October 2009
2 posts
“I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire...”
– E. B. White (via jessicalee)
August 2009
3 posts
Gendered communication
Lately, as I’m faced with opportunities to speak to larger audiences who are often older and more senior than what I was used to in school, I’ve become intrigued with the observation that men and women express themselves differently, especially in a public speaking context. Unfortunately, finding role models for this task as a professional woman is more difficult than it should be, so...
Yes, it could get worse
As a person who staunchly believes that our health care system is in appalling shape, I’ve nevertheless come to the conclusion, especially after observing recent turns in the health care debate, that reform could lead to situations worse than the status-quo. For example,
An individual mandate passes without ensuring low-cost insurance options exist for poor patients (subsidies might patch...
“Don’t be the AMA circa 2001 or the recording industry, clinging to your own...”
– Susannah Fox of Pew Internet & American Life Project at the Health 2.0 conference in San Diego, CA (3/4/08).
July 2009
7 posts
Do we devalue the poor?
Peter Singer, utilitarian philosopher and bioethicist, wrote in “Why We Must Ration Health Care” (New York Times, 7/15/09) -
“[I]f the stories of Bruce Hardy and Jack Rosser lead us to think badly of the British system of rationing health care, we should remind ourselves that the U.S. system also results in people going without life-saving treatment — it just does so less...
“As economists have often pointed out, we pay doctors for quantity, not quality....”
– Atul Gwande, The New Yorker, 6/09
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande
“Indeed, most of the intrapreneurs we interviewed appear to have cast off...”
– From “The Social Intrapreneur - A Field Guide for Corporate Changemakers”
Entreprenuership university?
Seth Godin once offered a program for a few individuals to forego the MBA and instead learn everything they need by working intensively on innovative projects.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/12/if-you-could-ch.html
What if we did this with undergraduate education?
What if universities picked students based not on SAT scores or high school transcripts, but on evidence of focused...
Growing ideas and organizations is like raising children: you conveive and birth them, fuss and fawn over their first steps, and guide them as they take shape. You build a strong network around them, nurture them in an environment of honest criticism and praise, and give them space to grow. If you do it again, hopefully you’ll have learned lessons from your first, but keep in mind that each...
Reviving American conservatism
I stumbled upon a Newsweek article about Henry Fairlie, a British political columnist from the late 20th century who effectively predicted the downfall of the Republican party today. How to revive American conservatism? “It means finding a way to uphold our best traditions while ceasing to profess ‘a conservatism that is just one long grouch at the 20th century.’ It means...
June 2009
14 posts
“It is not selfishness to do what you want. Selfishness is forcing someone else...”
– The grandmother of a NYTimes reader (it’s weird what you run into)
What does popular media say about how we feel...
After ER turned in its final episode and “Grey’s Anatomy” turned from dissecting disease to dissecting the ebbs and flows of Meredith and McDreamy’s relationship, there’s been a slew of new medical dramas. First, there was “Private Practice,” a spin-off of “Grey’s” that subtly draws contrast between the settings. More recently,...
Can public education help us find answers in...
I’ve recently been struck by how similar the incentives for performance are between health care and education systems. Using a Newsweek article from 6/6/09 (http://www.newsweek.com/id/200896), I’ve drawn out these rough parallels:
Challenges:
“…the Blob, the collection of educatocrats and politicians who claim to support reform but remain fiercely committed to the status...
Service metrics
40 Accenture consultants
2.5 hours
1204 boxes
30,000 lbs of food delivered to senior citizens in need
Metrics can be a powerful reinforcement for service. Great job, SF food bank!
Innovation in gene use vs. technology
“We have got the same basic building blocks and plumbing [as other species], but we use it in ways that are unprecedented.”
- Prof. Robert Sapolsky, at Stanford Class Day 2009.
Isn’t this the same as innovation in social media? We use the same platforms (Twitter, facebook, Google), but it’s the way we use them - for health care, social connection, or political dissent -...