A Hypocritical Oath, and a Hypercritical Address

It's almost funny how so many people decide to trust doctors and nurses only after they get sick. Doctors and nurses take a Hippocratic Oath, and when these people seek treatment they have taken their own Hypocritic Oath. 

To help us get through this hump, those who end up in the hospital after choosing to not get vaccinated against the advice of doctors, should only be treated by those who have also chosen to not get the vaccine. That'll free up more doctors and nurses to treat people with accidental maladies like strokes and heart attacks while simultaneously releasing the unvaccinated from their hypocrisy. 

I love this joke- "I used to pray to God for a bicycle but then I realized God doesn't work that way, so I stole a bicycle and prayed for forgiveness." 

Does that person deserve God's forgiveness? Does somebody deserve forgiveness from doctors and nurses when they assumed their eventual forgiveness as a premise for their irresponsible behavior?

September 19, 2021

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Have no fear, any unfairness will not stand. The arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, as they say. We just need to do the work.

How about this paragraph from Dan Rather:

"Our greatest statespeople, jurists, artists, activists, poets, dissidents, philosophers, inventors, entrepreneurs, scientists, social workers, and reformers have been the women and men who have been emboldened and steeled by the odds against their success, not shaken. They are the ones who have championed action over apathy, wisdom over cynicism, hope over despair. They have been the dreamers who were undeterred, the menders, the empathetic. With clear eyes they catalogued our national deficiencies and went to work on doing the hard work of improvement. They led with their will as well as their words, demanding their nation expand to accommodate their voices and their rights."

September 19, 2020

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Want me to make a prediction about the empty Supreme Court seat? No vote until after the election. Read Bernie's statement for hope that there's not universal Republican hypocrisy on this issue.

Want me to make a prediction about the election? MORE people will vote strictly for Supreme Court nominations than strictly for the president. Republicans already did this nearly universally, so hopefully it'll light a fire under more people and we can restore balance. 

We stand to lose a lot, and it might not be worth dwelling on the cherry-picked worst things about Biden from decades ago. Let's cherry-pick the best thing that could come from his presidency.

September 19, 2020

Postscript: Always too optimistic.

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I think I'm going to consider this Zuzu's first legit joke. Gretel caught her hiding and pooping in her diaper. When I changed her I pointed out that it was only two little nuggets. Zuzu said, "Gretel can save it for lunch tomorrow." Good material.

September 19, 2018

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This Kavanaugh allegation... interesting how everyone picks a side and it just happens to correspond with their political leaning. Each side has reasons and gut instincts. Maybe half of us are wrong for picking the wrong side, or maybe all of us are wrong because even if we picked the right side we did it for the wrong reason. I'm not suggesting we'll never know the truth, but it does take time.

September 18, 2018

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Wow, person just drove past me at an intersection and threw a gum wrapper out the window, like it was 1953 or something.

September 19, 2018

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Saw mother! over the weekend. I highly recommend that you see it. If you're the type of person who would like it. If you aren't, it might be one of the worst experiences of your life. So good luck I guess.

September 19, 2017

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Gretel tried to catch a cricket tonight but it jumped away. I told her that bugs are afraid of us. 

Gretel: "But we aren't monsters!"

Me: "To bugs, we are monsters."

She laughed it off and countered, "I'm a bug catcher."

Hear that, bugs? We aren't monsters, we're only bug catchers.

September 19, 2016

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Andy Borowitz- "I am in favor of profiling people if that will protect our country from danger. Specifically, I am in favor of profiling people with narcissistic personality disorder and preventing them from becoming President."

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George Washington looked a few hundred years into the future, and gave his farewell address on this day in 1793.

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty."

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On this day in 1881, the death of James Garfield set the table for the pogonotrophic Chester Alan Arthur to become president. Charles Guiteau's bullet didn't actually kill him. Germ theory was new and mistrusted, and all the doctors poking their grubby fingers in the hole is what killed Garfield. So is that an assassination?

Fun fact: I was at a museum in DC one time and guess what they had there. Wrong. They had the actual section of James Garfield's spine on display. 

