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THE WAR OF 1812

October 6, 2012

A friend of mine in Bosnia, whom I help learn English, has a 16 year-old daughter who is an exchange student at a high school in southern Illinois.

Her daughter got the best grade in her class on an essay about the War of 1812.  She knew that part of American history better than her American classmates.  They would not be expected to know much about Bosnia, although I was shocked at two of the questions they asked the young woman, when she arrived at the school:

  1. Did you come here by train?
  2. Do you take showers?

I often say there are no dumb questions, except asking one that was just answered.  Questions reveal a great deal about the one who asks them, and the above two questions revealed a shocking lack of education or curiosity.  Personally, I would have asked, “What is it like to live in Bosnia?” or “What languages do you speak?”

I don’t expect most Americans to be able to accurately find Bosnia on a map, although the 1984 Winter Olympics were held in its capital, Sarajevo, and there was an horrifically devastating war and genocide there in the early 1990s.  Considering that the US was part of ending that war (the Dayton Accords), it was at the time the first instance where air power alone was able to end a war, that is something worth knowing.

Instead, we have a large number of people who can’t find important countries on a map, countries where geography determines history, and history determines behavior.

Indeed, at a time when many Muslims in the world do not like America, to put it mildly, it would not hurt to remind them that we were helpful in ending the genocide against Muslims in Bosnia.  The mother and her daughter are Muslims, and the former has taught me a great deal about Islam.  She is one of best, purest, nicest people I know, who lives her religion.

She taught me that “Balkans” is a word that means “blood and honey,”  probably one of the best descriptors of the region.  This area will likely explode again.  There is no Tito, no Yugoslavia, now Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Macedonia.  I tell many of my European friends that one thing many Americans cannot understand is why Europeans appear to lean towards dividing into smaller groups.  We now have Moldova and Romania.  The USSR was divided into 14 different countries. People in Dagestan are Russian, but they call themselves from Dagestan.  (It’s west of the Caspian Sea.)

I often have discussions with my wife about what American students ought to know, and she says, probably correctly, that I am too strict.

But, given student loans and credit cards, students ought to know something about debt.  They ought to know the Rule of 72, which says that the doubling time of debt is 72 divided by the interest rate in %  (not decimal).  Debt at 8% interest doubles in 9 years (72/8); at 24% in 3 years (72/24).  That is why credit card debt is so deadly.  Yes, and students ought to be able to quickly convert decimals to percentages and vice versa.  I am not asking that students be able to derive the Rule of 72, which is P=Po[(exp(rt)], which is [P/Po]=exp (rt), and since P=2Po, we have 2=exp (rt), ln 2=rt  and t = ln2/rate (decimal).  ln2=0.693) so if I multiply numerator and denominator by 100, I get 69.3=t .  Seventy-two is a much easier number to deal with than 69, so we use that.  I do expect knowledge that 1/4=25%  and 0.62 is 62%.  Yes, really.

I think American students ought to know the difference between a billion and a trillion.  Politicians discuss money figures of this magnitude frequently.  There ought to be a simpler way to explain, and perhaps this would be a good debate question to ask politicians, along with the age of the Earth. The Earth has existed more than a trillion days, assuming, of course, we are teaching that the earth is 4.5 billion years old.  A billion is the number of seconds old we are in our early 30s.  A million is the number of miles the Space Station travels in about 2 days, 40 trips around the Earth, the number of miles a busy driver will drive in a lifetime.

I think American students ought to be able to name nearly all the states without looking at a map.  I think they should be know Canada is our biggest trading partner, and that it and Mexico border the US.  I think they should be able to name most of the original 13 colonies, know when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Constitution ratified.  I think at least half of the Bill of Rights should be known, at least 3 Supreme Court justices, and the last 5 presidents.

We should require more writing, more research projects, more math and science.  Students ought to understand the basic concepts of statistics, such as means, variance and the concept of error.  They might then recognize the chance they could be wrong.  Music and art should be studied, care of animals, the mistreatment of which is a red flag for sociopathy.  The students ought to periodically go outside for exercise and learn about the plants, water, and sky.  They should spend one evening under a clear sky and see the Moon and stars.  They should learn at least one foreign language, and if they already know one, to learn another.

Students should be taught that being unique and being special are not the same.  One is given, the other has to be earned.  Wow, we have a lot to do in a short time.

Fortunately, we have a lot of retirees who could help, and it would be great for them and great for the schools, too. The War of 1812 is not particularly difficult to understand.  It’s not like when it happened is a mystery.

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SPAMMED ON JACKFISH BAY

September 27, 2012

My wife and I got spammed on Jackfish Bay on our last canoe trip.  No, I didn’t have a computer; I saw a plastic bag in the forest behind the campsite, and it had three full cans of SPAM, the real deal.  Minnesota is the Spam capital of the world; for those who don’t know the etymology, it is shoulder of pork and ham.  When I first canoed, 50 years ago, Spam tasted pretty good.  Then again, in the woods, most things taste good, even pine needles.

On the same campsite were two empty beer cans and a burned out can in the fire area.  We carried all of this garbage out, along with our trash. The white pine in the center of the campsite had dozens of scars from people who had to chop at it.  Despite that, the tree was tall and had no signs of blister rust, unusual for a tree this age.  White pines are the most beautiful tree in the woods; the wood from them is prized.  Why anybody would deliberately chop at a tree that was likely a sapling when the Voyageurs came through 225 years ago is beyond me.

White pine (Pinus strobus), scarred by prior campers.

But, give a guy (usually a guy) an axe, and everything in the woods becomes fair game.

On the way out of the woods, we passed a campsite where somebody had cut a few dozen balsam pine boughs for a mattress.  There was a time, half a century ago, when we cut balsams down for tent stringers, used their boughs for mattresses, put cans in the campsite can pit (or in the lake), and threw axes at trees.  These days I thought were gone.  Having cleaned some 500 campsites in the Boundary Waters, those days are not gone.  Note to campers:  aluminum foil does not burn completely in campfires.  No, it does not.

The Wilderness Act of 1964 establishing the Boundary Waters (BW), made most of it, except for a few lakes, including Basswood, non-motorized.  Cans were not allowed, green trees were not allowed to be cut (they don’t burn, and there is no reason to do so), permits were required (and were free for more than three decades), and the number of people who could congregate at one spot was limited to 9.  The BW was and is the largest roadless area in the contiguous states.  This did not sit well with some, and Sig Olson, one of the first great wilderness writers, was burned in effigy in his hometown of Ely.

