Thoughts and Prayers

When something bad happens, someone always says, "Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected by this horrible blah blah blah."

The idea of praying for someone who has experienced something bad, I get. There is an agency there; well-meaning people are praying TO someone, with a belief that this prayer communicates a request or sentiment to their god praying on behalf of this suffering friend.

But what the heck are "thoughts" going to accomplish in such a situation. If I have suffered a loss or experienced a tragedy of some kind, why should it be a comfort to me to know that someone else is thinking about it?

That phraseology is a politically-correct cop-out, I contend. . . a concession that people make in times of trouble in order to not hurt the feelings of non believers (among the suffering or among the onlookers). We don't want to make a collective statement saying that everyone is praying, because many are not. And we don't want to offend non believers by only offering them prayers in their time of need, because they may think that prayers offered on their behalf are wasted effort.

So we say "thoughts and prayers" as a way to keep everyone happy, or to at least not offend. I get that, and I see the value in not offending needlessly.

I personally have some very dear friends and relatives who are non believers. When they're in trouble, I'm likely thinking about them and their plight, but the sad reality is that I'm probably also thinking about football and my job and whether the grass needs to be cut and what's for dinner. My thoughts at times like that aren't worth all that much, and don't really accomplish much.

What matters is that, when those around me are in trouble, I pray for them. Not as often as I should, probably, nor as fervently. I don't think I'm great at prayer, but I try. And I humbly hope that others do the same for me.

The Hypocrisy of Sin Taxes

States heavily tax tobacco products. . . because they can.  

Everyone knows that tobacco use is harmful, which permits non-tobacco users to write off tobacco users as irresponsible and uneducated.  Cigarette smoke disturbs nearby non smokers, as does the sight of a snuff user spiting into a cup or on the sidewalk.  Smoke-free bars, restaurants and places of work now force smokers to stand out in the cold and rain, often "at least 100 feet from the closest building or sidewalk" to do their dirty deed. 

States can tax tobacco freely because smoking has become a dirty, frowned-upon habit in America.  And they can also tax it freely because they know that smokers will keep smoking regardless of price.  The demand for cigarettes is highly inelastic, meaning that price increases for cigarettes do not dramatically affect the demand.  So states know they can add another $0.25 or $0.50 per pack periodically and get the additional revenue they need, and tobacco manufacturers know that higher taxes on their products, while not ideal, will not really impact their sales much. No one loses but the user. . . the sinner who is being gouged by the sin tax.  

States rationalize these frequent tax increases by pointing to the damage that smoking does, both to the smoker and to those breathing second-hand smoke.  The fact that smoking is so obviously harmful gives politicians and voters the easy moral high ground every time they decide to levy another tax on cigarettes, as if they are really doing something good for those poor smokers by jacking up the price of cigarettes yet again.  They all sleep well after each tax increase, having convinced themselves that they have done this to help or incentivize smokers to make healthier choices.  It's not about the money, right?  Smokers needn't pay higher taxes; they could just quit smoking, right?  They could transition to a nicotine gum or one of those electronic cigarettes (e-cigs) that deliver nicotine without all of those harmful effects from tobacco, right?  Life is about choices, and smokers need to just smarten up and make better choices.  Right? 

Here's the kicker.  Now that e-cigs (which use no tobacco, produce no second hand smoke, and eschew the purported dozens of carcinogens found in tobacco) are becoming popular, states are realizing that they're missing out on a great new revenue source.  The states can't just let e-cigs be sold with only normal sales taxes affixed, can they?  Of course they can't.  States (starting with Utah) will, with increasing frequency, start going after e-cig sales and levy ever increasing taxes on those products.

The hypocrisy is just epic.  The states are addicted the sinful tobacco tax revenue like a three-pack-a-day smoker is addicted to his cigarettes.  The state's own tax increases are driving people away from cigarettes, endangering the tax revenue that the states gladly gobble up from this the sale of this horribly harmful product.

To be sure, the states will (always) package any new attempt at taxation so that it appears that they are once again simply doing what is best for the citizenry   But such attempts at spin are transparent these days, aren't they?  We're not that naive any more. 

It begs an interesting question.  If states could press a button and halt all tobacco sales forever. . . if tobacco use could miraculously be wiped out in one fell swoop, never to return and saving millions of lives in the process. . . would legislators choose to press that button?  Or are they so addicted to the revenue generated by tobacco sales that they secretly, desperately need people to keep smoking?  I think we all know the answer to that.  Again, we're not that naive any more.  

