MS Handicapped Parking Permits in Missouri
An article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch regarding compliance with a January 2005 revision to the requirements for doctors to issue handicapped parking permits. Apparently, the new requirements are having an "unintended consequence" for MS (multiple sclerosis) patients which essentially means that only if "a person cannot walk 50 feet without stopping to rest" they can have a sticker….otherwise start hiking. Doctors are interpreting the new law in its strictest sense and not issuing permits. Because MS is an "intermittent" illness, which means sometimes they can walk the walk, 50 feet, and sometimes they can’t. What is going on here???? Watching Politics asks, "Can blind people walk 50 fifty feet without resting?" Well, probably it would be a good idea if blind people didn’t have drivers licenses but probably the point is, blindness is a physical disability as is MS. Why the "intermittent" concern?
My 93 year old mother has suffered from MS for over 50 years and I think this is outrageous! Although she no longer drives a car, when she did, she used a handicapped permit and that permit made it possible for her to extend maintaining her independence….and maintaining her independence is directly related, in my opinion, to her longevity. MS is a devastating illness that can blur vision, weaken
muscles, impair cognition, decrease sexual performance, cause tremors, incontinence, and fatigue….and that is in the milder states. MS limits ones ability to participate in many of life’s activities that we take for granted….it seems to me that as long as an MS patient can drive a car and park it, giving them a handicapped permit to make access to their destination a little easier or in some cases possible should be a given. If they are having a good day and can walk, great. For the days that they are not, they need a permit.
The doctors that are not issuing handicapped permits to MS patients because of the 50 feet requirement fear that they will be "prosecuted" Dr. Beck Parks of the John L. Trotter Multiple Sclerosis Center at Washington University School of Medicine is quoted in this article saying, "A patient’s neurological ability can decline significantly during the
course of a day, or from one day to the next, especially in the heat. The law makes no allowances
for a person with a condition such as multiple sclerosis." Does the new law make allowance for common sense?
I have to say that if my mother could have walked the length of a parking lot, she would have gladly done so…and if she could have walked it in the morning and not in the afternoon she would have walked it in the morning and used her handicapped permit in the afternoon.
I know there are a number of MS bloggers and podcasters out there…I hope they will post their opinions of this refusal by some doctors to issue handicapped permits in Missouri to MS patients. I know I am going to write a letter to the editor of the PD and an email to the Trotter Center.
Top 100 List of Non-CNET Top 100 Blogs
I just wanted to add my blog to the list of non-CNET Top 100 blogs posting about the list. OK, so it’s my own list but of course that’s why I’m on it. Anita Campbell posting from her SmallBusiness Trends blog which was curiously not on the list, writes that the list validates the importance of blogs in general. Her RFID Weblog, however, was on the list of Cutting Edge Blogs. RFID, with all of its paradoxes is definitely something to keep our eyes on…her RFID blog validates that!
No. I Don’t Have Time to Read Blogs
I was talking to my lawyer yesterday about what lawyers call my "high conflict" divorce case. Yes, we are divorced but instead of that judgment being the end of the conflict, it became the basis for my ex to escalate the conflict. This is, of course a whole other blog that is under development but this post is about people completely impervious to blogs. My lawyer started talking about the client/attorney relationship in an unusual manner for lawyers that I have actually worked with, as opposed to law professors, friends who are attorneys or those whose blogs I read…he talked in terms of client service and was pondering why, despite what their firm thought were great results in some case, the client did not express gratitude or otherwise provide positive feedback. Well, I could have given him quite a guest lecture on the topic based upon my personal experiences,and experiences of friends and family in the quagmire of the family court system; and I could filter the personal experiences with my marketer’s lens. However, I politely suggested that there was a lot being written about this topic on the web, specifically by lawyers who blawg. I suggested he might want to check out the {non} billable hour or In Search of Perfect Client Service or The Greatest American Lawyer for their insightful and innovative thinking about the practice of law.
When there was silence on the other end of the phone, I inquired as to whether or not he read blogs. His answer? No, I don’t have time to read blogs. My thought of course was: Do you really have time to not read blogs? And I know I am at one extreme with my the answer to all of life’s mysteries can be found in the blogosphere attitude….but c’mon, you want to know why, despite winning a case, your clients seem dissatisfied? Have a conversation with them…and listen; add some empathy. There you go…good start. You are in the service business….did you serve their needs? You say you "won" the case…did you have a discussion with them to define what "winning" the case was so in the end you could agree that you had won. Oh, stop billing your clients for your mistakes, especially when it is because you didn’t listen…ok, I may be going too far.
