Monday February 1. 2010

Per the headline assignment from last Monday. If you were in class and did not do the assignment, you have a 0.

These next few days will probably be the last grammar review of your high school career.

Take your time and look over the grammar usuage handout. Then on the blog rewrite the following ten sentences. This will be taken as a numerical grade. The sentences are due at the end of class. The corrections will be posted tomorrow morning, and the assignment will be no more.



1. She felt bad about missing the school board meeting, but her editor fired her irregardless of her excuse.

2. We will all join together in prayer for the students who died in the shooting, and we will fly the flags at half-mast.

3. It's alright if you miss class for a job interview. you can make up the the test tomorrow.

4. We'll divide the workload between the students.

5. The St. Joseph Board of Commissioners are planing to submit a proposal for a bond issue to pay for road imporvemens, and they are hopping the election committee will reach a consensus of opinion to put the issue on the ballot.

6. I know you are anxious to get this job, but each of the applicants will have a chance to discuss their strenths and weaknesses withe the personel director.

7. Based on your writing skills, it looks like you could be a good journalist.

8. Each of the students is going to receive a plaque with their diplomas at graduation.

9. She was embarrassed that she had less than five answers correct on the quiz.

10. After the boss read the report, he gave it to Jim and I to rewrite tnad said its due back on Monday.

Monday January 25, 2010

Writing headlines. Due at the close of class; please post your responses.

In reading over Thursday's stories, one problem some folks had was misleading headlines. While there were attempts at humor, the facts presented were about the boy's deaths, and not the waitress, who had served them alcohol. As a journalist, one should understand that headline writing is a difficult art. Not only is it hard to do in the space allowed, but it is full of pitfalls that can make the newspaper look foolish: mistakes in grammar and spelling, double entendres, incomprehensible ideas. Try to avoid these pitfalls.



Take a few moments to read the Dos and Don'ts of headline writing below.



DO
Read the article, especially the opening paragraphs, to understand the purpose and main idea.
Give the most general, overall focus/summary of the story.
Remember that the headline may be the only reason the reader decides to read the story (Entry point.)
Avoid headlines that can have more than one interpretation.
Limit the number of words -- 6 to 10, generally
Use strong, active verbs. (To be verbs are generally understood, but not written out.)
Use present tense verbs.
Express a complete thought. Headlines usually read like simple sentences.
Use a secondary headline -- or subhead -- to convey an additional idea of a story.
Substitute a comma for the word "and."
Capitalize only the first word and proper nouns and adjectives. (This rule can be waived if your newspaper's style is for up-style headlines.)
Write a headline that is grammatically correct.

DON'T
Mislead the reader about the content of the article. Avoid downplay, exaggeration, sensationalism.
Use the name of the school unless it's absolutely necessary.
Use the verbs "participate" or "experience."
Use labels or phrases for headlines.
Put a period at the end of a headline.
Use names, unless very well recognized. Use grades or positions instead.
Use abbreviations or slang.
Trivialize a serious story with the inappropriate use of puns or other word play.
Separate words that belong together in a phrase. (All words in infinitives and prepositional phrases should be on one line.)
Use more than one banner headline on a page.
Repeat words on the same page. (Very common on sports pages.)
Capitalize every word or every important word.
Use "a," "an" or "the."

Please read the following bad headlines and post your corrections on the blog.
You might want to copy and past the horrible one's in and write your correction below.
Horrible headlines

These are REAL headlines that appeared in daily newspapers. They were featured in the Columbia Journalism Review's Lowercase column.

1. America's new war: Japanese still eyeing Hawaii



2. Taxpayer role proposed in future terror acts



3. Editor's wife rented to two suspects, FBI says



4. Students return to ground zero high



5. Nightclub liquor license denied, close-by Lansing church objects



6. Scientists spot plant outside solar system



Many businesses say English must be spoken on by workers



7. Sikh student suspended over dagger



8. Animal movements banned



9. Brain drain small, but signnificant, study says



10. 1.6 million Cherokees recalled



11. Study offers another reason to get Pap tests: researchers



12. Reserves, National Guard: Who can keep them straight?

Thursday January 21, 2010

Midterm exam
You have a class handout. Compose your story and post it on the blog.

FOR FRIDAY: there has been a request for a party, specifically a cereal one. So this is how it will work: 4th period (and anyone from 9th, who has permission from senior lounge or study hall) should come to 176 during 4th period. Please bring some cereal- any variety. I will provide bananas, milk, bowls, spoons and a beverage. If you prefer, bring a sweet.

The following is from the City newspaper. This impacts the community greatly. Please take the time to read the whole commentary and respond by Wednesday. This is the last class grade for this term.

REMINDER: MIDTERM IS THURSDAY! See Friday's blog for information.
COMMENTARY: Mayoral control doesn't work and is wrong
on January 14, 2010


Bill Cala, former interim superintendent of city schools. FILE PHOTO
by William C. Cala, Ed.D

(William Cala is the former interim superintendent of the Rochester City School District and former superintendent of Fairport schools.)

Looking at the statistics of urban schools across the country is enough to make anyone consider radical tactics. In nearly all of these schools graduation rates hover around 50 percent and rates for African-Americans and Latinos are as low as 30 percent. New York State is no different and Rochester has the dubious honor of leading the pack in negative statistics for children. The Children's Agenda's annual report is a must read for anyone who cares about Rochester's kids. And it's not all about graduation rates; it's about health and living conditions that are causative factors of poor school performance. One statistic alone, the teenage pregnancy rate, should make us think twice about where we are putting our reform efforts. Rochester has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world, putting it in the same statistical arena as a third-world country. That has produced kindergarten classes that are made up of nearly 25 percent of the children coming from teenage mothers.

In "Class and Schools" by Richard Rothstein, a clear case is made demonstrating the catastrophic effects of poverty on urban school performance. From community safety to poor health due to living conditions and lack of access to adequate health care to joblessness to a lack of a family structure, children across the country are ill-equipped physically, emotionally and socially to succeed in school. Rochester is the 11th poorest city for children in the country. I have had numerous conversations with pediatricians over the past 20 years, and they have relayed horror stories about the damage that poverty has done to children before they enter the school-yard gate (i.e. the average urban kindergartener has 1/3 of the vocabulary of a suburban counterpart).

Given this scenario, a logical question to ask is, "How will mayoral control of the schools help urban children and the factors leading to the lack of success of children in urban schools?

Is it about academics?

We have heard about the "success" of mayoral control in cities such as New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Cleveland. Since New York has been used as an exemplar for mayoral control here in Rochester, it seems only fitting to look at what Mayor Bloomberg has done since taking over the New York City schools. Historian Diane Ravitch recently provided some eye-opening statistics about this ersatz "success."

The National Assessment of Educational Progress� is a federally funded and administered test that is considered by scholars to be the best and only valid measure of student performance in the nation having a 40-year track record of solid performance.

Ravitch points out that of the urban districts that have been tested since 2002, the highest performing districts were Charlotte, North Carolina, and Austin, Texas. The lowest performing districts were Washington, DC, Chicago, and Cleveland. Charlotte and Austin are not controlled by mayors and the lowest performing districts are all controlled by mayors (Cleveland and Chicago have been controlled by the mayor for over a decade).

