More and more people in our time are disconnected from religious institutions, at least for part of their lives. Others are religious and find themselves creating a family with a spouse from another tradition or no tradition at all. And the experience of parenting tends to raise spiritual questions anew. We sense that there is a spiritual aspect to our children's natures and wonder how to support and nurture that. The spiritual life, our guest says, begins not in abstractions, but in concrete everyday experiences. And children need our questions as much as our answers.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
The Spirituality of Parenting
This is a fantastic podcast in which the hostess of "Speaking of Faith" interviews a very wise female rabbi,Sandy Eisenberg Stasso. Even those without children will imo find her insights very valuable...You can also listen to it on your computer if you are not an ipod user...HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
More and more people in our time are disconnected from religious institutions, at least for part of their lives. Others are religious and find themselves creating a family with a spouse from another tradition or no tradition at all. And the experience of parenting tends to raise spiritual questions anew. We sense that there is a spiritual aspect to our children's natures and wonder how to support and nurture that. The spiritual life, our guest says, begins not in abstractions, but in concrete everyday experiences. And children need our questions as much as our answers.
More and more people in our time are disconnected from religious institutions, at least for part of their lives. Others are religious and find themselves creating a family with a spouse from another tradition or no tradition at all. And the experience of parenting tends to raise spiritual questions anew. We sense that there is a spiritual aspect to our children's natures and wonder how to support and nurture that. The spiritual life, our guest says, begins not in abstractions, but in concrete everyday experiences. And children need our questions as much as our answers.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Lure of Great Wealth Affects Career Choices
A decade into the practice of medicine, still striving to become “a well regarded physician-scientist,” Robert H. Glassman concluded that he was not making enough money. So he answered an ad in the New England Journal of Medicine from a business consulting firm hiring doctors.
(..)
And today, after moving on to Wall Street as an adviser on medical investments, he is a multimillionaire.
(..)
“There were doctors at the reunion — very, very smart people,” Dr. Glassman recalled in a recent interview. “They went to the top programs, they remained true to their ethics and really had very pure goals. And then they went to the 20th-year reunion and saw that somebody else who was 10 times less smart was making much more money.”
The opportunity to become abundantly rich is a recent phenomenon not only in medicine, but in a growing number of other professions and occupations. In each case, the great majority still earn fairly uniform six-figure incomes, usually less than $400,000 a year, government data show. But starting in the 1990s, a significant number began to earn much more, creating a two-tier income stratum within such occupations.
The divide has emerged as people like Dr. Glassman, who is 45, latched onto opportunities within their fields that offered significantly higher incomes. Some lawyers and bankers, for example, collect much larger fees than others in their fields for their work on business deals and cases.
(..)
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are held up as models, certainly by Dr. Glassman. “They are going to make much greater contributions by having made money and then giving it away than most, almost all, scientists,” he said, adding that he is drawn to philanthropy as a means of achieving a meaningful legacy.
(..)
(..)
And today, after moving on to Wall Street as an adviser on medical investments, he is a multimillionaire.
(..)
“There were doctors at the reunion — very, very smart people,” Dr. Glassman recalled in a recent interview. “They went to the top programs, they remained true to their ethics and really had very pure goals. And then they went to the 20th-year reunion and saw that somebody else who was 10 times less smart was making much more money.”
The opportunity to become abundantly rich is a recent phenomenon not only in medicine, but in a growing number of other professions and occupations. In each case, the great majority still earn fairly uniform six-figure incomes, usually less than $400,000 a year, government data show. But starting in the 1990s, a significant number began to earn much more, creating a two-tier income stratum within such occupations.
The divide has emerged as people like Dr. Glassman, who is 45, latched onto opportunities within their fields that offered significantly higher incomes. Some lawyers and bankers, for example, collect much larger fees than others in their fields for their work on business deals and cases.
(..)
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are held up as models, certainly by Dr. Glassman. “They are going to make much greater contributions by having made money and then giving it away than most, almost all, scientists,” he said, adding that he is drawn to philanthropy as a means of achieving a meaningful legacy.
(..)
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
A Favorite Charity That Won’t Accept Donations
An interesting article which fleshes out a doctor's desire to help an individual patient of her's in the context of modern American medicine...
...The idea is preposterous. Even if she would take money, doctors simply do not give it. We give our time and skills; we give out tests, advice and little pieces of paper written in Latin. The various ethical codes that guide our behavior go into some detail about when and from whom we should not accept money. They never bother to discuss when we should not give it out, because, in theory, we never do.
The theory is reasonable: the relationship with patients is complex enough without adding yet another layer of guilt, obligation and responsibility.
(..)
But despite this instructive lesson, I still indulge in fantasies of saving my needy patient with a solid hunk of cash, an anonymous check — enough to buy her food and transportation; expert, consistent medical care; a few treats; and a little something in the bank.
It is an idiotic fantasy. But perhaps no more idiotic than for me to write out checks this month that will cover an infinitesimal fraction of some giant charity’s overhead. No more idiotic than for me to labor over Latin incantations on little scraps of paper in the illusion that they alone will make a difference in my patient’s health and life.
...The idea is preposterous. Even if she would take money, doctors simply do not give it. We give our time and skills; we give out tests, advice and little pieces of paper written in Latin. The various ethical codes that guide our behavior go into some detail about when and from whom we should not accept money. They never bother to discuss when we should not give it out, because, in theory, we never do.
The theory is reasonable: the relationship with patients is complex enough without adding yet another layer of guilt, obligation and responsibility.
(..)
But despite this instructive lesson, I still indulge in fantasies of saving my needy patient with a solid hunk of cash, an anonymous check — enough to buy her food and transportation; expert, consistent medical care; a few treats; and a little something in the bank.
It is an idiotic fantasy. But perhaps no more idiotic than for me to write out checks this month that will cover an infinitesimal fraction of some giant charity’s overhead. No more idiotic than for me to labor over Latin incantations on little scraps of paper in the illusion that they alone will make a difference in my patient’s health and life.