Sig knew, far before many, that wilderness was no longer something to be conquered or to be lived off but something to be protected.  It was a massive shift in thinking that many still have not embraced.

We now have lightweight and safer gear: air mattresses, chairs, small saws, rain suits, good tents, barbless hooks, food packaged in plastic, but not metal, that it ought to be easy to travel in the wilderness without harming it.

I write this to those who do not know the rules but wish to abide by them; I hope maybe a few of the others might think about what they are doing as well.  The BW is not pristine America post-glacial era.  Most has been logged, about a century ago, and it has been burned by natural and human-caused fires.  I’ve seen a third of the campsites with hot ashes or frankly burning fires and no inhabitants.  I’ve seen many other fires built outside the fire area.  Given the dryness of the soil–dig a latrine, as I have and you realize this fact–fires can spread underground.  Fire is a natural phenomenon, lightning sparked fires, such as the Pagami Creek Fire last year, clear the forest for new growth.

The debate should be about whether we let naturally caused fires to burn.  There should be no debate whether somebody should be allowed to leave an unattended campfire.

The BW is open to fishing and hunting.  Fishing has to change too, from a half century ago.  Catching large stringers of fish–or one huge fish, a breeder–has to stop, and catch and release, except for a meal, with barbless hooks should be done.  Is this inconvenient?  Sure.  But what about the upcoming generations?  BW lakes are not sterile, but the northerly climate makes them far less productive of fish than many lakes at lower latitudes in the US.

The world changes.  We are no longer voyageurs with canoes in an unmapped wilderness.  We are a quarter million annual visitors in the wilderness the size of Rhode Island.  While there is much room, large numbers of people put pressure on the wilderness with human waste, human trash, and other impacts.  Humans belong in the BW, but as our numbers increase, our impacts must lessen.  Even the best camper may break rules when caught out in severely inclement weather.  I’ve seen hundreds of pounds of abandoned gear.  The late Mike Manlove referred to this as “being out of one’s comfort zone.”

Wilderness is not only subject to attacks from within but from without.  Fish have mercury, lakes become acid.  Water quality may deteriorate from sources far from the wilderness.  Careless boaters can transfer invasive species from one infected lake to a previously normal one.   Heavily log or burn much of the forest, and streams and lakes will become muddy.  This affects fishing.  Eventually, such damage may clear.

Mining, on the other hand, is forever.  A sulfide mine, planned near the wilderness, is a huge concern.  Communities need jobs, but sulfide mines are particularly toxic to watersheds, and the BW is a watershed if ever there was one.  Another pillar of the local economy is tourism.  Destroy the watershed, and tourism will disappear.  I am told the mine will be safe; things tend to be “safe” until they are suddenly not safe.  Then, everybody is sorry, the money made, the rich folks gone.

One hundred fifty years ago, the virgin pine stands of northern Minnesota were thought to be inexhaustible.  Forty years later, the state was importing lumber.  Log enough, and the jobs eventually end, along with the forest.  Mine enough, the jobs eventually end, along with the surrounding area.  If we have an unemployment problem, one good solution would be for many families to have a lot fewer children.  The US population has more than doubled in my lifetime; we have one of the highest birth rates in the industrialized world.

This is the 21st century, and we need natural resources, wise use of land, and a lot fewer people than we are producing.  If we continue to act the way we did in the 18th century, nearly exterminating the beaver, the 19th century (the buffalo and the forest), and the 20th (treating wilderness like a playground), there will be a large emptiness in the 21st.

Nature can recover, but within limits, and often with very different outcomes than even the best biologists can predict.  Enjoy the wilderness, carry out what you brought in, and maybe a little stuff that others brought in, too.

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SEASONS OF THE CANOE COUNTRY….AND LIFE

September 25, 2012

“Come on in,” called Dorothy Molter, as I had paddled up to shore on her island home on Knife Lake and knocked at the door.  Dorothy was a legend on Knife Lake.  She left nursing and Chicago around 1930 and lived on an island in Knife Lake, which straddles the border between Minnesota and Ontario.  Called “The loneliest woman in America,” Dorothy had hundreds of visitors every year.  She was grandfathered (or mothered) and allowed to live the rest of her life on Knife Lake after the Wilderness Act of 1964 required resorts to be taken down, power boats removed, limits on numbers of people who could go in, and even how low planes could fly overhead.

Dorothy was a legend.  She gave me some of her famous root beer, and as we talked, I commented that it was a little more difficult to canoe trip when I was 32 then it had been when I was 18, guiding canoe trips in Algonquin Park, wearing the coveted red neckerchief that only guides wore.

“Yes,” Dorothy replied, completely straight-faced, “I don’t paddle and carry as well as I once did, either.”  Dorothy had forty years on me and she would live for 5 more, her statement a lovely put down to my complaint about age.  I never forgot that.

In the ensuing 31 years and twice as many trips I have taken into the Quetico-Superior, not exactly easy from Arizona, I can count lots of things–wildlife sightings, fish caught, bear charges (1), aurorae seen.  What has fascinated me the most, however, has not been the three seasons in which I have paddled, but the changing seasons of my life with the canoe country.

I first put a canoe on my head 50 years ago, in the spring of my life.  I was an apprentice guide, and I carried wooden Old Towns, slept in canvas tents or under a canoe.  Nobody practiced Leave No Trace camping.  We had can pits, cut live balsam for tent stringers every night, and washed dishes in the lake.  I carried up to 140 pounds, dragged reluctant canoes down rivers, and fought waves so large they hurt, when the bow crashed down on the other side.

In my 30s and 40s, in the summer of my life, I discovered and then explored the Quetico-Superior, covering as much distance as I could.  I had a map on the wall in my office, and after each trip there was new ink on the blue and green splotches.  Miles mattered, new routes mattered, single carrying portages mattered.  I was up early, paddled hard all day, and slept well at night?  Rain?  I got wet.  Headwinds?  I worked.  Portages?  They were a chance for me to show what I had.

When I was 43, I volunteered in Ely for the Forest Service, spending six months away from my medical practice and 100 days in the woods between mid-May and mid-October.  I was a third again older than the guy who visited Dorothy Molter, in far better shape, but I now learned about the trees and the plant life that I had walked by, cut, and burned.  I learned that giving back to the wilderness was more important than having my own personal proving ground.

As I approached 50, I brought my wife along, a previous non-camper, and taught her how to travel.  She in turn taught me how to enjoy the woods–together.  I stopped single carrying portages in 2001, when I was 52.  I had nothing to prove and a lot I could hurt.  I enjoyed walking back in the woods for a second trip.

