It seems to have gone out the door with 'medical ethics', which is how we handled such matters in the past. HIPAA costs a lot, and provides no benefits over what we had with medical ethics in play.

Another sink hole for money.

Jan

A part of HIPAA was protecting our medical records from prying eyes.

That privacy protection is, for all practical purposes, gone now that the IRS has complete access to our records.

anything about hipaa must be unnecessarily
complex. . . what ever became of plain old privacy? -- j

That is a very nice thing to say. I am feeling particularly foggy this Monday morning: your comment has increased my resolve to handle an unnecessarily complex HIPAA Business Associates agreement and to try to come up with a satisfactory reply for some mutually contradictory emails sent by various parties at one of our customer's labs.

Jan, flattered and preening

There are fewer and fewer WWII vets remaining every day. In not so many years, they will all be gone.

Whenever my wife and I are in a restaurant and I see a WWII vet eating, I pick up their tab. In appreciation for what they went through.

bright as the day is long, Jan;;; you help us cut through
the fog, daily -- and Thank You Much!!! -- j

OK. Thanks for explaining the joke to me. In small words and simple sentences...

Sigh.

Jan, sometimes not too bright

it was intended as a joke -- since no one speaks
sanskrit, no one could translate it if it were spoken.
it's twisty logic;;; I know. -- j

No. Sanskrit survives as a written language only. The closest spoken form for Indo-European is apparently Lithuanian. There is some disagreement over how close or far Lithuanian is from IE.

Jan

I addition to my dissappointment with the movie it had the additional misfortune of starring Mr. Cage who I am totally sick and tired of. I promise you though that I gave the movie a fair viewing in spite of Mr. Cage, due to the interesting subject....but yes IT SUCKED!!!!

But did you like the movie?

I couldn't tell.... ;-)

The most unfortunate aspect of the history of the code talkers is that godawful movie Windtalkers with Nicholas Cage. The only reason that the code talkers were in the movie was to provide a downtrodden minority group in the background for Cages charicter to save. I had high hopes for the movie but it was one of the more pathetic examples of a formulaic hollywood movie style known as the "magic negro" movie. It was in fact worse than the standard magic negro movie where the misunerstood minority is revealed to have a wonderful and special talent. In this movie the code speaking got almost no play. Cage just dressed up a code speaker as a Japanese soilder and used his resemblance to the hated enemy to complete the mission and make the formula white racists...which hollywood knows the army is full of...to respect the poor downtrodden minority. Of course if it wasn't for Cages charicter the codetalker charicter would not have been able to work his way out of a wet paper bag.

Thanks. My first chuckle of the day.

She did tell me one story, but I have since forgotten almost all of it.
Interestingly, there are only five major clans in the Navajo nation.
When I went on a several hour canyon tour in northern Arizona, my tour guide was a cousin who knew my student.

does anyone speak sanskrit? -- j

our Navajo sponsor-kid in NM, Joshua, carries on
the tradition of wonderful members of the u.s. -- hooray!!! -- j

Good analogy.

Yes, it takes the collaboration of many skills for projects and for a society to succeed, symbolized by tales like the Magnificent Seven.

Make sure no one is in the bathroom before you read further--
Our future is in the voting hands of ignorant children.
They are the next generation lambs of sheeple.
They are blissful Eloi who await the Morlocks.
Look for Obama in the link--

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=eloi...

The idea still has merit...but would use Ebonics.

Ugh. I need to go throw up...

So very true, Jan. With the touch of a screen that information can be downloaded. It's a double edged sword, technology. Imagine trying to accomplish the start of this nation in this day and age. It would have never happened. The element of surprise would have not been possible. Or getting shot for treason.

Elegant way of resisting. I like your style. :-)

I loved the story of the code talkers: the difference between deciphering a code and translating a language. Fascinating. We were very bright to do this, though it would not work again - the world is too small now, and information is to well distributed. There is no language that could be used for more than a single interaction before it was pinpointed and translated.

I am sorry the gentleman is gone.

Jan

We used to have "Valuing Diversity" as a category on our annual reviews, probably due to some defensive lawyer and zealous HR person wanting CYA.
I took great pleasure every year in my self-evaluation, describing real reasons this is important, for example: diversity of problem solving approaches to help ensure objectivity; getting electric and mechanical engineers to identify system design approaches, etc. Separately I'd argue with HR that, if this had to do with race/gender, the score must be middling, and any other would be detrimental to the company. That generated some interesting discussions. Another small act of defiance, supporting my jousting at windmills moniker. Since my boss disliked this category as well, it went smoothly. That silly category is now gone, along with the corporate HR staff supporting it, even though we went from Republican to Democrat as the CEO!