Prevent spread of flu--Instead of infecting others, seek treatment

Late last week, NBC correspondent Chuck Todd honked a sneeze heard round the world during a White House briefing. Because he forgot to cover his mouth, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius scolded Todd and quipped, “Who’s got some Purell? Give that to Mr. Todd right away. Elmo knows how to sneeze.” (Elmo promotes sneezing into one of your arms to limit the spread of germs.)

Although the incident sparked giggles and a few YouTube videos, it is no laughing matter.

Flu season is just around the corner and the H1N1 virus is looming with the coming winter months.

Since the virus was uncovered in Mexico in April, the United States has confirmed more than 600 swine-flu related deaths and federal officials are particularly concerned about the virus on college campuses. Five cases have been confirmed at the U.

During a conference call Friday, the Department of Education said the threat is being taken seriously and, disproportionately, the target population is people under the age of 25. Universities are a hotbed for the virus because it typically affects younger people—especially considering the proximity of students to one another.

Doctors recommend that you isolate yourself and seek treatment if you experience any of the following symptoms: fever, cough, dizzy spells, sore throat, vomiting, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. The standard flu preventative measures still apply, such as washing your hands, wiping off surfaces that are touched by a lot of different people and staying away from others if you are sick.

The Federal Drug Association approved a vaccine for the H1N1 virus that will be administered in the form of a free flu shot in mid-October. Although it is certainly good sense to become educated about the H1N1 virus, panicking will do no good. Instead, it’s best to become educated to the symptoms, seek treatment if you’re affected and most importantly, take preventative action.

People older than 55 should have already built up immunity from a similar strain in the 1970s. Experts say young people with underlying illnesses are particularly vulnerable to the virus. That vulnerability will increase if you come down with the flu and then the H1N1 virus. Do yourself and those around you a favor by getting your flu shot this year as well as the vaccine for the H1N1 virus. Plus, if you get sick, don’t come to class and share it with everyone else.

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/prevent-spread-of-flu-1.1911907

Homecoming Queen still bleeds Utah red

Margaret Price Carlston is a living heirloom of family, wisdom and the U—and her story starts more than 70 years ago on this very campus, when she became the U’s first homecoming queen.

Homecoming Week at the U has certainly seen changes during the years. Gone are the days of massive floats, quartets and KSL radio broadcasts at the Union dances. Few remember the time of matinee dances, sissy-kissing on the Park Building steps or sitting on the lawn with your best gal. And only one dimple-cheeked 93-year-old can say she was the U’s first member of Collegiate Royalty.

Utah Supreme Court justices David Moffat and William Folland hand-picked Margaret “Suzie” Price from a group of 26 coeds to greet alumni during Homecoming Week in 1936 as the first U Homecoming Queen, then known as the Homecoming Hostess. They even let her ride on the Associated Students of the University of Utah float. Tall, vivacious, gracious and dignified, Margaret used her opportunity as Homecoming Hostess to bridge the gaps between young women from the cities and rural communities.

For Margaret, people, relationships and a quick wit mean everything. She was constantly questioned about whether she played basketball because of her height. Margaret would respond, “No, do you play miniature golf?”

Standing 5’10”, a rarity for her day, Margaret was chosen for royalty on the basis of beauty, personality and poise. But she was not just a “weekend fluff” of a beauty queen, she said. Margaret engaged in many pursuits as a coed at the U, including her service as president of Associated Women Students, vice president of Delta Gamma and a member of the Utonian staff.

The beauty queen spent her summers working at the national parks in Southern Utah. In between shooting tin cans and clay pigeons with the forest rangers, she worked as a waitress at Bryce and Zions. With the wrinkle of her nose and rise of her shy eyes over a wide smile, she won over customers who opened their pocket books for tips with the line, “Isn’t there something else I can bring?”

A life can take many turns after college. For Margaret, it meant raising a child while her husband, Ken Carlston, was serving in the Pacific during World War II. After her husband returned from the war, they eventually settled down in Whittier, Calif., to raise their five children.

