BRIEFINGS AND ADARA
Re: The Prowler's Obama's Chicago Pentagon:
Your September 18 article entitled "Obama's Chicago Pentagon" written by "the Prowler" references a briefing by Rear Admiral Gregory Timberlake to the Secretaries of Defense and Veterans Affairs. The article states that the admiral's brief specifically referenced an IT company by name "in the written presentation".
That statement is incorrect.
In his briefing to the secretaries on March 24, entitled "The Way Forward: Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record Using a Common Services Approach," the admiral made no reference, written or otherwise, to any IT company or firm.
The briefing that the Prowler has obtained had a different title and was given more than a month earlier to an entirely different audience. By confusing the two briefings, the article attempts to portray the admiral as endorsing a particular vendor, when in fact neither he nor his office plays any role in that decision.
The role of the DoD/VA Interagency Program Office is to ensure DoD and VA develop and implement electronic health record systems and capabilities that are interoperable. The responsibility for developing requirements and IT solutions -- to include the selection of specific vendors to accomplish this work -- remains with the respective DoD and VA organizations.
-- Martha Deutscher
DoD/VA Interagency Program Office
The Prowler replies:
While it is understood that Adm. Timberlake did not endorse a vendor or a company, the fact is that Adara's platform and work was highlighted in briefings as an example of what an interoperable medical records database would or could look like, and Adara was a firm that was one of several who would have met the requirements had the more clearly defined request for bid proceeded.
ONE CRAZY SCHEME
Re: George Neumayr's Race to the Bottom:
Geraldine Ferraro thought President Obama's race worked to his advantage in the primaries. Jimmy Carter thinks that bigots hold President Obama's race against him. George Neumayr asks, which is it? It is both. But the panderers and the bigots were both operating in the Democratic primaries. America at large has no problem with a black president, neither favoring, nor disfavoring, the man because of his race.
Yet America at large is suspicious of candidates like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Race factors into these suspicions because Jackson and Sharpton insist on it. In Obama, America thought it was electing Amos Jones -- a hard working, thoughtfully intelligent, family-oriented problem solver. Instead, they got George Stephens and Andy Brown, cooking up one crazy scheme after another.
Joe Biden likes to ride the train. Maybe if we pack them lunches and buy them tickets, we can send them to Chicago.
-- Dan Martin
Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaIt continues to appear that, most generally, without consequence or conscience, Obama, liberals, leftists and many prominent Democrats -- as well as the current state-controlled media -- can be and are misanthropic, misogynist and racist.It also appears that Obama never meant what he said about being post-racial and a new politician.
At any time in the past couple of years, but especially last fall and through this week, however, Obama could've been both by stating publicly that divisiveness will not work.
But, then, would've had to lie, wouldn't he?
-- C. Kenna Amos Jr.
Princeton, West Virginia
LOST IN SPACETIME
Re: Tom Bethell's Can We Do Without Relativity?:
I can well sympathize with Mr. Bethell over the lack of attention he forecasts, in taking issue with some of the foundational concepts of modern physics. I get a similar response when I point out that the concept of "spacetime" is logically flawed.While it is convenient and useful to model time as a dimension along which events occur, it has proven extremely difficult to physically explain the process involved and this has caused serious confusion over the years, leading to such propositions as "block time" and multi-worlds hypotheses, such as Schrodinger's Cat.
There is actually a very basic explanation. While we, existing in the present, do go from past events to future ones, these events go the other way. First they are in the future and then in the past.
The question is whether time is a fundamental dimension along which the present moves/exists, or is it that motion is constantly rearranging the situation, so that the configuration of the pattern of what exists is continually changing and time is simply a consequence of this motion, as each arrangement is relaced by the next?
Does the earth travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow? Or does tomorrow become yesterday because the earth rotates?If you can appreciate that it is the latter, it does explain the many anomalies of time with which physics must contend, such as why it is affected by gravity and velocity. These affect the rate of atomic activity and thus the ticking of the clock determined by that activity. Time as the probabilities of the future collapsing in the activity of the present, then into the determined order of past events, describes a dynamic process, while time as a dimension going from the determination of the past into the vagaries of the future leads to the many worlds scenario, which proposes all possible paths be taken.
Simply, time is a consequence of motion, not the basis for it. This means it actually has more in common with temperature, the scalar average of motion, than space. In fact, I suspect this means space isn't relativistic, but is an inertial frame that does determine such things as the speed of light and why atomic activity slows as it increases velocity. This point raises questions about current cosmology, but that's another topic.
Suffice to say, I get little positive response when I raise this issue on various physics forums.
-- John B. Merryman
Re: Ken Blackwell's Obama Is Right and Carter Is Wrong:
Has anyone asked Jimmy Carter, Bill Cosby, or the mainstream media if Obama's persistent and ongoing criticism and slander of George W. Bush is racially motivated?
-- Gerry Kendall
THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
Re: A Conversation With Irving Kristol:
With Kristol's passing conservatism has lost what I consider the third of modern conservatives' giants: Friedman, Buckley and Kristol. Their writings and editorships took this squishy early twenties moderate on an intellectual journey that settled me into a mature, deeply committed conservative.
-- Paul Z.