A synopsis of Preventive Medicine

A Synopsis of Preventive Medicine

It has been almost two decades now since I taught courses relative to the topic above. Those courses included: Human Physiology, Physiological Control Mechanisms, portions of Pathophysiology, Exercise Physiology, Central Nervous System Physiology, Physiological Aspects of Drugs and Drug Abuse, and Physiology of Aging. The ensuing many years of retirement precludes any possibility of claiming I am current on many topics relating to physiology. I am not and frankly, most physiology of modern significance is at the cellular level---indeed to be more correct, it is at the molecular level. So anyone who claims to understand body function today really needs to be a molecular biologist. Most areas that I once may have claimed to be an 'expert' on, I have not kept up to date with in any serious manner. Perhaps the one exception has been preventive medicine---after all, like most people I wish to live a long and healthy life. 

More precisely, the object for me is to to live a healthy life as long as possible, not to live as long as I can. We are edging closer to this being a practical reality. A few states now allow assisted death. I believe every person has the right to live as long as they want to live and not be forced to endure living longer because the government or someone's religion demands otherwise. For me it is also an economic matter. To spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of my money or other people's money to keep me alive a few more months goes against my ethical grain. There are many young people dying needlessly of curable diseases or in need of medical care and I prefer such money be spent on those who have a lot of life ahead of them. I don't fear death but I do fear being trapped in a difficult dying process. 

The next general point to be mentioned here is that some people will live a long healthy life with no concerted effort on their part to do that. My mother is a good example.  She ate anything she wanted, as much and as often as she wanted, she never exercised to speak of, and lived a healthy life until she died at age 98. My father did pretty much the same and lived to be 89, albeit with some health problems in his later years. I guess they had the right genes. 

On the other hand, most people can extend their years of good health by attention to some simple guidelines, which I elucidate on below with every effort to be concise. Too much detail and we miss the forest for the sake of the trees. 

Weight control, exercise, proper diet, attitude, and mental activities to reduce stress are all general areas to address.

Weight control is one of the most crucial to ensure continued good health. Being overweight is often a contributing factor to a host of medical conditions. Keep in mind the following. There are two kinds of fat cells---white fat cells and brown fat cells. You are basically born with X number of white fat cells and they operate by storing fat---but only a certain percentage of a white fat cell is filled with stored fat. When you gain weight at some point the thermostat for storing fat gets reset and each fat cell now stores more fat. The object is not to let the thermostat get reset for any length of time. If we do, then losing weight can become a huge problem. Thus, if you gain 3 lbs, lose it, then and there, in the next week or two weeks. Brown fat cells actually burn fat and exercise stimulates the formation of brown fat cells. These brown fat cells also produce the hormone irisin which helps prevent or overcome insulin resistance and this guards against some forms of diabetes. Keep in mind that nothing is equal amongst us in terms of preventing weight gain. It has long been known that some people become overweight on less calories than others who, on the same caloric intake, do not become overweight. There are people who, when paid to become overweight, cannot become overweight, or do so only with great difficulty. Once stopped being paid to be overweight they have no trouble losing the extra weight. The idea that weight control is all a matter of will power does a great deal of disservice to those whose genetic makeup is geared in a different direction. There are a lot of potential reasons for weight gain.

Exercise, we all know, is a great activity for maintaing good health. With all the gadgets and use of cars to go anywhere, young people today have serious weight problems. More young people are overweight today than at any point in our history. At the same time, more young adults and middle aged adults are engaged in serious organized exercise activities than ever before. Most forms of exercise are good, and younger people should just do the exercise they like. Muscle mass is a mixed bag. It doesn't hurt but then do we want to really try to maintain this muscle mass in older years?  We might feel we need it for whatever reasons when young, but we don't need it when older. After about 55 years of age, walking or swimming are probably the best forms of exercise. Unless we are in a rush for hip or knee replacements, we need avoid stressing joints when older. Walk, don't run, moderate paced swimming is probably even better. Exercise, at least statistically, improves the feeling of well being (for most people), helps guard against a lot of medical conditions, and keeps weight down. Attitude helps. Don't park as close to the store door as you can, the walk to the store is good for you, and in general, never miss a chance to walk instead of being deposited at your destination. Never avoid a short set of stairs to take an elevator---climb the stairs. Try to walk a decent distance everyday or a longer distance every other day.

Proper Diet. 

There are more people eating a proper diet today than in the past. The situation here is tricky. The basic principles for good diet are relatively simple. Don't eat too many calories. Avoid saturated fats, trans fat, cholesterol, too little fiber, or eat red meat too frequently---or in too great a quantity at one sitting. Olive oil is the best cooking oil, skim milk or soy milk better that whole/1% fat milk, egg beater better than real eggs in cooking, and therein is a good start. The only vitamin we probably really need take is Vit D, although some people with stomach situations may need Vit B12, B1, and folic acid. After that there are hardly any studies which support going overboard with vitamins. The problem with scientific studies on food habits---these studies sometimes change conclusions over the years. First this or that is bad and then later it's not etc. The problem is there are so many other variables in these studies that interpretation is difficult. I can do a study which might conclude that strict vegetarians live longer or are less likely to have heart attacks, etc. and the question about vegetables would still be open ended. People who tend to become vegetarians also tend to be more health conscious than those who are not vegetarians. So perhaps all the study proved is that those who are health conscious tend to live longer and have fewer heart attacks. It may have little to do with the vegetables (there is sufficient evidence however that vegetables are good for us).  When it comes to eating, moderation is a good guide. What about certain herbs, and other specialty products pushed by a huge 'anecdotal' alternative medicine industry? Look, most of these people with a shingle out in this industry couldn't give an intelligent lecture on the physiology of any system in the body. They rarely have had any courses worth anything or from anyone remotely qualified to lecture on body physiology. In many cases these are people who badly want to be doctors but could never gain entrance to medical schools due to non competitive academic grades. 

Are the anecdotal alternative medicine industries a bad thing? No, they are not. Most people who use their services are very health conscious and regardless of how much of their money they waste on these services, they tend to eat healthy, exercise, watch their weight, etc. Almost all of these anecdotal alternative health doctors are quite careful not to push any product which is toxic to the body or do anything medically which will harm a person. Outside of the military industry and the regular medical field we desperately need some other industries in this country. Let the anecdotalites be. They rarely hurt anyone and it has long been known that people who feel something is good for their health, even if it is a harmless placebo, tend to be in better health. The relationship between state of mind and body is very important to just how optimally body systems function. For many people, religious beliefs have been replaced by anecdotal alternative health beliefs. There is some truth that most all of us need to believe in something.

Attitude

All the body systems are controlled by the Central Nervous System. This system is essentially a chemical computer. Nerves produce neurotransmitters and these neuro transmitters stimulate, inhibit, or block other nerves from being activated. All kinds of problems can happen, minor or major, when not enough of a neurotransmitter is being produced, or too much produced, or there is a problem with reuptake, destruction, or their actions are being potentiated by the presence of another chemical. Most all drugs taken to impact on the central nervous system act by interfering with any of the above neurotransmitter properties. As with drugs which act directly on other body systems, drugs acting on the central nervous system invariably have negative side effects. Medically, the gain has to offset any side effects to be useful. With millions of neurons in the CNS and all of them producing neurotransmitters, it is no wonder we all individually have unique mental states. The one mental state sought by all is contentment. Achieving contentment is no easy road. It is never an all or none proposition. Suffice it to say here, a contented person is more likely to be healthy and remain healthy, all other factors being equal. So it is best to reduce the stress in our lives. Easier said than done, and I certainly will make no attempt to tackle this topic in this synopsis. 

