Clearly it's been awhile since my last post, so I wanted to post an update on my latest activities. I am currently enrolled in a Masters of Law program (health law) that ends in May, and I am still working at my current job 20-25 hours a week. So it has been a very busy and exciting month for me.
I hope over the next 8 months to post some of my thoughts on the state of healthcare in this country. In many ways, we have one of the most ridiculous, inefficient, and unfair systems of healthcare in the entire civilized world and I will illustrate that with statistics and examples that may shock and amaze you.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Zoo Rabbi and independent thought
I've been wasting way too much time reading the Zoo rabbi's website and why numerous Orthodox Jewish leaders banned his book which attempt to reconcile science and religion. This ban (AKA the Slifkin affair) is almost 3 years old now, which is why I am just reading about it now.
It does give me a lot to think about, mainly about the pros and cons of independent thought. The argument espoused by many traditionalists is that one should feel free to question and argue within hashkafa but one still must accept certain principles as beyond question. Yet what principles must be accepted as such seems to be under constant debate. Belief in G-d? Belief that the Torah was given by G-d? Belief that the Torah's description of creation is literal, and how literal? Belief that Chazal (the Rabbis of antiquity) are infallible in all matters, even matters of science where they were presumably limited by the accepted thinking of their time? Belief that Rabbis who insist that you must believe in the truth of the matters asserted by Chazal, even if they directly contradict the evidence we have today, are more right than the "minority" opinion that Chazal may have been wrong?
Rabbi Feldman writes a well-written article explaining and supporting the ban on Rabbi Slifkin's books and ideology. But his approach is rooted in a mindset of never questioning the wisdom of the ages, which itself is rooted in never questioning the wisdom of the ages. Logically, we end up with an inverted pyramid of thought, as each new idea has to be made consistent with every old one ever accepted by the old wisdom. His article is also criticized by "halachic" laymen here, here and by Rabbi Slifkin here.
It would have been refreshing to hear well-respected Torah scholars who had refused to support the ban speak out against it. But that would violate the "never question the great rabbis" rule that has implicitly driven the whole controversy.
It does give me a lot to think about, mainly about the pros and cons of independent thought. The argument espoused by many traditionalists is that one should feel free to question and argue within hashkafa but one still must accept certain principles as beyond question. Yet what principles must be accepted as such seems to be under constant debate. Belief in G-d? Belief that the Torah was given by G-d? Belief that the Torah's description of creation is literal, and how literal? Belief that Chazal (the Rabbis of antiquity) are infallible in all matters, even matters of science where they were presumably limited by the accepted thinking of their time? Belief that Rabbis who insist that you must believe in the truth of the matters asserted by Chazal, even if they directly contradict the evidence we have today, are more right than the "minority" opinion that Chazal may have been wrong?
Rabbi Feldman writes a well-written article explaining and supporting the ban on Rabbi Slifkin's books and ideology. But his approach is rooted in a mindset of never questioning the wisdom of the ages, which itself is rooted in never questioning the wisdom of the ages. Logically, we end up with an inverted pyramid of thought, as each new idea has to be made consistent with every old one ever accepted by the old wisdom. His article is also criticized by "halachic" laymen here, here and by Rabbi Slifkin here.
It would have been refreshing to hear well-respected Torah scholars who had refused to support the ban speak out against it. But that would violate the "never question the great rabbis" rule that has implicitly driven the whole controversy.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Family Tree
Last weekend I was talking to a cousin of mine about how I would really like to see a wiki-type family tree website where you can invite contributors to add and edit your tree, put as much information as you like about each person, and maybe, eventually connect the entire world.
A not-too-simple google search later, and I find www.geni.com
This is a sleek, neater, and practical(ler) execution of my basic idea. Cribbing heavily from Linkedin this site allows users to easily (and addictively) add everyone in their family and their family's family to an extremely easy to navigate family tree. I've only played with it for a half hour and it does seem to be defaulted to traditional family mode (i.e. all siblings are assumed to be from same parents, and all parents are assumed to be married or formerly married) but I'm sure they'll improve on that over time. Anyway, I highly recommend trying the site out.
The bad news? I won't be able to sell my idea to Google for 10 billion dollars.
