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Showing posts from January, 2016

THE FRENCH DENTIST - FIRST VISITS

Making judgements based on anecdotal experience can be dangerous, terribly misleading, particularly given only one data set. But considering how similar our first visit to a French dentist was to our regular visits to our French general practitioner, we feel confident that our experience was not an outlier. My French or expat friends are invited to tell me if I've misjudged. Cathey broke a tooth some time ago. She didn't have pain and decided to wait until we received our carte vitale , our French public healthcare card, before visiting a dentist. We'd try out the recommendation of our friends Simon and Julia. Two women, one relatively young, one somewhat older, had a dental clinic in Capestang a few kilometers away. They had both studied in the US, so their English was probably better than our French. Cathey decided that we'd go after Thanksgiving. No, after Christmas. No, after the New Year. And of course by about the second week of January, the tooth that hadn&

THE NEW NINTH PLANET

I truly believe it. I believe that they will find it, the new Ninth Planet. No doubt. They've decided that it's there. That's all it takes. Once they decide that it's there, it's there. We are all just a little bit crazy. Yes, we are. The most buttoned-down, logic-loving realists among us secretly believe that Paul is dead or Elvis is alive or that the moon landings were faked or that Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are not a gift directly from God, proof that She loves us. I admit to a belief that many...that most...that everybody might find highly unlikely, but I'm sticking to it. I believe that until enough people with the proper scientific backgrounds were convinced that the possibility of the Ninth Planet existed, the Ninth Planet did not exist. Even today, there is only indirect evidence that the Ninth Planet exists. But the media has picked up the story. An ever growing number of astrophysicists are on board. The scales have tipped. In my lifetime

HANDICAPPING THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION - JANUARY 2016

Anyone who claims to have this election figured out is delusional. I am not delusional. But I am reasonably well read and I know a modicum of history. That gives me a leg up over a large segment of the electorate. Yes, it does. So after taking the month of December off to catch my breath, I'm back. Remember, after I announce my predictions for the month, I'll repeat the predictions that I made in the first of these posts in June of 2015. DEMOCRATS Has Clinton Fatigue finally set in? Has Bernie truly lit a spark that will catch electoral fire? The first three will answer those questions. Iowa: Always interesting but seldom dispositive, Iowa picks the eventual candidate as often as not. In 2008, Obama and Huckabee won. Past winners include Tom Harkin, Dick Gephardt, and Uncommitted. New Hampshire: A better record than Iowa, New Hampshire nonetheless has been won by the likes of Pat Buchanan, Paul Tsongas and Gary Hart. South Carolina: Newt Gingrich and John Ed