See, I already knew that every inch of a person's height corresponds to around $789 of additional earning per year. Controlled for gender, weight, and age, on average, a 6-foot tall dude makes $5,525 more annually than someone that's my height (5'6"). Fine. I get it. There aren't really any short Presidents anymore, either.
Now? Now I found out that tall people are, on average, happier than petite people. And have higher levels of education. The researchers even checked for different demographics and ethnic divisions, but naw, it's height.
Well, eff all y'all. While it is clearly true that I'm poor and miserable, I can easily grab that middle seat on the F train and fly coach without sucking on my kneecaps. So suck it, tall dudes. If you all look down, I'll be the tiny guy at the bar sadly sipping his drink, but saving money because it costs my petite ass less money to get drunk.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
How to lose a [conservative] client in one easy step
I have a wealthy, conservative client that sends conservative email forwards to folks in her address book. I'm in her address book. Usually I read them in the same way I now watch Fox News for a few minutes once a week - to see what the other side thinks and to make sure my liberal ass isn't being intellectually complacent.
Today's email crossed the line. She asked what I thought. I responded. The forward (excluding the other comments of how insightful the email was from other forwarders) --
And my response.
---
My opinions on this --
First, I was completely floored that a published Historian with ties to some of our best universities could ever write something like this. I was happy to find out that Kaiser, of course, did NOT write this at all. In fact, he wrote --
"The first two sentences, beginning, "For the past thirty years," were of course written by me; the rest of the email was not written by me. Its views are in many ways the opposite of my own. It is apparently some sort of conservative disinformation campaign, quite possibly the work of a single individual, designed to muddy the political waters by falsely attributing views to others. I obviously regret the deception."http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/proportions.asp
This email is also sometimes attributed to Dr. Tim Wood of Southern Baptist University. He also distanced himself immediately and wrote -
"I would be lying if I said I was not upset. Even above and beyond the fact that the comparison is utterly ridiculous (anyone who believes that truly has no understanding of the depths of evil plumbed by the Nazi regime)..."A good read - http://sbuschollian.blogspot.com/2009/03/historian-deals-with-online-identity.html
Second, are my opinions on this email -
So much of it is inaccurate. Our economy is being de-industrialized because multi-national corporations can find cheaper labor elsewhere. Schools are not being dumbed down (though No Child Left Behind is an educational nightmare and doesn't promote thinking, creativity, and freedom), founding documents are still being taught (American History - 4th Grade), and students can still read and write.
Our economy is in serious trouble, but has shown signs of stabilizing and is in no way 1929 x 10. We can name our enemy, and his name is Osama Bin Laden, but most Muslims do not want to slit our throats given the opportunity.
Nothing about our President is scary (even if you find some of his views scary). And yes, this country wanted a Change.
But equating our President with Adolph Hitler is, to put it mildly, crossing the line. No one is afraid to speak out against our President. Dozens, if not hundreds of TV and radio personalities do it daily. There was just a demonstration in Washington where thousands of people expressed their displeasure. Loudly. Compare that to Hitler and the Nazis who organized the systematic murder and torture of around 17 million people, some of which disagreed with him politically (Communists), religiously (Jews, Catholic clergy), ethnically (Poles, Serbs), socially (homosexuals, the handicapped) or militarily (POWs).
If this is a veiled outcry about the health care debate and government spending, this is an odd parallel to draw. If anyone can be accused of taking away freedoms, it was via the last administration's Patriot Act, its violation of the Geneva Convention, and invading other countries without the support of the international community would come closer. Still, Dick Cheney on his worst day does not begin to approach the evils of Hitler and the Nazis.
I am happy to have a civil debate about our country's policies. I understand the philosophical debate between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives (with a Libertarian slant) tend to view government as inherently inefficient and usually unnecessary and meddlesome in a market-driven economy. As someone who is more liberal, I do think at times the government needs to step in for the sake of society and social welfare. I think it was a good idea for the government to socialize the fire departments 150 years ago. I think the government does a better job than the independent fire fighting companies of the 19th century. I have no problem with government sometimes regulating business, such as establishing a minimum wage, outlawing child labor, or passing laws to protect our environment. It is my opinion that sometimes the free market fails to consider society's needs as a whole. I think over the past few decades, it has become clear that we need to regulate the health industry as well.
I'm not the only one who thinks this way.
If you don't trust Obama, trust the doctors of this country. The AMA supports health care reform. It is on their front page -- http://www.ama-assn.org/
If you don't trust our doctors, trust our nurses. The ANA supports Obama's drive for reform on their front page as well - http://www.nursingworld.org/
If you are a senior, read the AARP's page on myths about health care reform - http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourhealth/policy/articles/health_care_reform2.html
Also worth nothing is that every single industrialized nation on the planet offers universal health care except the United States.
If you are worried about the federal budget, so am I, but we need to control health care costs. I would also like to know why the fiscal conservatives of our country weren't shouting during the Iraq war, which has cost our country almost one trillion dollars to date (the same as the projected cost of health care over ten years), or when tax cuts were issued when we were running record deficits. The biggest increase of the National Debt in our history occurred during the last administration, from $5.73 trillion to $10.7 trillion, and our current recession hasn't helped the situation.
