The tortured artist

A student mentioned Vincent van Gogh during class discussions.  About the artist cutting his ear off.

I wonder if such a tortured life was worth it.  Maybe van Gogh would have been happier in a mediocre career like what I have?  I mean, now we celebrate him and his artistic genius.  But, when he lived his life, given all the troubles that he went through, would he have traded in all his creative talents in order to, for instance, live as a journeyman carpenter?  Marry, have a few kids, live into his middle age, develop a paunch, ...

As he took up the gun to kill himself, did van Gogh curse the gods for the tortured life that he lived?

Life is cruel--all we have is the one life that we each have.  Within this one life, a great deal is simply beyond our control.  The parents who create us, for starters.  Whether we are "accidents" that resulted from blind passion or from calculated decisions to have kids, the fact of the matter is that we did not have a choice in it.  We happened.

And then, as Philip Larkin colorfully and poetically put it, "They fuck you up, your mum and dad."  Before you get all riled up that Larkin is bad-mouthing your wonderful parents, treat it more than beyond the simple words.  Who we are depends so much on to whom we were born, where we were born, who raised us, where we were sent to school, how we spent our free time, ... all those and more then pretty much put us in a straitjacket of sorts.  Kids who share the same birthday, year, and minute in different parts of the world, for no fault of theirs, the kids turn out to have very, very different lives.

Thus, there is this one life that we have, in which we had no role whatsoever in choosing the beginning.  It then is almost like we walk into a play, in which we are assigned to play heroes and heroines in our own very lives, but we take on those lead roles only well into the play.  And from them on, the play's success and failures depend on us--even though we did not choose to be in the play in the first place.  How unfair!  To make things worse, there is not even one rehearsal.  For that matter, there is no script either--it is all ad-lib.

As he was dying, Vincent van Gogh apparently whispered to his beloved brother, Theo, "the sadness will last forever."  

Are his paintings worth all the sadness that van Gogh experienced?  Wouldn't you have wished for a less-troubled life for him even if he had never produced anything artistic, so much so that you and I would never have known about him, like how we don't know anything about the billions of other humans who have lived and died?

What kind of society does “America” mean?

I remember John Steinbeck's line somewhere that the poor in America don't consider themselves to be poor--they have been brainwashed into thinking that they are temporarily embarrassed millionaires.  Poverty is a minor setback, and it is only a matter of time before they become another Gatsby.

Except, it is not any minor setback.  And not everybody easily climbs up the ladder to become millionaires and gazillionaires.  Especially if you are not white in America!

But, when the dominant narrative is driven by whites, who shrug their shoulders and ask "Why can’t they get their act together?," to talk about inequality means that the trolls would immediately attack with name-calling. Socialist!

That shoulder-shrugging approach has always been the MO for the whites-only party, aka the GOP:

Republican orthodoxy is that inequality is not necessarily a problem. And if rising tides substantially lifted everybody’s boat, it might matter less that the yachts parked at the North Cove Marina a stone’s throw from Goldman Sachs rode a bigger swell. Tides in America don’t work like that anymore, though.

Most other boats are leaky.  And many don't even have boats!

Your heart doesn’t even have to bleed to care. The United States risks its prosperity by leaving so many Americans behind.

Republicans. Don't. Care. "Republicans just passed another round of tax cuts to offer a helping hand to the upper crust."

I have always wondered why there is simply no rioting on the streets. Why there is no looting. Why aren't the poor jumping into their broken down cars and rushing to ransack the Versailles of the greedy gazillionaires?

As Catherine Rampell noted in The Washington Post, populism — understood as a political movement shaped around giving the working class a “fair shake” — is pretty much dead.

To refer to trump as a populist is a twisted interpretation of what populism means.  He is no populist; he is merely a loud-mouthed racist, misogynist, ...

So, what happens to the poor?  Especially those who are not white?

Let them eat frog legs!

I made the Trump/Romney photo black and white, and it looks like a Twilight Zone episode where a guy just made a foolish deal with the Devil pic.twitter.com/froiDYDJei

— Adam 'Stuhlbarg' Murray (@Atom_Murray) November 30, 2016

High time I blogged about this!

The coffee shop had an interesting sign--CBD can be added for an additional charge.

CBD at a coffee shop?  Without any special licence?  At a place that minors are allowed?  What's going on?

There is a rapidly evolving market demand "for a hemp-derived extract called cannabidiol, or CBD"

CBD is popping up in everything from cosmetics to chocolate bars to bottled water to pet treats. One Los Angeles bar sells drinks containing the oil, massage therapists use creams containing CBD and juice bars offer the stuff in smoothies. Dozens of online sites sell endless iterations of CBD oils, tinctures, capsules, transdermal patches, infused chocolates and creams with no oversight.

CBD in coffee is a part of this trend.  And there is more CBD entering the market because of marijuana prices plummeting in states like Oregon that have legalized it.

A glut of legal marijuana is driving Oregon pot prices to rock-bottom levels, prompting some nervous growers to start pivoting to another type of cannabis to make ends meet — one that doesn’t come with a high.
Applications for state licenses to grow hemp — marijuana’s non-intoxicating cousin — have increased more than twentyfold since 2015, making Oregon No. 2 behind Colorado among the 19 states with active hemp cultivation.

And support for growing hemp is coming from strange corners:

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has introduced The Hemp Farming Act of 2018, which would remove hemp-derived CBD from the Controlled Substances Act, freeing hemp farmers from many of the current federal regulations. For now, much of the hemp-derived CBD consumed in the United States is manufactured in Europe and Israel and imported into the country.

The turtle is on board with this!  But, as long as trump and sessions are in their offices in DC, we will be in a legal grey area. That does not dampen the market though.

Despite confusion around the legislation and some quality concerns, the legions of CBD devotees are growing every day. "It has become a trend since [CBD] is something new and exciting to the majority of the public," says Henry. "It's something that alleviates pain and discomfort, without the negative side effects of pharmaceutical drugs."

One of the reasons that the turtle also supports hemp production--helps struggling farmers.  Not because these farmers are users, but growing hemp can be profitable in an otherwise low-margin activity.

Hemp can be grown to harvest on about half as much water as corn can, for example. Hemp also tolerates a wide variety of soils and temperatures, requires no pesticides, and grows extremely fast, soaring to as much as 20 feet in 100 days.
Thus, if hemp eventually replaces other crops across large acreages, it could free up precious water supplies in the arid West for other uses. This could become especially important with climate change expected to shrink Western mountain snowpacks.

I tell students that this world is way too fascinating, and this entire hemp thing is merely the latest evidence for me.

Some U.S. farms are reporting revenue of $90,000 per acre from CBD oil alone. That compares to around $600 per acre for alfalfa. This makes hemp an enticing choice for any farmer.
And that doesn't count potential profit from the fiber in hemp stalks.

