:Scribbles and Bits

I haven’t done an update on my MBA progress for a while. I’m just now finishing my second year of the 4 year, distance MBA program through Colorado State University. The distance cohort is an extension of the evening, MBA program at Fort Collins, CO–there is no full time MBA program. Nevertheless, the program is AACSB accredited and the Business School ranks in the top 100.

My current course on Business Economics will finish in a few weeks and I’ll have the summer off this year. For now however I am 1 DVD lecture behind and have my first project coming due in a week. This actually isn’t too bad. Lectures for this course occur on Tuesday evenings and I receive my DVD on Friday mornings–I will be caught up before the next lecture arrives. Previous to Econ I took Statistics. I entered the course with a measure of dread but actually came out quite well (B+), an outcome that is due in a large part to high-quality teaching staff. I can only hope for the same with economics.

After this…

Only two more years to go!

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Physicians at the University of arizona and at the University of North Carolina have developed a quick reading test to help assess patients’ individual cognitive levels to help them tailor their teaching accordingly. Patients are asked to read a nutrional label on a product and are then asked six simple questions. This test, which the doctors have called “the newest vital sign,” can be completed in the span of time in which the patient’s other vital signs such as pulse, temperature, respirations and blood pressure are measured. The February issue of Healthcare Financial Management points out a study indicating on average, that those with a 3rd grade reading level or less cost Medicaid $10,000 annually while patients with more developed skills average only $3000.

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According to USA today, America is enjoying a historic building boom in new-hospital construction. Construction spending for the past five years has exceeded spending in the previous five years by 47%. Bed capacity however, has fallen. Bed capacity in 2004 fell by 18000 to 808,000. Some of the change may be attributable to long anticipated regulatory rules requiring “private-room-only” for all patients.

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Modern Healthcare reports that over two thirds of US hospital CEOs interviewed cited finances as their biggest worry. Healthcare staffing ran a distant second. Interestingly, Hospitals in the USA have reported an average 5.2% margin for 2004 with a slightly hire margin anticipated for 2005 when all accounts are in. On the other hand, another recent article suggests that 4% would be a more realistic estimate for 2004. With that kind of ambiguity it’s hard to know what to worry about the most.

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St. Patrick’s day is closing in quickly! If you haven’t yet purchased your greeting cards, gifts and celebratory paraphernalia, maybe you don’t need to. The day honors the memory of the captured Scot who spent six years in slavery before fleeing abroad for religious training, afterwhich he became instrumental in the conversion of Ireland to Christianity. A great starting point with links to all things St. Paddy can be found here.

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The News Observer cleverly points out that former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevec’s death has abruptly ended the 4-year, war crimes tribunal–I would think so!

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Payson AZ: 75 year old Ernie Freeman plunged down an abandoned well-shaft in late January. He stopped only when his clothing finally snagged on debris. He’d been working in a shed with volunteers for the local historical society when he unexpectedly disappeared through the rotten boards that covered the well.

After being rescued by area emergency crews he said, “I was a good 20 feet down. My feet didn’t touch the bottom. If the water had gone over my head, I would have been in big trouble.” There was an estimated 30 feet of water in the well.

You can read the full story here…

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President George Bush’s budget plan proposes a record $3.5 billion increase in new user fees. He may not hate taxes as much as he loves shifting the costs of services to the users of services. How about also proposing abuser fees that would shift some of the pain of hearing the english language abused to those who abuse it?

A colleague sent me this collection of Bushisms: some old and some new…

Can the English language survive?

“The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country.”
- George W. Bush

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American Life in Poetry: Column 043

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Lola Haskins, who lives in Florida, has written a number of poems about musical terms, entitled “Adagio,” “Allegrissimo,” “Staccato,” and so on. Here is just one of those, presenting the gentleness of pianissimo playing through a series of comparisons.

To Play Pianissimo

Does not mean silence.
The absence of moon in the day sky
for example.

Does not mean barely to speak,
the way a child’s whisper
makes only warm air
on his mother’s right ear.

To play pianissimo
is to carry sweet words
to the old woman in the last dark row

who cannot hear anything else,
and to lay them across her lap like a shawl.

From “Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems,” BOA Editions, Rochester, NY. Copyright (c) 2004 by Lola Haskins and reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Richard John Neuhaus, in “First Things: A Journal of Religion, Politics and Culture,” (November 2005), comments on the notion “that in matters of religion, but not only in matters of religion, one must make a choice between tolerance and truth.” He says it as false as a notion as it is a persistent one.

He cites a recent study by sociologists James D. Davidson and Dean R. Hoge “that explores how the sexual scandals have influenced Catholic attitudes toward the faith and the Church.” Davidson and Hoge surveyed over a thousand, self-identified Catholics. In the study, 60% of participants were registered in a local parish and were assumed to be more religiously active than the 40% who were either not registered or who were unsure where or whether they were registered.

The researchers report an overall picture of stability in the pews. The results include several startling figures:

1) “Generational differences on the effects of the scandal turn out to be small, as were differences between registered parishioners and others.”
2) “81% of Catholics said that being Catholic is a very important part of who I am.”
3) “82% said the Catholic Church is very important to me personally.”
4) “71% said they would never leave the Catholic Church.”
5) “83 percent of Catholics agree that in the Mass the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ.”

Citation of statistics was not the main point of Neuhaus’s lengthy article but I thought that the numbers were a striking indicator of the strength of religious upbringing as a longer-term factor in Catholic, self-identity.

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