The most important point for me is that wherever any one of us stands on these issues, promoting intellectual dishonesty, hatred, and fear is not a policy or a solution and adds nothing to the debate. I'd like to think that we can all calm down and engage in a discussion without calling the other side Nazis, Soviets, Marxists, or whatever else the far-right or far-left fanatics are shouting about this week for ratings.
This country can be better than that. Sorry for the length of this email,
Me
---
Maybe I could have used better wordiage, maybe I could have kept my themes clearer, but c'mon. C'mmaaaaaan. Hitler, people? Watch what you say (or forward) around this Jewboy.
Today's email crossed the line. She asked what I thought. I responded. The forward (excluding the other comments of how insightful the email was from other forwarders) --
Take the three minutes to read this. Maybe he is wrong. What if he is right?
David Kaiser is a respected historian whose published works have covered a broad
range of topics, from European Warfare to American League Baseball. Born in
1947, the son of a diplomat, Kaiser spent his childhood in three capital cities:
Washington D.C. , Albany , New York , and Dakar , Senegal .. He attended Harvard
University , graduating there in 1969 with a B.A. in history. He then spent
several years more at Harvard, gaining a PhD in history, which he obtained in
1976. He served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976.
He is a professor in
the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College . He
has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College and Harvard
University . Kaiser's latest book, The Road to Dallas, about the Kennedy
assassination, was just published by Harvard University Press.
Dr. David
KaiserHistory Unfolding
I am a student of history. Professionally, I have
written 15 books on history that have been published in six languages, and I
have studied history all my life. I have come to think there is something
monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is simply a banking crisis, or
a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely
single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper
focus.
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because
I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it.
Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our
country that has been evolving for about ten to fifteen years. The pace has
dramatically quickened in the past two.
We demand and then codify into law
the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can
never pay back? Why?
We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which
has little or no real oversight by anyone, has "loaned" two trillion dollars
(that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to
whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that
is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this
past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms
unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a
government of "we the people," who loaned our powers to our elected leaders.
Apparently not.
We have spent two or more decades intentionally
de-industrializing our economy.. Why?
We have intentionally dumbed down our
schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we
are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot
write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting,
teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity.
Why?
We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election
(violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it
simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did
you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?) We have corrupted our
sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that
radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN
and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what
purpose?
Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free
fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of
collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire
government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and I
know precisely what I am talking about) - the list is staggering in its length,
breadth, and depth.. It is potentially 1929 x ten...And we are at war with
an enemy we cannot even name for fear of offending people of the same religion,
who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the
opportunity to do so.
And finally, we have elected a man that no one really
knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a
town as big as Wasilla , Alaska . All of his associations and alliances are with
real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn
about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have
heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense
force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course.
The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer
it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe are more
important.)
Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word:
Change. Why?
I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children
as I am now.
This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he
has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will
divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the
pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And
when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.
And that is only the
beginning..
As a serious student of history, I thought I would never come to
experience what the ordinary, moral German must have felt in the mid-1930s In
those times, the "savior" was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the
streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they should
have known was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and
pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the
political stage through great oratory. Conservative "losers" read it right
now.
And there were the promises. Economic times were tough, people were
losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and frowned and waved a
lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his
"brown shirts" would bully and beat them into submission. Which they did -
regularly. And then, he was duly elected to office, while a full-throttled
economic crisis bloomed at hand - the Great Depression. Slowly, but surely he
seized the controls of government power, person by person, department by
department, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The children of German citizens were at
first, encouraged to join a Youth Movement in his name where they were taught
exactly what to think. Later, they were required to do so. No Jews of
course,
How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs
to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards for the military-industrial
complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control,
health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill
pride once again in the country, across Europe , and across the world. He did it
with a compliant media - did you know that? And he did this all in the name of
justice and .... . .. change. And the people surely got what they voted
for.
If you think I am exaggerating, look it up. It's all there in the
history books.
So read your history books. Many people of conscience objected
in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and ridiculed. When
Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the
House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his
seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though. And the world came
to regret that he was not listened to.
Do not forget that Germany was the
most educated, the most cultured country in Europe . It was full of music, art,
museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And yet, in less than six
years (a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency) it was
rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning
children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors.. All with the best of
intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.
As a practical
thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can
either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make
me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from
across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes,
having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me..
I choose
to believe the evidence. No doubt some people will scoff at me, others laugh, or
think I am foolish, naive, or both. To some degree, perhaps I am. But I have
never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I
believe-and why I believe it.
I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am. Perhaps
the only hope is our vote in the next elections.
