The truculent rose

iPads and economics

2011-10-17T21:42:00.001-04:00

A source of frustration for us classical liberal democrats is the collectivist orientation of classical musicians. I'd think that a class of artists who are dependent upon corporate grants and ticket sales to elderly Republican dowagers for their pay would show just a little gratitude to the capitalist system.

Why this is has been a subject of considerable speculation. I think Michael Medved got it correct: the free market does not appear to reward classical musicians "fairly". A cellist can start in grade school, practice 2-4 hours a day initially, struggle to get into the finest conservatory, practice 6-8 hours a day, maybe land a job with a small city orchestra, practice 8-10 hours a day, and with any luck, finally make it to a big city orchestra.

None of them will ever make as much money as Keith Richards.

Under Marxism, a cellist should be rewarded for his labor. As I understand it, Marxism places value in the labor of the worker, not in the value the consumer places on it.

Under evil capitalism, the free market establishes the economic value of the cellist, which is based on whether anyone really wants to listen to him enough to pay for it.

The last time the Rolling Stones came to Louisville, they sold out a large public venue.

The Louisville Sympathy Orchestra is facing bankruptcy.

I preface the following with this disclosure: I'm a horrible musician. When I claim to have played something "well", that only means "not as thoroughly bad as other stuff I've played.

I have a long but interrupted and checkered past with the cello. I'm not very good.

Bartok wrote 44 charming and kind of easy duos for violins. Kurz transcribed 18 of them for cello. Although I could find some recordings of a few of the duos, no cellist has recorded all of them, so I figured if I couldn't be the best, I could be the first. I've recorded all but three of the duos by multitracking them on my GarageBand. Most were shabby but about three of them were half decent. They may be found at www.soundcloud.com/klengelhasser, along with some pretty weird junk.

I got some kind remarks, mainly from other amateur cellists, and I appreciated them.

Six months ago I developed neck and left arm pain, and three months ago I had to stop the cello. I decided to plunge into the Heart of Darkness, otherwise called GarageBand for iPad.

The hour grows late and I'll sum up: I have generated some of the awfullist nonsense excuse of music I've ever done, including two that were tongue-in-cheek. They were received pretty well according to the site monitor.

As I said, the free market fails to give us fine classical musicians our just deserts.

iPads, cellos, and medical economics, part I

2011-09-11T15:02:00.010-04:00

Truth be told, I'm not a very good cellist.

I've played off and on since grade school, never reaching any great level of proficiency. In my adult years I've dabbled a bit, not taking the instrument very seriously until earlier this year when I resumed lessons for the first time in 40 years.

It's much easier to learn an instrument in the Internet Era. I've learned more about, for example, vibrato technique by visiting YouTube than I had with hands-on teaching. And anyone and everyone has posted a video of themselves playing something. You can see plenty of Rostropovich recordings, but if you'd rather, there are plenty of 7 year olds whose parents have posted videos of a very scratchy performance of Suzuki book 1.

The most elusive quality in the art of the cello is intonation. The cello has no frets, so you have to place your fingers exactly on a spot to generate the proper pitch. Early on the process might be characterized as "just kind of guessing". The more you practice, the better your guesses become.

The most helpful thing I've found for my intonation is to play with someone else, typically a pianist. The piano's pitch isn't going to change, and it isn't the pianist's fault if your note is just off a little bit. Playing a duet forces me to play as accurately as I possibly can.

I shouldn't take this personally, but it's always been almost impossible to find a pianist who can join me at any regular interval.

The greatest invention for frustrated rank amateur musicians since the tuning fork is GarageBand. This software, packaged with an iMac, is a very nice music processor. It's not the easiest software in the world to operate, but with a few trips to YouTube to watch GarageBand tutorials I learned the art of multitracking. Multitracking is when you play one line of music into the machine, then play a second one which you can layer on the first one, up to eight tracks. Musicians only 20 years ago would have killed to get such a seamless program.

I can now play duos, trios, or as shown in the above screen-shot, quartets with myself. For now, pay no attention to the checked "Autotune" box in the lower left corner.

For $100 I built up the prestigious Klengelhasser Recording Studio, which consists of a Blue Snowball microphone I got at 40% off at Amazon.com (can't beat that deal with a stick), an $18 mic stand, a $15 set of monitor headphones, and assorted extension cords.

