Quantum John

Why the Payroll Tax Cut is a Bad Idea

2011-12-08T21:07:00.001-05:00

Extending the "Payroll Tax Cut" is a bad idea. The specific tax it cuts is the Social Security tax. Social Security is already underfunded and every politician in Washington D.C. knows it. That's reason enough to let this tax cut expire, and why it never should have been enacted, but there's an even bigger reason:

The tax cut will save most families about $1,000 over one year. The politicians pushing it say it will stimulate the economy. No, it won't. $1,000 per year is less than $20 per week. Most families won't even notice it. In fact, most people aren't even aware that this tax cut is already in effect (scheduled to expire at the end of this month), because that amount, spread over such a long period of time, just doesn't make a big difference to each family. The accumulated funds from every taxpayer, though, makes a significant difference to Social Security.

If you want to simulate the economy with a tax break, fine, but give families the $1,000 as a lump sum distribution so they actually notice it, and treat it like a windfall, and DO NOT take it out of Social Security!

Still Looking For a Good Republican Candidate

2011-12-03T13:09:00.001-05:00

I keep hearing a lot of pundits make statements about Evangelical and independent voters that I don't think are accurate. I know many of them aren't accurate for me, and I'm both Evangelical and independent.

For example, Dick Morris said just a week ago, "Evangelicals... can’t back Romney due to his religion or Newt because of his personal issues." I don't care what religion a candidate holds, and I only care about their personal issues where it reflects on how the person would govern. Where Morris references Newt's personal issues, I believe he's referring to Newt's past sexual indiscretions, and not things like changing his positions.

I decided that Herman Cain wouldn't have been one of my preferred choices, because of his very notable weaknesses on foreign policy issues. He has other weaknesses, but that was the biggest one for me. I don't know that he's guilty of any sexual harassment or infidelity, so that wasn't a reason he moved to 2nd-tier in my mind. I think his new policy website (www.TheCainSolution.com) is a good way for him to contribute politically.

Also in my 2nd-tier are, with example reasons:
Perry relies on his intuition, and I think he has poor intuition.
Bachmann makes flippant false accusations and frequently misstates facts.
Paul is so ideological I don't think he could govern effectively, and he's too isolationist.

That left my first-tier as Gingrich and Romney, but the more I evaluate them, the less I like them, and I'll probably drop them to 2nd-tier if I think there's a least one candidate who's better.

My biggest concern about Gingrich is his tendency to make substantial pronouncements without careful consideration. He's capable of excellent reasoning, but he still doesn't seem to discipline himself well enough to avoid ill-advised assertions. I suspect his propensity for speaking off-the-cuff would make him the most entertaining candidate and president, but that's not my top priority for candidates or presidents.

My biggest concern regarding Romney is the fact that he consistently denies he's changed positions on a number of issues. It wouldn't bother me if he consistently acknowledged his changes and explained why he changed, but his denials in the face of video evidence makes me wonder how much more he'll change on issues and deny he's changing.

That only leaves Rick Santorum and John Huntsman as current candidates, so here's my current take on them:

Santorum: I haven't begun evaluating his policies yet, but I don't care for his personality much, at least as he's come across in the debates.

Huntsman: I just recently started evaluating Huntsman's policies and character, and there's a lot to like so far. He may end up in my first-tier, even though he doesn't spell his first name correctly. :)

Sexual Harassment and Herman Cain

2011-11-08T19:48:00.002-05:00

Sexual harassment is a bad thing. It's just as evil as sexual misconduct such as adultery, because we can expect that the harasser intends to do more than just harass unless the effort is rebuffed. However, falsely accusing someone of doing wrong is just as evil as sexual harassment.

Often in the case of sexual harassment, only the individuals involved know the truth. The public can examine the character of the individuals, but that can only improve our odds of correctly guessing who's telling the truth. If one person is notoriously corrupt and the other is famous for good character, that gives us the best odds, but if both people seem to have roughly equal records, that gives us the worst odds.

A long time ago I learned that any human is capable of just about any failure. I'd like to favor the accusers when it comes to accusations of sexual harassment, but unfortunately, some people are just as capable of making false accusations as others are of committing sexual harassment. I can believe that Herman Cain is blameless regarding the current accusations, or I can believe that though he is a man of generally high moral character, there could have been a time in his life when he succumbed to sexual temptations. If he committed these crimes, he may remember them well but have too much pride to acknowledge them, or his mind may have walled off those memories so well that he's convinced himself he never did them. Never underestimate the ability of people rationalize their failures, to misshape their memories, or to deceive themselves.

Likewise, I can believe that the women who have accused him are wrong. If they are all wrong, the ones who are purported to have "felt uncomfortable" at some of the things they claim he said are probably motivated very differently from the woman who's accused Cain of physically groping her. The former could easily have been based on a misunderstanding, perhaps exacerbated by their personal circumstances at the time. I know a coworker of mine grossly misinterpreted something I said once, and it led to a major blowup between us. My coworker took very serious offense to something I said because she thought it revealed that I thought very poorly of her. Nothing could have been further from the truth: I had tremendous admiration for her skills and capabilities, but she didn't perceive my attitude or motivation correctly. Based on that experience, I feel sure that every day there are people in the working world who make similar mistakes where they think sexual issues are involved.

The woman who has accused Cain of groping, Sharon Bialek, can have no such misunderstanding. She's either lying or telling the truth, and he either groped her or he didn't. She could be telling the truth, and it could have been very difficult for her personally to come forward. Or she could be lying for any number of reasons, from simply hating something about him, to seeking notoriety and profit.

As for Mr. Cain's candidacy for the Republican nomination, I've studied him and his major positions a bit, and I like him. I also admire him for many things. But if someone comes up with proof that he committed sexual harassment or worse, my overall respect for him will decline substantially. Unfortunately, proof either way is unlikely unless someone comes up with explicit photos, audio recordings, or a DNA-stained dress.

I'm puzzled by Gloria Allred's claim that Ms. Bialek has two corroborating witnesses from the year when she claims she was groped, but that she hasn't released those statements. Those statements wouldn't constitute proof, but depending on the witnesses' own character, plus what they said and when they said it, the statements could significantly increase the odds of the public being able to correctly guess if Bialek is telling the truth. As long as they're not made public, they're obviously useless to the public. The fact that Allred hasn't released them makes me suspect they may not lend much credibility, but unless they release them, we'll never know.

So, will I stop supporting Herman Cain? Not yet. Where there's smoke, there's fire, but that doesn't tell you whether or not it was arson. Based on some leftist blogs I've read, there seem to be people who hate Cain so much they might recruit women to make false claims against him, hoping that the more accusers there are, the more people will doubt his innocence. On the other hand, maybe Cain's almost as bad as Bill Clinton when it comes to sexual misdeeds. I don't know. What I do know is that I will presume innocence until I see proof or overwhelming, high-quality evidence. I actually don't like presuming innocence, but I like presuming guilt even less.

If such proof or evidence comes to light against Cain, I'll shift to my very close second choice: Newt Gingrich. I don't like Newt, because I already know he has a lousy sexual track record. For those of you who don't know, Mr. Gingrich was committing adultery against his second wife while she was battling cancer, and then he divorced wife #2 and married the woman he was committing adultery with. On the other hand, Newt is much smarter than anyone else running, including Obama. Obama's pretty smart, but if there's ever a debate between Gingrich and Obama, I expect Obama will end up looking like the Great Pretender. So, -1 on Gingrich for poor personal character, +1 for dominant intellect. Newt also gets +1 for being down-to-earth (as much as any Presidential contender can be), and another +1 for his political skills while in office. The most important of those skills, in my view, was when he lead the House and he successfully worked with Bill Clinton to accomplish a lot of great things. I'd have taken President Clinton with Speaker Gingrich over Bush Jr. or Obama any day of the week.

By the way, today is election day, and I VOTED.

UPDATE December 1, 2011:
Since this original post, Ginger White has claimed she had an on-again-off-again affair with Cain over a 13 year period. It's been only 3 days, but so far she has provided no evidence of an affair. She's provided evidence of a relationship, but not of an affair, so that leaves us with guessing about character again. I've discussed Cain above, so here's some potentially relevant information about White: She filed a sexual harassment claim against an employer in 2001, which was settled. She's had several eviction notices over the last 6 years, although she claims she's never actually been evicted. A former business partner of White's sought a restraining order against her for "repeated emails/texts threatening lawsuit and defamation of character," and that was followed by a libel suit against White, which she lost by not showing up in court. Further, on Good Morning America, she said of Cain, “I honestly do not think that he is, in my opinion, would make a good president as far as I’m concerned.” Those are characteristics that would be consistent with a person who would make false allegations for a political purpose. Whether she is lying or not, we can only guess, unless she provides evidence of an actual affair.

Presidential Candidates for 2012, v2

2011-09-24T19:56:00.001-05:00

Six months ago I blogged about presidential candidates for 2012. I'm more firmly convinced it's too late for Obama to win reelection, baring an event of near catastrophic proportions. I think President Obama is too narcissistic to step down like Lyndon Johnson did, and I think it's too late for anyone to successfully challenge Obama in the Democratic party primary, even Hillary. Obama controls the Democratic party machinery, and a challenger would not only have to do without that, they would have to overcome it. And no other party can field an electable candidate. If I'm right that Obama will be up for reelection, but cannot win, that means our next president will be a Republican.

That also means whoever wins the Republican primary will be our next president, so pay attention now, folks, because the campaign for the Republican nomination is in full swing. Democrats in States that allow any voter to vote in either primary may want to consider voting in the Republican primary this time around.

Six months ago, there were no declared candidates, and I said that Mike Huckabee was my favorite potential candidate. He decided not to run, but a boat-load of others are in. I'm no expert on any of these folks, but I've heard some positions and noticed some personal failings that have turned me off to several candidates, and I've seen a few things that I like in a few candidates. There isn't a single candidate that I like 100%, but that will always be true. If I ran myself, I'd agree 100% with my positions, but I'd be concerned about how my health might hold up under the rigors of being president, so I wouldn't even be for myself 100% taking everything into account. Nevertheless, I do have some new favorites that I'm willing to share:

My top choice of these folks is a tie between Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, and my third choice is Mitt Romney. There are things I like and things I dislike about the rest of the pack, but I prefer that none of the others become president for various reasons.

I like Herman Cain for president because he's not a career politician, he has a strong business management background, he's matured enough since he got into this race to stand up to the rigors of the election and the office, and most importantly, I like a lot of his ideas. He understands the importance of fiscal responsibility and simple and stable rules for businesses to be able to risk expanding their workforce and for entrepreneurs to start new businesses. And this isn't a big deal, but I think it'd be cool to have a presidential election between two black guys. Okay, a black guy and a half-black guy that most people refer to as black.

I like Newt Gingrich for president because he worked very well with President Clinton once Republicans controlled the House under Clinton's tenure, and the two of them got a lot of great things done for our economy and our finances, and because Gingrich has a lot of great ideas and stays open to new ideas. He also understands the stability and simplicity of rules that business people need regarding risk management, expansions, and start-ups.

Mitt Romney has answered the complaints against him very well, he has some very good ideas, and he comports himself as a president should.

I'll reveal a personal problem I have with a lot of candidates and elected leaders that I now hold against some of the Republican candidates: Verbal short-circuits. Anyone can make a misstatement or other verbal gaffe, but when a leader of my civil government does so, I cringe. It's embarrassing. Bush Jr. had the most frequent flubs, and Nancy Pelosi has had two of the worst of all time. Obama has had an average crop. It may be a flaw in my character, but Bachmann and Perry have surpassed my comfort level with their foul-ups. Even though they're reasonably intelligent people (despite how they're portrayed by the media), the sheer number of their gaffes so far leaves me cold. I kind of hope it's not too much to ask for a President that won't embarrass me all the time like Bush Jr. did.

UPDATE (1Oct2011): After watching a bunch of Herman Cain videos, I'm no longer undecided between Herman Cain and Newt Gingrinch. I'm on Hurricane Herman Cain's train.

The Cost of Gov't Jobs That Are Already Paid For

2011-09-17T18:18:00.000-05:00

Contrary to what many people think, a civil government cannot efficiently grow a national economy with centralized planning.

As a case in point, in this article, the Dept. of Energy has been accused of creating only 3,500 permanent jobs with $38.6 Billion in stimulus funds. The DoE defends itself by saying when they're finished it will be 60,000 jobs and many more in the supply chain. For the sake of argument, let's say the DoE is right, and let's say another 60,000 jobs will be created in the supply chain for 120,000 jobs total.

$38,600,000,000 divided by 120,000 jobs is $321,666 per job. That's using the DoE's most optimistic numbers.

$321,666 per job.

Somehow, the President and his administration think their trillion dollar stimulus program has "prevented the collapse of the financial system, saved millions of jobs, and put the economy back in a place where it's creating jobs and growing again," according to White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. Of course, both parties habitually claim their policies are responsible for all the good things in our economy and the other party is responsible for all the bad things, and that's easy to do since reporters rarely challenge them on such claims. But $321,666 of tax money per job? C'mon, only morons could believe that's a good thing.

You know what would have had far better effects on our economy? If they hadn't taken that $38.6 billion dollars from taxpayers in the first place, and instead they embraced "The Stossel Rule": For every business regulation they pass, they must repeal two or more. Stossel's rule is based on the sound idea that "hiring doesn't come from new laws. It comes when government gets out of the way and leaves all of us with simple and predictable rules."

So forget the "PassThisBill, PassThisBill, PassThisBill, IfYouLoveMePassThisBill" mantra. The trillion dollar stimulus didn't work, and another half-trillion dollar stimulus won't work any better. Taking money from companies and families by taxation and spending $321,666, or more, of it to create one job is not a road to recovery.

As to the claim that it's paid for (the President used the present tense in his televised speech), that's a foolish claim. Even a claim that it will be paid for is foolish as long as the Federal budget isn't balanced.

Suppose you loaned me $10,000 at 2% interest to support some essential business ideas I had that were guaranteed to work and benefit you, me, and everyone! At the end of the first year I paid you $200 in interest and you loaned me another $10,000, because the expenses for my essential business ideas kept growing. Except first you loaned me the $10k, and then I paid you back the $200. We repeat it the next year, but I pay you $400 in interest because I now owe you $20k. But I decided I need more money for more essential business plans, so I talk you into loaning me $15,000 the next year. So I've borrowed $10k the first year, $10k the 2nd year, and $15k the 3rd year, for a total of $35,000 borrowed, and my next interest payment is $700. Wow, the interest I owe you keeps going up for some reason. I need to borrow more money from you so I can be sure I have plenty to do everything I want and pay the interest I owe you. Okay, now I want to borrow an extra $5,000 in the middle of the year for an essential new business idea. What? You're getting reluctant to loan me more money? Trust me! I know exactly what I'm doing. I have everything under control. And, most importantly, this new project is already paid for! How is my new project paid for if I still owe you so much and I'm borrowing even more money from you? Simple! It's paid for because I was going to borrow that money from you anyway eventually and use it for something else, but now I've changed my plans and now I'm going to use this extra borrowed money for my newest essential idea. And if you notice my newest essential idea is the same as my old essential idea, well, that proves how good my original idea was.

(For any critics of my analogy who may want to point out that it's not a perfect parallel to life, may I point out that the paragraph above is an analogy, and it's not intended to be a perfect parallel to life.)

Can you think of a huge problem my analogy didn't go far enough to cover? It's this: Compounding Interest. The amount of interest keeps rising if you only pay the interest and none of the principal, and you keep borrowing more money. It will eventually reach the point where you cannot borrow enough new funds to even pay the interest on the debt.

In 2010, we paid $196,000,000,000 (196 billion) in interest on the national debt. In fiscal year 2011, we're paying $205 billion dollars. Just think of all the good things we could have done with that $205 billion dollars if we hadn't had to pay it on interest. These figures are from the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) (see the Summary Tables), which projects the interest over the next ten years:

2012, $240 billion
2013, $322 billion
2014, $421 billion
2015, $505 billion
2016, $584 billion
2017, $661 billion
2018, $730 billion
2019, $798 billion
2020, $863 billion
2021, $928 billion

This is not the amount of our debt, this is just the interest on our debt. And these figures are based on interest rates that are at historic lows. Interest rates will rise. And when they do, the amount of interest we have to pay will go up higher than these projections, unless the morons in Congress stop borrowing more money and dramatically pay down our debt.

Even if interest rates stay flat for many more years (not likely considering Bernanke's historic monetary expansions), if we keep borrowing more and more money, in a few years we will spend more money in interest on the national debt than we spend on Social Security or Medicare, or the military. A decade after that we may be spending more on interest than on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the military combined.

We are all fools if we continue to elect politicians who think taking your money and borrowing even more money to spend $321,666 of it to create one job will magically make us prosperous.

We don't have to wait for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution to correct this problem. Find yourself a congressional candidate with personal integrity who will refuse to vote for another dime of deficit spending, and help them get elected in 2012 and in every congressional election after that.

Creating Jobs

2011-09-05T09:55:00.001-05:00

Political policies to create jobs is about economic incentives. Here I present two ideas to help create jobs, neither of which will cost a dime in additional tax expenditures.

As a preface, the President and Congress are currently yammering about creating jobs. This concern is long overdue. In my view, any time we have significant unemployment, policies to facilitate the creation of jobs should be a top issue in national politics. That President Obama waited until he was 3 years into office to get serious about this issue is a disgrace. Lest you think I'm just another Obama-basher, I have just as many complaints about Bush Jr. before him. But, I don't merely want to complain, so without further ado, here are my recommendations:

#1. Permanently eliminate or dramatically reduce the corporate repatriation tax.

#2. Have the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) change the age-old definition of fiduciary responsibility for publicly-held corporations to put domestic employees on an equal footing with shareholders.

Explanations:

1. Economists estimate there are over a trillion dollars in profits held overseas by U.S. corporations. If every billion dollars brought home eventually resulted in 1,000 new jobs, a trillion dollars brought home would result in 1,000,000 new jobs. If every billion resulted in 10,000 new jobs, it would result in 10,000,000 new jobs. So this is not a trivial suggestion; It would have a large, beneficial impact on our national economy. I say eventually, though, because it takes months for companies to gear up new projects, and a given company can only manage a certain number of new projects at a time.

Most of our overseas profits are held by only a few dozen of our largest companies. If they bring that money back into the United States, it is currently, and normally, taxed at a 35% rate. That's an extremely powerful incentive for these companies to keep that money overseas. Eliminating or dramatically reducing that tax increases their incentive to bring that fortune back into the U.S.

What does this have to do with creating jobs? Well, what do companies do with profits? For the most part, they reinvest them, in a perpetual effort to increase their profits, but job creation depends on how the companies invest those profits: there are both job-creating investments and job-neutral investments. The same is true for how individuals invest, although most people only think about job-neutral investments.

If you take some of your retirements funds (or your pension plan managers do this for you) and purchase some stocks in an established company, that's a job-neutral investment. You and someone else are trading shares of that company's stock. That's a valuable function in society, but it doesn't create jobs. If, however, you were to invest in a start-up company, or start your own company, that creates jobs. If you start your own company and succeed in it, then you've created at least one job, even if you don't hire anyone else.

There are quite a few job-neutral investments available to corporations if they repatriate their overseas profits, the same as with domestic profits, such as repurchasing shares of their own stock to try to increase their stock prices or issuing stock dividends to directly reward investors.

The corporate repatriation tax has been in effect for many years, with an occasional tax "holiday" that resulted in bringing overseas profits home in big lumps. Some opponents of eliminating or reducing this tax point out that when the holidays have occurred in the past (the last one in 2004), companies put most of that money into job-neutral investments, not job-creating ones. Of course they did! Because they can only manage a certain number of new projects at a time, they invest what they need in those projects, creating jobs, and they invest the rest as wisely as possible. For example, if they repurchase stock now, they are later able to reissue that stock to raise cash when they're ready to start or expand new projects.

The previous paragraph highlights why it would be beneficial to make this change permanent, rather than have unreliable, once-in-a-while tax holidays. It would create stability in those cash flows, allowing corporations to make reliable plans further out into the future, and that is a critical factor to any company considering hiring new employees. In addition, if the change is not permanent, then the remaining tax creates incentives for companies to permanently move jobs overseas, the opposite effect from what we need.

As far as eliminating vs. dramatically reducing, some of the CEO's of the companies holding that trillion dollars overseas have indicated they would have sufficient incentive to bring the money home if the tax rate was lowered to 5% or less, as opposed to eliminating it. I have no strong objection to that, so why do I suggest eliminating the tax? Because permanently eliminating the tax would maximize the incentives to bring the money home, and keep it working here to create jobs on a steady basis.

It is more than interesting that the United States is almost the only nation in the world to tax repatriated corporate profits. Why did a previous short-sighted Congress create this tax? They obviously thought it would raise revenue. They were wrong. Companies simply hold those profits overseas and wait for the next tax holiday and invest those funds overseas in the meantime. Also obviously, other nations see this tax for what it really is: a counter-productive drain on the national economy.

2. As long as we've had public-stock companies, the managers of those companies have been legally required to make their decisions in such a way as to maximize benefits to the stockholders. This didn't always result in moving jobs overseas because international shipping and communication used to be far more expensive and far less reliable. However, in the last half-century or so, both shipping and communication have become much less expensive and highly reliable. When this is combined with placing stockholder interest as the exclusive top-priority of corporate managers, of course they've been moving jobs overseas where labor is cheaper: They're legally required to do so if it increases their profitability!

We can permanently reverse this trend with one simple adjustment that won't cost any taxes: Have the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) change the age-old definition of fiduciary responsibility for publicly-held corporations to put domestic employees on an equal footing with shareholders.

This change won't stop all American jobs from ending up in other countries, but it will protect many of them, and will eventually result in many jobs coming back to the United States from overseas. When the needs of domestic employees are given equal consideration to those of shareholders, an existing factory will only be relocated when that factory is completely unsustainable where it is. In that case, the local factory has to be shut down no matter what. The company could, under those conditions, still build a replacement factory in another country, if that's feasible. But no U.S.-based factory would ever again be relocated to another country just to increase profits when that factory could be sustained where it is at marginal profits.

Happy 235th Birthday to U.S.!

2011-07-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

It was 235 years ago today that the Continental Congress passed the Declaration of Independence, and it was eventually signed by 56 of our Founding Traitors.

We usually refer to them (and a few other notables from that period) as our "Founding Fathers", but at that time, they were legally subjects of the British crown. Declaring independence made them traitors. Today we don't think of them that way because the colonists won the War for Independence, but if they had lost, they'd probably be remembered mostly as traitors who failed at rebellion.

I appreciate our freedom and history as much as anyone, and would sacrifice my life for our nation as quickly as anyone today, but I've often wondered what my opinions and actions would have been during that time. Holding rule-of-law in high regard, I may have been a Royalist, as were many colonists at the time.

I've also wondered more than once how the signers of the Declaration would fit into our current labels of liberal vs. conservative. It's my perception that our current conservatives are generally strong Constitutionalists, based on principles such as the fact that we owe our continued freedom and prosperity largely to that set of laws. It's also my perception that our current liberals generally don't care to adhere to the rule-of-law principle in that they're willing to forsake rule-of-law for expediency in attaining their political goals, despite how dangerous that path is even to their own interests. (I think many liberals are principled in the aspect that they want to do good, but are short-sighted when they endorse a simple current-majority-rules approach.)

Our Founding Fathers valued liberty highly enough to risk their lives in rebellion, so rule-of-law wasn't paramount if that rule was tyrannical. Yet they had a legal precedent of sorts in the English civil war from a century past, and a major purpose of the Declaration of Independence was to explain their carefully-reasoned justification for the rebellion. By their written testimonies and by the fact that they were pitting 13 small colonies against one of the strongest militaries in the world (they were not only risking their lives, but with little assurance of success), it seems clear that they were acting on principles.

