While I happily anticipate this fall’s 100% turnover in the U.S. House of Representatives and 33% turnover in the Senate, here is my advice for those candidates aspiring to get in there and clean up the mess:
Restore respect for Congress
Don’t promise it. Don’t proclaim that you’ve done it. Just do the right things, and (after a long time) respect will follow. Here are some things that Congress must generate the will to do if respect is ever to be achieved. If you just sit when you’re told to sit, speak only when spoken to, and vote the way you’re told to vote, you will dishonor yourself and merely join the gallery of rogues and fools that you think you’re replacing.
Start with the House and Senate rules
Dump the current House and Senate rules. All of them. Term limits have been needed mainly because the current rules invest far more power in some members than is justified by mere representation of a district. Absolute power in a committee chair diminishes fair representation. And try this: Give every member the option to introduce, and require a roll-call vote on, an issue (bill) of his own choosing (even of his own authorship) at least once during a legislative term.
Give no thought to image, impressions, and re-election
I’ve seen it in business but many times but more intensely in government: Those in power try to manage what everyone thinks of them by manipulating words and timing and audience. Well, those efforts are somewhat like General Eisenhower’s example of the difference between pushing a string and pulling it. What’s attached to the other end of a string is going to follow the pulled string but will be oblivious to the suggestion in a pushed string. Most of us can distinguish between authentic information and a line of bull. Don’t insult us with manure marketed as a dietary supplement. If you’re doing it right, we’ll know it.
Make it nearly impossible to attach an unrelated rider to a bill
Call them riders, earmarks, or pork – attaching them to legislation is probably the sleaziest, most insidious thing that Congress does. If it’s a bill to set up a national photo archive, then don’t attach riders to add a veterans’ hospital in a certain member’s district or change the rules of baseball.(1) If a rider doesn’t pertain to a bill, then bring it to a vote on its own merits. If riders are somehow the only way Congress can function at times, then at worst, let every member have only one chance to propose one in a two-year term.
Take a serious look at the fourth branch of government
Lawyers and accountants elected to Congress over the past 50 or so years have evidently created and nurtured the regulatory branch to further their own professions; there is no other rational explanation for its existence! This entire branch of government deserves to be challenged under the Constitution.(2) Let lawyers and accountants be the LAST people whose interests are considered when writing a bill – and don’t let them be the ones to write a bill either.
Name the beast
The Internal Revenue Code is just the best-known example, but we small people realize that nearly all federal regulation is equally absurd. Not complicated. Not merely arcane. It is insane. But it is the irresponsible tinkering of every act passed by Congress that has made it insane. Name it for what it is – America’s shame – and as a dramatic first step, demolish the Code.(3) Then begin a systematic hunt for comparable cancers throughout the remaining legislative refuse of the past half century. This means exposing other dens of cockroaches, such as the Department of Labor and a hundred more like it.
Take control of the beast
Perhaps only a few of us know the dirty little secret of all legislatures. While lobbyists for corporate interests and the shrill, indignant hucksters for so-called “citizens’ groups” are the annoying vermin making it hard to breathe in Congress, the big leaches are the “permanent” government agencies that present periodic demands for money (budgets) as if they are the first line of entitlement in the country. Every one of these agencies needs to learn that the elected representatives (who make us a republic) are in charge of them, not the other way around. Every bureau, department, and commission needs to experience some healthy fear for its very existence, and some (in my opinion, most) of them need to be abolished.
Don’t be my cradle-to-grave problem solver
Congress needs to stop trying to identify all my problems and especially needs to stop trying to solve problems I didn’t even know I had. I realize that Congress gets led around like a bull with a ring in its nose, but who put the ring there? Oh, wait, there’s no ring at all! It's just posturing! Quit enacting lawyers’ and accountants’ full-employment acts with cutesy titles like “An Act to Improve Music Appreciation in Public Education (IMAPE)” which serve only to funnel my money to undeserving recipients involved in causes that I abhor. Stop saving us from ourselves.
Get real about money
For 5000 years, likely longer, people worldwide have used something of intrinsic value as a medium of exchange. A couple of pen strokes by Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon do not erase this history, and can no more than temporarily disrupt the use of real substances as money. John Maynard Keynes promised us that we could live high on the hog and send the bill to our grandchildren, who would send it on to their grandchildren indefinitely, but the bill has come due in the first generation – we have stuck it to ourselves! It’s “experts” like Paul Krugman who now need to be ignored rather than consulted.
Understand what government is for
The Constitution was not written in secret language available only to a class of high priests.(4) Read it, act within its scope, resist the temptation to mollycoddle the able-bodies, and get out of the way. Understand, too, that every state legislature is likely to write its own parody of every act of Congress, especially those that purport to benefit us small people. Thus we have a federal OSHA and a state version, a federal FMLA and a state version, a federal EPA and a state counterpart, and on and on it goes. Who benefits? Attorneys. Who reels in confusion? Those who would start a small business or teach a kid to fish or contribute to a symphony orchestra.
Get out of the businesses that don’t properly belong under government
This includes getting out of health care, insurance, manufacturing automobiles, broadcasting, and on it goes. Support free enterprise by cheering it on, not by jeering it, punishing it, and preventing it with regulations. And get out of subsidizing every state and local undertaking with “matching funds” with strings attached – do we still use President Nixon’s term, “revenue sharing”? Most urgently, make capitalism legal again. De-regulate business. We’ve sent too much manufacturing to China. We CAN have robust industry in this country that is safe and non-polluting. We need to police our industries, but when they are tied up with proving in advance that they haven’t done anything wrong, as they now must do in order to satisfy bureaucratic zeal, we have essentially made it illegal to manufacture, distribute, or sell anything in this country without first paying a host of lawyers for protection.
