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Kevin Pezzi, MD

I developed technology to instantly
stop school shooters and other criminals,
such as rapists, robbers, home invaders,
and shoplifters. I also created ways to block
airborne germ transmission. Read more >

Iconoclastic views on economics, politics, technology, science, and life.

Disagree with something I wrote? So do I! Read more

“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

— Elbert Hubbard, American editor, publisher, and writer (1856–1915)

Trivia: He and his wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, the noted feminist and writer, died aboard the RMS Lusitania, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine on May 7, 1915, when they were heading to Europe to cover the war and interview Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

If you disagree with something I wrote, feel free to challenge it. Some of my viewpoints are the antithesis (exact opposite) of what they once were. That isn't flip-flopping; that is changing opinions with scant evidence to support them into convictions with a firmer foundation of facts.

My political philosophy is an amalgamation of libertarian, conservative, and liberal principles. My opinions have changed so significantly that my conservative friends might be horrified by how I strongly believe that liberals are correct on certain issues. I've previously written about some of them, but to make this more fun, I will present others as challenges in which I offer $100,000 to the first person who can refute the logic I used in forming that opinion. Please note that due to my limited time and difficulty using my hands after I broke my neck, I cannot quickly update my previously published opinions. However, now that I am balancing the promptings of head and heart, I strongly disagree with many opinions I expressed in my writings.

I like finding people who make me think, not necessarily those who agree with me. Genius Robert Heinlein said, “I never learned from a man who agreed with me.” If you can educate me, I'm all ears.

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
— Albert Einstein

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
— Albert Einstein

“What I would like to see more often in this nation is an open and intelligent conversation, not people just casting aspersions at each other … it's unbelievable to me the way people act like third graders. And if somebody doesn't agree with them, they're this and they're that … it comes from both sides. And it's just so infantile.”
— Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon

“The ultimate ignorance is the rejection of something you know nothing about and refuse to investigate.”
— Dr. Wayne Dyer

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
— General George Patton

“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes

“A lot of people risk their lives in a brief act of heroism, which is kind of cool, but Jill has what I call slow heroism. She is risking her professional life on something that her own calculations show may not work for a thousand years—may not ever. So I like to support people that are risking their lives.”
— ex-Microsoft billionaire brainiac Nathan Myhrvold speaking about Jill Tarter, who inspired the character played by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. It takes a brilliant person to see that others who go against the grain of conventional wisdom may be sages although lesser minds often ridicule their ideas.

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
— Oscar Wilde

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
— Winston Churchill

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
— Euripides, Greek tragic dramatist (484 BC - 406 BC)

“It is socially unacceptable to be right too early.”
— Robert Heinlein

“I'd rather stand alone on the truth than with millions on a lie.”

“The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture.”
— Arthur H. R. Fairchild

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
— Abraham Lincoln

This reminds me of something stressed by one of my psychology professors, who said that society imposes rigid boundaries for what behavior is acceptable, and applies tremendous pressure trying to force people to conform to the behavioral expectations. Some of the most brilliant and productive outside-the-box thinkers led unconventional lives. One of the side effects of forcing people to think inside the box is that by lopping off outside-the-box behavior, potentially great outside-the-box ideas are lost, too.

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”
— Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (1908-1965)

“You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.”
— John Eliot

Another lost American freedom

A woman interested in buying my ER cookie and Jell-O^® mold recently wrote to me. My response details the loss of yet another freedom:

I might be able to give you one, but I almost certainly cannot sell you one because I think the FDA requires that products sold that contact food be approved as safe. That's not a bad idea (it's a good one, in fact), but I suppose it restricts a freedom that you and I ought to have as Americans.

I vacuum-formed the ER cookie and Jell-O molds from milk jug-type plastic, just much thicker. I am considerably more picky about food safety than the FDA (over 90% of what they deem as safe I deem as toxic junk I refuse to put in my body), so I should be able to sell the mold to you. However, unless I am mistaken, I think food contact products must be FDA approved, which means testing, money, red tape, and time I just don't have.

