Al Hoang

Nice town…

Thanks Pink Tentacle

The New Yorker has a nice article describing health care reform. But some interesting tidbits from the article is the discussion on the origins of the the modern health care systems for Britain, Switzerland and France. (Wish there were references to double check besides Wikipedia).

However, one choice quote I really like is:

The reality is that leaders are held responsible for the hazards of change as well as for the benefits.

References

I have been following Twitter a bit too much lately that my blog has been ignored a little bit. Then again it doesn’t take that much effort for me to ignore my blog on ‘other reasons’.

Speaking of Twitter stuff… I found an interesting ‘conversation’ [1] between Tim OReilly and Mark Littlewood on a BBC article summarizing a report on how inattentive parents are causing more difficulties for present day children.

While it would be nice to believe that parenting can become the mark of a civilized society, it would be interesting to see some more specifics. From what I see at the ground level it is not that easy to achieve. As a parent you only have a limited control of the overall environment a child grows up in. Some of the suggestions by the report are good though. Having more ‘family-oriented’ spaces is a good thing. I am not sure about other countries but in the U.S. and Japan it can be non-trivial to find family-oriented spaces in urban environments. Finding ways to make these available and more accessible to busy parents is overall a good thing.

Some things I could think of off the top of my head that might be nice:

• More restaurants that are suited to family where parents don’t have to be embarrassed if their children decide to cause a scene
• Try to be more understanding of the parent with the kid that is causing a scene at the you name it area (grocery store, department store, etc). In general kids, cry for a reason (not always the greatest ones). While jamming a pacifier works as a stopgap. Better solutions revolve around trying to understand the root cause. This of course takes time.

Footnotes

[1] I guess these are conversations in Twitter parlance but it seems more like drive-by thought blurb and commenting to me. Either way some of them can be interesting depending on who is talking

References

Read the BBC article