There are a lot of programs which purport to reduce stress in our lives. Some work, some don't, and for the most part, some work for some and others work for others. Some people meditate or do yoga or pray a lot or have therapy sessions of various ilk, or respond enthusiastically to motivational seminars, etc. I tend to take long walks, mostly in nature settings. Whatever reduces stress in our lives is a good thing.

The above areas are the primary ones to get a good start on healthy living. There are, of course, a multitude of of lesser areas we can give attention to, but the object here is to emphasize those areas which can have the greatest impact on our health. Some people manage to make their lives endlessly complicated with imagined or real preventive health issues. Most people I suspect are not trying to live to be 100, just want to live a healthy life to a decent age.  

I have seriously tried to make this a real synopsis, a task not natural to my writing style. Interestingly, I enjoy writing on topics which are new to me, which require a lot of thought and some research. Writing on areas of my professional training is a lot less challenging, almost boring. Decades of lecturing on the same topics is quite enough. Following is a plan of sorts to follow regarding the best preventive medicine.  

Finding the right doctor is a good place to start. It surprises most people to learn that until relatively recently medical students where given little or no training in preventive medicine. That has changed, am not sure to what degree. I prefer a doctor who is part of a Medical School faculty. These are teaching institutions, to gain an appointment on the staff is very competitive, and because these are teaching institutions these doctors are under the microscope in their practice. Most everything they do is being observed by a small army of interns, medical students, medical associates, and medical school evaluation boards of numerous sorts. Whatever our medical problem, these doctors have ready access to get us attended to by the right specialist with the right credentials. They are really one huge team. "Leave the driving to us' comes to mind.

No matter how good the general physician, many people will have medical problems, usually of a minor nature, for which modern medicine has no quick answer. No good doctor has the time to spend a lot of time mulling over some vague medical problem a particular patient is having. When this happens we need tackle some solutions on our own. Google is a God-send here. The trick to using Google for medical solutions is that we need to limit our input to established dependable medical sources. That is always where we should start. We need constantly remind ourselves that articles on the internet can often be garbage in terms of any scientific validity. There are isolated M.D.'s out there who make a small fortune preying on people's desperate search for solutions to vague medical problems. They are no different than the anecdotal practitioners but at least those people don't claim to be M.D.'s. The main news page of sites like Yahoo and others of similar ilk often carry so called preventive medicine articles. Be careful here. Always check the credentials of the author. For example, there was a headline article which claimed to list the 10 best foods to remove toxins from the body. It was such an absurd title that curiosity got the best of me. The foods listed were of no special significance, certainly harmless enough. But clearly I sensed the author knew little or nothing about digestion, metabolism, or excretion for them to make such a silly claim. I looked up the authors on Google and they were three housewives with a blog. 

The other most common internet authors to avoid for medical advice are journalists. Again, you check the source out on google. If they list all the publications they have written for as proof of their expertise, you should be wary. A good journalist who makes medical claims in their writing will list the sources of their information at the end of the article. If they don't do this, just take it all with a grain of salt. After all, they are journalists, not trained medical scientists. They are often motivated to write what people will read and claiming there are foods you can eat which remove toxins from the body is a sure way to attract readers. It is a safe enough scam, can anyone prove they are wrong?

Our time, of course, is precious. Maybe not so much with retired folk like me. There are reputable Medical Institutions which publish monthly medical news bulletins on health related matters, including modern approaches to treating varied medical conditions. These 'letters' cost about $25/year. It is really useful for most people to get 3 or 4 of these. The cost is well worth the sound medical advice given. The ones I subscribe to are: Harvard Health Letter, Mayo Clinic Health Letter, University of California at Berkeley Wellness Letter, Harvard Men's Health Watch (am sure they have a Women's Watch too), John Hopkins Health after 50, Duke Medicine Health News, and UCLA Division of Geriatrics Healthy/Years.  For any major health issue we may have, these publications will keep us right up to date on our particular problem. Any information obtained from these sources is a result of legitimate research studies using controlled experiments.  A doctor rarely has the time to give us any polished in depth presentation on our problem. Articles from these reputable institutions can fill this void. 

Finally, many of us have medical problems which are vague enough or unique enough that the best of doctors cannot see any quick solution. They don't have the time to research or cogitate endlessly about our particular such problem either. We then have to do the research ourselves. Google makes this possible. Anecdotal alternative medicine may be worth the try. Endless munching on some herb may help. Herbs rarely get run through any scientific testing simply because a drug company cannot patent a herb. The Government should run tests but they don't. The Government is busy making smart bombs. The cost of one fancy assed fighter plane would probably cover the costs of scientifically testing most of these herbs. Some of these herbs might really help some medical conditions. Just be sure to google the herb and see if there is any cautionary warnings from a reputable medical institution. When all else fails I think rational people are willing to take risks on the chance something might help. Science does not have all the answers yet. 

A lot of the vague symptoms some of us suffer from are due to Central Nervous System malfunction. This is hard for a lot of people to accept. It kind of means the problem is mental. Of course you and I don't have mental problems. Well, sometimes I wonder about you. Almost all of the well known mental problems have degrees including depression, paranoia, anxiety, hyper this or hypo that---and every physiological system is regulated and affected by the Central Nervous System----which means that the digestive problem we have may really be Central Nervous System in origin.  At any rate, a visit to a neurologist or stress physician may be in order. I have always felt that these guys have the toughest area. It really takes amazing analytical skill to decipher what kind of treatment might be helpful. Fortunately, a lot of progress has been made in recent years in these areas. Tension and anxiety is a consequence of modern day living. When I was younger there was plenty of time to be bored. The nice thing about boredom now and then is it forces some relaxation. Today a lot of people cannot stand being alone with their own thoughts for even a short time. An assortment of gadgets is always right at hand. I sometimes wonder if very many people have any time at all anymore for deep thought about anything. Be all this as it may, some of our problems are due to excessive tension, excessive insecurity about matters, stiff competition at work, social stresses, family stresses, etc. Relief from these sort of states often takes time and may require trying this or that endlessly until the right relief is obtained. But if we refuse to start dealing with CNS derangements, the problem we have will not likely ever go away. 

Too many people let their own feelings and notions drive their medical care. Knowing little about how the body functions, they imagine this or that as the cause and then proceed to find some kind of doctor (using the term loosely) who will agree to treat them for the imagined cause of their problem. Not surprisingly their problem never really goes away, continues unabated or comes back again and again and they spend years diagnosing themselves and seeking those who will happily take their money and go along with such self diagnosis. 

Any more paragraphs here and the word synopsis will no longer fit. Hopefully somewhere in here might be something of use to someone reading it. I now am eager to return to topics that are more philosophical. 