The city with the most sustained gains is Atlanta, Georgia (not controlled by a mayor).

New York City has been controlled by the mayor since 2002. To date there have been no gains on NAEP in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade reading, or eighth-grade mathematics. Additionally, there have been no gains for African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, whites or lower-income students. Is this closing the achievement gap? Is this progress? Hardly.

Let's talk about those pesky graduation rates. One of the keystones of Mayor Bloomberg's campaign this past fall was the improvement of the graduation rates in New York City. He has claimed a rate as high as 70 percent. Here are the facts: New York State Education Department statistics clearly determine that the graduation rate in New York City is 52 percent. Mayor Bloomberg has conveniently invented his own mathematical formula to determine the NYC graduation rate. What he and his chancellor of education, Joel Klein have done is create "Discharge Codes." Discharge Codes are ways of designating students who have disappeared from the city schools as "other than dropouts." In fact, they have invented so many Discharge Codes that they are unable to determine what actually happened to the student. This is a convenient manipulation to obfuscate the graduation rate. So egregious is this activity that Advocates for Children did a study this past year citing tens of thousands of children being listed as "discharged" (not dropped out) yet the New York City administration was unable to demonstrate where these children went. Over the past six years, most of the discharges are students of color. The graduation rate for African-American males is 29 percent.

The New York City Department of Education is currently under investigation for this practice. (By the way, the Houston Independent School District has its brand of Discharge Codes called "Leaver Codes." They have over 20 Leaver Codes. They too were called out for seriously manipulating the graduation rate. The "Houston Miracle" turned out to be The Houston Mirage. Unfortunately, the No Child Left Behind Act that governs education nationally was built on the Houston system, which has since been thoroughly discredited).

Is it about money?

If controlling the Rochester school district is about saving money (The City of Rochester is required by law to contribute no less than $119 million to the RCSD coffers), then perhaps we should again look to the beacon that has often been mentioned as Rochester's model, New York City. In 2002 Mayor Bloomberg took over the schools. The budget at that time was $12.5 billion. In 2009 the budget is $21 billion. Given the lack of student performance in NYC, how does Bloomberg justify a 68 percent increase? If we look to other cities controlled by mayors and were to evaluate those mayors based on student performance and cost savings, the public debate could logically center around a voter recall of those mayors.

In 2005 Wong and Shen, in a study called "When Mayors Lead Urban Schools: Assessing the Effects of Mayoral Takeover," examined finances and staffing in the nation's 100 largest urban school districts. They reported that mayoral takeovers did not produce the promised improvement in financial stability and concluded that "no general consensus is emerging about the overall effectiveness of mayoral takeover."

One has to minimally ask the question whether mayoral control is about breaking unions and creating a lower paid workforce with fewer benefits. Author Danny Weil's December 2009 post should cause serious reflection:

"This is the point, and why mayoral control and Eli Broad, Gates, The Fisher family and the Walton family (and a host of other such charitable capitalists) along with Green Dot schools and other EMO's who seek to privatize all of education are so giddy. Creating a sub-prime school system that breaks the backs of the teacher's union is the goal of the new managerial elite who seek only to turn over public schools to private operators and entrepreneurs. This way they can reduce teachers to at-will employees, de-skill them with the "best practices," force them to work longer hours for less pay and less benefits and of course eliminate collective bargaining; that will then give the new managerial elite and their corporate masters, control over the entire educational enterprise - from curriculum development to the hiring and firing of teachers."

If Rochester's City Hall is unhappy with the mandated $119 million it must contribute to Rochester school district, the mayor and council members should look at the track record for mayoral control across the country. If they were to reduce costs under a system controlled by the mayor, they would be the first to do so. While the disdain for the $119 mandate is understandable, how does the city's contribution compare to the share that Monroe County suburban taxpayers contribute to their schools? $119 million is less than 18 percent of the total Rochester school district budget. By comparison, suburban communities contribute well over 50 percent of their total budgets. The local argument is that Rochester's share to RCSD is higher than that of Syracuse and Buffalo. True enough, but it's high time to start looking to models of success rather than using other urban failures as a benchmark.

Is it about crime?

Do dropouts cause crimes or do crimes cause dropouts?

Would there be less crime if the graduation rate were higher or would the graduation rate be higher if there were intact families, less crime, safer neighborhoods, better health care, and most importantly, jobs? While it is easy and convenient to narrow the focus to one culprit (education), the answers are much more complex and require the political will to tackle all of the above issues including educational reform. (See "Class and Schools" by Richard Rothstein for additional information on this topic.)

It is a great sound bite to look at crime statistics and announce that the perpetrators are dropouts. This statistic is a "no-brainer." Of course the vast majority of crimes are committed by dropouts, but in fact in most cases, that which led up to dropping out is the initial crime. Unless we search for the root causes of problems, our efforts are misplaced, ineffective and wasteful. While in the City of Rochester, I made it my business to do a forensic study when children committed serious crimes. Without exception, the home lives of child criminals were stunning.

For example, one adolescent drop-out shot and killed another boy. His life looked like this: His father sold cocaine out of the home. He was arrested and imprisoned twice while in elementary school. His mother was repeatedly beaten by the father. The Department of Social Services was often involved in attempts to resolve domestic abuse. The boy in question was sexually abused by the father and ran away twice. All of this occurring in early elementary school! The boy eventually dropped out. Living off of the streets was less painful.

I wish this were the exception to the rule. In varying degrees, this scenario repeats itself on a daily basis. Surely we should do everything within our means to adequately educate our children and keep them in school rather than having them drop out. However, the elephant in the room cannot be ignored or denied. Our efforts must address the external forces that lead to near certain school failure. At the national, state, and local level, I am afraid that resources are not addressing the root causes. We do not need more money going to urban school districts for programs that do not address root causes.

Mayoral control will not fix this.

In addition to being ineffective, mayoral control is wrong

Clearly, mayoral control doesn't work, but beyond its failure to produce, it is quite simply, wrong.

City residents are already disenfranchised by laws governing big cities in New York State. While suburban citizens are empowered with the right to vote on their district budgets, city residents are not entitled to do so. Mayoral control effectively removes Rochesterians from any meaningful input into the education of its children. I believe that this particular issue outweighs any consideration relative to academic outcomes and political perceptions of economic feasibility. Eliminating yet one more avenue to parent and citizen participation in government is an outright assault on democracy.

I am not alone in this belief. A 1997 case study of mayoral control in Chicago found some evidence that appointed officials were "less accountable to particular constituencies and... therefore, better able to put system-wide concerns above constituency demands."

Mayoral control involves establishing boards appointed by the mayor. Frederick M. Hess has conducted the largest study of mayoral control in the nation. He states that:

"Scholars raise several important concerns about appointed boards. Appointed boards tend to be less transparent than elected boards, and minority voices are more likely to be silenced or marginalized. There is also a risk that politically savvy mayors and their appointed boards may eventually settle into comfortable accommodations with special interest groups. Mayors themselves can also be a problem if they politicize school boards in self-serving ways or neglect education in favor of other issues."