If there is money to be made, jeff sessions and his crazies will be powerless to stop the forces. But, they can take some CBD to ease their pain, or smoke some weed if they want to really chill out ;)

Uncertain and inconclusive

Recently, the town's cultural center featured an evening of "Bollywood" dance.  I refused to go anywhere near that.  Because, "Bollywood" is, as the current President might note, fake news.  As the late Shashi Kapoor put it, Bollywood is "pure escapism."  The escapism often playing on the base emotions like, yes, sex.

Of course I have watched a few "Bollywood" movies in my life.  As one who grew up in India, how could I have not?  But, anybody who is even remotely familiar with India knows that Bollywood is not India.  Instead, it is some kind of a fantasy world. A crazy invention.

As a young adult, I started turning away from those formulaic movies. And, thanks to the one-channel television that was introduced, I finally could watch movies that I had only read about in newspapers and magazines.  The movies that rarely ever played in cinema houses but won awards both at home and abroad.

Mrinal Sen was one of those movie makers, whose movies appealed to me.  As art, and as stories about the real world and its people, his was among the few movies that I remember and cherish even after all these years.

Sen became a seminal figure of India’s “parallel cinema,” which was less the counterpart that its name suggests than an utter refusal of the predominant model of filmmaking in the subcontinent, now colloquially known as Bollywood.

Source

The older I got, the more the Bollywood movies were unwatchable, like in the instances that I have blogged about.  (Here and here.)  Every visit to India has been even more disappointing than the previous ones on how far removed society seems to be from art and culture.

Sen's Ek Din Pratidin I vaguely remember--after all, it has been more than three decades and my memory isn't what it used to be.  Until I read that essay, I had no idea that Sen is still alive.  He is.

Now ninety-four, Sen grew up during the era of Gandhi’s protest against colonial rule, in rural Faridpur, “an unknown little town belonging to the ancient landmass of undivided India,” as the director describes it in a rambling but ultimately moving memoir

No doubt that a life experienced over all those changes would be reflected in the art that Sen created. In those art films, which did not cater to any set formula, the endings often left the viewer exploring the story and the characters because there was no real ending.  No bow tie to wrap up the box.  Sen was no different:

“Life itself is uncertain and inconclusive,” he has said. “Then why should I make a creation conclusive? Thus, all my films are open-ended.”

Uncertain and inconclusive, indeed.  Which is exactly how the latest art film that we watched also wrapped up--uncertain and inconclusive.  If only they made more such movies in the old country instead of the messed up Bollywood ones!

Life and death ... of pets

Imagine telling somebody whose mother died, "sorry for your loss. In a few months, you can get another mother."

Sounds absurd, right?

Yet, that's what we almost routinely tell people who lost their pets.  Or say that without saying that.

If pet owning humans are like me, well, we aren't attached to any pet.  We are attached to that unique animal.  Like how we are attached to unique humans.

It has been years since my last dog died.  I have no intention of "replacing" him.  There ain't any dog like that fella.  Should I get another dog sometime in the future, it will be a new relationship--not a replacement.

Even the diagnosis of his enlarged heart condition was devastating. I immediately thought of my grandmother, who, too, was diagnosed with congenital heart enlargement.  Some good people and animals literally and figuratively have huge hearts that also leads to their premature deaths.  I suppose the mean-hearted like the current president live long lives; perhaps they literally have smaller hearts too!

There are some who take a long time to recover from the deaths of their beloved pets.  I recall a female colleague in my California years who was grief-stricken for weeks after her cat died.  She is not alone.

Losing a beloved pet is often an emotionally devastating experience. Yet, as a society, we do not recognize how painful pet loss can be and how much it can impair our emotional and physical health. Symptoms of acute grief after the loss of a pet can last from one to two months with symptoms of grief persisting up to a full year (on average). The New England Journal of Medicine recently reported that a woman whose dog died experienced Broken Heart Syndrome—a condition in which a person’s response to grief and heartbreak is so severe, they exhibits symptoms that mimic a heart attack, including elevated hormone levels that can be thirty times greater than normal.

I don't know how it is with cats.  But, dogs being so expressive and child-like, their deaths are too damn harsh.  I can easily imagine how some suffer serious health issues as a result.

Because pet loss is disenfranchised, many of the societal mechanisms of social and community support are absent when a cherished pet dies. Few of us ask our employers for time off to grieve a beloved cat or dog as we fear doing so would paint us as overly sentimental, lacking in maturity or emotionally weak. And few employers would grant such requests were we to make them. Studies have found that social support is a crucial ingredient in recovering from grief of all kinds. Thus, we are not only robbed of crucial support systems when our pet dies, but our own perceptions of our emotional responses are likely to add an additional layer of emotional distress. We may feel embarrassed and even ashamed about the severity of the heartbreak we feel and consequently, hesitate to disclose our distress to our loved ones.

It is not without reason that sometimes even the homeless people are out there with their pet dogs and cats.  Those animals love these unfortunate humans even when the rest of us humans barely even look at them. Imagine then the mental agony for a homeless person when his dog dies!

In my early years in America, I read an interview with whom I don't recall.  He said something along the lines of how one can have a happy life without any pet animals, but that life gets even better with a pet.  I can vouch for that.  He should have also added how much of a heart break it is when that pet dies.  Such is life!

Alert!!! A national security threat!

Let's see if this gets published somewhere other than here in this blog ;)
**********

My cute little orange Honda Fit is a national security risk?

The New York Times, like many of the news outlets that the President distrusts, reported that Mr. Trump has asked for an investigation into whether imported autos pose a threat to national security. In addition to being a funny-accented naturalized citizen from a nearly "shithole" country, I have now invited more problems with the purchase of a Japanese import.

Until a month ago, despite my brown-skinned alien looks, this President would have applauded me. For nearly 14 years, I have owned a Saturn Vue. Made in America, Mr. President! Back in 2004, I traded in my 12-year old Saturn station wagon when I bought the Vue, which makes it a grand total of 26 years of owing American vehicles.

Source

Of course, Saturns are not manufactured anymore. Soon after the Great Recession, in the shake up that dramatically restructured the automobile industry, General Motors ended the sales of Saturn vehicles in 2009. As disheartening as this was, businesses dying is not anything new; it is consistent with the creative destruction that is a hallmark of the modern economic system. As a businessman, especially as one who has personal experiences with declaring bankruptcies, Mr. Trump certainly knows this well.

Loyal Saturn owners like me were devastated when GM announced its decision. Even now, I fondly remember how Saturn was marketed as a different kind of a car company. Car buying became stress-free with its no-haggle prices. After the sale, the service department treated us owners like we were family. Because employee turnover was low, every visit I met with practically the same personnel in the service shop, and we grew closer with every oil-change. We even traded personal stories; my daughter has no idea how much I have joked about her while waiting for my Saturn!

