inignoct wrote:
] ] So, Mr. Dawson said, he was stunned this week to find
] ] that his name had been added to a little-known Internet
] ] database for doctors attacking "litigious behavior." His
] ] offense: filing a medical malpractice lawsuit against a
] ] Fort Worth hospital and doctor over the death of his
] ] 39-year-old wife, whose brain tumor was missed, and
] ] winning an undisclosed settlement.
]
] [ Some interesting issues brought up here... On the one hand,
] minimizing the frivolous or excessive lawsuits is a good
] thing, and benefits everyone, but it seems unethical not to
] distinguish the cases based on the details and merit of the
] actions. A balance needs to be struck between maintaining
] people's ability to punish bad doctors and limiting their
] ability to make boatloads of money on lesser claims. thoughts
] from the community? -k]

RYAN SEZ:
This is about assessing risk and an unfortunate side effect of the ease of internet publishing. This really is no different than what the house insurance people do-- if you put in a claim on your homeowner's insurance, they pay it out and then cancel your coverage. When you try to get new coverage, you discover your name has been put on a list of people who make claims.

Of course this is where I seem to think some sort of government regulation comes in, but then again, why make people play by rules? Unfairness is the American Way TM.

RE: In Texas, Hire a Lawyer, Forget About a Doctor?

[ damn this is fun... i got to level 30, but i've gotta drag myself away so's not to be too worthless. -k]

Warthog Launch

] I travel a lot and one of my favorite destination lead
] through poisoned with radiation, so called Chernobyl
] "dead zone" It is 130kms from my home. Why favourite?
] because one can ride there for hours and not meet any
] single car and not to see any single soul. People left
] and nature is blooming, there are beautiful places,
] woods, lakes. There is no newly built roads, but those
] which left from 80th in fairly good condition

Ryan -- this is one of the coolest things I have seen in a while. It is a photoblog of a daughter of a nuclear engineer who tours around Chernobyl on her motorcycle.

Photoblogging Chernobyl

] LA Times:
]
] I am a high school teacher and the daughter of
] Holocaust survivors. Monday morning, Period 1, a student,
] age 17, comes into my room. She asks me if I had seen the
] film "The Passion."
]
] I answer, "No."
]
] She continues, "It was so sad. I cried so much. I
] hate the Jews."
]
] Very, very sadly, that tells the whole story, Mr.
] Gibson.
]
] Anna Paikow
] Los Angeles

*sigh*

Eschaton

] Shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, mussels, all these are an
] abomination before the Lord, just as gays are an
] abomination. Why stop at protesting gay marriage? Bring
] all of God's law unto the heathens and the sodomites.

[ Drawing attention to stupid fundamentalists is funny. -k]

God Hates Shrimp

] A security issue also arose in Georgia.
]
]
] Georgia Tech student Peter Sahlstrom said he found 10
] Diebold terminals sitting unprotected in the lobby of the
] school's student center Monday. Sahlstrom, 22,
] photographed the machines in their unlocked cases.
]
]
] "Frankly, this makes me nervous and ... it validates a
] lot of the concerns I already had," Sahlstrom said in a
] phone interview.

[ Yeah... this is from *today*. Still no accountability. Still no audit trail. Still no concern for security of eVoting systems. If there's a compromise in november, the country's gonna go nuts. Sweet jesus help Kathy Cox if that shit goes down, because there are some people that're gonna wanna have a word with her, and every other moron whose given carte blanche to Diebold. -k]

Salon.com Technology | Technical problems reported in e-voting

] Polaroid said its film should be laid on a flat surface
] and shielded from the wind, and that users should avoid
] bending or twisting their pictures. Of course, "lay it on
] a flat surface like a Polaroid picture," doesn't sound
] nearly as cool.

Shake it shake it shake it shake it shake it......

CNN.com - Polaroid warns buyers not to 'Shake It' - Feb. 17, 2004

] PARIS -- The dormant Garden Gnome Liberation Front has
] sprung back to life, stealing about 20 gnomes during a
] nighttime raid on a Paris exhibition.
]
] "We demand ... that garden gnomes are no longer ridiculed
] and that they be released into their natural habitat,"
] the Front's Paris wing said in a statement following its
] weekend strike.

Still makes me laugh to think about....

CNN.com - Garden Gnome Liberation Front strikes Paris show - April 12, 2000

] The content available online is much less important than
] the manner in which it is delivered, indeed, the way the
] Web is structured. Its influence is structural rather
] than informational, and its structure is agnostic. For
] that reason, parental controls of the sort that AOL can
] offer gives no comfort to conservatives. It's not that
] Johnny will Google "hardcore" or "T&A" rather than
] "family values;" rather, it's that Johnny will come to
] think, consciously or not, of everything he reads as
] linked, associative and contingent. He will be
] disinclined to accept the authority of any text, whether
] religious, political or artistic, since he has learned
] that there is no such thing as the last word, or indeed
] even a series of words that do not link, in some way, to
] some other text or game. For those who grow up reading
] online, reading will come to seem a game, one that
] endlessly plays out in unlimited directions. The web, in
] providing link after associative link, commentary upon
] every picture and paragraph, allows, indeed requires,
] users to engage in a postmodernist inquiry.

The media is the message.

Ryan: That's a really interesting notion. I can only hope that it is true. The world could use a little more cynicism and a critical eye. I would love it if people could see moral relativism at least as it can be applied in some places rather than others. Perhaps I will save a more coherent rant on this piece for my own blog.....

CTHEORY.NET : Why the Web Will Win the Culture Wars for the Left by Peter Lurie

watch idiots try to pull a car out of a ditch.

ryan: that's pretty quality. I was kind of hoping that they attached it to the axel though. That would have been even more fun!

Hook it to the frame, ppl