Posts Tagged ‘Philosophy’

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THE LADY IN THE STYLISH BOOTS

July 29, 2013

“Oh, those damned government regulations.”

I looked towards the voice, that of a fortyish woman, with stylish boots, dyed blonde hair, and a southern accent, who was talking to a park ranger at Katmai, 400 km southwest from Anchorage, and a long way from any part of the lower 49.

I almost let her have it, because rangers have to be nice, I don’t. I’m an elder in my society, and I was a lot more in my environment than she was.  I was wearing boots that had walked the over peaks in the Brooks Range, in Kobuk Valley’s sand dunes, both above the Arctic Circle, in Alaskan rivers, and on tussocks and ice.  Hers had probably just spent their first time on a dirt trail.

At Katmai, there are two viewing platforms at Brooks Falls, the lower, where one can go as long as one wishes without waiting or time limits, and an upper, where 40 people are limited to one hour, then have to get into line again for another hour, should they wish to see more.

Brown bears at Brooks Falls, Katmai NP, Alaska

There is a question, and I think a good one, whether we should be having people view the bears in the Brooks River feeding on salmon.  We don’t know what effect we are having on the bears.  Perhaps none.  Perhaps a lot.  Katmai is pretty enough without having to see the bears close up, but most go to see the bears.

The upper platform, next to the falls, has more fish, and that is where the males, and the big ones, congregate, so people want to go there.  Forty are plenty.  Put 50 or 60 there, and the last 20 aren’t going to see much.  I waited for 20 minutes when I arrived, spent an hour at the upper falls, left, got back on the list again, went to the downstream viewing area a second time, skipped lunch, and waited my turn to go to the upper falls.

The downstream viewing was great.  I saw a bear sleeping in the mud on the other side of the river and pointed him out to others.  A bear ran right under the walkway with a salmon, off into the woods to eat it.  There weren’t many people talking, and within 45 minutes, I was back at the upper falls.  That wasn’t a long wait.

Bear napping in mud, Brooks River, Katmai NP

Bear taking salmon into woods

That second time was special.  I saw a boar chase a cub up a tree.  When the boar left, the mother came with two more cubs and soon all 3 cubs were in the tree.  Later, another sow with spring cubs, much smaller, appeared.  The whole time, several bears were fishing the river.  I had a good time and as I left the check-in station, I heard the woman complain.

Sow with her 3 cubs.

I almost let her have it. But being an elder means having wisdom, and I knew I would be more emotional than wise if I said anything to the woman wearing the stylish boots.

I would have started with the failure to properly regulate flights properly over another national park: the Grand Canyon.  On 18 June 1986, a helicopter and a fixed wing collided over Tuna Creek, killing 25, many of whom were Dutch tourists, who likely burned to death before they hit the ground.  The FAA stepped in.

I would then have asked how much better off we might be today had we regulated the financial industry, so that people who almost took down the world’s economy, which is still struggling years later, got bonuses that themselves were in the top 0.5% of US income.

I might have asked her to imagine Katmai as a private park with a bus to the viewing platforms, so people wouldn’t have to walk 1.2 miles, selling tourists a salmon, then putting them on a tram over the falls, so people could look down and drop salmon to the bears, getting that “special” picture to post on their wall.

Ten years ago, during bear hunting season, many people went into Lake Two in the Boundary Waters without permits.  It’s an easy lake to get to, and surprise–people don’t always regulate themselves.  When my wife and I tried to camp there, with a permit, coming the other way, we were tired, disappointed, and angry that the lake was full.  We had to paddle a lot further before camping.  Afterwards, rangers were posted at the entry point to ensure people had permits.  Regulations make it possible for me to have my rights protected, too.  Even with rules, parks get trashed; without them, I shudder to think what would happen.

She probably would have screamed at me if I asked when a person’s right to own a firearm interfered with my right to be safe at my local Safeway, where Gabby Giffords was shot. Yes, I know, guns don’t kill people, people kill people, because if they are angry, it is easy to move a finger without thinking of the consequences.  Using a knife or a fist makes it a lot more personal, risky to the attacker, and requires enough time where maybe somebody can think “I shouldn’t do this,’ which is what I did before telling the woman in stylish boots what I thought of her.

All but forgotten now, the memorial to the 6 killed and 19 wounded in Tucson. Just a question: When was the last time you heard “Newtown”?

I’d like to know what the lady would think of regulating food quality and safety, something a good looking congressional candidate from my district wanted to do away with, since he had never had seen a case of typhoid fever or hepatitis, or a child die of shigella or salmonella.  That candidate scared the daylights out of me and missed winning the seat by 4,000 votes, because people were angry about the Affordable Care Act, many of whom were on Medicare or military retirees, ironically receiving government funded medical care.

No, lady, we regulate our public lands, because if we don’t, they will be lost for all time and be turned into money makers for a few.  The forests will be cut, the land mined, the water ruined, the silence gone, the animals gunned down.  I’d conclude with: “What about my rights and the rights of those who have yet to be born?”

I wonder whether she would kick me with those stylish boots.  Or think.

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LIKE LOCUSTS DESCENDING ON A FIELD OF WHEAT

July 23, 2013

Forty years ago, I was sold a $50,000 Whole Life insurance policy that cost me $750 a year in premiums.  When I cashed it out last year, it was worth about $84,000.  This is a rate of return well below 2%, and I paid the premium for several years.  It was a bad investment.  It was a good deal for the broker.

Back then, I didn’t know how to say no.  I was a first year medical student.  Life insurance salesmen descended on medical students like locusts on a wheat field, asking each one to give a couple other names of fellow students.  I refused to do that. Credit card companies in 1975 wouldn’t give me a card, when I became a physician (no way students ever got credit cards back then), because I was only an intern earning $10,000 a year.

I would have been much better off buying a 20-year $1 million term policy that I could afford. Every young married couple should have term insurance.  This is a time when people are usually healthy, their incomes are low, their debts are high, they may have children, and sudden death can devastate the survivors.   They can afford $500,000 term policies.  A whole life policy of that size is unaffordable.

Insurance salesman, however, make more money selling whole life policies, so that is why I got one.  It was an introduction to the world of people acting in their own self-interest. Having a fiduciary responsibility to a client means one does what is best for the client, not what is best for the provider’s income. As a physician, I had a fiduciary responsibility to do what was best for my patients, not me.  It meant that I got up at 2 or 3 a.m. to treat a drunk who had fallen, or a guy who had gone off his motorcycle and wasn’t wearing a helmet.  I was spat upon, had to hold a drunk still in a CT scanner, where the scans took a half hour to do, not a few seconds, yelled at, often not paid, but  able to be sued if I screwed up.  The next day, I was exhausted and functioned at a level of being legally drunk. Back then, in the “good old days,” doctors worked while exhausted.  I said at the time it was wrong, and I was slammed by my partners for saying so, because good doctors functioned well for 36 hours straight.  Research long ago showed that notion to be false.

Over the years, I have made many financial and medical mistakes:  I invested in a few REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts), but not many.  I had suspicions that something was amiss in 2007, but I listened to my financial adviser explain them away.  He gave me an article by a Wharton professor, who ensured the reader that 2008 would be a great year. Financial advisors cannot be given carte blanche. I was executor of my father’s estate, and half of the legal advice I received was wrong.  Even the lawyers can’t understand our financial system, which is in my view deliberately made complex.

Credit card debt is a major problem and a classic example of how lack of regulation allowed banks to do well at the literal expense of their customers.  I pay the balance off every month.  Always. By doing so, I get an interest free loan from the bank.  Credit card debt has astronomical interest rates that only recently have been made public.  Many think that making the minimum payment on a credit card is all they need to do.  It is not.  The interest is charged on the full amount.

