Global warming, Arizona style

An ongoing series in the New York Times looks at how climate change is hitting Summerhaven, Ariz., a so-called sky island near Mount Lemmon. Though the story acknowledges that the recent changes could fall within the normal range of ecological cycles(unless they're burning down homes, forest fires are considered a natural part of the area's ebb and flow), it also points to mounting evidence that the temperature is rising quickly and steadily.

High above the desert floor, this little alpine town has long served as a natural air-conditioned retreat for people in Tucson, one of the so-called sky islands of southern Arizona. When it is 105 degrees in the city, it is at least 20 degrees cooler up here near the 9,157-foot summit of Mount Lemmon.

But for the past 10 years or so, things have been unraveling. Winter snows melt away earlier, longtime residents say, making for an erratic season at the nearby ski resort, the most southern in the nation.

Source: New York Times

Insurers behaving badly

An interesting story that provides more evidence that our heath care system needs serious reform:

In 2003, a subsidiary of Conseco, Bankers Life and Casualty, sent an 85-year-old woman suffering from dementia the wrong form to fill out, according to a lawsuit, then denied her claim because of improper paperwork. Last year, according to another pending suit, the insurer Penn Treaty American decided that a 92-year-old man had so improved that he should leave his nursing home despite his forgetfulness, anxiety and doctor’s orders to seek continued care. Another suit contended that a company owned by the John Hancock Insurance Company had tried to rescind the coverage of a 72-year-old man when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease four years after buying the policy.

This comes just days after California fined Blue Cross -- my own health insurer -- $1 million for improperly denying claims when customers get sick. In both cases, the problem is a serious imbalance of power.

In a perfect world, everyone would be able to save enough during their working years to pay for their own long-term care. But salaries and long-term costs are unpredictable, hence the need the pool risk through insurance. But it's dangerous to put companies in the position of having to choose between your health and its profit. Because unlike other consumer products and services, you can't just move to a competitor when you grow unhappy with your insurer's cost/service balance.

Source: New York Times

My alma mater grows up

From USA Today:

With 51,000 students on the main campus, plus 10,000 more at three branches around Phoenix, ASU is already among the country's largest traditional universities. But unlike any current rivals for that title, it plans to keep growing -- to about 90,000 students over the next decade.

Sounds like an exciting time to be at ASU, though I do see the point of one critic in the story who complained that students are getting a community college education at a university price.

Source: USA Today

Start++

Like Vista's built-in search but miss some of the functionality of good old Windows Desktop Search (such as Web-search shortcuts)? Fear not: a young Microsoftie created an unofficial add-on that imbues Vista's start-bar search menu with those old functions and more.

Download here.

More heat over fired U.S. attorneys

One Republican, Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire, has publicly urged Bush to fire Gonzales. Another GOP lawmaker, this one in the House and not ready to speak out publicly, said Thursday he planned to call next week for Gonzales to step down. And Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., said Thursday that Gonzales had lost the confidence of Congress.

Other Republican lawmakers are trying to quell the uproar until they hear from Gonzales and his aides.

...

Bush on Wednesday defended the firings but criticized how they were explained to Congress. The president said he still had confidence in the attorney general but implied that his support was conditioned on Gonzales patching things up with lawmakers.

So it looks like Gonzales won't be fired today. I give him one or two weeks, tops.

Source: MSNBC.com

Doomed

As if having to download a separate application to read the newspaper wasn't enough of a hassle, The New York Times now wants users of its experimental Reader software (which I've slammed here before) to pay for the hassle. Thanks, but I'll continue reading it for free on the Web.

I've always praised the Times for its cutting-edge use of the Web, but this is a major step backwards. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Source: Poynter Online

Generic drugs, brand-name prices

The Freakonomics Blog examines the wide price disparities among generic drugs from retailer to retailer. It uses the generic equivalent of Prozac as an example; the price for 90 tablets ranges from $117 at Walgreens to $12 at Costco.

I can vouch for Costco's low prices, at least when it comes to the generic Claratin D. The allergy drug averages about $1 or so per pill (for the 24-hour dosage) at most stores and 33 cents at Costco.

The typical price seems to have actually increased a little over the last year, since stores stopped selling it on shelves (the drug can be used to make meth, so the rest of us suffer -- but that's another rant). My theory: comparison shopping has become more cumbersome.