A not-too-simple google search later, and I find www.geni.com
This is a sleek, neater, and practical(ler) execution of my basic idea. Cribbing heavily from Linkedin this site allows users to easily (and addictively) add everyone in their family and their family's family to an extremely easy to navigate family tree. I've only played with it for a half hour and it does seem to be defaulted to traditional family mode (i.e. all siblings are assumed to be from same parents, and all parents are assumed to be married or formerly married) but I'm sure they'll improve on that over time. Anyway, I highly recommend trying the site out.
The bad news? I won't be able to sell my idea to Google for 10 billion dollars.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Executive Privilege
I'm an ignorant bumpkin (today). So the White House signed off on some wrongful terminations of federal prosecutors around the country. Sucks to be in the wrong party. What's the fuss?
Wait, is the Justice Department supposed to be independent? Party-blind? Since when? Like most other agencies its leaders are appointed by the president. Sure in an ideal world the president would pick people solely on merit, but in the real world these jobs have always involved a certain measure of politics. I know some say we have a president who indulges too much in cronyism, but we gave him the reins and we can question his appointments from here to next week but that's not really criminal.
What about the fact that some of those US prosecutors were barking up trees of alleged republican corruption, and that their dismissals were a way of impeding those pursuits? Now we're talking obstruction of justice. Now we're talking criminal investigation. Well not yet. Apparently, Congress is in oversight mode and is simply gathering information to see if there might be criminal charges brought at some point. That's pretty remote from the level of criminal investigation that pierced executive privilege in U.S. v. Nixon (as in Richard) back in 1974.
Bush has asserted executive privilege and has ordered his former attorney (Harriet Miers) and former political director (Sara Taylor) not to testify about the dismissal. Both have been subpoenaed by Congress. Brave or stupid Taylor tries to please all the people by appearing for the subpoena and then refusing to answer any real questions. Miers is purportedly going to skip her session.
Should Bush be able to get away with shutting down Congressional investigations on a whim? Well I guess it's a question of law which is deliberately sketchy when it comes to executive privilege. Neither side wants to go to court but they might have to. Two incredibly potent and ambiguous powers are on the table - executive privilege vs. congressional oversight. And the decider? Well it's that third ambiguous power that nobody even talks about - judicial reluctance.
Wait, is the Justice Department supposed to be independent? Party-blind? Since when? Like most other agencies its leaders are appointed by the president. Sure in an ideal world the president would pick people solely on merit, but in the real world these jobs have always involved a certain measure of politics. I know some say we have a president who indulges too much in cronyism, but we gave him the reins and we can question his appointments from here to next week but that's not really criminal.
What about the fact that some of those US prosecutors were barking up trees of alleged republican corruption, and that their dismissals were a way of impeding those pursuits? Now we're talking obstruction of justice. Now we're talking criminal investigation. Well not yet. Apparently, Congress is in oversight mode and is simply gathering information to see if there might be criminal charges brought at some point. That's pretty remote from the level of criminal investigation that pierced executive privilege in U.S. v. Nixon (as in Richard) back in 1974.
Bush has asserted executive privilege and has ordered his former attorney (Harriet Miers) and former political director (Sara Taylor) not to testify about the dismissal. Both have been subpoenaed by Congress. Brave or stupid Taylor tries to please all the people by appearing for the subpoena and then refusing to answer any real questions. Miers is purportedly going to skip her session.
Should Bush be able to get away with shutting down Congressional investigations on a whim? Well I guess it's a question of law which is deliberately sketchy when it comes to executive privilege. Neither side wants to go to court but they might have to. Two incredibly potent and ambiguous powers are on the table - executive privilege vs. congressional oversight. And the decider? Well it's that third ambiguous power that nobody even talks about - judicial reluctance.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Politics
I am often asked whether I am a democrat or republican. I am both and neither. It's not that I can't tell the difference between the two, or that I like straddling the fence. It's that I'm not very good at yeah-saying and every time I think I'm starting to align with a party, they do something so egregiously extreme or objectionable that I find myself running the other way.
Who says we need to be one or the other anyway? Granted as an independent, in most states, you become useless during primary season unable to vote for any candidate until the general election. But is this a bad thing? I suppose if the masses were independents it would make consensing on candidates very difficult. But for the minority, I see some benefit. If your candidate has a shot at the title, he* should be able to convince his chosen party that he's electable whether or not you get to vote for him in the primary or not. So being independent is a way of saying, there's a chunk of us in this country who aren't inclined to join your party but also aren't members of the party that's diametrically opposed to your politics either. Your party has vetted you, now impress us.