This is all nestled in between the toy box we have for our grandchildren in the family room and our computer station.

My "studio time" is limited by other members of my family watching TV, talking, or the phone going off. I made one pretty decent recording only to have my wife open the dishwasher in the last measure. I kept it anyway. I thought the tinkling of the dishes together gave the recording a rather pleasing "patina". Still, I really wanted to be able to move my "studio" into some other room so I wouldn't have to compete with "Buried Alive" or "What Not To Wear" or all the other stuff the distaff members of my family enjoy.

To be continued.

Financial crises for the Compleat Idiot

2011-09-08T19:13:00.003-04:00

"You really should read this", said my son-in-law after he perused The Big Chill by Michael Lewis. "These guys figured out a way to get rich during the sub-prime mortgage fiasco. You won't believe how they did it".

As little as I know about micro-economics, it would dwarf my understanding of macro-economics. I ordered the book and polished the whole thing off during the Labor Day weekend.

Getting through the book required little effort. It's well-writing in a very compelling narrative style. I wanted to know which political party the author would place the blame for the whole mess, and I was pleasantly surprised how apolitically Mr. Lewis presented the events.

We all lead very busy lives so I will take the liberty to offer a synopsis of the book. If you think I mess up any of the points, please let me know. As I said, I claim no expertise in this subject.

How to destroy an economy in a few easy steps:

15 years ago Big Banks (BBs) were centers of capital investment, providing businesses and institutions with the credit needed to allow them to function.

During the 1990s and 2000s the BBs discovered that they could make even more money by engaging in Market Speculation. They developed an appetite for speculative ventures that would make lots of money for them.

Mortgage companies, especially loan originators underwrote loans to darn-near anyone who could fill out a form. People with poor credit scores had to pay more than the prime interest rate, called the Sub-prime interest rate (since the rate is higher than the prime rate, logically it makes more sense to call this the Supra-prime rate. Get used to this).

Loan originators didn't worry if the debtors could never repay the debt, because they turned around and sold the loans which were called Asset-based securities. BBs bought them. The loan originators made lots of money on the origination fees.

Moodys reviewed these securities, and for reasons that defy all reason, rated the lions' share of these securities AAA.

The securities that were not rated AAA were repackaged by a system that can only be described as alchemy into Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs). No one really knows what that means.

The CDOs were resubmitted to Moodys, where the lions' share were rerated AAA. How this was done is a greater mystery than abiogenesis.

The BBs liked them because they were rated AAA by Moodys so they bought lots of them and made lots of money on them initially.

A few investors, upon reviewing these ASBs, determined that these securities weren't worth the paper they were printed on. Everybody told them they were stupid.

The investors wondered how they could make money by "shorting" these securities. They turned to yet another weird investment tool called Credit Default Swaps (CDSs). Credit default swaps are really inexpensive (relatively) insurance policies that allow the bearer of the swaps to collect the total value of the ASB if it defaulted.

What's weird is that you didn't have to own an ASB to buy a CDS. Why should this be? No one knows.

The small group of investors bought all the CDSs they could get their hands on. The BB that sold the most of them was AIG-FP. They were happy to sell the CDSs because the ASB they were insuring were all rated AAA by Moodys.

In early 2008, predictably almost down to the month and maybe even the day, the sub-prime mortgage loans defaulted in huge numbers. The ABSs became worthless. This was bad for the BBs because they held billions and billions of dollars worth of them.

This was even worse for AIG-FP because they had to pony up for the CDSs, which made the investors who held them a blue fortune.

All of a sudden the BBs realized they didn't have much money. The entire US economy was screwed. They went to the Federal Government for a bail-out, which they got for the most part (TARP).

On retrospect, it seemed unwise to offer a migrant worker who made $14000/year a $750,000 home loan. This really happened and it's what led one investor to take an interest in this market.

It seems criminal to have allowed predatory lenders to have originated these loans in the first place.

It seems beyond stupid that the BBs did not perform due diligence when they were purchasing massive amounts of these ABSs and issuing CDSs.

It seems that the people who took BBB ABS and mysteriously turned them into AAA CDOs should be arrested for market fraud.

And you, dear reader, if you are one of the 55% of American voters who actually pay Federal income taxes, have underwritten the entire thing.

