The poster must be a guy and a nerd at that. Some of the most intense music making of all time happened during the bleakest periods of human history, including the Middle Ages. So, a medieval gymel expert might well find better and more lucrative employment compared to someone who services a machine. Gymel is not so abstruse after all, unless one listens exclusively to bad classic rock... riffing on what your voice can do, the first human instrument, may have occupied a lot of talented people back in the day. Bards, jesters, poets, writers, and other creative types made it big in tough times, as they do now sometimes.
Hello Frosty, hang in there. My first day of work in 1995 was the first day of the shutdown and I didn't get paid for 2 months, but I did get paid. My creditors did not allow me to pay when I got the check, I had to pay on time. But I was proud of my work taking care of veterans. Still am. The entire IT department is going to be furloughed, so if there's a computer problem, and it impacts veteran care, people will just have to be patient (I am non-IT, but rely on it a lot). You make total sense to me, a disabled veteran who cares about his country and his brother and sister veterans who have been injured and who need medical attention. Oh, the election following the shutdown saw the political ouster of a lot of the people who had brought it on, so you are right about that too.
The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz. A wonderful not too long story about magic and spaceship technology geared for the younger crowd (but I love it).
Anything by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but especially the John Carter of Mars series.
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle (and you can suggest Sherlock Holmes as well).
Down Town by Viido Polikarpus and Tappan King.
The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula LeGuin.
All very interesting and short enough, as well as cool.
One of the best forgotten books of children's' science fiction is The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz. Try to find an unedited copy. The edited editions are subject to severe remarks on Amazon, for example, and for good reason. The highly idiosyncratic dialog penned by Schmitz is a delight. The story is one of the most entertaining and original in early sci-fi.
You think being called an IT guy is bad, try being called a "male nurse." Which is what I am, but I mostly support the electronic medical record software for a hospital. There's just a way that people say it, "oh, you're a male nurse?". Every time I hear the "male nurse" remark, it's like reliving the meet the parents dinner scene in "Meet the Fockers." "You work for IT" is not as bad, but again, you are being lumped into a vague non-white non-blue collar job category in some weird way. I have friends who are certified, trained electricians who work for the Engineering Department and people say to them, "you work for Engineering?" as if being a trained guy who works in a dangerous environment shouldn't command a level of respect. All of this may have more to do with the lingering bias in the health care and hospital world towards physicians, actually. I liked Avatar8's remark, that anyone who says you work for IT simply means to say they don't have a clue about what you do or how to use computers (I think that's what he meant).
As a botanist, I worry about some of the new genetically engineered or the kind of super plant getting out of control. In the same manner, I guess I should worry about an enhanced high yield algae escaping some sort of super algae farm. Would it have the same effect on the environment as other specialized "plants"? Would it be some kind of fairly fragile monoculture type algae that would not do well in the wild? Algae is already a major problem in the Mediterranean and along the west coast of the US recently. I wonder if anyone has examined of this critter might be a problem? A high yield algae would certainly find it's way back into the oceans and lakes.
Yep, that's exactly what I thought as well after my next door neighbor had a break-in. It's a safe area, but why risk 10 years of digital photos? We have the safe deposit box anyway, so I bought an OWC drive that fits into it like a Russian nested doll. I back up all 3 Macs on the partitioned drive. The safe deposit box costs about $55/year, cheap at the price.
That's exactly what happened to us... the hit took out 2 Macs and the power bricks/adapters for nearly everything else electronic in the house. And it was a strike across the street that travelled thru the dsl line, not the well-protected outlets. I always have at least one backup NOT connected and stored off-site since then. The other awful thing that convinced me to use 3 external drives was backing up to a single drive and having a bad thing happen to both the main drive in my PowerBook and the backup at the same time. The screwup was a funky restore from backup (I'll never use Intego Personal Backup again). Yes, the stupid things happen and you'd better be ready...
