Poetry

Hallo (featuring Tout Puissant Mukalo and Nelly Liyemge)

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An album of Congolese artists is being produced by DRC Music, led by UK musician Damon Albarn. It seems to be in the vein of similar efforts such as Paul Simon’s Running with the Saints or David Byrne’s O Samba.

The question is thus whether Tout Puissant Mukalo, Jupiter and the Okwess International, Bokatola System, Evala Litongo, Nelly Liyemge and others will achieve greater international recognition, or is this really about Albarn? He did not use remote collaboration or cloud for the work and instead traveled in person with a huge crew to sit face-to-face and record and produce local sound in the Congo.

Hallo (featuring Tout Puissant Mukalo and Nelly Liyemge) by DRC Music

One of the strangest things I find is that Albarn lays down his fairly simplistic beats before Congolese sounds are layered over them. This is like an American executive from McDonalds traveling to France and telling a chef that they are going to “collaborate” on a meal by using the chef’s sauce on two all beef patties with a sesame seed bun. Albarn’s production crew could work on producing sounds and poetry on top but why take away the most important elements of Congolese music?

So the boring Gorillaz style of beat is what turns me away from the example above. Nelly Liyemge sounds awesome but totally out of place with the low-energy slow beat. Here’s another sample:

Lingala (featuring Bokatola System and Evala Litongo) by DRC Music

Boom, chick, boom, chick? The timeline should fade into the beat, not be the beat. It gets better after 30 seconds but still sounds watered down from the beats straight out of the DRC.

The above songs will be released on an album called Kinshasa One Two by Warp Records next month (October 3rd). They are said to be a benefit for Oxfam. Too bad Oxfam could not just release Congolese music directly to the world as a benefit. I wonder if they have to cover the costs of “production” by a large group traveling in person to Kinshasa, DRC.

Here’s a wonderfully complex soukous beat that Albarn misses completely in the above examples:

…not to mention street beats. Just about every song in the following compilation video, recorded live, puts Albarn’s production to shame. 5:18 is perhaps the most comparable style but on a whole different level:

Maybe Albarn just didn’t know what to do when he heard Congolese rhythms like the following drum line or maybe the project is really just about him being only slightly influenced by them:

Poetry, Sailing

Limbe

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by the Italian group S-Tone Inc. from their 2002 album Sobrenatural (featuring Italian jazz vocalist Laura Fedele)

Translation by me.

Le ciel c’est comme un voile The sky it’s like a veil
c’est immobile le soir all quiet in the evening
on entend pas le bruit so there is no noise
de tes pas sur le sol as you pass over the ground
 
Pas de destination Without a destination
ni meme d’intention but no intent for
total absence de joie lack of joy
et de peine or suffering
 
Tu viens vers tu n’sais quoi You come to what you don’t know
unique la direction single direction
Tu n’as pas de reponses You have no answers
ni meme de demandes nor any requests
 
Tu viens You go…
 
Le but c’est inconnue Purpose unknown
il s’agit de l’instinct it is from instinct
tu ne t’interroge pas Do not ask
si c’est bien ou si c’est mal if it’s right or wrong
 
Comme un fantome qui glisse Like a ghost that glides
qui n’a plus de sexe who has more ecstasy
entre la realite between the realities
l’inconscience et le reve the unconsciousness and dreams
 
Tu viens vers tu n’sais quoi You come to what you don’t know
unique la direction single direction
Tu n’as pas de reponses You have no answers
ni meme de demandes nor any requests
 
Tu viens You go…
 
Comme ca tu simplement tu viens You enjoy how you simply
suspendu sous un ciel indefini hover below an undefined sky
 
pas de couleurs no color
pas de sons no sound
pas de souvenirs no memories
 
hier yesterday
demain tomorrow
rien nothing
 
seulement le present only the present
le moment qui passe, qui glisse the moment passing, gliding
qui revient, exactament egale a lui meme returning, exactly equal to itself
 
Tu viens You go…
 

I also noticed a Stone Roses style remix by Fred Ventura

Energy, Security

Warning Labels for Coal Power Plants

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Illustration by Tom Toles.

Warning Labels for Coal

He forgot serious illness such as cancer, birth defects…

…huge rates of coal consumption were a factor behind an increase in cancer and birth defects as well as non-specific and chronic nervous, immune and respiratory illnesses.

