For Posterity

The following is a copy of a letter received by my girlfriend from Stephen W. Mahan, President and CEO, Southern Regional Health System –


September 1, 2010

[removed my girlfriend’s name and address]
[removed the salutation]

Earlier this year, Southern Regional Health System filed a Certificate of Need application with the Georgia Department of Community Health (DCH) for state approval to provide open heart surgery. On June 23, we announced our withdrawal of that application to evaluate feedback from DCH and make a determination about how best to proceed in the face of continued opposition to our efforts by Piedmont Healthcare.


After much consideration, we decided this is not the right time to resubmit our open heart surgery application. However, we are not abandoning our efforts to bring advanced cardiac care to the Southern Crescent. We will continue to monitor the situation as we still believe the Southern Crescent is in need of this critical, life-saving medical treatment.


Additionally, we recently obtained regulatory approval from DCH to provide angioplasty (PCI) services independent of the Cardiovascular Patient Outcomes Research Team study, better known as C-PORT. This approval will enable us to expand access to our high-quality PCI services. Thanks to our experience with the C-PORT trial, Southern Regional is already one of the most experienced PCI providers in the state, and we are very well-positioned to better address our community’s needs for local cardiac interventions.


I want to thank you for the support you showed Southern Regional Health System during the Certificate of Need process. We are committed to providing the highest quality care and needed services to our community, and considered it an honor that our community showed unwavering and overwhelming support in our efforts. In total, over 2,000 letters of support were submitted by patients, families, physicians, nurses, community leaders, and elected officials supporting the need for an open heart surgery program, and recognizing that Southern Regional is the best facility in the Southern Crescent to offer this service.


A significant number of other initiatives are taking place at the hospital right now, and I hope your support for these programs will continue. The Bariatric Center at Southern Regional, which opened in 2009, is set to graduate its’ first class of successful weight-loss patients. The Georgia Orthopedic Institute is helping patients get back to living with its’ advanced joint replacement and minimally-invasive surgical options. Our robotic surgery program also continues to expand, which allows patients to have minimally invasive surgery with quicker recovery times and enhanced outcomes.


Once again, thank you for your support of the Southern Regional Health System. If you have any questions about the open heart surgery Certificate of Need application or any other hospital matters, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.


Sincerely,


Stephen W. Mahan, FACHE
President and CEO
Southern Regional Health System

Things I Hope No One Ever Asks Again #1

What if everyone knew the day they were going to die as surely as they knew the day they were born?
Looking for loopholes? Let's pretend suicide won't work. No way out. The day is THE DAY. The end doesn't have to surprise us, but any attempt to cheat would fail.
Would we celebrate the anniversary of our impending deaths, the way some soldiers (such as I) looked forward to getting short, then getting out of the service?
If we knew when, but not how, would someone be able to sell rubber cages as insurance against a horrific end, where we could spend our last hours in the most comfort possible?
Would death become less fearsome, more like a retirement, or would the predictably drive us to madness?

Index Prohibitorum

Whereas, while The Missus finds Squozzer a broad and deep source of happiness, she also has discovered a certain quirk in his makeup – he likes to find ways to annoy her -- over and over again.


When faced with a choice of saying something annoying for the umpteenth time or letting the moment pass in silence, he always chooses to annoy.


As a guide to his behavior, The Missus presents to Squozzer a list of his flaws and hopes he can dig beyond the familiar and either say something positively engaging or just STFU!


