Two years on and a whole lot has happened

It's springtime in 2012, and I'm looking around at all my Web properties and deciding which ones to keep and which to consolidate. This post won't attempt to wrap up all the things that I've done since spring 2010, when I began working full time at the Herald Journal newspaper, through 2011, when I went to study French literature and technology in Switzerland, then graduated with a BA in French and journalism, with an instructional technology minor, through now, when I've attended the Scripps School of Journalism for the past two quarters as a master's student and a news writing teacher. No, I won't try to tell you all that. Instead, I'll give you a taste of some of my photos, which I've been pursuing like crazy since I came home from La Suisse in July 2011.

Springies

Well it's getting dark outside the library and I can see the mountainsides east of Logan turning gray-blue, covered with fresh snow and spotted with dark green piney spots. Writing has become difficult lately, a put-off job, something I've procrastinated for weeks now...and this week will funnel all my various due dates into one tough time.

Email etiquette rules: the basics of Internet communication

This article about e-mail etiquette was first written about 12 years ago, when the net was still emerging. Though most Internet content is quickly aged out of existence, this post still has lots of excellent information and tips to protect yourself when communicating via e-mail.

Two of my pet peeves about e-mail communicators: those who WRITE IN ALL CAPS AS THOUGH THEY'RE YELLING THROUGH THE WHOLE E-MAIL!

and

Those who send out a group e-mail to a list of recipients without blind-copying it, so that the e-mail is preceded by several hundred (or more) names and e-mail addresses of recipients. Not only is this annoying to me, it makes me feel embarrassed for the uninformed sender, and afraid for my privacy and that of the other recipients.

Here's a link to the article everybody should read at least once: http://www.emailreplies.com/

The Peugeot Project: my vintage ten-speed is coming together

So, I've been working on this bike since earlier this summer. Here's what the frame looked like when my neighbor Eric gave it to me. (Notice those cotter-pins holding the solid steel cranks to the bottom bracket.) It also had a set of really cool aluminum bars that aren't shown:














So I rode the bike for a couple months, put about $100 into a new rear wheel, two new tires, some sweet DHS caged pedals, new brake pads, and some black bar tape. This is the bike before I got the pedals and bar tape on.














And then I got a bit more serious. I looked up a guy who specializes in powder coatings, and took the frame to his shop. $65 later, he had sandblasted it and put on a new coat of bright white paint.













I spent hours online, looking for some replacement cranks for those steel behemoths, and a new bottom bracket as well. It was nearly impossible. You see, these old French frames are 35x1 mm threaded; in a word: obsolete.
I was about to despair, so I went to Adam at Blue Bikes on the Utah State University campus. He'd helped my friend Christy fix her old French twinner frame to this one, and he showed me where to order a new bottom bracket that didn't even need threads. It's self-centering. I ordered it, and came back the next day to talk about the bike. As I told the shop about my travails, this guy spoke up.
"You have an old Peugeot? My first real race bike was a PX-10. I love those old bikes, and you know what? Just two weeks ago, my friend gave me a bag of old French racing bike parts. You want 'em?"

It was a miracle. Just when I needed them, they appeared. So this guy Joe, who it turns out is an architect for the university, called me the next day and gave me these: (Everything is aluminum. Check out the Simplex derailleur. So cool.)

Health Care reform

I've been following this health care reform debate closely this week because it applies directly to my life. I've been uninsured since May 1, 2009, when my previous employer's health care program closed down when the company claimed bankruptcy. So when Sarah Palin wrote on her Facebook page that the public option health plan would convene "death panels" to euthanize her son Trig and everybody's grandparent's, I couldn't believe what I was reading. First thought:

"It's outrageous that Palin would write something like this. There's no way this could be correct."

And I was right. I spent about 15 minutes to find the text that she referred to in her post, which you can see here: http://bit.ly/2w0DP

Look at Page 425 and read on through 432.

Even if you consider her main argument as a possibility: that doctors who counsel older patients will have a financial incentive to persuade them to sign "do-not-revive" orders, it is overstatement and gross hyperbole to use the term "death panel."

But consider this. Palin (and any Republican who uses this "death panel" argument), wants it both ways. The other most cited reason for opposition to the public option is the problem of providing too much care, not too little, because it is in the doctor's and hospitals' best interest to keep patients coming back. Doctors have a financial incentive to keep patients alive and in their care.

We've seen this in California. Patients persuaded to return for more services are the "cash cows" for doctors, clinics and hospitals. Doctors actually have an incentive to continue to treat people, often ordering more tests than are necessary for diagnosis, (for malpractice reasons as well). In any case, when was the last time you met a doctor who had an interest in saving the government's money?