mass observations

i've been reading a bit about a woman called Nella who participated in a civilian writing project in Great Britain during and after WWII. The idea behind the writing project was to enlist ordinary citizens to keep a diary. A written record so to speak of how they were experiencing every day events in their part of Great Britain.

Nella was a housewife and began writing in 1939 as part of a larger group of diarists. Her diaries covered everything we all encounter during the course of our lives and one reviewer of a book that was later published by her said, "it's about tiny domestic difficulties and lumpy custard." But it wasn't just about tiny difficulties, it was about everything happening in a neighborhood during War.

The project she was involved with was called the Mass Observation project. A term, that at least to me, smacks of surveillance. Too bad it wasn't called something else more palatable because the idea is actually a very good method to include personal ordinary histories in the greater scheme of the major aspects of historical accounts. The original aim was "to create an "anthropology of ourselves".

There is a web site dedicated to making available testimonies that were collected during that time and two of Nella Lasts books are available at Amazon. Many of the diarists wrote about "the coronation of George VI to peoples drinking habits in Bolton pubs, to sex and boredom, the themes covered are quite diverse." The project continued into the 1950's but was then disbanded, it started up again in the 1980's. If you want more information you can find it here:
http://www.massobs.org.uk/index.htm

Having majored in Anthropology this whole exercise in writing by large groups of people spread out over a nation is fascinating. Just the idea of pulling so many stories together into an archive that can be accessed far into the future is wonderful. Imagine the cultural historians, anthropologists, and scientists looking for information on numerous topics from that time period. No longer do they have to guess or unearth deposits...they have it available on the net.

i've been wondering if something like this could be started in the Virgin Islands?

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i'm still on the health reform conversation and probably won't be able to let it go. There are a number of objections that seem to always rear their ugly heads during this debate. Taxes which i addressed in my other piece still grabs everyone so here is a bit more on that subject.

i want to ask you politely, is it our priority to place the funding of our military industrial complex over the values of the American people? Are we really a Christian nation?

"The U.S. military is unmatched. Since 2001, total U.S. defense spending has increased by nearly 80 Percent. Furthermore, we are spending more on defense than all of the other countries of the world combined. Combined. 56 percent of the entire discretionary budget for fiscal year 2010 will be used to fund the defense department."

"The global reach of the US military today is unprecedented and unparalleled. Officially, more than 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees are massed in approximately 900 military facilities in 46 countries and territories (the unofficial figure is far greater). The US military owns or rents 795,000 acres of land, with 26,000 buildings and structures, valued at $146bn. The bases bristle with an inventory of weapons whose worth is measured in the trillions and whose killing power could wipe out all life on earth several times over. These figures do not include Iraq and Afghanistan." Thom Hartman

Really check out this web site to see where your taxes go....to me it looks like there is lots of room for a public option without breaking the bank if we re-evaluate who we are as a nation.
http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm

And finally, i don't understand why we would rather spend $4 on insurance premiums to save $1 on taxes? Because you know the premiums will go up if nothing is done.

Another big issue is Malpractice and Tort Reform. An article up yesterday titled "Medical Mal Practice Breeds More Waste" stated that:

The direct costs of malpractice lawsuits — jury awards, settlements and the like — are such a minuscule part of health spending that they barely merit discussion, economists say. But that doesn't mean the malpractice system is working.

There is a lot of good stuff in this article about tort reform and malpractice
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/business/economy/23leonhardt.html?em if this debate does interest you get educated.

And finally that issue of government can't run anything but all those failing industries can.

Consider this:
The health insurance industry has a 30% administrative overhead compared to 3% government's(Medicare/Medicaid)? Simplistically we could assume that the health industry is 27 % less efficient than the Government. The Government is actually the solution because they are better managed than the private insurance cartels.

And what about the personal health bankruptcy's? Sick people made a choice to run up all those bills in order to retain their health or life, right? Getting sick, that's a choice, right?

And so i end with a quote by Maurice Maeterlinck:
"At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past."