Boreal B[l]og

The following three commentators won today:  “I want my money going to fight North Korea, not to pay for somebody else’s knee.”

Joe Walsh’s tweet: “Sorry Jimmy Kimmel: your sad story doesn’t obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else’s health care.” Well, Mr. Walsh, I don’t want to pay for yours, either, but I recognize that any of us can be that somebody else, and a malignant cell, blood clot, virus, drunk driver, nut with a gun, bad choice in deciding to fix a roof, can make any of us easily a million dollar consumer of health care.

A hiking friend of mine won, the guy who couldn’t see why his taxes should go to pay for somebody else’s health care.  I liked him a lot until I heard that.  He carries too much weight.  Yes, I may end up using more medical resources than he, but insurance actuaries would rather insure me than him.

America’s greatness in no small part comes from our willingness as a nation to contribute to the collective good.  That means we pay taxes for a lot of things that never benefit us. I learned young that most of the land, parks, and other places in the West were paid for by people in the East who never saw them.  A trillion dollars in 20 years—yes, a trillion, and that would be a one followed by 12 zeros, with a “net” after it—went from my once home New York State to the federal government over the past 20 years.  Most of the red states in the Deep South got a net infusion of money from the government that so many of them despise.  This is either hypocrisy or ignorance.  Knowing the South, and I have walked across Tennessee, yes—walked, I suspect it is both.  The highest percentages of people with pre-existing conditions are in southern red states.  They have high percentages of teen pregnancy and gun violence, too.

I shouldn’t have to pay for the levees in New Orleans, when they are doomed to fail because of ocean rise, subsidence, and the Atchafalaya River. I would not have rebuilt the city after Katrina.  I no longer wish to pay for sand to be trucked in to East Coast beaches, and rebuilding in the same places after another hurricane, ocean rise, storms, bad building, and because nature reshapes beaches.  I am tired of paying for defense that goes on offense and causes worse problems than we started.  I didn’t think the Iraq war was right and my judgment was correct.  And yes, I don’t like paying for health care for people who smoke, use drugs, drink too much, don’t wear helmets when they should, eat too much meat, and are obese.

You know what?  I get a lot back from this country, even though I gave a lot to this country in time and taxes, and until now, I haven’t been keeping score. Now I am.  Conservative commentators who don’t want to pay for people’s health care have no problem driving on roads and crossing bridges in their state that I helped pay for.  Or laud the firing of cruise missiles that I also helped pay for.  Or send their children to good universities that I helped fund.  I have no kids, but I gladly pay to support education, because an educated population is a lot better than an uneducated one, as we have learned in spades these past 18 months.  The Republicans put together a crappy bill, rammed it through the House without hearings or CBO knowledge, not because the country was in dire straits because of health care issues (mostly their fault, since if they had worked to make the ACA better, it would have not been a problem), but because they wanted some legislative victory to go home to.  I hope they enjoy their town halls.

I’d wish the lot of them to be thrown out of office next year, but that won’t happen, because people have short memories, those who don’t get health care will be told it was Obama’s fault, and while the Democrats are great at asking for money, they aren’t so great when it comes to running good campaigns.  When I have given, all I heard was another email:  Give. They mean well, but let’s face it, we have this guy in office for at least four years, and the other night the news media started discussing his “first term,” so it’s likely to be eight.  The Democrats will blow it again in 2020, I’m sure.  True, the president might become incapacitated, but Pence is after him, and he believes that going to church would cure pre-existing conditions.  How he would deal with pregnancy, a pre-existing condition, and abortion, isn’t clear. Paul Ryan is after Pence.  I’m not going to be politically active for another 8 years, not after dealing with Nixon for 6, Reagan for 8 and Bush 43 for another 8.

I’m almost in the David Brooks camp about how the president is really a 3-4 on the worry meter, not the 11 so many of us peg him at.  But Brooks isn’t looking at the big picture: climate change, which neither he nor I will live to see wreak its full havoc, the educational system, and the results of our misadventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and probably Syria and North Korea before this is all over.  Oh, we are marching, and the Democrats are running better than expected for open Congressional seats, but they are still losing.  The Democrats are really good at losing, and almost getting there isn’t a victory or even a message.  It is another loss.  “Wars aren’t won by evacuations,” as Churchill said after Dunkirk.  Ask the average American high school senior who Churchill was and why Dunkirk mattered, and you’d get a dumb stare.  Half the country can’t find the Ukraine within 1500 miles on a map of the world.  A significant number can’t find north, which these days might be useful in the US.

