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Snippets

A clerk at a Trader Joe’s in La Quinta, California, said that she, unlike most others who lived there, was a native to the area. She said that she hated the snow and cold and labeled herself a Desert Rat. She was very pale, however, and explained that she stayed that way because she never went outside.

A server at a Japanese/California fusion restaurant brought to mind the scene in Miracle on 34th Street when Santa at Macy’s sends customers to rival Gimbels for a Christmas present. I had asked the server whether the symbol on the menu of two hot peppers meant that the sushi roll would blow the top of my head off or only make my eyes water. The latter, she said. She was right, and I enjoyed the dish. When she inquired about our desire for dessert, I asked if the tempura ice cream was worth it. She said no and explained that at this restaurant they often did not fry the batter-covered ice cream long enough, and it came out gummy. I did not get any dessert, but her tip went up.

It is always good to learn something new. At Joshua Tree National Park, the volunteer ranger explaining the distinctive geology said that the rocks behind her were plutons, a word I had never heard before.

For a week, I wore my cap that said “Jesus Is Us” on the back and “Jesus Was Wrongly Judged” on the front. If anyone asked about it, I was prepared to say that the organization’s website said that they would send me a free cap and shirt if I promised to do a good deed. I promised and got the merch. I rehearsed saying to inquirers that I got the stuff because “I believe in free enterprise, free trade, free love, and a free cap.” No one asked, however. I have learned that the group that sent me the shirt and cap, although they try to hide it, is anti-LGBTQ+ even though Jesus said nothing about gays (or abortion or contraception.) I have trashed the cap and shirt.

In a radio interview, she fervently indicated her support for Donald Trump and said, “This is the worst economy of my lifetime.” Although I did not see her, the voice was that of a mature woman, not a child. She must have lived through the recession of 2020 when the unemployment rate jumped in two months from 3.5% to 14.7%. By the end of 2021 it was under 4% again. Trump was president in 2020.  Joe Biden was in 2021. And she must also have lived through the Great Recession of 2007-2009, when the GDP dropped by 4.3% and unemployment peaked at 9.5%. That recession, which was the worst since the 1930s, started under George W. Bush. It ended under President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden. I thought about the woman on the radio: Ignorance remains strong.

After I had found the book I was looking for, I scanned another library shelf and saw The Hot Country by Robert Olen Butler. The jacket copy told me that it was the first in the series of Christopher Marlowe Cobb thrillers by Robert Olen Butler. I checked out the book and found that Cobb was an early twentieth century war correspondent and that the book placed him on the eve of World War I in Mexico with its complicated history of that time. I enjoyed the book and noticed that the jacket also proclaimed that Butler was a Pulitzer Prize winner. I assumed that Butler had been a newspaperman and had won the prize for some reporting. Instead, I found that he had been awarded the Pulitzer for fiction in 1993 for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, a collection of short stories. Although I seldom read short stories, I was curious and got A Good Scent as an e-book from another library. Most of the stories are told in the first person by Vietnamese refugees living in the New Orleans area. When I told a friend about the book, she assumed that the stories were depressing, but no, they aren’t. Some go all the way to heartwarming, and all are wonderful. Serendipity worked out.

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Marching Through Madness

In this time called by some March Madness, I learn yet again that I subscribe to TruTV, and I learn yet again where it is on my cable system. March Madness refers to the college basketball tournaments. They have so many games that some plop onto otherwise obscure cable stations.

Before the tournaments begin, sports commentators speculate and speculate some more about which teams will be the #1 seeds. There are four of them, which, of course, is contradictory, but the tournament is divided into four sections of sixteen teams each with a #1 seed. Despite all the discussions of #1 seeds, it hardly matters whether a team is a #1 or a #2 seed. The #1seed plays the #16 seed, and the number two seed plays the fifteenth seed, but the designation of fifteenth or sixteenth are semi-random. Although sports pundits may say some team should have been a one seed instead of a two, I have never heard a commentator say that a team got screwed by being designated a sixteenth seed when it should have gotten a fifteenth designation. Whether a team is a first or second seed, it is certainly a heavy favorite, and, of course, if the seeding really works, the first seed will end up playing the second seed on a neutral court. Whether a team is a first or second seed should hardly matter, so shut up about it.