A brief comment on rate of return.  One will hear that a security has a 4% rate of return.  That rate does not include fees to buy and sell the security, nor does it include the taxes one pays on the gains.  It isn’t dishonest for the financial community to do so, but it isn’t realistic, either.  If I make $1000 on a stock but pay $400 in taxes and $50 in fees, I haven’t made $1000; I have made $550.  My wife and I had a house in rural Arizona.  We sold it for double of what it cost to build it, but after fees on both ends and capital gains taxes, over 20 years our rate of return was 1.8%.  That is a real rate of return:  money we had.  The doubling was simply a number, before costs of selling and taxes were factored in.   I take my net worth and multiply it by 70%, and that is my real net worth, because selling everything will be taxed.

I recently watched a story on Suze Orman about a 69 year-old woman, whose husband’s pension died with him.  She had a house underwater in Florida, and she was nearly destitute.  Indeed, she was living on social security, as do many Americans.  What happens to them if we “privatize it”?  Like the insurance agents descending on medical students, financial experts will descend upon the elderly.  Good looks and saying what people want to hear trump truth and fiduciary responsibility for the buyer’s best interests. A lot of elderly can’t understand finances and money, don’t think clearly, and are going to get burned.

I made many financial mistakes, and I teach math.  We don’t value math teaching and teachers;  the financial industry exists to do three things very well:  take your money in the form of high fees, move it around electronically, and generate paper.  Research has shown little value to society to moving money, compared to, say–a teacher.  I receive thousands of pages of financial paper annually (I sampled and made inferences), most of which are not understandable. I don’t have the time to read it.  Can you imagine how a poorly educated 80 year-old will handle it?  The few million words I get basically can be summarized with 12:  “you might lose all your money and we are not at fault.” Every other week, I receive a class action lawsuit notification about some company, often 4-5 copies, each 20 or so pages.   I have to decide whether to throw it away or try to research when I bought the stock and how long I held it.  I used to look up the information, but when the suit was settled in my favor, I got vouchers for something the company made.  I throw this stuff away now.  At least I can recycle it.

If I, a mathematician, who can tell you right away what the doubling, and tripling time of money is for a given interest rate is (divide the interest rate into 72, and 110 respectively, and the quotient is the number of years), cannot understand much of American finance, what chance does an elderly woman who has just been widowed have?  Or a young person out of school?  Mortgages should require a 20% downpayment and consume no more than 1/3 your income.  You don’t throw away money on rent; you have somebody else taking care of things that break, and you can leave when you want to.

Many live only on Social Security, never its intention, but now their only choice.  Many in Congress would like to destroy it and privatize Medicare, because the “market” will do a better job.  In Ayn Rand’s mythical world, the market does well.  In the real world of greed and grab, birth defects, viruses, auto accidents–heck, appendicitis–the market needs regulation, which it isn’t getting.  The “market makers” almost took down the world’s economy in 2008.  Many of them got bonuses worth more than I made in my lifetime for doing it, and I practiced medicine. Five years later, we still are not back to where we should be, many will never recover, and we are talking about removing the safety nets from those who need it the most.

While the paper continues to flow into my mailbox.

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WILDLAND FIRE IS INHERENTLY DANGEROUS; NO MORE PURPLE RIBBONS

July 6, 2013

Ten Standard Fire Orders 

  1. Fight fire aggressively, but provide for safety first.
  2. Initiate all actions based on current and expected fire behavior.
  3. Recognize current weather conditions and obtain forecasts.
  4. Ensure instructions are given and understood.
  5. Obtain current information on fire status.
  6. Remain in communication with crew members, your supervisor, and adjoining forces.
  7. Determine safety zones and escape routes.
  8. Establish lookouts in potentially hazardous situations.
  9. Retain control at all times.
  10. Stay alert, keep calm, think clearly, act decisively. 

Eighteen watch-out situations 

  1. Fire not scouted and sized up.
  2. In country not seen in daylight.
  3. Safety zones and escape routes not identified.
  4. Unfamiliar with weather and local factors influencing fire behavior.
  5. Uninformed on strategy, tactics, and hazards.
  6. Instructions and assignments not clear.
  7. No communications link with crewmembers/supervisors.
  8. Constructing line without safe anchor point.
  9. Building fireline downhill with fire below.
  10. Attempting frontal assault on fire.
  11. Unburned fuel between you and the fire.
  12. Cannot see main fire, not in contact with anyone who can.
  13. On a hillside where rolling material can ignite fuel below.
  14. Weather is getting hotter and drier.
  15. Wind increases or is changing direction.
  16. Getting frequent spot fires across the line.
  17. Terrain and fuels make escape to safety zone difficult.
  18. Taking a nap near the fireline.

I’m going to be a Monday morning quarterback, but on the other hand, accidents and their investigation interest me, for we must learn from them. Commercial aviation has done so to a remarkable extent; medicine has not.

1949: Mann Gulch fire.  Thirteen died when the fire blew up due to strong winds.  From the time trouble was recognized until the men were dead was 11 minutes.  Those who died did so running uphill.  They died from asphyxiation or burns.  The fire was not affecting houses or civilian lives.  We had a culture from the 1910 fire, where 87 died, that all fires were to be put out before 10 a.m. the next day.  Ironically, this has created many problems we face today.

1994: South Canyon fire, near Glenwood Springs, Colorado.  In early July, a lightning strike started it.  Because some residents complained about smoke, a decision was made to fight the fire, which was not endangering any structures or lives, and was 5 acres when a decision was made to attack it, despite its being one of the lowest priority fires in Colorado at the time, where there were at least 35 fires burning, and resources were stretched.  When the fire was initially scouted, the difficulty and the risk were noted, and recommendations were made not to fight it in that particular area.  Catastrophes occur when there are major errors, but they also occur when there is a concatenation of smaller errors.  This fire was an example of the latter.  It was attacked because a person complained of the smoke–an inadequate reason.  Had the fire grown, it might well have been clearly inaccessible to attack in the place where the people who attacked it subsequently died.  It might have been fought differently.  I do wonder whether those who complained about the smoke ever wondered whether they were culpable.

Fourteen people died, including most of the Prineville, Oregon hotshot crew, when they descended a hill, in this worrisome area, in thick growth to build fire lines. Several members thought this maneuver was dangerous, because they had unburned fuel, extremely volatile fuel,  between them and a fire they couldn’t see (Watch out #9). Nobody spoke up, except some smokejumpers elsewhere on the fire, who did not think what they were asked to do was a good idea.  Eight of the ten major rules for fire fighters, 12 of 18 Watch Out guidelines were eventually compromised or violated.

A dry cold front came through that afternoon, predicted, but the information wasn’t relayed to the firefighters.  At 1520 hours, concerns were raised, and some left the area.  At 1600 hours, all left, but sawyers were still carrying their saws, and many were walking.  Twenty minutes later, they were dead, shelters not deployed.  Not only can fire move faster than we can run (this one moved 14 mph), superheated gases and radiant heat can kill people at a great distance, and winds can knock them over.  On Mann Gulch, winds lifted a survivor up and down three times.  The idea that fire suddenly erupts and people die with no warning is not true.  Fire does suddenly erupt, but usually there are hints.  There were such hints at South Canyon.  There were draws, and there was wind, an ideal situation for fire spread, and one that had been previously noted.  Many firefighters didn’t appreciate the severity of the situation until it was too late, for the safety zones were too far away and uphill.

The recommendations after South Canyon were hoped to make fire fighting safer.  They didn’t.