These and other reasons lead me to think that a large majority of our Founding Fathers would have been somewhere in the middle between our current liberals and conservatives.

As a modern-day patriot, it bothers me not to know with certainty which side I would have ended up on, but there are just too many what-ifs for me to figure that out. What I can figure out, happily, like most of our Founders, is that I can give thanks to Divine Providence for creating a nation with a degree of freedom that is awesome in its historical context, and has directly blessed me, my family, and all my fellow-citizens.

So, as a grateful beneficiary of their sacrifices, I wish a very happy birthday to all of U.S.

May we as a nation become ever-more deserving of our freedoms, and much better at helping those who still yearn for the liberty we hold so dear.

Microsoft Acquires France

2011-04-01T00:00:00.007-05:00

News Flash: Microsoft has just announced it will acquire the national government of France as a wholly-owned subsidiary.

In a historic move, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) has announced that it will take advantage of the recent weakening of the Euro against the dollar to purchase the national government of France. This represents the first time a sovereign nation has been acquired by a corporation. Microsoft's strategic objective in this friendly takeover is to reduce it's own exposure to European anti-trust liability, while increasing the anti-trust scrutiny of Google. The primary benefit to France is anticipated to be free upgrades from Windows Server standard edition to the enterprise edition, free competitive upgrades from Oracle to SQL Server, and a five-year discount on Microsoft Premier and Consulting Services.

President Sarkozy explained in a press conference with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that current French legislators at the national level will become employees of Microsoft and receive a free Windows Phone 7, while retaining their French vacation and retirement benefits. Local elected officials will be unaffected, and citizens of France will reportedly be offered discounts on new purchases of X-Box consoles. The French Foreign Legion will now be known as the Microsoft-French Foreign Legion, and will begin a three-year plan to switch from military activities to I.T. consulting.

Microsoft stock declined slightly on the news, despite record profits in all departments. Wall Street analysts have been cool on the deal, noting that the French divested the last of their colonies several decades ago, dramatically reducing the wholesale value of France. During a question-and-answer session, Ballmer denied that plans had ever existed to offer French colonies their independence in exchange for an agreement to use Windows operating systems exclusively. Vanuatu President Iolu Abil, vacationing in France at the time, said that he had not been approached by Microsoft, but that their island nation was open to being acquired by Microsoft or to hosting a self-contained Data Center.

There was no explanation for recent sightings of French reconnaissance aircraft over Mountain View, California, where Google's headquarters are located, or for a squadron of French Mirage jet fighters with air-to-ground missiles moving their base to an area of a Boeing compound just outside Seattle.

Google executives, ensconced in private meetings with German officials, could not be reached for comment.

Birther Bother

2011-03-29T20:23:00.000-05:00

Since even before Obama was elected President, some people fussed that he might not be a U.S. citizen, raising the birth certificate issue, while Obama's supporters belittled their concern. Then he won the election, and the issue heated up. Eventually, a certificate of live birth was released for Obama. A certificate of live birth, however, is not the same thing as a birth certificate. Some cried that a certificate of live birth wasn't good enough to prove Obama's citizenship. Obama's supporters insisted that it was good enough. Nothing came of the ruckus, and the noise eventually died down, even if the issue never went completely away.

Recently, Donald Trump has raised the issue again on a popular talk show, and Obama supporters have gotten defensive again. Trump later provided what he called his birth certificate to the media as proof that he is a U.S. citizen. Except that what he actually provided was a certificate of live birth. That's where the funniest part comes in: Some Obama supporters then howled that Trump's certificate of live birth was insufficient proof. (In so doing, they weakened their own argument in favor of Obama.) Trump quickly came up with his actual birth certificate. So far, President Obama hasn't.

What's my position? The same as it always has been: I believe in rule-of-law, and that we should enforce the requirement that a person must be a U.S. citizen to be President. Seems to me like a certificate of live birth is adequate proof, so that's good enough for me unless someone proves otherwise. So, I'm satisfied that Obama is a natural born American, and entitled to be President on that count.

It does still puzzle me, however, why he won't authorize the release of his actual birth certificate. I used to suspect it must have something on it that he might find embarrassing, so a while back I looked up an example copy of Hawaiian birth certificates, and I didn't see anything that could justify much embarrassment. Because I believe a certificate of live birth should normally be adequate, I don't care much about the issue, other than it's entertainment value.

Since the actual birth certificate wasn't released, however, there are people who have spent a lot of effort investigating to try to determine his citizenship based on other facts. While I'm not concerned about the issue of citizenship, I am concerned about some of the issues run into by investigators. They have apparently been actively opposed, with someone paying lawyers to fight the release of information like the following:

Passport files
University of Chicago Law School scholarly articles
Harvard Law Review articles
Harvard Law School records
Columbia University records
Columbia University senior thesis, "Soviet Nuclear Disarmament"
Occidental College records, including financial aid that he may have received
Punahou School records, where Mr. Obama attended from the fifth grade until he finished high school
Noelani Elementary School records
Complete files and schedules of his years as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004
Obama's client list from during his time in private practice with the Chicago law firm of Davis-Miner
Illinois State Bar Association records
Baptism records
Obama/Dunham marriage license
Obama/Dunham divorce documents
Soetoro/Dunham marriage license
Soetero/Dunham Adoption records

For someone who promised unprecedented openness, we find unprecedented hiding instead. This bothers me. I'm curious. Most people seeking the limelight would be happily inclined to release such records, and running for President is clearly seeking the limelight.

President Obama is a pretty bright guy. Surely he knows that most, if not all, of this information will become public sooner or later, and much more like it. So I keep asking myself... why doesn't he release such information himself? Why pay people to fight its release?

If anyone has any rational explanations and can express them calmly, I'd love to hear them.

Presidential Candidates for 2012

2011-03-16T20:16:00.001-05:00

There are generally two strategies in voting for a presidential candidate for a party:
1. Who can beat the opposing candidate?
2. Who do we want to be the president?

The first concern often relegates the second concern to a footnote, and sometimes results in choosing the strongest campaigner rather than the person who would be the best president.

In 2012, President Obama will almost certainly be the Democratic candidate for president. The 3rd-party candidates aren't likely to be significant in any way. That leaves the Republican candidate as the next big choice.

I suggest that the campaign ability of the Republican candidate won't matter a great deal, because I think President Obama will win or lose based primarily on how the economy is doing. If the economy is doing well, Obama is likely to win no matter who the Republican candidate is. If the economy is doing poorly, Obama is likely to lose no matter who the Republican candidate is. If the economy is muddling along, then it might be closely contested and the campaigning skills of the Republican candidate might be important, but I project that our economy will be doing quite poorly in the months leading up to the next election a year and a half from now. The long-term economic factors are headed in that direction, and has too much momentum to turn around before then.

If I'm right, then Republicans (and Independents who vote in Republican primaries) should focus their attention on which candidates would make the best president, because no matter who it is, that person is likely to become the next president rather than a footnote in history.

My favorite for the Republican candidacy at this point? Mike Huckabee. Not because he used to be a preacher, which is irrelevant in my view. The leading reasons I prefer Huckabee are because he's knowledgeable on both domestic and foreign issues, I agree with his big-picture positions (the ones I'm aware of), he has a little more humility than most presidential candidates, he's optimistic, he knows how to build consensuses well enough to manage large organizations such as the State of Arkansas, he has personal integrity, and he's cordial even with his opponents. Does he have flaws and past failures? Sure -- but as long as we're electing humans, that will be the case, and I think Huckabee's flaws are less serious and less numerous than most other contenders. So I hope Republicans and Independents give him serious consideration.

One last thought, just for Democrats who live in States with open primaries (anyone can vote in any party's primary). You don't need to vote in the Democratic primary, because no one is going to beat Obama in the primary anyway. So you could vote in the Republican primary and try to vote for whoever you think Obama could beat most easily in the general election. Well, I'd like to ask you to consider the reasoning I provided above, because we may have a Republican president next time no matter who it is. So if you vote in the Republican primary next year, don't vote for who you think would be most likely to lose, vote for whoever you would like as president the most. Or at least the person you would hate the least! And right now I hope that's Huckabee.

If you're interested, here's Huck's latest book: A Simple Government: Twelve Things We Really Need from Washington (and a Trillion That We Don't!)

Limited Government vs. Free Enterprise

2010-12-05T20:12:00.000-05:00

A lot of folks, including many tea party activists, say they're for limited government and free enterprise. I'm not.

If by "government" you specifically mean civil government, then okay, I'm for limited civil government. There are other forms of government, such as self-government and family government, that enter into the picture of human governance, but I'll stick with civil government in this post, since that's what most folks mean when they refer to "the government." Overall, I'm for balanced human governance.

If you consider "free" enterprise as completely unrestrained enterprise, then I'm against it. There are countless examples of how we're all better off due to some limits on enterprise, such as not allowing companies to put sawdust in milk (yep, that really happened, on purpose, to make the milk thicker), not allowing companies to impose sweatshop conditions on workers, and not allowing companies to discriminate against employees or customers based on skin color.

So, I'm for limited civil government and limited enterprise. However, there's a big, huge, colossal difference: Regarding civil government, we do best when we are cautious in what powers we grant to it; and regarding enterprise, we do best when we're cautious in what constraints we impose on it.

Give the civil government too much power, and we will all be its slaves. Impose too many severe restrictions on private business, and we will all be paupers.

The First National Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T10:58:00.000-05:00

Shortly after Congress approved the First Amendment in 1789 to send to the states for ratification, President George Washington issued the first National Thanksgiving Proclamation:

“Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me 'to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness;'

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the People of these United States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be;

That we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks...for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government...particularly the national one now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed...to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue.”

Something Nice

2010-11-10T01:40:00.000-05:00

Can I say something nice about President Obama? Quite a few things, and here's a good example: In a speech in Indonesia, he said, "I have made it clear that America is not and never will be at war with Islam. ... Those who want to build must not cede ground to terrorists who seek to destroy." Amen.

QE2 and 2012

2010-11-05T19:39:00.001-05:00

Federal government intervention hasn't solved all our economic problems yet, so it's time to try the same things again, obviously. Without a gold standard or something similar, the Federal Reserve has the ability to create money, and put more of it into circulation. They claim this is to improve the economy. Interestingly, they expanded the money supply by 2.45 trillion dollars from Sept 2008 to June 2010 (the biggest expansion in history), and as you may have noticed, it didn't improve the economy. So now they're planning "QE2" to expand it by another 800 billion dollars (600B fiat and 200B from TARP funds) from now until mid-2011. It will have an impact, primarily by further enriching the biggest banks, who are at the front-end of the expansion, but it won't benefit the economy in accordance with their stated goals.

This makes it clear, once again, that these high-level leaders (Obama; Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve; Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury; et al.) don't exercise common sense and appear to be too ignorant for their posts. They're guessing! Worse, they're gambling with trillions of dollars of our money. Bernanke just recently said that QE2's 800 billion dollar expansion is an "experiment."

Expand the money supply to stimulate the economy? Really? Consider this quote and see if it doesn't make more sense than our exalted leaders... "A lesson that was taught by classical economists that remains true: there is no ideal supply of money in a society. Any quantity of money will do, so long as the quality of the money is sound. Prices adjust based on the existing money supply. New quantities of money injected into society confer no social benefit. If production rises and the money supply remains stable, the purchasing power of the money will rise. If production falls while the supply of money remains stable, the purchasing power of money will fall." End the Fed, Ron Paul, page 203

Obama, Bernanke, and Geithner seem to have no concept that the money supply has quality, let alone that their actions are harming its quality. But whether I like it or not, QE2 is here. If, as I suspect, QE2 makes things worse in the long run, then Obama probably won't be reelected in 2012, because the economy will still be struggling. By then, a majority of voters will know or suspect that Obama and his czars' efforts to control the economy were guesses all along, and they guessed wrong. And instead of making things better, they made things far worse.

In 2012, the Democrats will almost certainly field Obama again, and no independent or 3rd party candidate is likely to win, so if we're to change presidential administrations, it will have to come from electing whoever wins the Republican primary. So let's not blow this deal.

I don't know who to recommend yet, but I know who not to recommend: Sarah Palin. Why? Lack of sufficient experience and knowledge. She's added to her knowledge since her vice-presidential candidacy, and can add more, plus she is an electric speaker (with polarizing charges - pun intended), and her experience is greater than Obama's was before he became President, but her experience is still not enough. I want a President with a lot more experience and a lot better understanding of economics than either Obama or Palin. Surely we can find someone better out of 310 million people. And while it is essential to have a candidate who understands the importance of a constitutionally-limited civil government, of financial responsibility, and of free-market economics, is it too much to hope that such a candidate could be more congenial than polarizing?

Surf Shelf

2010-06-24T20:11:00.000-05:00

I just recently got a Surf Shelf, and it's great. It easily mounts on the control board of a treadmill or exercise bike and will hold your laptop while you walk, run, or pedal. It's $40, but it lets you work or play while you exercise.

Oh, and it works for books and magazines, too.

http://www.surfshelf.com

All The King's Men and All the King's Horses

2010-05-30T21:34:00.001-05:00

The catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is not only an environmental catastrophe, it's an economic catastrophe for that region of the United States.

I know they've been consulting an army of experts, but I still don't understand why this has been going on so long. I'm reminded of a story I heard long ago about a tractor-trailer that the driver tried to get under a bridge that was too low. Traffic was snarled for hours as they tried using tow trucks and other means to pull it out, all to no avail. All the experts were stumped, until a little boy who had been in one of the cars that got stuck in traffic and was now in the group on onlookers said, "Why don't you just let some air out of the tires?" Problem solved.

Maybe there's something I'm missing, but it seems to me like all the solutions I've heard about involve experts trying sophisticated techniques of some kind or another, when a brute-force attack would be a better approach.

Instead of focusing all efforts such things as trying to calculate just the right density and adhesive qualities of slurry to pump into the well head, why not build a huge concrete dome with more than enough mass to counter the oil pressure, tow it out to sea and sink it over the well head?

Yes, I'm aware of the box idea they tried that failed. That was too small, with too little mass, because that wasn't an attempt to stop the leak, that was an attempt to cap it with an outlet that would still allow them to pipe up the oil to the surface. Forget all that. Just smother the thing.

The Greatest Ice Hockey Goal of All Time?

2010-05-07T22:05:00.000-05:00

I thought I had posted a link to this clip here before, but I wanted to watch it again, and discovered it wasn't here after all. So I hunted it up and I'm posting it anyway, even though it's 3 1/2 years old now. Maybe someone else will see it here who's never seen it before, and wow, is it worth watching.

This is Alex Ovechkin playing for the Washington Capitals, against the Phoenix Coyotes in November 2006. The announcers are Coyotes' announcers, and one of the says during several replays from different angles, "...we can't see this enough. I mean, we can, because it's against the Phoenix Coyotes, but that is something spectacular."

Alex the Great, on his back, rolling over, moving away from the goal, which he can't see but knows about where it is, three opponents between him and the goal, only one hand on his stick, next-to-impossible absolutely-minimum angle left to get a shot in, but...

Link for when it gets copied into Facebook (on accounta FB hasn't been copying embeds): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzbmI6-YSnQ.

What a shot!

A Candidate I Can Support

2010-04-29T19:12:00.000-05:00

Today I started campaigning for a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. It feels strange.

I strongly dislike the long-term behaviors I have observed in my incumbent Congressman. For example, on taxes, he emphasizes that while he was Chair of our County Board of Supervisors, he "lowered taxes." He clearly makes it seem that his lowering of taxes was the most notable characteristic of his tenure as Chairman on the issue of taxation. He lowered taxes, he claims. Yeah, well, he once voted to lower the tax rate on properties after the property valuations had risen dramatically, so that they were ever-so-slightly less than what they otherwise would have been, but the overall effect was that property taxes went up. Up is not down. Property taxation is a huge issue, as property taxes make up the vast majority of tax revenue for most counties and states.

During this guy's entire tenure as Chairman, property taxes doubled. Doubled. He voted for one tiny little reduction in a tax rate one time, but he allowed the overall taxation to go up and up and up. And yet he has the gall to talk as if lowering taxes defines his position on the general issue of taxation. He is a quintessential ~politician~ who appears to have no difficulty distorting the truth, and I want to vote him OUT.

I'm an independent. This political bum I'm referring to happens to be a Democrat. He not only voted for the recent health insurance legislation, he was a co-sponsor of the bill. This is the roughly 2,000 page bill of which House Speaker Nancy Polosi made the idiotic statement during a press conference, "We have to pass the bill to find out what's in the bill."

Well, there are two Republicans running in the primary to compete against my incumbent. I like the stated positions and real-world, private-industry experience of both of them. Neither one is a career politician. Both have accounting expertise. Neither one is perfect, but I think they are far superior to the sorry excuse for a Congressman who now holds the office. I prefer Pat Herrity for several reasons, so I have started supporting him. A couple of independent polls indicate it will be a close election in November.

Today I went to Pat Herrity's campaign office and got a handful of bumper stickers and a dozen signs. I drove to a busy highway, parked my car, walked to the median and started planting them. Tomorrow I'm going back for more.

Pat's not rich, and he can't fund his campaign out of his pocket. If you're looking for a good guy to give $5 to help him de-fund the recent health insurance legislation, promote generally "conservative" values, including actually supporting the U.S. Constitution, you can contribute here: http://patherrity.com.

Pre-Strike Civilian Warning?

2010-04-14T18:30:00.000-05:00

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's mind may be warped the same way Saddam Hussein's was. He may think he can stall forever by stringing along the U.N. while bouncing between promises and threats without getting bombed by the U.S or Israel. He may think that we learned a lesson from overthrowing Hussein that it's too hard and costs too much, in money and lives. He may think we wouldn't even drop bombs on his nuclear facilities without invading because we're too -- take your pick: weak, tired, soft, foolish, etc.

Maybe he's right. I don't know if President Obama has what it takes to decide we're too close to a homicidal dictator getting working nuclear bombs to actually stop him, rather than merely lament and plead until after they detonate their first underground bomb as a test and testament.

Certainly the pronouncement this week that the world is safer now from nuclear weapons than before the security summit is not encouraging. The security summit changed exactly nothing, and Iran wasn't even mentioned in the self-congratulatory assurances that sounded too much like Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time." That was shortly before Hitler launched World War II, for those who don't recall.

Obviously, I don't know if we'll strike, or allow the Israelis to strike. But as far as I know, we might. So, here's a wild idea I had, and I'd love to get some responses from other folks. If we decide to bomb Iran's nuke sites, what if we were to warn the entire population before-hand? Give the civilians time and warning to get out of the way, in order to minimize innocent casualties?

It might make things more difficult and riskier for our military. If so, that's a clear down-side. Saving civilian lives would be a clear up-side, but I don't think this would simply be trading our military lives for their civilian lives. Just because it might increase risk to our guys doesn't mean it would definitely cost more of our lives, or any, for that matter. If we were to use high-altitude stealth bombers that can fly above the range of Iran's anti-aircraft missiles, that'd be one option. Another would be stand-off cruise missiles, or even non-nuclear ICBM's.

For the sake of discussion, suppose we were certain we could bomb them with them being able to strike back. Would it be a good thing to warn them to let the civilians flee to safer places? We would haven't to specify the exact day or time. The targets are fixed sites, so we can't exactly surprise them there, except that we may know more of their secret places than they hope.

After 6 months of incinerating scores of Japanese cities with conventional bombs brought them no closer to surrender than ever, we finally dropped the first war-deployed nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. That killed over 100,000 people. When they still didn't surrender, we dropped a second one on Nagasaki, and they finally surrendered. Regardless of what you like or don't like about that history, two things are clear: it was effective in getting them to surrender unconditionally, and it killed a whole lot of civilians.

Yes, the situation between the U.S. and Japan was far different from the situation between the U.S. and Iran, by many measures. And if we had warned them about which city we intended to bomb, they may have been able to shoot down our bomber. But suppose we had warned the Japanese that we were going to annihilate one of their cities without telling them which one, and urged their civilians too leave all their cities? Maybe no one would have paid heed and the same people would have died in Hiroshima. What would have happened when we warned them the second time? Perhaps a lot of people would have fled cities all over the country, including at least some in Nagasaki, and perhaps tens of thousands of lives would have been spared.

We only had two bombs back in 1945. If either one had gotten shot down, maybe they wouldn't have surrendered for a much longer time. How much would a warning have increased their chances of intercepting one of our nuclear bombers? I don't know. And if they had, perhaps even more civilians would have died in the continued conventional bombings. I can't help but recall that my Dad was in the U.S. Navy, in Hawaii, about to ship out toward the fighting front, when the Japanese did surrender a few days after Nagasaki. That was before my dad met my mom and fathered my brother and myself.

But in this situation, the point of bombing Iran wouldn't be to get them to surrender. It would simply be to physically eliminate their ability to process weapons-grade uranium. No invasion necessary. Cruise-missile their underground processing facilities with non-nuclear warheads until there's nothing left but dust. That's my best guess as to what we would actually do, IF we do anything other than talking until seismographs reveal they've succeeded in a detonation.

Well, if we were to do that, what would be the harm in giving them advance warning? Something along the lines of, "Citizens of Iran: We wish you no harm, but we cannot allow your dictator to finalize his efforts to build nuclear weapons. We have reasoned, we have urged, and we have threatened, all to no avail, and now we regret that he has forced us to act to eliminate this very serious threat to world peace. Therefore, we urge you to stock up food, water, and medicine, and move as far as possible away from your government's nuclear facilities. We will begin bombing them within a few days and will continue bombing them until they have been completely destroyed. Here is a list of the most prominent facilities that you should remain far from at all costs..."

So... what do you think?

Microsoft Acquires Oracle and IBM

2010-04-01T07:40:00.000-05:00

News Flash: Microsoft has just announced that it will acquire both Oracle and IBM in the largest merger of technology companies in history.

Oracle products will continue to be supported for at least 5 years, but no new products or features will be developed. Existing customers will be encouraged to begin shifting to SQL Server, SharePoint, and other mainline Microsoft products.

IBM mainframes will now be marketed as Microsoft Frames, running Windows Server Frame Edition. The IBM consulting services division will be merged into Microsoft Services, and those employees will no longer be required to wear ties or attend meetings.

Anti-trust objections from the Justice Department were mooted yesterday by Microsoft's acquisition of the Justice Department's anti-trust division. Anti-trust objections from the European Union were allayed by promising not to install Internet Explorer by default on the Windows Frame edition.

The Royal Presidency

2010-03-27T08:24:00.000-05:00

In my next-to-last post, I included a chart of expenditures of the Federal Government for fiscal year 2009. It includes the expenses of the Executive Office of the President, but it barely registers on the 800 Billion dollar scale needed to show the largest categories.

<tangential rant>
In the chart notes I pointed out that the Federal Government employs over 22 million people. Twenty-two million. Do we really need that many people to run our Federal Government?
</tangential rant>

Here I'd like to single out that tiny little line item for the President's Office.

Guess how much of your tax money was spent in fiscal year 2009 to operate the White House, the President's staff, and the rest of the Presidential expenses. Go ahead, guess... Ten million? Fifty million? A hundred million?

Try over seven-hundred and forty-two million. Exactly $742,850,260 according to the U.S. Treasury Dept.

Don't blame Obama for this. At least, don't blame him alone, because that budget didn't just get that large in the last year or two.

But I can't help but wonder how much harm it would cause our country if that budget went down a few million. Or a few hundred million.

Why I'm STILL Against the Current Health Insurance Reform

2010-03-18T16:19:00.000-05:00

Well, the big news today is that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just finished their estimates based on the proposed House of Representatives' revisions to the health insurance reform. Those favoring this legislative package are giddy with delight, because the CBO estimates are that the revisions will lower the Federal deficit over the next 10 years, and lower it even more the decade after that.

My primary objection in my last post was that we can't afford it, so why aren't I changing my tune?

Because no legislation can change the fundamental principals of economics.

