On Scot’s time at Ashland Seminary this week; some pics, too.

re: sad, true
It?s difficult for me to have sympathy for the business problems physicians face. Then again I don?t have sympathy for the problems other businesses face. All businesses have to adjust to the marketplace.
I suspect the real issue here is physician pay; that don?t want to work for less. But no business can charge more than people can pay for their goods and services. Physicians have enjoyed extremely high compensation for years. (High as compared to other workers and I know high is relative and a value judgment.)
Perhaps what we are seeing is a marketplace adjustment. Physicians should not complain about the situation and make it our (the customer?s) problem anymore than other businesses should expect their customers to solve business problems.
Why is it not appropriate to expect physicians to heal their own business problems?

JRS,
I think that you are probably at least partially right … but there are other large expenses and malpractice insurance is, I think, one of the biggest, then there is office overhead which is also not insignificant. But perhaps I’ll stand corrected.

Molly Aley’s piece is fantastic – her stuff is always worth reading. In this post she points out a problem that I have with some reformed doctrine – it is both too self-centered and too focused on the majesty of God. This is an interesting conundrum. I tend to go with more free will, the sovereignty of God, the importance of relationship, and the absence of micromanagement. We could have some interesting discussions here.
David Opderbeck’s piece is also worth a careful read. I am looking forward to part 2.
The three news items about women in the workplace are also worth comment — but I’ve work to do.

Re :mic’s post (Read deep enough in this piece to see his question.)
Some 12-15 years ago my brother-in-law (pastor at the time of a small rural church (with a salary small enough to qualify for food stamps – relevant the the stressful jobs article)) led an effort to build a house for a disabled widow in his community. It worked – but was a great deal of work. (And he is not “emergent” or anything close…) This came about because he was convicted by the “care for widows and orphans” passages and saw real deep needs around.
We need more conviction to act – and we need structures in place to allow us to act. This is thought-provoking stuff.

RJS, JRS, what’s next? SRJ, followed by SJR? Oh, how to keep it all straight!?

I thought the article about emergent Jews had a contemporary paraphrase things Jesus said, and which also parallels a lot of religious inaction, today.
“I could wake up tomorrow and say, ‘I don’t want to be Jewish.’ There would be no social, political or economic consequences,” said Shawn Landres, the 37-year-old co-founder of Jumpstart, a Los Angeles-area organization that pushes forward out-of-the-box ideas in the Jewish world. “It’s true for the first time in thousands of years that we can build the identities we want.”
If we can honestly say that there would be no consequences or ripples to a new personal decision “not to be Christian”, then something is amiss.

Doctors have went on strike before when the government didn’t do things to suit them. It didn’t matter.
My cousin is an oncologist. He lives in a $2 or 3 million house, pays $10,000+ a month in child support to his first wife and kids, and has opened 2 or 3 clinics.
He’s probably less able to go without a paycheck than anyone here.

perhaps he could if he moved to a much less expensive house. There’s retirement for you right there – a million or so bucks.

Well I lost a message … just wanted to say I thought Woman and the Workforce and … was a great piece. Very thoughtful. I’d never thought of the Internet as exacerbating incivility to women, but I think it may. Of course, a woman who does more than faint on a sofa is going to be labeled a bitch, a ditz and ugly, but now it can be done more openly …
Otw, yes, the man could sell his 2-3 million dollar house and maybe could’ve tried harder to stay married. Hard to bleed to much for him…:)

David O’s post is worth a read. Even more worth a read is his critique of Judge Jones opinion here:
http://www.tgdarkly.com/blog/?p=294
These are my comments to David there:
We of course agree that ID has been misunderstood and misapplied in pop culture. It’s a little funny that you largely blame supportive believers for wrongly applying ID. Wouldn’t you agree that its opponents inside and outside the church are also to blame for misrepresenting it? Lots of urban myths are constantly peddled all over the web, including in the comments here.
You don’t get to a solution. Isn’t the key solution for everyone to represent ID accurately and promote reasonable applications?
The title is a little funny too. It seems hardly a “defense of Dover,” especially after your heavy duty attack on Judge Jones reasoning, which I think is more of a “must read.”

Scot,
I haven’t that much action on my neglected blog in some time, so thanks for the link love. As to Maureen Dowd, that was a screecher for sure. Blessings~