Accept the responsibility by taking on the job, but you may not be re-elected
You personally didn’t create this mess. But don’t perpetuate it. Be honest in the campaign: What you have to do will require a reality check by each and every one of us. The vultures of our self-indulgence have come home to roost. You don’t want to preside over a catastrophic economic collapse. The next Congress needs to rein in the entitlements, make it legal to hire people and manufacture goods. Pare entitlement programs to benefit those who are truly in need.(5) The able-bodies need to fend for themselves, and once free enterprise is again unfettered enough to operate freely, the able-bodied will find jobs, because there will be jobs. If the lot of you who are sworn in in January 2011 cannot act in concert, swiftly, honestly, and decisively, you may not be sent back to Congress in two years, but your conscience will be your friend if you tried.
Repeal, repeal, repeal
It’s too late to repeal the bail-outs. I forfeited about half of my retirement fund so that the banks could be bailed out and so that young people with $800,000 mortgages could keep their McMansions. In the wisdom of the current Congress, they were more deserving of my savings than I. Maybe I should be happy that my sacrifice was no greater than that. But as soon as you get in there, get rid of the so-called health care reform, financial reform, jobs bill, cap-and-trade if it has gone through, and as much of that sort of garbage as you can rapidly undo.
I grew up in the Midwest and in New England in the 1950s and 1960s. I believed in America and I understood freedom – freedom to act as I wished as long as I acted responsibly, not freedom from want and wishing. I volunteered for the Army during the Vietnam war. I understood that I could be prosperous if I chose to be, but I didn’t expect to become prosperous with other people’s money; I planned to earn it myself. I planned and ran my life around that code. I have no respect for those who have stolen the dream. The only real power I have against those who have stolen it is my vote. If you are running for Congress in 2010, this message is what I expect my power – my vote – to accomplish.
(1) – And get Congress out of baseball. It makes me apoplectic to see Congressional hearings on baseball, (a completely private enterprise requiring no government intervention), when there are real problems, like border security, to be solved.
(2) – Congress needs to avoid passing “enabling legislation” and all that goes with it: agency rule-making, letting the Secretary of the Department misinterpret, misrepresent, and override the intent of Congress, and permitting strong-armed enforcement that properly belongs - if strong-armed enforcement belongs anywhere - in the legislative branch.
(3) – Those high priests exist and are exceedingly impressed with themselves, not just in regard to the Constitution but associated with every federal department and every act of Congress as well. As an HR director I once asked our corporate attorney a tax question. He replied the next day, breathless with excitement because he had reached someone of stellar influence within the IRS. His joy was sickening to behold.
(4) – The tax code… Please, please ditch it all. Set up a flat tax with NO deductions and no extra forms to fill out, or a consumption tax (which is also a flat tax), or both. A flat income tax would exempt some amount – say $25,000 – per citizen, (so a couple with an income under $50,000 would be exempt from withholding and filing a tax return). A consumption tax would affect those who may fall below the filing line and give some incentive not to spend indiscriminately or irresponsibly.
(5) – In my semi-retirement (which means I’m now working only 40 hours a week for under $25,000 a year) I am a receptionist for a medical practice group. I’ve been in the work force steadily for 45 years. I’m still working so that I can provide health insurance for my family, but when I see a 20-something patient whose diagnosis is “anxiety” and who can’t pay his $3 Medicaid co-pay because he is still paying off his fifth tattoo bill, I deeply resent carrying him. I later learned that he just had his motorcycle tripped out with extra chrome, but he has a state-subsidized cell phone, gets to buy convenience groceries with food stamps so he can use his cash for cigarettes, and… and on it goes.
22 June 2010
28 May 2010
White Noise
I’m sitting at my terminal in a two-doctor medical practice. I scan documents into the electronic medical record and I help answer the phones. My work space, roughly in the center of the building – a pleasant, spaciously-arranged area with a cathedral ceiling and skylights – is separated from the reception area by a partial wall. Further back in the north-facing building is a nurses’ station for the medical assistants. Three exam rooms on the east side and three on the west line each of the outside walls. Each doctor has an office in a back corner. Sliding windows on the receptionist’s countertop separate the reception desk from the waiting area, which lets the receptionist answer the phone without making all her conversations too public.
The practice management group that runs this office (and several others in this part of the state) has selected some sort of custom music service to provide “white noise.” This noise is apparently broadcast (nationwide?) via radio waves, for there is a receiver in the receptionist’s space. The noise service company provides a remote control and a list of channels, selectable through the remote.
The 50-plus channels include such scintilating choices as 924 for Hot FM, 958 for Strobe, 963 for Concrete Beats, oh, and 920 for Environmental. There are a few channels featuring, it appears, ethnic music, such as Mojito, Little Italy, and Hawaiian. There is one called Lucille, which means as much to me as if it were, say, Roberta or Hortense. There are plenty of channels presumably offering hits of some fan-base or era: Reflections, Expressions, Mo’ Soul, Cashmere, ‘80s Hits, Screen Door, Shag Beach, and Plaza.
The receiver has no display to indicate what channel has been selected. It does have a green LED to indicate that it is turned on. The receiver feeds a set of speakers mounted in the waiting area, and is also cabled to a separate console that was made some 20 years ago by Bose. This separate console, which has a defunct CD changer, feeds its own set of speakers arranged through the rest of the building, including three that immediately surround me at about eight feet above the floor. Right now a husky woman’s voice is coming through the speakers, berating her man, (I assume), with the repeating phrase: “I don’t care what you say/want/do,” something like that, and telling him in no uncertain terms what it is she is unwilling to do. If I were him, I’d be cowering near the exit. I feel as though I’m eavesdropping on a domestic dispute in the next apartment.
The Bose console can be turned off separately, and in fact, besides the white noise feed, can accept an alternate signal source, such as an iPod. But to run the back area of the building from a separate source would cause a jarring clash of sounds, sort of like standing in a shopping mall with Spencer’s on one side and Abercrombie & Fitch directly opposite.
