Drug Policy

Check out this entertaining and informative video.
It seems as if the war against drugs might just be a war against drug users. Unfair, right?

http://www.soros.org/initiatives/drugpolicy/multimedia/drugreport_20090303?clickthrough_drugreport=20090318

The Lesser-Known Uyghurs of Xinjiang

I went to a lecture today by U. of Michigan professor Douglas Northrop. he discussed the issue of transborder politics and the effect of imperialism in Central Asia. We centered our understanding of identity formation on the Uyghurs of Xinjiang. They are an ethnic minority belong of Turkish origins, and the injustices brought upon the minorities are comparable to those discussed (and rumored) by the Chinese mistreatment of the Tibetans.

Yet, I have not heard anything about the Uyghurs until today. That is unfortunate. They were in the news last week (link to the LA times post) because people are urging for the freeing of 17 Uyghur detainees at Guantanamo.

It's an interesting perspective on yet another part of China that I had no understanding or knowledge of. Here's more reading on them if you're interested.

I'll post more thoughts about this soon.

Word for word, people for word, elephant for word...

I hope to one day have a word named after me. Maybe it would be "juice: to be constant butt of jokes. Example: He was quite juiced today." (note: juice is one of my many nicknames. long story)

Until then, you can read about other examples of such a phenomena.

This is why I hate Ticketmaster

Just click on photo. I suck at formatting.

Pay-For-Performance

One way that people have been talking about improving the health care system is through providing a pay-for-performance incentive to physicians.
Here is a digestible article from NYT that discusses the lack of studies done on quantitatively and qualitatively weighing the costs and benefits of the actual P-for-P deal. The model works well in firms and corporate companies, but does it translate well to the medical field and public health? There's the fear that such initiatives will put a rift in patient-doctor relationship (which is already pretty sucky). From the article:

Even more concerning, however, are the unintended consequences that some of these studies have uncovered. Some pay-for-performance plans have resulted in increased administrative costs. Certain physicians and hospitals have found ways to “work” the system, avoiding patients who require more costly care or who skew quality records and exaggerating the severity of patient status in order to document the kind of dramatic improvement that might result in a bonus.

Printed Blog?

Check out an interesting article about the startup, The Printed Blog, that is essentially putting blogs into print form for free. How sustainable is it? Hard to tell since it's inaugural issue hit less than a month ago. Definitely another interesting spin for print media in an increasingly digitized world.

two months into the year 2009,
two months of not blogging,
i know people are missing me.

thus, to appease all my worldwide followers (read: three of my friends with too much time on their hand) i'm leaving this little note.

//current contemplations:

getting through school.
-Microeconomic policy tools
-Discourse of Disease (the class is as vague as it sounds)
-Comparative Approaches to International Studies
-Chinese 136 (read: the bane of my existence)

enjoying the better weather. basking in sleep. dreaming more.
hanging out with the lovelies that have come back from abroad.

feeling more confused than ever (read: spending way too much time thinking about my life. but as charles saadeh reminded me this morning, everything is insignificant. you just need to find ways to keep yourself happy)

learning to not stress (whatever that means). probably the hardest of them all.

day at a time. fighting restlessness.

growing in my capacity to love more than just myself.

my sanity. strung loosely. jc keeps it in place.

//future fuss:

going home for the summer. apparently the dry california weather will do me some good. i'm thinking more like a tan will do me more.

(i'm thinking about) berlin for the fall. yes, i don't know german. yes, i'm going to learn some.
ish liba dish.

that's all for now.

note: notable quotables will return shortly.