I'd like to thank Vice President Biden for giving me an easy cover while emceeing the Diamond Awards last night for my day job. I started the evening by saying "My main goal tonight is to not pull a Biden."
If you haven't figured it out by now my modus operandi is to set an exceptionally low bar and then crawl over it.
If you live in a cave and haven't heard the (newest) Biden blurt here it is:
You'd expect the comments on an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education to be somehow less troll-ish than comments in mainstream rags. I guess that's why the comments on this article about the University of Alabama professor who shot a bunch of her colleagues seem even creepier than usual. The first commenter gets them off to a roaring start:
The tragedy at UAH was a racially motivated hate crime as evidenced by the shooting of minorities only. Dr. Robert O. Lawton, the chairman of the departmental committee that recommended against the killer's tenurel was not targeted even though he was at the meeting. She is a Harvard trained racist with the brain of a lunatic. Could it be that Harvard is a breeding haven for such lunatics?
One commenter manages to really poison the well in a couple of separate one sentence comments:
There is a good ceal of mental sickness among academics, not least among females.
and
ALL THE DEAD WERE DARKIES? GOOD SHOT, AMY!
and then there's the cryptic:
If that lady had no weapon how can she expressed her anger?From ancient time man are killing each other but their weapons were rudimental they killed few people. As mankind inventing new and new dangerous weapon killing is easy and horrible.Mankind inventing ultra effective weapons for safety but is living in more unsafe circumstance.
Leonard da Vinci realized that development of his military engineering skills once a source of pride and ambition was a grotesque error.While he continued to fill his notebooks with diagrams drawing and speculation.He wrote"I will not publish, not divulge such things because of evil nature of man.
Can today`scientists learn and lesson from da Vinci?
We can only hope that these people aren't actually involved in higher education. What am I saying? Why would higher ed be any different from other profession? They've all got their share of whack jobs.
The only intro I'm going to give you to this short film is that it deals with getting fired and the title refers to what optimists do when they get handed a big lemon, or bunches of them:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Elizabeth Warren | ||||
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Congress' attempt at health care reform is a big issue right now, and if you watch the news about what our Congresscritters are up to you can surmise that hardly anyone will be happy with the results. On the other hand most people seem to be holding their breath and hoping that, if nothing else, the changes to the system will at least be an improvement on the status quo.
Whatever the result we need to make sure that situations like this will never arise. From the story:
The financially strapped Jackson Health System has stopped paying for dialysis treatments for 175 poor patients with failing kidneys — a decision that experts say could be deadly.
“It is no game,'' says Emelina García Cordoví, 67, whose treatments at a South Miami-Dade center were cut off Dec. 31. “We are talking of the lives of persons who depend exclusively on their dialysis.''
Jackson, Miami-Dade's government health system intended to be a safety net for the poor and uninsured, said it expects to save $4.2 million by stopping payments for outpatient dialysis treatment for the 175 patients. Of those, other avenues for care have been found for all but 41, says spokesman Robert Alonso. About a third of those are undocumented immigrants, who are not eligible for government programs.
Of all the countries to get pummeled by a major earthquake I can't think of many less prepared to deal with it than Haiti. Of course there are other Third-World countries out there, but because of Haiti's proximity to the eastern U.S. those of us who live here in NC are more likely to know someone who has been there or is involved with a group doing work there than elsewhere.
In the last hour I've received two emails from people who have friends or acquaintances in Haiti. One came from friend (and former neighbor) Susan Ewing, who has a very close friend, Pam Carter, currently in Haiti and she asked for all of us to pray for Pam. Luckily Pam is okay and she was able to get an email out to her husband and daughters to let them know that she's fine. Here's an article in the Charlotte Observer with more details. Of course things can go from "okay" to "very bad" in short order so please do keep Pam and everyone else in Haiti in your prayers.
The second email came from Bob Krebs, a board member of the organization I work for who is also heavily involved with Free the Kids. Free the Kids supports an orphanage about three hours from Port au Prince and Bob wrote that the orphanage was okay, that much of Port au Prince is demolished and that food and water are quickly becoming a problem and since the orphanage's food supplies come from Port au Prince they do not yet have a solution for the food problem.
Another local connection to Haiti is Susan Midgett who raised $100,000 for the orphanage by doing the Escape from Alcatraz Sharkfest swim last year. Hers is truly an inspirational story and I encourage you to take a look at the difference that one person made in the lives of literally thousands of children.
I'm sure there are many more local connections to this tragedy, and while it doesn't make the situation any more or less tragic I think it does help us appreciate the magnitude of what is unfolding down there. If you know of ways that people can help please feel free to share them in the comments or by emailing me and I'll try and get the word out as best I can.
Update 1: Gotta love Twitter. Just found this : Text HAITI to 90999 and $10 will be charged to your cell phone bill for the Red Cross effort in Haiti (via @barackobama )
h/t to The Seventh Sense for the link.
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?
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:
Really, I'm sooooo confused which makes me believe that the powers-that-be have us just where they want us.
Befuddled 