Responsibility and character: Active sculpting of reckless mindset

Here is a quote from Gretchen Morgenson, a New York Times reporter on her recent NPR interview regarding the reckless behaviors of Fannie Mae that provide a template for reckless behaviors later on Wall Street.

"If you had had regulators doing their job, and if you had had a tough overseer of Fannie Mae who made it increase its capital, who made the company take greater care with some of its loans that it - that it guaranteed or bought, then you wouldn't have had this problem. So you can't lay it simply at the feet of Fannie Mae, but you have to throw in all of these other characters that were acting in their own interests.

It wasn't about the homeowner. It wasn't about expanding home ownership so that immigrants could, you know, build a nest egg for their children, because the kinds of loans these immigrants were given had absolutely no ability to build a nest egg. They were so punishing in their terms, that there was no way the immigrant could possibly pay them off.

So it was an idea, but the execution - the idea was OK. The execution was disastrous. And it was because there were so many self-interested people at the trough."

Just imagine ...

I found the analogy that Atul Gawande uses in this illustration of the consequences of errors made in medicine with errors made in the game of baseball to be intriguing and may worth reflecting. Here how it goes:

"Imagine, though, that if every time Mike Lowell threw and missed, the error cost or damaged the life of someone you cared about. One error leaves an old man with a tracheostomy; another puts a young woman in a wheelchair; another leaves a child brain-damaged for the rest of her days. ... Someone would want to rush to the field howling for Lowell's blood. Others would see all the saves he's made and forgive him his failures. Nobody, though, would see him in quite the same light again. And nobody would be happy to have the game go on as if nothing had happened. We'd want him to show sorrow, to take responsibility. We'd want the people he injured to be helped in a meaningful way." From Better by Atul Gawande.

I want to add a few sentences to this story. Yet, in the end, nothing happens. The world goes on as if none of these happened. The bottom line is, sometimes, we don't use these failures to be better.

Collective failure: University Experiences and Progress

The two authors of the book "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses" who found that college students do not learn much from their 4-year college experiences. In other words, there was little improvement in students' critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills.

Here is their challenge to university faculty and administrators in their recent New York Times OpEd:

"Most of all, we hope that during this commencement season, our faculty colleagues will pause to consider the state of undergraduate learning and our collective responsibility to increase academic rigor on our campuses."

Very critical question indeed.

Third story from Henrietta Lacks

The story of her cell, HeLa cell, is remarkable in science history. Her cell is a big part of several scientific discoveries and new drugs that cure diseases and save lives. Some of these discoveries include drugs for treating leukemia, influenza, and Parkinson's disease, among others.

However, these scientific triumphs come with tremendous personal cost to her family. It creates confusion, anger, and sadness among her children when the woman behind the cell has not received the honor that she deserves. More important, when pharmaceutical companies and labs make money off Hela cells, her family lives in poverty and cannot afford health insurance.

How can the medical field let this happen?

U.S. secure border initiative network

According to the recent article in the New York Times, it looks like the virtual fence project under the Department of Homeland Security is much likely to fail. The project was originally estimated at $7.6 billion. The work by Boeing is to put up a series of towers and sensors to spot trepassers along the 2,000 miles of U.S. border.

So far, with $1 billion spent, we have less than 50 miles of these virtual fence done. Oh well...

Making sense of life experiences

"I left the cocoon of Harvard, I left the cocoon of Saturday Night Live, I left the cocoon of the Simpsons. And each time it was bruising and tumultuous. And yet every failure was freeing, and today I'm as nostalgic for the bad as I am for the good. So that's what I wish for all of you--the bad as well as the good. Fall down. Make a mess. Break something occasionally. Know that your mistakes are your own unique way of getting to where you need to be. And remember that the story is never over."
Conan O'Brien's Speech to the Harvard Class of 2000