http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC4LBdSnhkE

It’s scary that the mayor of a city at the forefront of technological and intellectual development is subscribing to an unsubstantiated and xenophobic rumor.  Obama was born in Hawaii.  He possesses a legal birth certificate.  And finally, the announcement of his birth was published in a local newspaper.

It’s clear to me that Mayor Schweighart is operating at the radical fringes of the Republican Party.  That’s why he was at a Champaign Tea Party Event.  Rather than representing the fiscally conservative values on local issues that he was most likely elected on, he has chosen to participate in an extremist group.

In addition to spreading false rumors about Barack Obama’s citizenship, Tea Party members have attacked members of congress with racial slurs, harassed a supporter of Healthcare Reform who has Parkinson’s, and compared the Obama Administration to a Nazi regime.

Mayor Schweighart isn’t an idiot.  He’s smart and politically calculating.  And that’s what’s scary about him-he runs the City of Champaign like a police state.  He’s a former officer himself.

Last year, police were dispatched to the Safe Haven tent community near the Catholic Worker house to photograph and harass homeless residents after Gateway Studios closed its doors.  And after Kiwane Carrington, an unarmed teen attempting to enter a family friend’s home (where he was welcome), was fatally shot by Officer Daniel Norbits, no formal apology was issued by Mayor Schweighart or Chief RT Finney of the Champaign Police.   Instead, Officer Norbits and Chief Finney both returned to work.  Chief Finney should heed calls from C-U citizens and community groups for his resignation.

If Champaign ever wants to be an innovative environment, it needs to move past this culture of racism.  In order to do this, we must clean house and elect a mayor and city council that is receptive to the community.

This is not a new phenomenon; many other Web sites exist that provide free news to their viewers, making it hard for traditional profit-oriented news publications to stay competitive. The advent of online news has created questions for many publications that previously relied on monetary support of print newspaper subscribers. These customers, many of which rely on the up-to-date content of the Internet, seldom have the need for a daily subscription.

The article mentions that large news corporation conglomerants such as Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation have accused Google of “stealing content from them”, though Google maintains that “it helps publishers by bringing them new readers” and also mentioned the various technical measures that sites can take to limit which parts of its articles readers can view.

As a journalist, I embrace the technological advancement of multimedia because of how easily it can be accessed by readers as well as how it adds to the depth of a story. Some readers are very visual and may not even look at a story if it does not have a video or audio element to it; it centers around personal preference. I believe that convergence adds a sort of element to telling a story that investigative journalism has never seen before. Overall, I think that many people are much more connected to what is going on around them because of these technological innovations.

But there is no doubt that the journalism industry is in a time of change, not just in regards to mediums of information, but from a economic standpoint as well. Admittedly, the monetary condition of this profession is somewhat of a valid concern. However, the view of journalism as a business or “selling stories” is not something that I support. The purpose of journalism throughout history has been to inform the public; extreme connection to the corporate world has its dangers. I hope that in its future, news never turns into the sort of commodity that one “buys” in order to have access to it and that readers are never viewed as mere “consumers” of what is written.

GOOGLE’S ANSWER: “LIVING STORIES”

Today’s New York Times reports Google’s answer to corporate media’s complaints: the company has began an experiment, the “Living Stories” project, which has been assembled along with reporters, editors and web producers at the New York Times and the Washington Post. According to the article, all content on the site is sorted by subject in reverse chronological order, giving readers a taste of each article in a series.

I think this could prove to be a wonderful solution; Google seems to be effectively maintaining the balancing act of satisfying both readers and the preservation of the monetary condition of the industry. It should be interesting to see where the idea heads.

An average UI undergraduate student sees the Chancellor twice in his college career: convocation and commencement.  There is no meaningful interaction, only massmails that are used to maintain the University’s public relations image.  As students with rising tuition and fees, however, we did pay his $350,000 base salary.

