Author Archives: Larry Franz

One of These Characters Could Become President

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Summer is almost over in this hemisphere, so we have 4 1/2 months until a small number of voters, in a few lightly-populated, semi-rural states, start letting the rest of us know who America’s 2016 Presidential candidates will be. As of now, however, I’m still trying to follow my own advice and ignore political coverage as much as possible.

That’s even though, in retrospect, it wasn’t great advice. The Democratic contest became much more interesting when Senator Bernie Sanders, the democratic (small “d”) socialist from the state of Vermont, received such a warm welcome. One might even grant that the Republican contest became more interesting as it became even weirder than expected.

The Republican struggle to choose a Presidential candidate is like a terrible movie you’re being forced to watch. It’s not funny enough to be comedy and isn’t serious enough to be tragedy. It certainly isn’t a musical. Let’s say it’s a fantasy with both comedic and tragic themes, kind of like a scarier version of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

To me, the funniest part of the Republican race is how observers keep trying to explain why Trump is popular among Republican voters (remember, these are the voters who helped elect George W. Bush not once but twice). The saddest part is that millions of Americans would be pleased if one of these Republicans became President. But maybe it will work out for the best. If the Republicans pick an extraordinarily terrible candidate, the Democrats should do well, even in the Congressional races. That could happen, even in 21st century America.

I wasn’t going to write about any of this (I’m still trying to follow my advice, if only because it’s still 2015), but there was a nice Salon article today. The author, Chauncey Devega, is a black American who loved Rambo, Reagan and Rush Limbaugh when he was too young to know any better. He also read “Soldier of Fortune” magazine and hoped to be our first black President. He doesn’t explain what made him reconsider his right-wing views, either for lack of space or because it’s obvious – he grew up and looked around.

An excerpt from the article:

…what if [a political party’s] “base” consists of people who live in an alternate world where facts, empirical reality, and scientific reason and truth operate according to a different set of rules? What happens to a supposedly mainstream political party’s internal dynamics when the most extreme elements are given control over it? And what if these voters have been socialized into a bizarro reality by a media machine that has created a literal and virtual bubble of information for its viewers and listeners, one where the “news” actually misinforms, thus leaving its public less knowledgeable about current affairs than before?

This alternate reality is the world in which the Republican Party and its candidates for president in 2016 exist. It is utterly impenetrable to outsiders. “Normal” politics do not exist there. This cult-like world is vexing, confusing, headache inducing, disorientating, and enraging for those in the “reality based community” who try to process the 2016 Republican debates. Ultimately, if one is not initiated into the right-wing movement’s rites and rituals, you will not be able to translate its political acts of magic and speaking in tongues that masquerade as serious political discourse.

As a political cult, today’s Republican Party uses faith, a belief in that which cannot be proven by ordinary means, to create a coherent worldview for its public. In this world there are no verifiable truth-claims that can be confirmed or rejected based on empirical evidence. Here, something is “true” because a trusted source, elder, elite, or media personality tells you so. Opinion is transformed into a substitute for facts.

Shorter version: Lies are made into truths for those in the cult and disbelievers are cast out as enemies and heretics.

The only modification I’d make to this is that the word “cult” usually refers to a relatively small group. When a cult gets big enough, it’s no longer a cult. At that point, it’s a movement or, as with the specimen under discussion, a political party that’s gone haywire.

PS – Paul Krugman had some things to say about the most recent Republican “debate”. Basically, he’s terrified.

It’s My Blog and I’ll Rant About My Visit to the Doctor If I Want To!

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Yesterday, a friend and I happened to get on the subject of restaurants, waiting rooms and (yes) elevators that have televisions. We agreed that the relatively recent practice of putting a TV everywhere possible in order to entertain or distract us is annoying. Obviously, some may enjoy watching TV while they’re waiting to see their doctor or eating lunch in a cafe or riding in an elevator. Also obviously, some people don’t. 