I recall one particular action by Bloomberg and his appointed board early on in the mayoral takeover of the New York City schools. The mayor's appointed board was presented with a plan to retain any third grader who did not pass a standardized test. Up until that point, the mayor empowered the board to make educational decisions. Two of the mayor's appointees could not in conscience vote for a plan that defied all research on child development. The mayor fired them and replaced them with nominees who would support the plan.

A comprehensive national study of mayoral control was presented to the general assembly of Johnson City, Missouri, in October of 2009. Citing numerous research studies on the topic across the nation they concluded that:

1) There is a lack of democracy with appointed mayoral school boards and a concern about education becoming too involved in politics.

2) The larger role mayors play, the more costly their elections become, opening the door for big business involvement in elections (Meier 2005).

3) There is a greater risk of limiting minority participation through mayoral control (Wong 2006).

4) There is debate over whether mayors or other non-educator administrators can offer the expertise necessary to transform a school (Wong & Shen 2003).

5) Mayoral control does not address root problems such as reducing top-heavy administration or the multiple layers of bureaucracy overseeing the school system (Council of Great City Schools 2007).

6) There is no evidence that there have been improvements to the budget process.

7) Financial stability remains unresolved with mayoral control (Henig & Rich, 2005: Wong & Shen, 2005).

8) Minority students are disproportionately underrepresented (educational opportunities) with appointed school boards. Elected school board members are more likely to represent the makeup of the community, and these elected officials make it their business to advocate for them (Leal et al.,2004). (N.B. the formation of the department of African-American Studies in 2007 in Rochester. This department became a reality due to the advocacy of elected minority School Board members.)

Imagine for a moment the following scenario: The New York State Legislature by 2003 had not passed an "on-time" budget in 20 years. Since 2003 it has been named as the most dysfunctional legislature in the country. And recently, a coup was attempted by the Senate to reverse the majority party by winning over two indicted members of its body. That should be sufficient background to justify the statement: The New York State Legislature doesn't work.

Using the logic of advocates of mayoral control, what should happen is that the governor should seek a change in the New York State constitution to eliminate election of legislators. Subsequently, the governor would take complete control, and citizens of New York would no longer be able to vote for their local representatives to state government. From a very cynical point of view, the thought of removing scores of down-state legislators is quite appealing, yet our democracy is much too sacred to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Does a smaller-scale assault on democracy (mayoral control of schools) make the rationale any more valid?

Would a parallel scenario ever be conceived in the suburbs? Imagine the outrage if an equal coup were attempted by a town supervisor to take over a school district or eliminate elections of town board members. Not only would it never happen, such thoughts would never see the light of day. I cannot help but believe that democracy is threatened more readily in urban centers where the vast majority of its citizens are entrenched in poverty and do not have the capacity to have their voices heard. Is it any wonder why voting among the poor is so low? Losing one more opportunity to have a voice (voting in School Board elections) will bring about a deeper cascade into hopelessness and a lack of faith in our democracy.

If not mayoral control, what?

I have no doubt that Bob Duffy truly cares about education in the City of Rochester. I am convinced that he is willing to expend political capital to accomplish the goal of educating all of the city's kids. If not mayoral control, what path should he and local legislators seek instead of greasing the chute for a mayoral takeover?

1) Start a campaign to seek better School Board candidates. After the state elections this past November, editorials sprung up supporting efforts to seek out better candidates to run for the Senate and Assembly. No less of an effort should take place for the RCSD. No one called for a gubernatorial takeover of the legislature!

2) Eliminate salaries for School Board members. This has a lot to do with getting better candidates. School Board members do not get paid in the suburbs and shouldn't be paid in the city, either. Perhaps we will see candidates whose only agenda is children.

3) Eliminate party affiliation in order to be placed on the ballot. Let's face it: if you are not an endorsed Democrat, you are highly unlikely to become a RCSD school board member.

4) Institute term limits. Given the nature of the political machine and the low voter turnout due to a sense of hopelessness by the citizenry, ineffective School Board members are difficult to vote out of office. Perhaps term limits will renew a sense of promise and encouragement.

5) While huge urban districts are notoriously clumsy and overly bureaucratic, the fact of the matter is that poverty is the real issue, an issue that often seems beyond solution, leading to the endless (and fruitless) attacks on urban schools.

The real solutions that will solve the graduation puzzle have very little to do with what is being proposed by the mayor, the governor, or the national secretary of education. The real solutions are with children ages 0 to 5 and their families. There is absolutely no debate about the importance of quality pre-school education, child care, and after-school programs. There is overwhelming evidence that addressing the social, emotional, physical, and financial ailments in homes with young children produces significant increases in graduation rates (more than any power reorganization, school-only program, testing regime, or pay-for-performance scheme).

Three of the four most effective programs in the country that produce the greatest increase in graduation rates are programs involving children younger than age 5. And right here in Rochester we have the Nurse Family Partnership, which is a highly researched and greatly effective program that receives inadequate financial support.

6) And speaking of the Nurse Family Partnership, community leaders should be looking at all of the recommendations of the Children's Agenda. They are researched based and proven to work.

7) Now to go into really dangerous waters: as stated previously, poverty is the real issue as it relates to performance in poor urban settings - poverty and the concentration of poverty in cities. Our cities (specifically Rochester) are exemplars of economic apartheid (Rochester is poorer and more segregated than it was in 1954 when Brown vs. Board of Education outlawed segregated schools).

All of the recommendations above assume the maintenance of RCSD as one urban district under someone's control, be it the mayor or an elected school board. A better solution, however, eliminates the Rochester City School District and sectors off Monroe County into slices of a pie. Each slice or sector would incorporate suburban districts and a small portion of RCSD students. Each educational sector would be managed by the current suburban board with additional board representation from the ranks of the city.

Research tells us that if schools consist of more than 40 percent children and families of poverty (high concentration of poverty), they will not succeed. This recommendation pays attention to the research on what works by providing a middle-class education for the urban poor. Other significant advantages include a massive savings by eliminating one of the most costly bureaucracies in the state, maintenance of local control, and supporting democracy by not eliminating the voice of the voter.

Conclusion

Mayoral control has been a hands-down failure in this country. The mayor has stated, "Documented improvements... are a proven fact in such cities as New York City, Boston, and Washington, DC." The only improvements documented are created by the spin machines of each of the mayors of these cities and the others that I have previously mentioned. Parents and citizens in cities controlled by mayors are up in arms because they have lost their voices and lost their schools, and there is no better performance in schools created by mayors as measured by any valid scrutiny (see http://www.pureparents.org/ and http://www.timeoutfromtesting.org/ , two of scores of parent groups in Chicago and New York).

Citizens of mayoral controlled communities have experienced massive school closings and reopening with private charters that have done no better, and in most cases, worse than their public predecessors. As Danny Weil stated, this is more about breaking the backs of teachers and their unions and putting schools in the hands of investors who don't care about kids, but whose only concern is making money. Perhaps that is why hedge-fund investors are wild about taking over New York State realty (http://www.examiner.com/x-28545-NY-High-Schools-Examiner~y2009m12d9-Hedge-Funds-invest-in-Charter-Schools). Teachers are not the enemy. Poverty is the enemy.