In other sports such as tennis, commentators will say that a player has made it to the round of sixteen or the quarter- or semi-finals, but not in college basketball. Instead, it will be the “Sweet Sixteen,” the “Elite Eight,” the “Final Four.” Perhaps this was endearing or cute many, many years ago, but they are just annoying clichés now. (Battology: “The continual reiteration of the same words in speech or writing; the wearisome repetition of words in speech or writing.” You’re welcome.) Could at least someone stop using them? (No one has come up with something approaching alliteration for a team winning the first game and being one of the remaining thirty-two teams. No one says the Thundering Thirty-Two or the Thriving Thirty-Two. Someone needs to work on that.)

The men’s tournament concludes after March concludes. Don’t we need something for games played in April? Since the games feature scholar-athletes, perhaps we could have a semi-learned shoutout to T.S. and call it April Cruelty, since somebody is going to lose. But I guess it has to be at least some weak attempt at alliteration. The best I have is April Apeshit. April Absurdity is alliterative but does not seem right. Surely you can do better.

Many are saying that the women’s tournament has bigger stars and will be more exciting than the men’s side. This is partly because of Caitlin Clark. When she is mentioned, we are usually told in the same breath that she has scored more points than any other Division 1 basketball player, either male or female. This points out the difficulty of comparing players from different eras. Of course, women did not play Division I basketball at all until relatively recently. And while Clark passed Pete Maravich in Division 1 scoring, the rules did not allow freshmen (first-year students, if we are being woke) to play varsity ball when Maravich was at Louisiana State University. He played three years while Clark has played four. Moreover, there was no three-point line when Maravich was in college. His per-game scoring average was, in fact, much higher than Clark’s. This takes nothing away from Caitlin Clark, who is an exciting player, one I love to watch. Nevertheless, I offer just a small caveat about comparing players from different eras.

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Targeting Trump

Targeting Trump

A conservative pundit on a “news” channel said that it is dangerous when prosecutors target individuals, and New York prosecutors had campaigned on the promise to “get” Donald Trump. He had a point.

Criminal investigations and prosecutions can be broken down into two broad categories. In the first, a crime is committed, and miscreants are sought. If purported criminals are caught, they are prosecuted. This is the pattern followed in the overwhelming number of prosecutions in this country. A convenience store is robbed; a person is murdered; or an illegal drug is sold, and an arrest and prosecution follow.

In other prosecutions, authorities determine that a person is “bad.” They investigate to find a crime that he has committed and prosecute him for that. A crime is not targeted; a person is. This happened to Al Capone a century ago. Prosecutors knew that Capone was a bootlegger who used unprecedented violence to protect and extend his operations. However, apparently because witnesses could not be found to testify to these activities, he was not prosecuted for those crimes. Instead, prosecutors convinced a jury that Capone lived well beyond the means possible on the income he reported on his tax form. Therefore, he must not be paying all the tax he owed. Thus, Capone went to prison for income tax evasion.

Similarly, there is now the recent complaint that Trump had been targeted. When it comes to New York State, that might be true. New York prosecutors, who are elected, seemed to make campaign pledges to get Trump. The commentator, however, said that such targeting is dangerous. Is it? The action by the New York Attorney General (this was a civil, not a criminal action but the same targeting issues apply) revealed that Trump and his organization monkeyed the books over many years’ time to benefit Trump. In other words, Trump, in fact, did what the Attorney General claimed. He was not manipulated into the equivalent of a false conviction.

In New York City, the Manhattan District Attorney has brought a criminal case against Trump. We don’t know what the result of this case will be, but if Trump is convicted, it will have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he did the illegal deeds (in this case, a form of money-laundering). He will not have been railroaded into a conviction for a crime he did not commit. How, then, can the commentator claim that targeting an individual is dangerous?