So I was psychologically primed when I entered a doctor’s office today and found a TV in the far corner of the empty waiting room. It was tuned to a talk show about cooking. Even worse, the sound was extremely loud. Instead of politely asking the staff if it would be possible to turn off the TV, I did it myself. In retrospect, I should have asked, but since I was the only one in the room, pushing the “off” button seemed like an acceptable thing to do. (Have you ever noticed that they never leave the remote control next to the television, a courtesy we patients might appreciate? Given how loud that TV was today, I think it’s really there for the office staff, who happen to be in a different room.)

After a while, one of the staff noticed that the TV was off and used the remote to turn it back on. I objected, saying that I had turned it off. We went back and forth a bit, and I raised my voice a little (no personal attacks were made). The staff member said the TV was there “for the entertainment of the patients” and having it off was merely my preference. Since another patient had entered the waiting room by then, I gave up. Even when I was alone again, the TV kept going, albeit with reduced volume.

Eventually, I got to see the doctor. He seemed upset about something. He spoke very fast and not very clearly. He was brusque, interrupted me when I asked questions, and kept telling me I didn’t understand his precise reasons for doing an MRI of my hip. Near the end of the examination, I said “Well, it will be good to find out what’s going on in there” (referring to my hip). I thought that was a pretty innocuous thing to say, but he insisted on again repeating why an MRI was a good idea (it was merely to rule out the presence of an anatomical abnormality or a tumor, not “to find out what’s going on in there”).

Having agreed about getting an MRI, I then made the mistake of asking about a different bone-related issue, since this doctor is an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in knees and shoulders and similar bones. My question was “Is surgery often done for bone spurs in the foot?”. He told me in no uncertain terms that asking a doctor a question like that is the worst thing a patient can do. He gave me a brief lecture, explaining that you should never ask a doctor about anything the doctor isn’t prepared or qualified to talk about. He seemed quite upset and left the room. I called after him “Should I follow you?”, he made a noise and I did.

While waiting for the MRI to be scheduled, I asked him if I could speak to him about something else. He said “No”. I then said I wanted to discuss the TV issue. I said that if a patient wants the TV off, it would be a good thing for the staff to honor that request. In response, he severely criticized my failure to initially ask the staff to turn off the TV, instead of pushing the off button myself. “How would you like it if I came to your house and drove your car? Or came into your house and turned off your television? It’s not your television. It’s ours.” (Gosh, I thought the TV was for the entertainment of the patients.) I admitted I would have asked if there had been anyone else in the room, but still felt what I had done wasn’t so bad.

At this point, I told the doctor that he had the worst bedside manner of any doctor I’ve ever visited (and I’ve visited a lot). Talking fast, interrupting, constantly correcting my choice of words, saying he didn’t “give a sh@t” about something and generally looking and sounding pissed off. He said he was still willing to treat me. I said “I don’t think so” and left. (This area isn’t short of orthopedic surgeons.)

Now, I assume this guy was angry about the TV thing when he entered the examining room. Maybe he heard my exchange with his staff. Maybe one of them mentioned the difficult patient in the waiting room. But if he was already angry with me, it would have been much better (and more “professional”) if he’d said so up front. He might have even declined to treat me. I would have been surprised but would have left quietly. Instead, he behaved like a jerk (another word came to mind, but this aims to be a family-friendly blog). Or maybe he treats lots of patients that way and it had nothing to do with the television.

So here’s a good part of this story (ok, this saga). I thought it would be appropriate to share my strange experience with the rest of the world (meaning the part of the world that, for some mysterious reason, doesn’t read this blog). Since we now have the internet, I went to a couple of those doctor-rating sites, Healthgrades and Vitals. That last site allows you to enter comments. So I did.

My conclusion was that this doctor might be very good, except for his personality. The treatment plan (the MRI) he recommended made sense. But I wouldn’t recommend him and would never see him again. 

