Last night, I had the opportunity to attend the town hall meeting at the MCC church in Seminole Heights. The meeting, as discussed earlier, was in response to BOCC's recent "neutrality" statement on gay rights which led to the dismantling of a public library book display on that topic. The initative was led by Ronda Storms - no fan of the library during her tenure.
Anyway I feel rather strongly about this issue and am offended by the BOCC actions for three reasons:
1. The county should not mandate what a library can and can not display - from my perspective, this is a clear civil rights violation
2. The county is short sighted in making plans for the future of our community. Data has demonstrated that areas with a welcomed gay population also have a large creative class, driving a high innovation, high economic growth area. In other words, an anti-gay image threatens the future talent pool and economic growth of our area.
3. Gay Rights and Discrimination - it seems as though our society awards rights to one group only to find another group upon which to discriminate against. Seperate is not equal.
The meeting last night was VERY WELL attended - apparently some estimates are in the range of 700 people. I was in the main room which was was packed - forcing the church to set up numerous small rooms with audio to handle the hundreds of extra people. Not only was the meeting well attended in terms of sheer numbers, but also in terms of credible supporters. For instance, City Council women Linda Saul-Sena was there, as well as former county commision chairmen, Pat Frank. Furthermore, a representative of the ACLU was in attendance along with the attorney who handled the human rights ordinance in 1990. Other Tampa notables included Joe Redner.
Attendees were very enthusiastic - lots of applause and standing ovations for speakers. What was most impressive about the meeting though was the ORGANIZATION. Equity of Florida has thought this through - after a general short pep rally the moderator had the room divide into break-out groups including - Art, Business, Direct Action, Legal, Librarian/Education, and Meet-Up/Long Term.
I attended the Business group since I didn't really fit well anywhere else and feel that I understand the economic arguments of why the BOCC decision is wrong. Furthermore, I also feel strongly that the gay community must be careful in crafting their campaign to fight this - I have outlined three issues above and only one of those issues applies directly to the gay community. In other words, this is a chance for many people in the community to rally around a single issue but if the campaign is driven by a gay pride marketing strategy you stand to lose numerous would be supporters who might not get passionate about gay pride but would certainly be passionate about civil liberties or future economic impacts. You have to craft a campaign that markets to the non-gay community and keeps the focus on all three important issues. The economic impact arguement (articulated best by Richard Florida) is probably the easiest thing to get behind for most people. You don't have to be gay to be outraged.
Anyway, the business meeting went well with people offering suggestions including a buycott of gay and gay friendly businesses, a display of company non-discrimination statements that include sexual orientation, and contacting the NFL to discuss whether a superbowl should be played in a town so unfriendly to the gay community.
After the breakout sessions, the group came together again to share ideas. The art community will sponsor a number of gay readings and book discussions at the public library, as well as a gay family portrait studio with the prints to go on display at the public library. The librarian group supported these measures. Furthermore, the direct action group will be sponsoring a number of protests and also suggested contacting the Human Relations Board of Tampa and the Human Rights Board of Hillsborough County to lodge a complaint.
One of the most interesting aspects of all of this is that the city and the county do not agree. Pam Iorio and at least some members of the city council are supportive of the gay community and Iorio has come out against this initiative previously, while Saul-Sena spoke out last night. Therefore, it is important to seek positive resolve without punishing the city itself (e.g. losing the superbowl). In addition, this could make for some interesting political battles as we move on.
Finally, the Equality Florida group is interested in getting another Human Rights ammendment passed in the county that would inlude Sexual Orientation in non-discrimination policies.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
The Creative Class
In Richard Florida's book, The Rise of the Creative Class, the author demonstrates how an increased investment in research and development within industry and academia during the early 2oth century fueled the rise of a creative class in the United States. While still unorganized and largely unrecognized, this growing group shares similar values and goals. Furthermore, the creative class spans art, science, music, and other information fields.
To get a sense of how the creative class spans different fields but centers around basic types of people, author Richard Florida compares Andy Warhol to Thomas Edison, noting how similar their workstyles were and, possibly, their personalities. Both Warhol and Edison amassed a large amount of work and inspired others to create a number of items as well. Both Warhol and Edison designed large creative spaces - Warhol had the Factory and Edison had his New Jersey Labs. Both Warhol and Edison allowed people to work on their own projects, collaborate on their projects, and found time to indepently explore their creations as well.
In other words, "creative" is used here to refer to a unique way of organizing, synthesizing, and reorganizing patterns and data. Most importantly, the creative class flocks together. Dating back to the rise of Silicon Valley, Richard Florida details how creative groups come together and thrive off of each other in seeminly unrelated industries such as music and software design. The first example of this is the proximity and timing of the rise of Silicon Valley to not only Stanford University but also to the hippie districts of the late 60s. Gifted hippies (Jobs, Wozniak, the Homebrew Club) were able to find work and a creative outlet in the early computer companies, coexisting with the aging eccentric engineers. This pattern is repeated throughout the U.S. in Seattle (Nirvana/Microsoft), Austin (South by Southwest Festival/Linkletter/Dell), and other locations. The main point is that creativity breeds creativity and creativity attracts creativity, not because all the creative people are doing the same thing, but because all the creative people need the same type of environment and share similar life goals.
The rise of the creative class correlates with the decline of the working class and the rise of the service class (which provide many services to the creative class) creative class. This may sound elitist but Florida also argues that it is imperative to better train individuals to move into the economic creative class or to readily apply service skills to gain sucess.
Another major mark of the creative class is that growing numbers "front-load" their careers - long periods of education and hard work (post-docs, residincies, assistant professorships, numerous albums, constant touring) while deferring marriage and children. This has altered the traditional workplace and leads to the shift from the vertical corporate ladder to the horizontal division of labor (discussed below) and also allows an individual to establish early credibility allowing greater influence later in life with less work geared simply at getting your feet grounded and more on creating, flexibility, synthesizing, training/teaching others, and reflecting. (the tenured professor).
The idea of the creative class ties in perfectly with Leavitt's ideas of information leverage (the doctor and real estate agent in Freakonmics) and helps explain the technological advances discussed in Friedman's technodeterminist work, the World is Flat. Furthermore, Florida's Creative Class takes the much discussed knowledge/information based economy and posits that the creative class is what generates, drives, and manages the growing knowledge economy.
The Creative Class is also changing work environments (1. vertical division is replaced with horizontal division of labor, 2. people identify with their occupation/profession, not their company, and 3. greater assumed risk by the individual) and management styles (1. creative work is not repetitive, 2. it goes on inside people's head so a lot of it is not observable, 3. creative people tend to rebel at efforts to manage them systematically).
For these reasons, soft control has become a more common management tactic, marked by a system of peer recognition and competitive peer pressure. Certainly this is demonstrated in academia through the peer reviewed system and in music through magazines, blogs, club bookings, record contracts, and influential scenters - and of course market forces.
The divisions between work and life are dissovling for the creative class - creativity is not turned on at particular times or hours - the compartmentalization of labor has grown fuzzy. The potential downside to this is that we are becoming workaholics - but, as Florida points out, we are also saving ourselves from lives doomed at watching a clock, counting the seconds to clocking out.
Richard Florida's most important contributions may come in the 4th section of his manuscript in which he suggests that the cities that will thrive in the future will be those that maintain and nurture a creative class, becoming a Creative Center. He goes on to suggest that how we decide to live and work will be partly dictated by our desire to be in a Creative Center. Florida notes that the creative class are high salary earners and make significant economic contributions. Therefore, he observes, the creative centers are economic winners - with "high concentrations of Creative Class people, they have high concentrations of creative economic outcomes, in the form of innovations and high-tech industry growth. They also show strong signs of overall regional vitality such as increases in employment and population" (this goes well with Friedman's arguments concerning the shifting patterns in employment - new job titles created with job innovation). These Creative Centers, the author continues, are not thriving for traditional reasons - such as access to natural resources and transportation routes - instead they thrive from creative capital where artistic, cultural, technological, and economic creativity thrive. Over the 20th centruy, the cities that have grown the most economically have also had the highest density of human capital (as measured by education level) - corporations and firms come to these places to get access to the talent pool. In other words, economic growth is driven by where creative people choose to locate.
Furthermore, Florida goes on to note that creative people of all types flock to locations that breed further creativity. Many creative people, argues Florida, need an open environment that is tolerant of new ideas and maintains a social space for creativity to thrive. Therefore, many creative people may access how tolerant and diverse a location is before settling there. One proxy for this is the "gay index" - or how welcoming a particular community is to the gay population. As a matter of fact, economic growth and high density of high-tech/innovative fields orrelates very well with the gay index. It does not mean that most people in high tech are gay, it just means that high tech people are going to be more likely to settle in a place that is also attractive to members of the gay community. A similar correlation is demonstrated with the "bohemian index" - a measure of openenss to new ideas.
From these correlations, the author develops his three Ts of success for a region - technology, talent, and tolerance. Between 1990 and 2003, those regions with the highest ratings in each of those stats also had the highest economic growth.
In the final section of "The Creative Class" Richard Florida demonstrates how Austin, TX and Dublin, Ireland have sucessfully applied the three Ts to become leading areas of creativity and growth.
Richard Florida's Site
Creative TampaBay
Buy it at Amazon
To get a sense of how the creative class spans different fields but centers around basic types of people, author Richard Florida compares Andy Warhol to Thomas Edison, noting how similar their workstyles were and, possibly, their personalities. Both Warhol and Edison amassed a large amount of work and inspired others to create a number of items as well. Both Warhol and Edison designed large creative spaces - Warhol had the Factory and Edison had his New Jersey Labs. Both Warhol and Edison allowed people to work on their own projects, collaborate on their projects, and found time to indepently explore their creations as well.
In other words, "creative" is used here to refer to a unique way of organizing, synthesizing, and reorganizing patterns and data. Most importantly, the creative class flocks together. Dating back to the rise of Silicon Valley, Richard Florida details how creative groups come together and thrive off of each other in seeminly unrelated industries such as music and software design. The first example of this is the proximity and timing of the rise of Silicon Valley to not only Stanford University but also to the hippie districts of the late 60s. Gifted hippies (Jobs, Wozniak, the Homebrew Club) were able to find work and a creative outlet in the early computer companies, coexisting with the aging eccentric engineers. This pattern is repeated throughout the U.S. in Seattle (Nirvana/Microsoft), Austin (South by Southwest Festival/Linkletter/Dell), and other locations. The main point is that creativity breeds creativity and creativity attracts creativity, not because all the creative people are doing the same thing, but because all the creative people need the same type of environment and share similar life goals.
The rise of the creative class correlates with the decline of the working class and the rise of the service class (which provide many services to the creative class) creative class. This may sound elitist but Florida also argues that it is imperative to better train individuals to move into the economic creative class or to readily apply service skills to gain sucess.
Another major mark of the creative class is that growing numbers "front-load" their careers - long periods of education and hard work (post-docs, residincies, assistant professorships, numerous albums, constant touring) while deferring marriage and children. This has altered the traditional workplace and leads to the shift from the vertical corporate ladder to the horizontal division of labor (discussed below) and also allows an individual to establish early credibility allowing greater influence later in life with less work geared simply at getting your feet grounded and more on creating, flexibility, synthesizing, training/teaching others, and reflecting. (the tenured professor).
The idea of the creative class ties in perfectly with Leavitt's ideas of information leverage (the doctor and real estate agent in Freakonmics) and helps explain the technological advances discussed in Friedman's technodeterminist work, the World is Flat. Furthermore, Florida's Creative Class takes the much discussed knowledge/information based economy and posits that the creative class is what generates, drives, and manages the growing knowledge economy.
The Creative Class is also changing work environments (1. vertical division is replaced with horizontal division of labor, 2. people identify with their occupation/profession, not their company, and 3. greater assumed risk by the individual) and management styles (1. creative work is not repetitive, 2. it goes on inside people's head so a lot of it is not observable, 3. creative people tend to rebel at efforts to manage them systematically).
For these reasons, soft control has become a more common management tactic, marked by a system of peer recognition and competitive peer pressure. Certainly this is demonstrated in academia through the peer reviewed system and in music through magazines, blogs, club bookings, record contracts, and influential scenters - and of course market forces.
The divisions between work and life are dissovling for the creative class - creativity is not turned on at particular times or hours - the compartmentalization of labor has grown fuzzy. The potential downside to this is that we are becoming workaholics - but, as Florida points out, we are also saving ourselves from lives doomed at watching a clock, counting the seconds to clocking out.
