That was the first question Annabelle asked this morning. She wasn't watching TV last night after 9 pm Pac. Coast time, so it was news to her.
We watched about an hour of the 'sky is falling' coverage on cable news, and then we watched President Obama's press conference from outside the White House this morning, talking about the shut down.
I could point fingers and cast blame, but I'll skip that part. But I do feel compelled to step up on the soapbox for a moment here. And this has nothing to do with party politics, this just has to do with me and what I've seen in my 47 years. More specifically, things I learned during my 20 years in journalism, and my 5 or so years working as an employment counselor for the state of Washington.
The bottom line is, 'they' are shutting down the government because 'they' do not want the Affordable Care Act funded. And here's where my soapbox comes in. IMHO, a lack of a national health insurance program is a HUGE detriment to our society.
I will never forget interviewing young Dana, a 5 year old girl with a liver transplant. Without it she would not have lived to start kindergarten. I met Dana in 1992, and her life-saving transplant was made possible by her daddy's employer's insurance, through his lumber-related company. I remember after that, each time there was a recession, wondering if her dad lost his job. I still worry about Dana! Because I knew full well that would mean the lifelong medical care she would require as a transplant recipient would disappear with her daddy's job. I worry about her as a 26 year old, 'aging out' of her parents' coverage.
I will never forget my 15+ years of being self employed and having to buy insurance for our family for hundreds and then thousands of dollars a month (and this was back in the 1990s!) as an individual on the open market, and being told I couldn't have insurance because of a 'pre-existing condition' (a heart murmur ONE doctor heard ONCE during ONE visit at a clinic in Battle Ground, WA).
As a WorkSource (unemployment office) counselor, working with people who had just been laid off, I saw over and over again the devastation the loss of medical insurance meant to their families. There was hardly a one of them who could afford the absurdly expensive COBRA insurance. And I met so many really bright men and women who had great ideas to start their own business, but they didn't dare, as it meant having no health insurance. So, they had to look for whatever job they could find where they could find health insurance, and stifle their dreams, not to mention our economy, potentially.
And so, as I write this, our government has been "CLOSED" for 24 hours. While the Affordable Care Act is almost certainly not perfect - it's probably far from it! - at least it's a start. I want my friends, neighbors, and fellow countrymen and women to have access to healthcare, independent of their income, their employment, and their pre-existing conditions.
Stepping off soapbox.
The closure definitely impacted our learning today. We were working through the Week 3 of the videos for our "From the Big Bang to Dark Energy" Coursera class, we were introduced to a couple of images which we wanted to further research via NASA, including this cool image of a "Cheshire Cat" space face.
(based on observations made with NASA's Hubble, obtained from the Hubble Legacy Archive, a collaboration between the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Space Teleschope European Coordinating Facility and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre)
But instead of getting more info on that cool image, we encountered this ....
BIG BUST: And speaking of our "Big Bang ..." class, I'm not too happy with it.
Check that - we are enjoying the lectures associated with our class immensely. What we are NOT enjoying so much is the homework. In Week 1, I was shocked by the questions, as many of them were only remotely related to the lectures. And by remotely, I mean, they kind of had to do with the universe. ;)
We went on vacation at this point and I was hoping things would magically improve in our absence. As if. ;) When we came back, I started to dig deeper on the class's Discussion Forum and, no surprise, I wasn't the only one wondering WTH was going on with the homework. And, magically, a new series of videos popped up along with the lectures, from a TA for the class, who wrote the homework.
IN HAPPIER NEWS: Here's a great video of Nobel Prize winning George Smoot directing the Cal Band to literally play out the Big Bang (from 12/06)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdsWhHWdc1g
As a WorkSource (unemployment office) counselor, working with people who had just been laid off, I saw over and over again the devastation the loss of medical insurance meant to their families. There was hardly a one of them who could afford the absurdly expensive COBRA insurance. And I met so many really bright men and women who had great ideas to start their own business, but they didn't dare, as it meant having no health insurance. So, they had to look for whatever job they could find where they could find health insurance, and stifle their dreams, not to mention our economy, potentially.
