CHANGE whether you want it or not

NO, not that kind of change, rather societal and technological change that can shock the system of those of us who are old and fixed in our ways.  The list of things that are different today is endless.  A few that come to mind immediately include the disappearance of land-line telephones and the ubiquity of Cell Phones.  I can barely watch an old movie anymore.  The first time the detective has to pull his car over and drop a dime in a pay phone to call the station house, I lose interest.  His trusty 6-shot revolver is an antique compared to a Glock semi-automatic with an 18 round capacity that most police officers carry today.

Moore's law says that technology doubles every 2 years.  That's why my laptop has 250 GIGAbytes of storage and costs the same as my computer of many years ago that had 64 MEGAbytes...(there are 1000 megabytes in one gigabyte).  My 6 year old grandchildren send me text messages and photos they take on their mother's iPhone.  The iPhone has more computing power than an IBM mainframe of my youth.

If you had stomach ulcers 30 years ago, it would not be uncommon to have surgery for the partial or complete removal of your stomach. Science has since discovered that most ulcers come from a bacteria in the stomach called Helicobacter Pylori, and the treatment is now a brief course of an antibiotic and some acid reducing drugs like the ones you can buy over the counter...Prilosec for example.  When and if cardiac, abdominal, or gynecological surgery is done, it is often done through small puncture holes, or by threading a catheter into an artery.  Doctors are administratively punished for keeping their patients in the hospital too long.

In my youth, pornography was a blurry photo of a naked woman on a wrinkled old postcard from France that someone stole out of their father's night table.  Today it's no-holds-barred, free, and High Definition all over the internet.  Speaking of the internet, We used to have to go to the library and use the card catalog to search for books that help us write a term paper or do research.  Today, even my older friends use the internet search engines like we used to use the library without leaving the comfort of home.

Our people are different too.  There was a time when someone who graduated from Medical school, for example, would find a town he or she liked, move there and open a practice.  Doctors put in 100 hour weeks, made house calls, and did everything from colds to delivering babies.  Today, doctors join big groups so they don't have to manage the business side of a practice, and specialize in things like Geriatric-neuro-radiology or after 5 years of residency and fellowship, something like Hand surgery or Glaucoma rather than ophthmology.  If you call a doctor's office after 5 pm the phone is not answered by an answering service but rather you hear "If this is an emergency, please hang up and call 911."  Now we have Obamacare and many people will not be able to choose anything about their medical care, from the Doctor to the Hospital or pharmacy, therapist, x-ray facility, and... your doctor will have to use the artificial hip or knee joint that the government says he must use, or only certain drugs, and the "panel" decides whether a patient is too old to get the surgery or care the doctor and patient would like.

The societal changes are a whole other topic.  It was unimaginable that millions of people would be complacent enough to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, food stamps, get free medical care and housing, and get a free cell phone.  Even if they are not even citizens of this country and are here illegally there is no end to freebies.  Most people got married before they had children.  Kids played outdoors.   More about this on another day.