Lukas Graham

The song of the day is 7 Years from the 2015 album Lukas Graham (a.k.a. Blue Album) by Danish pop-soul band Lukas Graham with vocals by the band’s namesake, Danish singer-songwriter and actor Lukas Graham Forchhammer.

Sia

The song of the day is Cheap Thrills from the 2016 album This Is Acting by Australian singer-songwriter Sia (Sia Kate Isobelle Furler).  The female dancer is 13-year-old Maddie Ziegler, who also appeared in Sia’s music videos for Chandelier, Elastic Heart, and Big Girls Cry. A lyric video for Cheap Thrills can be found here.

Calvin Harris & Rihanna

The song of the day is This Is What You Came For by Scottish DJ, producer, singer, songwriter Calvin Harris (Adam Richard Wiles) with vocals by Barbadian singer-songwriter Rihanna.

Selena Gomez

The song of the day is Kill Em With Kindness from the 2015 album Revival by American actress and singer Selena Gomez (Selena Marie Gomez).

Guns and Statistics

One of my pro-gun friends sent me a link to a YouTube video about gun murders, voiced by Bill Whittle. The video was pro-gun and filled with snarky remarks about gun control and its proponents, such as: our country’s obsession with guns is “dangerous and frankly embarrassing when facing our European film critic friends.”

I’m not sure if he meant all Europeans are film critics, or all film critics are Europeans. At first I took it to mean that all gun control proponents are liberals and all liberals are film critics; ergo, all gun control proponents are film critics. But I may be over-thinking this. Perhaps he means only that film critics are liberals because to be a film critic you must be able to think. And also, you must be able to write grammatically correct sentences. Liberals can do that.

He also refers to “our moral betters on the left.” Though this sentence is intended to be snarky, it’s probably accurate. (I can be snarky, too.) He refers to the “left-wing weenie case for banning guns” – something that literally no one of any political stature has suggested. In fact, banning the sale and ownership of guns would be unconstitutional. Banning guns is a prevalent right-wing paranoia that is promoted, I suspect, to boost gun sales. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn the NRA is behind it.

Whittle makes his case against gun control by first pointing out that, according to Wikipedia, the US has the highest per capita gun ownership of any country. Then, he makes the claim that the US is not #1 in gun murders; the US is, he says, #111 in gun murders. The reason for our relatively low ranking could be because there is a long list of violent 3rd world countries ruled by drug cartels and warlords with private armies.

But even though I trusted Whittle to be straight with his viewers, I remember what Ronald Reagan said: trust but verify. So I went to Wikipedia and found their list of countries with firearm related deaths per 100,000 population per year. By default, countries in the table are sorted alphabetically by name, but clicking on a column header (such as Homicides) sorts the table by ascending values (one click) or descending values (two clicks) found in that column.

According to this Wikipedia article, the US is in 18th place for gun murders. A string of Central and South American countries (plus Swaziland, Philippines, and South Africa) is above us, with Honduras in the #1 position. If we sort on total gun deaths (including accidents and suicides) the US is in 11th place.

Whittle points out that Detroit, Michigan, with strict gun control laws, has a gun murder rate of 54.6 per hundred thousand compared to 10.54 for the entire US. He then points out that Plano, Texas, where apparently everyone is armed to the teeth with pistols, shotguns, and assault weapons as well as knives and pointy rocks (backup, one assumes), has a gun murder rate of only 0.4 per hundred thousand. He does this to make his point that gun control increases gun murders, whereas arming the populace like they’re going into combat reduces gun murders.

According to Whittle, Detroit’s gun control laws must be the problem, not the fact that Detroit’s per capita income ($14,717) is one third that of Plano ($40,920); not that Detroit’s inner city has collapsed as Detroit’s auto industry has dwindled; not that the inner city has few job opportunities and has neighborhoods where drug dealers and gang-bangers roam. Whittle must be very astute to figure out that gun control laws are the problem, because frankly, I would have naively bet all those other things were the problem.