Anyway, I didn't realize prices swung that wildly for other drugs, too.

By the way, if you haven't read the book Freakonomics, you should. It's a fascinating and thought-provoking read.

Source: Freakonomics Blog

Gonzo is gone gone...

Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire on Wednesday became the first Republican in Congress to call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' dismissal, hours after President Bush expressed confidence in his embattled Cabinet officer.

"I think the president should replace him," Sununu said in an interview with The Associated Press.

And according to the story, several others are equivocating.

The only question is whether the "resignation" will come tomorrow or Friday. I'm betting Friday afternoon (because nobody reads news between noon Friday and 7 a.m. Monday).

Either way, good riddance. Lets hope he's replaced by someone who respects the rule of law and actually gives a damn about the U.S. Constitution. 

Source: MSNBC

Clueless

 San Francisco Chronicle columnist David Lazarous proposes trying to extract licensing fees from sites that link to newspaper stories.

If newspapers aren't going to collectively reach into the pockets of online readers, they should at least focus their attention on other Internet players that are profiting from newspapers' content.

First off, there are the aggregators, sites like the Drudge Report and Huffington Post that pull together stories from a wide array of media sources (and charge advertisers a fee to appear beside links to content that they had nothing to do with creating).

This is not only impractical -- hyperlinking isn't just a feature of the Web, but its very structure -- it's business suicide. Why would you purposely drive away all the potential advertising?

Newspapers need to get over the idea that people are going to pay for content online. With a few notable exceptions -- The Wall Street Journal and maybe The New York Times -- they just aren't. Sad but true. Instead, newspapers need to focus their energies on getting advertisers online.

Google, which in many ways is far more useful than the typical local newspaper, doesn't charge subscription fees and somehow manages to rake in the dough. Why can't newspapers?

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

There is hope...

It appears that reading -- as in books, not text messaging or blogs -- is on the rebound. Better still, says this story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the writing quality is improving, too, at least for teen lit.

Like a lot of teens, Leslie Cornaby has a crowded schedule -- her days crammed with homework, hobbies and an array of techno diversions. When she's not checking e-mail, she's cruising YouTube or scrolling her iPod to tunes by Pink or Christina Aguilera.

She's also reading -- just for the glorious fun of it -- and says, "Most of my friends are readers, too."

The Shorecrest High School sophomore may not realize it, but she's enjoying the fruits of one of the most fertile periods in the history of young adult literature.

Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Exactly

Duncan Black, responding to this piece from Joe Klein, hammers home an argument I've tried to make before against citing a rude lefty blog posts or nameless antiwar protesters when making the argument that Democrats are "just as bad" as Republicans.

To be sure, Democrats have their issues (see this shady lobbyist-sponsored trip for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer for an example), but party spokesmen != some random person with a Web site.

Anyway, as his commenters try to explain to him over and over again, the point is that to the extent that the people Klein was trying to caricature with his list of left wing extremist characteristics actually exist (stipulating for sake of discussion at the moment that they do), they aren't members of congress, they don't have prominent positions in the Democratic party, they don't have columns in Time magazine, they don't get invited to discuss the issues on CNN or NPR, they don't write Op-Eds for the New York Times and, most relevant for this discussion, they aren't even prominent dirty ... hippie bloggers.

On the flip side, the caricature he offers up of right wing extremists are members of Congress, prominent members of the Bush administration, run the Republican party, have columns in Time magazine, regularly come on CNN to discuss the issues, and pretty much define the right wing blogosphere.

Source: Eschaton

A case of euthanasia?

Police are investigating whether a Kaiser Permanente transplant surgeon attempted to hasten the death last February of a 26-year-old San Luis Obispo man on life support in order to harvest his organs more quickly.

...

When the patient didn't die, Roozrokh allegedly told nurses: "Let's just give him some more candy," according to a person who was briefed on what took place but spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigations.

If these allegations are true, this is murder, plain and simple -- not to mention a public-relations disaster for the organ-transplant industry. It's hard enough getting people to donate their organs when doctors aren't trying to kill them.

Link to Police probe death in organ donation case - Los Angeles Times

In case you needed any more evidence I'm a geek...

