Archive for April, 2011
Saturday hate mail-a-palooza
Saturday, April 30th, 2011You know where to find the crazy.
365 Things to do in Columbus Ohio…
Saturday, April 30th, 2011365 Things to do in Columbus Ohio…
Rancho Alegre on Cleveland Avenue
I tried a NEW Mexican restaurant … or relatively new Mexican restaurant on the north-east side this week, Rancho Allegre. Rancho Allegre is on Cleveland Avenue, it is the former site of a TGI Friday’s I believe.
I had a chile relleno, one of my favorite. It was made with an egg batter. It was good
365 Things to do in Columbus Ohio…
Being Easter and Passover there is a lot going on this weekend…
I am off to the Good Friday service on the Worthington Green now.
Other things to do….
African American Heritage Festival starts Saturday and runs through Saturday, I believe.
Friday and Saturday are Lebowski Fest. The first one in Columbus? The site says:
“Lebowski Fest is a celebration of all things related to The Big Lebowski.”
It just made a list as a weird festival.
Eggs, Paws and Claws Event at the Columbus Zoo.
Add things to the ’365 Things to do in Columbus Ohio’ page on Facebook and they may end up here.
Related posts:
- Columbus BEST, location, location, location
- McCarthy's Wildflower Cafe in Clintonville
- 2008 Columbus Best Breakfast
Cosmetic Dentistry combined with spa amenities
Friday, April 29th, 2011
The Atlanta Center for Cosmetic Dentistry’s Dr. Debra King talks about techniques to keep up with excellent dental care and the positive aspects of a dental spa on the CBS Early Show. For much more info, go to www.atlantacenterforcosmeticdentistry.com.
Video Rating: 4 / five
Dr. Marc Lowenberg, New York Cosmetic Dentist, does total dental makeovers utilizing porcelain veneers, composite bonding and teeth bleaching. Teeth problems fixed consist of tetracycline staining caused by tetracycline antibiotics, spaces between teeth, stained teeth, and missing teeth.
The Nashua NH Dentist Resource
Local Gallery Showcases CCAD’s Art of Illustration
Friday, April 29th, 2011
AOI poster by Graham Erwin
CCAD’s annual Art of Illustration exhibition, now in its 14th year, is spreading its wings and leaving the nest for a Short North gallery.
The popular exhibition, featuring the best of CCAD student illustrations, is organized entirely by students—from designing promotional posters and selecting jurors to securing sponsors and notifying participants from all nine CCAD majors.
Art of Illustration, opens March 5 at Rivet Gallery, 1200 N. High St. in Columbus, and continues through March 25. An opening awards presentation and reception begins at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 5.
This year’s show is organized by five Illustration majors: seniors Alex Alvarado and Noel Ang, juniors Lexie Holliday and Brianne Schulze, and sophomore Andrew Thompson. They secured a panel of professional alumni jurors—Linda Bittner (CCAD, ’88), Tim Bowers (CCAD, ’79), Eric Fortune (CCAD, ’99), and Scott Hull (CCAD, ’77)—as well as Illustration Chair C. F. Payne to winnow the 164 entries down to 38. Per tradition, judging took place in Payne’s home.
“Our main focus this year was to get the community more involved,” Schulze said. “In the past, the show was held in one of CCAD’s galleries, so we figured the most obvious solution was to find a gallery off campus.” The Illustration department is excited about the gallery’s involvement because the student work, opening reception, and awards presentation will be showcased during Columbus’ popular monthly Gallery Hop.
Payne describes the jurying progress as “very regimented and very tough once selections get down to the final level.” All students submit their entries in a digital format. For jurying, the student organizers project the images for the judges to see, then track each round’s selections and tally the overall winners, a process that lasts several hours.
Awards, including prizes from various sponsors, will be presented for best of show as well as first, second and third place. Additionally, five selections identified as “judges favorites” will receive an original work of art from the respective judge.
This year’s sponsors include Chipotle, Cameron Mitchell, Kroger, and R Designs and Printing. CCAD student, a senior majoring in Illustration, designed the 2011 AOI poster.
Payne is pleased that the student-led tradition continues to grow and sees the move to an off-campus gallery as a positive development. “Having AOI in a gallery adds some prestige,” he said.
(click on thumbnail to see full image)
Columbus College of Art & Design Blog
SC-Pres, WV-Pres: Republican primary numbers
Friday, April 29th, 2011
Two new polls, in South Carolina and West Virginia, reveal Mike Huckabee leading the Republican field should he choose to enter the race. And for the first time, Donald Trump is running first in a state, tied for the lead with Huckabee in West Virginia.
