Lift Up Your Hearts!

Florida has become the second state (after Utah) to ban the addition of fluoride to community water systems, for which I am very grateful. I prefer to have governmental decisions made at the lowest practical level, but I prefer even more not to have to choose between buying bottled water and drinking tap water with greater-than-natural levels of fluoride. I already get plenty, perhaps too much, from other sources, from toothpaste to topical fluoride to my frequent cups of tea. There may be dental benefits to consuming fluoride, but ingesting it ought to be a personal choice, not something forced upon all customers of the community water supply.

I let my opinion be known at the city level, with no success, despite the good examples of neighboring cities. So I was thrilled to learn yesterday that our legislature had passed, and Governor DeSantis signed, a bill eliminating added fluoride in our water systems.

There may have been a time when adding fluoride to the water supply was important, but with the substance so readily available in other ways, there's no excuse for forcing it on the general population.

Thanks, Florida!

I've been reading through our Constitution recently, a practice I recommend, along with reading the entire Bible on an annual basis. You never know what's going to jump out at you.

Here's a stark reminder of the dangers of getting our information from headlines, sound bites, click-bait, and quotations taken out of context.

There you have it.  Be a good citizen and vote accordingly.

Why are people so upset that some government workers are losing their jobs? Why are we not rather rejoicing that vast areas of waste and downright corruption and fraud are being exposed? For as long as I can remember—and that's well more than half a century—governmental inefficiency and waste has been a standard joke. But it's not funny. It is unethical, and has led directly to our country's unimaginable debt, and the financial disaster we are bequeathing our children and grandchildren.

Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency are heroes in my book. Why is it that the same people who just months ago wanted to force us all to switch to electric cars are now so upset by the thought of layoffs that they think it's reasonable and useful to destroy Teslas?

It really stinks to lose your job. We've been there, more than once. But government employees have been living in a fantasy world of job security. Private companies, from small family businesses to massive corporations, frequently face situations where they must let employees go: sometimes when the workers have done something unethical, sometimes when they are not doing their jobs well, and often because cold, hard, economic facts force the business to downsize.

Where was all this weeping, wailing, and wrongdoing when American manufacturing went overseas? When our IT jobs went overseas? When millions of workers were imported to keep agricultural wages artificially low? When slave labor became acceptable because otherwise the plantation system would fall apart? (We once fought an especially grievous war over that one.) All these caused millions of American families to become unemployed or to settle for low-paying jobs without the benefits we once had. Did Americans then rise up in protest, or did we just sit back and enjoy the benefits of cheap goods?

It stinks to lose your job, but as far as I can tell, the government employees facing that threat have been offered generous severance packages, much nicer than what most people get when they find themselves out of a job. Why should governmental workers be protected from what ordinary Americans face daily?

Sadly, too many federal judges are showing that they are living in the same fantasy world, by ruling that the government cannot fire its own employees, reorganize its divisions, or effect layoffs of its own workers. What business could possibly stay afloat under such conditions? What part of the Constitution guarantees that a government employee, once hired, has a right to keep his job forever? I can only hope that higher courts have better sense—and that the errant judges are overruled before the damage done becomes irrevocable.

And what's wrong for an employee to be asked to give an accounting for the work he is doing? I admit I don't like the idea of cutting out remote work, which was a positive step forward for job satisfaction and family life. But remote work—or any work for that matter—can only succeed if the tasks actually get done, and I don't see why it's a bad thing to require some accounting of the work that justifies one's paycheck.

I don't remember where I heard the following, but it neatly expresses the problem.

I know a guy in the IT sector who says that a man slept at his desk regularly through the day, but they could not touch him, unless he really botched up. That is someone who is stealing from this company. He is stealing his wages for work not performed. 

That struck me in particular, because of a situation from my own experience. I also knew an IT guy who regularly fell asleep at his desk—or on the floor of his office. He was also one of the most treasured employees because he got the work done, and then some, without counting the hours. He was brilliant, and did his work in a manner that worked best for him. The company had no objection to his unusual schedule because they appreciated what he brought to the table.

