Liberal elitist Matthew Yglesias and TPM slander "Paduka" Kentucky

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It's obviously Nowheres-ville USA

From Eric Dondero:

As everyone is aware, "Paduka" is a popular slander from political folklore meant to evoke images of backwardness and nowheres ville. It's similar to the old saying "how does it play in Peoria."

East Coast elitist Matthew Yglesias blatantly used the derogatory spelling for the made-up town of "Paduka," in his most recent column about Rand Paul, instead of the correct "Paducah." Paul was clearly referencing the Western Kentucky city. But by using the wrong spellling, Yglesias snarked that Paul was wanting presumably illiterate small-town hicks to run America's education, rather than the "experts" in Washington.

Yupper! Just a bunch a small-town hicks running our Edu-macation

The slight was repeated at TPM's Wonk Room. Here's the reference:

Rand Paul’s stated rationale for wanting to abolish the Department of Education is revealing of his ignorance of the relevant issues:

PAUL: I would rather the local schools decide things. I don’t like the idea of somebody in Washington deciding that Susie has two mommies is an appropriate family situation and should be taught to my kindergardener at school. That’s what happens when we let things get to a federal level. I think I would rather have local school boards, teachers, parents, people in Paduka deciding about your schools and not have it in Washington.

Will the Paducah Sun, or other Kentucky media, which have been slanted towards Paul's Democrat opponent Jack Conway, have any comments to make on the slight?

One wonders how Yglesias's remarks will play with them good ole votin' folks of Paducah?

(H/t Memeo)

Home Depot CEO pleads for Economic and Personal Liberty

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"I am a grandson of immigrants who came to this country seeking basic economic and personal liberty"

Ken Langone, CEO of Home Depot, excerpt from the WSJ, "Stop Bashing Business, Mr. President" Oct. 16:

A little more than 30 years ago, Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, Pat Farrah and I got together and founded The Home Depot. Our dream was to create (memo to DNC activists: that's build, not take or coerce) a new kind of home-improvement center catering to do-it-yourselfers.

Today, Home Depot is staffed by more than 325,000 dedicated, well-trained, and highly motivated people offering outstanding service and knowledge to millions of consumers... If we tried to start Home Depot today, under the kind of onerous regulatory controls that you have advocated, it's a stone cold certainty that our business would never get off the ground, much less thrive. Rules against providing stock options would have prevented us from incentivizing worthy employees in the start-up phase—never mind the incredibly high cost of regulatory compliance overall and mandatory health insurance. Still worse are the ever-rapacious trial lawyers.

Meantime, you seem obsessed with repealing tax cuts for "millionaires and billionaires." Contrary to what you might assume, I didn't start with any advantages and neither did most of the successful people I know. I am the grandson of immigrants who came to this country seeking basic economic and personal liberty. My parents worked tirelessly to build on that opportunity. My first job was as a day laborer on the construction of the Long Island Expressway more than 50 years ago. The wealth that was created by my investments wasn't put into a giant swimming pool as so many elected demagogues seem to imagine. Instead it benefitted our employees, their families and our community at large.

Important Note to our Readers: SHOP HOME DEPOT!! (unsolicited endorsement)

Lead Acid Battery Usage

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Lead Acid batteries have problem of stratification of Electrolyte as it is being used with Inverter Application and with 80% discharge sometimes.This reduces capacity. How to over come this problem.The dischrage is not full always and depends on Power outages. How can the electrolyte gravity be mai

Save Electricity

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Is there a way to save electricity by keeping brick in refrigerator,anybody watch the video "Another side of the wall,we don't need an education" by pink floyd?

One Sharron Angle supporter outside debate nails it; compares Reid and his supporters to Soviet and East Bloc regimes

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"Workers of the World" unite for Harry Reid

From Eric Dondero:

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that hundreds of protesters on both sides lined up outside of the debate hall Thursday night. The paper describes Reid supporters as "an organized force made up mostly of party volunteers and union members." The Unions handed out professionally printed signs, and even burgers to their participants.

In sharp contrast the Sharron Angle supporters on the other side of the street were loosely organized individual grass roots activists. They carried homemade signs.

One of the Angle supporters was interviewed, and compared the scene to what she saw in the old Soviet bloc.