A Career Analysis of Terrell Owens

Now that the long NFL career of Terrell Owens is presumably over a summary statement about him is in order. My defense of Terrell Owens is limited to his time as a football player in high school, college, and the NFL.  His life, post NFL, will likely be good theatre if one is turned on by unpredictability and tragic endings. Terrell Owens outside of his football career is like a fish out of water. It would be hard to imagine anyone less prepared for life after NFL football than Terrell Owens. 

The very ingredients which made him a success in life as a wide receiver are inoperable outside this goal. These ingredients included:

A belief that he was special

A belief that he could trust no one, that others would do everything to bring him down.

A belief that he had to run over, around, or through every hurdle in his way on his own.

A belief that his own will power, focus, and training program could take him to the top of of his profession.

A tremendous need to be alone, a need to be honest no matter what the consequences, a need to be non-forgiving and be a one man band about his own achievements.

A burning desire to be somebody, to see his name in print, on TV and do this without granting any personal access to media commentators and most beat reporters. He considered them all enemies.

I am not aware of any other football player----with such little innate ability (he was never the center of attention, let alone spoiled by coaches and peers in high school or college---who got to the top on his terms utilizing all the ingredients above. I am not aware of any other football player who was a good citizen, had no criminal or bad behaviors off the field, and yet whose persona fired up more antagonists from the media and many fans as Terrell Owens. As long as he could pile up the stats they could not bring him down, although the effort to do so went on for more than a dozen years. During all these years no wide receiver trained harder, focused more, or played harder in the game than T.O. 

There is a heavy price to pay for this route to the top. T.O. could never have gotten to the top probably any other way. It would be hard to find anyone who could duplicate his effort and focus. For that I admired him and always will.

All his long time detractors are having a field day now. He is a fish out of water thrashing around, no longer able to do the only thing he ever prepared himself to do---be a wide receiver in the NFL. To the delight of his detractors and the sadness of his supporters,Terrell is his usual brutally honest self when he says he feels like he has no friends. Of course he never really had any close friends his entire football career or life.  All his teammates and coaches said repeatedly he was unapproachable as a friend. Whenever Terrell Owens was spotted in public he was almost always by himself. There never was any 'posse' at any point in his career. It would be hard to imagine just who he would thank, outside of his Grandmother and himself, for his success in football. He really was self-made.

Terrell, in any social setting, is vulnerable. For him to succeed in anything outside of football he would need a whole new set of personal qualities. To expect this is probably a bit much. I suppose, if he could set his focus on something new with the same qualities he applied to football, he could pull something or other off. This seems unlikely. Maybe he needs to be like Ricky Williams and get away from people and go off to the wilderness and live amongst a group seeking contentment via alternate lifestyles. What he probably should not do now is continue to set himself up for ridicule and contempt for his unique personal qualities (or failures if one wishes to label them such). He is 38 years old now and he can find solace in that it took that many years for his detractors to be able to dance on his grave, so to speak. How many other kids from his neighborhood came close to his achievements? They are all still, relatively speaking, nobodies. He reached his goal, to be somebody, and thrived in it for a good twenty years, his way, a one man band. 

T.O., from the get-go of his focused rise to the top of his profession, envisioned that his performance on the football field would determine his status as a worthy person. He was incapable of giving a piece of himself to media commentators or fans---to dance to their tunes--- as an additional price to pay for their respect. Political commentators, like Peter King of Sports Illustrated, depend heavily on personal access to football players---their 'unknown sources'--- for their character assassinations or hero worship of star players. Many fans expect a player to fit into their own perceptions of humility and form of celebration. In neither area did Terrell have anything to offer them. It is no crime, it need be noted, for anyone to remain aloof from others. Peter King's vocabulary, in his references to Terrell Owens, reflects the kind of retorts expected from a 14 year old ghetto kid on a neighborhood playground, not a professional sport commentator. Terrell, to King, was referred to as "Mr. Glass groin", "wack-job Owens", "wacko", "nuttier than a fruit cake", "a little bit off", "jerk", "stupid" etc. At the same time King relentlessly character assassinated Owens, he portrayed Brett Favre's character, in endless lengthy articles, as the 'perfect' idol for a sports hero. This is not football reporting, it is cheap ass juvenile soap opera character garbage. In essence Terrell was being asked to dance to the tune of others as the price for any recognition of his achievement on the football field. King and others, not remotely close to Terrell personally, even demanded he be thrown out of the NFL.

To Terrell's credit, he never once, to my knowledge ever used such derogatory adjectives about anyone. He is, always has been, and continues to be, a gentlemen in his comments about others. His strongest statements about others consist of such statements as "I was not the one who got tired", "You don't talk to me unless I talk to you first", "Who can make a big play? I can", "I am going to love me some me", etc. Even in his latest appearance with three angry women about child support, he refused to character assassinate any of them on TV and just sat there and took their attacks about his inability to relate to them. For T.O., with precious few exceptions, the character assassination is always a one way street. He will talk forever about himself, and it basically stops there. Others really are not part of his world, period. That too, is remarkable. Most people, called the kind of names Peter King called him, respond in kind. Terrell never did. His comment when asked to respond was "They are paid to do what they do and they are good at it. There is nothing I can do about it". 

As much as I have studied his personality, I cannot begin now,  just as no one has been able to do prior to now, predict his future. I spend a lot of time analyzing famous people, and Terrell is right up there with Lincoln when it comes to a wall of personal impenetrability. As a friend of mine would say, T.O.'s a 'piece of work'. Strangely, such 'pieces of work' usually have tragic endings. What Terrell is, is extremely 'different'. That is hardly grounds for the kind of character assassination he has been relentlessly subjected to. He really doesn't owe any of us an apology for not tap dancing to our tunes. It does give everyone, including Terrell, pause to wonder just how much such intense focus to achieve a goal, is worth. He got twenty years of success at what he does. Had he danced to the tune of others he would have had a lifetime of being another nobody. In that context he achieved a lot, and is now paying a stiff price. Age, as it is for all great athletes, is one hurdle even T.O. can't run through, over, or around. At the other side of this hurdle is a stone wall. Turn out the lights, the party's over. Well, not for his detractors. For them the party has just begun. They'll tire of it in due time. 

Misplaced Marriage Debate

Misplaced Marriage Debate

The debate rages as to who should be allowed to marry who. Maybe first we need to examine all the changes that have occurred this past half century in the institution of marriage itself. People throw around the 'sanctity of marriage' phrase right from the beginning of the marriage ceremony:  "Let no man put asunder what God has put together". That sounds pretty nifty except somewhere between 40% to 50% of marriages end up in divorce. Strange, in divorce proceedings no one ever accuses God of having messed up. I guess maybe God is not too talented at match making. Personally, I don't think He ever got involved. 

People marry at a later age now. Quite a bit later, from the avg age of 20 in 1950 until 27 these days. I am not sure what 'sanctity of marriage' really means but there does seem a lot of concern by a lot of people that their marriage will lose this sanctity if gays get married. Maybe so if I could understand better what the phrase means. 

Only half of eligible Americans now marry. It was 72% 50 years ago. It seems there should be a bit more concern why old fashioned marriage is becoming less popular and lasting much less longer before we leap frog to obsessing over any new razzle dazzle type of marriages. There is a sanctity leakage somewhere, and has been for the last half century. 