I would like to see a system that facilitates such flexibility. Requiring a brief summary of the week's accomplishments can allow such people to shine.

Doubting that most of America's workforce is as obviously effective as my friend was, I believe we could all benefit from such an exercise. The psychological advantage of focusing on "what did I accomplish?" instead of "did I put in my hours?" could be great.

This picture showed up on my Facebook page. It's from the Babylon Bee, which I often, though not always, find funny. I wouldn't have given this article more than a passing glance, were it not for the fact that less than 24 hours previously we had seen an excellent and amazing production, by our church's Resurrection Players, of Beetlejuice, Jr.

Trump Issues New Striped Robes For Federal Judges

If you've never seen the show, this won't make sense, but if you have, the association may provoke a smile unintended by the Bee.

I remember the days when we were enthusiastic supporters of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. WFLN in Philadelphia, WXXI in Rochester, WMFE in Orlando. This was primarily because wherever we went, they were the stations of classical music. And PBS was where you could find great shows like Mystery! and Connections and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

When that changed, I'm not sure. The biggest break for me came when WMFE split off their music and put it on a radio frequency we couldn't receive. It became all talk, all the time, and most of that did not interest me. I remained a huge fan of shows like Car Talk and A Prairie Home Companion, but found little of the other non-music talk worth my time.

I'm pretty sure we stopped our regular support of WMFE when we could no longer get the music, but Porter still listened to their shows during his morning and evening commutes. It helped distract him from the traffic, though it certainly didn't have a calming effect. I believe it was at about that point he started calling it National Socialist Radio. With good reason.

After he retired and spent less time in the car, our public radio consumption became rare, as we'd tune into something for a few minutes, then start to wish that we could cut off our tax contributions to the system as we had our personal money.

Sasha Stone's experience was more dramatic than ours. She was not only a great supporter of NPR/PBS, but was herself interviewed on Weekend Edition back in 2012. (Ms. Stone is another one of those people I would never have chosen to listen to—what do I care about Hollywood and the Oscars?—but once introduced, found her interesting and insightful.) That link takes you to one of her recent Substack posts. Caveat: I have only read the text, and not watched all the videos.

Sasha's own story is interesting enough, but what inspired me to include it here was that part of it pertains to New Hampshire. The context is NPR's substantial political bias.

Just look at NPR’s shameful coverage of the trans issue.... Search for any story that tells the opposing viewpoint ever. You won’t find it. For an ideology that the Democrats insist represents only 1% of the population, it sure is a popular topic at NPR. Searching just in the last year brings up hundreds, if not thousands of stories. They seem to never tire of different ways to tell the transgender perspective to their listeners and yet have no way of telling even one story that represents the alternative viewpoint.

Recently, in New Hampshire, a 23-year-old Democratic representative named Jonah Wheeler voted to protect women in sports, causing a major uproar in the city. His constituents demanded a town hall meeting, but Wheeler bravely stood up to them.

At the same meeting, a young man spoke before the crowd, asking the woman there what she would tell parents of detransitioners like him who had been convinced to have their testicles removed because that would make them women. He now has to live this way for the rest of his life.

NPR had no search results for Representative Jonah Wheeler. Certainly, none for whistleblower Jamie Reed, who was there to support Wheeler, and even stayed after to ensure he got to his car safely. Reed has been traveling from state to state to ensure laws banning “gender-affirming care” are passed.

But over at NPR, she doesn’t exist. And if she doesn’t exist, most of the people you know on the Left will never have heard of her, or this dramatic story playing out in New Hampshire.

If you want to see the videos of the speeches, you'll have to go to the whole essay. I did watch the ones pertaining to the New Hampshire story, which was probably not good for my blood pressure, but at least they're short.

I don't know the solution to the problem of funding the arts, or science, or education, or medicine, or almost anything for that matter. Generally, I'm for markets as free and control as local as possible; it's not so much that they do a great job, as that they do far better than any other system I've seen. It's like the saying that democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others.