These latest estimates are for a proposed subsequent change to the health insurance legislation that the Senate passed. A reform of the reform. These estimates only apply if the House passes the exact same legislation the Senate passed in December, which has far higher CBO estimates, and then the House and Senate would both have to pass this revision. If the House passes the original Senate bill and this revision at the same time, the revision won't be applied unless the Senate passes the same revision legislation that the latest CBO estimate is for. There is almost no chance that will happen since the majority of the Senators don't want it, and probably couldn't pass it even if they did want it.

Additionally, the CBO estimates are never real-world estimates. I'm not saying that to be mean, or to exaggerate support for my position, but because the CBO isn't allowed to try to be realistic. They're required to base their estimates on whatever assumptions are included in the proposed legislation. History shows that such estimates are typically severely underestimated. Here's a closely related example: In 1966, total Medicare expenditures were about $3 billion dollars. At that time, the Congressional estimate for Medicare in 1990 was $12 billion after adjusting for inflation. The actual cost was over $107 billion. That's a little more than a rounding error, and is solid evidence that Federal "estimates" can't be relied upon.

If the House passes the Senate reform bill, Obama will sign it into law. If the House also passes the legislation they intend to reform the reform, the Senate is very unlikely to pass it, so it won't become law. The House reform to the reform will be nothing more than a footnote in history. The taxes will begin immediately, with the tax-funded benefits not beginning until the 5th year. If it's not changed before then, then tens of millions of people will begin to receive those benefits.

No legislation can change the fundamental principals of economics. If you try to provide a much greater quantity of health care without a corresponding increase in the number of qualified doctors, nurses, and hospitals, then the quality of health care has to come down, costs will go up, or both. Legislation can't change economics any more than it can change physics.

Why I'm Against the Current Health Insurance Reform

2010-03-07T19:10:00.000-05:00

Year 11

Year 11 is the primary reason. The failure actually begins with year 5, but Obama and his legislative supporters have done their best to hide the fact that years 5 through 10 of their plan are unaffordable. They think we're stupid enough to believe their ploy of starting taxes 4 years before they start providing benefits so they can claim that the overall 10-year plan is financially balanced.

Year 11 has no such camouflage: The year following the 10-year plan will cost billions of dollars more than the taxes taken in for it. Either taxes will have to be raised, the national debt will have to be raised, the benefits will have to be cut, or some combination of these actions. Regardless of what else you like or dislike about this health insurance legislation, we simply can't afford it. We can't afford it now, and the next generation can't afford it later.

We already have the same impending problems with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. It's all an economy-ruining financial time-bomb. Take a look at the following chart (data from Dept. of Treasury). Medicare and Medicaid are part of the Dept. of Health and Human Services budget, and under current laws, they will continue to grow rapidly. The baby-boomers are beginning to retire and Social Security outlays will continue to grow rapidly. The astonishingly irresponsible deficit spending over the last few years (Bush 2 and Obama) will cause the interest on the national debt to continue to grow rapidly in addition to threatening the stability of the dollar.

Chart notes: "Dept of Treasury" includes hundreds of billions of dollars intended to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. "Independent Agencies" include a large number of organizations such as the U.S. Interagency Council On Homelessness; the Vietnam Education Foundation; and the State Justice Institute. "Other Defense - Civil" includes military retirement. Covered throughout this budget: There are over 22 million employees of the Federal Government.

No legislation should be passed that isn't financially sustainable. In the long-run, this health-insurance monstrosity won't provide better health care to more people, it will multiple the economic damage threatening our economy that could cause more hundreds of thousands of jobs to evaporate. And those folks unfortunate enough to lose their job will also lose their employer-based health benefits. Fewer jobs, fewer employer-based health benefits -- the opposite of the purported goals for this foolish legislation.

I'd rail awhile about how all the effort toward the misguided health-insurance legislation should have been focused on the economy, as the President seemed to acknowledge in his first State of the Union address ("Creating jobs has to be our number one priority in 2010") but I have no reason to think that this President or legislature has any understanding of how to improve the job situation. For example, the President and legislature are still virtually ignoring the continuing meltdown at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with extremely far-reaching consequences for the housing industry and the economy. Nevertheless, since health-insurance is in fact, still his number one priority, I'll close with a quotation from former Democratic President Bill Clinton, which I direct to the increasing egotistical President Obama:

"It's the economy, stupid."

Running Record

2010-03-01T21:28:00.003-05:00

Logging when I'm not too tired and not too forgetful afterward.

13Mar2010, 5 miles! First time in over 20 years! Did it in under 50 minutes, on a treadmill, starting with a run of over 5 minutes at 9 mph, but had to slow to a walk a several times. As usual, did it with asthma medicine, several minutes of stretching first, and running in my wonderful Vibram 5-finger KSO shoes.

1Mar2010, new personal best for 5K: 24:34, on a treadmill. This was after learning a new technique my timing my asthma medicine. Worked pretty well!

25Feb2010, personal best for 5K: 25:26, on a treadmill. Goals for 2010 (no particular order): break 25 minutes in a timed 5K race, run for 5 miles without any walking, and run 9mph for 10 minutes.

22Feb2010, <gasp>Ran for over 4 minutes at 9 miles per hour and discovered how valuable my asthma medicine is, since I had forgotten to take it first.</gasp> <wheeze>Yesterday I ran 3 minutes at 9mph at the beginning of a 5K run and finished with another minute at 9mph, all on a hit of Advair an hour beforehand.</wheeze> I definitely prefer breathing while I run.

15Feb2010, 5 miles in just under 50 minutes. That's the first time I've been able to run/walk 5 miles in more than 25 years. The first 5K in less than 29 minutes. Treadmill, with varying incline. I'm looking forward to the first time I can run 5 miles again without having to walk any. My distance and speed are only improving very slowly, but at least it's improving and not declining!

2Feb2010, 5K in 29 minutes flat, on a treadmill, with varying incline.

2Jul2009, some distance, in some number of minutes. I've been going on fun runs around the neighborhood, so I don't track how far, and usually don't track how long, though I'd guess in the 20-40 minute range. I learned 2 things while running tonight: 1) I'm not fast enough to outrun mosquitoes; and 2) Lightening bugs are as awesome now as they were when I was a kid!

6Jun2009, 5k Race for the Cure. I finished, and I'm happy with that. It was perfect weather, not too hot, not too cold, slightly overcast, but not too humid. I was less than perfect. As the race began, I was in a porta-pottie with "the runs." Got done and there were so many people, it took awhile before I could even get to the starting line. This also meant that the entire crowd was in front of me, and it stayed crowded the entire time I was running. The RFID tag on my shoe should give me an accurate time whenever they post it, but I got anxious and once I got started, I ran on the outside much faster than my usual pace. Faster than usual meant I was certain to have to stop and walk some, and I did. During my first slow-down, I started feeling like I might have to barf, so I made a conscious decision not to push myself. I know the timer at the finish line was 42 minutes and something, but I have no idea how long it was between the official start and my start. I'll find out in a few days, I guess. So, I'm a survivor of the race, though that's a different kind of surviving than those wearing the pink shirts...

The results are in: 30m 31s
50-54 age group, 74th out of 186
All men: 1446 out of 2762

5Apr2009, Cherry Blossom 5k Run/Walk from near the Washington Monument to the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery and back. I finished in 27 minutes and 13 seconds! The best time I've ever run 5k since my thyroid problems started causing leg problems. [Correction: 2nd best time.] And somehow I ran the whole way - no walking!

Didn't get much sleep on the 12 hour trip home from Hawai'i, Carla & Niah picked me up at the airport, went home, changed clothes, and off we went to the Metro station. We got to the starting area with just a few minutes to spare. Niah & Daniel ran with me, and Promise went with us to hold our junk. Carla and Rebecca weren't feeling up to going with us.

I easily got up to the front of the crowd, the starter counted us down, and off we went. That's when I learned there's a notable disadvantage to starting in the very front: there's no one for you to pass, and plenty of people that might pass you. And a lot of people passed me. I did okay the first 1/2 mile or so, and then started thinking I'd have to walk some before I hit a mile. But I got to a mile, and then I figured I'd try to make the half-way point at 1.55 miles. I made it and that got me jazzed up a bit, so I tried hard to make it to the 2 mile mark. I made that and heard my time and did a little pondering on what my final time might look like depending on how much walking I had to do before the end, but I soon realized I was on the last mile, so I decided to try to keep trudging along a little bit farther. Then I started trying to recognize where the end was. Sometimes when my pace gets too hard to continue, I can actually keep going by speeding up, which changes my stride, and changes how I'm using my muscles a little bit. With about a half mile to go, I sped up just a bit, and it was enough of a change. Then I estimated about 1/8 of a mile to go and tried to give a final kick. I kicked okay, but started losing breathing control, and then realized the end was farther away than I had estimated, and I had kicked too soon. I was about 50 yards away and about to slow down to a stagger when I remembered they'd have cameras taking photos as people approached the finish line. Well that was excellent motivation. I gave up on breathing control altogether and sped up to a gasping sprint to cross the finish line, stumble over to the grass and collapse. Promise and a race volunteer kept an eye on me to make sure I didn't need a doctor or something. I just needed to pant awhile until I got my oxygen balance back.

I finished 70th out of 410 men, and 3rd out of 20 in my age group. Not bad, eh? Well, I'd feel a lot better about it if I hadn't been trounced by Alexander Van Valkenbu, a nine-year-old who finished in 24:45. And after I had asked him nicely before the race not to make me look too bad. ;)

28Mar2009, 3.1 miles in just over 38 minutes. First 2 miles in 18m3s, but then had to walk a lot. Home treadmill, 1/2 degree incline. Cherry Blossom 5k in 8 days. My return flight from Honolulu is scheduled to arrive at 6:19 AM, and the race starts at 8:40 AM. If the plane's not too late, I should be able to get there, but not sure how much energy I'll have.

24Mar2009, 3.1 miles in 30m3s. Went 2 miles in just under 19 minutes before having to walk a bit, on home treadmill.

22Feb2009, 1.75 miles in 17m2s, home treadmill.

20Feb2009, running delayed due to bruised ribs, just ran 1.5 miles in 13.5 minutes, no walking, treadmill.

2Feb2009, 1st mile in 9m, total 1.75 miles, ~17m, hotel treadmill, Seattle

27Jan2009, ~1 mile, ~12m, 29 degrees, outdoor IN THE SNOW!, gently rolling terrain. (Last time I ran in the snow, 30 years ago, I ran a distance of 5 miles, but probably ran about 10 miles counting all the slipping and sliding!)

19Jan2009, 1 mile, 8m35s, treadmill

6Apr2008, Cherry Blossom 5k Run/Walk, 28:47

7Jun2008, Komen National Race for the Cure - 5K, 26:23

Vindication for Global Warming Skeptics

2010-02-16T18:56:00.036-05:00

A global-warming skeptic is not a global-warming denier. The difference is somewhat like the difference between atheists and agnostics. I, and many others like me, don't claim that the earth is in a long-term cooling trend or that it's stable. In addition, even if long-term global-warming was certain, I have serious doubts about the quality of the computer models upon which claims are made that global-warming is caused by humans.

I consider myself an amateur scientist, with an appreciation for fact and the scientific method. Where science has been applied to medical research, it has had a major and direct impact on my life, and my appreciation is especially strong when I recall that it's only been a couple of hundred years since 'doctors' regularly drained blood from patients as a standard treatment for a variety of ailments, with absolutely no scientific basis for it.

However, despite my appreciation of science, I don't trust scientists much more than I trust politicians. Someone does some important research and analysis? Great! But don't just tell me the summary and expect me to accept it without question. What were the assumptions? What were the measurements? What was the analysis? Which statistical methods were applied, and why? If a reasonable theory has been developed, great! But are there other reasonable theories? Are there other plausible theories?

So, despite the 'consensus' of scientists often alleged by crisis-profiteers, crisis-careerists, and an easily duped media, I've remained skeptical that we have enough measurements or a thorough enough understanding of circumstances that impact global temperatures to reach a conclusion about the current long-term global temperature trend, or the impact of human activity on global temperatures. This has often felt like being a round-earther ridiculed by the official flat-earth dogmatists. But no one will get me to change my mind just based on alleged consensus while there are intelligent scientists who hold contrary views and provide reasonable explanations for their contrary views. The esteemed leading doctors of Western medicine had a strong consensus on the value of frequent blood-letting, so don't give me 'consensus.' Give me facts. Give me reason.

So today comes an article in London's Mail Online: Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995. Dr. Phil Jones, a leader in the man-caused-long-term-global-warmist theories, has admitted that the evidence isn't nearly as strong as many have been led to believe. Dr. Jones gives lucid statements that don't debunk the possibility that the earth is getting warmer in the long-run, and don't debunk the possibility that human activity is a dominant factor in whatever the earth's temperatures are doing. But read the article, and it will become apparent that this interview is a bellwether event because it virtually destroys the alleged certainty that has been so popular with the crisis-mongers.

The earth has not been getting significantly warmer in the last 15 years, as Dr. Jones admits, and as many skeptics have been pointing out. It may still be that the last 15 years has been an exception to the rule and perhaps the earth is getting warmer over a period of hundreds of years. But maybe not. The door is now almost fully open, where it was almost fully closed, to consider all possibilities, and not jump to conclusions based on inadequate data or inadequate, unproven computer models.

If Dr. Jones isn't enough for you, then consider the interview by Dr. Robert Watson, none other than the former chair of the IPCC itself. In an article at the Times Online, Dr. Watson responds to the rash of errors recently pointed out in some of the IPCC reports. While none of the errors I've seen reported are damning individually, Dr. Watson points out that together they indicate a significant bias, because every single error favors catastrophic predictions. If they were unbiased, as the tarnished current chair of the IPCC claims, then the errors would be roughly evenly distributed between those favoring catastrophic predictions and those opposing it.

So let's continue to study global temperatures. Let's continue to measure and improve how we measure. Let's continue to model global processes and improve how we model global processes. Let's continue to reason and improve how we reason.

And while we're improving science (and scientists), let's not damage or destroy national economies based on overreactions to false assumptions and irrational predictions. Let's also bear in mind that regardless of the long-term temperature fluctuations, whether up or down, we'll always need clean air to breathe and clean water to drink, so let's not throw out the baby of responsible environmentalism with the dirty bathwater of unproven climate-change fears.

Come, let us reason together.

Irrational Global-Warming Leader

2010-02-05T16:26:00.001-05:00

The leading organization preaching that global warming is man-caused and a disaster-in-the-making is the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the head of that organization is Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. Pachauri is also the head of the The Energy Research Institute (TERI) (formerly the Tata Energy Research Institute).

His degrees are in engineering, so he should be familiar with rational thought. However, he's been quoted by the Financial Times as making the following statement:

"[Climate change skeptics] are people who deny the link between smoking and cancer; they are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder. I hope that they apply it [asbestos] to their faces every day."

For the record, I am currently a climate change skeptic, and I do not deny the link between smoking and cancer, nor do I say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder. And despite his stated desire, I do not apply asbestos to myself or anyone else.

As head of the IPCC and TERI, Dr. Pachauri has been subject to much criticism, some for possible conflicts of interest from running both organizations. In his recent interview with the Financial Times, he also was quoted as saying, "[There are] nefarious designs behind people trying to attack me with lies, falsehoods." I don't why anyone would lie about him... the direct quotes above are enough to ruin his credibility as a rational scientist.

UPDATE:The week of March 21, 2010, Dr. Pachauri was quoted in the London Times as saying, "It is not correct to say there are people who don’t trust me." If that is an accurate quote, it is conclusive evidence that he does not exhibit a scientific mind. He has also been apologizing for the factual errors in the IPCC reports, but I have not heard him address the issue of bias. Bias is not only a significant factor in facilitating factual errors that favor a pre-determined view, it is also a critical factor in errors of omission -- the fact that the IPCC reports intentionally exclude metrics that are inconsistent with their favored Earth-is-getting-too-warm-and-people-are-to-blame beliefs.

Fairness or Freedom?

2010-01-23T18:27:00.009-05:00

We all like fairness, right? "Mom, he/she got more than I did!" is a complaint heard from every child with a sibling. It's often said because of perceived injustice, as when a sibling really did get a larger amount of something. Most children with loving parents quickly learn how effective the "fairness" complaint is and try to extend it's use by altering its meaning: "Mom, I want more candy." "You can't have more candy, it will spoil your appetite for supper." Altogether now... "That's not fair!" Fairness is good, but not everything is a matter of fairness.

Suppose we try to use civil government to force fairness into society to the greatest extent possible. Is that a worthwhile goal for a nation? Well, what if maximum fairness means imposing the lowest common denominator on wages and wealth? Would you want comprehensive, forced economic equality if it meant you get exactly the same daily ration of food regardless of how hard you work or how much you learn?

Suppose our civil governments allow people maximum freedom instead, even if it means some people who learn more or work harder will earn greater wealth than others? Freedom and individuality have long been dominant in the United States and it's produced a level of wealth that was unimaginable when this country began. Yet free enterprise guarantees inequality of wealth.

So, if you were limited to these two choices, which would you chose? Forced economic equality that provided everyone a perfectly even distribution of goods, including exactly 1000 calories of exactly the same food per day, or complete freedom that resulted in economic disparity such that some people have as many calories of whatever food they want per day and the poorest have at least 1500 calories of food per day with a substantial variety of food choices?

Which is better, comprehensive forced fairness or universally superior wealth?

I suggest that fairness shouldn't be the ultimate goal of society because people are different. Men are different from women. That doesn't mean men are better than women, and it doesn't justify a lower salary for a women doing the same work as a man, but it's acknowledging the reality that there are substantive differences between men and women, and the cause is genetic. Industrious people are different from lazy people. An argument can be made that hard-working people are better than lazy people by some measures, and the cause for the difference is primarily behavioral choice. Healthy people are different from those with infirmities, and that could be due to genes or environment. The fact is that everyone is unique. The inference is that absolute fairness, or equality, is not possible. In every socialist country where great effort has been made to enforce fairness, it has been clearly seen in practice that the leaders "are more equal than others," as Orwell put it.

If you give everyone exactly the same health care, that means you must either give everyone a pacemaker or no one a pacemaker. Silly argument, right? That would be true, complete fairness, but that's not the only option to try to arrive at equality. Okay, so we use a different policy: everyone who needs a pacemaker can have a one if they want it. That sounds pretty good, right? Unless your society doesn't have enough pacemaker surgeons. Which leads to the question, how do you give a pacemaker to everyone who needs and wants one if there aren't enough pacemaker surgeons? Give the person a do-it-yourself kit? Or just let a civil government agency decide on everyone's careers, so they can ensure enough pacemaker surgeons? Do you want your career choice to be made for you? There are socialists who think that's the best course for public policy.

For myself, and for my family, my friends, and my neighbors, I prefer freedom to forced fairness. I'll learn as much as I can and work as hard as I can, and I want the opportunity to improve my financial circumstances. And I want that opportunity for everyone else.

It was President Kennedy who famously said, "A rising tide lifts all boats." He was talking about economic prosperity, not Cuba, but whenever I think of that speech in 1963, I tie the two together, thinking of the many boats people have used to try to escape from the prison camp known as Cuba, where fairness is guaranteed by Castro. Cubans risked their lives in desperate attempts to flee Cuba's fairness for American freedom. A freedom that has proven Kennedy's point, a freedom that has created so much wealth that American charitable giving makes the United States the most generous nation on Earth. In fact, America is more than twice as generous as the next most generous nation.

Fairness has its place, but if it comes down to a choice between fairness and freedom, give me freedom.

Command Performance

2010-01-09T20:27:00.000-05:00

Some time ago, I wanted a photo-viewing program and couldn't find one with the features I wanted, so I wrote one myself. It's called Command Performance, and I've just tweaked it and posted it as freeware. If you want to try it out, you can download it here: http://www.exabyte.net/ElfInkSoftware.

I'd love to hear what you think of it.

Ciao!

HOPE

2009-12-24T07:04:00.001-05:00

There is hope.

There is hope for those wounded by the loss of loved ones.
There is hope for those who have been hurt by loved ones.
There is hope for those frightened for their loved ones.
There is hope for those worried about their livelihoods.
There is hope for those struggling with their health.
There is hope for those facing their own death.
There is hope for those sent into harm's way.

There is hope that is greater than other hopes.

The greatest hope is not in weapons of war, nor in the valiant soldiers who wield them.
The greatest hope is not in persuasion, nor in politicians who attempt to persuade.
The greatest hope is not in science, nor in scientists who examine and reason.

Military might has defended the innocent, but it has also tortured and executed them.
Political fight has produced the heights of freedom, but has also sunk to the depths of genocide.
Scientific sight may master the subatomic and interstellar How, but by definition ignores the Why.

Thousands of years of war, and peace is still fragile or missing.
Thousands of years of laws, and inalienable rights are still questioned.
Hundreds of years of science, and the world still groans.

But we can still hope.

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed, and so became the father of many nations.

Abraham hoped in a God who created us, who loves us, and who is faithful to us, even when we are unfaithful.

Like Abraham, we can hope, even when everything seems hopeless.

And our greatest hope is that God is a God who condescended to humanity, covered our sins, and invites us to fellowship with Him.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining, 'til he appeared and the soul felt His worth...

A thrill of hope...

A weary world rejoices...

Oh holy night...

It is the eve of the dear Savior’s birth.

Who Pays For Our Freedom?

2009-12-07T18:07:00.004-05:00

It is the soldier, not the reporter,
Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet,
Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the organizer,
Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.

It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protestor to burn the flag.

-- Father Dennis Edward O'Brian, USMC

We, the Religious People...

2009-12-05T00:10:00.006-05:00

President Obama said in a speech in Turkey, "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

Well, I don't know of any recent studies, but for most of our nation's history, the majority have definitely considered our nation a Christian nation. And, I wonder, what "ideals" and "set of values" does the President think bind us together? I haven't found any statements by him to clarify that, but then, as long as he's vague enough, he can offend the fewest possible people who might disagree. In hope that he is ignorant on our country's religious character, rather than deceitful, perhaps some history lessons are in order. Here's one:

Neither our Constitution, nor the Declaration of Independance, nor any of our national laws say that we must have the famously alleged separation of Church and State. What the Constitution says in the First Amendment is, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." That doesn't even prohibit the individual States from establishing religions, although none have. In fact, no American is forced by Federal, State, or local government to worship God.

However, there's nothing in the Constitution that prevents religious people in general or Christians in particular from being involved in the creation or management of our laws, or prohibits their religious beliefs from affecting their political views or the laws we create, with the sole exception of the prohibition against establishing a national religion.

One of the prime examples of the influence of Christianity in this country is in our Declaration of Independence, which openly acknowledges God in these quotes:

...to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them...

...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

...We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world...

And lest anyone think the open acknowledgement of God by our body politic has been limited to the Federal government, here are quotes from the Constitutions of the 50 United States: (Passing this along with thanks to Lianne.)

Alabama 1901, Preamble: We the people of the State of Alabama, invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish the following Constitution...

Alaska 1956, Preamble: We, the people of Alaska, grateful to God and to those who founded our nation and pioneered this great land...

Arizona 1911, Preamble: We, the people of the State of Arizona, grateful to Almighty God for our liberties, do ordain this Constitution...

Arkansas 1874, Preamble: We, the people of the State of Arkansas, grateful to Almighty God for the privilege of choosing our own form of government...

California 1879, Preamble: We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom...

Colorado 1876, Preamble: We, the people of Colorado, with profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of Universe...

Connecticut 1818, Preamble: The People of Connecticut, acknowledging with gratitude the good Providence of God in permitting them to enjoy...

Delaware 1897, Preamble: Through Divine Goodness all men have, by nature, the rights of worshipping and serving their Creator according to the dictates of their consciences...

Florida 1885, Preamble: We, the people of the State of Florida, grateful to Almighty God for our constitutional liberty, establish this Constitution...

