Here's another Lack of Logic tidbit: advice columnist is running a letter from bigwig at American Cancer Society about importance of colon cancer screening. Bigwig writes 'we're here to help so we have a free information kit to help people talk to their doctor about colon cancer screening.'

Well, the big problem is HAVING A DOCTOR TO TALK TO.

All these people they want to get screened...they don't because they can't afford it. They can't afford to have a doctor. 

They can't afford the tests or the insurance to pay for the tests. NOT because they don't know how to talk to their doctor!

Presumably, the American Cancer Society is involved with medical issues, so why don't they realize the state of medical care for most people in this country?

Seems to me that if they're sincere about helping, they'll help find a way to enable people to have the "luxury" (a purely American concept, I think) of having a doctor to see regularly.

Rules to lessen stress

Simple rules that can make life less stressful:

1. Things don't always turn out the way you want them to. Be prepared with a Plan B.

2. The guiding principle behind your budget should be the same as the sanity rule in Las Vegas---don't gamble more than you can afford to lose.

3. Wait until you can afford it. You'll live till then. Really.

4. Unless they are going to pay for it, don't buy anything based on what someone else will think if you do. Or don't.

5. There is NO free lunch. Period. No exceptions.

6. If you cannot meet your basic needs (shelter, food, personal covering) today, quit figuring angles on tomorrow. Get another job.

7. Appearing to be rich does NOT make you rich.

8. Saying something doesn't make it true.

9. If you don't understand it, don't sign it.

10. If you sign it, you owe it. Pay up and learn. It's repeating mistakes that's shameful.

Why is thinking ahead so out of fashion?

Watched a dvd last night wherein all the conflict resulted from the characters just not thinking ahead. And of course, it was very realistic. What I'm wondering is when and why thinking ahead--considering results and consequences--have become extinct?

I can see it everywhere. What is the "mortgage crisis" except an example of large numbers of people not thinking ahead? Doesn't anyone stop before taking action and ask themselves, "What are the possible results? What can I live with? Is it worth it? If I don't get the raise I hope I get and need to pay this mortgage balloon, what will I do?"

It's hard to know where it started. (Why, I think, is easy: it's easier. We've all gotten so lazy with living so easy these days, we've forgotten life is still hard.)

Giving credit cards to unemployed students...chicken or egg? Either way, having the "ability" (or illusion might be a better word) to have what you want before you can afford it certainly encourages people to not think ahead to the day of reckoning. I personally am fiscally responsible, but when I get a credit card statement saying I owe $10K but the minimum payment due is $0--even my head will spin for awhile before remembering that if I owe it, I'll have to pay it someday. And someday always comes. How do other people get themselves convinced it might not?

Could this lack of interest in thinking ahead be related to how few things last these days? Why think about how buying a girl a drink in a bar will affect your marriage when there's so little chance your marriage will last anyway?

Is that it? Is that the leap in logic that makes so many people do such ill-conceived things and then wonder why what resulted happened??

Another chicken or egg: protecting people from themselves. If McDonald's is responsible for some knucklehead pouring hot coffee on herself, then nobody is responsible for anything that happens to them. So what is there to think about? Lack of impulse control is a national epidemic.

When I was a young mother, teaching kids about "logical consequences" was one child-rearing theory. As in, if you tell the kid not to hit his friend and he does it anyway--and the kid hits him back--you explain that's the logical consequence of his behavior. In other words, each of us is responsible for much of what "happens to us." Results are a consequence of choices we make.

Maybe there are just too many entitlements and victim-ologies around these days for people to see that they still have lots of control over their fate, if they so choose.

There are certainly so many that people have forgotten that not choosing is, in fact, making a choice.