Author Archives: Jon Lowder

Not All Yurts Are Created Equal

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Last summer our family spent a long weekend staying in a yurt near Charlottesville, VA.  Our yurt was luxurious and featured a nice kitchen, a nice bathroom, air conditioning, and HD television.  Although it looked very much like the yurt occupied by the family featured in this NY Times story the similarities ended there.  These folks have no running water and thus no indoor plumbing, their heat is provided by a wood burning stove and they fashioned a root cellar out of an old refrigerator. They're not totally roughing it though: they have broadband.

Can We Say Awkward?

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One of the things I love about Facebook is that at least once a day, if not more often, one of my friends shares something that truly cracks me up.  Smitty did it today when he shared the site Awkward Family Photos.  I swear you could spend hours on this site, but if you want just a taste check out the last picture on this page or the last one on this page or even the last two on this page.

I could go on but you get the point.

Update: Oh great googly moogly, you gotta love this one.  And someone better call the SPCA.

French or Ruby on Rails?

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Fred Wilson makes a great point about our schools today and it can best be summed up with this quote: 

If the Obama administration wants to really do something about jobs and retooling America for the 21st century, it would fund the development of great middle school programming curriculum. It would fund training teachers to teach that curriculum. It would get millions of kids writing code before they have their first date. That would change a lot of things.

Our experience has been that the computer classes at our kids' school focus on teaching students how to use basic programs like Word and Excel.  Sadly they don't do a great job of that and we, the parents, end up doing a lot of "tutoring" at home.   

I think our experience is the norm.  UNCG professor and economist Dave Ribar posted this piece about the College Board canceling the more stringent of their two AP computer science courses.  He also offers this quote: "The result of sporadic or skimpy computer science training is that a generation of teenagers great at using computers will be unlikely to play a role in the way computer technology shapes lives in the future, said Chris Stephenson, executive director of the New York-based Computer Science Teachers Association."

While I don't think French or Spanish should disappear from the school curriculum, I do think that we should get serious about teaching our kids computer science.  Put it this way: where do you think the jobs will be in 2020 or 2040?  Computer technology is one area of the economy that we can be pretty confident will continue to grow for the foreseeable future and it would serve us well to enable our kids to take advantage of it.  After all, these aren't burger-flipping jobs but desirable jobs as highlighted by a Bureau of Labor Statistics profile that Ribar cites:

In May 2008, median annual wages of wage-and-salary computer applications software engineers were $85,430. The middle 50 percent earned between $67,790 and $104,870. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $53,720, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $128,870.

What Would Vacation Be Without a 5:00 a.m. Wake Up? or On Traveling With Teenagers

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It's hard to complain about anything when you've been able to take a few days off and escape with the family to a semi-abandoned timeshare in the land of over-landscaped golf courses.  That said there's something very un-relaxing about spending those days ferrying around three teenagers who can't be bothered to see where they're going because they're sending text message number 8,423 of the day to their boyfriend, or playing game number 2,500 on their DS or simply going whatever place in their vacuous heads that teenagers go that gives them the glassy-eyed stare of a decade-long heroin addict.  Let's just say yesterday didn't provide a very Cleaver-like moment and I let the kids and everyone within a 20 mile radius know that I wasn't cool with it.

Let me be clear: I blew a gasket.  It wasn't an epic gasket-blowing, but it did involve threats of packing up and heading home a couple of days early.  It did include the time-tested "you have no clue how lucky you are that we're able to go on vacation" line that's been used by every parent for generations.  I even threw in the "you kids just don't appreciate what your Mom and I do for you" line.  I don't think the latter two statements had much of an effect, but I think the threat of a 7 hour drive with a pissed off Dad did have a sobering effect.  We ended up having a nice dinner.

And as always when I lose it I crashed early, had a fairly restless sleep and popped awake at some gawdawful early hour (5:00 a.m.).  At least I get to enjoy a quiet cup (or twelve) of coffee. 

Merry Christmas Eve everybody.  And yes, Mom, I do appreciate the irony of all this.

