Wednesday Bible Study: Inverse theodicy
One solution to the theodicy problem is that Job must in fact be wicked and deserve his fate. That ' s the one he gets from Zophar in Ch. 11. However, the whole point of the book is that it isn ' t so: Job is a perfect and upright man. By the way MacLeish cast Zophar as a communist. That isn ' t evidently relevant to the original concept, but he was inventing what modern ideologues might say to Job. Anyway, Job isn ' t getting any comfort from any of these Bozos.11 Then Zophar the Naamathite replied:2 “Are all these words to go unanswered? Is this talker to be vindicated?3 Will your ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 13, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
How Policy Changes Can Fix Market Distortions in Healthcare and Improve the Country ’s Debt
The following is a guest article by Zach Markin, Co-Founder and CEO at HTD Health
American healthcare is the most dysfunctional industry in our country. Historically, it is the most prolific driver of family bankruptcy, and now it is on its way to bankrupting our country collectively. A major justification for President Biden’s tax hike proposal is to shore up the tenuous finances of Medicare whose trust fund is forecasted to be depleted by 2028. While this is important, such efforts address the symptoms of a dysfunctional industry rather than the root causes.
While the near-term liquidity and long-term financial health ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - September 12, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: Ambulatory C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Regulations Revenue Cycle Management AMA Healthcare Barriers Healthcare Costs healthcare industry Healthcare Perverse Incentives HTD Health Me Source Type: blogs
The last bumper sticker: The Sacred Text
Okay, we ' ve finally come to the end of this tedious exercise. The U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history. Again, I ' m not sure what the political point is supposed to be here. As far as I know the only people who want to repeal the Constitution are conservative Republicans, notably the followers of Donald J. Trump. But as a liberal of the non-neo variety, I do take issue with the statement.For some reason Americans are inclined to see the Constitution as equivalent to holy scripture. It ' s the infallible word...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 11, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Job talks back
In Chapter 10, Job complains to God about the injustice done to him, and yearns again for death. Satan doesn ' t win the bet -- Job doesn ' t curse God or renounce him. But he walks right up to the edge. He wants an explanation. We ' ll see if he gets one.10 “I loathe my very life; therefore I will give free rein to my complaint and speak out in the bitterness of my soul.2 I say to God: Do not declare me guilty, but tell me what charges you have against me.3 Does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of you...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 10, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The next bumper sticker: political science
As usual, Ramaswamy ' s glib slogans aren ' t self-explanatory, but I think we can figure out what he ' s pretending to be thinking about with this one:There are three branches of the U.S. government, not four.One would guess that this is a reference to the bullshit concept of the " Deep State. " What that actually means is of course the career civil service -- federal employees who don ' t get replaced wholesale every time the party in power changes, and who have legal protections to make sure that doesn ' t happen. Sometimes it also includes the military. (Sometimes it ' s the Deep State that ' s persecuting Ronald...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 9, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Possibly the most ridiculous bumper sticker of them all...
