Alan Greenspan Died of What???

Sometimes even the gloomier headlines land a little funny. Take the latest one about former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who passed away on June 22nd.

"Alan Greenspan, former Fed Reserve chair dies, with cause of death revealed."

"Cause of death revealed"—as if we were all waiting for some shocking twist. The article goes on to say he died from complications of Parkinson's disease. Sure. But honestly, every disease kills you through "complications." If diseases had a job description, that would be it.

Rule #1: Complicate one's ability to continue living.

By their very nature, complications are the part that actually does you in. Heart disease? One of the complications is that your heart stops. COPD or emphysema? A key complication is that you stop breathing. It's not exactly a mystery.

The part, in this case, that matters more is the fact that Alan Greenspan was 100 years old. Parkinson's or not, few people are cracking triple digits and making a run into overtime. At that age you could trip over a throw pillow and that would be your "cause of death revealed."

We already knew he had Parkinson's. We also knew he was a very old man. So, his passing isn't shocking, and it certainly doesn't require a dramatic headline tease.

Perhaps if someone had never heard of Alan Greenspan, the headline might be more informative. It's certainly a headline worthy of someone much younger who suddenly dies. When that happens, out of pure curiosity, we want to know.

A cleaner and more honest headline would have been: "Alan Greenspan, former Fed Reserve chair, dies at 100."

Then, inside the article, mention the Parkinson's diagnosis, and trust readers to connect the dots. He was a centenarian with a serious illness, and eventually biology does was biology does. 

Like the things I write about or the way I write about them? Want to help to keep the lights on? Consider making your next Amazon purchase through my Amazon link and I'll get a small, appreciated commission. Also be sure to check out The Springboard on YouTube.

© 2026 Jim Bauer

Welcome to the "Quick Shout" Segment

THE SPRINGBOARD WAS ALWAYS INTENDED TO BE AN OPINION DRIVEN RESPONSE. Thus, as the title suggests, a good many of the posts found here spring from something happening or something said, and The Springboard essentially is responding to that. It's never been intended to be journalistic, and never was intended to serve as a news source even if to some extent a good bit of the content is news driven.

There are already enough sites and blogs out there that intend to deliver news. Here, this blog responds to it. Over the years of my doing this blog that really has not changed.

One of my aims entering 2018, however, was to begin the process of increasing the content here, and make posts quite a bit more frequent. There are several ways I have begun to do this. And one of those ways is the introduction of a new "segment" of the blog I am calling Quick Shout.

As I have increased my participation on Twitter one frustration has always been that sometimes I'd like to have the opportunity to expand more in response to something that has been tweeted. While Twitter has obviously relaxed its character allowances among other things, it still can be rather limited.

Quick Shout allows me to respond directly to a Tweet, or some other thing, do it in a more expanded manner, but still keep it short and sweet.

It is not intended to become the blog. Regular posts will still be written as they were before. It is simply an addition to the blog content presented here. Most of the Quick Shout content will be geared to, and tied to Twitter. Why? Because its a great source for engaging discussions, and even retorts. And it offers a great source of material from which to springboard from and further those discussions in a more detailed, and lengthier fashion.

Why have I decided to incorporate Quick Shouts into the regular blog? To me, it seems one can become bogged down trying to manage too many blogs, and because the nature and general format of this new segment are quite in line with the purpose and intent of The Springboard, it just seems fitting to me to keep it here.

What I'd love to see with it is more engagement from my readers in the form of comments. One area that has been lacking here for whatever reason. The Springboard gets an enormous amount of activity. But for whatever reason has never driven comments.

I think it should be an interesting new area of the blog, and hopefully you'll agree. We'll see where it leads us—and perhaps over time, as most things do, it may even evolve a little bit.

Today's Swimsuits: The Blog

Blogs are sometimes just simply hit or miss. It's just the nature of things. Either you don't have a topic that enough people will ultimately find interesting, or the layout is all wrong, or there is simply too much other competition out there making it virtually impossible to get anywhere.

And then there are swimsuits.

Of course, the only reason I ever visit Nelda Hoxie's blog, Today's Swimsuits, is for the articles. After all, Ms. Hoxie writes with detail and precision, and you can almost feel the fabric of the suit on your skin as you read along. I hardly ever notice that she also includes pictures of bikini clad women in each of her descriptive entries.

Ahem.

I have followed Nelda in a couple of different places, and that's really how I found her blog. But being that summer is right around the corner, I like what she has done with the blog, and of course enjoy the articles, I thought I would share.

If you have not yet visited Today's Swimsuits I encourage you to do so. Especially for the ladies who may be looking for just the perfect swimsuit to add to her ensemble for the coming warmer days ahead.

It is a blog worth reading, and I give Nelda Hoxie a two thumbs up hands down. It's fantastically done, and in all ways good. Pictures, descriptive content, and layout combined. It's just fantastic. I am actually quite envious.

I bet she is making a killing.

Restoring The Springboard 2015

My blog here has become a bit muddled, befuddled, and I will readily admit, off topic. Not sure where that trend started. But this blog was supposed to be about money, politics, and the random thought. The random thought seems to have overrun my recent posts.

So, there are a couple changes I intend to make going into 2015.

1) I am going to post here more often. The old saying goes that the more updated a site is the more traffic it generates. Since WebAnswers stopped being a big money maker, my Google AdSense earnings have fallen off dramatically.

2) I am going to restore my blog to its original intention for content. I will write about money, politics, and still include the random thought. But I will have much less random thoughts  thrown into the mix.

3) I will promote The Springboard more, along with my Bubblews posts and now Elitevisitors posts.

All in all I want to see 2015 be a good year for The Springboard. I thought about starting a new blog, something that would mimic what I did on Bubblews and call it something like Chatterbox or something like that. And I may still try something like that out. But for the most part I just want to restore at least this blog to some of it's "roots."

The rest of my 2014 posts will just be to get back into the habit of posting regularly. But after January 1st, it's back to business. Time to get The Springboard back on track. Onward and upward and I shall see you all on the other side.