To my elected officials...

I noticed that there are a great deal of programs that help uninsured children. Why is there no assistance to help uninsured adults? My brother works for a restaurant part-time and goes to school part-time. Because he is over 25 he is ineligible for coverage under my parents' policy. He makes too much money to qualify for Medi-Cal, and has no company sponsored plan he can participate in. He had individual insurance, but because of the ever increasing cost - it went from $180 to $250 without him receiving notice - he had to cancel his coverage. To top things off, after he received a small increase in pay, and he reapplied, he was told he was ineligible because of a pre-existing condition - asthma. I have two questions: Why are the health insurance companies being allowed to deny coverage based on a pre-existing condition like asthma (which, I might add, is a result of the poor air quality in the Central Valley); and why are my elected officials doing nothing to make sure that all Californians have access to health insurance, or affordable health care? Are the health insurance companies donating that much money to politicians' campaigns that my elected officials are answering to the health insurance companies and not to the people of California?

Open Library

From the creators of the Internet Archive, Open Library strives to collect "all the world's information about all the world's books and made it available for everyone to view and update." It has amazing potential, along with some tremendous implications on the library community. They want to use a structured system to catalog all the books in the world, but they'll do so by allowing people to make changes as they see fit. Image LC Classification System meets Wikipedia.

Sshh!!!

A recent article in the New York Times found that librarians are not the shushing, gray-haired, "Marian-the-librarian" of old. But instead are tattoo-wearing, technology-toting hipsters. Read on...

Home again...

We made it home with no drama or adventures to speak of - thankfully. Before we left yesterday, we had lunch at a burger joint called Five Guys. We (Aaron, April, Hal and I) have decided that they are the best burgers we've ever had... ever. And the fries are to die for.

Excellent food in DC is not at all hard to come by. We tried to make it to the cheaper, neighborhood joints, as well as some of the more well-known restaurants that litter the tourist areas. Each restaurant was so good that we can't even pick our favorites. So instead, here are the list of places we went:

1. Jaleo - Fabulous tapas and sangria - even though they were out of most things (bread, beef).
   
2. Matchbox - A very hip restaurant in Chinatown with burgers and other bar food, along with yummy bistro dishes.
   
3. Domku - Slavic Scandinavian Comfort Food - Odd mixture of cultures, but excellent food.
   
4. Cosi - A chain that serves freshly made salads, sandwiches and pizza. Way better than average.
   
5. Rumberos - Latin American tapas, and drinks
   
6. Georgia Brown's - Bill Clinton's favorite restaurant; Low Country cuisine
   
7. Luna Grill & Diner - A typical cafe, but a local favorite.
   
8. Mama Ayesha's - Excellent Lebanese/Syrian food. I went twice!
9. Five Guys - As previously mentioned, best burgers on the planet.