But much more important than whether or not mayoral control is measured as an academic or financial success is the disenfranchisement of the urban poor. Taking away the right to vote is not an option in a democracy. Taking away the minority voices of the urban poor is an egregious assault on civil rights. The mayor, the governor, and the legislators who are lining up behind this ill-thought-out plan should re-think their positions and seek to tackle the root causes of poor performance in the city. If they expect city kids to graduate, it is imperative that poverty and its trappings are vigorously addressed. Paving the way legislatively for mayoral control of the Rochester City Schools would be one more flagrant act of hubris by the New York State legislature.

There are more viable paths available to achieve better results for urban kids than mayoral control. All take commitment and substantial political will and capital. And yes, they all will bring substantial and necessary "incremental" improvement. Remember that the only truly successful paths to graduation are built in pre-school programs that incrementally build to the pride and joy of graduation. The mayor and the superintendent have stated that we do not have time for incremental improvement. I would argue that we do not have time "not" to improve incrementally. We cannot afford the failed policies that emulate Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC. The public debate of this issue must take place immediately. Before any bill is drafted, all sectors of the public should weigh in.

It is not just our city's future that is at stake. Democracy is at stake.

Friday January 15, 2010

There are no additional blog posts assigned today. Anything you have completed has been recorded. There are lots of gaps! Today is the last opportunity to finish up this week's responses.

MIDTERM is NEXT THURSDAY. It will consist of a series of facts that you will turn into a well-written article, through which you will demonstate that you understand how to write a solid lead and incorporate quotes. As with an actual deadline, you'll have one class period.

Friday January 15, 2010

Please watch this clip and respond. I have no comment that can printed.

I am having trouble with the link; so you may need to copy and paste this into another tab.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/13/pat-robertson-haiti-curse_n_422099.html

Thursday January 14, 2010

Please make sure you have read yesterday's information and have written a thorough response and then responded to two other people. Remember that you may also pose your own questions. The material presented is merely a foundation for anything else you might find tangential and of interest.

Wednesday January 13, 2010

The following is really an addendum to yesterday's topic of surrogacy, but we've moved from rental property to ownership.

Please take the time to read the article.
The Meat Market
In a race to prevent thousands of needless deaths a year, countries from Singapore to Israel are launching innovative new programs to boost organ donation. Alex Tabarrok on paying donors for kidneys, favoritism on waiting lists and the shifting line between life and death.

Harvesting human organs for sale! The idea suggests the lurid world of horror movies and 19th-century graverobbers. Yet right now, Singapore is preparing to pay donors as much as 50,000 Singapore dollars (almost US$36,000) for their organs. Iran has eliminated waiting lists for kidneys entirely by paying its citizens to donate. Israel is implementing a "no give, no take" system that puts people who opt out of the donor system at the bottom of the transplant waiting list should they ever need an organ.

Millions of people suffer from kidney disease, but in 2007 there were just 64,606 kidney-transplant operations in the entire world. In the U.S. alone, 83,000 people wait on the official kidney-transplant list. But just 16,500 people received a kidney transplant in 2008, while almost 5,000 died waiting for one.


3,363
Americans who died waiting for a kidney transplant, January to October 2009
To combat yet another shortfall, some American doctors are routinely removing pieces of tissue from deceased patients for transplant without their, or their families', prior consent. And the practice is perfectly legal. In a number of U.S. states, medical examiners conducting autopsies may and do harvest corneas with little or no family notification. (By the time of autopsy, it is too late to harvest organs such as kidneys.) Few people know about routine removal statutes and perhaps because of this, these laws have effectively increased cornea transplants.

Routine removal is perhaps the most extreme response to the devastating shortage of organs world-wide. That shortage is leading some countries to try unusual new methods to increase donation. Innovation has occurred in the U.S. as well, but progress has been slow and not without cost or controversy.

Organs can be taken from deceased donors only after they have been declared dead, but where is the line between life and death? Philosophers have been debating the dividing line between baldness and nonbaldness for over 2,000 years, so there is little hope that the dividing line between life and death will ever be agreed upon. Indeed, the great paradox of deceased donation is that we must draw the line between life and death precisely where we cannot be sure of the answer, because the line must lie where the donor is dead but the donor's organs are not.

In 1968 the Journal of the American Medical Association published its criteria for brain death. But reduced crime and better automobile safety have led to fewer potential brain-dead donors than in the past. Now, greater attention is being given to donation after cardiac death: no heart beat for two to five minutes (protocols differ) after the heart stops beating spontaneously. Both standards are controversial—the surgeon who performed the first heart transplant from a brain-dead donor in 1968 was threatened with prosecution, as have been some surgeons using donation after cardiac death. Despite the controversy, donation after cardiac death more than tripled between 2002 and 2006, when it accounted for about 8% of all deceased donors nationwide. In some regions, that figure is up to 20%.

The shortage of organs has increased the use of so-called expanded-criteria organs, or organs that used to be considered unsuitable for transplant. Kidneys donated from people over the age of 60 or from people who had various medical problems are more likely to fail than organs from younger, healthier donors, but they are now being used under the pressure. At the University of Maryland's School of Medicine five patients recently received transplants of kidneys that had either cancerous or benign tumors removed from them. Why would anyone risk cancer? Head surgeon Dr. Michael Phelan explained, "the ongoing shortage of organs from deceased donors, and the high risk of dying while waiting for a transplant, prompted five donors and recipients to push ahead with surgery." Expanded-criteria organs are a useful response to the shortage, but their use also means that the shortage is even worse than it appears because as the waiting list lengthens, the quality of transplants is falling.


Surgeons at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington perform a kidney transplant.
1,154
Americans who died waiting for a liver transplant, January to October 2009
Routine removal has been used for corneas but is unlikely to ever become standard for kidneys, livers or lungs. Nevertheless more countries are moving toward presumed consent. Under that standard, everyone is considered to be a potential organ donor unless they have affirmatively opted out, say, by signing a non-organ-donor card. Presumed consent is common in Europe and appears to raise donation rates modestly, especially when combined, as it is in Spain, with readily available transplant coordinators, trained organ-procurement specialists, round-the-clock laboratory facilities and other investments in transplant infrastructure.

The British Medical Association has called for a presumed consent system in the U.K., and Wales plans to move to such a system this year. India is also beginning a presumed consent program that will start this year with corneas and later expand to other organs. Presumed consent has less support in the U.S. but experiments at the state level would make for a useful test.

Rabbis selling organs in New Jersey? Organ sales from poor Indian, Thai and Philippine donors? Transplant tourism? It's all part of the growing black market in transplants. Already, the black market may account for 5% to 10% of transplants world-wide. If organ sales are voluntary, it's hard to fault either the buyer or the seller. But as long as the market remains underground the donors may not receive adequate postoperative care, and that puts a black mark on all proposals to legalize financial compensation.