But ordinarily the broadcast noise feeds both sets of speakers. Why? Well, there are several reasons. First, lawyers somewhere have persuaded medical practices everywhere that white noise helps protect privacy. This is borne out when one steps into almost any waiting area anywhere and sees two or three unrelated people, perhaps strangers to one another, who happened to find themselves unexpectedly thrown together for an hour’s wait, shouting at each other to be heard over the strains of “Don’t Let Me Go.” Second, lawyers everywhere have blessed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which, as everyone knows is all about AIDS/HIV and secrecy. Medical practice management groups evidently believe that pumping white noise through their buildings contributes to health insurance portability and will prevent lawsuits. If it did indeed absolve the practice of any further liability for an overheard conversation, that would be great. We could all tolerate a stream of crappy music everywhere if it would force tort lawyers to find real work. But the volume of lawsuits reaching our courts are not a function of our mis-adherence to regulations, it is a function of the numbers of lawyers clamoring to fill their case loads. Third, and the main reason why it’s pumped through both sets of speakers: The lone full-time receptionist in this office, Mary, who controls the white noise equipment, has made it plain that she cannot work without some sort of continuous aural stimulation and she cannot hear the “music” unless the speakers in the back of the building are on, since the sliding windows in front of her make it hard to hear it coming from the waiting area.
And it’s Mary who gets to make the channel selection. Not long after I joined this office a year ago, I presumed to experiment with the channels. The other staff members might have warned me not to, but they didn’t. Mary, though, made it plain that I had violated some cardinal rule. Since there is no display on the receiver to remind her what channel she had previously selected, and therefore I couldn’t help her remember, she grumbled for most of a day while she tried to return to it.
Mary doesn’t want to listen to music; she’s not interested in the lyrics, and she is not moved by melody or voice or harmony or arrangement. Perhaps because she is essentially an urban person, she just wants background noise. (To which end, I don’t know why other random sounds wouldn’t be as soothing and “white”: trucks dumping gravel, catenaries sparking over streetcars with squealing wheels, sirens and horns, people shouting.)
The couple of times I messed with the system, when Mary was on her lunch break, I tried one channel that had some light classical pieces and another that had familiar old songs with melodies. Mary found these choices offensive.
Since it must be loud enough in the back of the building for Mary to hear in the front, we generally communicate in raised voices, even the doctors – and that’s when we have only lawyer-recommended white noise to contend with. When the scanner is running, the fax machine is dialing or spitting, the copier is beeping, the shredder is grinding, and a couple of phones are ringing, all of which are within ten feet of each other in the center of the building and all of which can be going at once, the “music” becomes inconsequential, and we often shout. It seems to me that a doctor who must shout at the person six feet away, in order to be understood, is in greater risk of violating privacy than one who can murmer in low tones in a quiet space.
When I read Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks, I was thunderstruck to learn that there are people who do not like music at all, not even that which I (and Sacks) consider true music: a pleasing, even beautiful, combination of tones and rhythm that begs to be listened to and savored or hummed and danced to. Some classical music, particularly from the Romantic period, appeals both to Dr. Sacks and to me, but there is much in modern music that gives me great pleasure. (Limited comparisons abound associated with the other senses: favorite flavors can be consumed only as long as it is safe or comfortable to continue eating; favorite vistas can be viewed only until the sun sets or the fog moves in; and until the invention of sound recording, favorite sounds could be attended only until the source might choose to fall silent.) While I was prepared, on reading Sacks, to discover that there are many like Mary who are troubled by silence, I was not prepared to learn that there are many who find beautiful music irritating and who are deaf to its lure. (And are deaf to the lure of every other type of music as well.) This discovery is confounded by the corollary that, while a person doesn’t find music appealing, music that more resembles cacaphony fulfills their craving for background noise.
Mary can’t stand beautiful music. Nor can she abide silence. Apparently she needs to be surrounded by noise. I wouldn’t know, but I suspect Mary sleeps with a nightlight on, and, probably, with a radio or television playing. While I can’t comprehend her abhorence of beautifully-organized sound, she can’t comprehend my abhorence of cacaphony or my preference for the utter absence of auditory stimuli. Mary happily submits to a day-long drone that includes a guy whining “Oh, I----‘ll never fall in love [repeat ad nauseum]” – a group thrumbing “You might go to sleep on a good-good night [r.a.n.]” – another group that is “sending out an SOS [repeat x24]” – another guy whining that he doesn’t want to die, and, I assume, a compendium of second-string almost-hits from the last year or so. Not only are these “songs” stultifying and repetitive, they recur several times during a daily program. I still don’t know what channel she has chosen in order to secure this drivel. The broadcast does not include a word of information about the songs or performers like a normal radio station, so I have no way of knowing who is performing, nor would it matter. And most of the time the lyrics, save for a repeated chorus, are obscured by the accompanying guitar abuse or other electronic overnoise.
During a relatively quiet moment one day, when only the tune-of-the-moment interfered with the peace, I commented to no one in particular in the open area of the building that I wondered why such a song, which sounded like someone straining at stool, ever made it to the public airwaves. Another co-worker replied from around the corner of the wall: That’s So-and-so; meaning, I suppose that So-and-so’s performance of anything more musical than a fart should hold me spellbound. Just because So-and-so did it; like, whatever God creates is perfect because he did it. I’ve mostly kept my mouth shut since then.