Richard Florida's most important contributions may come in the 4th section of his manuscript in which he suggests that the cities that will thrive in the future will be those that maintain and nurture a creative class, becoming a Creative Center. He goes on to suggest that how we decide to live and work will be partly dictated by our desire to be in a Creative Center. Florida notes that the creative class are high salary earners and make significant economic contributions. Therefore, he observes, the creative centers are economic winners - with "high concentrations of Creative Class people, they have high concentrations of creative economic outcomes, in the form of innovations and high-tech industry growth. They also show strong signs of overall regional vitality such as increases in employment and population" (this goes well with Friedman's arguments concerning the shifting patterns in employment - new job titles created with job innovation). These Creative Centers, the author continues, are not thriving for traditional reasons - such as access to natural resources and transportation routes - instead they thrive from creative capital where artistic, cultural, technological, and economic creativity thrive. Over the 20th centruy, the cities that have grown the most economically have also had the highest density of human capital (as measured by education level) - corporations and firms come to these places to get access to the talent pool. In other words, economic growth is driven by where creative people choose to locate.
Furthermore, Florida goes on to note that creative people of all types flock to locations that breed further creativity. Many creative people, argues Florida, need an open environment that is tolerant of new ideas and maintains a social space for creativity to thrive. Therefore, many creative people may access how tolerant and diverse a location is before settling there. One proxy for this is the "gay index" - or how welcoming a particular community is to the gay population. As a matter of fact, economic growth and high density of high-tech/innovative fields orrelates very well with the gay index. It does not mean that most people in high tech are gay, it just means that high tech people are going to be more likely to settle in a place that is also attractive to members of the gay community. A similar correlation is demonstrated with the "bohemian index" - a measure of openenss to new ideas.
From these correlations, the author develops his three Ts of success for a region - technology, talent, and tolerance. Between 1990 and 2003, those regions with the highest ratings in each of those stats also had the highest economic growth.
In the final section of "The Creative Class" Richard Florida demonstrates how Austin, TX and Dublin, Ireland have sucessfully applied the three Ts to become leading areas of creativity and growth.
Richard Florida's Site
Creative TampaBay
Buy it at Amazon
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Emergency Town Hall Meeting
This is from the seminole heights blog - I have just cut and pasted in order to spread the word
Emergency Town Hall Meeting
I received this via email. An important event in Seminole Heights addressing an significant injustice countywide. See Ernest Hooper's article on the controversy.Attend the Emergency Town Hall Meeting in Tampa - 6:30 PM Monday, June 20th. See below for directions and spread the word to others in Tampa. In an outrageous act of bigotry, the Hillsborough County Commission voted yesterday to bar county agencies from recognizing or participating in Gay Pride Month or any events that portray gay people in a positive light. Our help is needed!
Now we are hearing about similar censorship efforts being launched in other counties.
The policy is an attack on gay people, an insult to the entire community and a national embarrassment for our state. This policy is discriminatory and will must challenge it.
The commission’s actions came on the heels of a dispute regarding the removal of a display at the West Gate Regional Library highlighting gay and lesbian literature. The display was created in recognition of Gay Pride month.
Out of hundreds of library visitors, only three people complained about the content of the main-lobby display over the course of several days. The county’s chief librarian, Jean Peters, visited the library and demanded the display be removed. When the removal of the books sparked an outcry, the library allowed a much smaller display to be shown in the back of the library.
Commissioner Ronda Storms, a longtime anti-gay antagonist, introduced the policy. And despite the dozens of us who crowded the chambers in opposition, the Commission passed the proposal. It prevents Hillsborough county agencies from giving equal recognition to local events that present gay people in a positive light, including Gay Pride Month. To make things even worse, the commission went on to vote 6-1 to prevent the new policy from being repealed except by a super majority vote of the commission following a public hearing.
Before casting the only "No" vote, Commissioner Kathy Castor stated "Government should not be in the business of promoting discrimination."
An Emergency Town Hall Meeting will be held this Monday, June 20th at 6:30 PM. The location is the MCC Church at 408 E Cayuga Street in Tampa. Take I-275 to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. exit and head west 1/10 mile. Turn right onto North Seminole Ave. and go 1/3 mile to E. Cayuga, MCC is on the right.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Health Courts
Two recent amendments passed by
First, I will review two Amendments which allow these changes and second I will introduce a policy proposal that can be adopted using the current laws, infrastructure, and resources available to our state.
In November,
A panel was assembled in the winter and spring of 2005 that made recommendations to the state House of Representatives. Finally, the House followed many of these recommendations and a final Amendment was passed that modified the original legislation into a law that would not cause a significant burden on
These two Amendments should be welcomed by the both the legal and medical community, as well as by patients, and but not in the current way in which the Amendments are executed. If we do not continue pursuits of additional malpractice reform,
The major concern cited by opponents to the non-economic damages cap is that attorneys will be unable to take on malpractice cases due to the high cost by the law firm in gathering expert witnesses and investing the claim. Therefore, attorneys will be unable to take on the majority of liability claims due to the potential loss of their investment.
It is also important to note that only 2% of patients injured by negligent care ever file a malpractice claim and the current malpractice system only compensates 1 in 14 people. These low odds and the lack of precedent cause attorneys to adopt a strategy of swamping the courts with malpractice claims, 4 out of 5 of which are found to be invalid. A system of standards for awards and for care would greatly reduce frivolous suits and would allow attorneys, patients, and physicians to modify their practices and behavior accordingly.
There is a solution to these problems that would be in complete alignment with Amendment 3 and Amendment 8. The Progressive Policy Institute, among others, proposes a system of health courts for liability claims and written standards of liability settlement that would function similar to the workers compensation claims process operated by the Board of Labor.
The most striking and revolutionary changes that would follow the health court system would be a shift from designating blame to a particular physician into assigning a process of blame to a team, group, or institution. Furthermore, and maybe most controversial, the system would end jury awards for malpractice and would rely on written standards to dispense benefits.
The basic tenants of the Progressive Policy Institute proposed Health Court system include (1) replacing civil courts with health courts to hear liability claims (similar to specialized tax courts), (2)creating a written standard of accelerated compensation events (ACEs) of common medical mistakes and errors (e.g. bleeding after colon surgery requiring an additional surgery) that would detail a benefit schedule that could be included with lost wages and direct economic damages, (3) ability for patients to directly file liability claims with the health care provider or hospital, (4) a local board that would review injury claims and determine if they meet ACE designation or if they require further judafication, (5) a system of state and federal health care boards with mixed funding at each level, (6) the establishment of additional ACEs and benefit standards determined by written case law (7) experts will be paid and obtained by the court and board, not by the attorneys from either side, (8)the ability to monitor truly negligent hospitals and institutions over time and (9) use of evidence based medicine to establish a standards board for practicing physicians.
The benefits of this system are that physicians will have a clear idea of what constitutes malpractice and liable behavior because their will be a written set of standards developed from court rulings. This will decrease overall health care expenses by decreasing the practice of “defensive medicine” which is common among physicians (an over abundance of tests are ordered to cover liability). Furthermore, all patients will have access and ability to pursue injury claims in a similar manner in which they already pursue worker’s compensation claims. In addition, the hiring of experts by the court will reduce attorney fees significantly making it easier for low-income individuals to obtain representation. Also, juries should not be in the business of deciding law, they should be focused on deciding fact. However, the unclear precedents in current malpractice suits make it so that the jury focuses their efforts on deciding law since there are no clear standards of care. It is quite possible that two people suffering identical injuries will receive very different awards simply based on the jury they receive. A physician faces the same fate at the mercy of an assembled jury. Health Courts remove juries from these decisions and allow clear expectations and standards to develop over time.
The Progressive Policy Institute has also outlined a number of potential objections to this system. The objections will likely come from attorneys for two reasons – (1) citizens have the right to a jury trial and (2) malpractice attorneys could suffer decreased compensation and less demand for services. However, the workers compensation model is ideal for demonstrating that it is possible to settle liability claims without a jury. Furthermore, if only 2% of malpractice injury claims are pursued at present, and only 1 in 14 of those receive an award, attorneys may be able to find compensation simply by the increased frequency of malpractice cases they will be able to take on.
One other potential problem is that large jury awards have been significant for increasing reform in other industries. For example, tobacco lawsuits resulted in billions of dollars in jury awards that threatened tobacco companies and resulted in significant modifications within their industry and an increase in positive health outcomes among the community. However, the large jury awards are not useful in altering physician behavior or hospital practices. Since there are no clear standards in place, it is not possible that a systematic practice of negligent and liable behavior is occurring. In other words, there is no behavior to deter by these awards. As a matter of fact, the large awards are linked to increased health care costs due to the practice of defensive medicine and high insurance rates.
Most importantly,
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
THE WORLD IS FLAT
I was able to finish another book on my Summer Reading List (see below) over the weekend. This time it was Thomas Friedman’s work, the NY Times Bestseller – The World is Flat. In college I, as I’m sure many of you did, encountered Friedman on a number of occasions (Beirut to Jeruselum for example) and have continued to read his pieces in the Times. The book, as can be expected, was basically an articulated and comprehensive summary of many of the ideas expressed in his columns and previous books. However, in this manuscript, those ideas are unified to create a well formed argument concerning globalization, American economy, quality of life, and international relations. I’ve written a short review of the book below - but I suggest you buy it and read it, the anecdotes are entertaining and writing makes for easy and enjoyable reading.
In The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman argues that the rate of globalization has increased tremendously since the year 2000, fueled by technological advances and political reform. Furthermore, his major thesis is that the
First, Friedman outlines 3 major phases of Globalization both chronologically and methodologically. He suggests that the first phase of Globalization took place before the Industrial Revolution, during the period of exploration by
Early in the manuscript, Friedman outlines the 10 major innovations, inventions, or advances that have allowed the flattening of the world. These include: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the invention and public release of the Netscape browser, Open source software, the Windows operating system, outsourcing, offshoring, supply chaining, insourcing, and PDAs/cellphones.
Throughout the early portion of the book, the author makes his case for why each of these innovations was so significant. The Berlin Wall opened up a new market, a new community of hungry and ready workers and consumers. The release of Netscape allowed people to easily access data without understanding the nuances of computer technology and http file transfer. Open source software allows individuals to modify and change software to fit their needs and allows exponential and mass changes to take-hold and increase the efficacy of software programs. The Windows OS helped make computers easy to use for all populations and individuals. Outsourcing, and this is critical, reshapes the American economy, allowing American companies to invest more money in research and development, creating new jobs that did not previously exist in our country. Offshoring allows opportunities for people in India, South Korea, China and other locations and also provides low status American jobs to individuals in areas where the jobs are higher status – providing them with educational and advancement opportunities. Furthermore, offshoring changes the PATTERN of jobs (not the number) in all involved countries and in the country doing the offshoring requires upskilling or retraining of workers for new jobs that are created or not yet invented. Supply chaining allows goods to be moved rapidly and cheaply over large geographical distances and also may play a role in social interactions and cooperation between countries (discussed below). Insourcing generates new jobs that did not exist previously in established countries and allows organizations to increase their efficacy and redefine their role. UPS is the best example of this, argues Friedman, since they now come into a company and take over operation from warehousing to transport and ordering, allowing the company to focus on design, creation, research, and development. In-forming represents the easy access to information and knowledge via the internet and internet search engines such as Google. This makes all knowledge accessible to all people and goes hand in hand with the final significant innovation, the development and spread of PDAs and cellphones. These devices empower individuals to carry knowledge and to create media and act as journalists and archivers of their environment with relatively little expense.
Much of these changes, suggests Friedman were driven by the Dot-Com Boom of the mid to late 90s, most notably, the overinvestment in fiber optic cable which allows those in Bangalore to have high speed internet access and communicate and share data in real time all over the world.
The author also suggests that these technologies converged during the year 2000 to drive a global revolution in economics and market forces.
In the first half of his work, Friedman lays out and supports his case for rapid individual and technology driven globalization after the year 2000. In the second half of the book, Friedman suggests ways in which the
Overall, there is a bit of “the sky is falling” feel to the book, however, Friedman articulates something that everyone kinda knows already – the world changed a lot over the past few years the jobs of my generation and my kids generation won’t look anything like the jobs of our parents or their parents. I think Friedman has gotten it right – we are in the middle of an economic revolution that will change the world even more greatly than the Industrial Revolution and will allow the potential for corporation and innovation between countries or conflict and war for energy, resources, and jobs. American policy must be greatly altered to recognize our role in this global marketplace or our protectionist and isolationist past will lead to an economic downturn and decreased quality of life in the future.
Amazon.com The World Is Flat
NY TIMES Thomas Friedman Column
Tampa, Young Adults, and the Creative Class
In this little essay, I would like to review some major findings of a study titled "The Young and Restless" and present a few ideas regarding how we can make Tampa's creative class more competitive in a knowledge based economy.
The Creative TampaBay site has a study available online that assesses the views of 25-34 year olds regarding the city.
Creative TampaBay is in-tune with Richard Florida's ideas regarding the creative class and the future of a knowledge based economy. Therefore, they argue, it is important to attract educated 25-34 year olds to the city because it is during this period that these individuals will start a career and meet a mate (forminig roots) making it more likely that they will stay in that place for most of their adult life. The views expressed in Creative TampaBay's Young and Restless study are not encouraging regarding the present but are slightly encouraging regarding the potential of the future.
