Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
What constitutes it, and who determines the status of when it is achieved? We hear about people who are “experts” in this or that, referring to either experience, association or credentials, and based upon that, we accept their status of being an “expert” in the field. Can that be undermined by personal experience? Say a person has a Ph.D. in a given field, has worked in the capacity of that field for 30 years, […]
Does hope lie fallow when the basket of tomorrows become numbered too few? When endless tomorrows lay before one’s imagination, too numerous to count that one need not bother, does that purport to show that one has a great quantity of hope, or merely that youth’s folly allows for a carefree tomorrow where an eternity of tomorrows can never be reduced to a handful beyond a few todays? Can time and incremental portions of divided moments be quantified in that manner? […]
Sometimes, it may be a true statement; at others, it may merely turn out to be a throwaway line that is cast about to deceive a decoy into the mix. What is the objective criteria in determining the truth of the statement? If a young lad is failing in school and the parents contemplate some form of incentivized punishment, […]
Private entities charge more; exclusive arenas tend to be out of reach; and it is, ultimately and as in all economic realities, determined by an admixture of supply (how many are allowed) and demand (how desirous is the goal of entrance and acceptance). For every admittance, there is a price to pay. Often, it is not merely the affirmative transfer of money or goods, but rather, the negative aspect of what one must “give up” in order to attain the end. It often involves a comparative analysis, an economic evaluation of gain versus loss, and in the end, the emptiness of the latter being overtaken by the value of the former. […]
It is that which we strive to achieve; a moment of quietude, an aside of reserved inattention; that plateau where sheep graze silently in pastures green, and the distant echo of a neighbor’s dog barking is merely but a contour from the daily hubbub of reality. Perhaps the pastoral setting is but an idealized paradigm; but, without it, there is a sense that life is pointless. We may engage in daily meanderings and wonder about teleological issues on high; but, in the end, something more mundane is the normative constriction which compels us to act. […]
It may well be another evolutionary vestige to have the capacity to divide, separate, pigeonhole and compartmentalize; otherwise, the extreme bombardment of visual and auditory stimuli would be overwhelming, and perhaps untenable to one’s ability to process the volume and extent of the information needed to receive, analyze and comprehend. What is relevant; what must be immediately attended and responded to; which sets can be procrastinated; where does this bit of data go to? […]