FERS Disability: federal first long term disability

Postal & Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Foreground-background

October 11, 2016

Perspective is always an important component in all that is seen, done and accomplished. For, without it, a self-contained sense of importance in light of irrelevance and insignificance always seems to dominate. Seen from afar, standing in the background, can we always determine that which constitutes the background, as opposed to the foreground, of an individual or perspective some distance away? Does a myopic vision constrict and further complicate, where we miss the details some distance beyond and make assumptions and presumptions to the detriment of a more “balanced” viewpoint? […]

OPM Medical Retirement: When we used to speak of meaningful things

May 31, 2016

Perhaps the negation of ideas trickles down, just as water from a crack in the roof tiles; of Derrida, Foucault and the deconstruction movement after the lengthy period of disillusionment represented by the French Existentialists headed by Camus and Sartre; for, if meaning constitutes parity and the loss of hierarchies and paradigms in crumbling corners of inconvenient truths, then Orwell’s prediction of how totalitarianism will infect society with the tools of our own making, will come about sooner than we thought possible. […]

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The problem of inductive reasoning

May 23, 2016

The difficulties inherent in deriving universal truths from particular observations have been annotated throughout the history of logical analysis, from Hume to Popper, and continue to haunt attempts at scientific certitude. That probabilities can be imputed, as opposed to arriving at undeniable conclusions, allows for that “wiggle room” which is the hallmark of modern science. Today, where the intersection and commingling of science, politics and entertainment requires less than rigorous experimental verification, and where drug companies argue for fast-tracking of medications with limited-to-little trials, even of “controlled” ones […]

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The last hurrah

March 26, 2016

We dream of those moments; the final word in a debate which devastates the opponent; the retort which wows the audience; the closing statement that persuades beyond a reasonable doubt; the performance of a lifetime which defines the value of life itself. […]

Federal & Postal Medical Disability Retirement: Vultures the world ’round

February 10, 2016

Despite what they do, some find them to be elegance in flight; and whether the encounter is in the New World or Old, their bald heads mark them out to be the focus of fascination, repulsion and avoidance of shuddering whispers. Scavengers upon carrion of dead carcasses, the full display of their baldness and redness marks them for a discriminated species. […]

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Observing Dogs

November 25, 2015

They belie conformity of thought, though they are willing to obey and follow strict adherence to rules and commands; and while “experts” in clothing of meandering letters, capitalized after the patronymic lineage displayed proudly as designators of validity and knowledge, may conclude that they neither smile, nor exhibit greater intelligence than primates deemed closer to our ancestral genetic heritage, what constitutes a test of possessing such a quotient is often irrelevant to defining the species. They can defy; they can doubt, and be suspicious; anticipate by mere thought or look; and know the scent of danger from miles afar, […]

OPM Disability Retirement: The Stuff of Life

November 18, 2015

Aristotle refers to the underlying unchangeableness of the world we encounter, in contrast to the cosmetic alterations which appear to defy the constancy of the universe, thereby bringing together the two poles of philosophical opposition as represented by Heraclitus and Parmenides. That “substratum” which underlies it all, and of which Heidegger sought to unravel and make known; for the everyday person, it is the “stuff of life” that we must deal with. […]