And then it ended. Just like that. No more Saturn dealership.

My lifetime oil-change contract was offloaded to another local automobile dealer. The first time I went there for an oil-change, surprise, Darrel from the old Saturn dealership was at the desk. But, he was different here—all work, strictly transactional. A few months later, Darrel was gone. No doubt that his Saturn-bred outlook did not mesh well with the ethos of the new place.

The Saturn Vue was there during my marriage, the divorce, and then a new companionship. I have a tough time letting go of my Vue, which is why I did not want to trade it in when I bought the Fit. I suppose I am loyal to my car more than Mr. Trump is to the people who worked for him.

The Vue served me well over the 14 years. If a car were like a man’s other best friend—dogs—my Vue is more than a 100 years old in human time. With over 310,000 miles, and not a single breakdown, my Saturn Vue is truly a testament to American manufacturing. But, all good things come to an end, and soon I will have to say goodbye. The used-car market knows the price of this Vue, and it will be rock bottom. As they say, the marketplace does not know the difference between price and value.

As I drive in a Honda Fit, I am no less American than the American that I was as a proud Vue owner. Neither my imported Honda, nor this brown-skinned and accented citizen, is a threat to national security. Support us, Mr. President; do not attack us.

Doctor of humanity

A few years ago, a physician, who is a few years older than me, mentioned during a conversation that his four years of undergraduate studies were a waste, and that he could have directly gone to medical school.  He was especially critical of the general education that he was compelled to take.

I was his house-guest. The protocols required me to stay away from picking a fight with the host.  And that is what I did.

We rarely ask ourselves what makes a good doctor.  Of course, we want them to know the tools of the trade, so to speak.  We want doctors to be knowledgeable, just like we would want any professional to be.  But, is it merely about the technical proficiency?  If so, why should we require the 18-year old coming to college with plans to become a doctor to take philosophy and religion classes, among other such "waste"?

medical students who are exposed to the humanities demonstrate higher levels of positive skills and qualities such as empathy, tolerance for ambiguity, wisdom, emotional appraisal, self-efficacy, and spatial reasoning—all important in being a competent, good doctor.
The same study found that humanities exposure is inversely correlated with negative qualities that can be detrimental to physician well-being, such as intolerance to ambiguity, physical fatigue, emotional exhaustion, and cognitive weariness.
Humanities majors may be more likely to pursue residencies in primary care and psychiatry—both areas where there is tremendous need.
Humanities exposure can arguably benefit patients by making better doctors and it may also be beneficial for the individual physician.

There's quite a bit to being a good doctor, eh!

Humanities exposure can arguably benefit patients by making better doctors and it may also be beneficial for the individual physician.
In this era of increasing dissatisfaction within the medical profession, a doctor also needs the tools to develop and nurture her own humanity so that she can continue her work, healthy in mind and body. Patients deserve a doctor who is thoughtful, professional, compassionate, understanding, humble, collaborative, wise, and knowledgeable. And while there are many factors in the development of a physician, humanities education is one important avenue toward making better doctors.

Ah, yes, but we need more welders than philosophers, right? Shut down those philosophy departments!

But the view ...

Consider this:

Zillow estimates that by the end of the century, nearly half a million Miami homes could be submerged.

The end of the century is a long time to go.  Which means, homeowners are not going to factor in rising sea levels when putting their money down, right?

We humans are irrational!  As simple as that.

Even as scientists have established clearly that the climate is changing and that sea levels are rising, people living in coastal properties consistently underestimate their risk of experiencing flooding. This tendency is causing a housing bubble that could devastate people's life savings, according to a recent paper by economists Laura Bakkensen, of the University of Arizona, and Lint Barrage, of Brown University.

Yep. We race to own homes by the coast, or by the rivers.

In a perfectly rational world, the risk posed by an encroaching ocean would be included in the price when you bought a property. After all, only a steep discount could persuade a sensible person to buy a property that might be washed away within 10 years.
But humans, apparently, are not all that rational.

The irrational behavior is also why we build homes on a volcano and then, as George Carlin joked, we wonder why there is lava flowing through the bedroom!

If people are irrational, then surely the government can address this, right?  Wrong!

Currently, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's National Flood Insurance Plan is subsidized, meaning that the government is still offering false incentives to build in a floodplain. "People may believe in flood risk or not, but if it is explicitly priced into homes through flood insurance, the market will be forced to internalize that," Bakkensen says.

Consistent--if humans are irrational, then why would an organization of humans be any more rational!

These inaccurate beliefs aren't just causing awkward conversations over Thanksgiving dinner. They could also cause house prices along the coast to eventually plummet by as much as 16 percent, according to Bakkensen and Lint, depending on how many flood risk "optimists" are willing to buy these properties in the near future. That's only slightly less than the 19 percent drop in house prices during the 2007–09 Great Recession.
These drops in value will occur as a series of shocks over time, as homeowners are forced to hastily re-evaluate their flawed beliefs: Unsurprisingly, the paper found that people often become convinced they live in a flood zone after they experience a flood firsthand. Bakkensen and Lint's study finds that people will correct their views over time, as flooding becomes too regular to ignore—or that better policies will force homeowners to start pricing in this risk, regardless of their personal views.

As the NPR report notes, "High tide or low tide, the next hurricane season officially starts on June 1."

What, me worry?

And then there were three ...

Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are neighbors. Why Nigeria, which is far away?

One word puts them in a special group: Polio.

“We are closer than we have ever been before to wiping out this virus. The next few months will tell us if we may be able to finish the job this year as this is the time when the virus is circulating"

Many of us here in the US and elsewhere suffer from the craziness that trump and his minions have been.   We have a president who openly questions whether vaccines are good!  Bill Gates says that the idiot-in-chief asked him about it--"he asked me if vaccines weren’t a bad thing because he was considering a commission to look into ill-effects of vaccines."  And what was Gates' response?  Gates said he told Trump, “that’s a dead end, that would be a bad thing, don’t do that.”  Had trump been the president back in the day, the US government might not have done anything regarding polio, small pox, ...

Thankfully, trump has come about during the end stage of the fight against polio.  Pakistan is inching towards zero.  One of those instances in real life when we begin to appreciate the mathematical idea of "tends to zero" but not yet zero. Perhaps the country might have wiped out the virus if the US had not recruited a Pakistani doctor to help find Osama bin Laden by having him carry out a fake vaccination campaign.

As we get closer and closer to eradicating polio, we need to pause and think about one of the most remarkable aspects of the vaccine: Jonas Salk did not patent the polio vaccine that he created.  He chose not to patent it.

Actually is is only two--Pakistan and Afghanistan. Because, Nigeria has not recorded a case of polio for 20 months since 2016.

