Healthy Ideas for a Sick Healthcare System

Last week I mentioned that the healthcare industry isn’t something that would benefit from socialization, but it should be apparent to everybody that even mildly pays attention that something must be done, and done soon.  Medicare is in dire straits, and as prices continue to mount, the situation will only become worse, subjecting not only individuals, but states as well to ever increasing budget short falls.  As I stated earlier, there are 120 bankruptcies every hour due to medical costs in America.  What happens when states themselves start to declare bankruptcy when they can’t meet their burden? more »

The Library at Night: A Book Review

The Library at Night, by Alberto Manguel, is simply the best non-fiction book I have read since Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe.  There are two things I look for in a non-fiction book, the author’s clarity of voice, which is imperative in conveying ideas to the reader in a way that is not only informative, but makes the reader want to read more.  The second item is what really does the author have to say, and how does he relate it to something I can understand in my own life.

To provide Alberto Manguel’s bona fides, I will refer to only one item.  He was named an officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France.  This may not seem like much except that Manguel was born in Argentina, and the French are very nationalistic when it comes to appointments like this.  A Library at Night starts just as the title suggests, in his own recently built library, a resurrected barn in a small village in France.  I will admit that the main reason I enjoyed this book so much is because in talking about libraries, Manguel has to discuss their inhabitants, books.

This book is both more and less than I thought it was going to be.  It is not just a list of great libraries throughout time, even though the library of Alexandria in ancient Egypt does make an early appearance.  It is not a prescriptive book on how to set up a library, though one chapter does look at a variety of ways books have been cataloged.  Rather than just the books, though, Manguel relates the cataloging of books to how we as humans tie subjects together in our minds.  How do we relate philosophy, history, theology, religion, architecture, art and literature to each other?  There have almost been as many systems in cataloging as there are people who have done the cataloging.

Manguel doesn’t focus only on large libraries, whether national or university, but also on personal libraries.  He equates the books collected in a personal library as a kind of road map to the collector’s personality.  His understanding of and research about the public and personal libraries he discusses is encyclopedic, though he is never pedantic.  From this, one can tell he has spent a great deal of time in libraries, large and small, public and private, which builds to the main thesis of the book:  Libraries, not banks or trading firms, should be the depositories of any nation’s culture.

Manguel not only touches on libraries that have existed, but exist no more, destroyed by time or war.  He laments heavily on the looting of the National Library of Iraq after the invasion in 2003 as well as the National Archives and Museum of that country.  Most of the artifacts of these buildings have still to be recovered.  He also talks about libraries, no matter how small, that have managed to exist against all odds, from the Buddhist scrolls sealed up in a cave on the silk route, undiscovered until the late 19^th century, to the small collection of books held by Jews in a number of concentration camps during World War II, or the prisoner’s reading library in a Russian work camp in Siberia that held more titles of banned books than the public at large had access to.  Manguel even goes on to discuss libraries that have never existed anywhere but within the pages of books or in the meanderings of our own minds.

Ranging from the architecture of libraries through time and different countries to the different functions of the librarian to our thoughts and understandings of those depositories of knowledge, Manguel’s writing functions only to spur the reader on, hoping against hope that this will be one of those books that has no ending, but where there is a front cover there must also be a back cover.  Look around your house; see what you have on your shelves.  What would it say about you?  Even if you were to start with the books Manguel mentions in The Library at Night, you would have the beginning of one of the most eclectic and interesting libraries around.

An Opportunity

There are now thirty-eight million people on food stamps.  Unemployment has risen to a point not seen in a quarter of a century.  Homelessness not just for individuals, but for families is becoming a larger issue, many children getting the best meals during the day at their schools.  Every hour, 120 people declare bankruptcy, not due to home foreclosure, but because of medical bills.  With unemployment rising, there are more and more people on the rolls of the uninsured.  Have I forgotten anything? more »

Books, Texts and Disks

Reading, no matter how much I enjoy doing other things in the moment of doing them, will always fall in the top three of my favorite things to do.  Technology, mostly the internet, has made them even more available, not just through online retailers of brick and mortar stores, but access to used bookstores across the country and even overseas through services such as Alibris and Abebooks.  Sites such as these have made books available that are currently out of print, but also books at a much more affordable rate (on some purchases I have paid more for shipping than for the book).  Add to that the number of sites where one can find etexts and the list becomes almost endless.  You think I would be beside myself with delirium.  I’m not. more »

The Individual in the Crowd

One of the strongest myths concerning America is the idea of the rugged individualist.  But is the idea really true?  Humans are social animals, and from the times we were living in caves to the present day, we depend on others for our survival.  In fact today, how many of us could survive on our own?  Do you know how and when to plant seeds for crops?  Could you raise and then butcher a chicken, much less a cow?  There was a point in our history, where most Americans could do this, the subsistence farmer.  The further we move down the road of technology, the more we rely on others to help us out, to enable us to not only survive, but to thrive. more »

One from the Sketchbook

I was talking with a young artist about what could be done with crosshatching.  I had my large sketchbook with me so I quickly scribbled an eye for her to see what it would look like.

