In this rapidly changing landscape of earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis and volcanoes It is easy to move on to the next crisis and forget the last one. It can indeed be overwhelming to think of all of them as on-going struggles. The following article highlights this with a quick insight about one small area of one such crisis. Many Japanese still cannot return home because they lived so close to the damaged nuclear power plant. The following article highlights a few personal experiences of some folks who have been given a few hours this past weekend to visit their homes in the irradiated area for a few hours. Some days I think I will run out of candles and prayers.
Tamura residents challenge hot zone for short trip home | The Japan Times Online
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Two and a Half Men, Long live the Surviving King.
Charlie is both talented and clearly burnt out. Of course, the same is probably true for the rest of the cast of the wonderfully funny television show called 'Two and a Half Men." Now that Charlie has chosen to go his separate way, I say 'chosen' because wizards understand and control their fate and therefore, Charlie Sheen chose to force CBS to fire him. So be it. I look forward to his next work of art.
That said, while Charlie Harper has embodied a central role in this drama, it is still an ensemble with many other important characters who have not made the same choice Charlie Sheen has recently made. First and foremost, Alan, Charlie's neurotic brother, played by John Cryer, deserves at lest 30 percent of the credit for this drama's success. While Charlie Sheen deserves a clear 30% as well, Jake, played by Angus T. Jones gets a full 15% of the credit (he is the half man after all). Their mother Evelyn, played by Holland Taylor, Berta the maid, played by Conchata Ferrell, Rose, Charlie's stalker, played by Melanie Lynskey and Alan's ex-wife Judith, played by Marin Hinkle all deserve at least the lions share of the other 15%. Truth be told the percentages shift with the same frequency as Charlie's girlfriends.
Two and a half men is a fusion of the odd couple and Arrested Development. The tragic lose of Charlie is just the blow that any dysfunctional family needs to galvanize the family into a moment of unity. I hope this family is able to take advantage of this opportunity.
The key at this juncture is in how the family deals with the tragic loss of Charlie. So start there. How did we lose him? With Charlie Harper, it was only a matter of time. Fast cars and lots of booze are a recipe for disaster in any universe. Personally, I picture Charlie Harper fantasizing his own demise by rocketing off a precarious turn on the kings highway at 120 into the pacific ocean. Given his behavior, however, he probably dies of asphyxiation on his own vomit after a another night of debauchery. In the end, the exact cause is probably unimportant in the face of the realization that hemorrhoids will need to find another songwriter to elevate shingles to jingles.
The point is that life goes on. The opportunity to host retrospectives on Charlie's life after "the accident" is a hook that any number of scripts can be hung on. Here is one example.
Since Charlie has never been the most responsible guy, there is no will. The inheritors of Charlie's condo would be either Alan or his mother or both. This gives us the opportunity to explore how far Evelyn will go to satisfy her greed when faced with her pencil thin sense of motherly obligation. It also begs the question of how desparate Alan would be in the face of Charlie not being there to be his benefactor.
Evelyn would decide to sell the condo unless Alan can get a roommate and save his Malibu home, because "After all, even if Alan IS a lost cause, grandmother can never put jake out on the street."
Alan gets his chance.
From now on, the roommates rotate every few weeks since no one can ever replace Charlie for Alan, Jake, Berta, Rose, and Evelyn. Perhaps one day, a roommate will come along who can live up to the magical dysfunction that was Charlie but until then, Alan must keep interviewing and living through one trail situation after another with different Charlie Parker Arch-types.
Given that all these characters live at the pleasure of the amazing comedic genius of Chuck Lorre, Lee Aronsohn and others, I feel confident that this scenario could work.
I look forward to where Two and a half men will end up now that Charlie has died.
That said, while Charlie Harper has embodied a central role in this drama, it is still an ensemble with many other important characters who have not made the same choice Charlie Sheen has recently made. First and foremost, Alan, Charlie's neurotic brother, played by John Cryer, deserves at lest 30 percent of the credit for this drama's success. While Charlie Sheen deserves a clear 30% as well, Jake, played by Angus T. Jones gets a full 15% of the credit (he is the half man after all). Their mother Evelyn, played by Holland Taylor, Berta the maid, played by Conchata Ferrell, Rose, Charlie's stalker, played by Melanie Lynskey and Alan's ex-wife Judith, played by Marin Hinkle all deserve at least the lions share of the other 15%. Truth be told the percentages shift with the same frequency as Charlie's girlfriends.