Lexicon

2011-09-03T13:55:00.005-04:00

This is a poster from the late 1980s during the transition of Russia from a collectivist nation to whatever it's become today. My Russian is a bit rusty, but I believe it says something to this effect:

Democracy - it's not just about rights, it's (about) responsibility, obligations, and discipline.

The talking heads of the era were hopelessly confused. Americans for the most part are pro-democracy, and see democracy as a force for good. This meant that Yeltsin was good, ie. a liberal, and the hard-line Communists were not good, ie. conservatives.

You'd think that the talking heads would pause and consider the implications of calling hard-line Communists "conservatives", but they didn't. The whole right wing/left wing dichotomy should have been scrapped, but it wasn't. I'm in the camp of considering the mainstream American media as lazy and unimaginative rather than cunning and conspiratorially evil, but I might be wrong about that.

Still, the 'conservative'/'liberal' dichotomy should be replaced. Presently the 'liberals' are the most adamantly entrenched in the status quo, and the 'conservatives' are actively working to change it.

I've been on websites where I was called 'fascist' for expressing conservative viewpoints, and then shouted down or censored in moves that any fascist would approve of. It's galling.

These classifications are not original, but I do not remember to whom to give credit. Here we go:

Collectivist - all property is owned by the state, and the state is the final authority of all things economic and ethical.

Statist - the state may lay claim to any property but chooses not to. Markets may exist but only under the strictest of government supervision. The state may define issues of ethics as it sees fit.

Corporatist - the state allows private corporations to do as they please with the understanding that the corporations will support the state economically in an incestuous fashion.

Liberal Democrat - the state exists to provide for security and infrastructure, but otherwise it lets citizens have as many freedoms as possible under the guidance of the Judeo-Christian ethic.

Libertarian - same as liberal democrat, but without the guidance of the Judeo-Christian ethic.

Anarchist - anything goes. Anarchists almost always morph into collectivists.

Note that fascists and communists would actually be very near each other: the communists being of course collectivists and the fascists being statists. Most of the Democrat party would be in the upper three categories. Most Republicans would be corporatist, liberal Democrat, or libertarian.

The non-economic concerns, ie. 'the social issues', I lump into 'sexpolitix'. This would include gay marriage, abortion rights, and radical feminism. Note that there is no inherent reason for sexpolitix to fall into the statist camp. It would at home with any of the categories except for liberal democrat, as sexpolitix falls outside of the behavior endorsed by the Judeo-Christian ethic.

Interestingly I was tossed out of a musicians' forum for posting this classification. Calling a 'conservative' a liberal democrat and a 'liberal' a statist was way too mind bending, leading to some testy comments and counter comments.

Anyway, this is the nomenclature I choose to use in future discussions.

Welcome

2011-08-28T13:08:00.003-04:00

The above is G. K. Chesterton, one of whose books I am finishing up. I recommend his writing.

As I've invited readers of Michael Kirsch's blog to wonder over here, I probably should post something every now and then to make the trip worthwhile. I've forbidden myself from posting until I've written a Primer for Patients: Colonoscopy Coding, and perhaps I'll do it today or tomorrow. Michael, you shouldn't have challenged me to do this own my own. I really can't be responsible for what might show up here.

Proceding with great peril

2011-08-17T19:49:00.002-04:00

In simpler times man would have his need to "hold forth" at a bar or cafe or perhaps even sitting by the campfire. My opinion may not matter much, but by golly I need to express it to whoever might listen. It matters not that anyone actually listens, only that holding forth serves a primal need. Blogs are good for that sort of thing.

A physician blogs with great peril as everything he writes is potentially discoverable. One might know better than to declare that "Wow, there was a colossal blunder at the office, and I sure hope I don't get sued over it". One might, in an unguarded moment, state that, for instance, "Using a hot biopsy forceps is substandard", only to use a hot biopsy forceps and have it generate some complication. Under those circumstances the plaintiff's lawyer need not hire an expert witness; you yourself, along with your blog, will serve quite nicely in that capacity.

Any small business owner, which a solo doctor is, needs to exercise some discretion in his public statements lest he offend some advocacy group and they show up at his office with "boycott" and "protest" signs.

Using a blog as a personal journal is also fraught with danger, unless you're a recluse or independently wealthy and have no concerns over what anyone might think about your state of mind. A patient of mine might not be reassured if I were going through a cataclysmic existential crisis and declared that all thoughts and actions are inconsequential and that no life is fulfilled or can be judged complete until we die. I don't believe that, but if I did it would not be wise to air such angst in a blog which could be read by millions.

