As I understand it Veterans' Administration computers won't

maybe I should have bolded A modest proposal at the end or underlined it, but I didn't think I had to because I didn't think anyone would take it seriously. And I'm dealing with 2 pension boards. believe me, I know how bureaucracy in business and government works if that's the appropriate word. The Mills of the Gods comes to mind, which for me is a standard reference but you may want to Google it if I've baffled you again. I don't put on this style of conversation purely to annoy you. This is how I normally converse. And it's why I have the friends I have, who converse in the same way, by reference and allusion and subtle subversive humour. "The Way I Walk Is Just the Way I Walk" (hint, that's an example, Google it too.)

"A Modest Proposal." An essay written by Irish author Jonathan Swift of Gulliver's Travels fame. He wrote it as a satiric piece anonymously in a newspaper in 1729, then published it under his own name in a collection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents and Country and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick.

I thought everyone knew about this. "a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies."

"In English writing, the phrase "a modest proposal" is now conventionally an allusion to this style of straight-faced satire." That would be better phrased "In writing in English ... " because it is a well known example and device in the US as well.

Short of Screaming I'm not really serious about this, it's a joke everybody, I don't know how I could have made it any clearer.

As I said very near the same time, we need Emoticons for Jokes, for Irony, for Sarcasm and for Satire since apparently my grasp of English is insufficient to communicate with you.

I was not serious since the dislocation would be vastly more expensive than simply scrapping the current VA system and starting from scratch. In fact it would have been a great Jobs Bill if those weren't completely verboten in this time of high unemployment even among the computer literate.

And from my correspondence (in its entirety) with my friend in England which prompted my post here at SE.

On Friday, 8 November 2013, 17:35, ROBERT BOYTER wrote:

That story reminds me of the ones about the US Veterans Administration. It's computer won't talk to any other computer system, so files from everywhere are inaccessible to it and its files are inaccessible to anywhere else. I think they should just swap it with the one used by the CIA and call it even, absolute security achieved, and absolute penetrability assured for patients and doctors.

Her reply?

"Assistant Director of the CIA to Obama.>>"We've developed an unhackable computer system for the Agency. We just stole the VA computer and nobody can get into it!" "

My reply?

Subsequent sentence not recorded, "Unfortunately, neither can we."

In the words of Foghorn Leghorn, "It's a joke, Son." And some people don't need semaphore flags to alert them to jokes. I'm more familiar with chatting with those people.

The way many people handle desperate situations (and that's how I feel about the VA situation) is to make jokes. Good jokes, bad jokes, tasteless jokes, subtle jokes. It helps keep the tears or the screaming fits at bay.

It's strange, I try to be serious and people get offended. I try to make a joke, and people get offended and think I'm stupid. (And yes, I know what everyone is rubbing their hands together to post in reply to that opening.)

Try growing a sense of humour not rooted in Television or Rim-Shot cocktail bars. "Take my Wife ... Please."

"Young man, it is possible to be funny and vulgar, and it is possible to be funny. I suggest you confine yourself to one or the other." I leave it to you to work out what the third option is there.

Rob

And no James, I don't think, I'm smarter than everybody else, or more anything than anybody else. I think everybody is just as smart as I am, which is why I don't talk down to people. I may talk over their heads sometimes (restraint, folks, restraint) but sometimes it's because I skip a step or two because my mind rushes too fast.

Note: This post was edited by a forum moderator to remove email address to prevent abuse by spammers on 11/10/2013 at 1:13 PM PT

you should also hit the alert and ask the email addy be removed before abused.

the Roman poet.
"Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, known in English as Decimus Junius Juvenal, was a Roman poet active in the late 1st and early 2nd century AD, author of the Satires."
"Juvenal wrote at least 16 poems in dactylic hexameter covering an encyclopedic range of topics across the Roman world. While the Satires are a vital source for the study of ancient Rome from a vast number of perspectives, their hyperbolic, comic mode of expression makes the use of statements found within them as simple fact problematic. At first glance the Satires could be read as a critique of pagan Rome, perhaps ensuring their survival in Christian monastic scriptoria, a bottleneck in preservation when the large majority of ancient texts were lost."

I can't help it that this stuff is all stuck in my head and falls out of my mouth or keyboard when I engage a problem intellectually, it's just the way I am. I'll grant that most of my friends don't permit it to distract from the point of their speech, but I never learned that trick. Some people like it, and enjoy my uncensored company.

Rob

Your 1st opening post offered nothing about some Irish author or what have you when I replied to your post. I can't fill-in the blanks for what you suggested or implied. This is too seriously a topic to me anything govt. related as I see it. No amount of wimsey is going to provide an answer. I see no humor here or one that leads to it or suggest that it maybe offered as such. Can you see my point? Plus as i read something from your 2nd post, that the Irish author of 1700's is going to resolve some issue in the 2100's, no!, that's a stretch even if human reasoning is still valid. i too have been a contractor and know a thing or two, quite frankly I wouldn't want these databases to merge. On top of that if one govt. office can't keep-up why would two huge govt. offices be any better managing that data. -----Willy

as I indicated clearly in my second post explaining the reference. The Satire, he said destroying anything amusing, was the idea of simply swapping Computer systems as if it was as easy as exchanging Laptops.

Beyond that, you're on your own.

Rob