I have so many drives from so many years of external data that I do 2 Time Machine backups to 2 separate drives, a 3d SuperDuper backup about every 3 months to a drive stored in a safe deposit box and I avail myself of MobileMe sync services. Like I said, I use SuperDuper for the backups to the externally stored drive. That way, if a Time Machine backup is corrupted or wonky, the pooch is not you know what. On an ad hoc basis I backup my user folder using SuperDuper to a portable firewire bus-powered drive from OWC... so, I really have 4 backups. Between MobileMe, my smtp email, my use of gmail and the panoply of manually run backups, I feel pretty safe. Why feel safe? Bc I have done backups to a single drive before and ruined the backup and the main drive simultaneously. It was my fault, but I learned to never depend on a single backup again. Yes, it takes time, but the 3 months I needed to sift through 5 years of data (I used Data Rescue II from ProSoft successfully) was a lot worse. The other 2 Macs in the house are also backed up to 3 backup drives each using the same approach.
Purchases at the store counter are taxed, but this measly, nagging little in-your-face tax is going to make Governor Paterson and the NY state Democratic Party look really bad. I pay taxes once a year for most big things. Now I'll be reminded every time I spend 99 cents that New York state - and by inference, the New York state Democratic Party - has a direct connection to my wallet. Not just for the big things, but even for the niggling things. If I had to pay a Republican to come up with a more effective reinforcement of the "tax and spend" stereotype that the Democrats have tried to distance themselves from for years, i don't think I could have done better than this moronic idea. A very poorly conceived proposal from a tactical political standpoint, it highlights that fact that the Democrats may win the battle but in the end they lose the war (and I'm a NYS Democrat).
What's really amazing is the a newspaper with the resources of the NYT allows an ignoramus like Markoff to write something so uselessly alarming and technically deficient. This is an example of the fear-mongering and the moron-level discussions of the internet that plagued us through 8 years of the Bushies. I have to admit, the general level of technical expertise of most NYTs articles is pretty low to substandard (except for Pogue).
Once CPRS is rewritten to be platform independent (otherwise known as a web-based front end), it will be useful for hospitals and just about any other location it's used in, including smaller clinics. It has worked beautifully for us for storefront clinics, for example. I have to admit that it does not have a billing module, but if it's a web-based app it can probably get one fairly quickly. And it's free.
WTF ppl? I did a Find on this thread and discovered one mention of the most ubiquitous EMR of all time... CPRS. It's the most successful and completely invisible health care tools in history, apparently. It was started back in the 80's and has been a graphic record-keeping tool since the early 90's. Why would anyone want to credit the government for anything well-done, after all?
CPRS is secure, is used in major hospitals, dental offices, small corner store community centers (scales easily), is free, open-source and easily configurable. The technical support for CPRS can be done by most plain vanilla tech support shops, the clinical interface is easily learned and well-loved by clinicians and it allows a tone of other products to "hook" into it.
CPRS does not give access to insurers for the most part inhibits profiling. An Information Security Officer can patrol the access and use fairly effectively.
The next version of CPRS will be platform-independent and built so that users can access lab and other information, request refills, etc. CPRS is going to be ported to the web soon and has been demo'd on the Apple iPhone, Linux and Apple computers (aka, it's not a Windows only solution).
Yes, it's got some rough edges and problems, but it has been on the job for nearly 2 decades...
So, back to the article that was referenced... the implementation of CPRS and BCMA has proved that an EMR can be launched successfully and effectively. The tech support for CPRS was drawn from the ranks of the VAMC nursing and lab staff, none of whom (to a woman and man, as far as I'm aware) had computer applications training or degrees. A lot of the developer support has been contracted and it has worked very well. There have been a few blowouts, but CPRS is largely loved by all.
The corps of very experienced trainers/developers/software specialists can be easily tapped at this point... many of the original CPRS implementation staff are now retiring and are looking for private sector employment. It's been almost 20 or more years and the experience of the VA shows that the transition CAN BE DONE... enough whining and let's get going!
