Why Must We Age?

I have a hard time figuring out the logic of aging and how the aesthetics can be so cruel. How beautiful young and middle-aged people become shriveled grotesques as they achieve the far reaches of mortality.

It's especially striking for those in which photographic evidence exists of the vast changes superannuation incur. Old photos of Bridget Bardot contrasted with how the 70-year-old-plus former actress looks now; similar transformations for so many others.

Former starlets of outrageous delectability devolving before our eyes unto haggard monstrosities. (Same with guys of course, but they tend to die earlier and the deterioration does not make it as far.)

What is the point, why such decay? The scariest of all are the especially thin ones (myself?!) who in their 80s wander the countryside as animated corpses.

While I do not believe that we are on this earth for any particular reason or that some "God" has a purpose and plan, I do believe that most biological functions serve an evolutionary role. Pretty girls attract pretty men to make pretty babies. Aviary plumage is nothing but a carnal display as well. Makes sense. But what is the point of the ravaged faces and bodies of the aged--to what purpose is nature served?

Is it to remove the temptation to seek impregnation of  an impossible womb? That seems outlandish to me. How can we passively accept the concept of "natural aging?" Why should it be natural? By making the formerly beautiful physically repugnant, are we also devaluing them in other ways? 

Most still have robust minds, active imaginations, and physical vigor, yet their appearance betrays them. What is behind the optics of old people and the aging process...what is the evolutionary rationale? 

Stop Hating on Obamacare

In today's NY Time, guest columnist Steven Rattner, a Wall Street exec. and occasional government troubleshooter who was instrumental in the GM rescue presents a scorecard of sorts for the first two years of Obamacare. In a nutshell, despite its many imperfections, the ACA has sucessfully met its three prime goals:

1. Created insurance exchanges that has led to a larger-than-expected drop in uninsured Americans.
2. Prevented insurance companies from capping benefits or denying coverage for those with pre-existing conditions.
3. Has helped reduce the increase in cost of health care in the U.S.

Get the full story here with some compelling graphics.

Of course all these positives could go by the board if the Supreme Court rules against premium subsidies for states with only Federal exchanges. Such a decision would pretty much destroy the viability of Obamacare and we'd be back to the bad old days. 

I for one wouldn't put it past the present SCOTUS.

How the State Should Execute People

First off, I do not believe in state-sanctioned killing. I think the death penalty is medieval, immoral, and a non-deterrent. Basically, the death penalty is all about punishment and vengeance by the state, which to me is a bit too fascistic for my taste. Plus, from an economic standpoint, it costs far more to society in terms of court and legal costs to litigate a death sentence through the appeal process than warehousing a killer for life.

However, the main reason I don't believe in the death penalty is because I don't have the stomach as a citizen to condemn another human being to death. Since I'm not convinced of the existence of an afterlife, I couldn't be the one to usher another person into the eternal void, no matter the heinous nature of his or her offense. So if I can't accept that responsibility, then I have no right to expect others to; hence, my opposition.

With that said, capital punishment is still legal in many states and many states are having a hard time finding merciful ways of murdering criminals. We've seen stories of strapped-down convicts writhing in agony for minutes on end because the executioners couldn't get the drugs quite right. Or how about Mr. Sparky and the tendency in some past executions not to get the voltages right, resulting in badly scorched, though not quite dead, electric chair occupants.

And there is also the problem of gaining cooperation from the medical community and drug companies to provide expertise and reliably effective materials for killing purposes.

Even with those concerns, my sympathy doesn't lie with the perps so much, but with the poor souls who are tasked with administering the coup de grace. Would you want to be the one responsible for injecting the deadly dose, throwing the switch, turning on the gas? I know it would cause me some sleepless nights.

So what I propose is a blameless procedure that is nearly foolproof and merciful. It's called the firing squad. Five professional marksmen, four bullets and one blank. In that way, each shooter has plausible deniability that he didn't commit murder. And, the likelihood that anyone could survive four professionally delivered rounds to the head is extremely remote.

Sure, it could get a little messy, even if the guy is wearing a dark hood, but why shouldn't it be messy? Even when carried out by the state.

It's a ME ME ME ME World!

In the end, we really are all about ourselves. And the ugly truth about social media is that now we can publicly demonstrate that obsession to the world. It's not like we're more narcissistic than past generations, it's just more in our face given the 24/7 me me me outlets of Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat, Instagram, etc.

Are we really so interesting that every utterance, thought, idea, and activity must be somehow cataloged and validated in multiple social media outlets? I most certainly am not! 

How many likes, followers, and friends must we have to salve our egos and nurture our self-worth? Are selfies ever appropriate?

The overall effect is just so much noise. So many people screaming at the top of their social media lungs to be noticed and loved by strangers, no matter how fleeting the moment. Outshouting each other until attention spans become a joke and communication is nothing more than frazzled fragments of headlines and images whose impact vanish in seconds.

Go ahead, call me a hypocrite. I have this blog and a Facebook account, but not because I am just another ego-driven shouter. My excuse is I'm just promoting my books, and social media is a necessary evil required of today's self-published indies.

In my defense I'll say it did take years of careful writing and editing to execute my literary efforts and, based on feedback and reviews, many think they're worthy of some fleeting attention from the teeming masses.

Otherwise, I'd wrap myself in the comforting cloak of invisibility. While everyone's manically bouncing like pogo sticks for more attention, nothing would suit me more than to be unseen, unheard, and unnoticed.

Except for my books, of course!