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Just last year, New York City signed a $982,269 contract with Swintec for the purchase of thousands of new manual and electric typewriters over the next three years -- some of which retail for as much as $649 apiece. And last month, the city signed a $99,570 deal with Afax Business Machines for the maintenance of its existing typewriters.The department is working on software to eliminate the old machines, a rep said.
Daniel Wright and Carrie McLaren will be presenting slide shows based on their new books at Vox Pop in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn this Sunday.
Carrie will be presenting "The Curious History of Submliminal Advertising," from her book, Ad Nauseam.
Daniel will be showing "A Brief Guide to Child-Rearing Devices," and some of his other favorite patents from Patently Silly: The Daftest Inventions Ever Devised.
Vox Pop
Sunday, July 19, 5pm
1022 Cortelyou, in Ditmas Park
(Q to Cortelyou or F to Ditmas)
Brooklyn, NY
map
Just wanted to let everyone know, that a new version of MemcacheD has been released. We will be rolling this out to the memcache nodes during the week of July 20th to 24th. This should have very little impact on the stability of the website; however users may see a slight increase in load times as the cache is re-populated with entries.
The software has been tested and verified to be working just fine with the application; so we perceive this to be a very minimal risk in regards to updating, and the stability of the website.
Thanks...
The guy on the bike ahead of me had socks that said "REBEL" in an Olde English font. I had assumed he was a loyalist, until the fuzzy knitting on his ankles set me straight.
They looked warm.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I can't use Twitter.
140 characters just isn't enough for any coherent thought. I find that to say anything worth reading, I need 200-300. I need a setup, the story itself, and the punchline. If you leave out the intro and the punchline it's just a damned laundry list. Look, 315 characters in this paragraph and I barely said anything!
No, I don't want to edit it to make it shorter. I also don't want to rephrase it into iambic pentameter.
The aghast prose in this article is really something: Punks invade Williamsburg as heroin-addicted hobos set up shop in trendy Brooklyn neighborhood.
The newcomers, who call themselves "gutter punks," [...] "The girls here like it that I'm dirty and I ride trains," he added. [...] "This is not Haight-Ashbury," said Community Board 1 member Evan Thies. "This is a family neighborhood."
Also: Before shaving off both eyebrows, we suggest doing just one to see if it suits you.
I think the health care debate is getting muddled and people are confused about it. Obama needs to fix that.
This is Obama's baby. This is where he's pushing people and spending political capital. So I think he needs to do what he's done before in order to guide the public understanding: Give a well-publicized speech and/or press conference on what he wants done and why.
Obama knows that when he talks, people stop to listen. If he crafts a good explanation of what he wants, he can shift public sentiment back his way again. People are scared, they'll love a confident authority figure telling them what to do, especially if it makes sense.
I think his ratings are falling because Americans are getting confused about what's going on; Republican statements, incoherent as they are, are the only things getting prime time.
Take back the reins, Obama. Quit hiding. give a press conference on health care reform.
Really interesting article by an ethics guy on specific considerations for intelligent health care rationing (as opposed to the crazy, inequitable, indefensible rationing we have now in America).
I kind of want to quote bits, but it's all interesting so it's hard to choose...
There’s no doubt that it’s tough — politically, emotionally and ethically — to make a decision that means that someone will die sooner than they would have if the decision had gone the other way. But if the stories of Bruce Hardy and Jack Rosser lead us to think badly of the British system of rationing health care, we should remind ourselves that the U.S. system also results in people going without life-saving treatment — it just does so less visibly. Pharmaceutical manufacturers often charge much more for drugs in the United States than they charge for the same drugs in Britain, where they know that a higher price would put the drug outside the cost-effectiveness limits set by NICE. American patients, even if they are covered by Medicare or Medicaid, often cannot afford the copayments for drugs. That’s rationing too, by ability to pay.
Dr. Art Kellermann, associate dean for public policy at Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta, recently wrote of a woman who came into his emergency room in critical condition because a blood vessel had burst in her brain. She was uninsured and had chosen to buy food for her children instead of spending money on her blood-pressure medicine. In the emergency room, she received excellent high-tech medical care, but by the time she got there, it was too late to save her.
When the media feature someone like Bruce Hardy or Jack Rosser, we readily relate to individuals who are harmed by a government agency’s decision to limit the cost of health care. But we tend not to hear about — and thus don’t identify with — the particular individuals who die in emergency rooms because they have no health insurance. This “identifiable victim” effect, well documented by psychologists, creates a dangerous bias in our thinking.
Rationing public health care limits free choice if private health insurance is prohibited. But many countries combine free national health insurance with optional private insurance. * * * The U.S. could do something similar. * * * Those who want to be sure of receiving every treatment that their own privately chosen physicians recommend, regardless of cost, would be free to opt out of Medicare for All as long as they can demonstrate that they have sufficient private health insurance to avoid becoming a burden on the community if they fall ill. Alternatively, they might remain in Medicare for All but take out supplementary insurance for health care that Medicare for All does not cover.
my mommy and my isaac came to my work yesterday and brought me a dozen pink roses.
my secretary: "why the flowers? is it her birthday?"
Isaac: "no, it's because she's so pretty!"
in some ways, Isaac is very well trained.
New Features:
I hope Franken keeps cracking jokes like he did with Sotomayor today. Because man, it is soooo boring to watch American politics. I mean, between the schmaltz and the stupid... ugh. Maybe Franken can make our politics more British. It would be a 100000000% improvement.
I've been running ragged the past few days with briefs and such.
Now they are all out and my motion hearing is over.
I feel kind of lost. I have stuff to do, but I just... kinda don't know which bit to do next.
Me: I dreamt that you were mad at me.
Patrick: I'm not mad at you.
Me: you were expressing it by leaving post-it notes around with angry math equations on them.
Patrick: The equations I would really leave you would express different things than anger.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/yea rs/2009/0717092mugs1.html?link=rssfeed
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/yea rs/2009/0717092mugs1.html
As you could have guessed, the Texas woman, 35, who kicks off this week's mug shot roundup was arrested for prostitution.