New York City

I have to admit that I don't go to a lot of technology conferences. It's not that I am not interested, on the contrary, I'd love to be able to attend each and every one of them. The problem is that I am in the situation that many other bloggers (especially women and people of color) are trapped in : We don't make enough money out of blogging to be able to afford a conference budget.

It's not just the airfare and hotel and the conference fee. As a working mother who is self-employed and has 2 children, traveling to conferences is not only absolutely prohibitive if I do so out of pocket. It's the emotionally draining logistics of who's going to take care of my children while am away. Unfortunately, in a city like New York not having family available or a nanny on payroll is a HUGE child-care liability.

So the few conferences I get to go am either paid to go because I am on a panel or I get to go to them because they're local enough (meaning a train ride away).

Outside of RootsCamp NYC (which happened 2 years ago) and this year's PodCamp NYC, there's not much for free or affordable the techie and geeky at heart here in NYC. Well, at least not much new to me because if I were to include some of the stuff happening at Eyebeam, well, yeah, that's geeky enough.

Which is why going to PDF is such a joy.

Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Mothterfucker
Tits

An amazingly simple legacy of free speech, civil disobedience, philosophy of language and culture criticism all wrapped up in the guise of stand up comedy.

New York City to me has rarely been to me the voice of Woody Allen or Seinfeld. New York City has always been the voice, the "tawk" and the raunchy wit of George Carlin.

Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Mothterfucker
Tits
Fart
Turd
Twat

To celebrate George Carlin as a champion our civil rights and the integrity of the US Constitution I give you thee the original stand up skit that went into the Supreme Court Decision of FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION v. PACIFICA FOUNDATION, 438 U.S. 726, 98 S.Ct. 3026 (1978).

There is a diary at the top of the recommended list on Daily Kos citing voting problems in NYC with some accusations that Hillary's people are disenfranchising black voters. A genuine red flag was raised when it was noticed that a heavily black election district in Harlem was recorded as having zero votes for Barack Obama. This is clearly unlikely and therefore genuinely raised people's concern. And it brings up several important issues regarding voting machines. But one thing this should NOT cause is accusations of fraud on the part of Clinton's campaign. From first hand experience, I can suggest that the problem was not an intentional undercount of Obama voters, but a maintenance problem with the voting machines used in NYC.

In NYC we use very old lever machines that record the votes using mechanical counters inside the machine. It is all mechanical with each vote for a candidate tuning a counter wheel inside by one digit. As long as these machines are properly set to zero before voting begins and the votes in the end are tallied in an open manner, and as long as the machines are not re-set before the vote is properly tallied, fraud can be avoided. Of course you can see how if an election board is corrupt there is room for fraud, but with bipartisan election boards and with a chance for any campaign or local political club to see the backs of the machines at the end of voting and record their own tally, the system seems pretty fair and open.

Okay, sometimes you gotta help even lawyers. This worthy event comes from the NY Bar Assn.:

As an expression of solidarity with our beleaguered colleagues at the Pakistani bar, the New York City Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, and the New York County Lawyers' Association, in conjunction with other organizations, invite you to attend a public rally in front of the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street on Tuesday, November 13, from 1:00-1:30 p.m.

The crude and brutal suspension of law and the legal system in Pakistan, and the repression of judges and lawyers there, require that we take a moment from our own busy schedules and demonstrate our concern.

Because the images from Pakistan show the violent repression of Pakistani lawyers wearing their customary dark suit and white shirt, we request that you appear on Tuesday in similar attire, though this is not required. What is important is a strong show of support.

We hope to see you there.

A moment of silence.

Smoke streaming from Ground Zero illuminates the night skyline of lower Manhattan in a view looking east from New Jersey. Photo taken the night of Sept. 16, 2001, by USGS field-crew members Todd Hoefen and Gregg Swayze.

Here's the Victims List.

You can read my story, two years after the fact.

It's also updated.

You know you have a September 11 story.

Now it's your turn to share it.

Post it. Link to it.