Now that I think about it, it would be better if more of us were independents, and we left the vetting to minorities. Or maybe we should do the vetting and not leave it to the masses (who tend to be woefully ignorant). I don't mean this to denigrate any particular socio-economic class, group or demographic. But I stand by that statement, the masses are ignorant. So we (the relatively less-ignorant ones) should vet the would-be-kings before they are presented to the popularity contest that is the general election.
If I had to sum up my politics, I'm a realist. Sometimes this means I like conservative ideas, sometimes liberal ones, sometimes neither. It would take too long to give every one of my (current) political stances but I will take a few minutes to comment on something almost everyone has some opinion about: the war.
I think war sucks. It's unpleasant, tragic, regrettable, and leads to the untimely deaths of our own brave young men and women along with those of innocents in wherever the war-torn territory happens to be. Nobody but the "bad guys" deserve to die, and collateral damage should be avoided if feasible (but not at all costs). Yet sometimes war is necessary and a strong leader must be willing to go to war in those situations.
Our war is not like that. The current war was begun under ignominious circumstances, and continues to be handled very poorly. I was uncomfortable with the evidence presented to go into war, the vague claims of WMD, and the general feeling of the righteousness of kicking arab butt in the region because of 9/11. I particularly hated having my intelligence insulted with the insinuation that we were fighting in Iraq to retaliate for 9/11. Now we're in, and I would like us to leave the region better than we found it, you know with some dignity, but even that seems more and more remote.
The war is also a huge drain on our economic resources and will continue to be for years to come, and rather than bolster our effectiveness at fighting terrorist and/or nuclear regimes by showing "them" not to push us or we will get medieval on their a$$es, it has had the opposite effect - weakening our defensive and offensive capabilities in every other region of the world. It is now common knowledge that we are short on personnel, in debt up to our eyeballs, and seriously out of confidence in our ability to fight this "new" kind of enemy quickly, and effectively - like we did in the first gulf war. In other words, we prematurely blew our wad.
Does my lack of support for the decision under which we went to war and its subsequent mismanagement make me a dovish peace-mongerer? If you think that, you're as guilty of group-think as the rest of the ignorant masses. Contrary to the hippie bumper-slogans, war can be the answer and sometimes you cannot afford to give peace a chance or you'll end up dead. But let's go to war when necessary and only for the right reasons.
Well, that's a sample of my politics in a very large and rambling nutshell. As always, I reserve the right to change everything, including this sentence, on a whim.
*The gender preferences here are used solely for convenience and not because I am opposed to the concept of a female president.
Who says we need to be one or the other anyway? Granted as an independent, in most states, you become useless during primary season unable to vote for any candidate until the general election. But is this a bad thing? I suppose if the masses were independents it would make consensing on candidates very difficult. But for the minority, I see some benefit. If your candidate has a shot at the title, he* should be able to convince his chosen party that he's electable whether or not you get to vote for him in the primary or not. So being independent is a way of saying, there's a chunk of us in this country who aren't inclined to join your party but also aren't members of the party that's diametrically opposed to your politics either. Your party has vetted you, now impress us.
Now that I think about it, it would be better if more of us were independents, and we left the vetting to minorities. Or maybe we should do the vetting and not leave it to the masses (who tend to be woefully ignorant). I don't mean this to denigrate any particular socio-economic class, group or demographic. But I stand by that statement, the masses are ignorant. So we (the relatively less-ignorant ones) should vet the would-be-kings before they are presented to the popularity contest that is the general election.
If I had to sum up my politics, I'm a realist. Sometimes this means I like conservative ideas, sometimes liberal ones, sometimes neither. It would take too long to give every one of my (current) political stances but I will take a few minutes to comment on something almost everyone has some opinion about: the war.
I think war sucks. It's unpleasant, tragic, regrettable, and leads to the untimely deaths of our own brave young men and women along with those of innocents in wherever the war-torn territory happens to be. Nobody but the "bad guys" deserve to die, and collateral damage should be avoided if feasible (but not at all costs). Yet sometimes war is necessary and a strong leader must be willing to go to war in those situations.
Our war is not like that. The current war was begun under ignominious circumstances, and continues to be handled very poorly. I was uncomfortable with the evidence presented to go into war, the vague claims of WMD, and the general feeling of the righteousness of kicking arab butt in the region because of 9/11. I particularly hated having my intelligence insulted with the insinuation that we were fighting in Iraq to retaliate for 9/11. Now we're in, and I would like us to leave the region better than we found it, you know with some dignity, but even that seems more and more remote.
