Hi –
This is the month when an ogre saw a ghost and was of course too dull to understand what it was. When someone explained it to him, he was bemused. “Aw, Ghost,” he said. It may have been a girl ghost who flashed her translucent panties at him, but he was also too dull to freak out. That would have intrigued her, and maybe she became his girlfriend for a while. There wasn’t much he could do with her other than look, and she liked getting looked. Opposites can attract in Xanth as well as Mundania. I think her name was Gusta Ghost, a variant of Augusta, meaning Majestic or Sacred. In Mundania that translates to August. Now you know. I trust you appreciate these spot lessons in how things really are.
I finished writing Xanth #48 Three Novel Nymphs and sent it out to my proofreaders. The nymphs finally do save Xanth, a couple of galaxies, and the universe from doom. They were thought to be good for Only One Thing, but they should have more respect now. Smarter readers might even catch on that Nymphs are a parody of Women, up against similar attitudes in drear Mundania. I’m not sure what #49 will be about, but someone suggested a Magician of Puns, and someone else suggested making a nickelpede the protagonist. Maybe I’ll research via Nickelpedia. I’m pondering.
I had gotten diagnosed with a heart flutter and put on expensive medication. It seems to be working. Then I came down with covid, probably the highly contagious BA 5 variant, as I had my shots and always went out masked. My fever was 102F, but in four days it returned to normal and stayed there. MaryLee tells me I was pretty much out of my mind, those days. I don’t remember. A critic would ask how she could tell, since my normal state is absence of mind. My retort to that critic would get me banned from the Internet, so I leave it to your imagination. So I think I have dodged another bullet, though there’s always the threat of Long Covid. We’ll see. I lost a few pounds, from lack of appetite, but expect to regain my normal lean state soon. I keep my weight in a set range, part of my general emphasis on health. When we went out grocery shopping, after my two weeks isolation, I ran over something I never saw; there was a bump like hitting a rock, and the tire went flat. That resulted in hours while MaryLee contacted road service insurance, which just happened to be renewing that day, and their machine read it as us not being covered. MaryLee finally got that untangled and a man came to put on our spare for us. In my day a driver could change his own tire, but that was before pneumatic nut tighteners made it impossible to do it on your own without power tools. MaryLee takes care of me, handling such details, being good for more than one thing. Meanwhile at the end of the month my email handler stopped sending out my letters, and one fan reported that it was sending a message about it being blocked because of abuse. Huh? MaryLee and our geek finally managed to get that mischief untangled. And we had fifteen and a half inches rain in Jewel-Lye; that’s our biggest month in seven years. And Citrus County covid deaths passed the 1,000 mark. That surpassed this county’s deaths from any form of cancer. Also respiratory disease, stroke and diabetes. Yet the fools go maskless.
Two weeks of bed rest enabled me to catch up on magazines. Oodles of good stuff there. NEW SCIENTIST for 2 July 2022 says they have found that an artificially intelligent robot perpetuates racist and sexist prejudices. My first wife Carol, who was in on the stone age of computers in the 1960s, said the saying was GIGO, Garbage In, Garbage Out. That seems to cover it. Same issue says that rogue planets with weird atmospheres could host life. Another article asks whether warfare could give rise to complex civilizations. One theory is cooperation, another is conflict. Another article says that UK’s largest carbon capture project is up and running. Taking the excess carbon out of the atmosphere could help reduce global warming. Giant bacteria that are visible to the naked eye are upending microbiology. One of them is about a centimeter long. That a bit under half an inch, about fifty times the volume of a regular one. A galaxy cluster catches hold of passing light beams and delays them as long as seven years. There’s fresh evidence that an exotic type of matter exists, consisting of four neutrons. The protein in faux meat may be less easily absorbed. As a vegetarian that bothers me. But the loss is only two percent. Is there a diet that can make you live longer? Maybe, but it seems to consist mostly of limiting calories, which can lead to loss of libido and increased susceptibility to infection. I would say this diet is not ready yet. Ten years ago they discovered the Higgs boson, the particle or field that supposedly gives mass to other substances. What is beyond it? Dark matter? Stay tuned. Could they manage to chemically alter the oceans so that they suck carbon out of the atmosphere? Maybe. Some claim that the human brain is the most complex object in the universe. I’m a skeptic, as there could be other life forms with greater complexity. “A more relevant question would be: is the human brain complex enough to avoid self extinction, or are all evolved apex intelligences doomed to wipe themselves out?” Damned good question.
