Zen and the Art of /.*/

I just finished ordering tickets for my brother and myself to go see Richard Dawkins’ lecture “The Purpose of Purpose” at the Northrop Auditorium on March 4th. I would encourage anyone else in the area to attend. Dawkins is a great speaker and it is sure to be a good time.

My brother used to work at the Northrop, I’ve been to a number of shows there, and I’ve never had a bad experience. And I’m sure it’s just a third-party product, but their ticket ordering system is a joke. Well, it would be a joke if it weren’t so painful.

Nothing but more false hope and economic illiteracy:

http://mises.org/story/3309

“Perhaps the most disturbing part of this discussion is the failure of so many people to recognize the illusory nature of the Obama tax cuts, which would reduce the immediate tax burden for some Americans by increasing the federal deficit. A switch from tax-financed spending to deficit-financed spending does little to change the existing division of resources between the private and public sector.”

It is complete nonsense to think that you can create value by either 1) taking from some people to give to others or 2) by decreeing value into existence.

Well, I certainly did not expect to be completely incapacitated for four days, but such is the price one pays for having thin corneas, apparently.

On Wednesday afternoon, I underwent photorefractive keratectomy. It was a fascinating experience on many levels. First, and most obviously, having your eyes partially numbed, drawn upon, propped open, scraped, and then burned is a slightly terrifying experience. It was in some ways better and in some ways worse than I expected.

Let’s ease into this whole blog thing with something decidedly uncontroversial…

I type this wearing years-old glasses that do not, in fact, focus images very well on my retinas. I have been wearing them for the past few days in order to allow my eyeballs to return to their natural shape, free from the deforming influences of contact lenses.

This is being done in anticipation of a surgery I will be undergoing tomorrow (well, technically, later today). About 12 hours from now an optical surgeon will be performing photorefractive keratectomy, whereby he will use a microkeratome blade to remove the epithelium (outer layer of the cornea) of both of my eyes and then use a laser to reshape my eyes’ corneal tissue to correct myopia, all within the span of a few minutes.

It has oft been said that I have a penchant for pontificating, a taste for tirades, and a verve for verbosity. Ok, none of that has ever been said. Perhaps a similar sentiment, but probably not so effusive. More like, “Wow, do your fingers hurt?” “You really think I have time to read that?” or “I think you accidentally left on the verbose lock.”

Sometimes folks will say things like, “Have you ever considered being a writer / politician / professional person-with-an-opinion-on-everything?” This is merely a nice way of saying, “Would you please find somewhere else to put your soapbox because my inbox can’t take it anymore.”

So, for 2009, my gift to my friends, family, and co-workers is to create a place where I can write down all of the things that I would have written to them and instead send them out into cyberspace for nobody to read. Actually “posting” my blather and seeing it present on a blog gives me the happy illusion of it being read, while affording the aforementioned folks a much better excuse for never reading it.

So, there you have it. My very own Web Log.

I promised a lot of words, but this is rather short. For many more words, see the About page.

Oh, and don’t give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it, always take truth as the authority rather than authority as the truth, and be good for goodness’ sake.

Read at your own risk. You’ve been warned.