When I was college shopping during my junior year in high school, I remembered a tour guide at a pretentious east coast school exclaiming that her university’s president hosted a weekly coffee hour open to any student.  Another tour guide told us that the president of her school invites graduating seniors in small groups to a dinner at his home.  I do contend that these are very different schools, with populations of around 9000 students compared to our 42,000.

The average student here probably doesn’t know who the Chancellor is/was, let alone that a Vice Chancellor for Public Engagement even exists.  Sure, we need to keep our surrounding community engaged and interested in order to prevent a civil war between the UI and the greater Champaign-Urbana area.  But what about student engagement? Our needs and concerns need to be considered equally important as those of the donors who keep this institution afloat.  As students, we should at least be treated like constituents or consumers.  Why is it a prerequisite that a student who wants to voice a question or concern to a member of the administration must be savvy at navigating through a bureaucracy?  Perhaps this is why the rate of student giving at the university is so low.

Image courtesy of CITES at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

Students and members of student government shouldn’t have to come to the administration, the administration should come to students.  What kind of place do we attend where administrators handpick student senators to serve on “campus committees”?  When tough questions need to be asked both on these committees and around campus, it may be difficult after that administrator gave you the resume booster of serving on the Campus Lighting Committee or the Public Safety Advisory Committee and even a letter of recommendation for your law school application.

There is a simple fix to this solution- holding office hours or even a quarterly forum open to all students and publicized accordingly.  Hey, I can see a purposeful use of the massmail system!   While we’re at it, let’s actually make good use of the term that President White so often recycled during the admissions scandal.  A firewall needs to be set up to protect ISS and the Office of the Student Trustee from administrative influence so these two units remain accurate voices of the student body.

Remember in elementary school when we once believed that our teachers lived at school?  It’s funny that you never run into the Chancellor or any of the Vice Chancellors around campus- not once have I bumped into any of them while waiting in a Campustown food line.  I’m starting to look back at this grade school superstition and think that our administrators must live in the Swanlund Building.

We don’t yet know who our next Chancellor is going to be and what kind of a leader they are.  Let’s hope that he or she steps out of the Swanlund Building and decides to take a serious look at these issues and practices.

The trend, I believe, does not just exist with MySpace and Facebook. Other sites, such as Twitter, also promote a sort of language abbreviation. Don’t get me wrong, I support Twitter and its use in our society. But think about it: one only has a 140 character limit in each post. We’re currently living in a society where abbreviated messages and to-the-point news is valued because of the speed of technology.

It is correct to view a dictionary as a tool for understanding active language. Many forms of slang have evolved from the Internet and social networking systems that have introduced a vast array of new vocabulary used in everyday life. The Oxford Dictionary, as well as many others, make it a point of adding new words to their lists all the time in order to keep the dictionary in sync with current language usage. In fact, Oxford contained as many as 301,100 entries in 2005. Many argue, shouldn’t the dictionary include made-up words? If one is unaware of the meaning of commonly used slang, shouldn’t he/she be able to look it up?

Yes. I do agree that the dictionary needs to act as a sort of accurate account of language use within today’s society. But voting a made-up word as Word of the Year? I feel that “unfriend”, along with many others, has become the slang form of what could be said in better English, and without much more effort. And for Oxford to honor this makes me question what the distinction will someday be between formal writing and casual speech. Do we really need to continue the trend of language abbreviation? I’m sure if one flipped open a dictionary, there exists an entire page of words that he/she didn’t even know existed, that simply haven’t been used because they’re “too long” or “too much effort”. But why should we use all the same words as everyone else and let these cool, less-known words die out?

It’s good that some parts of language are adjusting to the fast-paced world of online news and communication. As a journalist, I embrace this. And admittedly, dictionaries need to be up to date. However, I still think some old vocabulary words have their place and should be appreciated. And Oxford honoring “unfriend” seems a bit over the top.

The runner-up for Word of the Year was “sexting”. Classy, Oxford.

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

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.

