HI –
I have been getting later and later on these HiPiers columns, and finally missed Marsh 2023 entirely. What has been going on? Have I been sick? No. Ornery? Always. Busy? You bet. To borrow a movie title, it’s been everything everywhere all at once. Now at last it can be revealed. We wanted a change from the tree farm, so were searching for a suitable place. We were also concerned about personal security. Suppose a rabid fan wanted to kill me and take my place? Yes, he would be crazy, as nobody else could write such preposterous novels or columns as I do; ask any critic. Someone was bound to notice the change eventually, and another rabid fan could come to take him out. But I’d still be dead. MaryLee might not even like him. What could I do? I married her and so there was a new sheriff in town. We finally bought a condominium in a secure gated condo community in Redondo Beach, California, coincidentally (unless God exists, despite my agnosticism, and wanted me closer to the movies) within twenty miles of Hollywood. Preparations were endlessly devious, chewing up time as if we had plenty to spare, wrestling with complicated California paperwork, and closure of our Florida routine, but finally we got things organized. We moved here the last week of Marsh. I am now typing this on the tenth floor of a nine story building, (things can be weird in Southern Cal, especially for odd characters like me) watching the mists of the bottom of a northward-moving cloud waft just over the other houses. I never saw that before coming here. The weather here can be one thing from an east window, another thing from a west window, and there is the constant sound of the waves. There are some solar collectors on roofs, and a number of bicyclists on the streets, so there are evidently folk here who care about the environment, in contrast to the MAGA (Make America Grotesque Again? My speller offers MAGMA) country of central Florida. I am as yet cut off from my normal snail and email, and my printer refuses to communicate with my computer, so I hope correspondents left hanging will have patience. In due course I expect to re-establish communication and catch up. Nobody told me that moving across the country would be so complicated.
The week-long drive here was interesting. My niece Erin and her husband Jeff joined us and drove our two cars — mine and MaryLee’s — so that we didn’t have to risk the driving of an 88½ year old codger or a very nearsighted wife; we might have dented a fender or gotten lost in a bog. One night at 2:15 AM the hotel alarm went off, and it was over an hour before both the loud BLAIR BLAIR BLAIR BLAIR and the flashing lights finally relented. Another time MaryLee’s car decided not to start; maybe it didn’t want to leave Florida. Jeff bought a set of jumper cables and got it started; thereafter, knowing we had them, it behaved. Another time the road signs called out every lodge except the one where we had a reservation, the Thunderbird Lodge on the rim of the Grand Canyon, so that we had to drive around and around searching and asking. But we did get to see some sights. There were windfalls of windmills (I don’t know the proper term for a group of them, you know, like a murder of crows or a cleavage of starlets), and snow on the ground as we passed the Continental Divide; we hadn’t seen snow in years. It’s sort of white and cold. The Georgia O’Keefe museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was one of our stops. She was an artist who had a long life and did many nice paintings. The Canyon de Chelly was scenic, as were the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. You can be sure that a Terrified Forest will show up in Xanth, along with tours to unfamiliar scenes. So was the Meteor Crater. Yes, critics; I don’t know it from a hole in the ground. But the main event was the Grand Canyon, whose layered sheer cliffs were awesome. MaryLee took pictures galore of all the sights; Google her pen name Muri McCage to see them or click here for her blog: “Dreams of the Purple Koala”. She’s the camera artist here; I haven’t yet figured out which button to push on what. For that matter I still haven’t mastered my smartphone. I am a slow learner, particularly in my dotage. I found myself height-phobic near the rim despite the guard rails. Actually I am nervous about standing too close to the big picture windows of the ninth and tenth floors here in the condo. I remember reading of a time when secretaries in a high-rise office were nervous about its array of glass, until a hefty workman checked it, then stepped back, charged forward, and hurled himself into the glass. He dropped to the floor, dusted himself off, and departed, the window unbudged. After that the secretaries were less timid. Maybe if a similar workman made a similar demonstration here, I’d be less timid too. Maybe.
