Bring back second Opinion page
Several of my friends and I are lamenting the continuing cuts to ADN. I can accept going to two sections during the week but now you have cut back the Opinion page. This is my favorite section, and I will greatly miss the columns you would insert by Leonard Pitts, Clarence Page and Nicholas Kristof among others.
My friends are already talking about discontinuing the paper due to this latest cutback. I have been accused of being addicted to newsprint ink and thus must have my morning fix of something I can actually hold. Please reconsider the Opinion page cuts before you lose more customers and I am forced to read the news online.
-- Thalia Wood
Anchorage
Palin's hypocrisy is showing
Sarah Palin has the nerve to blame the rejection of her nominee for attorney general on "the politics of personal destruction" after all her negative attacks on Barack Obama during the presidential campaign. Pardon me, governor, your hypocrisy is showing.
-- Raymond Wilson
Anchorage
Medical records are still safe
The March 14 article on errors in Google's Personal Health record sounds concerning on the surface, but let's looks at the facts. The patient had access to his electronic record, identified gross errors and had them corrected. This is generally impossible with paper records. Further, the data supplied to the Google Personal Health Record was billing data NOT clinical health data.
There is a big difference! Physicians rarely use billing coding data for medical treatment, and the data is rarely checked for errors.
The Alaska eHealth Network is working to supply clinical health data to medical providers through a secured network of electronic records. This system will also allow patients to access the same information via a secure Web portal. Patients will also be able to set permission levels on their health data.
Data accuracy will be cross checked against multiple data sources, NOT merely received from one data source as the Google and Microsoft solutions are currently designed. Many errors will be eliminated.
In the future the accuracy of the patient's medical record can be monitored by the patient and corrected. This will be a welcome change from the past.
-- Thomas Nighswander MD MPH, Board Member
Alaska eHealth Network
Anchorage
Tax rebate doesn't make it right
CNN reporter Susan Roesgen challenged one Tea Party participant by asking him if he knew he was eligible for a $400 rebate. I have a question for her. If someone holds up a liquor store and gives me $400, does that make it right?
-- Pam Siegfried
Anchorage
Tea Party protest went too far
I would hope that the cheek of every intelligent critic of Obama's policies was flushed with embarrassment upon reading about the circus of indignant simpletons who gathered in downtown Anchorage and Wasilla on Wednesday. No doubt sensible dissenters were among those protesting, but the ubiquity and prominence of such nonsense and cant as was espoused in that protest cannot be overlooked or excused.
A woman, lacking either common sense or decency (or both) says she believes "with all (her) heart" that the president is an "undercover terrorist."
Placards declaring "(No) Taxation Without Representation" are wielded, as though Young, Murkowski and Begich were unemployed.
A ludicrous connection is contrived between an oppressive tax levied in 1773 and the disputed soundness of Obama's economic recovery plans.
Religion is somehow outrageously blended into this cesspool of foolishness, making it all the more ridiculous.
"Socialism" becomes a childish epithet, void of any meaning save that of an insult. And all this encouraged and exploited by the demagogues of Fox News and mountebank politicians.
Disgusting and shameful, no?
-- Michael J. Williams
Anchorage
Save the Samson-Dimond library
The Anchorage Assembly has a plan to make up for budget shortfalls, and that plan includes closing the Samson-Dimond Branch Library.
Doing that would leave a gap in library services of nearly 40 miles (between Loussac Library and the Gerrish Branch in Girdwood) and would close the doors of the Samson-Dimond Branch Library to hundreds of patrons every day who come in seeking Internet access, books, movies, storytime or just a friendly face.
I encourage patrons of any location of the Anchorage Public Library to write your Assembly member or, better yet, attend the next meeting on April 28th and tell them that they can find another way to make up the budget shortfalls.
-- Emily Reeve
Anchorage