Chronic Pain Lifestyle

Occam's Razor

     Poor writing skills are excessive ballast that threaten to sink the good ship, Blogsphere.  You read it everywhere; someplace's bad writing obscures otherwise interesting thoughts, in other places this woefully lack of skill demonstrates painfully hasty writing.  The worst examples remind readers of boorish conversationalists who speak from fear of silence. Gosh, I'm as guilty as everyone else.

     Instead, reflect on Occam's Razor: write only to improve the blank page; speak to improve upon the silence, otherwise just shut-up.

     Pain or no pain this applies: Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.  A thought is incomplete if a writer is unable to explain that thought in 3 sentences; writers must not write on topics that are incomplete thoughts.  Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.

    

A woman, Liz Strauss, writes a really interesting blog, Successful Blog(ers), http://www.successful-blog.com/301-what-is-an-sob/ examines many commonalities among good blogs.  Even if you're not a writer, you might look at her page, which explains what draws you to certain blogs or authors.  What do your favorites have in common?

    Tip-toeing away, Colin

Right the Injustice, Protect the Innocent

   I urge that you stop what you're doing and follow this URL, http://savecharlotte.com/ .  This site is censored in Great Britain.  Rarely are we charged with acing on so blatant a moral imperative such as this.

   I quote Lord Matt, "

Readme file for Protect the innocent :: Charlotte Wyatt

For reasons I don't even care about anymore the UK courts forced Google to remove the blog from the blogger servers.

Was it the embarrassment they hated or the faith and hope the parent have shown dispute the way it has slowly broken their lives to do so?

What ever the answer the fact remains there is no good reason to censer this blog.

This is a copy of googles cache of the site. Saving the cache seems to have had the added bonus of restoring most of the images.

I am asking ALL who care about blogger freedom to download and mirror the zip file of the blog and to publish the contents on other servers the world over. Let's do this as fast as possible to stop the courts forcing me at gun point to take it back down again.

I have done nothing to stop you navigating the file system so please honour this and do not hot link the images found here.

Click here to navigate the directory.

-Matt

    Bloggers, we have a responsibility to act.  For thoughtful coverage of this outrageous behavior, please read:  http://lordmatt.co.uk/  or http://lordmatt.co.uk/lordmatt/

     This is one of those terrible stories.  Doctors, no doubt cost-bound, it seems were able to convince a judge that Charlotte, would not live, and the judge soon after her birth upheld the hospital's contention that Charlotte should not be resuscitated, DNR.  The details of the story are horrifying; Google in it's wisdom removed all references in the blogsphere, shutting a site on Blogger that Lord Matt has provided a back door link to.

     Act according to your conscience, but act. God bless. Colin

Burger, Fries, and a Small Miracle, Please

     Although it's within my nature to be arrogant and mean, I'm not going to reveal the names of the two women who wrote one of those ridiculously expensive, gee I feel good now, books that one finds so often on the impulse buyer's shelf at Borders.  These gentle souls believe in something they call a "small" miracle.

      Is it even possible for a miracle to be small?  I'd always thought that embedded in the idea of a miracle is that the word doesn't admit of qualification.  "Miracle" is like "unique".  Both words have special definitions.  A miracle by its' nature, is big;  no, BIG.  In fact, what makes something a miracle is that it's an event, of which there's nothing bigger than.  It's UNIQUE, which means one of a kind.  It's contradictory for a thing to be almost unique; the "almost" means that the event isn't unique at all.  The word, "UNIQUE", doesn't allow for itself to be "a little unique".  People who use these words in the ways I've described, don't understand out native tongue.  Here's another example, "the pain I feel is so unique, that I can't even describe it!" (Get it?)  Jeepers, Einstein, that must mean it hurts so much that there isn't even a word for it!

     It's fun to play these games with words.  Try this one someday with an atheist:  The definition for "God" is "a being of which no greater being can be conceived".  So, if one says, "I don't believe in God."  All you have to say is, "what exactly is it that you don't believe in?"  A simple response might be, "I don't believe in the being of which no greater being can be conceived."  The winning retort: "I can conceive of 2 beings, one that isn't real, and the other one, the one that's greater because it's real.  This means that there is no such thing as the "Unreal God" because the real one is greater than the unreal one.  See, That's what the word "God" means.  See, simple.

     Back to our 2 genius authors, who probable believe in a small God for small miracles; they provide running commentary on God's will, too.  Here's one of my favorite of their missives:  "Sometimes when we feel most alone in the universe (just in case you felt alone on Saturn) God sends us a 'twin'"  WHAT???? 

      It should be a crime to publish this crap, and a capital crime to foist it on a suffering public.

     Try Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should remain silent."  God bless, Colin

Financial Advice Written by Morons

     I stayed away from this subject for a long time, but after a few hours shoveling some heavy shit (!) I think it's time to do a little debunking.  A long, successful career on Wall St. qualifies me to make several general observations on what passes for financial advice to the unaware blog reader. On Wall St. I advised people across the spectrum, from ordinary hard-working middle class people to hard working extremely rich people.  I found the sites I viewed among the most popular sites in the blogsphere.  Here are some very basic caveats:

• You get what you pay for.  Think for a minute about financial magazines and not blogs.  Let's say a magazine costs $5.00.  Hard and fast, the advice you receive from a magazine is worth $5.00.  Any schmuck with a fiver in his or her pocket can get the exact same advice as you, so how worthwhile is it?  For you and your unique (all investors are unique) financial condition this advice is valueless.  A magazine doesn't make money on the performance of your assets, it doesn't even make money on magazine sales. Magazines make money on advertisement sales.  To check this pearl of wisdom, pick any magazine and try to find any article that advises against your investing with one of it's advertisers.  Try it, but you won't find a one.