Only one country, Iran, has eliminated the shortage of transplant organs—and only Iran has a working and legal payment system for organ donation. In this system, organs are not bought and sold at the bazaar. Patients who cannot be assigned a kidney from a deceased donor and who cannot find a related living donor may apply to the nonprofit, volunteer-run Dialysis and Transplant Patients Association (Datpa). Datpa identifies potential donors from a pool of applicants. Those donors are medically evaluated by transplant physicians, who have no connection to Datpa, in just the same way as are uncompensated donors. The government pays donors $1,200 and provides one year of limited health-insurance coverage. In addition, working through Datpa, kidney recipients pay donors between $2,300 and $4,500. Charitable organizations provide remuneration to donors for recipients who cannot afford to pay, thus demonstrating that Iran has something to teach the world about charity as well as about markets.

The Iranian system and the black market demonstrate one important fact: The organ shortage can be solved by paying living donors. The Iranian system began in 1988 and eliminated the shortage of kidneys by 1999. Writing in the Journal of Economic Perspectives in 2007, Nobel Laureate economist Gary Becker and Julio Elias estimated that a payment of $15,000 for living donors would alleviate the shortage of kidneys in the U.S. Payment could be made by the federal government to avoid any hint of inequality in kidney allocation. Moreover, this proposal would save the government money since even with a significant payment, transplant is cheaper than the dialysis that is now paid for by Medicare's End Stage Renal Disease program.

In March 2009 Singapore legalized a government plan for paying organ donors. Although it's not clear yet when this will be implemented, the amounts being discussed for payment, around $50,000, suggest the possibility of a significant donor incentive. So far, the U.S. has lagged other countries in addressing the shortage, but last year, Sen. Arlen Specter circulated a draft bill that would allow U.S. government entities to test compensation programs for organ donation. These programs would only offer noncash compensation such as funeral expenses for deceased donors and health and life insurance or tax credits for living donors.




Source: Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network
World-wide we will soon harvest more kidneys from living donors than from deceased donors. In one sense, this is a great success—the body can function perfectly well with one kidney so with proper care, kidney donation is a low-risk procedure. In another sense, it's an ugly failure. Why must we harvest kidneys from the living, when kidneys that could save lives are routinely being buried and burned? A payment of funeral expenses for the gift of life or a discount on driver's license fees for those who sign their organ donor card could increase the supply of organs from deceased donors, saving lives and also alleviating some of the necessity for living donors.

Two countries, Singapore and Israel, have pioneered nonmonetary incentives systems for potential organ donors. In Singapore anyone may opt out of its presumed consent system. However, those who opt out are assigned a lower priority on the transplant waiting list should they one day need an organ, a system I have called "no give, no take."

Many people find the idea of paying for organs repugnant but they do accept the ethical foundation of no give, no take—that those who are willing to give should be the first to receive. In addition to satisfying ethical constraints, no give, no take increases the incentive to sign one's organ donor card thereby reducing the shortage. In the U.S., Lifesharers.org, a nonprofit network of potential organ donors (for which I am an adviser), is working to implement a similar system.

In Israel a more flexible version of no give, no take will be phased into place beginning this year. In the Israeli system, people who sign their organ donor cards are given points pushing them up the transplant list should they one day need a transplant. Points will also be given to transplant candidates whose first-degree relatives have signed their organ donor cards or whose first-degree relatives were organ donors. In the case of kidneys, for example, two points (on a 0- to 18-point scale) will be given if the candidate had three or more years previous to being listed signed their organ card. One point will be given if a first-degree relative has signed and 3.5 points if a first-degree relative has previously donated an organ.

The world-wide shortage of organs is going to get worse before it gets better, but we do have options. Presumed consent, financial compensation for living and deceased donors and point systems would all increase the supply of transplant organs. Too many people have died already but pressure is mounting for innovation that will save lives.

—Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University and director of research for the Independent Institute.
Correction & Amplification

Surgeons from the University of Maryland's School of Medicine have performed five transplants using kidneys that had either cancerous or benign tumors removed from them. Also, Singapore is preparing to pay donors as much as 50,000 Singapore dollars (almost US$36,000) for their organs. A previous version of this article incorrectly said that five patients received transplants of kidneys that had cancerous masses, and failed to note that the 50,000 figure was in Singapore, not U.S., dollars.

Tuesday January 12, 2010

Marketablility

Are certain goods not marketable?

Please read the following as pertains to surrogacy. Over the next two days, write your thoughts on this particular case. Then ponder whether the selling of organs. You might want to do some background reading on organ selling.

Mary Beth Whitehead, the genetic mother, was artificially inseminated with William Stern's sperm, making her the surrogate mother of his child. Whitehead responded to an ad in the Asbury Park Press seeking women willing to help infertile couples have children.[1] Despite what was stated in the surrogacy contract, Mr. Stern's wife, Elizabeth, was not infertile but had multiple sclerosis and was concerned about the potential health implications of pregnancy. A medical colleague had warned her that his own wife, who also had multiple sclerosis, had suffered temporary paralysis during pregnancy.[2]

On March 27, 1986, Whitehead gave birth to a daughter, whom she named "Sara Elizabeth Whitehead." Within 24 hours of transferring custody to the Sterns, Whitehead returned to ask for the baby back and threatened suicide. Whitehead then refused to return the baby to the Sterns and left New Jersey, taking the infant with her.

In 1987 New Jersey Superior Court judge Harvey R. Sorkow awarded custody of Baby M to the Sterns under a "best interest of the child analysis", validating the surrogacy contract.[3]

On February 3, 1988, the Supreme Court of New Jersey, led by Chief Justice Robert Wilentz, invalidated surrogacy contracts as against public policy, but in dicta affirmed the trial court's "best interest of the child" analysis. The Supreme Court remanded the case to family court. On remand, the lower court awarded William Stern custody and Mary Beth Whitehead visitation rights.[4][5] The court specifically addressed the issue of surrogates who were genetic parents, leaving open the question of whether gestational surrogates also had parental rights and whether gestational surrogacy also violated public policy.[6]

The case attracted much attention, as it demonstrated that the possibilities of third party reproduction had novel legal and social ramifications. The case exposed the dilemma of a birth mother created by contractual agreements and biological bonding. The case also split feminists who, on one side, argued that a woman has rights to her own body (that is, that she can decide to be a surrogate if she wishes), but who were also sensitive to the issue of potential exploitation. The surrogacy arrangement was heavily criticized.

Monday January 11, 2010

Conscription and Capitalism

"Any man whose name was drawn could escape service in one of the two ways: he could buy a flat commutation fee of $300.00, which exempted him unless and until his name was drawn again-or he could hire a substitue to go to war for him."

I'd like you to reflect and blog on two things here: Was this a fair system? Why or why not? And how does this compare to our all volunteer army?

Friday January 8, 2010

Folks were mostly in agreement over the Tiger Wood's incident as related in the article. Bravo to those who also commented on the writing itself. Rather than an article, here is more of a philosophical question to ponder:

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

(this actually ties into the last three blogs!)

Thursday January 7 2010

Thoughts: please make sure you write thoughtful responses, following the usual critical thinking formula of making a statement followed by support. Your responses should give reasons for your agreement. You folks are coming up with some interesting perspectives. Awesome.
(By the way, Happy Birthday, Jala!)