Whittle ends with this mind-blowing conclusion, “maybe it’s not the guns … maybe it’s the people holding the guns.” No kidding, Whittle.

Of course it’s the people holding the guns! That’s why it’s a bad idea to sell guns to violent felons, dangerous lunatics, and people with restraining orders against them. That’s the whole reason for background checks.

Gun control proponents primarily want two things. The first is universal background checks at the point of transfer for every person buying any type of firearm. Currently only eight states and the District of Columbia require such checks. Two more states require such checks for handguns. The second thing gun control proponents want is a ban on the sale of weapons designed primarily to kill a large number of people quickly.

I’m a gun owner and I support the Second Amendment, as long as we sell reasonable firearms to responsible people. Society has to draw the line somewhere, and that somewhere should be personal and family protection, hunting, and recreational and competition target shooting. No citizen needs weapons of war for any legitimate purpose.

Ambien

I’ve written previously about the sleep-inducing drug Ambien (also called Zolpidem) in a post called Losing My Mind. In that post I recounted how someone changed all my clocks from Daylight to Standard time one night while I was sleeping. The problem: I was the only person in my house, so who set the clocks back an hour? Apparently, I did, while I was asleep. I had taken Ambien that night.

The list of Ambien side effects is a long one. There have been reports of people taking Ambien and then sleep-walking, sleep-driving, and sleep-eating bizarre things like buttered cigarettes and whole eggs including the shell. People have driven cars into people, injuring or killing them, with no memory of it after taking Ambien. People have taken Ambien and gone to bed and gone to sleep, only to awaken in the morning to find themselves in jail with no memory of what they did.

But I forgot about that clock episode when I recently complained of poor sleep to my doctor and she prescribed Ambien. I took the Ambien for three and a half weeks before I decided to stop. I stopped for two reasons. First reason: I was beginning to feel bad during the day. At first I didn’t connect that with Ambien, but after two or three days I concluded it was daytime Ambien withdrawal. Second reason: I saw that things were happening in my house that I couldn’t remember doing. It was as if I was living with another person – a person I never saw but who left behind telltale signs of his presence. I could only conclude the obvious: the other person was my sleeping self, who was apparently getting out of bed during the night and doing who-knows-what.

The first night after I quit Ambien was miserable. Not only did I not sleep at all, I was very restless and kept getting up, watching TV, going back to bed, lying there a while, getting up, and so on, all night long. The next day I felt really bad withdrawal symptoms. I was anxious and shaky. I could hardly believe that three and a half weeks on Ambien would cause such distress.

The strange thing is that many years ago when I was having sleep problems, I took Ambien for a month or two with no ill effects. It put me to sleep, I slept all night, and I awoke refreshed. When I ran out of Ambien I didn’t renew the prescription – I just didn’t take any more Ambien and I had no withdrawal symptoms. Many people take Ambien without any problems, just as I once did. But for those unlucky enough to have problems, the problems can be major – life-changing, even. And not in a good way.

Anybody But

My friends on the right send me a constant stream of emails demonizing Hillary Clinton. Some say they would vote for Satan before they would vote for Hillary. That’s a bold statement. It makes me think: Really? Satan?

According to Christian belief, Satan wants to take our souls to Hell and let us burn there forever. I ask you, can Hillary do worse than that? I file this constant drubbing of Hillary in the Anybody But Hillary folder, which is a subfolder of the Anybody But folder.

Who else is in the Anybody But folder? Cable news channel CNN ran this headline recently: RNC delegates launch 'Anybody but Trump' drive. CNN isn’t alone in reporting these Republican anti-Trump movements. There is a lot of chatter on the internet that can be put into the Anybody But Trump folder.

So some voters say they would vote for Satan before Hillary, and some say they would vote for Satan before Trump. This makes me think that Satan isn’t getting the respect he warrants. Not worship, not devotion, not allegiance, but respect. Anything that can torture us until the end of time warrants our respect, lest we underestimate its power.