I am wondering at what point the American public is going to look at how the Republicans rammed through a bill that is going to make health care unaffordable, therefore inaccessible, for millions, clobber hospitals, who have to care for sick people who can’t pay, all in the name of a tax break to the wealthy.  There was no hurry to do this, other than to make the president look good, a president all of their other candidates last year tried to stop.  Now, they are embracing him, which means they own everything that happens to the country.  Everything. The Republicans complain of government overreach, yet they reach right into a woman’s life all the time, telling her what she cannot do.  They say people should be free to choose their doctor and health care, when the average person doesn’t have a clue how their body is put together and doesn’t have the money to pay for just one ED visit. I’m a physician, and when I moved to another city, I had no way to know who was a good doctor. The data are so bad that 19 years after I left practice, I was still given a 5-star rating online.  We’re not talking about Consumer Reports for Toyotas or Leafs, but medical care.  People need care, care that doesn’t bankrupt them.  I could ask that the care be better, but that’s next.

What’s unfortunate is that many of those who voted for this Congress and this president are going to be very hurt by what has happened, and they are not even aware of it.  Nor will most change their vote the next election.  But if 1% of them switched, which is the percentage Nicholas Kristof found, there might be hope.

1% to fight the 1%.

I started using my first cellphone in 1990, but even as late as 1999, I still used a pager.  When I tried to replace it, I was told nobody used them any more.  I did, and I liked it.  A pager was easy, I knew what number to call, and usually it was something important.  The cell phone finally supplanted my pager, and I no longer know where every pay phone is (or have a pocket full of dimes—er… quarters), not that there are any of them around, but many of my incoming calls are either spam or wrong numbers.  Every technology has untoward, unforeseen side effects.

I have never tweeted.  I do have an account, but I’ve never seen a need to follow somebody on Twitter, since I have my own life to live, not follow somebody else’s.  I haven’t missed much, although I did stun a few people when I admitted I didn’t know anything about the Kardashians. I’d rather know how to backpack, read the sky, start a fire when it’s pouring rain, how to canoe trip, or how to do basic math than worry about somebody famous.  I can’t write well and quickly.  I need time to think; technology does not play to my strengths in this regard, but rather to my weaknesses.

On a recent hike, a few of us saw a flower we couldn’t identify. Somebody asked me if I had an app to identify it. Being a dinosaur, I don’t have such, any more than I have an app to look at the night sky or the types of clouds overhead.  I usually ask someone or look it up when I get home.  Dinosaurs do those sorts of things. I need to get better at flowers; I know my way around the night sky just fine.

Nonetheless, I looked at flower identification apps, found one that seemed useful, bought it, after having to change my password for the app store, because I couldn’t remember it, since I don’t buy apps very often, and took a picture of an Oregon Grape as a test.  I figured the app would match it to a known picture, just like on my computer, where I kept seeing unwanted pictures of people in the background of my photographs whom I couldn’t get rid of until I got lucky with a few buttons (which showed me where the strange face came from–it was a high jumper at the Olympic trials in 2012).  If we can match faces, I reasoned, certainly we can certainly match flowers.

I had to fill in information about the plant, which bothered me, because I thought the flower would be matched with a database. Come on, if American Airlines can send me an ad offering “up to 30% off” sharing miles, two days after I viewed the their offer (20% for under 25,000 miles and nothing off on the fee), we ought be able to match an picture to a plant.  I was informed that I would get an answer within 24 hours from a botanist, to whom I could pay $0.99.   In other words, the identification is not by matching, and I have to pay for it.  Bluntly speaking, another fee, explained as “Many experienced botanists make effort….It is a process requiring their time and knowledge.”