If the country can make it to three years, plus a few extra months as an epidemiological cushion, it will be certified polio-free, which will also mean that the entire continent of Africa is clear of the disease. 

Imagine that; the African continent could be officially polio free in a year.  The entire continent.

Against such a backdrop, we have our eyes set on the November elections.  But, 2018 will be far more historic than a Democratic takeover of Congress if there are no new polio cases in 2019.  A big fucking deal, as Joe Biden once remarked!

We are the elite!

Different sets of people.  Different dining table settings and food.  Different conversations.  But, one commonality stands out: We are globalists, and among the economic elite.

We might think of ourselves as "middle class."  But, middle class we ain't. In fact, halfway through one dinner, I proclaimed that we might not think about ourselves as elites but we are.

Of course, me admitting to the world that I am one of the upper-economic-crust is not anything new in this blog.  (Here are two samples: One and Two.)

Any which way we slice the data, well, as long as we don't deal with alternative facts, we cannot escape the reality.  "The families at our end of the spectrum wouldn’t know what to do with a pitchfork."

This elite in the US is mostly white or Asian (yes, including me.)

The Institute for Policy Studies calculated that, setting aside money invested in “durable goods” such as furniture and a family car, the median black family had net wealth of $1,700 in 2013, and the median Latino family had $2,000, compared with $116,800 for the median white family. A 2015 study in Boston found that the wealth of the median white family there was $247,500, while the wealth of the median African American family was $8. That is not a typo. That’s two grande cappuccinos.

Ah, yes, but we are middle class!

The other day, a sales agent told me my credit rating is a "you can buy whatever you want rating."  It is, indeed.  But that rating by itself is a piece of evidence that I ain't middle class, which struggles to keep itself afloat, which is why their credit rating is not one they will be proud about.

We then turn around and tell the real middle class, and the lower class, that they too can do this.  If only!  "In America, the game is half over once you’ve selected your parents."  If you are a regular reader, then you know you have read this before ... and you are right.  It has been one of my favorite ways to summarize the inequality: Choose your parents well!

Recall the old adage that health is wealth?  The two are increasingly tied together:

Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, and liver disease are all two to three times more common in individuals who have a family income of less than $35,000 than in those who have a family income greater than $100,000. Among low-educated, middle-aged whites, the death rate in the United States—alone in the developed world—increased in the first decade and a half of the 21st century. Driving the trend is the rapid growth in what the Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton call “deaths of despair”—suicides and alcohol- and drug-related deaths.

Yet, despite all such evidence, because of political ideologies, and implicit supremacist views because they know better than to voice them explicitly, many shrug their shoulders and prefer to interpret the other people's relative poverty as vice: "Why can’t they get their act together?"

You see, when educated people with excellent credentials band together to advance their collective interest, it’s all part of serving the public good by ensuring a high quality of service, establishing fair working conditions, and giving merit its due. That’s why we do it through “associations,” and with the assistance of fellow professionals wearing white shoes. When working-class people do it—through unions—it’s a violation of the sacred principles of the free market. It’s thuggish and anti-modern. Imagine if workers hired consultants and “compensation committees,” consisting of their peers at other companies, to recommend how much they should be paid. The result would be—well, we know what it would be, because that’s what CEOs do.

I have no idea how this story will end.  All I know is that this story is not unfolding well.

It is up to us to create a heaven right here on earth

Another mass shooting!

The US is the rare nation where individual attacks are more common and usually deadly than attacks by groups because it’s so easy to buy highly lethal #guns.https://t.co/6hAYVkUMbE#SantaFe #Parkland #LasVegas #NRAIsATerroristOrganization

— Am.Dr.Khe (@congoboy) May 18, 2018

Seriously, we have two problems: Guns, and men.  But, the party of thugs, aka the GOP, won't allow us to talk about these two.  Definitely not about guns.

Meanwhile, we are well in to Ramadan. 

For all the non-believer that I am, I consciously think about my existence, and worry about what it means to be human.  When bad things come my way, whether it was the refrigerator that died thanks to which I had to buy a new one or when people who are near and dear to me say awful things about me right to my face, I do not need a god to turn to.  "Shit happens" I tell myself.  After all, it is not as if the entire cosmos exists only to serve me!  The cosmos is.  

But, when it is a mass shooting that kills a few 17-year olds, it does not feel right to merely blame it on the cosmos.  We humans are the ones creating hell right here for other fellow humans!  Bloody sociopaths!  May they be tortured to the nth degree in the hell in which they believe!

Whether it is Lent, or Ramadan, or whatever, I am not ever sure that most of the believers really use that designated time in order to reflect on our fleeting existence on this "mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam," as Carl Sagan so poetically put it. 

In fact, the disconnect between such need for introspection versus the believers merely reciting the Vishnu Sahasranaamam and the Bhaja Govindam and more was the point of departure for the young me questioning the idea of god and religion and belief.  I was convinced then, and even more convinced I am now, that living a morally sound life has nothing to do with god and religion. 

The "godly" Republicans are the ones who support this president and also the organization that has over the years made it easier and easier for Americans to buy highly lethal guns and even openly carry them.  "God help us!" won't work then.  We are bound to witness more and more mass shootings :(

Caring is expressed in listening

Lee Shulman, whom I heard speak at one conference many years ago, was one heck of a guru in the world of understanding teaching and learning.  He talked and wrote in plenty about pedagogy, by observing the teaching and leaning in various fields.  Shulman made me think a lot about the pedagogy in medical schools, which I also understood vicariously through my daughter's experiences.

There is a lot we can--and should--learn from how knowledge is conveyed in professional fields different from ours.  A constant reflection on what we do and what others do is a requirement for teachers.

Abraham Verghese writes about the rapid infusion of big data into the medical profession, and the essay gives me a lot to think about.  Verghese, who I referred to in this post seven years ago, I came to know of through a book of his ... that was more than 20 years ago.  He is one of the Indian-American physician authors who seemingly have time for everything!  And now the guy has even wandered into writing fiction.  An ultimate Renaissance man indeed!

Anyway, in this recent essay, Verghese writes about the practice of medicine:

True clinical judgment is more than addressing the avalanche of blood work, imaging and lab tests; it is about using human skills to understand where the patient is in the trajectory of a life and the disease, what the nature of the patient’s family and social circumstances is and how much they want done.
... that patient’s greatest need is both scientific state-of-the-art knowledge and genuine caring from another human being. Caring is expressed in listening, in the time-honored ritual of the skilled bedside exam — reading the body — in touching and looking at where it hurts and ultimately in localizing the disease for patients not on a screen, not on an image, not on a biopsy report, but on their bodies.

