Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
We remember learning about the various constellations; and, these days, we are merely one “Google-away” from identifying that morning point of light that seems to shine so bright just over the horizon, and has moved since you first noticed it the evening before. Google ruins everything. […]
Is language necessary for laughter to follow? If so, what accounts for the slapstick comedy that erupts with uproarious belly-shaking guffaws that reverberate throughout? What is the fine line between laughter and sorrow — of the man who slips and upends upon a slippery banana left unnoticed on the sidewalk, to realizing that the injuries are serious enough […]
It is, of course, the core of Western thought, originating from Socratic arguments against placing one’s faith in the “appearance” of things as opposed to the Platonic Forms that represent true Being; and through Aristotelian arguments of a “substratum” that underlies the outward appearance, to the certitude of Cogito, ergo sum; then, the inner reliance where subjectivity and objectivity coalesce and the distinctions became undoable by Wittgenstein’s standards of banishing all Philosophical problems to mere linguistic confusion, […]
Although it may no longer show in modernity, it was the dominant methodology accepted as reflecting the Aristotelian belief that man is essentially a rational animal, and thus the general approach towards reaching conclusions should embrace the perspective that the criterion of truth is based upon not sensory, but intellectual and deductive foundations. But if the thought process fails to utilize the formal laws governing deductive reasoning, and nobody reads Russell or Quine, anyway, what is the difference?
Before going “whole-hog” with anything in life, the greater wisdom often confirms that we should try and obtain a differing perspective on the matter, if only to affirm the correctness of our own, or to consider the fissures and weaknesses we are blind to. Wise people seek wisdom; fools travel down roads not merely untested, but even unprepared. Such a tautology is a mere self-evident fact of life, but we nevertheless follow blindly where the blind leads. If an individual discounts the criticisms of everyone else, then the wisdom one holds is merely the price of one’s own mistakes, […]
Much time is often wasted upon rebutting incoherent arguments. Such a statement is true in a great many sectors of life, as well as with an initial denial received from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The first reaction in response to an Initial Denial received from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is to panic and become disheartened: The Federal Disability Retirement applicant has waited many, many months, just to get to this point of being denied an application which was thought to clearly meet the legal standard of preponderance of the evidence, and perhaps the medical narratives and treatment records clearly and unequivocally established the nexus between one’s medical condition and the essential elements of one’s job. […]
Of course, the title is more akin to Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, as opposed to an interventionist deity of a personal nature. Yet, even of the latter, the question of whether any real influence can be gotten, or whether fate had already predetermined the course of future actions, is certainly debatable. If one ‘appeals’ to the guidance of a personal idol, but hears nothing, is there any distinguishable distinction to be made from that of a prime move, unperturbed by cries of tragic consequences? […]
It must be nice to walk around this world of insecurity with an intractable sense of locked certainty. There are those some few who possess such a perspective: everything is without any shades of grey; “rightness” is defined by one’s power, position and capacity to impose, and those who stand in the way are mere leftovers in the residue of history’s garbage heap; […]
Society’s steady progression towards greater insularity has been accepted as a mere inevitability that must be tolerated, resigned to, and ultimately embraced with little resistance and no objectionable diatribes, except by those madmen and social commentators who defy and decry and parade and parody of innovation as the essence of civilization’s manifest destiny, replacing the previous paradigm that engaged in the systematic genocide of the civilizations encompassing […]