Out of the top 50 metropolitan areas, tampa is in the bottom 5 for educational attainment of the 25-34 year old group (25% with a 4 year degree) and and #47 in percent of population between 25-34 (12.7%). Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, and Atlanta do much better than Tampa in almost every category regarding education and number of 25-34 year olds in the city or moving to the city and only Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and West Palm Beach-Boca Raton are ranked lower in percent of population between 25-34 among the largest 50 metro areas. Raleigh-Durham (45%), Atlanta (38%), Charlotte and Nashville (33%) boast a much higher proportion of college educated individuals compared to Tampa Bay's 25%. Furthermore, Tampa has only 0.022% of the total market share of college educated workers, while Atlanta ranks number 1 with 0.8%. Overall, Las Vegas and Austin, TX rank highest in almost every category concerning young adult growth (but Las Vegas ranks lowest in college education at 16% - however, it also had the greatest increase (101%) in college educated individuals between 1990 and 2000)
The 50 largest metropolitan areas account for 58% of the U.S. population, with 2.2 million residents of the Tampa Bay area (303,000 young adults between 25 and 34 years of age). The Tampa Bay area has 56,000 fewer young adults than it would have if it was in the middle of 50 largest metropolitan areas. THe population of young adults decreased across all of the US between 1990 and 2000 as the whole population aged. Slightly encouraging, the decline in population of young adults in the Tampa Bay area was less (-7.7%) than the national average (-8.3%), however, in absolute terms, the number declined from 328,000 to 303,000 25-34 year olds within the region and other Southern Regions, such as Atlanta and Raleigh Durham saw significant increases in their young adult populations during this period of over 20%. Overall population growth (16%) of the area was greater than the national average (14%) between 1990 adn 2000 but did not come close to other Southern metropolitan areas such as Atlanta (39%), Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill (39%), Charlotte (29%), Nashville (25%), and Jacksonville (21%).
Richard Florida also writes that increased tolerance is a key ingredient to attracting and competing for the creative class. One measure of tolerance is diversity, however, Tampa also ranks low in diversity with 80% of the 25-34 year olds labeled as "white" (national average is 70%). However, between 1990 and 2000 the number of African-Americans increased by 7%, the number of Asian Americans increased by 68% and the number of Hispanics increased by 101%. Currently, other Southern regions are made up by a more diverse group of 25-34 year olds, including Atlanta (60% white), Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill (67% white), H ouston (59%), New Orleans (58%), and Memphis (51%).
It isn't rocket science to figure out where our problems originate. First of all, you have to tolerate diversity to compete for the creative class. This does NOT just mean skin color and race - it means religious diversity, homosexual rights, tatoos, funny hair, and different styles of dress. While living in Ann Arbor, MI a few years back, a friend visiting from Tampa remarked to me how "everyone here looks like a scene kid" - what he was really saying was that a lot more people feel open to express themselves as individuals even while carrying $50K+ per year salaries. In addition, this area is not very inviting to outsiders - there is a strong good ole boy (and girl) network within the state and county (Palma Ceia CC, the Yacht Club, etc0 that still drives politics and change. If Tampa wants to attract innovative young minds and keep innovative young minds in the region, we have to allow INNOVATION and creativity. There needs to be a systamatic change in the way young people are treated in this region and a renewed respect for individuals with job titles and job training reflective of an oncoming knowledge economy driven by the creative class. Job titles are going to change drastically and what we do in our work is shifting as well - many of us produce and manage ideas now and it takes understanding from the community to allow room for these individuals and changes to take place. While I love living in a real city (Tampa) compared to Ann Arbor-Detroit, I must admit it was always easier to explain myself to the average person up north than it is here.
Next, as the Creative TampaBay report notes, we HAVE to improve downtown. While it is nice that the new Tampa Museum of Art is going to go into the existing old federal courthouse, we have to see the failures of this as well. Iorio's riverwalk plans were significant in that they allowed non-luxury, non-residential development to take place in an area overly focused on high-income POTENTIAL residents. We are setting ourselves up for another bust if we continue to push residential property growth without the necessary infrastructure and cultural resources there to support an influx of residents. If you have enough money to spend on a $300,000 plus condo in downtown you might also have enough disposable income to spend at coffee shops, movies, plays, shopping, etc - we have to ensure that those resources are in place in order to ensure that residents really do move in to these new homes. In other words, I feel that downtown must be developed but we can't simply force the issue by encouraging developers to make realestate investment (this is only part of the puzzle). We have to first change our approach and perspective on the creative class, then increase the resources for those individuals while also developing places to live and 'take root' as well.
This leads to my next point - we must focus the real estate development past the direct downtown area into places like Tampa Heights and Seminole Heights. There are existing beautiful neighborhoods within those regions that could be improved upon by focused efforts that have started and stalled on a number of occassions. However, we can't simply commit a blind gentrification. The creative class is sensitive to the residents of these areas who have owned and lived in their homes for many decades. It is NOT appropriate to force these residents to sell their home because the low price they would receive before redevelopment is unlikely to cover the price of a new home in another location. A similar tactic was undertaken, contrversially, by the former Mayor Dick Greco in the late 1990s and can not be tolerated in 2005.
Finally, the city must brand and market itself with greater exuberance. We need to specifically identify potential young adult migrants and migrant populations from national college areas and other metros with a high influx new residents (such as NYC). The image of Florida among many young adults in the North is of a backwards and socially unprogressive area, unwelcoming to new ideas and new people. What are we going to do in order to drive Tampa into the next phase of the knowledge based economy?
The Creative TampaBay site has a study available online that assesses the views of 25-34 year olds regarding the city.
Creative TampaBay is in-tune with Richard Florida's ideas regarding the creative class and the future of a knowledge based economy. Therefore, they argue, it is important to attract educated 25-34 year olds to the city because it is during this period that these individuals will start a career and meet a mate (forminig roots) making it more likely that they will stay in that place for most of their adult life. The views expressed in Creative TampaBay's Young and Restless study are not encouraging regarding the present but are slightly encouraging regarding the potential of the future.
Out of the top 50 metropolitan areas, tampa is in the bottom 5 for educational attainment of the 25-34 year old group (25% with a 4 year degree) and and #47 in percent of population between 25-34 (12.7%). Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, and Atlanta do much better than Tampa in almost every category regarding education and number of 25-34 year olds in the city or moving to the city and only Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and West Palm Beach-Boca Raton are ranked lower in percent of population between 25-34 among the largest 50 metro areas. Raleigh-Durham (45%), Atlanta (38%), Charlotte and Nashville (33%) boast a much higher proportion of college educated individuals compared to Tampa Bay's 25%. Furthermore, Tampa has only 0.022% of the total market share of college educated workers, while Atlanta ranks number 1 with 0.8%. Overall, Las Vegas and Austin, TX rank highest in almost every category concerning young adult growth (but Las Vegas ranks lowest in college education at 16% - however, it also had the greatest increase (101%) in college educated individuals between 1990 and 2000)
The 50 largest metropolitan areas account for 58% of the U.S. population, with 2.2 million residents of the Tampa Bay area (303,000 young adults between 25 and 34 years of age). The Tampa Bay area has 56,000 fewer young adults than it would have if it was in the middle of 50 largest metropolitan areas. THe population of young adults decreased across all of the US between 1990 and 2000 as the whole population aged. Slightly encouraging, the decline in population of young adults in the Tampa Bay area was less (-7.7%) than the national average (-8.3%), however, in absolute terms, the number declined from 328,000 to 303,000 25-34 year olds within the region and other Southern Regions, such as Atlanta and Raleigh Durham saw significant increases in their young adult populations during this period of over 20%. Overall population growth (16%) of the area was greater than the national average (14%) between 1990 adn 2000 but did not come close to other Southern metropolitan areas such as Atlanta (39%), Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill (39%), Charlotte (29%), Nashville (25%), and Jacksonville (21%).
Richard Florida also writes that increased tolerance is a key ingredient to attracting and competing for the creative class. One measure of tolerance is diversity, however, Tampa also ranks low in diversity with 80% of the 25-34 year olds labeled as "white" (national average is 70%). However, between 1990 and 2000 the number of African-Americans increased by 7%, the number of Asian Americans increased by 68% and the number of Hispanics increased by 101%. Currently, other Southern regions are made up by a more diverse group of 25-34 year olds, including Atlanta (60% white), Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill (67% white), H ouston (59%), New Orleans (58%), and Memphis (51%).
It isn't rocket science to figure out where our problems originate. First of all, you have to tolerate diversity to compete for the creative class. This does NOT just mean skin color and race - it means religious diversity, homosexual rights, tatoos, funny hair, and different styles of dress. While living in Ann Arbor, MI a few years back, a friend visiting from Tampa remarked to me how "everyone here looks like a scene kid" - what he was really saying was that a lot more people feel open to express themselves as individuals even while carrying $50K+ per year salaries. In addition, this area is not very inviting to outsiders - there is a strong good ole boy (and girl) network within the state and county (Palma Ceia CC, the Yacht Club, etc0 that still drives politics and change. If Tampa wants to attract innovative young minds and keep innovative young minds in the region, we have to allow INNOVATION and creativity. There needs to be a systamatic change in the way young people are treated in this region and a renewed respect for individuals with job titles and job training reflective of an oncoming knowledge economy driven by the creative class. Job titles are going to change drastically and what we do in our work is shifting as well - many of us produce and manage ideas now and it takes understanding from the community to allow room for these individuals and changes to take place. While I love living in a real city (Tampa) compared to Ann Arbor-Detroit, I must admit it was always easier to explain myself to the average person up north than it is here.
Next, as the Creative TampaBay report notes, we HAVE to improve downtown. While it is nice that the new Tampa Museum of Art is going to go into the existing old federal courthouse, we have to see the failures of this as well. Iorio's riverwalk plans were significant in that they allowed non-luxury, non-residential development to take place in an area overly focused on high-income POTENTIAL residents. We are setting ourselves up for another bust if we continue to push residential property growth without the necessary infrastructure and cultural resources there to support an influx of residents. If you have enough money to spend on a $300,000 plus condo in downtown you might also have enough disposable income to spend at coffee shops, movies, plays, shopping, etc - we have to ensure that those resources are in place in order to ensure that residents really do move in to these new homes. In other words, I feel that downtown must be developed but we can't simply force the issue by encouraging developers to make realestate investment (this is only part of the puzzle). We have to first change our approach and perspective on the creative class, then increase the resources for those individuals while also developing places to live and 'take root' as well.
This leads to my next point - we must focus the real estate development past the direct downtown area into places like Tampa Heights and Seminole Heights. There are existing beautiful neighborhoods within those regions that could be improved upon by focused efforts that have started and stalled on a number of occassions. However, we can't simply commit a blind gentrification. The creative class is sensitive to the residents of these areas who have owned and lived in their homes for many decades. It is NOT appropriate to force these residents to sell their home because the low price they would receive before redevelopment is unlikely to cover the price of a new home in another location. A similar tactic was undertaken, contrversially, by the former Mayor Dick Greco in the late 1990s and can not be tolerated in 2005.
Finally, the city must brand and market itself with greater exuberance. We need to specifically identify potential young adult migrants and migrant populations from national college areas and other metros with a high influx new residents (such as NYC). The image of Florida among many young adults in the North is of a backwards and socially unprogressive area, unwelcoming to new ideas and new people. What are we going to do in order to drive Tampa into the next phase of the knowledge based economy?
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Darfur
This is the last paragraph from a recent Kristof commentary in the NY Times regarding Bush's lack of action to halt the ongoing genocide in the Sudan:
"Mr. Bush values a frozen embryo. But he hasn't mustered much compassion for an entire population of terrorized widows and orphans. And he is cementing in place the very hopelessness he dreads, by continuing to avert his eyes from the first genocide of the 21st century."
The whole article can be found here...
"Mr. Bush values a frozen embryo. But he hasn't mustered much compassion for an entire population of terrorized widows and orphans. And he is cementing in place the very hopelessness he dreads, by continuing to avert his eyes from the first genocide of the 21st century."
The whole article can be found here...
Duane Hanson
Duane Hanson - Portraits from the Heartland is currently at Sarasota's Ringling Museum of Art.
Duane Hanson created life-like sculptures of ordinary people doing ordinary things but did so with amazing attention to detail, including the skin, clothes, and props. This exhibit is definitely worth checking out, especially if you haven't been down to Ringling previously.
The Ringling estate, which sits right on the water, is enormous and now contains his large Baroque art collection, a performing arts center, a rose garden, and an excellent circus museum with many original props, outfits, train cars, and memrobilia. Plus, its free for all Florida Students and Florida Teachers.
Dream State
Last weekend I knocked off the first book on my self created summer reading list (see below) - Dream State by Diane Roberts. You may be familiar with Diane Roberts - she writes for the St. Pete Times occassionally and also can be heard on NPR (all things considered and the sunday weekend edition show).
