Back in July, I asked you all to pray for me as I had chiari decompression surgery, which I thought was the first in the series of two surgeries to correct an extremely painful facial nerve condition I have called trigeminal neuralgia. The trigeminal neuralgia went away after the chiari decompression, so I did not have the second surgery at that time. However, the pain has returned (as the doctors said it likely would) so I will undergo Microvascular Decompression Surgery tomorrow. I will keep you up to date with how it goes.
UPDATE, March 8, 2007: I am now home from having surgery. I was in the hospital for 4 days then stayed at a family house in Pittsburgh for the net 4 days or so. It feels good to finally be back home, my head still hurts a bit, and i’m still napping a lot and resting most of the remaining time, but all was successful except some minor numbness in my face. And I’m happy to say that (at least as I can tell through the numbness), my trigeminal neuralgia pain is gone. And I will change that for a bit of facial numbness anyday. Thank you all for your thought and prayers.
Well, at least men in Britain…According to an article in today’s Telegraph,
The Valentine’s Day bouquet — the gift that every woman in Britain will be waiting for next week — has become the latest bête noire among environmental campaigners.
Latest Government figures show that the flowers that make up the average bunch have flown 33,800 miles to reach Britain.
In the past three years, the amount of flowers imported from the Netherlands has fallen by 47 per cent to 94,000 tons, while those from Africa have risen 39 per cent to 17,000 tons.
Environmentalists warned that “flower miles” could have serious implications on climate change in terms of carbon dioxide emissions from aeroplanes.
Andrew Sims, the policy director of the New Economics Foundation, said: “There are plenty of flowers that grow in Britain in the winter and don’t need to be hothoused.
“Air freighting flowers half way round the world contributes to global warming.
“You can argue the planes would be flying anyway but the amount of greenhouse gases pumped out depends on the weight of the cargo.”
Vicky Hird, of Friends of the Earth, said: “We don’t want to be killjoys because receiving flowers can be lovely but why not grow your own gift?”
With all of New York State’s problems, this is what our state senator’s choose to focus on?
A state senator from Brooklyn said on Tuesday he plans to introduce legislation that would ban people from using an MP3 player, cell phone, Blackberry or any other electronic device while crossing the street in New York City and Buffalo.
I don’t even know what to say…
I had my first piece of fiction published today in the ezine A Long Story Short. I’m a little surprised that they put the story in the Women’s Issues section, but you can read it here. Enjoy.
There’s an interesting piece on WSJ.com today that challenges the conventional notion that teacher’s are underpaid. The article, by Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. Winters begins like this:
Who, on average, is better paid–public school teachers or architects? How about teachers or economists? You might be surprised to learn that public school teachers are better paid than these and many other professionals. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, public school teachers earned $34.06 per hour in 2005, 36% more than the hourly wage of the average white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty or technical worker.
So why do we continually hear that teachers are underpaid? According to the article,
In the popular imagination, however, public school teachers are underpaid. “Salaries are too low. We all know that,” noted First Lady Laura Bush, expressing the consensus view. “We need to figure out a way to pay teachers more.” Indeed, our efforts to hire more teachers and raise their salaries account for the bulk of public school spending increases over the last four decades. During that time per-pupil spending, adjusted for inflation, has more than doubled; overall we now annually spend more than $500 billion on public education.
You may ask–isn’t it worth it, to improve our public education system? Unfortunately, the answer to that question isn’t a simple one. According to the article,
To wit, higher teacher pay seems to have no effect on raising student achievement. Metropolitan areas with higher teacher pay do not graduate a higher percentage of their students than areas with lower teacher pay.
In fact, the urban areas with the highest teacher pay are famous for their abysmal outcomes. Metro Detroit leads the nation, paying its public school teachers, on average, $47.28 per hour. That’s 61% more than the average white-collar worker in the Detroit area and 36% more than the average professional worker. In metro New York, public school teachers make $45.79 per hour, 20% more than the average professional worker in that area. And in Los Angeles teachers earn $44.03 per hour, 23% higher than other professionals in the area.
The authors of the article suggest a better solution,
Evidence suggests that the way we pay teachers is more important than simply what they take home. Currently salaries are determined almost entirely by seniority–the number of years in the classroom–and the number of advanced degrees accumulated. Neither has much to do with student improvement.
There is evidence that providing bonuses to teachers who improve the performance of their students does raise academic proficiency. With our colleagues at the University of Arkansas we found that a Little Rock program providing bonuses to teachers based on student gains on standardized tests substantially increased math proficiency. Researchers at the University of Florida recently found similar results in a nationwide evaluation.
The authors end their article by saying,
The fact is that teachers are better paid than most other professionals. What matters is the way that we pay public school teachers, not the amount. The next time politicians call for tax increases to address the problem of terribly underpaid public school teachers, they might be reminded of these facts.