"Blue Jay Spreads His Wings" 60 Minutes
I rarely get a chance to watch "60 minutes," the Sunday night news show on CBS--this used to be a family tradition when I was growing up. But this last Sunday, after an 8 hour drive from Salt Lake City, I plopped down exhausted in front of the TV set and fortuitously "60 Minutes" was on. There were two interesting stories: the "memory erase" pill story in the previous post on this blog, and another segment about an incredible child prodigy composer named Jason Greenberg. At my son, Ryan's piano recital last week, a student had played a very unusual piece entitled, "Storm." It turns out that the composer was Jason, profiled in this piece on "60 Minutes."
CBS) Jay Greenberg is an American composer who some say is the greatest musical genius to come along in 200 years. He wrote five symphonies by the time he was 13 years old.
"We are talking about a prodigy of the level of the greatest prodigies in history when it comes to composition. I am talking about the likes of Mozart, Mendeelsson, and Saint Saens"...Sam Zyman
CBS) Jay Greenberg is an American composer who some say is the greatest musical genius to come along in 200 years. He wrote five symphonies by the time he was 13 years old.
"We are talking about a prodigy of the level of the greatest prodigies in history when it comes to composition. I am talking about the likes of Mozart, Mendeelsson, and Saint Saens"...Sam Zyman
Monday, November 27, 2006
We're all Racists, Unconsciously
AFTER A PAROXYSM of racial viciousness at the Laugh Factory last week, Michael Richards, the 57-year-old comedian who played Kramer on "Seinfeld," explained to David Letterman and his "Late Night" audience Monday: "I'm not a racist. That's what's so insane about this."
Richards' shattered demeanor and heartfelt repentance leaves us with what I shall call Kramer's Conundrum: How can someone who spews racial epithets genuinely believe he is not a racist? The answer is to be found in the difference between our conscious and unconscious attitudes and our public and private thoughts.
Consciously and publicly, Richards is probably not a racist. But unconsciously and privately, he is. So am I. So are you.
(..)
The insidiousness of racism is because of the fact that it arises out of the deep recesses of our unconscious. We may be unaware of it, yet it lurks there.
How do we know this? One indication is the Implicit Association Test, developed by Harvard scientists, which asks subjects to pair words and concepts. The more closely associated the words and concepts are, the quicker the response to them will be in the key-pressing sorting task (try it yourself at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ ).
(..)
Richards' sin was his deed; his thoughts are the sin of all humanity. Only when all people are considered to be members of one global in-group (in principle if not in practice) can we begin to attenuate these out-group associations. But it won't be easy. Vigilance is the watchword of both freedom and dignity.
We should accept Richards' apology for losing his temper and acting out those hateful thoughts. Perhaps we also ought to thank him for having the courage to confess in public what far too many of us still harbor in private, often in our unconscious minds. As the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote: "Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone but only his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind."
Richards' shattered demeanor and heartfelt repentance leaves us with what I shall call Kramer's Conundrum: How can someone who spews racial epithets genuinely believe he is not a racist? The answer is to be found in the difference between our conscious and unconscious attitudes and our public and private thoughts.
Consciously and publicly, Richards is probably not a racist. But unconsciously and privately, he is. So am I. So are you.
(..)
The insidiousness of racism is because of the fact that it arises out of the deep recesses of our unconscious. We may be unaware of it, yet it lurks there.
How do we know this? One indication is the Implicit Association Test, developed by Harvard scientists, which asks subjects to pair words and concepts. The more closely associated the words and concepts are, the quicker the response to them will be in the key-pressing sorting task (try it yourself at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ ).
(..)
Richards' sin was his deed; his thoughts are the sin of all humanity. Only when all people are considered to be members of one global in-group (in principle if not in practice) can we begin to attenuate these out-group associations. But it won't be easy. Vigilance is the watchword of both freedom and dignity.
We should accept Richards' apology for losing his temper and acting out those hateful thoughts. Perhaps we also ought to thank him for having the courage to confess in public what far too many of us still harbor in private, often in our unconscious minds. As the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote: "Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone but only his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind."
Pin the Tail on the Victim
So what is the statute of limitations on stupid, insensitive comments?
(..)
Public opinion now turns on which of our leaders makes the best case for having been persecuted, and which has most effectively used the words "I've suffered" as a substitute for "I'm sorry."
Perhaps this great national game of pin the tail on the victim is truly the best we can do in evaluating the "character" of our leaders. In an era in which every gaffe and blunder is recorded for eternity on YouTube, who among us is really fit to judge whether Lott or Allen is a racist? And who can decide whether the former racists have been reformed and redeemed?
Perhaps this is just too old-fashioned, but I wonder if we could agree that at least part of a person's character can be measured by his ability to say, "I am sorry. I was wrong," as opposed to "I am sorry you victimized me."
(..)
Public opinion now turns on which of our leaders makes the best case for having been persecuted, and which has most effectively used the words "I've suffered" as a substitute for "I'm sorry."
Perhaps this great national game of pin the tail on the victim is truly the best we can do in evaluating the "character" of our leaders. In an era in which every gaffe and blunder is recorded for eternity on YouTube, who among us is really fit to judge whether Lott or Allen is a racist? And who can decide whether the former racists have been reformed and redeemed?
Perhaps this is just too old-fashioned, but I wonder if we could agree that at least part of a person's character can be measured by his ability to say, "I am sorry. I was wrong," as opposed to "I am sorry you victimized me."
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Boy's Wish: Kill Them All
The genocide that started in Darfur in 2003 is now threatening to topple the governments of Chad and the Central African Republic. If these two countries collapse into chaos and civil war for years to come, then neighboring countries like Cameroon and Niger will be threatened as well — and the death toll triggered by the Darfur genocide will eventually number in the millions.
