onparkstreet

Giving Thanks

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For my Family

For my Home, my Country. A wonderful experiment in self-governance that, despite deep difficulties and irregularities, remains a dream-beacon.

For the Brave: Project Valour-IT.

For Beauty and for Books and for Art:

How delightful it would be to be a governess! To go out into the world; to enter upon a new life; to act for myself; to excercise my unused faculties, to try my unknown powers; to earn my own maintenance, and something to comfort and help my father, mother, and sister, besides exonerating them from the provision of my food and clothing; to show papa what his little Agnes could do; to convince mamma and Mary that I was not quite the helpless, thoughtless being they supposed.

Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte.

My copy of the Bronte book has a cover painting of great quietness, symmetry and mystery: Interior, by Vilhelm Hammershoi.

As long as we are discussing art, the flickr page for iPad created art is here. This wonderful experiment in self-governance frees us to create more and more and more. All hail the creators!

For Humor:

In “Whiter Shades of Pale,” Mr. Lander’s targets are more far-flung, and it’s a treat to watch him take aim. He takes note of the industries, in addition to classical music, that survive solely on white guilt: “Penguin Classics, the S.P.C.A., free-range chicken farms, and the entire rubber bracelet market.” About the chef Anthony Bourdain’s TV show — during which Mr. Bourdain eats arcane dishes and complains about tourists — the author writes, “There hasn’t been a show this reaffirming to white people since ‘Seinfeld.’ ”

New York Times books page

Yes, I am aware that I linked a Penguin Classics book above. That’s humor, too :). (Plus, I really love the books.) And for those not familiar with Mr. Lander’s brand of satire, he is making gentle fun of a certain mindset and attitudes, not race.

For Friends. Be well.

Smart Phones and Medicine

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Teledermoscopy enables rapid transmission of dermoscopic images via e-mail or specific web-application and studies have demonstrated a high, 91%, concordance between face-to-face diagnosis and remote diagnosis of such images. Further to this, telediagnosis of melanocytic skin neoplasms achieved a diagnostic accuracy of 83% versus the conventional histopathologic diagnosis. Mobile teledermoscopy is the combination of such approaches enabling transfer of images captured with cellular phones coupled with a pocket dermatoscope and preliminary studies have demonstrated the feasibility and potential of its use in triage of pigmented lesions. Such applications are of benefit to physicians in enabling easy storage of data for follow-up or referral of images for expert second opinion and may facilitate a “person-centered health system” for patients with numerous moles and pigmented skin lesions who could forward images for evaluation.

Semin Cutan Med Surg. 2009 Sep;28(3):203-5. Mobile teledermoscopy–melanoma diagnosis by one click?

More data just means more data. Someone – or some thing – has to interpret all of the information generated by new technologies. Too bad we are creating a health care system with all the responsiveness of a snail on downers.

Model that we are creating: A federal bureaucrat commissions a study, to be vetted by a centralized board, to be further vetted by a state panel, to be implemented by a local health care provider, and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

Model real-life Millenials will someday use for medical diagnostics: “There’s an app for that.”

I’m exaggerating for effect so don’t get too hung up on the potential accuracy of the prediction. You get the point.

Yell at me in the comments or whatever.

President Obama in India

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1.

Even Bollywood could not stay away from using the Obama metaphor. In an upcoming Hindi film titled “Phas Gaye Re Obama” (“Obama Is in a Fix”), director Subhash Kapoor said he portrays a bunch of Obama-loving Indian gangsters struggling amid the economic recession. The comedy isn’t coming out until after the president’s visit.

Washington Post (There is a nice slide show of American presidents in India at the link.)

2. NDTV video link to President Obama’s town hall with Indian students at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai. One of the students asks a pretty tough question about the midterms at 15:00.

3.

The president viewed a demonstration of a new system called “e-Panchayat”, a new effort to enable people in the more than 400 local districts across India to obtain and share information.

VOA

4. “What They Said: Obama’s Maiden India Visit” – IndiaRealTime (Wall Street Journal)

5. “President Obama’s visit to India, Day 1: The Obamas at Mani Bhavan “There were no human bombs then.” – Pundita (Pundita has several very good posts on the visit.)

Mr. Kamdar had a word of praise for the U.S. security personnel as well. “They weren’t at all obstructive. We could not make out who were the security and who were the staff. Everything went on so smoothly and naturally,” he said.

– The Hindu

Project Valour-IT

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The lean, mean, Air Force Team – Mrs. Greyhawk, The Mudville Gazette

What is Project Valour-IT?

Project Valour-IT, in memory of SFC William V. Ziegenfuss, helps provide voice-controlled/adaptive laptop computers and other technology to support Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries.

I asked to join the Air Force “team” (the “competition” between teams is all in good fun) because I first learned about Project Valour-IT from The Mudville Gazette. Now if I could just figure out the widget. Paging Jonathan….

Rally to be held for “super fans” of Imperial City.

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Imperial City, Washington D.C., whatever.

Make no mistake, Oprah Winfrey is supporting the rally. Two weeks ago, she surprised members of the studio audience at “The Daily Show” by announcing she will send them all to Washington.
 
Maybe she knows something the rest of us don’t.
 
Meanwhile, we can surely be excused if our imaginations run wild. Especially for the biggest fans of Stewart and Colbert, can the rally we anticipate possibly be matched by what they have in store? They haven’t promised us the moon — they haven’t promised us anything beyond generalities — but in lieu of other promises, the moon is what we expect. Or at least Lady Gaga and Desmond Tutu.

Come on. It’s all in good fun. Just a bunch of people attempting to restore some sanity to the fevered national political debate hijacked by evil extremists.

I do have some questions for the CBz readership, though:

(1) Will Twitter shut-down that day as twittering Obamatrons flood the system with gentle observations?

(2) Will the alphabet run out of the letters T, E, A, B, G or R?

(3) Will clouds of smug blot out the sun?

(4) Will there be extra aid stations to tend to all the broken arms injured from patting oneself on the back?

(5) Will Lady Gaga be there?

These are serious times people. And serious times call for serious rallies. Run by serious people. Generally sympathetic to a Very Serious Political Party.

Update: Last bit of the post edited slightly for “aesthetic” reasons. Because I felt like it.

Second update: Just watched the following video of Smugapalooza (link via Instapundit). Apparently, misspelling words invalidates an argument so I made sure to change “high jack” to “hijack.” Any other mistakes of note? How embarrassing. Except, I’m not embarrassed. Well, for me. Nice video of the March To Restore My Inflated Self-Esteem. I’m in love with myself….