I would be the last person to profess any insight as to what is going on with marriage these days. Perhaps it has something to do with the modern day environment within which we live our lives. Much of our social life these days involves the internet, cell phones, chat rooms, computer games, face book, and other avenues I know even less about. A satisfactory relationship for two to live together is a bit more complicated than simply turning to our various gadgets for amusement.  Between pets and gadgets, other more potentially contentious relationships seem risky, both emotionally and financially. 

Here are some more stats in no order and beyond any useful perspectives on my part:

% who have been divorced:   Jews---30%; Born Again Christians---27%, other Christians----24%, Agnostics----21%. Close enough together for me not to get picky about blame. 

The # of co-habitating unmarried couples has increased 10 fold between 1960 and 2000; and increased 88% between 1990 and 2007. Why are these couples avoiding the sanctity of marriage? We really need work on getting this phrase defined more clearly.

40% of couples today cohabitate first before marriage but a recent stat stated the percentage of both kind of marriages who end up divorcing is the same. So much for trial runs. 

40% of all births are to unmarried women (2007). Wow. Fortunately studies seem to show single parents can effectively raise children. I don't know the percentage of all parents, single or coupled, who really do raise kids properly. That might be a depressing stat. There is this generalized perception that these pregnancies to single mothers are all ignorant mistakes. Hardly,  there are a good number of women out there who really want a child but can't attract a suitable husband, or don't want one, or whatever, and they purposely get pregnant. For a lot of young girls, having nothing much in life to value or any hope for things to get better for them, a child is the only treasure within reach. If a sperm bank is not financially feasible, then enticing a drunken 'prince' for a one night quickie will do. I guess it might take a series of 'quickies'. Then there are the 'slickies', and I have no idea how common this is, where good looking gals entice a wealthy 'celebrity' into sex so they can raise the kid as a lucrative profession, often tens of thousands of dollars per month child support if there is no marriage, and life in a gilded mansion if there is a marriage. Financially it is a lucrative profession. Not surprisingly there are sufficient numbers of older men who think some young sexy thing is really in love with them. The only risk for the gal is if the fool is the O.J. Simpson type. O.J. may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it may have dawned on him that she really married him for the glitzy life style. Reality can be a downer. A six foot downer for her. 

A slimmer of good news. Recently the divorce rate has been dropping a bit. 

Nevada, Ark, and Wyoming have the highest divorce rates. The lowest is in DC. (huh?), Mass., Pa. 

In 2010 44% of our adult population was unmarried. When it gets to 51% those of us not married are going to vote in politicians who give the tax break to the unmarried. That's a joke. Hmmmmmm. 

There are now 31 million 1 person households in this country (2007). Doesn't sound right. I always thought of a household as consisting of more than one person.  Anyway, all of the above is simply observations from the head of my household. Damn, Shiebiejeebie, my cat, just bit me. I stand corrected.

Sanctity of marriage and sanctity of life are terms which need a lot more clarification. Life for all of us, in the form we exist now at any rate, will end. For sure. No sanctity there. If change is one of the major forces driving the whole process of evolution, however one wishes to define this process, then of course individual life forms can't last forever. We are all temporary, lucky enough to have the chance to strut around for a bit on the stage of life. Who gets the best cards to start seems also to be a huge dose of chance. Perhaps marriage is like every other aspect of life----there is, and logically could be expected to be-----a lot of change in a marriage over the years. People change, and because people change, ALL relationships of any kind depend on the nature of the change over time. Some changes will strengthen a marriage, others will weaken it. We need to go easier on the notion that someone has to be to blame for a marriage failure.

I have given up a long time ago predicting which marriages will last. Even how long a marriage lasts is deceptive. We like to tie marriage and love together as if one is the cause of any durability. Even that is somewhat illusionary. For the most part, hardly anyone just goes out and finds someone they feel they could love the most, and marries them. First, we all have to figure out what our attractiveness level is. Just like 'plain Jane' is not going to be asked to the prom by 'Prince Charming', the odds of such a couple anywhere marrying are pretty long. Then there is the personality match----Einstein himself could not come up with a formula for figuring out who is compatible with who. I don't even try anymore. What is, is. If all this isn't a big enough hodge-podgety quagmire, then add sex. Oh my. I wonder if one reason people marry later these days is the availability of casual sex and the ever present availability of sex in one form or another on the internet. All the mystery and tension that used to exist on young people about sex is pretty much gone in most societies. Add to that the kind of hard core porn of every imaginable form on the internet for young kids to see and it is hard to comprehend exactly what all this does on a young person's sexual state of mind. Even if two people are compatible regarding the type of sex acts, the sameness of the acts and the same two involved is bound to add a new wrinkle----how often to have sex. This paragraph is depressing. If any couple successfully gets through all this with the same intensity of love and sexual satisfaction present at the start of their marriage----well, that is really something. Not natural maybe.

Even some of the marriages which last are suspect. It may be the kids which hold the marriage together, it may be financial security which holds the marriage together, it may be seldom doing things together (independence) which holds the marriage together, it may be the fear of who else they can attract at an older age, it may be simple platonic friendship, or simply the lack of energy or interest to go through the whole process of mate selection again (enough is enough). I would guess trust, patience, and being best of friends to be the strongest glue.  

At any rate, considering all these complicated, varied, stressful components of marriage which every couple needs to address, over and over again---with time changing these components, it just seems who can marry whom is not the major question at hand.

For me it is simple enough----I do not wish to be married to anyone who would have me as a spouse. I need be a tad more selective. The penalty is I am now in the 47% of the unmarried adult population. Maybe, at my age, I will claim I started this trend---another addition to the list of things for which I get blamed. 

It is best to keep things simple. In a world so seeped in hate, intolerance, and violence----when two people claim to love each other and wish to live together as spouses officially married----well, it is hard to understand how this will alter the sanctity of anyone else's relationship, or force anyone to compromise their own particular religious beliefs. And legally, if there are no victims there is no crime. Marriage is always, without exception, the union of two unique to the planet humans. Therefore every marriage will be unique in a multitude of ways, and ways which impact only on the two trying to live as a couple. It is what it is. So be it. Nothing changes for me. Half the time, when two people indicate they are going to marry, I scratch my head in disbelief. The more things change the more they stay the same---scratching my head half the time will remain. 