I think this exposes "sin taxes" like those on cigarettes for what they are: an easy way for politicians to extort money from people who have no choice but to accept it. And there will never be enough tax revenue generated to satisfy the state's addiction.   

Where's the pepper?

I think I've uncovered some kind of conspiracy, or at least a mystery.

Except for sweets and desserts, almost every food recipe I've ever followed calls for salt and pepper. And every savory recipe I've ever seen prepared on TV always includes salt and pepper. Along with salt, black pepper is a nearly ubiquitous spice. It's everywhere in what we cook and what we see cooked.

What's weird is that, for the life of me, I cannot remember seeing "black pepper" listed as an ingredient in any packaged food I've purchased from the store. I read a lot of food labels these days, and it just dawned on me that black pepper is never listed as an ingredient.

How can that be? How can black pepper be called for in almost every recipe known to man, yet not included in any foods that we buy?

Something fishy is going on.

Have you ever. . . ?

Have you ever created something new intellectually? I mean have you ever really, seriously advanced thought in some area?

If you think about it, much of what we all do (or at least much of what I do) is derivative, rehashing what has already been done. Certainly in undergraduate school, any "research" that I did was really an exercise in collecting, repackaging and reselling what other "experts" had done. Even in those areas where I was expected to provide a fresh insight into the work of others, I was still not creating anything new. At best, I might have said something slightly original about someone else's work.

In graduate school, it wasn't much better, really. I was expected to have developed an expertise for my area of study, and I was (hopefully) able to make connections and inferences across works and across subject areas that were perhaps a bit more sophisticated than I would have pulled off in undergraduate school. It felt like hard, creative work at the time, but I know better now, all these years later. Even when completing a thesis at the graduate level, it was still more of the same, riffing on more of the same. It was all about what moderately unique twist I could come up with on what others had already done.

Now, in the real world, what do we really create? Certainly I write thousands of words a week and produce original processes, plans and ideas all the time. Or at least it seems like I do. But I think that someone doing a forensic analysis of my work after the fact would conclude that nothing I do is really anything new. I'm still retracing well-worn paths and building familiar structures.

Does anyone truly "create" any more? What about people studying at the PhD level? The requirement for that degree is supposed to be a true, original contribution to the literature in that field of study. . . something that advances the debate and provides primary research for graduate students to rehash and for other professionals to build upon. Are PhDs where the creation in academia happens?

And what about the creative ones among us in the real world? Those artistic ones among us. Surely they create, right? Original fiction and non-fiction. Original illustrations, photographs, paintings, and sculptures.

Is that really who creates? PhDs and artists? What about everyone else?

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

-- Emily Dickinson

My ISP Sucks

After countless calls to my Internet service provider (ISP) and four visits from various technicians, it appears that our house connection is finally working at reasonable speeds (10 Meg download).

Most infuriating parts of the whole experience so far?

• Realizing that the complicated way I had my modem "bridged" to my wireless router was in fact totally unnecessary and probably negatively impacting my speeds. The only reason it was ever set up that way was because my ISP said to do it that way.
  
• Being told to disconnect my router and recycle my modem EVERY SINGLE TIME I talked to anyone at my ISP (at least 20 times all together), even though I knew the problem wasn't on my end.
• Having the technician show up in the middle of my work day and being surprised when I wasn't cool with just losing my Internet connection for an indeterminate amount of time. Ever heard of "working from home?"
• Being told "Yep, we fixed it on our end; the slow speed problem is on your end" and being forced to dismantle my network for the umpteenth time, only to have the guy interrupt me half way through that process to tell me, "Oh, I just got an IM from [some other guy]. He says that we haven't actually increased your connection speed yet. It'll be fixed by this coming Friday."
• Having it not be fixed by that coming Friday. Or the next Friday. Or the next.
  
• Being told by "tech support" that I should call customer service once this is all over to get my billing straightened out. Excuse me? I thought I was already talking to customer service. I actually said, "So you can't say to me 'I'll make sure that your billing gets straightened out, sir'?" And I was told, "Nope we [tech support] can't call customer service."
  

The most infuriating part of the whole process yet to come? The certainty that I'll be charged for the faster connection for the three weeks between when they said I had it and when I actually got it.

Yes, I know that unfair additional charge for those weeks only amounts to about $10. I'll still probably end up going to jail over it.

Make PDFs

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http://www.pdfforge.org/.

It's free, it's slick, and it allows you to turn your Word docs, Excel spreadsheets and other weird files directly into .pdf files.

Immensely useful.