From 2007_02_23

I got this in the mail today. It's my long-awaited Xbox Live Diamond card! The chicks will dig it.

Actually, there is a practical benefitto having this. Supposedly, I get all manner of discounts at non-geeky places such as Carl's Jr., TigerDirect and GameStop. Oh, wait...

Future-of-Journalism story roundup

• Slate's Jack Shafer argues that the 20% profit margins to which newspaper publishers have become accustomed are a historical anomaly. He contends newspapers have a choice: 1) Lower profit expectations to 10% or so and invest anything above that back into the product. 2) Buoy margins with cost cuts that end up killing the golden goose.
• Jeff Jarvis says running newswire copy and maintaining costly non-local news bureaus don't make sense in an age of hyperlinks. In discussions with my wife -- a newspaper graphics artist making the transition to the Web -- I've come to the same conclusion.
• Cnet reports that bloggers think Microsoft's new Reader software (not to be confused with this Microsoft Reader) is dead on arrival. When I first wrote about this software several months ago, I praised its ability to prioritize stories and highlight photos and graphics with a newspaper-like layout. But I also wondered whether users would have to download a separate application for each publication they wanted to to read. Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Apparently no one at Microsoft or any of its publishing partners realize that most people prefer a single application to read everything: it's called a Web browser. As I said in my initial review, Microsoft's Reader should be a browser plug-in that can work with any specially formatted site, not a standalone application -- and certainly not a set of them.

Narrowing the Religion Gap?

An interesting piece in last week's New York Times magazine about the odd political pole reversal in the 2008 race. That is, the Democratic frontrunners seem more "religious" than their Republican counterparts.

Try a quick political thought experiment. First, form a mental picture of the Democratic front-runners for president — Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Now do the same for the leading Republican contenders — John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Next (and this is the key step), imagine each of them in church, sitting in a pew, head bowed, or better still, at the pulpit, delivering a homily or leading the congregation in worship.

Of course, the article doesn't mention Republican Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon, or Democrat Joe Biden, who doesn't seem very religious at all. But then again, those two aren't the leading 2008 contenders in their party.

Source: New York Times

Scientist Bush

First the flight suit, now this. If you ask me, I think he's a little too old to be dressing up in costume.

Adventures In Editing

The strongest drive is not to love or hate. It is one person's need to change modify revise alter rewrite amend chop to pieces change another's copy.

I've always found this little truism (featured in Arthur Plotnik's The Elements Of Editing among other works) funny, but never before today had I appreciated how true it is.

While editing a reporter's story this morning, I was driving myself batty trying to find a better way to say "glossy." After about 15 minutes of branching through various synonyms -- and synonyms-of-synonyms -- I finally stumbled on the exact word I was looking for. So I went back to the original sentence to replace it. Chagrined, I realized that my masterstroke was the reporter's original word: "glossy."

Some post-Valentine's Day humor

The U.S. Central Command's war plan for invading Iraq postulated in August 2002 that the U.S. would have only 5,000 troops left in Iraq as of December 2006, according to the Command's PowerPoint briefing slides, which were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and are posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org)

Too bad it's not supposed to be a joke.

Source: National Security Archive

Gadget addiction

Some words of wisdom from a former tech (blog) writer:

Stop buying this crap. Just stop it. You don't need it. Wait a year until the reviews come out and the other suckers too addicted to having the very latest and greatest buy it, put up a review, and have moved on to something else. Stop buying broken products and then shrugging your shoulders when it doesn't do what it is supposed to. Stop buying products that serve any other master than you. Use older stuff that works. Make it yourself. Only buy new stuff from companies that have proven themselves good servants of their customers in the past. Complaining online about this stuff helps, but really, just stop buying it.

I'm better about not buying stuff than I used to be, but maybe I should impose a mandatory 1-year waiting period on myself for most technology-related purchases.

Source: Gizmodo

Windows Mobile Roundup

ActiveSync 4.5 is official, but if you've already migrated to Vista, you'll want to use Windows Mobile Device Center instead. And don't forget this Daylight Savings Time update. The page has DST updates for Outlook and Windows, too. The usual Windows update should take care of the issue from a Windows perspective, but I don't know whether Office automatically updates.

And while I'm on the topic of Windows Mobile, here are a couple of potentially useful map/search applications: Google Maps and Windows Live Search.