Anyway, if you are interested in Florida history the book is worth going through. The French, not Spanish influence on early America, the legacy of corruption, the stories of Confederate family members, the laregely Agricultural history of this state, and the persistance of the Democratic party to hold office (even after turn of the century changes in the democratic party) are all main points. While the voice of Roberts is likable in this book, she can also be a little frustrating at times in her lack of organized presentation (only roughly chronological) and overarching theme/backbone.
The book can best be described as a person who goes to an all you can eat buffet with really good food - they are bloated, full, and excited to tell you about this buffet but they simply vomit on the page spewing chunks of their meal everywhere. You are left to sift through the chunks and in the process find the remains of an excellent meal that you wouldn't mind consuming yourself.
Anyway, if you are interested in Florida history the book is worth going through. The French, not Spanish influence on early America, the legacy of corruption, the stories of Confederate family members, the laregely Agricultural history of this state, and the persistance of the Democratic party to hold office (even after turn of the century changes in the democratic party) are all main points. While the voice of Roberts is likable in this book, she can also be a little frustrating at times in her lack of organized presentation (only roughly chronological) and overarching theme/backbone.
The book can best be described as a person who goes to an all you can eat buffet with really good food - they are bloated, full, and excited to tell you about this buffet but they simply vomit on the page spewing chunks of their meal everywhere. You are left to sift through the chunks and in the process find the remains of an excellent meal that you wouldn't mind consuming yourself.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
NBA FINALS 2005
"They’ve got a legacy to write for themselves. Not since the early 80’s when Dr. J’s 76ers won one championship and no more has an NBA champion failed to win another championship within the next four seasons."
Celizic - MSNBC.COM 6/7/05
Celizic - MSNBC.COM 6/7/05
Thursday, May 26, 2005
meet george jetson....
the first FAA approved hovercraft (!) will be available in 2009
http://www.moller.com/skycar/m400/
http://www.moller.com/skycar/m400/
Filibuster
What's the point of making a comprimise to keep the filibuster in-tact if when it comes time to use the filibuster you decide not to filibuster and allow a nomination/bill to proceed in order to keep the filibuster in-tact?
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Summer Fun
Summer plans have been shaping up pretty well and were basically finalized after a preliminary meeting with the Department of Health in Tampa yesterday.
1) The VRACS dataset originally discussed is simply not going to work for my dissertation for a number of reasons - starting with the fact that it only kinda belongs to TGH and mostly belongs to some Indian researchers. Furthermore, the sample surveys were half-heartedly designed without adquete sampling theory applied and things are a bit slopply with the data itself. Finally, the sample size is only about 400 people - kinda small for a population based question. Anyway, I wanted things to be clean at every step along the way so that I didn't run into trouble somewhere deep down the line and deep in the summer, thus causing me to pull out and start over again (which is EXACTLY what happened last summer with the NHANES III and NHANES 1999-present series).
2) #1 is okay because things are coming together.
There are 2 models for writing a dissertation with the Michigan Anthro department. One models is traditional - you pick a topic, question, place - you go there, you do field work, you collect data, you come back, analyze data, and write it up. Another model is that you can throw together a string of 3 related published papers regarding some theme/question over a period of time.
Given my plans this summer, and the access I have to other data sets and populations, I believe that the latter may be the model I opt for in completing my dissertation.
3)Apparently the City of Tampa Department of Heath (DOH) is part of Tampa General Hospital and works closely with the Infectious Disease group - which I did not know but now makes total since because they are both public places and both deal with a lot of STD patients. Well, I was excited to learn that my summer contract with Infectious Disease allows me to also work with the DOH - therefore, I have some access to their data, clinic, and populations as well under the direction of Dr. H.
Yesterday, I met with the director, Dr. H and an epidemiologist Dr. G, to discuss the possibility of using an STD dataset collected in Tampa throughout the various DOH clinics. They were agreeble to this plan and had no problem checking this out a little bit. More specifically, we are having a meeting next week with some of the other epidemiologists at DOH regarding the data.
So why is an STD dataset so valuable to me?
4)I will also be working with the Hernando County Health Department with a group of HIV+ and at-risk for HIV adult men in Brooksville. The idea is to meet with social workers and public health officials to develop an education/policy initiative aimed at reducing HIV incidence amongst this population. See a theme developing? I do - and its quite appropriate for an anthropolgy dissertation using this population and the Tampa STD data.
HIV risk factors, socioeconomic status, population of people using Florida DOH clinicis.....its coming together - slowly.
The nice part about this is that a 3 paper model dissertation will allow a focus on the policy/prevention aspect, clinical aspect, and the data analysis of risk factors as well - getting at the problem from both ends (real people and real numbers, population and individual health care). Almost sounds like the kind of dissertation an MD-PhD student interested in population health and clinical care is supposed to be doing!
1) The VRACS dataset originally discussed is simply not going to work for my dissertation for a number of reasons - starting with the fact that it only kinda belongs to TGH and mostly belongs to some Indian researchers. Furthermore, the sample surveys were half-heartedly designed without adquete sampling theory applied and things are a bit slopply with the data itself. Finally, the sample size is only about 400 people - kinda small for a population based question. Anyway, I wanted things to be clean at every step along the way so that I didn't run into trouble somewhere deep down the line and deep in the summer, thus causing me to pull out and start over again (which is EXACTLY what happened last summer with the NHANES III and NHANES 1999-present series).
2) #1 is okay because things are coming together.
There are 2 models for writing a dissertation with the Michigan Anthro department. One models is traditional - you pick a topic, question, place - you go there, you do field work, you collect data, you come back, analyze data, and write it up. Another model is that you can throw together a string of 3 related published papers regarding some theme/question over a period of time.
Given my plans this summer, and the access I have to other data sets and populations, I believe that the latter may be the model I opt for in completing my dissertation.
3)Apparently the City of Tampa Department of Heath (DOH) is part of Tampa General Hospital and works closely with the Infectious Disease group - which I did not know but now makes total since because they are both public places and both deal with a lot of STD patients. Well, I was excited to learn that my summer contract with Infectious Disease allows me to also work with the DOH - therefore, I have some access to their data, clinic, and populations as well under the direction of Dr. H.
Yesterday, I met with the director, Dr. H and an epidemiologist Dr. G, to discuss the possibility of using an STD dataset collected in Tampa throughout the various DOH clinics. They were agreeble to this plan and had no problem checking this out a little bit. More specifically, we are having a meeting next week with some of the other epidemiologists at DOH regarding the data.
So why is an STD dataset so valuable to me?
4)I will also be working with the Hernando County Health Department with a group of HIV+ and at-risk for HIV adult men in Brooksville. The idea is to meet with social workers and public health officials to develop an education/policy initiative aimed at reducing HIV incidence amongst this population. See a theme developing? I do - and its quite appropriate for an anthropolgy dissertation using this population and the Tampa STD data.
HIV risk factors, socioeconomic status, population of people using Florida DOH clinicis.....its coming together - slowly.
The nice part about this is that a 3 paper model dissertation will allow a focus on the policy/prevention aspect, clinical aspect, and the data analysis of risk factors as well - getting at the problem from both ends (real people and real numbers, population and individual health care). Almost sounds like the kind of dissertation an MD-PhD student interested in population health and clinical care is supposed to be doing!
Mae - 1 Year 11 Weeks
We got Mae 1 year ago - below is a photo taken at her first vet visit on May 19, 2004 and another photo taken on May 22, 2005.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
True Crime - UPDATE
Last week, I posted photos of Steven Lorenzo's home at 213 West Powhatten. If you remember, Lorenzo is the suspect in a series of kidnappings and murders of gay men. The police began searching the house again during the beginning of May but had been tight lipped about what they were looking for specfically and what they had found. However, in a St. Petersburg Times story today, Tampa Police elaborate on the case and the evidence recovered inside the home.
"They found rope, tape, plastic gloves and other "torture-type" items - along with printed pages about serial killers. They found an envelope containing newspaper articles about Galehouse, Wachholtz and "other missing or dead individuals."
They found pictures on Lorenzo's computer of a "lifeless" young man, blood on his face and on the floor beneath him, ligature marks on his wrists and ankles.
Tampa police and Hillsborough sheriff's detectives examined the pictures. So did two medical examiners and a DEA agent. They all agreed: The man was dead when the pictures were taken, in what appears to be Lorenzo's living room and bathroom."
It also looks like Lorenzo had an accomplice, Scott Schweickert, who helped plan and carry out the abductions and murders. Furthermore, there may have been previous attempts before the Galehouse/Wacholtz killings and there may have been victims after those two deaths.
Friday, May 20, 2005
lost links
Other than Gary Payton, Reggie Miller was the last significant link to the era of basketball represented by the late 80s - mid 90s
Gary Payton, Shaquile O'Neal, and Grant Hill are the only remaining NBA players from the 1996 USA Men's Basketball Team, which lost another member to old age last night when Reggie Miller retired after the Pacer's game 6 loss to the Detroit Pistons - scoring 27 points on his way out the door while getting a chance to play one more time on his home court.
In the early 90s, Cliff Hall and I would have epic one-on-one battles in the backyard of his neighbor's home where there was a small, but well kept, basketball net, glass backboard and concrete drive. These battles usually took place during the spring and summer NBA playoffs - cliff was usually Michael Jordan or Scottie Pippen, but I was always Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing or Reggie Miller. Every shot was narrated by a pretend Marv Albert and scores were kept with great care in a never-ending Best of X series.
Gary Payton, Shaquile O'Neal, and Grant Hill are the only remaining NBA players from the 1996 USA Men's Basketball Team, which lost another member to old age last night when Reggie Miller retired after the Pacer's game 6 loss to the Detroit Pistons - scoring 27 points on his way out the door while getting a chance to play one more time on his home court.
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In the early 90s, Cliff Hall and I would have epic one-on-one battles in the backyard of his neighbor's home where there was a small, but well kept, basketball net, glass backboard and concrete drive. These battles usually took place during the spring and summer NBA playoffs - cliff was usually Michael Jordan or Scottie Pippen, but I was always Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing or Reggie Miller. Every shot was narrated by a pretend Marv Albert and scores were kept with great care in a never-ending Best of X series.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
UPDATE: Highland Avenue Structure
Thanks to the help of readers, I have more information regarding the odd structure on Highland Avenue that was discussed last Tuesday.
Apparently, Bert Wahl owns this building and at one point ran a business "rescuing" and selling big cats, including lions, tigers, and cougars. However, in 1997 the business, Wildlife Rescue Inc., was cited for violating the Animal Welfare Act by the USDA. The inspectors claimed that Mr. Wahl was leaving his cats in poor conditions (which are obvious by the photos I posted previously). Since this was the first offense of Wildlife Rescue and Mr. Wahl, the USDA let him off relatively easy with a $1000 fine and a cease and desist order.
But this wasn't enough for the animal abuser. Bert Wahl continued running an illegal and unlicensed business while keeping his animals (merchandise) in poor conditions and in 2000 he was again cited for violations of the Animal Welfare act by the USDA.
While there are no longer any animals, at least in view, at the premises, Mr. Wahl may still be around the area. After looking his name up on the HC Property Appraiser website, 2 properties were found to belong to him - both in very close proximity.
I walked by the first of these properties and quickly realized that they weren't simply in close proximity - they were directly next to each other!
This is the view from the street in front of the second property -
And this is the view from the side of the house
You can clearly see from these photos that the structure I posted previously is directly behind the other home. Therefore, I assume that Mr. Wahl used (or uses) the yellow home as his residence and once used the brown home to keep the cats and supplies. Now that he can no longer do that, at least in plain view, the structure sits abandoned, dilapidated and falling apart.
An anonymous comment included these links:
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/lpa/news/1997/08/WAHL.HTM
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/lpa/news/2000/08/WAHLB.HTM
title change
i have retitled the blog "a living hominid" to reflect its url and my posting name...plus, this way i don't take everything from murakami
no post wednesday
The LCE large group presentation took place yesterday (as discussed here previously) and went off just fine (except for the fact that the neuropathologist was 30 minutes late and his USB drive didn't work - so he had no slides - no biggie though). Afterwards, it was time to rush down to south Tampa to see Alivia's graduation
Oddly enough, I still have fairly vivid memories of my preschool graduation - including the poems we read (polly, the doctor says), the songs we sung (my contry tis of thee was definitely one of them) and counting on stage with Mrs. Chambers. In some ways I have better memories of graduating preschool then high school and college...
Oddly enough, I still have fairly vivid memories of my preschool graduation - including the poems we read (polly, the doctor says), the songs we sung (my contry tis of thee was definitely one of them) and counting on stage with Mrs. Chambers. In some ways I have better memories of graduating preschool then high school and college...
PICASA!
