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Is Pluto redeemed after all?

27181601There’s a fascinating article, Is Pluto a planet after all?, by Stephen Battersby in the July 27, 2009 New Scientist about the continuing controversy over whether Pluto is a planet. It shows how scientific discourse reflects multiple cultural and political forces, why defining any word is hard, and how our continuing transactions with nature lead us to think again.

How many planets are in the solar system? The official answer is eight – unless you happen to live in Illinois. Earlier this year, defiant Illinois state governors declared that Pluto had been unfairly demoted by the International Astronomical Union, the authority that sets the rules on all matters planetary.

Click on the image to see the New Scientist diagram, which explains part of the debate.

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Opening the door to single-payer health care

Tommy_DouglasMy previous posts on national health care, The bottom line in health care and The bottom line in health care, and Single-payer health care: Why not?, make the case for a national health program. But Canada established its program in an incremental way.

Tommy Douglas, premier of Saskatchewan from 1941 to 1960, led the province to develop a universal, publicly-funded “single-payer” health care system. It was so successful that other provinces soon copied it, and ultimately, so did Canada’s federal government. In 2004, Douglas was rated by his compatriots as “The Greatest Canadian” of all time.

Saskatchewan has been a leader in many areas of health care, but that happened over many years. The Saskatchewan Government site lists six reasons why the province was able to do what it did. These are worth thinking about for the US health care debates today:

  • There was a vision of health care for all.
  • Citizens showed a co-operative spirit, trust, and a willingness to help one another.
  • Municipal politicians were forward-thinking and innovative.
  • Provincial governments responded quickly to needs.
  • Medical doctors were altruistic, with service to sick patients as their primary goal.
  • Economic hardship, particularly during the 1930s, meant that virtually everyone was in the same predicament.

A US House committee recently approved an amendment allowing states to create single-payer health care systems. Doing so might be a way around entrenched, moneyed interests that have thus far thwarted every attempt at health care reform in the US, but only if we can find a similar vision and co-operative spirit. Could we do it without the economic hardship of the 1930s?

References

Nichols, John (2009, July 17). A real win for single-payer advocates. The Nation.

Physicians for a National Health Program.

Stewart, Walter (2003). The life and political times of Tommy Douglas. Toronto: McArthur. Gripping, humorous, and revealing story of Douglas’s amazing life.

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The wisdom of crowds

There’s an interesting report this week in The New Scientist on the wisdom of crowds. It summarizes a number of recent studies showing that crowds may be wiser than we’ve been told. Here’s an excerpt:

The “unruly mob” concept is usually taken as read and used as the basis for crowd control measures and evacuation procedures across the world. Yet it is almost entirely a myth. Research into how people behave at demonstrations, sports events, music festivals and other mass gatherings shows not only that crowds nearly always act in a highly rational way, but also that when facing an emergency, people in a crowd are more likely to cooperate than panic. Paradoxically, it is often actions such as kettling [corralling the entire crowd into a small area] that lead to violence breaking out. Often, the best thing authorities can do is leave a crowd to its own devices.

via Why cops should trust the wisdom of the crowds – life – 17 July 2009 – New Scientist.

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The bottom line in health care

healthIn my previous post on Single-payer health care: Why not?, I talked about our family’s experiences with health care in France, UK, Ireland, Italy, China, Australia, and other places in comparison to that in the US. This included health care for children and the elderly, and both minor (blood donation, physicals, skin growth removal) and major (broken hip, eye infection) procedures.

Thinking a bit more about this I realized that there were four essential facts that emerged from this wide variety of experiences. In every industrialized country except the US,

  1. Equitable: Everyone has the right to health care.
  2. Effective: People live longer, healthier lives.
  3. Economical: They spend less on health care, as much as 50% less.
  4. Efficient: There is much less bureaucracy, fewer forms, less running around, less waiting.

dollarI might add a fifth point, too: The scare stories that we hear (“you have to wait forever!” “you can’t choose your doctor!”) are simply false, or they index issues that are the same or worse in the US. The information we get about health care promotes profit, not health.

There are many issues–changing demographics, new technologies, new medical knowledge, changing standards, globalization, and more–which affect health care. But the fundamental difference in the current US situation is that health care is driven by the bottom line. Insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, media corporations, hospitals and clinics, doctors and other health care professionals, and all others involved in health care operate in a system in which rewards bear little relation to the overall quality of care or efficient use of resources.

