Neanderpundit

Mr Porretto has an excellent post here, on health care.

It so ha-pens, that last friday I had a heated debate over burritos with my own physician, about the relative merita of government provided healthcare. He was of the opinion that the only way to “fix” the healthcare system was to put the government in charge.

!!!!!

Anyway, that, and some other conversations I’ve had lately, have led me to this post.

I grew up connected pretty well to the outdoors. I like gardening, and i like camping, and i like doing things that can be done outside. Hunting, most specifically. I enjoy being outdoors more than just about anything. We had friends who hated the outdoors, and everyone in my family thought of them as… well, the word we used was “tetched”. A little odd. Not right. Somehow wired improperly.

It took until adulthood to understand that this was a preference, and a preference alone. What one person likes and what another person likes neither enhance one nor diminish the other.

My doctor- as I explained to him the folly of his ideas- saids “Why can’t you accept that other people might have a different opinion than yours?”

“because” I said “Liking the outdoors or big cities are issues of opinion. How healthcare- for instance- works, or does not work, is a matter of fact, and can be quantified, and anyone who dismisses facts in favor of belief, deludes themself and damages others”.

“I refuse to believe that the things you say are true”.

Ten minutes later, I had emailed him links confirming the veracity of the claims I made. he has never opened the links. They threaten his worldview. Thank god he’s a decent doctor.

I like being the Big Guy. I have always been big, and part of the time I have been fat, too, but I’m back to being just big.

I like that people equate my arrival with tectonic activity. I like that my stride is measurable on nearby geiger counters. I like that I have long arms and a tall and big reach (not as tall or as long as some, but adequate for me) I like that I’m big, and strong, and don’t have to prove anything to anyone.

Two things:

A long time ago, a friend got me into the habit of hitting things. Building columns, floors, anvils. he did it all his life- his knuckles were tough with callouses and the hide was thick and knobby over his fist. He said “if you spend your life hitting iron as hard as you can, a jaw feels like a pillow”. I fell out of that habit. I used to punch a brick as hard as I could stand, two, three hundred times a day. I fell out of the practice. I’ve started again.

I should start wearing a shirt that says “if it was me, you’d be dead” A cute picture of my dog for the first person that gets that reference.