Thanksgiving–Health

     I am very thankful to have relatively good health. I had some health problems in the spring and early–problems severe enough that I feared I would become unable to work.  I saw my whole life turn upside down for several weeks.  I missed several days of work and worked despite feeling terrible on several other days. 

     Thanks to good medical treatment, I am doing quite well now.  I have bad days, but nothing as bad as the days I suffered in April, May and June. 

     For those who do not know or do not remember, I have atypical migraine.  Rather than getting the classic migraine headache, I get vertigo, nausea, tinnitus, and loss of hearing.  I sometimes get other migraine symptoms, including the throbbing headache, but each episode varies.  I have had these symptoms off and on for fifteen years without knowing what was wrong and without getting a correct diagnosis.

     Now I know how to prevent the attacks, and have had pretty good success in doing so.  I also am blessed to have found a drug that aborts the attacks if they become full blown.

     I have not missed a day of work so far this autumn.  For that I am very thankful.

My New Blog

     I am off and running with my new blog. 

     My first three posts are on “The Last Good President,” “One of My Obstacles–Abortion,” and “A Christian and a Libertarian.”

     Check it out.  It’s called My Own Pie.

September 11

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Job Creation

     A brief survey of articles on the Internet indicates to me that people conceptualize the creating of jobs in several different ways.  Some see it as a function of the economy as a whole.  Some see it, by extension of the frist concept, as a function of the economic policies and acts of the government, at both the local and the national levels.  Others see job creation as a function of individual private businesses.  Of course, most people probably see it as a combination of all those things.

     For example, when a new scientific research project is started, have jobs been created?  Obviously they have, say some people.  Others, though, point out that many research projects are funded partly by the government, which means that the net expansion of the economy is not as great as it would be if the project were privately funded. 

     I tend to be in the group that believes that job creation is best done by individual private businesses.  Private capital goes in, which means that investors make money.  Products and services are offered in an efficient, cost-effective way.  Taxes are paid, increasing government revenue instead of just circulating it from the government to the workers and back to the government, usually with a net loss.

     Of course, even if the government supplies the capital, the overall economy probably gains a little.  Government employees spend, save, and invest money, too.  They produce helpful goods or services that benefit people at large.  Therefore, the government jobs that produce the best goods or services are the ones that I like the most.

     Some jobs are created by the government out of a perceived need.  A city needs protection, so it runs a police force.  It needs sanitation, so many people get jobs by working for the city in that department.  I have no problem with this kind of government job, if it is based on a needed function.

     However, when a job is made up in somebody’s imagination, for the sake of saying that a job has been created, then I have a big problem.  When a city decides that the underworked dog catcher needs an assistant, and that assistant needs a secretary, so that the mayor can hire his brother and his cousin, I have a very big problem.

     Whenever I hear people in government talking about creating jobs, I am skeptical.  They probably mean the second kind I mentioned.  They probably aren’t thinking of a needed function and then going about supplying it with people to perform it.  They are probably thinking about how many people they would like to create jobs for, and then making up one new position or title after another.

     Remember, it’s our money, and when it is spent on creating jobs that are not necessary or at least helpful, our money is being wasted.

Another Year Gone By

My birthday is tomorrow–my 46th birthday, to be exact.  In some ways it is just a number, but it has some significance.

It makes me closer to 50 than to 40, but then again, that was true starting a few months ago. 

It’s prime factorization is very interesting:  2 x 23.  Of course, that serves to remind me that I am twice as old as most college graduates.

If you double my age, it is 92, and that is much longer than most people live.  Which reminds me that I probably (mathematically speaking) have lived more than half my life already.

I have lived for as many years as I have chromosomes.

At my age. . .

• Benjamin Franklin conducted his experiments with lightning.
• Jack Nicklaus won the Master’s.
• Teddy Roosevelt was elected to the presidency.

The number 46 is the ASCII code for a period (full stop), which means I should end this post now.

“Another Black Man Down. Oh, Goody!”

