There’s Accountability and then There’s Accountability

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In an act that would scare the pants off of any doctor the Freedom of Information minister in Scotland ruled that the mortality rates of the patients of the almost 1,000 surgeons in the country could be made publicly available.  In other words each of the surgeons’ success rates are now public knowledge. (Read about it here).

The head healthcare dude for the country said that he didn’t understand why the data was made available "because it did not provide details of individual patient cases."  Well, I’d argue that it would then be in the best interest of the doctors to make sure that the details were made available so that the public could have some context, but it is definitely in the public’s best interest to have this data available.

Now before you jump all over me here I think this is a two way street.  If we’re going to hold doctors accountable (which I argue for) then we need to also protect them from frivolous lawsuits, and I actually think that this kind of "sunshine" on doctor data will help doctors.  After all if we can say that 90% of patients that have a certain procedure die (100% die without it) then we can’t hold the surgeon responsible if it goes wrong.  On the other hand if 99% survive a procedure and a doctor manages to lose 10% of his patients then that’s another issue.

Of course I don’t see this becoming an issue in the US.  The medical establishment will fight "sunshine" laws until their last breath and lawyers will never go for anything that would put a crimp in their market.

It’s the Comments

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Ever since I started blogging I’ve been asked the same two questions over and over:

  1. What makes a blog different from a regular website?
  2. Why do you blog?

I’ve often struggled to answer both questions, but over time I came to realize that one overarching feature of blogs attracts me: the comments.

I read other peoples’ blogs because they’re interesting and because I want to see how people react via comments. (A quick aside: I’ve found that I rarely continue to read blogs that have the comments turned off).  A great case study is Ed Cone’s blog post about the furor in the Muslim world over some offensive comics.  I found the 23 comments (when I read it) more interesting than the post itself.  To use a real world analogy I’d find having dinner with Ed and the commenters and listening to their debate over the issue far more interesting than going to speech given by Ed (no offense to Ed, I just don’t much enjoy speeches).

One of the main reasons I continue to write my blog is that I truly enjoy the comments I get.  I really don’t care if someone agrees or disagrees, but I do care that I’m having a form of interaction.  It helps me avoid intellectual petrification because there are a lot of smart people out there and when they provide me with alternate theories, ideas and arguments they give me the gift of context and a larger worldview.

So I guess you could say that the one word answer to both questions is: dialog.

And the Food Wasn’t Bad

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Last week I had lunch with a local moderate conservative blogger who referred to me as a moderate liberal, which is pretty much accurate.  He didn’t name me on his blog to protect my identity so I’ll do the same.  I very much enjoyed the conversation and although we originally planned to eat at Outback we ended up eating at NASCAR Cafe.  Honestly the food was pretty good which means I was pretty surprised.

Speaking of NASCAR and things you ingest did you know that NASCAR big-wig Richard Childress has his own winery?  Living in NW North Carolina does have its interesting moments.

Hold the Phone, or You Thought Bank Fees Were Bad

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Celeste, my lovely wife, is going to choke when she reads this one.  There’s a woman in Wisconsin who has been paying a monthly fee to rent a rotary phone she hasn’t used in at least 10 years.  It’s been boxed up in her basement all that time. (Read about it here).

The monthly fee is currently $4.45 per month plus tax.  That means for at least the recent past she’s been paying over $50 a year for the thing, and she only discovered it when she changed from AT&T to SBC for long distance.  She’d never switched from AT&T for long distance after the company split into the baby-bells in 1984, and she never noticed the line item for the phone on her bill.

That’s exactly the kind of thing that Celeste guards against.  If the bills were left to me I’m sure we’d have a similar story to this, but Celeste catches those things like a hawk. Needless to say I don’t get away with ANYTHING around here.

Is This Retro, Cheap or Just Sad?

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XmturntableI’ve had my XM Delphi Radio Roady2 for about 8 months and until now I’ve kept it in the car.  A while ago Celeste got me the home kit for it, but I just now got around to putting it together in my office.  It plugs into any stereo with standard white/red auxilary cords, so instead of going out and getting a new setup I just grabbed an old hand-me-down stereo that my sister-in-law gave my kids years ago (see the picture; click on it if you want a larger version).  How old is it?  It has a turntable.  I guess you could say it’s an XMtable.

