Quote of the Day

Patient Patronage

November 23, 2011 Budget

Not generally recognized in the county nursing home business is a second form of political patronage, namely “patient patronage.” Sure County Legislators and other politicians call when they want a job for a friend, family, or constituent. No surprise there. This practice was pretty much suppressed in Albany County government for the first dozen years […]

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Left Hand/Right Hand Continued. Tying Several Issues Together

November 16, 2011 County Government

Am hearing from officials in other New York counties regarding the Albany County Nursing Home. Here’s a quote that ties together several important issues: The nursing home issue goes to the heart of the issue about mandate relief/bailouts for counties. Why should Albany County get the same relief that other counties are getting when they […]

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We slide toward talking about economics – and economic slides

July 11, 2011 Economics

The current economic distress in the US and in the EU have common threads both financially and politically. Certainly the public reactions do. In particular, both involve protecting lenders to a much greater degree than borrowers and much more than the public, which in various ways pays to protect the lenders. They also both involve […]

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Amazon’s First Hire

June 15, 2011 Business

Not sure that this story is a perfect fit here, but it’s still a good one. From Geekwire, Meet Amazon.com’s first employee: Shel Kaphan. And this should certainly count as a quote of the day as he describes made the work fun at the beginning: One of the things that attracted me in the first […]

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Quote of the Day

June 3, 2011 Quote of the Day

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle” — George Orwell

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(Lengthy) Quote of the Day

April 5, 2011 Quote of the Day

Carole Goble’s emphases are in the life sciences. But the lessons in Democratizing Informatics for the ‘Long Tail’ Scientist are both generic and important. Substitute your own domain. Semantic Web is the elephant to a blind man—everything to everybody. One of the prime pieces of the Semantic Web is the notion you could publish into […]

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Quote of the Day

March 24, 2011 Camps

Sarah Hartley of the Guardian posted a couple days ago in Data expert moves on from ‘telephone journalism’ and quoted Francis Irving saying: In the end we’ll no more talk about data journalism than we talk now about telephone journalism. Irving has a successful track record of using the web to provide the public with […]

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