When I was 56, I soloed into Kawnipi Lake one more time.  Many of us who ply the canoe routes of Hunter’s Island feel Kawnipi is the most beautiful lake on either side of the border.  I may go back again, but it doesn’t matter now whether I do.  I have been there six times, love the place, and am thankful for what I’ve seen there.

“Bowling alley.” Kawnipi Lake.

The northern sweep of Agnes Lake, on the way to Kawnipi.

The year after, my wife and I sponsored a scholarship at Vermilion Community College (VCC).  We have no formal tie to the school, but Ely has given both of us a great deal, and we get great pleasure from helping the next generation of wilderness enthusiasts, many of whom not only live at the edge of wilderness but at the edge of poverty.  These young–and older–men and women are doing great work, and each year at the spring banquet, I meet them and hear their stories.

After 2003, my wife and I started base camping in Lake Insula.  I never thought I would base camp, but I enjoy the day trips where we explore side bays, sometimes finding trails that lead to interesting views.  It is nice not to have to set up camp every night and break it down every morning.  Do I miss the long days and the multi-lake trips?  No, I look back on them with fondness.  My pictures have faded; neither the diaries nor my memories have.

We’re now well into our 60s, the autumn of our lives, and every autumn we come up and base camp somewhere else.  We find a nice place, explore, relax, and forget about the “road, steel and towns” that Sig Olson wrote about.  We are in his “back of beyond.”  We enjoy canoeing and we work well together.  The lakes are old friends; the campsites second or third homes.  Every year we can come up is a gift–one more chance, one more trip, a few carries, the automaticity with which I put a canoe on my head, or deal with a 2 foot chop.  I have watched with great joy my wife become an excellent canoe tripper who also loves the woods, and helps me make a comfortable camp, in all sorts of weather.

Fall colors on Jackfish Bay.

We established a second scholarship at VCC and contribute to a third.  VCC has become family.  I come up for the banquet in April and take a solo trip for a day or two.  I don’t go far, I just want to be out there, alone, thankful for those who saved this wilderness from damming, clear cutting, and roads.  In the autumn of my life, I get to see others in the spring of their lives and canoe in spring, too.

We don’t know how long we will be able to canoe.  The autumn is a brilliant time in Ely, and it is a brilliant time in our lives.  This past trip, I saw Lesser Sandhill Cranes fly high over me on Pipestone Bay.  Next March, I will be in Nebraska, at Rowe Sanctuary, showing people these same birds during their spring stopover along the Platte, one of the two great North American migrations.

We will camp as often as we can in the Boundary Waters.  We know there are no guarantees reagarding ability or longevity.  We hope to canoe into our 70s.  I dream of going out in the winter of my life when I am 80; I took my father into the Quetico when he was 78.  We hope there will be enough of those with sense to guarantee the future of this region to those whose lives are not only drawing to a close, but those whose lives have yet to begin.

Eventually, we will die, like every living organism we have seen in the wilderness.  Our ashes will be spread in the area, finally being part of the wilderness we have travelled, loved and supported.

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GOLDEN PEARLS AND DIE LIBELLE

September 15, 2012

One of the interesting experiences about learning is a new language is the new world that opens up to one who can read books written in that new language and listening to videos narrated by speakers of that language.  Translations are important, but there really is a difference when one reads a book written in the original language.

Reading several German books has nearly doubled my vocabulary in the past six months, for while I can understand the meaning of a book, it is essential to look up specific words I do not know.  This flies in the face of some advice, to learn words in context, but when I took my PSAT exam years ago, my contextual definitions were often wrong.  From that day forward, if I am uncertain what a word means, I look it up.  I have multiple different lists, and I memorize….daily.

I am not going to use all those words, but if I am to understand German–.and now Spanish, too, for I am learning that — I need to know what those other words mean, for while I may not say them, others will.  I am continually amazed by words I thought I would never need to know that were said a few days later.  I learned “die Libelle,” dragonfly, and wondered when I would ever to use it.  A week later, on German radio, there was a description of research done about die Libelle, and I immediately thought “wow, something is going on about dragonflies”.  The something was how they caught die Stubenfliege, fly.  Every word that I can understand gives me more pieces of the puzzle that is called conversation.

My experience with German is one person’s.  I am mostly self-taught, because there have been few with whom I have been able to speak or write on a regular basis.  Good grammar books are not common.

German videos have shown me all parts of the world.  Many are from Germany itself, so I have seen the large cities and the northern coast–North and East Seas–separated by the Danish peninsula.  I have seen parts of Bayern–Bavaria–that I did not have time to see when I was in München.

Still other videos have shown me, narrated in German, apricot harvests in Turkey;  nomads in the high arctic of Russia, dealing with the “gas rush”; salt mining in Bolivia; tree houses for research in Costa Rica; research on the Andean Condor in the Argentinian Patagonia; a women’s co-op in Yemen and water filtration in Peru.  One was about Portland, Oregon, describing the lifestyle.  Another in the US showed homeless eking out a living in the California desert, living in conjunction with snowbirds.  A third showed Detroit beginning to turn into a farming city, using empty neighborhoods to grow crops.  I miss some meaning, but I don’t miss much.  A lot of the translations are slow, and I know enough Spanish and French to know when there is not a full translation into German.  That is a lot of fun to recognize.

A recent video was about harvesting pearls in the Philippines, off the coast of Palawan, the long island at the western end of the Archipelago.  I never saw Palawan, but I have spent a lot of time in the Philippines.  I was struck by not only the way pearls were harvested, but the science being used to run genetic crossing of the mussels, trying to produce the most valuable golden pearls.

There are other problems, too, that I hear about.  Virtually every video that discusses the environment comments on climate change, viewed from the local perspective. On these videos, I have not heard one word saying that climate change is a hoax.  Perhaps the videos are biased; perhaps not.  Coral reefs are bleaching, which is not news.  The northern end of Palawan is too warm (32 C., or nearly 90 F.) for growing mussels.  The oceans are getting warmer.  This is a fact, not fiction, not a hoax.  They are also growing more acidic, which is also a fact, due to carbon dioxide.  For those who say that man is not changing the environment, ocean acidification is the smoking gun that says we are.  This has made the news in the last several months; I knew about acidification in 2006.

