Green Plastic, the renaissance of Thalimide (?) over 50, the old ones are the best

The magic figure of 50 has featured large in my life this week. My wonderful PA Jennie celebrated her 50th birthday this week and it was great to see all her colleagues help in this celebration. Congratulations Jennie!

This week’s blog is a crowded one. Like yesterdays Times, I am starting with all things green. One third of yesterday’s front page was given over to the story of Chanel’s Jade nail polish. It was described as an interesting shade of medicinal mint. Originally sold for just £16, it was quickly fetching £64 on Ebay. I thought it was a bizarre choice of story given concerns over global warming, Afghanistan and solving world poverty. And as for good old Dr Foster and the reports of his excursions to Gloucester and hospitals all over the UK this week, that story will have to wait for next time.

If I sound irritated, it is because I am. Green has been the source of much of my irritation this week. I blame this state of being partly on the Canadian Harry Wasylyk. He was the guy who thought green plastic was cool, and was something we all needed in our lives. It was Harry who invented the ubiquitous plastic rubbish bag, which was originally only supplied in bright green plastic. Interestingly (for some) the bags were first supplied only to the Winnipeg General Hospital. Whilst rubbish bags now come in a range of colours, other plastic objects have stubbornly retained the luminosity of a frog on steroids. Thanks Harry. To see an example of this contemporary art form please visit floor one in the Mary Seacole Building. That is two floors below the Midwifery art exhibition, (which thankfully is presented in tasteful terracotta) and one floor above the Clasp, rusting gently outside in the piazza.

Thinking about it, perhaps green plastic objet d’art is not so bad after all.

Making a choice between buying nail polish at £64 a bottle, owning art and/or having enough money to buy food is something most of us don’t need to worry about, we buy the food. When the former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told the British people that they had never had it so good he was spot on. A comparative study, published this week, exploring our spending habits then and now, shows that although 50 years on we earn more, own more, and travel more, our lives are pretty miserable. These days most of us have big mortgages and endless bills, and a sense of having to work harder just to stand still.

In the 1950s once families had paid the rent, they concentrated on spending their income, mostly it seems on smoking, drinking and having fun. Cigarettes were the second most important item on the shopping list. Eating out was also popular and they liked a drink or two. Families in 1959 were spending 3% of their income on alcohol. Interestingly despite the media reports to the contrary, this was a greater proportion of the 1950s families’ income than we spend on alcohol today. However, the dominance of factory farming, supermarket price wars and cheap food has brought about some changes that some might consider progress. In 1959, when eating a chicken was considered a luxury (always considered barbaric by me), 30% of spending each week went on food compared with only 15% today. Today’s essentials (mobile phones and televisions) didn’t even feature back in 1959. However, all our spending on new technology also means bigger phone bills, mobile phone bills, car insurance and satellite and cable rental.

Sadly the report shows that, because of our increased wealth, we are now much more divided as a society than in the 1950s. For example, and perhaps somewhat critical to our ambitions for Media City, nearly every household in the richest tenth of the UK population has a computer and internet connection compared with just 21% among the poorest. I have the sense this societal imbalance is a never ending problem. I have been disheartened this week to read of the outcome of a clinical trial on the use of thalidomide in the treatment of Small Cell Lung Cancer. At the end of the trial researchers found no evidence of a survival difference between the two groups involved, although those who took the thalidomide drug had a higher risk of thrombotic events. Thalidomide is an anti-angiogenic drug. It targets and suppresses the formation of new blood vessels that tumours need to survive and grow. However, and particularly for those readers under the age of 50, thalidomide was used in over 46 countries following its launch in 1957, but its dreadful side effects led to over 10000 children being born with birth defects and the drug was subsequently banned in 1962. However, the drug is now experiencing what has been called a ‘worldwide renaissance’. Unfortunately, this renaissance is occurring particularly in many parts of Africa and South America where new cases of thalidomide-induced limb defects are increasingly being reported.

We know of these things because from a communications point of view, the world is becoming an ever growing (but smaller) global village. For example, 50 years ago the first transatlantic flight (from London to New York) took 8 hours 53 minutes (actually over 10 hour’s journey time) whereas today, the same journey can be done easily in less than 6 hours.

Indeed, this week it took Jennie just a few minutes to book flights, a hotel room, get the tickets and have everything printed off for my forth coming trip to Budapest. She tells me its all about organisation and planning. And so it seems. I heard the story this week of two older ladies meeting for the first time since leaving high school. One asked the other, “You were always so organised in school, did you manage to live a well planned life?”

“Oh yes,” said her friend. “My first marriage was to a millionaire, my second marriage was to an actor, my third marriage was to a preacher, and now I'm married to an undertaker”

Her friend asked, “What do those marriages have to do with a well planned life?”

“One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready and four to go man go!”

Anyway, Jennie many thanks for all your help I hope the next 50 years are wonderful for you and yours - and in a back handed compliment sort of way, I want to say, as this joke shows, the old ones are always the best ones!

Dollars, Deficits and Gold

“President Obama is in Asia,” I told the class.

“Yes, and he bowed to the Japanese emperor,” said a boy.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Americans don’t like to see their leader bow to others,” said the boy. “It’s like saying they’re better they we are.”

“He was just being polite,” said a girl. “Nothing wrong with that.”

“Okay,” I said. “Chinese leaders asked how he was going to pay for his health care reform bill, which may cost another trillion dollars. Why would Chinese leaders care about that?”

“Because China lends us money, right?” said another boy.

“Yes. Japan too. Why is that?”

“Because we don’t have enough?”