The winds of change are blowing through the medical field like an F5 tornado. I might rail against the "corporate takeover of medicine", only to sign on with a corporation next week. It would look bad.

I've worn out my welcome on three forums, two of which were music-oriented and one of which was sports-related. Public forums are not welcoming to conservatives (unless it's a conservative forum), and a writer who is capable of typing out venom will not last long, unless he's a progressive.

No matter. For all the good that most public discussion accomplishes, one might as well air them on a blog and leave it at that. That's what I intend to do.

I will comment on politics, but by intention only in broad and philosophic terms. I'll comment on medicine, but of all the things I could talk about, I am the most uncomfortable discussing medical topics. The more I learn about medicine the less confident I am in expressing an opinion because I truly grasp the depths of my ignorance, unlike religion, music and cycling.

Before I was banned from the Internet Cello Society, I issued a challenge that the politically-oriented members there read Alasdair MacIntyre's "After Virtue". It had been about five years since I had read it, and I suggested that the most relevant chapters were the first three and the final one.

I took up my own challenge and I'm working on my third reading of the book. My recollection was correct. All of the book is an excellent read, but the first three chapters state our dismal state of affairs better than anything else I've come across. If I might offer an extended quote from the end of the third chapter:

[Political] debates are often staged in terms of a supposed opposition between individualism and collectivism, each appearing in a variety of doctrinal forms. On the one side there appear the self-defined protagonists of individual liberty, on the other the self-defined protagonists of planning and regulation, of the goods which are available through bureaucratic organization. But in fact what is crucial is that on which the contending parties agree, namely that there are only two alternative modes of social life open to us, one in which the free and arbitrary choices of individuals are sovereign and one in which the bureaucracy is sovereign, precisely so that it may limit the free and arbitrary choices of individuals. Given this deep cultural agreement, it is unsurprising that the politics of modern societies oscillate between a freedom which is nothing but a lack of regulation of individual behavior and forms of collectivist control designed only to limit the anarchy of self-interest.

The more things change....

2009-02-07T10:00:00.003-05:00

G.K. Chesterton died before WW II but one might have thought he wrote a weekly column for Townhall or some other soon to be outlawed conservative outlet from this passage:

For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck.

Oops!

2009-02-04T20:28:00.001-05:00

Saturday @5.

Happy birthday, dude!

2009-02-04T09:08:00.004-05:00

Today is Tom's 18th birthday! We are planning a family birthday party on Friday at P.F. Changs. Mom has made reservations, but I don't remember what time they are for. Call her.

Anya and I counted her worldly cash collection yesterday: $69. She is insistent on buying a "very good" present for Tom with her own money, along with Valentine Day presents for her sisters, whom she adores whether they know it or not. Thank goodness there are 3 Walmarts within a 6 mile radius of our house.

I finished Chesterton's book on St. Thomas Aquinas. Someday I'll have to go back and reread the last chapter because I didn't understand a word of it.

Having mastered that, I'm now halfway through "Orthodoxy", Chesterton's spiritual autobiography and opus. It is not an easy read, and I realize why he is not as popular an author as the more-accessible C.S. Lewis.

Here is a striking quote from the book:

Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously. Let us follow for a moment the clue of the martyr and the suicide; and take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. "He that will lose his life, the same shall save it," is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will rick it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of life.

Back in the house

2009-02-01T13:33:00.003-05:00

Our power came on last night although we didn't move back to our home until this morning. Almost miraculously we came upon an enterprising arborist from Cincinnati who is in the area helping with the clean-up effort. He is clearing out the yard even as we speak, at a fraction at what the local arborists were going to charge. I'm proud of how Karin has been able to orhestrate this process.

Two nights ago we watched "Fireproof". It's a great little movie. As Katy said, it won't be nominated for any Oscars (many of the actors were local volunteers, and the movie had a low-budget feel to it) but it was a good-hearted film that made me think about my own marital behavior.

Just don't tell my wife or she'll expect me to be nice to her.

Winter wonderland

2009-01-28T16:13:00.004-05:00

Last night Kentuckiana was hit by an ice storm for the ages. I'm a sound sleeper and was oblivious to it all, but my son stayed up all night listening to cracks and crashes as our trees were covered with two inches of ice and then collapsed under the weight. To make matters worse, we woke up to no electricity. Fortunately Katy and Mike invited us over to their nice toasty warm house.

