“There Comes a Time When You Get Tired of Being a Slave”

(p. A1) RIO DE JANEIRO — In a rare act of collective defiance, scores of Cuban doctors working overseas to make money for their families and their country are suing to break ranks with the Cuban government, demanding to be released from what one judge called a “form of slave labor.”
Thousands of Cuban doctors work abroad under contracts with the Cuban authorities. Countries like Brazil pay the island’s Communist government millions of dollars every month to provide the medical services, effectively making the doctors Cuba’s most valuable export.
But the doctors get a small cut of that money, and a growing number of them in Brazil have begun to rebel. In the last year, at least 150 Cuban doctors have filed lawsuits in Brazilian courts to challenge the arrangement, demanding to be treated as independent contractors who earn full salaries, not agents of the Cuban state.
“When you leave Cuba for the first time, you discover many things that you had been blind to,” said Yaili Jiménez Gutierrez, one of the doctors who filed suit. “There comes a time when you get tired of being a slave.”
. . .
(p. A10) . . . , Dr. Jiménez, 34, found the work rewarding, but also began to harbor feelings of resentment.
“You are trained in Cuba and our education is free, health care is free, but at what price?” she said. “You wind up paying for it your whole life.”
. . .
“We keep one another strong,” said Dr. Jiménez, who says she has been unemployed since being fired in June and is now barred from re-entering Cuba for eight years.
Dr. Álvarez and her husband were among the lucky ones to keep their jobs and get what amounted to a huge pay raise. They also managed to bring their children to Brazil.
“It’s sad to leave your family and friends and your homeland,” she said. “But here we’re in a country where you’re free, where no one asks you where you’re going, or tells you what you have to do. In Cuba, your life is dictated by the government.”

For the full story, see:
ERNESTO LONDOÑO. “‘Slave Labor'”: Cuban Doctors Rebel in Brazil.” The New York Times (Fri., SEPT. 29, 2017): A1 & A10.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’.”)

Washington, D.C. Regulators Protect Citizens from Goat Yoga

GoatYogaInGlendaleCalifornia2017-10-09.jpg“Goat yoga has spread nationwide since last year. Practitioners in Glendale, Calif., in May.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) WASHINGTON–Young goats have on occasion grazed in the Historic Congressional Cemetery, deployed to keep down brush. A yoga instructor has been holding weekly classes in the chapel.

Goats and yoga go together, as any modern yogi knows. So, cemetery staff proposed this spring, why not combine them and bring inner peace to all on the grounds?
“I asked the farmer if there’s any harm to the goats doing yoga,” says Kelly Carnes, who teaches the discipline on the cemetery grounds. “She said quite the opposite–the baby goats just love to interact with humans.”
Gruff was the response from District of Columbia officials. District policy, they decreed, prohibited the human-animal contact goat yoga presented: “At this time the request for the event with the inclusion of baby goats has been denied.”
. . .
(p. A12) This spring at the Congressional Cemetery, Ms. Carnes read about goat yoga and raised the idea with participants in her “yoga mortis” classes at the cemetery. They were “crazy to try it,” she says.
She spoke with Paul Williams, president of the nonprofit that manages the cemetery, about trying it with the goats they had twice hired over the past several years to eat down unwanted plants.
The cemetery planned to hold goat classes in a pen in a grassy area. In June, Mr. Williams sought permission from the health department.
The “no” came that month. The capital’s health code, says Dr. Vito DelVento, manager of the District of Columbia Department of Health’s animal-services program, bans animals beyond common household pets from within district limits.
. . .
Then there’s Washington’s “no touch” policy barring direct contact between humans and animals beyond household pets.
“Baby goats are probably one of the most fun animal species–they are a blast,” says Dr. DelVento, who has farm animals outside the District and has raised goats. “But the fact that we have baby goats jumping on people and interacting with people obviously violates our ‘no touch’ policy.”
Mr. Williams says he will try again next year when Mrs. Bowen has a fresh herd of kids. He will seek a no-touch-policy exemption.
“We’re really trying to offer a service,” says Mrs. Bowen, “that is good for people’s mental health and physical health.”

For the full story, see:
Daniel Nasaw. “The Kids Are Not Alright: Bureaucrats Buck Goat Yoga.” The Wall Street Jounal (Sat., OCT. 2, 2017): A1 & A12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 1, 2017, and has the title “Goat Yoga, Meet the Zoning Board.”)