Thirty Mile Fire, Washington State, 2001.  Four fire fighters died after deploying their shelters in a rock field when a small fire earlier in the day suddenly exploded, overwhelming the crew. The problem was many small errors–virtually no sleep the night before (impairs judgment equivalent to being legally drunk), going suddenly to a fire that they hadn’t planned on, faulty equipment, slow start, and pulling in the lookout.  At the lunch spot, not a safety zone, two spot fires were noted up a dead end road (which had not been previously appreciated when the group arrived at the fire), and tankers were sent to the spots.  At this point, the hauntingly sad video given by survivors stops, and the listener is told to put himself in the position of the fireboss, rather than knowing what happened later.  The fireboss sent more help to the spot fires, had no lookout to look at what the main fire was doing, and ultimately, the whole group was cut off from escaping from the lunch site the other way.  Instead, they went up the dead end road (which also had civilians present) to what appeared to be a safe area, with a stream to the east, a rock slide with no growth (but fuel between the rocks), and the road.

Thirty minutes before the fire overwhelmed the crew, many were taking pictures of themselves, not looking for safe spots or beginning shelter deployment, not knowing this would be the last picture of them alive.

Shelter deployment means that people were in an area they should not have been in.  They were too far from the safety zone.  That happens.  Shelters are a last ditch effort to save oneself.  Had everybody deployed on the road, they would have all survived.  But some deployed on the rocks.  They died of asphyxiation.  Many at the time were not adequately trained to deal with shelters, which one must be able to get in either standing or lying.  Several wore fusees and backpacks into the shelter; fusees burn at 375 degrees and can ignite if in contact with the shelter itself.  Some lost gloves, which were in retrospect available and nearby, and others left backpacks too close to the shelter, where they burned, adding fire near the shelter.  I don’t know what I would do if I were in that situation.  I haven’t been trained; all of these people were.  Many deploying shelters do so when there is a great deal of wind from the fire, sometimes ripping the shelter from a person’s hand. When I saw this haunting video, I said to myself, “When the tanker on the downwind spot fire radioed that they needed additional help, that is when I would have pulled out.  Everything is going wrong on this day, and we need to regroup.”

We get back to the basic part of fire fighting.  It is dangerous, and everybody who fights fire knows that.  My experience is nearly nil, only having driven a water tanker on a controlled burn in 1995.  The culture had been not to question orders, and there is a degree of pride in being able to handle adversity.  Nobody likes to lose a fire, nobody wants to say that they couldn’t attack it.  Nobody wants to see houses destroyed.

What I don’t remember about 1994, although I could be wrong, was that we didn’t refer to the fallen firefighters as heroes.  They were professionals, and they were sadly victims. The fire should have been allowed to burn, nobody should have been deployed in any area that was unsafe, regardless of the risk to property and especially not because somebody complained about the smoke.  And that brings me to 19 years later, a lot closer to home.

2013:  Arizona.  Nineteen firefighters die fighting the Yarnell Hill fire.  We don’t know many details yet.  A lookout was posted, and he radioed that the winds had shifted and he was leaving.  We’ve heard he did all the right things, but I know nothing yet of whether his messages were received, or what else was said or not said.  Shelters were deployed, unlike Storm King, so there was more time for the firefighters to realize they were in trouble.  There wasn’t much time, but the early reports saying “nothing could have been done, the fire was on them in seconds” may not be accurate.  I don’t yet know.  More than one report is comparing the Yarnell Hill fire with the South Canyon fire.  Both were initially small, both were in difficult terrain with extreme drought, and both were handled by hotshots.  Both had a major, predictable wind event, both had unburned fuel between the firefighters and the main fire, and both led to disasters.

I suspect by the end of August, most of the investigation will be completed.  Lack of a meteorologist will be one issue, I suspect, or at least under appreciation of what the winds would be.  Working in dense fuels with fire nearby, not seen, will likely be another.  An adequate escape route will be another.  Beyond that, I would not speculate further except to unequivocally state, this was NOT an Act of God.  That statement to me is a copout, an excuse for not trying to understand circumstances that people should understand, and a way to sweep the matter under a rug.  Unfortunately, the mistakes made will be publicized, likely inflaming many communities as much as the fire did.  But mistakes were made.  Thunderstorm downdrafts, erratic winds, Venturi effects, plentiful dry fuel, and a burning fire are all understandable.  Whether we can predict what they will do is another matter, and evidence is beginning to mount that our modeling of fire behavior is inadequate due to increased size of fires because of suppression, climate change allowing bark beetles to survive winters, and more houses in the wildland-urban interface.  Ability to recognize danger and to speak up is part of firefighter training.  If we cannot adequately predict the worst case scenario, and plan for it, then we have no business sending people into harm’s way, except to save lives, not property.  Worst case scenario planning is why firefighters are required to have safety zones and exits to them, both hopefully plural.

Just as Challenger repeated 17 years later with Columbia, almost to the day, with many of the same cultural problems still persisting in NASA, so did South Canyon repeat 19 years later with Yarnell Hill, almost to the day.  I suspect, like NASA, there are still cultural problems in the firefighting community.  Hopefully, the investigation will uncover these issues, and the wildland firefighting community will address exactly how we will approach fires, what we will do, and what simply will not be tolerated.  Whether one wishes to call the men heroes dying doing what they loved is a matter of choice.  I call the men tragic victims who died, not one of whom expected to that day in Yavapai County.  I don’t call dying doing what I loved great.  If I love doing something, dying is not the outcome I want. But that is a my opinion.  We didn’t learn from Mann Gulch in 1949; 45 and 52  years later we had South Canyon and 30 Mile fires respectively.  We didn’t learn enough from them, and 12 years after 30 Mile we had Yarnell Hill.

To the Watch Out situations, I would add:

19. Size of fire does not matter.  Small fires can kill you.

20. Always be aware that you may have only 10 minutes to live, should things turn sour. Act accordingly.

My prediction:  another catastrophe will recur.  My hope:  It won’t.

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CONTEXT

June 29, 2013

“A fanatic won’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”  

Winston Churchill

Twenty-seven years ago, I went to trial for malpractice and was not convicted.  Many people say, “You can’t be convicted in a civil suit.”  My reply: “When you have been sued and have gone to trial, then come back and tell me what word you would choose.”

During the pre-trial deposition, quotations from a textbook of neurology came from the prosecutor, and I did not question them.  I learned something that day:  people quote out of context.  At the trial, the prosecutor grilled me on the stand: “Is it not true, doctor, that Adams’ Textbook of Neurology says, “a brain tumor is not likely to be missed.”?

I looked at the prosecutor and quietly said, “May I see the book, please?”  He handed me the book.  I read the paragraph before and after the quotation the prosecutor had used, which stated essentially that with classic symptoms and signs and good imaging techniques, yes, certain kinds of brain tumors were not likely  (italics mine) to be missed.  That is a lot different.

A little later, the prosecutor quoted the textbook again, and again I read the pertinent passages before and after the quotation, politely handing the book back to him.  A third time, this happened, and again I asked for the book.  The prosecutor literally threw the book at me from four feet away.  I never have forgotten that.  At least one juror gasped at the rudeness.  I stayed calm, again reading the passages before and after.  I wasn’t sure what the jury was going to do, but after I stepped off the stand, the bailiff came up to me and said, “You’re a hell of a witness, doc.”

Of course, not losing didn’t mean I won, and I was never the same again.  A few years later, I left medicine.  I still feel like I was a bad doctor, nearly three decades later.

Out of context quotations are dangerous, and one recently surfaced when an Austrian woman came and spoke in Boston about the lack of free speech given to those who speak out against Islam. She spoke at a synagogue, and a person I know in Germany sent me the article.  This individual and I have very different political beliefs, although we share a concern about young women–often girls–who are forced into marriages with older men, have limited rights in their society, and can be killed by family members for not agreeing to these marriages.  These are well documented facts.