First, the critical primary state of South Carolina:
Winthrop University. South Carolina “Republicans and Republican leaners”:
Mike Huckabee (R): 18
Mitt Romney (R) 16
Donald Trump (R): 10
Sarah Palin (R): 9
Newt Gingrich (R): 8
Chris Christie (R): 6
Michele Bachmann (R): 4
Ron Paul (R): 3
Tim Pawlenty (R): 2
Herman Cain (R): 2
Haley Barbour (R): 2
Jon Huntsman (R): 1
Mitch Daniels (R): 1
Gary Johnson (R): 0
Huckabee has a small lead, but with the leader at 19% there’s no clear favorite in South Carolina. Trump actually does pretty well, Sarah Palin seems to be fading, and evidently voters aren’t very familiar with the media darlings du jour (Huntsman, Daniels, and Tim Pawlenty’s video editor).
Now we know why Haley Barbour dropped out, I guess. Even in South Carolina, where one might expect the Mississippi native to perform well, Barbour was underperforming Herman Cain.
Bonus: President Barack Obama’s approval rating is not all that bad in South Carolina considering the conservative bent of the state. 43% of respondents approve of the President’s job performance while 47% disapprove.
On to West Virginia, where the President is certainly not quite so popular:
Public Policy Polling. West Virginia (Republican primary)”:
Donald Trump: 24
Mike Huckabee: 24
Sarah Palin: 13
Mitt Romney: 11
Newt Gingrich: 9
Tim Pawlenty: 4
Michele Bachmann: 3
Ron Paul: 3
Well, that was easy for The Donald. It’ll be interesting to see PPP’s Presidential head-to-heads against Barack Obama; this may well be the first state where Trump actually leads the President.
Trump has jumped pretty quickly to a serious frontrunner. The fact that the President has now legitimized the birther movement ought only to help him. And birthers are popular among WV Republicans, per pollster Tom Jensen:
Trump is riding the birther train to his lead in West Virginia. Only 22% of Republican voters there think Barack Obama was born in the country to 53% who think he was not and 26% who are unsure. With the voters who think Obama was born in the US Trump gets just 15%, putting him in third place behind Huckabee and Romney. But with the folks who think Obama was not Trump gets 30% putting him 8 points ahead of Huckabee and allowing him the overall tie.
Frightening.
Alliance Online News: HUD Releases 2010 PIT Counts
Thursday, April 28th, 2011HUD Releases 2010 PIT Counts
National Alliance to End Homelessness
Proximate Cause Redefined?
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011I got an email today from the Texas Bar about an upcoming CLE titled "Proximate Cause Redefined: The Controversy Over Substantial Factor". The TPJC’s new definition reads: "’Proximate cause’ means a cause that was a substantial factor in bringing about an event, and without which cause such event would not have occurred. In order to be a proximate cause, the act or omission complained of must be such that a person using the degree of care required of him would have foreseen that the event, or some similar event, might reasonably result therefrom. There may be more than one proximate cause of an event."
Two things. First, right after it came out we predicted that the Texas Supreme Court’s opinion in Transcontinental Insurance Company v. Crump would cause confusion and controversy. See "Substantial Confusion". We worried that by deploying a substantial factor analysis in a worker’s comp setting (i.e. no fault / producing cause framework) it meant that the court had somehow gotten the idea that all "but for" causes could be subdivided into really really necessary causes and merely really necessary causes. And that, I think, is what the first sentence of the new definition tries to capture. Too bad no inquiry as to the necessary-ness of a necessary cause can be sensibly maintained.
Maybe the court will use Bostic to put the train back on the rails and continue on with its longstanding and sensible approach to substantial factor. Specifically, that an assessment of whether or not a given "but for" cause was a substantial factor is an inquiry for the court and that the question of whether a substantial factor was of a sort that would have caused an ordinarily prudent person to perceive the risk created is a question for the jury.
Second, I’d be willing to bet that not one of the next 100 juries to consider this new TPJC definition of proximate cause will have any idea as to what concept it’s trying to convey.
Why Do Almost One in Three Americans Experience a Medical Error While Hospitalized?
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011Start with "Medical Errors in the USA: Human or Systemic", head over to Health Policy Brief: Improving Quality and Safety (04/15/2011) and then try "’Global Trigger Tool’ Shows That Adverse Events in Hospitals May Be Ten Times Greater Than Previously Measured". It reminded me of my Great Grandmother who had a serious stroke yet refused to go to the hospital: "You don’t ever want to go to the hospital; if you’re lucky you come out no worse off than when you went in." Instead she called for big cans of soup from her pantry to use as workout weights to help get her strength back. Ten years later she was given too much of the wrong medication and died soon after. But 102 ain’t a bad bad age to make it to especially if you’re independent to (almost) the very end.
