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
Communications Director
DoD/VA Interagency Program Office
Arlington, Virginia
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
Sparks, Maryland
TOUCHE
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
Winnipeg, Canada
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.