The woman who sent me the article is to me quite typical of those who are politically far right of me.  They have several common approaches.  One is to write comments with questions, rather than making statements.  A second is to send me articles, the implication (to me) that if I only would read this article I would come around to their way of thinking.  Third, they have never–that is true, the number is zero– read anything I have sent, so I no longer send articles.  A fourth characteristic is they take things out of context and often use words I don’t.  That’s how I know they are talking out of context. At a medical meeting once, I quietly asked one of my detractors  and the rest of the group if I had used a word she just had.  The room remained quiet.  The point was made.

The first article I got from the woman in Germany, a non-scientist, was that climate change wasn’t occurring.  The article, written by a non-climate scientist, good looking woman, paid by ExxonMobil, quickly stated, “Don’t let them fool you.”  Those words are not scientific, and it violated the first rule I have in dealing with those who disagree with me on science–personalization of the issue.  To a high level of confidence, we are causing climate change.  The confidence is not 100% (meaning we could be wrong), because climate is complex; but to disagree, one must offer high confidence limits that include 0, no change.  I have not seen any such articles.  I won’t discuss my other rules here.

The article about the Boston speech mentioned several men who allegedly had their rights infringed upon for speaking out.  I researched  the first man and found disturbing parts of his past behavior.  I wondered why he was used as an example.  Then the woman mentioned what “Barack Hussein Obama” had said, and my hackles rose.  Obviously, she knew Hussein is a charged word in today’s society, and she used the President’s name in a way that I consider rude, especially from a foreigner in my country.  I realize others might not agree, but to me, she was playing “loose” with Mr. Obama’s name.  I doubt Mr. Obama would care, but I did.

The quotation was “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” and this was meant to imply that Mr. Obama supported those who were offended by complaints against Mohammed.

Personally, there is no love lost between me and fundamentalists of any breed, including Christianity.  Others feel differently. But I thought that Mr. Obama had said more than what was quoted, and I found the rest of the paragraph quite easily.  First, one had to recognize that the President spoke at the UN about the infamous video insulting Mohammed was circulating on YouTube, inciting violence.  That context was crucial, because it meant that Mr. Obama was criticizing the video maker, not everybody who criticized Mohammed. He continued:

“Yet to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see when the image of Jesus Christ is desecrated, churches are destroyed, or the Holocaust is denied. Let us condemn incitement against Sufi Muslims, and Shiite pilgrims. It is time to heed the words of Gandhi: “Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.” Together, we must work towards a world where we are strengthened by our differences, and not defined by them. That is what America embodies, and that is the vision we will support.”

This is a very different view from the first line, and the quoting out of context meant that the speaker was deliberately choosing what she wanted to choose.  This is done by many, including the man who prosecuted me for malpractice, but it is wrong, and violators need to be called out on it.  To me, the speaker had lost credibility, and I wanted to call my German contact out on it.

How I did that was difficult, but I know exactly how I must do it.   I am incapable of writing what I feel and sending it immediately.  I am an emotional person, and if I am not careful, my emotions will hijack me into using sarcasm and hurtful, non-factual comments.  In short, I become the person they often are.  I thought about the comments for three days, then I sat down and suddenly, opened the computer and wrote 1200 words–in English.  I then let the writing sit for a day, removed the anger, the sarcasm, the nastiness, stayed factual where there were facts, and translated it to German.

Eventually, she wrote me back, and I sent the article.  I was disappointed in the response, not because she disagreed, but because she did not even acknowledge my comments about context, which are as basic to arguing what people believe as statistics is to arguing whether a trend exists. My last paragraph discusses the words I use–probably, possibly, I think, I once thought, I am 95% confident, and “I could be wrong.”  These are words of science, of probability and uncertainty, of openness, of being human.

My letter to her in German is not good German, but I am self taught, and it was important to write her in her language.

Es ist nicht einfach, diesen Brief zu schreiben.  Ich bin absichtlich verschwunden, um Deinen Artikel zu denken und endlich darüber zu schreiben.  Ich war enttäuscht und ein bisschen wütend.  Wahrscheinlich würde es besser verschwinden, weil diese kürzlichen Tage sehr schwierig für mich gewesen sind.  Ich will schreiben, ohne Sarkasmus, ohne wütend, und mit allen Tatsachen.  Ich werde in meinem Brief nur zwei Fragen stellen, weil viele Radikalemenschen mir die Frage stellen mögen, wenn sie mir schreiben, und das gefällt mir nicht.  Ich schreibe, ich stelle oft keine Fragen, die ich die Antwort schon wissen.

Vor mehrere Tagen hast Du mir eine Frage gestellt (vide infra).  [Übringens habe ich gesagt: Seit 20 Jahren gab es keinen Krieg in den Balkan, nicht die Welt.  Achttausend Muslimen sind in Srebrinica gestorben.  Ich erinnere mich daran.  Dieser Krieg hat in Dayton, Ohio, mein Land beendet.  Unser Präsident war Clinton, ein Demokrat.  Es war das erste Mal, dass einen Krieg beendet wurde, mit nur den Luftverbomben.  Die Republikaner hatten gesagt, dass es unmöglich sein würde.]

 1. “Syrien?”  Es ist eine Tragödie des Menschens.  Mein Land können nicht mehr die Welt retten. Ich frage mich, ob diese Frau und Europa wollen, dass Amerika in Syrien mit unseren Soldaten, mit unserem Geld kämpfen sollen.  Wenn es viele Probleme stattfinden werden, und vertraut mir, es wird viele Probleme geben, wird man sagen, “Verdammten Amerikaner.”  Plötzlich wird niemand sagen: “Vielen Dank.”  Es hat immer stattgefunden.  Immer.  Ich bin alt, und ich habe es oft erlebt.

 2. Deine zwei Artikel haben mich beleidigt.  Ja, beleidigt. Das letzte Mal, dass ich so beleidigt war, eine muslimiche Frau, die Dagestan auskam, hat mir geschrieben, dass meine Regierung 9/11 verursacht hat.  Wieder bin ich sehr enttäuscht, und ein bisschen wütend. 

Die Wahrheit macht uns Frei.  Aber sie ist die ganze Wahrheit, nicht ein bisschen Wahrheit. Es ist sehr wichtig, der Unterschied zu erkennen. 

Sie hat “Barack Hussein Obama” gesagt.  Das ist unglaublich unanständig für eine Ausländeringaste in meinem Land zu sagen. Ja, wir haben unsere First Amendment.  Sie können sagen, was sie willst.  Wir bedürfen nicht, höflich zu sein.  Er ist President oder Mr. Obama.  Sie hat absichtlich “Hussein” gesagt, um ihre Zielgruppe zu beeinflussen.  Ich bin voll überzeugt.  Ich werde alle Opfer nicht hier diskutieren.  Ich habe ein paar schon erforscht, und ich war nicht beeindruckt, besonders der erste Mann. 

Sie hat seine Ansprache nicht im Zusammenhang zitiert.  Das war völlig falsch, und sie soll sich schämen.  Mit diesem großen Fehler kann ich ihre ganze Ansprache nicht glauben. 

Hier ist der volle Absatz.  Meine letzte Frage: hast Du dieser Absatz gelesen? Wenn ein Zitat merkwürdig erscheint, lese ich immer den Zuhammenhang.  “Ich liebe die Muslimen, die nicht zu Europa kommt” kann “Ich liebe die Muslimen” werden, und nicht mehr. Leider habe ich mehrmals gesehen.  Hier: 

“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam (Es war sehr wichtig zu verstehen, was passiert ist, wenn Mr. Obama darüber gesprochen habe.  Es gab ein schlechtes Video auf YouTube, das von den USA auskam.  Es gab nichts mit Sabatina oder mit anderen muslimischen Kritiker(in) zu tun.  Es geht ein Video.  Du mußt  in diesem Rahmen erkennen, darüber Mr. Obama gesprochen hat). Yet to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see when the image of Jesus Christ is desecrated, churches are destroyed, or the Holocaust is denied. Let us condemn incitement against Sufi Muslims, and Shiite pilgrims. It is time to heed the words of Gandhi: “Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.” Together, we must work towards a world where we are strengthened by our differences, and not defined by them. That is what America embodies, and that is the vision we will support.” 