Finally, ponder "Should the Practice of Medicine be a Deontological or Utilitarian Enterprise?" Maybe our problem here too in the states is that we’re stuck with a promise of heroic effort in every case yet able, obviously, to deliver only the effort that knowledge, time and money allow. So instead we make a big production of hospitalization and in the process gather a mountain of analytical test data that can’t possibly be adequately analyzed (in no small part because we don’t know what most of it means). In the meantime we subject patients to a staggering numbers of unnecessary tests or pointless biopsies and expose them to all the attendant risks including nosocomial infections.
So for now, and for the foreseeable future unless we’re willing to admit that medicine knows a whole lot less than it claims, we’ll have to settle for beads and rattles.
Hindsight Bias: A Flaw or A Weapon?
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011Why do plaintiff lawyers like computer generated re-enactments? See: "Hindsight Bias, Visual Aids, and Legal Decision Making: Timing is Everything". Who’s more prone to falling prey to the reasoning flaw, young adults or seniors? See: "Hindsight Bias From 3 to (% Years of Age"
Finally, why do we reason? Is it "a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means"? See: "Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory". Maybe now we know why the ancients thought that rhetoric was an essential skill for any leader.
Open thread for night owls: ABC News lets Rev. Franklin Graham get away with birther lies
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
Christiane Amanpour’s interview with Franklin Graham has sparked only a small amount of attention. The son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, Franklin has taken up the torch of his father’s worldwide ministry. He’s also claimed the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated every level of the Obama administration and had made disparaging remarks about Muslims, in general. Of Obama’s birthplace, he told Amanpour:
“I was born in a hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, and I know that my records are there. You can probably even go and find out what room my mother was in when I was born. I don’t know why he can’t produce that.” …
At Mother Jones, David Corn writes:
[Amanpour] devoted more time to whom Graham fancies among the potential 2012 GOP candidates. After Graham remarked that celebrity mogul Donald Trump might be his candidate of choice, Amanpour asked whether Trump’s unrelenting advocacy of birtherism bothers Graham. Not at all, Graham replied, adding that the president “has some issues to deal with here” regarding his birth certificate. Graham also questioned whether Obama was truly a committed Christian—though he did acknowledge that “God is the only one who knows his heart.”
And that was it. Amanpour allowed Graham to drop a birther bomblet without forcing him to defend his remarks, as well as squeezing in some doubt about the authenticity of the president’s Christian beliefs. The interview was an Easter gift to those on the right who believe the president is a secret Muslim plotting the end of the United States of America. ABC News had provided a much-coveted platform to a fellow who has publicly said Obama’s government is riddled with Muslim Brotherhood agents at the most senior levels—that is, someone who promotes conspiratorial crackpottery.
Graham’s birther-friendly remarks did catch some attention on the Intertubes. But there was not much controversy about his appearance on the show. On Monday afternoon, at the daily White House press briefing, I asked press secretary Jay Carney if the White House was concerned that a national religious leader was charging that Obama has been shifty about his birth records and has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to penetrate his administration. Carney offered this in reply: It was “unfortunate” that Graham “chose Easter Sunday to make preposterous charges.” There was a touch of anger in Carney’s voice, but just a touch, and he did not elaborate. He then left the lectern and departed the briefing room.
Obama has been quite kind to Graham’s ailing father and has prayed with the elder and younger Graham. Despite that, Franklin Graham spreads conspiratorial swill about the president—without much challenge from the media. And the White House obviously calculates it can only go so far in publicly denouncing Graham. Consequently, there’s not much disincentive for Graham to change his ways.
One is spurred by Graham’s preposterousness to ponder whether his view of what makes a committed Christian includes not bearing false witness on national television.
• • • • •
At Daily Kos on this date in 2005:
He’s so busted, and the story is spreading.
The airfare to London and Scotland in 2000 for then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was charged to an American Express card issued to Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist at the center of a federal criminal and tax probe, according to two sources who know Abramoff’s credit card account number and to a copy of a travel invoice displaying that number.
DeLay’s expenses during the same trip for food, phone calls and other items at a golf course hotel in Scotland were billed to a different credit card also used on the trip by a second registered Washington lobbyist, Edwin A. Buckham, according to receipts documenting that portion of the trip.
House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting travel and related expenses from registered lobbyists. …