In our profession, too, we deal with data about students like the graduation requirements and GPA.  But, working with students is not merely about looking up that kind of data and "solving" their problems.  Well, that too. But, often, it is above and beyond those mechanics.  It is about listening to students.   And to "genuinely care."

Earlier this week, as we wrapped up a nearly 30 minute chat about her academic plans, the student said "thanks for your advice every time." I was slightly taken aback.  She continued with "you always listen to me, and think about what will be good for me."

I thanked her.  I wished her a good summer.

Yesterday, it was deja vu all over again with another student.  At the end of our meeting, she put her stuff in her backpack, picked it up, and then said, "thanks for listening to me and always putting myself in my place and thinking about what will be good for me."

I thanked her.  And told her that it was pleasantly strange that she was saying something identical to what another student.  Her response was even more interesting for me: "Most other faculty I have taked to seem to be single-track and they only talk about their own stuff."

I agree with Abraham Verghese: Caring is expressed in listening

A skeleton without flesh

Consider this statement:

Global health programs can increase life expectancy or decrease child mortality, but ultimately, people want a higher standard of living.

Re-read that.

And now think about that age old wisdom in "health is wealth."

The guy who flatly declared that it is all about economics? Stephen Moore, who was trump's economic policy adviser during the campaign.  He  wants to gut foreign aid to nothing.  As a nutcase Republican, Moore had the formula to prescribe for development:

All these countries have to do is cut taxes, provide private property rights and get involved in global markets  

Yep, cut taxes, provide property rights, engage in international trade, and within a generation even the Central African Republic can become a Singapore!

What a piece of shithead!

I could never understand the right-of-center's worship of economic growth.  Thus, their endless worship of the economic "successes" like China, for instance.

trump now presiding over such a worship means that we in the US too are doing everything to behave like how China does.  trump's people are hell bent on removing regulations that give priority for the natural environment or labor over economics.  Bizarre and awful.

In this essay about capitalism, the author quotes the profound political thinker Karl Polanyi:

fascism strips democratic politics away from human society so that “only economic life remains,” a skeleton without flesh.

Protecting the flesh, and keeping it healthy, means discussing the very idea that the likes of Stephen Moore, paul ryan, and the way right-of-center maniacs hate: The safety net.

we’d be better off with redistributive programs that are universal—parental leave, national health care—rather than targeted. Benefits available to everyone help people without making them feel like charity cases. Kuttner reports great things from Scandinavia, where governments support workers directly—through wage subsidies, retraining sabbaticals, and temporary public jobs—rather than by constraining employers’ power to fire people. “We won’t protect jobs,” Sweden’s labor minister recently told the Times. “But we will protect workers.” Income inequality in Scandinavia is lower than here, and a larger proportion of citizens work. Maybe a government can insure higher pay for its workers by treating them as if they were, in and of themselves, valuable. True, Denmark’s spending on its labor policies has at times risen to as high as 4.5 per cent of its G.D.P., more than the share America spends on defense, and studies show that diverse countries such as ours find it harder to muster social altruism than more racially and culturally homogenous ones do. Nonetheless, programs like Social Security and Medicare, instituted when a communitarian ethic was still strong in American politics, remain popular. Why not try for more?

Unfortunately, the maniacs are dead set against this.  They would rather govern with a fascist in the Oval office, as long as they can carry out their political agenda.  And they actively sell such a "development" model across the world too! :(

A dog's life

Congo was a remarkably friendly and wonderful dog.  I was always, always, struck by the absolute lack of any meanness in him.  And always, always, he was happy to see us and to be with us.  If only we humans could have his attitude.

"Was" because Congo died more than a decade ago.  His heath problems began to show up when he simply could not even climb a couple of steps of the staircase.  He could not walk for long.  He started curling up like the proverbial sick dog.

The vet examined him. The verdict was in.  Congo had an enlarged heart that was slowly weakening.  The fellow literally and metaphorically had a big heart.  The vet didn't think Congo had more than a few months left, unless we were willing to spend a whole lot of money on a few options.

Over the weeks, Congo seemed more and more tired.  Sometimes he did not even walk up to welcome me when I came home; instead, he continued to sit in his basket and waited for me to go to him.

At one point, I asked the vet when I would know what the time will be to ease Congo's troubles and put him down.  I still remember the vet's words: "You will know."

About six months after the diagnosis, it was clear that Congo had suffered enough.  A different vet, who made house calls only for the terminally ill pets, came home to administer the euthanizing drugs.  It was a traumatic for us, but a peaceful end for him.

Congo died at home, with his loved ones.  A privilege that we do not extend to the human kind.  Rarely ever do suffering humans get such good deaths.

David Goodall could not get such an option for himself in his home country of Australia.  The 104-year old had to travel to Switzerland in order to get help for his life to end.

On the eve of his death, David Goodall, 104, Australian scientist, father, grandfather and right-to-die advocate, was asked if he had any moments of hesitation, “even fleeting ones.”
“No, none whatever,” Mr. Goodall said in a strong voice. “I no longer want to continue life, and I’m happy to have a chance tomorrow to end it.”

It is a shame that he had to do this in an alien territory.  Far, far away from Australia.

He expressed gratitude to the Swiss and regret at having to leave home for Switzerland, the only country that offers assisted-dying services to foreigners if the person assisting does not benefit from the person’s death. (Only 40 Australians are known to have made the journey, according to Exit International, because of the length of the flight and the cost of the trip.)
“I am very appreciative of the hospitality of the Swiss Federation and the ability that one has here to come to an end gracefully,” Mr. Goodall said, adding, “I greatly regret that Australia is behind Switzerland in this move.”

Even when the person is 104, and wants to call it quits, society does not extend him the treatment that Congo was legally eligible for and which he received.  Some day we will change the way we think about good death.  Soon, I hope.

Let's talk about unicorns and rainbows

The local newspaper, which had been ailing for a while and now seems to be in a critical condition, reported that a middle-aged man of some local standing now faces charges of allegedly molesting a teenage girl who was known to him.

Meanwhile, there are people--especially undergraduate students--who think that it is inappropriate to teach Lolita.  As if there is nothing that we can possibly learn and understand about humans by reading and discussing Lolita.

It is not an easy text to read.  I know. I have attempted that twice.  The last time was three summers ago.  As I noted then, "my spirit is too weak to continue on with Lolita."  That book, and the real world too, is not for wusses like me.

A literature professor writes about teaching Lolita even though her students complained about it, even though she has been teaching it since 2008.

I was not surprised by the vehemence of your response to the book, but by the suggestion that we should perhaps not read it at all. That by assigning Lolita I am perpetuating trauma and may even be perpetuating rape culture. This last suggestion runs so counter to my own beliefs about what literature does that I found it hard to parry your challenges.

It is almost as if students want literature professors to only teach Aesop's Fables!