Das war der ganze Absatz.  Das ist die ganze Wahrheit.  Sie hat absichtlich das Zitat nicht im Rahmen, um die Menschen zu beeinflussen.  Ich kann ihre Ansprache nicht vertrauen.  Es gibt keinen Grund zu tun.  Meine Frau konnte es auch nicht glauben.  Man muss immer im Rahmen zitieren.  Es ist traurig, weil die Tatsachen sich sprechen können.  Sie hatte genug Tatsachen, ohne diesen Fehler zu machen. 

Ich kann verschwinden.  Wenn Du etwas diskutieren wollst, kann ich bleiben.  Du kannst entscheiden, ob ich ein wertvoller, aufgeschlossener Mann bin, mit wem Du schreiben willst.  Ich kann Dir sagen, dass ein Fundi hier gesagt hat:  Weil ein LGBT Umzug in New Orleans geplant war, ist warum Hurricane Katrina kam.  Der Gott hat New Orleans bestraft.  Ja, hat gesagt.  Oder eine Frau, die ist vergewaltigt, wird nicht Schwanger werden, weil ihr Körper eine Verwaltigung erkennen, und kann eine Schwangerschaft verhüten.  Jedoch muss die Frau das Baby haben. (32K Babys gebären nach den Vergewaltigen hier jedes Jahr).  Vielleicht wird Sabatina diese Tatsachen wissen wollen.  Oder nicht.  Ich weiß nicht, aber ich denke, dass es hier ein “Republikanerkrieg gegen Frauen” gibt, ein Missbrauch der Frauen.   

Wenn Du über Deinem Garten, über der Erde, über deine Familie, uber dem Leben, schreibst, würde es gut sein.  Alles Artikel gefällt mir nicht.  Ich habe Dir keinen Artikel geschickt.  Es ist für mich höflich nicht zu tun.  Du wirst ihn wahrschinlich weder wollen noch lesen.   Ich werde ein Artikel lesen, aber wenn ich etwas voll Unrecht finde, würde ich den ganzen Artikel wegwerfen.  Jetzt bist Du null für zwei.  Mein Brief über Syrien wird diese Woche  in The New Yorker Zeitschrift erscheinen.   TNY ist sehr wohlbekannt hier, und einen Brief ist sehr schwierig in diesem Zeitschrift zu haben.  Ich bin ein guter Wissenschaftler, Arzt und Stastiker.  Ich bin sehr neugierig.  Ich kann gut schreiben, und ich lese sehr vorsichtig.   

Endlich schlage ich die Leute vor,  diese Wörter zu lernen, dass ich oft benutzte:  “Vielleicht,”  “Wahrscheinlich,” “Ich denke,” “Ich dachte einmal, aber jetzt denke ich nicht”, Ich habe 95% Zuversicht” und am wichtigsten:  ICH KONNTE UNRECHT HABEN. Man würde gut tun, diese zu lernen. 

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DRESSING UP A PIG

June 1, 2013

In 1967, when we began heavily bombing North Vietnam, we called it a “protective reaction.”  Doonesbury asked “what are the casualties?”  The answer, in the same cartoon, was, “On language, very great.”  The following year, we heard, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”  We use derogatory terms I won’t write here to de-humanize an enemy, since it is easier to kill somebody one doesn’t think is human.

In many instances those somebodies are women and children.  Let’s start with circumcising women, which I will call by a proper name: “Genital mutilation.” This has no medical reason, unlike male circumcision, which completely prevents penile cancer and makes HIV less prone to be transmitted.  I don’t remember mine, and I don’t believe it caused lasting harm, but I am open to evidence on the latter, just not the former.

I read recently that Reuters refuses to use the term “Terrorists,” and the Associated Press now refuses to use “Islamic terrorists” or “illegal aliens.”  This is equally bad as dehumanizing an enemy.

I’m a liberal, but I am a strong believer in using the proper word to describe a situation or condition.  An improper word or phrase, used frequently, can become harmful if it becomes ingrained in the vocabulary.

Examples of the latter include “The Death Tax,” which is the estate tax.  There is a threshold over which the estate is be taxed at about 40%.  The threshold varies and is now $5.25 million. The proper term is “Estate Tax.”

“Death Panels” were used when during the debate on the Affordable Health Care Act (called Obama Care, another misuse of the language, since the Congress passed the law, and the Supreme Court upheld it).  One part of the bill was to have Medicare pay for counseling on End of Life planning.  As a neurologist who dealt with end of life issues, often when no other physician was willing to do so, I found that lack of advance directives was a significant impediment to decision making families had to make, when a member had irreversible brain injury.  I saw families torn apart over the issue.  Paying to have these discussions with competent people in advance seemed to me to be a good use of money, since the amount was 1-5% of the cost of one day in intensive care, and many of these people languished, and that is the proper word, in intensive care for days, weeks, or in some instances months. I saw this often.  Many elderly want their estate going to their offspring, not for futile, unwanted care. ICU beds are in short supply, so having them used to house patients who were going to die soon, when seriously ill people could benefit from those same beds, made no sense.  I made sure neither of my parents lingered.  They made me promise not to let it happen to them.

I practiced in a Catholic Hospital, and the Church had no problem with discontinuation of futile care.  Nor should anybody else.  I used terms like “die,” and “death”, hard words, but final in meaning.  “Expire” is too soft, and “pass on” implies something I don’t believe in.

Some of the terms we use would be funny if they weren’t so pernicious in their ability to dress up a pig in such a fashion that people forget it is still a pig.  “Pre-owned” means “Used”, half the letters and twice as easy to understand.  “Fastest growing” is another term for “smaller,” since large firms need proportionately more money to grow a given per cent. If my firm grosses $1 million a year, and next year it grosses $1.1 million, it has grown 10%.  If my competitor grosses $100 million a year and next year grosses $105 million, his has grown 5%, but his share of the market has increased nearly 4%, from 100/101  to 105/106.1.  The amount of new business in the market has increased $5.1 million, and nearly 98% of that increase went to my competitor.

We can say “undocumented immigrants,” and the term is correct.  But people who cross borders without going through customs and immigration are violating the law.  That is why we have the word “illegal.”  There may be all sorts of reasons for the person to do so, and there may be appropriate words for those reasons–fleeing a repressive regime, starvation, an epidemic of disease.  But the person is still performing an illegal act.  Whether the act is immoral is another matter altogether.  We saw during the last financial crisis that people did immoral acts that were not necessary illegal.  We should not confuse immoral and illegal.

Beheading a British soldier in broad daylight and saying that his country is responsible for killing millions of Muslims daily is a gross act of religious terror and exaggeration.  [Mathematical note:  “millions of people daily” would require about 5 years to have no Muslims on the planet, using a minimum number of “2” for the plural and 2 billion for the number of Muslims.  This error was not brought out in any article.]  Terror scares people, and that act scared the hell out of me.  Since this was a brutal act carried out in the name of religion, both the act and the modifier belong. I fail to see why Reuters won’t use the term.  Indeed, a mullah interviewed on British television refused to call the beheading an “abhorrence,” using only the word “shocking,” which is far milder and has many different meanings.  Abhor is very clear, and the man refused to use the word.

My liberalism has limits.  When I saw Corregidor, the American Cemetery in Manila, the prison where men drowned during high tide, I felt strongly that we had a place in the world that we had earned through the blood of men who fought and died in places not many people know of today, like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Leyte and Lingayen Gulfs, Bataan, Kwajalein, Enewetak, and Saipan.

