Archive for September, 2009
Celebrating Talk Like A Pirate Day
Ahoy mates, today be International Talk Like A Pirate Day!
T’ help you sail through t’ day, your buckos at Urbanagora wanted t’ link t’ some booty. Click here. And here. Garrrrr, here be an English t’ Pirate translator. And, here be a funny picture o’ a pirate keyboard (from Engadget)
Editors Note: This is reposted from a previous Talk Like A Pirate Day
The Cost of Individualism to our Health
Much has been said about healthcare in the last few months. It seems there is nothing more to talk about. I mean come one we’re headed towards National Socialism or Communism (interesting how one policy can lead to wildly divergent political outcomes eh?), we’re going to kill grandma, we’re going to ration healthcare, we’re going to take healthcare decisions out of the hands of patients and put it in the hands of bureaucrats (a dramatic shift, no doubt, from my insurance company denying any and every treatment I’ve ever needed until I called in to bust some balls). Well this post is about absolutely none of those things, so I’d appreciate it if we could avoid such silliness.
No, this post is about the costs to our healthcare that arise from our social isolationism. Okay, so the title is a bit misleading, it says individualism, but I tend to not see a dramatic difference. Individualism encourages us to look to no one but ourselves for our necessities, which when taken to its logical endpoint, means we become more isolated. Semantics aside, my argument is pretty simple: our isolationism is costing us in our healthcare spending – and big time. Read more…
The uber-significance of Obama
Omitted from all the furor of the brownshirt behavior of the right, the rabble, and the Rush is the more important governmental philosophical perspective that Obama made explicit in his quotation from Sen. Kennedy’s letter and his invocation of national character. The prime distinction between the FDR-LBJ era to the Reagan-Shrub era was the shift from a Social Gospel, “I am my brother’s keeper because I am my brother”, “we’re all in this together” v. the Neo-Puritan, every man for himself, social Darwinism. Obama throughout the campaign and in his policy approaches is moving public policy back to the Social Gospel. He made it clear in the speech that his Health care interest is in government as helping those who can’t help themselves and need some assistance. Not the Bush approach of only giving help to those who “deserve” help based upon some, generally, theological moral basis. The book “Hellfire Nation” by James Morone elaborates on these themes, though for a pre-Shrub era.
Why I love people who chalk the quad…
None of my 9am classes never really leave me feeling engaged or excited to learn. That’s why much of the time I have my head down after walking out of lecture, and am lucky enough to see some of the many chalk and stencil markings that line the quad.
I learn something new each day- today I learned that “ROTC discriminates against gays”. (Not something I would doubt)
Defining Power
How would you define power, in a political sense? Like my last few posts, this one is inspired by Professor Larry Klugman. On the first day of his political science course he defined Power with the following formula:
Power = Access + Process
Four U of I alums named to the BoT
Governor Quinn has named four new members to the BoT, all of whom are U of I alumni.
The new members are:
- Former Springfield Mayor Karen Hasara
- Timothy Koritz, a staff anesthesiologist at Rockford Memorial Hospital
- Pamela Strobel, retired executive vice president and chief administrative office of Exelon
- Carlos Tortolero, the president of the National Museum of Mexican Art.
A Game of Twenty Questions with the Constitution
This post was also inspired by Professor Larry Klugman. He picked up a digital “20 Questions” game at Walmart for a few dollars to play around with it. He figured it would contain many commonly picked items, but thought its range would be somewhat limited. Klugman reports that it successfully guessed what he was thinking of well within twenty questions, until he tried “The Constitution.”
This time he beat the machine by lasting more than 20 questions. On the 24th attempt, the machine finally ventured a guess. It didn’t get “Constitution” but the answer was still intriguing.
The item the machine guessed was “a receipt.” Professor Klugman urged me to share this with the blog, noting he thought the answer was surprisingly intellectual. In many ways the Constitution is a receipt for our democracy.
Question for the Carmenites
This blog has become one forum for Ira Carmenites to discuss how much they thought of him. I have had the benefit of taking courses with many extraordinary professors over the years, and in Political Science two stand above the rest. One is Carmen, and the other is a community college professor in Decatur Illinois named Larry Klugman. I’m also lucky that both of these greats correspond with me from time to time. A few days ago Klugman forwarded an email to a group of his friends and asked, “If you heard on the news I was convicted of a crime, what crime would it be.” He was very entertained by the series of answers he received. Maybe Professor Carmen would be too.
So here’s the question:
If you heard on the news tomorrow that Ira Carmen were arrested, what crime would you be most likely to assume he committed?
Have fun with it.
What if Herman and White were Both Fired Tomorrow?
As the U of I community debates whether or not Chancellor Herman and President White should be fired or forced to resign from their positions, some have argued that if would pose a huge continuity problem for the University of Illinois if the two top dogs had to be replaced at the same time.
At the core of the position of Chancellor and President are the following roles: the public face, the fundraiser, the community leader, the provider of values and vision, and the public servant. White and Herman can no longer effectively play these roles. Both have violated the public trust, forever tainted their own integrity, diminished their effectiveness as fundraisers, embarrassed themselves and the university, and enraged lawmakers in Springfield who are now less likely to fund us (with the added excuse of not wanting to pay inflated salaries of these jokers). There is no question that White and Herman cannot provide the people of Illinois with the best possible leadership of the University of Illinois. This is the most important criteria the BoT and Pat Quinn should use when determining whether White and Herman should be retained.
Although anytime any leader of a bureaucracy the size of the University of Illinois is replaced there will necessarily be a transition period, here the resulting administrative hiccup would be much less damaging than retaining Richard Herman and B. Joe White. White and Herman aren’t exactly steering the boat alone. The University has an ever-expanding army of senior administrative personnel who can keep the wheels going round even if we had to name an Interim-President and Interim-Chancellor tomorrow. Read more…
Emily Frank’s response to my letter in the Daily Illini
I appreciate Emily’s response (http://bit.ly/3inYm) to my letter in the Daily Illini (http://bit.ly/1uZudn) , but I’d love to know— what vested interest does she have in defending Housing’s utterly pitiful response to Thursday’s flood?
She’s not a housing resident (as she mentioned in her letter) and lives in a house. Frank can in no way compare her situation to our situation at Allen. Living in a house means that the resident is responsible for most maintenance issues. Living in University Housing means that the University is responsible for all maintenance issues.