What the hell; the speakers work and now I have XM for my own version of Muzak.  The handy-dandy remote allows me to channel surf without leaving the computer.  Nice.

I Wonder if SunTrust Would Care if They Knew

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A Greensboro-based blogger named Jay Ovittore wrote a post about the policy at SunTrust Bank to immediately debit a transaction yet hold a refund for several days.  The policy came to his attention when a store clerk mistakenly overcharged a transaction and then immediately refunded it.  Since the refund didn’t kick in right away several other transactions caused him to overdraw his account and rack up over $200 in overdraft fees.

What’s interesting to me is that Jay got 10 comments on his post, and all of them were recommendations for other banks and credit unions.  SunTrust did eventually make things right and it’s not like they’re the only bank with this policy, but they now have their competitors being promoted at their expense on a blog post that will eventually pick up search engine traffic, and at least locally it has stirred up a little noise.  (It’s the network effect in action).  SunTrust is a big institution, so my question is do they know about this and if they do know about it do they care?  Somehow I doubt it, because if they did they would have a representative posting a comment in their own defense.

Should SunTrust care?  Sure they should, because even in the offline world one disgruntled customer typically tells their friends and colleagues when they get bad service and they also tell those friends and colleagues when a company does something extraordinary to make up for it. Conversely, customers rarely tell anyone when they get adequate or even good service which generally makes them a silent majority. Right now SunTrust has a disgruntled soon-to-be-ex-customer that offers them an opportunity to get out a positive message about their company and they’re missing it.

Where the Jobs Are

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There’s a job-related search engine called Indeed that is basically Google for jobs.  To use it just go to the site, type in your parameters (two fields are provided, one for describing the position you’re looking for and one for a geographic area you’re looking for) and faster than you can say "You’re hired" a listing of jobs will appear.  Just like other search engines Indeed ranks the jobs by relevance and it pulls the job listings from thousands of sources.

Indeed has also just launched an interactive map that shows which cities in the US have the most job listings per capita.  My old hometown, Washington, DC comes in second behind San Jose.  Sadly, none of the cities in the NC Triad area (Winston-Salem, Greensboro or High Point) shows up, but that’s not a surprise when you consider that the region’s traditional industries are textiles, furniture and tobacco.  On the other hand Charlotte, just an hour south of us, is ranked 19th.

I Know Who the Next Victim of Wiretapping is Going to Be

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Since the current administration, "The Bushites", seem to have no sense of humor I have a feeling that they won’t appreciate being satirized which leads me to believe that the person(s?) behind Fafblog are about to get ‘tapped.  Why? Well, when you pen a satirical piece and title it "Our Omnipotent President" you’re bound to attract attention from some ticked-off Bushites.

The piece is in Q&A form; here’s my favorites:

Q. Can the president spy on me without a warrant?
A. The president would never, ever spy on you, unless you’re talking to a terrorist.
Q. That sounds reasonable!
A.
Or an associate of a terrorist or a suspected associate of a terrorist
or a possible suspected relative of a member of an affiliate of a
terrorist or someone with a name that’s spelled like a terrorist’s or
someone who’s been mistakenly identified as a terrorist by an NSA
algorithm.
Q. That sounds like I should look into switching to smoke signals.
A. Well if you want, the president can stop the illegal wiretapping just for you.
Q. Really? Well thanks, that’d be great!
A. And then the terrorists can come and eat you.
Q. Wait! What?
A.
Cause without the wiretaps there’s nothin to stop the terrorists from
eatin you, yknow. The terrorists and their army of bees.
Q. Oh no! I’m allergic to terrorists AND bees!
A. Oh that’s too bad, cause now the president hasta stop the illegal wiretaps and let alllll those terrorist bees eat you.
Q. Quick! Put the wiretaps back, put the wiretaps back!
A. No no, you just said you wanna get eaten. Eaten by terrorist bees.
Q. I change my mind! Please let the president wiretap me, pleeeease.
A. I dunno…
Q. Please, I can change! I DO believe in terror, I DO believe in terror!
A. Oh, alright. But just this once!
Q. It’s a Nine-Elevenmas miracle!

Found via Boing Boing.