Moi, je suis Charlie

Watching clips from the news in Paris regarding the CharlieHebdo terrorist attack.  It's sad in a way how such heinous attacks bring out the best in people.  John Kerry, the tea drinker extraordinaire (and with his pinky out!) just said something on Fox (maybe all the channels) about how terrorism can never kill humour and free speech.

All the same, after years of defending France to people who thought they were all wimps, I love seeing Francois Hollande on TV calling terrorism terrorism (and a spade a spade)

I'd go into a diatribe about how retarded wahabists are pretty warped to believe that someone satirizing them or their religion belongs to them and that they have to control their thoughts. But I'm too nauseated right now.  Wonder what Davi Barker is thinking .

1914 & All That

Happy holidays, and let me apologize here for my absence (in case anyone is actually reading....is that crickets I hear?).  I've been spending 2014 learning a lot about 1914, military history buff that I am.  I've been watching things on the History Channel, listening to podcasts, looking at maps....sort of how I followed the 150th anniversary of the US Civil War for a minute, until it became exceedingly dull.  Now the sesquicentennial of Lincoln's death is approaching and I'm all, zzzzzzz...I'm sure it'll be interesting again in April.

But the centennial of the Great War is completely fresh, as of July anyway.

The most ridiculous sign within 5 miles of me

Join me on the other side of "more" for  the discussion.

The conversation I wish I could have with certain people I work with

In Michigan,  two pieces of paperwork have to be completed before involuntary psychiatric hospitalization can be considered:  one is a petition, which any concerned person can complete if they have reason to believe the future patient has a mental illness and/or is a danger to himself or others.  The second is called a "certification", which can be completed by any physician or PhD level psychologist.

Holy Show Trial, Batman!

OK, after a few weeks hiatus, your Cold War anti communist "McCarthy was right dammit!", Soviet-kitsch-o-phile blogger is back to "The Americans."

Actually, I've seen all the episodes, but episodes 11 and 12 were kinda boring.  Except for the fact that Nina (remember her?  She's the KGB agent the FBI guy who lives next door to the KGB spies masquerading as The Donna Reed Show,  fell in love with, and whose activities and pillow talk Nina is faithfully sharing with the Residentura at the Russian embassy) is in a bit of a pickle.

Implosion of the State Through Education Only?

One of the things that has been hard for me to grasp as a recovering statist is the notion that "you can't use the state's methods to topple the state."  I agree with it wholeheartedly, because I'm not into violence, and I don't think that libertarians getting into power, then enacting their own laws, would create anything better than what we have now.

But at the same time, as a behavioral scientist, I know that when most people come accross new information, particularly if it goes against what they believe, it's unlikely they'll absorb it in any helpful way.  That is my instinct anyway, and my observations in my own half-century one rat study.

Something clicked for me yesterday as I pondered my Christian beliefs, my (limited) knowledge of history, and the history in particular of liberty.  And now I'm thinking, maybe their have been times in the past when the State was toppled, or at least challenged, by those who wanted to educate their fellows that it was simply an imaginary construct that they could shrug off whenever they were ready.

"The Americans" Update: "Martial Eagle."

More about the show that makes you wonder, "So is there a TV show in Russia about CIA spies with perfect Russian accents living in Moscow called, 'The Russians'?"

WARNING:  Spoilers-a-plenty ahead.  

LIST OF MIGRAINE CURES THAT HAVE NEVER WORKED; but which I have feltcompelled to re-test long after I figured this out:

cold stuff on my head

Aspirin

Tylenol

chocolate 

fiorinal

Child Pose

More chocolate 

Beer

Fiorinal and beer

Feverfew

Magnesium supplements

Co EQ

Chocolate and peanut butter

Lemon filled Girl Scout cookies....

Statistics

I have a theory about why the federal government invests so much time in promoting stupid solutions to problems that don't exist.  Take the cries for the banning of firearms because there are "more and more" school shootings.   This is despite the fact that, statisticaly, millions more men,, women and children die in car accidents, diving into shallow swimning pools, stay home for the hurricane party, or have a cement block dropped on their car from an overpass.  And in fact, violence against school children isn't increasing.  Although the news media is indeed paying more attention to it.

The Pastorale: Not for the Peasants, Anymore?

My immediate family, or those I live nearby, anyway, are coping with a particularly voracious stomach flu bug, and I'm not feeling all that well myself, so this Easter the cockatiels and I are staying home...avoiding the Easter goodies, doing some light spring cleaning, and participating in a ritual I've enjoyed since my senior year on high schillings:  Playing Beethoven's Symphony #6 and enjoying the spring it portends.  It's a good day for it too; sunshine streaming in, probably teasing us mercifully before the next big polar vortex with its 10 inches of snow and the thousands of Michigan parents being treated for a new illness:  snow day fatigue.

It looks very springy today, on the other hand.

From Russia With a 2 Kid, 1 Car Family, 2 of whom are Soviet Spies, a Clueless FBI AGent who Lives Next Door, and a Promise of Sympathy Distortion

Those are my words, those last two, and sympathy distortion is something the fan of FX's "The Americans" must learn to live with.  Or stop watching it.

