News and Commentary as  Aunt Bloggie sees it.  May 15 – 31, 2008

 

World News	Art and Entertainment
I read about Google launching their new service for storing your and my medical records. I have decidedly mixed feelings. On the one hand anything that actually makes a logical system out of the mess of files, x-rays, and code numbers that passes for medical records is a welcome sight. On the other hand, just how protected and confidential that information will stay is a matter of debate. By the fall of 2009, if all goes as planned, Oregon’s 400,000 Medicaid recipients records would be accessible to authorized health care providers and would not be available to outside interests who seek to market or use the information in those records, according to the Oregon Department of Human Services. But in the April 24, 2008 Computerworld  University of Miami officials last week acknowledged that six backup tapes from its medical school that contained more than 2 million medical records was stolen in March from a van that was transporting the data to an off-site facility.Jacqueline Menendez, vice president of communications at the university, said  a vehicle used by Archive America Ltd. to transport the patient data was broken into in downtown Coral Gables, Fla., on March 17. Thieves removed a transport case carrying the school’s computer  backup tapes, she said.  After learning about the data breach, the university contacted local computer forensics companies to see if data on a similar set  of backup tapes could be accessed. Menendez said security experts at Terremark Worldwide Inc. “tried for days” to decode the data but could not because of proprietary compression and encoding tools used to write data to the storage tapes.”The university feels confident that the person who took [the tapes] doesn’t know what they have. Even if they do know what’s contained inside, it’s very difficult to extract that information,” remarked Menendez. This raised my blood pressure quite a bit. However,  I soon discovered the situation may not be any worse than plain old paper! Just have a look at this news. Local6.com  KISSIMMEE, Fla. — Medical records and private identification numbers of Central Floridians were exposed in an auction of a storage unit.  A woman who wanted to be identified as Melody said she paid $175 at auction for office furniture inside a storage unit at the Personal Mini Storage in Osceola County.  Inside of several boxes inside of the unit were medical histories attached to copies of Central Florida driver’s licenses and medical records. Yep, names, ssn’s, addresses, and medical records. Boxed up and ready to go, courtesy of a doctor with an absent mind for protecting medical records and paying storage bills!	My taste in the Arts runs the field like a rabbit from a hound. I kinda bounce all over the place. Ever since my great-nephew Herbert  took me to a performance art exhibit, I’ve had to open my perspective a bit. Agree or disagree, one such artist to be reckoned with has a new exhibit called        “A Season in Hell” Randall Packer is internationally recognized as a pioneering artist, composer, educator, and scholar in the field of multimedia. His work has been exhibited throughout the world. Packer’s book, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, has been adopted internationally as one of the leading educational texts in the field. He is Assistant Professor of Multimedia at American University. Mr. Packer, the self proclaimed Secretary of the US Department of Art and Technology, has composed an “opera in progress” about his view of the state of America. Readers, it ain’t for the faint of heart, but then neither is the state of America. I do recommend that all of us get a mite more agreeable to different opinions and points of view, and art is one of the best tonics for this I know of.
Blogosphere	Politics
It was an interesting week in the bloggerhood. I checked in on Laurie Kendrick and got hoodwinked but good.She starts a telling a fearful story about bread, claiming… “As they are want to do, the noted thinkers at Laurie Industries did some in-depth investigating and have uncovered startling evidence which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that bread kills, maims, leads to terrorism…”Well, I nearly choked on my apple butter and toast! 89 years of unbridled bread ingestion, and all this time I’ve been recklessly expediting an imminent end. Oh, I should have seen the signs. Just to confirm my suspicionings, I dug out a old black and white of yours truly 60 years ago and compared it to my current visage in the mirror. My God! I look like HELL compared to that picture! And all because of of my lust for the loaf! On a brighter note, I wrote to Inez about her post…The Power of Duct tape. Dear Inez, I felt an immediate connection to your duct tape. I’m permanantly stuck to duct-tape-cures-all man, my not yet dearly departed sidekick of 70+ years. The story was a good one, and well tolt. Fired up a remembering about Uncle Web. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford a christmas tree.. he just lost track of the days till, and in pops the hoard of grandkids and great grandkids, and no tree. Well he galavants all over town but its too late. No tree, even the pitifull ones are gone, and he won’t abide by a “fakey” one. Just as the little tears are about to commence, he grabs some faded newpaper and broken crayons, and….yes.. duct tape… and he and the littlest child make a tree. They start a stickin on hair barrets and pennies and scraps of tinfoil, and next thing you know the whole gang of’em.. including the teenagers, are decorating this tree. Now every year… he gets a big old douglas pine a week ahead… but its that ragged newspaer tree that gets all the attention! Sincerely Aunt Bloggie Finally I must mention The Letter T where a post about “sweet tea” and McD got my attention. Dear Letter T,Well being from the Letter R.. as in R-Kansas and cyphering mention of Sweet Tea, I had to read. Don’t fret girl.. I learned sailor talk while you was still a protein. Not suprprised either about that poor thing in McDs. My nephew is a chemical taste engineer. They got chemicals for every taste there is and ain’t. Thats why I started blogging. Truly these days you cannot account for taste..cepting for the accountants. Sincerely Aunt Bloggie	The Presidential Election of 80 years ago is the first I have any recollection of, and it was a doozy. In August 1927, President Calvin Coolidge announced to the nation: “I do not choose to run for president in 1928.”At that time no Republican approached the public esteem enjoyed by Herbert Hoover, the secretary of commerce.A a week after the convention ended, Republican nominee Hoover said: “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of this land… We shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this land.” New York Governor Al Smith was the first Roman Catholic to gain a major party’s nomination for President, and his religion did become an issue during the campaign. Although Smith did not openly come out against Prohibition, he was perceived to be a “wet” by many, and soft in the war against alcohol. Both major candidates actively campaigned across the country, but for this election we also had radio commercials and sound newsreels. It was a modern campaign in more ways than one.In late October, Hoover criticized the Democrats for their socialistic policies and preached the virtues of open competition and private enterprise.  Well I guess the more things change, the more they remain the same.