The issue we face as a country is how we deal with a very nasty world without compromising our values.  For if we become what our enemy is, then we have lost.  But if we allow the enemy to proceed without resistance, then we have lost as well.  The world is not black and white but a large shade of gray.  Any time the gray hides something evil, we need to shine a spotlight on that evil and address it.

With a carefully chosen word or phrase, because it is proper, regardless of who may be offended.

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NOT HAVING TO HAVE THE LAST WORD

April 27, 2013

Over the years, I have written many letters and many words, most of which were never read by others.  I got the anger and sarcasm off my chest by writing those words, but I decided against causing a lot of pain by sending those words out into the world.

A cardiologist I know, the  medical director of a cardiology program in the hospital where I was medical director, often sent letters that he obviously dictated, never read afterwards, and never let sit for a few days.  It fell to me, who was paid far less than he was, to reread the letters and tell the cardiologist what to write and what not to write.  Most of the letters would have been better off had he not written them.  The facts were not checked, the grammar was poor, and the point often could have been made with a lot fewer words or a telephone call.

With the onset of social media, it becomes very easy to comment on posts.  Many times, I have done so, only to delete the comment after it was written.  This morning, I started to reply to a comment on my comment, and finally just decided to let it go.

That’s really the secret:  knowing when to let something go.  If one insists on winning every battle and every argument, one may.  It is not a good way to live, and it almost guarantees failure of relationships with the opposite sex.  It took me far too long to realize that I needed to pick and choose those battles for which I would go to the mat on.  But even some of those, I would let the other person have the last word.  I’ve done that many times on Facebook, so I would not clutter up another person’s wall with my comments.

I often go to the mat on climate change, but I usually state my points and let the other person have the last word.  I make my five points very quickly:

  1. Is there anything I can say that will influence your thinking?  If the answer is no, then there is no use arguing.  We are now into the realm of ideology, faith, or religion.  I can be influenced about climate change; it is just that I require the following four statements to be present, and to date, they have not been.
  2. Can one state the argument without personalization?
  3. Will you use appropriate statistical terminology?
  4. Can you offer verifiable predictions to the Earth’s climate over the next 10-50 years?
  5. Can you state the consequences of your being wrong?

Once I have stated those issues and made my predictions, I have nothing further to add.  I will undoubtedly get something to read, which I will, until I see the first personalization of the argument, at which point I stop reading.

On gun control, which I also have strong feelings about, I am becoming more and more silent.  Like the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, it flares up from time to time, and nothing will change in my lifetime.  I knew nothing would change after Newtown.  There are people who honestly believe that the government–the same government they say can’t do anything right–is going to confiscate their guns; something that is not being said by anybody in government.  They will not be influenced by me, and I am never going to change the feelings I had when I saw the handgun my late father had, when I cleaned out his apartment.  I looked at the gun, and I saw evil and death.  From a gun.  No, it isn’t likely I will be influenced, either.  So what is the point in arguing, other than to say as a teacher I will NOT carry a gun?

Most letters I write are about a quarter longer than they need to be.  They say all the feelings I have in my mind at the time.  I don’t omit anything.  They are powerful….and they are wrong and hurtful.

Letters with these strong emotions I require to sit for three or four days, unless they are a letter to the editor, more time sensitive, in which case I still let them sit for a day.  In that time, I discover some of the things I want to say really aren’t going to help my cause, may hurt it, are repetitive, and need to be deleted.

Posts that are on this blog are never written without letting them sit at least a week.  Sometimes, even that isn’t long enough.  Sometimes, a week is long enough to let them never see the light of day.  I got the issue off my chest, and that is what I really needed to do.

I didn’t need to put it on somebody else’s chest.

The disadvantage of allowing people the last word is that some make the mistake that my silence is tacit approval.  That is not true.  I might have decided the battle wasn’t worth fighting.  When I do decide the battle is worth fighting, one best be ready with statistics, probability, facts, and no tolerance for personalization of the issue.  That is the price I pay for waiting, being silent, and not having to win every argument.

That price is worth paying.

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SAVING THE UGLIEST FISH IN AMERICA: THE PALLID STURGEON

March 31, 2013

The Pallid Sturgeon is a fish that lives in the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, and which is on the endangered list.  Each year, many endangered species are further endangered by cuts in funding, because a country that went to war on borrowed money, with few who questioned going to war, now has to cut expenses to balance its budget.

A fish seems like a good place to start cutting money.  Or a bird.  Or a mammal, although our willingness to destroy other mammals of our own species hasn’t yet hit the chopping block.  Indeed, if we really want to balance our budget, so-called Defense should be first on the list.  But I digress.

The Pallid Sturgeon has been called the ugliest fish in America by some, so it might seem to be a good way to save money by cutting funding to preserve it.  After all, what use is a fish?  Oh sure, there are some anglers who enjoy catching something that can be 3-6 feet in length, weigh 85 pounds, and even provide caviar.  But a few anglers?  Not worth it.  Most of them who fish for the Pallid Sturgeon live in Red States, anyway, so politically this is a non-issue.

And the fish is ugly, at least compared to a Walleye.  But when I look into a mirror, I’m not looking so great some days, too, so I’m not about to pass judgment based on looks.

The Pallid Sturgeon is one of the leftovers from the Acipenseridae family and the Cretaceous period.  In 70 Million years, it has basically not changed, I have been told, making it a true living dinosaur.  It is endangered, because its habitat has been slowly destroyed by dams and pollution, and it spawns very seldom.

The question I ask is this:  “What is the Pallid Sturgeon worth?”

Each year, In Sioux Falls, a man who tries to recover this endangered fish; in other words, a man who thinks this fish has worth, has a visitor arrive from Washington, DC.  The visitor is an individual who comes from the center of government to the hinterlands of the US, where there are a lot of Republicans to be sure, but a lot of practical, commonsense people, too, people who have a multigenerational connection to the land and the life that land supports.  I don’t discuss politics with these folks, but when I discuss the land and wildlife with them there is a look on their face that I suspect is on my face, too.  I suspect the look is not on the face of the guy in the suit, when he arrives in South Dakota.

Each year, the man in charge of the Pallid Sturgeon project explains what he is doing in great detail, being sure to explain the dollars and cents involved in the recovery, so the dollars and cents guy can understand.  Mind you, this is not answering the question I raised above, for the word I chose was “worth,” not “cost”.  There is a difference, although to many, including the guy wearing the suit, the difference escapes him.  That is unfortunate, but he fortunately will learn the difference during his stay in the Dakotas.

At the end of the briefing, the biologist takes the Washington guy back to a large pool, and invites him to put hip waders on over his suit and step into the pool with him.  That to me would be worth seeing.  I would even pay to see that. Notice again how I use the two words.  The suit guy is a little surprised but does what he is asked to–he is used to that, after all–and soon, two of them are in the pool.  The biologist takes a net and scoops out one of the young sturgeon, and asks the man in the suit whether he would like to hold it.  Surprised, the man in the suit agrees, and he is soon holding a young fish in his hands, a fish without a lot of color, for that is what “Pallid” means.  While the fish is young, in terms of evolution, it is old, the same fish taking two opposite predicative adjectives.  It is somewhat ironic to me that while those who sent this man don’t believe in evolution, they would have to say that God created this fish in order to be consistent with their beliefs.  I believe something created this fish–I just call it The Creator–to be consistent with my beliefs.

The look on the face of the man holding the fish is priceless, from what I have been told.  His eyes open wide, as he realizes he is holding something special, something rare, something whose close relatives swam the waters of the Earth when dinosaurs roamed the land.  I’m about ready now to pay for the flight to Sioux Falls to just look at the fish, for the cost would be worth it, to juxtapose these two words.

“Funny thing,” the biologist has said.  “Every year, I get funding.  And the next year, they send a different guy.  And the same thing happens.”  The funding continues, and the fish recovery effort survives–for another year.  We don’t even know if the effort will be successful.  If not, our species has managed to destroy something whose close relatives were here more than three million generations ago, except there haven’t been three million generations of humans.  This fish is a relic.