The amount of money to be saved is a boat load and more. And the jobs created for support staff will replace all the clerical jobs lost.
I've been a clinical applications coordinator since 2003 so I should know... I did not have a day of computer training prior to starting the job. I was handed a key as my only mentoring experience... I am a nurse, and if I can do it, anyone can do it. And there are LOTS of nurses and clinicians who would jump at the chance to do something this thrilling.
Why study Britain's EMR? The US has had a successful public sector EMR in use in major medical centers, outpatient clinics and the Indian Health Services for almost 2 decades... it's now called CPRS and the doctors and nurses I work with love it. The effort to build an EMR started in the good ol' USA in the 80's and the EMR took a graphic form in the early 90's. How do I know? I went to my local VAMC for my post-deployment physical following the Gulf War and the VA lost all of my paper records stat (hey, I had a copy). 2 years after that, the same thing could never happen again. I love my work as a Clinical Applications Coordinator and the staff really like using CPRS a lot. Study done.
A very good but mostly unknown pre-teen sci-fi classic is "The Witches of Karres" by James H. Shmitz. Pick up an early edition of the story... a later, edited version lacked some of the charming language "flaws." Altogether, one of the best written, original and fun books I've read.
The above sounds like an awful thing to bring up, but don't confuse panic attacks with psychosis. I had panic attacks in HS and - years later - so did my daughter. Both of us worried ourselves sick wondering if the next stop was voices, social shunning and the lockup ward. I was an A student and just backed off a little. My daughter got a lot of relief just knowing that panic attacks are familial, can be controlled with medication and relaxation and that panic attacks aren't a sign you are a basket case. Turns out that my daughter also discovered that SLEEP - aka getting to bed before 11 PM and just stopping doing the homework - made the greatest impact on her anxiety and her ability to deal with stress. Another writer complemented you on bringing this up in a Slashdot venue... same here. But do yourself a favor and get to bed early, no more caffeine, get some exercise and have some good times. You'll eventually learn to live with the panic attacks (or, mostly, the worry about having the panic attacks). If they continue or get worse, call a Clinical Psychologist or Psychiatrist as soon as you can. So many of these things, if treated early - even the emotional disorders - resolve and get quickly better. The professionals will help you through the worst of the crisis and are really worth it. I'm a nurse and someone who's lived through this and speak from personal experience. Good luck.
I am still so amazed that it's the Republicans that seem to be leading the charge on privacy, altho' a good number of Democrats are in cahoots. And it's all so unfocused... why bother to be able to wiretap students? Threats to natl security by way of downloading, I guess. But I was in the military also and just can't see why this is happening. I mean, this is being done by the people I voted for in 2000 to safeguard my civil liberties. Guess I'm a major chump. But I also changed my party affiliation.
hell, yes. I've been planning on another PPC-based Mac for a while for my wife. And then I'll buy an Intel-based Mac afterwards. The measure of an Apple fanatic's thirst for product is not if he or she will buy after, but before the switch to Intel.
Mr. Quasi, you have said it so well. So, I suppose it makes sense to switch to the Democratic Party, despite what some of the LPers have said above. I looked at the LP site, and it goes overboard in some areas, altho' I feel more at home there now than I do listening to Tom Delay, for example.
Some of the Republicans in our little upstate NY town of 12,000 tried an in-your-face, crush the opposition, you must not dissent or you're a commie approach to zoning and commercial issues and recently got booted out of an 18 year majority. The idiots were from out of town mostly and bullied the well-loved mayor, a genteel educator and a 20ish councilwoman, the gracious daughter of a local banker, the only Democrats on a 9 member council. In a county with a 60% Republican demographic, the Democrats won by landslide margins. My read on this is that there is hope that extremists won't win in the long run, but local politics are so different from the national scene.
