Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Ruins

We take extraordinary steps just to visit them; of the Parthenon, the Athenian Acropolis; of the Great Wall of China; of unspeaking relics where life once bustled, and still does but in a different way; of mere onlookers to a civilization once vibrant, but now twice removed — first, in the incremental abandonment of a society no longer relevant, and second, by the implicit concession that tourism establishes the death of the substantive content of any collection of structures. Or of Aleppo, where modern-day devastation intersects with the ruins of old, and where actual suffering echoes throughout the ancient cascades where antiquity overwhelms the current screams of flesh and blood. […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Life’s Alliteration

The repetitive recurrence of mirroring sounds or letters at the beginning of adjacent words is merely a reflection of how we live our lives. What is inherent in human beings that we would discover, create or otherwise compile an aggregation of such a linguistic phenomena? The universe could have continued happily on its mindless course of fated determinism without people engaging in such nonsensical rhythms of prose and poetry; but as each act of indeterminate vacuity [… ] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: The labyrinth of human psychology

Daedalus, in Greek mythology, constructed the complex maze for King Minos of Crete; it is reported that the multicursal patterns were so elaborate that even the designer himself could barely find a pathway out. That is, indeed, reflective of the complexity of human beings. Cynics are quick to dismiss our own species as predictable, untalented in any specific category but only in general terms; boastful beyond a simpleton’s ego and successful in self-promotion and propagation only because it is too lazy to do otherwise. […] Read More …