Letter to Valley Medical Group

Subject: Please Don’t Respond

1. Every time I call anyone through Valley Medical at 10am you call back when I am at work at 4pm. 

2. Employees of VMG are snarky and expect me to know VMG ever-changing policies by psychic ability. 

3. Your phone menus lead me to people who complain that I should not call them. 

4. When I called to make a payment plan, I got no response for a week and then daily calls AT WORK after 3pm. 

5. I used to call and see my doctor the same day. When the doctors office forgot to schedule a results visit, the snide VMG operator (not Dr. T’s office) offered one inconvenient slot vs. a three week wait for a return visit. Meanwhile medications ran out and problems resulted. 

6. As a cardiac patient, frustration, aggravation and obfuscation by VMG does nothing to improve my health. 

I’ll make payments on my bill, work around your horrible services and shut off my phone when I get to work, since your offices call from random unrecognizable or blocked numbers. Just don’t contact me.

Morning Glories

My Gnome Village(s)

Oscar Treats

From Twitter to Your Conscience

Day 1 of Trump's America

Explaining the Trump Victory

Team America explains the reason Donald Trump 

is president-elect instead of Hillary is because 

America prefers assholes to vaginas.

Letter to The Electric Company

Below is a gift from my friend BG; a copy of a letter she sent to her local electric company. She says, "Once, after a six-day outage, I got mad at the electric company. This is what I wrote to them"
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To Whom It May Concern (at the Electric Company),

Sorry I wasn't home to receive your call Thursday. If it is in your job description to deal with, redirect and or appease crackpots, I'll be at this number most of the day tomorrow. Before you call me though, check out the history of electrical power in America. And when you do, take note of your progress - we've all seen the old photos of horse and buggies alongside electric poles and ugly wires; the first horseless carriages parked near electric poles and ugly wires; airplanes flying over electric poles and ugly wires; rocket launches at NASA and on the ground are...electric poles and ugly wires! Read this at your next CEO conference and watch their faces, er...light up, so to speak. But the lightbulbs above their heads - they're NOT lit. Ironic, isn't it?

The defacing of our landscape with poles and wires has been tolerated for many generations, and yet it is a system that we are promised will fail again and again and again. And after all these years, the only answer your guys can come up with is to bury the lines so you can tear up the roads every five minutes to repair them. You haven't thought outside of the box in a hundred years, but perhaps it's because NO ONE WAS YELLING at you to find a better answer - one that doesn't leave you eating the dust of those who've made REAL progress. You didn't have to crank your Ford to start the engine this morning, although I'll bet you passed miles of electric poles and ugly wires (on you way to work in your climate-controlled office). When you call me or another crackpot, I'd wager your phone doesn't have a rotary dial, and I'd bet you also have a cell phone in your pocket; I'd also be on target if I guessed you have a fancy computer on your desk - and one or two at home. The only reason I have time to type this letter is that I don't have to stomp my laundry in a washtub and hang it out to dry; I don't have to chop wood for the stove or heat water for a bath. And to turn on a light I do exactly what my great grandmother did - I flip a switch (when there's not a black-out). And in her yard and in mine...those hideous things that cannot be disguised or hidden, ignored or denied and around which we must exercise a modicum of caution - are those hideous, horrible, anachronistic, horse and buggy, pony express, Little House on the Prairie electric poles and ugly wires. And they are virtually the ONLY thing my great-great-great grandmother would recognize in this world were she to rise from the dead today.

The electric industry's complacency with OUR complacency with the status quo allows them to be both an eyesore and an unreliable source of power. We haven't complained enough or embarrassed you enough to consider any other answer. Add to those facts that you have no competition forcing you to make improvements.Your CEOs are lazy and stupid; your company is lazy and stupid; and I have hundreds of dollars worth of good reasons to NOT trust you or your service. (That freezer's still for sale, if you're interested.) And since you cannot deny that I'm right and retain any credibility, are you sure you still wanna talk to me?

You can reach me at the number in your files,

BG 

PS: Note that the background image on Hiram's Rants has those ugly telephone wires at the bottom of it.  And if you like this sort of thing, here is that classic, If GM ran like Microsoft

Naguru-Morpheus Connection

Hi Readers,

Recently, I saw an answer posted by the Yahoo Answers User Naguru, a very nice guy whom I have always gotten along with, and the answer so bothered me (It was a kind of "You are right whatever you are trying to say" answer) that I posted a question asking whether this was pandering. As soon as I posted it I regretted putting his name in the details, but Yahoo Answers no longer allows me to remove a question once I have asked it.

