Feeling Grumpy but Not Over-Educated

So a few days ago I read a headline announcing that a majority of the "over-educated" continue to support President Obama, and I wondered just what is meant by "over-educated." The most popular definition of that term suggests that someone with a post-graduate degree is over-educated. I have a post-graduate degree, and I don't feel over-educated.

How stupid a term is that: "over-educated"?  More than educated? I really don't see how someone can be over-educated.  By whose measurement? If I'm a plumber with a doctorate, am I over-educated? Why? Because I know more than I need to know to fix a faucet? Who says so?

I'm feeling quite surly about this.....curmudgeonly, perhaps.... or.....misanthropic--an indication that I might be "over-educated"?

Good. Lord.

Not a Health Care Soundbite

Jerome Groopman, Chief of Experimental Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and author of How Doctors Think has an interesting article online at The New York Review of Books website about how medical "best practices" might be included in government health care legislation and how that inclusion might play out in the decisions of doctors and their patients. Groopman provides two viewpoints of how "best practices" might be legislated in health care reform, one that uses the established best practices as a "nudge" to get doctors to choose governmentally-approved health decisions, another that more aggressively promotes these "best practices" by providing financial incentives or negative consequences. President Obama's friend and advisor, Cass Sunstein, favors the first (providing doctors with some leeway not to choose always the established "best practice" method in dealing with a patient's health issue) and Peter Orszag, another of Obama's advisors and director of the Office of Management and Budget, prefers the more strong-armed approach:

Doctors and hospitals that follow "best practices," as defined by government-approved standards, are to receive more money and favorable public assessments. Those who deviate from federal standards would suffer financial loss and would be designated as providers of poor care. In contrast [to the Senate bill], the House bill has explicit language repudiating such coercive measures and protecting the autonomy of the decisions of doctors and patients.

I didn't know much about this debate until I read Groopman's article this afternoon, and I was fascinated by Groopman's discussion of how established "best practices" sometimes turn out to be wrong or not the best health choice for certain individuals. Thus, there are problems with aggressively pushing doctors to choose the "best practice" standard at all times in all situations. This situation reminds me of the debate over mandatory-sentencing laws.  When judges do not have any discretion over sentencing criminals, serious injustice sometimes results, for instance, first-time drug offenders given long jail sentences when they could have been put on parole, provided with rehabilitation, and given the opportunity to change the course of their lives (and thus not cluttering up the prison system and costing the taxpayers huge amounts of money).

What really struck me was the anecdote of Groopman's personal contribution to a "best practice" standard that proved to be wrong. You just got to listen to folks who are willing to admit their mistakes.

Anyway, it's a long article, published in another one of those magazines that some people sneer at for being "elitist," and thus won't be part of any health care soundbite--but it's worth reading: Jerome Groopman, "Health Care: Who Knows 'Best'?," The New York Review of Books, February 11, 2010 edition.

Profiles that Complicate our Cardboard Cut-Out Judgments

Reading the profile of John Mackey, the founder and CEO of Whole Foods, online at The New Yorker this morning reminded me of some of the reasons I have subscribed to that magazine off and on over the years. The article's in-depth description of a complicated character makes me re-think my own knee-jerk reaction to Mackey's op-ed on health care reform that the Wall Street Journal published last year. Not only did I think the guy was a nut, I agreed with Matt Yglesias, who wrote that:

there’s asking a CEO to pander to your prejudices, and there’s pressuring a CEO not to go out of his way to offend your prejudices. Corporate executives have a lot of social and political power in the United States, in a way that goes above and beyond the social and political power that stems directly from their wealth. The opinions of businessmen on political issues are taken very seriously by the press and by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Once upon a time perhaps union leaders exercised the same kind of sway, but these days all Republicans, most of the media, and some Democrats feel comfortable writing labor off as just an “interest group” while Warren Buffet and Bill Gates and Jack Welch are treated as all-purpose sages. One could easily imagine a world in which CEOs were reluctant to play the role of freelance political pundit out of fear of alienating their customer base. And it seems to me that that might very well be a nice world to live in.

What Yglesias had to say on the issue still resonates with me--the idea that rich CEOs have too much power, anyway, so they need to be careful about how they throw their weight around in the public arena--but Nick Baumgarten's article also provides me with a more nuanced profile of John Mackey, whom I had never really thought about until Mackey wrote that op-ed.  Like many interesting characters, Mackey is a contradictory mix of hippie, capitalist, libertarian, paternalism, and goofiness. I think Mackey's idea that the world would be a wonderful place if other corporate leaders ran their companies as he does his--his idea of "conscious capitalism"-- and thus there would be no need for government laws to protect people from the over-reaching power of corporations, is very pie-in-the-sky.  I think we've had a very nasty wake-up call as to the self-centeredness and greediness of corporations--manned by their overpaid CEOs--in the debacle of Wall Street, the bail-out of banks, and the almost-collapse of our economy. I am glad that there are corporate leaders such as Mackey who do think it necessary and good to provide their workers with fairly generous benefits and good wages--too bad there aren't more of them these days.