In case you were wondering, the doctor who was in charge of caring for Garfield, his name was Doctor Willard Bliss. Somehow his first name was Doctor, he didn't even need a degree. The guy was a walking contradiction. Untrue to his last name, he gave Garfield excruciating daily proddings, looking for the bullet. He was obsessed with it. If he was obsessed with washing his hands, Garfield might have lived out his term.

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Two Imperial Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom II jets flew out to investigate a UFO on this day in 1975. Both independently lost instrumentation and communications as they approached, only to have them restored upon withdrawal.

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Blue Velvet was released on this date in 1986.

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The Washington Post and The New York Times published the Unabomber manifesto on this day in 1995. That FBI sketch looks like Little Richard fucked Eminem.

The opening paragraph:

"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries."

Later on...

"Even if these writings had had many readers, most of these readers would soon have forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which the media expose them. In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we’ve had to kill people."

Ahhh, so in order to become victorious you must become the thing you hate. You are against dehumanization, so you need to dehumanize to get your point across. Even if his murders would end up decreasing suffering in the short term by ending the technological system, other humans would increase the technological system and destroy those who haven't. I'm not sure we have a great shot either way, but I don't think we have ANY shot if we try to backtrack. We'd have just as much luck convincing our ancestors to do away with fire.

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Actress Frances Farmer was born on this day in 1913, although unfortunately I'll bet that many times she wished she wasn't.

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Skeeter Davis left us on this day in 2004.

THE END OF THE WORLD

Why does the sun go on shining?

Why does the sea rush to shore?

Don't they know it's the end of the world?

'Cause you don't love me any more

Why do the birds go on singing?

Why do the stars glow above?

Don't they know it's the end of the world?

It ended when I lost your love

I wake-up in the morning, and I wonder

Why everything's the same as it was

I can't understand, no, I can't understand

How life goes on the way it does

Why does my heart go on beating?

Why do these eyes of mine cry?

Don't they know it's the end of the world?

It ended when you said, "Good-bye"

Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm

(Why do these eyes of mine cry?)

Mmm, mmm, mmm

Don't they know it's the end of the world?

It ended when you said, "Good-bye"

https://youtu.be/xHa6a3FtPJg

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Another notable birthday- Twiggy (1949)

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Other notable deathdays- Red Foley (1968), Gram Parsons (1973)

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Time for the president to bust out his pardon pen. Any dying man is allowed to try to rob a bank so that his soon-to-be widow won't have to live on the streets. If any of us were in the dying man's position we would have done the same thing (if we had the courage), so there can't be anything wrong with it. Right?

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local-beat/Suspect-Wanted-50K-to-Pay-Off-His-House-59800292.html

September 19, 2009

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McSweeney's- DON’T SHAME ME FOR NOT VACCINATING MY LABRADOODLE, by John Long

"What happened to personal choice? Our grandparents weren’t required by law to inject their animals with chemicals and preservatives — yet their dogs and cats lived long, happy lives. It’s true the occasional stray would come down with a case of rabies and, within a few days, transform into a snarling, deranged predator, indiscriminately attacking everything in its path from horses to small children. And sure, that rabid dog might eventually have to be hunted down by a posse organized by the town and shot several times before eventually dropping like a stone, still foaming at the mouth, jaws frozen wide open in a macabre grin — even in death. But that almost never happened!"

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/dont-shame-me-for-not-vaccinating-my-labradoodle

September 19, 2017

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Gretel is a good helper.

September 19, 2015

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Pogonotrophy- The act of cultivating, or growing and grooming, a mustache, beard, sideburns or other facial hair.

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Plato- "Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous."

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George Bernard Shaw- "Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."

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Sir Walter Scott- "Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasure, and you can create for the world a destiny more sublime that ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer."

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Stephen Jay Gould- "The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos."

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Jimmy Carr- "A big girl once came up to me after a show and said ‘I think you’re fatist’. I said, ‘no, I think you’re fattest.'”

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Steven Pinker- Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005: 

"It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings."

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Michel de Montaigne- "Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me."

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Louis C.K.- "The Greatest Generation gets too much credit. Those World War II guys, if they had all the shit we have today, they'd be assholes too. It's just circumstantial. It's what you're called on to do that makes you great. We haven't been called on to do anything but buy shit and get fat."