     Helen Losse wrote that brief, provocative comment on my post about Van Jones.  Her sarcasm is, as usual, sharp and insightful.  I can well imagine that there are people out there who are happy that a black man has been pushed out of a high position.  I wish that it were not so, but I must be honest.

     However, I could not help but imagine Helen’s reaction had Clarence Thomas, a black man, gone down.  She did not seem to be too unhappy when Alan Keyes, a black man, went down, in terms of not getting nominated by the Republican Party.

     Helen claims that skin color is not what matters, but then she writes a comment like that, in which she references only the man’s color.  I don’t get it!  She does not discuss the issues involved or try to refute any of the criticisms of Jones.  The implication, I think, is that because Jones is black, it would not matter what he has said or done.  To me, that is not racial equality, but maybe I’m wrong.

     I like Helen.  She makes me think, and she makes me laugh.  I appreciate her challenges to what I write, because it helps to sharpen my own thinking.  She has taught me what Martin Luther King was really like, and she has caused me to understand better what African Americans feel and what they mean by some of the seemingly outrageous things that some of them say.  I have not changed my mind very much, but I have more understanding than before.

     I said, and I meant it, that I did not care if Jones resigned or not.  If the things said about him were “lies and distortions,” as he claimed in his resignation letter, than he should not have resigned.  If that is the case, then it seems to this white Republican that he was thrown under the bus, and that is too bad.  I hate to see that happen to anyone, but it does seem to be the nature of politics.

     Back to Helen’s sarcastic statement. . . .under her influence I have come to believe that black people in America are entitled to a bit of extra grace in the political and social arenas.  By that I mean that the white community owes it to the black community to be extra tolerant and understanding.  The white community must listen to the justified anger expressed by members of the black community.  If a black man becomes a radical leftist, even a socialist or communist, it is understandable, given our history.  (I think it is a mistake for them to do so, but I understand what compels them to it.)

     By saying that we white people have to be gracious, I do not mean that we have to agree, any more than we have to agree with other white people.  I still feel justified in criticizing Jeremiah White, Louis Farakhan, Jesse Jackson, and a lot of other black people, but I respect their right to their opinions and even understand why they arrived at them.  In general, white people have themselves to thank for the radicalization of black people.  It’s a hard pill to swallow, but we need to swallow it.

Not So Absurd

     I was thinking today about Theater of the Absurd and mused about how the joke is really on its practitioners and aficionados.  I am most familiar with the work of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco, so most of my comments will be based on my knowledge of them and of their plays.  I say that the joke is on them for three reasons:  the words in their plays have meaning, the playwrights themselves do not live as though their worldview is true, and the plays would not appear absurd if their worldview were true.

     When I consider the plays themselves, I reflect on how they contain words that have reognized meanings, and they often contain bits of straightforward diaglogue that makes some degree of sense.  The absurdity comes with things like the insertion of nonsense words, illogical dialogues, and dialogue that has nothing to do with the action.  Nevertheless, most absurdist plays contain words and phrases that make sense in and of themselves, and the reason that the words and phrases make sense, is that the human mind has created them and imbued them with meaning.

     If the world were as the existentialist absurdist playwrights claim that it is, I do not believe that language would have meaning.  In fact, all that human beings could do would  be to babble sounds and die from acting completely chaotically.  The world according to these playwrights is, after all, meaningless, purposeless, random, and chaotic.

     Of course, hardly anyone of the absurdist playwrights or their audience members live as though the world is that way.  They sleep, eat, converse, work, and play as though the world and their lives have discernible meaning and a high level of predictability.  I’m reminded of a story involving Francis Schaeffer.  One day a young man was arguing with him that reality is an illusion, that what we preceive is a projection of our own mind and not something real.  One of the other guests got exasperated with that nonsense and grabbed a tea kettle full of boiling water.  He held the tea kettle over the young man’s head and said, “If what you say is true, then it would not matter if I pour this boiling water on you.”