So I was about to apologize to Naguru (thankfully some friends in there reported my question for me to take it down,) but then I received an email from Morpheus.

A little background on Morpheus:

Seven years ago, I was a top answerer in Yahoo Answers Philosophy with hundreds of fans and an 8% best answer rating (anybody with higher than a 20% is a fraud and is boosting their own answers by the way.) Suddenly everything I wrote got reported (That is the old method of what they do now, which is move your questions to insulting and erroneous categories like "pre-school.") A friend who knew Morpheus in real life warned me that he was an IT guy and a hacker and that he was a little bit dangerous. Another friend told me Morpheus hacked his email and started posting inappropriate questions under his name. So my account was targeted, questions removed and fan links used to stalk and harass me with nasty anonymous emails, until I removed all my fans and made my user links private. Finally my account was revoked. I will not underestimate Morpheus again.

So after my Naguru debacle I received this anonymous email:

From: M O R P H E U S
Subject: Raging against the machine!
Message: Still here, I see. We never had a beef, you and I. Somethings are best to leave...

At rest.

Be well!
-----------------------------------

I, dear readers, consider this a threat, and a threat against me for saying something negative about Naguru. Morpheus is a sham, a fraud apparently a dangerous person and apparently Naguru is his protégé. Remember that in Y!A anyone can have an account called Morpheus and  anyone can send off an email as him. But the fact that his name comes up after I inappropriately slammed Naguru leads me to think maybe it was inadvertent rather than inappropriate, and that I have discovered another con game in Y!A.

I hope I am wrong. I hope someone with a very long memory is F-ing with me and that this is not the psychotic hacker turning his disgusting attentions back on me. I have seriously avoiding being popular or whatever in Philosophy for this very reason.

But perhaps my attempts at obscurity have failed.

If you contact me, Morpheus, I will spread the word to a higher and greater level what you are about in Y!A philosophy. Do not mess with me.

Happy Hiram

If perception changes the perciever does it change what is percieved?

If perception changes the perciever does it change what is percieved?

The mind is a splitter. Everything we look st becomes a zebra when in fact the universe is all gray horses. We see horses when all is gray scenery. 5 million shades of gray when there is one.

The universe is one thing until the mind begins to break it up. Reflection (like a mirror) turned on itself (like two mirrors) results in infinity. Put yourself between two mirrors and see. The mind creates an infinite universe OUT OF ITSELF. Crazier than any Matrix brain-in-a-vat scheme. 

There would be no reality if mind did not distinguish background from object. That is the triad at the center of all things. A father, son and holy scrim if you like. Sky mother and Earth father and you (as the observed one.) Time (out of mind) space and matter/energy. 

Against the assertion that religion is irrelevant.

The original question from Yahoo Answers

Q: Religions are just old Cults?

Have you noticed every Cult calls itself a Religion?

A: Cultic thinking is merely when sets of words cohere, and members of a group develop their own language for understanding one another. CBS television is a cult. The followers of Richard Dawkins are a cult. Discussion of the scientific method becomes cult-like. 

Any time someone says use its not it's in a sentence they are closing the walls on a barrier between people, an attempt to make themselves special, a cult of those in the know and those not.

Your word cult does not scare me. You are mad at religion because you percieve their ideas - which you think crazy, irrelevant and dangerous - have succeeded much better than yours do, even now in this most enlightened of ages.

People will ALWAYS seek after deeper truths than science can tell them. When you try and shut them out to build a cult against religion you are doing their work for them, because you cannot chase away a need by shaking your finger.

Fake Thomas in Yahoo Poetry

The original Thomas7 from Yahoo Answers who wrote crappy poetry using archaic words, was a good Christian and warned me that someone was impersonating him is gone. The new Thomas (with or without the 7) who claims to be the old Thomas thinks Boolean and semantics are "made up words" and when I speak the truth about him in comments they get reported and removed. But he says he is the old Thomas and that I have been saying lies again.

I know Thomas and you are not him.