Picasa is an excellent digital photo storage management software program complete with one-button photo editing capabilities. Best of all it is ASBSOLUTELY FREE - not shareware either, the full thing. I use it to quickly go through all of my digital camera photos after dumping them onto the computer -its faster and easier then photoshop for getting quick results for large volumes of pictures.
Anyway, it has some fun color temperature/saturation settings as well that allow you to take horrible photos and at least turn them into odd visual experiences.
Here are just a few examples of some bad photos that I salvaged.
Anyway, it has some fun color temperature/saturation settings as well that allow you to take horrible photos and at least turn them into odd visual experiences.
Here are just a few examples of some bad photos that I salvaged.
Summer Readin'
1. Dream State: Eight Generations of Swamp Lawyers, Conquistadors, Confederate Daughters, Banana Republicans and Other Florida Wildlife. Diane Roberts 2005
2. Kafka on the Shore. Haruki Murakami 2005
3. The World is Flat. Thomas Friedman 2005.
4. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. 2005.
5. The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgramage to the Dawn of Evolution. Richard Dawins 2005.
6. Cigar City Mafia. Scott Deitche 2005. (tampa mobsters!)
7. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. 2005.
8. Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. Steven Johnson 2005.
9. Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China. Rachel DeWoskin
10. Why Not? 2004
11. Mountains beyond Mountains
I try to squeeze a few non, or only tangentially, medicine and anthropology books in to the summer. This is my self-created list of choices - anyone else have any suggestions for must reads?
2. Kafka on the Shore. Haruki Murakami 2005
3. The World is Flat. Thomas Friedman 2005.
4. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. 2005.
5. The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgramage to the Dawn of Evolution. Richard Dawins 2005.
6. Cigar City Mafia. Scott Deitche 2005. (tampa mobsters!)
7. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. 2005.
8. Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. Steven Johnson 2005.
9. Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China. Rachel DeWoskin
10. Why Not? 2004
11. Mountains beyond Mountains
I try to squeeze a few non, or only tangentially, medicine and anthropology books in to the summer. This is my self-created list of choices - anyone else have any suggestions for must reads?
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Highland Avenue Structure
Yesterday, I drug SAM on an extra long walk to check out the Powhatten place, but nothing much was going on over there.
So I decided to head north, past Hanna (an unusual direction for our normal walk) to check out a building that caught my eye a few days ago. Unfortunately, I did not consider the fact that as we are getting later and later into May and with the progression into summer comes late afternoon thunderstorms.
Luckily, with the sky darkening, I reached the odd house at the corner of Sligh and Highland after almost turning back.
The house is obviously abandoned which is odd in and of itself - not so much because no one lives there, but because the real estate market is quite competitive in Seminole Heights and empty houses usually don't stay empty long and they stay relatively well-kept during their time on the market. But this place doesn't even boast a for-sale sign.
However, it wasn't the fact that this place was abandoned that caught my attention - instead it was the backyard.
The place is filled with cages - and these cages contain little plastic igloo shelters.
What kind of animals were in these cages? What was going on at this place? These people must have been breeders or some serious hobbyists of some sort. I seem to have this odd childhood memory large cats being located behind a place like this in Seminole Heights. Maybe this is the original location of Wildlife on Easy Street or something similar. Does anyone out there have any clues?
Unfortunately, I forgot to jot down the address to lookup the property on the Property Appraiser site because Sam's tugging alerted me to the presence of rain drops beginning to feel a little harder than a light sprinkle. So, I hurried away without thinking about getting more information to help solve the puzzle. I guess a trip back is in order.
So I decided to head north, past Hanna (an unusual direction for our normal walk) to check out a building that caught my eye a few days ago. Unfortunately, I did not consider the fact that as we are getting later and later into May and with the progression into summer comes late afternoon thunderstorms.
Luckily, with the sky darkening, I reached the odd house at the corner of Sligh and Highland after almost turning back.
The house is obviously abandoned which is odd in and of itself - not so much because no one lives there, but because the real estate market is quite competitive in Seminole Heights and empty houses usually don't stay empty long and they stay relatively well-kept during their time on the market. But this place doesn't even boast a for-sale sign.
However, it wasn't the fact that this place was abandoned that caught my attention - instead it was the backyard.
The place is filled with cages - and these cages contain little plastic igloo shelters.
What kind of animals were in these cages? What was going on at this place? These people must have been breeders or some serious hobbyists of some sort. I seem to have this odd childhood memory large cats being located behind a place like this in Seminole Heights. Maybe this is the original location of Wildlife on Easy Street or something similar. Does anyone out there have any clues?
Unfortunately, I forgot to jot down the address to lookup the property on the Property Appraiser site because Sam's tugging alerted me to the presence of rain drops beginning to feel a little harder than a light sprinkle. So, I hurried away without thinking about getting more information to help solve the puzzle. I guess a trip back is in order.
Monday, May 16, 2005
40 days and 39 nights?
The NBA schedule officials must have screwed up a bit - somehow I got three games yesterday and ZERO games tonight - this is the first night in over two weeks that I have been stuck without playoff basketball. Am I supposed to do all that work I've been shoving aside for the love of the Pistons? I couldn't even watch yesterday's western conference games - after the emotional game 3 on Friday in Indiana and the wonderful game 4 domination on Sundary afternoon, I actually needed a break from basketball.
True Crime
The past few weeks, our relatively quiet Seminole Heights neighborhood has periodically sounded more like a Bosnian warzone - with numerous helicopters circling overhead only blocks from my house. Why all the excitement?
Apparently, during the fall of 2003, Steven Lorenzo was committing some very serious crimes (drugging, kidnapping, and raping young men) at his home on 213 West Powhatten Avenue. On December 20, 2003 two young men left a gay bar and went missing. One of those men, Michael Wacholtz was found dead on January 6, 2004 - left wrapped in a blanket lying in his Jeep. Friends and bar-patrons remember the other man who went missing, Jason Galehouse, leaving the bar on December 20 with two other men, matching the description of Lorenzo and Wacholtz.
Galehouse is still considered missing since no body has been found and his mother, Pam Williams holds out hope (maybe delusional hope) that her son has amnesia from the drugs and is alive and well, shopping in the Ross in Sarasota (where he was supposedly sighted a few months back).
Steven Lorenzo has been in jail since December 2004 on federal drug charges. He is also a suspect in the kidnapping, drugging, and raping of 6 other men - however, he has not yet been charged in the case of Galehouse and Wachholtz.
Anyway, his empty house has been searched during recent weeks, bringing an influx of local news media into our neighborhood. If baynews9 was going to break the story, I figured it only appropriate that Hard Boiled Wonderland also get the "big scoop".
So, armed with SAM as my patsy, and camera in hand, I wandered over to 213 W. Powhatten yesterday afternoon to check things out for myself.
As you can see from this first photograph, the house has been kept up very well, considering that no one has lived there since November. Obviously, Mr. Lorenzo has arranged some type of landscaping/lawnmowing type service or a relative/friend is helping out in his absence.
There really isn't much to see from the street and this is clearly why the news outlets have resorted to using their helecopters for a better look at things behind the house. I have seen camera shots from the helecopters showing massive amounts of material being piled up and sorted through in the backyard of the home.
One of the main items of interest in news reports/rumors is the hot tub. I poked over to the side of the house, staying well within the public area of the sidewalk and observed that the hot tub had indeed been yanked out of the home or deck or wherever it normally goes and moved to an area for further investigation.
Oddly enough, there is no police presence/guard (at least in plain sight) and the house is not roped off with crime scene tape or a do not cross line. I would have thought that an empty house with an active search warrant might receive more protection.
If I here that the police are back to search the house again, I will take the ever-willing, crime-fighting companion, SAM, back for another walk on Powhatten and see if I can get a more interesting scoop while trying to stay relatively unnoticed and out of the way.
Apparently, during the fall of 2003, Steven Lorenzo was committing some very serious crimes (drugging, kidnapping, and raping young men) at his home on 213 West Powhatten Avenue. On December 20, 2003 two young men left a gay bar and went missing. One of those men, Michael Wacholtz was found dead on January 6, 2004 - left wrapped in a blanket lying in his Jeep. Friends and bar-patrons remember the other man who went missing, Jason Galehouse, leaving the bar on December 20 with two other men, matching the description of Lorenzo and Wacholtz.
Galehouse is still considered missing since no body has been found and his mother, Pam Williams holds out hope (maybe delusional hope) that her son has amnesia from the drugs and is alive and well, shopping in the Ross in Sarasota (where he was supposedly sighted a few months back).
Steven Lorenzo has been in jail since December 2004 on federal drug charges. He is also a suspect in the kidnapping, drugging, and raping of 6 other men - however, he has not yet been charged in the case of Galehouse and Wachholtz.
Anyway, his empty house has been searched during recent weeks, bringing an influx of local news media into our neighborhood. If baynews9 was going to break the story, I figured it only appropriate that Hard Boiled Wonderland also get the "big scoop".
So, armed with SAM as my patsy, and camera in hand, I wandered over to 213 W. Powhatten yesterday afternoon to check things out for myself.
As you can see from this first photograph, the house has been kept up very well, considering that no one has lived there since November. Obviously, Mr. Lorenzo has arranged some type of landscaping/lawnmowing type service or a relative/friend is helping out in his absence.
There really isn't much to see from the street and this is clearly why the news outlets have resorted to using their helecopters for a better look at things behind the house. I have seen camera shots from the helecopters showing massive amounts of material being piled up and sorted through in the backyard of the home.
One of the main items of interest in news reports/rumors is the hot tub. I poked over to the side of the house, staying well within the public area of the sidewalk and observed that the hot tub had indeed been yanked out of the home or deck or wherever it normally goes and moved to an area for further investigation.
Oddly enough, there is no police presence/guard (at least in plain sight) and the house is not roped off with crime scene tape or a do not cross line. I would have thought that an empty house with an active search warrant might receive more protection.
If I here that the police are back to search the house again, I will take the ever-willing, crime-fighting companion, SAM, back for another walk on Powhatten and see if I can get a more interesting scoop while trying to stay relatively unnoticed and out of the way.
Recent Documentaries
Apparently there is a new "documentary" in production titled SUPERSLIM ME, in which the narrator sets out to "prove" Morgan Spurlock wrong (SUPER SIZE ME, 2004). If you haven't seen Super Size Me, I suggest you do. The basic premis is that Spurlock lives on McDonald's products alone for a couple of months and monitors the health consequences to his body. Obviously this is an extreme diet, probably not something a person would actually do, and meant to make a point (duh). In addition, there are some really funny scenes with numerous lawyers, professors, and food industry execs.
Following the success of Supersize Me and similar style documentaries (such as Farenheit 911), people have spent time debating whether the movies were factual and objective. To do this, anti-documentary documentaries have been produced to "discredit" the original movies. Therefore, some people do not feel that they can "trust" documentaries anymore. This where SUPERSLIM ME comes in - the author (auteur?) claims that Supersize Me is biased because Spurlock simply consumed large amounts of Mickey-Ds and didn't exercise.
But Supersize me is a movie that is meant to make a point. Most americans do not exercise, therefore, its isn't biased that Spurlock didn't exercise. Also, If you follow the obesity public advocacy literature at all, you will realize that Supersize Me had all the "big Names" in the field - David Katz, Lisa Young, John Banzhaf - therfore, at least hearing what they have to say (which makes up at least 30-40% of the movie) is worth the time by itself - not too mention the scene where Spurlock and Banzhaf go to McDonald's together (Banzhaf is a lawyer who has been a pioneer in suing fast-food companies and was the first lawyer to sucessfully sue a tobacco company in the 90s). Most importantly, Spurlock's movie and the sucess of Super Size Me worked! McDonald's, while still very unhealthy, has been making significant changes to their menu since the movie was released last summer. Maybe what we are beginning to see is an alternative way to use the media in a sort of guerilla style assault on powerful organizations that would otherwise not have to really answer to consumer concerns. I think this was the greatest contribution Michael Moore's early work provided in TV Nation and Roger and Me.
Furthermore, a documentary doesn't have to be "objective" to be "real", it can certainly have a point or an agenda and still document something. Instead of looking at these movies as trying to "prove" something to you, look at them as trying to make you think about something you might not normally consider.
In addition, there is so much competition in a society of content-delivered media, that a documentary has to be very entertaining to appeal to a broad audience and be seen by someone other than "the choir" of already converted. The past 5 years have witnessed amazing sucess of documentaries as they blended into a more entertaining movie-product.
The only movies I have enjoyed seeing in an actual theater over the past 2 or 3 years, excluding Spiderman, have been the popular documentaries including Michael Moore's material, as well as Supersize Me and the movie about Al-Jazeera. Whether there is an agenda in these movies is besides the point for me, instead, I am able to see interviews with major players presented in a fun/entertaining way and I am given a starting point or someone's reference point as to what debates surround an important issue.