     The fellow exclaimed, “You’re crazy!” and left abruptly.  It is unknown if the point ever sank in.

     Even if the things around us are not real, we must live, if we are to live, as though they are.  We must actually eat food, for example.  We must care for our teeth, or they will rot causing us great pain and the need for extraction.

     You know, the playwrights themselves show that something in the universe is ordered and meaningful–the human mind.  Using their own powerful minds they have created outstanding works of art.  They have every reason to be humanists rather than existentialists, since they themselves show what amazing entities human beings are.  If not humanists, they should at least realize that they have every reason to be egoists, since they are geniuses with amazingly creative and powerful brains.  (I think that essentially they are egoists, but I do not think that most of them admit it.)

     I find them lazy, to be frank.  The world is not exactly as they wish it were, so rather than look at it long and hard, they dismiss it as meaningless, purposeless, and chaotic.  They do not take the time to notice the beauty, order, meaning, and purpose that countless others recognize.  They even have to deny the reality that is right before their eyes.  They are atheists,  for the most part.  They might as well be nihilists, in which case there is no point in writing plays or in doing anything.  There’s not even any point in living. 

     But they do (or did) live, and they write plays.  Interesting!

     Not only must we live as though things are real, we must also live as though things make sense.  It might be fun  in an absurdist play to have a character pull the trigger on a gun and have balloons fall from the ceiling, but in the real world the gun would fire and the bullet would hit something, and we all know it and act accordingly.

     In fact, the reality that guns fire bullets is what makes an absurdist play absurd.  If the gun in the play shot a bullet, it would not be absurd.  And if guns in the real world caused a downpour of balloons, then the play would not be absurd.  The order of the real world is juxtaposed against the disorder of the absurdist play, and that is how audiences recognize the absurdity of the play.

     In fact, if the world were as the absurdist playwrights believe it to be, there would be nothing to say or write about their plays.  A person would not even know that he had been to a play or whether he had enjoyed it or found it boring or stupid or annoying. 

     Nobody watches Waiting for Godot or The Bald Soprano and says, “Yup, that’s exactly what the world is like.”  But that is just what the existentialist playwrights want you to think, or at least what they claim that they think.  Don’t buy it.  Please notice, along with me, that the joke is on them, not on you or me.

Oh, no! The Mobs Are Taking Over

     Does anyone remember all the fussing and arguing about people’s right to dissent during the years of George Bush’s presidency?  I do.  Some Republicans who supported Geroge Bush were describing their political opponents as “unpatriotic.”  (In many cases they were.)  Those folks were countering that they had a right to dissent and to express opinions contrary to the President’s and to his fellow Republicans.  I agree, with one qualification.  Citizens certainly have the right to oppose policies, but it is unpatriotic to condemn your country or to support its enemies.  That distinction must be made.  If you want to call George Bush a liar, that is your right.  If you want to call America evil, I consider you unpatriotic and wish that you would go live where you will be happier.

     Now the tables are turned.  The President and his fellow Democrats are trying to reform healthcare coverage in America, and some people object to some or all aspects of their plan.  Some people have fears that what the politicians are saying might not match what actually occurs in the future.  (Politicians of all political stripes are notorious for saying one thing and doing another.  We should all be able to agree on that!)  What are the Democrats saying about the people who have concerns about the health insurance reform bill?

     In an advertisement put out by the Democratic National Committee, those who oppose part or all of the President’s plan are called “rightwing extremists” and are characterized as a “mob.”  Wow!  So much for being the party of inclusion, tolerance, unity, respect for the common person, and the right to dissent!

     Are all the people who oppose the health insurance bill “rightwing extremists”?  I oppose it, but I don’t regard myself as an extremist.  I know hundreds, literally, of people who oppose it, and I have to believe that we are representative of thousands, if not millions of other like-minded people.  Are we all extremists?  If those of us who oppose the bill are rightwing extremists, wouldn’t it make those who support it leftwing extremists?  I wonder why extremism on one end of the political spectrum is acceptable but exremism on the other end is not.

