Tuesday I'm scheduled to work at one of the shelters in Cobb County where some of the NOLA evacuees are staying. I've been craving that day for a week, since I went and signed up as a red cross volunteer, because the overwhelming urge to CHANGE SOMETHING is haunting my every waking moment.
So I'll change something. Maybe it'll be a trash can liner, maybe I'll change a diaper, maybe I'll change the paper towels in the locker rooms, maybe the toilet paper in the bathrooms, maybe I'll change the ink cartridge in the ink jet printer, if there is a printer, maybe I'll change the way the phone is answered, or maybe I'll change what's for lunch, maybe I'll change my mind, maybe I'll change someone else's mind, or maybe I'll change some tiny little insignificant thing that might be the only little change I can change.
From Shelley Powers at Burningbird:
Another side topic that came up in the comment thread was the impact that meeting people and becoming personal friends has on ‘open’ discourse, in an environment made up of people who have met each other, integrated in tightly with those who have not; with how we react when ‘friends’ are referenced, as compared to those we feel more objective about. This also appeared in the comment thread of a post by David Weinberger.
Either one enters an online discussion to debate the merits of whatever topic is the focus, or we enter a conversation to defend or support a friend. When we mix the two, we put those who have not met others, personally, at a disadvantage. This, also, becomes a failure in social software.
From Dave Pollard at How to Save the World:
There's a company in our community that provides a free, supervised exercise facility to all its employees, and a subsidized cafeteria that offers only healthy foods. I think they're on the right track -- they're rewarding behaviours that repay them as an employer (through healthier, more resilient workers), without getting specific about who's to blame when an individual becomes sick or injured. It's a 'no fault' system.
What is needed to supplement this is more honesty in our society and our economy about many of the things that are bad for our health, but which are very profitable, and which therefore are rarely recognized or addressed as the social evils they really are. Alcohol, for all its benefits, sucks billions out of the economy in death and violence and injury and illness every year, yet we still tolerate advertisements that show its consumption as an essential ingredient of personal happiness. The meats, and many other foods we eat that are advertised to the hilt (especially the fat, salt and sugar-laden "fast-food" varieties) are chemical cesspools that unquestionably add billions of dollars to annual health care costs.
The real answer, I would argue, is not rewarding people for staying healthy (because we can never determine when their health or lack of it is due to their behaviour or factors beyond their control), but rather health care innovations that address the real, preventable causes of illness and injury...
Read the remainder of this here.
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