Every Dog Should Have His Day, Including Togo

(p. A23) Central Park in New York has two Columbus statues, one a 76-foot-tall whopper at, um, Columbus Circle. The park is a sort of mass market for historical markers — 29 statues, along with multitudinous plaques, busts, carved panels and memorial groves. Most of them are accompanied by critics. A park official once told me the only noncontroversial statue on the premises was Balto, the hero sled dog.
Balto was famous for bringing critical diphtheria serum to the then almost unreachable town of Nome, Alaska, in the winter in 1925. He was a real celebrity in his time. But I am sorry to tell you that he actually has had detractors.
“It was almost more than I could bear when the ‘newspaper dog’ Balto received a statue for his ‘glorious achievements,'” sniped sled driver Leonhard Seppala, whose team ran the longest stretch of the 674-mile Serum Run. Seppala felt very strongly that his lead dog, Togo, was the true hero of the day.
On your behalf I have been looking into this controversy, and I would say it’s possible Togo’s cheerleaders had a point.

For the full commentary, see:

Collins, Gail. “Dogs, Saints and Columbus Day.” The New York Times (Sat., Oct. 7, 2017): A23.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Oct. 6, 2017,)

Gig Workers Have More Control Over Retirement Savings

(p. 2D) “There’s this myth that the Gig Economy equals Uber driver,” said Diane Mulcahy, who recently wrote a book on the subject. “If you are not a full-time employee in a full-time job, you are part of the Gig Economy.”
While gig workers have been around as long as there have been handymen, tutors, writers and musicians, what’s new about the Gig Economy is how quickly it has infiltrated white-collar professions and industries such as health care, finance, the law and technology, Mulcahy said. She is a private equity adviser for the Kauffman Foundation, which studies and supports entrepreneurship. As proof, she said, look at the growth of national online placement services like Toptal for tech and finance workers and Axiom for lawyers.
. . .
Managing volatile income can come down to ongoing business development and networking. Gig workers must make sure to keep business flowing through the development pipeline and writing contracts in a way that ensures ongoing cash flow, Mulcahy said.
Saving for retirement is one of the few areas where the independent contractor has an advantage because through IRAs and 401(k)s for the self-employed, they can save more quickly and at higher levels than their full-time brethren, she said.
This all comes as the economy has fundamentally changed.
“This is the future of work,” Mulcahy said. “The full-time employee is getting to be the worker of last resort.”

For the full story, see:
Miami Herald. “As full-time jobs slip away, Gig Economy movement leverages skills and passions into multiple jobs.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 6, 2017): 1D-2D.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title, “As full-time jobs slip away, Gig Economy movement leverages skills and passions into multiple jobs.”)

The Mulcahy book, mentioned above, is:
Mulcahy, Diane. The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want. New York: AMACOM, 2016.

Extreme Left Attacks “Enlightenment Values: Reason, Inquiry and Dissent”

(p. A19) The revolution on college campuses, which seeks to eradicate individuals and ideas that are considered unsavory, constitutes a hostile takeover by fringe elements on the extreme left. Last spring at the Evergreen State College, where I was a professor for 15 years, the revolution was televised–proudly and intentionally–by the radicals. Opinions not fitting with the currently accepted dogma–that all white people are racist, that questioning policy changes aimed at achieving “equity” is itself an act of white supremacy–would not be tolerated, and those who disagreed were shouted down, hunted, assaulted, even battered. Similar eruptions have happened all over the country.
What may not be obvious from outside academia is that this revolution is an attack on Enlightenment values: reason, inquiry and dissent.
. . .
In a meeting with administrators at Evergreen last May [2017], protesters called, on camera, for college president George Bridges to target STEM faculty in particular for “antibias” training, on the theory that scientists are particularly prone to racism. That’s obvious to them because scientists persist in using terms like “genetic” and “phenotype” when discussing humans. Mr. Bridges offers: “[What] we are working towards is, bring ’em in, train ’em, and if they don’t get it, sanction them.”

