Author Archives: Tin Man

RIP Ted Kennedy

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“If his father, Joe, had surveyed, from an early age up to the time of his death, all of his children, his sons in particular, and asked to rank them on talents, effectiveness, likelihood to have an impact on the world, Ted would have been a very poor fourth. Joe, John, Bobby … Ted.

“He was the survivor,” Mr. Ornstein continued. “He was not a shining star that burned brightly and faded away. He had a long, steady glow. When you survey the impact of the Kennedys on American life and politics and policy, he will end up by far being the most significant.”

– from Ted Kennedy’s obituary in the New York Times.

Celestia

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I’ve been on a space and astronomy kick since the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing was celebrated last month. I just finished reading This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age, by William E. Burrows. It’s incredibly thorough, covering all aspects of the space program from humanity’s first strivings to fly into space, through Galileo’s discoveries, through the development of rocketry, all the way to the end of the 20th century. (The book was published in 1998.) Now I’ve moved on to The Fabric of the Heavens, a history of astronomy from Babylonian times to the discoveries of Newton.

I’ve also discovered an amazing free downloadable computer program, Celestia, that lets you simulate travel throughout the universe. It contains models of every planet and moon in our solar system, rotating and revolving at their actual speeds, as well as pretty much every star we know about; man-made satellites, such as the International Space Station and the Hubble Telescope, in their proper places; comets; and countless galaxies. You can see things from any vantage point, you can speed way up or slow way down, you can move around. It’s also expandable — you can download addons for numerous spacecraft, comets, asteroids, and even fictional planets and spaceships, such as the Enterprise or the Death Star, Vulcan or Tatooine.

You can do so many cool things with it, and playing around with it can bring interesting insights. For instance, if you zoom way out so that so you can see the sun and the first four planets, and then tell the program to put Earth at the center of your screen and keep it there no matter what happens, and then speed things up, it looks like the sun and the planets are orbiting around Earth, just like the ancients thought. Venus and Mercury do these weird loop-de-loops around the sun, creating the epicycles that we see here on Earth, while Mars looks like the “wandering star” people used to think it was.

Or you can go to the surface of Mars and see the Earth as a tiny dot, just as Mars looks like a tiny dot from Earth. Or you can go to another star and see the Sun itself as just another dot.

Or you can press a button that shows you the lines that make up the constellations, and then you can zoom way, way out from the Sun, past Neptune, past Pluto, without the constellations seeming to change shape at all. They don’t start to change shape until you get about 0.1 light years from the Sun. That’s how far away they are! We know this intellectually, but it’s amazing to see it actually simulated.

I don’t know why I never knew about Celestia, but it’s my new toy, and it’s absolutely free.

Health Care Basics

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So, the health care debate.

But first, a really long tangent. Feel free to skip this part, but it does kind of relate.

* * *

One day when I was a boy, I was reading some old Jewish folktale that took place in a shtetl. There were some robbers, and they were stealing from a family’s home. My dad was shaving in the bathroom, and I went in and asked him, “Is there such thing as robbers?”

It seemed so weird to me that there could be a group of people who snuck into someone’s house and stole their stuff. It… just didn’t make sense. It was too scary and unsettling. It was… wrong. Why would people do something that was wrong?

I tend to be idealistic about humanity — or naïve, depending on how you look at it. I like to throw away the assumptions and ask the questions a child would ask. Why do dogs have four legs? Why is the sky blue? Why are people mean? Why can’t they just not be mean? Grow the hell up, someone might say. People are just mean. What? Come on! I can’t even ask why?

I believe, or I want to believe, that every human being wants to be good, that human beings care about their fellow human beings, and that if you just try to communicate with someone who is ill-informed — if you calmly lay out your reasoning, clearly and logically — the other person can’t help but come around; perhaps not right away, but eventually. Even if the person protests, I believe (or, again, I want to believe) that your words will seep into the person’s subconscious, take root, and flower when the time is right.

I believe deeply, almost religiously, in the power of logical argument. That doesn’t mean an argument divorced from emotion or morality; ultimately, arguments for the preservation of humanity or for the idea that we should treat each other well are moral ones, not logical ones. But the process by which you get from a moral premise to a moral conclusion, that involves logic.