She worked for 30 years as a full-time substitute high school English teacher, shaping young minds until she retired at age 86. Margaret served up many bowls of ice cream to family and friends between poker games on her back porch with Disneyland fireworks booming in the distance. As a gift to graduates and newlyweds, Margaret wrote her local congressman, requesting flags from Washington, D.C. She would plan weeks ahead so that the flag would be flown over the Capitol on the day of their special occasion to personalize the gift.

Sharing a lifetime worth of wisdom for U coeds, Margaret advises to “just get up every morning and be happy.” Be involved in a lot of things, get to know a lot of people, enjoy your college years—not just the setting of college, and set your goals and strive to achieve them, she said.

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/news/homecoming-queen-still-bleeds-utah-red-1.1912024

Nuclear waste storage a slam dunk for Utah

No one likes garbage, unless your name is Oscar. If the garbage truck didn’t come every week, we’d be swimming in a pool of disease and filth. Some items are harder than others to dispose of, such as glow-in-the-dark watches, smoke detectors, wiping rags, mops and injection needles. These items earn the special designation of low-level waste and typically need to be disposed of at a specialty site approved by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Enter EnergySolutions, which specializes in the disposal of class A material—the lowest category of nuclear waste. If you’ve been to a Jazz game, you know the old Delta Center has been changed and renamed by the Larry H. Miller Group as EnergySolutions.

Earlier this month, the state continued its stalemate of prohibiting EnergySolutions from importing low-level waste from Italy. Wanting to build a track record and expand its business into international markets, EnergySolutions wants to bring 1,600 tons of foreign nuclear waste to dispose in Utah. A federal judge has ruled that the foreign nuclear waste can come to the state. However, Utah is appealing the ruling. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, millions of tons of radioactive waste needs to be disposed of every year. The federal government relies on three facilities to complete this job. The Italian waste deal represents a miniscule part of this task, less than 1 percent.

“This is nothing new,” EnergySolutions said in a statement. “We made a proposal at the beginning of the year that we discussed in television ads as well as with government and community leaders. We believe that it is in the best interest of the state, the citizens of Utah and EnergySolutions to settle this matter and we hope the state considers this proposal.”

The company said it is offering Utah 50 percent of its net revenues from the disposal of foreign nuclear waste if it agrees to let the waste in the state. This means the state is expected to get $100 million a year for 10 years, just for signing a contract to let a company do what it’s in business to do.

According to the governor’s office, the state’s $3 billion budget for education was cut by 6 percent this year because of a bad economy. With the EnergySolutions proposal to split revenues, a third of the mandatory budget cut on education would be reconciled. EnergySolutions projects revenues for this project would be about $200 million a year for 10 years and the state would be given half those revenues should it allow the transaction to take place.

This should be a no-brainer, slam-dunk decision to proceed and the state should stop dragging its feet in this political tap dance. Unfortunately, the business issue has been intercepted by environmental lobbyist groups and politicians prohibiting a relatively small transaction that will propel a Utah company into an international business. The state needs to give up on playing politics and let a tax-paying, revenue-sharing company move forward with its business operations.

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/nuclear-waste-storage-a-slam-dunk-for-utah-1.1881852

Herbert’s flip on stimulus is unwise

Gov. Gary Herbert says it’s time to hit a second home run in the housing industry. The successful program started by former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. to allocate $10 million in stimulus funds to give first-time home buyers a $6,000 down payment is being copied by the new governor. Herbert’s plan is to give $2,000 to $4,000 to Utahns who buy a new home before the money runs out.

This comes as no surprise because Herbert is a real estate guy. Shortly after leaving the National Guard, he created a successful real estate firm, Herbert and Associates Realtors, and served as president of the Utah Association of Realtors.

“We know from experience that the creation of new homes does more than just benefit developers and contractors,” Herbert said. “It revitalizes broad sectors of the economy, from painters and plumbers and electricians to decorators and furniture shops and specialty stores. Programs like Home Run are the best use of our economic stimulus dollars because they put people back to work.”

