Brief – compelling, comforting in its own right;
Bringing the flutter of life, high upon majestic waves;
Bent trees, as if weighted atop, tells of its passing;
Life springs forth, welcoming its cool crisp attention;
Stark – the reminder of days when ne’er wind blew
Across deserving and undeserving alike;
When memories of those whose faces were touched
never knew of things to come.
Harsh – truth of being, hides contentment,
As closure beckons the weary traveller to rest
and feast upon the richness of blessings it delivers
in an infinite path to unknown destinations.
Calm – lying unseen, unheard, forever gone,
yet passed in thought, remembered for a lifetime,
comfort given, promises fulfilled, heartily thankful
as life begins anew offering its own rewards of wind

There is a growing movement that concludes that faster than light travel IS possible.

I personally think that the theory Einstein proposed was based on flawed physics. Particle accellerators indeed can accellerate atoms faster than light, regardless of the medium, from the perspective of the viewer (outside the accellerator) the atom travels from A to B faster than light can travel, the same distance.

The grandfather paradox is bunk as is the time travelling aspect of FTL travel. I believe time is linear and unidirectional and as such you can only move forward.

In 100 or 1000 years, I believe my assertions will be proven truthful, as physics, in its entirety is based upon theoretical processes. Theories are modified and adjusted in time. One of the funniest things I can think of regarding physics is the assertion from a world renouned physicist that an automobile could never achieve fuen economy better than 34mpg .. and he proved it using mathematical formulae. The only thing I can suggest is that either the formula was incorrect or the assumptions of energy were incorrect. I suspect the latter. If a physicist cannot correctly determine that a car can’t get better that 34mpg because of energy constraints, then how on earth can I believe then when they state that an arbitrary formula dictates that one cannot travel faster than light?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”  

“deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government” 

You read the title correctly. Insurance is probably the biggest lie perpetuated on the public since the flat-earth crowd. Consider in the US, where the masses have been using and abusing insurance for more than a hundred years. On its face insurance looks like and sounds like a perfect solution. The cost of health care for example, is very high. One would argue that by having health insurance, you reduce your expenses, particularly in a catestrophic event, and thus reduce your overall exposure to financial risk in the process. It seems so good, how on earth could it be bad? Well, consider that insurance companies are not independently wealthy, their wealth comes from the premiums paid to them by subscribers …  like you and I, and our respective employers if we are so lucky as to have them subsidize our premiums.

 
Insurance companies are in business to make money, and as such, the premiums that must be collected from the subscribers must always be higher than the monies paid to health care providers for your care, regardless of whether it is for a $40 prescription or a $150,000 heart transplant, plus associated future medical care. It isn’t difficult to imagine then, that given the cost of health care, we just can’t afford it.

 
So, what is the answer? Well, I didn’t say I had the answer, I only said that insurance as we know it is a big lie … if the associated health care costs are not affordable, then the insurance to cover that health care, by the sheer nature of the beast, cannot be affordable either. The prospect, while pretty on the face, is unsustainable. In 2007, the average cost spent per person in the US for health care was $7600. Therefore, to make things equitable for every man, woman and child to receive benefits, (i.e. be able to go to the doctor for whatever ailment they had), a family of 4 would have had to contribute $30,400 to the insurance pool in 2007. Since it is obvious that most people can ill afford to pay the premiums under these circumstances, it stands to reason that the health insurance companies’ betting that you will not need health care is a winning one. The question then is, if the insurance companies don’t think you will need health care, or at least they don’t think the masses will need it, why have we, as a society put so much emphasis on the dire need of health care? The answer once again is with the insurance companies. The top 25 insurance companies in the US spend $1.5 billion annually telling people how much they need their product. So their job is to convice you that you NEED their product, while betting that you don’t.