Georgia 1777, Preamble: We, the people of Georgia, relying upon protection and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish this Constitution...

Hawaii 1959, Preamble: We, the people of Hawaii, Grateful for Divine Guidance .... Establish this Constitution...

Idaho 1889, Preamble: We, the people of the State of Idaho, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, to secure its blessings...

Illinois 1870, Preamble: We, the people of the State of Illinois, grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy and looking to Him for a blessing on our endeavors...

Indiana 1851, Preamble: We, the People of the State of Indiana, grateful to Almighty God for the free exercise of the right to choose our form of government...

Iowa 1857, Preamble: We, the People of the St ate of Iowa, grateful to the Supreme Being for the blessings hitherto enjoyed, and feeling our dependence on Him for a continuation of these blessings, establish this Constitution...

Kansas 1859, Preamble: We, the people of Kansas, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious privileges establish this Constitution...

Kentucky 1891, Preamble: We, the people of the Commonwealth are grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberties...

Louisiana 1921, Preamble: We, the people of the State of Louisiana, grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberties we enjoy...

Maine 1820, Preamble: We the People of Maine acknowledging with grateful hearts the goodness of the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe in affording us an opportunity... And imploring His aid and direction...

Maryland 1776, Preamble: We, the people of the state of Maryland, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious liberty...

Massachusetts 1780, Preamble: We...the people of Massachusetts, acknowledging with grateful hearts, the goodness of the Great Legislator of the Universe, In the course of His Providence, an opportunity and devoutly imploring His direction...

Michigan 1908, Preamble: We, the people of the State of Michigan, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of freedom, establish this Constitution...

Minnesota, 1857, Preamble: We, the people of the State of Minnesota, grateful to God for our civil and religious liberty, and desiring to perpetuate its blessings...

Mississippi 1890, Preamble: We, the people of Mississippi in convention assembled, grateful to Almighty God, and invoking His blessing on our work...

Missouri 1845, Preamble: We, the people of Missouri, with profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and grateful for His goodness, Establish this Constitution...

Montana 1889, Preamble: We, the people of Montana, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of liberty establish this Constitution...

Nebraska 1875, Preamble: We, the people, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, Establish this Constitution...

Nevada 1864, Preamble: We the people of the State of Nevada, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, establish this Constitution...

New Hampshire 1792, Part I. Art. I. Sec. V: Every individual has a natural and unalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience...

New Jersey 1844, Preamble: We, the people of the State of New Jersey, grateful to Almighty God for civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing on our endeavors...

New Mexico 1911, Preamble: We, the People of New Mexico, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of liberty...

New York 1846, Preamble: We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings...

North Carolina 1868, Preamble: We the people of the State of North Carolina, grateful to Almighty God, the Sovereign Ruler of Nations, for our civil, political, and religious liberties, and acknowledging our dependence upon Him for the continuance of those...

North Dakota 1889, Preamble: We, the people of North Dakota, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of civil and religious liberty, do ordain...

Ohio 1852, Preamble: We the people of the state of Ohio, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, to secure its blessings and to promote our common...

Oklahoma 1907, Preamble: Invoking the guidance of Almighty God, in order to secure and perpetuate the blessings of liberty, establish this...

Oregon 1857, Bill of Rights, Article I Section 2: All men shall be secure in the Natural right, to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their consciences...

Pennsylvania 1776, Preamble: We, the people of Pennsylvania, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of civil and religious liberty, and humbly invoking His guidance......

Rhode Island 1842, Preamble: We the People of the State of Rhode Island grateful to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing...

South Carolina, 1778, Preamble: We, the people of he State of South Carolina grateful to God for our liberties, do ordain and establish this Constitution...

South Dakota 1889, Preamble: We, the people of South Dakota, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious liberties...

Tennessee 1796, Art. XI..III: That all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their conscience...

Texas 1845, Preamble: We the People of the Republic of Texas, acknowledging, with gratitude, the grace and beneficence of God...

Utah 1896, Preamble: Grateful to Almighty God for life and liberty, we establish this Constitution...

Vermont 1777, Preamble: Whereas all government ought to enable the individuals who compose it to enjoy their natural rights, and other blessings which the Author of Existence has bestowed on man...

Virginia 1776, Bill of Rights, XVI: Religion, or the Duty which we owe our Creator can be directed only by Reason and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian Forbearance, Love and Charity towards each other...

Washington 1889, Preamble: We the People of the State of Washington, grateful to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe for our liberties, do ordain this Constitution...

West Virginia 1872, Preamble: Since through Divine Providence we enjoy the blessings of civil, political and religious liberty, we, the people of West Virginia reaffirm our faith in and constant reliance upon God...

Wisconsin 1848, Preamble: We, the people of Wisconsin, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, domestic tranquility...

Wyoming 1890, Preamble: We, the people of the State of Wyoming, grateful to God for our civil, political, and religious liberties, establish this Constitution...

Placebo Effect in the Bible?

2009-12-03T21:01:00.000-05:00

"A cheerful heart is good medicine..." [Proverbs 17:22]

Thousands of years before modern medical science began, the placebo effect was recognized in the Bible. When it compounds the benefits of effective medications, good things happen. So to Susan, Terry, Brian, and anyone else with serious physical problems, keep on lifting your spirit in praise, and take courage!

A Plea for Rational, Responsible Economic Environmentalism

2009-11-26T22:24:00.006-05:00

There is, in fact, no scientific consensus on the existence of global warming, let alone the alleged extent or most likely causes. And the recent exposure of emails by the CRU cabal may have mortally wounded the efforts of the crisis-mongers pushing the human-caused-global-warming scenario.

(Kim Strassel: Their correspondence show a claque of scientists massaging data to make it fit their theories, squelching scientists who disagreed, punishing academic journals that didn't toe the apocalyptic line, and hiding their work from public view. "It's no use pretending that this isn't a major blow," glumly wrote George Monbiot, a U.K. writer who has been among the fiercest warming alarmists. The documents "could scarcely be more damaging." And that's from a believer.)

But the diminishing stature of this faked crisis is actually a cause for some concern. Just because these latest crisis profiteers have tainted their crisis-of-the-decade, that doesn't mean we need the pendulum of public concern for the environment to swing too far back in the other direction. Why? Because we'll always need clean air and clean water.

Clean air, clean water, and the broadest possible bio-diversity are good things, and economic activities (and government policies that impact economic activities) should take them into account.

For those who tend to think that unrestrained free-enterprise is perfect, let me remind you that people making decisions for profit only, without regard to the environmental impact of their decisions, have caused some horrendous pollution and damaged the health of many millions of people world-wide.

On the other extreme, for those who act like the environment is their god, let me remind you that moderated free-enterprise has led to many scientific achievements that allow us to measure and quantify our environment while providing livelihoods for billions of people.

So, let's be rational. Let's encourage economic growth that takes the environment into account and work to improve both our economic engines and our environment.

United Nations Inquiry

2009-11-23T19:59:00.006-05:00

Okay, it's not quite Thanksgiving yet, but if someone's wondering what to get me as a Christmas present, here's something I'd like:

Please list all the good things the United Nations has accomplished, excluding all the good things where the United States alone was responsible for 90% or more of the good thing (by dollars or people), and total up all the United Nations has cost, adjusting for inflation and breaking out the costs borne by the United States as a separate number.

I'm not someone who thinks the U.N. has never accomplished anything good, but I also don't think we should keep it if it's not producing more value than it consumes.

Here's my analogy #2,357: If you have a car that gets you to work sometimes, that's a good thing. But if it fails to get you to work most of the time and if repairs and maintenance cost more than a new car, how long would you keep the old car?

I just want to be honest about the U.N. and determine it's real worth.

Any takers?

Global Warming FAIL

2009-11-21T21:35:00.004-05:00

For all my non-Twittering friends, "FAIL" is shorthand for disapproving or disavowing something. No, I don't Twitter either, but I'm familiar with some of it.

So, Global Warming. It's common knowledge that real scientists have formed a solid, near-universal consensus that global warming is fast approaching irreversible, catastrophic damage to Earth's climate due primarily to human activity and we should do everything and anything we can to reverse our activities, even if it ruins national economies, for the sake of human survival. Wow. And it's common knowledge because most reporters and commentators in the mass media believe that, and keep repeating it in articles and on TV. Movie writers and producers reinforce it by weaving it in as an underlying assumption or outright plot-points. And they usually have lots of quotes from "scientists" who earn their livings from the grants they get, and the more dire their predictions, the more funding they're given.

Too bad the consensus isn't true. It's not even close to true. Follow this link to an article citing a petition signed by over 32,000 scientists, including over 9,000 Ph.D.'s and scores of Nobel laureates, all of whom are not part of the alleged consensus.

So if your elected representatives support the idiotic Cap & Trade legislation, you might want to point this out to them. If they have functioning intellects.

"Whatever You Need, We'll Give It To You"

2009-11-07T18:15:00.006-05:00

I've been listening to the pontificating on C-SPAN as the House prepares to vote on Pelosi's health insurance (not health care) reform bill, and must conclude that some of our national politicians are ignoramuses themselves or they're intentionally pandering to an ignorant constituency.

Do the ignorant ones think that an insurance company is a stingy rich uncle with unlimited money and everyone can have anything they want if they can just convince the uncle to be more generous or if they can take the uncle's money by force of law?

Modern insurance works on one fundamental principal: Each insurance program must take in more money in premiums than it pays out in benefits. This is true regardless of whether the organization behind it is for-profit or non-profit, and certainly includes civil governments. Insurance is a means of allowing a group of people to share financial risk, not a magically infinite source of money.

Some have said, "We're making health care a right." Oh, really? You're going to make something with a price tag a civil right? You're going to put it on the same level as the right to life and the right to liberty? And what will you do when the well runs dry? And when the group of patients need two dollars worth of health care for every dollar paid in insurance premiums, what will you tell those who complain that their rights are being denied?

The truth is they're not talking about improving health care. They're talking about changing health insurance in a manner by which the civil government will control how health care is rationed, rather than allowing freedom of choice.

And some of these folks are claiming, with a straight face, that the Federal bureaucracy is going to cover hundreds of billions of dollars worth of the increased costs by making things more efficient and reducing fraud? Oh? Like they have with Veteran's health care, Medicaid, and Medicare?

Here's my two cents' worth of opinion: make the VA, Medicaid, and Medicare effective, efficient, and fraud-free, and then I'll have a basis to believe the Federal government can do a better job with public health insurance than the free market and non-profits are doing now.

Imprecision and Bogus Econ

2009-10-30T17:21:00.005-05:00

Just read a couple of different articles. One about evolution and one about how many jobs the most recent U.S. Federal stimulus program has created. They both annoyed me a lot, and for the same reason. What do these topics have in common?

Confusing or misleading imprecision by the authors.

Evolution: The author used the term repeatedly, but never specified when he was talking about evolution within species or among species. They aren't the same thing, but this author, and many others, seem to think they are.

Jobs: The author of the article I read, the interview subjects, and the reports cited estimate how many jobs have been created by the Federal government passing out tax money. In this article and in others, there's little or no talk about what kind of jobs.

For one thing, there's a big difference between creating a minimum-wage job and a job for a highly-skilled person. For another, there's an even bigger difference between a temporary job and a permanent job.

So, the Federal government takes $15,000 in taxes from you and I, then passes $12,000 to a company that will create jobs. (I don't really think the Federal government would have such a low administrative overhead, but I don't want to get into that issue here.) That company hires 12 people for one month each. Some reports were initially claiming that the Federal government's actions had created 12 jobs, but then people started catching on, so some folks started adjusting the counts to equal full-time employees for one year, making the example above equal one job created. Except that those were temporary jobs. When the handout money ran out, the jobs ran out. That might not be so bad if the Federal government could keep taking enough money from taxpayers to keep shoveling money at companies and organizations to keep people employed, but they can't. So, the Feds have "created or saved" X number of jobs. Please. They created or saved X number of temporary jobs. Does anyone think a very short-term temporary job is as good for the economy as a permanent job? Of course not.

But, a temporary job is better than nothing, right? Well, what was the cost of that short-term job? Money taken from taxpayers, both individuals and companies. What might that money have been used for, if it hadn't been taken as taxes and redistributed? Most individuals would have used their extra money to buy things. Which would have... wait for it... stimulated the economy! Except that this is longer-term stimulation. Most companies would invest their extra money. In what? Primarily raw goods, services, and payroll. Which would have... you got it: stimulated the economy! And again, with much longer-term repercussions.

These ignorant folks waxing eloquent about the success of the Federal stimulus package may have been some of the same folks who claimed that the cash-for-clunkers program was a great success. Well, if success was subsidizing car purchases for a month or two, then it was successful, alright. However, many of those purchasers were enticed to purchase a new car to replace their old car sooner than they otherwise would have. The secondary impacts include this: For each one of those people who would have otherwise purchased a car next year, now they won't. All the cash-for-clunkers did in these cases was to shift a small number of future purchases to current purchases, weakening the future economy.

Sigh. Sometimes I wonder if any of our bone-headed politicians have even read an economics textbook?

Political Global Warming

2009-10-12T17:03:00.004-05:00

Many of our glorious politicians declare repeatedly that global warming is a crisis, and they must do something to save us all. Even if it means spending all our money and all our children's money. But that's okay, because they base their rhetoric and fear-mongering on cold, hard science, right?

Thanks to their intrepid ~~fund-raising~~, uh, I mean campaigning to educate we ignorant masses, everyone now knows the truth that global warming is caused primarily by rising levels of atmospheric carbon gas. And the rises in atmospheric carbon gas have been measured very carefully, and have indeed been going up and up, for the last 20 years and beyond.

So, then, what do you think is the warmest year in modern recorded history? Last year? This year? If atmospheric carbon gas causes global warming, and it has been going up every single year the last 2 decades, then you would reasonably expect...

1998.

1998 was the warmest year in modern recorded history. Despite that nasty continuous growth in gaseous carbon. Huh. What could possibly account for that incredible anomaly?

Could there be some other factor at work? Could carbon gas be a non-decisive factor after all? Of course not, that would mean the impossible, that our politicians weren't basing their agitation on scientifically established facts.

I guess we'll just have to wait another century or so, and let our great-grandkids figure it out.

In the meantime, does anyone know where I left my sunglasses?

Exercise-Induced Asthma

2009-09-26T18:31:00.002-05:00

Well, chalk up one more malady in my medical chart, add a problem I didn't even realize was a problem, and then cross that problem off the list.

During my annual physical a few weeks back, my doc asked me some questions no one ever asked before. My answers prompted more questions, and she began to suspect I might have exercise-induced asthma. I didn't know there was such a thing. I figured the trouble I've had breathing after running for a few minutes was normal. Those who know my history well know that there was a period of 20 years or so when my health was too poor to run, but I can clearly remember the same breathing problems while running in my twenties.

Well, Doctor Drew gave me an Advair sampler disk, which is an inhaler-gizmo with long-term anti-asthma drugs. She urged me to try it, and I did. Wow! What a difference!

Breathing is no longer my weak link while running... now it's my muscles, as it's probably supposed to be. So, despite my lungs not being fully recovered from the flu yet (it's dragging out a really long time), I'm running again and enjoying it even more than usual. What a blessing! Maybe I can finally start working on increasing speed or distance.

Breathing... I can personally recommend it!

The Cutest PC in the World!

2009-09-04T15:57:00.003-05:00

In case you haven't see it, here is the cutest PC you will ever see:

Do You Trust Your Doctor?

2009-09-03T19:04:00.002-05:00

Do you trust your doctor completely? When they're prescribing medication, you shouldn't. It's a lot of extra trouble, but if you want to do your best to make sure you're pursuing the best health you can, you should research everything you can about medications they prescribe. This article gives some good background on how marketing drives much of pharmacology industry, to the detriment of our health.

Being God's Pockets

2009-08-22T18:10:00.003-05:00

From an article in the NY Times: The paramount moral challenge... in this century, is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

Regardless of whether you like the NY Times or not, regardless of whether you can think of other serious issues to give your attention, this is certainly an area where the Body of Christ can and should make a difference in the world. We're familiar with the idea of being God's hands and feet by being missionaries and personally going overseas to preach the Gospel. But you can also stay home and give money to support other people who work as missionaries. And you can also provide very small no-interest loans to desperate people around the world, through organizations like Kiva. You don't have to do this instead of contributing to missions, you can do it in addition. As little as $25 can make a huge difference in people's lives.

That's why I've tagged this NY Times article. Read the first page and you'll see how a mere $65 changed the life of a Pakistani woman named Saima, who was in a very nasty situation. And you'll see how the effect of that loan grew to help other families through Saima.

Typically, multiple people each put up a small portion of a loan, sharing the risk. Note making zero-interest loans is not a way to plan for your retirement. But it is a way to help improve lives and make poor societies more stable, and therefore likely to produce fewer terroristic maniacs.

The more financially stable families there are in a country like Afghanistan, for instance, the less power groups like the Taliban have. So please consider making a loan to a hard working, but poor person, just because you like helping people, or to make the world a little safer place for you, your family, or for the missionaries in those countries.

An Old, Unknown Empidemic

2009-08-09T13:39:00.010-05:00

Your family probably has a very serious health problem that you've never heard of. The latest flu? No, this has probably been an epidemic since people started working in factories and office buildings, but has gone unnoticed and unheralded until very recently. So I'm writing this little note to add a little heralding.

From WebMD: "Seven out of 10 U.S. children have too-low vitamin D levels, putting them at risk of heart disease, rickets, and weak bones... Vitamin D deficiency is a serious health threat..."

70%! Every family is probably affected. Your family is probably affected!

While the linked article is about children (of all ages), do a little more research and you'll find that vitamin D inadequacy and deficiency is also prevalent among adults.

Doctors have been increasingly aware of the seriousness of vitamin D inadequacy and deficiency, not only for physical health, but also for mental heath. And they've been increasingly aware that they have not been adequately monitoring the problem, which prompted the study at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine behind the article linked above. "We expected the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency would be high, but the magnitude of the problem nationwide was shocking."

So, read the linked article, read other articles, then get everyone in your family tested to find out what your vitamin D levels are, and if they're low, start getting more. If you take vitamin D supplements, make sure they're vitamin D3. Get it locally to start with, and while you're taking those, you can save money by ordering online. This is where I get my vitamins, and no, that's not an affiliate link so I'll get a little commission if you buy something there. It's just a link directly to a reliable source of inexpensive vitamin D3, from a large vitamin manufacturer.

By the way, my doctor found my vitamin D inadequacy a few years ago, and I started taking supplements, and it makes a big difference to my energy levels and helps me keep a positive attitude toward life. I'm sure, because I have a compartmentalized pill box with a box for each day of the week. That let's me see when I've forgotten to take my vitamin D, B-complex, fish oil, thyroid pill, and blood pressure med. When I forget them for a day, I can see a real difference. When I forget them for 2 days in a row, I see a much bigger difference. And a few times I've run out of D when I had the other things, so I learned what it was like to take everything except D, and wow, does D make a big difference!

Remember, 70% of U.S. kids have inadequate vitamin D, and 10% have full-on vitamin D deficiency, and it causes a wide variety of mild to very serious health problems. And since it's easy to test for, and cheap to take supplements, don't ignore it!!

My Famous Disease...

2009-06-29T18:22:00.003-05:00

Hey, if you're gonna have a rare disease, especially if you're a guy and 85% of the people who get this disease are female, at least make it a famous disease! And Fibromuscular Dysplasia (FMD) just made the front page of the Wall Street Journal! Dr. Olin, my specialist for this particular problem, is quoted. Cool, huh? I go to New York to see him again in a few weeks... and I've thought of some new possible treatments: an arterial transplant, a whole-body arterialectomy, and if those don't work, Teflon-coated chain-linked carbon nanotubes artery liners!

Beautiful Music: Hang Drum

2009-06-27T14:05:00.001-05:00

A beautiful song on a variation of steel drum:

Rules for a Gunfight

2009-06-24T09:21:00.003-05:00

I stole this pic from Greg Long:

Need a Gift Idea?

2009-06-16T18:15:00.003-05:00

Guys... have trouble figuring out what gift to get your wife?

How about affordable hand-made jewelry?

Check out Take Courage Designs.

Installing Windows Storage Server 2008

2009-05-09T10:40:00.004-05:00

The Administrator password when installing Windows Storage Server 2008 is wSS2008!.

No, I don't blab confidential Microsoft information. No, I don't give away keys. And no, I don't give away any real passwords. However, this is the default install password, and it's not a secret or confidential, it's just too hard to find. You have to download the Tools CD from MSDN and then read the release notes. So, I'm putting the WSS08 default admin password here in case it makes a little easier to find for people who search the Internet before they read all the docs. (And who's going to read the Tools docs before they install the basic software?)

So, with "wSS2008!" you can now log in to your fresh install of the fantastic new Windows Storage Server 2008. Ta-da!!

Now what's the first thing you're going to do after you log in...? CHANGE THE DEFAULT PASSWORD, if you're smart.

Paradise...

2009-04-04T13:04:00.002-05:00

Paradise isn't a tropical island. Especially when the island in question has traffic problems, employment problems, housing problems...

I'll say this for Hawai'i, nowhere else have I seen rainbows so frequently, so complete, so large (very wide from red to violet and the ends miles apart), or glowing so vibrantly.

Paradise, however, is in our hearts and minds. It doesn't matter whether we're in a mansion, a cozy home, or a tent. What matters is who we're with, and how much we appreciate each other. It doesn't matter where.

Ok, so I finally did the 25 random things about me...

2009-03-28T20:15:00.010-05:00

I've been tagged for this by multiple friends, but nothing's truly random, so I'll jot down 25 miscellaneous things about me:

1. I'm an adventurer.
2. I was born 5 miles north of Booger Hollow, Georgia. (Booger Hollow is unincorporated) (very unincorporated).
3. I have Fibromuscular Dysplasia (FMD) (which has cost me about 5% of my right kidney so far), hypothyroidism, hypoglycemia, peripheral neuropathy, an enlarged prostate gland, back problems, blood pressures problems, lots of chronic muscular tightness/sore spots sometimes labeled as fibromyalgia, but as long as I can run, I consider myself healthy.
4. I earned my bachelor's degree in my 30's for less than $1200. Got it so I could check the box on job applications.
5. I have degrees in Economics, Education, Electronics Engineering Technology, History, Literature in English, Psychology, and Sociology, but I've never used them for an occupation.
6. I've had jobs as "high" as a corporate President and as a Chief Technology Officer.
7. I've passed more than 60 I.T. certification exams by at least 6 different companies.
8. I had poor grades in high school, but I had a lot of great friends.
9. I've read many college level textbooks just for fun.
10. I have a lot of books. Many, many, books. Hundreds and hundreds of books.
11. I wish they would put vitamins in chocolate-chip cookies.
12. I ruined a car engine by running it with the oil drained out. On purpose. As part of an experiment.
13. A good friend and I rode bicycles over 1200 miles on a trip from Georgia to Virginia, where my bicycle was stolen.
14. I owned a Kawasaki 440 LTD motorcycle (belt-drive!), and enjoyed giving rides to friends on it.
15. My Scoutmaster, Bill Ergle, saved my life. He rescued me from downing.
16. A good friend, James Stanley, saved my life when I had been bench-pressing alone, had passed out with the weights on my chest, and had stopped breathing.
17. I know that it is possible that there is a realm of existence that may be unmeasurable (and possibly undetectable) by scientific means, commonly referred to as a spiritual or supernatural realm.
18. I believe that a realm does exist that is currently beyond scientific scrutiny.
19. I believe that God exists, and I believe that he loves us.
20. I believe God is a loving God despite the pain and suffering in the world, and that his long-term, universal perspective allows him to weigh our short-term emotions and physical difficulties differently than we usually do.
21. I've witnessed a few things that I haven't been able to develop an explanatory hypothesis for based on science alone. And I'm really good at developing at least somewhat plausible scientific hypotheses.
22. I believe people have spiritual aspects to our existence, but I have no idea of how the physics of that facet of existence could work. I keep pondering it, though, and am currently toying with an interesting quantum theory.
23. I talk to God a lot. But I don't listen very well.
24. I believe God has silently communicated directly with me a few times, and I believe God has communicated to me a few times through other people regarding future events which those people could not have predicted. Subsequent relevant events were consistent with the possibility that those ideas originated from a benevolent, omniscient God.
25. I have uncountable wealth. The love of my wife Carla makes me the richest man I know. Add to that my children, the parents I had for too short a time, my brother, my relatives-in-law, and my friends... it's no wonder I smile so much.

