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No News Is Good News

Good news for media and politicians is whatever garners readers or viewers or wins voters. Such news need not have any actual news value and may in fact be no news at all. One form this takes is the presenting of numbers without statistical context. Thus the following item from the Associated Press on May 18, 2022:   Nearly 43,000 people were killed on U.S. roads last year [2021], the highest number in 16 years as Americans returned to the roads after the coronavirus pandemic forced many to stay at home. One has to read far into the article to come across the following statement, which pulls the rug out from under all the rest:   Government estimates show the rate of road deaths declined slightly from 2020. Last year there were 1.33 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, compared with 1.34 in 2020. This shows both that driving is incredibly safe and that its safety has increased (or at least stayed pretty much the same), not decreased, since the depths of the pandemic
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The Burden Shifts

I will know I’m a writer when the burden shifts from my having to make adjustments in my writing in order to accommodate the reader, to the reader who will be tasked with understanding what I have written.             Not that I don’t like to clarify and re-articulate and generally “edit.” I love it, in fact! Nevertheless I dream of being the author of the kinds of books we were assigned in my English courses, whose reading benefited so much from the teacher’s pointing out subtleties that had gone right over our student heads. I guess what this would mean to me is that people care about what I am saying to such an extent that such lengths would be taken to examine it.             But I’m not there yet. At least not so far as I know. Thus, I “test marketed” on various people a fictional manuscript I wrote and asked them if they understood the title or to explain what it meant. Only one of them “got it.” So this puts the burden on me to rewrite the text so that the reader will be mor
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Divine Intervention

I strive to rid my life (and the lives of others) of superstition. This means that God is not going to save us. This means that miracles do not occur. This means that prayer has no power to change events except in the purely psychological way of making us calmer if we believe it has nonpsychological power. Thus, superstition itself has power …  not only to calm us, but also to deceive us and to harm us. Since I believe the latter outweighs the former in their impact on our lives and society, I try to get rid of it.              Here are a couple of examples of the nonsense becoming dangerous:   In his testimony before Congress a month after a meteor had exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, injuring hundreds, then-NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, “This is not an issue that we should worry about in the near term,” but that if we did know that an asteroid or a comet was heading our way with very little advance warning, he would advise us to pray. I watched him say the
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Why the Senate Will not Convict

The last time Trump was caught red-handed, making his perfect telephone call to the president of Ukraine, various lawmakers asked rhetorically, “If this is not an impeachable offense, what is?” Now again the same question can be asked, and this time with even less room for doubt. And yet, once again, the Senate won’t convict. Why not? For one thing Trump did not explicitly call for insurrection in his Save America Rally speech. I heard him calmly state, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” What he did do was present a litany of false claims as grounds for overturning an election. Was he lying? That depends on whether he believed what he was saying. Barring discovery of an Access Hollywood-type tape where he is caught admitting, “I don’t believe a word of it myself, but it sure fires up my fans,” it is impossible to say for sure. Even so, Trump might be considered criminally negligent
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Two Mistakes

Speaking strictly tactically, Trump made two big mistakes. The first was to downplay the COVID virus, and indeed go on the offensive to encourage risky and dangerous behavior, particularly not wearing masks. I assume the reason for his madness here was a combination of stupidity in ignoring science (just as he has done with climate change), or at least ignoring the science that counseled sacrifice as opposed to the science (and lucrative industry) that promised a quick-fix vaccine, and a short-sighted (thus, again stupid) focus on maintaining at all costs the glowing economy he expected to get him re-elected. Instead he should have seen this as an even more assured road to victory by becoming a wartime president and rallying the nation to beat this terrible foe. Americans do not change horse in midstream. That’s what got even hapless Bush II re-elected, you may recall. It is clear that Trump’s absurd way of dealing with the pandemic hurt him politically.              Nevertheless, an
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The Joke’s on Us

OK, this is not a new theory of the Trump Presidency. From the very first it was speculated that he had become an accidental president, never expecting to win and perhaps not even wanting to, but with some ulterior motive most likely linked to marketing the Trump brand in his future business dealings. Of course there were also darker murmurings (and indications) that he was a Manchurian candidate … perhaps even an unintentional and totally befuddled one more along the lines of Being There .             But Trump’s behavior since losing the election to Biden has been (and continues to be as I write) so off the wall, so seemingly intended to make him look as bad and bonkers and just plain pathetic as possible, as to suggest, and indeed support another theory I myself (along with others, no doubt) had entertained from the very start, which is that he’s doing it just for a joke, just for the sport. Basically he wants to see just how far somebody can go in putting one over on people.
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A Wise (and Terrible) Thought