NEW SCIENTTIST for June 18-24, 2022 (It seems I didn’t read them in order) says that the European Space Agency has released a new tranche of data from its Gaia space telescope. Now we can look back into the history of our galaxy; we have data on nearly two billion stars in our galaxy and can track back individual stars, verifying the internal history of our galaxy. AI finds evidence of human fires from a million years ago. Now they want to see if they can verify our use of fire, and cooking, about two million years ago. I know from my research for my GEODYSSEY historical series that fire was transformative in the development of our species; it provided us with light at night, protection by day – a smart lion is not about to attack a man waving a blazing torch in its face – heat during cold weather, and food, because it made meat and tubers edible. We lost the giant belly of the apes and became tight bellied as we are now, at least when we don’t overeat. So one million years, two million years – whenever, it happened, and fire remains huge in our lives today. A strange new type of time crystal has been created that varies in the fourth dimension, time. It oscillates in milliseconds, but maybe they’ll be able to develop a longer range. A kind of dinosaur, a psittacosaurus, had a belly button. It would have had an umbilical cord attached to the yolk of its egg, and unlike other dinos, kept the scar. Our brains can be a few degrees hotter than the rest of the body. So some folk really are hotheads. A distant – 32 light years – star has mysterious cold blobs. Maybe it’s ill, and instead of running a fever, it runs chills. They have now proved that quantum computers can be exponentially faster than normal ones. Monarch butterflies are seeing dramatic losses in overwintering sites in North America, but the population has been stable for the past 25 years. It seems the females are laying more eggs to keep up. The brain’s fever center has been located. It’s in the hypothalamus’s ventral medial preoptic area. If the mystery has been keeping you awake at night, now you can relax. The Mediterranean diet has been promoted as healthy for the person and the environment. Forget it; it’s the worst diet, which if adopted across the US would lead to 240 extinctions. Meat eating of course is catastrophic; as a life long vegetarian I inform you of this purely as a public service. But alternatives are not necessarily good. Cultured meat and fermentation show promise, however. It seems that some jellyfish age backwards. It also seems that intermittent fasting may not help you live longer. Is there a connection between creativity and chaos? This is uncertain. As a writer I pride myself on my creativity, but I am aware of the abyss of chaos or insanity. I try to get as close as I can to genius without blundering into madness. Never mind what my critics say; I don’t think I have misstepped yet or at least not by much. And a multi-item exploration of the mysteries of the fourth dimension. It would help if we even were sure what time is. Why does it go only one way? How do we sense it? Do animals sense it? What affects our perception of it? Can time lead us to a theory of everything? How do we make the most of our time? Can we live without time? Will time ever end? There don’t seem to be clear answers yet. But stay tuned. There may in time be answers.
THE PROGRESSIVE for June/July 2022 is as usual hard hitting. An item titled “Poor People Gonna Rise Up” says “During the past forty years, the share of earnings for the nation’s top 1 percent has doubled, while the wages for 90 percent of workers have barely kept up with inflation. Even before COVID-19, there were 140 million low-income people living in the United States, making up about 40 percent of the population, including more than half of the nation’s children.” It says that poor communities have borne the brunt of the US’s excessive Covid death toll. Yet poverty is hardly ever talked about here. Republicans call for cutting taxes and reducing regulations, and blame poor people for not succeeding when the stock market is growing and unemployment is low. Democrats claim to be the party of the working people, while ignoring poverty. Thus the false consensus that has lead to 20 percent of the world’s known deaths from Covid in America, while representing just 5 percent of the global population. “It is the pandemic of poverty in the United States that has catalyzed an uprising of low-wage workers.” “The corporate-sponsored assault on voting rights has everything to do with the rising power of organized low-wage workers.” In 2021 nineteen states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting, and similar bills are in nearly every state. They disproportionately impact young people, women, and poor people of every race. I agree. I fear we are watching the conversion of our democracy to a plutocracy, that is, rule by the wealthy, with the poor being essentially servants. “Maybe we can all unite to revive the heart of democracy and reconstruct a society that works for all of us.” I hope so, but I’m not confident. Former president Barack Obama’s presidential library received more that 800 Freedom on Information Act requests in the first month it was open; a majority are of the conspiratorial variety, including requests for his birth certificate and information about a White House Hot Dog Party at which children were allegedly served up to pedophiles. One problem with empowering the common man is his determined ignorance and racism. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas got bumped from a plane in Montana after arriving late, and he blew his top and threatened the employment of those involved. I guess he didn’t like being treated like the rest of us. There’s a reference to the Anthropocene Era, essentially the Age of Man. I am intrigued by the word’s similarity to my name. Anthro-Piers? There was a great conference on Education that did not include a single teacher or students. Par for that course? I was once a student, and once a teacher; this seems all too typical. More on the way the editor’s mother was evicted from her senior care health facility, in violation of the law. So what did the local Department of Health Services do? It rescinded the citations it had issued, no reason given. It seems that such institutions can violate the law with impunity, screwing the common person. Did I mention our ongoing conversion to a plutocracy? More than half of abortions are now accomplished by pills. It will be interesting to see how the abortion banners go about eliminating that pill. Restaurant workers have faced a stark choice: keep working at the risk of their lives, because of Covid, or find something else to do. Thus early retirements. “Our bosses don’t care if we die.” Florida passed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill restricting what can be taught in schools about gender identity. But “…teachers aren’t ‘indoctrinating’ students: Trying to create a safe space for queer students, or students who are questioning their identities, does not equate to pedophilia or grooming, as conservatives allege.” And there, I think, is the crux. “Conservatives” seem too eager to see pedophilia around every corner. Why is it so much on their minds? Do they project it elsewhere because they feel it in themselves? “Gender identity and sexuality are always part of children’s lives inside schools, and there is no way to get around that. This [bill] is more about silencing people who don’t fit into the cisgender heteronormativity expected by some people.” And there’s another crux: bigots want to silence others for having a broader perspective. “The biggest thing we see with homophobia is ignorance.” Amen! An article titled “Less Incarceration, More Safety.” It seems that parole violations have become a pathway to prison. The infractions may be minor, the penalties severe. Now there is a popular push to limit that. Sex workers fight for their rights. They are trying to get prostitution decriminalized. I agree. As I see it, your banker offers a service, your dentist offers a service, your shoe store offers a service, and so on. Why not similar respect for the service of sex? If you don’t need it, don’t buy it, but don’t try to tell others what to do or not do. Guatemala was once a beacon in the fight against corruption, but a systematic campaign has destroyed that. Those who fought corruption have been driven out. It has become what can be described as a narco-religious state. “Their goal is to establish an authoritarian power in the country. The end of democracy may be the final consequence of this attack on the rule of law.” Exactly as the rightists are trying to do to America. There is more, but I think this gives a notion of what is in this magazine. It’s not comfortable reading. The forces of evil are running rampant.
NEW SCIENTIST for July 9-15, 2022, cover story is “The Universe as we’ve Never Seen it Before.” The new James Webb Space Telescope JWST is now coming online with crystal clear pictures. This should transform our knowledge of the early universe. A European consortium is beginning to design a commercial nuclear fusion power plant to be built by 2054. Folk don’t necessarily realize that there is more than one kind of nuclear power. Hitherto is has been fission, where complicated atoms are split asunder. Fusion is the joining together of atoms, as happens in the sun. That’s more complicated but safer and less pollutive. The new rightist Supreme Court, having voided women’s rights, is moving on to other areas, such as limiting the Environment’s Protection Agency, in effect promoting pollution. There may come a self-cooling quantum computer made of diamonds. Overheating has been a problem, as computers get ever denser and stronger. This could change that. Intermittent fasting has been linked to improved gut function in mice. Maybe so, but I have read elsewhere that fasting is not healthy. Brain electrodes may bring lasting aid for depression. As one who was mildly depressive for decades, until they found the cause, low thyroid function, I have a deep respect for depression. Those who say to just smile and get over it are ignoramuses. It seems the electrodes can abate half of severe depression, surely a blessing for those who suffer it. There’s a species of lily pad up to 3.2 meters wide. That’s about teen feet. Alien invaders have taken over something like 97% of the world’s land, and we haven’t even noticed. Why? No, they’re not monsters from outer space. Because these are alien earthworms, found mostly underground. The article doesn’t say exactly where they do come from. Remember the movie Minority Report? Now AI can predict the location and rate of crime across a city a week in advance with up to 90% accuracy. People who catch covid-19 two or three times go on to have higher rates of everything from heart disease to kidney disorders. They are twice as likely to die of any cause, and three times as likely to to be hospitalized in the six months after catching it, compared to those who catch it just once. That doesn’t mean the reinfection is worse than first infection; the risk is smaller, but not all the evidence is in yet. Maybe it means that if your immune system doesn’t get the message, the first time, it means that anything can still get you. As one who has now had that first case of covid, I am of course concerned. I am convinced that there will be a movie or TV series based on my novels, but I want to see it happen while I’m alive to appreciate it. So I don’t really like covid. Do you have a pain in the ass? Let my rephrase that before the Word Police come after me. Folk can now get lasting relief from IBS pain. That’s Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Get a transplant of the right microbes, and your gut can feel better. That doesn’t mean you have to have a healthy turd jammed