Water vapor is, of course, the most prevalent greenhouse gas.  As air warms, there can be more water vapor present, because warming makes gas molecules move faster, keeping them from condensing.  Air at 31 C, all else equal, may contain 2 grams more water per cubic meter than air at 30 C.  The amount of air over the tropical ocean would best be measured in millions of cubic kilometers.  Does it prove anything?  Perhaps not, but there is a lot of circumstantial and non-circumstantial evidence to suggest we have a problem.  Water expands with heat, with a coefficient of expansion of about 0.0002/degree C.  Warm water 1 degree C. and the worldwide 110 million square kilometers of ocean surface plus a significant depth expand a lot, when multiplied by 0.0002/C.  Add glacial melt, and we get ocean rise, which is well documented to the tenth of a millimeter per year.  This rise will be at least 70 cm this century, but some think maybe a meter, and can easily flood a coastline where there is a shallow angle from sea to land.  In addition, salt can easily contaminate the water table.   If you live in Kansas, that is no big deal, unless we prove that the drought of 2012 was due to climate change.  It may not be.  Or, it may be.  The question goes back to Clint Eastwood in “Dirty Harry”:  “How lucky do you feel?”

What continues to interest me is how nearly every place these videos are shot has an environmental overtone.  Water in Peru is a problem because of the receding glaciers.    Drought in Yemen is the cause of decreasing biodiversity, which is important both for the planet, and for humans, because many of our ideas for new medications or molecules come from natural compounds.  There are just too many of us, and the planet is showing signs of big signs of wear.  I haven’t heard much about this in English, but I sure am hearing about it in German.

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ALL MODELS ARE BAD; SOME ARE USEFUL

September 10, 2012

On a recent science podcast, climate models were being discussed, one conclusion of which was that droughts like the 2011 one in Texas were 20 times more likely to occur today then they were 50 years ago, and that this was due to climate change.  However, floods that devastated Bangkok recently were felt not to be due to climate change, but rather a cyclical issue that was worsened by the way Bangkok had built since the last such flood.

There was a call from a listener, and as soon as I heard the tone of voice, I said to myself, “Uh oh.”  Some listeners call in with questions, some give speeches.  This one did both.  He wanted to know if the models were so good, what the temperature was going to be in a certain city in the Midwest next July 4 and for the following 3 July 4ths.

He had a very angry, challenging tone of voice.

Climate models are not the same as weather prediction.  We cannot predict the weather accurately more than a few days in the future.  Does that make the GFS, ECWMF, NAM, AVN and other models wrong?  Yes….and No.  As a statistician, I learned the following:  “All models are bad.  Some are useful.”  Weather forecasts are based on atmospheric models, which differ according to initial conditions and the relative weight of the known variables.  I remember 50 years ago, when weather forecasting was done by a non-meteorologist on television, and the forecasts were not very good.  We have gotten a lot better; short-term forecasts, in the 24 hour range, are exceptionally good; I use the GFS 9 day model as a rough idea of what to expect in the coming days, but I know matters will change.

Climate forecasting is another science altogether, taking into account different long range variables.  From 40 years ago, when climate scientists, unaware of key variables, thought there might be cooling, to now, where virtually all believe warming is highly confident (95% being considered highly confident), there has been much research and ability to get information about the past.  The fact that a confidence interval is used means that statistical techniques have been taken into account, and while the conclusion may be wrong, it is highly unlikely that it is.

Let me explain a confidence interval:  it is NOT a probability, or it would be called such.  It is a range, based on the evidence, of where the parameter (the true measurement) is expected to be.  The parameter is unknown and unknowable, so that the interval either contains or does not contain the parameter.  This makes no sense with probability, so we call it confidence.  If we are able to repeat the experiment 100 times, we would expect 95% of the intervals generated to contain the parameter.  We would not know, of course, which 95 would.  The fact that models are not perfect is taken by far too many to allow them to take the other view, that they are wrong.  One may, of course, choose to do so, but it behooves those who disagree to come up with their own margin of error, p-value, and confidence interval, so the data can be appropriately discussed.  To say,”models are wrong,” is inappropriate for a scientific discussion.  Of course they are.  Statistics as a predictor is wrong, but good statistics state the likelihood an error of a defined amount will occur.

Probability is forecasting the future.  There is almost nothing complex in our world that we can forecast perfectly.  There must be some error.  Every responsible scientist quantifies that error in some manner; to do otherwise is to say that one can predict with absolute certainty what the future will bring.  We don’t do this with temperatures in Iowa on July 4th, where the next hurricane will form, or even its 10 day path.  Nor do we say, with absolute certainty, that the Earth is warming.  But the range that the models are giving us does not include zero or a negative number with high confidence, and that means the conclusion is, based on the current data, that the Earth is warming.

While correlation does not equal causation, there may be factors that make such causal.  Because we know that one greenhouse gas has increased (carbon dioxide), that another, in the face of warming, has increased (water vapor), a third and fourth (nitrogen oxide and methane) are increasing, we have reason to believe that the conclusions are not in error, and that there is a causal factor.

Anybody who follows hurricane forecasts is familiar with the cone of uncertainty, and the fact that the cone changes with time.  We saw this with Irene last year, and we saw the gradual westward shift of Isaac this year, as the initial forecasts showed Isaac to strike Tampa.  With time, the models showed a westerly drift of the hurricane’s expected path, and for it to ultimately strike New Orleans.  The models were constantly updated, and the gradual change was noted.  What did not happen was that the hurricane dissipated, it curved into the western Atlantic, or it went south into the Caribbean.  The models were good.  They were not perfect, but they were very good, and three days before Isaac made landfall, it was predicted to hit very close to where it eventually did.

Nate Silver says that the cone of uncertainty for hurricanes was 700 miles in diameter 25 years ago and 200 miles in diameter today.  He is studying models to understand why some work and others do not.  But the poster child for good models is weather and climate science.

Models to some have become the new “Bad Boy” of climate science.  Every responsible scientist develops models, if it is all possible.  Indeed, the dawn of simulation was about 15 years ago, and I remember running simulations in graduate school in 1998.  We are now able to do this so much better than we once did.  Debate should be over what models are used, their initial factors, the variables, and the conclusions, not whether or not we should use them.

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SWIFT BOATING VACCINATION

August 13, 2012

On a science podcast I listened to a few months ago, the moderator interviewed an actress from a well-known television series.  She had a Ph.D. in physics from UCLA.  The moderator himself was on the show one time, and that may have colored his viewpoint of what happened in the interview.

The woman had not vaccinated her children, saying,  “There are a third more vaccines now than there were when I was growing up, and I thought that was too many.”

