Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter. I hope you don't mind my
pontificating about "evil", when I say that I don't think
evil exists. Your comments immediately brought to mind
a citation from Spinoza to the effect that one does not
blame an "evil" man for not being a "good" man, any more
than one blames a horse for not being a man. However, I
found no reference to this quotation when I looked for it,
so perhaps it's apocryphal. In any case, I consider
the destructive acts of a human being evil no more than
I consider the earthquake, the flood, or the tsunami to
be evil, or for that matter, the bite of a poisonous snake
or the attack of a hungry bear.

As for the question: What is (the) good? I distinguish
between what is "good for" the individual, in Kierkegaardian
terms his evige Salighed (ewige Seligkeit, eternal bliss)
and what society demands of him as "a good citizen", which
in my case is defined by the General Laws of Massachusetts
and 248 CMR, the Rules and Regulations Governing Plumbers
and Gas Fitters. So far as I'm concerned, the precepts of
eternal bliss are enshrined in literature and music; the
demands of society, such as e.g. the renewal of my driver's
license, are largely nonsense or garbage or both.

My exposition of ethics tonight is not very profound, so
I'll spare you the rest, except for Isaiah's account of the
criminal, of the evil one:

1  Who hath believed our report?  and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? 
2  For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root
out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him,
there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3  He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him;
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4  Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows:
yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5  But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised
for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him;
and with his stripes we are healed. 
6  All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned every one to his own way;
and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7  He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth:
he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep
before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
8  He was taken from prison and from judgment:
and who shall declare his generation?
for he was cut off out of the land of the living:
for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
9  And he made his grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death;
because he had done no violence,
neither was any deceit in his mouth. 
10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him;
he hath put him to grief:
when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin,
he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days,
and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
11  He shall see of the travail of his soul,
and shall be satisfied:
by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many;
for he shall bear their iniquities.
12  Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he hath poured out his soul unto death:
and he was numbered with the transgressors:
and he bare the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
                              Isaiah 53

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I like to day-dream, but my mind has been in the clutch
of my awareness of my obligations. I feel I must do this,
and while I am doing this, I become distressed not to be
doing that. I find myself driven from one project to the
next. The plumbing litigation has been much on my mind.
I've written to Home Depot and to Lowe's inviting them
to file briefs as amicus curiae, since if I lose and the
case is reported, their Do-It-Yourself plumbing businesses
in Massachusetts will go down the drain. I also sent an
e-mail inviting an amicus brief to the local ACLU chapter.
Haven't had any reply yet, and don't expect any.

Yesterday, or was it the day before I suddenly remembered
having read somewhere that in some jurisdictions unreported
case, i.e. cases which the Court has not published in the
official "Reporter", may not be cited or relied on as
precedent. Herrick v. Butler about which I wrote in my last
letter is such an unreported case. So I asked Google:
"May unreported cases be cited as precedent in Massachusetts?"
and Google answered me with 24,700 citations, one of which,
dated 2006, stated that in Massachusetts unreported cases may
not be cited or relied upon in unrelated cases. Inasmuch as
the Decision and Order which I received from the Plumbing Board
celebrates Herrick v. Butler in glowing terms, I shall open
my appeals argument with a request that the Plumbing Board's
Order be held null and void on the grounds that their reliance
on Herrick v. Butler is an egregious violation of procedure.
I doubt that I'll prevail on just this point alone,
but if in the end, I lose in the Superior Court,
I'll have at least one elegant claim of reversable error
for the Appeals Court. In any event, my discovery
takes away much of the gloom of my preparations.

For the rest, I've been toying in a very preliminary way with
an outline for a patent application for a computerized medical
records system, which as you know is a mirage expected
to resolve all problems of the misguided "healthcare" business.
It's potentially a project from which I may derive much satisfaction.
We shall see.

Now back to work. You stay well and give my best to Ned.

Jochen