Cobb

It's My Birthday

It turns out that I don't have enough dosh on the credit card at this particular moment to do what it was I wanted for this, my 49th birthday. What I wanted to do was rent a Porsche or Ferrari and take a spritely drive up the California Coast. I had my mixtape all prepared.

But that's OK. I'm in a zone of living which is almost devoid of want. In many ways, I have reached aspects of that plateau I sought long ago when I first studied the Tao. The most important thing to me is that my children attain happiness and success in their lives, and I realize completely that I am not in control of that. I am happy every day to be near them. They are some of the best people I know.

Secondly, it is my desire to fulfill all of the commitments I make on a regular basis in my professional life. I am one of the fortunate people who understands exactly what good and what a difference I make in my work.

Thirdly, and new for me, I am committed to putting my physical health as a premium. My intent is to step outside of the life of the mind and get back into my body. I haven't done this seriously in over 25 years. The last time I did, being me as I run from one extreme to the other, I got to the point where I could play beach volleyball 4 hours straight and cycled 70 miles a week. Half that would be sufficient, except this time I'm going to swim. All I need to know, Jack LaLanne taught me 40 years ago.

Fourthly, I want to thank my friends and readers with whom I have shared my writing and thinking over the past 17 years at The Well, SCAA, Brainstorms, Vision Circle and Cobb. You have been the reason I have been able to sustain my sanity in a career that takes me around the country like George Clooney in 'Up In The Air'. I know virtual links are weak links, but there are a good number of you who have a strong presence in my life. I am virtually always there for you as you have been for me. And this especially applies to those of you I have known since the 70s with whom I have reconnected -  if only over the web. 

I feel very good at this point in my life. I don't have as much power as I thought I might have if I had done the right things at the right time. I still haven't made the Dosh Point. But I like the kind of popularity and third rate celebrity that I have received and I am thankful to the people that made that happen. I am a much more satisfied and content individual than I thought my personality would allow, and I consider myself fortunate to have had people to both listen to me and to tell me to shut the hell up.

I am most proud of my extended family, who just by being family, have enriched my life and given me the willpower to resist the numerous and sundry venal temptations of American life. Knowing your love for me is always there helps keep me honest.

--

This almost sounds like a retirement speech, but it's just another moment to reflect on life and make sure that I don't just cruise through it without stopping to think, and thank. At this moment in my writing life I am dedicated to be more analytical and will try to blend that interest more into my work and avocation. But I'll talk about that later...

Thank you all so much for the birthday love. I am touched.  Life is great because all of you are.

Academic Overcompensation

Before WW2 most Americans didn't go to college. Now most expect to. We have forgotten how to be a middle class country. The middle class of America is basically disrespected by the media that is the mouth, if not the conscience of the nation. Too many yuppies. I also think, too many academics that cater to those yuppies, and I think those academics know it.

If you want to know how I really feel about academics, I can sum it up in one story - a story Cobb readers may be familiar with. It is the story of how I went to an academic conference at Harvard filled with mostly black superstar professors including Kilson, Bell, West and Guinier and informed them about this thing called the Internet. I had on a baseball cap, backwards of course, with my email address on it. This was 1992. I was considered to be a creature from Mars. A few years later, this same crowd had invented something called the Digital Divide and proposed that things like Moore's Law didn't apply to black people. They could not imagine the world we live in today. 

You should note how obvious it is that nobody talks about the Digital Divide. Nor do people give much credibility to language like the following, or maybe they do...

Styles of discourse are not natural. They differ from culture to culture, and are a product of socialization. Socialization takes place through institutions--the family, schools, religious traditions, etc. Men and women are socialized to different styles of discourse in this culture (again, I refer you to the voluminous and oft-duplicated research on this question). When women adopt male discursive strategies, they're punished for it (again, see the research on conversational patterns and the disruption caused by women embracing "male" speech patterns, and see both my posts [and other women's posts] to this list). The mechanisms of punishment are engaged automatically, without deliberate or conscious effort on the part of the men in the conversation because that is simply the "normal" reaction to female speech that challenges the status quo. That's the very definition of institutionalized oppression--when enforcement mechanisms become diffuse, naturalized, and automatic, so that no individual needs to take responsibility for keeping another in her place. It just "happens."