I thought people were already back to work from the last government spending spree. The saddest part of this package, besides the governor’s impaired ability to look beyond the housing market, is that he doesn’t have a backbone.

Angie Welling, the governor’s spokeswoman, said Herbert is “against the federal stimulus package in theory, but it happened and it would be foolish at this point to turn that money away. He might as well make the best of it for purely stimulus projects, creating and saving jobs.”

If the governor is truly against federal stimulus money, he shouldn’t spend it. This is no different than saying you are against adultery, yet still sleep around (no, I’m not implying anything). His political maneuvering is scary because it clearly shows he is comfortable saying one thing and then doing another—whatever it takes to keep the votes coming in or padding the pockets of old friends in the real estate market. This is every politician’s plague.

Taking a page from Herbert’s book, this money could have been well spent in several other productive ways. Housing already had a shot in the arm with the first stimulus check. How about taking a look at improving health care options or extending unemployment health insurance benefits, road and transportation projects, or better yet, education.

There is a saturation of new homes. That’s why builders are struggling. There are a lot of people with older homes that want to sell. Perhaps builders should adjust to market conditions rather than further saturation.

In February, the Legislative Education Budget Committee was talking about a 17.6 percent recommended cut to Utah’s education budget for the 2009-2010 school year. Because of a separate federal stimulus bailout of $298 million for public education in Utah, the 2010 budget now only faces a 6 percent cut. Thanks, Uncle Sam.

Spending federal stimulus money is going to hit us hard across the head in the form of higher property taxes, income taxes and inflation because the government will have to do something to tackle the expected $9 trillion deficit. Rather than burdening value producing businesses and individuals with heavy taxes, the incentive should be to let them keep their money. The best way to stimulate the economy and create jobs will be through the efforts and innovation of hard-working individuals without government interference.

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/herbert-s-flip-on-stimulus-is-unwise-1.1872226

Online textbooks hurt students in the end

After spending a sweaty summer going door to door selling pest control, you were able to put away $3,500. With school starting, it’s time to hit the stores so you are ready to study chemistry, English, physics and calculus.

New school clothes: $300. New backpack: $35. Pencils, erasers, paper: $15. This week’s grocery bill, stocking up on Top Ramen and Dr. Pepper: $150. Fall Semester tuition: $3,000. University Campus Store: there’s no money left.

The Utah Student Association has just the thing to solve your short-term crisis. They want to make textbooks available online—as a service provided to students for free.

You haven’t heard of the Utah Student Association, your new best friend? It is composed of student body officers from every Utah college. According to USA, the Make Textbooks Available initiative will save students $4.7 million annually. This is coupled with House Resolution 4137, a bill being presented to Congress that would require more transparency from publishers putting out revised editions that typically cost more even though the content isn’t substantially different.

Sadly, in forming the initiative, the USA didn’t bother checking with textbook publishers, authors of those textbooks or the stores that sell those books. They only considered student complaints about high prices.

Frankly, should the initiative pan out, students are just going to get dumber in the long run, and here’s the extreme reason why: If professors want to write textbooks but don’t have the incentive to do so, they will market their knowledge via another format. Instead of getting books written by leaders in the field, texts would often be authored by second-class sources. Therefore, the online textbook will have no valuable content and the reader won’t gain the knowledge intended.

Although I agree that textbooks are an incredibly expensive burden on students, the solution is not to make the content free. There are a lot of low-price options that can be found through online bookstores, e-books and book rentals. To curb a student’s hesitation to spend money on a textbook, the campus store guarantees a 50 percent buy-back deal. Rather than thinking about one-sided solutions for students, the USA would better invest its time by lobbying President Barack Obama to fund its program using federal stimulus money. He seems pretty open-minded to funding programs that produce short-term solutions.

Textbooks are part of the price for a student’s education. Take out a student loan, work part-time, whatever you need to do, but don’t ask for freebies when it comes to education. You’ll get a job and make the money back after graduation.

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/opinion/online-textbooks-hurt-students-in-the-end-1.1864514