“That’s right,” I said, pulling down the screen and projecting an image onto it. “This chart goes back to 1980 and it shows how our federal government is paying, or not paying, for what it does.” I explained how we get a deficit when government spends more than it gets in taxes and showed them how the deficit increased during the Reagan and first Bush presidencies and declined during the Clinton years. Then I pointed to the surplus in the late Clinton years and the second Bush’s early years before sliding back into deficit after the September 11th attacks in 2001 and our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Notice that during George Bush’s last year the deficit was a record at almost $500 billion?” I said, pointing on the screen. “Now look at President Obama’s first year,” I said. He’s more than tripled the deficit to $2 trillion.”

“Wow,” said three students.

“What can Obama and the Congress do to reduce the deficit?” I asked. “There are at least three ways.”

“Higher taxes,” said a boy.

“Right,” I said. “That’s one way, and Obama is asking Congress to raise taxes, but not nearly enough to reduce the deficit. Why not?

“Because that would make people mad,” said the boy.

“Right, and congressmen might get voted out. What else can they do?”

“Don’t spend as much,” said a girl.

“Right again,” I said, “but Obama and the Congress are spending more and the health care reform bill they’re trying to pass will cost another trillion dollars. What else can they do?”
 No hands.

“They could print money. The Constitution gives Congress power to do that and they are,” I said. “Good idea, huh?”

“Yeah,” said a boy.

“Won’t that make our money not worth as much?” asked a girl with a worried look.

“Yes,” I said. Other students looked puzzled.

“Why is that?” asked one.

“Because then there are more dollars out in circulation while the number of things to buy stays the same. Each new dollar and the ones already out there are worth less. Prices go up. It’s called inflation.”

I waited while that sunk in. Then I took a dollar and a blank check from my wallet and held them up. “Notice they’re about the same size and both are made of paper?”

They nodded.

“Let’s say you were selling a house for $200,000 and I wanted to buy it, okay?
More nods.


“If I made out this check for $200,000 and signed it, would you take it in trade for your house?”

“That depends on whether you have $200,000 in your account,” said another girl.

“I claim that by writing the check. It comes down to how much you trust me.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

Then I held up the dollar. “This is like a check from the United States of America. Do you trust the United States government?”

“Yes.

“Would you take 200,000 of these?”


“Yes.”

“China is nervous about the US dollar,” I said. Then I took a quarter out of my pocket and held it up. “This used to be made of silver but now it’s copper because this much silver is worth more than 25 cents. Ever see an old movie where someone bites a coin?”

Many had.

“Why?”

“Because silver is soft and they wanted to see if it was real,” said a boy.

“Right. They trusted the metal, not the country. This has little ridges around the outside edge because people would sometimes shave some off. With ridges, you know it’s all there.”

“The price of gold has doubled in three years to over $1100 an ounce because people are trusting metal more than dollars again. Two weeks ago India bought 200 tons of it. China is worried about the billions it already lent us. That’s why they’re asking Obama about where he’s going to get the money to pay for his health care reform bill. They’re afraid he’s going to print more dollars.”

Decisions, distances, dementia and Damsons

I have been told that last weeks posting was a little obscure in places, particularly at the beginning. Apologies, it was a simple message. I think a professoriate should be made up only of professors. For me, anything else defeats the point of having a professoriate. There, story re-told.

Two colleagues have, during this week, had to come face to face with the realties and consequences of having to make decisions about providing care for their elderly parents. This is something many of us of a certain age have to face. Often these decisions are made more difficult because of the geographical distances involved in where we might live in relation to our parents and other family members. Trying to make arrangements for the care and accommodation of parents at a distance is always going to be difficult.

Likewise, entrusting our loved ones into the care of others is also not an easy decision. Stories such as those around the neglect of many older people do not help either. For example, this week I was drawn back to the story that reported on how many people with dementia have been receiving anti-psychotic medication in order to keep them quiet and ‘controlled’. This is a distressing story of abuse of our older people. Especially as this is abuse said to be carried out by those responsible for providing un-conditional care and treatment of the highest order. Abuse of the vulnerable in society is typically hidden, and as well as being hidden in the hospitals and care services of society, much abuse is often hidden within the family. For example, the NSPCC have recently reported that:

• 7% of children suffered serious physical abuse.

• 6% of children suffered serious neglect.

• 6% suffered emotional abuse.

•11% suffered sexual abuse from an unrelated but known person; 4% suffered sexual abuse within the family.

Child abuse causes 1-2 deaths per week in England - possibly more.

Ironically, perhaps, there was also a report this week from US researchers that made the tenuous connection, but a connection nevertheless between childhood emotional and physical abuse and the premature aging of the body. This premature aging brought with it a range of physical problems including cardiovascular and cancer illnesses. I don’t know if these problems also include mental health problems, but I suspect they probably do. My colleague Sue McAndrew and I have, for many years, been looking at the relationship between childhood abuse and mental health problems in adulthood. As part of this work we produced the first structured review of the literature that identified the large number of nurses who were unprepared to work with those who had been abused as children. This lack of preparedness was both from a knowledge perspective as well as from an attitudinal point of view.

So I was also a little concerned this week to read the story about nurses clamoring for further education and training to enable them to provide better care to patients with dementia. That the story came out at the same time as the chemical straight jacket story noted above was one level of concern. Another concern was in thinking about what it was these nurses wanted in terms of further training and education in order to be able to care for these people. Being with a other, establishing relationships and helping others with their daily activities of living where they cannot help themselves, are and should always be fundamental aspects of good nursing care.

Thanks, I think, to Sue MacDonald (Royal College of Midwives), for her support on nursing becoming an all graduate profession. Midwifery, which has had an all degree entry only since September 2008, embraced this approach to ensure the continuing development and high standards of midwifery. Sue MacDonald’s comment was to welcome this approach as it would improve nursing care and the status of nursing.

