Different Slants

SIX-LEGGED OBSESSION!!!
THE FLY AND I SEE EYE-TO-EYE  September 30, 2007

My original newsstand, from August 1965 on was 4 feet x 4 feet, built from rough, stolen, construction-site exterior plywood sheeting, was about 6 feet high, with a roof that projected out from the front of it about 4 more feet, at an angle making the far edge of the overhanging roof higher off the sidewalk by about one foot than the back of the tiny newsstand, where it was secured by many nails. It was meant to shield us from the powerful sunlight that turned our ‘hot-off-the-presses’ newspapers yellow and our skin red ( pale Rick) and brown ( olive Bob), and also from sudden rain squalls that would otherwise drench our small stacks of newspapers.

Its color was a kind of checkerboard white and green, really ugly, but they were the only two cans of paint I could find in my mother’s garage. On the sides of the stand, where it was white, I painted “B & R Newsstand”. I was very proud of our little enterprise and its name. Rick, less so.

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The Power of Nightmares is a 2005 BBC documentary. To my knowledge, it has never aired on U.S. TV. It is a three part (3 hours) series that traces the current Islamic Fundamentalism and Neoconservatism movements to their origins in the 1940s and 1950s and shows how they have become intertwined. If it has become more difficult to make people believe in ideologies, it has become easier to make them fear the future.

I highly recommend you take the time to view these three videos.

The September 6, 2007 Wall Street Journal had an insightful article on the health care system in Holland. The system’s goals are universal coverage and consumer choice – a combination that is hard to argue against.

Since in 2006, all adults in Holland are required to purchase their own health insurance. There are penalties for failure to do so. Before jumping on that as another government invasion of individual rights, consider the precedents. If you drive a car, you are probably required to buy liability insurance. In most places, the government does not tell you who to buy it from, just that you must buy it or pay a penalty.

Next, insurance companies must accept all applicants, regardless of medical history or pre-existing conditions. (Read on …)

In his comments to my previous post, a good friend, Don Larson, got me thinking about the changing nature of war and about how the use of the word itself has been broadened. Wikipedia has much interesting material on war.

When I was young (and Rome was invading Carthage), war seemed a simple concept and when one heard the word its meaning was generally understood. Now it can mean so many things. Lets look at a few.

Conventional war. Like World War II, conventional war is fought by nation states. Each has a military. In (Read on …)