Eric Clapton: Christian

Speaking of the interaction of faith with contemporary culture, one of my recent books from the public library was Clapton: The Autobiography. I knew his music but what had made me get the book was hearing that he was also a Christian: Eric Clapton, In the Presence of the Lord. Here's a review of the book at the NYT: Slowhand.

It covers his childhood, the early bands he was a part of (Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith) and the many musicians he jammed with (B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, George Harrison), his relationship with Harrison's wife, later his wife. It also covers more somber subjects, like his drug and alcohol addictions and the death of his four year old son.

What got him through the bad stuff was in part his faith, and he went on to found a drug and alcohol rehab clinic in Antigua - watch Ed Bradley and 60 Minutes visit the clinic here.

Here is the song he wrote about his son, Tears in Heaven ...

Here he and B.B King play at The White House, 1999 ...

And here is one of my favorite songs of his which he wrote with George Harrison, Badge ..

Cross Posting, Copyright, and Relevance

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Relevance
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Evidence of the Superiority of Female Doctors

Superior Pay for Superior Female Doctors?

Ever since I was a college teacher back in the seventies I have been a advocate for women doctors. I remember trying to convince a particularly brilliant advisee that she should be a doctor rather than a nurse. My primary physician is a woman, and the surgeon for my upcoming surgery is a woman.  So I was pleased to come across this article which told me I was correct all along.

Evidence of the Superiority of Female Doctors

The research is published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. Researchers from Harvard University reviewed the records of 1,583,028 hospital visits among Medicare patients. Within 30 days of arriving at the hospital, rates of death and re-admission were significantly lower when the patient’s doctor was female. 

This was true for people with medical conditions of all sorts and severities. The researchers tried to account for every variable; but ultimately all that was left was the finding that women are superior to men at treating these (65-and-older) patients in the hospital. The association held true even for patients who were randomly assigned to a physician when they arrived. People treated by a female had a 4 percent lower relative risk of dying and 5 percent lower relative risk of being admitted to the hospital again in the following month.

I noticed that residency programs where very upset by Trump's travel ban. They have a big competition for these residencies, and there were thousands of applicants from the banned countries.

Now are we running a competition for the best, mostly male I suspect, future physicians from around the world, when in fact we may be neglecting a better source of future physicians, our own women.? 

CNN Had a Problem. Donald Trump Solved It. (Updated)

TV (and CNN) is the problem, not the solution

I have not watched CNN since the election!

CNN Had a Problem: Donald Trump Solved It

Link above Jonathan Miller, New York Times

In Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community Robert Putnam documented that decline of many different types voluntary organizations. He saw Television as the big culprit.

In 2011 in a PrayTell post Television, Time Use, Lent and the Divine Office, I reviewed the literature on time use. Across 20 developed countries both paid and unpaid work had declined, leisure as the remainder had increased (sleep was constant). In 1960, well educated people (both men and women) had more leisure than less educated people. This reversed by 1990. Less educated people now have more leisure than well educated persons. (No, it is not simply because the less educated are more likely to be unemployed.)

In the US, much leisure time was channeled into television viewing. TV time rose from 9.3 hours per week to 15.0 hours per week for women; it rose from 11.9 to 17.3 hours for men. Increased television time not only absorbed time freed up from paid and unpaid work it reduced the number of hours spent socializing, reading and listening to stereo. Hobbies, fitness and sport time did increase, but not nearly as much as television. 

So we have a lot of people, especially less educated people with a lot of time on their hands watching TV!

Why do people watch so much TV? The answer in the past is that it is readily available. Mahler says the theory of the “least-objectionable program,” that most TV watchers were basically passive consumers governed programming decisions at all of the networks but it became outdate in 2001.
NBC Zucher developed  The Apprentice. According to Mahler it "proved that the era of the 'least-objectionable program' was over. In fact, the one thing audiences didn’t want was neutral programming. They wanted intrigue, cattiness, chaos and Darwinian, winner-take-all battles for success and survival. It didn’t matter what was real and what wasn’t, and the central characters didn’t even need to be likable. They just had to be watchable and, ideally, compulsively watchable."

Extending Mahler's argument, I would say that much of CNN and TV has become the equivalent of Roman Circuses. Viewers are being entertained by people engaging in conflict and/or stress.

H1-B Visa Deadline Day

Fed-Ex is doing a land-office business delivering applications for H1-B visas to La Guna Niguel, California. 65,000 U.S. visas are issued annually to companies importing foreign tech workers; last year there were 236,000 applicants. On Monday, opening day of the sweepstakes, the Fed-Ex driver, first at the gate, said he had 15,000 pieces of "mail" to deliver and many more were on the way. The rush is on because the rules are up for changing. NYTimes 

As background to the problem recall the 2015 Disney World lay-offs of 250 tech workers who were to be replaced by contract workers from India. That was scandal enough, but the knife was twisted by Mickey Mouse requiring the 250 to train their replacements as part of their severance agreement.  As Congressional hearings revealed other companies like Southern California Edison did the same in cashiering employees in favor of H1-B visa holders.

The plight of tech workers along with farmer's worried about planting and harvesting crops underline the shabby state of our immigration laws and the vexing problem for U.S. workers at both lower-paying and higher-paying jobs. Will Trump deliver a solution?

Global Warming Concern & Belief on Upswing!

Good News for Environmentalists?

Two recent Gallup posts certainly sound like good news:

March 14, 2017:        Global Warming Concern at Three-Decade High in US

March 27, 2017:        Half in US Are Now Concerned Global Warming Believers

Gallup has been in the polling business for a long time, has a lot of historical data and therefore sets its current findings within that perspective (even if they give attention getting headlines).

Clearly beliefs and concerns about global warming have waxed and waned during the last several decades. They wax when news highlights the threat, they wane when the country is diverted to other concerns such as the economy (e.g. 2009-2011). They increase when Republican's threaten the environment; they diminish when Democrats seem to be doing something about the environment.

We are at one of the highs in these cycles, the highest high ever! Will Republican threat drive the concern even higher? Or will they (and maybe we?) lead Americans to think global warming is about politics not reality. Remember the Law of Averages: when data having multiple causes reaches a new high it is likely to return toward the mean not go higher!  

Environmentalists need to be creative about this opportunity, and overcome these cycles.

The Details and Bottom Line

Trump, Russia, China, and the White House

For those following foreign policy, NPR interviewed Mary Beth Long this morning. She opined that Trump is doing the smart thing by inviting the Chinese for a visit before inviting the Russians.