Comments [0]
Sep 6
Health Care for Our Heroic Citizens
Can't say it better than the man himself, Congressman Ron Paul, in his book The Revolution:
Those who favor national health care schemes should take a good, hard look at our veterans' hospitals. There is your national health care. These institutions are a national disgrace. If this is the care the government dispenses to those it honors as its most heroic and admirable citizens, why should anyone else expect to be treated any better?
Comments [0]
Sep 5
Ron Paul on "The Soul-Killing Logic of the Welfare State"
From Ron Paul's The Revolution:
Issues like these [Social Security, Medicare, etc.] are predictably portrayed as contests between generous souls who want to provide for their fellow men on the one hand, and misers and misanthropes who care nothing for the suffering of their fellow citizens on the other. I should not have to point out that this is an absurd caricature. The fact is, we do not have the resources to sustain these programs in the long run. There is no way around this simple fact. (p.83)
I try to be as generous as possible, though it is a never-ending journey. I'm making room for volunteerism and non-profit work in my life, alongside work and play. But I do not support these large, unwieldy programs, despite the good intentions that probably gave birth to them.
Besides the fact that we are quickly running out of money for these bottomless pit federal programs, Ron Paul highlights Charles Murray's "thought experiment" that illustrates how the welfare state impacts our character and sense of community:
Imagine that the programs that constituted the federal "safety net" were all of a sudden abolished, and for whatever reason could not be revived... How would you respond? Would you be more or less likely to volunteer at a food bank? Would you be more or less likely to volunteer at a literacy center? If you were a lawyer or physician, would you be more or less likely to offer pro bono services?
We would all answer [positively] to these questions, wouldn't we? But then we need to ask ourselves: why aren't we doing these things already? And the answer is that we have bought into the soul-killing logic of the welfare state: somebody else is doing it for me. I don't need to give of myself, since a few scribbles on a tax form fulfill my responsibility toward my fellow man. Do our responsibilities as human beings really extend no farther than this? (p.85)
[emphasis mine]
Ultimately:
We have lost our belief that freedom works, because we no longer have the imagination to conceive of how a free people might solve its problems without introducing threats of violence -- which is what government solutions ultimately amount to. (p.85)
Comments [0]
Sep 4
Political Blinders
We wear such amazingly effective political blinders, don’t we? It’s always "the city," "the county," "the state," or "the country," that pays for what we want and heels to our demands. Never Bob the struggling family man. Never Jill the single mom. Never anyone we know. Never anyone we have to explain ourselves to.
Comments [0]
Sep 4
From "Top 10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage Should Be Illegal"
5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed. 6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.
Comments [0]
Sep 2
HealthBase Lists "Treatments" for Microsoft Windows
Apparently, there are many treatments for Microsoft Windows, such as security patches -- which are "biomed material." Don't forget your daily round of "Radio SHARK" and "PRIMROSE" with your glass of Wine...I like how one of the treatments is "operating system." This confirms my long-standing suspicion that Windows is not really good enough to be considered an operating system!
Comments [0]
Sep 2
The Mathematics of Choosing a Urinal -- xkcd
This leads us to a question: what is the general formula for the number of guys who will fill in N urinals if they all come in one at a time and follow the urinal protocol? One could write a simple recursive program to solve it, placing one guy at a time, but there’s also a closed-form expression. If f(n) is the number of guys who can use n urinals, f(n) for n>2 is given by:
via blag.xkcd.com
Definitely read the whole blog post, it's pretty funny. Although this is definitely NOT an "international" protocol -- in China, the luxury of always having an empty urinal between you and the next guy just doesn't happen. It's called OVERPOPULATION!
Comments [0]
Sep 1
Google Trends: Not Jon & Kate, But Gmail
At least I wasn't the only one who was annoyed by the Gmail outage. I wasn't bored/desperate enough to Google around about it, though...
Comments [0]
Aug 30
Noooooo :( ... 'Reading Rainbow' Reaches Its Final Chapter -- NPR
Reading Rainbow comes to the end of its 26-year run on Friday; it has won more than two-dozen Emmys, and is the third longest-running children's show in PBS history — outlasted only by Sesame Street and Mister Rogers.
via npr.org
Noooooooooooooo! :(
Comments [0]
Aug 30
George Carlin: Paradoxes of Our Time (via @positivepresent)
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life.
Comments [0]
