Aimee Mann fans take note, reliable sources say that she will make an appearance on this week’s episode of The West Wing. Staff member are making a trip to “Rock the Vote” (it being an election year in the alternate liberals-take-over-the-White-House universe) where Aimee and her band will perform.

Faced with dwindling numbers, the Sisters of Carmel of the Resurrection in Indianapolis have hired a development director to do a little publicity to attract new members. It has been twelve years since someone joined their community. Despite the nuns’ modest plans for a simple brochure, the development director brought in a set of advisors to propose new-fangled publicity such as a website. Now you can find out what books the sisters are reading, read their perspectives on current events, and apply to visit and learn more about life as a Carmelite nun (“If you are a single woman between 20-45”). Breaking a tradition of seclusion was not easy, but these women love their way of life so sincerely that they wish for it to continue. An ad agency took on the challenging job for free and found the sisters to be witty and even irrevent at times. Their interest in current events gave them the hook for an intriguing website and now some of them have a weekly deadline to write essays on current events. No sisters seem to regret their new exposure to the outside world. Whether or not their goals of recruitment will be achieved remains to be seen.

The handwriting recognition software in Microsoft’s new Table PCs matches your letters with preloaded samples in the database on the machine. Bill Gates thinks that the database should be augmented to learn from the user’s handwriting. But others at the company want it to remain closed, with periodic updates that the company itself controls. They’re not sure if the recognition will be better or worse if the software tried to understand individual handwriting quirks. Also, and perhaps more importantly to Microsoft, if they don’t control a central store of samples, they won’t learn which additions improve overall accuracy. Meanwhile, IBM is pushing for a digitized handwriting standard (InkXML) so that companies can collaborate and produce better results. I am happy having the handwritten ink stay as it is for me to peruse later, but I would definitely want searching capabilities for it so I’d need recognition. But perhaps it wouldn’t have to be completely accurate if it was exhaustive enough to include the correct results in its various guesses for what my scribbles may mean.

Follow Me Here linked to an article which I can’t access anymore about how orchestras are getting louder and louder. A portion of the article discussed musicians’ hearing loss, which some orchestra members combat with special earplugs. An online article I found claims that “As many as 52 percent of professional orchestral performers have been diagnosed with hearing problems. 26 percent of high school seniors who participated in band had measurable hearing loss.” Orchestras have gotten louder over time in order to fill huge halls. Sitting in front of the brass section or even sometimes the winds can be an ear-ringing experience, and that ringing can stay with you permanently. You’d think that rock musicians would have worse hearing loss, but their amplifiers are typically pointed towards the audience, and they aren’t playing directly into each other’s ears. Orchestras can reach 120-137 decibels.

The NY Times reports that with the removal of the asterisk indicating extended time and other accommodations given to SAT test takers, business is up for doctors who test for learning disabled students. Legitimate requests have risen, but there are also parents and students looking for an extra edge. Some will shop around until they get the diagnoses they want. And these don’t come cheap, $2,400 for tests and an evaluation. Students without that money and in lower income schools that can’t afford to provide disability testing may not be able to even get legitimate evaluations. The College Board doesn’t think this is any worse than inequities of schools not being able to afford new textbooks. But parents and teachers can creatively overcome things like lack of school supplies. How do they get their own edge on those who can afford to cheat on a diagnosis?

Scan Scam?
If you live in an area where companies selling “whole-body scans” have arrived, you’ve probably heard the ads offering peace of mind and early detection of illnesses. They often feature testimonials from customers who credit the scans with saving their lives. San Francisco doctor Alan Eshleman has a problem with these “whole-body scanners”. In fact, he thinks they are worse scammers than the telephone psychic who told his patient that he had a deadly lung disease. His supporting facts? There is little evidence that these CT scans really catch early signs of disease, nor do they necessarily offer peace of mind. The reports provided with the scan results tend to not be absolutely reassuring since they don’t want to rule out any possible problems. So the patient is referred to their doctor for followup work on the “questionable” size of a cyst or “unexplained” density in the liver. A few hundreds or thousands of dollars of more tests later (perhaps, if they are lucky, paid by insurance but then also contributing to the rising costs of health care), the patient maybe has their peace of mind.

However, in my opinion, the fact which beats out any of the other negatives or benefits is this: “the radiation dose delivered during a whole-body scan is hundreds of times greater than that of a single chest X ray. […] People who receive a whole body scan every few years as ‘preventative medicine’ actually increase their chances of getting a radiation-induced cancer.” The FDA is looking into these scans for preventative screening purposes, and it’s possible they may see them in a more positive light than Dr. Eshleman does, but, as I always advocate, be informed.

It’s a nice change of pace to go on vacation and read charming stories in the local paper such as this: Dog gone … found two miles out to sea. Block Island resident Boo Boo, a 3-year-old Staffordshire terrier who enjoys chasing sea gulls into the waves, was caught in a rip tide and disappeared. She was discovered two miles offshore, despite dense fog, by a surprised fisherman. She had been doggie paddling for about an hour and a half. Boo Boo has been reunited with her owner, a jewelry designer who is now making her pet a tag in the event of future escapades.

Fresh Air’s Terry Gross is profiled by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Her interviews are typically done long-distance, and her producer says that “makes it more intimate and interesting for the listener.” It also reduces self-consciousness for both the interviewer and interviewee. Gross does not warm up her subjects, preferring to let the rapport grow while they are on the air. Also noted in the article: Car Talk has the most listeners per hour of the NPR shows. (via Media News)

Authors and Books for Children contains articles on some of my favorite books, including an informative biography on Helen Dore Boylston who drew on her own nursing experience to write the Sue Barton series, a bit on the Betsy-Tacy series, and a comparison of two editions of a Nancy Drew mystery. There are also links to online books (etexts) including those of Thornton W. Burgess.

In the third book in the Sue Barton series, our heroine, fresh from nursing school, joins the Henry Street Nurses in New York City. When I originally read the book I had little interest in researching what realities the plot may have been based on. Now my curiosity regarding whether the Henry Street Settlement and founder Lillian Wald, who makes a brief but memorable appearance in the story, actually exist is quickly satisfied with a web search. Lillian Wald started the Visiting Nurses Service in 1893 after realizing there was a need for public health nursing and education within the New York tenement community. The group of nurses from the Henry Street house were well established by the time the fictional Sue Barton joined up in the 1930s. While there are happy endings to most of the cases Sue tends to, I would say that the book does not glamourize the conditions and hardships that these nurses had to contend with in providing care in impoverished households. The Visiting Nurse Service of New York still exists today and their web site, with its historical photo gallery, shows that they are well aware of their heritage.