MSSU, Day One

2009-03-01T11:59:00.003-05:00

Sunday, 1Mar20098, SQL PFE day 77, MSSU day 1.

Woke up about 6 AM local time, 9 AM Eastern. About 5 hours sleep. The high heat last night melted my foot pads. I had to sit on the edge of the tub and scrape the goo off my feet under the hot water.

I ate a stale pretzel and some left-over peanut M&M's, then checked out the list of apartment-complex amenities. There's a fitness room. I got dressed for a run, took my keys and headed out to find it. There are no signs. Anywhere. There was no one else about at that hour to ask. I remembered the motto of the Virginia Commonwealth and persevered. I mean, there are a limited number of floors and hallways, and it's got to be off one of them right? Finally found it in the South Tower and ran 1.5 miles in 13m3s.

Got back, showered, and dressed. Roommate woke up, we talked and headed out for breakfast. Couldn't find a restaurant open so we went to a Safeway grocery store. We can actually get to it from our apartment without going outside.

Class started at 1 PM local time, at the Lincoln Center a few blocks away. There was free-lance meet and greet with drinks and snacks, then get-to-know-one-another exercises, then a break, then a team-building exercise. We wrapped up around 4 PM local time. Didn't take my umbrella because it wasn't raining when I left the apartment. I won't make that mistake again.

Ran back in a steady light rain and couldn't get my shoes & socks off fast enough. Feet are hurting and I'm getting very sleepy. I need to get a report finished for a customer back home, but I'm not sure how long I can stay awake. Doing it in the morning before class probably won't work, because I have to catch the shuttle to the Microsoft campus at 7:00 AM. Guess I'll put my shoes back on, get something from Safeway, eat, and crash.

MSSU, Day Zero

2009-03-01T07:51:00.000-05:00

Saturday, 28Feb20098, SQL PFE day 76, MSSU day 0: Travel to Seattle

MSSU is Microsoft Services University, and I'm to attend 9 days of training in Bellevue, WA, starting March 1st.

Got up early and worked on describing a procedure to track deadlocks to send to a customer before getting bogged down in travel. Finished and sent it.

Packed, with Carla's help, and finished a few minutes ahead of schedule. Family prayer and then Carla dropped me off at the Vienna/Fairfax Metro station. Short ride to Reagan National Airport and caught a commuter flight to US Airways Philadelphia hub. Up, down... short flight. The plane had 2 seats on one side of the aisle and one on the other side. I was on the single seat side, so I had a window seat and an aisle seat at the same time. Three hour layover in Philly, then a big jet non-stop to Seattle. Against prevailing winds, as usual when flying West, so it was 6 hours in the air. Was afraid my back would not be happy, but it was okay. The seat beside me was empty, so I got to stretch a little more than normal.

Then things started going wrong. I did a pretty good job of not pigging out on sugar all day so my blood sugar was okay, but I'm used to going to bed around 9 PM, or 8 PM if I'm tired. I got into Sea-Tac about midnight Eastern time, and I was really tired. I couldn't run in the airports, but I had walked a lot, pulling my laptop behind me. What could go wrong at this point?

No, not my checked luggage. It took a half hour, but I got my suitcase okay. But I was TIRED. I remembered I was supposed to take a taxi to the apartment I'll be staying at and was told to expect to pay $40. I struggled to find the taxi stand, then spent a few minutes trying to find a cab that would agree to a flat rate. Apparently they're not allowed to do flat rates, but I'm still skeptical. So I finally plop in a cab and haul out my Tom-Tom GPS to make sure he doesn't drive me out of the way to artificially hike the fare. We get to the right street, but the street number doesn't appear to exist. There's supposed to be a North Tower building and a South Tower building owned by the same management company, and I spot the other address, so I get the driver to let me out there since it's only supposed to be a block from the other building. I figure the front desk will get me straightened out. The cab fare is $50 and I waste a moment fretting about it being more than I was told to expect.

There is no front desk. It's an apartment building and the office is closed for the weekend. I'm standing outside getting cold fast, and my bladder is uncomfortably full. It's a downtown area and nearby every store is closed. There are no cabs in sight. The building directory is no help. A young woman enters the building and takes pity on me, letting me drag my bags into the tiny lobby to get in out of the cold. I get my laptop out and start opening email to look up phone numbers and other housing instructions. I start calling numbers and listen to a lot of hold-music. I figure out a housing document listed the wrong street address and I'm actually in my building. I go up to my room and knock on the door. My roommate, who was supposed to arrive this past Wednesday, does not answer the door.

I go back down to the lobby. I finally get through to an emergency number for the company that sublets the apartment to Microsoft. They don't know if my roommate ever checked in or not. If I knew he had, I could camp outside the door in the hallway, but if he didn't show up, that wasn't the best solution. (My TechReady roommate never did show up, so that was a recent precedent I had in mind.) The housing guy says I should have received instructions that told me I was supposed to go to Ken's Baggage at the Sea-Tac airport to pick up my apartment keys. Hmm. I had received a flood of email about MSSU and housing and I missed that item. The housing people have no process to help out ignorants losers like me, so I have to go back to the airport. Oh, and I have to get back there before midnight local time, because that's when Ken's Baggage closes. My bladder situation is getting bad. I pack up my laptop and prop a suitcase in the building's front door (hearing Lucy Pevensie's voice in my head) and look up and down for a cab. No cabs. Very few cars. I call Carla and ask her look up a cab company and have them send a cab while I stay outside in case I can flag down a miracle cab.

I spot a Westin sign on top of a sky-scratcher a couple of blocks away. I call Carla back and tell her to wait about calling a cab. I grab my bags and drag them uphill to the Westin. I go inside and take about 2 hours to empty my bladder. Possibly it was less time than that. What a relief. And I didn't get arrested for indecent exposure! And there was a cab right outside. He takes me back to the airport. I tell him I need to go to the baggage claim area. He says he's not allowed to go there, he's required to go to ticketing. What?! I point out that the place I need to go is baggage claim, not ticketing. I talk him into taking me straight to the baggage claim area. He doesn't even get parked and a police car swoops in and stops him. Another officer approaches on foot. The cabbie was right. For whatever reason, they seriously do not want cabs in that area. (Which explains why I had so much trouble finding a cab the first time after picking up my bag in baggage claim.) They're about to give the cabbie a $100 fine. The cabbie does not look like a wealthy man. I get out and try to explain to the cops, while worrying about Ken's Baggage about to close. They tell me Ken's Baggage is right inside the door to the left and tell me to go. I run. I got to Ken's, showed an ID, signed, and got the keys. The cops let the cabbie off with a warning. The cabbie takes me back to the building. After going a few blocks out of the way. I think he was just a little confused about how to get to my building instead of back to the Westin hotel.

The fare is $93.25. I tell him to add a $10 tip and hand him my AmEx. My boss won't fuss, but I worry that some bean-counter will think I was trying to cheat Microsoft out of a hundred bucks. Beep. Declined. What?! It worked just fine in the previous cab. He tries again. Declined again. I call the 24 hr customer service number on the back of the card. It takes awhile to get a person on the line. They check, and there have been no declines. The cabbie tries again. I look at him machine. The message is "Declined. General System Error." This isn't a credit card problem, this is his credit processing machine with a problem. He deserves the money, I want to pay him. I don't have that much cash. He calls his office. Their credit processing system is down and that's why his is. The only person in the office doesn't know how to fix it. The cabbie takes me a block away to an ATM. I try to get $100 from it with the AmEx. It won't work. I finally get the money with a different credit card. He drops me off and I go inside. My roommate is in town, and appears to have already gone to bed.

I go into my bedroom. It would make a decent tiny home office. It would make a decent nursery. It might make a decent bedroom for a small child with a single bed. This room has a full size bed, a tall chest of drawers, an end table with a large but dim lamp, and a walk-in closet. That's all. There's one foot between the corner of the bed and the chest of drawers. The closet door won't open all the way because it hits the bed. I can't plug in my laptop and put it on the end table without unplugging the lamp (the only light) or the clock. I plug my laptop and phone in to recharge in the only other outlet and leave them on the floor by the door. I bruise my hip trying to get past the chest of drawers with my suitcase. I put the suitcase on the floor so I can open it and get my foot pads out and then crash into bed.

My foot pads have Lidocaine to reduce the burning sensation in my feet due to nerve damage. I usually can't sleep without them. I get them on, turn off the light, and flop into bed. It's too cold. I get up and turn on the light. My bedroom has an individual temperature control. It's not a normal thermostat. I turn the dial until I hear a click. I turn out the light, flop into bed, get up and turn the light back on. It's deathly quiet except I hear someone in the outside hallway. I power up my laptop and launch my flowing-stream audio clip to provide some white noise. I turn off the light again and lay down again. I realize I didn't set it repeat. I get up again. Wrong, it was already set to repeat. I lay back down. The screen-blanker doesn't kick in. I get up and throw a shirt over it. I think it's about 4 AM Eastern time. I lay down and pass out.

I wake up and I can hardly breathe it's so hot. I struggle up, bang into the chest of drawers, crank down the temperature control and crawl back into bed.

Free Lunch

2008-12-10T10:03:00.002-05:00

It's supposed to be a fundamental principle of economics that there's no such thing as a free lunch.

I beg to differ. While I'm changing employers, folks from my old company are taking me out to lunch to say good-bye, and folks from my new company are taking me out to lunch on my first day to say hello.

So, I've already figured out this scam. All I have to do is change employers every other day, and I'll never have to pay for lunch again!

Working & Running = Happy!

2008-12-01T12:20:00.004-05:00

Wow. 6 weeks without a post. I hereby nominate myself for Worst Blogger Ever. My sporadic writing is why my blog has sporadic readers. Although you can always use a "reader" to "subscribe" (for free) and then the reader will notify you when I've posted something new.

Anyway, I've been back at work full-time for awhile, and doing pretty well. Pretty well means I've started running again! The biggest source of pain I have right now is a frozen shoulder. I never heard of a frozen shoulder before, but it's apparently fairly common, though they don't know what causes it. It's painful, but not too much to keep me from working. Or running!

Whatever...

2008-10-15T02:10:00.003-05:00

Got out of the hospital to finish recuperating at home. Clindamycin burned an ulcer into my esophagus and messed up my entire GI track. I seem to have a lot of trouble with side-effects, starting with Tetracycline (an antibiotic) that stained my teeth yellow when I was a kid.

Well, they got me stable, taking 2 mg of Dilaudid every 4 hours for pain, plus lots of other junk to restore my digestive system. Another week or two to fully recover, they project.

So, I get home and my left arm starts swelling up around the elbow, turning red, getting itchy and hot. An infection from an IV that was plugged in there. That happens less than 2 tenths of 1% of the time. How do I keep hitting the rare things??

Another Medical Problem

2008-10-10T23:43:00.003-05:00

I've been in the hospital the last couple of days, was mostly irrational a few days before that. I'll probably be here at least a couple more days. The side effects from taking the antibiotic Clindamycin started bad and got to the point where I was in constant severe pain in my gastro-intestial track. One small swallow of anything would amp the pain to writhing in bed for 30-60 minutes. I'll explain more later.

FMD Update 5

2008-10-06T15:26:00.011-05:00

What a nightmare. I developed a bad toothache a few days before going to see the specialist in New York. I had put off going to the dentist for a couple of years because I was so disappointed with my last experience... my dentist had put in 2 crowns in the back on the same side and they were too short, ruining my bite. Well, this toothache was bad enough that I couldn't procrastinate any longer, but I found a new dentist. He gave me several options, and I chose to have him remove this tooth in preparation for a snap-on-smile. I could always get an implant later, if I want to.

Well, the root of a tooth is normally inside the jawbone, but in this case the jawbone had an indentation and the root was outside the jawbone. So, when the doc pulled the tooth, he mixed some of my blood with some bone graft material and spackled it in the gum and sutured it up. It was supposed to hurt for a day or two after the Novocaine wore off. It didn't. So the doc put me on penicillin in case there was an infection. It felt a little better for a day, then got worse and worse. I was hurting a lot when it was time to leave for NY, but I didn't want to postpone that trip. The trip was very unpleasant due to my gum.

Well, on the trip, Dr. Olin, the FMD specialist, had trouble reading my angiogram. The software on the CD for showing the images does a poor job of cacheing, so it was very slow. He said he'd review them later on a faster computer. Based on the images he did see during our visit, he said that the stretch of right renal artery looks very much like FMD. However, he didn't see any other arteries that looked like they had FMD, so that's a puzzle since FMD normally affects more than one short section. There is, however, a test available that I had not heard of, one that combines an angiogram and ultrasound, and gives the most accurate picture possible of an artery. Since my case is still a mystery, a friend of Dr. Olin's down here in DC may do that test.

So, I get home from the trip, and my mouth is killing me. I call the dentist in the middle of the night and leave a voice mail. He didn't call back right away, so I went to the emergency room. All they could do was put me on a stronger pain medication (hydromorphone) and tell me to go back to my dentist. Actually, the ER doc, who did not examine my mouth at all, said that I needed a root canal on the jaw where the tooth had been. I asked if there could be an infection that might be resistant to penicillin, and he said no, there was definitely no infection. I get home and talk to the dentist (cells phone signals are suppressed in the ER). The dentist walks me through some steps while I look in the mirror, and I push on my gum and some whitish-yellowish liquid comes up out of a hole in the gum. He says it's definitely infected and obviously resistant to penicillin, so he tells me to stop the penicillin and calls in a scrip for clindamycin.

My blood pressure was highly erratic all this time, but my temperature had always been normal. After starting the clindamycin, my temperature started going up and down and the pain got worse. Finally, last night, my fever came down to stay, and the mouth pain has diminished significantly. Just in time for the onset of severe heartburn, a side-effect, apparently, of the clindamycin. Another call to the dentist, who called a pharmacist, and he called and told me to use Mylanta to deal with the heartburn. It doesn't get rid of it, but it makes it a little more tolerable.

Oh, I almost forgot one thing. One afternoon after a trip to the dentist, with my mouth full of Novocaine, I felt no pain anywhere, my blood pressure was great, my mind was clear (well, you know, as clear as my mind gets...), and I was full of energy. That was extremely delightful. Perhaps my mouth has been part of my blood pressure problem. If so, that should be remedied soon.

I see my dentist tomorrow morning, and my general practitioner tomorrow afternoon.

Update

2008-10-02T10:44:00.001-05:00

FMD update delayed due to dental emergency...
Pain and blood pressure out of control. Don't feel like writing...

Mortgage Meltdown, Addendum

2008-09-28T12:45:00.004-05:00

Here's another idea that seems obvious I forgot to put in the previous article.

It's normal, when a homeowner defaults on a mortgage, that the lender evicts the homeowner and sells the house. Normally, however, there's not a tremendous glut of houses for sale at very high prices, so houses are sitting on the market for very long periods of time. For example, the house at 100 Main Street, the owner gets evicted, and the house sits empty for a year before the bank can get it sold. Say the original mortgage amount was $2400 a month, so the total revenue to the mortgage company was $28,800 for one year. Instead the bank's revenue for that period of time is $0.

Mortgage companies, and especially mortgages backed by FHA, Fanny Mae, and Freddie Mac, instead of evicting homeowners, ought to try to work out a deal that lets the homeowner stay in the house and pay some amount of rent. Suppose the homeowner can pay half the amount they were paying in mortgage payments. If they can pay half, then the lenders' revenue will be $14,400 for the year, instead of $0. They can still try to sell it while it's occupied, but they also have the option of selling it as a rental unit that is already rented.

:typed and edited by Promise Lambert

Mortgage Meltdown

2008-09-24T19:07:00.005-05:00

I don't feel like writing a lengthy treatise, but I have to say something about the mortgage crisis, since our political leadership doesn't seem to see what I think is an obvious technique to improve the situation. None of them will see this, probably, but at least I'll get it off my chest.

The Federal Government should pay off 2nd and 3rd mortgages up to 20% of the value of primary residence and take a 25% ownership of the property, if the 1st mortgage is a stable fixed-rate loan and this restructuring will enable the family to keep up with payments after the change. The valuation should be based on the valuation at the time of the last mortgage, not the current valuation.

The Fed is going to pump many billions of dollars into the mortgage crisis somehow. This method allows families to stay in their homes if they can afford it after the deal. They are lightly punished by losing slightly more home value than the percentage of financial assistance they receive. This punishment is appropriate because they bear responsibility for knowing what they could afford long term, and a deal that does not punish them is unfair to those who were more responsible with their finances. Yes, the homeowners were probably deceived by lenders pushing them into houses with payments larger than they could afford in the long term. Criminal charges should be pursued against lenders who misrepresented affordability to home buyers or misrepresented the quality of the loans to mortgage bundlers (for the mortgage resell market). This would minimize foreclosures, which will keep the maximum number of families in their homes and stabilize national home values as much as possible, contributing to a more rapid recovery of housing values than we'll otherwise have.

Thanks to all...

2008-09-23T01:12:00.001-05:00

I haven't been keeping up with email, which makes me feel guilty, but I'm probably not going to do better unless and until I can get my pain significantly reduced. I'm takng a lot less Vicodin than I could in order to avoid getting addicted and to avoid my body becoming so used to it that it doesn't work as well. Unfortunately, that means I hurt more and feel like doing very little, and it makes it hard to sleep until I'm exhausted. That means I've been costing Carla a lot of sleep also.

I've been surprised at how many people have emailed encouragements, even strangers from around the world. Wow. So if I haven't replied to an email from you, please know that I read them all, eventually, and I really do appreciate them. -- John

FMD Update 4

2008-09-20T17:04:00.010-05:00

Well, it was a long, but interesting two weeks, with lots of pain, lots of high blood pressure (measured as high as 195/110) and several new developments.

First, I met with a local interventional radiologist who recommended that he go in and angioplasty my right renal (kidney) artery and look around at all the other arteries in the area, but he wanted to discuss it with my kidney specialist (nephrologist) first. So, I got a call later from an assistant of the radiologist who told me the radiologist talked to the kidney guy, and that the kidney guy wants to see me before the radiology guy does the plasty thing, so I should call the kidney guy right away to get an appointment. So, I call the kidney doctor's office, and they tell me I already have an appointment in 6 weeks. Yes, I explained, but now there's a more urgent matter so I need an appointment right away. Okay, they put me through to the doctor's assistant and I left a voice mail. The next day the assistant called me back and I explained everything, and the assistant said she would talk to the doctor and call me back. That was over a week ago, and they have not called me back. Grrr.

Okay, so the first instance of a major symptom immediately prior to the eventual discovery of FMD was on Sunday, July 13, with lots of abdominal pain, which later localized around my right kidney. I tried to tough it out and went to work as usual on Monday, but the became intolerable and I left after working 7 hours, feeling pretty lame that I couldn't hack just one more lousy hour. Monday night was horrible, and I didn't sleep much, and went to my general practitioner (GP) first thing Tuesday morning, and it didn't take long before she called an ambulance to take me to the hospital. They checked me for kidney stones and gall stones and junk like that, which were all negative. They found a suspicious wedge shaped thing in my right kidney that would need further investigation, and gave me pain meds and sent me home. It wasn't until July 30th that I finally ended up getting an angiogram that revealed FMD in my main right renal artery for sure, and showed a complete blockage in a smaller renal artery that had resulted in the death of 5% of my right kidney, and another partial blockage right next to it. However, no one mentioned the FMD to me, with the possible exception of the radiologist right after the angiogram while I was still stupid from the drugs. Stupider than usual, that is.

Well, this last paragraph is to give you dates, so you can fit this in: In the first week of August, I started noticing a pain in my right shoulder, and it kept getting worse and worse. So I went to my GP about, and was referred to an orthopaedist for a possible tear in my right rotator cuff muscle. Except how could I have torn a muscle? I hadn't been doing anything! Well that led to some big news this week. The ortho doc said all the symptoms fit a tear in the right rotator cuff muscle, gave me a shot in the shoulder and told me to come back in 3 weeks. Did that, and my shoulder was hurting worse, and that wasn't all. The shoulder had only hurt when I moved certain ways. It hurt really bad when I moved it those ways, but when I was a good boy and didn't move it those ways, it didn't hurt. ["Doctor, when I do this, it hurts." "Okay, don't do that."] But in the meantime, my right bicep had started hurting, all the time. So ortho doc sends me for an MRI of my shoulder and I have to wait until yesterday to see her and get the results. And... there's no tear. That's good, right? There's clearly some tendinitis in my shoulder, and some fluid around the joint, and the MRI doesn't show down my arm. The problem is that the tendinitis doesn't explain the severity of the pain.

Now, there's this version of FMD called intimal fibrosis that occurs in less than 10% of FMD cases, but it can cause problems in any artery anywhere, like in a shoulder. I had thought of this a few times, but the odds were really, really tiny. Until I find out I've got no tear. Now those very tiny odds only seemed like tiny odds. The odds my have been tiny, but they were, like, moving in the wrong direction, you know what I mean? So I start thinking too much about it, pondering life without my favorite right arm, and so on. Then I woke up in the middle of the night with a better theory. A much more likely theory. A highly probably theory, that lets me keep my arm solidly attached to the rest of me. Very Tense Muscles. Just hold on, it'll make more sense in a minute.

I went to my GP early this week for a comprehensive review of The State of John, with all the test results, trips to the emergency room with high blood pressure, etc. And as part of the catalog of complaints, the doc noticed my muscles were very tense. I said they had been that way a long while, and I knew it, I just hadn't been able to successfully convince my muscles to relax. It's apparently a reaction to the pain. Or possibly space aliens, but I'm going with pain as the primary culprit. So doc suggests some muscle relaxing drugs. Hey, I'm a basket case, what's one more drug to test? Well, I started taking methocarbamol (generic for Robaxin) "as needed" and pow -- it knocked my blood pressure way down, and reduced my average pain significantly. I hadn't realized just how tense my muscles were!

Now back to the shoulder theory. Tendinitis and tense muscles -- muscles acting like they were constantly doing isometric exercises. What's the treatment for tendinitis? Rest. Don't use the muscles, dummy! Except my muscles were using themselves without permission from the rest of me. So instead of taking the muscle relaxer only when my blood pressure goes high, I'm going to take it regularly for while and wear a sling to remind me not to do anything with my right arm (other than blogging), and I fully expect my right arm to thank me in a week or two. One less source of pain would be a very good thing.

By the way, I had been down to a thyroid medication and pain patches for my feet as my only medications when my kidney blew up. Now I'm on the those, plus 2 blood pressure medications, pain pills, blood thinner, and muscle relaxers. Phooey. By the way, at home, I take the generic version of Vidodin for the pain. They gave a script for Percacet, which is supposed to be stronger, but it does nothing for me. Not only does it not help the pain, it doesn't even give me the intoxicating effect that most people get. Tried it 2 weeks apart, just in case the first time was an anomaly. This, I have no explanation for. Yes, I still have an almost full bottle of Peracet. No, I won't sell it to you. You'll have to get your own malady for that.

For now, it's 11 days and counting until I see Dr. Olin.

FMD Update 3

2008-09-08T21:07:00.004-05:00

I haven't mentioned it before, but the reason I'm posting my story of learning about FMD is in the hope that it might help someone else learn about it. Since it's rarely covered on the evening news. And even if it were, people rarely watch the evening news these days.