Set aside, though, our difference in taste, if you can call it that. (It’s beyond taste. I must someday argue for a definition of the word ‘music’ that excludes such affronts as cell phone ring tones. I’m reminded, for instance, of other settings where I’ve spent a little time under the forced white noise, and I remember hating the repetitious drivel of “Su-su-sudio” and “Cisco Kid was a friend of mine.” It doesn’t matter how famous or creative the performers of these pieces were – I could crank out tuneless, mindless pieces like that all day long but I’d be embarassed to do so.) The greater question is this: Why is it OK for my employer, in the person of Mary the music Nazi, to subject me to an irritating, distracting, assault on my senses? What is it in her that not only assumes but insists that I will enjoy the noise she chooses? (It pleases her, so it must please everyone.) Consider the other senses. If I had the power that Mary has and I decided that she must endure a continuous daily light show of flashing blue LEDs over her head, would that be OK? (I know one person who has seizures when she sees flashing lights.) What if I decided that my co-workers all had to settle for a fifty-degree room because that’s my most comfortable working temperature? What if I brought in a plug-in air freshener in, say, ‘hot roofing tar’? What if I were in charge of the white noise and I chose Shastakovich, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev ad infinitum? (I like those composers, by the way – in moderation, but they grate on most everyone else I know.)
Why, oh why, is it ingrained in our culture that I must not subject another soul in the workplace to the odor of my aftershave but I must submit to an auditory assault by the office music dominatrix? If my co-workers must avoid offending anyone who can claim an allergy to the odor of flowers, then maybe I need to assert my own involuntary appoplectic response to white noise that is irritating by design.
The practice management group that runs this office (and several others in this part of the state) has selected some sort of custom music service to provide “white noise.” This noise is apparently broadcast (nationwide?) via radio waves, for there is a receiver in the receptionist’s space. The noise service company provides a remote control and a list of channels, selectable through the remote.
The 50-plus channels include such scintilating choices as 924 for Hot FM, 958 for Strobe, 963 for Concrete Beats, oh, and 920 for Environmental. There are a few channels featuring, it appears, ethnic music, such as Mojito, Little Italy, and Hawaiian. There is one called Lucille, which means as much to me as if it were, say, Roberta or Hortense. There are plenty of channels presumably offering hits of some fan-base or era: Reflections, Expressions, Mo’ Soul, Cashmere, ‘80s Hits, Screen Door, Shag Beach, and Plaza.
The receiver has no display to indicate what channel has been selected. It does have a green LED to indicate that it is turned on. The receiver feeds a set of speakers mounted in the waiting area, and is also cabled to a separate console that was made some 20 years ago by Bose. This separate console, which has a defunct CD changer, feeds its own set of speakers arranged through the rest of the building, including three that immediately surround me at about eight feet above the floor. Right now a husky woman’s voice is coming through the speakers, berating her man, (I assume), with the repeating phrase: “I don’t care what you say/want/do,” something like that, and telling him in no uncertain terms what it is she is unwilling to do. If I were him, I’d be cowering near the exit. I feel as though I’m eavesdropping on a domestic dispute in the next apartment.
The Bose console can be turned off separately, and in fact, besides the white noise feed, can accept an alternate signal source, such as an iPod. But to run the back area of the building from a separate source would cause a jarring clash of sounds, sort of like standing in a shopping mall with Spencer’s on one side and Abercrombie & Fitch directly opposite.
But ordinarily the broadcast noise feeds both sets of speakers. Why? Well, there are several reasons. First, lawyers somewhere have persuaded medical practices everywhere that white noise helps protect privacy. This is borne out when one steps into almost any waiting area anywhere and sees two or three unrelated people, perhaps strangers to one another, who happened to find themselves unexpectedly thrown together for an hour’s wait, shouting at each other to be heard over the strains of “Don’t Let Me Go.” Second, lawyers everywhere have blessed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which, as everyone knows is all about AIDS/HIV and secrecy. Medical practice management groups evidently believe that pumping white noise through their buildings contributes to health insurance portability and will prevent lawsuits. If it did indeed absolve the practice of any further liability for an overheard conversation, that would be great. We could all tolerate a stream of crappy music everywhere if it would force tort lawyers to find real work. But the volume of lawsuits reaching our courts are not a function of our mis-adherence to regulations, it is a function of the numbers of lawyers clamoring to fill their case loads. Third, and the main reason why it’s pumped through both sets of speakers: The lone full-time receptionist in this office, Mary, who controls the white noise equipment, has made it plain that she cannot work without some sort of continuous aural stimulation and she cannot hear the “music” unless the speakers in the back of the building are on, since the sliding windows in front of her make it hard to hear it coming from the waiting area.
And it’s Mary who gets to make the channel selection. Not long after I joined this office a year ago, I presumed to experiment with the channels. The other staff members might have warned me not to, but they didn’t. Mary, though, made it plain that I had violated some cardinal rule. Since there is no display on the receiver to remind her what channel she had previously selected, and therefore I couldn’t help her remember, she grumbled for most of a day while she tried to return to it.
Mary doesn’t want to listen to music; she’s not interested in the lyrics, and she is not moved by melody or voice or harmony or arrangement. Perhaps because she is essentially an urban person, she just wants background noise. (To which end, I don’t know why other random sounds wouldn’t be as soothing and “white”: trucks dumping gravel, catenaries sparking over streetcars with squealing wheels, sirens and horns, people shouting.)
The couple of times I messed with the system, when Mary was on her lunch break, I tried one channel that had some light classical pieces and another that had familiar old songs with melodies. Mary found these choices offensive.
Since it must be loud enough in the back of the building for Mary to hear in the front, we generally communicate in raised voices, even the doctors – and that’s when we have only lawyer-recommended white noise to contend with. When the scanner is running, the fax machine is dialing or spitting, the copier is beeping, the shredder is grinding, and a couple of phones are ringing, all of which are within ten feet of each other in the center of the building and all of which can be going at once, the “music” becomes inconsequential, and we often shout. It seems to me that a doctor who must shout at the person six feet away, in order to be understood, is in greater risk of violating privacy than one who can murmer in low tones in a quiet space.
