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Woman Becomes Quadruple Amputee After Giving Birth

Here's a good story to remember the next time you hear about hospitals and doctor groups complaining about the high costs of malpractice insurance:

ORLANDO, Fla. — A Sanford mother says she will never be able to hold her newborn because an Orlando hospital performed a life-altering surgery and, she claims, the hospital refuses to explain why they left her as a multiple amputee.

The woman filed a complaint against Orlando Regional Healthcare Systems, she said, because they won't tell her exactly what happened. The hospital maintains the woman wants to know information that would violate other patients' rights.

Claudia Mejia gave birth eight and a half months ago at Orlando Regional South Seminole. She was transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center in Orlando where her arms and legs were amputated. She was told she had streptococcus, a flesh eating bacteria, and toxic shock syndrome, but no further explanation was given.

The hospital, in a letter, wrote that if she wanted to find out exactly what happened, she would have to sue them. [emphasis added]

This would be unbelievable, except that medical professionals respond this way all too often. The Orlando hospital may cite Florida's "Patients Right To Know" statute as its rationale, but the code of silence is common throughout U.S. health care. The reasons are varied and complicated, but for a quickie intro to the topic, check out some of the sources mentioned here.

Coke's criminal conspiracy

Coca-Cola has recently started airing a commercial whimsically encouraging " sip stealing"—surreptitiously drinking at the self-serve machine and refilling when the owner is distracted. It is a lighthearted, fun ad ... or is it? (Adland subscription required to watch the ad).

It seems so innocent and imbiber-friendly, as if Coke is your friend—a cuddly, corporate Abbie Hoffman—encouraging you with a wink and a nudge to steal from them. But they aren't really asking you to steal from them at all—they're asking you to steal from convenience stores! When customers steal sips, stores have to buy more syrup from Coke. Pretty crafty, huh?

Which isn't to say that I haven't been sip stealing for years.

Clearance sale on ovens

A few days ago I wrote about the unfortunate placement of a McDonald's billboard. Because of my vain obsession with Technorati-ing this blog (Technorati is the new Google for the self-involved), I saw that Ishbadiddle linked to us in a post that included an even better juxtaposition: nobody wants their ad to run on a page with a story about the Holocaust but gas companies want it to happen much less than others.

Winston Smith's Close Call

Winston Smith has been cutting up other people's pictures to make surreal and politcally charged collages since the 1970s. His illustrations have appeared in magazines from Spin and Playboy to The Atlantic Monthly and the New Yorker (my favorite New Yorker illustration can be seen at right).  But most know him for his album cover art for punk bands like the Dead Kennedys, Jello Biafra, and even Green Day. 

I emailed Winston to ask him if he'd ever had a run-in with copyright holders upset with the way he, in his words, "kidnaps innocent images from vintage magazines and diabolically glues them into compromising or politically revealing positions." Here's what he had to say:

Winston Smith: Actually, in over 25 years of appropriating images created by hard-working artists (unlike myself), only once was I ever approached about it. Sometime in the late 1990s I had made an illustration for Playboy using an image from an "Old West" magazine from around 1949.  The artist who did the original illo saw it.  He was 82 at the time, so I reckon he had something on the ball that he was still enjoying pictures of the photo lay-outs of Playboy. (Or at least the articles...)  And he recognized his work, even though I had substantially changed it and added several elements.

My art director at Playboy said the illustrator wanted to sue, until their lawyers pointed out that the image was fifty years old—the original copyright had run out about 24 years earlier. And because I had transformed the whole piece, it was no longer covered anyway.

But Playboy was cool about it and the editors invited him to write a letter about his work. So his son wrote a nice letter about his dad's career as an illustrator and how pleased he was to see that his work still had relevancy at the turn of the century (1999).  And Playboy asked me to write a letter explaining how I create my compositions and how the essence of collage as an art form depends entirely from appropriating images from different sources (without which I would be working in a GE plant making air conditioner filters outside Tulsa).  They printed both letters, plus a reproduction of the guy's original piece. (I would send you the tear sheets but the pages are stuck together).