I'm afraid we might be seeing our summer vacation landing on the ground as we contemplate how we're going to get this mess cleaned up. Unless one of the teetering limbs falls on our house, we're thankful that we didn't sustain any structural damage.

I'm also thankful that I'm getting to spend time with my grand-daughter and commiserate with my son-in-law Mike, the businessman, who is pondering just how I might make a living in our current reimbursement climate.

Team in Training

2009-01-27T21:48:00.002-05:00

I've signed up to do the Fletcher-Flyer century ride in June. This will involve propelling myself one hundred miles on my bike over treacherous and mountainous terrain in Asheville, N.C. I will be raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Foundation. Would you, O reader, consider checking out my Team in Training page and donating and small yet tidy sum?

O happy day!

2009-01-26T19:30:00.002-05:00

Today we learned that Tom has been accepted early decision to Moody Bible Institute. We are proud of you, dude!

That is quite a record, btw: Three children apply to college early decision, and three get accepted. I can't tell you how thankful we are!

A few of my favorite things

2009-01-25T13:29:00.004-05:00

It's hard to stay in a bad mood when you look at these pictures. I could look at them all day. They're even better in person.

Kendra:

Clare (AKA Clare-bear):
Here's my memory work, along with corrections if I miss any.

Therefore I tell you not to worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how (And look at) the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin and yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was (not) dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass, which is here today and tomorrow thrown into the fire, (is clothed), will (your heavenly father) he (even) not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" (about what you will eat or drink or what you will wear.) For The pagans all run after these things, and you heavenly father knows that you need them. (Instead) But seek first (the) his kingdom and its righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. Do not worry about tomorrow, (because) for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Bible stories

2009-01-21T21:04:00.003-05:00

Dr. John Patrick says that it is the duty of all men to teach their children "all the major stories and parables of the Bible" before they reach 7 years old.

I didn't do that. All my native borne children turned out pretty well anyway.

But I still think it's a good idea.

Maybe my married daughters would do that with their children. It's up to them. Maybe they could help me come up with a list of stories to teach our Ukrainian daughter Anya.

We made it through Charlotte's Web, but she has no interest in any of the Narnia books.

I think I'll make her suffer through one Bible story a night until I get them all covered.

Here's my list so far:

1. Creation and the Fall of man.

2. Cain and Able.

3. Noah's Ark and the Flood.

4. The Tower of Babel.

5. The call of Abraham.

6. Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac.

7. Abraham and Isaac and the mount.

After that I'd have to scan through Genesis. There are a few stories I might not get around to covering, like Judah and Onan, but I think that's a good start.

Feel free to make suggestions.

Before my Saturday morning spin

2009-01-17T10:01:00.007-05:00

Once again I can't figure out how to manipulate images once I've uploaded them to the blog. Oh well.

Here is Kendra, whom we are babysitting this morning. When she comes to our house she is the perfect child, and I mean PERFECT. She plays happily, never cries, and goes right to sleep when it is nap time. Her parents think we're doing them a big favor when we babysit her. Don't tell them it's not so. It'll be our little secret.

Above is my roadbike mounted to a Kurt Kinetic trainer, right in front of a TV that has Coach Troy discs loaded and ready to go. I'm planning on doing a 1 1/2 hour pukefest as soon as Kendra is picked up. I hope her parents take their time.

Here is a lucid quote that clears up one of my misunderstandings, again from G.K. Chesterton:

I have never understood why there is supposed to be something crabbed or antique about a syllogism; still less can I understand what anybody means by talking as if induction had somehow taken the place of deduction. The whole point of deduction is that true premises produce a true conclusion. What is called induction seems simply to mean collecting a larger number of true premises, or perhaps, in some physical matters, taking rather more trouble to see that they are true. It may be a fact that a modern man can get more out of a great many premises, concering microbes or asteroids than a medieval man could get out of a very few premises about salamanders and unicorns. But the process of dedutction from the data is the same for the modern mind as for the medieval mind; and what is pompouly called induction is simply collecting more of the data.

Da Man

2009-01-14T09:21:00.003-05:00

I'm half-way through G.K. Chesterton's biography of St. Thomas Aquinas. At this point I'm not sure who I admire more, St. Thomas himself or Chesterton, who I suspect to have been a better albeit more demanding writer than C. S. Lewis.