From the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "Crowd as polarized as the candidates: Reid, Angle supporters hold spirited protest" Oct. 15:

The Angle group was smaller and more spontaneous.

Las Vegas resident Rita Hickey was living in West Berlin when the Wall divided the city. The 63-year-old said she grew up surrounded by socialism and watched as people on the other side lost their lives trying to tunnel and climb their way out.

Clad in an Angle T-shirt, holding a sign and wearing an anti-Reid placard around her neck, Hickey said she now sees signs of socialism in America that remind her of what she witnessed before the Wall came down.

"It was an oppressed regime, and that's what I'm seeing here now," Hickey said. "I see what's going on here with socialized medicine and the government being involved in every aspect of people's lives. It frightens me."

Open Thread – October 16th, 2010 | Gene Expression

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Yesterday regular contributor “miko” announced two things. First, he’s signed up as one of the 1,000 for the Personal Genome Project. And, he’s fired up a weblog to chronicle his journey. I know at least one other reader, my friend Paul, is also among the 1,000. Combined with the recent reveal of Genomes Unzipped, we’re in interesting territory. You also have Genomeboy, who’s been around longer…at least by the standards of personal genomics. How many other similar blogs are there like this? Judging from 23andMe’s post on Genomes Unzipped the industry leaders are going to have be careful, balancing the demands and pressures from the bottom, as well as the fiat power of our legal high priesthood. Good luck on that.


A new Farhad Manjoo piece in Slate, This Is Not a Blog Post, will be getting a lot of attention from bloggers because it is about blogging. This is a weblog. My posts consists of links, short commentaries on links, paper and book reviews, as well as essays. My prose is altered by the fact that it is written with the prior understanding that I’ll have links embedded into technical terms. A review of a paper will always have a link to that paper, and I will include the abstract as a matter of course so that the authors can “speak for themselves” at least to some minimal level. Some of my posts are inspired and strongly influenced by “personal communication.” But I never do reporting. By reporting, I mean specifically going out to get a quotation from someone, and putting that quotation into the body of the prose (though I will use quotations which others have retrieved). Rather, my posts are shaped by people I talk to, as well as informed commenters.

Speaking of which, that’s another reason why this is a blog. When Andrew Brown solicits a contribution from me to Comment is Free there are comments, but I only glance at them cursorily and don’t get involved, no matter how much they insult my honor. I obviously don’t follow all the comment threads here in too much detail, but I’m very active. The main reason is that I learn a lot from commenters, though fostering fruitful discussion means that I have to invest some labor input. Blogging with comments has an interactivity and dynamic component to the content generation which I do not perceive in articles, at least in such a free-form and helter-skelter manner.

In regards to my philosophy of commenting, I’ve already fleshed out some of the specifics earlier. But I thought I would explicitly acknowledge something: I treat people differently based on how much value I believe they add to my own understanding of a topic. When it came to Alan Templeton vs. the Bayesians I naturally deferred to the statistical geneticists in the audience. I don’t require detailed elaborate explanations from them, authority accrued through expertise and the wisdom of the community will suffice. This does not mean that a commenter whose authority I defer to will be found to be correct in the end, simply that I don’t have the expertise or labor hours to make a better assessment myself. Their spare opinion nevertheless adds value because of the source. Some of the commenters use real names, others use handles with email addresses tied in to Facebook profiles, while others have IP addresses which I can trace to the Broad Institute and such. I try and get a sense as to the nature of the commenter.

Now let’s move to another topic. What was the historical significance of the Battle of Tours? Unless you are a scholar of this time and place I am not interested in your unadorned opinion, because I almost certainly am in a better place to make an assessment than you are because I know more about the battle and its historical context than you do. In the spring of 2003 I developed an interest in Charles Martel and read a series of monographs and articles on his life and times, and I have also taken a long-term interest in the late Merovingian and early Carolingian phases of the Frankish polity for reasons not having to do with the Battle of Tours (a curiosity as to the early ethnogenesis of the proto-French and proto-German national identities). Obviously when it comes to macrohistorical questions I’m no scholar, and my lack of other languages means that I’ll always be hobbled by a reliance on secondary sources. But I do know quite a bit, and am in no mood to be swayed by the opinions of other lay persons. That’s why I demand elaboration, even if I know more on a given topic than than someone else, I can still learn quite a bit from their train of thought and the data which they enter into the record.

