People love to travel, being one of them I should know. Yet I can't help but feel that our love for travel and discovery puts us in danger of doing too much too soon; and, in so doing losing some of the magic and anticipation that comes with each trip. Sure the world's a big place and it would be beyond presumptuous of me to claim that I've done it all (whatever that means). What I can say with a fair amount of confidence is that I'm lucky to have had the opportunity to follow my travel bug: sundowners on a pier in Honduras; reaching Everest Base Camp among tears of happiness and exhaustion; drinking my way around Ireland / France / Italy / Kentucky...; partaking in a cut throat tuktuk race around Kathmandu; seeing the sun rise over the Grand Canyon. While each experience is different and I guarantee you there are hundreds more (OK, that was bragging. Sorry); the point I want to make here is that no matter how much traveling you do and how many countries you manage to tick of your bucket list by the time you hit 30, the feelings you get from these moments have nothing to do with being away from home. Instead we get these feelings because be really let go and live. So yes I'm lucky, but am I really luckier than someone who has travelled less and yet still 'lived' and embraced new experience closer to home? It would take a lot for me to voluntarily give up traveling yet in recent months I've come to appreciate the travel bug closer to home. With a summer free to do as I pleased, I've made more new friends and discovered new places in my home city than I ever thought possible. 

W is for Bourbon

It didn't take long for the Irish in me to show it's true appreciation for triple distilled corn, barley, and rye (or wheat but we'll get to that later). Only 26 years. There is a somewhat romantic story to my discovery of bourbon, but the shortened version will suffice for now: I moved to America. OK, so that's not all that it took; prior to America there was a road trip around Ireland, and once in America there was the lure of a golden plaque upon completion of a now infamous Georgetown bar challenge: drink the entire bourbon selection at Old Glory (some 92-100 bourbon's) in under a year. I did it in 2 months.

I'll be the first to admit that all this started as a fun adventure driven in part by my sense of adventure, in part my boyfriend's incessantly loveable quest for expertise in everything, and in part procrastination. What better way to put off those final term papers than to drink 100 bourbons? Helping us along the way were a liquor store where we've become part of the wallpaper, a Bourbon entrepeneur famed in DC and Kentucky (but not in between), and a Bourbon ignorant bartender at a New Orleans themed restaurant that will remain nameless for reasons that will become obvious in due course.

Challenge nearing completion, said boyfriend and I packed up the car and headed for Kentucky. Just us, a tent, 15 hours of NPR podcasts, and the prospect of an entire state dedicated to the production of bourbon. One could say the rest is history; truth be told history is still in the making and my love affair with bourbon has only just begun...

Front page fever

What would we blog, critique or discuss were it not for traditional media? What does "traditional" media even mean? Is it a thing (newspapers, radio, TV) or something much larger and intangible?
Media is communication, medium through which stories can be told that may or may not affect us, interest us or impact our lives in ways we may never comprehend. Increasingly these medium have become two way, allowing for a discussion (in the form of tweets, blogs ...etc) which far from replacing traditional forms of media have encouraged media professionals, particularly journalists, to become better at what they do.
Going back to my original question, one which emerged from the recent New York Times documentary, I believe there is a place for every type of media though the scale of distribution will certainly shift. This is not because Bloggers are taking away journalists jobs but simply because more and ore people are joining the discussion, outweighing the influence of media moghuls and ensuring the balance is very much tipped towards mass media. Yes jobs are being lost, but many of these are a result of emerging technology or economic pressures. Bloggers will always need something to blog about, if no one is in Sana'a to report on popular uprisings then no one will talk about it. If the pictures don't turn up on the 10 o'clock news, the story is much slower to emerge. Wikileaks may have used Youtube to break the first of their "media" scoops, then opted to embrace print media to channel the second on a much larger and more effective scale.

Wanderlust - Fez and Istanbul

This is the life

Drink with a view?

The Blue Mosque

Heaven for the Baklava lovers among us

Who's hiding what?

What I find disturbing is that on a recent trip to al-Khiam, locals had no issue with us taking pictures - hardly something to suggest they are hiding weapons. Interestingly, only UNIFIL seemed to have a problem with our presence, while Hezbollah were more than welcoming. This begs the question: who has something to hide? Or more to the point, who are supporting Israel's propaganda war through limiting access to a town with nothing to hide, and who have felt the full impact of Israeli aggression? Click here for the article.

In a privately run health care system, the opportunity cost for doctors of any time they spend not rendering services will vary according to the equipment and time they have available. It would appear that US doctors are paid depending on the treatments they provide and because the equipment they have available is often a fixed cost, in order to secure profit, the incentive is for doctors to overprescribe. This is not to say that they do this, such an assumption would be unfair. However if we were to embark upon a program to improve efficiency, we might employ more doctors per surgery in order to spread to fixed costs and decrease average total cost. Marginal cost is low, however potential marginal revenue can be quite high and thus the suggestion that doctors may be accused of providing unnecessary services in order to increase their pay (which as mentioned before is variable according to the number / type of service provided).

In the UK, the system is quite the reverse. Each region is given a budget and the responsibility to spend it according to the needs of the population. E.g. if there is a high propensity for COPD, then the necessary equipment would be prioritised over, say, a maternity ward (assuming here that COPD is high because of an older than average population, thus lower than average birth rates). The UK system is designed to ensure investing in equipment and distribution of spacialisations are in line with local variations. With regards to GPs (doctors), they are paid according to the number of patients on their register, not according to the quantity / complexity of procedures they undertake. Thus the salary of the GP is a fixed cost. Furthermore, in the UK the majority of healthcare is public and health organisations do not seek a profit. Incentive therefore lies in achieving the quality, innovation, productivity and performance targets set by the regulatory authorities. Meeting these would increase the budget for subsequent years, and targets are set such that year on year improvements are recognised. This gives health organisations who have a history of below average performance an incentive to provide better quality care because they are able to measure their progress and not feel consistently judged against their national peers.

In comparing the two systems at this high level, it appears that while a system that pays on a fee-for-service basis represents an incentive for doctors to provide excessive or unnecessary treatment in order to secure additional fees and thus higher revenue, focusing on quality and innovation ensures that resources are not wasted and patients receive the level of treatment they require. I would certainly be keen to investigate this further and do a comparative study of health care systems across the world.

The best memories