God and the Universe?

What is the most rational view of God and the universe?

To say "I know what I don't know" is never rational. So the atheist is as irrational as the theist. As a planet full of people WE DON'T KNOW if God exists or doesn't. We thought we knew Little people (Hobbits, Leprechauns Etc...) didn't exist UNTIL THEY FOUND THEIR REMAINS on a Polynesian Island. Did some little people travel to Europe and Asia and spread the legend of their existence?

Truth is a tall order from a world full of people who don't know very much. Smart people are like the tall people in a hedge maze, they think they are at an advantage because they see the rough contours of the whole thing better than most, and then they rush headlong down dead alley after dead alley because intelligence breeds arrogance sooner than it breeds insight. The little people (religionists) meanwhile  stand one on top of another and the most intrepid one gets a glimpse of something that even genius cannot fathom. These mystics go "behind the walls" so to speak. They come back with weird tales that get weirder and weirder in the telling, but often the lowly follower has a better grasp of the trip than his much taller scientific counterpart. But is it truth? Does it hold up to examination? Of course not. So the smart one rams into ten more walls getting angrier and angrier at the little know-it-all twerps.


Truth chasing comes down to that old adage "Would you rather be right or happy?" Beliefs that are useful are often not rational and beliefs that are rational are often not very useful.

Poetry rant

The Original Question (probably gone by now)

The trusted members who rule the roost in YAP cannot stand anyone with intelligence talent or an ear for poetry. 

You might find out Neon- er, Elys - er, Pete- er, Tho- er, Ge* - er...

You might find out the emperor has no clothes. 

*Ge has talent, he just follows and obeys those who don't and wants to defend his hegemony over new poets even from those of us who do not threaten it. 

The Children of Goldilocks: or Not Being Able To Make Up Your Mind.

The Question from Yahoo Answers

Question: Why do I keep changing my mind? Doing one thing one day and changing course the next?

Answer: Some of us are not meant to row just one boat. And some of us are mentally ill. And some of us are both. The difference between polymath and psychopath is not as distinct as you might assume. 

Getting help for psychological problems often feels like shutting down the genius of oneself. The trouble is that that can be correct and wrong at the same time. My judgement as a depressive is often very skewed. So I need help. But much of the psychiatric community cannot fathom my statement about polymaths and psychopaths. So they assume any good idea you might have is delusional. So long as you are aware that that is THEIR necessary delusion you can find a balance. It is never going to be as good as we expect our raw genius to be. It just won't be as messed up as it will actually be. 

 I don't assume you are a teenager, even though I usually make that assumption. Because I recognize a fellow Child of Goldilocks when I see one.

Rejecting the Infinite Universe; Embracing the Infinite Deity

An infinite universe, to me, causes more problems than it solves. The problem with infinity is that is has a corrosive quality of making everything functionally pea soup. Imagine two images superimposed, and now imagine a million images superimposed and that is what you get in an infinite universe - infinite times over! 

The universe is finite because things that exist must be discrete - i. e. finite. This means that either God must not exist or must not be infinite, unless their is another state beyond absolute finiteness and absolute non-existence. Quantum physics describes something called potential particles that affect the universe EVEN THOUGH THEY DO NOT PHYSICALLY EXIST. 

Particles effect each other forwards and backwards in time. The Big Bang as the theory states, was caused to bang by conditions that existed shortly AFTER the bang triggering its INITIAL state. It was its own parent, so to speak. 

The universe that was to be effected the Big Bang and vice versa. 

The finite universe is driven by potential, whether on the level of quantum physics or at higher energy states by the multiverse. The multiverse is like that superimposed photo metaphor except the superimpositions are implied (i. e. potential) and affecting but not bleeding out the limited universe that IS. Potential drives everything and is the divine engine that runs the universe. I call it/him/her/them God.

If you want goofy pseudo-theories about how human behavior comes from magnetism, read Alex Chiu's Neo-Darwinism: http://www.alexchiu.com/cell/frame.htm

I personally think that love and hate and joy and fear are expressions of the infinite quality that is consciousness. Consciousness is a sort of touchstone between us and potential. It is the way in which we are made in God's image. 

Why is there something instead of nothing?