One thing that we don’t really hear about in healthcare debates, particularly when comparing the United States to other countries is that virtually all of the other countries with universal healthcare also have much tighter social webs, community life, and place less emphasis on individualism. I don’t think there is a direct 1:1 correlation between community attachment and healthcare spending, only that there is an indirect link that probably hasn’t been studied very much. A few areas strike me here as very likely areas where this matters a lot:

1) the elderly. Older people are notoriously lonely, especially in the US. In my relatively limited travel, I’ve noticed that older people rarely live alone in other places, they usually live in multi-generational households. They watch their grandkids (or great grandkids) and their children take care of them. The psychological toll of that constant loneliness really gets to people and lonely people are more likely to be depressed, get sick, and generally be less happy. I imagine that older people like to see their doctors more because they have someone to talk to. Hell a lot of older people I know base a good chunk of their social lives around discussing their health conditions and ailments. Who better than a doctor . . . which leads me to . . .

2) Hypochondriacs. People who think they are always sick. Have a sore thoat? Maybe it’s tonsilitis. Oh God! a bump on your neck? must be a tumor…or so WebMD suggests. More information isn’t good if the person receiving the information doesn’t know how to interpret it properly, but that’s an aside. Without people, family, close friends, co-workers to give us that reality check and tell us it’s ok, every sneeze sends us to the doctor and every chest pain demands an MRI. Which of course leads to . . .

3) Pill Popping. Suburban housewives are huge drug users. They just pop prozac and antidepressants. They put their kids on ritalin because they’re hyper (really? a hyper kid needs medication? Really? God what would have happened to me if ritalin were widely prescribed when I was 5). We turn ourselves into blank zombies. We’re not any happier because of all of the pills. We don’t feel any better. If anything our isolation and self-medication make us feel worse, hate our lives, and become depressed. Which leads me to . . .

4) Psychiatric Care. Now I’ve never been to a psychiatrist, a psychologist, or a therapist of any kind. Some who know me well enough might suggest it could help. Maybe, maybe not. I have, however, known many people with severe problems who were and are on multiple meds and seeing multiple therapists. Some people genuinely need this. For a lot of people, however, I get the feeling that having a loving family around and good, supportive friends would be as good or better. Even people with serious issues could probably benefit from a tight social network. I’m not spouting here, because I’ve seen the difference in people (primarily with depression) who deal dramatically better with their issues when they’re around family and friends than when they feel alone.

And of course all this stems from the belief that *I* (not me specifically, but the Ego “I”) am a special and unique snowflake and my life is worth an infinite amount of money (well as long as I’m not picking up the tab) and of course so are my loved ones’. Now when it comes to *your* life  and you will cost a million dollars for the possibility of living another two months, to hell with you. Ah the Ego bias.

This isn’t nuts, it’s probably a series “well duh” things. I know. But no one’s talking about it.

Point being that we can do a lot to “fix” health care by expanding coverage, cutting costs and all that jazz, but we may still face higher costs than we have to because of our culture of isolation and individualism. I’m not suggesting we all hug and sing kumbaya. I’m not suggesting we have group hugs (although I do enjoy hugs). Point simply being that we’re treating conditions more than we need to or that probably shouldn’t exist as a result of our culture. I don’t know how to “fix” it. I don’t know that it can be “fixed.” Just an observation.

I learn something new each day-  today I learned that “ROTC discriminates against gays”.  (Not something I would doubt)

I also learned on my first day that Chancellor Herman’s admission, in the view of some, should be denied.  Not quite sure what it really means, but I always get a kick out of it when I see it written on sidewalks and benches.

I especially enjoy the calls to “end rape”, “save the environment”, and “protect human rights”, but my favorites are the random sayings adhered to telephone poles and street lights.

Just thought I’d give a shout out to the guys and gals who help lift up my spirits after many sleep-inducing lectures.

Max

Power = Access + Process

The new members are:

1. Former Springfield Mayor Karen Hasara
2. Timothy Koritz, a staff anesthesiologist at Rockford Memorial Hospital
3. Pamela Strobel, retired executive vice president and chief administrative office of Exelon
4. Carlos Tortolero, the president of the National Museum of Mexican Art.