When I read Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks, I was thunderstruck to learn that there are people who do not like music at all, not even that which I (and Sacks) consider true music: a pleasing, even beautiful, combination of tones and rhythm that begs to be listened to and savored or hummed and danced to. Some classical music, particularly from the Romantic period, appeals both to Dr. Sacks and to me, but there is much in modern music that gives me great pleasure. (Limited comparisons abound associated with the other senses: favorite flavors can be consumed only as long as it is safe or comfortable to continue eating; favorite vistas can be viewed only until the sun sets or the fog moves in; and until the invention of sound recording, favorite sounds could be attended only until the source might choose to fall silent.) While I was prepared, on reading Sacks, to discover that there are many like Mary who are troubled by silence, I was not prepared to learn that there are many who find beautiful music irritating and who are deaf to its lure. (And are deaf to the lure of every other type of music as well.) This discovery is confounded by the corollary that, while a person doesn’t find music appealing, music that more resembles cacaphony fulfills their craving for background noise.
Mary can’t stand beautiful music. Nor can she abide silence. Apparently she needs to be surrounded by noise. I wouldn’t know, but I suspect Mary sleeps with a nightlight on, and, probably, with a radio or television playing. While I can’t comprehend her abhorence of beautifully-organized sound, she can’t comprehend my abhorence of cacaphony or my preference for the utter absence of auditory stimuli. Mary happily submits to a day-long drone that includes a guy whining “Oh, I----‘ll never fall in love [repeat ad nauseum]” – a group thrumbing “You might go to sleep on a good-good night [r.a.n.]” – another group that is “sending out an SOS [repeat x24]” – another guy whining that he doesn’t want to die, and, I assume, a compendium of second-string almost-hits from the last year or so. Not only are these “songs” stultifying and repetitive, they recur several times during a daily program. I still don’t know what channel she has chosen in order to secure this drivel. The broadcast does not include a word of information about the songs or performers like a normal radio station, so I have no way of knowing who is performing, nor would it matter. And most of the time the lyrics, save for a repeated chorus, are obscured by the accompanying guitar abuse or other electronic overnoise.
During a relatively quiet moment one day, when only the tune-of-the-moment interfered with the peace, I commented to no one in particular in the open area of the building that I wondered why such a song, which sounded like someone straining at stool, ever made it to the public airwaves. Another co-worker replied from around the corner of the wall: That’s So-and-so; meaning, I suppose that So-and-so’s performance of anything more musical than a fart should hold me spellbound. Just because So-and-so did it; like, whatever God creates is perfect because he did it. I’ve mostly kept my mouth shut since then.
Set aside, though, our difference in taste, if you can call it that. (It’s beyond taste. I must someday argue for a definition of the word ‘music’ that excludes such affronts as cell phone ring tones. I’m reminded, for instance, of other settings where I’ve spent a little time under the forced white noise, and I remember hating the repetitious drivel of “Su-su-sudio” and “Cisco Kid was a friend of mine.” It doesn’t matter how famous or creative the performers of these pieces were – I could crank out tuneless, mindless pieces like that all day long but I’d be embarassed to do so.) The greater question is this: Why is it OK for my employer, in the person of Mary the music Nazi, to subject me to an irritating, distracting, assault on my senses? What is it in her that not only assumes but insists that I will enjoy the noise she chooses? (It pleases her, so it must please everyone.) Consider the other senses. If I had the power that Mary has and I decided that she must endure a continuous daily light show of flashing blue LEDs over her head, would that be OK? (I know one person who has seizures when she sees flashing lights.) What if I decided that my co-workers all had to settle for a fifty-degree room because that’s my most comfortable working temperature? What if I brought in a plug-in air freshener in, say, ‘hot roofing tar’? What if I were in charge of the white noise and I chose Shastakovich, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev ad infinitum? (I like those composers, by the way – in moderation, but they grate on most everyone else I know.)
Why, oh why, is it ingrained in our culture that I must not subject another soul in the workplace to the odor of my aftershave but I must submit to an auditory assault by the office music dominatrix? If my co-workers must avoid offending anyone who can claim an allergy to the odor of flowers, then maybe I need to assert my own involuntary appoplectic response to white noise that is irritating by design.
28 March 2010
50 Books I Highly Recommend
These are my favorite books of all time, more than 50, actually, and growing. I wish there were time and space to explain each one. If you want to know why any are on this list, just ask. The numbers 1-8 are a sort of ranking by importance to me. Something in the 8th rank may be just as readable and captivating but for me, the content may not have had as much impact as a book with a higher ranking.
Yes, I've read them all, some more than once. And I can warmly recommend almost anything else written by any of the below authors; I just refrained from listing every work each one has written and which I have read. (There are exceptions. Nothing else by Joseph Heller rises to the inspired genius of Catch-22.) No other book glows with the beauty of the English language like Lolita by the Russian author Nabokov, even though the story shocks many readers. (And Nabokov's Russian roots conceal his early acquaintance with the English language. His command of both certainly contributed uniquely to his linguistic power.)
And, sadly, my favorite juvenile novel of all time, The Lion's Paw, is extraordinarily hard to come by. If you look for it, prepare for an arduous search. (The author fell out of favor with his family, who own the publishing rights.) I have a new copy which I obtained right after its very limited 50th-anniversary re-publication in 1996, but I originally read it in my youth.
If you are looking for a book to read, you can't go wrong if you choose from this list, although if you're not "into" non-fiction, then I will not be responsible if you don't enjoy, for instance, Big Bang. If you do enjoy non-fiction, I will be surprised if your reaction to Big Bang isn't similar to mine - the most engaging, suspenseful, and faith-restoring book I have read in a quarter century.
