Dan’s Papers October 29, 2010 danshamptons.com Page 20
Pinwheel
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Also noted is a kind of triangle, which represents how far our telescopes can “see” out into the ethos. It’s not very far. Every day, these telescopes, manned by scientists all over the world, are looking for planets that have conditions for life as we know it. From our perspective, the search has been futile but thorough. From the ethos’ perspective, so far it’s been a pathetically tiny search that has revealed small amounts of information about an infinitesimal slice of things. We’ve got our work cut out for us. This is so depressing. One would have hoped that the picture would show a very ordered universe of stars and planets all lined up in rows with a big throne at one end with a benevolent God sitting in it paying fond attention to one
particular planet, our little Earth as it unfolds amidst the others. But that does not appear to be the case. On the other hand—who took that picture? * * * Here are some brief thoughts I’ve had on some other matters. A friend explained global warming to me. You have this bathtub which is slowly filling with water. The drain is clogged. So it keeps filling. Even if you shut down the taps a bit it still keeps filling but it is slower. Eventually unless you deal with the clog, it’s going to overflow anyway and make a huge mess. Here’s how I said we should look at global warming. We all live in a small apartment in a
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condo and we’re all in there having this great party, drinking and carrying on and making lots of noise and it pisses off the neighbors. The neighbors call the cops. But the cops are like the referees in professional wrestling. They come over and fret and dither but do nothing. So that pisses off the neighbors even more. Eventually the neighbors take matters into their own hands and come over in a large group and beat the crap out of us. The neighbors, by the way, are Mother Nature, Father Time and the Animal Kingdom, a big happy family. Here’s some thoughts on health care. For millions of years, there were maybe a few hundred thousand humans on the planet. The year I was born there were just over two billion people. Now, just a little more than half a century later, there are over six billion people. Most of these people consider death to be part of life. They accept it. Here in the west, however, we will go to almost any lengths imaginable to keep everybody from dying. We’ve gotten so good at it we’ve become an infestation on the planet. But at the same time, we’ve spent ourselves near to bankruptcy. The government has now created a new health care system so America can cover everybody, which is what is going on in all other western countries. It doesn’t address the basic problem though, which is that expense is no concern when we order tests and treatments for everybody. There are no controls on these expenses, no competition to keep them low, nothing. But the new health plan does not address that. The new health plan is just a fight over who is going to fill out the paperwork to pay these huge sums, the businessmen or the bureaucrats. Reining in medical expenses means the unthinkable. Somebody will need a very expensive medical procedure. So we’ll just let them die. I have trouble even typing up this idea. What do you say to yourself when you read, we’ll just let them die? It’s a knee jerk reaction. Oh no we won’t. Here in America, nobody dies. Or if they do, it’s way, way down the road. Certainly I’M not dying. My idea is gonna sound really bad. I think we should make a big fuss over people when we know and they know that they are dying. Have a big party, speeches, presents etc. etc. Make it an experience for everyone to really enjoy. I know this is hard. And I also know that there are societies, non-western ones, where people do this. And there are also mean societies, non-western ones, which push the elderly out into the snow or let them fall behind deliberately when the tribe moves on. But after the elections, however it turns out, let’s get Obama and the Congress behind this. Set aside 20% of the entire Health Care program for big parties such as this. Make it a national tradition. That we could afford. And it wouldn’t matter if it were administered by bureaucrats or businessmen. Voila. Health problem solved. Next week: how to deal with nuclear weapons, North Korea, the bedbug infestation and the New York Yankees not winning the World Series.