A certain kind of moralist may simply say, “If he did the deed, punish indeed . . . let him bleed.” But let’s combine some theology with the law. If you are of the Original Sin disposition, we all do things that are wrong. And even if you don’t buy into Genesis, you might know that we have many, many laws on the books with blurry boundaries. (Almost) all of us have committed illegal acts, but stealing a pencil from work, overstating a charitable deduction, or slapping an acquaintance is almost never prosecuted. Our justice system could not handle every violation of the law. However, if the authorities want to “get” someone, and they have enough resources to investigate that person thoroughly, they will almost always be able to bring some sort of criminal or civil prosecution. And, yes, that is a scary power.

So, I have sympathy for the conservative’s concern that Trump has been targeted in New York, but I do not know all that went into the decisions to bring the New York litigations. On the other hand, the Georgia, January 6, and classified documents prosecutions are not the targeted kind. Deeds were done and investigations leading to prosecutions followed. The conservative commentator did not make that distinction but should have.

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Snippets

I recently saw Boy My Greatness, a new play by Zoe Senese-Grossberg. It was performed by the Firebird Project, which, per the program, “is a grassroots theater production and arts education company dedicated to telling stories that burn.” It was performed at the Hudson Guild Theater, a comfortable off-off-Broadway space in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The Hudson Guild, with roots going back to a settlement house in the nineteenth century, is, according to its literature, a “community-based social services agency . . . that has a variety of programs and services, including after-school care, professional counseling and community arts programs to the neighborhood.” For me, it was an afternoon of firsts: I had never seen a play at the Hudson Guild Theater orby the Firebird Project or by Senese-Grossberg. I picked the play not because someone told me about it or because I had read a review, but because its description on the website of one of my discount ticket services seemed interesting.

The play explores the lives of the boys who played the women’s roles in the original productions of Shakespeare’s plays. We may know that boys and young men between the ages of twelve and twenty-two performed them, but we give them little thought. As the playwright says in program notes, “The focus seems to be more on the absence of women rather than the presence of boys.” Senese-Grossberg senses that the short, dual lives as male and female must have had an effect on them. She asks, “What did it mean to be trained to be a woman at the age when we learn to become our assigned genders? How did it feel to be a child asked to embody characters decades older than you—asked to play love scenes opposite adults? How did it feel, in your 22nd year to be violently thrust back into a rigid, gendered world?”

Boy My Greatness thought-provokingly explores these themes with the background of the rise of Puritanism seeking to close theaters and the onset of another wave of the plague in London. The play is often touching. It is worth seeing although this almost uniformly well-acted production only runs for a few more days. I hope it is mounted again. However, I also hope that the next time it runs it is tightened and shortened from its almost Shakespearean length of almost three hours.

Once again my prejudices have been assailed. I would have thought that South Carolina is a place where gender at birth is considered by the state to be immutable. However, the impressive women’s basketball team at the University of South Carolina is called the Gamecocks not the Gamehens.

A young woman sitting in the row behind me on a flight from Phoenix to Palm Springs at first seemed to be tipsy, but she was only excited as she pronounced again and again to her seat mate that this was her first flight. She said she was from Idaho or Utah (those are different places, right?) and going to Palm Springs to meet her girlfriend. She was carrying a cat who she said, as we began our descent, did not like landings, presumably from the one experience of flying from Provo or Boise to Phoenix. The woman, although she talked incessantly, did not say how she happened to have a girlfriend in Palm Springs, but she was met at the airport by a large woman all dressed up in what I would describe as a babydoll outfit. And I wondered what percentage of American adults have never flown.

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The Three Revolutionary Technological Innovations of a Lifetime

From a previous barstool conversation, I knew that he had graduated from the same university as I had, but he also had a Ph.D. in political science from there. I assumed that he was smart, knowledgeable, provocative, witty, charming, a chick-magnet, but, at best, a mediocre dancer. He had recently started to work for Meta, that Facebook company, doing some sort of computer work that I only vaguely understood.