Voters are free to dislike a candidate for any number of reasons. However, to compare a presidential candidate with ultimate evil goes beyond the pale. 

You know who really belongs in the Anybody But folder? Satan. Literally, anybody would be far preferable.

The Chainsmokers ft Daya

The song of the day is 2016's Don't Let Me Down by American DJ duo The Chainsmokers (Andrew Taggart and Alex Pall) featuring vocals by American singer-songwriter Daya (Grace Martine Tandon).

Liberal Values

My friends on the right call me a liberal. I used to think I was fairly middle-of-the-road when it comes to political ideology. But now I think they’re right. As the two main political parties in America have moved farther apart in their opinions of our most pressing problems and what the appropriate solutions should be, I find myself increasingly in the liberal camp.

I’m liberal because I support liberal values. I refer to values like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, racial equality, and gender equality, among others. In fact, the values declared in the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights are liberal values. Conservatives will probably claim that the rights declared in the Bill of Rights are conservative values, too. But let’s examine the historical record.

America’s “Founding Fathers” were the liberals of their day, and very progressive liberals at that. The values they put into the Constitution were revolutionary (pun intended). The conservatives of that day were called Royalists. Conservatives don’t like change, unless the change is “backward” to an earlier time, and the Royalists wanted no part of creating a new country. They liked things as they were and wanted to remain British subjects. In the end, liberal revolutionaries won the day and America was born.

America’s Civil War was a war between liberal progressives and militant conservatives as much as it was anything else. Liberal progressives wanted to abolish slavery, while militant conservatives were ready to fight to the death to defend the institution of slavery and maintain the status quo. In the end, liberals won the day, slavery was abolished, and the United States remained united.

Liberals didn’t push for segregation and Jim Crow laws in the South after the Civil War. That was done by conservatives who wanted the people they had subjugated during slavery to remain subjugated after slavery had been abolished. Southern conservatives desperately wanted nothing to change in the South. Although blacks were no longer slaves, many black sharecroppers remained in economic bondage to white landowners.

The battles to bring women the vote, to bring women and all races and ethnicities equal rights in job opportunities, education, and pay were battles brought by liberals in an attempt to bring America closer to the values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence—that not just white men, but all people, are created equal, and all should have the same opportunities for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Liberals believe all people must be treated fairly and equally by government and ultimately by all of society, with the same rights and the same opportunities for education, jobs, and pay.

Today, the battle for LGBT rights is another liberal battle. As is often the case, the battle is about allowing a minority to have rights that conservatives don’t want to grant them. And just as conservatives lost the battle to remain British, and lost the battle to spread slavery, and lost the battle to deny women the vote, and lost the battle to deny civil rights to minorities, they are destined to lose the battle to deny the LGBT community the rights that others take for granted. The arc of progress is toward more equality, not less; toward more fairness, not less.

By making these observations, I do not intend to imply that liberals are always on the side of the angels, while conservatives are always wrong and somehow bad. In some instances, such as racial segregation, I think it is obvious that conservatives were on the wrong side of history. And I think liberals have sometimes been overly zealous in their pursuit of a more just society, to the point that one could make the observation, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Stated more directly, acts that were undertaken with the best intentions sometimes had unforeseen negative consequences.

There are many factors that make one a liberal or a conservative. For example, if you believe in science, then you probably believe man-made global warming is real, and that, in turn, will likely lead you to conclude that global warming is the biggest threat we face today. If you don’t believe in science (or you only believe the science you want to believe), then you may believe that man-made global warming is a hoax being perpetrated on the world by some nefarious conspiracy or foreign power, so you will likely conclude that something else—perhaps terrorism—is our greatest threat today. If you believe a wealthy country should provide a safety net for its poorest citizens, then you probably support some forms of welfare. If you believe that self-reliance is an important virtue, then you will likely be opposed to government programs that, in the worst case, perpetuate dependence on government assistance to the ultimate detriment of the individual.