Two and a half men is a fusion of the odd couple and Arrested Development. The tragic lose of Charlie is just the blow that any dysfunctional family needs to galvanize the family into a moment of unity. I hope this family is able to take advantage of this opportunity.
The key at this juncture is in how the family deals with the tragic loss of Charlie. So start there. How did we lose him? With Charlie Harper, it was only a matter of time. Fast cars and lots of booze are a recipe for disaster in any universe. Personally, I picture Charlie Harper fantasizing his own demise by rocketing off a precarious turn on the kings highway at 120 into the pacific ocean. Given his behavior, however, he probably dies of asphyxiation on his own vomit after a another night of debauchery. In the end, the exact cause is probably unimportant in the face of the realization that hemorrhoids will need to find another songwriter to elevate shingles to jingles.
The point is that life goes on. The opportunity to host retrospectives on Charlie's life after "the accident" is a hook that any number of scripts can be hung on. Here is one example.
Since Charlie has never been the most responsible guy, there is no will. The inheritors of Charlie's condo would be either Alan or his mother or both. This gives us the opportunity to explore how far Evelyn will go to satisfy her greed when faced with her pencil thin sense of motherly obligation. It also begs the question of how desparate Alan would be in the face of Charlie not being there to be his benefactor.
Evelyn would decide to sell the condo unless Alan can get a roommate and save his Malibu home, because "After all, even if Alan IS a lost cause, grandmother can never put jake out on the street."
Alan gets his chance.
From now on, the roommates rotate every few weeks since no one can ever replace Charlie for Alan, Jake, Berta, Rose, and Evelyn. Perhaps one day, a roommate will come along who can live up to the magical dysfunction that was Charlie but until then, Alan must keep interviewing and living through one trail situation after another with different Charlie Parker Arch-types.
Given that all these characters live at the pleasure of the amazing comedic genius of Chuck Lorre, Lee Aronsohn and others, I feel confident that this scenario could work.
I look forward to where Two and a half men will end up now that Charlie has died.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Reading "Seeking Atmosphere" by E. Berman PsyD.
Recently, Fortune Magazine released it's list of the Top 100 Best Companies to work for. As a manager of a business one imagines reading this list with a question of where am I on this list? More realistically, how can I make my company better? In order to craft plans for employee retention and satisfaction, growing productivity and improving communication one should turn to an organizational psychologist.
In her article, "Seeking Atmosphere", Psychologist Eileen Berman concludes that good leaders bring out the best in people, and that both high and low productivity can be traced back to the top of an organization (Berman, 2009). One imagines that, as a manager, this is an inspiring message. A task of an organizational Psychologist in this author's business would be help identify ways to implement a milieu that engenders loyalty and happiness in my company.
BERMAN, E. L. (2009). Seeking Atmosphere. Industrial Management, 51(2), 6.
In her article, "Seeking Atmosphere", Psychologist Eileen Berman concludes that good leaders bring out the best in people, and that both high and low productivity can be traced back to the top of an organization (Berman, 2009). One imagines that, as a manager, this is an inspiring message. A task of an organizational Psychologist in this author's business would be help identify ways to implement a milieu that engenders loyalty and happiness in my company.
BERMAN, E. L. (2009). Seeking Atmosphere. Industrial Management, 51(2), 6.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Whose the Bully? Health Care or Reform?
Recently somebody told me that Health Care Reform has already raised healthcare costs in Massachusetts by more than a third! This statement, if accurate, demands Health Care Reform reform.
In our culter of soundbites and a habit of throwing around "facts" that we have not personally checked, I did some investigating.
In her Boston Globe article of August, 2009, Kay Lazar reported the following:
".. the average family premium for plans offered by employers in Massachusetts
was $13,788 in 2008, 40 percent higher than in 2003. Over the same period,
premiums nationwide rose an average of 33 percent."
Her citation is "a report by the Commonwealth Fund, a non-profit health care foundation".
As far as I can tell, however, we don't have sufficient data to create a definite
causal relationship between premium costs and the health care reform bill which did not
exist as law until the 2010-2011 year. Articles at the Commonwealth Fund seem to support the idea that Health Care Reform laws are causing us harm.
While I agree that more needs to be done, I disagree that the fact of a 33% average
premium cost increase between 2003 and 2008 is sufficient proof that both the baby
and the bath-water should be thrown out.