Professors need to assign, and students need to read, difficult books. The challenges we face are not new. Our students are not “coddled” (a discourse which I abhor). But we need to read and discuss and come to our own conclusions. Even if that conclusion is that Nabokov contributed to a “Lolita myth” that has at times had horrific resonance in our culture.

Indeed!

Nabokov wrote about the difficulty in getting his book published.

Their refusal to buy the book was based not on my treatment of the theme but on the theme itself, for there are at least three themes which are utterly taboo as far as most American publishers are concerned.  The two others are: a Negro-White marriage which is a complete and glorious success resulting in lots of children and grandchildren; and the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106.

As I noted then:

It was only in 1967 that the US Supreme Court invalidated laws that prohibited interracial marriage.   As far as atheists, Nabokov was not exaggerating by any means; this country might even be ready to elect as president a bisexual Black woman who is a Muslim before the electorate ever warms up to an atheist!

I don't understand the demand that higher education not include such challenging and difficult topics.  If we don't, then all that remains is preparing automatons for the work place, with a curriculum that is based on graphic novels.  Oh wait, we already do that!

There is no free lunch

Remember that old joke about laptop computers being heavy, and that deleting unnecessary files will make it light as a feather? Haha!

Go ahead and Google that joke, if you want.

Wait, maybe you should think twice before you do it.  Not because of the need to think, which is important.  But, for a completely different reason:

Every Google search comes at a cost to the planet. In processing 3.5 billion searches a day, the world’s most popular website accounts for about 40% of the internet’s carbon footprint.

In the internet-of-things world of today, we forget that the internet is based on real world infrastructure and needs energy--a whole lot of it--to work.

“Almost nobody recalls that the internet is made up of interconnected physical infrastructures which consume natural resources,” [Joana] Moll writes as an introduction to the project. “How can such an evident fact become so blurred in the social imagination?”

In our daily lives, we rarely pause to consider how the good and services that we use are created.  Who makes tshirts? Where is the electricity coming from? It is always a combination of ignorance and apathy.

Despite the notion that the internet is a “cloud,” it actually relies on millions of physical servers in data centers around the world, which are connected with miles of undersea cables, switches, and routers, all requiring a lot of energy to run. Much of that energy comes from power sources that emit carbon dioxide into the air as they burn fossil fuels; one study from 2015 suggests internet activity results in as much CO2 emissions as the global aviation industry.

For Google, this infrastructure means about 0.01 kg per search request.

Of course, it is not just Google. The Frightful Five and others have to maintain servers and routers and whatever else all around the world.  Which is one of the reasons they also like places like Oregon where they set up their energy-hogging server farms.

Server farms all across the planet.

Ireland, which with Denmark is becoming a data base for the world’s biggest tech companies, has 350MW connected to data centres but this is expected to triple to over 1,000MW, or the equivalent of a nuclear power station size plant, in the next five years.
...
The data will be stored in vast new one million square feet or larger “hyper-scale” server farms, which companies are now building. The scale of these farms is huge; a single $1bn Apple data centre planned for Athenry in Co Galway, expects to eventually use 300MW of electricity, or over 8% of the national capacity and more than the daily entire usage of Dublin. It will require 144 large diesel generators as back up for when the wind does not blow.

The more connected we become, the more our energy needs, unless something is done dramatically different:

Global computing power demand from internet-connected devices, high resolution video streaming, emails, surveillance cameras and a new generation of smart TVs is increasing 20% a year, consuming roughly 3-5% of the world’s electricity in 2015, says Swedish researcher Anders Andrae.
In an update to a 2016 peer-reviewed study, Andrae found that without dramatic increases in efficiency, the ICT industry could use 20% of all electricity and emit up to 5.5% of the world’s carbon emissions by 2025. This would be more than any country except the US, China and India.

Don't trust all these?  Go ahead, do a Google search ;)

The pleasure of finding things out

My news feed informs me that May 11th was Richard Feynman's birth centenary.

In this blog, I have referred to Feynman quite a few times.  The following is a re-post.
****************************************

In the high school biology class, during one of the lab sessions, we transferred our blood drops to a glass slide, and viewed that with a microscope.  Even though the textbook and the biology teacher (was Gladstone his name?) had prepped me for it, I was blown away that the liquid blood was not some simple solution but there was all kinds of things happening there.  There is more than meets the eye, indeed! 

I was reminded of that experience when I read this essay on how discovering the microscopic world led humans into yet another frontier to which humans had never gone before.  Explorations of the micro-biology kind.

When it came to studying the human reproductive system, after reading the textbook with a sense of being a science explorer combined with all the teenage angst and desires, there were certainly plenty of moments when I wondered if the sperm really looked anything at all like the tadpoles in the pond.  I suppose it would have been one crazy biology lab if any classmate had attempted to check that out; thankfully, nobody did, and we believed the textbook instead.

It is that kind of curiosity to constantly peek behind the curtains which has led us to where we are now.

In previous ages, natural philosophers had attributed the causes of processes to invisible, occult forces and emanations — vague and insensible agencies. The new mechanistic philosophers of the 17th century argued that nature worked like a machine, filled with levers, hooks, mills, pins and other familiar devices too small to be seen. As Hooke put it: ‘Those effects of Bodies, which have been commonly attributed to Qualities, and those confess’d to be occult, are perform’d by the small Machines of Nature.’
He never quite found them — what the microscope revealed was more often unintelligible in these terms. But there was no shortage of other marvels.

Yes, marvels. A never ending stream of marvels. 

A typical complaint is that the more we systematically analyze the world around us, the less everything is charming.  That we reduce the wonders of nature to their material components, and then we decipher the components of those components. 

It simply isn't so. 

The fact that such inquiries enabled humans to walk around on the moon has not made the sight of a full moon any less poetic--it has only increased our desire to go check out the moon for ourselves, as much as we pricked our fingers and examined that blood under the microscope.  Critically analyzing a play or a musical performance makes us appreciate the nuances and adds to our enjoyment. 

But then, I am not saying anything new.  The phenomenal polymath physicist, Richard Feynman, articulated it for all of us while talking about the beauty of a flower:

I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.

Yes, the marvels we discover adds considerably to appreciating and enjoying this world.  If only people would invest a lot more time and energy to understanding science than we currently do. 

As Feynman noted in this context of a lack of interest in scientific knowledge:

we should teach them wonders and that the purpose of knowledge is to appreciate wonders even more. And that the knowledge is just to put into correct framework the wonder that nature is.

Ah, "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" ...

From the BBC Interview for Horizon 'The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/archive/feynman/)
Animated by Fraser Davidson (www.sweetcrude.tv).

From my cold, dead hands!

Remember Moses saying that?