I do not rely on movies, whether they be called documentaries or not, to "prove" something to me. Nor do I rely on published books, peer-published literature, or first hand observation to make an ultimate decision. Instead, these movies, literature, and observations/experiences are all pieces of the puzzle in using my own critical thought process of evaluating available data and "proving" or disproving things to myself.
Following the success of Supersize Me and similar style documentaries (such as Farenheit 911), people have spent time debating whether the movies were factual and objective. To do this, anti-documentary documentaries have been produced to "discredit" the original movies. Therefore, some people do not feel that they can "trust" documentaries anymore. This where SUPERSLIM ME comes in - the author (auteur?) claims that Supersize Me is biased because Spurlock simply consumed large amounts of Mickey-Ds and didn't exercise.
But Supersize me is a movie that is meant to make a point. Most americans do not exercise, therefore, its isn't biased that Spurlock didn't exercise. Also, If you follow the obesity public advocacy literature at all, you will realize that Supersize Me had all the "big Names" in the field - David Katz, Lisa Young, John Banzhaf - therfore, at least hearing what they have to say (which makes up at least 30-40% of the movie) is worth the time by itself - not too mention the scene where Spurlock and Banzhaf go to McDonald's together (Banzhaf is a lawyer who has been a pioneer in suing fast-food companies and was the first lawyer to sucessfully sue a tobacco company in the 90s). Most importantly, Spurlock's movie and the sucess of Super Size Me worked! McDonald's, while still very unhealthy, has been making significant changes to their menu since the movie was released last summer. Maybe what we are beginning to see is an alternative way to use the media in a sort of guerilla style assault on powerful organizations that would otherwise not have to really answer to consumer concerns. I think this was the greatest contribution Michael Moore's early work provided in TV Nation and Roger and Me.
Furthermore, a documentary doesn't have to be "objective" to be "real", it can certainly have a point or an agenda and still document something. Instead of looking at these movies as trying to "prove" something to you, look at them as trying to make you think about something you might not normally consider.
In addition, there is so much competition in a society of content-delivered media, that a documentary has to be very entertaining to appeal to a broad audience and be seen by someone other than "the choir" of already converted. The past 5 years have witnessed amazing sucess of documentaries as they blended into a more entertaining movie-product.
The only movies I have enjoyed seeing in an actual theater over the past 2 or 3 years, excluding Spiderman, have been the popular documentaries including Michael Moore's material, as well as Supersize Me and the movie about Al-Jazeera. Whether there is an agenda in these movies is besides the point for me, instead, I am able to see interviews with major players presented in a fun/entertaining way and I am given a starting point or someone's reference point as to what debates surround an important issue.
I do not rely on movies, whether they be called documentaries or not, to "prove" something to me. Nor do I rely on published books, peer-published literature, or first hand observation to make an ultimate decision. Instead, these movies, literature, and observations/experiences are all pieces of the puzzle in using my own critical thought process of evaluating available data and "proving" or disproving things to myself.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Roof Dogs
In March, Seminole Heights suffered a "microburst" which appeared to be a tornado but apparently did not form the typical funnel cloud and therefore was given another wind formation name.
After the storm, there were numerous downed powerlines, some roof damage, and a couple of trees on top of cars. Many of these images were captured by the local news media and played repeatedly over the next couple of days. One of the most interesting images caught by the Tampa Tribune featured TWO DOGS on TOP OF A ROOF. While the reporter never said so, the implication was that somehow these dogs got on the roof because of the strong wind.
Well, as many Seminole Heights residents know, the ROOF DOGS were not a microburst phenomenon - they are an everyday part of life.
Typically, the Roof Dogs will happily run up and down the roof when Sam and I walk by - somehow knowing exactly when to stop short of plummeting into the side yard from the second story.
I have never seen a person at the Roof Dog house - just a couple of older cars in the yard - but I would love to know why they decided to opt for roof dogs instead of indoor dogs, porch dogs, backyard dogs, etc. Not that it's a problem - the Roof Dogs seem genuinely happy and don't appear to be in too much danger of falling.
Friday, May 13, 2005
Detroit Obesity Tax
According to the CDC
Michigan is not the only state in the country getting fat, as you can see comparing data from 1990 and 2003
While Michigan may not be the only fat state, and maybe not even the fattest (down to the third spot overall in 2005 after being ranked #1 fattest state by Men's Health in 2003), Michigan combines their fatness with a collapsed infrastructure, economically depressed cities, and questionable city leaders (more on that some other time).
Given this combination of poor health indicators, it is not suprising that the Mayor of Detroit is considering passing a "fast-food tax" within the city.
I am a strong advocate of using public policy to improve public health outcomes. For example, neighborhood variables and therefore zip code are an excellent predictor for cardiovascular disease. Therefore, neighborhood analysis is ideal for allocating city resources, such as parks and clean-up programs, which are positively correlated to lowering CVD risk. Furthermore, I am not opposed to a carefully thought out use/luxury tax being applied to high-fat food items and fast foods. But the proposal in Detroit is myopic, greedy, poorly timed, and biased. In addition, the tax could end up taking money out of the city instead of bring in additional funds.
Currently, there is a 6% state sales tax in Michigan. If the Mayor's proposal passes, there will be an additional 2% imposed on sales of fast-food, namely places like McDonald's, Burger King, etc. These businesses SHOULD be regulated. They provide a product which strongly contributes to one of the three highest public health threats facing our country (obesity), along with the comorbidities associated with the disease (atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, diabetes mellitus, etc). However, this tax is not the proper regulation - it will lead to absoultely no decline in obesity prevelance.
Detroit is over 80% African-American, 31% of Detroit children live in poverty, and the median household income in the poorest zipcode is under $8000 (national average = $43,000). The literature is still out on whether fast-food industries differentially target low-income populations, but either way, this 2% tax will certainly differentially affect some of the lowest income populations in Michigan. However, a 2% tax is not a significant deterent to poor individual dietary choices. People within Detroit will still go to McDonald's but will also be forced to carry a large share of the economic burden for the city's past and future bad decisions.
In order to really affect dietary choices, and to shift the economic burden more fairly, the tax should be shifted away from consumers at the local level and towards distributors and corporations. Without the choice-infrastructure in place to make other food choices, it is unfair to burden consumers. Until high quality foods are made affordable, many consumers have no choice but to eat low-quality foods in order match their economic and calric budgets. Subsidies must be made available to encourage companies to offer healthy choices and to make those choices affordable to low-income families. In addition, changes must be made at a larger level than the city municipality - otherwise consumers or businesses will leave those areas for more favorable locations. In order to make a real impact in the obesity-epidemic the infrastructure must be in place to fully support significant dietary changes that will be difficult for many families.
The legislature is one way to make changes, but to fully affect change within corporations, the judicial system is another avenue that must be explored. Public health and policy makers were able to make significant headway against tobacco companies during the 1990s by linking tobacoo companies directly to negative health outcomes of smokers. Tobacco prevalence has declined significantly and tobacco companies have had to change their marketing strategies and tactis. The fear of large jury settlements is one way to change corporate behavior. Professor John Banzhaf at GWU School of Law is the major advocate of using the judicial system to change the landscape of dietary choices and the public perception of the obesity epidemic.
There is absolutely no quantitative data in place to measure the success of the Mayor's proposed tax. How will we know if the tax leads to decreaded prevelance of negative health outcomes associated with obesity? Who will be doing that data collection and who will pay for it? The likely answer is that none of this has been considered because it is not part of the plan. The only thing that will decrease is the poorly managed Detroit budget deficit, allowing Kwame and his crew to roll around in expensive SUVs while his constituents struggle to make ends meet.
LINKS
Detroit Mayor's Tax Proposal
CNN
BBC
Detroit News
Another from Detroit News
Detroit Free Press
OTHER
John Banzhaf
- 62% of Michigan adults are overweight (BMI > 25) or obese (BMI > 30). (CDC BRFSS, 2002)
- 24% of non-Hispanic white adults, 35% of non-Hispanic black adults, and 31% of Hispanic adults in Michigan are obese. (CDC BRFSS, 2002)
- The obesity rate among Michigan adults increased by 80% from 1990 to 2002. (CDC BRFSS, 2002)
- 24% of Michigan high school students are overweight or at risk of becoming overweight. (CDC YRBSS, 2001)
- 28% of low-income children aged 2–5 years in Michigan are overweight or at risk of becoming overweight. (CDC PedNSS, 2002)
Michigan is not the only state in the country getting fat, as you can see comparing data from 1990 and 2003
U.S. Obesity Prevalence 1990
U.S. Obesity Prevalence 2003
While Michigan may not be the only fat state, and maybe not even the fattest (down to the third spot overall in 2005 after being ranked #1 fattest state by Men's Health in 2003), Michigan combines their fatness with a collapsed infrastructure, economically depressed cities, and questionable city leaders (more on that some other time).
Given this combination of poor health indicators, it is not suprising that the Mayor of Detroit is considering passing a "fast-food tax" within the city.
I am a strong advocate of using public policy to improve public health outcomes. For example, neighborhood variables and therefore zip code are an excellent predictor for cardiovascular disease. Therefore, neighborhood analysis is ideal for allocating city resources, such as parks and clean-up programs, which are positively correlated to lowering CVD risk. Furthermore, I am not opposed to a carefully thought out use/luxury tax being applied to high-fat food items and fast foods. But the proposal in Detroit is myopic, greedy, poorly timed, and biased. In addition, the tax could end up taking money out of the city instead of bring in additional funds.
Currently, there is a 6% state sales tax in Michigan. If the Mayor's proposal passes, there will be an additional 2% imposed on sales of fast-food, namely places like McDonald's, Burger King, etc. These businesses SHOULD be regulated. They provide a product which strongly contributes to one of the three highest public health threats facing our country (obesity), along with the comorbidities associated with the disease (atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, diabetes mellitus, etc). However, this tax is not the proper regulation - it will lead to absoultely no decline in obesity prevelance.
Detroit is over 80% African-American, 31% of Detroit children live in poverty, and the median household income in the poorest zipcode is under $8000 (national average = $43,000). The literature is still out on whether fast-food industries differentially target low-income populations, but either way, this 2% tax will certainly differentially affect some of the lowest income populations in Michigan. However, a 2% tax is not a significant deterent to poor individual dietary choices. People within Detroit will still go to McDonald's but will also be forced to carry a large share of the economic burden for the city's past and future bad decisions.
In order to really affect dietary choices, and to shift the economic burden more fairly, the tax should be shifted away from consumers at the local level and towards distributors and corporations. Without the choice-infrastructure in place to make other food choices, it is unfair to burden consumers. Until high quality foods are made affordable, many consumers have no choice but to eat low-quality foods in order match their economic and calric budgets. Subsidies must be made available to encourage companies to offer healthy choices and to make those choices affordable to low-income families. In addition, changes must be made at a larger level than the city municipality - otherwise consumers or businesses will leave those areas for more favorable locations. In order to make a real impact in the obesity-epidemic the infrastructure must be in place to fully support significant dietary changes that will be difficult for many families.
The legislature is one way to make changes, but to fully affect change within corporations, the judicial system is another avenue that must be explored. Public health and policy makers were able to make significant headway against tobacco companies during the 1990s by linking tobacoo companies directly to negative health outcomes of smokers. Tobacco prevalence has declined significantly and tobacco companies have had to change their marketing strategies and tactis. The fear of large jury settlements is one way to change corporate behavior. Professor John Banzhaf at GWU School of Law is the major advocate of using the judicial system to change the landscape of dietary choices and the public perception of the obesity epidemic.
There is absolutely no quantitative data in place to measure the success of the Mayor's proposed tax. How will we know if the tax leads to decreaded prevelance of negative health outcomes associated with obesity? Who will be doing that data collection and who will pay for it? The likely answer is that none of this has been considered because it is not part of the plan. The only thing that will decrease is the poorly managed Detroit budget deficit, allowing Kwame and his crew to roll around in expensive SUVs while his constituents struggle to make ends meet.
LINKS
Detroit Mayor's Tax Proposal
CNN
BBC
Detroit News
Another from Detroit News
Detroit Free Press
OTHER
John Banzhaf
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Real ID Act
The senate has UNANIMOUSLY passed a bill that adds 82 billion in funding for the Iraq war. Wrapped up in this bill was the "real ID act" giving states 3 years to implement a federally-regulated drivers license.
The argument is that a federal license is basically a national ID card. I'm not sure I fully buy the arguments that a national ID card is inherently a violation of privacy and civil liberties. However, I certainly feel that it is a violation of state rights. Furthermore, why is a homeland security/immigration measure getting stuck to a bill for national security/war funding? Because the republicans put it there knowing that there were no democratic senators with the balls to vote no to "money for our troops". If they would have voted no, they would face the same commercials during their reelection campaigns that John Kerry had to deal with because of a similar add-on to a previous troop-funding measure.
