ARTS & FARCES internet

A DaVita dialysis facility in Manhattan voluntarily shut down after the New York State Health Department found blood on equipment, unsatisfactory staff behavior, and at least one patient who had contracted hepatitis C as a result of the facility’s unsanitary conditions. More than 650 patients were instructed to get hepatitis and HIV tests. And 171 patients were forced to seek treatment elsewhere.

The facility’s medical director, Walter Wesser, was fined US$300,000, lost his operating certification, and faces revocation of his medical license.

When the DaVita facility was inspected last month—as a follow-up to previous violations—the Health Department found that employees regularly failed to wash their hands properly, didn’t change gloves between patients, and didn’t correctly disinfect equipment.

Interestingly, the Anemona Hartocollis’s report for the New York Times fails to identify the facility as owned by DaVita. Anna Bennett’s accounts for Dialysis from the sharp end of the needle (Bennett was a patient at the closed Manhattan DaVita facility) are much better written and more compelling.

It started with CNN’s Campbell Brown holding a McCain aide’s feet to the fire, not letting him dodge a direct question asking for a single example of Sarah Palin’s foreign policy experience. And it seems to have started a trend among other corporate journalists: they’re sprouting new appendages that could actually develop into something very closely resembling spines.

Now comes Jay Rosen urging his Twitter followers to point out examples of this phenomenon by including the “#spinewatch” tag in their tweets along with links to exemplary coverage. Because so many journalists follow Rosen, this idea will almost surely spread quickly. By tomorrow morning we’re going to be seeing “#spinewatch” tags everywhere and probably at least one Spinewatch weblog.

As I write this there are 61 Google hits for “spinewatch.” That’s only three hours after Rosen first tweeted his initial “spinewatch#” idea. Wonder what the Google count will be by the end of next week.

Oh, this just gets better. Rosen has created a spinewatch newsgroup on Scott Karp’s publish2.com. The meme has been loosed.

Update: Sunday, 14 September 2008 08:28PM CDT: Dan Gillmor extends the meme with the idea of a companion “spinelesswatch#” tag. Finally got around to watching the pilot for Fringe and not sure yet what I think. Best line, by far, was “excellent! Let’s make some LSD.” But then they injected it. Bad writing, no donut.

Sunday morning listening to the first two Santana albums—Santana and Abraxis—and reveling in how utterly fantastic they are. The richness, soul, and the vibrancy still takes my breath away. Mixing for real hi-fi sets and tube amplifiers, not .mp3 players really made a difference. Turn it up loud.

And that Abraxas album cover. I can still get lost in it for hours. The music and the visuals still trigger reactions in the deep folds of my brain tissue that don’t get exercised enough any more. Of course, 40 years ago they probably got exercised a little too much, but hey—I made it.

Santana was released in 1969; Abraxas in 1970. The times were full with possibility, it was just dripping everywhere. We—individually and collectively—could do anything we wanted, having made it through 1968. I don’t know if it’s because I’m older or because of my illness or both, but I don’t get a sense of that utter and total unending possibility any more. It’s just not there. What a special time. The music and the times were different in so many ways.

And here’s a shocker. I’ve archived pretty much every Grateful Dead show, but the only ones on my MacBook Pro’s hard drive are from the 1960s-70s. I didn’t set out to limit what I carry—I just picked my favorites; the ones I remembered the most fondly. Funny how it worked out.

Are there enough of us left to remember? Can we recall it?

Wired magazine has a fascinating online experiment taking place: a weblog documenting the conceiving, pitching, writing, editing, photographing, and designing of a feature article for the November issue of the print magazine. For magazine insiders and readers alike, this is an absorbing peek under the covers.

The editorial side of things will be covered in Storyboard while the design process will be documented in Creative Director Scott Dadich’s The Process. So far, however, the two online publications are mirrors of each other.

The editorial and production processes at most magazines are, generally, quite secretive so this is a big deal. Getting to watch how a major feature for one of the world’s best magazines gets made promises to be fascinating. This was the idea of Senior Editor Jason Tanz who has indicated that everything—or something close to everything—including internal email, drafts, edit memos, and .pdfs of layouts and page proofs will be made publicly available in close to real-time.

One of the best aspects of the experiment is the subject matter: a profile of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Kaufman’s first directorial effort, Synecdoche, New York, is scheduled for a 24 October release and Tanz’s profile will focus on the growth of Kaufman from screenwriter to auteur.

Both the StarTribune and the Pioneer Press have published reports of an affidavit (.pdf; 3.5Mb) filed yesterday that, if accurate, outlines serious criminal actions planned by conspirators from 67 cities to “crash” the Republican National Convention here in Saint Paul. Criminal actions specified in the affidavit include kidnapping delegates, releasing dangerous chemicals, sabotaging the infrastructure of the Excel Energy Center, and injuring horses used by police.

The most disturbing alleged planned action is this one included in the affidavit:

“An individual by the name of ‘Henry’ told the action camp group that he was throwing a liquid filled balloon and that members of the group should stay away from the area where he was throwing it because it would be very dangerous. ‘Henry’ stated the balloon was filled with a chemical that would be very dangerous and if caught, he would go to jail for a long time.”

The primary sources for the information contained in the affidavit were two informers and an undercover member of the Ramsey County sheriff’s department—all unidentified. Unidentified sources are always problematic, especially so in an affidavit.

Nonetheless, if the affidavit proves to be accurate, evidence of a criminal conspiracy can’t be denied. A total of 284 arrests were made on Monday and 130 of them were made on suspicion of felonies. Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told the Pioneer Press that “most of the felony arrests were anarchists from elsewhere.”

Should the affidavit prove accurate, it fails to excuse the preemptive raids by the Ramsey County sheriff, the overreaction and brutality of law enforcement during the convention, nor the targeted arrests and detainments of journalists.