But that was essentially an argument in support of the idea that the internet is a white male discursive space incapable of supporting the ideas of women - that it's maleness was baked into its very fabric. I no longer pay attention to that sort of talk. Quite frankly I don't think the author does either. Because, after all it is an academically researched reason for women to discount what discussions take place in this medium, which both preposterous and academically sound. Then again I'm of the sort that often discounts academic discourse for practical reasons. It's the same two edged sword.

It occurs to me today that academics, especially those whose aim is to support social justice, understand very well that they cater to the chatting classes who exist on the fringes of relevance. But a constant stream of undergraduates must confirm in them some value. Underlying the journeyman's job of undergraduate edjumacation must be higher aspirations, one of which I assume to be cultural evolution. And so there is a numbers game afoot. The more high quality academically vetted knowledge that can be pumped into the minds of an increasingly thick stream of students, the greater the share of the population will live in enlightenment. 

But at the same time it must surely be equally obvious that higher education is indeed a bourgeois exercise. Most people won't get one. And so for the aims of social justice to be met, all such students must serve as proxies for the truthiness contained in the pedagogies of college professors. And in there lies the difficulty. How can academics reach the masses when they won't do their jobs for free? Why is it that relatively few academics can bear to publish their best work on the Internet? How might one go about actually breaching the barrier? Isn't college a very very expensive certification / indulgence? Is it really possible to learn what one needs to know without paying so many thousands of dollars? It is a question put plainly by MIT by the example of their Open Course Ware program. 

Now I actually expect college professors to be elitists and I expect those applicants to universities to be the elite. So my questions are mostly rhetorical. I think that the art of writing in and of itself as made broadly possible by the internet is actually superior to traditional publication and that despite what is said about whitemaleness, the blogosphere is an extraordinary gift to civilization. Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that everything that comes out of the 'sphere because of its origin is somehow superior, but for the sake of content and reputation, the certification process of college is being met by that of internet writing. In other words, in every way except for the most formal vetting processes of institutions, the knowledge provided at low or no cost is as socially relevant and valuable as that gotten from formal higher ed.   And as such it is challenging the ways and means by which people communicate and learn.

I believe that academics and journalists in particular, as arbiters of the social value of knowledge, are most threatened by this. As such they seek to ingratiate themselves with broad classes of people who are by and large currently excluded from higher ed. In other words, they are overcompensating by amping up their moral authority and trying to impress too many people.

Biosecurity Maintenance

So we've been talking not of the price of tea in China, but the value of shrimp in the Gulf States. I did a little, tiny bit of research. Here's the kind of stuff that gets the professional in me all jubilant.

Dig this:

In the year 2000, total global aquaculture production was reported as 45.71 million metric tonnes (mmt) valued at US$56.47 thousand million. Over half of this was in the form of finfish (23.07 mmt or 50.4% of total production), followed by molluscs (10.73 mmt or 23.5%), aquatic plants (10.13 mmt or 22.2%), crustaceans (1.65 mmt or 3.6%), amphibians and reptiles (100 271 metric tonnes (mt) or 0.22%) and miscellaneous aquatic invertebrates (36 965 mt or 0.08%). Although crustaceans (a category comprised mainly of penaeid shrimps) represented only 3.6% of total production by weight, they comprised 16.6% of total global aquaculture by value in 2000.

Over half (54.9%) of global aquaculture production originated from marine or brackish coastal waters in 2000, as compared with 45.1% for freshwater aquaculture production. Although brackishwater production represented only 4.6% of total global aquaculture production by weight in 2000, it contributed 15.7% of total production by value. The main species groups reared in brackish water are high-value crustaceans and finfish (50.5% and 42.7%, respectively), while molluscs and aquatic plants dominate in marine waters (46.1% and 44.0%, respectively).

As in previous years, marine shrimp continued to dominate crustacean aquaculture, with shrimp production in 2000 reaching 1 087 111 mt (66.0% of global crustacean aquaculture production) and valued at US$6 880 068 900 (73.4% of total value). Aquaculture currently provides just over a quarter (26.1%) of total global shrimp landings. The main cultivated species are the giant tiger prawn (Penaeus monodon), the fleshy prawn (P. chinensis) and the whiteleg shrimp (P. (Litopenaeus) vannamei), these three species accounting for over 86% of total shrimp aquaculture production in 2000.

