Friday, August 26, 2005

The ConvergeSouth journalism conference is six weeks from today. The blog conference is six weeks from tomorrow. Registration is free, fast, and online. It's going to fill up fast, so you might want to lock down a space now. 10:59:24 AM   permalink   comment []

Writing in The New Yorker about Hilary Spurling's biography of Matisse, Peter Schjeldahl supports Spurling's contention that my Aunt Michele (aka Michele C. Cone) was wrong about Matisse's war-time politics, or lack of them. I don't know much about it, but I know better than to argue with my aunt. 10:52:57 AM   permalink   comment []

Why can't more people discuss the war in Iraq like this? This guy supported the invasion of Iraq, but he's able to talk about the situation on the ground without waving pom-poms and yelling that WE'RE WINNING, no questions asked. His dismantling of the "flypaper" argument is worth reading. 8:34:49 AM   permalink   comment []

A thoughtful discussion of D.G. Martin's reaction to Blood Done Sign My Name, by Sally Greene and Eric Muller. Greensboro isn' t the only place in NC struggling with its violent past. 8:14:07 AM   permalink   comment []

Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker: Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care every year, almost two and half times the industrialized world’s median of $2,193; the extra spending comes to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. What does that extra spending buy us? Americans have fewer doctors per capita than most Western countries. We go to the doctor less than people in other Western countries. We get admitted to the hospital less frequently than people in other Western countries. We are less satisfied with our health care than our counterparts in other countries. American life expectancy is lower than the Western average. Childhood-immunization rates in the United States are lower than average. Infant-mortality rates are in the nineteenth percentile of industrialized nations. Doctors here perform more high-end medical procedures, such as coronary angioplasties, than in other countries, but most of the wealthier Western countries have more CT scanners than the United States does, and Switzerland, Japan, Austria, and Finland all have more MRI machines per capita. Nor is our system more efficient. The United States spends more than a thousand dollars per capita per year -- or close to four hundred billion dollars -- on health-care-related paperwork and administration, whereas Canada, for example, spends only about three hundred dollars per capita. And, of course, every other country in the industrialized world insures all its citizens; despite those extra hundreds of billions of dollars we spend each year, we leave forty-five million people without any insurance. A country that displays an almost ruthless commitment to efficiency and performance in every aspect of its economy -- a country that switched to Japanese cars the moment they were more reliable, and to Chinese T-shirts the moment they were five cents cheaper -- has loyally stuck with a health-care system that leaves its citizenry pulling out their teeth with pliers. Gee, maybe it's not all the trial lawyers' fault. Read the whole thing. 7:09:12 AM   permalink   comment []

More combat reporting, with photos, from Michael Yon in Mosul. 7:03:00 AM   permalink   comment []

Gate would like some details about the incredible fund-raising spree by Nido Qubein at High Point University. Me, too. 6:56:41 AM   permalink   comment []