Claims And Issues

TRICK OR TREAT, BUT DON’T EDIT?

(Photo by Dennis Wall)

This may be a trend.  In two weeks I have seen two errors in publications that I have never seen before, and never expected to see at all.

In a book on finance, an equation did not compute that was published in a book by a major publishing house and written by distinguished authors who are experienced in business reporting, Gretchen Morgenson & Joshua Rosner, These Are The Plunderers (Simon & Schuster 2023).  (The equation involved simple arithmetic, so that even I could see that it just did not add up.)

In another book, Sheldon Whitehouse & Jennifer Mueller, The Scheme (The New Press 2022), readers were expressly referred to another book by author and title.  Unfortunately the referred author is not the author of the referred book.  I know because I searched out the other author and the other book.  In other words, the authors of The Scheme referred their readers by name to a book and a person who did not write the book they recommended.

Today may be Halloween but it’s always the time of year to edit your stuff before it gets published.  We all make mistakes.  That’s why we have proof-reading and if we’re too busy, then we have copyeditors.

GO FORWARD, WRITERS.

DEFINITIONS BY EXAMPLES: SKEPTICISM v. CYNICISM.

There is a fundamental distinction between a healthy skepticism and a deadly cynicism.

Skepticism demands that we be critically aware that claims to virtue, appeals to common sense, and boasts of high ideals often come from power and self-interest.  When they do come from those places, they are not always to be believed but they are always to be questioned.  That is a healthy skepticism.

Cynicism, on the other hand, takes power away from you because it makes your demands and desires for change feel helpless, even useless.   It makes you stop questioning anything.   “The retreat from universal demands is a form of defeatism,” wrote Fintan O’Toole.

GO FORWARD

BASEBALL, MAKING A BUCK, AND BRAINS.

Baseball’s long-ago decision to make a couple of levels of short series that teams would have to negotiate like a minefield, showed itself this year.

The justification for departing from one pennant winner with the most victories in each league was money.  The Lords of Baseball, the Owners, wanted more money.  They thought without evidence at the time that more fans buying more tickets in more series would make them more money.  In the short run, perhaps it has.

In the long run, the fans that follow teams beginning in April know that in October their teams’ victories won’t matter.  What will matter is whether their team “qualifies” for the first of many short series on the way to the World Series.  Even if a team wins more than 100 games, as the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Baltimore Orioles both did this season, their records won’t matter if they don’t make it past all of the multiple short series.

So the lesson is that winning games between April and October does not matter so long as you win 3 out of 5 games, or 4 out of 7 games, to really punch your ticket to the World Series.  The Lords may be making money on this in the short run, and maybe not, but if those Owners pay attention they will see and hear and smell the loss of interest in the long run.

Short-term profits and long-term loss.  Isn’t that so 2023?

CIAO!  ARRIVEDERCI!

“THE OPPOSITE OF PROGRESSIVE HOPE IS NOT REALISM.”

“The opposite of progressive hope is not realism.  It is paranoia.”

--Fintan O’Toole

GO FORWARD WITH HOPE.

IS ANYBODY GOING TO WATCH THIS WORLD SERIES?

Fans followed two teams that went the distance in the 2023 baseball season:  the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Baltimore Orioles.  Both teams won over 100 games in a season that lasted over 6 months and a 162-game schedule.

The Orioles added something to their storyline this year.  Unlike the Dodgers, the Orioles have not been used to winning over the long haul.

Now we are in the short haul part of the baseball year.  After winning “the best of 5” and then “the best of 7,” the two remaining teams are proven losers over the long term but proven winners over the short term because they are still around.  For their part, the Orioles and the Dodgers have gone home.

So is anyone going to stay around and watch this World Series?  It’s a short series, you know.  Anything can happen, and losers can even be champs in a short series, you know.  But I wonder:  Are the same people that followed baseball over the long haul going to stick with this shortened version where the teams and the records are, well, smaller?

SEE ‘YA NEXT YEAR!  Maybe.

WHY DOESN’T JOE BIDEN GET MORE SUPPORT IN THE POLLS?

Members of the Taliban at the Kabul Airport after the Americans left.  (Photo by Reuters via The Jerusalem Post)

In a word:  Afghanistan.