OK, I understand the idea that I’m getting a service that has worth.  I won’t use the app.  I’ll teach myself from now on.  Having answered more than 5300 math problems for free on algebra.com, until now quietly and with no fanfare, I wonder why I am such a chump Dino when I could easily charge a dollar or more for each problem solved, three dollars for showing work, which takes maybe a minute longer, and ask for renumeration for my “efforts” using PayPal. More than one student has wanted me to help them. I won’t charge for two reasons: first, I am a chump. I believe I should to give back to the community by helping people, and second, I quit using PayPal ever since they took a deposit on an outdoor trip I paid, said they could only dole it out $500 a month, so that I had to come up with more money to pay for the trip by check, and meantime I could, if I wished, donate my money held by them to a charity of their choosing.  I don’t know how many of my buttons PayPal pushed with that maneuver, but it was plenty.

I was not the only Dino at Rowe Sanctuary when the new young paid staff had an online sign up sheet for volunteer jobs.  We had signed up online for years, and it worked fine until this year, when they used a free web site and stopped using the jobs Board listing three consecutive days of who was doing what job.  I made the jobs Board back in 2008, and it had been, until this year, a quick and easy way to see what jobs needed done and what one’s responsibilities were on a particular day.  The free web site is slow, because it’s free and oh, we’d also like you to look at the ads.  I don’t like slow loading web sites, because I don’t know if it is the website or the computer has locked up.  Once the site loads, then I have to scroll through every job listed for one day.  It’s slow and inefficient, unless one is young, I guess.  I also didn’t like the volunteer orientation with PowerPoint slides that I can read in 3 seconds then have to listen to somebody else read them over a minute or two.  That drives me crazy.  PowerPoint has been shown to do bad things: Tufte’s article about the Columbia space disaster and the concerns raised by PowerPoint presentations beforehand makes compelling reading.  General McChrystal once said that if he could understand a single PowerPoint slide about Afghanistan (amazing to see), he could win the war. I loved Tufte’s comment: “Why are our presentations operating at 2% of the data richness of routine tables found in the sports section? ” Indeed.  In seconds, I understand the NHL or NBA playoff picture, and I follow them only peripherally.

I’m a Dino, because I recently heard that email is passé.  Well, not to me it isn’t.  I like to read what I have written, make changes so it sounds better, and put in little things like “Dear xxxx,” and “Sincerely yours”.  To me, platforms like Skype, Messenger, and WhatsApp, which I have used a lot, while useful, can be huge time wasters.  Skype is horrible for email.  Get somebody on one of them who is lamming—chatting with somebody else online or in person simultaneously, for example—and if there is a gap in the chat, one doesn’t know whether to stay online wasting time or do something else, like read a paper book, feeling rude to leave.  Dinosaurs have different values.

I realize I am falling further behind the technology curve. I still have a decent idea of what technology is good and not good for.  I no longer need Bartlett’s book of quotations, I can find lyrics to any song I wish and even listen to one, and I can write faster than I could on a typewriter.  Calculators are great for the math I can’t possibly do myself, although I still have ability—no longer taught any more—to determine whether or not an answer makes sense just by looking at it. I’m great at that.

I guess I’ve become the curmudgeon that as a kid I made fun of.  Sorry, gramps, or not.  Maybe like me you had no children.  But you were right.  The world is going to hell.

“I have a question for you!”  I looked down at the four-year old girl, accompanied by her mother.  I had just finished an afternoon planetarium show at The Science Factory, a local children’s hands-on museum, and I got down on my knees so our heads were at the same level, and asked what her question was.

“Who named the stars?”

“What a great question!” I answered.  The mother was a little embarrassed, I think, but the little girl demanded an answer.  “Why, they were named by the ancient Arabs, the Persians, and the Greeks,” I said, “who lived in places where it was clear at night and real, real dark, because there was no electricity.  I find some of the names beautiful, like Shaula, Adhara, Albireo, Nunki, and Denebola. What do you think?” She was fascinated but liked Regulus the best. She liked lions.   I think her mother enjoyed the interchange, too. The question made my day.  Maybe I made both of their days, too.

Examples like this are the reason I am writing in support of replacing the planetarium projector, which finally burned out, and I am willing to back up my support as a four figure donor, which information I normally don’t give out, but times are hard.