After entering my comment, it occurred to me that maybe I was being a little unfair to the guy. Maybe he was having a bad day. So I looked at the other comments. These are some of my favorites:

Only drawback – he is very hard to talk to or get understandable information from. He gets very impatient with explanations.

He has a big ego. He does not like being questioned…. Instead of giving you understandable answers and showing that he cares, he gets impatient and annoyed very easily.

AVOID [Dr. X] AT ALL COSTS. There is not enough room for his ego and the patient in the exam room.

My experience with [this doctor] was disastrous.

... a horrible and unprofessional surgeon… As [the vomiting] got progressively worse I decided to page [Dr. X]… His words went something like this (and keep in mind I could barely talk because I was vomiting so often) He basically told me that I was interrupting his dinner and that it was not right that I was doing so….I actually started crying so my amazing sister took the phone … This is but one of my horrible experiences with [Dr. X]. Please Please Please Please, I beg you not to see this Doctor!!! 

One of the worst experiences of my life… I told him about the problems I was having after the surgery. He went off the handle and acted very unprofessionally by yelling at me. His behavior made me cry and I never went back to him.

I echo all of the negative comments already posted here: he is impatient, belligerent, insulting, difficult to comprehend, excessively … antagonistic when you explore his incomprehensible answers, actually told me one of my questions was “Bullsh-t”, and that I was wasting his time by asking questions…I would not feel comfortable going under the knife of such a disordered personality. I think he’s sociopathic.

Of course, there are glowing reviews as well. But the lowest grade he gets is for (surprise!) “bedside manner”. All I can say is that if you’re ever in the market for an orthopedic surgeon in or around Springfield, New Jersey, be careful. It’s a jungle out there!

PS — Other people object to all these televisions. From a doctor:

Welcome to the world of the “captive audience… Take them out. Take them all out. That includes the four flat screens on different channels at the local restaurant. I can’t find a single study that shows any legitimate health benefit to support their presence in a doctor’s office, but I can think of 100 reasons to take them out.

From an educational site for doctors:

An informal survey conducted in a variety of waiting rooms found that the presence of television adds to stress, especially when people believe they are unable to control the volume or programming…. If your waiting room includes a television, consider offering patients options. Rather than exposing them to specific programs at a certain volume, for instance, offer television with closed captioning or hygienic headphones on loan from the waiting room desk.

And keep them out of the damn elevators too!

Cutting the Cord (the Saga Ends)

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Four weeks ago, we began the convoluted process of breaking away from Comcast, the cable TV giant that is one of America’s least admired companies. We had a package deal for television, internet and phone service with Comcast that wasn’t worth the monthly fee, especially since we weren’t watching much live television. With the arrival of Verizon’s fiber optic internet service in our neighborhood, it was a good time to consider alternatives.

First, I called Comcast to see if there was a way to lower our monthly bill. They told me that was impossible. Even if we completely eliminated our cable TV service, we wouldn’t save money (the combined price of Comcast’s internet and phone service bought separately would be almost as much as what we were paying for internet, phone and television as a bundle). 

Like Comcast, Verizon offers its best deals to new customers. Unfortunately, most of these deals weren’t as good as they first appeared. For example, to get TV through Verizon, you pay an additional fee for every television you hook up. That makes sense, except that Verizon assesses this additional fee even if you’ve only got one television! I believe this is known as “chutzpah”. (“Since you don’t actually have a television, you can get Verizon cable TV for the advertised price!”)

It turned out that even with an introductory offer, we’d pay Verizon almost as much as Comcast if we got Verizon’s phone and television services in addition to the internet. So our best option was to buy as little as possible from Verizon. That meant getting their internet service and nothing else. The good news was that Verizon offered a faster internet connection than Comcast for the same amount of money (and installation was free).

Not wanting to give up our current home phone number, we then signed up with Ooma, an internet phone company. Ooma doesn’t charge a monthly fee. You buy one of their boxes up front. You also pay a fee if you want to keep your old number. After that, you pay Ooma a few dollars each month (in our case, $4) to cover federal and state taxes. 