up your posterior; they hope to isolate the good microbes so that a pill will do it. Seagrass meadows are vanishing at the rate of 7% a year. If they can reverse that trend and restore the underwater meadows, the sea and the world will profit. A thought experiment suggests that a sentient entity could just pop into existence by a fluke, the Boltzmann Brain. So if you encounter someone odd, and his name is Boltzmann, and he seems to have no past history, that may be him. A book, Stalking the Atomic City, by Markiyan Kamysh, explores the city of Chernobyl, where the nuclear accident poisoned the region in 1986. Nature has pretty much reclaimed it; lynx have made their dens in derelict buildings. It seems that all that is needed for the natural realm to be restored is for humans to get out and stay out. Could God be sending us a message? Animals have inner lives we hardly grasp. For example, an octopus’s arms have minds of their own; only a third of its neurons are in its head. And a series of articles about the cosmos as we’ve never seen it before. When and where did the first stars form? Near the universe core, about 500 million years from the Big Bang. What are the origins of supermassive black holes? Some were 100,000 to tens of billions of times the mass of our sun. There were some really big dust clouds in those days. Is Dark Matter cold? Astronomers think it accounts for 85% of all matter in the universe. I remain a skeptic. I hope I am still around to say “I told you so,” when they realize it doesn’t exist. How do massive stars go supernova? Oversimplified, when they get too massive their interiors got squeezed too hard, triggering an explosion that blows them apart. We don’t yet understand the details. Where do planets like Earth get their water? It seems to form in deep space, and get carried in by asteroids or comets. Could the most promising exoplanets harbor life? We don’t yet know. Does the rate of expansion of the universe bust our best cosmological model? It may indeed. We’re still calculating, with different models producing different answers. So there’s a heaven of a lot yet to be figured out. Many psychologists now consider the singular self to be an illusion. So if we try to get to know our inner voice, we may discover there’s nothing there. “People answer questionnaires according to what kind of mind they think they have, rather than what kind of mind they actually have.”
The July 2022 issue of LOCUS, “The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field,” has a column by Cory Doctorow titled “The Swerve.” It starts “We’re all trapped on a bus. The bus is barreling toward a cliff. Beyond the cliff is a canyon plunge any of us will be lucky to survive. Even if we survive, none of us know how we’ll climb out of that deep canyon.” Do we yank the wheel? Others demur, preferring to suppose that we’ll get through all right. This is an analogy for the climate emergency. But climate denial still festers. Even two decades ago Exxon concluded that their products would eventually render the planet uninhabitable for humans. What did they do? They buried the research and paid for denial. Doctorow concludes that we’ve got to seize the wheel of that bus. We have to swerve. The bus will roll over, but that won’t be as bad as plunging into the abyss. “We gotta get ahold of that wheel first. You ready? Let’s roll.” Damn well told, Cory.
THE WEEK FOR July 8, 2022, features the rogue Supreme Court judges on the cover, blowing up precedent. Yes, conservatives believed in precedent, until they got power. Then kablooie! An item about the January 6 incident indicates that there is devastating testimony about Trump, who could wind up in prison. 58% of Americans now believe Trump should be criminally charged. Politically, Trump is now trailing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. This should get interesting. Russia defaulted on its debt payments for the first time in modern history, thanks to Western sanctions. The rise of the sea? The island Maldives government is working to create a model city that can float. Gasoline prices hit a record high of $5.02 a gallon before nudging down. The Republican Party is now in the grip of “folk libertarianism,” which is “an authority impulse that wants authority for itself.” Fourteen nurses in the maternity wing of a Kansas City hospital became pregnant at the some time. Obviously they know how to do it, working there. The abortion rate among Black women in 2019 was nearly quadruple the rate among white women, largely the result of a lack of access to any effective use of contraception. A massive legal and logistical struggle is looming over abortion pills, which accounted for 54% of the abortions in the US last year. Privacy rights: is gay marriage the next to fall? Contraception is favored by 9 in 10 people. What happens when the Court tries to ban that? The immersive virtual reality world known as the metaverse was supposed to be the future of work, but a new study suggests it is frustrating and inefficient. Maybe some day, but not today. A panel of experts concludes that vitamins won’t offer you protection against cancer and heart disease. A healthy diet is still the first line of defense against chronic disease. I prefer to cover all bases, with a healthy diet, supplemented by vitamins and such, buttressed by regular exercise. I suspect I’ll outlive some of those panel experts. The IRS backlog keeps growing. They are sitting on 21.3 million unprocessed tax returns. Their problem is that they have not been able to hire enough employees to keep up with the job. More than 100 million Americans owe medical debt. The hiring situation is mixed; some workers are getting laid off before they even start. One worker quit her prior job, and turned down an offer from another company, only to learn too late that her offer had evaporated. Next time, she says, she won’t leave her old job until she receives a laptop from the new one.
