"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Monday, December 20, 2010

Stress Test

Very light blogging today.... this morning I had a cardiac stress test.   Apparently I secretly have the cardiovacular system of a race horse, because I went about five minutes past what average people do and wasn't breathing heavily.   Finally I just got bored and got off.  

It's interesting to contemplate how health care has changed.   We kvetch about the cost of health insurance and the cost of health care, but we demand that the medical profession develop newer and better processes for detecting earlier and earlier the least problem with our bodies.   Fifty years ago a man like me, post-50, would be smoking, drinking a lot more, eating a lot more read meat and eggs and bacon, and would have no way of detecting that his arteries were steadily clogging (or that his colon was developing polyps).  You wonder if men grew up earlier and became more responsible earlier because there just wasn't that much time to do anything else.  You'd see a lot fewer 40 year old men acting like college students if they thought that they might only live to 60.   Now, we all think we have plenty of time to spare.   And so we waste so much of it.  

Just some night thoughts.    More tomorrow. 

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