Last night ended with a glass or two of home made Damson Vodka. It was many years old and had matured to a fine drink, which inspired introspection and philosophical debate amongst the dinner party. Given, what might happen to us in childhood and older age, much of this debate seemed to revolve around whether life was, in fact too short to remove the stones from Damsons when cooking with them or not. Although of course, I always follow the drink aware code of practice, this morning I cannot recall what the outcome of the debate was. So answers please, on a postcard or as a comment to this blog would be more than welcomed.

Question Reality?

“I wasn’t talking.”

“Hmm. Your lips were moving. Sound was coming out. The person you were facing was looking at you and nodding, but you weren’t talking?”

“No.”

“So, I should believe you, and not my own eyes and ears?”

“Whatever.”

That word is telling. It’s what we’re left with when we deny objective reality. Anyone can talk in my class, but only one at a time and only on the subject. Using the Socratic method, that’s how it has to be. I gave him a consequence and moved on, but I was troubled by his nonchalant denial of the obvious because I’m seeing it around me more and more. Either the world is getting crazy or I am. Once I saw a bumper sticker saying “Question Reality” and I laughed, but I don't think it's funny anymore.

Objective reality hard to perceive exactly sometimes, but we have to believe it exists or we can’t function. It can be fun to question it and consider that everything is relative during late-night bull sessions, but if we pretend objective reality doesn’t exist, we’ll suffer painful consequences. General Custer discovered this when he ignored reports that thousands of warriors could be just over the hill. “Whatever,” he thought, and ordered an attack. Denial of objective reality is most dangerous during wartime and that’s exactly what our president, his party, and the mainstream media are doing by denying the obvious: that the Fort Hood massacre was an act of Radical Muslim terrorism. After September 11th and all that’s happened since, it astonishes me to see Americans are nodding at their ludicrous claims that Major Hasan was really suffering from vicarious PTSD while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” as he mowed down our soldiers. That he contacted al Qaeda twenty times and asked what he could do to further the jihad and told fellow doctors: “Infidels should have their throats cut,” and “non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats” is not evidence of Islamofascism, but symptomatic of second-hand stress from counseling returning soldiers.

Whatever.

In education, I’m accustomed to the constant drone of “multiculturalism” and “diversity,” but in our military too? According to Army Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters, “A dirty big secret in our Army has been that officers' promotion boards have quotas for minorities. We don't call them quotas, of course. But if a board doesn't hit the floor numbers, its results are held up until the list has been corrected. It's almost impossible for the Army's politically correct promotion system to pass over a Muslim physician. Sen. Joe Lieberman . . . needs to call the officers who sat on Hasan's promotion board before the Senate, put them under oath, then ask if Hasan made major because of minority-quota requirements.”

According to Obama’s Army Chief of Staff General Casey, however: “[A]s horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

Incredible.

We are most definitely at war, but it’s not like World Wars I & II. It’s not like Korea or Vietnam either. It’s unique. According to some analysts, we’ve been at it since Iran took over our embassy in 1979. That was the first offensive action by Radical Muslims against us, and there have been many since. We were broken out of our denial by the September 11th attacks, but we’re crawling right back into it by pretending our enemies are nothing but common criminals to be handled in the court system. Khalid Sheik Muhammad and the other defendants who planned and carried out September 11th have already admitted their culpability and asked to be executed, but President Obama insists they be tried in a New York City courtroom instead of being lined up and shot as many of us would wish.

President Clinton treated the 1993 World Trade Center attack, killing six, as a criminal matter instead of an act of war and that was a big mistake. It was attacked again in 2001, killing 3000. In the interim, there were attacks on our embassies in Africa, killing twelve, on American soldiers in Saudi Arabia, killing nineteen, and on the USS Cole in 2000, killing nineteen. Rather than learn from Clinton’s blunders, though, Obama is repeating them.

Radical Islam resurrected itself with the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 and it’s goal has been to reunite Islam with government. There had been a separation of church and state (or church and mosque) in the countries of the Muslim world after years of European influence in the region and the Muslim Brotherhood would reunite the two. By 1979, Iran had declared itself an Islamic Republic and started attacking the west immediately, especially the United States. Osama Bin Laden declared war on us in 1996. Then Iran did in 2006. Both have attacked and killed Americans by the hundreds in the case of Iran and in the thousands in the case of Bin Laden.

Bush called it the “War on Terror.” That’s a misnomer because terror is a tactic, not an entity, but Bush was reticent about calling our enemy by its name: Radical Islam. That was bad enough, but the linguistic contortions the Obama government is willing to make are astounding. It dropped “War on Terror” in favor of “Overseas Contingency Operations,” whatever the hell that means, and his Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, now calls attacks of Islamic terrorism like September 11th “Man-caused Disasters.”

Whatever.

After President Obama suspends our “Overseas Contingency Operations” as he seems about to do, the next “Man-caused disaster” we experience at the hands of these “criminals” could produce not only political and economic fall-out, but also the radioactive variety.

Finally!....I mean Thank You

I got my braces off yesterday after a year of having them (for the second time). I'm super happy. It's one of the best days in a teenager's life when you finally rid yourself of the constrictive metal brackets and wires and make it into the freedom that is an unhindered white(ish) smile. Can I get an AMEN?!

It was an eventful time in the weeks leading up to the day I got them off. I had an appointment for the 5th to see if I could get them off earlier but unfortunately due to a mislabeling on the calender I missed that one and had to wait two weeks. It was no big deal though. Okay. Actually it was. I was really hoping to get them off but I guess God thought this would be a good time to teach me some patience. That whole "Consider it a pure joy...when you face trials of many kinds (James 1)," thing is not easy to do. It was worth the wait though and I got them off just in time to be able to really dig into Thanksgiving.

Something to Remember.------

When you've prayed and hoped and wished for something for a long time don't forget to give thanks. It may seemed to have taken forever but at least it came.

A story so big I almost missed it!