Third blog: The following is the article published last week in Vanity Fair. It is essentially a summary of the Tiger Woods' incident. Since the article will take a while to read, let's plan on responding to the incident over two days. There is lots to talk about here. This will be due by the close of Friday.

Tiger in the Rough

When Tiger Woods finally fell from his pedestal—the car crash, the angry wife, the tales of kinky extramarital sex, the link to a controversial sports doctor—it was one of the greatest recorded drops in popularity of any nonpolitical figure. Given Woods’s impenetrable mask of perfection, and the hints of trouble from one strange glimpse behind it, the revelations were inevitable and very, very costly. Annie Leibovitz catches the icon, pre-scandal, in prophetic isolation, while the author finds the clues in the wreckage.
By Buzz Bissinger
Photographs by Annie Leibovitz
February 2010 Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.


It wasn’t until after the early-morning hours of November 27—when Tiger Woods got into his Cadillac Escalade closely trailed by a golf club carried by his likely very furious wife, drove his car far less distance than he putts a golf ball, and hit a fire hydrant—that the tens of millions of us who admired him suddenly came to a realization: this was the first time we had ever seen him do something human, except perhaps for when, at the Buick Open last year, he was caught on video shaking his leg, apparently farting, and then grinning like a frat boy.

We know all too well the unraveling that has gone on since the crash. Tiger’s little car ride was as pregnant with imminent implosion as the one taken by another sports celebrity on the San Diego Freeway, followed by a convoy of Los Angeles police cars, in 1994. Tiger’s story has been driven by sex, tons of it, in allegedly all different varieties: threesomes in which he greatly enjoyed girl-on-girl, and mild S&M (featuring hair-pulling and spanking); $60,000 pay-for-sex escort dates; a quickie against the side of a car in a church parking lot; a preference for porn stars and nightclub waitresses, virtually all of them with lips almost as thick as their very full breasts; drug-bolstered encounters designed to make him even more of a conquistador (Ambien, of all things); immature sex-text messages (“Send me something naughty ... Go to the bathroom and take [a picture],” “I will wear you out ... When was the last time you got [laid]?”); soulful confessions that he got married only for image and was bored with his wife; regular payments of between $5,000 and $10,000 each month to keep his harem quiet. It’s all there and more in what is the greatest single fall in popularity of a nonpolitician in the history of public-opinion surveys: a drop in approval from 87 percent in 2005 to 33 percent, with an unfavorable rating of 57 percent, according to a recent USA Today/Gallup poll.

But why? When soccer player David Beckham was rumored to have been in sexual trouble, it may have been disappointing to his fans, but it was hardly surprising. Beckham just had the look of someone who was born to screw around. The same with Alex Rodriguez. The same with Kobe Bryant. (Is there a player in pro basketball who doesn’t screw around?) The same also with Bill Clinton and John Edwards and David Duchovny and Colorado minister Ted Haggard.

But not Tiger Woods. In an age of constant gotcha and exposure, he had always been the bionic man in terms of personality, controlling to a fault and controlled to a fault, smiling with humility and showing those pearly white teeth in victory or defeat, sui generis in the world of pro golf, where even fellow pros and other insiders didn’t really know him, because he didn’t want anybody to know him. With Woods, everything was crafted to produce a man of nothing, with no interior—non-threatening and non-controversial.

I’m aware if I’m playing at my best I’m tough to beat ...
It will always be the ball and me ...
No matter how good you get you can always get better ...
My main focus is on my game ...

That was Tiger Woods, all of which made him the perfect man and pitchman for our imperfect times, a charming nonperson.

In the movie Up in the Air, George Clooney’s character, Ryan Bingham, travels nearly 330 days a year to fire people with a sympathetic look on his face. He lives his life in airports, and his very emptiness, masked by calculated caring and aphorisms, makes him effective. So it was with Woods, making millions of dollars for endorsing a consulting company called Accenture with smooth and sophisticated ads emphasizing the noble but totally nebulous concept of “high performance.”

But even Ryan Bingham is ultimately no match for Woods. “To know me is to fly with me,” Bingham says at one point, and there is truth in that. But there was no way of ever knowing Tiger Woods—not in golf, beyond witnessing the machine-like relentlessness that made him the most remarkable athlete of our time, and not outside of golf, because he never showed any real part of himself off the course, never stepping outside of the cocoon that he and his handlers, primarily International Management Group, had created. Nothing was left to chance, not even his wardrobe during major tournaments, a careful mix of dark pants and golf shirt and hat picked out in consultation with Nike. He had the trappings of a life: a beautiful blonde wife, Elin Nordegren, who was a former Swedish model; a little boy and a little girl; an obligatory mansion in Florida, outside Orlando. But so much of it now seems like requisite window dressing, props for the further crafting of image and garnering of those hundreds of millions of dollars in endorsements—Nike, Gillette, Gatorade, Tag Heuer, AT&T. It now seems that when he returned home after a tournament and vanished back inside his gated community, the persona he left behind, the one he so obsessively presented to the public, was as empty as Bingham’s Omaha apartment, pieces of furniture without any meaning, a life without meaning.

There was no way of ever knowing Tiger Woods—beyond witnessing the machine-like relentlessness that made him remarkable.At the end of Up in the Air, Clooney realizes the error of his ways, that a life shielding human emotion is not worth living, that not everything can be controlled or should be controlled. But Woods, to the bitter end and with a kind of hubris that revealed his fundamental arrogance, still felt he could beat the tidal wave back. When he was taken to the hospital for injuries, a fake name was used. When the highway patrol came knocking, he refused to speak to them for three straight days. It was only when his paramours started pouring out of every cupboard like tenement cockroaches that Tiger expressed some sort of awareness that he was in deep shit, though he did not do so in person but on his Web site. He must have thought the merest acknowledgment of impropriety would be some type of antidote: he was Tiger. For the second time in his life he badly estimated, just as he had a few days earlier when he apparently thought that most fans would accept the story that his wife had a golf club in hand to free him from his Escalade instead of trying to beat the hell out of him for his infidelity. Once again it was sheer arrogance from a 33-year-old man—not “a kid,” as his I.M.G. agent, Mark Steinberg, still idiotically calls him—who continued to think he could fool the world.

There was once, in fact, a sustained glimpse of the real Tiger Woods. In 1997, Charles Pierce, writing for GQ, got inside. Tiger was 21 at the time, on the eve of winning his first of four Masters. For somebody who at the age of two had appeared on The Mike Douglas Show (where, with a perfect swing, he miraculously hit a stunning shot into the center of a net), he seemed remarkably naïve and remarkably stupid about the ways of the media. The interview was largely a series of profane quips by Tiger, such as “What I can’t figure out is why so many good-looking women hang around baseball and basketball. Is it because, you know, people always say that, like, black guys have big dicks?” At another moment, during a photo shoot where four women attended to his every need and flirted with him as he flirted back, he told a joke: He rubbed the tips of his shoes together and then asked the women, “What’s this?” They were stumped. “It’s a black guy taking off his condom.”