But there is definitely a place for government and governmental action. The trick lies in matching the action with the appropriate level. The further up the food chain we go, the greater the power and the money—and the greater the risk of tyranny and corruption. It also makes it possible, as in the case of PBS and NPR, for a single ideology to dominate, whether it's the medieval Catholic Church or a modern secular movement.

There's a lot to be said for the Principle of Subsidiarity. (See the top paragraphs at that link for further explanation.)

The Principle of Subsidiarity refers to the idea that decision-making authority should be placed where responsibility for outcomes will occur and in close proximity to where actions are taken. This principle emphasizes matching authority with responsibility and situating them as close as possible to operations for well-informed decisions.

Or as I frequently say,

Responsibility without authority is slavery; authority without responsibility is tyranny.

When an organization is financially dependent primarily on the direct support of the public (think NPR's fund drives), there's a smaller (though certainly non-zero) probability that it will become captured by an ideological power that cannot be trusted to serve the public's best interests. When an unelected governmental agency doles out huge sums of money for broadcasting, or education, or medical research, or just about anything, such that the entity cannot survive without the agency's funding, tyranny thrives.

Who is Bill Maher, and why does he deserve a place in my Heroes category?

No one who knows the deep extent of my ignorance of pop culture (among other things) will be surprised that until I looked him up on that great foundation of American knowledge and ignorance, Wikipedia, I had no idea who Bill Maher was. Now I know he's a comedian, politically and socially liberal, and a potty-mouth. There are issues on which Maher and I agree, and I've reluctantly come to accept the need to endure crude speech because these days I know so many otherwise highly intelligent and reasonable people who for reasons unknown apparently cannot speak without being vulgar. However, I find modern comedy generally too edgy for my taste, so I'm unlikely to add Maher to my list of favorite speakers.

Thus it was only through a friend (also intelligent, reasonable, potty-mouthed, and one of the funniest people I know) that I heard the following monologue (13 minutes).

What I find amusingly frustrating is that Maher's simple description of spending time with President Trump has people on both sides of the aisle asking, "Has Bill Maher gone MAGA?" No, he hasn't; he's just being a reasonable human being, the way that was standard not all that long ago.

I suspect he will take a lot of heat for being reasonable—lives have been ruined for less—and he knew it before deciding to speak out. But he spoke the truth anyway, and that makes him a hero to me.

It was eye-opening, when we first visited Switzerland, to discover that they don't refrigerate their eggs. Nor do they get sick from that practice. Why must we refrigerate American eggs? Here's an Epoch Times article that explains why we are once again being given the short end of the gustatory and nutritional stick.

Being raised in the United States, I was startled during my first trip out of the country. I noticed that the eggs at the store were not refrigerated. How is this possible? ... I gradually came to realize that the United States is the outlier, apparently the only country in the world where eggs go from the chicken to the refrigerator, both at the store and at home.

The United States seems to be the only country in the world that requires the washing of eggs before they are sold. As a result, the outside membrane—called the cuticle—is washed away, leaving them vulnerable to outside bacteria and other sources of spoilage. That’s why they must be refrigerated. ... However, if you don’t wash away the cuticle, they can sit happily on the counter for a very long time and be ready to eat anytime.

It’s because of Big Agriculture and industrial methods of egg harvesting. They pack chickens in huge warehouses inches apart and in tight layers. The whole place is a gigantic mess because machines can’t stop the natural function of the digestive system. In essence, the place is filthy. As a result, washing the eggs is absolutely necessary to remove all the pathogenic muck.

The industry, then, lobbied the government over decades to make this a general rule, providing them with a level competitive playing field with small farmers who run much cleaner operations. ... In effect, the USDA and the FDA have adopted rules on behalf of the biggest players in the industry while forgetting about the small farmers.

Maybe in the future, Americans will have the right to raise and sell eggs without washing off the protective layer from the shells. Maybe in the future, we will stop being seemingly the one outlying country in the entire world that routinely refrigerates our chicken eggs? We shall see.