Songs – Squozzer likes to serenade The Missus, but certain songs she forbids from this moment hence:


1. Surfin’ Bird – the prohibition extends to the Family Guy episode that started your fixation.
2. The Snickers jingle that goes, “Happy peanuts soar, over chocolate-covered mountaintops, and waterfalls of caramel…”
3. Songs sung in German are verboten (esp. Rammstein), and songs in other non-English languages she strongly discourages.
4. Anything sung by William Shatner or Wesley Willis


The Visual Arts – Squozzer loves to entertain The Missus by using a variety of means – movie rentals, TV watching, re-creating scenes from famous movies – but The Missus finds his artistic vision a bit too dark, and he tends to repeat himself. No more will The Missus allow the following:


1. Shows that display cruelty to animals or predator / prey scenes.
2. Shows with sad or bad endings.
3. Shows that have or need subtitles.
4. Re-creating skits from Robot Chicken.
5. Declaring random people on TV as The Missus’s lover.
6. Capturing and looping shows, songs, or other content known to annoy or upset The Missus.
7. Commercials pose a special problem for The Missus, because they synchronize a little too closely with Squozzer’s attention span. Squozzer will not repeat the following commercials:
     a. The Snickers “Happy Peanuts”
     b. Anything with William Shatner, including Priceline
     c. The medication (Exelon) that goes, “Everything changed…”


Conversation – Squozzer and The Missus have many great discussions about life, love, the future, blahblahblah – but Squozzer often perverts the intent of language using a variety of tactics.


1. Squozzer should consider more constructive topics – from now on, he can no longer bring up the following:
     a. The pros and cons of having sex with his co-workers.
     b. The following people in any context:
          i. The Missus’s boss Rick
          ii. Santos, a former co-worker of The Missus’s
          iii. The Pope (don’t ask)
          iv. What Catholic clergy might have done to certain people
          v. Michael Jackson
          vi. Barack Hussein Obama
          vii. Sharia Law
          viii. Keanu Reeves
          ix. The Missus’s former lovers, e.g. Donnie and Fran
          x. Michael, a deadbeat who knocked up The Missus's daughter
     c. Countries where men can legally mistreat women.
     d. Vaginas and chainsaws in the same or adjacent sentences.
     e. Possible deadly or destructive outcomes from ordinary activities.
     f. Depraved alternative plots when discussing The Missus’s latest reading.
2. Squozzer responds reflexively to many situations by chanting from a small liturgy of one-liners. The Missus finds these and others annoying and offensive.
     a. “Spread bitch”
     b. “How about that?” or one of many variations
     c. “That’s what she said”
     d. “Now we make baby”
     e. “She / I / You love me long time”
     f. “That was your first big mistake”
     g. “GIT!”
     h. “Feel free to lick my unwiped butt”
3. Impersonation -- The Missus wishes Squozzer would express his true self more instead of attempting to mold his personality after a TV or movie character. She presents the following as a memoriam damnatus:
     a. William Shatner
     b. Keanu Reeves
     c. Michael Jackson
     d. Sylvester Stallone, esp. as Rocky
     e. Arnold Schwarzeneggar
     f. Pinhead from Hellraiser
     g. Patrick from Sponge Bob
     h. 20s gangster
     i. Chinese kung-fu masters
4. Tactics of Persuasion -- Squozzer likes to use his powers of persuasion to influence The Missus’s behavior, which in itself does not threaten The Missus, but she will no longer tolerate the following tactics:
     a. Threatening to shave his beard
     b. Using hypotheticals to disclose actions taken or under consideration
     c. Threatening to withhold sex
     d. Demanding payment or begging for sex
     e. Using reductio ad absurdum, straw-man, or ad hominem
     f. Mocking or impersonating The Missus
5. Body Language, Non-verbal Cues, and Miscellaneous Acts – The Missus accepts most of Squozzer’s rudeness, and finds some of it charming in small doses. But the following may possibly trigger violent reactions:
     a. Snapping fingers
     b. Clapping hands as if Squozzer were summoning a servant
     c. Taking a tone of condescension
     d. The French Wave
     e. Using a megaphone or other voice amplifier
     f. Using bright lights such as powerful flashlights or light bars
     g. Turning on all of the bedroom lights at 7am.
     h. Pointing and grunting
     i. Sneaking up and scaring
     j. Tickling
     k. Fanning farts / Dutch Ovens
     l. Performing death rattles, aka “quirky jerky”
    m. Staring at The Missus’s feet, especially with a predatory expression


Animals – The Missus knows Squozzer loves the sweet animals that live in and around his house – but how he shows his love probably confuses the animals so from now on:


1. No teasing the animals by pretending to offer them food then snatching it away.
2. Do not chase the animals in a way that makes them think they’re being hunted.


