Good post from Sarah

Sarah's blog Between Chapel Hill and Timbuktu has been detailing her experiences in Syria..

In a post called Home Alone she discusses cultural differences about living alone or having stronger familial links:

Last weekend, we were invited to dinner at a restaurant outside the city. Our host brought along not only his wife and two young children, but also his mother, one of his nephews, his brother, sister-in-law, and their infant daughter. When I told his wife that my daughter Katie is in Istanbul working, she was surprised and sad. Isn’t she lonely? Intisar asked. I explained that in the US, children often leave their parents’ house when they finish high school. This idea seemed quite unacceptable. ‘We have close families here,’ she responded.

When Hala, my wonderful teacher, left Aleppo to go to the university in Latakia, she lived with her aunt. When she finished, she returned to her parents’ home. Young men and young women generally live with their parents until they marry. Our friend Victoria, an Armenian Syrian whose family has been in Aleppo for generations, is about to be married. She and her fiancé have just bought a house blocks away from her parents.

The whole post is really worth reading. I reflect on this thinking of how of my original nuclear family three of us live alone. I often like having the personal space, but that whole desire is very cultural.

A partial explanation of high health care costs...

So, I'm seeing a speech therapist and she wanted me to schedule six appointments out. So I did, which basically puts me through finals time and then I'll be in Turkey and we'll pick up again in January. The woman in the scheduling office said they'd remind me by mail, too. So yesterday I had six separate letters from UNC hospital. That's right, they sent me one for each appointment. The postage comes out to $2. I know the reminders are a savings because they keep people from missing appointments, but there's no reason I can see for getting six separate reminders on the same day. If they sent each one out a week before the appointment that might be a different story, but this strikes me as just silly.

Nation columnist knocks UNC

The comment that got me fired up in a piece by Nicholas von Hoffman:

Last year sports-crazed benefactors donated $51 million for sports at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a place which has something of a reputation--God only knows why--as an institution of higher learning, but the school cannot be too serious about the learning if it is devoting such energy raising money for games. (link)

A great retort from the web letters from Michael Burnim in Ann Arbor , MI:

Speaking of boneheadedness, you might want to read up on the 2007 Nobel Prize for medicine before making any more statements like "the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a place which has something of a reputation--God only knows why--as an institution of higher learning."

Sandi, a grad student from my department, also wrote an excellent, lengthly letter. I'm going to submit a letter highlighting some of the departments on campus that are among the top in the nation.

Lisa's s-chip rant

My friend Lisa, who is in my program, has a good rant about the Bush s-chip veto here.