David
Kaiser Jamestown , Rhode IslandUnited
States I HOPE THIS IF NOTHING ELSE GETS YOU TO THINKING
ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW AND WHAT MAY LAY AHEAD? IF IT CAUSES THE SLIGHTEST
BIT OF CONCERN, PASS IT ON TO OTHERS TO READ AND REPOST IT BEFORE THERE IS
NOTHING LEFT FOR US TO DO. IF YOU ARE ASKED TO TURN IN YOUR GUNS IN THE NEAR
FUTURE, WHAT YOU HAVE JUST READ IS COMING TRUE.
And my response.
---
My opinions on this --
First, I was completely floored that a published Historian with ties to some of our best universities could ever write something like this. I was happy to find out that Kaiser, of course, did NOT write this at all. In fact, he wrote --
"The first two sentences, beginning, "For the past thirty years," were of course written by me; the rest of the email was not written by me. Its views are in many ways the opposite of my own. It is apparently some sort of conservative disinformation campaign, quite possibly the work of a single individual, designed to muddy the political waters by falsely attributing views to others. I obviously regret the deception."http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/proportions.asp
This email is also sometimes attributed to Dr. Tim Wood of Southern Baptist University. He also distanced himself immediately and wrote -
"I would be lying if I said I was not upset. Even above and beyond the fact that the comparison is utterly ridiculous (anyone who believes that truly has no understanding of the depths of evil plumbed by the Nazi regime)..."A good read - http://sbuschollian.blogspot.com/2009/03/historian-deals-with-online-identity.html
Second, are my opinions on this email -
So much of it is inaccurate. Our economy is being de-industrialized because multi-national corporations can find cheaper labor elsewhere. Schools are not being dumbed down (though No Child Left Behind is an educational nightmare and doesn't promote thinking, creativity, and freedom), founding documents are still being taught (American History - 4th Grade), and students can still read and write.
Our economy is in serious trouble, but has shown signs of stabilizing and is in no way 1929 x 10. We can name our enemy, and his name is Osama Bin Laden, but most Muslims do not want to slit our throats given the opportunity.
Nothing about our President is scary (even if you find some of his views scary). And yes, this country wanted a Change.
But equating our President with Adolph Hitler is, to put it mildly, crossing the line. No one is afraid to speak out against our President. Dozens, if not hundreds of TV and radio personalities do it daily. There was just a demonstration in Washington where thousands of people expressed their displeasure. Loudly. Compare that to Hitler and the Nazis who organized the systematic murder and torture of around 17 million people, some of which disagreed with him politically (Communists), religiously (Jews, Catholic clergy), ethnically (Poles, Serbs), socially (homosexuals, the handicapped) or militarily (POWs).
If this is a veiled outcry about the health care debate and government spending, this is an odd parallel to draw. If anyone can be accused of taking away freedoms, it was via the last administration's Patriot Act, its violation of the Geneva Convention, and invading other countries without the support of the international community would come closer. Still, Dick Cheney on his worst day does not begin to approach the evils of Hitler and the Nazis.
I am happy to have a civil debate about our country's policies. I understand the philosophical debate between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives (with a Libertarian slant) tend to view government as inherently inefficient and usually unnecessary and meddlesome in a market-driven economy. As someone who is more liberal, I do think at times the government needs to step in for the sake of society and social welfare. I think it was a good idea for the government to socialize the fire departments 150 years ago. I think the government does a better job than the independent fire fighting companies of the 19th century. I have no problem with government sometimes regulating business, such as establishing a minimum wage, outlawing child labor, or passing laws to protect our environment. It is my opinion that sometimes the free market fails to consider society's needs as a whole. I think over the past few decades, it has become clear that we need to regulate the health industry as well.
I'm not the only one who thinks this way.
If you don't trust Obama, trust the doctors of this country. The AMA supports health care reform. It is on their front page -- http://www.ama-assn.org/
If you don't trust our doctors, trust our nurses. The ANA supports Obama's drive for reform on their front page as well - http://www.nursingworld.org/
If you are a senior, read the AARP's page on myths about health care reform - http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourhealth/policy/articles/health_care_reform2.html
Also worth nothing is that every single industrialized nation on the planet offers universal health care except the United States.
If you are worried about the federal budget, so am I, but we need to control health care costs. I would also like to know why the fiscal conservatives of our country weren't shouting during the Iraq war, which has cost our country almost one trillion dollars to date (the same as the projected cost of health care over ten years), or when tax cuts were issued when we were running record deficits. The biggest increase of the National Debt in our history occurred during the last administration, from $5.73 trillion to $10.7 trillion, and our current recession hasn't helped the situation.
The most important point for me is that wherever any one of us stands on these issues, promoting intellectual dishonesty, hatred, and fear is not a policy or a solution and adds nothing to the debate. I'd like to think that we can all calm down and engage in a discussion without calling the other side Nazis, Soviets, Marxists, or whatever else the far-right or far-left fanatics are shouting about this week for ratings.
This country can be better than that. Sorry for the length of this email,
Me
---
Maybe I could have used better wordiage, maybe I could have kept my themes clearer, but c'mon. C'mmaaaaaan. Hitler, people? Watch what you say (or forward) around this Jewboy.
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