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Socialism-Pro or Con?

There has been a great deal of talk about socialism from the Republicans in congress to the corner of Ashley River Road and Magwood Drive.  However, there seems to be a lot of confusion about the word and what socialism is.  Socialism in the broadest sense of the term is the underpinning for what communism used to be.  I say used to be because this has changed greatly since China changed their policy towards capitalistic economic models.  In fact, even in China today, you have to pay for your healthcare.  There are only a couple of countries that have fully socialized medicine. more »

The Medical Leap (from West Of)

I predict within the next 15-20 years,  the medical field will see a jump in advances and technology similar to what the computer industry has in the last decade.  What will this mean not only for the beneficiaries of the medical advancements, but the country as well?  Given a quality of life that ensures mobility and productive thought, I can see the life expectancy increasing to 120 in the lifetimes of those living today.

Let’s start with the moral issues.  Here I am not talking about an embryo or human cloning, but rather a question that hasn’t really been raised yet.  What is life at the end of the spectrum?  If you remember the Terry Schiavo case, and how the government got involved with that, then you will know I am talking about.  With advancements in medicines and technology in the coming decades, it may be possible to keep people “alive” indefinitely.  This could especially be true as we learn more about how the brain works, and how the electrical field between synapses is created, and can be recreated or sustained by us.  It is possible that there could be many people in the shadow area between life and death.  Death is another question in itself.  If we are going to have life spans of say 120 years, then what will be thought of those people who refuse medical procedures that would prolong their life, whether implants of new organs, technological devices or monitoring systems.  Would the right to life groups weigh in as heavily on keeping people alive?  Could people be forced to undergo medical procedures they don’t want just to sustain their lives?  Would it be considered suicide not to do everything one can do medically to prolong one’s life?

The next set of problems is on the social and political fronts.  Having life spans greatly lengthened would have a huge impact on our society.  Currently, our population is growing only through immigration.  If it weren’t for the people coming into America, we would actually be shrinking, like many other countries around the globe.  But what if we were to live to be 120 years old?  I am not sure how the length of reproduction would be affected, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t be extended as well, considering advances in artificial insemination.  This has two consequences, either the population we have will balloon because of the growing segment of older people; or, if we are able to maintain a sustainable population, then the number of older citizens will greatly outmatch those of younger generations.  Social Security and Medicare are both in serious trouble now, imagine if they had to support three to four times as many people.  But this itself raises another issue.  When will we retire if we live to be 120?  Except for those with lucrative enough careers and the planning to do so, very few people will be able to retire at sixty-five and go on to live a comfortable life for another fifty to sixty years.  If medicine were to grant us lives as long as pictured here, then it would be a bonus to the social net programs to have people paying into them until they are one hundred years old.  This would help greatly to stabilize the system as it now exists.  But here is the big question, as far as I am concerned.  Would you want to work for eighty or one hundred years before you retired?  This, to me, seems an interminable length of time to spend at work.

I am not sure if I will see medicine and society come to this point, but I think it is a safe bet to say that people living now, those who are young enough, will see their lives and quality of life greatly extended over a century.  It may be that we do not have to address these issues immediately, but the medical advances will come, and with those advances, consequences.  We must start taking an active stance concerning our future and what kind of society we want to be.

The Fruits of Spring (from West Of)

Soon the fruits of Spring will be here, the fruits and  vegetables, and long, clement days.  If you are fortunate, you have a garden of your own to work in.  Due to number of large oak trees, I get very little light, so growing things (even grass) presents a problem.  Having fresh produce available is one of the best things you can ask to have in your house.  This is doubly true, now that people have cut back in their spending.  The more you have in the garden, the less you spend at the store.  If you don’t have a garden, or have only a small one, then the next best thing is the farmers’ market. more »

Where are the Republicans Going? (from West Of)

Are we down to a one party political system?  For a democracy, this can’t be a good thing, and if we are going to be stuck with only two parties, then they should both be as strong as possible.  I have heard from a number of conservative pundits (not the zealots), that the Republican Party runs the risk of becoming a regional party, viable only in the South and upper plains states.  That bodes ill not only for the Republican Party, but for the nation as a whole.  There are a number of problems as I see it. more »