 
I don’t have health insurance. It is a calculated risk I take. If the insurance company believes I don’t need their product, then why should I believe them when they tell me I do? It doesn’t mean that I forego health care … far from it. Consider that my total health care premium for 2007 would have been $15,200.00 just for me, not including my family, based on a group rate from my employer. On average that is $1267 per month for health care. I would find it very difficult to expend that amount of money monthly on my health care alone. In fact, if I went to see the doctor weekly, I would spend on average $260 per month without health insurance. Most people visit the doctor much less than that, in fact, I have been to the doctor exactly 3 times in the last 2 years. Once for a full physical, required by an organization I was working with, once for a blood test, and once for the results of those tests. I could not begin to tell you how upset I would be had I spent $30,400.00 to an insurance company to provide $295 in services. If you think health care is expensive, try looking at the true cost of your insurance. I did, and I said “No thanks”. I’ll pay for my health care costs as I incur them, and I will keep the remaining $30,000 in a savings account in case I need catestrophic care.

Early this morning, a strangeness overcame me when I awakened briefly. I remembered a childhood occurence as clearly as it had happened yesterday. The memory came from a time when I was 6 years old and we lived in a relatively quiet neighborhood. It was a time when you could allow your children to roam the neighborhood unsupervised … I had the reign of 10 neighborhood blocks. Of course at 6 it seemed like a huge area, something now I would look at as relatively small.

I had many friends, Mike and I were neighbors … best of friends … we would meet together and along with some other friends and play all sorts of childhood games. On the particular day in question, among the 5 or 6 of us gathered on the sidewalk, we began discussions of where we would play “hide and go seek”. I didn’t want to play at my house, because at my house there were just no good places to hide because I knew them all, and at age 6, you presume everyone else must know them too! We each had a vote and I voted to play at Mike’s house, after all, he had a big dog we just loved to play with.

Being there were several other kids there, obviously there was a differing of opinions. The concensus was that we should play at Jimmy’s house. At the time, I was not really happy about that prospect, you see, Jimmy along with his brothers and sister, lived in a house much like mine, except Jimmy’s parents weren’t like mine, in fact they weren’t like anyone’s parents in the neighborhood that I knew of, this fact would ultimatley give me my first encounter with child protective services … I of course expressed my objections to playing at Jimmy’s house, because in the words of a brutally honest 6 year old, Jimmy’s house was “junky”. Sure I had been there before, heck, I had been there many times before, and let me tell you, ”junky” was expressing the living conditions mildly.

Jimmy’s house was not well kept, although the back yard was hidden by a privacy fence, it was obvious these were not the neighbors you would like to have. The front yard had several old lawn mowers in various states of disrepair a car under the carport that didn’t operate and another on the side of the house. The grass however was kept up by a cobbled together push mower used by Jimmy’s older brother Chris. This meant of course that the “junky” house just had the grass cut, nothing else. Jimmy’s youngest brother was in diapers and those diapers frequently made their way into the yard as if by magic. I find it amazing, that even at this early time, while every other struggling parent in our neighborhood was using cloth diapers, Jimmy’s brother had disposables, and they got disposed of right in the front yard along with all sorts of other personal hygene products. I don’t know if they purposefully threw them out there or if they failed to pick up after the dogs dumped the trash can, either way, they were there, the flies were plentiful, and the smell was atrocious. Inside the house was no better, doors were off the hinges, windows were broken out and the dog had messed in the floor and had not been cleaned up. I could never imagine having to live in such squalor and filth, it was certainly not a place I wished to go play.

Then, like a thief in the night, Jimmy and his siblings disappeared, they weren’t abducted though, child protective services had come in and taken the children away, from the youngest to the oldest, all were moved to foster care. Of course “we” knew where they were, even if their parents didn’t, since the parents were not allowed to have contact with the kids, and we were, we found out where they lived. A mere 5 blocks from their old place of squalor.

I don’t know what happened to Jimmy and the rest of his family and I don’t know if they ever came “home”, but I do know that Jimmy took offense to my calling his house “junky”. The rest of the kids used a little more tact than I did, they didn’t express displeasure, even though I could tell from their expressions they knew I was right. I never played “hide and go seek” that day, because even though Jimmy wasn’t a bad kid, he did have a certain amount of pride, and he just couldn’t let my comments go unanswered.

I often wonder about Jimmy and the rest of the gang, where they are and what became of their lives. The queston “Did Jimmy ever go home” likely will never be answered for me. I can only pray that he is living better now than he did then.