She thought that was too many?  Based on what science?  Her statement appalled me, and I was equally appalled when the moderator did not call her out on her actions.  So what if there are a third more vaccines?  I haven’t seen a measles case in years.  A measles cluster involving about 7 people occurred here a few years back, and it made the newspaper.  Fifty years ago, only 7 cases of measles in a neighborhood  would have made the newspapers as real news.  Measles kills and is extremely contagious:  1 in 1000 die from measles encephalitis.  It is a nasty, nasty disease.  Does this mother want to spin the roulette wheel on her children?

Or rubella, the disease we kids loved to have, because we felt fine but had to stay home from school.  Unfortunately, pregnant women may catch rubella–and may not know it–until too late.  Does she want her daughter to have a child with congenital rubella syndrome, like a cousin in my distant family?   He is deaf, retarded and partially blind, and he lives with his mother.  What happens to him when she dies?  What happened to his life, and what happened to his mother’s life?

What about polio, where most cases are asymptomatic?  Perhaps if her children never leave the US, they will be fine.  What if they go to Bangladesh, Paraguay, Uganda, or even Mexico?  Does she want to take the chance they will get polio that is not asymptomatic?  Perhaps they will not be allowed in, because some third world countries actually believe that vaccination is important, even if some in a First World country don’t.

Mumps orchitis (testicular inflammation and a chance of sterility), pertussis, and H. influenzae meningitis are not benign diseases. This is the worst year for pertussis in decades.  What is this woman thinking?  Does she believe these diseases no longer exist because a higher power took them off the Earth?  Does she not know the Salk Trial was stopped early, because the vaccine worked so effectively?  I was part of that.  I was in the first cohort who got the Sabin vaccine.

When I was a medical student, forty years ago, we wrote “UCD” in a patient’s history, meaning “usual childhood diseases.”  I have no idea what they are now.  If we did as a country what we should do, and mandate vaccination for those who clearly have no contraindication, we would not have many “UCD” at all.  In Arizona, half of all children in charter schools are not vaccinated; 15% in public schools are not.  It’s bad enough we are destroying public education in this country; now the kids are going to be at higher risk for bad diseases, too, in addition to no solid proof in Arizona that charter schools deliver a better education.

Regrettably, all it takes is for a few vociferous people who will not believe sound science to convince many that white is black, and black is dangerous.  There are many people convinced vaccines cause autism and vaccines are bad, when good science has not shown that.  There are many who don’t believe we landed on the Moon, that astrology is meaningful, who can’t find Polaris, don’t know why we have seasons, don’t know metric or English measurements, think 9/11 was a US government plot, and the Marfa Lights are UFOs. Even more believe that the climate is not changing, and that we can continue to grow economies infinitely using finite natural resources.  The latter beliefs are unfortunate; not vaccinating when there are no contraindications is child endangerment.

Before 2004, not many people had heard of Swift Boats.  Today, the term is an English verb: “To Swift Boat somebody”.  You take a fact, say it isn’t or discount its worth, repeat the lie over and over again, and you can get a lot of people to believe it.  Swift boat ads helped defeat a decorated combat veteran by turning his Vietnam service against him. We have Swift Boated vaccines, and at some point we will pay the piper.

I wish I could have had the measles vaccine in 1956.  I did get the mumps and shingles (zoster) vaccines.   The zoster vaccine decreases the risk of neuralgia by half and cost me $200. I thought that was a good bargain, since post-herpetic neuralgia is a miserable, poorly treatable disease.

For most of history, disease, not hostile action, was the biggest cause of battlefield casualties during war.  Small wonder that the military believes in vaccinations.  It would be nice if the rest of the country did.

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THE DEMENTORS AMONG US

July 22, 2012

On 5 June, I took my telescope, a camera, and a videocamera, all with solar filters, to the local medical society, and showed about 100 people the transit of Venus, at the same time shooting video, taking pictures, and answering questions.  This exceedingly rare event occurs in pairs, 8 years apart; the next pair will occur 105.5 years from now.  Only Venus and Mercury, inner planets, can cross the Sun as viewed from the Earth.  Of the 100 who came, nobody knew it would be the last time I would be involved in a local medical community event; from now on, before our move next year, I will be only a patient, and hopefully not too often.

The transit was not as beautiful as many astronomical events I have seen, but it is so rare that nobody alive today will see it again, including the baby who looked through the eyepiece of the telescope; his grandchildren, should they live long enough, will.

TRANSIT OF VENUS, 5 JUNE 2012, WITH SUNSPOTS VISIBLE

A picture I took of the transit appeared on the Society’s magazine where I was once a columnist until I resigned last spring, because of reasons explained in the link.  It was a beautiful picture, and it was a good way to leave medicine, as a volunteer, who took a good photograph of a rare event, and shared it with the members.

Everybody who came was nice, except for a few comments, that while were not nasty, I could have done without.  One man, whom I know well for his right-wing beliefs (even as he gets AHCCCS, Arizona’s Medicaid) asked me the distance it was to Venus, and I said about 26 million miles.  He said, “Wow, that is less than the national debt.”

Why does politics have to be brought up during an exceedingly rare astronomical event?  The distance to alpha-Centauri in miles is greater than the national debt.  So what?  We have the national debt for a lot of reasons, some of which I think are important (Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, FAA, FDA, NIFC (National Interagency Fire Center, which saves lives, towns, and houses) FEMA etc.), some of which are not (Iraq, Afghanistan, aid to dictators, farm subsidies, tax breaks for millionaires).   But it sucked a little happiness out of me.  Dementors do that.

Another person came whom I consider a true enemy.  The person has never once laughed in my presence in the 35 years we have known each other.  Not once.  The individual does not believe in evolution, vaccination, climate change, and thinks there should be no government involvement in medical care.  Just seeing this individual depresses me.  That is a  Dementor.  I was polite, and while that person asked good questions, there has been “too much history,” and too many hateful comments from that individual for me to let down my guard.  Since this is likely the last time I will likely ever see this person, or anyone else there, I sucked it up for 2 hours.

A few months back, my wife and I had dinner with a neurologist friend and his sister, a retired nurse.  She had worked in emergency departments, and was vehement about those who misused them.  This happens.  I was up in the middle of the night a lot, caring for drunks, helmetless people who had motorocycle accidents, people who had not taken their anticonvulsants, and were in a state of continuous seizures.  Most of these people did not have insurance, and I didn’t get paid, although I could have been sued for everything I had, were I wrong.  That is part of a physician’s life–caring for many people come to EDs for conditions that they do unto themselves.