The KGB family brings brownies for the FBI agent under whose nose they reside

If you don't watch much TV, then you, like I before a friend told me about it, may not know about this show. It's a little difficult to explain unless you are a Cold War nerd like myself, but basically, the "stars" are a couple (marriage arranged by the KGB) from the Soviet Union, their accents somehow magically erased, living in a cushy split level in 1980s Washington, DC, next door to a clueless FBI agent; amusing themselves with kidnapping, forced repatriation of the odd Russian intelligentsia, a fake marriage (the husband's), meeting cool people and killing them, and by magically keeping their kids from knowing they are KGB spies from the Soviet Union (don't these kids wonder why they never meet their grandmas?)  While all this is going on, the clueless FBI agent not only misses the KGB agents under his nose, but has fallen desperately in love with the woman he believes is his KGB informant, but who used him to get her way back into the good with her "Soviet ambassador" boss, and who may have been in love with him, but is now sleeping with another sort of free-agent agent who is extorting FBI information from the FBI agent by threatening the life of his KGB "informant"/triple agent informant/lover.  All in the context of wives, children, and innocent bystanders who are flicked away like so much acceptable collateral damage.

Are you getting all this?

The 2013 Tax Year Tax Dirge: Don’t Fine Me, Bro!

Or, All I really want to do….is claim you as a dependent.

The reason for the tax dirge:

The tax dirge is perfect music for seeking lost bits of paper, Googling tax code minutiae (and isn’t it all minutiae?)…and for holding your breath until your accountant calls and says you're getting a refund, or a bigger refund than expected....or until you enter all the numbers into Turbo Tax and the amount "overpaid" comes up positive.  On the other hand, it's good music to drown your sorrows when you see there is no way in H-E Double toothpicks you're getting a refund...in fact, you may have to sell your house to pay your bill!!

To be honest, many times the songs in the annual playlist known as the Tax Dirge aren't evocative of those feelings viz their music or lyrics; many times the title just, well, fits.

As usual, the Dirge features songs of all or most song types.  This one includes reggae, hip-hop, opera, 70s punk, folk and country.  And 2014 sees the debut of Mr. Marshall Mathers on the Dirge with not 1 but 2 selections from "The Eminem Show".

We end as usual with the Mother of All Tax Dirge Songs, "Taxman", written and performed mostly by George Harrison....the Grumpy Beatle[1].  If you're singing along to the finale this year, and wondering what to put in place of the descant, "Uh-uh, Mr. Wilson; Uh-uh, Mr. Heath", then "Uh-uh, Mr. Boehner, Uh-uh, Mr. O" works pretty good.  Unless you're Canadian, in which case you have a couple of weeks to figure out how to fit Messrs. Harper and Mulcair in the song in a rhythmic and clever way, eh.

Happy dirging, taxpayers!

Trivia from Doing Mental Health Evaluations Over the Years.

Actually, don't get too excited....

Things People Never Really Believed

This post occurred to me because I've been thinking a lot about an upcoming post on religion and the state, or specifically, Islam and the state.  This has brought me head on into the claims, by jihadis, non-muslims, talking birds and probably spacemen, that one of the hallmarks of Islam is "conversion by the sword".   I can't believe that average people of average intelligence and average sanity, anywhere in the world, speaking any language, practicing any faith, could ever really believe that you can change someone's mind by threatening to kill them.

Looking around for information on that got me thinking, how many other dumb things do we believe about other cultures or historic beliefs?

Minuit Chretiens ( Warning: Film Spoilers ahead)

Minuit, chrétiens, c'est l'heure solennelle,
Où l'Homme Dieu descendit jusqu'à nous
Pour effacer la tache originelle
Et de Son Père arrêter le courroux.



This Christmas Eve I went to my aunt & uncle's church; my uncle was playing the organ for their Christmas presentation. The message was good and interesting; their pastor preached on the origins and history of the famous French carol, "Minuit Chretiens", known here as "O Holy Night". Some of what he said seems to have been apocryphal, or at least, not in Wikepedia. It wasn't the first song to be sung on the air after the invention of AM radio, for example; I don't know if the church really rejected it, as was suggested tonight, after learning the composer was Jewish and that the man who wrote the lyrics had recently embraced Communism, but it fits. I have always liked this song. It's beautiful when sung by someone who can sing, and its message is very Christian. No jingle bells here.


Le monde entier tressaille d'espérance
En cette nuit qui lui donne un Sauveur.
Peuple à genoux, attends ta délivrance.
Noël, Noël, voici le Rédempteur,
Noël, Noël, voici le Rédempteur!

Literal translation:
The whole world waits in hope/during the night that gives it a Savior. People, down on your knees, await your deliverence//Noël, Noël, here is your redeemer/NoëlNoël, here is your redeemer.

