Date-iversary

Last Thursday was the anniversary of my first date with my [new] husband, Jeff. He decided it was a proper occasion for flowers:

...and delicious dinner at the restaurant where we had our first date, Thai Noodle House:

Afterward, we took a walk and enjoyed...the stifling heat of Texas. We like being married so far :)

Healthcare and how individuals can help

Something you may already know about healthcare, but is good to read, here.  And another article about how to cut your own costs here.

If you don't want to read it (lazybones), at least read this:

Doctors are afraid of being sued. Does that contribute to excessive treatment?

Fear of malpractice suits is universal among physicians. It's sometimes a legitimate reason to order tests, and it's sometimes an excuse.

How can a patient keep from being subjected to all these needless tests and procedures?

You should go to your doctor with an attitude of healthy skepticism. And don't be afraid to ask questions. Do I really need this CAT scan? Do I really need to go to a specialist? If you don't feel as if you've gotten adequate answers from your doctor, go to another doctor.

Medicare is soon going to bust the U.S. budget. Could the changes you are talking about prevent that?

If you reduced expected spending growth in Medicare by one percentage point per year below where it is now, you would save over $1 trillion over the next 15 years. Medicare goes from the red to being in the black.

Could the cost savings be enough to enable us to insure everyone?

If we fixed the way we deliver care so that doctors are rewarded for providing good care at low cost, we could afford it. We have an incredible opportunity to make American medicine the envy of the world, and cover everybody. 

Laughing With

This is the video of the song "Laughing With" by one of my favorite female musicians, Regina Spektor.  She just released this new album last week.  What do you think of the lyrics? (Read them here)

A Weekend Project

Last week I found two matching milk glass lamps at the thrift store (I wish I had taken this picture before I got rid of the lampshades; they were absurd and ruffly):

So I took the lamps apart, cleaned all the pieces...

...painted all the metal and plastic pieces...

...replaced the wiring, bought some nice lampshades, put it all back together, and came out with a set of lovely, one-of-a-kind lamps to add to our humble abode:

Between the cost of the lamps, new wiring, and lampshades, they ended up costing ~$20 each. Hurray for great Goodwill finds and weekend projects!

A cost-saving tip I learned during this project: check in the electrical supplies of the hardware store for pieces like the actual light socket. I found the plug/wire in the lighting department, and the sockets there were about $2 more than they were in the electrical department.

Iran

I'm not sure if you've kept up with what is going on in Iran, but it's something worth reading about if you have not yet. There's actually not a lot of information available because Iran is doing everything in its power to keep information from leaving the country. This summary will get you up to speed (begin reading at "Suppression of Dissent - The Players"); this would be a good place to start if you knew very little about what is going on. Another good overview by NYTimes.

This CNN article gives eyewitness descriptions of the beatings taking place in Iran right now. And I have no words in response to this:

During a Saturday afternoon news conference Ahmadinejad compared the violent crackdown against the protesters to a citation after a traffic ticket.

A lot of the atrocities government officials are ordering in Iran remind me of the Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City in 1968. After hundreds of unarmed high school and university students were killed, surrounding apartment buildings were raided and witnesses were killed--all by government-ordered military forces. Phone lines and power were cut off in the area, much the way all methods of [non-government] communication have been cut off in Iran now.

I don't quite understand the thought processes that go into repressing people with violence to maintain power and control. If you don't have the support of the very people you govern, what's the point?

Assuming the accusations of election foul play are true, I'm not so sure Khamenei and Ahmadinejad foresaw this type of disaster. Let's at least hope not.

Thoughts on Culture in Education in America

"When should culture be taught?

Culture should be taught when we have students to teach."

-Ned Seelye, Teaching Culture: Strategies for Intercultural Communication (1974)

In researching for my Master's Report, I'm currently reading the above-quoted book, and I found one of his points necessary to share.

Though Seelye specifically works as a Spanish language teacher and discusses the teaching of culture in a foreign language classroom, he advocates the incorporation of cultural knowledge into all our courses in education and as early as possible.  He acknowledges the teacher's concern with how this can be done (i.e., "How would I even teach that, assuming I had time?"), but emphasizes that teaching culture is about equipping students with skills to study, inquire, and relate with other cultures, rather than with information (trivia-type facts) about other cultures.  "While a convenient place to begin learning about the target culture is in our foreign language classes, culture must be taught systematically in addition to purely linguistic concerns. ...[J]ust as culture cannot be ignored in foreign language classes the role of language in human thought cannot be ignored in social studies classes that aspire to develop intercultural communication skills."

I think Seelye's point about including intercultural skills in all subjects would clearly be an effective change in our schools, but I think editing our views and practices in foreign languages could have drastic and positive effects, as well.

I've spoken with many people who wish their children had the opportunity to study languages in public school as early as kindergarten or elementary school.  It seems that generally people assume that learning languages that early is the "best" way to do it (there's research that indicates advantages to children and others to adults, so whatever your age, you have skills that will help you greatly), and I wonder if we might be able to begin with our children by teaching language with an emphasis on intercultural communication.  In this way, students would progress through their early years of school with this recurring theme of cultural curiosity and understanding that would not only be a healthy social change for us in the U.S., but would also be an amazing way of teaching our students to use critical and independent thinking skills.  Not to mention it would provide us with an opportunity to learn how to use the metric system, which to this day eludes me; I wish I had been taught to think in both Metric and U.S. customary systems.  --That's a personal motive, of course.

But if we seriously considered the benefits that exist for teaching our students foreign languages from primary school through college, we would be astounded.  One problem we have is that our timeline for learning a language is skewed; taking a language for two years does not guarantee that you will be an "intermediate" level learner.  We don't teach English (or any other subject) that way, so why would we teach other languages in such a rushed manner?  Teaching languages long-term throughout school would allow students to reach near-native proficiency by the time they leave public schools.  Multi-lingual, globally conscious, culturally sensitive graduating classes from our high schools would go on to college and the world to make strong, qualified, intelligent leaders.  Why would we not want to seize this opportunity?

I don't foresee these types of changes in the U.S., though they would certainly have positive and lasting effects on future generations.  Other countries recognize the benefits of multilingualism.  I only hope we can someday recognize them, too.

Husband of the Year

Let it be known, men: it will always be a good thing to bring flowers and chocolate ice cream home from work...