Amo Houghton was our man until his retirement last year. Now that's a Republican. After Amo and Hillary Clinton worked together to save our regional VA, many dyed-in-the-wool Republican veterans decided they'd think about voting for her. I'm sure that somewhere someone checked to see if it was a cool afternoon in Hell, but it's true.
When I was in graduate school, I was a Peace Corps recruiter and an Army Reserve sergeant in the medical platoon of a tank battalion at the same time. That seeming dichotomy shook some trees, but all of my friends understood.
Well, I did mention I was a conservative. So, now I'm looking at the alternatives and trying to keep in mind that I might have to make a bigger leap. Maybe just more involved would help right off, or better informed. But I still delight in telling (select) neighbors in my 12,000 citizen lilttle town that I switched. Around here, putting a Democrat's sign in your lawn is like announcing gender surgery. Perhaps I should just move to France (just kidding)?
Well, your point about public money surprised me, in a good way, tho'. Public money, never thought about it THAT way. On the other hand, I WAS a Republican and believed for many years that some of what I held was all mine and didn't belong to anybody else. I'm not even trying to sound ironic here, but I do feel like I'm waking up from a dream.
I think the college President is suggesting that there is an option, in effect, to "opt out" of the federal databases, if only by not applying for or accepting federal student aid. I wonder what percentage of students that comprises, but it still represents a choice. K. Will's intent is to point out a tipping point, something you refute to an extent. Not enough of an extent to convince me that there is a need for the database... or no need to wonder about its purposes.
Like I said, a tactical move. I might vote third party, but I'm still disappointed in a party I'd held to be a protector of individual liberties, and I doubt I'll ever vote for a Republican ticket again. I want Republicans to know it, for what it's worth. Was I naive to think that any party was a protector of liberties? Yes. I just can't seem to shake off the amazement I experience looking at the overspending, the war, the deterioration of veteran health care, the unfunded mandates, the databases. Was I also disappointed in any Democrat who voted for the USA Patriot Act. Yes.
Slashdot Mirror
The poster must be a guy and a nerd at that. Some of the most intense music making of all time happened during the bleakest periods of human history, including the Middle Ages. So, a medieval gymel expert might well find better and more lucrative employment compared to someone who services a machine. Gymel is not so abstruse after all, unless one listens exclusively to bad classic rock... riffing on what your voice can do, the first human instrument, may have occupied a lot of talented people back in the day. Bards, jesters, poets, writers, and other creative types made it big in tough times, as they do now sometimes.
Hello Frosty, hang in there. My first day of work in 1995 was the first day of the shutdown and I didn't get paid for 2 months, but I did get paid. My creditors did not allow me to pay when I got the check, I had to pay on time. But I was proud of my work taking care of veterans. Still am. The entire IT department is going to be furloughed, so if there's a computer problem, and it impacts veteran care, people will just have to be patient (I am non-IT, but rely on it a lot). You make total sense to me, a disabled veteran who cares about his country and his brother and sister veterans who have been injured and who need medical attention. Oh, the election following the shutdown saw the political ouster of a lot of the people who had brought it on, so you are right about that too.
The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz. A wonderful not too long story about magic and spaceship technology geared for the younger crowd (but I love it). Anything by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but especially the John Carter of Mars series. The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle (and you can suggest Sherlock Holmes as well). Down Town by Viido Polikarpus and Tappan King. The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula LeGuin. All very interesting and short enough, as well as cool.
One of the best forgotten books of children's' science fiction is The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz. Try to find an unedited copy. The edited editions are subject to severe remarks on Amazon, for example, and for good reason. The highly idiosyncratic dialog penned by Schmitz is a delight. The story is one of the most entertaining and original in early sci-fi.
Amen Jason. It's why the internet was shut down in Egypt, wasn't it? Again, amen.