That was the only close call (so-to-speak) that I've had in over a quarter of a century. I also try never to utilize anything from Disney, Coca-Cola or Norman Rockwell. I may be crazy but I ain't stooopid.

Ad-Free Blog.org

My neighbors down the street started adfreeblog.org for bloggers who do not run advertising on their blogs.  It's a simple little icon that means:

I am opposed to the use of corporate advertising on blogs.

I feel the use of corporate advertising on blogs devalues the medium.

I do not accept money in return for advertising space on my blog.

This is especially interesting with the controversy surrounding whisper campaigns on blogs, where bloggers are paid to talk up specific products in the content of their sites.  This type of advertising goes a step beyond banner ads usually found on the web, because the ad is disguised in the content as the authors authentic opinion.  The advertisers count on the trust and dedication readers have to the author, and the advertiser exploits that trust. 

The "AdFreeBlog" button is a quiet way bloggers can assure their readers.  If you have a blog, you can quickly download the buttons

Truth and Consequences

We were recently sent this amazing photo of a pair of billboards.

It would be great if all billboards were conveniently paired like this. Say, the Army and coffins or BetOnSports.com and the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

(Thanks, Cody Wilmer!)

I am blogger. Hear me whore.

The Spoonbender has the right idea about how people should react to getting nominated for web awards, but I have decided not to treat adland's Battle of the Ad Blogs with contempt. Adland is a good blog; we have linked to them and we have been linked from them.

Also, they nominated us in the Best Topical Blogs category. The category is so important that it was listed 16th of 16, so scroll down.

More corporate graffiti?

Thanks to Matt Novak for tipping me to this oddly tagged newsrack that he spotted in Milwaukee.... but is it corporate graffiti? No way. How can I tell? Easy: Target would never advertise on something this ugly. This is closer to Lumpen's style than Sony's. In fact, it reminds me of a prank the Cockeyed guy did a while back, where he painted a couple of ratty metal chairs with the Starbucks logo, chained them to a random street sign, then watched for weeks to see what would happen. Street art. Gotta love it.

The Amazing World of iTunes Celebrity Playlists

I'm sure every one of us has, during some moment of curiosity, weakness, or both, investigated the "Celebrity Playlists" section of iTunes. It's occasionally interesting, but after seeing that Frank Black is listening to nothing but Burl Ives, I grew bored. Until I hit the last page.

Now, I'm not sure what the criteria is to get your playlist featured on iTunes as a celebrity playlist, but the last page of them (page 15 when I checked this morning) is full of some amazing playlists. I'm not even sure how or why some of these people have playlists on here. I mean, David Oreck? The vacuum-cleaner mogul? Lawrence Lessig? Alan Greenspan? More amazing than that he's even here is that, apparently, Alan Greenspan listens to almost nothing but the Black-Eyed Peas.

Some of the entries offer no surprises at all: David Duke likes Skrewdriver and Prussian Blue? No shit. Frank Gehry likes Kraftwork? I can see that. But sometimes you think some of the selections are just picked to be, you know, seen. Like how Kofi Annan's huge list of U2 songs really seems just like some Bono-ass kissing.

Then there's the really baffling ones: Fidel Castro and the Shins, Betsey Johnson and Thin Lizzie, and the fact that Fran Tarkenton (ex NFLer who once co-hosted That's Incredible) is on the list at all.

Anyway, this makes for some fascinating time-wasting.

Whatever happened to Martin Luther King?

Who says we never celebrate the holidays at Stay Free?  We've got two Martin Luther King, Jr. items for you people:

Martin Luther King™
What Martin Luther King's estate is doing in the name of "intellectual property" has the civil rights leader rolling over in his grave. From Stay Free! #24, by Kembrew McLeod.

The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV
In his time, MLK was a radical who the FBI tried to take down. Now, he's a postage stamp. When I was teaching high school media literacy, I used this article from FAIR on MLK Day, and it inspired some lively class discussion.