What Our Reading Might Look Like Not Too Far in the Future

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If you have any interest in the publishing biz or are a fan of magazines then you really need to read Rex Hammock's blog.  Of all the people I follow he seems to have the best grasp of where the industry is going and, more importantly, he's one of the few who seems to know what he doesn't know.  A recent post included a video about how traditional magazine content might be presented on what Rex has dubbed "pad devices." Here's the video, but read Rex's post as it has links to a couple of other interesting and related pieces.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Good for the Goose, Good for the Gander

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Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina says it's going to reimburse primary care physicians more money if they can prove they're providing higher quality care.  From the article:

The Chapel Hill-based insurer, which with nearly 152,000 enrollees
is the largest health insurer in the Triad, has invited about 4,000
primary care physicians across the state to apply to join its Blue
Quality Physician Program. The program is designed to reward quality
over quantity. Physicians who meet the program’s criteria are eligible
for double-digit percentage increases in standard reimbursements on
some of the most commonly billed procedures.

BCBSNC will score applicants based on clinical quality outcomes, as
measured by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, use of
electronic prescribing, administrative efficiency and the physician’s
ability to care for patients after-hours or electronically, among other
criteria. Those who have scored high enough will qualify, while those
who do not qualify can reapply.

Couple of things:  I'm curious as to how I'm going to be cared for electronically.  I'm tempted to get sophomoric and start talking about sticking electronic probes in interesting places, but I'll resist.  Maybe they think the doctor can have me go "ahhhh" into a webcam and he can look at my tonsils online.  Whatever.

What I'd really like to know is if I can base my reimbursement to BCBSNC on their quality of service?  For every disputed claim we'll knock off double-digit percentages and for every drug not in their schedule we'll knock off even more.  For every letter I get from my doctor saying my bill hasn't been paid and it's been, oh, 90 days we'll just waive the payment completely.  Who will be our arbiter, our very own NCQA?  Well, we'll found the Carolina Association of Righteously Pissed Patients (CARPP) and it will judge each claim based, in part, on BCBSNC's ability to care for patients at all without sucking over 15% of their gross income out of their pockets.  Sound good?

10 to 15 Inches and Maybe a White Christmas?

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AMR emailed to let me know about a cool weather blog he's found that called for a significant weather storm here well before the local weather experts did.  In reading his most recent update about tomorrow's projected storm I was stunned to find this:

A major winter storm is about to slam Virginia and North Carolina as a
s/w trough diving down the front range partially or potentially fully
phases with a an area of low pressure in the Gulf of Mexico and
produced a rather potent storm which will move just of the southeast
coast tomorrow and Saturday. It is still unclear as to how much phasing
will occur and exactly who gets the snow. The idea I am working on is
that much of Virginia and western and northern North Carolina see a big
snow, perhaps 10-15 inches in parts of those states.

A little later in the post he writes this:

Beyond this Christmas week looks cold for most of us and like I have
been saying all week the Christmas storm is a threat for the southern
and eastern US. I didn’t like the lakes cutter idea and still don’t
thanks to the massive block over eastern Canada. I still think we could
see a disruptive winter storm Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
potentially for the southern and eastern US.

A white Christmas…in NC?  Methinks hell hath frozen over.

Why Maybe Progressives Aren’t Bat—t Crazy

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Lex offers a detailed assessment of why the progressives might not be bat—t crazy. I'm so confused.

Here's just a taste of what Lex had to say:

Just how bad has Joe Lieberman crapped all
over the whole debate on health-care reform? Bad enough that right now,
I think it’s time he not only gets no health care, it’s time he gets
intestinal cancer in a part of the world where morphine is as yet
undiscovered. I mean, really, what kind of sociopath do you have to be
to disregard those 45,000 annual deaths and singlehandedly chop up a
bill to create something that:

  • Mandates that every American buy expensive insurance from private
    companies without the choice of a public option and lets the IRS fine
    you if you don’t
  • Severely taxes middle-class health care plans, rather than wealthy individuals
  • Increases insurance premiums about $1,000 a year
  • Increases health care costs
  • Continues to exempt health-insurance companies from antitrust laws, inhibiting competition
  • Provides a sweet deal for pharmaceutical manufacturers while
    denying the government the ability to negotiate for lower drug prices
    for Medicare, something Democrats actually promised three years ago.
  • Apparently won’t let the government import drugs from cheaper foreign sources. I’m told my own junior senator, Kay Hagan, was arguing tonight that this was a “safety” issue, which must come as a surprise to the dozens of other countries that do this every day.
  • Grants monopolies on new biologic drugs so they will never become generics
  • Offers NO public option
  • Offers NO Medicare expansion, even in return for payment, for 55- to 64-year-olds.
  • Limits insurance-company payouts, contrary to President Obama’s promise in September
  • Raises taxes in January while not beginning benefits until 2014.

Really, I'm sooooo confused which makes me believe that the powers-that-be have us just where they want us.