None of this was — or is — inevitable. In late 2003 and early 2004, some Republican appointees in the Bush administration (particularly in the Agency for International Development) were among the first to push for a government response to the slaughter in Darfur, but the White House wasn’t interested.
(..)
The most common question I get from readers about Darfur is: What can I do? The simplest answer is to write or call the White House and members of Congress. (See how your representative does on the issue at www.darfurscores.org). Imagine if Mr. Bush had made Darfur an important issue at the Asian summit meeting last week, if he had returned via Cairo for a meeting with Arab leaders, if he had dispatched Condi Rice to Chad to shore it up.
Beyond pushing our own government, we can write the embassies of countries like France and Egypt that could play especially crucial roles. The same is true of China, which provides Sudan the guns used to shoot children like Ismail. We in the news business, including Arab and European television networks, could use a few pokes to appreciate that genocide is newsworthy.
The heroic efforts of aid groups in Darfur and Chad — 13 aid workers have been killed in Darfur since May — deserve support as well. (I list some groups active in Darfur in my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground.) The aid workers risk their lives daily to try to save people, putting up with janjaweed, scorpions, camel spiders and pit toilets inhabited by bats. They can use our backup.
None of this was — or is — inevitable. In late 2003 and early 2004, some Republican appointees in the Bush administration (particularly in the Agency for International Development) were among the first to push for a government response to the slaughter in Darfur, but the White House wasn’t interested.
(..)
The most common question I get from readers about Darfur is: What can I do? The simplest answer is to write or call the White House and members of Congress. (See how your representative does on the issue at www.darfurscores.org). Imagine if Mr. Bush had made Darfur an important issue at the Asian summit meeting last week, if he had returned via Cairo for a meeting with Arab leaders, if he had dispatched Condi Rice to Chad to shore it up.
Beyond pushing our own government, we can write the embassies of countries like France and Egypt that could play especially crucial roles. The same is true of China, which provides Sudan the guns used to shoot children like Ismail. We in the news business, including Arab and European television networks, could use a few pokes to appreciate that genocide is newsworthy.
The heroic efforts of aid groups in Darfur and Chad — 13 aid workers have been killed in Darfur since May — deserve support as well. (I list some groups active in Darfur in my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground.) The aid workers risk their lives daily to try to save people, putting up with janjaweed, scorpions, camel spiders and pit toilets inhabited by bats. They can use our backup.
When Young Doctors Strut Too Much of Their Stuff
MIAMI, Nov. 20 — When I was a new faculty physician, I worked with a resident doctor who was smart and energetic and took excellent care of her patients.
There was just one problem. As she delivered her thoughtful patient presentations to me and the other attending doctors, it was hard not to notice her low-cut dress.
(..)
In a study published last year in The American Journal of Medicine, patients surveyed in one outpatient clinic overwhelmingly preferred doctors photographed in formal attire with a white coat to photos of doctors in scrubs, business suits and informal clothes — jeans and a T-shirt for men, an above-the-knee skirt for women. The patients also said they were more likely to divulge their social, sexual and psychological worries to the clinicians in the white coats than to the other doctors.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys sometimes ask about a doctor’s attire in malpractice depositions, Dr. Rowland said. Her research has also found that physician clothing can influence scores on board certification oral exams, in which a senior doctor assesses a younger doctor’s medical knowledge.
“You don’t want to look too attractive to be serious,” she said, adding that “a certain amount of the nerd factor” can help a doctor’s performance.
Okay, so according to the author of the article above, doctors should be careful of how they display their style and beauty--what about beautiful newswomen like Melissa Theuriau?
Stem cells core of more cancers
A spate of new discoveries about the basic biology of cancer is pushing researchers toward an astonishing conclusion: For decades, efforts to cure the disease may have targeted the wrong cells.
Current therapies treat all cancer cells the same. They're aimed at shrinking tumours on the basis that the various cells within them all have similar powers to spawn new cancers and spread destruction.
But mounting evidence suggests that cancer's real culprits -- the roots of perhaps every tumour -- are actually a small subset of bad seeds known best to the world as stem cells.
Current therapies treat all cancer cells the same. They're aimed at shrinking tumours on the basis that the various cells within them all have similar powers to spawn new cancers and spread destruction.
But mounting evidence suggests that cancer's real culprits -- the roots of perhaps every tumour -- are actually a small subset of bad seeds known best to the world as stem cells.
Monday, November 20, 2006
China's Africa Adventure
This is a very well done 6 page piece about the history of Anhttp://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifgola and the increasing influence of China in this oil-rich country. It highlights the type of investment relationship that China is creating all over Africa...
Angola is a very, very poor country, but it is also an extremely rich one, for immense deposits of oil lie under the South Atlantic Ocean within its territorial waters. Thanks to the growing appetites of several developing nations, China in particular, that need oil to sustain the furious expansion of their economies, last year Angola, which otherwise has almost no economy, had more than $10 billion to play with. And it has used that money to pay more advanced countries to rebuild its infrastructure. This vision — call it “Development by China” — looks like a catastrophic mistake to the Western experts and institutions that have scrutinized, invested in and at times despaired of Angola.
(..)
Angola traditionally exported not only oil but diamonds, iron ore, cotton, sisal and corn. But Portugal, Angola’s colonial master for four centuries, abruptly abandoned the country in 1975, provoking a civil war between a government backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and Unita, a rebel force supported by South Africa and the United States. The war waxed and waned through stalemates, cease-fires and even, in 1992, an election. By the end, in 2002, more than a million people had died and about a third of Angola’s population of 12 million had fled from their homes. The war reduced Angola to a beggar nation, dependent on handouts from the World Food Program.
(..)
The one industry that continued to function throughout the war was oil, for even Angola’s fighting couldn’t spread to the ocean floor. Oil revenue allowed the regime of President José Eduardo dos Santos, who took power in 1979, to buy weapons and mercenaries, and ultimately to destroy the Unita army. A bizarre wartime financial system evolved in which revenue flowed into the national oil company, known as Sonangol, and then . . . disappeared.