Now we are still in the process of moving in, living from takeout to takeout when we are able to get through the complications of ordering. But it is getting easier as we establish spot accounts. It’s a temporary sort of existence in this strange realm. The local time is three hours earlier than in Florida. We are here, my Florida goods are here, though I left my 3,000 book library behind, and my collection of my own written books, as they would not fit. Sigh. But MaryLee’s Tennessee household is still on the way, and seems to have gotten fouled up so that we are paying thousands of dollars to move stuff that was supposed to be left behind and have no room for here. Par for our course. MaryLee calls us the Glitchersons. (And the speller offers Sonsofbitches in lieu of that; maybe it knows something we are in denial about.) Each day we try to unpack a few more boxes. Later MaryLee’s goods did arrive, the boxes filling up much of the condo, blocking off closets and pantry shelves; there will be a whole lot more unpacking there. I walked along one of the two paved paths by the beach, finding it replete with loud music, a man preaching how only Jesus saves, bicyclists, walking families, and spot restaurants galore on the pier. There was a stiff sea breeze. A whole different world, really, quite unlike the isolated tree farm. We are trying to connect with delivery services for groceries and fast vegetarian food, but each is a struggle. MaryLee has been taking over making the evening meals, which I did in Florida. Yes, I have encountered occasional fans of my writing. We are as yet nervous about driving in this unfamiliar city. The building is secure; we have to key in and key the elevator up to our floor, but the relative safety is worth it. For MaryLee it is an emulation of Heaven, as our west windows look out across the adjacent beach and the wide Pacific Ocean, while to the east there are myriad shopping centers and restaurants within five miles. What more could a woman ask? Well …
I do have mixed feelings about the move. At home on the tree farm I was surrounded by the artifacts of my late wife Carol and my late daughter Penny. While I certainly don’t want to forget them, those items evoke depressive memories, as those folk are dead. I would have preserved their lives if I could, but fate did not provide me that choice. Constant reminders of their passing grew wearisome. MaryLee of course does not want to be incessantly reminded of the Other Woman in my life, for all that the marriage lasted 63 years and it was Carol’s unfailing support that enabled me to make it as a writer and thus attract MaryLee’s attention. It does seem to be time to move on. So we are here, hoping for a positive new experience. Her Tennessee goods finally arrived, so that this household will increasingly reflect her background rather than mine. I have started writing Xanth #49 Knickelpede Knight and am halfway through Chapter 2, titled “Nikipedia,” and “Zombie Kiss, that is an encyclopedic map crafted by a scholarly nickelpede assisted by a couple of capital D Demons introduced in the prior novel Three Novel Nymphs, and a, well, wait for the novel. The expedition encounters a zombie invasion from a foreign universe. Multiple universes will rock by the time this finishes. In other words, a typical minor Xanth novel for the critics to condemn unread. I surely have mentioned before that in my view a critic is a work of art finely fashioned from feces. You doubt? Ask any other writer.
I am trying to catch up on my backlog of magazines, without much evident success. The current ones are still going to the Florida tree farm; I’ve been too busy to change the address yet. Here are a few more.
THE WEEK March 24, 2023: the Fed is launching an investigation into the failure of the Silicon Valley Bank, which is the nation’s second largest bank failure in history. It seems that small government libertarians called government regulations a drag on their innovative spirit. So they’ve had their fun, and now they want a bail out. Par for that course. President Biden proposes a budget that spends more and taxes the rich. Trump-approved budgets made huge tax cuts and grew the national debt by $7.5 trillion. Balancing the budget without entitlement reform or major tax increases would mean slashing all other spending by 85 percent. Tucker Carlson, the Fox News prime time star, with an annual salary of $35 million, doesn’t believe half the things he says on his show. Now Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox is documenting that. Being exposed as a flaming hypocrite isn’t as damaging as it used to be. This could get interesting. West Virginia lawmakers have rejected a ban on child marriage. Their state senator Mike Stuart said that his own mother married at 16, and “six months later I came along.” A Canadian court ruled that “flipping the bird” — you know, the one finger salute — to anyone is not only legal but a God-given right. Donald Trump’s SuperPAC filed a complaint charging that Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis is violating state ethics and election laws by taking and spending millions of dollars for his “shadow presidential campaign.” In Paris garbage collectors went on strike, and 5,600 tons of waste piled up. In Berlin women are now explicitly permitted to swim topless in municipal pools. So maybe at the moment tourists should visit Berlin rather than Paris; I know I would. Two Russian fighter jets forced down an American reconnaissance drone over the Black Sea in international air space. I know Russia