What about a blogsite, which is free? What is the value of it's advice.  That's right, nothing.  What's important to a blogger? Readership! This should send -up a warning flag.  To attract a reader, you need a good headline: be careful of headlines that make implied promises.  Bylines also attract readers. Think about this possibility, a single person has 2 blogs. One of this person's blogs says, "Hawk the house, and buy this!", while at the same time the same person in the other blog says, "Hawk the house, and short this (the exact same security).  It's inevitable that one of the blogs will be right.  I know this, we'd never know that one person was simultaneously pushing the exact opposite thing on two different sites.  Caveat emptor!  Once the blogger knows that the first site was right, he folds up the tent on blog number 2. and creates another one instead.  One of the blogs will always be right. A little manipulation of pen names and links, and it would be possible to fess-up to all winning blogs, and their near perfect track records.  Hard to believe that people fall for it?  Why do you think you see so many of them.  Once this track record is in place, people pay for subscriptions to password protected sites.  Then for the dishonest blogger it's PUMP, DUMP, and RUN.

• The "One day you'll be Rich, Too!"  Blogsite, often called "The How Do I Get Started Investing." Blog.  I read a few of these, and they seem well intended, not dishonest, in fact, exactly the opposite.  Nonetheless, these sites can also be accidentally dangerous.  Think again of the value of advice.  In my entire career, not once, did I ever find two unique investors for whom the same allocation or strategy was appropriate.  Is it possible that every patient of a doctor requires the same treatment.  Think of us for Pete's sake; how many of you have sued a surgeon for cutting first, and asking questions later.  That surgeon who treats all patients as if the were the same, instead of unique individuals,  each with a different set of symptoms, medical histories, preconditions, fears, ages; that surgeon is just like the blogger says take this percent and put it here, then that percent and put it there.  This advice fails to take into account the investors goals, risk tolerance, age, marital status, expenses, etc.  All investors are unique and require their own investment plans, Just like the patient I mentioned above.  This type of blog site is not a scam, but offers what it can't deliver: Financial solutions for you.

     This is always true: there's no free lunch, and there's no return without risk. Keep those 2 things in mind when planning the purchase of an island in the Caribbean.

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to...

  Leslie Gore, sports-fans. She sang that song, then went on to live a tough crummy, little life then met with a bad end.  She was in the news briefly, within the past decade.  Maybe you read something about her.  Well today, like Leslie Gore in her song, I've got my own boo-hoo list, but at 11:16 AM, EST I'm tired of feeling sorry for myself.

     Please God, will you have my Dr. return my call sooner rather than later?  I really mean it.  God, it's not like other bad days:

• my feet are burning, after cramping until 4:00 last night;
• my back is in spasm, and it hurts to sit, but I'm a brave little soul and managing just now;
• I can't deal with both problems right now;
• I'm wicked tired from lack of sleep;
• My prescription for Actiq hasn't yet arrived;

You know and I know that this list is really much longer, but I can't stand writing it.  I can live inside this list, like a turtle in a shell ( jeez it must stink in there). Yep, that's what I can do.  And yes it does stink inside this crummy little shell of self-pity.  You know how embarrassing it is to write this junk.

     Or I can post to my page (done)

     Mail a package for my wife (Done within the hour)

      Write an email or two (one of them will definitely make me feel good, because it's just the right thing to do--done within the hour)

      Leave myself off of my prayer list today, except to say thank you (Does it still count if I don't mean it?)

      Watch something by Samuel Fuller, maybe Shock Corridor; or Sam Peckinpaugh, Who Knows I might go wild and watch Preston Sturges movies, NO NO. Billy Wilder: I'll watch The Apartment loving fully certified nutball, Shirley MacLaine.( done a little later)

      Jeepers I could take a nap. 

      I can watch my eldest catch, she's the catcher, her softball game.  She's a junior, but is co-captain of her High School team. They play in a pretty competitive fast-pitch league.  The games are usually tight, barnburners (1-0, 4-2 you know) she's really smart, too.  750's on all of her SAT'S.  She doesn't want to attend my alma mater, but I think she could get in.  STAY AWAY: A FATHER BRAGGING ABOUT ONE OF HIS KIDS!!

Ah, another list. This too, could go on for ever.

I feel better already.

God Bless you all.  Thanks be to You!

A Quick summary of what I'm doing to get better

1. Accept that my life has changed, and that it's my responsibility to make the most of what I am.
2. I believe in God, and pray for help. I also thank God for a shot at a new and different life.
3. Build a team of medical supporters who know me, know what I want and take their advice.
4. Good days and bad days just happen.
5. Look at the big problem, break it into it's smaller component problems then solve for these smaller problems. The big problem then starts to fix itself.
6. Do something positive and different every day--even if it's tiny. Remember any plan attempted today is better than a great plan scheduled for tomorrow.
7. Stop feeling sorry for myself, and look at how my life has changed all of those lives around me.

I'm no saint, I do the best I can and I screw-up more often than I'm successful. All I can do is my best.

Tough day

Ouch! My feet are killing me. I'll try for tomorrow. Anyone with really good sites, please pass them along. Likewise for your own stories. I'd like to hear them so please don't be shy. Please know that I'll always respect your privacy, or if you're trying to get something off the ground, I'm happy to share my experience of a 25 year Wall St. career.