(..)
Vast sums — no one knows how much — were stolen by members of the regime. By the mid-’90s, the government was running enormous deficits, and inflation was zooming past 1,000 percent. The end of the cold war had deprived Angola of its Soviet patron; the regime, which in 1990 officially forswore Marxist-Leninist doctrine and supposedly began making a transition to a market economy, now turned to the West for help. But the United States and other donor nations no longer needed to prop up sympathetic dictators. And they had learned, through painful experience, that aid given to corrupt regimes with opaque financial systems was bound to be wasted.
(..)
An I.M.F. team that came in 2002 to help the country put its financial affairs in order was flabbergasted by Angola’s Potemkin economy, and even more by the nonchalance of its leading officials.
(..)
After the I.M.F. report, the United States and Britain pulled out, and Angola, still deeply in debt despite billions in oil revenue, was left to bitterly contemplate its options.
(..)
And China offered a model of development, driven from above and powered by high-tech investment, vastly more gratifying and reassuring to third-world elites than the Western gospel of unleashing growth through democratic and marketplace reform. Western donors, led by the I.M.F., conditioned aid on the achievement of meaningful, and often painful, reform. China, by contrast, offered aid without “conditionality.” According to China’s official African policy, published earlier this year, China seeks “a new type of strategic partnership,” which, among other things, “respects African countries’ independent choice of the road of development.” China invokes this doctrine of noninterference when defending the grossly abusive regimes in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Eritrea and elsewhere with which it carries on a flourishing business.
(..)
By 2003, the regime in Angola was every bit as disgusted with the I.M.F. as the I.M.F. was with it.
(..)
In November 2003, Angola’s finance minister traveled to China to discuss a financial package. One year later, China announced that it had extended to Angola a $2 billion oil-backed loan, an Angolan specialty in which credit is secured by future oil production — just the kind of risky gimmick the I.M.F. had preached against. China uses its foreign aid as a means to promote opportunities for private investment, and the two countries agreed that Chinese construction companies would build the giant infrastructure projects financed by the loans.
China immediately began to increase its purchase of Angolan oil; by early this year, Angola had replaced Saudi Arabia as its single-largest source of oil. The extent of China’s commitment to Angola became stunningly clear this spring, when Sinopec, a Chinese state-owned energy company, bid $2.2 billion for the right to develop two deep-water blocks — a sum that shattered all previous records anywhere in the world. Sinopec made its investment in partnership with Sonangol. The billions China offered astonished the Western oil companies, which had already explored adjacent areas and had submitted only modest bids.
(..)
Everything seems to be breaking right for Angola just now. Angola is swimming in oil money. Last year’s oil revenue of $10.6 billion was almost double the figure from 2004. A recent report by The Economist Intelligence Unit projects the country’s growth rate at 16.7 percent this year and 20.8 percent in 2007, making Angola’s one of the world’s fastest-growing economies
(..)
And yet this is the same country where one out of three children dies before reaching the age of 5, where average life expectancy is 38, where cholera, polio and hemorrhagic fevers like the Marburg virus flourish — a country that ranks 160th out of the 177 countries on the United Nations’ Human Development Index. How, and when, will the cataract of oil money flow down the hill from Luanda Sul to improve the lives of Angola’s impoverished, war-weary citizens?
(..)
“If you don’t have roads, if you don’t have bridges, if you don’t have the energy system, electricity, water,” he said, “how can you expect the private sector to invest in such a country?” Yes, he said, Angola needed to pay teachers better. “But public expenses for personnel account for 50 percent of the current budget. Some people”—I.M.F.-type people, presumably —“say that you have to bring down your expenses for personnel. How do you solve that in a postconflict situation? Do you create massive unemployment?”
(..)
Jaime had, of course, glossed over the untold sums lost to corruption, but he had also neglected to mention another distinctly Angolan factor: the combination of war, theft and indifference to the plight of the ordinary Angolan had rotted away the machinery of government. The state’s capacities, whether in regard to bricklayers or teachers or civil servants, or banks, or power grids, were so feeble that any attempt to push all those billions through normal government channels would produce a colossal blockage. The only way to actually put the money to use was to pay the Chinese — or the Portuguese or the Brazilians — to build things. And so Angola was spending staggering sums to repair its infrastructure: $2.7 billion for a dam in the north, $4 billion for three railway lines, including the one that ran through Huambo. The regime wouldn’t be able to provide a public health care system or a skilled work force for years, but it could deliver passable roads. And roads mattered. “By the end of 2007,” Jaime grandly predicted, “most roads linking main production centers will be finished, and the economy will just jump.”(..)
China is now one of Africa’s largest customers not only for oil but also for timber, minerals, cotton and other natural resources. China in turn has flooded Africa with cheap consumer goods. The I.M.F. forecasts that China’s trade with Africa will top $50 billion this year and could reach $100 billion by 2010. Over the last five years, sub-Saharan Africa’s growth rate has almost doubled, to 5.8 percent from 3 percent; economists attribute much of the increase to trade with China and other Asian countries.
(..)
The People’s Republic has declared 2006 “the Year of Africa.” The West had its own unofficial Year of Africa in 2005, and it is instructive to compare the two. The industrial nations conducted a sort of moral crusade, with advocacy organizations exposing Africa’s dreadful sores and crying shame on the leaders of wealthy nations and those leaders then heroically pledging, at the G8 meeting in July, to raise their development assistance by billions and to open their markets to Africa. Once everyone had gone home, the aid increase turned out to be largely ephemeral and trade reform merely wishful. China, by contrast, offers a pragmatic relationship between equals: the “strategic partnership” promised in China’s African policy is premised on “mutual benefit, reciprocity and common prosperity.”
(..)