Of course it was not Moses. It was Charleton Heston who played that role.  And, no, he did not utter those lines when walking around as Moses.  Heston was scaring the cult, er, the NRA, that the government was coming to get their guns.  This was 18 years ago, when the NRA was campaigning against Al Gore.

No, this is not a post about guns.

It is about smartphones about which most people will defiantly declare that they will never be separated from them. "From my cold, dead hands!"

More and more people are talking and writing about this smartphone addiction.

If I’m honest, much of what I did on my phone could be characterized as mindless. I can’t count the number of times I pulled out my phone just for the feeling of unlocking the screen and swiping through applications, whether out of comfort—like a baby sucking her thumb—or boredom—like a teenager at school, tapping his fingers on a desk. In those cases, I sought not mental stimulation, but physical release.

In the old days, at the airports, for instance, people might have even attempted to talk to the people next to them.  Or, maybe they walked up and down observing people and wandering into stores.  Now, it is all about the smartphone--even if they are only aimlessly and mindlessly locking and unlocking their phones!

If personal technology is improving the world of thought, what is it doing to the world of our moving, breathing bodies?

What is it doing to us?

The author of that essay has given up her smartphone.

Without my phone, I’m more fully myself, both in mind and body. And now, more than ever, I know that looking at my phone is nothing compared to looking at my daughter while the room sways as I rock her to sleep, or how shades of indigo and orange pour in through the window and cast a dusky glow over her room, or the way her warm, milky breath escapes in tiny exhalations from her lips, or how the crickets outside sing their breathless, spring lullaby.

I don't believe in giving up the smartphone.  But, I do believe in moderation. I believe in making sure that I own the phone, and that the iPhone does not own me.  Often, just to make sure I know how to operate in this world without the smartphone, I go about running errands without carrying my phone.  As much as possible, I refuse to use the map app.  I don't have to die in order to give up my iPhone.

Incel killers

In the courses that I teach, population growth comes into discussions either directly or indirectly.  In the straightforward discussions on demographics, I often note in passing that we need to watch out for one age segment in the sudden population growth in societies: Males between 15 and 25 years of age. 

I tell them that the biology of being males means that during that age there is one heck of a lot of testosterone rushing around in them and that if there aren't safe outlets for the resulting behavior, well, these young men can be destructive.  In the old days, people got married when they were young, and marriage and sex effectively tackled the testosterone.  And then there were wars to which young men were sent to fight--another outlet for testosterone.

Now, countries rarely wage wars.  We have become a lot more peaceful than ever before.  So, one outlet for testosterone has been preempted.

In most countries around the world where sex outside of marriage is frowned upon, males are marrying much later in life.  And meanwhile, sex is all around--like how a flick of the finger brings up more porn that one can watch in a life time.

And, now, we have a word for them: Incels.

In popular usage, the term primarily refers to the online communities of people who self-identify as involuntarily celibate. These communities are characterized by misogyny, the glorification of violence, and racism

The involuntarily celibates are not merely online though.  "Basically, incels cannot get laid and they violently loathe anyone who can."  And more than a few of them are not mild-mannered people.  I have always worried about the destructive power of the sexually frustrated young men. 

The destructive incels are not that different from other violent actors whose ideology is different from his own, yet whose actions are similar

It is not difficult to spot parallels with the world of jihadism, where women and sex are similarly fixated on to an extraordinary degree.

Quick, think of the photos of terrorists across the world.  How many images of women flashed in your mind?  How many middle-aged men?  You see what I mean?

Like incels, jihadists similarly crave sex, but the circumstances surrounding its consummation are closely regulated by their religious norms, which prohibit sex outside of marriage and same-sex couplings. Among jihadists, even masturbation is frowned upon, although Osama bin Laden famously issued a masturbation fatwa, permitting it in times of urgent need.

There is more than mere correlation in all these.

According to Professor Juergensmeyer, “Nothing is more intimate than sexuality, and no greater humiliation can be experienced than failure over what one perceives to be one’s sexual role.” Furthermore, he argues, such failures “can lead to public violence,” which is performed to cancel out feelings of shame and reassert the claim to manhood.

What to about this?  Definitely not what Ross Douthat writes about!

Every breath you take / Every move you make / I'll be watching you!

Take a look at this photo:

Looks like one of those coffee shops where young customers stay for hours while making use of free wifi, right?

Look again.  There is something hanging under his neck.  If somebody had asked me to guess what it is, I would have failed, and failed miserably.

It is a "sociometric badge."

I am with you--I have no idea what it means when somebody says "sociometric badge."  Guess what it is for?  "Combined with digital data, sociometric badge data can help organizations get a holistic view of how work gets done."

Even at this point, you might wonder what that means.  I am with you.  I didn't know about any of these until I read this essay on how digital technology and data on all kinds of things are enabling employers to monitor their employees every second.  It is one of the most depressing essays that I have read recently.  Ignorance is bliss!

That "sociometric badge"?  Ironically, the company that makes that is called Humanyze.  A company that is all about dehumanizing people and their work is called Humanyze!  It is a pioneer in something called "people analytics"--a phrase that I wish I had not heard or read. Referred to in short as PA.   "Worn around the neck and attached to microphones and sensors, the badges record their subjects’ frequency of speaking, tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language."  Note the kinds of data that the badge is collecting!

Very little "escapes the gaze of the sociometric badge and its associated technologies":

“Even when you’re by yourself, you’re generating a lot of interesting data. Looking at your posture is indicative of the kind of work and the kind of conversation you’re having.”

This is fucking insane!

Even scarier is this: Humanyze is not the only game in town.  All these PA firms "rely on combinations of wearables and computer-based technologies to monitor and control workplace behavior."

These companies boast that their systems can find out virtually everything there is to know about employees, both in the workplace and outside it. “Thanks to modern technology,” in the words of Hubstaff, a PA company based in Indianapolis, “companies can monitor almost 100 percent of employee activity and communication.”

Like I said, this is fucking insane!

The owners of these robots gain more wealth and power over labor that increasingly is left behind and becomes voiceless.  The demagogue who foul-mouthed his way to the Oval Office in order to fight for the forgotten men and women couldn't care less.  It was never about the forgotten!

Bomb, bomb bomb. Bomb, bomb, Iran!

Today is when the star of the trump reality show will announce his decision after teasing the viewers with "will he?" questions.  Recall how the star announced his decision on the Supreme Court nomination, or about pulling out of the Paris Accord?  It is all about the ratings, the substance be damned!

It will be a huge surprise, an awesome twist, if the star announces that the US is committed to the Iran deal.  That will be an unexpected plot twist, immensely more head-turning than JR returning to Dallas!

In all this drama, which is a complete contrast to the years of no-drama-Obama, let us not forget one fundamental aspect: Most Republicans have always hated working with the Iranian government.  The Republicans have no qualms working with our frenemies, especially Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.  But, Iran they hate.  It is simply that trump states everything in crude terms what seasoned Republican politicians say in polite language.