has hinted at going nuclear if balked, but this time it is messing with a stronger nuclear power, America. That could be mischief. A former girlfriend is suing golf star Tiger Woods for $30 million, another potentially interesting case. A spot commentary on alcohol: even modest drinking can have negative consequences, including raising the risk of cancer and heart attacks. Yes, the more I learn about alcohol the more I avoid it. I was never a teetotaler, but have never been drunk. I was always cautious about anything that interfered with my mind, as I need that to earn my living. When my wife Carol’s increasing medications required her to stop drinking alcoholic mixes, even polite social ones, I stopped too, and never saw fit to resume. So it has been decades, and that’s fine. Thus abstinence seems to be my future, not because I fear alcoholism or hate wine, but because it is healthier. Teens seem to be under more stress these days; the pandemic surely contributes, but now there are “pressure cooker schools” that make grades and test scores an all encompassing measure of self worth, becoming toxic. There is no longer any time to be social, or to get enough sleep, or to be normal. A Maine vegan got a license plate LUVTOFU, that is, love tofu. But dirty minded officials saw it as love to fu, seeing the beginning of a fornicative word. They offered V3GAN but he turned it down. Maybe he didn’t like being fu’d with. Diabetes and obesity are soaring in young adults. There is a warning that this could result in a tsunami of cardiovascular disease. Humans began growing wheat to make bread about 11,000 years ago. Now it is known that grape growing kept apace, for wine and worse. In fact it might have been one of the driving forces of civilization. A new study shows that the way to get a baby to stop crying is to carry it for five minutes. This reminds me of a poem: “Here’s to the happiest years of my life/ Asleep in the arms of another man’s wife/ My mother.” Can money buy happiness? That depends on your income. It does boost happiness up to about $75,000 a year. Above $100,000 it doesn’t make much of a difference. “If you’re rich and miserable, money won’t help,” a study reports. Republicans led an attack on environmentally and socially conscious investing, which President Biden was set to veto. I belong to no religion or political party, being an untethered agnostic liberal, but it does seem to me that if Satan set out to take over the mortal realm and make the world evil, he would do it via the Republican party. Maybe he is already doing it, as Trumpism suggests. Chinese billionaires keep vanishing. In 2015, five disappeared, and it continues as Chinese president Xi consolidates his power. So money may not only not bring happiness, it may be lethal. When American billionaires start vanishing I’ll be nervous. How far down will the process go?
MOMENTUM is the promotional magazine of the Moffitt Cancer Center. My daughter Penelope, Penny for short, died of melanoma, a lethal variety of skin cancer that in her case metastasized to her brain and took her out in 2009 at age 41, so I retain a pained interest. Its article “Turning Pain into Purpose” by Pat Carragher tells of Amanda Brunson. She was running track in college when her shoulder really bothered her, and she had chest and back spasms that took her breath away. A doctor told her she was pushing too hard and just needed to take it easy. Yeah, sure; the doctor was not concerned about a spot on Penny’s shoulder. When it was finally removed; it was too late; it had metastasized. Doctors can miss the mark. Amanda’s pain got worse weeks later, and she noticed bruises and pink rashes all over her body. She raced to the hospital and was diagnosed with leukemia, cancer of the bone marrow that messes with the manufacture of red and white blood cells. She suffered three and a half years of chemotherapy, bone biopsies, and spinal taps, but kept moving. In remission she was back on the track working toward an Olympic tryout. Finally she got a bone marrow transplant, which left her weak, but she still went for walks. Today she is back in remission, and knows that her drive to be active during her treatments made a big difference in the long run. More power to her!
FOREST NEWS, the Newsletter of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, or FSEEE, has a feature on how sequoia deaths prompt emergency responses. You might think that the national Forest Service would do its best for trees, but it can go astray and be called to account by FSEEE. Sequoias are the most massive trees on Earth, some of them over 3,000 years old. They grow in about 70 to 80 groves that cover less than 30,000 acres on the western slopes of California’s Sierra Nevada. Fire is a danger here, but their heavy fibrous bark — up to two feet thick — provides insulation against it. But the loss of 13 -19% of mature sequoias in just two years alarmed scientists, conservationists, and land managers, who cite human induced climate change and a century of forest mismanagement as factors in catastrophic fires. The thing is, it was assumed that all fire was bad, so it was suppressed, which resulted in accumulation of combustible brush so that when fire did come, it was horrendous. For example, the 2020 Castle Fire killed an estimated 7,500-10,600 large sequoias. A prior bad fire was in 1297, about 700 years ago, but this one was worse. So they mean to thin out overcrowded forests and improve the overall health of the sequoia woodland, even if they have to fight the misguided powers that be.