THE WEEK for July 22, 2022. the Editor’s letter says that the newly activist Supreme Court has given a green light to things like a 40 foot Christian cross standing on public land, a public school coach can pray to Jesus on the field, and a US state must extend its vouchers to Christian schools that teach “a Christian worldview.” This is in defiance of previous rulings that the Constitution bars official endorsement of a particular religion. Our Constitution prohibits the government from favoring, or “establishing,” one faith as the state religion. But we are getting close to doing just that. Yes, as I have remarked before, the rightists hardly seem to like democracy, and are working diligently to destroy it, stage by stage. The BA.5 subvariant triggers a new Covid wave. Don’t I know it! Elon Musk secretly fathered twins last fall with an employee. Now he has nine children. “If pro-life advocates want to show how much they care about the well-being of mothers and infants, here’s an idea: ‘make birth free.’” “It’s time for the pro-life movement to choose life.” Why do I suspect they won’t? Remember, my thesis is that their real agenda is to not to help babies, but to punish women for the sin of sex. Go ahead, pro-lifers: prove me wrong. A woman who is sexually attracted to inanimate objects once married the Eiffel Tower. Now she loves a fence. I wonder if Eiffel is jealous? Farmed fish in Canada are condemned to spend their lives in crowded and unsanitary conditions, much like feedlot cattle and factory chickens. Their excrement and chemical residue create a noxious stew that settles on the ocean floor, killing marine life and breeding dangerous pathogens. Another reason to go vegetarian or vegan, no? China is evicting Tibetans from their homeland, forcing them into concrete villages so that their political activities can be monitored. Much like farmed fish, no? Covid was the leading cause of death among Americans ages 45 to 54 in 2020 and 2021, and the third leading cause of death overall. Yet the idiots skip shots and go maskless. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had to sneak out the back door of Morton’s Steak House before protesters could catch up with him. Conservatives were outraged that his fancy steak dinner was spoiled. Doesn’t he have a right to privacy? A liberal columnist blasted that, as the conservatives just decided that the Constitution provides no privacy rights, especially for women’s private parts. “This telling bit of hypocrisy is a perfect illustration of what women have always known:” that privacy is a privilege long reserved for men.” In Highland Park, yet another massacre. We have more guns in America than Americans. Yes, the carnage will continue until the guns are restricted. And from the Wit & Wisdom column: “The opposite of despair is not hope. It’s struggle.” and “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” Tik Tok denies it, but it has been funneling user data on 138 million Americans to China. Balloons may soon be able to track hypersonic weapons more readily than satellites do.
NEW SCIENTIST for July 16-22, 2022. “You may have heard that the coronavirus pandemic is over…And yet there are more confirmed cases of covid-19 globally than there were at any point during the first two years of the pandemic.” “The stunning full-color image from the James Webb Space Telescope is just a taste of what is to come.” I am eager for it. “The chance falling rockets will hit someone is increasing.” “Three-eyed predator stalked ancient seas.” That was Stanleycaris hirpex, in the Cambrian Period about 500 million years ago. It was roughly the size of a human hand. Bees work hard, visiting some1000 flowers a day, rejecting 5000 others. Does a bee have a mind of its own? A case can be made. Bees evolved from wasps about 120 million years ago, being a vegetarian group within the wasps clade, and hornets are another type of wasp.