This week I was invited to book a place at the forthcoming first meeting of the Universities new Professoriate. All professors in the University were. The invitation made me ponder, and that is something we should do more in the increasingly ever turbulent world environment of Universities. University’s everywhere have to find new responses to the problems resulting from the need to respond to the new knowledge society/economy, globalization, and the massification of higher education. At times the responses prescribed can be uncomfortable and challenging. So I found the opportunity to re-engage with something familiar was somehow reassuring and comforting. Likewise, receiving the invitation also promoted a reaffirmation of my sense of identity, which is of my professional self, and the relationship I have with the University. It was Basil Bernstein who in his amazing paper The Divorce of Knowledge from the Knower (1996) warned of the inherent dangers of Universities, and the professoriate’s that make up these, losing their pedagogic identity. He argued that the relationship of knowledge production to is utilization and the value accorded to knowledge creators was critical a factor in ensuring societies continue to have access to the knowledge required for economic growth, physical health and sustainability of its moral fabric.

He worried that the very concept of knowledge and its relationship to those who create and use it, was being changed irreparably. He warns that the very concept of higher education is in danger of being lost to processes of economic commodifcation and demand. What has now become an internationally universal process of educational massifcation illustrates the worst aspect of this shift in how higher education is increasingly being conceptualized. Massification essentially refers to the actions taken in fulfilling the desire to increase the scope of participation in higher education. Paradoxically, this concept is said to be located midway between the notion continuing to provide both elite higher education and higher educational opportunities for all. This is a somewhat flawed conceptual model, and its pursuit has unintended consequences. For example, we know from UNESCO (reported in THE July 2009), that internationally, the range and level of qualifications possessed by many academics is reducing. This is a direct consequence of needing to increase the number of teachers required to satisfy the spiraling global demand for higher education. Up to half of the world’s university teachers may lack postgraduate degrees because of the pressures of massification. The UNESCO report also warned that “in terms of accountability and assessment, the professoriate has lost much of its autonomy. The pendulum of authority in higher education has swung from the academics to managers and bureaucrats, with significant impact on the university”.

I hope as our professoriate engages in its own renaissance that we ensure the pendulum swings back to a more balanced view of the value of engaging with a professoriate that is comprised of appropriately qualified academics. I mention this as the really big story I nearly missed was the announcement that all new nurses will need to be educated to degree level from 2013, in what was said to be one of the biggest changes in medical education in the history of the NHS. Talk about losing ones identity.

I was sent many copies of how this story was reported all the major British press, and almost without exception, the changes to medical education featured prominently. The Government claimed this change is designed to raise the status of nursing and to end the stigma of nurses being the doctor’s handmaiden. Where have Government Ministers been these past 20 years? I think it was Stein who wrote about the Doctor-Nurse Game – but that was in 1967 and was not based upon any kind of an empirical evidence base!

It was not a good day for the largest single profession within the British health service. It didn’t end there. Critics claimed that these planned changes will create an elitist profession and scare off recruits with the prospect of a long and expensive period of study. There are also concerns that some nurses would be too clever to care and refuse to carry out duties such as washing and feeding patients and helping them to the lavatory. A criticism that yet again would seem to play into the hands of others. For example, Alistair Henderson, Deputy Director, NHS Employers noted that: Employers will need consider the implications of the change and look at how they use all their nursing staff, both registered and non-registered, ensuring they have the right skills mix appropriate to the task required.

This last observation is very apposite given the latest report published by the Kings College London Policy Trust this week. In a study that looked at the relatively scarce evidence on the relationship between skill mix, patient outcomes and costs, they found there was no simple relationship between either numbers or skill mix of nursing staff and either outcomes and cost. Helpfully, the study essentially reinforces the benefits of a degree qualified nursing workforce and rejects the notion of the reinvention of a second level nurse, akin to that of the previous Enrolled Nurse, as being a simple solution to current workforce challenges. However, you can bet there will be NHS Trust managers out there somewhere working out the cost benefits of the employing the latter over the former. As with the modern professoriate, the dilution of experience, qualification and knowledge is likely, in the long term, to be a step we will come to regret.

Mi Casa es .... Umm, How Do You Say Baby In Spanish ?

I’m nesting. Kind of like a giant, watermelon-bellied bird.

Yes, until now I’d always thought it was an old wives tale or one of those funny things pregnant ladies say to explain away their craziness, but I have the “ nesting instinct “, and I have it bad. Basically, its this intense feeling of wanting to clean and rearrange and generally get my house for ready for the arrival of the baby. Like I said, I’d heard of women saying they were nesting before and I just thought it was a load of clap trap. But over the course of the last month or so this need to have my house in tip-top shape has taken hold of me – and its getting worse. Its not just cleaning ( that’s how it started ) – its decorating too. I purchased my little duplex earlier this year, and moved in back in July, but its only now that I’m obsessed with having all the decorating finished.

Mr Gil and I have spent a good amount of time in the last two weeks painting. Its with good reason – the previous owners had thought it a brilliant idea to paint the walls garish, circus clown colours and, pregnant or not, there is no way I could live with a Kermit the Frog green bathroom. ( I would find a Kermit the Frog bath mat appealing though ). So now all the walls in the living area are a nice, neutral sandy/green colour, with a slightly darker hue for the architraves. I’ve made it my personal project to paint all the doors ( the same colour as the walls, only in a gloss paint ) and I only have three doors to go. Mr Gil is fervently working on the baby’s room – and knowing that we are having a boy guess what colour we went with ? Blue – yes, no-one could ever accuse of being original. I liked a seafoamy green colour but Mr Gil was set on the blue, so blue it is. It’s a lovely aqua blue and the trim will be a darker navy colour and we’ve ( ok – I’VE ) chosen to go with white furniture.