After some catching up (I had not been in the biergarten for months), he said that there had been three revolutionary tech advances in his lifetime (he is 33) — smartphones, the internet, and ChatGPT. I said that I could understand his inclusion of iPhones and the internet, but that I did not know enough about AI to have an opinion about its status on his list. He said that he used it every day at work and pulled out his smartphone to give me an example of ChatGPT’s marvels.

 He asked what the most important technological innovations in my lifetime were. I had not thought about this before. I did not have an immediate answer. Instead, I said that I knew of many things that were better than when I was a kid, but the improvements seemed to have been incremental or evolutionary not some giant leap in technology. Cars, for example, are better than decades ago. Microwave ovens are nice but not transformative, and so on.

Then I did think of a technological change that had big impact on the spouse. She was writing her Ph.D. dissertation. Her writing until then had been done by hand or on a typewriter and drafts were time consuming and often messy. However, she found that she had access to a clunky new machine that was dedicated to a new task, word processing. Her life had changed, and, of course, that made me realize that one of the important innovations during my lifetime has been the personal computer.

The Meta friend said that he had been told that one advance that had been incredibly important during my lifetime was air conditioning. I agreed. While AC was invented before my days, it became widespread after I was born. And it changed this country tremendously. Places that are now heavily populated would not be, and this has had many consequences.

Our conversation continued to resonate after I left the bar. I told some friends about it, and this led to other interesting discussions. I realized that the Meta friend’s three innovations are, in a sense, not three separate advances. They are intertwined. Smartphones are amazing. They do allow for interpersonal communications that did not exist before, but their real power is that they connect to the internet. Without the internet they would not be so revolutionary. I still think it is too early to know the importance of ChatGPT. Many things have been hyped in our lifetimes that within a decade or so are largely forgotten—iPods and CD and DVD players in the entertainment fields, for example. AI was barely mentioned a few years ago, so I hope it is all right for me to keep on open mind about its importance. However, conceding that I know little about it, I believe that its revolutionary power depends on computer programming and the internet. In other words, one technological advance is at the core of all three of his innovations—the internet.

The discussions about these innovations regularly brought up where to draw the line between revolutionary and evolutionary advances. Smartphones have meant that we can bring a personal computer with us wherever we are. Much of what we can do on these devices, however, we could do before on a personal computer, but not as easily or conveniently. So aren’t personal computers the real revolutionary technology and smartphones only an incremental advance on them?  Possibly, but I do believe that smartphones have been transformative. Their impact on society in such a short time is remarkable. It is hard to remember that iPhones only came on the market in 2007. Imagine the effect on society if smartphones were magically banned. And if ChatGPT were banned? I think few of us would know what the consequences would be.

Many conversations on these topics considered advances that were important to this country throughout its history, not just during the most recent decades. Transportation was a frequent theme. For the first quarter of America’s existence, passenger and freight traffic predominantly went by water. Locations not by the coast or near navigable streams were isolated. The Erie Canal was revolutionary by putting water that could bear passengers and freight where it was advantageous. The result changed the country and made New York City the country’s dominant metropolis.

The innovation, however, that truly began to tie the country together geographically was a network of trains. Distances closed and locations without water transportation were settled more often. We have seen many improvements in transportation since the beginning of the train network. If we hold in mind the major impact of trains, are planes revolutionary or evolutionary? Are jet planes revolutionary compared to the previous planes?

We may not agree on those answers, but I think there would be more consensus on the transformative power of automobiles. That leads to the question of whether the interstate highway system built during my lifetime has been revolutionary.

Another frequent theme in my innovation discussions concerned communications. The telegraph, I believe, produced revolutionary changes in the country. It, like the trains, tied the country together on commercial, informational, and personal levels that the nation had not had before. In a museum a few years ago, I saw the many extras that the New York Herald produced after the assassination of Lincoln. Because of the telegraph, news was in readers’ hands only fifteen minutes or so after the event. It seemed only a bit short of the you-are-there television coverage of Kennedy’s assassination.

If the telegraph was revolutionary, how about telephones? Merely evolutionary or something more?

Radio, which directly entered homes unlike the telegraph, also seems revolutionary. Radio did many things, but it tended to give the country a widespread popular culture that it had not had before. Then along came television. And movies. And cameras.