I am specific about the edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotation, by the way. I fear that, over succeeding editions, important quotations will be deemed expendable to make space for later, and probably deserving, entries. So, if you do obtain a later edition, pair it with the fourteenth (or earlier), and if you have the fourteenth and you obtain a later one, keep them both.
I could add a thousand more books, (if I have read them). It pains me to leave some out, for instance William Bennett's compilations under the titles of The Moral Compass and The Book of Virtues. Perhaps, some day, I will compile a book of lists of books...
I am certain that I have forgotten to include a few titles which, if I were to think of them, I would be chagrined to realize I have omitted. When they come to mind I will edit this list.
NON-FICTION
1. Big Bang by Simon Singh
2. In the Empire of Genghis Khan by Stanley Stewart
3. The Great Evolution Mystery by Gordon Rattray Taylor
3. King Solomon's Ring by Konrad Lorenz
3. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
3. The Way of a Pilgrim by author unknown
4. Ken Purdy's Book of Automobiles by Ken Purdy
5. The Code Book by Simon Singh
6. The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
7. The Best-loved Poems of the American People compiled by Hazel Felleman
7. Cosmos by Carl Sagan
7. Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
7. The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White
7. Familiar Quotations, Fourteenth Edition compiled by John Bartlett
7. Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman
7. The Life That Lives on Man by Michael Andrews
7. Game Management by Aldo Leopold
8. Quotations from Chairman Bill by William F. Buckley, Jr.
8. Small Is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher
BOOKS OF ESSAYS
1. The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
1. Parliament of Whores by P. J. O'Rourke
2. One Man's Meat by E. B. White
3. The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener by Martin Gardner
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
1. Memoirs of a Superfluous Man by Albert Jay Nock
CARTOON
1. Pogo by Walk Kelly
2. Asterix the Gaul by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo
FICTION
1. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
1. Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
1. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
1. The Enormous Room by e. e. cummings
1. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1. The Lion's Paw by Robb White
1. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
1. Oliver Wiswell by Kenneth Roberts
1. The Oxbow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clarkson
1. Penrod by Booth Tarkington
1. Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford
1. The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
1. The Source by James A. Michener
1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. Follow the River by James Alexander Thom
2. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
2. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
2. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
2. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
3. Halic: The Story of a Gray Seal by Ewan Clarkson
3. Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
4. All Creatures Great and Small by James A. Herriot
4. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
4. Come Spring by Ben Ames Williams
4. Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
4. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
5. A Fine and Pleasant Misery by Patrick F. McManus
6. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Feel free to recommend more!
-=DAW=-
Addendum, 1 September 2010: How could I forget...?!
1. The Way of a Pilgrim by an unknown author
1. The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare
1. Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie
2. Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Freeman
-=DAW=-
Yes, I've read them all, some more than once. And I can warmly recommend almost anything else written by any of the below authors; I just refrained from listing every work each one has written and which I have read. (There are exceptions. Nothing else by Joseph Heller rises to the inspired genius of Catch-22.) No other book glows with the beauty of the English language like Lolita by the Russian author Nabokov, even though the story shocks many readers. (And Nabokov's Russian roots conceal his early acquaintance with the English language. His command of both certainly contributed uniquely to his linguistic power.)
And, sadly, my favorite juvenile novel of all time, The Lion's Paw, is extraordinarily hard to come by. If you look for it, prepare for an arduous search. (The author fell out of favor with his family, who own the publishing rights.) I have a new copy which I obtained right after its very limited 50th-anniversary re-publication in 1996, but I originally read it in my youth.
If you are looking for a book to read, you can't go wrong if you choose from this list, although if you're not "into" non-fiction, then I will not be responsible if you don't enjoy, for instance, Big Bang. If you do enjoy non-fiction, I will be surprised if your reaction to Big Bang isn't similar to mine - the most engaging, suspenseful, and faith-restoring book I have read in a quarter century.
I am specific about the edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotation, by the way. I fear that, over succeeding editions, important quotations will be deemed expendable to make space for later, and probably deserving, entries. So, if you do obtain a later edition, pair it with the fourteenth (or earlier), and if you have the fourteenth and you obtain a later one, keep them both.
I could add a thousand more books, (if I have read them). It pains me to leave some out, for instance William Bennett's compilations under the titles of The Moral Compass and The Book of Virtues. Perhaps, some day, I will compile a book of lists of books...
I am certain that I have forgotten to include a few titles which, if I were to think of them, I would be chagrined to realize I have omitted. When they come to mind I will edit this list.
NON-FICTION
1. Big Bang by Simon Singh
2. In the Empire of Genghis Khan by Stanley Stewart
3. The Great Evolution Mystery by Gordon Rattray Taylor
3. King Solomon's Ring by Konrad Lorenz
3. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
3. The Way of a Pilgrim by author unknown
4. Ken Purdy's Book of Automobiles by Ken Purdy
5. The Code Book by Simon Singh
6. The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
7. The Best-loved Poems of the American People compiled by Hazel Felleman
7. Cosmos by Carl Sagan
7. Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
7. The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White
7. Familiar Quotations, Fourteenth Edition compiled by John Bartlett
7. Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman
7. The Life That Lives on Man by Michael Andrews
7. Game Management by Aldo Leopold
8. Quotations from Chairman Bill by William F. Buckley, Jr.
8. Small Is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher
BOOKS OF ESSAYS
1. The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
1. Parliament of Whores by P. J. O'Rourke
2. One Man's Meat by E. B. White
3. The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener by Martin Gardner
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
1. Memoirs of a Superfluous Man by Albert Jay Nock
CARTOON
1. Pogo by Walk Kelly
2. Asterix the Gaul by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo
FICTION
1. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
1. Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
1. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
1. The Enormous Room by e. e. cummings
1. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1. The Lion's Paw by Robb White
1. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
1. Oliver Wiswell by Kenneth Roberts
1. The Oxbow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clarkson
1. Penrod by Booth Tarkington
1. Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford
1. The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
1. The Source by James A. Michener
1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. Follow the River by James Alexander Thom
2. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
2. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
2. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
2. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
3. Halic: The Story of a Gray Seal by Ewan Clarkson
3. Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
4. All Creatures Great and Small by James A. Herriot
4. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
4. Come Spring by Ben Ames Williams
4. Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
4. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
5. A Fine and Pleasant Misery by Patrick F. McManus
6. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Feel free to recommend more!
