"The Patient's Guide to HIPAA is the first comprehensive guide to medical privacy written expressly for patients with a practical eye as to how to use the law to protect privacy. It is a major privacy resource for patients, written directly and without legalese. The Patient's Guide to HIPAA is easy to navigate and digest; the guide is in the form of Frequently Asked Questions & Answers. All of the key points in HIPAA are included, from the 7 basic patient rights to how and when to get copies of health care records. Difficult situations that patients often encounter are included in the guide. The Patient's Guide to HIPAA was written by Robert Gellman, with assistance from Pam Dixon, John Fanning, and Dr. Lewis Lorton."

On April 13, 2009, the Ronald Reagan library opened 244,966 pages of records processed in response to hundreds of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. These records include the Presidential Briefing Papers collection, Office of Speechwriting research material, and approximately 13,000 pages of declassified records on numerous foreign policy topics. To date, more than ten million pages of Presidential records have been processed at the Reagan library.
On April 13, 2009, the George H. W. Bush library opened 797 pages of records that deal with Saudi Arabia. To date, more than six million pages of Presidential records have been processed at the Bush library...

Turnoff Weeks 2009: April 20th - 26th and September 20th - 26th, 2009: "Why Turn Off?: Screen Time cuts into family time and is a leading cause of obesity in both adults and children. Excessive use of screens for recreational purposes leads to a more sedentary and solitary lifestyle and that is unhealthy for all of us, both mentally and physically. In the US and other industrialized nations around the world, screen time use continue to increase every year. The average daily usage for all screens, in some countries, has reached 9 hours per day. This is for recreational use of screens and does not include work time. On average, people watch 4 hours of television and then spend another 4 plus hours with computers, games, video, iPods and cell phones. According to Nielsen, the average World of Warcraft gamer plays for 892 minutes per week! The company that owns Second Life (a virtual world) claims that its users spent over 1 million hours on line. These statistics hold true for children directed sites as well, including Webkinz and others." [via Tom Melo]

The New York Yankees have a policy of restricting spectator movement during the playing of God Bless America, and you run into two NYPD cops on “paid detail” at the game who prevent you from reaching your desired destination. That's exactly what Bradford Campeau-Laurion says happened to him on August 26, 2008. With help from the New York Civil Liberties Union, he filed suit in Manhattan federal court against the Yankees, two cops, and Ray Kelly, the NYPD's commissioner. (Click here for the lawsuit.) Campeau-Laurion says he's proud to be an American, and he's still a Yankee fan (he bought 24 regular-season home-game tickets for this season). But he “doesn't want to be forced…to participate in a patriotic or religious ritual in conjunction with the playing of 'God Bless America' at Yankee Stadium,” according to the complaint. He's asked the court for damages and to enjoin the Yankees and NYPD from enforcing the “no-movement” policy during the playing of the song. Following 9/11, Major League Baseball required all teams to play “God Bless America” during the 7th-inning stretch. The requirement ended the next season, but the Yankees continued playing the song at every home game. Click here for a 2007 NYT story on the Yankees' no-movement policy, in which the Yankees' chief operating officer says the team started the policy after fans complained about how other fans were not paying respect.
A Wisconsin rule, called the “diploma privilege,” provides that graduates of the law schools at the University of Wisconsin and Marquette University don't have to take the Wisconsin bar exam in order to practice in Wisconsin. But is that rule fair to graduates of the law schools at Harvard or UCLA or, well, Oklahoma City University? Well, one Oklahoma City University School of Law graduate doesn't think so. Christopher Wiesmueller, a lawyer in Waukesha, Wisc., has sued both the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the agency that administers the Wisconsin bar exam, alleging that the rule violates the Constitution's dormant commerce clause--which, generally speaking, prohibits one state from discriminating against residents of other states. John Shabaz, a federal district court judge in Madison, dismissed the case back in 2007, ruling that the rule did not discriminate against nonresidents, finding that there was no discrimination since all graduates (residents and nonresidents) of all law schools outside Wisconsin were required to sit for the bar exam to gain admittance to the Wisconsin bar.
But Wiesmueller, who through the course of the case switched from representing himself pro se to representing a class of plaintiffs of which he is not a part, appealed, arguing that the lower court largely misapplied the law on the dormant commerce clause. Arguments before the Seventh Circuit were held last week. According to this write-up in the Wisconsin Law Journal, the judges on the panel all expressed views that were sympathetic to Wiesmueller's case. WSJ Law Blog April 15, 2009