So, on with the story. I had a duplex Doppler ultrasound of my carotid arteries Friday morning, then Carla dropped me off at the train station and I worked about 4 hours, but on the way home I started hurting a lot worse. On Sunday, my left kidney started hurting, but not as much as on the right side. My blood pressure was bouncing around, going as high as 145/105, even though I'm on a blood pressure medication.

I had an echo cardiogram this morning (Monday), then went to the office, but it didn't turn out well. The train ride increased the pain a bit, and that apparently triggered my blood pressure to go up again. It kept going up despite a double dose of blood pressure medicine. The building I work in has a health clinic, and a nurse there put me in a dark, quiet room and called my doctor. After awhile, my BP stabilized, then went down to about 135/85, which is still too high. Then my family picked me up, and my BP went up again on the way home. After a few hours in bed, it's finally back down to the safe range: 120/80. Unfortunately, I didn't get much work done.

FMD Update 2

2008-09-04T22:06:00.004-05:00

Worked all day today for the first time in almost 2 months. I was tired and hurting a bit, but I worked the whole day. Even walked to the train and back home. And I got an appointment with Dr. Jeffrey Olin on October 1st. He's the director of vascular medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center, and has written more about FMD than anyone else. So, I should have a lot of news after that.

FMD Update

2008-09-03T20:02:00.003-05:00

Talked to my kidney doctor yesterday and saw my general practitioner today, and they both concur that it's a good idea for me to check with a doc who deals with FMD a lot. I spoke to an assistant for the doc who's written more on the subject than anyone else, and have emailed him my medical history. He's supposed to look it over and his assistant will get back to me regarding one or more appointments. In the meantime, I'm waiting for results of more blood tests, and I have duplex ultrasonography scheduled for my carotid artery and an echo cardiogram just to make sure those things are in good shape. And I now have written permission from my general practitioner that will allow me to go back to work, since my company wouldn't accept a note from my kidney doctor. I still have moderate abdominal pain, but work isn't supposed to make my condition worse, so I'm hoping to last the whole day. Work is good!

Fibromuscular Dysplasia

2008-08-30T13:06:00.004-05:00

Well, it turns out I may not have had a kidney infarction after all. There had been continuous confusion amongst the many doctors involved as to whether I had an infarction (from a clot) or an infection (from unknown cause) in my right kidney. The key thing I understood at the beginning was that I had one small kidney artery that was completely blocked, killing 5% of that kidney, and another small artery right next to it that was partially blocked. The blockages were either from a clot of blood or cholesterol or from an infection. An angiogram showed no sign of an existing clot, so if that was the cause, it had dissolved by then. I was put on an antibiotic in case I had an infection, but that didn't change anything. The early prognosis was that I would be fine with such a small loss of kidney tissue, that I would take an anti-coagulant the rest of my life to ward off any more potential blood clots, continue to watch my cholesterol levels, and the pain should be gone in a few weeks.

Except the pain never left. It subsided for awhile, then got worse a while, then better, and so on, but never left. I was out of work that whole time, as the pain was generally more than enough to require medication that interfered with my ability to think, which is what I get paid for. Had I not taken the pain medication, the pain would have been too much to think, so either way, I wasn't much good for working. Last week the pain improved to the point that I thought was ready to resume working and I got a note from my kidney doctor allowing me to return. At that visit, my kidney doctor reviewed with me everything he knew from all the tests. That included something I hadn't been told about before: there were some partial blockages in the main artery feeding my right kidney, and it was determined (by their size, shape, location, etc.) that they were caused by Fibromuscular Dysplasia (FMD). The kidney doctor still didn't know what caused the full and partial blockages in the smaller arteries, as things didn't quite fit the normal characteristics of either infarction or infection.

Then I found out my company and the insurance company require a note from my general practitioner, so I had to wait until next week. Then a couple of nights ago, the pain got really bad again, and my blood pressure went high (around 160/110) and stayed there. Although the pain backed off a little, the BP stayed up, and my kidney doctor called in a prescription for Diovan to bring my BP down. After a day or so of that, my BP is back down. In the meantime, I've been studying FMD.

FMD is a rare disease. Really. There's actually a list of rare diseases, and FMD is one of them. And there's a support site on the Internet run by doctors and patients, and information from FMD doctors indicates that FMD is not well recognized or understood by doctors. Patient stories support the idea that most doctors are not familiar with it.

Basically FMD results in some cells in the walls of arteries growing larger than they should, constricting the flow of blood through the artery, eventually blocking it off altogether. No one knows what causes FMD, though genes and hormones both seems to be factors. There's no cure, but the symptoms can be treated with anti-coagulates and angioplasty. Most people who are familiar with angioplasty have heard of it because they know someone who had it to open up an artery around their heart. That common usage means someone gets an angioplasty once every few years or less often. Some people with FMD get angioplasty several times a year. FMD can effect any artery in the body, with the kidneys being the most common, and the carotid arteries being the second most common.

So, I've come up with a theory, which I wrote up and faxed to my kidney specialist yesterday. He called me late last night to tell me he had been in hospitals all day and had not had time to read the letter yet, so I'm hoping to hear from him next Tuesday. I have an appointment with my general practitioner on Wednesday, and I'll discuss this with her then. My theory is that I had neither an infarction nor an infection, but that both are the results of FMD. There is a form of FMD called intimal fibroplasia that comprises less than 10% of FMD cases, but it appears to me it fits perfectly with the full and partial blockages I have in my smaller kidney arteries. It seems to me to explain everything, including my continuing and fluctuating pain, and I really like understanding things. If I'm right, however, it's bad news, because this form of FMD is the most aggressive.

Well, as Bill Gates famously said, it's good when bad news travels fast. That's because the sooner you learn of something bad, the sooner you can do something about it. So, I have FMD. I may have the most aggressive kind. Since I know, my doctors and I can more aggressively monitor my arteries and intervene with angioplasty as often as necessary. And that could give me months or years more than I might have left if we hadn't figured it out.

Whenever I have more news, and feel like posting, without being to unintelligent due to pain medication, I'll post followups here.

Big Setback

2008-08-24T03:23:00.002-05:00

I was sure my next training run of 5k was going to be the first time in over 20 years I'd be able to run that distance without having to stop and walk part of the way. I was just a day or two away.

Then I had a kidney infarction and lost 5% of my right kidney. That was weeks ago, and I haven't stopped hurting yet. Quit doing everything, including eating, and have lost 20 pounds, so I'm down to just over 130 pounds. Haven't weighed that little since high school.

Well, two weeks ago I start walking again, very slow, very short distances. I got to where I can walk to the Metro station again, and took a short test ride. Subway trains are way bumpier than cars, if you didn't know, and the shaking is really tough. Since then I've ridden all the way downtown twice. It made me hurt worse for awhile, but within a day it got back to the same level of hurting it was at before the train ride. I sure am looking forward to running again. And working again. And doing other things again. Especially running.

Running Update

2008-06-15T19:02:00.003-05:00

Well, the official results are online for the Race for the Cure, and there were only 7,637 finishers, far fewer than I had been told on race day. I was 517th, with a time of 26 minutes and 23 seconds. I was 23rd out of 222 in my gender/age group.

I ran today, to/from my front door, about 3.1 miles, based on a path I traced with Google Earth. It was 88 degrees, 18% humidity, and rolling hills. I couldn't even run a full 2 miles without stopping to walk this time. It took me 31 minutes & 31 seconds, about a pint of sweat, no known blood loss, and my weak link was breathing (again). For my next race, I may downgrade from a run/walk to a run/walk/stagger.

Rationing Health Care

2008-06-10T19:01:00.001-05:00

Heresy! No one in their right mind would support rationing health care. Would they?

Well, since there is a finite amount of health care, and that amount is less than everyone would use if they could, the fact is that health care is rationed now. The current rationing mechanisms are complex, and involve many intertwined interactions between the free-market, public and private health insurance plans, health provider management organizations, volunteers, and other components. It's complex now, it's not going to become simple, and there are ways to improve it and ways to make it worse. In fact, most changes that would make one aspect of health care better will make other aspects of health care worse. So it would be prudent to make changes very carefully, understanding as much of the trade-offs as possible.

But not now. Now, it's national-electioneering time, and most candidates are going to be talking about health care. Lots of them are going to use the phrase universal health care, but what they'll actually talk about will be universal health insurance. It pains me to observe that there are so many people running for office that use "health care" and "health insurance" as synonyms.

The Politics of Health
Most politicians are not morons, so the reason they talk like this is likely that they are simply pandering for votes with sound-bites instead of carefully reasoned positions. I can't help but wonder, though, how many even realize that health care and health insurance are not the same thing. People don't need health insurance, they need health care -- health insurance is just one of several mechanisms to ration health care.

Universal Health Care. Sounds great! But people will never get what many politicians are promising... extending health care to everyone, without compromising quality. Politicians will never fulfill those promises because it's not economically possible for any society to accomplish that. Some of them make know that, but all of them will yammer about it and pass legislation that deals with health care, and they'll claim victory based on such legislation, regardless of the actual results of the legislation.

Ain't Gonna Happen
I'll use two extremes to illustrate why universal health care is not possible. The concepts are the same whether applied to a single nation or the globe, but since we're using the term "universal", I'll use global terms for this example. So let's assume a world population of 6 billion and total global wealth of 1.1 quadrillion dollars. Let's set aside an extremely meager 10% of wealth for food, housing, transportation, and all those other things people seem to like, leaving us with an even 1 quadrillion dollars for health care.

Great Health Care
For the first extreme, suppose researchers develop a vaccine that will make a person immune to all disease, but that the process to manufacture it results in a cost of one billion dollars per dose. (The pill requires a superconducting super-collider to spawn reactions that result in a molecular accrual rate wherein the energy and maintenance costs equal the billion per dose.) While were at it, let's pretend that there are no safety/side-effect concerns.

If we were to spend our 1 quadrillion dollars for health care on this super pill, we could create doses for exactly one million people, or less than two-tenths of one percent of the world's population. Um, that's noticeably less than universal. But, we run the machine because the researchers hope to discover a way to substantially lower the cost, and while they're researching, they create a few hundred of the pills. Who gets them? Who decides who gets them?

Good news! The researchers have discovered how to significantly lower the costs! Unfortunately, it still isn't enough for everyone. So, you chose... do you want the pills to go to the oldest people, the children, or random chance selection? Okay, say we chose the children for the noblest of reasons. Now, at maximum production, we can provide one pill to 80% of all children born. Sorry, there's just not enough wealth to get to 100%. Maybe if we took some of our health care money and used it to improve the economy we could get there, but that would mean we have to create fewer pills now. How could you possibly chose to reduce pill production to cover only 70% of the children now in order to get to 100% some day in the future? Those are hundreds of millions of children you're leaving exposed to deathly disease. Okay, 80% it is. Which 80%?

Great Health Care Equality
Here's the other extreme. All world governments agree to a global health care plan that will be absolutely equal. In order to ensure that it is equal, everyone reluctantly agrees not to allow any health care other than the what is provided by the global health care plan, so the rich people can't have anything better than the poorest person. Yeah! Now that's truly fair to all! Okay, we know we can't afford to give everyone the best of everything, so we have to start from the other direction. We'll come up with a list of health care benefits that can be provided to every person on the planet, adding one item at a time until we reach our 1 quadrillion dollar limit. Now let's see how much we have to spend. One quadrillion divided by 6 billion people equals... $166,666.67!

Wow, jackpot! That's a whole lot of health care for every man, woman, and child on the planet! So, we can allocate for each person for their entire life. Oh, let's say, two boxes of band-aids, two emergency-room visits for broken bones, and we don't have those super-pills under this scenario, so we'll dedicate some funds for vaccines, one-heart attack emergency room visit, a few drugs such as cholesterol and blood-pressure control, and we'll allocate the rest to cancer chemotherapy and radiation. Unfortunately for you, you need a heart transplant, and that didn't make it onto the list.

Well, that's no good, so we'll make the universal health care plan so that everyone gets up to $166,666.67 worth of whatever they need. All right! Oops, it seems that your heart transplant would cost $200,000. Sure, if you sell your house, you can come up with the extra $33,333.33 to throw into the pot, but you're not allowed to. That would be unfair to all the people who don't have any extra money, and a fundamental principle of the universal health care plan is that we absolutely must be fair. No one can get anything extra just because they can afford the extra costs. Besides, we forgot about the time you broke your arm on the playground and had a doctor put a cast on it. Now you're an additional $500 short.

But then you realize that there are a lot of people who are healthy their whole lives and never need any health care at all. The health care money those folks don't use should be made available, equally of course, to all the folks who do need it. And joyously, it turns out to be $33,833.33, so it will cover your heart transplant!

Unfortunately, it took quite a bit of effort to get the world to agree to the universal health care plan, and now its managed by a United Nations bureaucracy, so it may take a little longer to get them to change things than you have left on your old ticker.

Promises, Promises
Okay, so what's my point? The point is that universal health care is what people need, but that universal health care without compromising the maximum quality of health care is not possible, and any political candidate who says otherwise is either woefully ignorant or is lying. So, please don't vote for morons or liars.

2 Months, 2 Minutes

2008-06-08T18:07:00.006-05:00

My son David & I completed another 5K yesterday, the Susan Komen Race for the Cure, which raised over $3,000,000 to fight breast cancer. The temperature was about 72 degrees and humidity was about 80 percent at 6:30 AM, but the temperature climbed fast and the humidity went down a bit by the time the race was over.

The race was to start at 8:00 AM, and David and I got to the starting area at 7:20. There were so many thousands of people scheduled to run, I figured it'd be crowded at the starting line by 6:00, and I didn't want to wait there that long even if it meant having to spend as much time running side-to-side to avoid other runners as I spent running forward, so 7:20 is when I planned for us to get there. Much to my surprise, there was only one other person standing at the starting line, though there were at least a hundred on the shoulders of the road nearby.

We took places front-and-center, and I laid down to rest and wait. Normally, I don't recommend that anyone lay down in the middle of the street on Constitution Avenue. Immediately after the starting barriers were removed, about two minutes before the race started, a couple of dozen people pushed their way to the front. You could tell these were the serious runners who wanted to win or place, so I didn't mind giving way to them.

As the race began, I ran my pace, and instead of having to pass other people, other people were passing me. A lot of these folks were those who don't know their pace, so they go real fast to start, then have to walk. I wasn't able to run the whole way, but I ran my pace as long as I could, and I made the first mile in 8 minutes flat, and the second in 8 minutes and 4 seconds. It wasn't long after that, though, that I had to walk a bit, and alternated between walking and running until the last quarter mile or so, when I was actually able to put in a little kick to the finish line. It was so warm, around 2.5 miles, I had started if I would have to walk the rest of the way, but I was able to mush through it.

This race didn't use the sensors attached to shoes, so they had lanes at the finish line. You enter a lane and someone manually writes down your time, in order. Someone else tears off your bar-coded ID from your race bib and puts in on a spindle, in order, so that if it works right, they get a fairly accurate time. Unfortunately, by the time David came through, there were so many people jammed up at the finish line, he had to wait to get counted. That was the case for most of the runners, and there were tens of thousands, so I was told. David still finished in under 40 minutes, though.

I haven't found an estimate by the organizers as to when official times and places will be posted. By my stopwatch, I finished in 26 minutes and 29 seconds, so I shaved a little over 2 minutes off my time from my race in April. This time, I didn't push myself quite as hard, and wasn't completely exhausted afterward. My average speed was 7.02 miles per hour, and my pace was 8 minutes and 33 seconds per mile. Not bad considering this time last year my muscles hurt so badly without knowing the cause that I wasn't sure if I'd be alive this year. My next goal is to be able to run an 8 minute pace without stopping for a full 5 kilometers. Once I can do that again, I haven't decided if my next goal will be speeding up or increasing distance. Isn't that a wonderful dilema?!

After the finish line, I turned right and walked over to the path around the
Smithsonian Museum of Native Americans and scooped up some water to splash on myself while I waited to meet up with David there. Almost everyone else turned left to go onto the National Mall, where the organizers had lots of tents set up. Despite the enormous crowd, only a dozen or so people came over to the museum, so it was a great choice for a meet-up. That museum is such a peaceful place.

RE: Skyrocketing Oil Prices Stump Experts

2008-05-22T20:11:00.003-05:00

"Skyrocketing Oil Prices Stump Experts" is the headline of a Washington Post article today. Perhaps the experts... aren't.

From the article: "People don't get it," said Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) at a Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday at which senior oil company executives were grilled about prices. Kohl said: "Demand is not crazy. Why are prices going crazy?" The article quotes from a wide variety of people that are allegedly experts, and they basically say they don't have a clue.

The answer is simple, really. The prices are high because a number of events occurred that tend to create pressure for prices to rise (e.g. increasing global demand), and people who choose to invest in oil futures have gotten auction fever. That drives the prices of future oil deliveries up, and the higher the prices go, the more "feverish" the investors get.

Joe's Story
As the price of oil futures are bid up, it has a carry-over effect on current prices. Over-simplifying, and exaggerating to make the point clearer, suppose Joe has 1000 gallons he wants to sell today to a gas station, he paid $1.50/gallon, he plans to sell it for $2/gallon, and oil futures that are about to "close" are selling at $1.50/gallon. Before lunch, the price for the futures that are about to "close" are driven up to $1.75/gallon, an increase of almost 17% in a few hours. Now Joe's gotta figure after he sells his gas, he's got to buy more at $1.75.

Joe could sell the gas for what he already planned to, make the amount of profit he already expected, buy his next shipment of gas for whatever the market cost is at that time, and mark up his price accordingly. That's the way most of us want Joe to see it. But Joe doesn't see it that way. Joe figures, the gas I have is worth a lot more this afternoon than it was this morning. I'm going to charge the gas station $1.75/gallon this afternoon. And he'll make a lot more profit at the expense of the person who pumps it into his car later. Or maybe he's worried that he'll be accused of price-gouging, so he decides to sell it for only $1.70/gallon.

Good ol' Joe. It's not his fault, it's "just basic supply and demand". Except that the faster he raises his prices, the more it feeds the auction-fever frenzy of the oil future speculators.

If you haven't figured it out, Joe represents the people at the big oil refineries and distributors that decide how much and when to increase their prices.

Who's fault is it?
Well, the market pressures are what they are, and they've been creeping up. The oil future investors have been over-reacting to market pressures because their exchange medium is auction-based. The big oil companies' price setting policies have been exacerbating the problem.

What can be done?
There are several options: change nothing, lower demand, increase supplies, or regulate distribution.

1. Change nothing and the prices may soar to wild heights. I've heard people talking about the "extreme" possibility that gas could go over $5/gallon at the pump. That's nothing, over $20/gallon is possible. Why? Because when auction fever runs amok, prices have no top-end in the short-run. Have you ever been in an auction, started bidding, gotten caught up in it, and bid way more than you really thought the item was worth? It happens every day in every auction-based market. Remember the incredibly high prices of tech-stocks before the tech-bust? Same thing. Dangerous? You bet. Bad enough that nations can go to war to "protect their national interests". For example, oil was a major factor in Japan's expansionist policies leading into World War II -- they wanted to secure the oil resources their economy was becoming dependent on.

2. Lowering demand is not likely at all, and if a major effort were made, it would accomplish too little to cool off the auction-fever.

3. Increasing supplies is technically more plausible, but you'd have to get a majority of oil-producing nations to glut the market to stop the auction speculation frenzy. Those nations only have so much oil, however, and the faster they pump it out, the faster they run out, and they don't have anything to replace that income with, so they want to try to stretch it out. Plus they're getting much higher prices, so they're not as worried about the consequences as others are.

4. Which leaves regulation. There are many ways to regulate, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, from both practical and economic perspectives. Unfortunately, anything that will seriously cool off the oil futures speculators will cause a separate set of negative effects.

What will be done?
Things will keep going just like they have been, and one of two things will happen. The oil market will stabilize enough to cool the investment speculators enough for the last ones in to lose a lot of money, and then prices may start adjusting more slowly. Or, the price increases will continue to rise rapidly and cause repercussions that are so painful, governments will begin increasing regulations, and they'll implement them haphazardly and with increasing severity until there's a global crash.

What should be done?
For many decades, industrial nations have periodically had banking crises characterized by panics that are similar to run-away auction fever, and they've created more and more mechanisms to avoid panic and to intervene when panic does occur. Some of these mechanisms are always-present regulations, and some are regulatory powers that only kick-in under specific circumstances, and only until circumstances improve. It hasn't been perfected, but the overall effect has worked very well for a long time now in the banking industry.

Similar efforts should be made to regulate commodity markets, such as oil. For instance, if retail prices increase by more than a specified percentage in a specified period of time, oil companies could be prevented from increasing their profit-margins. This particular interference in the marketplace would not cause the long lines that rationing causes, but it would effectively cap the oil companies profits until markets stabilized.

Top-it-off
Okay, so I used the topic of experts being puzzled to rattle on about some ramifications of high gas prices and espouse what I think would be an improvement. Getting back to the starting line, I don't know why anyone is puzzled. The market for oil prices is an auction, and the investors playing in it have gotten auction-fever. The question shouldn't be what's driving the high prices, it should be what we're going to do about it, if anything.

I'm Back!

2008-04-07T22:38:00.001-05:00

I finished the 2008 Cherry Blossom 5k Sunday morning, the first timed race I've ever competed in, and the first time I've been able to seriously run in many years. And the first timed-race in my life was also the first for my two sons! They didn't take preparations very seriously, and I beat them handily. I don't want to tease them too much, however, so I don't give any extra incentive for next time. It won't take them much effort to trounce me, I suspect.

But for now, my thyroid is under control, I'm not taking any medications with wacko side-effects, and I've getting stronger every week. I'm back! Back to when I used to run just because I love to. Although at the end of the race, it was more like staggering. I left nothing on the course.

I finished in 28 minutes and 47 seconds, averaging 9 minutes and 16 seconds per mile! I placed 63rd out of 267 men (well, males, some as young as 9). I was 6th out of 19 in my age group of 45-49. Not bad, considering I'm twenty-something years out-of-shape, it was cold, it was raining, and I started at the back of the pack, so I spent a lot of effort moving side-to-side to get around people.

Some folks might think I have a tiny little competitive streak, but that's not true. The fact that I've already been examining the results to see how many more people I could have finished in front of if I had shaved off another minute, or two more minutes, is just a form of mental exercise. While I plot my next race. One scheduled for a warmer day.

The Myth of the Ongoing War in Iraq

2008-04-02T22:19:00.000-05:00

It's the year 2008 and people are saying "the war in Iraq" to refer to the activities of our U.S. combat troops in Iraq. Republicans are saying it. Democrats are saying it. Independents are saying it. News reporters are saying it. Political commentators are saying it. There's only one problem with it. There is no war in Iraq.

We were at war in Iraq, but that ended when the U.S. and its footnote-allies crushed the Iraqi Army. It began on 20 March 2003, and it ended on 15 April 2003. The war is over.

Ask a thousand people what "war" means and 99% will tell you some variation of: the military of one nation or group of nations fighting the military of another nation or group of nations. On 15 April 2003, Iraq had no military. That's a noteworthy point. Here's another: Iraq has a military now, and the U.S. military is training and equipping them.

Yeah, I've read or heard people whining: "But we still have soldiers there", "But we're still spending billions of dollars on military operations over there", and "But we still have soldiers being killed in combat operations over there".

Okay, here's my specific rebuttals to those issues. We have soldiers in many nations all over the world and we are not at war with those nations. Japan, for example. The amount of money spent doesn't define whether or not we are at war. We spend a lot of money to support our troops in Japan. Altogether we spend hundreds of billions every year on military expenses even in peace-time. Yes, we have soldiers dying in Iraq, but it's not from war, it's from occupying-actions.