The Progressive POPULIST, February 1, 2023. I received this as a sample copy, and must admit that it impresses me. It is in newspaper format, published twice monthly, with combined issues in July and January, which I think makes 22 issues a year. It has 24 big pages and no advertising, so there’s a lot of text. This issue starts off with a feature by Jennifer Oldham on wildfires in Colorado that could have been prevented, had officials not ignored the warnings. They were more attuned to the special interests and political expediency than to the welfare of nature or the common man, so nothing was done. Ever thus. “The Perverse Vulgarity of Book Banning” by Jim Hightower says that pious book banners have been around ever since books were first published, but it’s getting worse. “Excuse me for using vulgar language here, but it seems to me that today’s most vulgar expression of right-wing extremist dogma is its unhealthy obsession with burning books.” Amen! A writer’s organization, PEN, has documented over 2,500 banning campaigns across America in the past year. These folk evidently don’t believe in free speech or writing. If they don’t like it, nobody else should have it. It’s a power play to impose their will on you. They are even demonizing and threatening librarians who resist their dictates. 71 percent of Americans oppose these bans. However, the internet allows them to get around the worst of it, and some do fight back. Two high school girls in Texas, discovering that the books they sought to check out were banned, formed the Banned Book Club in their school, reading prohibited titles and then meeting twice a month to discuss the books and the ban. More power to them. The craziest political word of the year is “woke,” as in “Don’t be woke,” pushed by the far right. “The intent is to demonize and shut up schoolteachers, preachers, librarians, historians, musicians, students, websites, business executives, and any sensible human who dares speak (and act on) the truth that racism, poverty, environmental degradation and such are systemic blights in America. These pious sensors of reality proclaim that anyone presenting less than a morally pure portrait of our history and society is a traitor whose voice must be suppressed. Indeed, these extremists demand that government act to ban public discussion and awareness of the injustices and prejudices that still shape and disgrace us.” That’s Hightower, laying it on the line. The censors want thought control to hide the truth that America still has a way to go before it becomes a truly perfect society. “A political party screaming ‘Don’t be woke!’ is a party afraid of the people, wanting you, me and civil society to be asleep, out of it, in dreamland, torpid, inactive … dead. Are they stupid, or do they just hope we are?” Damn well told. But I am also wary of those pseudo liberals who shout down conservative speakers; they don’t understand free speech either. All sides should be heard, all positions considered rationally, so that the truth can emerge. A cartoon by Koterpa, if I make out the signature correctly, shows a little girl and boy evidently walking home from school. She says “If you keep lying, one day they’ll send you to …” He says “Yeah, I know … the principal’s office … ” She says “No. Congress … ” He smiles evilly. That does seem to explain a lot. The LETTERS TO THE EDITOR section has a letter by Frank Erickson saying that if we support Ukraine’s right to use violence for a good reason, what about the right of native Americans to fight the wrongs against them? Remember, 95% of them were exterminated as the white man conquered their land. That’s a significant part of what the conservative censors want to hide. The editor replies that the Indian wars were pretty much settled more than a century ago. Maybe so, but they do have a case. The letter also says that The Progressive Populist hates Republicans. The editor replies that PP does not hate Republicans. “We just think that they are wrong for the most part. When Democrats are wrong we point that out, too.” That strikes me as the proper attitude. A letter by Ronald Sachs says “Relieve the rich of tax burdens, cut the benefits to the poor, disregard your neighbors’ blight? Is that Christian?” I suspect that Jesus would cast them out of the temple. Article by Dick Polman is titled “A New Year’s Resolution: Do Not Underestimate Uncle Joe. Ever Again.” It says that Joe Biden has been quietly accomplishing things despite stonewalling by Republicans. Article by Thom Hartmann is titled “What the Final Stage of Reaganism Looks Like.” It say’s we’re there now. “Violence against women and minorities has exploded. Armed militias tried to assassinate the Vice President and Speaker of the House in an attempted coup directed by the Republican President of the United States.” And so on. It says that Reaganism brought us the collapse of the middle class, student and medical debt that’s impossible to climb out of, an explosion of predation from health insurance companies and for-profit hospitals, political manipulation by corporations and billionaires, an explosion of homelessness and untreated mental illness, and turned our elementary schools into killing fields. Reagan started packing the Supreme Court. He gave power to corporations and wealthy individuals. He cut the top income tax rate on the rich from 74% to 27%, and on the corporations from 50% to 25%. “To