The Human Cost of Our Insurance Industry

The family is suing:

Nataline had been battling leukemia and received a bone marrow transplant from her brother. She developed a complication that caused her liver to fail.

Doctors at UCLA determined she needed a transplant and sent a letter to Cigna Corp.’s Cigna HealthCare on Dec. 11. The Philadelphia-based health insurance company denied payment for the transplant, saying the procedure was experimental and outside the scope of coverage.

The insurer reversed the decision Thursday as about 150 teenagers and nurses rallied outside of its office. But Nataline died hours later.

That the doctor even needs to send a letter to the insurance company to ask is wrong - and yes, I know it's common.

It suggests that the priority is not health care but profits.

Again, I know this is not necessarily news. But it's still bullshit.

On Notice

I despise Christmas shopping.

That is all.

The World's Strangest Connection

I just discovered that David Krumholtz, who played Bernard (the head elf) in The Santa Clause, has been in a very eclectic mix of works over the years:

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008) (post-production) .... Goldstein

Serenity (2005) .... Mr. Universe

"Numb3rs" .... Charlie Eppes / ... (72 episodes, 2005-2007)

Superbad (2007) .... Benji Austin

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny (2006) (uncredited) .... Frat Boy 2

There's a bunch more, but this guy seems to have a great career going. I should pay more attention to him.

Also: There is a movie named "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay" coming out. This could be great.

Assessing Research on Student Evaluations

This is a really useful article.

I found this point particularly convincing:

Are ratings affected by situational variables?

The research says that ratings are robust and not greatly affected by situational variables. But we must keep in mind that generalizations are not absolute statements. There will always be some variations. For example, we know that required, large-enrollment, out-of-major courses in the physical sciences get lower average ratings than elective, upper-level, major courses in virtually all other disciplines. Does this mean that teaching quality varies? Not necessarily. What it does show is that effective teaching and learning may be harder to achieve under certain sets of conditions. There is a critical principle for evaluation practice embedded here: to be fair, comparisons of faculty teaching performance based on ratings should use sufficient amounts of data from similar situations. It would be grossly unfair to compare the ratings of an experienced professor teaching a graduate seminar of ten students to the one-time ratings of a new instructor teaching an entry-level, required course with an enrollment of 300.

To me, this suggests the obvious: That large lectures are not as successful as small classes.

Also obviously, this comes down to a funding issue.

Nevertheless.

Strike Life

As part of the WGA strike, a couple of folks teamed up and produced some web-only shorts about the strike under the name Strike Life. I've only watched one (but the rest are all loading as I type this), and since it was fracking hilarious, I thought I'd point you in that general direction.

For the record, I saw "Problem Solved."

More Books

Some further book recommendations I have received via email or through conversation (thanks everybody!), as well as a few I've dug up on my own:

The Einstein Intersection - Samuel Delany

Triton - Samuel Delany

Dhalgren - Samuel Delany

Nova - Samuel Delany

Johnny Mnemonic - William Gibson

Pattern Recognition - William Gibson

Spook Country - William Gibson

The Difference Engine - William Gibson

Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

Misfortune - Wesley Stace

The Ivy Tree - Mary Stewart

A Rare Piece on Religion

Update: Outgoing links removed for, well, reasons that I may or may not explain later.

Longtime readers (and friends) will know that I don't normally post about religion except to laugh at the hypocrisy and flat-out evil that comes from the Religious Right.

Well, this time I'm posting in a much more compassionate light.

From (of all places) Confessions of a College Call Girl (NOT SAFE FOR WORK OR SCHOOL!), a post that gets at the intersection of spirituality and religion:

As many of you have noted, I am not a perfect person. I have made mistakes, over and over again. And sometimes the only way to get back up after you’ve fallen so far is to rely on something bigger than yourself, to pull your head out of your ass and notice that there even IS anything bigger than yourself. And it’s awfully sincere, but when I went looking for God, I found a whole big world out there that saved me from myself. Whether it’s the love of friends and family, the talent that comes and faithfully offers me the right word, the potential for kindness between people, or the ability to tell a story that comforts others. These things can be holy too.

I will never again call myself a Christian; never spend another Christmas with my head bowed in worship, never walk back into the red-brick building where love so often ferments into hate. But this year I approach happiness. And in those creeping moments when I walk down the street and look to the tops of the buildings that skim an endless skyline, when joy unexpectedly fills up my lungs like crisp winter air, until even my blood is sweetly singing. Then I am feeling God.

The whole thing is pretty intense.

P.S. This really reminds me of Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.