And so, as I write this, our government has been "CLOSED" for 24 hours. While the Affordable Care Act is almost certainly not perfect - it's probably far from it! - at least it's a start. I want my friends, neighbors, and fellow countrymen and women to have access to healthcare, independent of their income, their employment, and their pre-existing conditions.
Stepping off soapbox.
The closure definitely impacted our learning today. We were working through the Week 3 of the videos for our "From the Big Bang to Dark Energy" Coursera class, we were introduced to a couple of images which we wanted to further research via NASA, including this cool image of a "Cheshire Cat" space face.
But instead of getting more info on that cool image, we encountered this ....
BIG BUST: And speaking of our "Big Bang ..." class, I'm not too happy with it.
Check that - we are enjoying the lectures associated with our class immensely. What we are NOT enjoying so much is the homework. In Week 1, I was shocked by the questions, as many of them were only remotely related to the lectures. And by remotely, I mean, they kind of had to do with the universe. ;)
We went on vacation at this point and I was hoping things would magically improve in our absence. As if. ;) When we came back, I started to dig deeper on the class's Discussion Forum and, no surprise, I wasn't the only one wondering WTH was going on with the homework. And, magically, a new series of videos popped up along with the lectures, from a TA for the class, who wrote the homework.
After reviewing all 4 weeks' of homework, and watching the videos by "our" TA (and the 'assistant' part of that is a misnomer in his case), it's clear to me the problem. TA Dude with the Bieber bangs got a little power and went NuTso. He is the author of the homework and seriously, it's like he's trying to prove something or teach his own class alongside/remotely parallel to the one we signed up for. His lame 'justification' and 'defense' videos only served to confirm what I suspected was going on.
Bottom line is, it's wrong, and it's not fair, and it's not enriching as far as this class is concerned (IMHO), but it is what it is. I've had TAs and profs like him before, and today we turned it into a 'teachable moment.' I told Annabelle and CJ that some profs and TAs they will have when they go to a bricks and mortar college someday will be of the ilk that they have this HUGE NEED to prove their worth, prowess, superior intelligence, insert-adjective-here by purposely trying to design a class where most students fail. I've been in classes like that before. So, you can either choose to cut bait and drop the class, or you can try to vex them. To me, it's more fun to try to vex them. :)
And so, we're going enjoy the heck out of the really wonderful videos by Professor Hitoshi Murayama and then do our DAMNEDEST to outwit, outsmart, outplay the Bieber Bangs TA and pass this course DESPITE him. I really hope we're successful, so that I can tell him he didn't 'beat' the 8-year-old girl who signed up for it.
Bottom line is, it's wrong, and it's not fair, and it's not enriching as far as this class is concerned (IMHO), but it is what it is. I've had TAs and profs like him before, and today we turned it into a 'teachable moment.' I told Annabelle and CJ that some profs and TAs they will have when they go to a bricks and mortar college someday will be of the ilk that they have this HUGE NEED to prove their worth, prowess, superior intelligence, insert-adjective-here by purposely trying to design a class where most students fail. I've been in classes like that before. So, you can either choose to cut bait and drop the class, or you can try to vex them. To me, it's more fun to try to vex them. :)
And so, we're going enjoy the heck out of the really wonderful videos by Professor Hitoshi Murayama and then do our DAMNEDEST to outwit, outsmart, outplay the Bieber Bangs TA and pass this course DESPITE him. I really hope we're successful, so that I can tell him he didn't 'beat' the 8-year-old girl who signed up for it.
IN HAPPIER NEWS: Here's a great video of Nobel Prize winning George Smoot directing the Cal Band to literally play out the Big Bang (from 12/06)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdsWhHWdc1g
I, too, had a prof or two who got some sort of thrill out of shaming students and demonstrating his supposed mastery of the subject. A pox on them.
ReplyDelete