Reading the article on Mackey reminded me of the profile of Barack Obama that I read in The New Yorker a couple of years ago: "The Conciliator," by Larissa MacFarquhar. Anyone who read that article would not have been surprised by Obama's leadership style this past year. Obama might have been one of the most liberal voters in the Senate, but as MacFarquhar pointed out two years ago, " In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative." Obama had a history already of trying to understand "the other side," on whatever the issue might be. This is a telling story from his long-time friend Cassandra Butts:

Obama is always disappointing people who feel that he gives too much respect or yields too much ground to the other side, rather than fighting aggressively for his principles. “In law school, we had a seminar together and Charles Fried, who is very conservative, was one of our speakers,” Cassandra Butts says. “The issue of the Second Amendment came up and Fried is pretty much a Second Amendment absolutist. One of our classmates was in favor of gun control—he’d come from an urban environment where guns were a big issue. And, while Barack agreed with our classmate, he was much more willing to hear Fried out—he was very moved by the fact that Fried grew up in the Soviet bloc, where they didn’t have those freedoms. After the class, our classmate was still challenging Fried and Barack was just not as passionate and I didn’t understand that.”

So when I read the crazy right-wing comparisons of Barack Obama to "Hitler" or the claims that Obama is a "socialist," I know right away that the person making that claim is just plain stupid or highly misinformed--or deliberately misleading. And there are a lot of folks like that. They obviously don't read The New Yorker, and, of course, I'm sure they hold in high disdain anyone who does. It's an "elitist" magazine. But I sure as hell have learned a lot from reading it--many times the articles challenge my own assumptions. However, there are a lot of people who don't want their assumptions challenged or their minds changed in any way.

I quit subscribing because, damn it, the magazine is published every week, and I can't keep up with the reading of it. I love the cover art, and I continue to think I will return to read articles I don't have time to read right away, and so the paper copies just stack up--I can hardly bear to recycle them (though I did grit my teeth at the end of the year and did just that). I think I need to get with a couple of other people who would like to subscribe and start a joint subscription--in other words, have someone to whom to pass on my copies.

Fandom--Because I don't want to think about politics today

I don't write much about television or films, but that's not because I don't enjoy television or films. I love a good drama. Recently I've become a fan of the British television series Life on Mars, the story of a British policeman who is hit by a car in 2006 and "wakes" up to find himself 33 years in the past, in 1973. The series is being re-broadcast on PBS.  Although I root for the modern, methodical, more sensitive DCI Sam Tyler, the officer who is stunned to discover he's on almost alien soil in 1970s England, I have an awful soft spot for the often corrupt and bullying DCI Gene Hunt, but I would like to think that soft spot is more the result of my rather swooning regard for the actor who plays Hunt--Philip Glenister--than of any admiration for the ham-fisted Hunt.  But evidently Gene Hunt has a swooning effect on many women viewers, and I'm just one of many. Maybe it's that confident swagger and curling lip that attracts us so.  However, I first really noticed Glenister as an actor in his role as Mr. Carter in BBC1's Cranford, a very different role than that of DCI Hunt--and I immediately liked that character, too. So, yeah, though he is not traditionally handsome, for some reason, I think Philip Glenister has a lot of sex appeal. I think I'm a fan--or as much of a fan as I ever am of actors. Here is a list of some of my favorite actors/characters:

• As a child, I loved Eric Fleming's Mr. Favor in Rawhide, my first "crush" on a fictional character.
  
• Vying for second place were Leonard Nimoy's Mr. Spock from Star Trek (all those other women could have the captain!) and Patrick McGoohan's "Number Six" in The Prisoner.
  
• Kevin Kline--a great talent
  
• French actor Jean Reno--oh yeah!
  
• British actors Alan Bates, Bill Nighy, Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, John Hannah, and Alan Rickman--all very sexy (and, yeah, I know that Everett is gay, but that doesn't make him less sexy!)
  
• I love Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes.
  
• Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, especially his role in Yojimbo
  
• Don Cheadle--not only a great actor but also very good-looking
  
• I first really noticed Forest Whitaker in Smoke and have enjoyed his acting ever since.
  
• Indian actors Aamir Khan and Ajay Devgan.

And that's my list of favorite actors, none of whom are really traditional heartthrobs--provided here today because I don't feel like addressing the really important news of the day, such as the execrable Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance. Yep, taking refuge in the superficial and entertaining.

