So Tom, Ted and I went out to dinner the other night and had this really interesting conversation about the filter. It all started when we were talking about two of our favorite TV shows, Bones and The Mentalist. We get a kick out of the main characters because they’re not quite normal in entertaining ways.
It all started to make sense when Ted described Bones as having no filter. She says exactly what’s on her mind and she has no trouble talking about things most people consider private and she’s confused when anyone is taken aback by her honesty because it all seems perfectly normal to her. Patrick Jane’s filter is in polarity mode — he’s constantly trying to crack someone else’s filter.
We decided that Ted’s filter is stuck in auto-off mode. He’ll go for days (or weeks) spending time alone or with close family… and the filter gradually shuts down because it’s unnecessary. When he ventures back into the social scene, he needs to re-enable the filter or he’s likely to step outside the bounds.
Tom’s filter is always on and always set to high. Never make waves, never say or do anything to call attention to himself, always fade into the background.
I think my filter is pretty much like everyone else’s. Just plain normal — how utterly boring.
Someone sent me this in an email. It couldn’t be simpler…
An economics teacher made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that President Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The teacher then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
All failed, to their great surprise, and the teacher told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
Class over. Any questions?
The good justice better damn well be sairy for what’s he’s done. Did he stop to think for even a second how dispassionate his actions would be to the families and friends of those who lost their lives over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988?
According to Dr. Barbara Starfield, health care professionals in the US are responsible for 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes, making doctors, nurses and hospitals the 3rd leading cause of death behind cancer and cardiovascular diseases. That doesn’t include the number of patients who simply experience complications stemming from poor decisions made by care providers, resulting in more physician visits, more prescriptions, more emergency room visits, more hospitalizations, more long-term visits and even more deaths — all adding up to an additional $77 billion in unnecessary expense.
The United States came close to ranking dead last out of health indicators measured for 16 countries… and further studies show that the poor rating can’t be correlated to bad health habits or lack of technology.
Introducing another 40 to 50 million people into a health care system that’s already struggling is a recipe for disaster. You want to redistribute wealth? Find a way to recover that $77 billion and put it to better use.
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