PIANO'S AND CRITICAL THINKING
Now that I'm retired I've considered several activities to engage in. Engage in at my leisure and in a way that suits me. Hmmm. That sounded kinda selfish, but there it is and I can't really change the statement substantially and still say what I wanted to. So, one of the things I would enjoy would be to teach begginner guitar and mandolin to those who have a desire to learn how to play them. When teaching these instruments I try to include some music theory, (as much as I feel the student can stand), because music theory is applicable to any instrument they may care to learn in the future and will help them be a more complete musician. As it happens, the piano is the best way, in my opinion, to teach music theory. It's kind of like a physical representation of music theory and can open up a deep and effective understanding of music in general. What I've leaned in my music theory classes, and piano lessons has been invaluable in my advancement on other instruments I have learned to play.
    Critical thinking is similar in another area of our lives. If we learn to analyze things systematically we can apply that process to situations as they present themselves in our lives. We cannot use this process to make decisions, but we would be silly not to use the process to HELP us make good decisions. If I may offer a quick example. We may not have delt with new car salesmen before but even on our first encounter we can benefit from analyzing the process. When a salesman says your used trade-in car is worth 3 times more than your friend was willing to pay you you may think your friend isn't as good a friend as you first thought. But if you are appropriately skeptical of the amount of money the salesman is offering you you will likely learn that your car's value is actually more in line with your friends offer. A new car price often includes a significant markup to allow the salesman the chance to offer you the excessive amount of money for your car to give the illussion that they are being very generous to make the sale more likely. They may offer you 3,000 for a car that they will wholesale out for 1,000 while still making a nice profit on the deal. These facts are there for the learning but are seldom discovered. If we know the value of our car before the negotiation we become skeptical of the process and can learn how the new car selling game is played. Then we can negotiate from a position of strength. Strength provided by our knowledge of the process we are engaged in.
    This ability to reason is something our schools use to focus on. Unfortunately we have entered a time when colleges are more interested in advancing a particular ideology rather than teaching the ability to form an opinion based on the logical analysis of the available facts. Just like music theory can help us with our endeavor to learn any instrument, so, too, does critical thinking help us in all aspects of decision making.

A STEP FARTHER

    Still working on the health-care issue in my rather limited mental capacity. See if this clicks at all.
Insurance is, (originally anyway), based on risk. The more risk the insurance company takes on, the higher the premium.
    The "risk" that someone with an insurance policy will get the flu, or a cold, or bronchitis, or an inner-ear infection, or etc. etc. is 100%. This means that the insurance company, before any other calculation, must account for the cost of providing services for these common illnesses. To provide services for these common issues that virtually every person will need, the insurance company relies on internal and external bureaucracies. These layers of red tape are required to oversee the system and verify needs, etc. These expenses are much inflated at the insurance company level over what they would be at the individual level.
    A visit to a direct care doctor for an illness and the subsequent treatment is exponentially more efficient and effective than going through the insurance company's bureaucratic environment.
    Since I have retired, I have engaged in a contract with a direct care physician and have a small sample of personal experience to draw from. I make a monthly payment for his services and then pay as I go for additional items. A recent blood work-up and an inquiry into prescriptions I need for eye drops revealed an incredibly low cost on both accounts. The blood test was around 20 bucks and one of the eye drops was about a tenth of what I'd been paying even with prescription coverage on my old plan. Additionally, I can call him 24/7 and know that I will get a doctor on the phone. I can email, text or use the handy on-line app they provide. I then purchased a policy to cover any major medical issues I may encounter and the combined costs of both are significantly less, (about half), of my previous employer-provided coverage. Yes, there are still questions and scenarios that may reveal issues with this set-up, but it's the kind of effort I expect from a free society. A society, a citizenry, that is losing freedoms by the day and will quickly lose much ground in this regard if we let the government seize control of our health-care system. (now, back to our regularly scheduled discussion).
    With a direct care model in place, (or something similar), the insurance company's would be free to return to their more appropriate place in the system and provide, true, risk-based coverage for people. This would see a dramatic drop in costs because the 100% risk factor will be replaced by a much lower factor and the common, predictable illnesses will be covered by the much more effective and direct approach offered by the doctor-patient contract mentioned above. A significant outcome with this arrangement is the person's more direct involvement in his health-care services and costs. The individual replaces the incredibly ineffective bureaucracy the insurance companies had previously relied on.
    I don't have a solution to our complex medical insurance situation here in the US, but doesn't it seem incumbent to consider some viable alternatives? This model has been around for many years and is available in all but 2 states as of this writing. If you were wondering how you can bring back a more free society, exercising some initiative and individual responsibility is one way. Please consider taking your health-care back from the government before it's too late.
    Thanks and have a nice day.

Where has all the common sense gone?

    Does common sense and logical thinking evaporate? Sublimate? Hibernate? If not, why is it so hard to find these days? And while we're out with our flashlights in the night looking for common sense maybe we can locate that elusive critter called dialogue and civil discussion. Heck, I'd settle for any discussion, civil or otherwise. Do we take our positions so personally that we can't risk actually listening to the other side? Or have we prejudged the "other side" so negatively that we can't even stand to hear it?
    Newsflash. There are thoughtful, compassionate individuals who don't think "gun free" schools is the way to go in a country saturated with guns. Not offering an opinion on gun ownership here, just making an observation. We surround celebrities, public servants, politicians of every stripe with people trained in the use of firearms to protect their subjects from harm. Somehow, we have decided a cool-looking international symbol printed on a sign at the entrance of our children's schools is supposed to protect them. How could any gun-inflicted harm come to our children with such a solid line of defense right there at the school's entrance? If I may say, it doesn't seem to be working too well so far.
    Given the reality that gun confiscation would be messy at best and against our Constitution , and would take years to try to enforce, (likely with little success), it does not offer us an effective solution to this rising problem. Left-leaning ideological thinkers pretending to state their more conservative counterpart's positions by these vague and far reaching "silly" statements isn't exactly interpretable as offering a meaningful solution either. It seems like with such an important subject we need to have a discussion, not a verbal bumper sticker convention.
    By the way, if our children are the priority of our society (as they should be), maybe we should consider another shot at prohibition since drunk driving is one of the leading causes of death among young children. And don't forget that swimming pools claim far more innocent children's lives than guns. Guns are very powerful and need to be handled with the respect they deserve but honestly, fatal accidents involving guns are rare and these school shootings are not revealing a gun problem, they are revealing a society and culture problem.
    "There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws; or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality."
                                                          Alexis de Tocqueville