Jon Armstrong on Dooce and Mental Health

For readers of Dooce, I highly recommend this post by Blurbomat author and Dooce husband Jon Armstrong. He write about his wife's battle with depression and how they both have learned to deal with it.

This bit comes across as having been learned the hard way:

To the people out there who denigrate mental health awareness and treatment, I say this: You aren’t helping. You are making it worse. Stop being an arrogant know-it-all. You aren’t right. You are wrong. If someone tells you they need help, your opinion means less than that of professionals. Stop being ignorant. Stop being obstinate. Stop insisting that your loved one, partner, child or co-worker “get over it”. They won’t get over it until you let it go and encourage them to seek help. There are many different approaches and ways to treat mental diseases and conditions. The first step is letting go. You could probably use some time talking it out yourself.

I cannot stress enough how correct I think Jon is. I've seen plenty of people suggest (both politely and not-so-politely) that someone just "get over it" when it's screamingly obvious that there's something very real that needs to be worked through.

Sadly, some of those times have been at work - and for me, that means teachers and students.

Update: I'm going to be even more specific; I see this happen with teachers who also happen to be coaches, or those with a military background. And while I think it comes from a place of wanting students to be self-sufficient and take responsibility for their own well-being, that makes it no less damaging or dangerous - it's certainly not a good way to go about achieving those goals.

Books!

I have been compiling a list of books I want to read for a few years now. While I've gotten to a fair chunk of said list (all the books that are bolded near the bottom have been read, purchased, started or some combination of the above), the growth rate is much higher than the completion rate.

Below is the entire list; you should note there's no distinction between fact or fiction (or anything else).

In the last few months, I have read more for fun (i.e. fiction) than in a long time - probably since before college. I'm a much different person now, and I get both more and different things from reading.

One thing I've found myself feeling as a result of reading the books am I is hope for the possibility of change. This is both extremely gratifying and extremely surprising.

UPDATE: Of course I have also read plenty of books not on this list - including a big chunk from a friend who has made his personal library available to me. Considering his personal library is probably 1000+ books, this will take some time...

Feel free - encouraged, even - to leave your wanted book lists in comments.... and to talk about what you get out of reading. Or, perhaps, to give me suggestions.

Thanks in advance.

****************************

A Thousand Plateaus - Deleuze & Guattari

The Stars My Destination/Tiger Tiger – Alfred Bester

Demolished Man – Alfred Bester

Stand on Zanzibar – John Brunner

Teaching Community – bell hooks

Sex on the Brain – Deborah Blum

Uprooting Racism - Paul Kivel

Refusing to be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice - John Stoltenberg

Racial Formation in the United States - Michael Omi and Howard Winant

Zines – Stephen Duncombe

Velocities – Stephen Dobbins

Man of Reason – Genevieve Lloyd

Being and Time – Martin Heidegger

The Moral Equivalent of War – William James

The Death of Nature – Carolyn Merchant

Metaphors We Live By – George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (UO)

Geography of Nowhere: The Rise And Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape - Kunstler

Freakonomics – Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Stigma - Erving Goffman

Cinderella’s Big Score – Maria Raha (Women of the Punk and Indie Underground)

Lipstick Traces – Greil Marcus

Mystery Trains – Greil Marcus

The Society of Spectacle – Guy Debord

The Revolution of Everyday Life – Raul Vaneigem

The Failures of Integration - Sheryll Cashin

Baltasar and Blimunda - Jose Saramago

Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy -
Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson (for AK)

Access All Areas – Ninjalicious (also Infiltration zine)

Russell Jacoby - The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe

Russell Jacoby - The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in an Age of Apathy

Themepunks - Cory Doctorow

Eastern Standard Tribe – Cory Doctorow

Unembedded - Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Kael Alford, Thorne Anderson and Rita Leistner

Sundown Towns: a Hidden Dimension of Racism in America - James Loewen

The Fibromyalgia Story: Medical Authority And Women's Worlds Of Pain - Kristin K. Barker

Rhetorical Occasions: Essays on Humans and the Humanities – Michael Berube

The Republican War on Science, by Chris Mooney

The Singularity is Near, by Ray Kurzweil

A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History – Manuel DeLanda

Dog Days – Ana Marie Cox

Inclusive Pluralism – Naomi Zack

Letters from Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out - Edited by Dan Berger, Chesa Boudin, and Kenyon Farrow

Do You Suck as Well as Fuck? Totally Sexed Up Tales of J. Edgar Hoover's America – Ken Ichigawa

