Coffee from a Reusable Ceramic Mug

I went to a workshop for women looking to become self-employed in Regensburg today. It was a full day with an overwhelming amount of information, not to mention a whole heck of a lot of technical German spoken with varying levels of Bayrisch. The first seminar was really basic information on starting a business. The speaker started by listing the typical ways women start businesses, and I pretty much fit each of the items she listed. Most women who start their own businesses are between 35 and 54 years old. More than 70% of these businesses include only the founder initially. Those were just two examples, which I would fit fairly well. Here, I thought I was somehow outstanding

There were a few interesting contradictions, like when the one speaker said that most women’s personal businesses start small and build into something larger (implying that men start larger with more risk, I guess). At the same time, the other speakers seemed to be assuming that the participants should be thinking on a small scale. If workshops geared toward women are discouraging big ideas, are they simply supporting their audiences or perpetuating the idea that women should start small because that’s what they do? Maybe I over think these things. I have been to self-employment seminars in the US, which were for a mixed gender audience, and they had a much different feel and a larger vision for their participants. That may be a cultural difference too between the US and Germany and also between large and small towns (the US seminars were in DC).

I was surprised to see that I recognized some women there, and at least one recognized me, but I had no idea how I knew them. It may just be that I live in a small enough town that I know them from the street. The one woman and I took a few minutes to try to figure out how we know each other and never figured it out. I hope I see her again because it is bugging me.

Anyway, I am a bit overwhelmed with all of the information at the moment and trying to get through the small mountain of reading material. I am pretty sure I haven’t violated any tax laws or anything with my limited self-employment activities, but I can’t be sure. This is a whole other way of seeing the world so I feel like I am starting from scratch. I am used to working inside of a big infrastructure where a smart woman asks me for all of my data, does some magic, and the money magically shows up in my bank account while I focus my energy on doing the job. I need a smart woman to run the business for me, and, frighteningly, I think that smart woman is me - scary (her German is not as good as it could be).

One fun thing that came out of the day is that I learned that Friday, March 26th is Germany’s national Equal Pay Day and the Rote Tasche (Red Purse) Initiative (and by ‘fun’ I mean a nice feeling of speaking with a politically active, interesting woman who told me about the initiative). The idea is to draw attention to the fact that women STILL earn less money than men for the same job. I, for one, should earn about 22% more than an equally qualified man just for being so darn fun to work with, on top of being extremely competent (right Brian?). The pay gap in Germany is about the same as in the US. There is a discussion in Regensburg around noon on Friday - details can be found here. Some of the shops are marking the day with ‘unhappy hour’ and if you show up with a red bag (or a lapel pin of a red purse) they have some gifts/discounts; a list of participating retails can be found here. I personally think the stores could do a better job of supporting the day by simply assuring and publicizing that their female employees are not being shafted in their pay, but what do I know? - Yay for shopping, right?

I don’t mean life without the country of China. Every once in a while, I come across news stories that get very little press about some horrendous acts carried out by the Chinese government against it’s people. It goes beyond internet censorship that does get a lot of press, interestingly, to the point of what I would call mass murder. Often women are bear the brunt of these harshest of these acts. I won’t go into details here about the stories, but these stories usually touch me deeply every time.

Fast forward to my perfect little life (compared to, say, the life of someone living in rural China). I look at the bottom of my coffee cup to the inevitable stamp “made in China.” From clothes, to dishes, to furniture, so much of it is made in China, and my consumption, in some part, contributes to suffering of the Chinese people. I can’t do much about the top-end politics of how my countries interacts with the emerging super power, but I can do something about my habits of consumption.

I am somewhat aware of where the stuff I buy comes from. I have a mix of things that were a bit more expensive because they were made in Germany or Western Europe with explicit mention about the conditions in which they were produced, and I also have a lot of things made in China. I’d like to decrease that second part until I can live with the idea of contributing to the government of China. I also realize that things are less black and white than painted here (as Chinese prosperity grows, there may be more chances for people there to win their freedoms, etc), but I still want to cut back on consuming Chinese made products.

