Posted inEntertainment

“The Chair” is a great look at college free speech

I know some retired Willamette University professors who would love "The Chair" on Netflix. This is a short (three hour) series that covers a lot of ground: college politics, free speech/cancel culture, how minorities are treated in academia. My wife and I liked it a lot. Sandra Oh, who I came to know and love in "Killing Eve," has a very different role here as Ji-Yoon Kim, the new chair of the English Department at a smallish university. She's terrific, as are all the other actors, notably including Everly Carganilla, who plays Kim's adopted daughter.  Though by far the youngest…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Maskless Oregonians, here’s what I’m thinking when I see you

Public health experts say we shouldn't shame people who choose not to be vaccinated or ignore mandates to wear a mask in indoor public spaces.  OK. I get that. Shaming isn't a good way to change behavior. Anyway, I'm too polite and well-mannered to go around telling maskless Oregonians what I think when I see them scoffing at Governor Brown's order to wear a mask because of the highly contagious Delta variant that has filled up almost every general hospital and ICU bed in this state.  This is causing non-Covid patients to die unnecessarily, because the mostly unvaccinated Covid patients…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Afghanistan is horrible, but Biden is doing right thing

For the past few days I've been agonizing over how I feel about the situation in Afghanistan. It pains me that the horrific scenes of panicked people at the Kabul airport trying to flee their country are happening on Biden's watch, since I view him as hugely more competent than Trump, and so far he's mostly done the right things as president. Last night my daughter, Celeste, and I talked by phone. Even though we're both progressives, much of our conversation centered on what was happening in Afghanistan.  Almost certainly the Taliban takeover will doom Afghan women and girls to…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Covid craziness tweets to make you outraged (and laugh)

For the past few days I've been collecting tweets from my Twitter feed related to the current Covid state of affairs. Most have to do with the horror show of Republican governors in Florida and Texas doing their best to kill people in their states by trying to prevent mask mandates, including in schools -- where children younger than 12 can't get a vaccine yet. Several tweets pertain to the worsening state of affairs here in Oregon. And one humorous tweet, my favorite, is from a woman in Tennesee who sent a marvelous email to school authorities regarding their policy…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Covid reality: thoughts are not facts

Driving into Salem today, listening to a news channel on satellite radio, I heard a public health expert say something that made me grab a piece of paper and write it down as soon as I came to a stop: Thoughts are not facts.  She was referring to wearing masks in schools as they reopen after a summer break. Like when a student or parent says, "But I thought that wasn't going to be necessary since Covid cases were declining so much a few months ago." OK. You thought that. But thoughts aren't facts, they're just thoughts. The only way…
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Posted inHealth

My hernia operation shows weirdness of hospital billing

I've been meaning to share what my May 6 hernia operation at Salem Hospital cost, because this shows how strange health care billing can be. But I'd been putting this off -- until I was spurred into blog post action by a story in today's Statesman Journal, "Salem Hospital lacks pricing transparency, new report says." Now, what I've shared below doesn't have anything directly to do with pricing transparency, but indirectly it does. I'm on Medicare. My insurance company is Regence MedAdvantage. Here's what the Medicare billing statement showed for my hernia operation. I combined the line items into categories,…
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