Satisfaction in a Completed Project

I finally completed one of the folk art quilts I began last year. This one is my son's; I am now finishing my daughter's quilt.  In order to guarantee I wouldn't lose interest and thus finish only one quilt, I crafted simultaneously the blocks for two quilts before crocheting the blocks together.  Over the Christmas holiday, I sewed blanket stitches around each block of my son's quilt and then crocheted a half-double-crochet edging to each block. Then I hand-sewed the blocks together and finished the quilt with a crocheted edging.

Now I am sewing blanket stitches around the blocks for my daughter's quilt, and will then crochet an edging to each block before hand-sewing (yarning in the backs of each stitch) the blocks together. It is really satisfying to complete a project such as this, a project that evolved out of my interest in felting worn wool sweaters.  Half of the blocks on each quilt are embellished with buttons or applique from cut-outs or of my own design. The picture at top left is of the front of the quilt. 

The back of each square is made of cotton material I saved over the years. Much of the material came from clothing I purchased from Marketplace India. When the outfit became too worn, I would toss it in my rag bag. Some of the material came from items of my children's clothing; for instance, on the back of my son's quilt is one square with an embroidered dragon from a robe he had as a small child. Also, both of my children practiced embroidery stitches when they were young; I found some of these early attempts and incorporated them into the quilts, too. The photo on the right is of the back of the quilt.
 

Discouraging

Yesterday evening as we drove home from watching the 3-D version of Avatar, we noticed a woman at a stoplight. As soon as cars came to a stop at the traffic light, she stepped off from the sidewalk to brave the still-slippery spots of the icy road in order to beg for money. She passed from car to car, holding up a one-dollar bill in mute request for more. I thought of her later as I remembered Judy Woodruff's report about jobs in December: the percentage of joblessness was remaining steady--but that was in light of the fact that 600,000 people had stopped looking for jobs.  Where does the government get the numbers for unemployment statistics? I had been told that the number comes from unemployment offices and that it is derived from the number of people still seeking employment and receiving benefits. The answer is more complicated than that, however, and is described on this website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

Just as discouraging as the number of folks who quit looking for jobs last month (for whatever reason), is the information about what recently re-employed people are discovering in the current economy. Most folks take a pretty hefty pay cut with the next job. And this pay cut affects their future earnings:

[P]eople hired at lower wages in a tight job market tend to lag behind their peers for years, sometimes decades. For example, workers laid off during the 1981-82 recession earned 20 percent less than people who remained in a job — even 20 years after they were rehired, a Columbia University study found. The study examined pay for white- and blue-collar workers, managers and hourly workers. ("For the Unemployed, New Job Often Means a Pay Cut," Christopher Leonard, Associated Press Writer, 10 January 2010)

In addition, "[m]ore than six people are now vying, on average, for each job opening, according to Labor Department data — compared with just 1.7 workers per opening when the recession began in December 2007." (my emphasis)

Some institutions benefit from joblessness. I read a recent article that reported a tremendous rise in the number of people returning to college, particularly to community colleges, and the number of traditional students who are choosing less-expensive colleges closer to their homes. (See Washington Post's "Community Colleges Get Influx of Students in Bad Times," by Valerie Strauss, 31 May 2009).  However, many community colleges are unprepared for this huge influx of students, for their state funding has been hurt by the economic downturn as well. (See "Community Colleges Get Squeezed," by Brian Burnsed, Business Week, 15 January 2009) One consequence is that community colleges are hiring more part-time faculty.  Look at the employment pages of any community college and note how many adjunct positions are being advertised. For instance, as of last year, New Jersey's Burlington County College was planning "to hire up to 200 new adjunct faculty members, increasing its part-time teaching staff to about 575, at the same time that the college faces a drastic cut of nearly 42 percent from the county and state."

Such part-time jobs for educators might sound great in this tough economy, but the pay for those jobs is often very low, particularly in the South, and those part-time positions also offer little or no benefits.  In a country where one receives better access to health insurance through full-time employment, that's not good news.

(For more on part-time faculty at community colleges, see Inside Higher Ed's The Part Time Impact," 16 November 2009).

The Problem with "Eyewitness" Accounts

I clicked on the article about the man who opened fire at a power plant in Missouri, depressed, again, by how many people turn to violence to express their frustrations with their colleagues and fellow workers, with their spouses, with the government. What really caught my attention in the article, however, was the description of the shooter, a description that illustrates the problem with eyewitness accounts:

Descriptions of the gunman have been confusing to police as one witness described the gunman as a black man, about 5-foot-8, wearing a tan coat and carrying a semiautomatic weapon — but later, a company supervisor called police to give the name of a disgruntled worker, a white man, who had possibly been recently fired, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

The news account reports that relatives of workers are saying the shooter was a disgruntled worker.

The End of Christmas

....not with a bang but a whimper--from the perspective of our cat Pluto, looking out a window into our neighbor's yard...