Any ideas out there? I find that, generally, buying less stuff is a good start, and when I have to buy stuff, I have to read really carefully. I used to think that sticking with major brands helped, but it doesn’t anymore. That little ‘made in China’ stamp has a way of sneaking in there when I thought I have bought something from elsewhere. Has anyone had success in this? It would be nice if they had something similar to ‘conflict-free’ diamonds for Chinese products.

As an aside, I saw a headline about some video the Glenn Beck is promoting about the ‘truth’ behind communism. Apparently, he thinks it is a big secret that Stalin was probably the worst mass murderer in history and the Che Guevara was an actual violent revolutionary. Long story short, from what I saw, the video kind of implied that communism is really bad and that the liberals (AKA Obama and elitists) have been trying to spread lies that communism is great and that Stalin is a hero!!!! OK, that last bit may just be my cynical extrapolation of where the video goes, but you get the idea. Anyway, I was thinking about the people this video was marketed toward (I suspect I am not one of them), and I wonder if the video will inspire them to take a similar stand against Chinese products since China is the largest communist regime ever. Will crazy-eyes Beck try to raise a boycott against Wallmart and most other discount retails who thrive off of Chinese imports? That would be an interesting twist. I suspect it will most likely be blamed on Obama and no one will be asked to sacrifice their cheap stuff, but it could happen.

A real policy Wonk in and elected office. Al Franken is one of the few (most of the others get very little press because no one likes to listen to them drone on and on about policy). One of his Wonky talents, apparently, is to be able to draw a very good likeness of the US from memory. I’m sure I can dig up the original with audio, but for the time being, here is a nice party trick.

So, I thought Sarah Palin should be left alone because her odd press conference kind of hinted that her and her family needed that. Then, she called all the major networks to come down to the lake where her family seemed to be retreating and continued to expand on the gobbly-gook that she gives as an explanation of her actions. I couldn’t really defend her right to privacy after that - she just seemed to be asking for it.

Surprisingly, I found an article by Peggy Noonan about the whole Palin phenomenon that I actually completely agree with. That was a bit surprising considering that Noonan comes off as a bit of a raving maniac quite often, but that is usually when she is on TV speaking. Perhaps she writes more coherently than she speaks, but it is nice to read words from a rather right-wing spokes person that is thoughtful, intelligent, reflective, and dare I say, “elitist”?

OK, back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

If you haven’t already, I recommend checking out whitehouse.gov and recovery.gov (the site used to track and solicit feedback on the TARP legislation - if you want to know where your money is going, check it out). I love the sites because, for the first time that I am aware of, it is very clear that tech-savvy ‘youngsters’ are putting the face on our government.

The whitehouse, Congress and all Executive Branch Agencies (EBA) have websites, but for the most part, they are rather uninteresting and difficult to navigate - I must admit that NASA has some good stuff though. Even with NASA, I usually find info through Google a lot easier than searching the NASA site itself. The two new sites coming out of the whitehouse, however, are simple and easy to use. Given all of the bureaucratic loops that must be jumped through in order to publish anything for the government, the look, feel and timeliness of the website is even more impressive. They, for example, have announcements from yesterday! Having tried to get some info up in an unnamed EBA, that seems amazing to me.

As far as content of these sites, I find it really nice for getting my eyes on presidential memoranda and Executive Orders - I find that sometimes the media hasn’t even done this much when reporting on them. The recovery site has a nice time line for the implementation of the TARP and some general info on how it will be distributed. Both sites have running blogs that are updated almost daily with the changes and input from the people setting policies. This is Awesome! Previously, there were no blogs (ie. no first hand accounts made publicly accessible in a timely manner), and if you wanted to find documents on the policy coming directly out of the Whitehouse, there wasn’t such a simple way to get it. It was all available before, but now it is much more accessible.

Yay for the Whitehouse techies!! And props to the puppet master who knows enough about the importance of staying connected in today’s world to fight for his Blackberry.