You think being called an IT guy is bad, try being called a "male nurse." Which is what I am, but I mostly support the electronic medical record software for a hospital. There's just a way that people say it, "oh, you're a male nurse?". Every time I hear the "male nurse" remark, it's like reliving the meet the parents dinner scene in "Meet the Fockers." "You work for IT" is not as bad, but again, you are being lumped into a vague non-white non-blue collar job category in some weird way. I have friends who are certified, trained electricians who work for the Engineering Department and people say to them, "you work for Engineering?" as if being a trained guy who works in a dangerous environment shouldn't command a level of respect. All of this may have more to do with the lingering bias in the health care and hospital world towards physicians, actually. I liked Avatar8's remark, that anyone who says you work for IT simply means to say they don't have a clue about what you do or how to use computers (I think that's what he meant).
As a botanist, I worry about some of the new genetically engineered or the kind of super plant getting out of control. In the same manner, I guess I should worry about an enhanced high yield algae escaping some sort of super algae farm. Would it have the same effect on the environment as other specialized "plants"? Would it be some kind of fairly fragile monoculture type algae that would not do well in the wild? Algae is already a major problem in the Mediterranean and along the west coast of the US recently. I wonder if anyone has examined of this critter might be a problem? A high yield algae would certainly find it's way back into the oceans and lakes.
Yep, that's exactly what I thought as well after my next door neighbor had a break-in. It's a safe area, but why risk 10 years of digital photos? We have the safe deposit box anyway, so I bought an OWC drive that fits into it like a Russian nested doll. I back up all 3 Macs on the partitioned drive. The safe deposit box costs about $55/year, cheap at the price.
That's exactly what happened to us... the hit took out 2 Macs and the power bricks/adapters for nearly everything else electronic in the house. And it was a strike across the street that travelled thru the dsl line, not the well-protected outlets. I always have at least one backup NOT connected and stored off-site since then. The other awful thing that convinced me to use 3 external drives was backing up to a single drive and having a bad thing happen to both the main drive in my PowerBook and the backup at the same time. The screwup was a funky restore from backup (I'll never use Intego Personal Backup again). Yes, the stupid things happen and you'd better be ready...
I have so many drives from so many years of external data that I do 2 Time Machine backups to 2 separate drives, a 3d SuperDuper backup about every 3 months to a drive stored in a safe deposit box and I avail myself of MobileMe sync services. Like I said, I use SuperDuper for the backups to the externally stored drive. That way, if a Time Machine backup is corrupted or wonky, the pooch is not you know what. On an ad hoc basis I backup my user folder using SuperDuper to a portable firewire bus-powered drive from OWC... so, I really have 4 backups. Between MobileMe, my smtp email, my use of gmail and the panoply of manually run backups, I feel pretty safe. Why feel safe? Bc I have done backups to a single drive before and ruined the backup and the main drive simultaneously. It was my fault, but I learned to never depend on a single backup again. Yes, it takes time, but the 3 months I needed to sift through 5 years of data (I used Data Rescue II from ProSoft successfully) was a lot worse. The other 2 Macs in the house are also backed up to 3 backup drives each using the same approach.
Purchases at the store counter are taxed, but this measly, nagging little in-your-face tax is going to make Governor Paterson and the NY state Democratic Party look really bad. I pay taxes once a year for most big things. Now I'll be reminded every time I spend 99 cents that New York state - and by inference, the New York state Democratic Party - has a direct connection to my wallet. Not just for the big things, but even for the niggling things. If I had to pay a Republican to come up with a more effective reinforcement of the "tax and spend" stereotype that the Democrats have tried to distance themselves from for years, i don't think I could have done better than this moronic idea. A very poorly conceived proposal from a tactical political standpoint, it highlights that fact that the Democrats may win the battle but in the end they lose the war (and I'm a NYS Democrat).
What's really amazing is the a newspaper with the resources of the NYT allows an ignoramus like Markoff to write something so uselessly alarming and technically deficient. This is an example of the fear-mongering and the moron-level discussions of the internet that plagued us through 8 years of the Bushies. I have to admit, the general level of technical expertise of most NYTs articles is pretty low to substandard (except for Pogue).