I’ve used a planetarium show to point out that escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad knew how to find the North Star, whereas very few Americans today can find Polaris.  Knowing how to find north mattered.  Nowadays, a large plurality of Americans would rather study astrology than find north.  I can think of three other ways to find north—without a compass.  Many think Polaris is the brightest nighttime star.  Nope.  It ranks 49th; Sirius is the brightest.  You learn that in the planetarium. I’ve discussed, during and after a show, how one can learn her way around the night sky, treating it like a map of a city, going from the major streets to the minor ones.  It’s easy in the planetarium, when all the major landmarks are on the dome above you, exactly as they appear in the night sky on any date, time or place in the world we choose.

I have volunteered in the planetarium the past two years. The Science Factory needs it as an anchor and Eugene needs it as a tourist attraction.  When I lived in Tucson, Flandrau Planetarium was an excellent astronomy museum, but it was on the University of Arizona campus, where parking was difficult. The Science Factory is easy to find in Eugene, parking is 100 yards from the facility, and a good planetarium is a major attraction, where parents and children together can learn science and the night sky.  The planetarium can inspire questions, teach people how to find the bright stars and planets and learn about the effects of light pollution on our ability to see the night sky.  We could use lectures, I suppose, but the ability to take people on a tour of the night sky in daytime can’t be done anywhere else but in a planetarium.  I’ve had fun turning the calendar forward 10,000 years to see what the sky would look like.  Or change the latitude and longitude and pretend I’m in New Zealand, where back in ’86 I was under some of the darkest skies I ever have seen, on the main road on the west side of South Island by Lake Moeraki.  I wrote two columns about the fabulous Southern sky down there.

I find it ironic that this year, when a long-awaited, exceedingly rare total solar eclipse will race across Oregon, the loss of the current projector makes some on the Board consider closing the planetarium. Boards don’t like to spend money or make tough decisions, I guess.  Boards like things simple, I think. I’m not sure, because other than medical societies, I’ve never been asked to serve on a Board.  I’m not an important person, except when it comes to donating money.  Then I’m courted by many.  But when it comes to ideas, experience, doing something differently, taking some risks, well, we need important people to do that, not some retired science nerd without connections.

Of course we need a planetarium in Eugene, and indeed, the eclipse this August makes it an excellent time to have a fund drive to replace the projector. Normally, I don’t tell people how much I am willing to donate, but since most of the good I’ve done in life appears to have been donations, I figured I would put my money where my mouth is and tell those important people on the Board what I was willing to donate, after I wrote a shorter, more polite, version of the above, so they knew that I had a brain and knew astronomy, planetariums, and the night sky, besides having money to donate.

I continued, writing I found it additionally ironic that literally in the shadow of Autzen Stadium, where no dollar is spared for athletics, we might let The Science Factory—and Eugene–lose an important educational and tourist attraction that will influence people far more and far longer than a football game.  The last coach was fired with about $10 million left on his contract.  The new coach’s strength coordinator, on the second day of the job, put three players in the hospital with rhabdomyolysis, caused by an over strenuous workout likely hurting their renal function permanently, since two of them stayed for nearly a week.  You need to be diuresed when this happens, in order to try to save the kidneys.  For all I know, they might have even had temporary dialysis.  Another assistant coach was paid $61,000 before being fired for driving drunk and hitting another car, two weeks on the job.  The first game isn’t until September.  The last president at the University had a million dollar severance package when he was let go early.  I’m not Mr. Personality, but I have more people skills than this guy had. I’m sure the Duck Athletic Fund Board and the Regents are full of important people, but with all due respect, I think their financial management and judgment could be improved. Who knows, maybe a nobody like me might actually make better decisions.  Mind you, I didn’t say all that in the letter, but I left a lot of lines to read between.

I ended my letter with the answer I gave the girl’s question, rather than putting it in the body.  I wanted them to read wondering who named the stars. Not knowing something is good for people.  It takes them out of their comfort zone, so they have to wonder.  I like having to wonder.  It leads to thinking, asking, or looking it up, all a reminder that none of us is as smart as we think we are.

I later wrote my contact at The Science Factory to count me in as a donor for the planetarium and a volunteer projectionist when she needs me.  But I won’t give one red cent to the Duck Athletic Fund.

Priorities.