Suppose you were on Air France Flight 4590, the Concorde supersonic transport (SST), on July 25, 2000, the day it crashed on takeoff, killing everyone on board. You strap yourself and your child in your seats. You are a little nervous, as always about flying and especially on takeoff, but you know the statistics and you are a rational person. Meanwhile you put on a jaunty face for your 10-year-old, who is peering out the window, excited and happy. Really it is time for you to relax and enjoy. A long-awaited vacation has begun. Nothing’s going to happen, so focus on having a good time.               What is so godawful about life (among a million other godawful things) is that your child is more enlightened than you are in this instance. He hasn’t a care in the world because his mind is not filled with reality the way yours is. (Of course I am idealizing the child in this example to make a point.) You are absolutely correct to realize that nothing whatsoever guarantees that you and he
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All I Know about Power I Learned from Donald Trump

They used to refer to Ronald Reagan as the Teflon President because nothing bad could stick to him. Presumably this was because of his sunny personality. Donald Trump is a new kind of Teflon President because he is completely in-your-face, but still nothing sticks … with half of the electorate, anyway. This seems to be because of his mastery of how to obtain and use power.              I grudgingly acknowledge his genius in this regard, although I can’t really know how much is due to sheer dumb luck. Is he the new Machiavelli, or just the new Magoo? But whether or not he has employed these tactics intentionally and knowingly, here are two things I’ve learned about power from Trump’s Presidency. I admit to being astonished by both.  1.       The more outrages the better. If you do something utterly beyond the pale, thereby stirring up controversy that could potentially un-do you once for all, simply do something else equally or even more outrageous that people cannot ignore … and so
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A Communal Model of Living during the Pandemic

Most of the COVID deaths in Connecticut have been in, or of residents and staff of, nursing homes and the like. Nationwide the figure is two fifths. This makes sense because of the concentration of older and infirm individuals in extended care facilities. Furthermore, life in these settings has been unutterably grim, since no visitors were allowed for months, and I imagine even the residents could no longer commingle because of the very high risk of contagion of their fellow most vulnerable. Could there be a more stark vision of hell?             It is also now clear that the driving force for these figures is the rate of infection in the surrounding community. The connection is not mysterious: The virus will be introduced into the nursing home environment, already primed for contagion by its demographics, by staff who spend the rest of their lives in the larger community, including with their own families, who also circulate in it.             These two observations lead me to off
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Faith

"People’s faith in God has been shaken” by the pandemic, said Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “In every diocese, we find people’s lives have been devastated.” (AP, 11/17/20)     Can you imagine? Their faith shaken by the pandemic? The Black Death, World War I, the 1918 flu pandemic, World War II, the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and  catastrophes too numerous to mention  didn't do it. Not even the torture and murder of countless children through the ages. (Consider Ivan Karamazov’s reflections on that one .) But the current pandemic, well, now that is something to make one doubt whether an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God is running the show!
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Some Predictions

Once Biden's election is fully authorized by the electoral college, Trump will announce his run for the Presidency and begin his campaign the day he leaves office. The theme: "They stole the Presidency! Let's take it back!"     After all, he began his campaign for re-election the day he took office and his entire Presidency has been a run for office again. He thrives on big rallies and won't want to give them up. He would be the same age taking office again as Biden will be when he takes office: 78.     So I foresee Trump leading raucous rallies and grabbing headlines for the next four years, inveighing against every Biden and Democratic initiative and continuing to have the same influence on the body politic, the nation, and the world, that he has had for the last four years.     And he won't sit in the stands for the Inauguration, since he labels it illegitimate, but will instead lead a counterdemonstration in D.C. billed as "the largest Inauguration Da
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The Present Trumps History

I don’t think Trump’s working relationship with Putin in the 2016 election (and beyond) amounted to his literally being a Manchurian candidate, but there is at least one feature of his political and Presidential career that forcefully echoes that of Senator Iselin in the 1962 movie, namely, the way he casts accusations at his opponents that are (more) true of himself. In the movie it was Iselin calling other candidates communists . The one accusation by Trump that has become most salient for me (writing now the day before the 2020 election) is candidate-for-re-election Trump’s railing against the movement to pull down statues or otherwise modify memorials to famous figures in American history who were also slave-holders, from Columbus to Jefferson to Lee. He claims this is an erasure of our proud history and the very meaning of America. But to me it is his railing that is the true erasure of what it means to be an American.  The present counts more than history.             As shock
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Flipping the Fermi Paradox on its Head

 © 2020 by Joel Marks and a TOTH to Nick Bostrom and David Koepsell  The physicist Enrico Fermi famously posed the puzzle of there being no evidence whatever of other intelligent life in the universe, despite the seemingly plausible assumption that intelligent life would be abundant in our galaxy and others and have had time to reach extraordinary levels of power to enable constructions and alterations and explorations that would be detectable over galactic distances. But it has just occurred to me (on Hallowe’en 2020) that this argument can be turned on its head. For perhaps the lack of evidence is itself evidence that there is other intelligence life than our own.              Here is what I have in mind. Let us suppose that the premises of Fermi’s argument are true or at least plausible, to wit:  (1)   The conditions in our universe allow for the coming into being of life as a common natural process. (2)  The age of our universe allows for life that has come into existence t
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Taking It In