Maybe in the future we will have better access to eggs bursting with nutrition and with beautiful, deep-golden yolks that come from a natural diet that includes bugs and a variety of vegetation, not something added to a grain-based diet just to make the eggs look good.

The following letter, published in the Orlando Sentinel in April 2015, was written by a friend of ours, a good man with whom we seriously disagreed on several issues. Those were the days when being on opposite sides of heated battles did not spill over into personal life. I discovered a copy of the ten year old letter when cleaning up files, and decided it needs wider circulation.

The inspiration for the letter was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that had been recently passed by the state of Indiana, but the sentiment is as applicable, and essential, today.

Religious belief is among the most personal of human attributes, and deals with the spiritual and the infinite. Governments are, rather, an expression of general agreement in things secular. In theory, these philosophical areas should complement each other; however, in practice the boundaries frequently conflict.

Thus, one person's faith becomes another person's bigotry.

So it is with the Hoosier State, which, like many states before it, has passed its own RFRA.

When is a business acting on its sincerely held religious beliefs, and when is it merely denying services to people unjustly and hypocritically using religion as a cover?

Discriminating against people because of who they are is categorically wrong. But when a customer demands, under penalty of law or litigation, that I render a product or service, which, according to my religious belief, constitutes the facilitating of sin, I must draw the line—a line protected by the RFRA. So, the baker, florist or photographer should, in good conscience, sell their wares to all comers, but they should also have the option not to be a part of events that they believe are proscribed by their faith.

My favorite sandwich place is closed on Sunday. My favorite Florida chicken restaurant is closed on Saturday—both for religious reasons. A local obstetrician/gynecologist believes abortion to be infanticide. Shall I compel their cooperation?

This is ultimately an issue of fairness and tolerance for both sides. Acceptance should be optional, but tolerance, caring and respect are essential to the human conversation.

James xxxxxxx Apopka
[I doubt our friend would mind my using his full name, since it was published in the paper, but just in case, I have redacted it.]

It's hard to believe that I'm looking back at 2015 as an era of civility, but relatively speaking....

Enthusiasm, fortitude, patience, and joy are good qualities in a president.

I wouldn't wish that job on one of my grandchildren any more than I'd wish them leukemia. Nonetheless, I would vote for her.

President Grace Daley speaks at the Smithsonian.

Sometimes the Babylon Bee—like much modern satire—is too heavy-handed for my taste. And other times it is spot on. This pretty much sums up what I'm feeling about our federal judges right now. You can read the article here, but this is the best part.

A district judge has issued a ruling saying Trump lacked the Constitutional authority to pick up two astronauts who have been stranded at the International Space Station for several months.

SpaceX has been ordered to return the astronauts immediately.

The SpaceX craft docked at the ISS on Sunday and was preparing for the return journey to Earth when the orders stopped the process short. "Please bring us home, I just want a cheeseburger and a nap in a horizontal bed," said one of the crew.

At publishing time, Trump was polling at 100% approval among the stranded astronaut demographic.

I have observed something interesting about buying eggs these days.

The painful increase in the price of eggs is directly driven by the mass-slaughter of chickens, which I'm certain will turn out to have been both useless and harmful to our country's economy, agriculture, and citizens. Much as our COVID response was, though hopefully on a lesser scale.

But perhaps some good may come of it. I've noticed that on our grocery shelves, the "better" eggs—the ones labelled local, organic, cage-free, pastured, and other such indications of (relatively) small operations—are flying off the shelves. I believe this is less because American shoppers have suddenly become more interested in better farming practices, but because the prices are lower. Why would that be? Why would the higher-end eggs actually cost less than those that are factory-farmed? Is this a temporary glitch in the system, or have farms with more humane practices been significantly less impacted by the current panic?