We want to know.

No-frills space gives docs luxury of time

From the September ACP Observer, copyright © 2007 by the American College of Physicians.

By Ryan DuBosar

Patients walking into general internist Soma Mandal, MD’s, Manhattan office in New York City see her immediately—she’s the only person in the practice. She relies on patients to complete their histories before their visit and she verifies insurance in advance. With all the paperwork addressed, she can then devote anywhere from 20 minutes for a routine visit to 40 minutes for a new patient—all of it clinical time.

The luxury of such long visits is a welcome shift from her previous work at a hurried Lower East Side community health clinic. Treating the underserved was rewarding, but the overhead of a large facility demanded she fit patients into 15-minute slots, leaving only five to seven minutes for clinical work. She moved to a large Brooklyn medical practice, but 40- to 50-hour weeks were similarly frenzied. So she began plotting how to strike out on her own.

“I realized that the only way I could take control would be to start my own practice,” she said. Unable to get a bank loan, she covered the $20,000 in startup costs herself and opened her scaled-down practice in September 2006.

By moving to a tiny office with no staff and minimal equipment, she lowered her overhead costs to an income-to-overhead ratio of 8:1. This allows her to restrict her patient load per week to about 20 patients in four half-day sessions, even while continuing to practice in New York’s Gramercy Park neighborhood.

Today I thought of our friend Richie Perez who tragically died three years ago of cancer. He was truly a great spirit. Among many other things, he was a Young Lord, a teacher, an activist, and a visionary. Richie faught against so many things with absolute dedication. He took on issues of police brutality, racism in our educational system, prisoners' rights, and the rights of Puerto Rican people. He became a strong advocate with a powerful voice. Above all, I admired Richie's ability to connect and communicate with young people. He knew how to listen and create meaningful dialogue about critical issues of our time.

Richie was also highly intuitive and I believe that he was able to take the pulse of an entire community and push for progressive political and social reform. He was one of the first male activists I ever met that learned to question gender discrimination and women's rights issues within people of color communities. He knew how to effectively communicate the key issues that intersect race and gender. He was a gifted educator in this way.

Many of Richie's teachings had a strong impact on my beliefs. I believe that his work and philosophy have touched the lives of many people. If you want to learn more about who Richie Perez was, you can go to http://www.cssny.org/pubs/urbanagenda/2004_04_01.html

March is an insane month for the amount of political events you can go to. The proof is in the amount of political heavy hitters DL21C was able to wrangle during that month : Jon Kerry, Wesley Clark, John Tester, John Edwards, Bill Richardson. It is also an insane month for the amount of technology and media conferences you can get invited to, the most important (at least for me) being SXSW --but there's eTech and IDPI as well.

I missed almost all the events involving presidential candidates because of the amount of conferences I was involved in during the month of March. Once I was done with my last one, ARC's national conference on "Facing Race", I was free to enjoy a candidate or two by the end of the month. I wasn't able to make it to the John Edwards event (I was having some fun at a party with Nancy Pelosi).

So 3/26 was Bill Richardson's lucky number.

Remember, you live in the beating heart of the known universe, glittering Gotham, peerless and unsurpassed, and this is what it looks like. Enjoy Texas.

The Washigton Post reports today that Hillary Clinton is fighting tooth and nail to keep her husband's impeachment out of any discussions involving her presidential bid :

Clinton Fights to Keep Impeachment Taboo - washingtonpost.com:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has a new commandment for the 2008 presidential field: Thou shalt not mention anything related to the impeachment of her husband.

With a swift response to attacks from a former supporter last week, advisers to the New York Democrat offered a glimpse of their strategy for handling one of the most awkward chapters of her biography. They declared her husband's impeachment in 1998 -- or, more accurately, the embarrassing personal behavior that led to it -- taboo, putting her rivals on notice and all but daring other Democrats to mention the ordeal again.

Funny, because at the nail salon, the republican feminist lady that was getting a french manicure was saying that it did matter to her.

A lot.