-=DAW=-
Addendum, 1 September 2010: How could I forget...?!
1. The Way of a Pilgrim by an unknown author
1. The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare
1. Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie
2. Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Freeman
-=DAW=-
16 February 2009
Change You Can Avoid by Legislation
A quick thought for today. I’ve just read a little motivational booklet called “The Survival Guide to the Stress of Organizational Change” by Price Pritchett and Ron Pound – a splendid piece of work describing 15 stress-inducing mistakes we make in the face of constant change.
The authors point out that change is unavoidable and ever more rapid, and change is stressful, but stress is manageable, and so forth. (Best point: Basic Mistake #8: Fail to Abandon the Expendable.) Continuing with my work of the day, in the next moment I picked up an expired invitation to meet with my Congressman, Mike Michaud, (a former co-worker from my old paper mill days). I did attend the meeting, but that’s another story.
Still contemplating the certainty of constant change as I disposed of the invitation, it occurred to me what happens in Congress, and what happens to us-all as a result.
Congress passes massive “bills” intended to alleviate our stress, yours and mine, by promising this and that and socking it to the rich, and so on. (State legislatures pass their own parodies of federal acts, so it happens on the state level too.)
Most federal and state legislation has predominately negative effects. If any positive effect to such legislation ever occurs, it generally takes years, and by then we’ve forgotten that in 1997 Congress passed the School Music Improvement Act, which cut funding for any school music program that failed to include instruction in gangsta rap-hop, and which included an amendment to prevent multi-vitamins from being made out of genetically-engineered corn. The usual Congressional logic.
So I was left considering how this year’s glorious porkulus/cripple-us bill will take years to deliver any positive effect, and by the time anything trickles down to those of us most oppressed by government, there will have been so much CHANGE in the country that the real benefits of the act will be like delivering crank telephones to rural Appalachia in the 1980s.
Congress doesn’t grasp that change happens at the speed of technology. Ominously, Congress appears to believe that the only important change which occurs is that which Congress has set forth. Insidiously, Congress believes that the change which it “stimulates” actually will take place – indeed, Congress seems to believe that the moment its act is signed into law, the matter has been taken care of. Until another national crisis occurs, requiring the benevolent intervention of government.
Congress is blind to the negative effects of all its acts – especially to the utter failure of most.
Congress doesn’t grasp that change happens due to forces that Congress did not vote on and that it happens faster than any compromise* bill of reckless government spending can affect.
I'm left with the only true impact of Congressional action on my affairs, and that is STRESS. Compromise, as practiced by Congress, makes me pray for gridlock.
*To explain congressional compromise, the following is excerpted from DamnYankee.com.
Here’s how compromise works, and why it must not be encouraged: The Democrats have decided that what every household needs is a pig. Pigs are ecologically sound; they take up little space, they consume solid waste, they can be domesticated and provide companionship, they reproduce willingly, promoting neighborliness between pig owners, and one pig eventually provides a freezer full of food. The Republicans have decided that what everyone needs is a Chevrolet. They are economical to buy and come in a variety of colors to let owners express their individuality, they provide reliable transportation, they’re safe to sit in during a storm, and they can easily be repaired with readily-available parts. Neither party is willing to go completely to the other party’s idea. So they compromise. After years of Congressional debate and insipid analysis by Katie Couric, Congress rolls out its prototype. It has the snout of a pig, an engine in place of a mouth, hooves on the left and wheels on the right, a lightweight metal body (with smiling Congressmen waving gaily from the interior – the prototype has bullet-proof glass), a round, hairy rump, an anus spewing exhaust fumes, and a curly chrome tail. It goes in circles, possibly because the hooves aren’t synchronized with the wheels, but that minor detail will be cleared up in the next Congress. It's called a Pigrolet, and it comes with a 7,800-page instruction manual that can't be followed without the help of lawyers. ©2004 DamnYankee.com
The authors point out that change is unavoidable and ever more rapid, and change is stressful, but stress is manageable, and so forth. (Best point: Basic Mistake #8: Fail to Abandon the Expendable.) Continuing with my work of the day, in the next moment I picked up an expired invitation to meet with my Congressman, Mike Michaud, (a former co-worker from my old paper mill days). I did attend the meeting, but that’s another story.
Still contemplating the certainty of constant change as I disposed of the invitation, it occurred to me what happens in Congress, and what happens to us-all as a result.
Congress passes massive “bills” intended to alleviate our stress, yours and mine, by promising this and that and socking it to the rich, and so on. (State legislatures pass their own parodies of federal acts, so it happens on the state level too.)
Most federal and state legislation has predominately negative effects. If any positive effect to such legislation ever occurs, it generally takes years, and by then we’ve forgotten that in 1997 Congress passed the School Music Improvement Act, which cut funding for any school music program that failed to include instruction in gangsta rap-hop, and which included an amendment to prevent multi-vitamins from being made out of genetically-engineered corn. The usual Congressional logic.
So I was left considering how this year’s glorious porkulus/cripple-us bill will take years to deliver any positive effect, and by the time anything trickles down to those of us most oppressed by government, there will have been so much CHANGE in the country that the real benefits of the act will be like delivering crank telephones to rural Appalachia in the 1980s.