Because this is my weblog I’m framing the issue here in a dyadic manner, but obviously commenters interact with each other, and are bystanders. In cases where I defer to someone quite often I’ll be privy to some detail of their identity which make the deference intelligible. I can’t simply go around telling everyone that a pseudonymous commenter is “professor/post-doc/grad student X”, but hopefully commenters will understand that when I give deference I usually have a reason (if a commenter asserts an affiliation or identity, but doesn’t provide self-evident proof, I can confirm with an IP trace, or contradict if I find something amiss). In contrast, in cases where I demand commenters elaborate and give their reason in a clear fashion there’s an obvious positive externality: I’m not the only one who benefits from the explanation!

I’ve been blogging for over eight years now. That means I’ve given some thought to commenting, and how best to extract value from interactions with readers, as well as fostering fruitful interactions between readers. I don’t think you do the same when you write an article.

Recycling Water

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water recycling People often think about recycling in terms of putting your soda pop cans in a different bin and the aluminum is broken down and reused in other products. It's often thought of being applied to aluminum cans, glass bottles, office/newspaper, and plastic containers. Water can be recycled just as those other materials.

According to the EPA, water recycling is useful because reuses treated wastewater for useful functions such as agricultural and landscape irrigation, industrial processes, toilet flushing, and replenishing ground water supplies.

Water is sometimes recycled and reused onsite; for example, when an industrial facility recycles water used for cooling processes. A common type of recycled water is water that has been reclaimed from municipal wastewater, or sewage. The term water recycling is generally used synonymously with water reclamation and water reuse.

Through the natural water cycle, the earth has recycled and reused water for millions of years. Water recycling, though, generally refers to projects that use technology to speed up these natural processes. Water recycling is often characterized as "unplanned" or "planned." A common example of unplanned water recycling occurs when cities draw their water supplies from rivers, such as the Colorado River and the Mississippi River, that receive wastewater discharges upstream from those cities. Water from these rivers has been reused, treated, and piped into the water supply a number of times before the last downstream user withdraws the water. Planned projects are those that are developed with the goal of beneficially reusing a recycled water supply.

Their are some really great reasons to support recycled or reclaimed water that benefit the environment as well. That includes the ability to provide a dependable, locally-controlled water supply. Water recycling can help us find ways to decrease the diversion of water from sensitive ecosystems. Other benefits include decreasing wastewater discharges and reducing and preventing pollution. Recycled water can also be used to create or enhance wetlands and riparian habitats.

Plants, wildlife, and fish depend on sufficient water flows to their habitats to live and reproduce. The lack of adequate flow, as a result of diversion for agricultural, urban, and industrial purposes, can cause deterioration of water quality and ecosystem health. Water users can supplement their demands by using recycled water, which can free considerable amounts of water for the environment and increase flows to vital ecosystems. This is why the creation of dams for energy all over the world negatively created harmful effects on eco systems that were dependent on adequate flow in rivers and streams.

Their are plenty of reasons why we must start thinking about every which way that we can preserve water. This is especially true for drought stricken areas of the world. This means rethinking the necessity of the suburban lawn, it means collecting rainwater for use in native/vegetable gardens, and it means supporting net zero energy buildings.

Thoughts, Comments, Questions...

How the Senate Climate Bill Faded Away

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Earth at Risk could turn out to be quite interesting — Derrick Jensen, the author and environmental activist, is holding an event this weekend at Seven Hills Conference Center at San Francisco State University.  The entire title is “Earth at Risk: Building a Resistance Movement to Save the Planet”.  The website is here.

Well, as you know, the climate bill in the U.S. Senate is “dead” (for now at least) and it wasn’t very good to begin with*.    There is also another climate conference coming up in December, this time in Cancun.  It will amount to lots of arguing and probably very little decided, just like in years past.  There are other alternatives like a potential clean energy bill (like Germany has!)   which I will write about later, so don’t give up hope yet.  Something will happen soon.  It’s just that political systems are probably a bad place turn to when trying to solve complex world-wide problems of a scientific nature.