Since 15 April 2003, U.S. military forces in Iraq have been attacked, and killed, not by the Iraqi military, but by armed Iraqi citizens who object to our continued presence there and by non-Iraqi instigators generally promoting Iraqi civil war for a variety of reasons. When our combat troops make a raid today, it's not to defeat an opposing army, it's to enforce civil order on those rebellious citizens and to capture or kill anti-Iraqi and anti-U.S. terrorists.

So what? At the end of World War II, there wasn't much armed resistance in Germany because Germany's infrastructure was in ruins, there were relatively few men of fighting age still alive, and it was occupied by multiple very large armies. There wasn't much armed resistance to the occupying forces in Italy, because the citizens were content to start rebuilding for the most part. There wasn't much armed resistance in Japan because their Emperor had surrendered and was still nominally in charge of society. In addition, none of these conquered nations had religiously motivated murderers trying to stir insurrection.

The U.S. had more than enough troops to crush the Iraqi military in 2003. We never had enough troops to enforce civil order afterward. The "surge" helped, and a larger surge would have helped more. An earlier increase in occupying forces would have helped sooner. But it's not us against the Iraqis.

We're for the Iraqis. We want all Iraqis to share the benefits of a peaceful representative democracy. We want them to prosper. We want them to enjoy freedom. We want them to live. Regardless of whether we should have overthrown Saddam Hussein or not, the price we're paying now in lives and money is to promote freedom in an infant democracy. Not to wage war.

Running again!

2008-03-28T20:56:00.005-05:00

I used to love running. A long time ago. Over twenty years ago. Then my medical mysteries became debilitating, and I was unable to run. For over 20 years. Then a couple of years ago, my general practitioner finally figured out what all the specialists missed. My thyroid was busted. So I started taking a thyroid hormone replacement, and I got a lot better. But I had other problems. Most of the remaining problems went away when I quit taking a medicine that was supposed to help with the painful burning sensation in my feet (peripheral neuropathy, probably due to the thyroid deal).

I started exercising again. I included walking. Faster... and faster. Then I tried jogging. Boy, did that feel great! After rebuilding a little leg strength, one day I broke into a real run. The first time in over twenty years. Wow! I loved it! I didn't run long, I didn't run fast, and didn't run far, but I ran! I increased all my exercising and ran more and more. Still not a lot, but getting better and better. I had more energy for other things, too, and started doing more things in my spare time.

Then my muscles started freaking out. Muscle relaxers didn't work. Massage made it worse. It got to the point that just touching muscles could hurt a lot. More doctors. More tests. Lots more. An unfortunately familiar pattern. On high-pain days when I couldn't work a full 8 hours, and not knowing what the cause was, I wondered how long I had left to live.

Then I had an annual physical, at my general practitioner's office. They were more worried than usual because I looked so bad. But, a few days later they called and said my cholesterol levels were finally in the good range, and I could quit taking Lipitor. Within a few days, my painful, debilitating muscle problems starting going away! Why didn't the doc's figure that out? Well, severe muscle problems are known side effects of Lipitor, but apparently most people who have those particular side effects have them very soon after they start taking it, and I had been taking it for a couple of years without any problems.

But, once again, I started getting better, exercising more, and finally started running again. Just a few paces at first, then fifty feet, then a hundred. When I got up to where I could do a slow run half-way home from the train station, I signed up for the Cherry Blossom 5K run-walk on April 6th, to give myself an external goal. It's only a 5K run-walk, but it's a real race. My first goal was just to finish, no matter how long it took. Unlike the 10 mile Cherry Blossom, there's no bus to scoop you up if you go too slow.

Well, I joined the fitness club in the building where I work, I've kept exercising, and a couple of weeks ago, I ran the whole way home, about a half-mile. And today... today I ran 3.1 miles on the treadmill... that's 5 kilometers, folks. My top speed was only 9 mph for a few paces, but I did 6 and 7 mph for sustained periods. Of course, the rest of the time I was walking. Total time? 32 minutes, 23 seconds, for an average pace of about 5.7 mph.

The race is a week and two days away, on an early Sunday morning. I'll let you know how it goes. If I live to tell...

Protest of Electronic Voting Machines

2008-02-12T10:24:00.001-05:00

This morning, February 12, 2008, I appeared at my polling place in Mosby Elementary School to cast my vote in the Democratic presidential primary, but refused to use the electronic voting machines, due to their inherent unreliability. The chief and assistant chief of the poll determined that this circumstance (my claim that the machines are unreliable) was not clearly covered by their rule books, so they phoned the Fairfax County Electoral Board. After they spoke to officials there, a County official also spoke to me by phone. After a lengthy discussion, the official on the phone spoke to the assistant chief of the poll and authorized me to submit a provisional paper ballot, although they were unable to assure me that my vote would be counted. They further explained that I have the right to appear before the County Electoral Board at Noon tomorrow at the Fairfax County Government Center, Room 315-C, to defend my ballot.

I will appear before the board and base my case on Virginia Code 24.2-642, which begins, “When any voting or counting device becomes inoperative in whole or in part while the polls are open…”, and the fact that it is impossible to know if the voting computer is recording all votes accurately.

My position is that there are only two ways for a person to know that an electronic voting machine is accurately recording votes and thereby fully operational. 1. Have the voting machine produce a paper record that allows each voter to confirm that their vote is accurately recorded on the paper record and use those paper records to validate the records and tabulations of the voting machine, or 2. Have a person who understands every line of code in the software and both the original and current condition of every physical circuit in the computer hardware verify that no errors can occur. In the first case, the use of a voting machine is rendered moot except that unvalidated election results can be produced very quickly. The second case is not humanly possible, and even if it were, we should not trust our election results to any single person.

Official reasons I have heard for the use of electronic voting machines are: 1. They save money, 2. They provide rapid results, and 3. They count more accurately than people counting paper ballots. Unofficial reasons, I suspect, include overly optimistic marketing presentations of the companies who manufacture voting machines, which gloss over the systemic flaws in the voting machine concept.

The fundamental purpose of an election is to provide citizens with the ability to elect representatives by popular, anonymous votes, and there must be a method by which ordinary citizens can validate all votes, otherwise our elections are vulnerable to errors serious enough to effect the outcomes of elections, whether those errors are intentional or unintentional. The purpose of an election is not to save money nor to provide rapid results.

Saving money and providing rapid results should only be considered for methods that improve voting systems that meet the fundamental purposes of elections, which must include the possibility of comprehensive verification. A claim that voting machines count more accurately than people is not true in the case of machines without voter-validated paper trails, because without voter-validated paper trails, it is impossible to know the accuracy of the voting machines' records. The executives and technicians at the voting machine companies say, "Trust us." I, for one, will not.

For these reasons, I will never again use a voting machine that does not include a paper record that allows me to verify that my vote was correctly recorded, so that the rapid-tabulation systems can be verified. I will continue to appear at my polling place in every election and request either a fully auditable system or a paper ballot.

John Lambert
Fairfax, VA

For further reading:

What's More Important: Accurate Elections Or Fast Results?

You Can't Patch An Election

Black Box Voting

E-Voting Undermines Public Confidence In Elections Even Without Evidence of Wrongdoing

Judge Voids Election Results Over E-Voting Results That Couldn't Be Audited

Article index of voting machine issues

UPDATE: 2/13/2008

Well, I got to defend my ballot with the Fairfax County Electoral Board, and it was a fun experience. They had 3 voting members for this process and 2 advisors, and they were all intelligent, reasonable people who were focused on following the rules to ensure the integrity of the election. Excellent! It was determined that the person who authorized me to complete a provisional ballot should not have done so, as the rules provided those only for people who were not in the polling book, but contended that they should have been in the book, not for people who wanted a paper ballot because of any other reason. Well, the rules for the Board are different from the rules at the poll, so the issue was now different. One voting member took the position that I was eligble to vote, and they had my sealed vote, so they should count it. Another took the position that I shouldn't have received the provisional ballot in the first place, so it should not be counted. The third's position was that I was trying to "strong-arm" a way to use a paper ballot, when the rules did not provide for that (which was correct), so he was opposed to counting my vote. Then they asked the advisors about precedents and were told that this issue has arisen in the past, and the votes were counted. Based on that insight, they all agreed to count my vote.

The best thing, though, is that when I inquired about how I could pursue moving Virginia away from non-voter validated voting systems, they told me that it had already been done. Last year (I probably missed this in my research because it was so recent), the Virginia Legislature passed a law that all new voting equipment must include the option to process paper ballots. And there will be at least four in use in Fairfax County this November. (And they said that they would make sure that one of those machines was in my precinct!)

Everything Has An Upside

2008-01-08T19:43:00.000-05:00

Personally, I don't recommend you try to develop peripheral neuropathy for any reason, but if you're stuck with it, there can be advantages...

When I was in the neighborhood of ten years old, I accidentally raked the index and middle fingers of my left hand across the rotating blade of a table saw. It sliced into each finger tip parallel to my fingernails and took out chunks of meat. I was surprised at how much blood could come out of fingers, since there aren't any arteries that far from the heart. But those little veins and capillaries carried an awful lot of blood. Yuk. I hate seeing blood. Especially mine.

Of course, the wound healed over within a week or two, but those fingertips were still sensitive to touch for a long time after that. Eventually, though, they got to where I didn't notice them any more.

That is, until the first time I tried to play a guitar. Trying to fret the strings was too painful to endure. Yeah, I know, it hurts every new guitar player until calluses form. Except my index and middle fingers hurt far worse than the other two fingers, especially when I pressed right on the scars in certain directions, so I'm pretty sure that was worse than usual. At any rate, it was bad enough to keep me from trying for more than a few minutes once every few years.

Now, take that scenario, add a couple of decades of nerve deterioration in my hands, and viola, those two troublesome fingertips no longer hurt too much to fret a guitar! They still hurt a little bit, but I figure they're about the level that most people would normally feel. That's where my neuropathy really pays off! :) And as an added bonus, my ring and little fingers on my left hand don't hurt at all... they're too numb!

My best neuro-doc has also told me that my peripheral neuropathy may improve eventually, since it was caused by deficient levels of thyroid hormones that is now being controlled. So, I may lose numb-finger "advantage", but if I do, you can be sure I'll have well-developed calluses long before then. Make hay while the sun shines, as they say, or in this case, make calluses while the pain is numbed!

Why guitar? I couldn't stand the poor sounds I was getting out of my violin long enough to get to the point where it wasn't too annoying. I don't really care much for the sound my autoharp makes. My trumpet is a little too LOUD to practice whenever I want. The guitar is easy to get good sounds out of if you can hold the strings down, I like the sound I get with thumb picking/strumming (don't care much for the sound I get from picks), and its quiet enough that I can practice any time I want!

Oh, and why are my hands and arms numb, but the nerve damage in my feet causes a nasty burning sensation? I dunno. It's relatively common for peripheral neuropathy, but no one seems to know why some people get burning sensations vs. numbness in various places. That's one of the 23,917,603 reasons I say that medical science, like all other sciences, is still in its infancy.

Ouch Relief

2007-11-29T13:14:00.000-05:00

Well, the nerve blocks were nice for a few hours each time, but then they wore off. Nothing was helping much and we (the doctors and I) weren't making useful progress in figuring out exactly what was wrong with my muscles, ligaments, and tendons, let alone why.

I can now report very good news, however. About a month ago, I had my annual physical, which showed that my cholesterol was finally back into a healthy range, so I stopped taking Lipitor. A few days later, my muscle/ligament/tendon problems were noticably better, on average. And kept getting better. I didn't want to blog this until now, thinking that couldn't be it, and I might start getting worse again.

My neurologist has just told me that considering all the circumstances, he's certain that my muscle problems for the last 9 months was indeed due to Lipitor side-effects, despite the fact that I was on Lipitor for a couple of years before that without those effects. As I've started telling friends and relatives about the Lipitor connection, now they've been telling me, "Oh, you were on Lipitor? I could have told you that causes muscle problems." Nothing like hindsight...

We have no idea why those side-effects kicked in all of a sudden, but boy, what a relief to be rid of them, and to know what the cause was. That was kind of like my nasty experience with Cymbalta, which the neuro-docs put me on a high "theraputic" dose of to try to ease the burning in my feet. I was on that for a long time also before side-effects kicked in and knocked me sideways.

So, I've been perking up, muscles/tendons/ligaments are back to "normal" for me.
I've gotten caught up at work, and things are looking rosy again. And my hobby activity is picking up again, as evidenced by this post! The only pills I'm on now are Levoxyl (thyroid hormone replacement) and 3000IU/day of vitamin D, so I shouldn't be getting any new side-effects from miscellaneous drugs.

A moral to this story? Perhaps that perscription drugs can be just as dangerous as illegal drugs. And no, I don't use illegal drugs... I have enough problems without intentionally causing more.

Leg? What leg?

2007-09-20T19:00:00.000-05:00

My left leg (below the hip/groin area, above the ankle, and excluding the knee), doesn't hurt as much as my right leg, and I think that can only be due to the nerve block & cortisone derivative treatment earlier this week. The funny thing is, those parts of my legs hurt so much less than other parts, the other parts have held my attention to the point that I didn't even realize until now that those parts of my legs were hurting. Hm... is that good or bad?

Well, I'm still going to do my best to follow advice I got many years ago, from my first pain management specialist: ignore it all as much as you can and get on with things. That doesn't always work, but it's better than the alternatives.

Ouch

2007-09-18T16:38:00.000-05:00

My excuse for not posting in a long time is that I've been in a lot of pain. Peripheral neuropathy due to hypothyroidism. Yuk. I've been able to keep up with my full-time job, but just barely. Yesterday a neurologist injected some nerve-block type stuff in some muscles and tendons in the left side of my butt. The goal is for us to compare how that effects my left side to my untreated right side. It's a diagnostic process right now. The first few hours were pretty nice, with a neglible amount of pain in my left butt, and even a little less pain in my left leg, but then it started fading, as expected. I'll see that doc again in two weeks. Right now, I'm really wishing I could have a pain free part of me again.

Pig Track

2007-06-07T14:00:00.000-05:00

7 June Update: This week, 143 even. I think next week's weight-in will be the final one for this event.

19 Apr Update: Last week, 146.5, this week, 144.5. My long term target was 145, but I think the Pig Club considers it a good thing if you weight less than the weight that was your original target.

What is the Pig Club?

6 Apr Update: Last week I wasn't at HUD, so I missed the weigh-in. This week I'm down to 147 even.

15 Mar Update: Last week I was down to 148. This week I'm down to 147.5 -- just haven't been very hungry...

24 Feb Update: Last week I was up slightly to 153. This week I was down to 150, earning myself the coveted title of Lean Machine of the Week. Who cares about emmies, grammies, and oscars?

9 Feb Update: The Pig Club's tracking system can't handle a goal of staying the same weight, so I've changed my goal to lose 5 pounds from my starting weight. And I'm headed in the wrong direction...

Update & Poem

2007-06-03T21:51:00.000-05:00

Hmm. I haven't posted in over a month. Well, that's about when my muscles started going on strike. The first 3 1/2 months of this year seemed like my body was improving steadily, with just a few minor setbacks now and then. Then my muscles started tightening up.

No big deal, I always have a prescription of muscle relaxers (methocarbomol) from my doc, and I usually keep some on hand. I just take those for a day or two, the muscles get over whatever was causing the problem, and I'm no worse for wear. Except this time.

The problem hasn't subsided, is worse than ever before, and the muscle relaxers have barely kept me functional enough to do my job. I have an appt this coming Friday to talk to the doc again to try to figure out what the cause is so I can start improving again. She's a great doc, I procrastinated making an appt, and it takes a long time to get one, because she's so popular.

Okay, this isn't Carla's poem, it's mine. But I don't wanna create a new category for one entry, and "Carla's poetry" is the closest. It's the only poem I've ever written that I like. And I thought it had been lost forever, but Carla had copied it years ago, and just found it. This poem is from a guy (me) who used to worry about the "waste" of giving cut flowers as a present, until he realized...

An Economist's Justification

"A waste of money,
these flowers will rot!
They'll dry up and wither,
and then what have you got?"

Yes, I know my dozen messengers
will not produce like kind,
but even if they do prove brief,
I certainly will not mind.

For regardless of their life-span,
and their non-regeneration,
yet they provide a forum
of unequaled demonstration;

The Love that these kind friends reflect
says, "I love you a lot!"
And when these sweet red roses,
with their joy have been forgot,
your knowledge of my love for you,
of a certainty, will not.

Thus their cost is not so great,
when their true benefit you see --
for these flowers tell the whole world
that you're worth everything to me!

P.S. Regarding that last line. You always have been. You always will be.

Prosperity for Posterity

2007-04-22T13:41:00.000-05:00

Prosperity for US
Well, I read about Prosper.com a few months ago in Readers Digest magazine, but forgot about it until this past week. It's a pretty cool peer-to-peer loan system for U.S. residents founded by the guy who started ELoan.com, and I've opened an account (it's free) and started fiddling with it. (For details on how it works, visit their web site.)

This prompted me to look at our debts, and I was surprised to find that we have 3 credit card accounts with small balances that have exorbitant interest rates. So, I studied up how to apply for a loan on Prosper, joined a group, got my info verified, and posted an application for a $5k loan to pay off those 3 credit cards. I put in the maximum interest rate allowed by Virginia, 11%, and it got fully funded within minutes. However, I'm letting the listing stay open for the maximum time of 10 days, and since it was fully funded at 11%, additional lenders (individual investors) have been bidding to get a piece of my loan, thereby bidding down the interest rate, which is now below 10%. Way cool! Check it out:

You can borrow, you can earn money by lending, or you can earn money by managing a group.

Prosperity for the rest of the World
One guy borrowing money via Prosper is using the money to reinvest, partly in microloans at kiva.org. I never heard of kiva.org, so of course I had to check it out.

Kiva (from the Swahilli word for "agreement") allows anyone to make microloans to the working poor in some of the poorest areas of the world. The staff at Kiva vets each borrower, and though the amounts are generally small by U.S. standards, they can have profound impacts on the people who receive these loans.

Some of these folks may never have another opportunity like this to improve their and their families lives, and you can help. You can make a small loan to someone on the other side of the planet and improve their lives forever.

Physics 4.0

2007-03-17T17:11:00.000-05:00

Light -- is it a particle, or is it a wave? The answer, of course, is that it is neither, or both, depending on your point of view. But it's not one or the other.

I was looking forward to starting a new career in physics someday, probably two or three careers from now, and resolving the particle vs. wave discrepancy. Alas, it looks like I'm too late, as Xiao-Gang Wen (MIT) and Michael Levin (Harvard) have come up with what may be just that resolution. Here's a summary explanation in New Scientist magazine.

String-nets. It's elegant. Its covers a lot of concepts. It appears to be validated by the existence of a mineral named Herbertsmithite. (No kidding, it's discoverers named it after a man they admired.) And I'm betting it will even lead directly to a quantum theory of gravity.

If Newtonian physics was Physics 1.0, then Relativity could be Physics version 2, and Quantum Mechanics could be Physics 3. String-nets could be the beginning of Physics 4.0. Pretty cool!

But... so far it doesn't seem to resolve my dilema of entanglement vs. relativity, so maybe there's still room for me to make a contribution to physics by redirecting my efforts. Eventually...

Simple vs. Complex

2007-03-01T04:44:00.000-05:00

A friend recently suggested that complex people tend to have simple ring tones (ring, ring) on their cell phones, and simple people tend to have complex ring tones (musical ditties), just based on her personal observations.

So, is my ring tone simple or complex? Well, my phone's almost always on vibrate, so I don't know what that says about me. But for those rare occasions when I have the sound on, my ring tone is a recording of my own voice saying, "Telephone... telephone..." What do you think? Is that simple, complex, or just strange?

Taking People For Granted

2007-02-24T14:37:00.000-05:00

I've always heard that it's wrong to take people for granted.

Why is that?

Carla and I have lots of moments that we concentrate on each other and drink in every little nuance of our friendship, but the vast majority of the time, we don't... we take each other for granted.

Between the times we verbally profess our love for each other (about every few hours), we take it for granted that we love each other. Between the times we're physically intimate (about every few hours), we take it for granted that we're being faithful to each other. [Just kidding about being intimate every few hours... sometimes we take a day off to rest!] Between the times we make plans together, we take if for granted that neither of us will make big decisions without involving the other.

So, yes, we take each for granted. Is that a bad thing? We know each other, we help each other, and we trust each other, and that's why we can take each other for granted. That seems to me like a pretty wonderful thing!