Le Rédempteur a brisé toute entrave:
La terre est libre, et le ciel est ouvert.
Il voit un frère où n'était qu'un esclave,
L'amour unit ceux qu'enchaînait le fer.
Qui lui dira notre reconnaissance,
C'est pour nous tous qu'il naît, qu'il souffre et meurt.
Peuple debout! Chante ta délivrance,

The Redeemer has broken all obstacles:
The land is free, and Heaven is open.
He sees a brother where there was only a slave,
Love unites those who chained iron.
Who will tell him our gratitude,
This is for all of us he was born, he suffers and dies.
People standing! Sing your deliverance,
Noël, Noël, chantons le Rédempteur,
Noël, Noël, chantons le Rédempteur!

But that's not what I wanted to tell you.

Messiness isn't the problem

Okay so I was listening to Monica Crowley today. She made an interesting comment about the mess that is Obamacare, at least now as people scramble to get on the website to try to apply so many problems. She said "this is what socialism is like. Of course it's a mess. Whatever you try to impose socialism, it's always a mess."  The statement told  me   two things about Monica Crowley. First off, she was nowhere near Leningrad or Moscow in the spring of 1992. I know this because she would've remembered the messiness it comes with unmanteling socialism.  She doesn't remember seeing cars full of  worthless rubles lying in the field rusting away. She doesn't remember people protesting on the street because they were learning that their pensions, guaranteed to them since babyhood, no longer existed.  She does not remember the crime wave filling  the vaccuum that communism left behind.

Secondly, she is very naive about our health system, which is about as non-socialist as Lenin dressing up as Saul Alinsky at a party hosted by Lillian Helmann and Kate Hepburn on halloween.

Even completely private health insurance plans change the economic relationship between patients and care in a way that distorts the value of services rendered, and that artificially or temporarily  protects buyers from experiencing the cost.  I say "artificially" because even though the insurance company may pay the bill, the patient is saddled with increased costs in the form of deductibles, copays, or in the worst cases, being dropped from the plan.

And I say "temporarily" because it seems like the contemporary system was a house of cards, particularly when the government stepped in to forbid companies from avoiding the sickest of patients in order to decrease their risk.  An insurance company can no more survive if required to "insure" everyone than a car insurance company can afford to give as cheap and comprehensive policy to riskier drivers as they can to statistically safer drivers.  But insurance had another self-destruct command along with it:  higher prices for care.

This was more clearly a problem after Medicare was enacted in 1967.  Medicare has famously lax means for policing itself.  I've talked a little about my work before, but I work in a hospital identifying and getting insurance authorization of people needing inpatient psychiatric care.  Or I get authorization if the payor (insurance or whatever charitable or public fund is available) demands it.  This is about 99% of the time.  The one insurance that NEVER and I mean NEVER requires precert is Medicare.   Like the honey badger, Medicare don't care.   Medicare recipients may have a secondary insurance that I need to call and get authorization, but the Medicare itself is uninterested in whether the patient really needs the and because it is a vehicle of politics and not of risk, decisions are made about it in order to scratch backs, not save money or ensure good care.  This helped drive prices up for all insurances.


If health care was still delivered on an individual basis, that is, with the practitioner and patient or family bartering for the best price, one that gave the practitioner a fair reimbursement but that the patient could afford, I can't help thinking things would be better.

Why Are You Still Here???

Not you, I mean.  I mean disgruntled employees.

So, OK, I hate Facebook....not because I don't think it's an awesome invention, and not because I don't like my family or friends, who seem to have abandone their email and phones to join what they apparently feel is a joyous cacophony in order to communicate with the rest of us.  Which is me.

To Russian, With "Enough" ( and "Through" and "Bough")

I've just started working my way through a textbook on Russian again.  Maybe I'm a hopeless optimist, maybe I'm just stubborn, but I can't seem to leave it aside, as hard as it is.

I've been studying languages for a long time.  I have a degree in German.  French, Spanish...they all came very easily to me.

Russian is sneaky.  You think, oh, this is gonna be a breeze! after you see that the alphabet isn't that hard.  They give you that, then they painstakingly show you how to write cyrillic cursive, the only problem with which is being able to read your own cyrillic cursive; then they give you some vocabulary and useful phrases.

Russian Nightmare

Russia is a country where tragedy and angst are guests that never leave.

That is not to say that Russia or Russians hold no amount of humor and light, I'm sure.  I've never been there, but I collect Soviet "anecdotii" (jokes), wickedly sarcastic and funny views of the burdens Russians and others endured throughout that era.

Now, it is not a Communist economy the people have to fear, but

another Russian tragedy, and it is the direct result of State[i] intervention....albeit intervention that is no doubt backed by a sincere wish to "help people."

A designer drug called "Krokodil", a sort of home-made desomorphine  is making the rounds in the slums of Siberia and Ukraine.  As far as I can see, "Krokodil" is suicide in a syringe.  It is made from codeine--available over the counter in Russia--iodine; and something called red phosphorous, right in the user(s)' home in a pot on the stove.  The high from  Krokodil lasts about an hour and a half, and supposedly painful withdrawal symptoms set in right away so the ability to avoid injecting more is probably nil.