The discussions of revolutionary technological changes were primed with mentions of smartphones, the internet, and ChatGpt, and the conversations naturally tended to center on what we personally use. There could have been revolutionary advances, for example, in the construction industry, and few of us would have been aware of them. If there have been remarkable innovations in the production of concrete and plywood, for example, I and my discussants were not aware of them. Perhaps surprisingly, none of my New York conversants mentioned the modern skyscraper or elevators, which together transformed cities.

No one suggested any advances in military weaponry although there have been many in my lifetime. (Are drones transformative?) Perhaps most surprising, no one mentioned one of the most important advances of the twentieth century—nuclear power. (The first nuclear bombs were dropped while I was in diapers.) And in the discussions about an earlier America, I am surprised that no one mentioned electric lights or indoor plumbing. However, a friend did maintain that a revolutionary advance in our lifetime was transistors, which transformed electronic devices, and led to computer chips. There is clear path from transistors to the internet, smartphones, AI, and so much more.

We all know that there have been important medical advances in our lifetimes. I certainly am a beneficiary with my artificial joints (three), artificial heart valve (one), and stents (lost track). I doubt that anyone of these in isolation is revolutionary, but the spouse had a broader perspective and said that the advances in medical imaging have been revolutionary.

Some revolutionary advances, such as in medicine and war, are not in the daily sight of most of us. Other revolutionary advances have been so incorporated into society and our lives that they seem invisible. None of my discussants mentioned two that transformed the world during my lifetime: the polio vaccine and birth control. Just think of the world before and after them.

The conversation started by my fellow alum has produced much thought about technology, innovations, society, and history. What would you say are the three most important technological innovations during your lifetime?

Whatever you select, important change can come without revolutionary technologies. We, perhaps, should discuss them, too. I know, for example, that I am extremely grateful for the increases in my lifetime of the availability of pizza.

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Snippets

A friend sent me a list of authors and asked me if I knew them since he had heard they were good. I did not, and I was reminded that as a reader, it is sometimes discouraging to learn how many worthwhile books and writers there are. I have been finding it true with mysteries. A few years ago, the Center for Fiction moved into a new building in my neighborhood. It used to be the Mercantile Library located in midtown Manhattan. It’s a subscription library that also supports writers by awarding fellowships and awards. I took out a membership not because I couldn’t find enough to read but to support culture in my neighborhood. Among other things, the CFF is known for its collection of mysteries which they house separately in a rather spooky basement with motion-detector lights that seem to take a bit too long to come on. Before I go, I do internet searches for things like “best mysteries” or “best mysteries of the 1950s”. The CFF won’t have all of them, but they always have some. Whenever I pluck one off the dungeon shelves, I see hundreds of other series I have never heard of. Recently I adopted the practice of taking the classic I was looking for and then taking something from an unknown-to-me mystery author. Often the unknowns have been quite good. E.g, I had never heard of Christobel Kent, but her A Murder in Tuscany held my attention. I realize, however, that even though a book might be unknown to me, that does not mean that it is unknown to others. I had some time to kill waiting for the car to be serviced and went into a coffee shop. The sweet young twenty-something who got me my latte saw that I was carrying Kent’s book and said, “That is excellent.” I consider that yet another startling New York moment. Perhaps it is just Gothamist chauvinism, but I doubt that it would have happened in most other places.

Expectations for home life vary wildly among us. My cardiologist sold the family home a while ago but has now bought a smaller home in the same community. He is an avid golfer, but he said that he was no longer a member of a country club. He said that he had been a member while his kids grew up, and he was lucky. The club was only a few blocks from his home and, therefore, he did not have to install a swimming pool.

Have you ever noticed that when the carton has a screw top, the milk costs a lot more?

I watched Dune: Part One on Netflix so that I might be up to speed if I saw the recent Dune release at my local theater. I enjoyed Part One and I found that I would like to dress like the movie’s characters. I was amused that even though these people of the future have tools and weapons beyond our ken, they still have hand-to-hand combat with knives and swords. As I watched the movie with its royal-type succession issues, seers, overlords, and evildoers, I was reminded again of how much humanity desires myths. However, even though I watched the movie closely, I am not sure that it gave me a leg up on the second part since I had little idea of what was going on.