I never knew decorating my home would get to me so much. Sure, I knew what paint colours I was and wasn’t willing to live with, but I wasn’t prepared for how emotionally attached to the choices I would be. I want the house – my first own, non-rented piece of property – to be an extension of me. A visual interpretation of what image I have of myself, and want others to have of me. I want to say “ of us “ because we’re almost a real family now, the three of us ( Mr Gil, The Bump and me… ) but aside from really wanting to have blue in the baby’s room, Mr Gil has been happy with my décor suggestions. Or at least, he hasn’t voiced any objections. So I’ve gone with what I like, whats “ me “ and i’m just hoping in some way its “ him “ too, and he’ll be comfortable living with neutral paint colour and black and white photography on the walls. I want our space to be classic yet contemporary, but I don’t want to feel like I’m living in some kind of art museum. You know ?

Maybe you don’t. All I am sure of is that there is crazy, overwhelming desire within me to get it all finished before the baby arrives. Its not just some idea of practicality – “ It’ll be much easier to do it before we have a crying baby to look after “ – but more of a “ I cannot possibly be a good mother unless my walls are painted/pictures are hung/bathroom is sparkling !!! “.

Yes, triple exclamation mark – its that nuts.

We're in Trouble

“Is it possible for a human being to become perfect?” I asked the class. Most students agreed it wasn’t. Some believed we could strive for perfection and that’s a good thing, but each of us would always fall short.

“How about creating a perfect society?” I asked.

“How can you create a perfect society with imperfect people?” said a particularly sharp girl with the perfect rhetorical question.

I was setting them up for lesson on utopian communes in America - efforts to establish perfect societies - and ultimately how the struggle between communism and capitalism dominated the 20th century.

We looked at 19th century communes like the Shakers and the Oneida Community. Both were religious, members of both gave all their property to the commune, both controlled all aspects of members’ lives, but they had opposite views of human sexuality. The Shakers eschewed sex but the Oneida commune spread it around as much as possible in a method they called “complex marriage.” Both thrived economically, supplying members with whatever goods and services they needed and both lasted longer than most attempted utopias. Neither achieved perfection, but they were around for a fairly long time working at it.

Though voluntary, 19th century American communes attracted fanatics who knew what was best for us all, and who were willing to impose it violently. It can’t be just coincidence that two presidential assassins were, at least temporarily, members of the Oneida Community. They were Charles Guiteau who killed President Garfield, and Leon Czolgosz, who killed President McKinley. Czolgosz especially seemed to personify the utopians’ metamorphosis from from religious to secular/socialist, then to athiest/communist as he embraced leftist anarchists and communists. People like him had no qualms about violently imposing their utopian fantasies on Russia beginning in 1918.

They transformed Russia into the USSR, then extended their influence over all of northern Asia and half of Europe. Promising to redistribute wealth, they appropriated private property whether owners were willing to part with it or not. They took control of the entire economy and every aspect of people’s lives, but seemed by all acounts to move further away from perfection rather than closer to it. The USSR couldn’t provide the consumer goods citizens needed. Its planned economy caused its demise.

Communist utopians tolerated no dissent. Somewhere between forty and sixty million people, most of whom were skeptical about communist dreams of establishing a workers’ paradise, were killed - far more than the number who died at the hands of Hitler’s Nazis.

Even without reproducing, the Shakers outlasted the USSR, which finally disintegrated twenty years ago. There are still a handful of Shakers in New Gloucester, Maine a few miles east of where I’m writing. As for the Oneidas - their utopian community is gone but they exist as a joint stock company making cutlery.

The religious American communes were entirely voluntary. People could join or not and if the life didn’t suit them, they could leave. The USSR was anything but. Communist officials built walls and an elaborate security apparatus to keep people from escaping. They had no choice beyond “adapt or die.” Communists believed they knew what was best for all whether they liked it or not. Religion was outlawed and the state became church. The revolution was sacred and capitalism evil. Individual liberty was not only irrelevant, it was “counterrevolutionary.” And, as Boris Pasternak’s novel character, Dr. Yuri Zhivago put it: “They shoot counterrevolutionaries.”

My earliest awareness of this was watching on TV as an ugly little bald guy with a wart on his face took his shoe off during a speech, banged it on the podium at the United Nations in New York City and declared: “We will bury you!” That was Soviet Premiere Nikita Kruschev. That Kruschev was dedicated to forcing Soviet communism on the entire world came through loud and clear to me that day and I’ve never forgotten it. Kruschev’s USSR collapsed thirty years later only because the United States sustained a forty-five-year-long Cold War.

We face a different enemy now. It’s another religious utopian group with strange ideas about sexuality, but different from its smaller predecessors in that it would violently impose itself on everyone in the world. It’s anything but voluntary. Radical Muslims are true believers with no doubts that they know what’s best for all of us whether we like it or not. They would make the world Muslim and run it under Sharia Law. They’re quite open about their intentions and have demonstrated that they’re willing to kill themselves if they can take a few infidels with them. Radical Shiite Muslims believe the Mahdi will emerge soon to preside over a thousand years of justice and peace. Iranian President Ahmadinejad invoked him from the same UN podium Kruschev used fifty years before.

Like the communists, Radical Muslims know the biggest obstacle in the way of achieving their utopian vision is the United States. Trouble is though, our Commander-in-chief lacks the will to oppose them. He won’t even call our enemy by its name. After US Army Major Hasan openly admired Muslim suicide bombers, declared the US an “oppressor” of Muslims, asked an al Qaeda recruiter what he could do “to further the Jihad,” shouted “Allahu Akbar!” while he gunned down forty-three US soldiers last week, President Obama said: “Well, look, we -- we have seen, in the past, rampages of this sort. And in a country of 300 million people, there are going to be acts of violence that are inexplicable.”

Inexplicable?

We’re in deep trouble.

