Musing of One Wondering Why Octavian Changed His Name After Becoming Head of the Roman Empire

We watched some Republican congressmen talking on TV about repealing the health care bill. In each case, it appeared their plan was to have various committee heads come up with pieces of the bill. Sounds like another committee designing a camel. It will probably result in another 2,500-page monstrosity, and although all the little monsters will be different it will still be a monstrosity. The only question is: will the camel have one hump or two?
As to our health plan we submitted to some congressmen (see posting of Oct. 20th, 2010), we have still had no acknowledgement from any congressman, not even so much as a "Ah, yes, boo, go to hell or what have you." It makes us think that the congressional NIH factor is bigger than the all outdoors.
So we are going to try a different approach to get somebody's attention. We recognise that our plan is radical, but the situation demands drastic measures. We'll see what happens.
On another note, we have seen on TV a gaggle of congressmen talking about the need to reduce expenditures and pontificating about the pain everybody will have to endure. Conspicuous by its absence was any reference to inflicting such pain on congressmen and others on the governmental payroll. So, what else is new?

Musing of One Wondering if Diogenes Ever Succeeded

Like everyone else we were horrified at the massacre in Tuscon a week ago. A day or so after ,one of the networks presented a program that seemed to us to be a disguised anti-gun message. This moved us to do some research on murder rates. We read summaries of gun laws in 7 states, along with data on murder rates, and did not find any correlation between the two. Some states with permissive laws had low murder rates; others had high murder rates. The same was true for those with restrictive gun laws.
Data such as these moved us to conclude that the problem is societal not modal (for example, recall the Tylenol incident during the Reagan presidency. In that case, a mentally incompetent individual poisoned numerous bottles of Tylenol on store shelves, leading to many deaths and the advent of tamper-proof closures). Some of the factors we considered were population density, ethnic and racial groupings and poverty rates. We have no data to draw any conculsions other than the one that the problem is modal, not societal.
We also wonder why there is such a large proportion of the population with mental disabilities.
One does recall that some years ago there was philosophy that stated "If it feels good, do it."