Original Question from Yahoo Answers

Anything which is infinite, by the very nature of the concept becomes all things, as an infinite variety of apples includes at least one that is an orange and one that is an orangutan etc.. So an infinite amount of nothing eventually becomes something. 

Atheists do not so much have an argument with the existence of God as they do with the existence of infinity because if anything is infinite unicorns can fly. Infinitude opens the door to gods and monsters but the people who so love the Big Bang that they cannot say "theory" behind it want only one kind of unicorn in the universe - the creating singularity. If you are going to accept something so bizzare as the Big Bang (and Hubble and other long range pictures of the universe confirm it) why not go whole hog and imagine a multiverse where all of the other potential universes are NON-EXISTENCE and our little play gets to be real in REACTION to those shadow plays?

Potential particles rule the atom and the infinite nada rules us.

Old Man Infinity and Ms. Nada

What created the universe?
(The original question)


The universe is a result of a surfeit of non-existence. Think of it as a old married couple. Old infinity is the man, and non-existence is his wife. When you breed infinity with non-existence you get reality. Pretend instead of non-existence, you pair infinity with an apple. You get an infinite variety of apples, including red ones, green ones, blue ones, ultra-violet ones, square apples, tubular apples, apples that look like umbrellas, apples that TASTE like umbrellas, follow this list infinitely and you get the whole multiverse. You can do the same thing with non-existence; when you run out of all the non-existent types of non-existence you start to get all the existent types of non-existence, which is what I call the surfeit of non-existence.

The question is, do you believe in the infinite, and that my friend (unfortunately for you) is the God question again

The Creation Story (again)

The Original Question: Can infinite regress be applied to anything?

Infinite regression only applies to things which are infinite. I am a believer in God, but I agree with Dawkins that infinite regression - as I understand it, which is called eternal recurrence - applies to God. That which goes on forever loses all character and becomes a gray melange, everything and nothing, EXCEPT FOR ITS FINITE PARTS. So an infinite thing is no thing (nonexistence) and the surfeit of an infinite nonexistence is EXISTENCE (if something is infinite it becomes all possible - and impossible, versions of itself (which is exactly the infinite regression problem) so that the very thing that he uses to demand there be no creator DEMANDS a universe CREATED OUT OF NOTHING. 

We, those things that exist, are the absurd tip of non-existence, which is a vast ghost ship, as it were, of all our nonexistent potentials; in other words - God. 

God is above mere existence and is not the pantheist's delusion but more than everything and nothing COMBINED.

What is your personal philosophy of the universe?

The Original Question

The universe is a surfeit of non-existence. God swallows the flame ball of eternal recurrence for us and we serve as the valve that allows God to be discrete (meaningfully finite.) Man's finite and imperfect idea of God is our greatest gift to our creator. 

We live, like our creator as disembodied spirits, consciousness without color or shape, tied to a concrete body that identifies and serves us. Our body is our greatest asset. It allows us to be specific things. Limitations make us whole.

Our mind includes a conscience (usually) and an ability to identify patterns, (reason.) Life is meant to be lived, despite the relative misery that comes from the brevity of physical pleasures. Pleasures of the mind are more durable, but everything is an exercise, to be played with dignity and skill, like a game. In the end we go back to that dreaded infinity.  

The formula for beautiful life is finite from left to right and infinite from top to bottom. As Oscar Wilde said, we are all in the gutter but some of us are staring at the stars. 

Thank you for asking the question. I wish someone were able to figure out what I am taking about.

More refuting "theories" of creation

How can atheist live in a world created for no reason?
See the original question

I resent the idea you start with that a degree makes you worthy of discussion and my lack of one devalues my opinion. As a non-atheist, you make a strong case for the atheist BY USING THEIR TACTICS. 

If everyone who knows science better than me is a better judge then your opinion is an outlier and I should ignore it and go with the statistically more consistent answers.

Contradictions in particle physics and the disconnect with the theory of gravity give string theory and the multiverse traction, which by your logic is worthless (which also throws out the unprovable creative intelligence theory.) So rather than trying to use minimalism and reductionism to defeat well accepted theories, why not admit that if God is a cubit or a Higgs particle it diminishes God and your minimalism and disdain for theories is much more atheistic than anything you are arguing against. I believe God can only be encountered by faith and those who wrap God in "theory" are swindlers or fools. Which are you?