ScrappyDoc

I'm a health care voter

Yes, that is completely a random statement, well, sort of... Yesterday, Nick and I were invited to a small town hall meeting with presidential candidate Barack Obama at the College of Medicine. The topic for the forum was health care, specifically how he plans to go about creating a universal health care system by the end of his first term as president. I'm not quite sure how Nick's name got on their list but one of the campaign reps called him on Thursday, and Nick asked if I could come along and before we knew it, both of our names were on the list.

We got there pretty early to make sure that we could get a good seat, and we actually scored the second row, right behind the Dean of the College of Medicine and the UIHC CEO. Our primo vantage points allowed me to snap a couple of cool pics and both Nick and I got to shake his hand.

I think it's still to early to decide who has real potential to lead this country into another era of greatness, but I really enjoyed listening to Obama's ideas. It was nice to finally hear someone in politics address all of the important issues that we discuss on a daily basis both in medicine and in public health. His plan sounds like it is well thought out and has real potential. Of course, the devil is in the details, and it will be interesting to see how everything shakes out. You can read more about the plan for yourself here and even watch part of the speech on YouTube here.

Treehugging is good

To go along with the theme of our green house that is being built in Winston-Salem, everyone should check out the new website by Google, called Blackle. It's all about each person doing their part, and if everyone changed their homepage to Blackle (or some other non-white background page) we would save a whole lot of energy (black or dark websites use a lot less energy than white or light ones, believe it or not). It can also help serve as a daily reminder to do your part to conserve energy and protect the planet. Another great blog all about being environmentally friendly is TreeHugger.com.

Also, they just chatted about Blackle on the Today show and the website is being a little slow, since I'm sure a million people are all trying to click on it at once. So if you get an error, just try it again in a bit.

A humble spirit

If you want to be moved by a beautiful holiday experience, read about Oprah's ChristmasKindness Project. Check it out here. The situation in Africa with the rampant spread of HIV and the countless orphans is enough to make anyone cry, but somehow Oprah managed to bring joy to thousands of little children and a sense of hope when there wasn't any to be found. She did it all with grace and a humble spirit, and serves to remind us that we can all do something to leave the world a better place than we found it. Apathy is lethal, small efforts can add up to something big.