I have two hopes for good things that could happen in response:

• Federal, state, and local governments will recognize the value of healthier, smaller, farming practices, and stop putting onerous regulations on them. Regulatory burdens that are necessary for industrial-style agriculture are irrelevant to small and local farms, and are killing them off—to the benefit, of course, of said industrial agriculture, as it leaves consumers with no choice but to buy mass-produced food. If we truly value America's health, promoting food freedom would be a great start.
• One benefit that came out of the COVID shutdown debacle was that millions of families were introduced to the joys of home education who had never before considered it. I'm hoping that being forced by economics to sample better eggs will encourage more Americans to appreciate the kind of eggs that Europeans take for granted. And maybe over-zealous homeowners associations will start recognizing the value of backyard chickens!

As you know, I've been playing with using Microsoft Copilot to create images; I was quite happy with my Bonnie Warrior experience. I still can't draw, so I went back to Copilot for the illustrations I wanted for my Don't Kill the Messenger meme (click image to enlarge).

After a little work, I was happy with the image of the shocked accountant. Next, I wanted to work with an image of a firing squad. I asked Copilot, "draw a cartoon of a firing squad." Its response? "I'm really sorry, but I can't help with that request. If there's something else you'd like to discuss or create, feel free to let me know!"

Already I didn't like its tone of voice. Especially the exclamation point at the end. And there is absolutely no reason Copilot could not have drawn a firing squad; if all the data that went into its training did not include plenty of references to firing squads, with images, then it is completely disconnected from reality. How then could I trust it with anything?

Clearly, this was not a matter of ignorance, but of censorship. Censorship even crazier and less justified than suspending a seven-year-old from school when he bit his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun. So I decided to test it out a bit.

Draw a gun? "I'm afraid I can't talk about that topic, sorry about that."

Draw a guillotine? "I'm sorry, but it seems I can't help out with this one."

Draw a picture of the French Revolution? Copilot produced a picture of a happy, cheering crowd of people waving French flags. 

Draw a knife? Ah, now we're getting somewhere. One knife coming up. A kitchen knife—with a happy smile on its face.

Okay, censorship clearly established. How to get around it? After many variations of trying to get a drawing of blindfolded men up against a grey wall, I settled for the one above, a single, courageous, and determined accountant standing in front of what looks like a prison.

Next problem: I wanted a background that conveyed a feeling of threat without distracting from the story. You would not believe how hard it was to get a threatening background of any sort. Every image that Copilot offered me looked more like something parents would choose for their child's nursery wallpaper. By including "clouds" in my request I managed to get something storm-like, but every effort produced something with the sun peeking through. My harshest request for something genuinely scary did produce a collage of lions, tigers, and other genuinely dangerous animals; however, they were all in a repetitive, child's wallpaper pattern, and they were all happy-looking cartoon animals. And not with the "I'm happy because I'm about to eat you" look, either.

I settled for the standard, grey, gradient above.

Having gotten those images figured out, I went to work on my Frog-in-the-Kettle meme. It shouldn't have been so hard. Undoubtedly, Copilot knows the frog-in-the-kettle story; how hard could it be to add someone in the act of pulling the frog out of his predicament? I didn't document all the variations I had to work through, but it reminded me of the early days of using search engines: Before Google got so clever, success depended largely on the skill one had in devising inquiries with just the right combination of words.

The real problem was a variation on the nursery-wallpaper situation above. For a story with a very dark theme, Copilot had a decidedly happy-go-lucky bias. So many cheerful frogs partying around cute tea pots! I finally managed to craft an image that would do. It certainly would have taken less time if only I could draw!

In the end, I decided that Copilot was simply toying with me.  Time to end my experiments and go to bed, before I died of sentimental sweetness-and-light.

What would you do if you received this e-mail from your employer?

What would you think if refusal to comply were grounds for losing your job?

There's been a lot of weeping and wailing from Federal workers who received such an e-mail recently—and from many who purport to speak up for them.

I don't understand why.

I know what I would have done, before I retired from my medical center IT job, if I had received such a request: I'd have sat down and put together five of the most important things I'd accomplished during the previous week. The boss was the boss, after all, and this would have been a whole lot less onerous than when he instituted the "no jeans at work" rule.