Consider, for instance, Mitt Romney.  He toadied up to trump by sharing frog legs for dinner, in the casting call for the role of Secretary of State.  Romney (like most GOP politicians) thought he could go about executing his preferred policies as trump clowned around in the White House.  trump tossed him away like a used condom. Remember that?

Romney's immigration policies are no different from the ones that are being implemented by the trump administration hand-in-glove with the GOP Congress.  This is a man who as a candidate asked the undocumented to self-deport.  As a candidate, he trashed the economically unfortunate as takers, and wanted to shred the safety net--exactly what is being done now, under the fearless leadership of his running-mate, Paul Ryan.

So, later today when trump announces that the US is nuking the Iran deal (yes, pun intended!) expect most of the Republicans to applaud him.  His rock-solid base will enthusiastically back him, and might even claim that this is exactly what Jesus would have done.  If chaos and wars increase, then the chances of the second coming increase, right?

The title of this post?  That's what the "elder statesman" John McCain sang back when he was the GOP candidate for the presidency.  Don't ever be fooled by these maniacs!  Apparently McCain's dying wish is that trump should not attend his funeral.  Strange politics!

But, seriously, won't it be one hell of a plot twist if trump announces his commitment to the Iran Deal? ;)

Donald Dick!

When it is convenient for them, evangelical Christians like to say that they only condemn sin but not the sinner.  In the case of trump, they not only do not condemn him, they elected him and are solidly behind him.

I am sure they are happy with the country's first porn president!

He is the first truly shameless president, the first porn president, and that is why it is Stormy Daniels—more than the FBI or the IRS or the string of women who have claimed sexual harassment or abuse by him—who just might take him down.

I simply cannot wrap my mind around the fact that the "moral majority" claim this man as their leader!

Stormy Daniels was not given a million dollars in seed money from a rich father, but in many other respects she is like Trump. She sees human sexuality as rife for transaction, she has no shame, and she’s tough. She, too, cultivates a passion of the leisure class (he golfs, she owns and rides horses competitively) and she shares his vision for imposing her name on a vast landscape. For Trump, this means blighting skylines with ugly buildings, each of them crowned with his big ’80s logo, that arrangement of gilded letters that stands for the worst of the decade. She seeks to control a vast region of online pornography by writing and directing and starring in films that fuse the storytelling and prop-filled premises of the ’70s long form with the contortionist extremes and necessary visual tropes of the contemporary short form. Like Trump, she understands that to be a winner you must be your own brand, and that if you spend your life as a Miss December, you will never really come out ahead: It’s your name you want on the building—or the Pornhub channel—not your employer’s.

After reading the essay, and especially that paragraph, I now see trump only as an aging former porn star.  

If George Costanza dreamed of his porn star alter-ego as Buck Naked, I can't help wonder what trump's porn star name would have been ... David Dennison? John Miller? John Barron? Nah, these are way too un-porn!

He’s a porn president, where every intimate interaction is for sale if the money is right, and where the underlying truth of each deal is that at the end of it somebody is going to get screwed. This time—maybe, maybe—it could be him.

I can't wait for this porn president to be screwed big time.  

But, will a porn star help to bring down a president?

“Ultimately, he is going to be forced to resign,” said Michael Avenatti, the attorney for the adult film actor who says she had an affair with Donald Trump and was paid by Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, to keep it quiet.
“I don’t know how he will ultimately spin his departure, but I firmly believe there is going to be too much evidence of wrongdoing by him and those around him for him to be able to survive the balance of his term.”

Paging Robert Mueller!

House of lashes

A couple of years ago, I was in discomfort after a routine eye exam at the optometrist.  As if something was poking my eyes.

I went back to the optometrist. The guy (yes, a guy) looked at my eyes again.  He decided that maybe I needed polarized lenses.

The annoying poking never went away.

I figured I needed a real doctor, not these fake "doctors" of optometry.  I went to an ophthalmologist.

I had barely finished explaining my problem to her (yes, a woman) when she figured out what it was.  "You have two eyelashes curving inward and they are poking your eye.  I will pluck those two and you will be fine."

She picked up a tweezer and plucked them.  "If it happens again, go to a beauty shop. It will be much cheaper," she joked.

The problems that I have to deal with because of my long and beautiful eyelashes! ;)

Why do we have eyelashes?

Some scientists believe that if eyelashes even have any real function, it’s to diffuse airflow that might threaten to dry out the eyeball, and that their length is generally determined in relation to the size of the eyeball itself rather than the gender of the mammal they belong to.

But, keep in mind that anytime we talk about hair, there are gender and beauty ramifications.  It is one thing for me to walk around with facial hair, but a bearded woman is, well, out of the ordinary, to say the least.  As mammals men and women have hair, yes.  But, all hair is not created equal.

Even though both men and women have eyelashes, they have increasingly become a thing of beauty for women.  But, we shouldn't fool ourselves to blaming Cosmo for this!

The earliest documented efforts to emphasize the eyelashes date back to as early as 4,000 B.C.; if you’ve ever watched any movie or TV show set in ancient Egypt, you’ll know all too well that in certain regions, eye makeup was worn on the lids, brows, and lashes of wealthy and royal men, women, and children. (It was used sometimes as a cosmetic, and other times for religious purposes like warding off evil spirits, though in 2010, researchers found it may have also inadvertently served some medicinal purposes.) Fast-forward to today, though, and products like mascara, false eyelashes, eyelash extensions, and lash-growth serums — both over-the-counter and prescription — are marketed almost exclusively to women. According to a 2017 Washington Post story, “99.9 percent” of leading false-eyelash manufacturer Ardell’s sales are to women (and those sales saw a dramatic 30 percent spike from 2016 to 2017). Drag queens, in turn, often say their oversize false lashes are a key part of their look.  

So, why the femme eyelash fetish?

For one thing, the eyes and mouth are more reliable “attraction magnets” on the face of a woman than that of a man, says Marianne LaFrance, professor of psychology and gender and sexuality studies at Yale. “What eyelashes do is like what lipstick does, and eyelashes may actually even do it more: They draw a contrast between the eye itself and the eyelid, like lipstick draws attention to the contrast between the lips and the surrounding area.” Attractiveness indicators in men, she says — facial features whose larger size and more striking definition suggest a man possesses traditionally “masculine” qualities, like confidence and assertiveness — are more likely to be the eyebrows and jawline. Emphasizing the eyes and mouth, then, by contrast, diverts attention away from these qualities that might suggest a female face looks masculine.

Hmmm ... if eyebrows and jawline are the facial masculine qualities ... Too bad you can't see my fluttering eyelashes as I wonder if that is also a reason why most men don't sport a beard even if they can?

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