On March 12, 2024, Tom Saving died in St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston’s Texas Medical Center. He chose potentially fatal surgeries to get blood to portions of his digestive system and to erase a blockage. The last straw was kidney failure, though a complex set of problems overcame his body. Judy and I visited with him on Sunday, March 10. He had little remaining energy and spoke in a low volume. He could barely move the hand that was not hooked up to i v fluids. My experience with my father made me think Tom would likely not live through the week. Judy gave him some needed positive feedback. I took him a Monet book, but I doubt he saw it, as he could not hold a book. After he died, his wife, Barbara, wrote that Monet was one of his favorites and hers, too. Ever since my early 20’s, Dr. Thomas R. Saving has been an important part of my life. At the outset I knew he was brilliant in economics. In his advanced course in macroeconomics, he derived intricate …
Post 24- Howdy, Great Apes
I extend a hearty hello to all you great apes. You might not have known you are among the great apes, but that is just because most of you do not have a child in school right now. A handful of Texans will vote tomorrow on the use of the McGraw-Hill biology text in some K-12 classes that teaches that you are one of the great apes and exist due to pure evolutionary forces. I am still one of the worker apes, and I am thinking about taking off for the rest of the afternoon, so I am going to make this quick. I would much rather write about music, my friends, or other topics that give me a break from work and world heavy issues. But I figured that since I spent enough time to write a book (short though it is) about this evolution/monkey issue, I ought to take the time to send an email about the McGraw-Hill text - so I did. I reproduce it here for you great apes who have learned how to read, By the way, being able to read, do math, drive a car, etc. makes you a very …
Post 22 – War In The Middle East
Between 1901 and 2022, 954 Nobel Prizes were awarded. Of the recipients, 212, or 22%, were Jews. They have won multiple awards in all six of Nobel Foundation’s fields of award. That number is already out of date. The recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics is the Jewish economist Claudia Goldin of Harvard University. You may be under the impression that Jews are plentiful. If so, you are wrong, very wrong. Jews number about 15 million in the world, compared with approximately 2.4 billion Christians and 1.9 billion Muslims. The Jewish population represents only 0.2% of the world’s population. The share of winners of the Nobel Prize by Jews is about 100 times more than their proportion of the world’s population. The Jewish people have contributed so greatly to mankind’s knowledge in the world that they ought to be viewed as one of the world’s treasures. Instead, many want them exterminated. Death to Israel. Death to America. How …
Post 13 – Special Needs/Special Love
The Teacher and the Dragon By Douglas A. Sharp, from his book NIGHT BREEZES It’s fair to say you taught me. There are some things I’ve learned A gift that is freely given often cannot be earned. I’ve seen you take the world on With nothing but a grin And whenever that was not enough You’d take it on again. I watched you face the dragon That filled me full of fear I saw you climb onto its back And whisper in his ear. I saw the dragon look at you Much as I have done It seemed to me he smiled a bit Before he ambled on. I don’t know what he heard from you Or what it meant to him But there’s never been a dragon I have feared since then I indicated in Post 8 - Ashley and Henry, at 18 months my daughter, Ashley, lost use of her hands, her face became pale, and she quit vocalizing. She sat on the floor rocking in her own world and would not make eye contact. She had one screaming episode where she grabbed her head. Rett Syndrome is a developmental …
Post 12 – Art for the Hagler Institute For Advanced Study
One of my favorite quotes about art is by Alberto Giocometti, a 20th century Swiss sculptor and painter. He said, "The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity." One intense endeavor is the search for new knowledge. I never thought much about what kind of art would portray this search, but it "plopped in my lap", as the old saying goes. Three drawings now hang on a wall outside my office that capture the intensity of the quest for new knowledge. The art came from the A&M Foundation, that raises major donations and estate gifts for Texas A&M University. The drawings appeared in a feature story about the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study in the Foundation's magazine, Spirit. I have loved these pieces of art since I first saw them, and I want to share them with you in this post. They are best seen on a computer monitor. A little background is helpful. I am Associate Director of the Hagler Institute. The …
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Post 11 – Prior Posts and the Federal Debt
Hello to all. I hope you are enjoying my posts. I always welcome feedback. Here are couple of comments I want to make about prior posts. Regarding my post called Grief: When Mary Forest Engel shared her article about losing her son, the spacing in her writing was beautiful and consistent. When I reproduced her writing, that was not the case. I am still learning the program used to send out these posts. I am grateful to my cousin, Bob Loyd, for calling to my attention that the 67% growth in government spending during 2020 took place during President Trump’s administration, not President Biden’s. During President Biden’s first year, 2021, government spending declined by nearly 28% from the high point reached the previous year. Federal government spending increased by 9% during 2022. The key point made in Post 10 holds true. There is a well-documented connection between rapid money growth rates and inflation rates. We may see this connection …
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