Notable factoids: Robert Putnam with Shaylan Romney Garrett write in The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (2020) that the colonial era was not as religiously observant as American myths would have it. At the time of the Revolution only twenty percent of the population were members of a religious body, and only thirty-four percent were by 1850. However, the 1940s through the 1960s was a time of exceptional religious observance. The authors note that as late as the mid-1960s, religiously observant Americans, both black and white, were more likely to be Democrats than Republicans.

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First Sentences

“The story begins with a voice on the radio.” Dan Callahan, Bing and Billie and Frank and Ella and Judy and Barbra.

“Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once.” Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone.

“On the edge of a typical Minneapolis coal yard in the 1930s was a wooden shack known as a doghouse.” David Leonhardt, Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.

“When the Toyota Avalon bumped down the dirt road out of the woods and across the railroad tracks, Parker put the Infiniti into low and stepped out onto the gravel.” Richard Stark (Donald Westlake), Dirty Money: A Parker Novel.

“Between Europe and the great, mature civilization of China and India lies a belt of over three thousand miles, dominated by desert and stony tableland, where rainfall is relatively little, frontiers are contested, political unity has rarely existed, and where as the late Princeton historian Bernard Lewis claimed, there has been no historical pattern of authority.” Robert D. Kaplan, The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy from the Mediterranean to China.

“According to legend, the first unethical science experiment in history was designed by none other than Cleopatra.” Sam Kean, The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science.

“The old man with the droopy right eye sat slumped on the witness chair pretending to be a nobody.” Matt Birkbeck, Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino.

“In the Spring of 1889, when an event whose only comparisons were biblical descriptions of the awful Last Day of Judgment came rushing into Johnstown, few people in the valley knew for certain who belonged to the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, the private retreat up the mountain, with its marvelous, sparkling artificial lake.” Al Roker, Ruthless Tide: The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood, America’s Astonishing Gilded Age Disaster.

“I was quite young the first time I saw the river; it was probably in 1928.” Frank Dale, Delaware Diary: Episodes in the Life of a River.

“The first measurement, like the first word or first melody, is lost to time: impossible to localise and difficult to even imagine.” James Vincent, Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants.

“The only impartial witness was the sun.” David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

“Reporting, like detective work, is a process of elimination.” David Grann, The Devil & Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession.

“Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, is known for his resolute personal integrity.” Evan Thomas, Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II.

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Snippets

Trump has not been happy with the Republican National Committee. He proposed a person close to him to be the chief operating officer of the organization. He proposed another man close to him, an election denier, to be a co-chair of the RNC. And he proposed his daughter-in-law to be another co-chair. I wondered why there were two co-chairs, and I learned that the rules of the RNC require one male and one female co-chair. Say, what? I expected conservatives to become vocal, not about Trump’s seeking to control what is supposed to be an independent organization, but about this two-gender requirement. (Of course, the conservatives believe there are only two genders, so I am not surprised that there are not more co-chairs.) This reeks of affirmative action. This is an example of wokeism. Surely the co-chair requirement should be abolished.

What Margot Asquith said about David Lloyd George still applies to some today: “He couldn’t see a belt without hitting below it.”