Coal-fired power plants contribute three quarters of China’s total electricity needs, but also around 70 percent of energy sector air pollution.

The government has been studying how to reduce its toxic effects, but “clean coal” remains a misnomer, said the group’s China campaign manager, Yang Ailun.

“There are many coal power plants saying they are now ‘clean’ but there are a lot of misunderstandings — coal creates pollution and clean coal is impossible,” she said.

Studies of the effect of coal used in homes have a similar warning:

[Kirk Smith, a professor of global environmental health at the University of California, Berkeley] said the results of the study do provide further evidence that coal causes significant health problems and should be replaced by other fuel sources. “Coal can’t be burned cleanly…it should be banned from all household use,” he told Reuters Health.

Security

How HIPAA is Enforced

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This question comes up a lot lately: how is HIPAA enforced? The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a page that gives a nice flow chart for the answer.

HIPAA enforcement

But that does not seem to answer what people are really asking. I think what entities really want to know is what will trip a HIPAA violation and generate a fine — what should they really worry about. An excellent source of insight for that answer comes from the Case Examples and Resolutions Agreements. The UCLA agreement just two months ago (July 6, 2011) to “settle potential violations of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules for $865,500”, for example, details their mistakes.

On June 5, 2009 and June 30, 2009, HHS began investigations of two separate complaints alleging that the Covered Entity was in violation of the Privacy and/or Security Rules. The investigations indicated that the following conduct occurred (“Covered Conduct”):

(i) During the period from August 31, 2005 to November 16, 2005, numerous Covered Entity workforce members repeatedly and without a permissible reason examined the electronic protected health information of Covered Entity patients, and during the period from January 31, 2008 to February 2, 2008, numerous Covered Entity workforce members repeatedly and without a permissible reason examined the electronic protected health information of a Covered Entity patient.

(ii) During the period 2005-2008, a workforce member of Covered Entity employed in the office of the Director of Nursing repeatedly and without a permissible reason examined the electronic protected health information of many patients.

(iii) During the period 2005-2008, Covered Entity did not provide and/or did not document the provision of necessary and appropriate Privacy and/or Resolution Agreement/Corrective Action Plan 08-82727 and 08-83510 (University of California Los Angeles Health System) Security Rule training for all members of its workforce to carry out their function within the Covered Entity.

(iv) During the period 2005-2008, Covered Entity failed to apply appropriate sanctions and/or document sanctions on workforce members who impermissibly examined electronic protected health information.

(v) During the period from 2005-2009, Covered Entity failed to implement security measures sufficient to reduce the risks of impermissible access to electronic protected health information by unauthorized users to a reasonable and appropriate level.

The words “reasonable and appropriate level” are the key to this enforcement agreement. It might seem vague at first glance but clearly a Covered Entity has to manage authentication and authorization. An appropriate level of access would be based on a need-to-know basis. In other words, no need means no authorization for a user.

And while the $865,500 fine could be called large, it reflects four years of authorization management deficiencies and information exposures to numerous “workforce members”. Compare it to the $1,000,000 fine handed to Massachusetts General Hospital earlier this year after a single authorized workforce member accidentally left billing papers on a subway on the way to work.

The documents were not in an envelope and were bound with a rubber band. Upon exiting the train, the MGH employee left the documents on the subway train and they were never recovered. These documents contained the PHI of 192 individuals.

I suspect these fine amounts prompt risk managers to wonder how a long-term and repeated exposure of information, which cites weak privacy management and hints at neglect and negligence, could get a lower fine than a one-time accidental disclosure by a single person.

“Willful neglect without correction” is specified under Section 13410(d) of the HITECH Act Enforcement Interim Final Rule as a “Tier D” penalty of $50K per violation up to $1.5 million per year per violator.

Perhaps documents left on the subway are considered by HHS a Tier D act, but it doesn’t sound like it from their agreement. Maybe I’m underestimating the importance regulators place on an envelope and rubber band, or on special circumstances of the case. The HITECH enforcement exception was the first thing that jumped to my mind after I read the agreement, but there must have been some other compelling evidence of privacy neglect:

…prohibition on the imposition of penalties for any violation that is corrected within a 30-day time period, as long as the violation was not due to willful neglect