MOVING ON BUT I DON’T KNOW WHERE ….

WHY DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW TO INTERPRET THE PRESENT?

"When you see a cloud rising in the west
you say immediately that it is going to rain–and so it does;
and when you notice that the wind is blowing from the south
you say that it is going to be hot–and so it is.
You hypocrites!
You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky;
why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

--Luke 12:54+ (Emphasis added.)

GO FORWARD

WATER, THE NAZIS, AND RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT.

One of the many perversions that the Nazis perpetrated was to withhold water from people.

A person who wants to be President of the United States told a national television audience that it’s okay for the Israeli Government to withhold water from the people of Gaza so long as Hamas holds hostages.

If you go around telling people it’s okay to be a Nazi, there’s something wrong with you.

GO FORWARD

WORLD POLIO DAY AT THE MARCH OF DIMES-CANADA ZOOM!

YOU ARE INVITED TO ATTEND THE WORLD POLIO DAY PROGRAM OF THE MARCH OF DIMES CANADA ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2023!

March of Dimes Canada
Virtual Polio Canada Conference

Click the link below and follow the instructions:

Download October 24_23 March of Dimes Virtual Polio Conference Flyer_R (5)

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!

GO FORWARD

HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS ON IT.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

--Emily Dickinson

GO FORWARD

 

WHEN HOPE IS NECESSARY.

 Continued ….

“In times when everything is fine hope is unnecessary.  Hope is not happiness or confidence or inner peace; it is a commitment to search for possibilities.”

          --Rebecca Solnit

GO FORWARD

AUTHORITARIANS THRIVE ON HOPELESSNESS.

Authoritarians thrive on hopelessness.

          So you keep hope alive.

          What is hope exactly?  To be continued ….

GO FORWARD

A MESSAGE FROM A PPS SURVIVOR, MY WIFE DIANNE.

Polio long-haulers must be their own medical advocates | Commentary orlandosentinel.com

I am so happy that the Orlando Sentinel chose to publish my article in today's paper. World Polio Day is next week, October 24! We PPS survivors are still around and am very willing to share the importance of getting vaccinated against polio. As a group, we are aging, and I know we would love the whole world to be 100% vaccinated so at least one more virus will be eradicated FOREVER. There is only one virus that reached total eradication due to a vaccine, and that is smallpox. Let's make polio the second world-wide virus eradicated too.

A BEAUTIFUL SENTIMENT!  GO FORWARD

N.B. The Orlando Sentinel newspaper may have put Dianne's My Word column behind its paywall.  If you encounter their paywall when you click on the link above, it's not you or your computer.--The Management

 

 

 

WORLD POLIO DAY AT THE MARCH OF DIMES-CANADA ZOOM!

YOU ARE INVITED TO ATTEND THE WORLD POLIO DAY PROGRAM OF THE MARCH OF DIMES CANADA ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2023!

March of Dimes Canada
Virtual Polio Canada Conference

Click the link below and follow the instructions:

Download October 24_23 March of Dimes Virtual Polio Conference Flyer_R (5)

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!

GO FORWARD

WORLD POLIO DAY AT THE MARCH OF DIMES-CANADA ZOOM!

YOU ARE INVITED TO ATTEND THE WORLD POLIO DAY PROGRAM OF THE MARCH OF DIMES CANADA ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2023!

March of Dimes Canada
Virtual Polio Canada Conference

Click the link below and follow the instructions:

Download October 24_23 March of Dimes Virtual Polio Conference Flyer_R (5)

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!

 

GO FORWARD

“EVERYONE HAS VALUE. FINDING IT, THAT’S THE TRICK.”

--Alvin Law

GO FORWARD

MAYBE IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE AWFUL. THEN YOU COME ALONG.

Maybe the news about some things is meant to be awful.  (Or maybe it’s meant to be awful about many things, depending on your viewpoint.)

But that’s where you come in:  to make things be not as awful as they would have been if you were not there.

You are much more important than many things including the news.  You determine the outcome, in the end.

GO FORWARD

WORLD POLIO DAY AT THE MARCH OF DIMES-CANADA ZOOM!