Chinese Food – Given Squozzer’s imagination as to the source of the meat, from henceforth: SQUOZZER SHALL NOT SPEAK WHILE ANYONE EATS CHINESE FOOD WITHIN RANGE OF HIS VOICE.


The Highest Law – SQUOZZER SHALL REMOVE ALL CLOTHING AT THE MISSUS’S REQUEST, REGARDLESS OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES.

Sin Taxes Are Not About The Sin

My karmic liege Seth Godin has found a way under my skin again. He’s assumed the position that soda taxes have merit. To me, the soda tax (and sin taxes in general) encapsulates everything that is bad about government. Here’s the usual process –

1. Decide you need more money.
2. Find a problem ripe for exploitation.
3. Decide the source of the problem lies in consumption of a legal product.
4. Find a sympathetic spokesperson – usually a victim backed up by a scientist or doctor.
5. Crank up the propaganda.
6. Get the bill passed – usually by promising to fund a program to help those afflicted by the product being taxed -- for example, to fund an anti-smoking campaign aimed at teens. If that fails, exploit a budget crisis.
7. Kill the program with the next budget crisis, but keep the tax. After all, don’t our politicians deserve a raise? This is where the spokesperson in #4 gets bought off or made to look like a crazy in the media.
8. Repeat.

Do I sound cynical? One could interpret the following statement as cynical also --

The benefit of a tax is that it affects you and your competitors at the same time, so you all benefit from doing the right thing, as opposed to having to compete against someone who doesn't care as much as you do.

It runs a bit counter to the “price doesn’t matter as much as the story” logic that I’m used to hearing.

And no, I’m not a hater.

Fighting the Westboro Way

I finally caught up with the Westboro story, and I don’t know what the Supremes will say about it – but I’m not betting against the First Amendment. And I feel pretty guilty. I want to solve the problem -- people cruelly using a dead hero to leverage their message – without weakening the Constitution further.

Besides, we’re dealing with fundamentalists – by calling upon the coercive power of the state, we’ve given them their attention and justification.

Maybe Bill O’Reilly can influence things, but it might just encourage them. So let’s try on a few ideas –

1. Being Christians, one might use the Bible to counter their claims directly. Remember Sodom and Gamorrah (Genesis 18)? Abraham talked – no, make that haggled -- God into sparing the wicked cities if only ten righteous people could be found (from thence a stereotype was born.) Certainly God would give America a better deal, and if he didn’t, certainly Westboro could supply us with ten righteous people and America FTW! And of course, in reserve we ready some sayings from Jesus.
2. A crazier idea I had consists of dressing up as Odin, hiring some bikini-clad Valkyries, and playing Wagner as a counter-demo. The sign might read, “Odin loves his fallen warriors.” Or hiring an Elvis impersonator to sing gospel. Let’s call it “the nuclear option.”
3. Getting back to reality, n the pictures I see the demonstrators seem a rather small – maybe we could use a big tarp to block them from the view of the next group of mourners they decide to bother? Now we have a new group of challenges –

• Where will they strike next? Can we find out and assemble in time? Sure we can, they post their itinerary on their website.
• What can we do about any sounds? Will blocking their line of sight be enough?
• How will Westboro react to the idea?
• Should we decide to engage Westboro, how will the world interpret our actions? We shouldn’t ignore the possibility of being seen as opportunists.

Cubicle Craziness Episode 1

I sometimes think of crazy ideas as a coping mechanism for 8 hours in the Great Beige Monster.

One of which was inspired by my haphazard attempts to learn Hindi.