Finally, there was the television problem. Many people don’t realize you can still get a lot of channels free with an antenna connected to your TV, kind of like the old days. It’s called OTA (“Over The Air”) television now. The bad news is that the broadcast signals aren’t as strong as they used to be. I looked at a Federal Communications Commission website to see which channels are available where we live. There weren’t very many. even though we’re only 20 miles from a big city. A quick experiment with a borrowed antenna confirmed that we would need an expensive antenna up on the roof to get more than one or two channels. 

That led us to Roku, an internet streaming service. Like Ooma, our new phone company, you buy one of their boxes up front. If you stick with the free channels, there is no monthly fee. And the free channels could be sufficient, since Roku has more than 2,000 of them. The bad news is that maybe 1% of Roku’s free channels are worth watching. For example, about 1/3 of them are devoted to religious programming, and looking at their many “special interest” channels didn’t reveal anything interesting.

The Roku website isn’t very clear about it, but what you get free is easy access to loads and loads of videos that can be played whenever you want. Very few channels have live feeds. For instance, you can watch videos from PBS and the Smithsonian Channel. You can also watch video segments from the network news shows.

For live news, you have the BBC and Sky News (also British) and a strange collection of American stations (in case you want to watch the local news from Sacramento or Little Rock). If you want to watch much live television or so-called “premium” cable channels, Roku says “the service may require additional fees”. However, so far as I could see, the “may” in that sentence always means “does”. If you already subscribe to something like Netflix or Showtime, you can access those channels through the Roku device.

In conclusion, we’re happy so far. We may eventually spend a bit more to add some live television (some sports, in particular), but for now our total monthly payment is $90 less than before. Taking into account the Ooma and Roku boxes we bought, the Ooma phone number transfer fee, and some new internet security software (Verizon doesn’t include security software in its standard package like Comcast does), and then spreading those costs over two years, we’ll still be saving $75 every month.

One other note: I didn’t have to tell Comcast that we’re moving to Iceland in order to easily disconnect our account. Fortunately, once I told them we’d already switched to Verizon, there wasn’t much to talk about.

Young Thoreau on Thinking and Writing

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In his journal, Thoreau (age 23) explains why thoughts don’t usually come to us in smooth succession:

…the flow of thought is more like a tidal wave than a prone river, and is the effect of a celestial influence, or sort of ground swell, … each wave rising higher than the former and partially subsiding back on it. But the river flows, because it runs downhill, and descends faster, as it flows more rapidly. The one obeys the earthly attraction, the other the heavenly attraction, The one runs smoothly because it gravitates toward the earth alone, the other irregularly because it gravitates towards the heavens as well [January 22, 1841].

Furthermore, if there are any valuable thoughts expressed in a journal (or in a blog?), they’re most likely hidden amid the clutter, only to be found later: 

Of all strange and unaccountable things this journalizing is the strangest. It will allow nothing to be predicated of it; its good is not good, nor its bad bad. If I make a huge effort to expose my innermost and richest wares to light, my counter seems cluttered with the meanest homemade stuffs; but after months or years I may discover the wealth of India, and whatever rarity is brought overland from Cathay, in that confused heap, and what perhaps seemed a festoon of dried apple or pumpkin will prove a string of Brazilian diamonds, or pearls from Coromandel [January 29, 1841].

Thoreau’s Journal and Modern Equivalents (with Apologies to the French)

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Henry Thoreau wrote a lot more than Walden and Civil Disobedience. Among other things, he wrote two million or so words in his journal. Here’s the first entry, dated October 20, 1837, when Thoreau was 20 (the “he” is probably Thoreau’s friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson):

“What are you doing now?” he asked, “Do you keep a journal?” — So I make my first entry to-day. 

