Douglas L. Ross - My Personal Reflections

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews

Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson My rating: 5 of 5 stars Having read only snippets and never a complete biography of Leonardo da Vinci before, I have no basis of comparison from which to judge the accuracy of Isaacson's beautifully written account of Leonardo's life. Assuming it's accurate, Isaacson's account leaves no doubt that; the man was a true genius, he led a fascinating life much of which was enabled by being born near the beginning of the Renaissance in Europe and he was fortunate to have been associated with so many other brilliant characters. The only minor issue I had with the book was not always being able to tell exactly what the current scholarly research consensus is about the many mysteries of Leonardo's life versus Isaacson's opinion. The book is well worth reading. View all my reviews

How to be a conservative by Roger Scruton My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews

I don't like labels. Labels are an unfortunate legacy of our evolution which once required that instant  "is it friend or foe" decisions be hard-wired as a matter of life and death. You would think that civilized human beings would have had enough time by now to evolve something better than simplistic warning labels like liberal and conservative, but for some reason we still haven't done it. Liberals would label me a conservative although I am often in agreement with ideas which liberals claim to be theirs exclusively. Conservatives would label me a "closet liberal" because I didn't meet some ludicrous litmus test criteria; but frankly, there is no litmus test of what it means to be a conservative that I really give a dam about. And both gladly take my contributions. So why am I rambling on about my personal philosophical leanings? Because I am distressed about the sorry state of "The New Republic" magazine. The latest issue (Feb 2015) was ...

I subscribe to e-mails from The White House (like the one below) to keep track of what they are actually saying. Normally their e-mails are recitations of the President's talking points and don't add anything meaningful. However, this time David Simas was soliciting input to prove their case that the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") is actually working. So, since I involuntarily have new health coverage as of January 1 (that's what The White House was asking for) I decided to submit my own "story." Here's what I submitted: I am retired. I pay for Medicare but I don't rely on it for quality health care. I have new coverage as of January 1st which I was forced to purchase privately as an individual. I believe I was driven to this largely by one of the unintended consequences of Obamacare which is that large employers will now more easily drop retiree group medical plans (to pay for other costs of Obamacare) citing Obamacare as the backstop for t...

One thing I learned from my father when I was very young was to always keep something in reserve. He lived this in many ways and I believe he meant it in those many senses. Don't push yourself beyond your limits keep something in reserve; save for a rainy day; do your best joke last; "don't drop your candy in the lobby" (an inside joke that all salesmen know...meaning don't tell everything you know about your product in the first five minutes of the sales call, listen, wait, keep you candy in the jar until you know what they want); save your ammo; make her happy before you are; and this list goes on and on. My dad had one particularly useful way of keeping something in reserve that he taught me sixty years ago and I'm still doing it today. It was after a Cub Scout meeting on a wintery Saturday afternoon, probably in Kentucky (I can't remember where). My dad and I were supposed to get milk at the grocery on our way home. Dad remembered the milk but when w...

It is difficult to describe how profoundly influential Dick Clark's American Bandstand was to many teenagers (like me) in the early 1960's. In those days before PCs, Internet, cell phones, IM, Facebook, MTV, etc. American Bandstand was what you did to see what new artists and what kinds of music the "cool" people were listening and dancing to, what they were wearing, how they did their hair, and what they thought about stuff. It was part of the vast technological impact that TV had on our lives visually improving the experience over radio DJ music programs by an order of magnitude. The impact of TV back then, now taken almost for granted and morphing again with nearly limitless new sources of online video, was not just a shift but a complete phase change from audio to video. It was amazing. In the late 1950's and early 1960's I happened to live near Philly. When we first heard about this American Bandstand thing we thought it would be like "The Hit Para...