   

In the Old Days

In their later years all old people remember 'the old days'. There is almost always a bit of nostalgia, I suppose because those were the days of youth. Somethings never change in the nature of change. That is to say the music of the young is invariably not the favorite music of the old. And some imbedded biases against this or that group tend to go by the wayside. This is not to imply things are always better and better. Man's inhumanity to humanity simply changes in focus and target. Science has always forced, ever so painfully, many religious dogmas to change, or at least become ignored. In a materialistic society the older population will always remember the cheaper cost of practically everything. What follows are simply changes that have occurred outside of simple price changes, as seen through my own eyes. The days are gone when a mother says to a 10 yr old kid, "You be home in time for supper or you won't get any". That's a big change. And if you went somewhere as a kid you walked, hitchhiked, or rode your bike---there was no parent driving you in a car from one scheduled supervised event to another. A family, no matter the size, only had one car and daddy used it to get to work. Nobody hitchhikes anymore. I can remember hitch hiking from Maine to New York on college breaks. It never crossed anyone's mind back then that we might get molested, let alone be murdered. It was a free ride and often a free meal or two en route. Programmed activities were few and far between. We had a lot of time on our hands and few electronic gadgets to play games on or message anybody. Phone conversations tended to be short and to the point or there would be squawking about the cost. A long distance call was a really a big deal. I can remember as a PRE teenager going to Ebbets Field to see the Brooklyn Dodgers with neighborhood pals. This required getting to a train station, taking the train to New York City and then a series of subways to Ebbets Field. If kids did that today the Police would be called and the parents scared stiff. Just about everybody talked to us kids back then and no one ever told us not to speak to strangers, although many a stranger probably wished we hadn't. Strangers were mostly friends for any sudden need, and part of a community spy network with direct connections to your parents. Parents had a lot of eyes back then. The front steps and sidewalks of a neighborhood bustled with activities, like what else was there to do but hang out and socialize in the neighborhood. The neighborhood today is your face book page. Much of youthful activity back then was planned nonsense born out of boredom. The favorite comedians back then were the likes of Abbott and Costello. In fact most of the TV stars back then seem really unsophisticated and simpletonian now. I guess this proves we have changed with the times. I can't remember even once fearing to go to school lest I get shot. I can't think of any student in my good size suburban school ever getting stabbed let alone shot. Even fist-a-cuffs were rare. Schools were of a far different atmosphere than now. Back then you had a Superintendent of the Schools, a high school principle, a dean of boys and Dean of girls, a guidance counselor, and that was about it. The teacher was King or Queen in those days, respected by students and parents, and it was the teacher alone who decided how he/she taught and what. There were 'regents' exams statewide and this put pressure on teachers to be effective. Actual vanilla sex was difficult back in high school in those days, let alone teachers having sex with students or an array of internet observed kinkier sex. The current encyclopedic array of sexual acts found on the internet today were non existent in our minds. The mouth had yet to become a primary sex organ, and any sexual diseases easily treated. A trip to the Deans Office, if for anything other than the most minor offense, would likely result in some sort of physical lesson, and depending on the nature of the parent, another physical lesson at home. Little of what I am recalling here are things that I am saying should never have changed. The point is times have changed. We can make fun of the endless sensitivity emphasis of today but it was bad for a lot of people back in my younger days. Almost all of discrimination was simply ignored. Minorities, for the most part, knew their place and as kids we were less prejudiced than ignorant. TV probably played the biggest role in bringing to the forefront how certain other groups were really being treated. I can't remember, as a kid, having discussions with other kids about anyone's rights and I can't remember much serious derogatory comments about other groups either. They had their world and we had ours. A black getting elected President, gays getting married, women getting equal pay or playing important positions in government or industry was simply a rarity, or unimaginable. Back then, those in the least paying jobs could at least make a living, afford a used car, a house, and spend a lot of time with family. Today, many people have to have two jobs to support a family and then everyone wonders why unemployment is high. Duh? If people could make a living with one job, like a waitress, truck driver, etc. then maybe there would be a job for everyone. Today we are busy trying to find out how many jobs we can eliminate in order to stimulate the economy? That sounds a bit strange and those who demand this be done never, ever, of course, think in terms of eliminating their own job to stimulate the economy. It was possible, with certain grades or talents, to pretty much pay your own way through college back then. When we graduated we never much were concerned about getting a job, keeping a job, having to work two jobs, etc. There was job security.. Health care was not a big issue in large part because medical knowledge was limited, the equipment not expensive, and there was no capability to keep some cells going in some form or fashion for months and years. You had your heart attack, cancer, diabetes, stroke, etc, and mostly just died shortly thereafter. When I was a kid the doctor sometimes came to your house to treat you. If you wanted a pizza you had to go and fetch it. Pets were common back then too, but more often the pet's territory was the whole neighborhood. People didn't much walk their dog as let them out. You might not see the pet again until they got hungry. I had one pet dog with a 2 mile roaming radius and food was wherever he found an unattended pot roast, a shot deer hung up to cure, and treats enticed from kids who would raid the kitchen for him. His idea of run and fetch was to take your hat or lunch bag and you had to do the fetching. Wrestling was another fun game for this dog but not for the mother who had to get the dirt stains out of her kids clothing. Through all of this he never bit anyone---but did get rides in a police car back home. He looked so proud of himself sitting in the back seat of a police car. My parents looked otherwise. TV was kind of new, and nobody had more than one, and somehow the whole family had to agree what to watch. There were maybe 5 or 6 channels to watch. The big names back then included such dumb ass vocabularists as Ed Sullivan and Lawrence Welk. Ok, now we have Sarah Palin, a vocabularist of the inane sort. Of course no one back then remotely suggested Ed Sullivan or Lawrence Welk run for President. That was Harold Stassen's assigned perennial job. 'Family values' as the term is used now, didn't much exist. It was hard to circle the wagons with your own family, or wall your family off from others back then. As soon as kids could walk and ride a bike they were off making their own friends, their own activities. And God forbid your parents came to watch anything you might get involved in----that was pure embarrassment, to have your mommy and daddy hanging around when you were trying your best to be independent and self important. A friend used to die a thousand deaths every time his mom, as he left the house would yell, "Robbie, where's your hat?" Or who wanted to be at bat and have your mom or dad start yelling supportive statements like you were a baby learning to walk, "C'mon Dicky, you can do it". And then if you grounded out into a double play who needs some booming parent shouting "That's alright Dicky, there is another inning". I always felt the kid should run over to the bleachers and yell, "maybe for me, but not for you, now get the hell out of here". Fireworks on the 4th of July were note worthy only if you and your friends could manage somehow to smuggle in fireworks, then take off and find someplace to shoot them off. The biggest thing for us were 'cherry bombs', a firecracker so dull that now they probably don't exist. Parents did worry about it all, but had little ability to stop it. It was fun back then to prey on the worries of parents. Someone told a parent of a friend of mine that some kid had put a homemade bomb in their family woodpile. That was funny when the mom took a broom and went outside and hit the kid over the head with the broom. Another time a kid was outside in his mom's yard and pretended to argue loudly about this or that with a friend, then covered himself with ketchup and threw the bikes together and he laid under one. The mom looked out the window and nearly had a heart attack. Well, funny at the time. Misbehavior by teenagers was creative but rarely destructive like damaging anyone's property. We didn't like the school bus driver so we would invent ways to anger him. One day we all got off the bus, crossed over in front of the bus and deliberately dropped our books and took forever to pick them up. Finally the driver stopped at one stop and this younger kid got off and dropped his books too. The driver gunned the engine to scare the kid, but his mother was in the yard gardening and saw the whole thing--- she called the Principal and told him the bus driver tried to run over her precious child. That was funny. We liked to get off the bus in the winter time and throw snowballs at the bus. The driver went to the Principal and the Principal told us the next time anyone throws a snowball at the bus they walk home for a month. So, the next snow storm the bus driver stops the bus, and each time he pulls away you could hear the bam, bam, of snowballs hitting the bus. The driver wrote the names down and the Principle followed through except we all said no one threw snowballs. Finally, he called in just the girls on the bus and asked them to write down annoymously whether anyone threw snowballs at the bus and put their hand on the bible when they turned in their answer. Every girl said no one threw any snowballs. And they hadn't. When the bus pulled away some of the guys would kick their feet against the side of the bus to make it sound like snowballs. Anyway, I think such creative nonsense is rare now because kids are too busy being amused by their electronic devices, texting every inconsequential movement of their life to the same small circle of friends. Of course, on the other hand, who needs so much nonsense? Still, one can argue that kids need fun, need some freedom, need to have to create ways to amuse themselves. Robots are good, but robots don't have much fun. I suppose maybe the world has become too dangerous for kids to be loose as in the past, and maybe the current close supervision is necessary and good. At one time the weekends were the heavy traffic days, people used weekends to visit relatives and go to the beach etc. Now the heavy traffic days are workdays when hordes of people travel distant miles to get to work. Some things haven't changed at all in this country. It still takes the same amount of time on a train to get from point A to B. No high speed anything unless it is a missile of some sort. Wars in the past were waged with real uniformed soldiers and real simple bullets. Now, the enemy could be anyone in the invaded country, no one is in uniform. There is no ready aim fire at a visual target, you press a button and some smart missile will chase down the ass targeted, enter and totally rearrange the molecular configuration of the target's entire body. In the past, those with the best weapons won, ask the American Indians, the Japanese, etc. Not anymore, if our soldiers die in a war they most likely stepped in the wrong place, or get hit by sniper fire. And, ever since we did away with the draft, wars occur almost endlessly. The idea of going to war and everybody sacrificing or being eligible to fight, if the right age and no connections, is gone. These are the strangest wars now---we are the invaders, and most people, like myself, find no impact on our lives whatsoever. In fact, if we don't get tax cuts from politicians we don't elect them, war or no war. I suppose this is now catching up with us, but hopefully the lights won't go out and the party be over until we ourselves are over and done with the misplaced priorities. Recently I came across a field filled with bumble bees. I haven't seen swarms of bubble bees since childhood. In fact there are a lot of animals and plants which we will never see again, they are all extinct. The rate of specie extinction is greater now than any time for hundreds of thousands of years. Maybe that just means we truly are God's favorite species and eliminating the rest pleases God immensely. It isn't just certain other diverse groups of humans who are a nuisance, other species get in our way and God wants us to keep on multiplying and rid the earth of all these nuisances. Walking through many 'forest preserves' today is like walking through a graveyard to experience humanity. In many of these forests about only thing left are the trees. Some, like the redwoods, have been alive for thousands of years. A forest without wildlife, birds, bodies of water with fish, and insects yet to even be named, is really a graveyard of sorts., and is certainly not a real forest. Even I know not to worry too much, Time stays, WE GO, just as it did without the dinosaurs. There is nothing inherently sad about all the changes above. Change has been the nature of God's evolutionary process from the start. What is noteworthy has been the extent of change in my own lifespan. It is a different world out there today than it was in my yesterdays and it will be a different world in the future years too. While it is possible to understand the past, the future seems beyond our grasp. I kind of feel something really noteworthy is about to give----that Mother Nature is about to play her cards. In the past when Mother Nature has played her cards, she always has won, corrections small and large are made, and the nature of the game and participants gets shuffled around and a new era gets ushered in. Good night souls of the past, wherever you are.

