Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Scoffing paradigms

Of course, such a title can have a double entendre or duality of meanings – that, in the first instance, the accent is upon the word “scoffing” with a lowering of one’s voice upon “paradigms”, and that would mean: One turns up one’s nose at the very idea of paradigms. Or, alternatively, if both words are of equally monotonous tonal undulations, then it could mean that the paradigm itself is one which scoffs at other paradigms, differing principles or contrary perspectives. […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Overload

The comparative life is an illusion of sorts; Plato’s theme throughout is established every day, as appearances hide the reality beneath, and the allegory of the Cave – where shadows constitute the seeming truth and the truth appears as hidden seeming – is merely an archaic anachronism that has been vanquished, if merely because no one gives much weight to dead philosophers and nobody has the time for reflection upon questions that cannot provide answers instantaneously, as Google and High Speed Internet have allowed us to become accustomed. […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: The precarious self

Self-preservation is said to be high on the list of instinctive survival mechanisms – that which society cannot “un-learn” because of the inherent nature of such evolutionary entrenchment of DNA-coded characteristics.  It used to be that, whether in the mythical “State of Nature” as advanced and envisioned by Locke, Hobbes or Rousseau, or the more fossil-based models as posited by anthropologists, the individual who was widely considered as a precarious survivor was quickly extinguished from the gene pool either though acts of foolish daring or by neglectful carelessness. […] Read More …

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: False Promises

Is it an oxymoron? If it is made, how can it be negated by untruth; for, if it is a nothingness at the outset which compels null and void the substantive content of the thing itself, how can it purport to be what it is while at the same time creating an abyss of meaninglessness? A promise cannot be false if it is to have the very meaning of a promise; and yet, we know that there exists such falsity of posited assurances, if not proposed by dishonest individuals and con-men, then at least by unintentional or otherwise mistaken pillars of vain malfeasance. […] Read More …

Civil Service Disability Retirement Benefits: Human activity

The dizzying pace of it all defies comprehension. We are, indeed, busy-bees, always engaged in this project, that protest, intervening in the affairs of others when our own are in such a state of disarray; up at it early in the morning and continuing until exhaustion sets in or wayward dementia in old age where even nursing homes impose human activity every night – bingo, dance, meditation, Tai Chi, family visitation day; not even a break for the aged. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: The sweater draped over a chair

You look in the room and see the sweater draped over a chair. You turn your gaze elsewhere, engage the ongoing conversations and the din of others distracted. Later, you turn back your gaze again, and the sweater is gone. You look about to try and see whether someone picked it back up, is wearing it, or perhaps put it somewhere else. You imply and infer – yes, one must follow the general grammatical rule that the speaker implies while the listener infers; but you are both the speaker and the listener, the one who observes and the same one who steps outside of the conscious universe to observe the observed. […] Read More …