Author Archive: Paul Epps

Soda Sticker Shock in Seattle

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Seattle is trying to discourage its citizens from drinking sugary beverages by imposing a 1.75-cent per ounce tax on all sugary drinks sold in the Emerald City. A $15.99 case of Gatorade at the Seattle Costco now has an added tax of more than $10. A case of Coke is now $7.35 more expensive than the Diet Coke or Coke Zero. Sticker shock! What will people drink instead of sugary beverages? Coffee. Seattle drinks a lot of coffee. Is coffee good for you? What if you put sugar in it? Beer. At these prices, it’s cheaper than soda. Diet soda. Are artificial sweeteners better for you than sugar? Fruit juice. Not taxed but contains a lot of sugar. Should there be a tax on all-you-can-eat buffets? How about a tax credit for eating a vegetable? Or maybe — just maybe — the tax code was not designed for and shouldn’t… Read more →

Grounds for Dissolution

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Divorce has traditionally been a fault-based proceeding, but California and most other states are now no-fault jurisdictions, and a divorce in legal terms is now called a Dissolution of Marriage. And yet we never hear anyone say “I’m going to dissolve you.” The primary ground for dissolution in California is “irreconcilable differences.” In a Regular Dissolution you are also allowed to use “incurable insanity.” Your spouse may seem crazy to you, but the insanity case is too complicated for you to present without an attorney, so if you want to keep things simple, go ahead and use “irreconcilable differences.” Read more →

EppsNet Book Reviews: Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

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Death on the Installment Plan is a fictionalized coming-of-age story based on Céline’s youth in pre-World War I France. Absent are heroism, transcendence, love and the possibility of love. Instead, there is a lot of human action that comes to nothing. Death is not ennobling. That said, hopelessness has never been described with more wit, energy and imagination or more droll, breathtaking language. Here’s a sample of the black comedy, as the narrator remembers a local physician (all ellipses in the original): “The most exquisite deaths, remember that, Ferdinand, are those that attack us in our most sensitive tissues . . .” He had a precious, elaborate, subtle way of talking, like the men of Charcot’s day. His prospecting of the Rolandic, the third ventricle, and the gray nucleus didn’t do him much good . . . in the end he died of a heart attack, under circumstances that were… Read more →

Is A.I. a Threat to Humankind?

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Not with a bang but a whimper, as T.S. Eliot used to say. In some countries, the people are kept in a state of submission by violence and/or threats of violence, but here in America, the same effect is achieved via mindless entertainments and gadgetry. Read more →

Fake News Awards

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I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 o’clock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 I’m looking forward to this! I find news media on both the left and right too smug and simplistic and agenda-driven. Read more →

Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them. — George Eliot, Middlemarch

2017: The Year in Books

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These are the books I read in 2017, roughly in the order listed. Not as many as I would have liked but I spent the first half of the year having a mental and physical breakdown. I’m back on track now. The ratings are mine. They don’t represent a consensus of opinion. Books of the Year: Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (fiction) and From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe (non-fiction). My Library at LibraryThing Read more →

Aside

A man can only be cosmopolitan up to a certain point . . .

Vignette

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Sara, 48, suffers from breast cancer, diagnosed three times in five years. She has to stop teaching at school but engages actively in volunteer work. Her environment praises her for her courage. She helps other cancer patients in a respectful way to deal with their illness. This for her is also very rewarding. Still, from time to time, mostly when Sara does not expect it, an ocean of tears comes up . . . Read more →

My Worries Are Few

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I have the ability to face up to the disturbing facts of life, except pain, sickness, death, poverty, rejection, loneliness, guilt, shame, confusion, doubt, imperfection, meaninglessness, futility and evil. Also fear of being laughed at and cruelty to animals. Read more →

Jefferson Davis’s House

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On a recent trip to New Orleans, we spent a night at the Beau Rivage Resort in Biloxi, MS. Biloxi is also the site of Beauvoir, the former home of Jefferson Davis, now a museum and historical site. Beauvoir is similar to a statue in that it’s a memorial to an eminent representative of the Confederacy, but surprisingly, even the most fanatical ideologue has not, to my knowledge, suggested that it be torn down . . . Read more →

People I Thought Were Dead

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Herb Alpert – trumpeter Max Baer Jr. – actor, “The Beverly Hillbillies” Barbara Bain – actress, “Mission: Impossible” Brigitte Bardot – actress Rona Barrett – gossip columnist Frank Borman – astronaut Roy Clark – musician Roger Corman – film producer Robert Crumb – cartoonist Bill Daily – actor Vic Damone – singer Angie Dickinson – actress Annette and Cecile Dionne – quintuplets Sam Donaldson – TV newscaster Hugh Downs – TV announcer Daniel Ellsberg – released the Pentagon Papers Barbara Feldon – actress Fannie Flagg – actress and game show panelist Larry Flynt – publisher of Hustler Whitey Ford – baseball pitcher A.J. Foyt – auto racer Ron Gallela – celebrity photographer, aka “paparazzo” Whitey Herzog – baseball manager Ernest Hollings – U.S. senator Cloris Leachman – actress Tom Lehrer – musical satirist Jerry Lee Lewis – singer and pianist G. Gordon Liddy – Watergate mastermind Rich Little – impressionist Peter Max… Read more →

The script of life is so unspeakably beautiful to read because death looks over our shoulder. — Martin Buber

Is Healthcare a Right or an Entitlement?

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That’s the title of a lengthy article on LinkedIn in which the author makes the following argument: I had to spend more than $30,000 on cancer treatment. Therefore, healthcare is a right, not an entitlement. Because having a “right” to something implies that you have the right to force another person to work and pay for that thing. Someone else must exert positive effort to help you – and not because you make it worthwhile for that person to exert that effort on your behalf, but because the government will ultimately imprison him or her if he or she refuses to supply you with that to which you have a “right.” You can add a level of abstraction, i.e., “the government should pay for my healthcare” sounds more appealing than “another person should pay for my healthcare” but where do you think government gets the money to pay for things?… Read more →

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