INFLATED MEMBERSHIPS

Inflated memberships: Years ago I got this application to join the NRA. I ignored it. Several months later I got my membership card. I wrote and told them I had not joined and did not intend to join. Every year until I moved a couple of years ago I would get my membership renewal notice, and each year I would ignore it, and every year a new membership card arrived. When the NRA frightens Congress with how many members they have I always shudder to realize my name is on their membership list and I guess will always be until the NRA has a membership which exceeds the population of the country. As a teenager I was baptized in the Baptist Church. I have never had my name removed and something tells me I am one of the current listed members of the Baptist Church. Ah, what the hell, no big deal. Public Schools which depend on enrollment for state or local funding often inflate enrollment. State College and Universities are often the worse offenders as all they have to do is find a way to get a student to enroll, even if it is under circumstances which they know will cause the student to soon drop out. Some students enroll just to get financial aid and then drop out. This inflated enrollment is often by a hefty amount. Prestigious Universities and Colleges often use inflated tuition figures as a tool to attract the best students. For example, if your tuition is currently at $30,000/yr you can increase tuition by $5000 and then increase scholarship grants by a similar amount and you win both ways: you impress the applicant as to how high up the ladder your University or College is, and you impress the applicant as to how much of a scholarship you will be giving them. I can remember the days when you could substantially work your way through college. I smiled at the experience of some guy named Tom Flynn. He was a member of the Catholic Church and decided he no longer was a believer and wanted his name removed. Finding this not so easy he decided to get himself excommunicated. His research determined that excommunication opportunities for lay-people are of three principal types. He found Canon 1364 which prescribes automatic excommunication in cases of schism (leaving Catholicism and joining another church), heresy (when a baptized Catholic 'obstinately denies' a well defined Church doctrine), or apostasy ( a thorough renunciation of Christ and the Church). Mr. Flynn visited the offices of the Archdiocese of Buffalo in Feb. 2008 and left a package for the Rev. Magr. David Slubecky, Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia. The package included his baptismal certificate, and evidence that he was no longer following certain Catholic doctrines. He requested excommunication. He never got an answer and then took his case to the diocesan office in Erie Pa. Again he got no response. Thus, at this date Mr. Flynn is a member in good standing of the Catholic Church. He is now contemplating excommunication via "desecrating the Sacred Species", which is to say he plans to take a wafer which has been consecrated by a priest and throwing it in a waste basket. The above is not an attack on the Catholic Church but yet another example of how so many organizations falsely claim members they really don't have. Well, I don't contribute to this sort of thing. If I apply to be a member of some group and they accept my membership application, I immediately decline. I don't wish to be a member of any group who would accept me as a member. I mean, how exclusive could it be? Unemployment figures, and only God knows how many other Government figures, are manipulated figures, tabulated in such a way as to minimize or maximize the problem. Even weather reports are often misleading, worded to get attention more than be realistic. I have been on trips and dutifully followed the weather reports back home only to find, upon return, that the weather crisis, as reported on the news, was a typical thunderstorm or whatever, nothing so momentous as portrayed on the weather news across the country. We live in a massive information age. There is very little information out there which cannot be found on the internet. I really like that. Maybe someday arranged marriages will return, only this time not by family, but by the internet. No more bar hopping, church socials, or whatever, you just fill out an accurate account of your own looks, character, priorities, hobbies, etc. and run it through some internet program and boom, just like that, comes the perfect bride or groom. Then maybe once a year both could fill out a form to determine current compatibility and boom, just like that, at the appropriate time, divorce could be declared with a print-out of who gets what---and to lessen the pain, a new spiffy bride or groom be coughed up so that no more than a couple of days of loneliness be suffered through. Of course this massive availability of the internet has downsides too. A good deal of the information is fabricated. And it provides every kook in the world (not you or I of course) to become connected through the internet with similar such kooks across the globe, allowing formerly isolated disconnected weirdos to become an effective force whether it be for good or bad. These kind of internet relationships have mostly replaced the neighborhood, the church, the schools, etc. as the social centers of our lives. People used to hang out on their porches or be busy going to club meetings or church functions, or community events-----not anymore, just block after block of houses lit up only by the dim halo of computer friendships in each person's room. Imagine telling some young person, "You have been bad you must go and stay in your room now until I tell you you can come out". You better say it quickly before they are already in the room and you better be prepared to beg them to come out after a reasonable time. So we find ourselves in a whole new world, at least those of us who are older, and what we are to think of it is an enigma. I kind of like it, the computer certainly makes entertaining oneself a lot easier, shopping a lot easier, getting information a lot easier, organizing a political movement much easier, etc. But the downside is that we all become more isolated entities of our social and physical environment. And what this all portends from an evolutionary standpoint for life on this planet is a $64,0000 dollar question. Maybe a case of the more we know, the less we really know. From an evolutionary perspective it might be garbage in, garbage out. 100 million people are projected to starve to death in the next few years and it will happen without hardly a murmur from any of us. It is the 3000 deaths from the World Trade Center bombing which generated massive response and actions. Imagine this, there will be over 3000 TIMES as many deaths from starvation in the next few years as died from the World Trade Center bombing and absolutely nothing much will be done about it. Reality and justice are too discombobulated for us to get priorities straight, or any justice for all right. All I really know, after all these years, is that TIME stays, WE go. And sometimes we never even get a chance to say goodbye, or good riddance, whichever applies.