The other day I went to visit a friend and, because I had arrived a little early, I wandered into the backyard just to have a look-see. There is nothing special about the yard: grass, a few bushes, a couple of trees in neighbors’ yards. But wherever my eyes roamed, I noticed something I had not noticed before. And as I continued to do this, I realized that no matter how much I did it, there would always be something new to see.             This gave me an insight into people I’ve noticed all my life who seem to be content simply to sit and watch. I am used to having a book in my hand or a computer monitor in front of me or the like if I am not otherwise engaged in a task that requires my attention. It was a mystery to me how those people could not be bored stiff.              But now I understand. The opening lines of Aristotle’s Metaphysics capture it:  ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this  is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefu
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Balance: a pandemic poem

I find I am spending more and more time on my Android. I need to restore balance in my life. I have been sorely neglecting my computer!  But what about real life? you ask.  Oh, that. It’s just an illusion, you know. The phone and the computer are beginning to offer better illusions.   (Eagerly anticipating VR.) -- Thanx and a tip of the Hatlo hat to Judith Solomon and John Lepore
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Further Adventures at the Kitchen Sink

I often have used my kitchen as the setting for various philosophical revelations, since, after all, I do spent a lot of time there, and so it is natural that thoughts will occur to me. The proverbial kitchen sink itself has been not only the backdrop but even the spur to enlightenment. Another such episode has just occurred.                 As I was rinsing the items in the sink one by one and then placing them in the disk rack to dry, I encountered a familiar discombobulation due to the awkward arrangement of some large items. Chiefly two mugs are responsible, which, if placed in one location, result in everything stacking up nicely, but otherwise not.                 The key is to position the mugs before anything else. Sometimes this comes about by chance, but usually not. And why not? Because I am not paying attention .                 Now, who cares, right? So I have to rearrange the items in the dish rack sometimes: So what? Actually paying attention to not paying attentio
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Black in America

When I, a “white” (male, Northern, liberal, Jewish, 21 st Century …) American, think about the plight of blacks in America (that is to say, African-Americans in the United States), one simple image comes into my mind as typifying its essence: a black man (just happens to be a male in my image, perhaps because I would have more basis for identifying with a male), slave or free, under the power of an idiot, bigoted white man (man because the typical power-wielder, I suppose, whether it be overseer, prison guard, traffic cop, supervisor, teacher ...; but of course any white citizen, male or woman, can make trouble for a black man or woman if not appeased), and the black man is thinking to himself (or making silent acknowledgment to a black companion), “What an idiot this is whom I am powerless to confront or even ignore, now and in most of my life and life prospects.”             This is a sentiment with which almost anybody can empathize, I assume, because it is an almost universal
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The Long Spoon

I have three long wooden spoons in my kitchen, which I keep in a drawer. Two of them are a matched pair, probably intended for tossing salads. The third is different and may be the remnant of another pair. When I just need to use a long wooden spoon to stir something on the stove, it does not matter which spoon I use. However a certain fastidiousness in my nature moves me to want to use the odd spoon rather than one of the extant pair. But this in turn has introduced a subtle discomfort into my kitchen routine. For although, as indicated, I was aware that the “third” spoon was different from the two others, I could not readily pick it out when reaching into the drawer. It would require a certain mental effort to fumble for the odd one, even when glancing into the drawer. Sometimes I would even end up with one of the pair inadvertently.             As you can see, I am downright Proustian in my sensibilities. Heretofore these have been a mixed blessing, since, as noted, even spoon
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Be a COVID-19 VIP

There is a huge untapped resource for combatting COVID-19, and it is growing just as fast as the pandemic. I am referring to the shut-ins, like me, who suddenly find ourselves with time to occupy while home alone that previously we would have spent in company or out in public at work or play. This has been very frustrating, not only because of the loss of personal opportunities, but also because it inhibits reaching out to help people who have been even more adversely affected by the virus’s medical and nonmedical effects. So far the way not to feel completely useless has been to consider that “We also serve who only stand and wait.” By sheltering in place and without guests we not only protect ourselves but also others whom we might infect if we happened to be carrying the virus without symptoms. Furthermore, even in protecting only ourselves, we free up hospital personnel and beds and ventilators for others. But this is not very emotionally satisfying, and anyway there is m
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Masks: A Modest Proposal

We have seen with the new coronavirus how something very simple in itself can have devastating implications. Thus, what COVID-19 requires of every human being on Earth is "simply" to stay six feet or two meters apart from anyone else. But what havoc this has wreaked! I could not even count the ways, but they are now known to all of us, so I need not bother. From the global (world recession) to the intimate (no touching, please), we live in an entirely new world now. This is much like a science fiction story, for a typical device in that genre is to change "just one" thing and then see what happens. For example, Philip Wylie's novel The Disappearance begins with the sudden vanishing of all women from the Earth. You can begin to imagine what would result, and Wylie does. But who would ever have imagined the imperative to keep six feet apart from everyone else? Of course it does "follow" from the way contagious disease spreads. But even in Camus&
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