If we believe that a model of development that strengthens the hand of authoritarian leaders and does little, if anything, to empower the poor is a bad long-term strategy for Africa, then we are going to have to come up with a strategic partnership of our own. And it is not only a question of what is good for the African people. The United States has a real security interest in avoiding failed states and in blocking the spread of terrorism in East and North Africa. What’s more, the United States already imports 15 percent of its oil from Africa, mostly from Angola and Nigeria; that figure is bound to rise and could even double, eventually making Africa as large a supplier of oil as the Middle East now is. China’s Africa policy shows that globalization is increasingly divorced from Westernization. We have grown accustomed to the idea that Africa needs us; it’s time to recognize that we, like China, need Africa.
Angola is a very, very poor country, but it is also an extremely rich one, for immense deposits of oil lie under the South Atlantic Ocean within its territorial waters. Thanks to the growing appetites of several developing nations, China in particular, that need oil to sustain the furious expansion of their economies, last year Angola, which otherwise has almost no economy, had more than $10 billion to play with. And it has used that money to pay more advanced countries to rebuild its infrastructure. This vision — call it “Development by China” — looks like a catastrophic mistake to the Western experts and institutions that have scrutinized, invested in and at times despaired of Angola.
(..)
Angola traditionally exported not only oil but diamonds, iron ore, cotton, sisal and corn. But Portugal, Angola’s colonial master for four centuries, abruptly abandoned the country in 1975, provoking a civil war between a government backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and Unita, a rebel force supported by South Africa and the United States. The war waxed and waned through stalemates, cease-fires and even, in 1992, an election. By the end, in 2002, more than a million people had died and about a third of Angola’s population of 12 million had fled from their homes. The war reduced Angola to a beggar nation, dependent on handouts from the World Food Program.
(..)
The one industry that continued to function throughout the war was oil, for even Angola’s fighting couldn’t spread to the ocean floor. Oil revenue allowed the regime of President José Eduardo dos Santos, who took power in 1979, to buy weapons and mercenaries, and ultimately to destroy the Unita army. A bizarre wartime financial system evolved in which revenue flowed into the national oil company, known as Sonangol, and then . . . disappeared.
(..)
Vast sums — no one knows how much — were stolen by members of the regime. By the mid-’90s, the government was running enormous deficits, and inflation was zooming past 1,000 percent. The end of the cold war had deprived Angola of its Soviet patron; the regime, which in 1990 officially forswore Marxist-Leninist doctrine and supposedly began making a transition to a market economy, now turned to the West for help. But the United States and other donor nations no longer needed to prop up sympathetic dictators. And they had learned, through painful experience, that aid given to corrupt regimes with opaque financial systems was bound to be wasted.
(..)
An I.M.F. team that came in 2002 to help the country put its financial affairs in order was flabbergasted by Angola’s Potemkin economy, and even more by the nonchalance of its leading officials.
(..)
After the I.M.F. report, the United States and Britain pulled out, and Angola, still deeply in debt despite billions in oil revenue, was left to bitterly contemplate its options.
(..)
And China offered a model of development, driven from above and powered by high-tech investment, vastly more gratifying and reassuring to third-world elites than the Western gospel of unleashing growth through democratic and marketplace reform. Western donors, led by the I.M.F., conditioned aid on the achievement of meaningful, and often painful, reform. China, by contrast, offered aid without “conditionality.” According to China’s official African policy, published earlier this year, China seeks “a new type of strategic partnership,” which, among other things, “respects African countries’ independent choice of the road of development.” China invokes this doctrine of noninterference when defending the grossly abusive regimes in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Eritrea and elsewhere with which it carries on a flourishing business.
(..)
By 2003, the regime in Angola was every bit as disgusted with the I.M.F. as the I.M.F. was with it.
(..)
In November 2003, Angola’s finance minister traveled to China to discuss a financial package. One year later, China announced that it had extended to Angola a $2 billion oil-backed loan, an Angolan specialty in which credit is secured by future oil production — just the kind of risky gimmick the I.M.F. had preached against. China uses its foreign aid as a means to promote opportunities for private investment, and the two countries agreed that Chinese construction companies would build the giant infrastructure projects financed by the loans.
China immediately began to increase its purchase of Angolan oil; by early this year, Angola had replaced Saudi Arabia as its single-largest source of oil. The extent of China’s commitment to Angola became stunningly clear this spring, when Sinopec, a Chinese state-owned energy company, bid $2.2 billion for the right to develop two deep-water blocks — a sum that shattered all previous records anywhere in the world. Sinopec made its investment in partnership with Sonangol. The billions China offered astonished the Western oil companies, which had already explored adjacent areas and had submitted only modest bids.
(..)
Everything seems to be breaking right for Angola just now. Angola is swimming in oil money. Last year’s oil revenue of $10.6 billion was almost double the figure from 2004. A recent report by The Economist Intelligence Unit projects the country’s growth rate at 16.7 percent this year and 20.8 percent in 2007, making Angola’s one of the world’s fastest-growing economies
(..)
And yet this is the same country where one out of three children dies before reaching the age of 5, where average life expectancy is 38, where cholera, polio and hemorrhagic fevers like the Marburg virus flourish — a country that ranks 160th out of the 177 countries on the United Nations’ Human Development Index. How, and when, will the cataract of oil money flow down the hill from Luanda Sul to improve the lives of Angola’s impoverished, war-weary citizens?
(..)
“If you don’t have roads, if you don’t have bridges, if you don’t have the energy system, electricity, water,” he said, “how can you expect the private sector to invest in such a country?” Yes, he said, Angola needed to pay teachers better. “But public expenses for personnel account for 50 percent of the current budget. Some people”—I.M.F.-type people, presumably —“say that you have to bring down your expenses for personnel. How do you solve that in a postconflict situation? Do you create massive unemployment?”
(..)