Neuromancer – William Gibson

Self-Made Man – Norah Vincent

Revealing Male Bodies - Nancy Tuana (Editor), William Cowling (Editor), Maurice Hamington (Editor), Greg Johnson (Editor), Terrance Macmullen (Editor)

Doorway into Summer – Robert Heinlein

Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories, Vol. 1

James Wolcott: The Catsitters

Inventing the University - David Bartholomae

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town - Cory Doctorow

The City of Joy - Dominique Lapierre

Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush – Eric Boehlert

Sun of Suns – Karl Schroeder

Ghost Brigade – John Scalzi

Old Man's War – John Scalzi

Learning to Labor - by Paul Willis

Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, Pacific Edge and Sixty Days and Counting – Kim Stanley Robinson

Radio On: A Listener's Diary (Paperback) by Sarah Vowell

Paul LaFargue, The Right to Be Lazy

Trapeze Collective; Do It Yourself, Pluto Press

Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories - Katha Pollitt

Rudy Rucker's new novel Postsingular

Charlie Stross's - Halting State

Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste - by John Waters

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism - Naomi Klein

Dude, You're A Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School – C.J. Pascoe

Norman Mailer - Miami and the Siege of Chicago and Armies of the Night and The Executioner's Song

What Are Journalists For? by Jay Rosen

IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea (Hardcover) by Stephen Murdoch
Interface – Neal Stephenson

Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela! Cartoons by Mikhaela B. Reid

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick.

David Graeber, Malagasy folktakes

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse - (Anthology) John Joseph Adams

Robert Anton Wilson – Schrodinger's Cat

Ursula K. LeGuin – Left Hand of Darkness

Alfred Bester – Demolished Man

Alfred Bester – Stars My Destination

Alfred Bester – Virtual Unrealities

John(?) Brunner – Stand on Zanzibar

Ourspace – Christine Harold

Soldier of Sidon – Gene Wolfe

Soldier of Arete – Gene Wolfe

Soldier in the Mist – Gene Wolfe

Latro in the Mist – Gene Wolfe

Stardust – Neil Gaiman

American Gods – Neil Gaiman

Neverwhere- Nail Gaiman

The Dance of Gods – Mayer Brenner

Public Works, DMZ comics, Brian Wood

Transmetropolitan Vols. 1-10 (Transmetropolitan Collections) – Warren Ellis

Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genuis

Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation – Isaac Asimov

Democracy Defended – Gerry Mackie

Out of the Sea and Into the Fire: Latin American-US Immigration
in the Global Age - Kari Lydersen

Savage Inequalities – Jonathan Kozol

The Way We Argue Now : A Study in the Cultures of Theory - Amanda Anderson

What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and “Bias” in Higher Education – Michael Berube

Crashing the Gate – Markos Moulitsas Zuniga & Jerome Armstrong

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Days of the Dead – Agnes Bushnell

The Fifth Sacred Thing – Starhawk

Magic Journey – John Nichols

The Postman – David Brin

Neal Stephenson – Snow Crash

How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization – Franklin Foer

Feminist Epistemology – Sharyn Clough

Fences and Windows – Naomi Klein

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs – Chuck Klosterman

Collapse – Jared Diamond

The Years of Rice and Salt – Kim Stanley Robinson

Jay Matthews' Top Ten Concerns About Education

Found somewhere (don't remember where anymore turns out it was here), this interview with longtime Washington Post education reporter Jay Matthews. I was particularly interested in the seventh question:

7) What do you see as the top ten concerns in education? What are the biggest concerns in the Washington Circle?

My concerns or Washington's? I will go with mine:

1. Low standards and expectations in low-income schools.

2. Very inadequate teacher training in our education schools.

3. Failure to challenge average students in nearly all high
schools with AP and IB courses.

4. Corrupt and change-adverse bureaucracies in big city districts.

5. A tendency to judge schools by how many low income kids they
have, the more there are the worse the school in the public
mind.

6. A widespread feeling on the part of teachers, because of their
inherent humanity, that it is wrong to put a child in a
challenging situation where they may fail, when that risk of
failure is just what they need to learn and grow.

7. The widespread belief among middle class parents that their
child must get into a well known college or they won't be as
successful in life.

8. A failure to realize that inner city and rural schools need to
give students more time to learn, and should have longer school
days and school years.

9. A failure to realize that the best schools--like the KIPP
charter schools in the inner cities---are small and run by
well-recruited and trained principals who have the power to
hire all their teachers, and quickly fire the ones that do not
work out.

10. The resistance to the expansion of charter schools in most
school district offices.

How many apply to Lebanon?

Offhand, I'd say 1, 2, 3, 7 and 8.

Any takers?