There are three main reasons  that the Senate failed to pass a climate change bill in 2010, according to the article below.  I would add a fourth:  that they were never committed to being honest with the public about climate change and what must be done, so there was lack of public support for doing anything about something so vague.  Politicians droned on and on about “green jobs” that never materialized, or at least didn’t materialize in an obvious, widespread, public way that could be used as good examples. That has to change next year.

We still have time to do enough about climate change to matter, but just barely.  The worst case scenarios seem to be what the government of the U.S. is now planning for:  “adapting” to climate change, and ultimately, geoengineering.

This is a cross post by Center for American Progress’s Daniel J. Weiss.

School children planting trees on 10-10-10 in Thailand. From 350.org

October 12, 2010– President Barack Obama took office with four major domestic agenda items: a plan to prevent the recession from growing worse and launch recovery; health care reform; financial reform to avoid future meltdowns; and clean energy and global warming legislation to create jobs, reduce oil use, and cut pollution. The president succeeded with the first three items. But clean energy legislation died in the Senate after passing the House.

The October 6, 2010 New Yorker has a “behind the curtain” dissection of the rise and fall of climate legislation in the Senate. It provides an interesting insider view of the always messy legislative process.

Reporter Ryan Lizza details some senators’ admirable willingness to stretch beyond their comfort zones on some energy issues to cement an agreement that would establish declining limits on carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants while allowing more offshore oil drilling and subsidies for nuclear power. He also notes the critical miscommunications and different approaches by senators and the Obama administration that reduced prospects for success.

Lizza gives short shrift, however, to [...]

Introducing Walmart-Pathology

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The name has been clipped off this but is available in CAP Today.  I know that pathology services have been commoditized but $10 a case is a stretch, particularly if you pay for courier.  Talk to folks who run billing companies and pathology management companies and they will tell you that some hospital pathologists get 2 or 3 bucks for a pap smear.  

And how will he/she/they access your LIS remotely.  I think this model has some problems.

 

CAPwork

Coast Guard Awards $14 Million EHR Contract

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A recent story mentioned the DOD wants a new EMR system despite a recent $2B upgrade.  

In a related item, Epic Systems has been awarded a $14 million contract by the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) to establish an electronic health record (EHR) system that will meet meaningful use requirements as well as help the Coast Guard transition from a paper-based system to digitized health records. 

The Epic EHR will replace a version of a Defense Department system that includes the Composite Health Care System (CHCS), Provider Graphic User Interface (PGUI), and Armed Forces Healthcare Longitudinal Application (AHLTA). The new Epic EHR will enable the Coast Guard to exchange data using the nationwide health information network (NHIN). Under the contract, which took effect Sept. 30, the new system will also use the C32 and Continuity of Care (CCR) document format standards for sharing a patient's summary health status, and support requirements for the virtual lifetime electronic record (VLER), a project of the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs, and longitudinal patient records.

OK, so want to make sure I have this right, the DOD reinvested 2 billion dollars into their EMR system (AHLTA) with only mild success and the Coast Guard (admittedly many fewer beneficiaries) in the system is going to replace multiple systems, including AHLTA for 14 million bucks with NHIN reporting services?

Meanwhile, it is  laudable that Coast Guard healthcare officials are striving towards electronic medical records in an effort to meet meaningful use but I wonder will the government reimburse itself for doing so? 

Lastly, if the men and women who serve in the Coast Guard receive their care from the DOD how will their records be transmitted if the two are on different systems from treatment location to duty station?  

Does this qualify meaningful use?

 

Anatomical illustrations from Edo-period Japan, 1603-1868

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All of the images you see above are drawn from a simply marvelous collection of anatomical illustrations tracing the evolution of medical knowledge in Japan during the Edo period (1603-1868) as found on the Pink Tentacle website.

To see the complete set of images (well worth it, I promise!) and read more about them, check out the original piece by clicking here.