Here are a series of quotes to be contemplated:

"It is not based on documents of faith, but on the reasons and statements of the philosophers themselves." Would that all Orthodox doctors in deliberation were as reasonable as Aquinas in anger!

---

[I]n the matter of the inspiration of Scripture, he fixed first on the obvious fact, which was forgotten by four furious centuries of sectarian battle, that the meaning of Scripture is very far from self-evident; and that we must often interpret it in the light of other truths. If a literal interpretation is really and flatly contradicted by an obvious fact, why then we can only say that the literal interpretation must be a false interpretation. But the fact must really be an obvious fact.

This last quote is taken at length from page 69 as it seems to dovetail amazing well with Wendell Berry's "Life is a miracle":

[St. Thomas] had won his battle for a wider scope of philosophy and science; he had cleared the ground for a general understanding about faith and enquiry; an understanding that has generally been observed among Catholics, and certainly never deserted without disaster. It was the idea that the scientist should go on exploring and experimenting freely, so long as he did not claim an infallibility and finality which it was against his own principles to claim. Meanwhile the Church should go on developing and defining, about supernatural things, so long as she did not claim a right to alter the deposit of faith, which it was against her own principles to claim. And when he had said this, Siger of Brabant got up and said something so horribly like it, and so horribly unlike, that like Antichrist) he might have deceived the very elect.

Siger of Brabant said this: the Church must be right theologically, but she can be wrong scientifically. There are two truths; the truth of the supernatural world, and the truth of the natural world, which contradicts the supernatural world. While we are being naturalists, we can suppose that Christianity is all nonsense; but then, when we remember that we are Christians, we must admit that Christianity is true even if it is nonsense. In other words, Siger of Brabant split the human head in two, like the blow in an old legend of battle; and declared that a man has two minds, with one of which he must entirely believe and with the other may utterly disbelieve. To many this would at least seem like a parody of Thomism. As a fact, it was an assassination of Thomism.

That dude can write!

2009-01-10T10:30:00.003-05:00

G.K. Chesterton knew how to turn a phrase. I don't really know if anything he says is true, but it is certainly well-expressed.

From his biography of St. Thomas Aquinas:

It will not be possible to conceal much longer from anybody the fact that St. Thomas Aquinas was one of the great liberators of the human intellect... Simply as one of the facts that bulk big in history, it is true to say that Thomas was a very great man who reconciled religion with reason, who expanded it towards experimental science, who insisted that the senses were the window of the soul and that the reason had a divine right to feed upon facts, and that it was the business of the Faith to digest the strong meat of the toughest and most practical of pagan philosophies.

Never post at bedtime

2009-01-09T22:19:00.004-05:00

But I'm going to do it anyway.

I finished up with Berry's "Life is a Miracle" and started the first chapter of Chesterton's biography on Saint Thomas Aquinas. I've never read anything by Chesterton so I'm looking forward to it.

Chesterton reminds us that God gives us a Saint to correct the imbalance of the age. St. Francis was given to us because, he says, his age lacked romanticism. St. Thomas was given to us because his age lacked (proper) reason.

To return to Berry, in page 137 he states, "In our public dialogue (such as it is) we are now using many valuable words that are losing their power of reference and have as a consequence become abstract, merely gestures. I have in mind words such as "patriotism, " "freedom," "equality," and "rights," or "nature," "human," "wild," and "sustainable.""

If these gentlemen are right, perhaps the next Saint will someone who can plainly speak the truth, someone who uses words properly with respect to their meaning.

He (or she) would be an anecdote for our age, this moment in particular, considering we are installing to power someone who used lofty rhetoric that was for the most part utter nonsense.

Good night.

Os Guinness

2009-01-09T19:41:00.002-05:00

I listened to an old Christian Medical Doctors Association tape interview of Os Guinness. I was intrigued by a haiku he quotes:

the world is dew

and yet......and yet.....

He discusses the three core questions we ask in times of either suffering or evil (or both):

--Why me?

--Where is God?

--How will I endure?

His challenge: if a secularist uses the problem of evil as a stick to attack God, what is their answer for the problem?

Fifth

2008-12-29T21:41:00.002-05:00

This obnoxious image now serves as the wallpaper to our family computer, which has a 20" screen. The caption is taken from the oft-spoken words of Anya's tutor when Anya starts whining that she doesn't want to learn something.