A week later, Thoreau described two interlopers at Goose Pond:

Two ducks, of the summer or wood species, which were merrily dabbling in their favorite basin, struck up a retreat on my approach, and seemed disposed to take French leave, paddling off with swan-like majesty . They are first-rate swimmers, beating me at a round pace, and – what was to me a new trait in the duck character – dove every minute or two and swam several feet under water, in order to escape our attention. Just before immersion they seemed to give each other a significant nod, and then, as if by a common understanding, ‘t was heels up and head down in the shaking of a duck’s wing. When they reappeared, it was amusing to observe with what a self-satisfied, darn-it-how-benicks-’em air they paddled off to repeat the experiment.

According to the usual sources, a “French leave” is an old expression that means leaving or taking your leave without permission or without an announcement. You just go, like two ducks quietly paddling away from a naturalist or a birthday part; or  like a soldier going A.W.O.L. or even deserting. In some contexts, a “French leave” is a pretty bad thing, which is why the French call it “filer Ă  l’anglaise or “to leave English style”. (By the way, I couldn’t discover what “darn-it-how-benicks-’em” means, or I’d have shared that too.) 

When I picked up my unread copy of The Journal 1837-1861 this afternoon and read those two entries above, I was impressed. Thoreau was a damn good writer, even at the age of 20. Then I asked myself a standard question. Would Thoreau have written a blog instead of a journal if he’d had the opportunity? People do write journals today. Some even write millions of words, despite the modern world’s distractions. But why write a journal instead of a blog? (And why in the world write a blog?)

It seems like the basic difference between journals and blogs is that journals are private and blogs aren’t. In theory, you can write whatever you want in your journal and nobody will be the wiser, at least until you make it public or your grieving family resurrects it. But on a blog, there are restrictions. Usually, anyone with the necessary technology can read your latest post, so you watch what you say. You want to be interesting, but not too interesting.

On the other hand, you can give yourself much more freedom on a blog by writing anonymously or using pseudonyms. But if journals can be made public and blogs can be made private, perhaps ease of access isn’t the fundamental difference between journals and blogs. Maybe the key difference is the intended audience. In writing a journal, you are writing to and for yourself. Someone else might eventually read your journal, but journals are self-directed. Blogs, on the other hand, are other-directed. It’s assumed there is an audience of actual human beings out there. Hence, you write a blog with an audience (you guys) in mind, even though by doing so, you are writing for yourself as well.

On this blog’s “About” page, I used to say that writing is a way to find out what you think. In the case of a blog, however, it’s a way to find out what you think and then share it. Your words could even save the world one day. (Hey, it’s not completely impossible!) As for Thoreau, I think he would have been a blogger, because, despite his time alone in the woods, he wanted us all to live better lives.

But let’s get back to those ducks. You’ve probably noticed that many blogs display a certain statistic. Here on this blog, as of this moment, you the reader are invited to join 313 other followers. The idea behind that statistic, of course, is that a large number of followers demonstrates that a blog is worth following (50 million Frenchmen can’t be wrong). What you probably haven’t noticed, however, is that the number of followers (on WordPress blogs anyway) never goes down! At least, this blog’s number has never gone down (jeez, I must be almost as good as Thoreau).

Now, assuming it’s just possible that somebody who decided to follow this blog once upon a time may have lost interest, or that someone who followed this blog only did so in order to tell me about their blog, I should see my number of followers fluctuate. Somebody stops following – the number goes down. Somebody starts following – the number goes up. I’m forced to conclude, therefore, that “join 313 other followers” should really say “join 313 other people who followed this blog for whatever reason and may or may not be following it now, with the emphasis on ‘not'”.

I know that at least five people, well, maybe four people, read this blog regularly, because they tell me so (I prefer to believe them). And there are statistics indicating that other followers visit now and then. But when you think about it, a blog that is only read by its author is basically a journal. A blog with no readers is about as self-directed as one of those fancy notebooks that come with a lock and key.

Despite the impressive statistic, therefore, many “followers” have, yes, taken French leave! They’ve quietly departed, even more quietly than (here they are) those ducks on Goose Pond.