But the democrats continue to come off as platformless cowards on this one. Many democrats gave speeches about how wrong this bill was before voting YES to it out of fear. There are 2 major problems here and yet another failed opportunity to strategically capitalize on republican actions.
1. Should we be giving more money to troops in Iraq? Well, let's sidestep this debate and basically agree that public sentiment is that you must give money to the troops IF they are there already UNTIL they come back - any other action would be politically devastating. I can buy that, even if I don't buy why such a large amount of U.S troops are still in Iraq. Therefore, I can excuse democrats for voting YES to funding, at least until they come up with a CLEAR exit scenario (something which Kerry failed to do in the last election).
2. Here is the important error by the democrats - a party that constantly misses ways to market themselves and seize on errors by republicans. Instead of democratic senators giving speeches detailing why they WANTED to vote NO on the bill because of RealID being added on by the republicans, the senators should have given a speech detailing why they WANTED to vote YES on the bill but couldn't because the Republicans stuck a totally unrelated, poorly thought out, measure on an importnat national security vote. If a strong majority of democrats would have done this, what would have happened? The Republicans would obviously be forced to take the stupid RealID measure off of the table. Clearly if the democrats strategize a little bit, they still retain SOME power in the senate (john bolten confirmation?).
During the 2004 presidential elections - and Florida Senate election for that matter - there were numerous times that the democratic party failed to market themselves properly or capitalize on republican missteps. I am convinced that a strong PR firm, branding agency would do wonders for their platform and create tangible changes at the polling booth.
You can listen to this story on NPR at the following link
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4647596
Or read about it at the ACLU site
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=18184&c=206
The argument is that a federal license is basically a national ID card. I'm not sure I fully buy the arguments that a national ID card is inherently a violation of privacy and civil liberties. However, I certainly feel that it is a violation of state rights. Furthermore, why is a homeland security/immigration measure getting stuck to a bill for national security/war funding? Because the republicans put it there knowing that there were no democratic senators with the balls to vote no to "money for our troops". If they would have voted no, they would face the same commercials during their reelection campaigns that John Kerry had to deal with because of a similar add-on to a previous troop-funding measure.
But the democrats continue to come off as platformless cowards on this one. Many democrats gave speeches about how wrong this bill was before voting YES to it out of fear. There are 2 major problems here and yet another failed opportunity to strategically capitalize on republican actions.
1. Should we be giving more money to troops in Iraq? Well, let's sidestep this debate and basically agree that public sentiment is that you must give money to the troops IF they are there already UNTIL they come back - any other action would be politically devastating. I can buy that, even if I don't buy why such a large amount of U.S troops are still in Iraq. Therefore, I can excuse democrats for voting YES to funding, at least until they come up with a CLEAR exit scenario (something which Kerry failed to do in the last election).
2. Here is the important error by the democrats - a party that constantly misses ways to market themselves and seize on errors by republicans. Instead of democratic senators giving speeches detailing why they WANTED to vote NO on the bill because of RealID being added on by the republicans, the senators should have given a speech detailing why they WANTED to vote YES on the bill but couldn't because the Republicans stuck a totally unrelated, poorly thought out, measure on an importnat national security vote. If a strong majority of democrats would have done this, what would have happened? The Republicans would obviously be forced to take the stupid RealID measure off of the table. Clearly if the democrats strategize a little bit, they still retain SOME power in the senate (john bolten confirmation?).
During the 2004 presidential elections - and Florida Senate election for that matter - there were numerous times that the democratic party failed to market themselves properly or capitalize on republican missteps. I am convinced that a strong PR firm, branding agency would do wonders for their platform and create tangible changes at the polling booth.
You can listen to this story on NPR at the following link
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4647596
Or read about it at the ACLU site
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=18184&c=206
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
LCE Large Group Presentation
On Wednesday, May 18, I will be doing the large group presentation during LCE.
This basically works like the New England Journal of Medicine's clinical case discussion.
The idea is that I pick out a case that has a good differential and bring it in for presentation. You start with the Chief Complaint (young adult male presents with Vomiting) and allow responses from the students to guide your from there - meaning, they would ask for physical exam findings, come up with a differential, ask for the positive/negative indicators, lab values, images, etc and come up with a more refined differnential. The attending physician usually comes in as well and it makes for a fairly entertaining hour and a decent little thought exercise - granted we don't really know any of the pathology right now so the logic behind our guesses at the differential is kinda shaky at best.
Anyway, Dr. B will be coming in and he is bring a cadre of people with him including Dr. M, a radiologist, and Dr. N, a neuroanatomist. So this means I probably won't have to say too much -fine by me.
It is advantagous to volunteer for these because you are then allowed to pick your next LCE preceptor - which allows me to ensure I get someone in Tampa (driving to Sarasota, Spring Hill, Lakeland, etc doesn't sound too fun) and hopefully someone in ID or EM.
Dr. B agreed to assist and allowed me to select the case - however, he made a push for a recent gunshot wound to the neck which would have allowed us to discuss trauma and stroke. However, we did a stroke in February and trauma doesn't allow for as much consideration in the differential.
Since we are currently in our neuro block, and I'm rotating with a neurosurgeon, I thought it would only be appropriate to do something with all the classic neuro exam signs.
We saw this patient on hospital rounds - a 25 year old male with persistent vomiting, nausea and headache. Apparenty, the bouts of nausea had been occuring for approximately 8 months, however, in the last few months, frequency and severity were increased and accompanied by a number of other symptoms, including headaches and transient confusion (described by his wife). The patient presented to hospital when the nausea began to occur with headaches during the middle of the night.
It is important to note that vomiting presented first. This led initial diagnoses to focus on the GI system. However, lab data came back negative and the presence of headaches with vomiting led to a neuro consult.
On exam, there were a number of important signs. Muscle tone was reduced on the left side, an ataxic gait was present (stumbling), and nystagmus was noted (eyes don't catch up to tracking an object). There was rebound phenomenon in the left upper limb (left arm bounces after lifted and dropped) but no Hoffman's sign or clonus (both tests for upper motor neuron lesions).
These findings are quite significant with a neoplasm (brain tumor), specifically in the posterior cranial fossa. While the majority of brain tumors occur in cerebrum (astrocytomas), the presence of coordination problems and nystagmus leads one to suspect that the tumor may be in the cerebellum.
An ependymoma would be the most likely type of glioma to consider. Ependymomas occur in the ependymal cells within the 4th ventricle. This can push on the ventricle wall, causing vomiting and block the pathway for cerebrospinal fluid to flow out of the ventricle, thus causing increased cranial pressure leading to heaches.
An MRI was obtained to confirm this diagnosis, however, the tumor was, suprisingly, not in the ventricle at all. As a matter of fact the tumor appeared to be a medulloblastoma - which are congenital tumors that often appear in the cerebellum during childhood. They do have a similar presentation - but headache usually comes before vomiting with these types of growths.
So here was a 25 year old male, too old for a medulloblastoma and presenting symptoms more likely to be an ependymoma. However, it is possible that 25 year old males can get medulloblastomas, and this is the case here.
Upon surgery, a portion of the occipital bone was removed and the tumor was excised. A number of weeks later, the patient received a lumbar puncture. It is important to do a lumbar puncture to check for drop metastases where cancer cells metastasize via CSF pathways into the spinal cord.
Unfortunately, in this case, the lumbar puncture was positive meaning that the cells had indeed spread into the spinal sac. At some point a tumor will occur along the spinal cord and can also reoccur in the cerebellum and will most likely lead to death.
This basically works like the New England Journal of Medicine's clinical case discussion.
The idea is that I pick out a case that has a good differential and bring it in for presentation. You start with the Chief Complaint (young adult male presents with Vomiting) and allow responses from the students to guide your from there - meaning, they would ask for physical exam findings, come up with a differential, ask for the positive/negative indicators, lab values, images, etc and come up with a more refined differnential. The attending physician usually comes in as well and it makes for a fairly entertaining hour and a decent little thought exercise - granted we don't really know any of the pathology right now so the logic behind our guesses at the differential is kinda shaky at best.
Anyway, Dr. B will be coming in and he is bring a cadre of people with him including Dr. M, a radiologist, and Dr. N, a neuroanatomist. So this means I probably won't have to say too much -fine by me.
It is advantagous to volunteer for these because you are then allowed to pick your next LCE preceptor - which allows me to ensure I get someone in Tampa (driving to Sarasota, Spring Hill, Lakeland, etc doesn't sound too fun) and hopefully someone in ID or EM.
Dr. B agreed to assist and allowed me to select the case - however, he made a push for a recent gunshot wound to the neck which would have allowed us to discuss trauma and stroke. However, we did a stroke in February and trauma doesn't allow for as much consideration in the differential.
Since we are currently in our neuro block, and I'm rotating with a neurosurgeon, I thought it would only be appropriate to do something with all the classic neuro exam signs.
We saw this patient on hospital rounds - a 25 year old male with persistent vomiting, nausea and headache. Apparenty, the bouts of nausea had been occuring for approximately 8 months, however, in the last few months, frequency and severity were increased and accompanied by a number of other symptoms, including headaches and transient confusion (described by his wife). The patient presented to hospital when the nausea began to occur with headaches during the middle of the night.
It is important to note that vomiting presented first. This led initial diagnoses to focus on the GI system. However, lab data came back negative and the presence of headaches with vomiting led to a neuro consult.
On exam, there were a number of important signs. Muscle tone was reduced on the left side, an ataxic gait was present (stumbling), and nystagmus was noted (eyes don't catch up to tracking an object). There was rebound phenomenon in the left upper limb (left arm bounces after lifted and dropped) but no Hoffman's sign or clonus (both tests for upper motor neuron lesions).
These findings are quite significant with a neoplasm (brain tumor), specifically in the posterior cranial fossa. While the majority of brain tumors occur in cerebrum (astrocytomas), the presence of coordination problems and nystagmus leads one to suspect that the tumor may be in the cerebellum.
An ependymoma would be the most likely type of glioma to consider. Ependymomas occur in the ependymal cells within the 4th ventricle. This can push on the ventricle wall, causing vomiting and block the pathway for cerebrospinal fluid to flow out of the ventricle, thus causing increased cranial pressure leading to heaches.
An MRI was obtained to confirm this diagnosis, however, the tumor was, suprisingly, not in the ventricle at all. As a matter of fact the tumor appeared to be a medulloblastoma - which are congenital tumors that often appear in the cerebellum during childhood. They do have a similar presentation - but headache usually comes before vomiting with these types of growths.
So here was a 25 year old male, too old for a medulloblastoma and presenting symptoms more likely to be an ependymoma. However, it is possible that 25 year old males can get medulloblastomas, and this is the case here.
Upon surgery, a portion of the occipital bone was removed and the tumor was excised. A number of weeks later, the patient received a lumbar puncture. It is important to do a lumbar puncture to check for drop metastases where cancer cells metastasize via CSF pathways into the spinal cord.
Unfortunately, in this case, the lumbar puncture was positive meaning that the cells had indeed spread into the spinal sac. At some point a tumor will occur along the spinal cord and can also reoccur in the cerebellum and will most likely lead to death.
VRACS?
There may be some issue in terms of access to the VRACS dataset. However, the owner/collector of the data has okayed for me to teach a SAS seminar and to do a paper using that data. Therefore, it doesn't seem to be an ownership issue - but who knows.
Apparently the person who collected the data just doesn't think there is enough in the data set for a full dissertation. I am supposed to call to discuss the issue further this week (tomorrow). There are multiple data sets on HIV risk factors in India that have been recently collected and are lying around the Infectious Disease unit waiting for analyses. Therefore, if VRACS is too small, I can turn to these other sources. I am thinking the 3 paper dissertation model may be ideal for me using HIV risk in India as the uniting theme (with a broad question to link these paper to be determined).
In other news, I am thinking about backing out of an additional summer committment which would only take time away from the dissertation project. The other comitmment is a health-education activity where I would work with an interdisciplinary team in a community setting (e.g. AIDS men in Tampa, overweight kids in hernando county, diabetetic hispanics in ruskin, etc) to develop an education model and to assess basic epi stats in that population. It's a useful project in that it deals with health ed/policy and pays well, however, it takes time away from dissertation related activities and potential learning/interesting opportunities at TGH (rounding, etc). The main pros at this point for keeping the second summer position is that the extra money would be fun, its only 24 hours a week, Kryste is going to be quite busy anyway, and I have already agreed to do it (granted it doesn't start until June and they would certainly be able to find someone to fill the open slot - however, I don't really want to piss off AHEC in my first professional encounter with the group). Anyway, something to mull over for a couple of days.
Apparently the person who collected the data just doesn't think there is enough in the data set for a full dissertation. I am supposed to call to discuss the issue further this week (tomorrow). There are multiple data sets on HIV risk factors in India that have been recently collected and are lying around the Infectious Disease unit waiting for analyses. Therefore, if VRACS is too small, I can turn to these other sources. I am thinking the 3 paper dissertation model may be ideal for me using HIV risk in India as the uniting theme (with a broad question to link these paper to be determined).