This woman we had dinner with felt that those patients wasted time, money, and effort, should have not been rescued, but left to die on the street.  Really.  A nurse said that.  My wife was shocked; I had missed that part of the conversation.  Well, Ron Paul also said that, too, and was loudly cheered by many, who if they have no insurance, are only a drunk driver, appendicitis, a kidney stone, or viral meningitis away from being in an ED without money and 5 figure costs.  My wife said if we again had dinner with the neurologist, and his sister came, I would go alone.  We left the dinner depressed.  Dementors do that.

Last March, in North Blind on the now dry Platte River, I was in my third year as a volunteer tour guide for the Sandhill Crane migration.  I was in the lower level of the blind; my co-guide had never been there and wanted the upper level, which had better views.  I had a family of four with two tweens, who were bored.  Their mother wasn’t interested, and only the father was taking a few pictures.  It was a good show–not spectacular–but good, and the kids obviously wanted to be elsewhere.  I couldn’t teach about Crane behavior, because they weren’t interested.  I guided 20 times during my stay, and this was the only time I left the blind depressed.  In a place where you can see cranes in fog, snow, close up, or 50,000 in the air above you, darkening the sky, with a haunting call that I simply love, who have been on Earth for nearly 10 million years, where it is one of Jane Goodall’s top 10 sights, and where the governors of Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas came one night, to have a bored family was a real downer.  They were Dementors.

EVENING ON THE PLATTE, MARCH 2012.

Twenty years ago, I helped a man on the Fall Lake portage in the Boundary Waters.  It was his last portage before returning home to Miami.  He had had rain, poor fishing, bugs, and not a good time.  I thought the weather had been fine, the fishing good, and the bugs non-existent.  I helped him get his gear across the portage and wished him well.  He was a Dementor, too, but the beauty of the Boundary Waters was strong enough for me to ignore his complaints.  Indeed, I parried every one of his comments; when he came to insects, he said “And the bugs!!!” He then looked at me and said, “Or are you ‘in’ to them, too?”  No, I am not “in” to bugs, but I recognize their presence, and I realize that they limit the number of people in the wilderness certain times of the year.

I’ve had my Dementor moments; many of us have.  But there are some who are always Dementors, and I try to avoid them if possible.  If they persist, I change the subject.  I had buttons made commemorating the Transit of Venus.  I didn’t make one for myself, for I only wear solar eclipse buttons,   The Dementor at the viewing got a button and liked his.  I almost wished I had seen that.  Harry Potter had the gift; maybe briefly, I had it, too.

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UNCOUNTABLE AND COUNTABLE COSTS

July 12, 2012

I needed a prescription refill for a medicine I have taken for 3 years.  My prior physician allowed calls to be made by the pharmacy to refill the prescription, so I didn’t have to go to his office to get one.  Unfortunately, he left practice to do concierge medicine.  I didn’t wish to pay $1500 annually for 24/7 access to a physician.  For years, I thought that went with the territory, along with not charging for the thousands of telephone calls I returned.  I can’t tell you how important it is as a patient to get a physician’s call.  I can’t put a dollar value on it, other than to say a big “Thank You” to the physicians who have called me back.  That has no dollar value, either, but I think they appreciate it.

Physician #2 left practice to become a hospitalist, because he was unable to afford continuing the practice he was in.  Physician #3 required a visit to refill this particular prescription, which is neither addicting nor dangerous.

We don’t have standardization in medicine for those things that need to be standard.  We disparage it as “cookie cutter” medicine, when in fact, cookie cutter approaches ensure good cookies.  “People are different,” I hear. No, we really aren’t as different as many would like to think.  Most men have similar anatomy; most women have similar anatomy.  Our physiology is the same, and our bodies react to insults in predictable ways.  That is why we study pathology.  Surgeons take out gall bladders the same way, and as a neurologist, I had a standard history and “cookie cutter” neurological exam.  I seldom forgot anything important.  What does differ is how we personally react to disease, and in a short office visit, time spent on that is virtually nil. I practiced for 20 years, so I know the difficulty in trying to diagnose, treat, and understand the patient’s reaction to an illness in a short office visit.

I drove to the physician’s office and asked for a prescription for 2 pills twice a day, 120 pills in all, with 5 refills.  I had my request written on a piece of paper.  I had to come back 2 days later to pick up the prescription.  The office could have sent it, but that requires something to be done by somebody else.  If I do it myself, it is more likely to get done right. Prescriptions can be lost and not sent.  It is only 45 minutes round trip, so it is nothing important, only my time.  When I returned, two days later, I was given my prescription, written for 1 pill twice a day, not 2, as I had asked for, but 120 pills in all, with 3 refills, not the 5 I had asked for.  I could have asked for the prescription to be written the way I had written it down, but the 120 pills a month was right, so I took it to the pharmacy, explaining carefully that this was a new prescription from a new doctor, who would be henceforth refilling future prescriptions.

The pharmacy normally calls me when my prescription is ready.  They didn’t call.

So, I walked to the pharmacy, 10 minutes fortunately, and was told that I could only get 60 pills, not 120, because the prescription was written for 1 pill twice a day. They said they couldn’t reach my doctor, but they mistakenly had called my previous one, who was no longer in practice, despite my having told them I had a new doctor, whose name and telephone number was on the prescription.

The pharmacy said they would call the doctor’s office.  I left the pharmacy empty-handed, because if I got 60 pills, I would have to explain to the insurance company why I needed a new prescription, should I again want 120 pills, which I do. The next day, the pharmacy said nobody picked up the phone.  I drove to the office, handwritten note again, and asked for another prescription, either to be called in or given to me to pick up.  While there, I asked if they had been called.  They said no, and they answer, so I am not clear whom the pharmacy was calling.

The following day, I got the prescription filled, a week late.  What would have happened if I did not have extra medication?  What would happen if I were 85, no medical background, not thinking clearly, because I was 85 and in ill-health, and on several medications?  I might end up in the hospital, which would be a five figure cost, because of breakdown of a really simple system.

I ask:  what is so difficult about writing and filling a prescription correctly?   Frankly, insurance companies should be trying to fix bad systems in medicine, which would save them far more money, than worry why a 63 year-old is taking 120 pills of Drug X every month, the same amount, and is doing just fine.  I am unable to refill a week in advance, should I go out of town during the time the refill is “allowed.”