A stated goal of the "right of center" Commonwealth Foundation is "Challenging the general perception that government intervention is the most appropriate and most efficient means of solving societal problems."
Being concerned that their mission statement might hint of a bias, I continued to dig through to the Congressional Budget Office which provided numbers to both ex-Speaker Pelosi and the current Speaker, John Boehner.
At the CBO you can find the CBO's assessment of the effect of Health Care Reform on our personal wallets as well as on the national debt. Apparently, having analyze it twice, the CBO estimates that reform will save, on net, about $125 billion dollars whereas if it were repealed our debt would increase about $150 billion.
The CBO concedes that, if repealed, individually owned health care plan costs would go down. They explain that this is largely because without the reform, companies would not have to offer as broad a range of services as they do now. They estimate, however, that in the long run, 2012-2021, the cost of premiums obtained through employers would be higher without reform because of the subsidies and tax benefits included in the new laws, which a repeal would eliminate.
There is no question that without health care reform, fewer people in general would be able to have any health care at any price.
All this makes me wonder if there is not a bit of a "placating the bully" dynamic going on. If you don't bother a bully, he wont hit you and if you don't attempt to reform the system, big companies won't run up your bills as fast?
While it can be argued that both Industry and Government have, in turn and in concert played the bully, in this case, it really appears to me that healthcare reform is trying to control the bully, not encourage him. As usual we're getting knocked around a bit extra right now before we see any relief from this tuff.
Kay's article can be found in the Boston Globe archives at:
Bay State health insurance premiums highest in country - The Boston Globe
More current information on the subject of Health Care from the Commonwealth Foundation
can be found at: www.commonwealthfoundation.org
The Congressional Budget Office website is: http://www.cbo.gov/
In our culter of soundbites and a habit of throwing around "facts" that we have not personally checked, I did some investigating.
In her Boston Globe article of August, 2009, Kay Lazar reported the following:
".. the average family premium for plans offered by employers in Massachusetts
was $13,788 in 2008, 40 percent higher than in 2003. Over the same period,
premiums nationwide rose an average of 33 percent."
Her citation is "a report by the Commonwealth Fund, a non-profit health care foundation".
As far as I can tell, however, we don't have sufficient data to create a definite
causal relationship between premium costs and the health care reform bill which did not
exist as law until the 2010-2011 year. Articles at the Commonwealth Fund seem to support the idea that Health Care Reform laws are causing us harm.
While I agree that more needs to be done, I disagree that the fact of a 33% average
premium cost increase between 2003 and 2008 is sufficient proof that both the baby
and the bath-water should be thrown out.
A stated goal of the "right of center" Commonwealth Foundation is "Challenging the general perception that government intervention is the most appropriate and most efficient means of solving societal problems."
Being concerned that their mission statement might hint of a bias, I continued to dig through to the Congressional Budget Office which provided numbers to both ex-Speaker Pelosi and the current Speaker, John Boehner.
At the CBO you can find the CBO's assessment of the effect of Health Care Reform on our personal wallets as well as on the national debt. Apparently, having analyze it twice, the CBO estimates that reform will save, on net, about $125 billion dollars whereas if it were repealed our debt would increase about $150 billion.
The CBO concedes that, if repealed, individually owned health care plan costs would go down. They explain that this is largely because without the reform, companies would not have to offer as broad a range of services as they do now. They estimate, however, that in the long run, 2012-2021, the cost of premiums obtained through employers would be higher without reform because of the subsidies and tax benefits included in the new laws, which a repeal would eliminate.
There is no question that without health care reform, fewer people in general would be able to have any health care at any price.
All this makes me wonder if there is not a bit of a "placating the bully" dynamic going on. If you don't bother a bully, he wont hit you and if you don't attempt to reform the system, big companies won't run up your bills as fast?
While it can be argued that both Industry and Government have, in turn and in concert played the bully, in this case, it really appears to me that healthcare reform is trying to control the bully, not encourage him. As usual we're getting knocked around a bit extra right now before we see any relief from this tuff.
Kay's article can be found in the Boston Globe archives at:
Bay State health insurance premiums highest in country - The Boston Globe
More current information on the subject of Health Care from the Commonwealth Foundation
can be found at: www.commonwealthfoundation.org
The Congressional Budget Office website is: http://www.cbo.gov/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)