Author Archive: Paul Epps

Happiness is Not . . .

by  on 
 

Happiness does not consist of the gratification of your wishes. Anna Karenina, for example, is quite illuminating on this point. Try reading a book once in a while, you’ll pick up on a lot of universal errors like that. Read more →

Throwback Cousin Photos

by  on 
 

My wife found a photo this weekend of our son and his cousin Kao. Casey was 5 years old in this photo and Kao was 11. She lives in Thailand but was visiting us in La Verne. I don’t remember this photo. I like it because I don’t remember the overall tenor of Kao’s visit being this pleasant. Casey had never had to share his mom’s attention and he wasn’t happy about it, especially since she talked with Kao in a foreign language that he didn’t understand. Here’s what they look like now (Kao on the left, another cousin, Tammy, on the right): Read more →

Nov. 12, 1954: Ellis Island Closes

by  on 
 

Via History.com: On this day in 1954, Ellis Island, the gateway to America, shuts it doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants since opening in 1892. Today, an estimated 40 percent of all Americans can trace their roots through Ellis Island, located in New York Harbor off the New Jersey coast and named for merchant Samuel Ellis, who owned the land in the 1770s. On January 2, 1892, 15-year-old Annie Moore, from Ireland, became the first person to pass through the newly opened Ellis Island, which President Benjamin Harrison designated as America’s first federal immigration center in 1890. Before that time, the processing of immigrants had been handled by individual states.   With America’s entrance into World War I, immigration declined and Ellis Island was used as a detention center for suspected enemies. Following the war, Congress passed quota laws and the Immigration Act of 1924, which sharply reduced… Read more →

The Mad Hatter

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” — Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

At some point, even if you don’t need the money, you have to teach what you were taught. — Ken Kesey

Sleep thou, who wa’st born to sleep, or follow thy own inclinations; for my own part, I will behave as becomes a person of my aspirations. — Don Quixote

I Am Identified as the Worst Father of All Time

by  on 
 

I noticed a significant uptick in traffic to EppsNet in the past week . . . a check of the referrer logs indicates that it’s coming from Reddit, specifically from a series of posts on the hapas subreddit (here’s an example) identifying me as the worst father of all time and an overall despicable human being. (If you’re as much in the dark as I was about what a “hapa” is, it’s a person of partial Asian or Pacific Islander descent. My son, for example, would be a “hapa,” which is how the hapas subreddit took an interest in EppsNet.) Ironically, the posts cited on Reddit as evidence of my awfulness are — to me, anyway — either pretty obviously not intended to be taken at face value (some are attributed to an imaginary author named Hostile Witness, to make it even more obvious), or completely on point, or both.… Read more →

Occupational Certification a Guarantee of Quality?

by  on 
 

I had fingerprints taken this morning, not the old-fashioned way with an inkpad but with a biometric device that required a certified technician to roll each of my fingers back and forth on a scanner. I emphasize certified technician because California law requires any individual who rolls fingerprints manually or electronically for licensure, certification and/or employment purposes to be certified by the state Department of Justice. You can’t just put any person off the street in charge of advanced optical technology. Thanks to the use of an expensive machine vs. an inkpad and the certification requirements, the cost to me of having my fingerprints taken was about $70. California is big on occupational certification. More than 200 professions from doctor to tree trimmer require certification from one of 42 government bureaus and boards. Does this elaborate and costly web of regulation assure the highest quality of professional service? Each fingerprint… Read more →

We Have Entered a New Screwball Phase

by  on 
 

Peggy Noonan had a good article in the Wall Street Journal this week about, among other things, two departures: Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, and Joe Biden as a presidential candidate. On Harper’s successor: [Incoming Canadian prime minister] Justin Trudeau has been a snowboard instructor, schoolteacher, bartender, bouncer, speaker on environmental and youth issues, and advocate for avalanche safety. Sensing “generational change” and gravitating toward “a life of advocacy,” he entered politics and served two terms in Parliament. He has been head of the Liberal Party two years. He is handsome, has a winning personality, exhibited message discipline during the campaign, and is a talented dancer. There’s a sense we in the West have entered a new screwball phase. On Biden and old-school Democrats: Joe Biden’s decision not to run for president left me sad. He would have enlivened things. He has always reminded me of what Democrats were like… Read more →

God: “I Gave Him a Sign”

by  on 
 

I hope I don’t die some cartoonish death like skiing into a tree or being launched out of my car and flattened against a freeway sign. It’s funny when it happens to other people though. The only thing funnier would be if he’d left a spread-eagle person-shaped hole in the sign and then died when he hit a second sign. When reached for comment, God said, “I gave him a sign.” Read more →

Could Donald Trump Have Made More Money in an Index Fund?

by  on 
 

I’ve seen this theory advanced by multiple sources, including the attached clipping, which I saw on Facebook. I don’t know the original source, but the finger-painting reference is a clue that the author has an anti-Trump agenda, hasn’t done the math and is just repeating something that may or may not be true for the benefit of anyone predisposed to believe it. The actual National Journal article, which is targeted at readers who don’t know much about history, math or the Trump family, says this: By putting his inheritance into the stock market back in the 1970s, [Donald] Trump might have been “really rich” without all the drama. . . . Had the celebrity businessman and Republican presidential candidate invested his eventual share of his father’s real-estate company into a mutual fund of S&P 500 stocks in 1974, it would be worth nearly $3 billion today, thanks to the market’s… Read more →

« Previous Page — Next Page »