Most people simply ignore this (probable) requirement and go on their merry way, but the FDA does, in conjunction with other federal and state authorities, raid the homes and businesses of people and corporations who run afoul of one of their zillion and one laws and regulations. When they conduct a raid (whether for food-related or other reasons), they go in with loaded guns pointed at people and conduct themselves in a way that's bound to overly escalate tensions, making their itchy trigger fingers too likely to send bullets into people who really don't deserve to die.

If you think I'm exaggerating, consider what happened to Donald Scott, a 62-year-old multimillionaire and heir to the Scott Paper fortune. He lived adjacent to federal park lands on 250 acres of breathtakingly beautiful property the government wanted. He refused to sell it, so the government concocted an excuse to raid his home, using weapons to threaten his wife. He heard her screaming, “Don't shoot me, don't kill me!” and rushed to defend her. He was shot three times and killed. I could give several more similar examples, including a case of “the authorities” raiding the wrong home, assaulting a young black honors student when they were supposed to be after three WHITE prostitutes, and then charging the student with a crime because she resisted being beaten up. Wouldn't you? (I detailed this case and related ones in another article, Police behaving badly.)

With 70,000 pages of new federal laws and regulations per year in a slow year and even more when federal politicians and bureaucrats are busy, I can't feasibly read all of that to determine if selling or even giving a mold to you is safe. To determine that, I'd also need to read the millions of pages of existing federal laws and regulations in addition to those in my state and yours. Practically speaking, this is an impossibility. Yet the FDA turns a blind eye to big corporations who sell us unquestionably harmful (and junky) products made in China and elsewhere. Go figure.

I wouldn't make you read this diatribe unless there might be something in it for you. In this case, that something is an ER cookie and Jell-O mold. Consider it an early Christmas present. That's what you want. What I want is to know that giving it is legally safe. If you contact the FDA and obtain their written approval, I'll give the mold to you. Deal?

She responded and thanked me for explaining the issue, but apparently thought that requesting FDA approval would be a waste of time. She is probably correct.

I wrote to them years ago about an unrelated matter and never received a response. They're too busy to respond to people trying to comply with laws and regulations, but always find the time to strap on their guns and round up federal, state, and local reinforcements to raid the businesses and homes of people who they think have broken some rule. Isn't it funny how they act like tough guys when they go after little guys but act like perfect gentleman when they deal with big corporations? That's typical of bullies.

I don't intend to imply that the FDA, police, and government are bad. Large bureaucracies are bound to have bad apples, many middling ones, and some shining stars. Our government and agencies within it have all of the above, but considering the gold we give them and the deference we give laws we often loathe, we should get fewer bad apples and bad attitudes and more respect as taxpayers doing our best to comply with the mountain of laws and regulations heaped upon us.

Notes:

IRS singling out of 'Tea Party' being investigated
Excerpt: “An investigation of the Internal Revenue Service was launched on Friday after a senior IRS official publicly apologized for subjecting conservative political groups to "inappropriate" scrutiny.”
Comment: Big Government = Big Thug. Power usually creates an urge to use it, and our government just can't help scratching that itch.

The views expressed on this page may or may not reflect my current opinions, nor do they necessarily represent my past ones. After reading a slice of what I wrote in my various websites and books, you may conclude that I am a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican. Wrong; there is a better alternative. Just as the primary benefit from debate classes results when students present and defend opinions contrary to their own, I use a similar strategy as a creative writing tool to expand my brainpower—and yours. Mystified? Stay tuned for an explanation. PS: The wheels in your head are already turning a bit faster, aren't they?

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reference: Imagining dialogue can boost critical thinking: Excerpt: “Examining an issue as a debate or dialogue between two sides helps people apply deeper, more sophisticated reasoning …”

Kevin Pezzi, MD

Another lost American freedom

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