pay for both, he tripled the national debt.” He crushed unions, froze the minimum wage, cut federal benefits to the poor, pregnant women, and the mentally ill. Now public school teachers are accused of promoting “Critical Race Theory” and librarians of hustling perversion and porn. The article concludes with the question Will America continue this path, or will we seize the responsibility for rescuing our nation, for the sake of the world? I think the case is overstated, but there is indeed a case. Article by Sonali Kolhatkar says that if our broken health care system received the same treatment that military spending gets, it could be fixed. That does suggest national priorities: make war, not health. Article by Sam Uretsky is titled “Get the Facts Right on Contraception.” It starts by saying that sometimes science is wrong, and gives an example that parallel lines never meet. “The fact is that parallel lines do meet at infinity.” I have a problem with that. Infinity is unachievable; an infinite series has no end. Parallel lines can go on forever and never meet. It’s like saying “When will parallel lines meet? Never. So the lines do meet at never.” This is nonsense. As a justification for contraception, this fails me, though I do believe in contraception. The article does make the point that some abortion pills that prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb could be the equivalent of an abortion or even murder. My answer is to avoid that issue by using pills that prevent fertilization. I don’t like abortion but do like sex, so approve true contraception, in the interest of reducing overpopulation. I feel that only wanted babies should be conceived. Article by Frank Lingo says that they have finally achieved nuclear fusion, creating a nuclear reaction that generates more energy than it consumes. “In a related story, a huge herd of unicorns were seen roaming Central Park in NYC.” That’s his way of saying he doesn’t believe that they are close to establishing nuclear fusion, the sanitary type of nuclear power. Yes, it would be nice to have it, but geothermal is surely a better bet. Lingo is also a vegetarian who doesn’t crave imitation meat; I’m with him on that. “I figure a VEGGIE burger should taste like vegetables.” Amen! “The Real Inflation” by Wayne O’Leary says that Republicans blame wage growth for inflation, but it has not kept up with inflation. So what’s the real cause? Prices, leading to record corporate profits. Peter Elkind explores the danger of cell phone radiation, especially for children. For others there is cancer. It is best to keep a distance from your cell phone. Cartoon: man and woman walking in a messy wreck of a city street. He says “Qanoners think a cabal of Satan-worshipping, blood-drinking elites control politics and the media.” She says “Such a cabal might be an improvement.” Ted Rall asks “How About Equal Time for the Truth?” He mentions the saying about a lie traveling halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. Today 40% of Americans believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Others think that Russua bombed its own natural gas pipeline. President Bush and his minions’ lies led the country into a war that killed a million Iraqis and destroyed America’s reputation around the world. But a dozen years later, half of Republicans still believe that the US had found Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. These are only samples of what The Progressive POPULIST issue contains.
And on into half a slew of NEW SCIENTIST issues. December 10-22, 2022 says that the Yellowstone super-volcano, one of the largest in the world, is stuffed with magma. In the past two million years it has erupted catastrophically three times, covering North America in ash. There are two huge reservoirs below, one near the mantle and the other a few kilometers down. They contain a crystal mush whose composition guides the eruption. It’s more potent than they had thought, but still well below the threshold for an eruption. So relax; it’s not going to blow America away this year. A gel applied inside the vagina can block sperm to make an effective contraceptive. So far, only sheep are using it, but their genital anatomy is similar to that of human women. This could avoid the complications of hormonal pills, like headaches, mood-changes, and sore breasts. I’m sure the sheep are relieved. A 67 million year old skull has overturned an established theory about how modern birds evolved. Most birds today can move their upper beaks; this takes that back to dinosaur days. They have found a pill that clears out the parasite that causes sleeping sickness. It promises safe and effective treatment. They have simulated a wormhole in a quantum computer. This just might enable us to study the problem of the conflict between the theory of quantum gravity and general relativity, perhaps the toughest and most important problem in physics. Astronomers have spied the most distant example of a star being eaten by a supermassive black hole twelve and a half billion light years away, and it may be one of the brightest events ever seen. The coming thing in telescopes may be liquid mirrors made of mercury. They are tricky to set up, but cost only about one percent of a regular optical lens. Arithmomania is the clinical description of a mental disorder causing people to engage in obsessive-compulsive counting. Now you know.