NEW SCIENTIST for 25 June, 2022. We may be entering an age of “precision medicine,” in which cancer treatments can be tailor made for individuals so they get the best responses with the fewest side effects. I’m for that, remembering how my daughter Penny died of melanoma that metastasized to her brain. The universe is weirdly lopsided. Two analyses of a million galaxies show that their distribution may not be symmetrical, which in turn suggests that our understanding of the cosmos is incorrect. There are, our present understanding indicates, about two trillion galaxies in the universe. It’s a pretty big place. The risk of Long Covid with omicron may be half that of delta. That is, roughly five percent instead of ten percent. My interest is that I don’t want to get it. Melting ice could open up a new Arctic Sea route, circa 2035 to 2065. El Salvador gambled on Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, making it legal tender in 2021, and lost, as it shed a trillion dollars, wiping out more than half its value. I think I’ll stay clear of crypto. An enormous impact flash lit up Jupiter’s atmosphere in October 2021. Good thing Earth dodged that bullet. An ancient meteorite is overturning our ideas of how planet Mars formed. It was from meteorite collisions, rather than condensation from a cloud of gases. Chewing catnip may be beneficial to cats, as it acts as a mosquito repellent. It seems that elite universities have a cozy relationship with the fossil fuel industry. This must stop. Global warming is causing mischief in the natural realm by moving up the time of key blooming so that insects miss it. Timing is everything. Astrophysicist Feryal Ozel specializes in photographing black holes, This can be tricky, as you don’t want to venture too close to a black hole even if you could, and galactic dust tends to obscure things. Two pictures are shown. I have to say that to me they resemble glowing puckered rectums, though they are inputting rather than expelling. Cartoon about what to expect on alien planets. One is that it all consists of dessert. Next panel corrects that, “I mean desert.” What a disappointment.
IG LIVING magazine, for August-September 2022. My late wife Carol subscribed to it, because it addresses immuno therapy, she being treated with it the last fifteen years of her life. It also has articles of general interest. In this issue there’s an article by Abbie Cornett, the patient advocate for this magazine, on the most ignored side effect of chronic illness: depression. It’s not surprising that patients and their caregivers suffer from it; they are constantly flirting with death. But it seems that doctors frequently ignore it. If you are chronically ill, and depressed, contact her and she will put you onto help. Depression is bad enough; at least you don’t have to suffer it alone. And one on “the Prevalence of Bullying Among Chronically Ill Kids” by Jessica Leigh Johnson. I don’t like bullies, and the idea that they pick on ill children really annoys me. If I ran the world, ill children would have monitors that took pictures of bullies, who would then get taken out and dumped in reform schools until they learn decency, if ever.
BERKSHIRE Magazine. Last month I commented on their tenth anniversary issue. This month I received their August 2022 issue, which celebrates the composer John Williams at age 90. It seems he wrote the sound tracks for movies like Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Indiana Jones, Superman, Schindeler’s List, and Harry Potter. He loves the Berkshires. I, having been raised in the Green Mountains of Vermont, appreciate how the majesty of the New England scenery could inspire moving music. As someone pushing 88 I’m glad to see him still busy at 90. We oldsters aren’t done yet. The rest of the issue has articles and pictures of local and general interest, concluding with a remarkable sculpture by Andrew DeVries of a woman seemingly lying in air, supported by her voluminous hair that extends about five feet down to the pedestal. As a devotee of long hair on a woman, I love this. Overall, ah, nostalgia!
I received the Westtown School Class of 1952 70th Reunion booklet. I attended Westtown, a Quaker school, that’s the Religious Society of Friends, four years, being completely undistinguished there, but it did serve as an alternate home as my family was breaking up. When a teacher caught me reading a science fiction magazine in study hall, he took it, tore it up, and threw it away. Since I later made my fortune as a commercial science fiction and fantasy writer, I elected not to contribute any of that money to Westtown, as it had not been supportive of my interests or my career. It was a good school, overall; just not as good as it should have been. 37 of us are listed, of about 80 in my class. That doesn’t necessarily mean the others are dead, just that they are out of touch. I respect the Quakers and generally follow their principles, such as integrity, business sense, avoidance of liquor, objection to gambling, and opposition to war, but I never joined them or, indeed, any religious sect. I moved on in life, regarding religion as organized fantasy, but I wish my classmates well.