I think it looks like what Citizen Kane might have resembled if he had access to Prozac.

And on goes my memory verses:

Blessed are you when they insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

These days I think of Sarah Palin when I contemplate this verse, but then again, this is not a political blog.

Life is a miracle

2008-12-28T11:03:00.003-05:00

I purchased Wendell Berry's "Life is a miracle" when it came out in 2000. The book had little appeal to me then; it struck me as being a bit Luddite in theme. I put it down after the first chapter.

I picked it back up about two weeks ago and haven't been able to put it down. My favorite passage in it so far has been this:

When a metaphor is construed as an equation, it is out of control; when it is construed as an identity, it is preposterous. If we are to assume that our language means anything at all, then the world is not a machine, and neither is an organism. A machine, to state only the greatest and most obvious difference, is a human artifact, and a world or an organism is not. (page 46).

The only problem I have with it is that I've not read E. O. Wilson's "Consilience", and reading a critique of something without reading the critiqued article seems a bit Philistine.

Fourth

2008-12-27T16:01:00.004-05:00

This next year is my "younger next year" year, in which I'm supposed to exercise six days a week. My favorite sport is cycling, but the weather has not been very conducive to riding outdoors, so I've set up my road bike in the basement. Today I rode the Coach Troy disc "Time Trial special 2.0" or somesuch.

John Patrick says I should read Gerald Manley Hopkins poetry, memorize the Beatitudes and memorize the Sermon on the Mount. I've done my best to read "The Wreck of the Deutschland" but as a migrainogenic activity it rates right up there with trying to learn Russian.

I think I've got the Beatitudes down, though:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Time to go to church. It will be something for me to meditate on if the worship team gets on my nerves.

Christmas 2008

2008-12-25T20:02:00.008-05:00

On a Christian Doctors Digest disc, Dr. Dick Swenson addresses survival in our overloaded age:

Make sure your priorities are ordered properly:

1. People are more important than things.

2. People are more important than things.

3. People are more important than things.

I kept this in mind as I enjoyed my Christmas. I received an IMac today, and I've spent about four quality hours with this seamless machine.

I've taken two pictures and downloaded them on the computer. They are both of the computer.

I could have taken pictures of my lovely family, especially of our newest very sweet granddaughter, but I didn't.

Speaking of granddaughters, I received a picture of my elder granddaughter Kendra. Once I learn how to insert photos I'll be able to comment on how beautiful Kendra is, and point out how beautiful the dress is, which was hand-sown by Karin, right down to the smocking.

Exercise in past 24 hours: carrying very heavy presents downstairs to the Christmas tree.

Third

2008-12-23T20:20:00.003-05:00

Let's get this over with.

This is our cat, Rascal. He is evil.

When he dies, we get to buy a Shih-Tzu. We love Shih-Tzus.

I don't wish Rascal any harm, though.

Second

2008-12-22T17:23:00.004-05:00

A few years ago I kept an anonymous blog which dealt with such things as death, malpractice, cycling, weight loss, and the lighter side of medicine. It was a decent blog. I was even linked briefly to someones A-listed blog, and received hundreds of hits in one day.

I was also out of the country and away from the computer at the time. I couldn't respond to the traffic, and the blog withered away and died a quiet death, never to be missed.

That was fine with me.

My blogging now is largely to record thoughts and musings. I have few original thoughts and musings, so I will be quoting and perhaps commenting on things I read or learn throughout the day. I'm hoping this will force me to ponder at least one new or interesting thing I learn over the next few years, or until I lose interest in blogging.

Given my attention span, this blog may not survive the year.

This is a kitty blog because I intend to post a picture of my cat in the near future.

It could have been a God blog, but you have to be pretty smart and devout to run one of those and I'm not those things. It could have been a Doc blog, but medicine gets enough of my time as it is. It couldn't have been a cycling blog; Fat Cyclist and Bike Snob have cornered the market on that genre for now. Political blogs are out of the question, and anyway they are a dime a dozen.

I hope you enjoy it.

First

2008-12-22T16:34:00.004-05:00

The abdomen is the reason why man does not easily take himself for a god.

--F. Nietzsche

Insofar as I've made a career of dispensing Nexium and hyoscyamine, I should be held complicit in the relentless secularization of our culture.