Getting All Political on Yo' Ass

Yes, i’m getting all political on you. And by political, I mean I’m going to have a whinge about a socio-political issue so for anyone who a) doesn’t care or b) isn’t interested, feel free to click on over to Facebook right about now.

I’m sure anyone north of the equator is completely unaware, but for the past four weeks now there have been a bunch of Sri Lankan “ refugees “ sitting on an Australian customs boat, moored off the Indonesian coast. That’s quite a few nations to wrap your head around, but long story short we’re talking about Sri Lankan nationals trying to make their way into Australian territory. Thing is they didn’t quite make it – they got busted just beyond our waters and had their boat hauled off to Indonesia ( apparently Australia and Indonesia have some agreement in place in regards to “ boat people”, the details off which I am not clear on ). So there you have it – four weeks ago a boatful of refugees got caught trying to slip into our country and have been sitting on an Australian government boat ever since. Why you ask ? Because they refuse to get off.

This is where my rant comes in – how have they been allowed to just refuse to get off? Since when do illegal immigrants, refugee or not, get to dictate the terms of their status, effectively telling the government where to shove it ? Those who know me know that I’m quite the humanitarian ( or hippy, depending on your view ) but even I’m drawing a line here. You cant just float your way from one country to another with the intention of illegally sneaking in, and then stomp your foot and refuse to co-operate when your caught out.

Here’s the latest scenario – after 3 and half weeks of sitting on an official Australian vessel, using mobile phones to communicate with media outlets and having well spoken children cry on TV, begging to be let in, the Sri Lankans have been offered a place in Australia…. As long as they are processed in Indonesia, which could take up to a year. This offer was greeted with a big fat “ Uh…. Nuh “ from our Sri Lankan friends, who are still refusing to disembark in Indonesia and are threatening to drown themselves if they are taken straight to Australia. What reaction does this illicit from me ? “ How freaking rude”.

It’s not that I have no compassion. I don’t doubt the existence of refugees and there may even be some of them on this particular boat ( even though they speak wonderful English, have mobile phones on board and allegedly flew themselves to Indonesia before boarding their leaky refugee boat ). However, I find this whole refusal to co-operate thing hard to swallow. I would imagine that if the situation in your homeland was so abhorrent, your women were being raped and your men were disappearing, you had nothing to eat and no future for your children, so terrible that you fear living there any longer – well I would imagine that an offer of safety and freedom in a good country, inside of a year, would be a godsend. I’d imagine that you would take any safe home you could get, whether it be in Australia or Indonesia or – god forbid – even New Zealand.

But no, not these “ refugees “. Nope, for them only the best will do, even though they have no legal right to obtain it. And yet, for some reason, our government is putting up with it. I find it hard to believe other Western countries would do the same.

Lets just put it like this - can you see a whole bunch of Mexicans parking themselves on a barge in the middle of the Rio Grande and refusing to get off on their own side ? Un-bloody-likely….

Sadness, stigma, suicide, and having the blues for Levi Strauss

This week I planned to write about my thoughts of an extraordinary example of an administrative fiat that I  stumbled across this week. It was a relatively simple thing, nothing more than an attempt to ensure that people turned up on a regular basis to a series of important meetings. When I read the missive I was reminded of that old saying about taking horses to water but not necessarily being able to make them drink. I felt the approach was almost certainly doomed to failure because it was essentially aimed at the heads and not the hearts of colleagues in bringing about change. I have published about this subject before, but as important as these issues might be, other events drew my thoughts somewhere else and I want to leave this discussion for now and perhaps return to it in a future blog.

The first and most significant event that changed my mind about what to write about was what occurred at Fort Hood this week. The tragic consequences of the army psychiatrist Major Hassan attacking his fellow comrades at the army base in the US reverberated around the world. It is too early to know if his actions were a consequence of religious extremism, psychological problems, a mental illness or a combination of all three factors. It is clear is that there were a number of behavioural changes and out of the ordinary occurrences to Major Hassans everyday life that might have alerted others to the fact he was having problems. From across the Atlantic, reading about the story, it seemed incredible that nobody noticed anything. But then I thought again. In reality there would of course have been enormous difficulties for anyone to make an appropriate intervention if and when they noticed something was wrong.

He was after all a psychiatrist and a doctor. Doctors hold a privileged position in most societies. As individuals most of us will listen and take note of what doctors have to say. What they have to say is often perceived as being inviolate and unchallengeable. Indeed, for many nurses, being able to appropriately challenge their medical colleagues in the course of their practice is still a very difficult thing to do. The hegemonic power doctors enjoy is often strongly institutionalised and supported within and outwith the many organisations of health and social care. We may have come a long way since Steins original thinking around the Doctor – Nurse Game, (others might say we haven’t) but it can still be difficult for the nurse to be seen as a equal professional in a system that is very clearly weighted in favour of medicine.

So perhaps it is not surprising that other colleagues in Fort Hood did not or could not do anything. Challenging the very embodiment of society’s number one sanity assessor would be an almost impossible thing to do. For me, the situation takes me back to the age old question of: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (who guards the guards?). Plato talked about them (possibly doctors, but certainly the professions) looking after themselves, and they would be able to do so because of a heightened sense of vocation and desire to serve others. It is certainly true that governments all over the world have struggled to deal with the countervailing power relationships between the State and Medicine in resolving these dilemmas. More regulation is not the answer, arguably, more and better education probably is.

The desire for education can be found everywhere. I received a request this week to facilitate an educational conversation with colleagues who were struggling to understand how best to respond to another colleague who was experiencing mental health problems. This approach appeared to me to be entirely genuine and well intended. I will have the conversation, and I am pleased to do so. I believe it will be as much about helping others better understand themselves, and to do so in relation to understanding the mental health of their colleague. Such a conversation can only be a good thing. Mental illness still brings with it a stigma reaction, usually born out of ignorance and unfounded perceptions. For example, people with a mental illness are likely to be murderers and violent, or that if you talk to some who might be contemplating taking their own life it will make them more likely to commit suicide.

The Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937, and since this time, one person every two weeks has gone there to commit suicide. I mention this sad fact, partly to start the conversation about the nature of suicidality, and partly in addressing comments made in response to my thoughts last week about conference attendance. I hope we can develop the debate about conference going further. We need to think a great deal more about how we engage with new technology particularly in rethinking about such activities as attending conferences. However, parking that debate for one moment, there was a good point made last week in the response. This was around continuing to ensure we find better ways of sharing experiences, whatever this takes. This may continue to be through conferences, publications, or educational conversations, or blogs like this one, and I hope I didn’t imply anything different. As was noted in the comment, sometimes it can be difficult to predict the impact of attending a conference and meeting others in a different place. Finally, and with a somewhat sad symmetry to these thoughts, I note it was announced this week that Claude Levi-Strauss had died.

Levi-Strauss, was widely considered to be the father of modern anthropology. He was born on Nov. 28, 1908, in Brussels, Belgium. He studied in Paris and went on to teach in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and conducted much of his research from there. Levi-Strauss was awarded honorary doctorates at universities, including Harvard, Yale and Oxford. The very first overseas trip I went on as a new member of MMU was to Sao Paulo. This was part of an EU funded project that required meetings to be held in South America and Europe. During what was an immensely exciting trip, my subsequent interest and passion in anthropology was born. The life work of Levi-Strauss helped me (and I am sure countless others) with my studies of human behaviour and thinking. He also was a great believer in how conversations help all of us better understand each other.

You Can Still, and Will, Do This....

The past was called to my attention today and i realised that i'm not as contemplative now as i once was. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing - i still contemplate, but the things on my mind are now more often trivial than deep and meaningful. I blog about the days random happenings and make lists of curious tidbits instead of musing on my innermost thoughts. I suppose its because i'm happier now - and with happiness there is a definate lessening of internal contemplation. Or internal damnation , which was quite often what was happening in my case. I've stopped looking inside and trying to figure out what was wrong - i still delve inside every now and then but i dont see much wrong anymore. I dont feel like there's so much i need to get off my chest, which really decreases blog post subject matter. That being said, i could make regular posts about how good i'm feeling, and how things are going so well or how much brighter the world seems - only i know that if i was reading a blog where every second poast was sunshine and rainbows i'd be completely turned off. Life needs its yin and its yang, its black and its white, its ups and its downs, in order to be interesting. And so does a blog - just as a blog that was continually full of doom and gloom would become boring, so would continual " happy-happy-joy-joy ".

Whats my point here ? I'm trying to convince myself i'm still capable of deep and meaningful; that i'm still able to ponder the intellectual and the emotional and not just the trivial and ridiculous; that i can still become absorbed and lost in a film or book or album instead of merely watching or reading or listening. And most of all i'm trying to convince myself that being able to do all these things will help me raise a wonderful person, with an open mind and an open heart.

I want to be the mumma who helps her child to experience and live and learn and grow and.... be. I want to let my child know that its a good thing to be smart; that their are hundred ways to do things but that doesnt mean that any one of them is the single " right " way; that thinking for yourself is awesome and being a sheep is not; that different does not always equate to worse. I would like to think i'm up the this task. Admittedly, its crazy to think- not 18 months ago i was still seeing a pyschiatrist, trying to convince myself that i was not the boring/dumb/ugly person that i imagined i was. I had to learn to rely on myself, knowing that true self-reliance and belief was all i needed. Now ? In approximately 9 weeks time i will have someone in my life who will rely on me for everything; their reliance on me will literally be the difference between life and death. Its a sobering, scary yet exhilirating thought.

My life is not going to be mine anymore - and yet it is, and so much more mine than it ever was. Its just going to be different, thats all. And isnt the proverbial change as good as a holiday ?

Think Health Care Is Expensive Now? Wait Until It's Free

Recently I asked students how much it cost for a doctor visit. “My mother pays fifteen dollars,” said one.

“Fifteen dollars? I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what she paid.”

“Okay,” I said, “But is that all it cost?” I pointed out that the average doctor visit costs between $95 and $265.

“She has insurance,” he said, “and they paid the rest. I didn’t know it cost that much.”

Many adult Americans don’t either and that’s our biggest problem with health care reform. I explained that people sometimes have a small “co-pay” and the rest comes from somewhere else. Those with insurance pay monthly premiums whether they get services or not. The poor, and people claiming to be poor, may have a small co-pay, and government uses our tax money to pay more, but it still doesn’t add up to the total cost of the visit - or the surgery, or the therapy, or whatever. To make up the deficit, providers charge patients with insurance more than the cost of their services, products or procedures - that’s why an aspirin can cost $13 at the hospital. Some doctors or dentists won’t take patients who won’t pay themselves or who don’t have insurance, because they can’t afford to make it on what government pays. Hospitals, though, have to take everyone. There’s no such thing as free health care, but more and more consider it their right.

It would be simpler if we all paid out of pocket, and that’s what 90% did before World War II when, according to economist Thomas Sowell, only about 10% of Americans had insurance. When government took over the economy during the war it imposed wage controls, so if a company wanted to woo an employee, it offered health insurance as a fringe benefit. That’s how employer-provided insurance caught on. However, many small businesses still can’t afford to offer it - especially lately. Huge, third-party government bureaucracies, and private ones too, add enormously to the cost of health care.