The growth in production of crustaceans has continued to be strong, increasing by 6.8% by weight from 1999, a rate slightly exceeding that for finfish (6.7%), molluscs (5.8%) and aquatic plants (6.1%). The growth of shrimp production, while still significant, has decreased to more modest levels over the last decade (averaging 5%) as compared to the double-digit growth rates observed during the seventies (23%) and eighties (25%).

Now there's this:

The U.S.
produced approximately 324.8 thousand metric
tons of crustacean products from wild fisheries and
aquaculture sources in 2005, representing 3.26% of
world production.

And Wolfram Alpha tells me this about crustacean consumption in thousands of short tons:

1 | China | 3560
2 | United States | 1691
3 | Japan | 1245
4 | India | 352
5 | Indonesia | 322
6 | Vietnam | 244
7 | France | 232
8 | United Kingdom | 196
9 | Spain | 194
10 | Mexico | 143

So shrimp isn't broken out but this information gives us a start to understand what fraction of world production we produce and which fraction we consume. Bottom line by the facts is that we get such a large portion of our shrimp from overseas, loss of the domestic piece won't hurt much. I'd like to factor in the effects of White Spot Disease, but ran out of time.

I do like the concept of biosecurity maintenance. It implies this level of understanding.

ICU Expenses

Conversations with Dr. K have revealed something I didn't quite get, but is probably obvious to medical professionals. It ain't the procedure, it's the bed. That's right, the bed.

If you stay overnight in a hospital, you'll probably pay at least $500. Plus another $500 if you got there in an ambulance. You might see the real doctor for about 20 minutes and he'll charge you $200 for the exam and write you a prescription for drugs that cost $100. But the doctor is not the expensive part. If you get an XRay, that's probably another $500 bucks...

But when I asked further I found out that there are beds, and there are beds. I broke it out into about 5 levels, the most expensive being an ICU. An ICU bed costs you about $3500 a night. That's where the money is. There are levels just below that, I think the term is something like a 'telemetry bed', where you're basically hooked up to all the monitors and staffs are required to check on you every 10 minutes or once an hour depending on the level of care. This is where the enormous bills come from. A kidney transplant operation only costs 4K, but if you're on a certain kind of dialysis...

So check this out:

OBJECTIVES: To determine the provider cost of administering intensive care unit (ICU) services, comparing 3 different staffing models for ICU coverage, and to compare the costs of using house staff vs nonphysician providers (NPPs).

METHODS: Data were collected on total staff composition and number of beds in ICUs from January 1, 2004, through December 31, 2004, at the 3 Mayo Clinic sites: Rochester, Minn; Jacksonville, Fla; and Scottsdale, Ariz. Institutional or national average staff salaries were used to determine total staffing costs per ICU bed per year at each site. Medicare medical education reimbursements were also taken into account.

RESULTS: Costs per ICU bed for physician staffing were $18,630 in Rochester, $37,515 in Jacksonville, and $38,010 in Scottsdale. When NPPs were substituted for house staff, the costs per bed were $72,466 in Rochester, $61,291 in Jacksonville, and $49,909 in Scottsdale. Incremental costs per ICU bed using NPPs were $53,836 in Rochester, $23,776 in Jacksonville, and $11,899 in Scottsdale.

CONCLUSION: Use of residents and fellows in ICU staffing at a major tertiary health center is more cost-efficient than use of NPPs. This finding could have implications for the cost of physician services in nonteaching community hospitals and the methods by which care is provided.

DME = Direct Medical Education; FTE = full-time equivalent; ICU = intensive care unit; IME = Indirect Medical Education; NP = nurse practitioner; NPP = nonphysician provider; PA = physician assistant

 

I found some other neat stuff which is less specific but gives you an idea. Emphasis mine.

A journal (1) article published in 2002, estimated the total health care costs in this country to be just over 1 Trillion dollars a year. Dividing that by 300 Million people we come up with $3,333 per person, per year or $277 a month. 20% of health care costs are for ICU care, which typically make up 1% of the beds in an average hospital. Daily ICU costs range from $2,000 - $3,000 per day in the US. (1996 figure).

Smoke!

I propose that the symbol for rejection of all political correctness and nanny state interference shall be the cigarette, and the extreme symbol, the cigar. Let us defy the Surgeon General and all of his minions. Whose life is it?

Fantastic Plastic Machine

Very cool graphics. I love this. The song's not bad either.

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