YOU ARE INVITED TO ATTEND THE WORLD POLIO DAY PROGRAM OF THE MARCH OF DIMES CANADA ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2023!

March of Dimes Canada
Virtual Polio Canada Conference

Click the link below and follow the instructions:

Download October 24_23 March of Dimes Virtual Polio Conference Flyer_R (5)

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!

IN A HURRICANE, WITH ELECTRICITY OUT, THEY SHARED; I REMEMBER.

Hurricane seen from space.  (Image by NASA)

I am not a Baptist.

But I will never forget the charity they showed in a Hurricane when all the electricity was out.  The First Baptist Church somehow got ahold of bags of ice when there was no ice anywhere. 

The First Baptist Church shared their ice with the rest of us, their neighbors.  I was lucky to be one of their neighbors.

All you had to do – all I had to do – was drive up to their church, get in the line of cars, and each car that showed up was given a bag of ice, no questions asked.  They did not need to ask questions, of course; the need was apparent to everyone who lived through the Hurricane.

I will never forget the generosity of the First Baptist Church in a Hurricane when all the electricity was out.  In a Hurricane, they lived the kind of charity that you hope to share every day.

As I said when through no fault of my own I was given a bag of ice, “God bless you.”

GO FORWARD

VENGEANCE IS NOT A REASON. IT’S AN EMOTION.

Some people keep asking why other people committed atrocious acts.  It must be very hard for people who consider themselves enlightened, as it were, who are rational and expect that everyone else is too.  Other people however often act out of emotion, such as revenge.

        Don’t waste time trying to figure out the “motives” of the relatively miniscule number of people who have no other reason for their actions than evil.

       More to the point, don’t waste time trying to be one of them and then pretending that you are rational after all.

GO FORWARD

WORLD POLIO DAY AT THE MARCH OF DIMES-CANADA ZOOM!

YOU ARE INVITED TO ATTEND THE WORLD POLIO DAY PROGRAM OF THE MARCH OF DIMES CANADA ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2023!

March of Dimes Canada
Virtual Polio Canada Conference

Click the link below and follow the instructions:

Download October 24_23 March of Dimes Virtual Polio Conference Flyer_R (5)

 

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!

PRIVATE EQUITY: TERRORISM WITH LIMITED LIABILITY.

Private equity is notorious for limited liability.  It is at best hard, but mostly it is impossible, to pin these outfits down to responsibility because they set up one or several layers of shell corporations to protect themselves.

Private equity has chosen several areas to penetrate.  You might have noticed the wave of bankruptcies that tend to follow in their wake when they are done “investing” in existing businesses.

Perhaps most in the news currently, private equity is busy acquiring or running whole lines of business in the health industry:  anesthesiology, gynecology, pediatric dentistry, even physicians’ groups (in which physicians are the nominal heads of the businesses, where State laws require physicians to be in charge of the businesses).

Private equity is notorious for allegedly overcharging and underperforming.  Healthcare in particular is the focus of reductions by P.E. in all kinds of healthcare, a feature of what has been called private equity’s manic mantra of “revenue maximization,” which tends to come always at the expense of anyone who is not an investor.

Reductions in healthcare are the inevitable result of equipment shortages due to reduced purchases of necessary supplies, lack of nursing and other medical personnel due to firings and layoffs to reduce expenses and increase the flow of income to investors, and overall reduction of expenses in an effort always to produce profit for investors regardless of the effects on anyone else.  See, e.g., Fred Schulte, Sick Profit: Investigating Private Equity’s Stealthy Takeover of Health Care Across Cities and Specialties, KAISER HEALTH NEWS (Nov. 14, 2022).

Look beyond the hype.  See over the top of the propaganda.

GOING  FORWARD

MAYBE IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK. TRY TO REMEMBER THAT.

Being safe includes paying attention.  Here’s what I mean by that.

In 2023, it is astonishing how many strikes are led by unions over unsafe working conditions.  Not over pay raises, not over benefits, although these issues may be involved.  Often, they are not the reason for the strike.  Workers are striking over unsafe working conditions a lot in 2023, it seems to me.

Unionized workplaces record significantly more reports of unsafe working conditions than shops where the workers do not have a union.