At this time of year, my local movie theater plays Oscar-Nominated Live Action Shorts and Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts. I try to see these before the awards and make my own judgments about who should win. I recently saw the live action program. These movies are always well made with excellent production values. The credits seem just as long as for a full-length movie. I wonder each year who the audience is for these shorts. I am not aware that such shorts are shown commercially, or at least not enough to make back the amount of money that it must take to make them. Almost uniformly the five or so films are interesting, often with innovative stories. There is, however, one problem with the programs. I used to see movie shorts as a kid, sometimes in a theater as an interlude between the double feature. More often, I saw them on TV as local stations tried to find content to fill out their airtime. Often they were, or at least meant to be, humorous, such as instructional videos by Robert Benchley or The Fatal Glass of Beer featuring W.C. Fields. (Everyone should see The Fatal Glass at least several times in their life.) Humor, however, in the nominated live action shorts is in short supply. I guess to be nominated a film must be serious. The ones I just saw did feature one quirky film, but the others explored grief, tragedy, abortion restrictions, and teenage suicide. Each was remarkably good in writing, directing, and acting. Each was affecting — so much so, that I had troubled sleep the night after I went to the theater. I plan to see the animated shorts. However, to my surprise, some of them are also quite disturbing. One year before the final animated short was shown, a manager of the theater came out and said that all children should be taken out of the auditorium. The film was too disturbing for children. He was right. It had graphic nudity and graphic violence. I hope that is not the case this year.

I seldom believe in censorship, but sometimes a phrase that at initially seems fresh becomes so used that I want to have it banned. First on my list right now is “off ramp.” Second is “soft landing.”

“If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you. If you really make them think, they’ll hate you.” Don Marquis.

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In the Realm of the Aged

I am a ‘tweener. I am older than Trump and younger than Biden. Knowing how age has affected me, I am concerned about the ages of both presidential candidates.

I, like almost everyone in my age bracket, suffers from the oft embarrassing tip-of-the-tongue syndrome. For example, an actor was in an ad. I tried to name him. I could say he was great in that movie with Jodie Foster, Silence of the Lambs. His name was on the tip of my tongue, but it did not immediately emerge. Of course, something like this happened when I was younger but not as often.

I have a related problem to the answer that won’t quite emerge. Sometimes I hear myself utter X and immediately know that X is not right. In a moment I may know I meant Y, and then I must quickly decide whether correcting myself is worth it.

This disturbs me, perhaps more than most others because I took pride in my trivia abilities. And, while I occasionally used to participate in trivia contests, I have vowed to eschew all future ones since they just make me feel old. Many of the questions have pop culture references that are too recent for me. That makes me feel old. I know I once knew the answer to some questions that I no longer know. That makes me feel old. And other questions produce that tip-of-the-tongue thing where only sometimes the answer emerges quickly enough to be useful. And that makes me feel old. The answers I can contribute to my trivia team do not make up for the inadequate, aged feelings, and I have retired from trivia.

Should these cognitive hiccups, which are normal in the aging process, disqualify me from being president? They should be put into context. I feel many of my cognitive powers are as strong — or at least nearly as strong — as ever, and perhaps some of the time even better now than before. I reason and think as well as any time in my adulthood. Whatever you might think of the quality of this blog, it would not have been better in 1980 or 2000. I no longer practice law, but I believe that I could write a brief of as good quality as I did in the past. I don’t believe that my mind has deteriorated in thinking about all sorts of problems and may even be better now because I bring more experiences and knowledge to bear.

The qualifying cognitive abilities to be president should not be determined by trivia gotcha questions, such as, Who is the leader of Kazakhstan? (Kazakhstan by land mass is one of the world’s ten largest nations. Can you name the other nine?) We should realize considering the magnitude of the job, that no person can know on their own everything they need to know to be an effective president. Instead, in judging a president or candidate, we need to know what kind of advisors he or she is likely to have. Will they be knowledgeable about Kazakhstan or whatever is the immediate matter of concern? Will they be able to present to a president in a comprehensible way what a president should know about the topic? Will they present all the information or only what they think the president will want to hear? If asked for opinions and recommendations, will they give unfiltered ones? Then our attention should turn to the president or presidential candidates. How well can these people absorb new information and analyze it? In other words, how well can the person learn and think?

However, we should remember that the learning and thinking required of a president is different from other successful folk. Generally, those who think and learn well do so only in a narrow path, and it is often embarrassing when they opine outside their lane. We have often seen the truth of what a wise person said: “Every person who has become famous for something ought to pray not to be interviewed on other things.” On the other hand, the president is a generalist. He or she must make decisions that span the globe and span multitudinous areas of expertise. A president must be able to learn and think about not just one subject but a whole world of subjects.