No, insurance companies should fix bad systems, like ensuring antibiotics are given in a certain time window before elective surgery, which would save them far more money, as would standardizing the antibiotic. When I was medical director, we met the time window only a quarter of the time, and we had a post-op infection rate 4 times higher than Salt Lake City.  That amounted to about 20 extra infections a year, or a few hundred thousand dollars.  Those are all facts.  We had one doctor use a very expensive antibiotic for his patients, increasing the possibility of resistance, and I was unable to get the Surgery Department to deal with it.  We also had 3 wrong-side surgeries: on the head, knee, and bowel.  The first one was not communicated to the internist following the patient, who resigned from the case, he was so angry.  Bad systems cause trouble.

My pharmacy experience is is one reason why so many of us are so angry about medical care today.  It doesn’t work properly.  Systems are broken, and it costs money and time, and makes people frustrated and angry.  While time is supposedly money, it isn’t to me.  It has uncountable worth.  Unnecessary anger and frustration are uncountable expenses.  Being uncountable does detract from their importance, a fact lost upon many today.

Thirteen years ago, I bet my career on becoming one who taught people how to fix bad medical systems, and I lost.  Here is how medical errors have affected my small family:

My mother’s final illness began with a fainting spell.  She was taken to the hospital where we were told her CT head scan was normal. Five months later, 1500 miles from home, her rapidly progressive dementia led to a fall, breaking her hip, and she was delirious after surgery.  I had to fly to Portland, put my abulic (more than dementia, destruction of personality) mother, recovering from a broken hip, on a plane, and bring her home.  At the same hospital, we discovered she had refused the initial CT scan, and nobody had told us.  Worse, the attending physician later changed the note on the chart (the note that said “CT normal”), which is illegal.  Three more days (uncountable cost) were spent in flying to Portland (countable), to bring my parents’ car home.  My mother died soon after, so the error probably didn’t matter much, although the way she died still bothers me (uncountable cost).

My oldest brother’s meningioma was misdiagnosed until he went blind in one eye.  He is a professional photographer, so this is a significant issue (uncountable cost).   I am hoping the meningioma doesn’t grow further and kill him, because he refused surgery.  That might not have been a bad idea, given the location of the meningioma and given how complex medical procedures are.  After all, if we can’t deal with prescriptions properly, what is the probability of a successful operation?  Are there data? Or is it just anecdotal?

During my father’s final illness, he had low protein and edema so extensive that it literally wept through the skin on his legs.  Despite that, his nurses said he had heart failure.  I tried to explain to the head nurse that a lab test to measure protein was overdue,  that I was not the enemy, only wanting to ensure my father got the care he needed (uncountable cost, except for the lab test).  The response from the head nurse was “Let doctor take care of it.”

In my language, doctor takes a definite article.  For an unknown reason, omitting it annoys me.

I had a significant mistake made in my own medical care which led to 2 months of the worst misery I have ever experienced.  The medication for this condition is the one I have been trying to get at the pharmacy.

We argue about insurance reform, but we waste countable billions on bad systems;  suboptimal care, unnecessary deaths, and the uncountable cost of unnecessary frustration.  A family member of mine may need chest surgery and stay overnight in the ICU.  I will sleep there.  Many doctors would agree with my decision.  If you can possibly afford the time, and remember, my time is not important, you need to check everything that is done.  Medicine is complex, although we have other complex systems in society which work a lot better.  “We’re different from them,” say my colleagues.

Yes, we are different.  We don’t fix our bad systems, and we marginalize those who try.  I am proof of that.  Once I left medicine, I heard horror stories from just about everybody I spoke to.  Many of these may not be true, but tell me:  how many people each year die from medical errors?  We have estimates, but they are poor, which to me is a travesty.  With sampling or a census, ability to keep the findings from discovery, we could review each death from each hospital and sort it into:  definitely caused by medical error; significant, but not fatal, medical error; not significant medical error; no medical error.  Each chart could be reviewed, and we would have a superb estimate of the number for a calendar year by January 31 the next year.  Additionally, we would know what the errors were, and we could learn from them.  Legislation to do this was written by me, had 10 co-sponsors in the Arizona legislature, which was 8 more than the number of doctors who supported it.  The Hospital Association killed the legislation.

We physicians want malpractice reform, yet we act as if bad outcomes are just bad luck.  They are usually due to a concatenation of bad systems that can be fixed, not tolerated.  How many and what kind need only to be counted.  To people like me, who live and breathe numbers, “count” is always modified by the adverb “easily”.

Instead, I have encountered verbs: to marginalize, to ignore, to frustrate and to fail.

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METRIC FLUENT?

July 9, 2012

I happened to have the TV on, during the Tour de France, when I saw and ad for a $50 gold coin, which was going to be sold for $9.95.  The coin, which looked like the 1 ounce gold coin that the US Mint made, was clad in 14 mg gold.  “Clad” means to wear or to cover.  Fourteen milligrams of gold were used to cover the coin, so it looked like the real thing.

Looks mean a lot in today’s society.  We have to get rid of gray, have white teeth, be the right weight, have the right figure–in short, be debonair.  What is inside a person, which really gives them lasting beauty, does not appear to be to be nearly as important.

So, how much is 14 mg of gold worth?  If you are metric fluent, you know immediately this is a bad purchase.  I might call it a scam.  With a little work, you can determine how much of a scam it is.  Otherwise, you pay $9.95 for what you think is a real 1 ounce gold coin.  Don’t laugh; the company wouldn’t advertise if they didn’t think this was a good idea.  They will likely make a lot more money than I will this year.  After all, looks matter.

Let’s say gold is worth $2000 an ounce, an overestimate of course, but I want to give a clear overestimate of the coin’s value.  One of the problems with today’s math teaching is that many are so calculator dependent that they can’t estimate things.

How many grams in an ounce?  Oh, about 30.  The actual number is 28.35, give or take.  I’m writing this without looking up any numbers.  I know that a pint has 453.6 ml, and there are 16 ounces in a pint (which most students I teach don’ t know either, but hey, they look great in their miniskirts and low cut blouses and tight pants, right?)  Divide 16 into 480 and you get 30, so my estimate is not far off.  And divide 16 into 453.6 and you get 28.35.  Use a calculator if you wish.

Now, you have to get to milligrams, which means you multiply grams by 1000.  This is what makes the metric system so nice to use.  We don’t have 7/16 th of a meter in most calculations, but do any carpentry, and you find sixteenths of an inch all the time.  OK, 30 gm of gold is 30,000 mg, and that ounce is worth $2000, or 200,000 cents.  It helps to convert dollars to cents, but one does not have to.  One may disagree with my opinion,  but so far, this is not difficult math.  That works out to about 7 cents per milligram gold.  You don’t need a calculator and 8 decimal places.  You need the ability to make quick estimates.  If you want to be more exact, 200 divided by 28.35 is not far from 210 divided by 30, and the latter is 7.