     The people I know that oppose the bill are the people my grandparents would have called “good old-fashioned people” and “salt of the earth.”  Many of them are farmers, small business owners and manual laborers.  Many of them go to church every Sunday and give both time and money to help others.  If they are extremists, may everyone in America become so extreme!  They are not Chicago-based community organizers or big union bosses or career bureaucrats.  They are just common, ordinary people.

     Are people who gather to talk to their representatives a “mob,” as the Democractic Party has described them?  If so, then what were the folks who gathered to talk to their representatives when George Bush was President?  I suppose they were also a mob.  It follows logically, doesn’t it?

     The funniest thing I heard is that insurance companies are busing people to townhall meetings and rallies.  As if!  I despise my insurance company, and I consider it a necessary evil.  I grudgingly pay my premiums and gripe about the runaround they give me whenver I file a claim.  I wouldn’t do anything that they asked me to.  I’m pretty sure that most of the other members of “the mob” feel the same way.  We don’t oppose taxpayer funded health care because we love private insurance.  We oppose it because we believe that it will be even worse than the current system.

Out for a Week

     This will probably be my last post for about one week.  I will be attending a conference in a remote place without Internet access.  It is both a conference and a retreat, and I am looking forward to it.

     The conference center is very rustic, which I do not like very much.  Nevertheless, it is a beautiful place, which does lend an air of serenity to the event.  It also strenghtens one’s character a bit to suffer a few deprivations.

     Please continue to comment on current posts, or use my time away as an opportunity to check out the archives.  If I get time, I will try to write something interesting or witty just before I take off.

Extolling Coffee

     The smell of coffee as it brews almost always brings me back to childhood visits to my greatgrandparents’ house.  We awoke every morning to the smell of bacon frying and coffee brewing in an electric percolator.  By the time my brother and sister and I went down it was time to toast the bread, which was our job. 

     As a child I was terribly frustrated to take in that supremely delicious smell and then be prohibited from tasting it.  My parents forbid us from drinking coffee or Coca-Cola.  When we were sick we were allowed to drink weak tea, and on special occasions we were allowed a small amount of Coke.

     What my mother did not know, I think, is that I would sneak sips of her coffee when she wasn’t looking.  I did not like it very much, because at that time my mother drank it with lots of milk and two spoonfuls of sugar.  The taste of that sweet, creamy drink did not seem to match the suberb aroma of the unadulterated coffee.

     The summer after I graduated from high school I worked in an office at a construction site.  Coffee was available throughout the day, and no parents were watching.  I finally had my chance to enjoy the delectable elixir and to enjoy it black with no sugar to destroy the robust flavor that coffee is supposed to have.

     Eventually I discovered that I like my coffee stronger than the average American–at least the average American of 20 years ago.  I still like it black with no sugar and quite strong. 

     Over the years I have cut down on my coffee consumption because of health concerns.  I have even tried to give it up to no avail.  The best I can do is limit myself to one cup per day.  It is not only physically addictive, but the appeal of that flavor is completely irresistable to me.  No wonder those roasted seeds are so popular.

     I not only like the taste of coffee, but I like the boost to my alertness and awareness that it gives me.  Coffee helps me to think even more clearly than usual.  It boosts my mood slightly.  At the same time that it stimulates my senses and my thinking, the flavor has a soothing, calming effect on me.

     There was a suspicion that coffee (actually the caffeine in the coffee) was triggering my migraines.  I did cut back and eventually cut out coffee, but it seemed to make no difference.  I am now being very good about drinking no more than one cup per day–in the morning.  I then usually have a cup of weak tea at lunch time. 

     How about you?  Do you like coffee, or are you in love with it as I am?  How do you drink it?  Do you prefer another hot beverage to it? 

Interesting coffee links:

Coffee, National Geographic

Coffee, Wikipedia

Coffee Review

Coffee Research