Much as I like to grumble about needless bureaucratic requirements, this one seems both easy to do and reasonable to request. After all, I was being paid, not for the hours spent sitting at my computer, but for what I accomplished there. My boss didn't know the nitty-gritty of the work I was doing; most managers don't. They're hired to manage the overall picture, not to know the internal details. Keeping one's work in front of their eyes on a regular basis accomplishes several good things.

• It reminds them that your job is important. If it's not, something needs to change.
• It reminds them that you're doing the work you're being paid for. If you're not, you need to be mentored for improvement, or let go to find more suitable work.
• It reminds YOU of these things as well. This is important for your job satisfaction and your self-confidence, which will lead to better work and more accomplishments—unless it demonstrates to you that you are in the wrong job; in which case, the sooner you discover that and do something positive about it, the better.
• If you are on the wrong track in your work, it will alert them while there is still time to make a course correction.
• If you are on the right track, it gives them the opportunity to confirm your direction and strengthen you in that course.

I can't see any downsides. They're not asking for detailed documentation—just five bullet points. Except in very small businesses, where everyone's contributions (or lack thereof) are obvious, what employee doesn't provide documentation of his work? Shifts worked, trash picked up, papers written, classes taught, code created, meals cooked, patients treated, products sold, houses built, cars repaired—most of us are expected to show evidence of our productivity.

It's harder for the self-employed, which includes those of us who are retired. But it's at least as important. When the worker and the supervisor are the same person, some measurement of our success is essential, for our growth, our progress, and our mental health.

So that's why I'm taking the DOGE Challenge.

Nothing fancy; the idea is simply to take a few minutes during the day to note various things that I've been doing. Then at the end of the week I'll choose the five (or so) most significant. I'll be the sole judge of what's "significant"—see the point above about the worker and the supervisor being the same person.  And I won't promise to share the results here, since they could end up being too personal.

But it's going to be an interesting experiment.

Whatever you think about Facebook, there's no doubt it can be unintentionally amusing

I mostly find its "Reels" feature to be annoying, and have more than once looked without success for a way to turn it off completely. The short videos it shows are mostly reposted from Tik Tok, which I don't otherwise see. Sometimes they are interesting, sometimes they are genuinely informative and helpful, but all too often I find them infused with a negative view of life, even when they are undeniably—even addictively—entertaining.

Sometimes, however, something unexpected shows up and catches my eye.

If you don't have access to Facebook, you may not be able to watch the video, unfortunately. I spent too much time trying to find a version I could embed here, without success. I hope that link will take you to something you can see, but if not, it doesn't matter.

My readers know that one of our granddaughters plays on her high school girls' soccer team, and that the team has been wonderfully encouraging and supportive of her family during her sister's leukemia journey.

Here's another way they showed their character.

What caught my eye (more accurately, ear) in this video, and made me listen all the way through, was that it's not often when I hear mention of their tiny New Hampshire high school in nationwide media. I think this is the only time I have, actually. So it made me jump.

The short version of the story is that some of the team members did not want to play against a certain other team on their schedule, which included a boy in their lineup. First, in principle, because theirs is a girls' league, not a mixed one, and also because they found the boy physically threatening. The team's coach handled the situation extremely well: those girls who objected to playing that game were excused without any penalty, and the team played the game without any fuss. Somehow it made the news anyway, but I'm proud of the way they handled the situation calmly and fairly.

Our granddaughter? She played the game, with the support of her parents, even though they all thought it unfair for a boy to be on the opposing team. Why? I can't speak for them, but here are a few reasons that came up in our discussion:

• After all she's been through, Faith wanted to support her team, and to play soccer.
• It wasn't the other team's fault that they had a boy on the team—it was a state ruling that forced them to do so.
• Boys and girls often play successfully on the same soccer team—although that's usually at the younger levels, before males gain a significant physical advantage over females.
• They've played against other teams with girls she found more physically threatening than this boy.

The game was played successfully and without incident. I honestly don't remember which team won. In a way, they both did. Don't misunderstand me: The teams should never have been placed in this position, and the state rule that made it happen needs to be fixed.

But bad things happen in this life, and when they are met with quiet grace, that deserves to be celebrated.