The war is also a huge drain on our economic resources and will continue to be for years to come, and rather than bolster our effectiveness at fighting terrorist and/or nuclear regimes by showing "them" not to push us or we will get medieval on their a$$es, it has had the opposite effect - weakening our defensive and offensive capabilities in every other region of the world. It is now common knowledge that we are short on personnel, in debt up to our eyeballs, and seriously out of confidence in our ability to fight this "new" kind of enemy quickly, and effectively - like we did in the first gulf war. In other words, we prematurely blew our wad.
Does my lack of support for the decision under which we went to war and its subsequent mismanagement make me a dovish peace-mongerer? If you think that, you're as guilty of group-think as the rest of the ignorant masses. Contrary to the hippie bumper-slogans, war can be the answer and sometimes you cannot afford to give peace a chance or you'll end up dead. But let's go to war when necessary and only for the right reasons.
Well, that's a sample of my politics in a very large and rambling nutshell. As always, I reserve the right to change everything, including this sentence, on a whim.
*The gender preferences here are used solely for convenience and not because I am opposed to the concept of a female president.
Caveat Lector
For a very long time I've thought about writing a blog because I love sharing my opinions with people. On the other hand, I'm a person of flexible convictions, and am willing to change my opinions when new and persuasive evidence is introduced. So what I write as my opinion today may not be the same tomorrow. Is this a bad thing?
The talmud uses the term L'Shitoso (according to his opinion) when attempting to discern whether a statement made by a talmudic rabbi is consistent with prior statements he has made. This tests the authenticity of the subsequent statement and the accuracy of the understanding of the prior statements. Yet talmudic rabbis changed their opinions all the time when presented with challenges and proofs. Apparently, when the talmudic rabbi is no longer around, he leaves a legacy of consistent opinions which can then be used as a litmus test on purported statements, but during his life he constantly evaluates evidence to discern what his own true opinion is. (In this two cent analysis, the talmudic rabbi treats what he learned from his teachers, i.e. his mesorah, as evidence to be given great deference but not absolute closed-eyed obedience.)
I guess I like to approach things the same way. There's no absolute truth or absolute right in this world, it's all shades of grey. Yes I know this statement is then a paradox because the absence of an absolute is an absolute in itself. I also believe that the existence of G-d is an absolute, unprovable, truth, which also tends to be an undisprovable truth, however I am happy to discuss this point as I take nothing for granted. With the possible exception of the existence of G-d.
The title of this blog is a play on the Hebrew phrase "Chanoch L'Naar Al Pi Darko" which means educate the child according to his ways. My way may be an education or a miseducation, depending on the day and your (the reader's) perspective. I plan to do a lot of blathering on about stuff on my mind, and (in typical lawyer fashion), I disclaim any of these opinions as subject to change without notice. Caveat Lector - Reader Beware.
The talmud uses the term L'Shitoso (according to his opinion) when attempting to discern whether a statement made by a talmudic rabbi is consistent with prior statements he has made. This tests the authenticity of the subsequent statement and the accuracy of the understanding of the prior statements. Yet talmudic rabbis changed their opinions all the time when presented with challenges and proofs. Apparently, when the talmudic rabbi is no longer around, he leaves a legacy of consistent opinions which can then be used as a litmus test on purported statements, but during his life he constantly evaluates evidence to discern what his own true opinion is. (In this two cent analysis, the talmudic rabbi treats what he learned from his teachers, i.e. his mesorah, as evidence to be given great deference but not absolute closed-eyed obedience.)
I guess I like to approach things the same way. There's no absolute truth or absolute right in this world, it's all shades of grey. Yes I know this statement is then a paradox because the absence of an absolute is an absolute in itself. I also believe that the existence of G-d is an absolute, unprovable, truth, which also tends to be an undisprovable truth, however I am happy to discuss this point as I take nothing for granted. With the possible exception of the existence of G-d.
The title of this blog is a play on the Hebrew phrase "Chanoch L'Naar Al Pi Darko" which means educate the child according to his ways. My way may be an education or a miseducation, depending on the day and your (the reader's) perspective. I plan to do a lot of blathering on about stuff on my mind, and (in typical lawyer fashion), I disclaim any of these opinions as subject to change without notice. Caveat Lector - Reader Beware.
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