Brief captions, top to bottom:

  1. Pregnancy illustrations, circa 1860
  2. Anatomical illustrations (artist/date unknown)
  3. Kaishihen (Dissection Notes), 1772
  4. Breast cancer treatment, 1809
  5. Zoku Y?ka Hiroku (Sequel to Confidential Notes on the Treatment of Skin Growths), 1859
  6. Zoku Y?ka Hiroku (Sequel to Confidential Notes on the Treatment of Skin Growths), 1859
  7. Zoku Y?ka Hiroku (Sequel to Confidential Notes on the Treatment of Skin Growths), 1859
  8. Female dissection, 1774
  9. Female dissection, 1774
  10. Illustration from 1759 edition of Z?zu
  11. Kaishihen (Dissection Notes), 1772
  12. Seyakuin Kainan Taiz?zu (circa 1798)

Definiens Digital Pathology Webinar Announcement: Image Analysis vs. Manual Evaluation of Her2 in Esophageal Cancer

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Have you have ever wondered how digital pathology image analysis compares to manual evaluation of Her2 stained tumor biopsies?

Dr. Guenter Schmidt et al. have recently presented their findings in a study comparing manual H-score evaluation (Dako Herceptest) of esophagogastric TMA cores compared to an algorithm derived using Definiens Developer™ software.

Kaplan-Meier Analysis revealed a significant prognostic value for the two groups generated by image analysis results, whereas the visually assessed score was not significant.

Join us for a review of this study and the results; including how H&E morphological evaluation compared to the Her2 Dako Herceptest with respect to patient stratification.

Speakers:

Peter Duncan – Director, Marketing and Business Development Translational Research, Definiens

Dr. Guenter Schmidt – Senior Research Scientist, Definiens

Date: Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT / 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM GMT

Space is limited.

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/332575322

"Genius or Grotesquery? The Arrestingly Strange World of Walter Potter," The Museum of Everything, Exhibition # 3

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The wild and eerie Victorian world of Walter Potter, where baby rabbits go to school and weep over their blotted copybooks, and where Bullingdon Club-style squirrels puff on cigars as toads play leapfrog and rat police raid a drinking den, is being reassembled in London, seven years after his creatures were sold and scattered across the world.

The displays are being assembled at the reopened Museum of Everything, a pop-up museum in a former Victorian dairy, and later recording studio, in Primrose Hill, London...

Whilst in London last week, I had the very good fortune to attend a preview of The Museum of Everything's "Exhibition #3," a carnivalesque spree exploring all things collectory, side-show, circus, grotto, and taxidermological. One of the exhibitions more impressive achievements--and the reason I was there in the first place--was the attempt to re-stage Victorian anthropomorphic taxidermist Walter Potter's Victorian museum of curiosities, a noble feat achieved by borrowing an assortment of Potter's charming pieces from the assortment of lucky private collectors--including Damien Hirst, Sir Peter Blake, and Pat Morris--who acquired them after the museum was controversially divided at auction in 2003.

Today's Guardian has run what I hope will be only the first of many ecstatic pieces on this wonderful exhibition, and on the Potter portion in particular, entitled "Genius or grotesquery? The arrestingly strange world of Walter Potter."

My friend Pat Morris--who spoke on Walter Potter at our recent Congress for Curious People-- loaned several of his own Potter pieces to the exhibition, most notably "The Death of Cock Robin, a truly epic tableaux depicting the funeral procession of the fabled Cock Robin as recounted in the well-known Englist nursery rhyme "Who Killed Cock Robin." This spectacular piece, as the Guardian describes, includes "more than 100 birds including a weeping robin widow and an owl gravedigger who has tumbled some tiny bones out of the soil while preparing space for the dead robin." For a visual (but please note: this image simply does not do the piece justice!), see third image down.

Besides being a collector of great proportion, Mr. Morris is also the author of the only extant book on Mr. Potter and his work, the lavishly illustrated and encyclopedic Walter Potter and His Museum of Curious Taxidermy, which you can buy in hardback or paperback by clicking here or here, respectively. You can also find out more about Potter, his work and his history by visiting the Ravishing Beast website by clicking here. You can read the full Genius or grotesquery?" article on the Guardian website by clicking here. To find out more about this exhibition--which will be on at least till Christmas--and the very curious Museum of Everything, click here.

Thanks to friend, friend-of-the-blog, and many time Observatory lecturer John Troyer for alerting me to this article!