So, what is the Pallid Sturgeon worth?  To me, the discussion isn’t really about dollars and cents but about dollars and sense.  Common sense.  The sense of beauty.  The sense of being stewards of God’s–The Creator, Mother Earth, or whatever you wish to call it–creation.  The sense that we are part of a vast web of life that we do not understand completely, but upon which we are dependent.  This fish has incredible worth, and a country that allows it to go extinct to save a few bucks really has its priorities wrong.

I think we have a moral duty to try to save the Pallid Sturgeon, unless nature–not man–in its own way decides that it is time for it to disappear.  Just as I believe that some day we will disappear, too.

I wonder how much that would cost.  I know this: it would have worth as far as Nature is concerned.

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THE BELL IS TOLLING

March 2, 2013

“Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” John Donne

The sign read, “It hurts to be hungry”, and it was carried by a man walking the “804,” part of the Oregon Coastal Trail system, north of Yachats.  With him were several others, including two women in long skirts, with backpacks, not looking at all like hikers.

It was cold and windy on the Oregon Coast, as it usually is in February, and what was a pleasant walk along what I think is the most beautiful coast in the US was a difficult hike for these people, who were hungry.  They walked by the memorial to two young high school students from Eugene, who 2 years ago, almost to the day, were on the rocks in the ocean when a “sneaker wave” caught them, and threw them into the ocean.  With incredibly rough seas, slippery steep, sharp rocks, they could not be helped by their 4 companions.  In three minutes, they were dead.  I stared at the rocks for awhile, wondering how probably 4 minutes earlier, the boys had no clue that in 240 seconds, they would no longer exist.

We saw the hikers about 6 miles up the coast the next day, one of them hitchhiking from a bridge, the other two on the other side.  We figured they were hitchhiking one at a time, since their size and their equipment would have made it impossible to fit into most vehicles.  We were only going to Waldport, two miles further, where we walked the beach south a couple of miles.

When we left Waldport, the group was sitting on a bench near a fast food restaurant on the south side of town.  I don’t know where they were going.  I do suspect they were sleeping outdoors, maybe with a tent, probably not with one.  And they were eating, although probably not a great deal.  They did not look like hikers or even people trying to lose weight, which they needed to do, by hiking.  They looked like the homeless in America.  They looked like those who sleep in the parks in downtown Tucson, or those who sleep under bridges in Eugene, Oregon.  Many are homeless veterans, who served the country during the past decade in Iraq and Afghanistan while the 99.5% of us who didn’t were either protesting the war in vain or else assuaged our guilt with yellow ribbons.  Some of the yellow ribbons had a cross inside, which really galled me, as it invoked the idea of a Crusade.

Mind you, I have no love lost for how many Muslims treat women and Christians who live in their land.  Read Sabatina James, or go on her Website, and you hear horror stories of forced marriages, Todesstrafe, which is a death sentence on young women who become westernized, some converting to Christianity, rapes, beatings, acid thrown into the face, stabbings.  Most of this occurring in Europe is from Islamists, not Christians.  Europe has a problem with integration of these people into society, and I think eventually the problem will cross the ocean, and we will have it, too.

But right now we have homeless, hungry people in America, and they aren’t all drunks or lazy slobs.  Many lost their jobs when the rich folks on Wall Street wrecked the economy and got paid large bonuses for doing it.  Many lost their homes which they never should have had, but we don’t educate people very well in dealing with numbers, math, economic circumstances, debt or critical thinking.

Many are bankrupt because they didn’t have health insurance to cover major medical bills, the largest cause of bankruptcy, but we sure held the Democrats responsible for the Affordable Care Act, which turned the House over to the Republicans, who now are grappling with the Tea Party, which is a minority, but seems to think it is their right to obstruct any sort of laws they don’t like.  Were it the Democrats doing this, the Republicans would be howling.  Right now, the Republicans are trying to figure out how to deal with the likes of Rand Paul, who was about as rude as one can be to the Secretary of State, and then showed his ignorance by proffering a theory that there were arms shipments from Libya to Syria.  Ms. Clinton’s body language as well as her verbal language during that exchange defines the word “incredulous,” for those who want to brush up on their English.

The greatest country in the history of the world can’t deal with homelessness and hunger.  We have the means, we have people who can think, develop complex systems, and we have volunteers to do this.  We lack the will, and a few are hung up on the deficit, which Mr. Obama inherited from Mr. Bush, back when Mr. Cheney said “Deficits don’t matter,” which seems to have been conveniently forgotten,  A third of the deficit came from the wars that were off budget and unnecessary.  Probably another sixth, if not more, came from the loss of tax revenues from the crashed economy.  If the stock market plummets, capital gains taxes disappear; indeed, capital losses decrease taxes.  If interest rates fall to zero, one gets a lot fewer 1099 forms in the mail, because there are none for interest payments of fewer than $10 in a year.  Last I checked, the economy crashed mostly before 20 January 2009.  If the sequester continues, we may see it crash again.

Instead of dealing with hunger in the US, we spend time still investigating Benghazi, even though we never did anything to Condoleeza Rice, who ignored the famous 6 August 2001 memo about imminent attacks in the US.  We ignore what is going on in Egypt, Mali, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, all time bombs ready to explode.  Many Americans couldn’t find any of these countries on a map.  We don’t take a stand on what is happening to women in Muslim countries, which is absolutely appalling.

I’m guilty, too.  I rationalize my way out of it and write stuff that few read and changes nothing.   I rationalize by saying “I can’t fix this problem,”  “I can’t save the world,” or I turn my head, when somebody wants money by saying “I’ll wash your car’s windshield,” which happened the other day in Eugene.  But the next time I’m in Market of Choice, I will buy a $10 coupon that goes to stop hunger in Lane County.  And maybe I will do that every time I am in there.  Darned if I know how I will deal with the homeless; mostly, I am more concerned about homeless animals, since not one of them had any say whatsoever in their plight.  And I have done something about that problem.

But I am human, and I remember what John Donne wrote.  Much as I despise much of what my species does, there is a certain poignancy about seeing a sign that says “It really hurts to be hungry,” not far from a 5 star hotel on the Oregon Coast.  I can rationalize all I want, but the sign and the people existed.  Time for me to stop writing and stop rationalizing.  I’m not sure what I will do, but it is time to do something.

I’m hungry for change.  These people need change to deal with their hunger, not money change, but a country change.

Near where the boys drowned, 2011.

Near where the boys drowned, 2011.

Waldport, Oregon

Waldport, Oregon

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ONE OF LIFE’S GREATEST GIFTS–LOVING TO READ

February 13, 2013

The other day, while substitute teaching in Math, I had a student in my class whom I had tutored last year in chemistry.  She is a smart, young woman, took AP Stats as a junior and did well in all subjects.  When I tutored her, she was prepared, her thinking was good, and she needed only a little more confidence in trusting her judgment, which was excellent.

She showed me a book, printed in 1902, that she had bought for $6 at a book show.  She was so excited to have the book; I cannot imagine more than a handful of students in the school would have thought an old book was worth buying.  I would have several such books myself, if it were not for the fact that we have limited space in the house and are planning to move.

She then asked me for my favorite book.  That’s a difficult question.  I have been reading since I was 2; my mother, before she died, wrote the story of how I learned words, asked questions, and bothered my father often while he was reading the newspaper, pointing out the words I knew and learning new ones from him.  My mother was an avid reader; I don’t ever remember seeing my mother without a book nearby.

I will never be a technical mountain climber, but there are very few books about mountaineering that I haven’t read.  I almost feel I know the way up Mt. Everest from both sides, because I have read so many books about it.