Jaime had, of course, glossed over the untold sums lost to corruption, but he had also neglected to mention another distinctly Angolan factor: the combination of war, theft and indifference to the plight of the ordinary Angolan had rotted away the machinery of government. The state’s capacities, whether in regard to bricklayers or teachers or civil servants, or banks, or power grids, were so feeble that any attempt to push all those billions through normal government channels would produce a colossal blockage. The only way to actually put the money to use was to pay the Chinese — or the Portuguese or the Brazilians — to build things. And so Angola was spending staggering sums to repair its infrastructure: $2.7 billion for a dam in the north, $4 billion for three railway lines, including the one that ran through Huambo. The regime wouldn’t be able to provide a public health care system or a skilled work force for years, but it could deliver passable roads. And roads mattered. “By the end of 2007,” Jaime grandly predicted, “most roads linking main production centers will be finished, and the economy will just jump.”(..)
China is now one of Africa’s largest customers not only for oil but also for timber, minerals, cotton and other natural resources. China in turn has flooded Africa with cheap consumer goods. The I.M.F. forecasts that China’s trade with Africa will top $50 billion this year and could reach $100 billion by 2010. Over the last five years, sub-Saharan Africa’s growth rate has almost doubled, to 5.8 percent from 3 percent; economists attribute much of the increase to trade with China and other Asian countries.
(..)
The People’s Republic has declared 2006 “the Year of Africa.” The West had its own unofficial Year of Africa in 2005, and it is instructive to compare the two. The industrial nations conducted a sort of moral crusade, with advocacy organizations exposing Africa’s dreadful sores and crying shame on the leaders of wealthy nations and those leaders then heroically pledging, at the G8 meeting in July, to raise their development assistance by billions and to open their markets to Africa. Once everyone had gone home, the aid increase turned out to be largely ephemeral and trade reform merely wishful. China, by contrast, offers a pragmatic relationship between equals: the “strategic partnership” promised in China’s African policy is premised on “mutual benefit, reciprocity and common prosperity.”
(..)
If we believe that a model of development that strengthens the hand of authoritarian leaders and does little, if anything, to empower the poor is a bad long-term strategy for Africa, then we are going to have to come up with a strategic partnership of our own. And it is not only a question of what is good for the African people. The United States has a real security interest in avoiding failed states and in blocking the spread of terrorism in East and North Africa. What’s more, the United States already imports 15 percent of its oil from Africa, mostly from Angola and Nigeria; that figure is bound to rise and could even double, eventually making Africa as large a supplier of oil as the Middle East now is. China’s Africa policy shows that globalization is increasingly divorced from Westernization. We have grown accustomed to the idea that Africa needs us; it’s time to recognize that we, like China, need Africa.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Sanjay Mishra: A Cross-cultural Exploration in Music
Listen to this NPR interview for a fascinating analysis of Western vs. Eastern tonality in guitar...
Sanjay Mishra: A Cross-Cultural Exploration in Music
Sanjay Mishra: A Cross-Cultural Exploration in Music
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Stephen Colbert Election NIght Rant
I have been waiting for this clip to appear on the net. (Tip of the hat to Freeze for finding it)...
U.S. Bombards Insurgents with Negative Ads
The latest from Andy Borowitz...
In a bold change of strategy in the war in Iraq, President George W. Bush announced today that the U.S. had begun bombarding Iraqi insurgents with negative ads in the hopes of bringing the insurgency to its knees.
At a White House briefing today, spokesman Tony Snow said that the new military campaign, called Operation Relentless Smear, would focus on attacking the personal missteps and hypocrisies of key Iraqi insurgents on a twenty-four-hour basis.
"This new strategy is playing to our strengths," Mr. Snow told reporters. "The insurgents are good at blowing things up and creating chaos, but no one is better than we are at creating negative ads."
According to Mr. Snow, Operation Relentless Smear will re-deploy thousands of negative ad producers, directors, and voiceover artists who were momentarily idle at the conclusion of the U.S.'s midterm election campaign.
Masterminded by the White House's top political strategist Karl Rove, the bombardment of negative ads began at midnight Wednesday, interrupting all local Iraqi programming with a nonstop diet of half-truths, corrosive accusations and character assassination.
By Thursday morning, there were already signs that Operation Relentless Smear was working, as Iraqi insurgents in such key cities as Baghdad and Tikrit appeared worn out by the onslaught of slickly produced attack ads.
"The air strikes and the curfews were one thing," said Hassan El-Medfaii, an insurgent who is based in Baghdad's Sadr City district. "But this is messing with my TV."
Elsewhere, US Airways made an $8 billion bid for Delta, including $4 billion in cash and $4 billion in lost luggage.
In a bold change of strategy in the war in Iraq, President George W. Bush announced today that the U.S. had begun bombarding Iraqi insurgents with negative ads in the hopes of bringing the insurgency to its knees.
At a White House briefing today, spokesman Tony Snow said that the new military campaign, called Operation Relentless Smear, would focus on attacking the personal missteps and hypocrisies of key Iraqi insurgents on a twenty-four-hour basis.
"This new strategy is playing to our strengths," Mr. Snow told reporters. "The insurgents are good at blowing things up and creating chaos, but no one is better than we are at creating negative ads."
According to Mr. Snow, Operation Relentless Smear will re-deploy thousands of negative ad producers, directors, and voiceover artists who were momentarily idle at the conclusion of the U.S.'s midterm election campaign.
Masterminded by the White House's top political strategist Karl Rove, the bombardment of negative ads began at midnight Wednesday, interrupting all local Iraqi programming with a nonstop diet of half-truths, corrosive accusations and character assassination.
By Thursday morning, there were already signs that Operation Relentless Smear was working, as Iraqi insurgents in such key cities as Baghdad and Tikrit appeared worn out by the onslaught of slickly produced attack ads.
"The air strikes and the curfews were one thing," said Hassan El-Medfaii, an insurgent who is based in Baghdad's Sadr City district. "But this is messing with my TV."