Totally right on... it's what I just did. MF morons deserve it. I also wrote them a message about not 'fessing up in the first place.
Once CPRS is rewritten to be platform independent (otherwise known as a web-based front end), it will be useful for hospitals and just about any other location it's used in, including smaller clinics. It has worked beautifully for us for storefront clinics, for example. I have to admit that it does not have a billing module, but if it's a web-based app it can probably get one fairly quickly. And it's free.
WTF ppl? I did a Find on this thread and discovered one mention of the most ubiquitous EMR of all time... CPRS. It's the most successful and completely invisible health care tools in history, apparently. It was started back in the 80's and has been a graphic record-keeping tool since the early 90's. Why would anyone want to credit the government for anything well-done, after all? CPRS is secure, is used in major hospitals, dental offices, small corner store community centers (scales easily), is free, open-source and easily configurable. The technical support for CPRS can be done by most plain vanilla tech support shops, the clinical interface is easily learned and well-loved by clinicians and it allows a tone of other products to "hook" into it. CPRS does not give access to insurers for the most part inhibits profiling. An Information Security Officer can patrol the access and use fairly effectively. The next version of CPRS will be platform-independent and built so that users can access lab and other information, request refills, etc. CPRS is going to be ported to the web soon and has been demo'd on the Apple iPhone, Linux and Apple computers (aka, it's not a Windows only solution). Yes, it's got some rough edges and problems, but it has been on the job for nearly 2 decades... So, back to the article that was referenced... the implementation of CPRS and BCMA has proved that an EMR can be launched successfully and effectively. The tech support for CPRS was drawn from the ranks of the VAMC nursing and lab staff, none of whom (to a woman and man, as far as I'm aware) had computer applications training or degrees. A lot of the developer support has been contracted and it has worked very well. There have been a few blowouts, but CPRS is largely loved by all. The corps of very experienced trainers/developers/software specialists can be easily tapped at this point... many of the original CPRS implementation staff are now retiring and are looking for private sector employment. It's been almost 20 or more years and the experience of the VA shows that the transition CAN BE DONE... enough whining and let's get going! The amount of money to be saved is a boat load and more. And the jobs created for support staff will replace all the clerical jobs lost. I've been a clinical applications coordinator since 2003 so I should know... I did not have a day of computer training prior to starting the job. I was handed a key as my only mentoring experience... I am a nurse, and if I can do it, anyone can do it. And there are LOTS of nurses and clinicians who would jump at the chance to do something this thrilling.
Why study Britain's EMR? The US has had a successful public sector EMR in use in major medical centers, outpatient clinics and the Indian Health Services for almost 2 decades... it's now called CPRS and the doctors and nurses I work with love it. The effort to build an EMR started in the good ol' USA in the 80's and the EMR took a graphic form in the early 90's. How do I know? I went to my local VAMC for my post-deployment physical following the Gulf War and the VA lost all of my paper records stat (hey, I had a copy). 2 years after that, the same thing could never happen again. I love my work as a Clinical Applications Coordinator and the staff really like using CPRS a lot. Study done.
A very good but mostly unknown pre-teen sci-fi classic is "The Witches of Karres" by James H. Shmitz. Pick up an early edition of the story... a later, edited version lacked some of the charming language "flaws." Altogether, one of the best written, original and fun books I've read.
The above sounds like an awful thing to bring up, but don't confuse panic attacks with psychosis. I had panic attacks in HS and - years later - so did my daughter. Both of us worried ourselves sick wondering if the next stop was voices, social shunning and the lockup ward. I was an A student and just backed off a little. My daughter got a lot of relief just knowing that panic attacks are familial, can be controlled with medication and relaxation and that panic attacks aren't a sign you are a basket case. Turns out that my daughter also discovered that SLEEP - aka getting to bed before 11 PM and just stopping doing the homework - made the greatest impact on her anxiety and her ability to deal with stress. Another writer complemented you on bringing this up in a Slashdot venue... same here. But do yourself a favor and get to bed early, no more caffeine, get some exercise and have some good times. You'll eventually learn to live with the panic attacks (or, mostly, the worry about having the panic attacks). If they continue or get worse, call a Clinical Psychologist or Psychiatrist as soon as you can. So many of these things, if treated early - even the emotional disorders - resolve and get quickly better. The professionals will help you through the worst of the crisis and are really worth it. I'm a nurse and someone who's lived through this and speak from personal experience. Good luck.