NS for January 21-27: Police in Germany removed demonstrators protesting the planned expansion of a coal mine. So much for German governmental support for the effort to stop pollution and abate climate change. Low frequency ultrasound appears to have rejuvenating effects on animals. Ranchers in the US are testing virtual fences to track and move cattle. The animals are fitted with collars that deliver electric shocks when they approach a virtual boundary. Now it they could just fit human criminals with similar devices to deter them from crime. Exxon knew in the 1970s about the effect their business would have on climate change, but did not publicize it. Now they and other oil companies are facing lawsuits. One brain network may be involved in six different mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and bipolar disorder. We’ve been looking for (nonexistent) Dark Matter; now our galaxy seems to be missing half of its regular matter. Is this an ongoing process? That makes me nervous. When parts of Planet Earth disappear, like Florida or California, I’ll be alarmed. The Editor’s Pick of letters has one by Ros Groves agreeing that the arts should go hand in hand with science. Albert Einstein was an accomplished musician who would adjourn to the piano or violin when there was a problem with physics. I feel that the arts are what distinguish us from other animals, and yes, storytelling is an art, fundamental to the development of modern mankind. It embraces science, as in science fiction, for example, and history as in historical fiction. Letter by Guy Cox remarks on a plan to produce environmentally friendly food using only green hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and ammonia. He points out that each of us excretes a nearly pure solution of nitrogen-rich urea every day, and we just flush it away. I say that’s a shame. Well, piss on it. Meditation seems to reduce stress and the risk of certain ailments. I feel it may represent a break from the normal hassle of ongoing life, and that the computer games of cards and tiles I play are the equivalent. When I compulsively play game after game I know I am suffering background stress that needs to be alleviated. No, I can’t just deal with the source; it comes from situations that are out of my control, like, well, a movie studio’s decision whether to make a film or TV series from one of my novels, in question for months or years. I know they’re considering it, but will they ever commit? You’d be restless too. And the issue’s cover story, “Rethinking depression,” by Clare Wilson. “We have totally misunderstood what causes depression. But, surprisingly, the search for treatments is making good progress.” I hope so. I suffered mild depression for decades, until I got a diagnosis that lead to treatment: low thyroid. The article says that common antidepressants are based on a defunct hypothesis about what causes the condition, and may depend largely on the placebo effect. That is, if you believe in the medication, it helps you. “The two core features of depression are low mood and a lack of ability to take pleasure from usual activities. It is often accompanied by a range of physical symptoms, such as appetite loss, fatigue and insomnia.” A feeling of being tired and defeated, not wanting to be here. I heard from a number of suicidally depressive teen girls who trusted me not to tell their folks, and I didn’t. I merged maybe half a dozen of them into my protagonist, fourteen year old Colene, in Virtual Mode, and gave her a phenomenal adventure that included a supportive telepathic stallion. Other depressive girls later told me I got it right. I never was a girl or suicidal; I trusted what they told me. I remember how I had Colene wear red wrist bands to cover her cut arms — cutting makes physical pain that drives away the mental pain for a few hours — and one of them corrected me: they needed to be black bands, because blood dries black. At one point Colene needed to get something in the possession of a grown criminal man. She challenged him to a contest to be judged by his criminal friends, knowing she’d be rape bait if she lost. She stripped naked, borrowed a sharp knife from one of the men, and sliced her arm so that her blood streamed into a small bucket. The winner would be the one who filled his/her bucket first. The man lost his nerve and forfeited without even cutting himself, and she won the admiring protection of the others as they bandaged her arm and took her safely home. If there is one thing a cutter can do well, it is bleeding. But this is perhaps wandering from the subject of treating depression today. The article is illustrated by a picture of a woman protecting a red flower by pushing a big rock up and clear; the rock resembles a squatting human figure hunched over in grief. The invisible burden. That says so much! One new treatment is ketamine, an anesthetic that reduces depression symptoms. But there is the risk of addiction. Still, maybe it is progress. Article “Homeward bound” by Graham Lawton on the strangeness of the eel. Why do European and African eels swim all the way to the Sargasso Sea off the American Atlantic coast to spawn? It’s a long, dangerous excursion that many do not survive. Where is the survival advantage in that? We don’t yet know. Article titled “Weaving a new web” by Chris Stokel-Walker says that the online world is controlled by a handful of powerful companies. Is it time to put a stop to that by building a new version of the internet? The first version is messy. Web 2.0 was supposed to fix that, but a series of scandals had shown that it has serious downsides. There is no real privacy there. So what about Web 3? It has yet to become popular, and may not really be an improvement. We’ll just have to see. A letter by Ron Dippold in a later issue concludes “If you think web 2.0 is unsafe, you have seen nothing yet.”