The public seldom gets direct knowledge about the crucial learning and thinking abilities of presidents or would-be presidents. We can only infer from other signals. How much a person does know about a range of topics is an indicator of how well that person has learned and, presumably, can learn. Whether a person indicates curiosity about a range of topics indicates a desire to learn.

There is another factor in this cognitive journey. I was once a trial attorney, and I believe that I could cross-examine and sum up as well as I did in days of yore. But a trial takes a lot of energy. Attention needs to be paid every moment during often long court days. After court ends, the attorney must retreat back to the office for hours of preparation for the next day. It can be exhausting. I know that I do not have the energy I once had, and it is possible, perhaps probable, that days of trial would sap my mental acuity. The energy to be a good president must be exponentially higher. Even if a person is able to think and reason well about a broad range of topics, energy, especially as the person ages, may wane in ways that affect mental acuity.

I am old. I believe that I still have a good mind. Even so, I am concerned about how the age of our candidates affects their mental abilities. However, the mental acuity of our leaders should always concern us. Gaffes in speech are not by themselves important. What truly matters is how well the person can learn, analyze, and make decisions and who the advisors will be.

Now. Examine for yourself the two gentlemen under consideration.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

A Congressional hearing found bipartisan agreement in denouncing social media. I am not the first to point out that while conservatives are willing to say that Facebook kills children, they do not believe that guns do. They are consistent, however, in not doing anything about either problem. 

He started at my end of the partially filled subway car asking for money. Occasionally I give panhandlers some money, but for reasons I can’t articulate, almost never on the subway. I, as did the man sitting opposite me, slightly shook our heads indicating no. The beggar moved on, but he may have forgotten that he had already tried his pitch where I sat. He came back. I had my head down reading Dirty Money by Richard Stark. As he approached, he said, “Sir. I don’t mean to disturb your reading. After all, reading is fundamental.” I found myself smiling. 

The news feed offered me a story: “Celebrity divorce attorney Laura Wasser: The No. 1 reason people get divorced.” I didn’t read it. I already know that reason is marriage. 

“I know only one thing for sure. Marriage is definitely the chief cause of divorce.” Kathy Lette. 

I just finished reading Dirty Money by Richard Stark. The cover tells me that is “A Parker Novel.” It is the only Stark book I have read, and it was different from other crime books. It is not a mystery story centered on a detective or a police officer. The main character is not a Robin Hood criminal like Lupin. Instead, Parker is bad guy criminal. He robs and kills. In this book he is trying to dispose of marked money after blowing up an armored car. Other bad guys try to take the money away from him and his accomplices. Parker kills one of the others after they had tortured one of his henchmen. Parker assists his confederate to bed and trusses up one of the other interlopers. Parker is about to leave when the guy on the floor begs not to be left there because, he maintains, Parker’s friend will kill him the morning. The book ends in great hardboiled fashion: “Parker looked at him. ‘So you’ve still got tonight,’ he said.”  

A few weeks before Dirty Money I finished The Hot Country by Robert Olen Butler. This, the cover told me, was a Christopher Marlowe Cobb thriller. It was the first in this series. I was not previously aware of it or Butler. However, when I did my extensive Wikipedia research, I found that Butler had won the Pulitzer prize in 1993 for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, a short story collection which I plan to read soon. I was intrigued by Butler’s personal life. The seventy-nine-year-old has been married six times. The last marriage will be two years old this June. The other five all ended in divorce. The penultimate marriage was to a “trans non binary poet.” 

In the early days of football, players had names that exuded toughness. From his name you knew how rugged Bronco Nagurski or Johnny Blood was. Or they had nicknames that helped us see them run down the field, such as the Galloping Ghost or the Gray Ghost of Gonzaga. Or they had a nickname that indicated their broad shoulders and bulging biceps came not out of a posh gym but from manly work, such as the Wheaton Iceman. Or their names conjured black-smudged faces having a shot and a beer in the neighborhood tavern after their coalfield shift ended, men like Ray Nitschke, Mike Ditka, or Chuck Bednarik. And what do we have now?  Brock Purdy.