If you’re trying to think of a charity for your holiday donation, consider supporting Doctors without Borders and their efforts in Darfur, Sudan. The conflict might have fallen off the radar of corporate media, but the problem hasn’t gone away. I just donated $35, which can provide two high-energy meals to two hundred children.
Somebody out there better be getting me a new iPod for [insert winter holiday of choice here], because mine is officially full. Which sucks because I can’t load my mp3s of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for the flight tomorrow. I prefer the 60GB iPod photo, but I suppose I can settle for the 40GB model.
Not sure if I’ll have time to blog in Baltimore. Maybe I can talk one of my nurses into typing a short entry. Otherwise, I’ll catch you all on Thursday.
I need to start packing, but check out Frank Rich’s column in the Sunday Times. Rich has been doing some good post-election cultural commentary. This week, he uses the film Kinsey as a springboard for comparing the the chilling effects of the right wing on cultural attitudes in our time and in Kinsey’s. He nicely illustrates the right’s near-pathological aversion to discussions of sexuality and how those attitudes exert a disproportionate influence on our media. Let me me add that we live in country where a few hundred people can spam the FCC into doing their bidding, but at the same time the adult film industry does billions of dollars in annual business. The cognitive dissonance is astounding.
A short entry tonight because I was out most of the evening, doing some holiday shopping. I took the train from downtown to the Mall of America, partially as a test run to see how long it would take me to get to the airport on Tuesday. Other than being a little crowded on the way home, the ride was smooth and uneventful. At the mall, the crowds were in their customary state of holiday oblivion, darting in my path like overstimulated deer. My nurse was quite miffed. “Are you a magnet for stupid people?” she asked when we got home.
I’m geeking out over the trailer for Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. I mean…dude! It’s a great trailer because it piques interest in the movie without hitting the viewer over the head with noise and eye candy. I love the mise-en-scene (and I dare you to find five other bloggers using that phrase) that’s established in the closing shot. The suburban landscape with the ominous lights flickering on the horizon…it’s evocative without being over-the-top.
I’ve been sampling various podcasts. Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code is the most polished and entertaining. But given his background in radio, that’s to be expected. A lot of the other stuff is pretty geek-centric and I’m still looking for something that isn’t more or less a talk show.
I think the commenting problems have been addressed. MT-Blacklist was being a little overenthusiastic, but it should play nice with everyone now.
Today’s Star Tribune includes an article detailing a legal settlement involving Fairview Medical Center and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Some patients who are deaf and were receiving treatment at Fairview sued the hospital because the hospital did not provide adequate sign language interpreter services. In some cases, the interpreters provided were incompetent. In one instance, the interpreter’s spouse tried to convince a patient to come to some kind of alternative healing center for treatment. The callous and unprofessional treatment these people received is disturbing, especially considering that it occurred in a medical setting. Imagine how confused and scared you would be if you couldn’t understand the people who were poking and prodding you with assorted instruments. Like I keep saying, businesses and institutions are still clueless about their duties to accommodate people with disabilities a decade after passage of the ADA. We still have this Darwinian view of disability; adapt or die, but don’t make it our problem. We need to do a better job of getting these companies to understand that accommodations are a normal part of doing business with the community. Oh, and you don’t do that by having one day of diversity training for managers that may or may not include an hour’s worth of discussion on disability issues.
Fairview is settling for $208,000 and a judge will oversee Fairview’s future compliance with the ADA.
Let’s see, what else is pissing me off? Oh, yeah, Time and Newsweek have virtually identical covers this week. Okay, I know that slapping Jesus on the cover of a magazine probably boosts sales in the heartland. But c’mon, Time and Newsweek! Did you call each other over the weekend, sweating out your respective deadlines, and finally say, “Ah, fuck it. Nobody will notice.” I don’t mind when you have similar covers after a big news event, but I didn’t realize the birth of Jesus was a breaking story.
According to a recent Gallup poll, nurses were ranked as the most being the most ethical and trustworthy professionals.
Attorneys were ranked #19.
You have no idea how much shit I’m going to get from my nurses once they get wind of this. And in the interest of ensuring my own continued health and well-being, I will emphatically declare my concurrence with the poll results. Nurses are, in fact, a most estimable lot and I have no doubt that many of my nurses would qualify for sainthood if given the opportunity.
Okay, I’m gonna quit it before I completely lose my dignity.
I’m trying to think of an audiobook to download onto my iPod for the plane to Baltimore. I’ve been meaning to read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and I saw it on Audible. Any other suggestions?
One thing that I simply cannot stand are badly written e-mails. And apparently I’m not the only one. I know quite a few intelligent people who seem to have only a passing familiarity with the written English language. Are we English majors the last line of protection against a world where capitalization and punctuation don’t exist? I’ve tried writing sloppy e-mails when I’m pressed for time, but I can never bring myself to hit “Send.” I always go back and edit everything. Dr. Pennington, my Advanced Composition prof at St. Norbert, would be proud.
Someone told me they tried posting a comment but that if was rejected for “inappropriate content.” The hell? Other than spammers, everyone is free to comment. The dirtier, the better, in fact. Is anyone else having this problem?
I had another Humphrey Fellows session today. I was joking with a friend that we need to have a session on a topic that doesn’t leave us completely depressed afterwards. Because right now I’m convinced that we’ll all be scrounging landfills for food in a few years because a loaf of bread will cost a hundred dollars. And that’s the good scenario. The worst-case scenario is that we get hit with a terrorist attack that makes 9/11 look amateurish. I better make that trip to Vegas soon, before everything goes to hell.
Almost at page 300 in the book. I’m thinking another 150-200 pages, but conciseness has never been my strong suit.
I’m trying to get into podcasting. I don’t like the deliberately obscure term, but podcasting is to radio what blogs are to print media. Podcasting enables people to distribute audio content over the internet cheaply and easily. People can use something similar to an RSS reader to check for new programs and download them to their computer/MP3 player. I’m looking for content suggestions to check out, so send ’em if you got ’em. But can someone come up with a better term that doesn’t make people think of iPods? Mainstream users aren’t going to adopt this if the term isn’t more descriptive.