There came another joke about why two lesbians always get to where they are going faster than two gay guys: because the lesbians are always going 69. Pierce’s interview, which he taped, was the only honest and open one Woods has ever given. After that the steel wall of insulation came down, spearheaded by I.M.G.

Joe Logan, who covered golf and the P.G.A. tour for 14 years for The Philadelphia Inquirer and saw Woods play close to a hundred times, invariably observed the same thing whenever Tiger appeared at a press conference during a tournament: he came into the room with an entourage that included several security officials from the P.G.A., Mark Steinberg, and often Nordegren, after they got married in 2004. An almost imperceptible nod would come from Steinberg to begin, and a half-hour of questions and answers would start. Some pro golfers, such as Phil Mickelson, wear their hearts on their sleeves during these sessions. Mickelson could talk candidly about his game and the impact of his wife’s having breast cancer. He could also be snarky and pissy. Never Tiger.

“Tiger learned very well to talk forever and say nothing,” said Logan, a co-founder of a Web site called MyPhillyGolf.com, which covers the game both nationally and in the Philadelphia region. For Woods, Logan remembered, an emotional response to a flawless round was “I had a pretty good day.” He never got rude or rattled. He never got irritated with a stupid question, in large part because he knew the camera was always on him. The press conference would go on until Steinberg would give another nearly imperceptible nod that it was over. Afterward, Logan, like other golf writers, would walk out and realize that virtually nothing Woods had said, whatever the cordiality, was usable.

During a tournament, it was not unusual for Logan and fellow writers to go out to dinner and see other golfers, who would at least acknowledge them. But not Tiger. Once a round was over, he did not linger. He often stayed in private houses during tournaments, and the rumor during one British Open was that he took out the existing furniture and moved in his own.

If he was unknowable to writers who covered him, he was equally unknowable to virtually all the other golfers on the tour. They admired him and were thankful for him. They knew of his remarkable 71 P.G.A. victories during his 13-year pro career. They knew he had won 14 major tournaments, leaving him only 4 behind the record set by Jack Nicklaus. Most important, they knew that purses for P.G.A. tournaments had gone from $71 million in 1996 to $279 million in 2008, virtually all of the increase attributable to Woods. But there was always an arm’s-length relationship, this sense that Woods as a golfer was superhuman and they were not, though he was always affable, never antagonistic. Early on, he had learned that one of the rules of pro golf is to conform, a commandment only heightened in his case by his being black in a white man’s game. “He tried to present himself as a normal person,” said Michael Bamberger, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, who has covered Woods’s career. “What seems clear now is that he lived a very abnormal life all his life in a sport in which guys are very conventional, and if you are not conventional you get ostracized right away.” Whatever demons lurked, he kept them well hidden. Too well hidden.

In the wake of the steamy revelations, Logan, like the general public, feels that Tiger willfully, and fraudulently, created an image designed to make him as much money as possible: “He held himself out to a higher standard he created and built and cashed in on. Everyone feels duped and betrayed. It’s not like some guy who got drunk and jumped in the sack with some waitress.”

With the number of alleged paramours reaching 14 as of mid-December (a figure bound to multiply), it is safe to say that behind the non-accessible accessibility and seemingly perfect marriage to a beautiful woman was a sex addict who could not get enough. There is nothing wrong with that, given that the opportunities for Tiger were endless. But it is hard not to conclude that the only reason he got married was to burnish that precious image even more, family man on the outside and what Logan calls “this whole alternate life” on the inside. Even Hugh Hefner publicly disapproved of Woods’s behavior, decrying not that he had sex with other women but that he tried to lie and cheat his way through his liaisons without manning up to the fact that the marriage wasn’t working.

It was the age-old clash of image versus reality, the compartmentalization of two different lives that inevitably merge, whoever you are.Things are only continuing to cascade downward for Woods. Sexcapades aside, the most damning blow to his reputation may well be his link to Anthony Galea, a doctor who has been charged in Canada with trying to smuggle an unapproved drug into the country. In the United States, Galea is reportedly suspected by federal officials of dispensing illegal human-growth-hormone drugs to athletes, an allegation he denies. According to news accounts, Woods saw the doctor on several occasions to aid his recovery from knee surgery. There is no proof that Woods took performance enhancers, and sources say Woods is not part of the federal investigation, though as far back as 2007, sportswriters covering him could not help but notice that from the back he was beginning to look like Barry Bonds. But since he was Tiger Woods, they gave him a free pass. Now, whether Tiger is innocent or not, suspicion will linger. There have also been reports that his wife plans to leave him despite Woods’s frantic attempt to keep the marriage intact with what the New York Post called a $5 million “re-signing” bonus. Going forward, it is impossible to trust the motives of Woods on anything, whether he wants to be married for real or to reclaim an image so bloodied that his endorsement career is almost certainly over.

The swirling question is if, and when, he will return to golf. Most observers think he will, but with companies such as Accenture, Gillette, and Tag Heuer basically fleeing for the hills, he would simply be a golfer trying to win a tournament. His focus is such that he can likely still win, whatever the insanity surrounding him, but life will be different. Donald Trump thinks he will come back “bigger than ever,” a sure sign the opposite will happen.

In the end it was the age-old clash of image versus reality, the compartmentalization of two different lives that inevitably merge at some certain point, whoever you are. He exhibited the same superhuman confidence off the golf course that he exhibited on it, apparently convinced he would never be caught despite the stupid sloppiness at the end—text messages, voice-mail messages. He deluded himself into thinking he could be something that he wasn’t: untouchable. The greatest feat of his career is that he managed to get away with it for so long in public, the bionic man instead of the human one who hit a fire hydrant.

Buzz Bissinger is a Vanity Fair contributing editor.

Wednesday January 6, 2010

As with yesterday's prompt, lets start a conversation about the new law in Colorado.
I went through yesterday's blogs. You have a C if you only wrote for yourself, a B if you did one response and an A if you did two. You can finish those up today to get full credit. thank you.


Marijuana No Longer Criminal in Colorado Ski Town
by Kurt A. Gardinier


The new year brought new, sensible marijuana laws to the vibrant ski town of Breckenridge, Colorado. In November, citizens voted by nearly a 3 to 1 margin to remove criminal and civil penalties for adults over 21 carrying up to an ounce of marijuana and smoking paraphernalia. The law takes effect today, January 1, 2010.

“There is no sense in criminalizing a substance that is far less toxic, less addictive, and less problematic than alcohol,” said Brian Vicente, executive director of Sensible Colorado. “This is a huge step toward more a more sensible policy, in which adults are no longer punished for making the rational, safer choice to use marijuana instead of alcohol.”

The new law doesn’t change laws prohibiting use by minors, smoking in public, or driving under the influence. It also doesn’t allow for the possession or use of marijuana while skiing. While conflicts with state and federal law remain, this first and necessary step toward ending marijuana prohibition sends a strong message to lawmakers in Colorado and around the country.

Tuesday January 5 2010

First blog: The following is the Michael Pollan's blog from yesterday, where he addresses the health care crisis.