The New York Times has an article today on blawging lawyers that quotes Scott Turow, "when people think of law, you think of jails and
marshals and corporate executives. But the reality is…it’s all words, and lawyers are verbal people, both in terms of the
written stuff and the spoken stuff." The law is about words…your clients are about words.
But maybe here lies one of the problems in having conversations with clients…the same New York Times article quotes another blawger, Denise Howell, "blogs demystify the law without costing outrageous
sums; lead to more open, frequent and occasionally informed discussions
of politics, law and occasionally morality; and help forge links
between practicing lawyers, law professors, law students and the real
world.
So, one of the problems that I see in client/attorney relationships is that attorneys don’t really want to "demystify" the law for their clients…and certainly not without collecting "outrageous sums". Second of all, in the link being forged above, the client is conspicuously absent from the list.
Bill 0′Reilly Declares Blogs Garbage
"I don’t read them, I mean it’s so outrageous", O’Reilly said on his show on July 18, 2005. Then last night on the Factor he attacks blogs calling them ideological weapons and smear campaigns as reported by Think Progress and Crooks and Liars. OK, Bill so I do watch your show because I believe it is important to hear opposing viewpoints. I have not read your book for kids. I am assuming (risky I know) based on interviews you have given about your book that you advise kids to be informed. I know that is the advise I give my own kids who frequently ask me why I watch your show since I frequently don’t agree with your opinions. Although, I would also advise my kids not to settle a lawsuit if the accusations were false. Hmmmmm?
So tell me, if you don’t read blogs, please explain to everyone how you know that they are "garbage"? Not to make an extreme comparison or anything, but wasn’t this the same premise upon which the Nazi’s burned books? Let’s declare the ideas we disagree with as garbage to protect others from reading them.
So, I say to Bill 0′Reilly: Your premise is garbage. You should read blogs to designate them garbage. I watch your show and and have personally heard you rant about the uninformed who express opinions. So, I believe I must request that you please take to heart your claim to be "fair and balanced" and at least read a blog or two, or just "shut up". (I also tell my kids not to say "shut up"….)
Marketing Person Not a Geek
Toby Bloomberg at Diva Marketing conveyed a discussion she had regarding Blog Tags with Stowe Boyd from Corante. Toby’s point was that as a marketing person not a geek, tagging was a challenge. Boyd’s point was that she should get over it and that not knowing how to do something was not "a badge of honor".
Well tagging is way up there on my list of things I know I need to understand but in spite of an ongoing search for a simple enough explanation, still don’t understand. Also on list, HTML. I too would say that I am a marketing person, not a geek. But, in my defense (and Toby’s also, should she chose to accept the defense) I don’t believe that my non-understanding of modern Geek is worn as a badge of honor. I wish I could just look at some of the this and just get it and get over it….I just don’t. It’s a brain thing.
Conversely, over at Creating Passionate Users a recent post with the title, You are a marketer, Deal with it directed engineers and product designers to "get over it"….no more it’s Geek to us badges regarding marketing. In another post, they direct the spotlight on all of us and ask, Who’s in charge you- or your brain? They then go on to say, "Everyone should know how their brain really works, because it–not you–is running the show!" Much of what they write about is about dealing with that. Ok, maybe my "it’s a brain thing" sounds a little lame when viewed in this light. Can I just whine a little and say there are just certain things that are really hard for me to understand?
OK then…so back to tagging and wouldn’t you know it but Rashmi Sinha wrote a cognitive analysis of tagging and explains it as a 2 stage process: The first stage is the "computation of similarity" between the concept and the"candidates" for related semantic concepts. The second stage is the decision regarding which category is the right one which involves various cognitive processes and much angst. However, Sinha’s theory of tagging is that the really great thing about tagging is that it eliminates step 2. You simply take your concept, subject, or object…and then do a kind of Freudian free association list of concepts, subjects or objects that come to mind, write them down and call them tags.
I get it…but I still don’t get de-licio-us.
2 Cool Sites From 2 Cool Sites
Even with RSS and aggregators, there is still too much information for me to process and use. In my email was Inter Alia Weekly Research, which always has great information to help manage the overload. This time, a site called memeorandum which takes daily news articles and links to the blogs that are talking about the the stories. Then from Seth Godins Blog came a reference to Emily Chang’s e-hub which is a constantly updated reference to everything new in blogs, social software, folksonomy, design and well, just everything.
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