November 10, 2006

Stuck in the middle

/ personal / Leave a Comment

I just had my three-month follow-up visit after LASIK surgery yesterday. My optometrist said “well, the good news is that your vision hasn’t changed. And the bad news is that your vision hasn’t changed.”

I’m in a funny situation. My correction isn’t perfect—and I’m very aware that my vision now is actually worse than when I was wearing glasses. But pretty good, and more to the point, it’s not bad enough for a touch-up.

As my optometrist explained to me, the least amount that LASIK can correct is half a diopter. Beyond that, it can make very fine-grained corrections, but it needs to apply at least that much. I’m about 1/3 diopter away from perfect. So, he said, I can hope that my vision magically gets better on its own, or gets worse on its own (neither is likely), but if I have to live with what I’ve got, it isn’t so bad. I’m scheduled for another visit in three months.

Well, you pays yer money and you takes yer chances.

Is that all there is?

/ current events / 3 Comments
Peggy Lee

So the Democrats have taken both the House and Senate. Admittedly, they had a little help from the White House, which managed to turn off many voters with a litany of crimes and errors too long and obvious to mention. But what surprised me is that the Republican majority—especially in the Senate—ended not with a bang but a whimper. The GOP could have put up a fight over the results in Montana and Virginia. In fact, I expected them to, and was surprised that they didn’t. I expected dirty tricks being masterminded by Karl Rove, lawsuits, etc. Nothing. Both Burns and Allen rolled over pretty meekly.

There is always a difference between the way a thing exists in the real world and your mental model of it. In my mental model of today’s GOP, the party is ruthless and effective (among other things). I suspect that many progressives have held a roughly similar model, and the Republicans have done plenty to create it. So the quick concessions are jarring, surprising. It makes me wonder if Democrats have been scaring themselves into paralysis with tales of the big scary boogeyman when the boogeyman really isn’t that big or scary.