As a liberal, I believe the political realities of 21st century America cannot always be aligned with the values of 18th century America. We live in a very different nation, and a very different world, than did our mostly agrarian, 18th century ancestors. Society evolves in order to meet evolving challenges. People today don’t want to just survive. People today want, and indeed need, a fair opportunity to achieve happiness, fulfilment, and a sense of security and well-being. They are demanding the opportunity to obtain those things. Ultimately, and however crooked the path, our society will evolve toward those solutions, liberal or conservative, that work best at meeting those needs. To that end, sooner or later everyone must take a stand; everyone must decide which solutions are likely to work best—not which solutions will best fit into an ideology learned by watching television and reading works of fiction.

Netsky

The song of the day is Your Way by Belgium musician and producer Netsky (Boris Daenen).

Lab Work

I have an appointment with one of my doctors in five weeks. So, his office assistant calls me to tell me I need to go to the hospital to get some lab work done. I ask her, “When should I go? Should I go a week before my appointment with the doctor? That would be in four weeks.” She says that will be okay. I ask her how to find the lab; she says go to Patient Registration.

A couple of days go by and the lab orders arrive in the mail. One of the orders says the test is scheduled for 6-7-16. Hmm, that’s not four weeks away, that’s just a few days away. Okay, 6-7-16 it is. I wonder, though, when is the lab open and can I make an appointment? I check the hospital’s website. It says the lab is open 24 hours a day. There’s a phone number listed for the lab, so I call them and ask when they are open. They tell me they’re open from 7 AM to 5 PM. Maybe they could mention that to the website designer. I ask how to get to the lab. They tell me to go to Patient Registration.

Now it’s Monday afternoon and my lab appointment is tomorrow. At 3 PM my phone rings and there’s a female voice. Someone from the lab is calling me to remind me of my appointment “tomorrow at 10AM.” I tell her, “I know my appointment is tomorrow, but no one told me it was at 10AM.” She says someone at my doctor’s office should have told me. I ask her how to get to the lab. She says go through the hospital’s front entrance, take an elevator to the second floor, turn right, and the lab is on the right. That’s pretty easy.

So as information trickles down from the medical establishment to me, the patient, my appointment time has gone from “anytime this month” to “this Tuesday” to “10 AM this Tuesday”, and my appointment location has gone from the hospital’s “front desk” to the actual lab location. None of this really surprises me. There is no evil intent to withhold information from me. Rather, a lot of people don’t know what they are supposed to know. It happens everywhere, I know, but it seems to happen a lot in the medical profession. Hospitals lose paperwork. Appointments are rescheduled and no one informs the patient. On and on it goes. One day the entire medical establishment will be replaced by robots. Maybe robots can get it right. And if not, well, they can’t do a lot worse.

Popeye Moment

I’ve just about reached my Popeye moment with phone scammers. (That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!) I get so many scammers calling me, so many robo-calls, that I’m at the point of just turning the ringer off on my VoIP phone, and leaving the mobile phone turned off unless I’m out and about.

I get multiple calls per day. Sometimes a recorded message starts playing. Sometimes a man with a foreign accent says he’s calling me from “tech support”. Sometimes, a recorded message claims that the the call is coming from “internal revenue services”. Services, plural! I’m sure the real Internal Revenue Service knows its own name. They say they’re going to file a lawsuit against me if I don’t call them back and pay them money. (By the way, the real IRS will never initiate contact with a phone call, nor will they ask for money in a phone call.)

Years ago I listed both my VoIP number and my mobile number with the National Do Not Call Registry but scammers don’t care. Phone scammers also don’t use their real phone numbers. They spoof a random phone number or use a number that belongs to a legitimate business.

Now that I think about it, I have another phone number – it’s a Google Voice number – that never receives calls from scammers. Not one scam phone call, not a single robo-call has come into that Google Voice number in all the years I’ve had the number. One more thing, and it’s an odd coincidence: Unlike the other two numbers, I have never submitted my Google Voice number to the National Do Not Call Registry. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.