For the full commentary, see:

Heather Heying. “First, They Came for the Biologists; The postmodernist left on campus is intolerant not only of opposing views, but of science itself.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Oct. 3, 2017): A19.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Oct. 2, 2017, and has the title “U.K. Treasury Chief Defends Free-Market Capitalism Against Resurgent Opposition,”)

Amateur Archaeologists Uncover Most Important Roman Site in Half Century

(p. A6) BOXFORD, England — Their ages range from 9 to about 80. They include a butcher and a builder. Some devoted vacation days to laboring on their hands and knees in an open field.
The group of amateur archaeologists — 55 in all, though only two dozen toiled on a typical day — were part of an excavation project near the village of Boxford, in southern England. They had to contend not just with days of backbreaking work, but also with a daunting, two-week deadline to complete the challenging dig.
Their commitment was handsomely repaid, though, in a few magical moments one Saturday last month. As a layer of soil was carefully scooped away, small, muddy pieces of red-colored tiling glinted in the sunlight, probably for the first time in more than one and a half millenniums.
The mosaic that slowly emerged from the earth is part of a Roman villa, thought to date from 380 A.D., toward the end of the period of Roman domination of England. The find is being described as the most important of its type in Britain in more than half a century, and in this picturesque, riverside village of thatched cottages, the scale of the discovery is still sinking in.
. . .
“It was down to the volunteers, it really was. I get quite emotional about it; it was something to see their drive,” added Mr. Nichol, project officer for Cotswold Archaeology, a company whose normal work includes helping real estate developers preserve archaeological finds.
. . .
So for the organizers, it was a relief, rather than a disappointment, when the earth was pushed back to conceal their discovery.
The night before that was done, Mr. Nichol decided to keep watch over the site from his S.U.V. with a supply of food, a sleeping bag and a bottle of red wine, all donated by volunteers.
The Roman owner of the villa would have invited guests to eat and drink on this spot, using the mosaic as a talking point, so a mildly bacchanalian vigil did not seem out of place.
“I was on my own in the field; it was incredible,” Mr. Nichol said. He described how, in the solitude, he felt drawn back across the centuries to experience a unique connection to the more-than-1,600-year-old archaeological site, and to the mythological images of its extraordinary, colorful mosaic.
“The wine did help,” he added.

For the full story, see:
STEPHEN CASTLE. “BOXFORD JOURNAL; A Link to Roman Era Is Unearthed in the English Countryside.” The New York Times (Tues., SEPT. 19, 2017): A6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date SEPT. 18, 2017, and has the title “BOXFORD JOURNAL; Amateur U.K. Archaeologists Stumble on a Roman Masterpiece.”)

Free-Market Capitalism Benefits “Ordinary Working People”

(p. A8) MANCHESTER, England–U. K. Treasury chief Philip Hammond on Monday offered a staunch defense of free-market capitalism in Britain, in a speech that underscores the disquiet in the ruling Conservative Party over the rise of the country’s left-wing opposition leader.
. . .
“By abandoning market economics, Corbyn’s Labour has abandoned the aspirations of ordinary working people,” Mr. Hammond said.
Mr. Hammond’s appeal comes amid signs voters in the U.K. are moving away from the embrace of free markets that was ushered in by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and broadly sustained by Labour under Tony Blair.
. . .
A survey of 2,000 adults published Friday [Sept. 29, 2017] by polling firm Populus for the Legatum Institute, a free-market think tank, found widespread public support for nationalizing railways, utilities and banks.

For the full story, see:
Jason Douglas. “U.K. Official Defends Free-Market Capitalism,” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Oct. 3, 2017): A8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Oct. 2, 2017, and has the title “U.K. Treasury Chief Defends Free-Market Capitalism Against Resurgent Opposition,”)

Has Jeff Bezos Given Up on Well-Paying Jobs for Average Citizens?

I have not read Scott Galloway’s new book, but suspect that there will be much in it to disagree with. But he makes a thought-provoking, and plausible, point, in the passage below, quoted from a Galloway op-ed piece.

(p. C3) I recently spoke at a conference the day after Jeff Bezos. During his talk, he made the case for a universal guaranteed income for all Americans. It is tempting to admire his progressive values and concern for the public welfare, but there is a dark implication here too. It appears that the most insightful mind in the business world has given up on the notion that our economy, or his firm, can support that pillar of American identity: a well-paying job.

For the full commentary, see:
Scott Galloway. “Amazon Takes Over the World.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 23, 2017): C3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 22, 2017.)

The commentary, quoted above, is related to the author’s book:
Galloway, Scott. The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. New York: Portfolio, 2017.