Congress doesn’t grasp that change happens at the speed of technology. Ominously, Congress appears to believe that the only important change which occurs is that which Congress has set forth. Insidiously, Congress believes that the change which it “stimulates” actually will take place – indeed, Congress seems to believe that the moment its act is signed into law, the matter has been taken care of. Until another national crisis occurs, requiring the benevolent intervention of government.
Congress is blind to the negative effects of all its acts – especially to the utter failure of most.
Congress doesn’t grasp that change happens due to forces that Congress did not vote on and that it happens faster than any compromise* bill of reckless government spending can affect.
I'm left with the only true impact of Congressional action on my affairs, and that is STRESS. Compromise, as practiced by Congress, makes me pray for gridlock.
*To explain congressional compromise, the following is excerpted from DamnYankee.com.
Here’s how compromise works, and why it must not be encouraged: The Democrats have decided that what every household needs is a pig. Pigs are ecologically sound; they take up little space, they consume solid waste, they can be domesticated and provide companionship, they reproduce willingly, promoting neighborliness between pig owners, and one pig eventually provides a freezer full of food. The Republicans have decided that what everyone needs is a Chevrolet. They are economical to buy and come in a variety of colors to let owners express their individuality, they provide reliable transportation, they’re safe to sit in during a storm, and they can easily be repaired with readily-available parts. Neither party is willing to go completely to the other party’s idea. So they compromise. After years of Congressional debate and insipid analysis by Katie Couric, Congress rolls out its prototype. It has the snout of a pig, an engine in place of a mouth, hooves on the left and wheels on the right, a lightweight metal body (with smiling Congressmen waving gaily from the interior – the prototype has bullet-proof glass), a round, hairy rump, an anus spewing exhaust fumes, and a curly chrome tail. It goes in circles, possibly because the hooves aren’t synchronized with the wheels, but that minor detail will be cleared up in the next Congress. It's called a Pigrolet, and it comes with a 7,800-page instruction manual that can't be followed without the help of lawyers. ©2004 DamnYankee.com
10 February 2009
The Lawyers' Chorus
This morning as I bumbled about the bedroom, I heard a woman’s voice on the television hawking some drug called Celebrex. I gradually became aware that she must have spent three quarters of the ad’s allotted minute just reciting the medical warnings about the drug. At the end, she said: “Ask your doctor if you could benefit from Celebrex.”
I thought: To heck with asking my doctor; it sounds as though I could benefit from a law degree. It seems to me that a drug company should feel free to advertise the wonders of its little pills without the need to warn us of the side effects. I don’t hear automobile ads warning us of the dangers of carbon monoxide, burning vinyl, sunburn (in case you use the car to take you to the beach), or obesity (in case you use the car to go out to eat). I don’t hear carbonated sugar drink ads warning us about diabetes. I don’t hear ads for personal injury lawyers warning us of the psychological peril in talking with them.
Sometime in the mid-1990s there was an ad on the radio that I heard two or three times and then it mysteriously stopped playing. I don’t recall what they were hawking, but the ad time was mostly taken up with the wonders of the product, and then, with maybe ten seconds left, the seller’s voice said: “And now the lawyers’ chorus will sing you the fine print.” The ad ended with an actual chorus of voices rapidly chanting a recitation of useless information.
I suspect that someone in the lawyer class heard the ad and threatened the radio station. (That would be the quickest way to get something off the air. Why bother with the ad agency or the seller – it doesn’t matter whether they want to keep the ad alive. It only matters whether it gets played, and therefore it is only necessary to threaten the player of the ad.)
I know some really fine people who happen also to be lawyers. I truly like these people. I truly like some people who are confirmed socialists, adulterers, and alcoholics. But my affection for someone does not confer approval of his do-gooder social maladjustment, masochism, or other misanthropy. To those whom I know who are lawyers, I would agree that, yes, a few laws are necessary, and so the world has need of a very few lawyers as well. But if you are a lawyer to whom a tome of regulation is a rhapsody, and if, for you, a government that is gushing murky law is a glimpse of heaven, I say you need to examine your worth to the world. See my additional take on this at DamnYankee.com.
I thought: To heck with asking my doctor; it sounds as though I could benefit from a law degree. It seems to me that a drug company should feel free to advertise the wonders of its little pills without the need to warn us of the side effects. I don’t hear automobile ads warning us of the dangers of carbon monoxide, burning vinyl, sunburn (in case you use the car to take you to the beach), or obesity (in case you use the car to go out to eat). I don’t hear carbonated sugar drink ads warning us about diabetes. I don’t hear ads for personal injury lawyers warning us of the psychological peril in talking with them.
Sometime in the mid-1990s there was an ad on the radio that I heard two or three times and then it mysteriously stopped playing. I don’t recall what they were hawking, but the ad time was mostly taken up with the wonders of the product, and then, with maybe ten seconds left, the seller’s voice said: “And now the lawyers’ chorus will sing you the fine print.” The ad ended with an actual chorus of voices rapidly chanting a recitation of useless information.
I suspect that someone in the lawyer class heard the ad and threatened the radio station. (That would be the quickest way to get something off the air. Why bother with the ad agency or the seller – it doesn’t matter whether they want to keep the ad alive. It only matters whether it gets played, and therefore it is only necessary to threaten the player of the ad.)
I know some really fine people who happen also to be lawyers. I truly like these people. I truly like some people who are confirmed socialists, adulterers, and alcoholics. But my affection for someone does not confer approval of his do-gooder social maladjustment, masochism, or other misanthropy. To those whom I know who are lawyers, I would agree that, yes, a few laws are necessary, and so the world has need of a very few lawyers as well. But if you are a lawyer to whom a tome of regulation is a rhapsody, and if, for you, a government that is gushing murky law is a glimpse of heaven, I say you need to examine your worth to the world. See my additional take on this at DamnYankee.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)