I am still so amazed that it's the Republicans that seem to be leading the charge on privacy, altho' a good number of Democrats are in cahoots. And it's all so unfocused... why bother to be able to wiretap students? Threats to natl security by way of downloading, I guess. But I was in the military also and just can't see why this is happening. I mean, this is being done by the people I voted for in 2000 to safeguard my civil liberties. Guess I'm a major chump. But I also changed my party affiliation.
hell, yes. I've been planning on another PPC-based Mac for a while for my wife. And then I'll buy an Intel-based Mac afterwards. The measure of an Apple fanatic's thirst for product is not if he or she will buy after, but before the switch to Intel.
Mr. Quasi, you have said it so well. So, I suppose it makes sense to switch to the Democratic Party, despite what some of the LPers have said above. I looked at the LP site, and it goes overboard in some areas, altho' I feel more at home there now than I do listening to Tom Delay, for example. Some of the Republicans in our little upstate NY town of 12,000 tried an in-your-face, crush the opposition, you must not dissent or you're a commie approach to zoning and commercial issues and recently got booted out of an 18 year majority. The idiots were from out of town mostly and bullied the well-loved mayor, a genteel educator and a 20ish councilwoman, the gracious daughter of a local banker, the only Democrats on a 9 member council. In a county with a 60% Republican demographic, the Democrats won by landslide margins. My read on this is that there is hope that extremists won't win in the long run, but local politics are so different from the national scene. Amo Houghton was our man until his retirement last year. Now that's a Republican. After Amo and Hillary Clinton worked together to save our regional VA, many dyed-in-the-wool Republican veterans decided they'd think about voting for her. I'm sure that somewhere someone checked to see if it was a cool afternoon in Hell, but it's true. When I was in graduate school, I was a Peace Corps recruiter and an Army Reserve sergeant in the medical platoon of a tank battalion at the same time. That seeming dichotomy shook some trees, but all of my friends understood.
Well, I did mention I was a conservative. So, now I'm looking at the alternatives and trying to keep in mind that I might have to make a bigger leap. Maybe just more involved would help right off, or better informed. But I still delight in telling (select) neighbors in my 12,000 citizen lilttle town that I switched. Around here, putting a Democrat's sign in your lawn is like announcing gender surgery. Perhaps I should just move to France (just kidding)?
Well, your point about public money surprised me, in a good way, tho'. Public money, never thought about it THAT way. On the other hand, I WAS a Republican and believed for many years that some of what I held was all mine and didn't belong to anybody else. I'm not even trying to sound ironic here, but I do feel like I'm waking up from a dream.
I think the college President is suggesting that there is an option, in effect, to "opt out" of the federal databases, if only by not applying for or accepting federal student aid. I wonder what percentage of students that comprises, but it still represents a choice. K. Will's intent is to point out a tipping point, something you refute to an extent. Not enough of an extent to convince me that there is a need for the database... or no need to wonder about its purposes.
Like I said, a tactical move. I might vote third party, but I'm still disappointed in a party I'd held to be a protector of individual liberties, and I doubt I'll ever vote for a Republican ticket again. I want Republicans to know it, for what it's worth. Was I naive to think that any party was a protector of liberties? Yes. I just can't seem to shake off the amazement I experience looking at the overspending, the war, the deterioration of veteran health care, the unfunded mandates, the databases. Was I also disappointed in any Democrat who voted for the USA Patriot Act. Yes.