One can debate each of the points above, but the evidence from OECD, UN, WHO, WTO, and other international organizations is overwhelming in support of them. Other systems offer health care that is more equitable, more effective, more economical, and more efficient.

So, why is single-payer, or national health care not even worth discussing? Why does the Obama plan dismiss it? Why does even public broadcasting ignore it?

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How to behave at the final defense

While cleaning out 30 boxes of files accumulated over many years, I came across an article by Neil Postman, which though long-misplaced, was fondly remembered. Postman  provides a humorous, but all too true account of the doctoral oral examination.

As he says, he rarely pays attention to “the content of an Oral – for example, what the dissertation is about or what idea the candidate is defending. [His] attention is always directed toward what the Oral is really about, namely, the conduct of relationships, obedience to authority.”

Here are a few excerpts, but I recommend reading the whole piece:

  • When the Orals begin, the door to the room is closed…like the closing of the main hatch of a submarine. Those inside are sealed off…from the rest of the world.
  • Eating during an orals is a breach of the system in that it not only dilutes the solemnity of the occasion but it reminds people that there are needs in life other than the passing of orals… [One candidate] brought with him a styrofoam cupful of chocolate ice cream which he sensuously engulfed as if he were replaying a scene from Tom Jones…it was a symptom of a general insensitivity to the nature of the occasion, and he was flunked without regret.
  • an attitude which combines concentration with slight bewilderment is about perfect.
  • leaning one’s elbows on the table, with fingers resting on one’s temples is very good, especially when accompanied by an intense frown.
  • Those who ask convergent questions are usually interested in the dissertation. Those who ask divergent questions are usually interested in the candidate. With the exception of very few of my colleagues, no one is much interested in ideas. (Those who are, of course, have never really understood the functions of an oral examination.)
  • questions [from the candidate] such as, “Why do you want to know that?” or “Are you quite sure you have your facts right?” are monstrous, and will bring down upon the candidate the full weight of the combined insecurities of the professors.
  • professors not only ask questions; they also make little speeches as prefaces to their questions…From the candidate’s point of view, these speeches are of no consequence since they are designed for the attention of other professors…The candidate would do well to appear interested but can put the time to good use by relaxing and trying to order his thoughts.
  • the oral examination is a serious test of how well a young scholar understands the structure of this and, by extension, other academic situations.

References

Postman, Neil (1978). Final orals: In defense of a thesis. The Gadfly, pp. 2-5. (the Littoral Press, iSSN 0160-1237)

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The story of stuff

home-diggerAnnie Leonard has created an excellent, 20-minute video+animation that calls for creating a more sustainable and just world: The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

The story is told in an engaging, even funny, way, very accessible to children, as it addresses serious environmental and social issues. It discusses the inadequacies of the linear model for the materials economy, which conceives stuff in terms of extraction, production, distribution consumption, and disposal. Annie shows how these mostly hidden processes affect communities in the US and abroad. It’s lively, informative, humorous, and makes us think of the stuff in our lives in a new way.

The story of stuff website has additional resources, and the book will be available March 9, 2010

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Using photography for qualitative research

nikon-d40-digital-cameraWhile lost amidst sorting through 30 boxes of my files, I’ve occasionally come across some gems. One is

English, Fenwick W. (1988, May). The utility of the camera in qualitative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 17, pp. 8 – 16.

As we do research, prepare proposals for conferences, and work with community members to document their own experiences, it’s worth thinking about alternative methods for doing and presenting research.

English’s article (available online through Sage or the UI Library) uses interesting photographs to discuss the role of the camera in inquiry. He also explores the metaphor of the photo as a way of thinking about different approaches to a research subject, foe example, the wide angle view that surveys a situation versus the telescopic that focuses in on a particular issue.

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Mapping cemeteries

Several of our Youth Community Informatics sites are mapping cemeteries. What sounds like small project, or even a gloomy one, soon opens up into far-reaching explorations of history, geography, health, families, technology, mathematics, literacy, and more.

At Iroquois West Middle School, youth started with a story about a primary school’s project to study cemeteries: Learning from graveyards. The “Map Masters” soon expanded this by incorporating technologies of GPS and GIS into their mapping project of the Onarga Cemetery. They have already made many discoveries and are continuing to do more. They’ll also connect with cemetery mapping projects in Cass County and East St. Louis.

One interesting tombstone that we found at the Onarga Cemetery was in the shape of a tree trunk. The name of the person buried there was Emory Gish. According to our reseach on symbolism the tree trunk showed a life cut short. The number of broken branches might symbolize the number of deceased family members buried nearby.