I, like all of our Congressional representatives back home, wasn’t able to read all 1,000 (and some) pages of the stimulus bill that was just passed so I missed a lot of details. I was impressed to learn that evidence-based medicine will be getting a boost. I never even knew this issue existed until my first job in DC at the National Academies of Science where a colleague of mine was working on a study looking at the lack of evidence-based procedures in medicine.

Until then, I kind of assumed that doctors prescribed a certain treatment because it is the best treatment for the patient. It turns out, there is very little information on which treatments are best for almost any procedure because there has been little to no funding to cross compare treatments. You can find information on how effective one particular technique is on a set of patients, but you can’t evaluate how much better the outcomes are compared to a completely different protocol. In some cases ineffective or overly invasive treatments can create even more problems for patients.

I know, from personal experience, sometimes surgeries are recommended for problems that can be resolved much more simply in some instances (shoulder surgery and gall bladder surgery - to name two that I have experience with). I am not saying that doctors try to hide therapies from patients - I don’t buy into conspiracies because I know too many good doctors and researchers. I do think that doctors themselves have limited information on alternative treatments because they have learned from people who are really good at doing what they do and haven’t distracted themselves with alternatives. Plus, like I said, the studies just don’t exist for the most part because no one is paying for them. If, for example, I need my shattered wrist put back together (that was a bad year), I want the woman who knows nothing more than how to put wrists back together really, really, really well (hopefully that one will be on call when I land in the emergency room).

In my own experience with a shoulder injury (I have had to see a lot of doctors in my life - head, wrist, shoulders, neck, sternum…….) I also found the lack of information on less-invasive therapies a bit frustrating. The specialist I went to for a shoulder injury kind of laughed at me and bet that the physical therapy that I requested would fail - he said, “I’ll see you in six months for the surgery.” He begrudgingly gave me a referral so my insurance would cover it, but I had to push for it and endure a bit of ridicule. The only reason I even thought about alternatives to surgery was because of some knowledgeable therapists I met through the yoga community. If I didn’t know those people, I would not have had the confidence to seek out alternatives. When I came back six months later with a happy, healthy shoulder, the doctor was impressed, but one shouldn’t have to push as hard as I did to get referral for the cheaper, and possibly better, treatment.

I think this part of the stimulus package is a great long term investment to help in the larger problem with health care expenses - not to mention that is may save lives and improve the quality of life for many patients. The implementation will be a long, sticky process, but at least the funding will be there to get the ball rolling on a long overdue issue in health care.

Just thought I’d share……. I get all riled up about health care stuff.

from this article written by one of Reagan’s staff back on the day. It is meant to discount the way many in the GOP have hijacked Reagan’s name to justify their anti-government rhetoric.

Reagan, who spent 16 years in government, actually said this:

“In the present crisis,” referring specifically to the high taxes and high levels of federal spending that had marked the Carter administration, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” He then went on to say: “Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work.” Government, he said, “must provide opportunity.” He was not rejecting government, he was calling — as Barack Obama did Tuesday — for better management of government, for wiser decisions.

There is another nice quote in there - “Certitude is the enemy of wisdom.” I’ll have to remember that one. It is at the heart of scientific thought.

Clair and I watched Obama become President! CNN had this thing where they asked people at the inauguration to take a photo of ‘The Moment’ and send it to them. We aren’t there, but I took a photo of the moment from here. Clair must have liked what Obama had to say because she made a big poo during his speech! Then she cried when Bush lifted off in the helicopter - maybe she is a Republican!

One of the reasons I like our future president is because of the way I perceive his relationship with his family. When I see interviews of Barack and Michelle Obama, I am reminded a bit of Matthias and me in how they talk over each other just a bit and also have a bit of yielding to each others voice in a dance that happens when you are with someone you perceive as your true partner. I haven’t seen many politicians who behave this way with their spouses (and I get the impression that many don’t give their wives with as much respect as they might deserve), and I really appreciate it. It’s also really nice to see a man publicly treat his wife with so much respect and admiration - it’s a great model for their girls to to have. I found this over at Pieces of my Mind, and I thought it was pretty touching. I think I’ll go hold Matthias’s hand now too.