Elsewhere, US Airways made an $8 billion bid for Delta, including $4 billion in cash and $4 billion in lost luggage.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
In Medicaid, Private HMOs Take a Big and Profitable Role
Some 55 million poor and disabled Americans are covered by Medicaid. With an annual price tag topping $300 billion, it's among the biggest government programs around.
It's also a lucrative business for some private companies that act as middlemen between the government and patients. Instead of directly paying the bills when a Medicaid patient goes to the doctor, state governments increasingly outsource the job to private contractors. More than one in three Medicaid beneficiaries now receive care through a private insurer.
The potential gains are big. Four years ago, a private-equity fund in which George Soros was the largest investor took a 70% stake in WellCare Health Plans Inc., a leading Medicaid health-maintenance organization. The fund finished cashing out the stake this August, bringing in a total of $870 million for an investment that originally cost $220 million.
Four of the biggest Medicaid HMOs -- WellCare, Centene Corp., Molina Healthcare Inc. and Amerigroup Corp. -- have seen their shares surge on the New York Stock Exchange over the past few years, although prices of the latter three have been volatile. WellCare's stock price has tripled since it began trading in July 2004, bringing the value of stock and options held by its chief executive, Todd S. Farha, to $77 million.
The companies are growing fast. Centene boasts nearly 1.2 million members and posted $1.5 billion in revenue last year. That compares with 142,000 members and $200 million in revenue six years earlier.
With the growth has come criticism from some doctors and patients who accuse Medicaid HMOs of scrimping on care. Even as they restrict medical tests and use of prescription drugs, the companies spend the money they get from states on items that don't have an obvious connection to patients. Centene has funded a multimillion-dollar arts center in St. Louis and paid to put its name on stadiums in Montana and Missouri. The HMOs are also big donors to political campaigns.
Link:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116354350983023095.html?mod=djemHL (subscription required)
It's also a lucrative business for some private companies that act as middlemen between the government and patients. Instead of directly paying the bills when a Medicaid patient goes to the doctor, state governments increasingly outsource the job to private contractors. More than one in three Medicaid beneficiaries now receive care through a private insurer.
The potential gains are big. Four years ago, a private-equity fund in which George Soros was the largest investor took a 70% stake in WellCare Health Plans Inc., a leading Medicaid health-maintenance organization. The fund finished cashing out the stake this August, bringing in a total of $870 million for an investment that originally cost $220 million.
Four of the biggest Medicaid HMOs -- WellCare, Centene Corp., Molina Healthcare Inc. and Amerigroup Corp. -- have seen their shares surge on the New York Stock Exchange over the past few years, although prices of the latter three have been volatile. WellCare's stock price has tripled since it began trading in July 2004, bringing the value of stock and options held by its chief executive, Todd S. Farha, to $77 million.
The companies are growing fast. Centene boasts nearly 1.2 million members and posted $1.5 billion in revenue last year. That compares with 142,000 members and $200 million in revenue six years earlier.
With the growth has come criticism from some doctors and patients who accuse Medicaid HMOs of scrimping on care. Even as they restrict medical tests and use of prescription drugs, the companies spend the money they get from states on items that don't have an obvious connection to patients. Centene has funded a multimillion-dollar arts center in St. Louis and paid to put its name on stadiums in Montana and Missouri. The HMOs are also big donors to political campaigns.
Link:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116354350983023095.html?mod=djemHL (subscription required)
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Dire Predictions and Disastrous Votes: Election Ads
This is a hilarious piece on NPR that I heard on my ipod this am--At about three minutes into the interview the guests recite nursery voices in the ominous tones heard in recent political campaign ads. Check it out.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Gorillas Harbor AIDS like virus
This was a concern in the back of my mind when bush meat was served for dinner when I was in Sierra Leone last month...
PARIS (AFP)—Gorillas appear to be widely infected by a close relation to the AIDS virus, according to a study that appears in the British journal Nature.
French scientists made the startling discovery—which has wide implications for the illegal market in bushmeat—as they were looking for traces of the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) among chimpanzees.
PARIS (AFP)—Gorillas appear to be widely infected by a close relation to the AIDS virus, according to a study that appears in the British journal Nature.
French scientists made the startling discovery—which has wide implications for the illegal market in bushmeat—as they were looking for traces of the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) among chimpanzees.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Gems in a Graveyard
A similar story could be written about Sierra Leone...
Diamonds could be among Congo’s best friends. But up to now, they’ve been just one more source of heartbreak and suffering.
Diamonds could be among Congo’s best friends. But up to now, they’ve been just one more source of heartbreak and suffering.
Monday, November 06, 2006
The Beauty of Mathematics
The Beauty of Mathematics: http://canadared.blogspot.com/2006/11/beauty-of-mathematics.html
Some Nevada doctors are flat-lining over reimbursement plans
This article highlights some experiences that jibe with our experience in the practice ofophthalmolog in Nevada. The article misses the fact that Blue Cross Blue Shield also provide minimal coverage for their patients--it is a moneymaking monster for itself, that rips off patients and doctors...
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Some Nevada doctors are flat-lining economically over reimbursement plans they say are too low. The dilemma could force many to leave a state that already faces a shortage of doctors, according to the president of the Nevada Association of Family Physicians.
"We're chasing our tails. We're in a losing game," said president Bill Pierce.
Pierce's solo family doctor practice in 2005 brought in a half-million dollars, but he ended up $32,000 in the hole. He took out a $100,000 home-equity loan to cover the difference.
Today's world of health care has forced Pierce to be as much a businessman as a healer and he said he's not alone.
Doctors' biggest challenge these days is not treating ailing patients but navigating a complex maze of reimbursements from 150 insurance companies, he said.
Each insurer reimburses doctors at different amounts based on separately negotiated contracts - and physicians' revenues can drop even as costs increase.
