One of my first experiences with culture shock here in the United States, was when I first got really ill here after leaving college and finding myself without access to the NYU clinic: I came down with a really bad throat infection and needed medical assistance. So I asked around where was the public clinic and people looked at me like I was insane. This was the end of the 1980s and not only did Ed Koch do away with almost all of them, but most people who'd go to the public clinics would do so because they ahd AIDS.

I was shocked and confused, to say the least. In Puerto Rico I had always had access to medical care. After my parents divorced and my mother found herself needed to go to public assistance, the public clinics where always there for us to use. Sure, they weren't convenient or brand spanking new but they were access to health care for all. At no point in the 20+ years I lived in Puerto Rico --and even as a young adult with no health insurance-- was I ever denied access to health care.
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It is really mindboggling that somebody like Harvey Weinstein would be campaigning for Polanski's release. That doesn't make it look like Hollywood is uniting behind Roman Polanski, but it certainly makes me put up British director Stephen Frears, actress Monica Bellucci on the "You Are Dead To Me" board.

Which is why am more than grateful for Richard Cohen's sincerity. From PostPartisan - Let Polanski Go -- But First Let Me At Him:

It's alright with me if Roman Polanski is freed by the Swiss authorities who have detained him at the request of the United States -- if first I get a chance to bust him one in the mouth. I agree that it has been a very long time since he pleaded guilty to having sexual intercourse with a 13 year old girl -- more than 30 years, actually -- but that itself was a reduced charge. He had allegedly plied the girl with champagne and given her a quarter of a Quaalude before, as the Victorians used to say, having his way with her. He is a squalid excuse for a man.

For saying that I know I stand in mortal peril of being accused by the French and much of the Pacific Palisades of being a moral prude (ha!) or a vengeance-seeking scold. The arrest has produced consternation in Hollywood and apoplexy in France, where even the culture minister, Frederic Mitterrand, got into the act. He decried that "a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already known so many during his lifetime." Oui. But he drugged and sexually abused a child. (emphasis mine)

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Roman Polanski raped a 13 year-old girl more than 30 years ago. Roman Polanski, who was 43 years old at the time of the crime, has never denied he gave Quaaludes and alcohol to a minor so he could force her into sexual acts with him. On the contrary, he entered a plea bargain for the lesser crime of statutory rape or unlawful sexual acts with a minor. It was after the case was tried, the plea bargain negotiated and before he was to be sentenced that he fleed the country.

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Code ! Code! Code! (test & document!):

Location

Day Two
Day Three
Day Four

Looking forward to all the case-study presentations plus the theming and multimedia workshops.

No keynotes or panels:

• Documentation sprints,
• DrupalCamp and a
• Views2 intensive.