Hindi has a remarkable degree of organization – one of my study texts has the consonants in a 5x5 grid. English, of course, has 26 letters, including vowels, but the thought occurred to me that a 5x5 grid might make sense. Who knows, maybe ridding ourselves of a letter could reduce typesetting costs. So the question becomes, which letter gets the boot?

Generally, English consonants have one sound and vowels two. More importantly, most of the consonants have a distinct sound with little overlap, but a few that have multiple sounds also share them with another consonants. The following letters make the best candidates for ejection, or at least reclassification as a symbol.

C – This letter comes to mind first, if for no other reason that its’ position. Most of the time, it imitates a K or an S.

Pro – we can start spelling “cat” as “kat”, “typical” as “typikal”, “America” as “Amerika”, and so on.

Con – confusion will reign as “scent” becomes “sent” – even though we’re used to assigning multiple meanings (and sometimes pronunciations) to a single word. A tougher nut we will encounter in most “ch” words, such as “church” (I suggest “kurk”, close to the Dutch form), but words such as “itch” (“itsh”?). OTOH, making “Chronic” into “Kronik” might save this choice. Then again, changing “the ABCs” into the “ABDs” might cause widespread angst.

Q – This letter has wreaked havoc with the language for some time. Most of the time, it joins itself to the letter U (“queer”), and the construction “qu” could be easily replaced by “kw”

Pro – Imagine all the fun you’ll have writing “kween”, “kweer”, and “kwality”.

Con – For some reason, has a high symbolic value in various fields as diverse as physics and entertainment. And you’ll piss off all of those Scrabble freaks who know every “Q without U” word.

Y – This letter, a sort of vowel-consonant bastard child, a linguistic Dick Cheney, has an easy substitute for its’ vowel sound (long E – just ask any girl named Sherri, Traci, Vicki, ad infinitum), but the consonant sound we can only approximately replace.

Pro – It would legitimize all of the Sherris of the world.

Con – The closest I can come to “yankee” is “jankee”, and that does not sound so good. And we might have to replace “yes” altogether (“si”?)

X – One of my favorite letters, it has no unique sound – it always imitiates “ks” or “z”, but it carries massive symbolism.

Pro – “eks-wife”, “seks”, “ekskrement”, “foks”

Con – Used for other things besides words, it pulls the symbolic weight of a whole generation. Also applied to prohibition, wrong answers, powers of magnification, the Roman numeral for ten, and so on.

Final Call – demote X to a symbol. Hey, Pluto got demoted. And we can change “XYZ” to “WYZ” – watch your zipper.

Be Careful Who You Follow

Seth Godin sent me on a fool’s errand today – I wound up on a blog commenting on Bill Gates’ “energy miracles” speech at TED.

While the blog had a good bit of give-and-take, most of the comments either attacked the blogger or pimped their pet “energy miracle”, such as mass transit.

And I posted the following –

You know what I hate about mass transit?

Let’s see, for one it puts my economic and personal well-being into the hands of yet another government bureaucracy, and even the most generous description of a typical transit authority can’t avoid the term “cronyism”.

But more problematic for me is the notion that everything in my life will now have to fit someone else’s schedule. It seems the desired vision of the future has all the spontaneity of a Borg unimatrix, or worse, high school, where you have to raise your hand to go to the can.

I think we can do better, or at least not suck every last drop of freedom out of our lives.

So I went a little over the top on that…

What people find so sexy about mass transit is that it’s a point solution – just pop out the auto, pop in the bus or train. Everything else remains as it was.

No one but the person needing transportation has to change.

I find that kind of thinking a complete pile of horseshit.

If we’re serious about changing our trajectory, it’s not going to happen without everyone sharing the fun.

Let’s consider rephrasing the goal, “Get people out of their cars” to “Get people to stop traveling unnecessarily.”

How do we do that?

Mass transit targets the work commuter – not that it isn’t useful for pleasure travel, but as a climate change / oil dependency solution it assumes to displace commuting to work by auto.