If you thought that unions are bad for workers for some reason, and employers are always good, be open to the facts of the thing.

Use this one example to try to remember:  Maybe it’s not what you think.

GO FORWARD

THOUGHTS FOR FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH ON WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

Asking ourselves what might have been can be a club we use to beat ourselves.

We can use the thought instead to begin a fresh start.

The choice is ours.  There really is no choice, or shouldn’t be.

GO FORWARD

“WE HAD TO DESTROY THE VILLAGE IN ORDER TO SAVE IT.”

This was a reported quote from an unidentified U.S. Army officer during the Vietnam War.  Although the officer has never been identified, so far as I know, the report has now become the legend.  It’s one of those stories that are “too good to check” for journalists.

Whether or not the sentiment was true then, it seems to describe the mentality of certain people alive now.  The people who want to tear American democracy down because they don’t have the votes and can never win at the polls.

Don’t believe them.  Above all, don’t follow them.

Whether or not the unidentified Army officer in Vietnam was a real person, these are for sure real people.  Well, I mean “real” in the sense that they are actually here.  They are not real in the sense of a majority.

There are still more of us than there are more of them, as the saying goes.

GO FORWARD

“RESTRAIN ME WITH YOUR JUSTICE”: JUSTICE WITHOUT MERCY IS VENGEANCE.

(Gridview_imagefull / DACS)

Much of what is threatening today can be traced to what Eli Wiesel put in words as well:  “Justice without mercy is vengeance.”

When you act with justice, you restrain yourself.  The natural desire in some situations to act with righteous vengeance is restrained by mercy, by a sense that it is not your place to inflict harm even though you may think that you have been appointed to the task.

Act with mercy.  You won’t regret it.

GOING FORWARD

TODAY IS THE DAY OF THE BALD-HEADED KABOBBLE.

In 1964 at the Connecticut State Fair, I entered a contest at one of the  booths.  I forget if I was supposed to throw a ball or if I was supposed to shoot an air rifle.  Either way, I would knock down targets to win a prize. 

Either way, I did not knock down any targets.

But I won a prize.

The man running the booth said that everyone should win a prize and he awarded me a bald-headed kabobble.  It was a little head of a man on a string or keychain (I forget that too), with a wisp of cotton on the sides of his head to represent his hair.

There has been some debate in the recent past over whether awards should be given to all the participants in a game, as they do in Little League.  I do not know how you might decide that debate, but I do know how I remember the award of the bald-headed kabobble.

I have never forgotten that man’s kindness in 1964 at the Connecticut State Fair.  Today is the day of the bald-headed kabobble.

GO FORWARD

“RESTRAIN ME WITH YOUR JUSTICE.”

I heard this yesterday as part of a prayer.  Since then, I have been thinking about this concept and it occurs to me that it is rightly part of our prayers, particularly at this time and in this moment.

When you act with justice, you restrain yourself.  Natural desires to inflict harm on those who specialize in inflicting harm themselves, for example, are tempered by the realization that you are not the force of justice in this place and at this time.

This is not another way of excusing inaction.  You should act.  Act with justice.

Oh, Lord, restrain me with your justice.  Amen.

GO FORWARD

“I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO.”

Delivery people who bring your package inside the door even though “I’m not supposed to.”  They're a gift whether or not they know it at the time.

Stepping back for a broader view here, it is almost always a gift to come into contact with people who don’t always follow the rules.

This is never more true than when a rule is a stupid obstacle that should not be applied to prevent us from helping other people, or receiving help from other people.  Let that be our guide:  Does applying this rule today, in this situation, to this person or to these people, stop me from helping other people?

 If the answer is “yes,” then “I’m not supposed to” just isn’t enough to stop the best of us from being the best of us at that moment in that situation.  It is a gift to come into contact with such people.

Be such a person.

GO FORWARD

 

NO LIFE IN THE IMAGINED PAST.

No-one I know wants to live in the imagined past.  It isn’t even the past.

The real past was lived by many people, not all of them the same.  “There were no provisions for anybody who was different.”  Harriet De Koven, Post-Polio Survivor.

Thank God we live now, at this time, despite everything, actually.

GOING FORWARD