NS for January 28 to February 4, 2023: Antarctica is the perfect place to hunt for space rocks, as a large meteorite demonstrates. Earth’s core is spinning slower and may be about to change direction, affecting the magnetic field, but the effect will be small. California is still grappling with historic drought despite intense recent storms. JWST, the James Webb Space Telescope, images a nebula shaped by a multi-star system. At least four stars orbiting one another. Planets in the “habitable zone” may not be good for life. Article by Madeleine Cuff suggests that more vegan food in schools could massively change farming. “Governments should force prisons, schools, hospitals and other state-run institutions to serve more vegan burgers, sausages and fillets in order to trigger a dramatic shift in global agriculture,” a team of researchers has proposed. This would help the protein sector to scale up and bring down its costs while also boosting the popularity of these products with the public. This could save a lot of land used for livestock farming and liberate land for reforestation. I’m for that, and not just because I’m a vegetarian who would go vegan if it were more feasible. “Why antidepressants leave you flat” by Clare Wilson says that they tend to dampen all emotions, not just the negative ones. Folk are not feeling much. Article by Brian Owens says that fertilizers derived from recycled human urine and feces are just as safe and effective as conventional ones. One problem is getting people to accept them. Article by Clare Wilson says that a lifestyle change can reduce the risk of dementia. Eat healthy, exercise, don’t smoke, and avoid alcohol; there is no safe drinking level. Do puzzles. This describes my own lifestyle, and I seem to be mentally healthy at age 88, critics to the contrary notwithstanding. Mouth bacteria are shared in the home, so be careful with whom you live. Starfish could be wiped out by heatwaves this century. A type of fungus uses nerve gas against nematodes. They have lollipop-like structures that break open to release the gas when nematodes press their heads against them. So if a fungus offers you free lollipops, be wary. Column by Alex Wilkins says that robot doctors trained on real electronic health records are making rapid progress. So it may not be long before your doctor is mechanical. If he seems impersonal, well, live with it. Original Sin, a book by Bleddyn Bowen says that space technology was born out of appalling weaponry. The German V2s that devastated Britain and Belgium were the brainchild of Wernher von Braun, who after the war was spirited away by the US and became the chief technical architect of NASA’s Apollo program. His skills in engineering liquid-fueled rockets led to the US being the first to land men on the moon. The space program is still militaristic, with spy satellites and such. Yet could America have afforded to do otherwise, considering the violent state of the rest of the world? Review of the film M3gan makes it look like one I want to see. Megan is the world’s first Model 3 Generative Android who cares for a young orphan girl, Cady, and works to protect her from physical and emotional harm. What could possibly go wrong? The answer, it seems is chilling, because the robot lacks human sensitivities. She can kill those who threaten Cady’s welfare. Cady eventually learns that she will have to grow up, but the overly protective robot does not encourage that. My wife Carol and I were married 11 years before we had a surviving baby, because of miscarriages, and that was nervous business, but I think a robot assistant would have been more nervous. To better explain the cosmos, physicist Neil Turok has proposed the existence of a mirror-image universe stretching back in time to the Big Bang. It seems it can explain things like dark matter and dark energy, and eliminate the need for the cosmic inflation that has become accepted by cosmologists. These strike me as excellent things to question. Understand, dark matter was devised to explain why spinning galaxies don’t fly apart, and dark energy to explain why the universe seems to be accelerating its expansion instead of slowing down, and inflation to account for the universe being insufficiently lumpy, as if it suddenly expanded without messing up the way it should have if it had taken sufficient time to grow. These are all guesses to explain what astronomers don’t understand, much as ancient gods were formed to account for the mysteries of nature. Science has largely banished the gods, but hasn’t yet caught up with the astronomical fantasies. So will the mirror universe do it? This reverses everything. It switches electrons for positrons, right-spinning particles for left-spinning particles, and runs time backwards. Add the two universes together and it comes to nothing. That is, the total is zero. Think of an equation 6+5-11 = 0, only on a larger scale. The universes are a bit more complicated, and I can’t say that I properly understand the nuances, but smarter folk than I are working on it. It would be nice if the astronomical fantasies go the way of the ancient gods. Preferably within my lifetime, so I can say “Ha!” One of the problems of women is polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS. That is, cysts on the ovaries. It leads to irregular or no periods, inability to get pregnant, sometimes acne, obesity, or excess hair on face or body. There are high levels of male sex hormones like testosterone. Now it turns out that the cysts are actually eggs that are stuck in an immature state. Longer range complications can be resistance to insulin, type 2 diabetes, weight gain, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Also anxiety, depression, reduced sex drive, and cancer. I’m glad I’m not a woman! Sediment flows in the ocean, also known as turbidity currents, can send tremors on land and generate tsunamis. They transport more material than any other natural process on Earth. A question in the letters section is how to reach other dimensions, theoretically. There are various answers, but the one that caught my attention is to use a laundry dryer. Unfortunately it only works for socks. Yes indeed! I have half a dozen half-pairs.