THE EQUEDIA LETTER – for some reason my eye tries to read it as Al Quaida, which it is not – for July 17, 2022, addresses food security. The war in Ukraine is causing millions of tons of food to get hung up in the pipeline so long it rots. Apart from that, 80% of the farmland in America is owned by folk age 55 or older, and half of them are 75 or older. The market value of farm properties has quintupled. We face food inflation in the coming years. The July 24 edition says that last month China declared de facto (that is, in reality) sovereignty over the Taiwan Strait, the waterway separating Taiwan and China’s mainland. China warned the US to stay out of it. When China tried that circa 1950, as I recall, the US sent the Seventh Fleet to patrol the area. China could not come close to matching that navel power, and Taiwan was safe. Remember, when the communist revolution took over China, the remnant of the former government moved to Taiwan. China regards that as Chinese territory. So what’s at stake? Well, Taiwan is home to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest chip maker, producing more than half of all made-to-order chips on the planet. It holds more than 90% of the market for the most advanced chips. So if China takes it over, they will control those chips. I think that means that they will decide what computer chips we can use, at what price. Bluntly, No Way. It is not to our interest to let China take over Taiwan. Could there be war over this? I suspect there could be. But that would be less worse than letting China take over our computer industry without a fight. There was a scary movie where that happened, and we became subjects of China. So this is a line we will not let China cross without a fight. Stay tuned. The issue for July 31, 2022, concerns the world’s finances. The American dollar has been supreme, but Russia and China are working to replace it with the the Chinese yuan. This is of course more mischief for America. Historically the American dollar was backed by gold, and America held two thirds of the world’s gold. Then in 1971 President Nixon cut the tie, and the dollar no longer had gold backing. He had his reasons, but of course there was rampant inflation. But there really wasn’t any alternative to the dollar, so it continued. But now China is weaning itself off the dollar. Stage by stage, it is making America a has-been. What can you do? First, brace yourself for sustained inflation. We’ll lose cheap goods from the east. Inflation will roar back. Millionaires will become billionaires, and billionaires will become trillionaires, not really any richer, and the common man will suffer. Best to load up on investments in currencies that can take the dollar’s place. American hegemony, that is, leadership, could be coming to an end. Unless we find a way to stop the trend. With today’s politicians? It is to laugh, bitterly.
More amusing shirts, these from the WHAT ON EARTH catalog. “1’m not weird; I’m limited edition.” “I’m not lazy. I just really enjoy doing nothing.” “The older I get, the better I was.” “Nothing is really lost until your wife can’t find it.” “I said I’d fix it! You don’t need to remind me every week!” “Age has its advantages. Too bad I can’t remember what they are.” “If only sarcasm burned calories.” “The proper term for ‘senior’ women is Queen-Ager.” “Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.” “I’m a social vegan. I avoid meet.” “I don’t have to listen to you. You’re not my cat.” “So far, this is the oldest I’ve ever been.” “WARNING: Never argue with a woman. If you win, things might get worse.” “July girls are sunshine, mixed with a little hurricane.” “Keep gate closed. Don’t let the chickens out no matter what they tell you.” “Life without lefties wouldn’t be right.” “I had my patience tested. I’m negative.” “I don’t mind getting older, but my body is taking it badly.” “Your secret is safe with me, because I wasn’t listening.” “My door is always open. I’ll be getting that fixed tomorrow.” “I Googled my symptoms. Turns out I’m a bitch.” “I have not yet begun to procrastinate.” “What part of MEOW don’t you understand?” “Men have feelings too. We feel hungry a lot.” “My wife says I never listen to her. At least that’s what I think she said.”