John's Famous Relatives

2007-02-19T17:11:00.000-05:00

Our family tree on Ancestry.com now has over 1700 people in it, thanks to many contributions from family and ties into the One World Tree. This goes back far enough and wide enough for the web site's famous relative search tool to work. And, it turns out I have some bad apples in the family, such as train robbers and politicians. Good or bad, here are some famous people related to John Donovan Lambert:

James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937)
Scottish Novelist
James Matthew Barrie wrote the stories of Peter Pan and The Lost Boys. His college acquaintances include Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Lewis Stevenson, with whom he wrote for the university newspaper.
Relationship: 3rd Cousin 12 times removed

Lucretia Rudolph Garfield (1832-1918)
First Lady
Lucretia Rudolph Garfield, wife of President James A. Garfield, wasn't interested in the social duties of the First Lady, but her genuine hospitality made her gatherings very enjoyable.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 7 times removed

Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919)
American Activist and Surgeon
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker was a feminist Union surgeon. She was given a Medal of Honor after the Civil War for her bravery as a prisoner of war, making her the only woman to have received this medal.
Relationship: 7th Cousin 5 times removed

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
26th President of the United States
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the first president to win the Nobel Peace Prize. With the assassination of President McKinley he became the youngest president in the nation's history. He brought new excitement and power to the presidency as he vigorously led Congress and the American public toward progressive reforms and a strong foreign policy. His popular presidency had many accomplishments, but he personally considered his greatest accomplishment to be the creation of the Panama Canal. The "Teddy" Bear got its name from President Roosevelt.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 7 times removed

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
American Author
Spending 2 years "living simply" in the forest was the premise for Henry David Thoreau's famous book, "Walden". Thoreau also wrote "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience", an essay that encouraged people to prohibit governments from having absolute power.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 8 times removed

Lucille Ball (1911-1989)
American Actress and Comedian
Lucille Desiree Ball was the comedic star of the 1950s TV show I Love Lucy. Often called, "The Queen of Comedy," Ball has acted in Broadway productions, motion pictures, and TV shows.
Relationship: 9th Cousin 3 times removed

Desi Arnaz (1917-1986)
Cuban American Performer
Desiderio Alberto Arnaz was a Cuban-American musician, comedian, and actor. He performed with his wife, Lucille Ball, for several years before their divorce.
Relationship: 11th Cousin 1 times removed

Edward Winslow (1595-1655)
Mayflower Passenger
Edward Winslow served as the governor of the Plymouth Colony. He also signed the Mayflower Compact.
Relationship: 12th Great Grand Uncle

Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
Irish Physicist
Robert Boyle is regarded today as the first modern chemist. He was also an alchemist and a physicist.
Relationship: 3rd Cousin 12 times removed

Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832)
Maryland Representative
Charles Carroll was the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. His signature reads "Charles Carroll of Carrollton", so he is widely known as such.
Relationship: 5th Cousin 8 times removed

George Ross (1730-1779)
Pennsylvania Representative
George Ross served in the Continental Army and on the Committee of Safety. He later served in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 8 times removed

William Osler (1849-1919)
Physician
William Osler has been called one of the greatest icons of modern medicine, the Father of Modern Medicine, which is what he considered Avicenna to be.
Relationship: 9th Cousin 4 times removed

Francis Lightfoot Lee (1734-1797)
Virginia Representative
Francis Lightfoot Lee was a radical patriot during the revolution. He worked with Patrick Henry to oppose the Stamp Act. He later signed the Declaration of Independence.
Relationship: 4th Cousin 8 times removed

Sam Bass (1851-1878)
American Outlaw
American train robber Sam Bass robbed the Union pacific gold train and took $60,000, the largest robbery of the Union Pacific to date.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 5 times removed

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822-1893)
19th President of the United States of America
Rutherford B. Hayes was known for his honesty and military involvement in the American Civil War. After the scandal ridden years of the Grant administration, Hayes restored trust to the presidency and ended Reconstruction during his term.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 5 times removed

Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
American Entertainer
Elvis Aaron Presley is often called "The King of Rock and Roll", or simply "The King". He starred in movies but is best known for his music which includes over 100 top 40 songs including "Blue Suede Shoes", "Hound Dog", "Love Me Tender", "Don't Be Cruel", and "Jailhouse Rock".
Relationship: 8th Cousin 2 times removed

Oliver Winchester (1810-1880)
Gun Company Owner
Oliver Fisher Winchester was an American businessman and politician. He manufactured and marketed the Winchester repeating rifle, which was a much re-designed descendant of the volcanic rifle of some years earlier.
Relationship: 7th Cousin 5 times removed

William W. Winchester (1837-1881)
Gun Company Owner
William Wirt Winchester was the second president of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company from 1880 to 1881. He was the son of Oliver Fisher Winchester who manufactured and marketed the first Winchester repeating rifle.
Relationship: 8th Cousin 4 times removed

J.P. Morgan (1837-1913)
American Banker
John Piermont Morgan I was one of the wealthiest men at the beginning of the 20th century. A financier and banker, he arranged the merger for General Electric, and his bank today is known as Morgan Stanley.
Relationship: 8th Cousin 3 times removed

William Charles Wentworth (1790-1872)
Early Settler
Australian explorer, journalist, and politician William Wentworth was a leading figure of early New South Wales. He helped explore the Blue Mountains, founded a newspaper, and helped draft the New South Wales constitution.
Relationship: 11th Cousin 7 times removed

Benjamin West (1738-1820)
American Painter
Benjamin West is known for his paintings of historical scenes set in and around the time of the American Revolution. His most famous painting "The Death of General Wolfe" is more than 5 feet tall and more than 7 feet long! West was also commissioned by King George III to paint royal portraits.
Relationship: 2nd Cousin 10 times removed

Lucy Ware Webb Hayes (1831-1889)
First Lady
Lucy Ware Webb Hayes convinced her husband, Rutherford B. Hayes, to fight in the Union army and to oppose slavery. He later became an influential part of the abolitionist cause.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 3 times removed

William Ellery (1727-1820)
Rhode Island Representative
A successful merchant from Rhode Island, William Ellery was the only representative from Rhode Island to sign the Declaration of Independence.
Relationship: 3rd Cousin 10 times removed

Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003)
American Actress
Four time Academy Award winning actress Katharine Hepburn maintained a successful acting career for over 70 years. Her notable performances in The African Queen and On Golden Pond, as well as countless other films, contributed to her title as the AFI's Greatest American Female Star.
Relationship: 7th Cousin 3 times removed

John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
American Author
John Steinbeck's writing is characterized by portrayals of working class families in California. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature as well as the Pulitzer Prize. Two of his most famous works are The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men.
Relationship: 7th Cousin 3 times removed

Ruth Benedict (1887-1948)
American Anthropologist
American anthropologist Ruth Benedict wrote, Patterns of Culture which was translated into 14 languages. She studied cultural relativism and spoke out against fascism.
Relationship: 7th Cousin 3 times removed

Ida Saxton McKinley (1847-1907)
First Lady
Ida Saxton McKinley suffered very poor health and many seizures during her time as First Lady to President William McKinley. She hosted her guests seated in a blue velvet wheel chair.
Relationship: 6th Cousin 6 times removed

Laurence Olivier (1907-1989)
British-born Actor, Director and Producer
Laurence Kerr Olivier was an Academy Award-winning actor, director, and producer. He acted in such films as Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and Spartacus. Olivier also appeared in many plays throughout his career.
Relationship: 10th Cousin 3 times removed

Elizabeth Browning (1806-1861)
English Author and poet
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. These famous words were penned by English poet and author Elizabeth Barrett Browning, one of the most respected writers of the Victorian era.
Relationship: 11th Cousin 3 times removed

Ben Stein's Excellent Perspective

2007-01-29T19:36:00.000-05:00

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on a CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

Herewith a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?

I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife. Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. If this is what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Ma! libu . If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away. I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians.

I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.

But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to. In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking. Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this Happen?"(regarding Katrina) Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believ! e God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"

In light of recent events.terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school .. the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK. Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK. Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bo! ther them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW." Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes'through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace. Are you laughing?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it. Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us. Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

Honestly and respectfully,

Ben Stein

Drugs (+/-)

2007-01-27T17:07:00.000-05:00

Personal Log, Stardate MWSEUSE27Jan2007AD*

First the pig weigh-in from this past Thursday: 151. Ta-da, no increase, no decrease. BTW, these weigh-in's are witnessed, else the Pig Clug won't count them.

A bit of Catch-Up
I was flustered at not knowing how to find Joanne Schubkegel's family, so I started learning a bit more about finding people online, and eventually found them via an obituary notice.

The wealth of people-related info in the obit led me to think I could apply that to finding my some of my own relatives, and I did. That led me to documenting some family tree info. That led me to assessing software/web service options for documenting family trees. That led me to creating a family tree on ancestry.com. That led to spending most of my waking hours last weekend to working on the famly tree, and I've come up with over 400 people so far. Some go back as far as before the War for Independence, and as far away as England and Germany. And yes, I appear to have another hobby.

You can visit my tree here. A link has to point to an individual, apparently, so this link goes to my Dad. You have to create a free account to log in an see anything, and you can't see living people such as myself. If you want to see the names of the living family members, send me an email so I can turn that on for you.

The Attack of the Drugs
A couple of weeks ago, I went to my dentist to get a large old filling replaced in a molar. He had to drill it a bit more to get rid of some decay that had occured under the filling, taking the hole very close to the nerve. He filled it up and put a temporary crown on it, so I could go back this past Thursday and get the permanent crown.

But... it had been very sensitive since the temp was put in, and getting worse, so he decided to wait another week before finishing to see if it would calm down. Not only did it not calm down, but the whole side of my jaw was hurting to the point of fighting tears. So, I call the doc, the doc calls in a perscription for pain and gives me a referral to an endodontist (specialist in tooth nerves and root-canals).

Carla picked up the pain medicine, vicodin, and when I got home that evening I took a dose and went to bed. Now, normally, I avoid pain medicine, because even though it's very nice to have less pain, they always cause trouble. After I had surgeries on my sinuses and prostrate (not at the same time), those docs gave me perscriptions for narcotic pain relievers. Carla and I decided we'd wait to get them filled and see if I really needed them. I didn't. I guess because I've had a lot of practice with pain, and the surgeries didn't really add much to my "standard" pain. Besides, I had scheduled those surgeries and could take a few days off work.

Well, this was unplanned, and I had a lot of work to do, so I took the vicodin thinking that would help me get a good night's sleep, and I could go to work after the endodontist fixed the tooth. Except that didn't work.

My back muscles had been bothering me all week (possibly a reaction to the increasing tooth discomfort), and I've been taking muscle relaxers for that. But I forgot to take that before going to bed, and my back muscles kept me awake. During the night, I took another dose of vicodin (yes, it was after the minimum time between pills, according to the bottle), and I took a dose of muscle relaxers. Big mistake.

That kept me awake for hours more, because it worked too well -- I didn't hurt. At all! I couldn't sleep because I didn't hurt at all for the first time in about 20 years. I didn't realize how much pain I've been in for the last bunch of years until it quit last night, and the absence of pain was too dramatic a change to let me sleep until I was exhausted.

So, I got up and Carla took me to the endo-guy at 9, and left there a little after Noon having had a successful root canal. Boy, did that get rid of the tooth pain! The whole side of my face was numb, including my ear! I came home to take a nap, hoping to go to work after that. Unfortunately, all the other "regular" pain and muscle spasms were in full swing, so I've pretty much been a mess since then.

No, I haven't taken any more vicodin. Sigh. There sits the bottle with lots of little pills that will make all my pain go away. Ah, but it only makes the pain go away temporarily, and if you keep using it, it takes more and more to do the same job, and the side-effects get worse and worse. Since I'm still acutely aware of how nasty it was withdrawing from Cymbalta, I'm not about to start something like that again.

Oh, well, someone else from my company has taken over the writing task that I tried to work on today (God bless you!), so I have the rest of today and tomorrow to get used to my old self again.

I guess my medical problems would be good for a soap-opera character, except they'd have to leave a lot out to make it believable...

In lieu of pity, I, Quantum John, would request that you make a financial contribution to some worthy charity. 'Cause there's lots of folks way worse off than I am. Besides, I'm already readjusting well enough to blaugh again!

* Star-date abbreviations as follows:
MW=Milky-Way (Galaxy)
S=Sol (star system)
E=Earth (planet)
USE=Eastern United States (local planetary continental area)
27Jan2007 (local planetary date designation)
AD (local planetary date-era designation)

Pig Club, Week 2

2007-01-18T16:14:00.001-05:00

Pig Club Weigh-in: 151 pounds.

Obama's International Diplomacy?

2007-01-13T15:31:00.000-05:00

Did you hear the latest news about Barack Obama?

On a fact-finding trip to the capital city of Ecuador's Chimborazo Province, Senator Obama encountered a local farmer whipping a cria and he tried to intervene to save the poor beast from its angry master. A crowd gathered, and many took the farmer's side, but some stood with the kindly American politician, while the Senator's escorts called for the local police.

When the farmer refused to relinquish his whip, the good Senator offered to buy the beautiful animal, but the farmer became even less rational and began to fiercely kick the cria. This excited the crowd into a frenzy, and as a riot threatened to ensue, the little animal stumbled, fell, and began bleeding from several lacerations from the farmers' foot.

The police arrived and managed to get the farmer away from the stricken animal and disperse the crowd, but the animal was unable to stand due to its injuries. The police convinced the farmer to sell the cria to Senator Obama rather than be charged with a variety of crimes, whereupon the Senator and his staff rushed the animal to a veterinarian's office.

Despite life-threatening injuries, the little animal did finally recover, and arrangements were made to have the former beast-of-burden taken to the Chicago zoo, where it is professionally cared for and receives loving attention from hundreds of children daily. All-in-all, a happy ending!

And this event is, of course, now known as:

Obama's Riobamba Llama Trauma Drama

Full Disclosure Update:
No fictional animals were harmed in the fermentation of this story. The imaginary parents of Cortehezala, the pretend baby llama, gave their informed consent, and ethereal emergency personnel were on location if needed. The fake farmer is now serving a 3 year sentence of daily counseling in the Maddenuff Center for Anger Management. The fictitious Mr. Obama became a real person and was elected to the U.S. Senate by the people of the State of Illinois.

I'm in the Pig Club!

2007-01-11T14:41:00.000-05:00

Today kicks off The First 2007 Season of HUD's Pig Club, and I'm in!

A buncha folks, including HUD employees and contractors, will weigh in each Thursday for 21 weeks. This institution has been going on for many years, and I'm pretty happy about finding out about it and being allowed to join.

The biggest gainer of each week, based on percentage of body weight, not total pounds, becomes The Pig Of The Week, and the biggest loser becomes The Loser Of The Week. Unless you're a Reverse Pig... then it's sorta flipped sideways so it ends up the other way around. You know. The Pig & Loser of each week get their cubicles or offices festooned with all kinds of endearing memorabilia, such as the "Those Who Indulge, Bulge" homemade poster. [Sure, Dianne, you can use that for one of your designs... it's not copyrighted, or nuthin. If you do, I'll point it out to my colleagues who will be sure to want some mousepads & such with that on it.]

Today I weighed in at 150.5, and my goal is to not gain any weight.

My primary care doc has been concerned since I started taking the thyroid hormone replacement because I haven't gained weight. It's not bad that I haven't gained weight, it's just that she didn't know why I wasn't. Well, guess what a side-effect of Cymbalta is? Yep, and I started taking that almost at the same time I started the hormone thingie. So, now I'm off Cymbalta, and surprise: my weight has gone up 5 pounds in the last 2 weeks.

I hope I'm not the biggest gainer or loser this season, but it will help to know how I'm fairing week-by-week.

~~Chow!~~ I mean, Ciao!

Death and Emotions (but not the death of emotions)

2007-01-10T18:48:00.000-05:00

I admit, I don't handle death very well.

Other people's deaths, that is. As for my own, I haven't quite died yet, but of the two times I came closest, I panicked once (almost drown, saved by Scoutmaster Ergle), and the other time I was a little too unconscious to panic (weight lifting mishap, saved by James Stanley).

Well, as some of you know, last year I finally began digitizing old photos & things, which led me to actually working at finding and contacting old friends, rather than merely planning to someday. And though I've contacted some, I've also found some that I haven't contacted yet, because I have to kind of schedule for the emotional bounces. The whole effort has been pulling on my heart-strings, or more like yanking when I have inevitably learned of the deaths of some.

In case you don't know, I'm a real softy. Talking to dear friends I haven't talked to in many years is very emotional for me... very positive emotions, to be sure, but there's a downside. Due to my thyroid and hypoglycemic blood sugar issues, any excitement boosts my adrenaline, followed within hours by a hormone/blood sugar induced crash (mitigated, but not eliminated, by a careful diet).

When I started on the photos & calls, I was on a "therapeutic" dosage of cymbalta, to try to increase the neurons in my brain, which was supposed to help me more effectively ignore the pain in my feet -- or so the pharmaceutical company claims. Unfortunately, that drug has a long list of side-effects, and a few of them chose that timeframe to appear, and get worse rapidly, especially in mood swings. I mean swings like I'm in a business meeting and I start to cry for no reason. Or I wake up in the middle of the night very angry... not about anything in particular, just angry, kind of looking for something to aim my anger at. Or getting embarrassingly, inappropriately romantic in email to someone other than my wonderful wife.

My pain doctor agreed I should stop that drug, which we scheduled for over the Christmas/New Year break, because withdrawal can be severe. How severe? Well, I don't remember Christmas day, and my family saw me through a lot of headaches, crying, too-dizzy-to-walk, etc. At least I did get it weaned down to nothing, and the worst of the previous side-effects seem to be permanently behind me now.

Getting rid of the drug doesn't mean I'm not a softy anymore, it just means I'm back to being my regular sentimental self. And, like I said before, I don't handle death very well...

Last week, I finally found some relatives I had lost track of, which was a huge boost emotionally, but at the same time learned of the death of a dear member of that part of my clan -- Tommy Jenkins, husband of my cousin Beth. He died in 2005, and they weren't able to find me to let me know at the time. That's my fault, because I'm the one who moved around and lost track, not them. It hurts that he's gone, and I didn't get to see him again. Yes, I expect to see him in heaven, but honestly, that thought really doesn't ease the pain much.

Then last night, I finally found and talked to Sandy Watkins (Andrewson), and what a joy that was! However, Sandy had to inform me that Joanne Schubkegel died a few years ago, leaving a husband and young daughter behind. I don't know their last name, so I don't know how to search for them. And apparently, Joanne's dad died within the last year or so, and her mom is in a nursing home, unable to converse. I found a phone number for her brother Brian, but it was disconnected.

All that was kind of pushing me to my limits of being able to stay focused enough to do my job, but fortunately, today was a quiet day at the office, and that allowed me to mourn a bit without interfering with work. AND THEN... This afternoon, I got an unexpected phone call from Michael Pannell! He and Dawn are doing well, and have four children. We had a wonderful chat, and with an exchange of email addresses, hopefully we can keep in closer contact now than once every 25 years!

==================================

On that topic, if you're an old friend who's found this, and I haven't contacted you yet, the odds are high that I have no clue how to find you, so PLEASE email me at and give me your contact info. This goes especially for you ladies who changed your last names upon marriage... that makes the research very difficult or impossible, unless I find another friend-in-common who has your contact info...
<hint> and they remember to send it to me. </hint>

Child Charged with a Crime for Wetting Pants

2007-01-04T18:45:00.000-05:00

This is disgusting.

I kid you not, a 12-year-old child was charged with the crime of disorderly conduct because she wet her pants when confronted by the school principal after she refused to leave the library. The girl is a "special education" student, which is generally a euphemism for someone with significantly less than average intelligence.

The principal and police allegedly claim that they are sure the girl did it intentionally.

1. A person can suspect whether or not another person wets their pants intentionally, but they cannot know if they are correct or not. If you cannot be certain, you should not arrest a person.

2. She's TWELVE YEARS OLD. Even if she says she did it on purpose, she might be lying out of embarrassment. Even if you could know that she did it on purpose, she's TWELVE YEARS OLD!

Any school principal or police officer that thinks the best solution in such circumstances is to charge the girl with a crime needs to change careers. Their "solution" is powerful evidence that their own intelligence is significantly less than what their jobs should require.

Time to recheck my blood pressure. Arrrrg!

Introducing: Bizarre Symptom of the Day (BSOTD)

2007-01-02T19:36:00.000-05:00

This post will introduce a new category for Quantum John topics: the Bizarre Symptom of the Day (BSOTD). For years I've had a very wide variety of unusual "symptoms" (for lack of a better term) that usually don't last very long, and don't clearly correlate to any of my known physical problems.

BSOTD's will not be presented in the hopes that an astute reader will come up with a cause, though any theories are welcome, but just so I'll eventually have a list of all the strange and unusal bodily effects I'm sometimes affected with. Or is that affects I'm effected with? Or affectations I'm affliated with? Not that it matters...

So, without further ado (and without further Adu, since the D.C. United traded away Freddy Adu), today's BSOTD is: A sharp pain in my left mandibular joint (jaw) when I part my teeth by more than about 1/2 inch. Ta-da...!

This symptom made it's first-ever appearance the day before yesterday, when it lasted a few hours, then went away as mysteriously as it came. Now, it's baaack...

Could this be a Cymbalta withdrawal symptom? Since my sinuses have been bothering me, and there are sinus cavities very close to the mandibular joint, could I have a sinus infection that spread to my jaw? It would have to have been a rather mild sinus infection, since I wasn't even aware of it.

Well, that wasn't hard. One listed, and approximately 1,312,416,008 to go.

New Year's Day & The Mordecai Project

2007-01-01T20:09:00.000-05:00

Time to tell you about:
The Mordecai Project
The Mordecai Project is a Christian ministry devoted to healing, protecting and empowering women around the world, and was founded by my friend Lee Grady.

From the intro of the web site:
"When Jesus Christ came to earth 2,000 years ago, He challenged the religious and cultural rules of a male-dominated culture. While other rabbis believed it was improper to teach women the Bible, Jesus called his disciple Mary to sit at His feet. While other religious leaders refused to go near bleeding women, Jesus healed one. While the Pharisees shunned Samaritans and divorced women, Jesus had compassion on the Samaritan divorcee and commissioned her to be an evangelist.

"And while some misguided Christians have distorted the Bible to oppress and restrict women, true Christianity liberates women. The gospel proclaims that men and women are created equal..."

I love what this organization represents and what it's accomplishing. If you'd like to help, you can pray, make financial contributions, and/or tell others about it. This is something worthwhile!

An hour ago I submitted my book proposal to my favorite I.T. publisher. Haven't heard back from them yet. :)

New Year's Eve and "Quantum" John's Personal Motto

2006-12-31T06:06:00.000-05:00

My web browser's home page is a customized set of Google widgets that includes a Bible verse-of-the-day, and today's is Isaiah 43:16, 18-19:

This is what the LORD says... "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."

After the past year (especially some health issues and an unusually stressful problem with a co-worker), I'm very happy to forget the former things. I'm ready to move on to the new things God has in store for me, my family, my friends, my country, and my world.

That verse-of-the-day also reminded me of one of my favorite verses, Isaiah 26:12: "All that we have accomplished, you have done for us."

God has given me some abilties to work and accomplish things, and I've tried to be diligent in exercising those abilities. As a result, my resume reflects some of the unusual things I've accomplished, such as earning over 50 professional I.T. certifications in database technology, network engineering, computer programming, and system administration, and all of it great fun. But no matter how much I accomplish, I remember Isaiah's words, and know that I'm just one of God's children, trying to follow His will and invest my time as He wishes.

"My accomplishments" are, in fact, what God has done through me, so there's nothing for me to brag about except the God who has blessed me with so much. Which brings me to my personal motto: Everything that I accomplish is just some of what God has done for me.

Trying to listen to God and follow His will has been an amazing life-long adventure so far. Now begins the year 2007, and I get to ~~read~~ live the next chapter... How exciting!

Mandy Lambert is Engaged!

2006-12-30T13:09:00.000-05:00

Mandy Lambert, of Columbia, South Carolina, and nice nifty niece of Quantum John, is engaged to marry her high-school friend Philip Nordstrom!! The wedding will be in December of 2007, and we'll all get to be there!

Here's the very happy couple, with a link to an online album with more:

Naked baby Mandy pictures will be available on EBay, unless she pays us ~~a big bribe~~ our standard photo-processing recovery fees.

Yee-Ha

2006-12-30T12:08:00.000-05:00

Okay, I admit it! I'm blessed beyond comprehension! In addition to a long life filled with loving family, friends, and adventure, this morning was a particularly wonderful morning.

I woke up beside my georgeous and loving wife, feeling NO side-effects from the prescription I've been kicking, got to watch her take a shower, and afterward noticed a heavy fog outside. Since I now have a hi-res camera, for the first time in almost 2 decades, I grabbed it and a wide-angle lens, and headed outdoors. What a wonderful time! And you can see some of what I saw, from this online album:

Thank you, Lord, for your amazing gifts!

Good riddance, Duloxetine Hydrochloride.

2006-12-29T20:27:00.000-05:00

I think I'm finally over the worst of the effects of withdrawing from Cymbalta. This nasty med was prescribed for me at a dosage large enough to have a "therapeutic" effect on the burning sensations in my feet due to peripheral neuropathy, but it never had any apparent positive impact, despite taking it daily for over a year.

With no gains, and side effects getting steadily worse, including some very unstable emotions on and off, my pain doctor finally agreed it was time to try something else.

So, instead of a drug that is intended to help by affecting brain neurons, I've now started using a cocktail of pain suppressors which a local "compounding" pharmacist makes for me -- by prescription, of course. All I have to do is smear this junk on the souls of my feet twice a day. So far, it seems to help, and with zero side effects. Yea!

Now that I have reason to expect my emotions to be normal again, I'm working on a book proposal that I hope to submit to a publisher in a week or so. I've never liked keeping personal secrets (though I'm very good at keeping other folks' secrets), but I don't want to reveal too much, too soon, because I don't want anyone else to try to scoop me. It takes a looong time for a book to get published, but I'll occasionally mention my progress in general terms. For now, I'll just tell you the major topic is database technology.

Speaking of books, I've started an online novel to explain the origins of Elf Ink. I have the first chapter posted, but I'm not going to put up links in the linky areas of my blaghs until I have a few more chapters done. If you want a sneak preview, I'll give a link here, since this post will get buried by following posts. If you read the first chapter, I'd really appreciate some feedback, positive or negative... mainly, is it interesting enough that you'd like to read more?

Would you believe... Time-Life has finally released the "Get Smart" TV series on DVD. I thought someone might give it to me as a Christmas gift, but I... "missed it by that much." Sorry about that, Chief.

Cymbalta side effects... still.

2006-12-27T20:46:00.000-05:00

Still suffering through withdrawal from Cymbalta. What a nightmare that drug turned out to be.

I was scheduled to return to work today, and in fact I went in early, but I turned right around and came home. The burning sensation in my feet and audio processing problems kept me awake most of the night, so I was pretty tired, but otherwise felt not-too-bad when I left home, but before I was half-way to the Metro station, the familiar dizziness came back big-time. I'm sure some other commuters must have thought I was drunk.

Once I got to the office, I couldn't concentrate well enough to do any work, so... here I am at home again. I'll try again tomorrow. At least I made it through another day without that awful drug.