Pierce estimates he needs to generate $272 an hour to cover his costs - from malpractice insurance to rent.
That means seeing dozens of patients every day. He doesn't want to treat them as so many widgets, so he tries to spend a decent amount of time with each. But that just gets him in financial trouble.
His practice has 4,300 patients. A third of them are covered by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield. It used to pay Pierce $66.53 to see a patient for a typical 20-minute visit. It was recently cut to $47.37, some of which may be paid directly by the patient.
By comparison Medicare, the federal government's insurance program for people who are disabled or over age 65, pays $84.51 for the same type of visit, Pierce said, though those rates are also expected to drop.
The reimbursement rules mean that sometimes it pays more for the doctor to inconvenience patients, he said.
For example, when a Blue Cross patient needed a skin lesion removal, a procedure that takes 30 minutes of staff time, Pierce had the option of delaying the procedure to a future visit and receiving about $30 from Blue Cross. Instead, he removed it immediately and was reimbursed 73 cents.
In most industries, business owners can charge more when their costs rise, but that's not the case for doctors.
Dr. Florence Jameson, an obstetrician-gynecologist and president of the Clark County Medical Society, said many doctors are forced to join groups and share administrative costs. The solo practice, she said, may become a relic.
"It is a big deal and it's a sad thing, and it's unfortunate that medicine now is just big business, it's now corporate," Jameson said. "It will never go back to the way it was 20 or 30 years ago. Too many people have found out how lucrative it is to be a middle man in medicine."
Jameson said insurance companies are forcing family doctors to change the way they practice. For example, many doctors are extending the reach of their practices by using more physician assistants or nurse practitioners to treat patients. Fewer patients are treated by doctors.
Pierce said he can't keep up with the insurance companies' changing rules and guidelines.
He just knows one thing: If they cut back on how much they reimburse him to see their customers, he may be forced to stop seeing them. Other doctors have dropped patients for the same reason - inadequate insurance reimbursements.
Pierce said he is forming an additional branch of his practice that will bypass insurance companies.
Patients who join the program - tentatively called Your MD -would eliminate their comprehensive health coverage. Instead, they would carry less-expensive catastrophic coverage and pay Pierce $2,000 a year - about what many people pay for health insurance - for up to 10 visits, annual lab work and a nutritional assessment.
He said he would limit the number of patients in the new program to 600, so they can have his full attention. In return, he'll get paid up front by patients.
And he won't have to deal with their insurance companies.
---
Information from: Las Vegas Sun, http://www.lasvegassun.com
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Some Nevada doctors are flat-lining economically over reimbursement plans they say are too low. The dilemma could force many to leave a state that already faces a shortage of doctors, according to the president of the Nevada Association of Family Physicians.
"We're chasing our tails. We're in a losing game," said president Bill Pierce.
Pierce's solo family doctor practice in 2005 brought in a half-million dollars, but he ended up $32,000 in the hole. He took out a $100,000 home-equity loan to cover the difference.
Today's world of health care has forced Pierce to be as much a businessman as a healer and he said he's not alone.
Doctors' biggest challenge these days is not treating ailing patients but navigating a complex maze of reimbursements from 150 insurance companies, he said.
Each insurer reimburses doctors at different amounts based on separately negotiated contracts - and physicians' revenues can drop even as costs increase.
Pierce estimates he needs to generate $272 an hour to cover his costs - from malpractice insurance to rent.
That means seeing dozens of patients every day. He doesn't want to treat them as so many widgets, so he tries to spend a decent amount of time with each. But that just gets him in financial trouble.
His practice has 4,300 patients. A third of them are covered by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield. It used to pay Pierce $66.53 to see a patient for a typical 20-minute visit. It was recently cut to $47.37, some of which may be paid directly by the patient.
By comparison Medicare, the federal government's insurance program for people who are disabled or over age 65, pays $84.51 for the same type of visit, Pierce said, though those rates are also expected to drop.
The reimbursement rules mean that sometimes it pays more for the doctor to inconvenience patients, he said.
For example, when a Blue Cross patient needed a skin lesion removal, a procedure that takes 30 minutes of staff time, Pierce had the option of delaying the procedure to a future visit and receiving about $30 from Blue Cross. Instead, he removed it immediately and was reimbursed 73 cents.
In most industries, business owners can charge more when their costs rise, but that's not the case for doctors.
Dr. Florence Jameson, an obstetrician-gynecologist and president of the Clark County Medical Society, said many doctors are forced to join groups and share administrative costs. The solo practice, she said, may become a relic.
"It is a big deal and it's a sad thing, and it's unfortunate that medicine now is just big business, it's now corporate," Jameson said. "It will never go back to the way it was 20 or 30 years ago. Too many people have found out how lucrative it is to be a middle man in medicine."
Jameson said insurance companies are forcing family doctors to change the way they practice. For example, many doctors are extending the reach of their practices by using more physician assistants or nurse practitioners to treat patients. Fewer patients are treated by doctors.
Pierce said he can't keep up with the insurance companies' changing rules and guidelines.
He just knows one thing: If they cut back on how much they reimburse him to see their customers, he may be forced to stop seeing them. Other doctors have dropped patients for the same reason - inadequate insurance reimbursements.
Pierce said he is forming an additional branch of his practice that will bypass insurance companies.
Patients who join the program - tentatively called Your MD -would eliminate their comprehensive health coverage. Instead, they would carry less-expensive catastrophic coverage and pay Pierce $2,000 a year - about what many people pay for health insurance - for up to 10 visits, annual lab work and a nutritional assessment.
He said he would limit the number of patients in the new program to 600, so they can have his full attention. In return, he'll get paid up front by patients.
And he won't have to deal with their insurance companies.
---
Information from: Las Vegas Sun, http://www.lasvegassun.com
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Dave Chapelle as Rapper Li'l John
Make sure you watch this video all the way through the end for some good laughs...
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