And this month’s one minute at a time book. As you know, I lack the patience to just sit there and wait the minute it takes for my system to connect online when I’m handling email, so I divert myself by reading random books in my library. This time it’s EYE TO EYE How People Interact, by Dr. Peter Marsh, which I bought in 1989. This consists of pictures and commentary on the manner folk relate to each other. Examples from the Preview suggest a notion: “The art of conversation involves intricate skills of social coordination.” “An element of humor in your social style can increase your influence and make you feel more assertive.” “Research has revealed principles for detecting lies and deceptions.” If those don’t intrigue you, then you’re not my type of folk. There is way too much here to cover in detail, so some more or less random examples will do. In the section on Assessing Appearances are two intriguing pictures. One shows two women from behind, at the beach. One is thin, one is fat. I’m a thin girl fan, but it seems that there are also fat girl fans. Next to it is a picture of three bare breasted girls as examples of three somatypes, the ectomorph (thin), the mesomorph (athletic), and the endomorph (pear shape). Theoretically they have defined personalities, but this has not been verified by detailed character assessments. As a man I hardly care about her theoretic personality; my eye is on those breasts. It seems that there are advantages to being physically attractive; defendants in court get lighter sentences if they look good. Hairstyle expresses gender and affiliation. As I remarked above, I love long hair on a woman. Meanwhile men shave off their beards so as to appear less aggressive. I remember my father musing why men would want to go “woman faced.” Women living in close proximity to others, such as in prisons or dormitories, tend after a while to synchronize their periods and the length of the cycle, because of pheromones. The major effect of perfumes containing musk is to increase the sexual arousal of the woman. Do you think that’s why Elon Musk has nine children? The eyes are receivers of information, but also transmitters of signals. There are pictures of men and women with their bodies marked in colors, for touching, depending on the relationship: green for seldom, blue for quite often (I think they mean sometimes), purple for often, and pink for very often. It’s as if some bodies are wearing green leotards from the neck down. Elsewhere are pictures of men and women walking together, his hand on her bottom. “One clinical study of women who sought help for feelings of depression showed that their need to be held was often so strong, that even though they were not in the mood, they sometimes engaged in sex with their husbands just for the comfort of being held.” Without going into detail, I’ll say that can be true for men too. Not all societies use the kiss; some African cultures are revolted when they see foreigners pressing their mouths together. Humorous people are perceived as being more likable. Wow! Now I see a secret of my success is that I can generally make people laugh. But humor may also be displaced aggression. Comedians may be depressed people underneath. So if I make you laugh, don’t hold it against me. Which reminds me of a joke: “If I said you have a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?” In a group, watch the feet. If someone doesn’t like you, his feet may point away from you, regardless what his face says. “For many people, lying is a way of life. Years of practice have enabled them to perfect the art of manipulation. Car salesmen and professional confidence men immediately spring to mind, as well as lawyers who have to keep other people’s secrets, and politicians…” Why relationships matter. “Even your physical health can be affected by the level of emotional support you receive from friends, family, and marriage partner in times of stress.” “We are creatures who need a particular level of stimulation.” “Married people are healthier and live longer than people who are single, widowed, or divorced.” Yes indeed; that’s why I remarried soon after losing my wife. “The bond between mother and daughter tends to be stronger than between father and daughter or between father and son, and the bond between sisters tends to be stranger than that between brothers.” I wouldn’t know; I never had a brother or a son. “A common conception of men’s friendships is that they are characteristically marked by these strong bonds of comradely loyalty and deep mutual understanding, whereas women’s friendships are by comparison rather shallow affairs, prone to bickering and jealousy. The facts are quite different … Women experience their friendships as warmer, more satisfying, and more important than men do.” “The millions of people trying to escape loneliness are an important market for businesses such as dating services, ‘personal’ classified advertisements in newspapers, singles bars, cruise organizers, ski clubs groups for single-parent families, and commercial therapy groups.” I never got into any of that, but I appreciate the appeal. Fortunately MaryLee came into my life. “There is a statistical correlation between extroversion and a liking for big breast. Introverts tend to prefer small ones. Women are attracted by a slim physique, including small buttocks, in a man 12-15cm (5-6in) taller than they are.” “Sex has a different meaning for different couples. For example, in the United States it has been found that unmarried people who live together seem to make sex a more important feature of their relationship than couples do.” And yes, older couples have sexual activity that is unrestricted by age. “In general, a couple’s marital satisfaction is at its peak in the first year of marriage, decreases gradually over the next 15 years, and then rises again to level off at a higher plateau as the children leave home to make a life of their own.” “The greatest satisfaction with marriage is recorded by couples in old age.” This is because the demands of childrearing and pressures at work are over. So, overall, this is another fascinating book. It leaves me reflecting on my 63 year long first marriage, and my two and a quarter year long second one. I have been the route, and am still learning things about relationships. Both MaryLee and I were molded to a considerable extent by our prior marriages, and are slowly getting over those channels.
So my personal situation has been complicated by health concerns – heart and covid – while the global situation faces similar threats on its scale, mainly threats to democracy and possibly World War Three. Two in three folk in the US favor term limits for Supreme Court justices. I think I agree, as they obviously can go wrong. Making readers laugh with funny fantasy is one thing, but there are desperately un-humorous things going on. I hope we are able to navigate through these shoals without capsizing. And yes, as mentioned, I’m still hoping for a movie or TV series based on my books, preferably while I’m still alive to appreciate it, as mentioned above. I still have things to try to do to help save the world, should I get the leverage to do it.