Don’t laugh.  Last spring, I saw a math teacher write down the tangent of 67 degrees to 8 decimal places, when he only needed one.  Since the tangent of 60 degrees is sqrt 3, the tangent of 67 degrees ought to be at least 2 and likely a little more, but not 3.   I took a stab at it and was pretty close to the actual number.  Again, it is a matter of estimating, not looking up 8 decimal places.  I don’t expect many to know what the tangent of 60 degrees is, but I do expect high school math teachers to know, without a calculator.

Anyway, back to gold.  This coin has 14 mg or roughly $1 worth of gold in it.  The company is selling nickels with $1 of gold for $9.95.  I don’t know if shipping and handling is included).  How many people are going to buy this?  The guy selling the coin looked good, sounded earnest, and was absolutely sure you should do this.  Today, that counts for a lot.  All of us are subject to make bad purchases based on irrational approaches.  I sure am.

It’s just a question here whether paying more than 9 times as much for something than it is truly worth counts for you.

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WALKING AWAY FROM A BATTLE, SADLY AND QUIETLY

July 1, 2012

“When god created the horse, he said to the magnificent creature: I have made thee as no other. All the treasures of the earth lie between thy eyes. Thy shalt carry my friends upon thy back. Thy saddle shall be the seat of prayers to me. And thou shalt fly without wings, and conquer without sword; oh horse.” 

— the Qu’ran

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee:  for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and they God my God.

–Ruth 1:16.

What is wealth? Being happy with what you have.

—The Torah

September 1963.  I begin 10th grade in a new school in Wilmington, Delaware, a southern leaning state.  Before class starts, we have the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.  We sit down.  Then, the homeroom teacher opens a Bible and begins to read.

I was stunned.  Bible Reading?  This isn’t upstate New York, any more, Mike.  You are in the South.  She read a few verses, then we all stood and recited the Lord’s Prayer.  Well (n-1) did, because having been raised Unitarian, I never learned it.  Within a week, I knew it cold.  Good thing, too, for the Supreme Court banned Bible reading after that.

Prayers in the school, before events were common.  Frequently, I would hear “let each of us in our own way, pray.”  I like that.  What I didn’t like was the leader ending it “in Jesus’ name”. when a good share of the school was Jewish, or me, a Unitarian, where it was said the only time the word “God” was spoken was when the janitor fell down the back stairs.

On Memorial Day, 2012, one of the Arizona legislators gave a speech, honoring “Christian veterans.”  I was appalled.  I was also angered.  I am a veteran who happens not to be Christian.  Did that make my service somehow less valuable?  What did being Christian have to do with military service?

Two months earlier, two Jehovah’s Witnesses came to my front door.  I listened politely, then told them that I did not foster my religious beliefs on others, and I did not appreciate their trying to convert me.  I asked them, using “Please”, to leave.  They did.  My late mother had a different approach, when the Witnesses said, “Don’t you want to live forever?”  My late mother, a Unitarian, said, “Certainly not.  I can’t imagine anything worse.”  The Witnesses were tongue tied.  That might have been a first.  My late father was fond of saying, “My prayers were answered, and the answer was ‘NO’.”

On a language Web site, a Muslim from Algeria looked at my profile, saw that I didn’t put a religion, only that “We are stewards of the Earth.”  He wrote me, saying while I had a good profile, it was a shame that I would be going to hell.  I seethed but stayed silent.  I knew I would never change his opinion, so why waste his time?  Not responding is one of the best ways to stop a conversation.

On this same Website, religion seems to keep appearing as a topic.  I was teaching English to a Russian woman from southwest  Russia, near the Caspian Sea.  One Saturday, I asked her what she was doing that day.  The answer was “Not much. I’m Muslim.”   She quickly followed with, “does that bother you?”

It didn’t….until later.  I am reading the Qu’ran, and I have found many Muslims on this language site who have taught me a great deal about their religion.  Unfortunately, this woman then said, “I hope you will convert.”  That bothered me, because I don’t ask people if they will convert to my way of thinking about religion.  I said, that I couldn’t believe in Allah, although I liked many other aspects of Islam.  She replied, “You’re wrong,”  two of the most charged words in the English language, almost guaranteed to make somebody angry.  I just said, “Whoa…..stop this right now.  This is your opinion and not mine.”  She did.  I wrote her later, and told her that a lot of Americans would have immediately ended the conversation permanently.  Little did I know I would be one of them.  I mentioned in my letter that 9/11 was devastating to how many Americans felt about Islam, to which she countered: “The US government caused 9/11 for oil.”

That was the final straw.  I had not brought up religion.  She had.  And in the space of 18 hours had managed to want me converted, said I was wrong, and espoused a conspiracy theory.  I told her that if she did not admit the possibility of being wrong, she would not hear from me again.  I got back, “You just don’t want to hear the truth.”

And so ended my teaching experience with her.

All religions offer solace to their believers.  The most beautiful writing from three of the world’s great religions is at the top of the page.  Those who live their faith are fine people.  Those of us who believe how we live our life defines us as human beings can also be fine people.

I have noted throughout history that was once God’s will is now understandable. People used to die from infected hangnails, or mild gunshot wounds, like President Garfield.  Now, we can treat these problems.  Rheumatic Fever and death from diphtheria or acute lymhoblastic leukemia were “God’s will,”  until the advent of penicillin and chemotherapy. Hemoptysis from bronchiectasis was God’s will until we discovered it was M. aviae complex, and treatable with triple therapy.  Untreatable cleft palates were God’s will, until plastic surgery.  We don’t see these problems much any more.

I believe in good science, which self corrects and moves forward, each generation standing on the shoulders of the previous generation and looking further.  I also believe there is a great deal that is unknown and to date inexplicable, There are many ways people deal with the unknown.  I am curious about it and want to know why.  Others use faith.  If I liked their way better, I would take it.  I don’t.  And I don’t ask them to take my way.  It is impolite, it is not going to happen, and it will make them angry.

To the legislator who honored Christian Veterans, I have these comments:  Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists, Wikkans, Atheists, Agnostics and others like me make up this country and have served honorably.  Honor those who serve.  Keep religion out of the discussion.

Faith, or lack of, is deeply personal.  Honor others’ views, unless or until they cross a line that you find you cannot tolerate.  Then walk away, sadly and quietly.

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