sub-optimal choices. On the other hand, organs are a gift from people who are usually not themselves powerful. Given two equally appropriate candidates, one powerful and one not, I’d rather my liver go to the less privileged. It’s my way of spitting in the face of a fundamentally unjust universe.
We should be talking about the organ trade.
Ross Douthat is the NYT’s latest attempt to find a GOP-friendly columnist who’s not a raving loon.
He writes of health care today, and he’s only lightly raving …
Ross Douthat - The Hard Part - NYTimes.com
…. In a world without political constraints, it wouldn’t be hard to create a fiscally responsible alternative. Conservatives would encourage people to self-ration, by putting a certain number of health care dollars directly in their hands and leaving the rest to market forces. Liberals would ration more directly, by slow-walking Americans into a public health care system, whose cost-conscious, evidence-weighing bureaucracy would pay for procedure X but not procedure Y, surgery P but not prescription drug Q.
But of course Americans want their health care system to bankroll the entire alphabet — and they definitely don’t want to think about “market forces” when they’re going to the doctor. They might be willing to pay slightly higher taxes to bankroll a reform, but their ideas about what “reform” should mean are far more expensive than what health care experts have in mind. Indeed, as William Galston noted recently, the best way to satisfy the public’s health care preferences would be to start with whatever the experts — right and left alike — say is required to keep the system solvent and do exactly the opposite…
Of course the choices are not as stark as Douthat pretends. He is a GOP voice, after all. On the other hand, my champion, Paul Krugman, isn’t as forthcoming as he might be. Krugman is very careful to skirt the reality of how health care services will be delivered -- if we actually win this one.
I’m 95% sure Krugman understands that what we will eventually guarantee every American is a ticket on the Manhattan subway, not the keys to a new Lexus. Everyone will get at least Quebec-quality healthcare, which is what I like to call “crummy care”. People with money will get what my family enjoys today, people without money get the Spartan version, and nobody gets “crappy care”. (As an aside, Subway Care may have better outcomes than Lexus Care, but that’s another post.)
Douthat is right that the average American’s ideas of “reform” are a delusion. Right wingers won’t mention that because they fear Obama will succeed – and maybe they hate that more than they love America. The good guys won’t talk about it because they suspect informed voters will freeze in the headlights -- and get squashed.
I’m not running for office though, so I can mention it.
Roger Cohen - A Supreme Leader Loses His Aura as Iranians Flock to the Streets - NYTimes.com
... Just off Revolution Street, I walked into a pall of tear gas...
... I did what I could and he said, “We are with you” in English and with my colleague we tumbled into a dead end — Tehran is full of them — running from the searing gas and police. I gasped and fell through a door into an apartment building where somebody had lit a small fire in a dish to relieve the stinging.
There were about 20 of us gathered there, eyes running, hearts racing. A 19-year-old student was nursing his left leg, struck by a militiaman with an electric-shock-delivering baton. “No way we are turning back,” said a friend of his as he massaged that wounded leg."...
... for all-day events in the Pre calendar you can remind 1/2/3/7 days before. For meeting-type events you can remind 5/10/15 mins and 1 day...
This is one of my favorite examples of the wrong way to deliver smart software.
Microsoft Access 2003 (2007 too I think) tries to be smart when importing an Excel spreadsheet. Rather than look at Excel’s data types, it looks at the data in the first 25 rows. Then, based on the patterns it sees there it infers a data type … (emphases mine)
Import, export, and link data between Access and Excel - Access - Microsoft Office Online
Data type By default, Access scans the first 25 rows to guess the data type of the column. If Access encounters values beyond the 25th row that are not compatible with the chosen data type, it will simply ignore those values and not import them.
… You cannot change the data type of the destination field during the import operation.
It’s the combination of oh-so-smart cleverness (infer the data type) and pure stupidity (no user override of the inferred type) that makes this such a priceless example.
The lessons?
First, be very conservative about making your software “smart”. In general, you’ll make it stupid.
Second, if you’re going to make your software smart, let the user override the clever code.
It’s not like Access is a consumer tool anyway.
I can’t measure what an amazing amount of pain this stupid design has caused me over the years. It even afflicts linking to a spreadsheet from Access.
Actually, it never went away – which is a bit weird.
We’re seeing a fair amount of it in Minnesota. This blurb came from the University of Minnesota and it’s not bad as these things go.
Emergency Preparedness : Academic Health Center Office of Emergency Response
As I’m sure you’ve been hearing in the news, spread of the novel H1N1 influenza (swine flu) is increasingly common and occurring throughout Minnesota. I thought it would be a good time to provide you with an update.
Currently all patients in Minnesota with flu symptoms such as fever, cough or other respiratory symptoms are considered likely to have the H1N1 novel influenza virus. The Minnesota Department of Health is now only conducting diagnostic testing on severe, hospitalized cases of possible influenza.
Given the increasing spread of H1N1, this is a good time to be reminded of the following:
- If you are sick with flu-like symptoms, you should stay home. You will be considered infectious for 7 days after the onset of symptoms or 24 hours after you are symptom-free, whichever is longer.
- Use excellent hand washing techniques and cover your cough. It is our best first line of defense against the spread of influenza.
- If you are pregnant, immune-suppressed or have a chronic health condition such as diabetes, heart disease, asthma or emphysema, you are at increased risk for severe flu or flu complications. You should contact your health care provider if you have flu symptoms or have been exposed to people with flu symptoms.
- Keep hard surfaces such as workstations, door handles and bathroom surfaces clean using household disinfectant.
The following links can also help answer any questions you may have:
Pretty good, but their list of increased risk is not complete. This one is from the MN Dept of Health
The implication, not explicitly stated, is that if you’re not at increased risk you’re supposed to stay home.
The CDC and departments of health need to do a much better job of providing guidance about home management of H1N1 flu -- including a description of the expected course and instructions to contact a physician if the disease is NOT following the expected course.
As I’ve mentioned before, I think the CDC has blown this one. We’re just lucky this flu hasn’t been unusually severe – so far. Though any influenza is nasty enough.
China lambasts Google again for disseminating porn - Ars Technica
.... Google is guilty of 'disseminating pornographic and vulgar information' and should stop immediately, according to China's Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center. The organization made the accusation Thursday after making several requests to Google to remove what it has deemed inappropriate content, and said that Chinese authorities should take action if Google won't conduct a 'thorough clean-up"...China's economy is under severe strain. International coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmnen square protests must have leaked back into China. China is mandating use of government controlled filtering software on all computers. South Korea is a huge cultural influence in China, and the inevitable collapse of North Korea will eliminate China's last remaining communist ally. The Iranian protests must be unnerving, and disturbingly reminiscent of Tiananmen and the fall of the Berlin wall. Lastly, with Bush gone, it's harder to find an inspiring example of a criminally stupid western government.
