Jeff Atwood writes an excellent and well-needed post on my least favorite technology: email

Coming out of corporate america, email is, above all, the most misunderstood, poorly executed communications medium available. In fact, I’d rank email below Twitter. Or maybe Twitter is getting bumped up higher because of its restrictive nature.

So, let me be clear:

Email has a use. I use it when I need to convey information in writing that might generally be too long or complex to write out in a chat client or when I need to formulate a response that can’t be given immediately that will take more than a sentence or two.

Whenever I see an email that consists of one or two lines, I cringe. When I have someone ask me if I read the ‘email’, I cringe. I cringe because it adds weight to Jeff’s point. It also reinforces my long standing habit of *not* reading email *unless* someone asks me about it. Why? I find it much faster to actually use email. I can sift through my email when needed rather than as a trained monkey pulling a lever.

Now, in corporate American, if you really want to anger a boss make him or her constantly ask whether you got the email. They hate it. But that one second of asking saves me countless hours non-productivity. Instead of wasting precious time organizing, managing, and cleaning up, I just wait until it is asked. I call it Just-In-Time-Annoyance-Email.

Let’s just say this approach is *not* an efficient approach *at all*. But I’ve been witness, and party to, using email as a chat client – something it is clearly not designed for. I think anyone who has worked in a production capacity in an IT shop knows what it is like when something blows up. Emails start flying everywhere. You have someone who changes the subject or fails to follow a protocol in the subject line and then you have a gigantic mess on your hands. Then you have streams of conversations that become circular – or even worse, conversations that break off into their own little world where nothing is communicated at all. Add on to all of this the massive FAIL committed by someone abusing mailing lists and you have one fine mess.

I’ve even thought about setting up a mail filter that works much like a challenge-response system for spam. Basically, you have to pay me to read your email unless I manually override it (i.e. you tell me I need to read the email). This would get me around people sending me useless emails devoid of any substance because an actual, tangible cost is incurred in the form of money. Now that would be cool.

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Over at Marginal Revolution, I ran into an ad linking to a site demanding healthcare reform by pointing out the nice salary (and house) of the CEO of United Healthcare as evidence that we need reform. One citizen, Stacie Ritter, gives us her story of just how hard it is for her and her family.

So Stacie, this post is for you. It must be hard. Having a daughter (or daughters, couldn’t understand if it was one or both) or any child with cancer can be a traumatic event. I have sympathy insofar as cancer is a disease that often appears indiscriminate and it is especially sad when children are afflicted with it.

But the world is one where we are forced to make choices. Choices to have children, choices to raise them, choices to be their caretaker, the choice to be their teacher and their guide through their early years. Yet demanding that insurance companies cover the expenses of your children and child raising is a tough pill to swallow for a lot of Americans.

Insurance companies are not medical providers. Insurance companies provide a means for shifting the burden of risk at a cost. With this cost are certain limitations the insurance companies impose on the risks, and treatments, they will cover. In your case, the required growth hormones are not covered by their services (from the details you provide).

Your husband’s insurance doesn’t provide for the treatments. It is not the fault of the insurance company. It also is not the fault of the executives you lambaste to stoke your anger. The executives and the insurer didn’t give your child(ren) cancer. The executives and insurance companies abide by their contract. Their role is not one of charity. To  shame someone for circumstances far beyond their control is not only offensive, it is repulsive.

You should be embarrassed. Not only for you, but for your children who you eagerly put in front of the camera to further your point. If we strip away the children and look at your demands for what they are – they are those of a rent seeker. Unfortunately, I have no sympathy for rent-seekers – those who leverage government to serve their own self-interest.

(via Winecommonsewer)

So the people in charge of the Empire State Building in New York are (were?) planning on lighting the building up in honor of China’s 60th B-Day.

The Winecommonsewer sums everything up nicely. It is offensive. But I’m surprise no one else has written about this: Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida was selling Mao t-shirts at one time. My last visit was two years ago so maybe they’ve changed their ways. If not… then I want to know why they don’t offer a Hitler T-Shirt in the German pavillion. I mean, if we’re going to celebrate mass murderers, might as well go all out and add the Hitler shirt. I don’t recall a Russian pavillion but I’m sure WDW can squeeze a nice Stalin shirt in there as well.