If we pay $95 or more out of our own pockets for doctor visits, it won’t be for frivolous reasons. We certainly wouldn’t pay $1000 for an emergency room visit unless it were a genuine emergency. However the poor, and those claiming to be poor, pay nothing for a such visits - or for an ambulance to drive them, so they’re much more likely to go for frivolous reasons like hangovers or gas pain, driving up costs enormously. Central Texas hospitals report that 82% of emergency room visits are people on “Medicaid or SCHIP.” According to the Austin American-Statesman:

In the past six years, eight people from Austin and one from Luling racked up 2,678 emergency room visits in Central Texas, costing hospitals, taxpayers and others $3 million, according to a report from a nonprofit made up of hospitals and other providers that care for the uninsured and low-income Central Texans.

If President Obama mentioned anything like this in his big speech to Congress, I didn’t hear it.

Notice I keep saying “or those claiming to be poor”? Many can hide how much they make, appear poor to government, and be eligible for “free” medical care. What percentage of the “poor” are really poor? A minority? A majority? Impossible to say. But we can safely conclude this: If we think health care is expensive now, wait until it’s “free.”

If more go under Obamacare, the deficit between what government pays and the actual cost of the services will also grow, forcing doctors and hospitals to pass along those costs to patients with private insurance - driving up premiums even faster. Then, unbelievably, Obamacare would actually tax those private plans. Don’t believe it? Check out studies by both government agencies like the Congressional Budget office, and private studies like one by PriceWaterhouse Coopers. This is what Democrats call “reform.”

Congress and the White House are determined to impose government-run medicine on Americans in the model of Canada and the UK. Economist Thomas Sowell sheds a little light on what Americans could expect:

In Canada, according to a provincial government website, 90% of Ontario patients needing hip replacements waited 336 days. In Britain, the wait is a year. As for technology, a 2007 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showed that the number of CT scanners per million population was 7.5 in Britain, 11.2 in Canada and 32.2 in the United States. For Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) units, there was an average of 5.4 MRIs per million population in Britain, 5.5 per million population in Canada and 26.6 per million population in the United States.

That’s why people in Canada wait about six months for an MRI. Dogs in Canada, however, can get one the next day because government doesn’t control veterinary care.

And They're Racing!

Happy Melbourne Cup Day everyone! I am pretty sure I’ve written about the Melbourne Cup before however, for those not in the know, I am talking about the biggest and most important horse race in Australia. Its known as “ The race that stops a nation “ because come 3pm this afternoon the majority of Australians will either be glued to the tv or huddled around a radio watching the 3200m race. Yes, we Australians love our sport, whether the main competitors be human or equine.

The fun part about Melbourne Cup is the betting. I’m not a regular gambler, nor am I an expert – but, like many Australians, I take the opportunity to have a once-a-year bet on the big race. I came to work 15 minutes early this morning specifically so I could pour over the form guide. Unlike the expert race goer, I don’t take previous form/trainer/jockey/gate drawn into account; nope, the majority of my decision making comes down to three things:
* Number
* Colour
* Name

That is, when I’m trying to pick a horse on which to put all my annual hopes of luck and fortune on, I make the decision based on what number the horse will be running as; what colour silks the jockey will be wearing; and whether I like the name of the horse. These three things need to combine to give me a positive vibe. Are they colours I like, or do they have another lucky association for me? Is it running under my lucky number, or number I feel good about ? And does the name have a good ring to it ?

Based on these three things, this year I have put my bet on a horse named “ Shocking “, which is running as number 21 ( a multiple of 7, my lucky number ) and his jockey is wearing black and gold ( I like the combination, and it’s the colour of my fathers football team). I think I’ve got a pretty good chance this year. I’ve got my “ good vibe “ combination happening and the horse was actually fourth favourite with the bookies last time I checked. Also, the last time I won anything on the Melbourne Cup was 10 years ago, so I figure I’m about due for a win.

Now all I gotta do is count down to 3pm, along with the rest of the nation, to see how I fared….

Faster than a speeding bulletin from up here in the frozen North.

I was interested to read this week of the way in which we are tending to use web based search engines. It appears that 60% of us use search engines for navigational purposes, trying to find a particular website like Salford.ac.uk for example. The remaining 40% of us tend to use search engines for informative reasons like finding your GPs telephone number for example. Whilst the use of the internet for these purposes continues to grow, it is other forms of real-time web use that are really pushing the boundaries of how we communicate and keep abreast of the news. Twitter, for example provided real time of the minute narrative of the riots as these occurred in Iran with information literally coming direct from the streets themselves. Our VC recently asked for colleagues to comment and make suggestions on his plans for teaching and academic developments using his blog. This is a trend that is set to grow and is a way of communication that will ensure as many people as possible are able to contribute to decision making and future developments. However, I am not sure we are all ready to take advantage of such opportunities, and the challenge will be to find ways to make such developments attractive to individuals and something they can gain a benefit from as well.

It’s clear that such developments in communication and dissemination of information are likely to shape the way we do many other things in the future (and perhaps not always for the better). For example, this weekend I am in Finland pulling together a research bid that I am developing with colleagues from Estonia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Croatia and Finland. Whilst it is good to travel, I might possibly have been able to achieve what I have done, and in real time, simply by using Skype to video conference. It wouldn’t have been the same experience, although it would have been much cheaper. But I am not sure we need to keep having the same old experiences. I think it will be interesting to see which big name conference moves to virtual participation rather than encouraging people to travel half way around the world to present their work.

Anyway, it was great being back here in Finland. It is one of my favorite places to visit. It was minus 7 when I got off the plane, but during the day the sun has shone and transformed the landscape. Thanks to Mikko for his hospitality and it was great to meet Leena and Heikki as well. We looked at photos taken when I first came here some 11 years ago. It was an amazing look back in time. Not sure quite when my hair turned silver.

Finally, please feel free to comment on this blog – its takes a few short steps to register an account and then you can let me know what you think. After all, I am trying to keep in touch with the way new communication technology is going!