Continuing with the Ramaswamy bumper stickers, we get this bizarre assertion:The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.I don ' t understand how this is even supposed to be a political statement. Public policy doesn ' t dictate people ' s household structure or their living arrangements, which nowadays are generally similar the world over. The nuclear family is not a form of " governance, " it ' s a social arrangement. And looking at the dark backward and abysm of time*, it ' s a fairly recent invention. On the African savanna, before we made the Big Mistake of agriculture, we believe...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 7, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Don't ask questions
Job ' s response to Bildad is essentially an extended riff on the immense power of God, his inscrutability, and oh yeah, he does not offer justice. The righteous may suffer and the wicked may prosper, and we can ' t ask why. If you leave it at that, the answer to the theodicy problem is that God is not good, he ' s entirely capricious. I ' ll actually buy that.9 Then Job replied:2 “Indeed, I know that this is true. But how can mere mortals prove their innocence before God?3 Though they wished to dispute with him, they could not answer him one time out of a thou...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 6, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Bumper Sticker installment for Labor Day
I ' m going to skip ahead on bumper sticker to match the occasion: " Capitalism lifts people up from poverty. "As usual, I ' m not sure exactly what the implication of this is supposed to be. In grand historical terms, it is true that human material well being has increased enormously since the advent of industrial capitalism in the 19th Century. That is the economic system that converted fossil fuel into the astonishing technological development and material infrastructure that distinguishes the modern world from all of previous history. But it doesn ' t seem to be much of a political point. Nobody on the left ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 4, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: The Comfort Hits Absolute Zero
MacLeish in J.B. casts Bildad as a priest, which seems about right. He tells Job, whose 10 children have just been murdered by God on a bet with Satan, that they must have done something to deserve it; and that Job himself must deserve his own fate. He insists that God is just. (BTW he is not called Yahweh in the Book of Job, but the Almighty, as reflected in the translation.) If you ' ve been reading the Bible so far, you know that isn ' t true. What a thing to say to someone whose children have all just been killed. 8 Then Bildad the Shuhite replied:2 “How long will you say such things? &...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 3, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The Bumper Sticker Problem
I haven ' t posted the past couple of days because my mother died on Wednesday. Not a tragedy really, it was overdue, but I had to deal with various issues. Next item: Parents determine the education of their children.The bullet list I ' m working through can be thought of as bumper sticker slogans. Yes, they ' re short and simple but that doesn ' t mean anybody can understand them. On the contrary, they may seem superficially plausible or even convincing, but it turns out that they evade the facts, or complexity of a problem. They may contain an unstated assumption that turns out to be false, or make sense only in an...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 2, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The One Question FOX News Moderators Should Ask Tonight
This article was published a week after the Republican Party Primary debate
BY MIKE MAGEE
This evening, the Republican Party will sponsor their first Primary Debate. It will be historic in featuring the absence of their lead contender for the 2024 Presidential campaign, a candidate who appears committed to the destruction of their own political party
Events over the past year clearly have confirmed that we are a “work in progress” even as we stubbornly affirm our good intentions to create a society committed to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
With the Dobbs’ decision, our Supreme C...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 30, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Non-Health Dobbs Mike Magee Republican Primary Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: The human condition
In Chapter 7, Job doesn ' t exactly curse God, but he certainly complains about the pain and injustice of existence. I think this is the essence of the book because we never do get a satisfactory answer. God just doesn ' t have to be accountable for anything, he ' s mighty and inscrutable and we ' re just dirt. Job wants an explanation. We ' ll see if he gets one.7 “Do not mortals have hard service on earth? Are not their days like those of hired laborers?2 Like a slave longing for the evening shadows, or a hired laborer waiting to be paid,3 so I have bee...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 30, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Ignorance is Strength
The next item on our bullet list: " An open border is no border. " Taken as a hypothetical, this would be half true. When you cross an open border, you enter a new jurisdiction and become subject to its laws. The border between Maryland and Virginia is open, but it ' s still a border. The same goes for the national borders within the European Union. To be sure, that has caused some friction, but it is obviously incorrect to say that they aren ' t borders at all. Keeping people out is not the only function of a border.That said, what this is supposed to mean is that keeping people out is indeed the principal func...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 29, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Gibberish
Next on the bullet list: " Reverse racism is racism. " These are just words, until you define exactly what you mean. If you just mean that an ideology that treats a normally privileged caste as inferior is racism, as is an ideology that endorses a traditional hierarchy, sure. If someone were to claim that people of European descent are somehow inferior humans, and ought to be deprived of educational an economic opportunity and even the right to vote, that would be racism. However, that is obviously not what people are trying to assert, since nobody would argue with them.What they are really saying is that frankly ackn...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 28, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Despair
Job responds with what amounts to despair. He wants to die, and he wants his despair to be respected. This soliloquy, and especially the second half of it in the next chapter, reminds me of Hamlet ' s " Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt " soliloquy, the somewhat lesser known one. But as a literary critic, I would say that Shakespeare does it much more efficiently. This runs through an excessive amount of imagery to make a pretty simple statement.6 Then Job replied:2 “If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery be placed on the scales!3 It would surely outweigh th...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 27, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
