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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

A fat weight loss expert

While shopping with a friend, Ingrid, she said that someone walked into the store that looked just like the big shot of a famous weight loss company who was in so many of their ads and commercials that she seemed to be the face of it. I won't name her or the company; I'll call her Lisa and the company Blubber Burners (if there actually is a Blubber Burners, I'm not referring to them).

Ingrid rarely comments on the appearance of others, so I was surprised by how animated she was about Lisa, whom she termed “heavyset”—a term I'd never heard her use. Initially I wasn't paying much attention because a young girl, perhaps age 8, had just run into me as if I were invisible. The impact was sufficiently severe that I worried what it would do to my neck, now fragile after breaking it. Once I ended my post-impact check to see if I were OK, I finally turned and saw Lisa, dressed in tight-fitting clothes that were stretched around mounds of blubber, especially on her butt, hips, and thighs. I wondered why anyone that fat would wear anything that tight. Was she training for the BEFORE picture in an upcoming ad?

The man with her wasn't what I'd call slim, trim, or in shape. Googling Lisa turned up images of her with a man who looked just like him, reinforcing my belief that the out-of-shape people standing in front of me were indeed linked to Blubber Burners. Based on a striking facial resemblance to Lisa, I surmised that a young woman (late teens to early twenties) who appeared to be with them was the granddaughter, who hadn't spent enough time at Blubber Burners. If Lisa was heavyset, the youngster was huge, with everything from her face on down appearing to be overly inflated.

I once was so fat I couldn't see my feet when I stood up, so I have in-your-shoes empathy for folks with too much blubber. Consequently, I don't enjoy picking on people with too many pounds. But still—Lisa has made a mint selling her weight loss ideas to others, and she has Ingrid (who is almost oblivious to blubber) raising her eyebrows in surprise? When our own weight loss experts need more expertise, it isn't surprising that Americans are so overweight.

Less than a year after being a blimp, I looked like this
without any dieting, hunger, drugs, herbs, or surgery.
Evidently not very much sun, either! :-)

I saw the same thing in 1997 when I attended a health conference in Las Vegas and saw a physician famous for fitness and nutrition look like an over-nourished Santa Claus, sporting a tightly stretched pot belly that made me wonder if he were pregnant with triplets a year past their due date.

UPDATE April 2016: One of the most prominent doctors on television, who lectured us for years on the hazards of obesity, is clearly chubby but not as alarmingly obese as his fifth-grade son. I won't name the doctor or who he works for to spare the child, who is so fat he is headed for an early grave. His father should realize that, and if he had any weight loss magic up his sleeve, put those tips to work on his son, whose body manifests how little practical advice the doc knows. When doctors can't help themselves or their families, can they really help you?

UPDATE 2019: I won't mention the exact day or her name (so as not to embarrass her), but Fox News featured another fat weight loss expert; this one recommended chocolate and other sweets for breakfast—good dieting advice, she claimed. After seeing her plump body and double chin, I wasn't convinced.

Notes:

My brother said that Lisa came into his store and he couldn't stand her because she was pushy, arrogant, and self-centered, evidently thinking that because she was a big shot, she should be waited on before other customers.

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

A fat weight loss expert

Notes:

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