MITPressLog

After reform...what's next?

It has been a week since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - better known as the health care reform bill - was signed into law by President Obama. The political debate goes on and will likely continue through this year's election season, as elected officials and voters debate the law and its effects.

Apart from the political debate, we wanted to know what was next for the nation's health care system. So we turned to Tom Lee, who's CEO of Partners Health Care in Boston and coauthor with James Mongan of Chaos & Organization in Health Care, which analyzes the prospects of reform from the standpoint of the delivery of care. He sent us the following thoughts on the changes just enacted, the challenges that lie ahead, and why reform matters.

In memoriam: Susan Leigh Star

We regretfully pass along news of the death of our author Susan Leigh Star, who passed away unexpectedly on March 24. At the time of her death, Star was on the faculty of the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Along with her husband, Geof Bowker, Star was a leader in the study of organization of information. One of her major works - Sorting Things Out, coauthored with Bowker - was a study of classification: the role that categories and standards play in the shaping of the modern world, and the moral-political consequences of classification systems. Here is a taste of the way they set out the contours of the study:

To classify is human. Not all classifications take formal shape or are standardized in commercial and bureaucratic products. We all spend large parts of our days doing classification work, often tacitly, and we make up and use a range of ad hoc classifications to do so. We sort dirty dishes from clean, white laundry from colorfast, important email from e-junk. We match the size and type of our car tires to the amount of pressure they should accept. Our desktops are a mute testimony to a kind of muddled folk classification...Any part of the home, school, or workplace reveals some such system: medications classed as not for children occupy a higher shelf than safer ones; books for reference are shelved close to where we do the Sunday crossword puzzle; door keys are color-coded and stored according to frequency of use.

These standards and classifications, however imbricated in our lives, are ordinarily invisible. The formal, bureaucratic ones trail behind them the entourage of permits, forms, numerals, and the sometimes visible work of people who adjust them to make organizations run smoothly. In that sense, they may become more visible, especially when they break down or become objects of contention. but what are these categories? Who makes them, and how may change them? When and why do they become visible? How do they spread?

Star's graduate students have set up a blog, Remembering Leigh, to share memories of their former teacher. According to the university, the funeral will take place on Tuesday, March 30, at Freyvogel Funeral Home in Pittsburgh.

She will be missed.

"Kinda trippy"

That's how a reporter for the San Antonio Express-News described "Double Scramble" a 1968 painting by Frank Stella of a pair of concentric squares (above). David Rubin, who is the curator of contemporary art at the San Antonio Museum of Art, said that not long after he came to the museum, he found himself looking at "Double Scramble" and thinking, "Wouldn't it be interesting to do a show that investigates and tells the story of a psychedelic sensibility in contemporary art?"

The fruit of that question is contained in Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art Since the 1960s, which runs at SAMA through August 1 and is bursting with artworks full of color, swirl, and general grooviness. A few images after the break to whet your appetite; many more are contained in the show's exhibition catalogue.

Taïa's Salvation Army Named Lambda Literary Award Finalist

       The Lambda Literary Foundation unveiled the finalists for the 22nd Annual Lambda Literary Awards yesterday, honoring the best lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) authors from 2009. We are pleased to announce that Salvation Army by Abdellah Taïa, part of Semiotext(e)'s Native Agents series, has been named a finalist in the Gay Fiction category.

Since 1989 the Lambda Literary Awards has brought attention to and honored exceptional writing about queer lives across multiple genres published by large and small presses.The 113 finalists were picked from 462 LGBT titles, selected by a panel of 87 booksellers, reviewers, librarians and authors. The award winners will be announced on May 27 in New York at the School of Visual Arts Theater in Manhattan. 

Celebrating Semiotext(e)

Semiotext(e) is the topic of tonight's 2010 Fales Lecture at NYU. The Fales Library & Special Collections is home to rare books and manuscripts in English and American literature, and collections such as the Food and Cookery Collection and the new "Riot Grrrl Collection". Tonight they are celebrating the acquisition of the Sylvere Lotringer Papers and Semiotext(e) Archive with a panel discussion: “Continental Philosophy and American Culture: Semiotext(e) Between Theory, Art, and Politics—A Celebration”.

Tonight's panelists will include:
Sylvere Lotringer, co-founder of Semiotext(e), professor emeritus, Columbia University.
Bruce Benderson, writer and critic.
Gregg Bordowitz, Associate Professor, Film, Video, and New Media, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Tim Griffin, Editor, Artforum.
Avital Ronell, Professor of German, Comparative Literature, and English at NYU.
Emily Apter, Professor of Comparative Literature and French at NYU, (moderator).
Denis Hollier, Chair, and Professor of French Literature at NYU, (respondent).

The event will be held at 6:30, at 70 Washington Square South, 3rd floor, in New York. For more information, see http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/fales/events.html

A Conversation About Grace

March is Women's History Month, and tomorrow the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California will be discussing the career and accomplishments of Grace Hopper. Kurt Beyer, author of Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age, will be joined by KQED and Northern California Public Broadcasting's chief content officer Linda O'Byron, for a conversation about this remarkable woman.

The event will be held at the museum on March 4th at noon. Click here for more information and to sign up.