Scariest Stats

The Scariest Stats: Some claim you are what you eat. Cute, but not so. Maybe you 'are', instead of dead, because of what you eat, but at some point in age there is so little of the 'real' you left that the 'real' you is sometimes gone long before you are physically dead. Besides, the 'real' you is a changing piece of work. I am not the same person today I was 40 years ago, and to be picky, not even the same person I was yesterday. Any continuity is more an 'essence' of ourselves. Of course the same changing hands of time effectuates changes in families, friends, neighborhoods, countries, and all of humanity. God's evolutionary process, whatever else, is not static. In the minds of many I am some sort of Professor Doomsday. Well, evolution is full of doomsdays. We speak of the age of plants, the age of dinosaurs, the age of humans, etc. I can't really visualize what is next---neither could the dinosaurs----any doomsday mentality reflects the notion of change with lots of individual tragedies, but a trajectory of progress ever upward. Even when we celebrate our own democratic history we like to pretend the founding fathers assembled a perfect Constitution and this perfectness should be the bench mark for all determinations of justice. We do the same thing with religion. A belief established in the past becomes etched in stone and is declared sacrosanct for evermore. What is civil rights if not the continuous battle to bring justice and fairness to more and more? Or to destroy and discard these once sacrosanct beliefs? And what is religion if it is not the Golden Rule? So doomsday essentially means, in the shifting sands of evolution, that change is inevitable, that one species having dominion over another is meaningless, that what may seem sacrosanct in one age becomes history in another. Doomsday is the fate of all INDIVIDUAL living things. The sanctity of life has meaning only in the sense that living cells continue to replicate and reproduce in ways which keeps 'life' itself, a concept beyond human comprehension, continuing on in an ever more complex and advanced fashion. We can no more understand where God's evolutionary process is heading than could the dinosaurs. Life, as we know it today, is doomed. This is of personal sadness to all of us, but hardly any doomsday for the evolutionary process. The stats today, no matter how hard we try to put a positive spin on them, are not good news for life as we have grown accustomed. It is we ourselves, not God, who created man in God's image; we ourselves who gave us 'dominion' over other species; we ourselves who insists God speaks to us through inherited religions; we ourselves who bestowed upon America some sort of 'manifest destiny' and other sorts of egotistical divine notions. In the evolutionary process CHANCE is king, not divine intervention on behalf of individuals or nations. This is no directionless drift in that the survival-of-the-fittest life process really does set the stage for future chances. Evolution is a great and wonderful process for the long run, but never for the short run for ANYBODY, ANY NATION, or for domination of any species. Many species become extinct. What we have before us today are stats, stats which the human species has the intelligence to comprehend somewhat. The dinosaurs may not have had the intelligence to visualize their own demise while humans groups---national or religious in nature---use protective illusions which enable them to be positive and upbeat in the face of impending disaster. Many people my age often admit they are glad they won't be around when the 'shit' hits the fan. I never felt so good politically than when Obama won the Presidency, but the forces which drive the evolutionary process are beyond the control of any species, let alone any individual of any species. HOWEVER, humans are advanced enough mentally to alter the RATE or DIRECTION of evolution. We can buy some time. We, could if we were bright enough, and strong enough mentally, prevent our own demise. I don't mean to imply here that humans will become extinct, but the manner in which we 'rule' the earth today, is doomed. Mother Nature always bats last. That we are God's favorite species is kind of a presumptive notion, let alone any, even worse, presumption that God created man to have dominion over all other species and our environment. That would be like asking someone, "Who are your favorites, your smartest friends or relatives or your pets?" If all life forms are the product of God's evolutionary process, it seems a risky and egocentric mistake to declare your own species God's favorite. Some go even further and insinuate that God likes them and their ilk best. They are, in their minds, God's chosen tribe. I consider this egotistical nonsensical tripe. Life as we know it now is doomed based on the following stats: (Where anyone, or any nation, puts their priorities tells you more about them then what they may insist they are about). It seems there are two general groups in every country---the "if you don't like it here you can leave" and those who constantly push for more justice through change. I agree with James Baldwin: "I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." The question is, if you only knew this country by the following stats, what image would you arrive at, and what changes would you make? 80 text messages----avg number sent and received by the average American teen every day. Wow. This is more at the level of "Polly wants a cracker" than intelligent discourse. Amount of money spent in 2008 to upgrade military forces: U.S.= $607 billion; the next 9 biggest upgrade spenders (China, France, U.K. Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia, India)= $476 billion. With 5% of the world's population we have 25% of the world's jailed prisoners, and 25% of them are for nonviolent recreational drug offenses. I am quite sure we have the highest percentage of white collar criminals with probably no more than a handful in jail. In 2007 there were 872,720 marijuana arrests, 775,000 of them for possession, not selling. If we just had more police we could manage more arrests! One can only hazard a guess how many police promotions were achieved through mostly marijuana arrests. I know I feel a lot safer. Most of the crimes committed by others against me in life probably were marijuana induced criminal acts! 70% of illegal drug trafficking profits were from marijuana. If marijuana were legal and taxed, the savings from this War on Drugs and the tax monies would would be enough to provide adequate quality health care for every American. Naw, let's keep the game going and lock the SOB's up---but only lock up the poor who use marijuana. 1 out of every 31 adults in the U.S. is in prison, in jail, or on supervised release. 42%---percentage of college students who feel 'down, depressed, or hopeless'. This is the American Dream? 44%---percentage of teen boys surveyed who said they've seen at least one nude photo of a female classmate online or via cell phone. Wow. Maybe someday down the road the pictures in the Class Yearbook will have a different kind of 'reality' look. In 2004----1.3 million new jobs, 26% of which went to non-citizens. I wonder if this has anything to do with' slave labor' wages? By 2008 our whole wage and benefit structure was under collapse. The legal status of abortions in various countries does not predict the number of abortions but just the percentage of safe abortions. Not too different from the legal status of marijuana does not predict the number of users just the number of people in jail. Development assistance globally as percent of GNI: United States is in 21st place at .2%. U.S. government assistance = $23.5 billion. U.S. Private giving=$34.8 billion. Amount of private aid giving: Universities and colleges= 3.7 billion; Foundations=4 billion; Corporations = 5.5billion; Religious organizations = 8.8 billion; private and voluntary organizations=12.8 billion. Charitable giving by average percentage of family income contributed: Those making more than a million dollars = 3.2%; those making between $100,000 and $124,000= 2.3%; those making $10,000 to $19,000= 2.4% Thus, the ability to contribute to charity has little