In other news, I am thinking about backing out of an additional summer committment which would only take time away from the dissertation project. The other comitmment is a health-education activity where I would work with an interdisciplinary team in a community setting (e.g. AIDS men in Tampa, overweight kids in hernando county, diabetetic hispanics in ruskin, etc) to develop an education model and to assess basic epi stats in that population. It's a useful project in that it deals with health ed/policy and pays well, however, it takes time away from dissertation related activities and potential learning/interesting opportunities at TGH (rounding, etc). The main pros at this point for keeping the second summer position is that the extra money would be fun, its only 24 hours a week, Kryste is going to be quite busy anyway, and I have already agreed to do it (granted it doesn't start until June and they would certainly be able to find someone to fill the open slot - however, I don't really want to piss off AHEC in my first professional encounter with the group). Anyway, something to mull over for a couple of days.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Dissertation Progress
In order to make myself think about my dissertation project regularly and to force myself to construct tangible ideas, I have decided to use this space for updates on my thesis.
When I left Michigan for medical school last summer, I took a data set and a dissertation question along with me. The ideas was to simply finish up the analysis of that data on my own, write up and send in chapters via email to my advisor/committee.
Coming off months of thurough training in SAS, SUDAAN, and SPSS throgh coursework and summer seminars at the UM-School of Public Health, I felt fairly confident about the statistical analyses that would be needed to answer my questions regarding cultral variation in diet and obesity and its link to the Glycemic Index within the United States.
The only caveat was that the dataset (NHANES) did not actually include Glycemic Index values. But, the February 2004 publication by Brand-Miller (Journal of Clinical Nutrition) listed the values for thousands of food items, using the USDA food codes which are also used in the NHANES diet survey. Therefore, I didn't think it would be a big deal to have the computer calculate the glycemic index values for the food entries in NHANES, providing me with the necessary data.
Well, it didn't take long for me to figure out that this was simply not going to work, at least I wasn't going to get it to work. Therefore, I began exploring the next option - hiring a software engineer to go through the data set and perform the necessary conversions, etc. While thinking about pursuing this option, however, the Willet group and others, continued publishing on the irrelevance of single-food glycemic index values since foods were eaten in combination with other foods providing a mixed-meal glycemic value. In other words, the glycemic values for each individual food that is part of a meal are not necessarily additive. Willet demonstrated this by publishing the average values for a number of mixed meals. However, the almost infinite combinations of mixed meals in NHANES makes it virtually impossible (and fully impossible at this time because the data doesn't exist) to calculate the mixed-meal values for each dietary entry for every sample.
In other words, the glycemic index question had become all but irrelevant by Fall of 2004 and the calculations and management of the data set had become much more difficult then originally envisaged.
The notion of completing my dissertation was being pushed to a backburner - a very far back back burner - as the daily business of medical school took over, coupled with the questionable value of a PhD for a physician. Meaning, now that my data and project had fallen through, did it really matter? Would there be any affect of this on my career as a physician?
Well, the basic answer to this question is that if I was going to do family practice in some South Tampa group or emergency medicine in a busy urban hospital ,then, no, of course it would not matter. However, if I was going to continue exploring my interests in epidemiology, infectious disease, and preventive medicine, then a PhD (particulary from a "brand" name university like Michigan) would be quite valuable on the policy/research side of life.
I let these ideas stew in my head as I continued through Winter and Spring coursework of my first year in medical school, growing more distant from anthropology due to the clinically oriented environment of my everyday routines. However, the past few weeks have allowed me to refocus and reexplore the possibility and value of completing my dissertation due to some fortunate events.
First of all, the heavy coursework period has ended and we have a little more time in this block to make plans for a 2 month summer break beginning in June. This has given me the chance to read up on some anthro journals, look back at some of my ideas and talk with some graduate school colleagues.
Secondly, I have been able to put the past 9 months into perspective thanks to the help of Sumaiya. These past 9 months have been the first period in my life for the past 5 years where I didn't DO anthropology everyday, where I didn't feel like an anthropologist - whether that be teaching, research, courses, etc. The lack of contact with anthropology and anthropologists makes the 9 month period seem longer than it is. I had started feeling too far away from my time at Michigan to finish my dissertation. However, some time for reflection and some conversations with Sumaiya remind me that this 9 months is no big deal for a number of reasons:
1. I left with the encouragement of my advisor as part of a bigger plan
2. I am only in my 5th year of the PhD program - well below the average of 9 years to completion
3. Many bio-anthro students have been in the "field" for long periods (1-2 years, or more) or simply taken time to be in other places doing other things. Granted my "field" work is a little different, it doesn't really change things too much if my plans remain the same.
4. Rackham policy gives a doctoral candidate up to three years to complete the thesis
Finally, I have accepted a research position with Dr. John Sinnott who heads up the Infectious Disease unit at Tampa General Hospital, and is a clinical professor. This position, ultimately, may be the thing that allows me to realistically complete my thesis. Sinnott is a clinician, academic, and researcher, allowing allowing him to understand my unique circumstances (MD/PhD student at two different places in a program I created). In addition, and just as important, Dr. Sinnott has access to valuable data sets that are of clinical and anthropological interest. For example, the VRACS dataset is a large sample survey collected in India in order to assess risk factors for HIV. The group working on this dataset has produced papers previously with an anthropological question (SEE ABSTRACT) and there are many great questions stilil waiting to be answered. Fortunately for me, Dr. Sinnott has agreed to let me spend the summer using this data to complete my dissertation (!). I don't think I could have imagined a better opportunity.
For completing my PhD to be a reality, I set up a couple of regulations that had to met. These regulation appear IN ORDER - from most difficult to fulfill, to easiest to fulfill.
1. I needed to find a dataset that was already available (e.g. no fieldwork)
2. I needed to be able to do analysis and writing while in Tampa
3. I needed to find someone here who could act as a committee member/co-advisor
4. I needed to get approval from Frisancho
I think have definitely met requirements 1-3. Currently, I am in discussion with Frisancho to meet #4. Basically, he just wants to know my question - to know if its relevant to anthropology, to him, etc. I am not concerned about this - if anything I am concerned about his advancing age and desire to retire in the near-future. In order to get some insight into all of this, I have contacted Susan Tanner (a Frisancho student very near completion). Hopefully she can shed some light on things as she tends to be very down to earth and observant.
I am currently awaiting the VRACS data set, which is probably going to be a huge cumbersome EXCEL file that I will need to convert to SAS. The plan is that I will get to know the VRACS data set by teaching a little mini-SAS course to the residents and fellows at TGH (um, I hope I remember how to use SAS!). This will allow me to develop my question a bit while reading up on the literature and 2 previous papers that were presented at conferences from this data. Oh, speaking of literature - apparently my life is going to be one step easier - 2 high school aged volunteers with the infectious disease groups will be able to help me do literature searches, editing, etc. Let's get this thing moving fast before the data falls apart or HIV, India, or something else becomes irrelevant (ha).
When I left Michigan for medical school last summer, I took a data set and a dissertation question along with me. The ideas was to simply finish up the analysis of that data on my own, write up and send in chapters via email to my advisor/committee.
Coming off months of thurough training in SAS, SUDAAN, and SPSS throgh coursework and summer seminars at the UM-School of Public Health, I felt fairly confident about the statistical analyses that would be needed to answer my questions regarding cultral variation in diet and obesity and its link to the Glycemic Index within the United States.
The only caveat was that the dataset (NHANES) did not actually include Glycemic Index values. But, the February 2004 publication by Brand-Miller (Journal of Clinical Nutrition) listed the values for thousands of food items, using the USDA food codes which are also used in the NHANES diet survey. Therefore, I didn't think it would be a big deal to have the computer calculate the glycemic index values for the food entries in NHANES, providing me with the necessary data.
Well, it didn't take long for me to figure out that this was simply not going to work, at least I wasn't going to get it to work. Therefore, I began exploring the next option - hiring a software engineer to go through the data set and perform the necessary conversions, etc. While thinking about pursuing this option, however, the Willet group and others, continued publishing on the irrelevance of single-food glycemic index values since foods were eaten in combination with other foods providing a mixed-meal glycemic value. In other words, the glycemic values for each individual food that is part of a meal are not necessarily additive. Willet demonstrated this by publishing the average values for a number of mixed meals. However, the almost infinite combinations of mixed meals in NHANES makes it virtually impossible (and fully impossible at this time because the data doesn't exist) to calculate the mixed-meal values for each dietary entry for every sample.
In other words, the glycemic index question had become all but irrelevant by Fall of 2004 and the calculations and management of the data set had become much more difficult then originally envisaged.
The notion of completing my dissertation was being pushed to a backburner - a very far back back burner - as the daily business of medical school took over, coupled with the questionable value of a PhD for a physician. Meaning, now that my data and project had fallen through, did it really matter? Would there be any affect of this on my career as a physician?
Well, the basic answer to this question is that if I was going to do family practice in some South Tampa group or emergency medicine in a busy urban hospital ,then, no, of course it would not matter. However, if I was going to continue exploring my interests in epidemiology, infectious disease, and preventive medicine, then a PhD (particulary from a "brand" name university like Michigan) would be quite valuable on the policy/research side of life.
I let these ideas stew in my head as I continued through Winter and Spring coursework of my first year in medical school, growing more distant from anthropology due to the clinically oriented environment of my everyday routines. However, the past few weeks have allowed me to refocus and reexplore the possibility and value of completing my dissertation due to some fortunate events.
First of all, the heavy coursework period has ended and we have a little more time in this block to make plans for a 2 month summer break beginning in June. This has given me the chance to read up on some anthro journals, look back at some of my ideas and talk with some graduate school colleagues.
Secondly, I have been able to put the past 9 months into perspective thanks to the help of Sumaiya. These past 9 months have been the first period in my life for the past 5 years where I didn't DO anthropology everyday, where I didn't feel like an anthropologist - whether that be teaching, research, courses, etc. The lack of contact with anthropology and anthropologists makes the 9 month period seem longer than it is. I had started feeling too far away from my time at Michigan to finish my dissertation. However, some time for reflection and some conversations with Sumaiya remind me that this 9 months is no big deal for a number of reasons:
1. I left with the encouragement of my advisor as part of a bigger plan
2. I am only in my 5th year of the PhD program - well below the average of 9 years to completion
3. Many bio-anthro students have been in the "field" for long periods (1-2 years, or more) or simply taken time to be in other places doing other things. Granted my "field" work is a little different, it doesn't really change things too much if my plans remain the same.
4. Rackham policy gives a doctoral candidate up to three years to complete the thesis
Finally, I have accepted a research position with Dr. John Sinnott who heads up the Infectious Disease unit at Tampa General Hospital, and is a clinical professor. This position, ultimately, may be the thing that allows me to realistically complete my thesis. Sinnott is a clinician, academic, and researcher, allowing allowing him to understand my unique circumstances (MD/PhD student at two different places in a program I created). In addition, and just as important, Dr. Sinnott has access to valuable data sets that are of clinical and anthropological interest. For example, the VRACS dataset is a large sample survey collected in India in order to assess risk factors for HIV. The group working on this dataset has produced papers previously with an anthropological question (SEE ABSTRACT) and there are many great questions stilil waiting to be answered. Fortunately for me, Dr. Sinnott has agreed to let me spend the summer using this data to complete my dissertation (!). I don't think I could have imagined a better opportunity.
For completing my PhD to be a reality, I set up a couple of regulations that had to met. These regulation appear IN ORDER - from most difficult to fulfill, to easiest to fulfill.
1. I needed to find a dataset that was already available (e.g. no fieldwork)
2. I needed to be able to do analysis and writing while in Tampa
3. I needed to find someone here who could act as a committee member/co-advisor
4. I needed to get approval from Frisancho
I think have definitely met requirements 1-3. Currently, I am in discussion with Frisancho to meet #4. Basically, he just wants to know my question - to know if its relevant to anthropology, to him, etc. I am not concerned about this - if anything I am concerned about his advancing age and desire to retire in the near-future. In order to get some insight into all of this, I have contacted Susan Tanner (a Frisancho student very near completion). Hopefully she can shed some light on things as she tends to be very down to earth and observant.
I am currently awaiting the VRACS data set, which is probably going to be a huge cumbersome EXCEL file that I will need to convert to SAS. The plan is that I will get to know the VRACS data set by teaching a little mini-SAS course to the residents and fellows at TGH (um, I hope I remember how to use SAS!). This will allow me to develop my question a bit while reading up on the literature and 2 previous papers that were presented at conferences from this data. Oh, speaking of literature - apparently my life is going to be one step easier - 2 high school aged volunteers with the infectious disease groups will be able to help me do literature searches, editing, etc. Let's get this thing moving fast before the data falls apart or HIV, India, or something else becomes irrelevant (ha).
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