You should have a minimum of 20 people on you friend list. I've checked and some of you folks do not. Please recitify that first. Then read Pollan's blog and respond in a thoughtful manner. Once you have done so, start checking what other folks in the class wrote. Choose two and repond to those. You should have a total of three writing exercises for this: one personal in depth response and two responses to those of a classmate. Grading is easy: I read and count! New blog post on Thursday.

"Food Rules": A Completely Different Way To Fix The Health Care Crisis


Michael Pollan Author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," "In Defense of Food"
"Food Rules": A Completely Different Way To Fix The Health Care Crisis

The idea for this book came from a doctor--a couple of them, as a matter of fact. They had read my last book, "In Defense of Food", which ended with a handful of tips for eating well: simple ways to navigate the treacherous landscape of modern food and the often-confusing science of nutrition. "What I would love is a pamphlet I could hand to my patients with some rules for eating wisely," they would say. "I don't have time for the big nutrition lecture and, anyway, they really don't need to know what an antioxidant is in order to eat wisely." Another doctor, a transplant cardiologist, wrote to say "you can't imagine what I see on the insides of people these days wrecked by eating food products instead of food." So rather than leaving his heart patients with yet another prescription or lecture on cholesterol, he gives them a simple recipe for roasting a chicken, and getting three wholesome meals out of it -- a very different way of thinking about health.

Make no mistake: our health care crisis is in large part a crisis of the American diet -- roughly three quarters of the two-trillion plus we spend on health care in this country goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which can be prevented by a change in lifestyle, especially diet. And a healthy diet is a whole lot simpler than the food industry and many nutritional scientists -- what I call the Nutritional Industrial Complex -- would have us believe. After spending several years trying to answer the supposedly incredibly complicated question of how we should eat in order to be maximally healthy, I discovered the answer was shockingly simple: eat real food, not too much of it, and more plants than meat. Or, put another way, get off the modern western diet, with its abundance of processed food, refined grains and sugars, and its sore lack of vegetables, whole grains and fruit.

So I decided to take the doctors up on the challenge. I set out to collect and formulate some straightforward, memorable, everyday rules for eating, a set of personal policies that would, taken together or even separately, nudge people onto a healthier and happier path. I solicited rules from doctors, scientist, chefs, and readers, and then wrote a bunch myself, trying to boil down into everyday language what we really know about healthy eating. And while most of the rules are backed by science, they are not framed in the vocabulary of science but rather culture -- a source of wisdom about eating that turns out to have as much, if not more, to teach us than nutritional science does.

What follows is a small sample of "Food Rules", a half dozen policies that will give you a taste of what you'll find in the book: sixty-four food rules, each with a paragraph of explanation. I think you'll see from this little appetizer that "Food Rules" is a most unconventional diet book. You can read it in an hour and it just might change your eating life. I hope you'll take away something you can put to good use, and maybe get a chuckle or two along the way. And do let me know if have any food rules I should know about. I'm still collecting them, at pollanfoodrules@gmail.com.

#11 Avoid foods you see advertised on television.

Food marketers are ingenious at turning criticisms of their products -- and rules like these -- into new ways to sell slightly different versions of the same processed foods: They simply reformulate (to be low-fat, have no HFCS or transfats, or to contain fewer ingredients) and then boast about their implied healthfulness, whether the boast is meaningful or not. The best way to escape these marketing ploys is to tune out the marketing itself, by refusing to buy heavily promoted foods. Only the biggest food manufacturers can afford to advertise their products on television: More than two thirds of food advertising is spent promoting processed foods (and alcohol), so if you avoid products with big ad budgets, you'll automatically be avoiding edible foodlike substances. As for the 5 percent of food ads that promote whole foods (the prune or walnut growers or the beef ranchers), common sense will, one hopes, keep you from tarring them with the same brush -- these are the exceptions that prove the rule.

From "Food Rules":

#19 If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't.

#36 Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.

This should go without saying. Such cereals are highly processed and full of refined carbohydrates as well as chemical additives.

#39 Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.

There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we're eating them every day. The french fry did not become America's most popular vegetable until industry took over the jobs of washing, peeling, cutting, and frying the potatoes -- and cleaning up the mess. If you made all the french fries you ate, you would eat them much less often, if only because they're so much work. The same holds true for fried chicken, chips, cakes, pies, and ice cream. Enjoy these treats as often as you're willing to prepare them -- chances are good it won't be every day.

#47 Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.

For many of us, eating has surprisingly little to do with hunger. We eat out of boredom, for entertainment, to comfort or reward ourselves. Try to be aware of why you're eating, and ask yourself if you're really hungry -- before you eat and then again along the way. (One old wive's test: If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you're not hungry.) Food is a costly antidepressant.

#58 Do all your eating at a table.

No, a desk is not a table. If we eat while we're working, or while watching TV or driving, we eat mindlessly -- and as a result eat a lot more than we would if we were eating at a table, paying attention to what we're doing. This phenomenon can be tested (and put to good use): Place a child in front of a television set and place a bowl of fresh vegetables in front of him or her. The child will eat everything in the bowl, often even vegetables that he or she doesn't ordinarily touch, without noticing what's going on. Which suggests an exception to the rule: When eating somewhere other than at a table, stick to fruits and vegetables.

Monday January 4, 2010

The French songwriter Jacques Brel wrote the following. It is lovely message I wish to share with you all as a nod to the New Year.

Our Deepest Fear.......

Je vous souhaite des rêves à n'en plus finir
Et l'envie furieuse d'en réaliser quelques uns.
Je vous souhaite d'aimer ce qu'il faut aimer
Et d'oublier ce qu'il faut oublier.
Je vous souhaite des passions. Je vous souhaite des silences.
Je vous souhaite des chants d'oiseaux au réveil
Et des rires d'enfants.
Je vous souhaite de résister à l'enlisement, à l'indifference, aux vertus négatives de notre époque.
Je vous souhaite surtout d'être vous!


Our Deepest Fear.......(English translation)
My wish for you is that you have a neverending series of dreams and a furious desire to realize a few of them.
My wish for you is that you love what must be loved and forget what must be forgotten.
I wish you passions. I wish you silences.
My wish for you is that you hear the songs of birds and the laughter of children at your awaking.
My wish for you is that you resist the downtroddenness, the indifference, the negative virtues of our era. My wish for you especially is that you be YOU!


New ASSIGNMENT:

We have three weeks left in this term and will spend it blogging. What this will entail is that every couple of days, you will have an article prompt to which you will respond. These responses should be subjective, much as one would write an editorial; however, they should not be diatribes, but insightful, reflective observations. At the same time, again like an editorial, there will be some controversy. Not everyone will have the same reaction.

Mechanics:
1. You need to connect to each other on the blog. Early on, I put together a list of folk's blog addresses. I'll hand out a copy to everyone. In class, let me know what is incorrect and I'll update it for tomorrow. In the meantime, put everyone in.

2. Read the article. They'll be one Tuesday.

3. Respond and post your article.

4, Now read some of your classmates' responses and respond to at least three of these. Again, these are not attacks, but thoughtful reflections and obserrvations. You may want to do a little background reading to support your arguments.