My first impressions? Of peace, of beauty abounding, of an old-world graciousness and elegance of line. And there was something more too: a deep-dwelling spiritual presence that seemed to emanate from the earth itself..." That's the narrator's description of Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's famed home, in the latest novel by T.C. Boyle. The words also capture how Mr. Boyle felt when he first glimpsed his house: a sprawling "summer cottage" here, designed by Mr. Wright. It was his home that inspired Mr. Boyle, author of "The Road to Wellville" and "Drop City," to pen "The Women," which chronicles the architect's notoriously tumultuous personal life. "I was constantly aware of the architect's ghost lingering in the design of this house, in which I am working," says Mr. Boyle. The book's release coincides with the completion of a meticulous renovation of the home back to its original state. Exactly 100 years ago, Mr. Wright designed the home for George C. Stewart, a Scottish accountant. Soon after the design was completed Mr. Wright left his first wife, Kitty, and their six kids and ran off with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the wife of a client and neighbor in Oak Park, Ill. It's the event that sets off "The Women," which chronicles Ms. Cheney's 1914 murder and a series of tumultuous relationships. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123932717020007499.html

On the first Friday of Lent, a parishioner of St. Cecilia Catholic Church began unwrapping pies at the church. That's when the trouble started. A state inspector, there for an annual checkup on the church's kitchen, spied the desserts. After it was determined that the pies were home-baked, the inspector decreed they couldn't be sold. The problem is the pies are illegal in Pennsylvania. Under the state's food-safety code, facilities that provide food at four or more events in a year require at least a temporary eating and drinking license, and food has to be prepared in a state-inspected kitchen. Legislation to overturn the baked-goods ban is being discussed. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123932034907406927.html

Feedback from A.Word.A.Day
From: Terry Moran (t.moran new.oxon.org) Subject: maudlin / Magdalene
Def: 1. Overly sentimental. 2. Foolishly sentimental because of drunkenness.
Magdalene was immortalised, if that's the right word, in the infamous Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, where girls who had fallen from grace--or, in some cases, who their fathers thought might be ABOUT to fall from grace--were incarcerated and used as slave labour. Unbelievably, the last one wasn't closed down until 1996.
From: Ed Dunne (egdunne gmail.com) Subject: maudlin
Since Magdalen comes from magdala, which is Aramaic for "tower", Magdalen Tower in Oxford is "Tower Tower".
From: Steve Thomas (stype sccoast.net) Subject: Nobel families in science
Your lead-in for the words of this week, featuring the illustrious Curie family, reminded me of another notable family of Nobel laureates in science--the Thomsons. It is with only the slightest obfuscation that it can be said that J.J. Thomson won the Nobel prize in physics in 1906 for discovering the electron, a particle inside the atom. In 1937, his son, George Paget Thomson won the Nobel prize in physics for discovering it was not. Sir George's discovery? The electron is a wave, not a particle.

Mary Magdalene is sometimes referred to as a prostitute or adulteress, but she was never called one in the New Testament.[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene

Toledo’s Attic—a virtual museum of Toledo, Ohio http://www.attic.utoledo.edu/toledosattic/
Toledo’s stadiums. 1883-present
http://www.attic.utoledo.edu/toledosattic/details_item.asp?key=577&did=120
Toledo’s major league affiliates http://www.attic.utoledo.edu/toledosattic/details_item.asp?key=576&did=120
The Toledo War of 1835-1836—the war that shaped the borders of Ohio and Michigan
http://www.attic.utoledo.edu/toledosattic/details.asp?did=144