As for the substantive part, the moral part: I do think everyone wants to do good. We can be selfish, fearful creatures, but we are also capable of great empathy and generosity. That empathy and generosity just needs to be teased out sometimes, and it has to be done in the right way. I don’t always know what that way is, but I believe it’s possible. I just refuse to believe that there isn’t a person who can’t ultimately be convinced.

Again, call me idealistic or naïve. I don’t care.

* * *

Okay, that’s the end of the tangent. You really should have read it.

But back to the health care debate.

All the craziness is making people forget what this is all about:

Either you care about what happens to strangers, or you don’t.

Either (1) you believe your fellow citizens deserve health insurance, or (2) you don’t believe your fellow citizens deserve health insurance.

Either (1) you see other human beings — most of whom you will never meet and who may have life circumstances or cultures that are completely different from your own — as actual, living, breathing people, or (2) you see your fellow human beings as subhuman.

Why do I say subhuman? Because if you don’t ascribe to other people the same three-dimensionality that you ascribe to yourself and your own family members, if you don’t think their lives matter as much, then you’re not treating them as human beings. You’re treating them as less than human. As subhuman. (This is why good fiction writers are probably better people than the rest of us: because they take the time to imagine fully real, fleshed-out characters. Because they appreciate that every human being has value.)

It’s weird. For most of 2008, and most of the years before that, I thought that the health care debate was about the fact that millions of Americans don’t have health insurance. Either they can’t afford it or they’re denied coverage, but for whatever reason, they don’t have health insurance. So they get sick and die because they can’t afford to see a doctor for minor issues that become major issues or even for preventive care. Or they have an accident or develop a catastrophic illness and then they go into bankruptcy because they have to pay for everything themselves.

So health care reform is about insuring all of our citizens, like every other modern nation tries to do.

But then suddenly it’s 2009, and people are saying, “Health care reform, as we’ve long said, is primarily about reducing costs.” What? When did this happen? I thought health care reform was about insuring all of our citizens. When did it become about cost? Cost is an issue, but it is a secondary issue. The primary issue is that there are millions of Americans who lack health insurance.

The cost isn’t really a big deal. Why are people so selfish that they’re not willing to pay higher taxes to help out millions of other people? Our taxes are already so low compared to other countries. Back in the ’50s and ’60s, taxes were way higher than they are now — the top rate was 91 percent — and the economy thrived.

The response is, “Are you kidding? I’m struggling as it is.” Well, guess what? There are millions of Americans who are much worse off than you.

“But this is my money. I should be rewarded for my hard work.” Yes, but you have a moral obligation to the rest of human society.

“But if these other people just worked harder, they’d be doing as well as me.” Tell that to the woman working two minimum-wage jobs to feed her family.

“It’s not my fault she’s worse off than I am.” No. But again, you are part of human society, and therefore you should care about her.

You should care about her.

“Why can’t we all just give to charity?” If that worked, we wouldn’t be in the mess we were in. Besides, mandatory payment — taxes — takes the social pressure off you. We care about how we’re doing in relation to other people, and if you know that everyone else has to give money for the common good, you won’t feel like a chump for being the only one doing it.

I don’t understand why more preachers and pastors and other religious leaders aren’t pleading with their congregants to support universal health care and the higher taxes that are necessary to achieve it.

I can be selfish and irritable and scared and suspicious just like anyone else can. But that’s why I need to be made to contribute, just like everyone else. We can’t rely on charity. Charity relies on our moods and our moods are inconsistent. We need to be made to pay higher taxes.

I don’t understand why citizens have to carry guns to rallies and why politicians have to spread blatant lies. (Chuck Grassley.)

Either you care about what happens to strangers or you don’t.

I guess I’m just naïve.

* * *

[Update: I don’t mean to suggest that health care costs are not important at all. There’s no need for our taxes to go toward inefficiencies or for us to pay more taxes than are necessary. But reduced health care costs are a means to an end — health insurance for as many people as possible — and not the end in itself.]