We can contemplate two other solutions – 1) Move everyone close enough to their jobs so that walking / cycling / riding a scooter to work becomes possible; or 2) Replace physical travel with logical travel – work without commuting TO work.

Solution #1 requires a lot of new construction and/or a lot of house-swapping. Not to mention the thrill of being packed into massive “Habitrails For Humanity” with all the charm of a Soviet-era apartment. I’m sure Congress’s friends in the construction business stand ready to accept trillions of dollars to implement it.

Solution #2 requires a bit of thinking.

Now consider your job – do you REALLY have to commute to it?

If you operate a big machine, such as a locomotive or a 20-ton press, then you probably have to go to the job.

Or if your boss says so. But let’s pretend the boss doesn’t care.

So now do you have to?

By now, you have figured out that I’m a big fan of telecommuting. And yes, I work for a big telecom, but I doubt I would gain substantially from a mass adoption to telecommuting – big bonuses lie well beyond my pay grade.

So what’s stopping us from telecommuting?

In answering questions, I find it useful sometimes to borrow my dad’s logic – he’s a retired cop – and ask, “Cui bono?” – Who wins and who loses?

Losers – Automakers, commercial real estate, road construction companies, mass transit projects, traffic cops, control-freak bosses, people who use going to work as an escape from a bad home life.

Winners – People tired of traffic and beige-cloth walls, internet providers and phone companies, the Earth

Are the obstacles easier to see now?

Adventures In Deceptive Packaging

Here's something I discovered a while back while shopping for light bulbs.

Consider the picture below -- how many bulbs do you think the box contains?



If you said 4, which it sure looks like --



Here's a better view --



Considering the product was priced a dollar less than the true 4-packs surrounding it, I impulsively grabbed it, which is when I discovered someone was trying to rip me off.

But I bought them anyway just to talk about the experience.

It's a perfect example of how businesses sometimes try to trick us. Sure, it says 2 bulbs, but what purpose does the extra-long tab serve? So we can look at a picture of a tree trunk and read a bunch of claims?

War On Xmas (After the Fact)

True to my nature, I put off this post until after Xmas...



I’m not talking about the yearly Fox News propaganda segment, but my own personal war against some of the holiday season’s boring and trite aspects.

Actually, I like Christmas, as it’s mostly fun, even the repetitive parts. However, it lacks a certain element of playfulness, probably because of the pressure we put upon ourselves to find the perfect gift, throw the perfect party, or however we go about showing the world that we get it.

We kill ourselves using the holidays as another avenue of one-upmanship.

We take off our Halloween masks and put on our Xmas masks.

Instead, maybe we should try subverting Christmas, and in so doing, we’ll drop our Xmas masks.

Maybe we should tap into our Inner Grinch.

One might consider torching a Santa display or nativity scene, which would certainly provoke a reaction, but it seems rather grandiose and impersonal.

I prefer something with a personal touch. For example, what if you gave your neighbor, nephew, or family friend something really obnoxious, just for laughs?

Sure, electric guitars and drum sets have been around for decades, but cost too much for the mischief delivered. How about something smaller and cheaper -- for instance, a small battery-powered megaphone?

I found some Totes mini-megaphones at the local JCPenney and my Inner Grinch got a wonderful, awful idea – imagining how a 9-year-old would have such a delightful time at the expense of his or her parents.



So naturally, I picked up a couple.

Then I tested one on my girlfriend and other members of my household.

They responded unanimously – they hated it. Jackpot!

Excuse me while I pretend to insert my fist into an imaginary cavity.

I gave one as a gift this weekend. The results that followed matched my predictions exactly. By Xenu’s space ray, I love being right and gloating about it.

I also put one in the Toys For Tots box at my job. Not sure if it will get past the people who run the program, but Marines like to yell a lot, so I can’t see any philosophical objection they might raise against it.



I have two more Megaphones to give – one to a young man who’s a bit on the hyper side, and one to myself.

So make an appointment to Google the following on 12/26 – “Man has mini-megaphone surgically removed from his rectum.”