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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

Helping people with medical and other expenses

While recently participating in an online CME activity involving the case of a woman with cancer, I was struck by the urge to financially help her. She'd never been married, had no medical insurance, and worked in a low-paying job. She lost ten weeks of work, and hence 10 weeks of income, because of her cancer and its treatment. Her bills undoubtedly continued to pile up during that time, and her medical treatment was exorbitantly expensive, so I didn't need a crystal ball to assume she needed financial help. But how could I get it to her and others like her?

Desiree Vargas Wrigley

Desiree Vargas Wrigley has the answer that she terms “strategic philanthropy.” I call it a superb idea. Through the GiveForward organization she co-founded, people can create “GiveForward pages [that] empower friends and family to send love and financial support to patients as they navigate a medical crisis.”

I suggest that physicians and nurses embrace her brilliant solution to a common problem. Here's how we can help:

Whenever we give case presentations (online or elsewhere), give participants a link to the patient's GiveForward page that we encouraged them to set up.
Whenever we identify patients in our clinical practice who might benefit by using GiveForward, suggest they create a GiveForward page for themselves.

Physicians and nurses are usually pressed for time, so GiveForward might want to develop downloadable brochures (in the Adobe Acrobat PDF format) that hospitals, clinics, and individual physicians or nurses could print and distribute.

The GiveForward concept could be expanded to help others, too. I have a soft spot in my heart for helping single mothers after seeing how my mother struggled to raise children on her own. In addition to donating money, many people could help single mothers or elderly folks in other ways, such as by shoveling snow, raking leaves, mowing lawns, fixing a furnace or leaky pipe, and so on. I've donated free firewood, food, and shoveled countless tons of snow up to 5 feet deep in addition to giving hundreds of thousands of dollars in free medical care, but that just whetted my appetite for giving even more.

Another possible GiveForward expansion might be to help students meet college expenses.

I eagerly want to help people in impoverished countries, but foreign aid given by our government often ends up in the Swiss bank accounts of dictators. I'd welcome a GiveForward channel of giving that directly connects donors with recipients. One of my pending inventions will make it easy to give one of life's basic necessities, but other needs remain. GiveForward could fill that gap.

Do you have an idea for expanding the GiveForward concept? I'm excited by it. If there were a Nobel Prize for helping meet social needs, I'd nominate it.

Ethan Austin and Desiree Vargas Wrigley,
Co-Founders of GiveForward.com
Kudos to them for a splendid idea!

Notes:

Another great charity: Grahamtastic Connection that offers “free computers and Internet access to children with cancer and other serious illnesses for educational purposes.”
Men Behaving Nicely: Selfless Acts by Men Increase When Attractive Women Are Nearby based on an article in the British Journal of Psychology: Men behaving nicely: Public goods as peacock tails.
Comment: The upshot of those articles was that men (but not women) contribute more when near members of the opposite sex, and men contribute even more if nearby women are attractive. While physical proximity undoubtedly magnifies such generosity, I think that merely seeing attractive women increases giving even if they are not present. Thus, Desiree's pictures are a stroke of genius, but not everyone is bright enough to appreciate that. On the day I discovered her and GiveForward, I found some people criticizing her online. No matter how good someone is, there always seems to be a negative person somewhere in cyberspace who finds a flimsy reason to knock others.

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

Helping people with medical and other expenses

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