I learned quickly that books were an escape.  One can go anywhere in the world with a good book, and I have.  One can go to other worlds, to other times, forward and back, and thoroughly enjoy the escape.  One learns vocabulary from books.  For years, I never used a dictionary, learning words by context.  When I scored in the mid 500s on my Verbal PSAT, I started looking up every word I didn’t know.  I improved my score 100 points the following year.  Even when I read books in German, I look up words.  Some say one shouldn’t do that, but learning words by context is a recipe that doesn’t work for me and can become very embarrassing (gift=poison in German).

I love wilderness books, and I have read everything Sig Olson wrote.  I read his book, The Lonely Land, 5 times, a canoe trip in Saskatchewan that he and five others took in the mid ‘50s.  I hope to finally see Saskatchewan this summer and canoe part of the route that they took.  Sam Cook of the Duluth Herald-Tribune is a modern day Sig.

I also have read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich at least five times, too, and have been astounded at how easy Hitler could have been stopped so many times but wasn’t.  There are lessons today for us to learn, if we will only learn them.  Storms of my Grandchildren, by NASA’s James Hansen, chronicles his attempts to push Americans towards dealing with climate change.  Recently, I read that the Arizona legislature wants teachers to teach the “other side” of both climate change and evolution.  I actually did just that last week, when I talked about confidence intervals, for “the other side” has not shown me their confidence in their contention that there is no man-made climate change.  A statistical colleague of mine, a good friend, once discussed at Georgetown how long Social Security would last in the US.  One of his students worked for a senator and said he had the answer in a “position paper.”  My friend asked whether there was a confidence interval for the data.  When the answer was “no,” my friend declined to look at the paper.

We live in a world full of uncertainty.  Therefore, we must understand and use probabilistic thinking.   It’s all well and good to say what ought not to happen, but to deny reality is magical thinking:  believing if you hope hard enough, good things will happen.  This does not work, any more than what Steve Jobs, a brilliant man, believed about iPhone antennas.  Years ago, Richard Feynmann, even more brilliant, said:  “For a successful technology to work, reality has to take place over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”

I live between two worlds in at least three different ways:  cities and wilderness, calculators and fast mental estimation, and electronic and covered books. When I bought my Kindle, I increased my reading dramatically.  I was amazed by how I could listen to an author being interviewed by Moira Gunn, then going to an electronic reader and within a matter of seconds, having the words–the book– in my possession.  But other books, specifically German, are much better when I can look at the pages, go back and forth more quickly, and not worry about a battery.  I use both online and paper dictionaries; both have advantages.  I am not particularly skilled with TI calculators.  I grew up in the slide rule era; I also can do calculations in my head.  I can sketch graphs fairly quickly, and I can do a lot of probability calculations quickly.  Calculators, however, add another dimension to my life, and I use them, not expertly, but for those things where it truly is faster and easier, like determining confidence intervals in a large set of data.

I will look up simple facts on the Internet; more complex explanations I will either print or buy the book.  Thirty years ago, we had only books; thirty years from now, it isn’t clear we will have.  It is quite clear we will have a word’s appearing somewhere, and if we choose properly, we will discover new facts, new worlds, new ideas, and maybe change the order and content of those words, or those equations, and make our world something that is has never been before.

Books offer the power to do that.

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SABATINA e.V.

January 11, 2013

I don’t know why I looked down the block in Melbourne, before I was about to cross a street, but I did.

I saw a sign “Bookstore: Books in Other Languages” and was immediately intrigued.  I have reached the stage in my German learning where I am reading books, and I thought there might be some good ones there.  I was not disappointed.

I found one by an author I knew, and then I picked up a paperback that said “Sterben Sollst Du für Dein Glück”  (You should die for your Happiness), by Sabatina James.  I read the back cover and was intrigued even more.  I bought both books and that night decided to start the James book.  It has changed me, just as Sabatina James has changed the lives of many.

Sabatina James was born in Pakistan and at an early age moved to Austria with her siblings and mother, to join her father, who was living near Linz, a small city in the northeastern part of the country, not far from the Czech Republic.  She went to school there and became a typical Austrian teenager–she became fluent in German, she liked the music, she had her friends, she did well in school.  But she had issues at home, where her mother had adhered to Pakistani traditions, Islam, and had learned no German.

Eventually, James had issues with her parents about her clothing, her hours, and where she went.  Her mother struck her several times.  James learned that she was betrothed to her cousin in Lahore, whom she had met only a few times.  Eventually, the family went to Pakistan, did the tour of the family in various parts of the country, and set up a betrothing–not a wedding–with Sabatina’s cousin.  She balked, loudly, at the betrothing, shaming her family.  When her parents and her siblings left, Sabatina remained behind, with her aunt, who ran the house.  Sabatina was put into two different Koran Schools, one so filthy that she was constantly sick, the other where the cleric at least listened to her ask questions about the Koran.  It should be noted that Sabatina’s having lived in Europe disqualified her from attending many such schools.

Eventually, Sabatina went along with the instruction, became a quiet, good Muslim young girl. She slept in the house where her betrothed lived.  He tried to get her to sleep with him; she was able to avoid that, but not his touching her while he masturbated. When her parents came back, they found a different girl.  Sabatina returned to Austria, where again, she slowly tried to regain her circle of friends.  Her parents kept pressing her to work on getting her fiancé’s visa for Austria.  She refused, and one day he came, the visa having been obtained by her parents.  She refused to marry him, and he parents put out a “death judgment” on her.

Since then, Sabatina has been on the run, occasionally her telephone number being found, and having to change it.  She converted to Christianity, because she found love in the Bible, and a lot more equality between the sexes than in Islam.  This makes her life even more dangerous.  She lives between the Islamic and Western worlds, and she founded Sabatina e.V. in 2006, a foundation for “Women in Chains”.  To say the stories are horrible is a gross understatement.  Women are burned, stoned, have acid thrown in their faces, beaten, and of course raped, even as young a 2 1/2 year-old, whose only crime was being born to a Christian family in Pakistan.  Five operations later, the child and family are safely in Canada.  Occasionally, one of these people is saved, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to the need.

About every day, the Facebook Site has pictures of women who have been beaten, raped, or otherwise severely abused.  Some commit suicide as their only escape from such a horrible existence.  I post on the site, but not often, and only when I am sure my German is acceptable.  I have pointed out issues here in the US.  We have yet to renew the Violence Against Women Act, because of LGBT concerns.  I am astounded that those who detest big government are quick to tell women what they should and should not do with their bodies, and that nearly all the testimony is from men.  I am astounded that  big government haters want the government to decide with whom somebody can live and love.  A woman who wants to have birth control covered by insurance was basically called a slut by Rush Limbaugh, whose gender, past drug abuse and body habitus hardly make him much better.  I’m told old people listen to him.  I’m old, and I find the man detestable.

We hear almost nothing about Ciudad Júarez, the most dangerous city on Earth, four hours from where I live, where every day in broad daylight, people are kidnapped without reason.  Others are gunned down, 120,000 dead in the last several years.  This information I pointed out to Sabatina e.V, noting that I did not hear about it in our local media, but in a German documentary, for apparently some Germans think this is a more pressing problem than how well the U of A basketball team is playing.

Why even try?  After all, this is liking trying to save companion animals, who die in the millions every year, without homes, because people want purebred breeds, the more exotic the better.  I call these “designer dogs,” because I seldom see a run-of-the mill mutt any more.  Sabatina is working for the tens of millions of abused women, and the female children, who in some places in India are killed at birth, because the family can’t afford a dowry.

Why even try?  A man, out for a walk along a beach, saw another man in the distance, throwing starfish into the sea.  “Why are you throwing them?” said the first man. “There are millions on this beach, and you can’t possibly make a difference.”

The second man threw another starfish into the sea.  “I made a difference for that one.”

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