Adapting Coral to Thrive as Oceans Warm

(p. A6) As they spent days working through a stretch of ocean off the Australian state of Queensland, Dr. Cantin and his colleagues surfaced with sample after sample of living coral that had somehow dodged a recent die-off: hardy survivors, clinging to life in a graveyard.
“We’re trying to find the super corals, the ones that survived the worst heat stress of their lives,” said Dr. Cantin, a researcher with the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville.
The goal is not just to study them, but to find the ones with the best genes, multiply them in tanks on land and ultimately return them to the ocean where they can continue to breed. The hope is to create tougher reefs — to accelerate evolution, essentially — and slowly build an ecosystem capable of surviving global warming and other human-caused environmental assaults.
. . .
Under normal conditions the animals grow and build their reefs only slowly, one of the factors that is stymying the effort to save them. “We can do all this work here, but can we scale it up enough to make an impact?” Ms. Davidson asked.
Researchers in Florida may be closest to answering that question. At the Mote laboratory in Sarasota, a researcher named David Vaughan has perfected a technique in which coral samples are broken into tiny fragments; the polyps grow much faster than normal as they attempt to re-establish a colony.
“It used to take us six years to produce 600 corals,” Dr. Vaughan said in an interview. “Now we can produce 600 corals in an afternoon, and be ready in a few months to plant them.”
. . .
A center in Key Largo, the Coral Restoration Foundation, has had particular success in bringing back two species, elkhorn and staghorn corals, that had been devastated in Florida waters. The state legislature has begun to appropriate small sums as Florida’s scientists dream of reef restoration on a huge scale.
Though the risks remain unclear, the day may come when many of the reefs off Florida and Australia will be ones created by scientific intervention — a human effort, in other words, to repair the damage humans have done.
“We’ve shown that there is hope in all of this,” said Kayla Ripple, manager of the science program at the Coral Restoration Foundation. “People shouldn’t just throw their hands in the air and say there’s nothing we can do.”

For the full story, see:

DAMIEN CAVE and JUSTIN GILLIS. “Building a Reef Tough Enough To Survive a More Perilous Sea.” The New York Times (Sat., September 30, 2017): A6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date SEPT. 20 [sic], 2017, and has the title “Building a Better Coral Reef.”)

Baseball Immigrants Learn English by Watching “Friends”

(p. D1) When he returns home from the stadium, Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Freddy Galvis often gets into bed and watches reruns of “Friends.”
. . .
For at least one generation of Americans, “Friends” endures as a cultural touchstone, a glowing chunk of 1990s amber. But its runaway popularity stretched far beyond the United States, and for some Latino baseball players it is something more: a language guide, a Rosetta Stone disguised as six 20-somethings commingling in a Manhattan apartment.
And also just a funny show.
“Now that it’s on Netflix, I always put it on and watch it,” said Mets infielder Wilmer Flores, 26, who is from Venezuela. “When I get up in the morning, I turn on the TV, and whatever episode is there I’ll watch and keep watching. I stop it when I come to the stadium. When I come home from the stadium, I pick up where I left off.”
What has the sitcom done for his English proficiency?
“It’s near perfect,” said Flores’s teammate, Jerry Blevins, who is from Tennessee. “When he doesn’t know something, it’s surprising.”
. . .
(p. D2) For Galvis, the English-language broadcast with Spanish subtitles on Venezuelan television, was an excellent learning tool. “You can compare what’s going on that way,” he said. “If they say ‘happy,’ you see he’s happy and the subtitle says ‘feliz’, then you can learn. You might not learn 100 percent, but you’ll learn to associate.”
. . .
Like Flores, Galvis is evangelical about “Friends.” He tells young Spanish-speaking players that he is living proof that consuming popular culture in English can help. And although he is now a capable English speaker, he still watches “Friends” with subtitles in Spanish so that his wife can learn English.
Marta Kauffman, one of the creators of the show, said she was delighted to hear about its unlikely and unintended impact on certain players. She compared the phenomenon to how Viagra was originally designed to treat heart problems but later was embraced for a very different purpose.

For the full story, see:
JAMES WAGNER. “For Some Major Leaguers, It’s Always Great to See ‘Friends’.” The New York Times (Mon., SEPT. 18, 2017): D1-D2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “‘Friends,’ the Sitcom That’s Still a Hit in Major League Baseball.”)