NS February 4-10, 23. A green comet from the outskirts of the solar system, the Oort Cloud, made its closest pass by Earth since the Stone Age, maybe 50,000 years ago. It may be millions of years before it passes again, if ever. If I were in charge, I would put a transmitter on it so that it could report conditions elsewhere in the system as it passes. Our great great great grandchildren might appreciate the news. Animals who care for their young accumulate more mutations than those that don’t, and go extinct faster. My guess is that the caring preserves some that nature might cull before they reproduce, preserving their genetic errors. That does not bode well for the human species, each person having 50 to 100 new mutagens. DeepMind AI is as fast as humans at solving previously unseen tasks. Dolphins who collaborate with fishermen survive better than those who don’t. The dolphins signal where the best catches are, and get to take some easy pickings from the fishing nets. Supernovae may attract alien attention as well as human attention, so might be a good place to hunt for alien signals, and leave ours, sort of like dogs at a peeing post. Bigfoot sightings arise where black bears are abundant. So maybe some bears are mistaken for Bigfoots. But it has been pointed out that some Bigfoot sightings might also be mistaken for bears. A tiny metal robot can melt its way out of tight spaces to escape and reform. Long covid affects the brain, commonly causing loss of the sense of smell, weakness, fatigue, headaches, depression, and memory loss. I am wary of it because I had covid once or twice, and MaryLee has long covid; neither of us cares for brain damage. The outline of a person’s body can be worked out from the pattern of wi-fi signals moving across a room. This might be good for monitoring folk in retirement homes, such as when they fall. There is now a device that can image your heart as you run, so maybe you can be warned to slow down before you have a heart attack instead of after. Synthetic skin may be better than the real thing at times. Researchers have broken the record of the shortest pulse of electrons, 53 nanoseconds, or 53 billionths of a billionth of a second. That could be almost as fast as the sound of an impatient horn behind you as the red light changes. Preterm babies may be underweight at birth but do catch up in their teens. Deepfakes are here to stay in film and TV. The abuse of them is troublesome, such as porn using facial images of prominent people. Policy and the law need to address this issue. Review of the book Pegasus by Sandrine Rigaud reminds us that Edward Snowden’s 2013 leak from the US National Security Agency exposed how fifty thousand people had been flagged for attack by a cybersurveillance software package called Pegasus. Regular civilians were being targeted with military grade surveillance weapons, against their will and knowledge. Pegasus was sold to more than 60 clients in over 40 countries, giving them an advantage over terrorists, criminal gangs, and pedophiles — and over whistle-blowers, political opponents, journalists, and at least one princess struggling for custody of her children. And Snowden was condemned for exposing this scandal, showing our government to be a monstrous liar? What a stench! Another book reviewed is Impulse: the Science of Sex and Desire, by Jon Grant and Samuel Chamberlain. We have trouble talking about sex, and there are taboos galore. The authors ask “If we know so little about sex, how do we know if and when sexual desire is typical or healthy?” This book tries to clarify this murky mess with sensible answers. For example the authors dismiss the social taboo that masturbation is “sinful” or perverse. It could even be healthy, referencing a study that found a link between more frequent ejaculation and a lower risk of prostate cancer. The book may function as a user manual more than as a work of non-fiction. The issue has an eight page section on the immune system, our body’s main defense against biological attack. What can we do to help it function? In very broad summary, eat healthy and keep stress low. Feature titled “Murderous mongooses” by Graham Lawton says these little animals may look cute, but indulge in extreme violence and wage war among themselves. They are almost as bad as humans.
I have more back magazines to cover, but I think it is time to get this column online so as to update my fans about my situation. The next column surely will be late too, but I am trying. We are slowly getting on top of things, but it feels like excavating mountains with teaspoons. An incidental personal note: In the midst of all this I lost my platinum wedding ring. One day it was on my finger, another day it was gone. I can’t explain it, but it does grieve me. When things finally settle down, I will shop for a replacement. I do still wear my original gold wedding ring, together with my first wife Carol’s ring, and a black plastic wrist band signifying the loss of Penny to melanoma. Sigh.