impact on the percentage a person gives. Put another way, if your income at $15,000 goes up 67 times, the percent you give to charity rises .8%. Onward Christian soldiers. Our Iraq War: number of displaced Iraqis= 4.5 million (1 in every 6 citizens); percent of households with clean water = 40%; percent of children in Baghdad that cannot attend school= 70%; number of Iraqi war widows = 1-2 million; number of orphans=5 million; number of dead Iraqis= 1 million one way or another. I wonder how many Iraqis even appreciate OUR sacrifice in this war? Ungrateful bastards. The number of decades the remaining Iraqis will remember what we did to them=who knows? What happened to the sanctity of life? Which country is the undisputed King of the killing fields abroad? This is staggering to me. We lost 40,000 in Vietnam, I think in Iraq it is like 4000, and I don't know the figure in Afghanistan. We killed directly, or indirectly, 2.1 million Vietnamese and so far over a million Iraqis. Hitler's Germany killed 2 million Jews. I mean like where is the Vietnamese Holocaust Museum? For what legitimate reason were they killed? And why was I such an enthusiastic supporter of that war for so long? How can seemingly 'good' 'Intelligent' people commit or support such atrocities on others? And it seems every group except Hitler claimed THE REAL God supporting them. Just baffling. Were I to continue this, the stats would become tedious and endless. Of course there are some good stats too, but their significance seems overshadowed by the consequences of the bad stats. Whether it is education, health care, the environment, global warming, depletion of natural resources, human overpopulation, accumulation of more and more global wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people percentage wise, number of terrorism deaths (whether by road side bombs, suicide bombs, smart missiles, modern weapons, just plain hacking your neighbors to death,) or homelessness, or death from curable diseases---this big global picture is ghastly, if it is anything. The original hypothesis here was that what a country does with their money tells you a lot about that country. What a person does with their money tells you a lot about that person---what he/she values, what priorities he/she has, how sharing he/she is, and how much respect others have toward him/her. I suppose one can argue it makes no difference what others across the globe think of us. I mean, for most countries, what have they to brag about compared to us? Much like in the days of slavery in this country the slave owners could similarly say, "Who cares what the slaves really think? What do they have to brag about anyway? And if they know what is GOOD FOR THEM they will stay in line and do as told". Of course our country paid a terrible price for that attitude and change eventually came. Perhaps when we say to other countries, "We don't care what you think. What do you have to brag about anyway? And if you know what is GOOD FOR YOU you will stay in line and do as we bid you do." OR ELSE! The trouble is, OR ELSE is becoming a less effective threat to others. The nature of conflict has changed so much today that our massive accumulation of weapons of mass destruction, including smart bombs, have become, for all practical purposes, more and more useless. What good did all this firepower do us in Vietnam? In Iraq? In Afghanistan? In Somalia? in Darfur? etc. We can claim that terrorism is unethical and cowardly, but on what basis? We killed 2.1 million Vietnamese---a high percentage of them civilians. They killed 35,000 American soldiers, no American civilians. In Iraq it is like 4000 American soldiers, and a million Iraqis killed, mostly civilians. It just seems, on the face of it, it is all terrorism by both sides. We are just better at it. We lose because we are the only side with the option of leaving at some point since we are the invaders. I find all of this crazy, senseless, achieving nothing----while the expenditures to do this kind of thing leaves domestic needs like health care, energy innovation, environmental protection, etc. all left underfunded. Thus we fall further and further behind other industrialized countries in just about all areas except the accumulation of military weapons of mass destruction and invasions of other countries. Blind patriotism, like blind religious fervor, in both cases an inherited phenomenon----are self destructive forces. When people run around demanding we all show support for our troops, I feel very patriotic. After all, I opposed sending troops into Iraq and now that they are there I support them by favoring bringing them home. I feel this is the best way I can remove them from harm's way and bring an end to our participation in such slaughters. My support of the Vietnam War was an abomination. It was not patriotism at all. When people say how can the Germans have supported Hitler and the murder of 2 million Jews, I ask myself how could I have supported my country killing 2.1 million Vietnamese. What did our soldiers and the Vietnamese die for? It was senseless slaughter. When I look at the Republican Party these days I am totally baffled and dismayed. Many of these individuals seem pleasant enough on the surface. They are the ones that drape flags over balconies to show their patriotism, want flag burning illegal, and love singing the national anthem at sport contests with marching bands, wounded veterans, and spirited oratorical defenses of every massacre in which we have ever participated---whether it be the Indian Wars, Vietnam, Iraq, dozens of South American countries, Cuba, Philippines, Hawaii, or the more legitimate Wars like World War I, World War II, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, etc. This is their patriotism---"My country, right or wrong". These same type people fight or fought integration of races, laws to protect children (parents should be the deciders), minimum wages, social security, medicare, worker protection laws, environmental protection laws, equal money spent to educate all children, voting rights, women's rights, universal health care, equal marriage rights for gays, abortion rights, birth control rights, populations control measures, curtailing depletion of natural resources, greater gas mileage efficiency, etc. What they thrive on is making their own religious beliefs the law of the land, the right of everyone to purchase and carry around assault weapons, unregulated capitalism, the right of the wealthy to accumulate unlimited wealth even when it results in 1-3% of the citizens of the U.S. owning 90% of our nation's wealth. When they get on a podium they don't talk about real people with real problems or any real solutions for those with these problems-----no, we get babble about our manifest destiny, about 'family values', about 'freedom', about 'good and evil', about God fearing Christians, about long past glories of conquest and subjugation, and never ever talk about the Golden Rule. Somehow, the Golden Rule escapes all their religious and patriotic fervor. A typical approach of mine when these people get going about their focal points, is to bring up specific cases of injustices so prevalent around us, and invariably they snap, "I don't want to talk about it!". And they mean it. FAITH--inherited FAITH---is the basis for their ethics, never the logic buried in the Golden Rule. Their FAITH is in THEIR God, almost always an inherited God, and dogma etched in stone by human designated emissaries from God. Thus, in their minds, God has spoken, and if God has spoken, the matter is closed. Thankfully for history, matters of injustice and fairness are never really closed, and many injustices they supported, even in their own lifetimes, have been corrected, over---so to speak---THEIR DEAD BODIES. That is not correct, they have only been dead from the neck up. No matter, for us as individuals, the band plays on---God's evolutionary process continues---change driven, always eventually reaching higher and higher plateaus physically, mentally, and ethically. The Golden Rule may yet reign some day.

Extended Time Out

Still occupied with a more extensive literary task. Should return to shorter musings on here in a few months.