Hi –
Things remain up in a heaval here, as the ill timing of these supposedly monthly HiPiers columns indicates. The last one was Apull 2023, wherein I described our sudden change of address from the Tree Farm in Florida to the beach of a suburb of Los Angeles. Our ninth floor apartment remains jammed with about 190 of the 200 boxes of our things from our prior households. What’s the problem? MaryLee has long Covid that vitiates her strength, so that making meals and paying our bills is about all she can handle, and I had a novel to write. I have now completed that novel, Xanth #49, so am getting to this column — some say it’s not a column, it’s a newsletter or something, but I am not up on 21st century terminology, so to me it’s a column, and my 20th century dictionary agrees with me — and we’ll be doing boxes too.
Oh, the novel? That’s Knickelpede Knight, about 96,500 words, about Nick Nickelpede, his love for Anthem Ant, and the zombie invasion of the universe. It’s a serious threat; even capital D Demons are getting zombiefied by deadly flying kisses sent by Demoness Zombia in another universe. The ratio of a Demon to an ordinary person is that of a galaxy to a grain of sand, so saving the universes is a bit of a challenge for a bug. You may expect wild nonsense in Xanth; this is wilder and nonsensier yet. Dedicated readers may question their dedication, and just a whiff of it should be enough to make my illustrious critics expire in puddles of putrid slime. Now I am starting to strain my addled brain to address #50. So cheer up, readers and critics; the worst is yet to come.
We tried to bring along everything we would need, when we moved, but naturally we forgot key things, and MaryLee calls us the glitchersons, as things constantly go wrong. For example, I worked with two computers, one for novels, the other for letters, games, stories, columns, and records. We brought the novels computer, and the correspondence printer. But turns out they don’t work well together, probably because the computer uses Linux and the printer uses Microsoft, and MaryLee does not speak Linux. So I have been unable to print out anything, including the novel, and long term correspondence, such as my weekly letters to Jenny, my paralyzed correspondent, have stopped. This system lacks the connections the other had, so I can’t email either, and don’t receive messages from fans. Our snail mail and magazine subscriptions get forwarded eventually from Florida, but that can take months. I have been rendered largely incommunicado. I will resume when I can. MaryLee and I are all right, otherwise, just not much in touch with the old order.
I understand that a heat wave has enveloped much of the rest of the country, setting records as the fossil fuel pollution industry continues unabated. Do we have to perish as a culture before we get the message and act seriously to cut the emissions? But here by the beach it has been cool. Only now, in mid summer, have temperatures risen to the 70s. July 4th we saw a local drones light show, from our balcony, with things like a giant five pointed star, a picture of the American flag, a rocket complete with moving exhaust fumes, pretend fireworks, a blue and pink dolphin, and the words REDONDO BEACH backwards, because we were seeing it from behind. Another day I looked out and saw a wedding on the beach, the bride in a flowing white gown. MaryLee had wanted a wedding on the beach, in Florida, but with the pandemic they closed the beaches, so we had it on our driveway with no extra attendees, a rather lesser thing. I now do my exercise walks on the paths along the beach where there numerous joggers, bicyclers, skateboarders, and yes, some buxom girls sunning themselves. I speedwalk, but once got passed by a young woman pushing a stroller with a baby in it, so I can’t claim to be as fast as I used to be. We are now considering giving up our cars and using services like Uber so we can get around, as is feasible here in the city. I am after all 88, pushing 89, so don’t fully trust my driving reflexes, and MaryLee has a vision problem, and long Covid brain fog.
The Hollywood writer’s strike continues, and seems to be getting joined by the actors. I understand that new technology has enabled the upper echelon to squeeze the foot soldiers ever tighter, so that the only way to get a fair deal is to make the whole system grind to a halt. As a writer who came up through the ranks of Parnassus, that is the New York publishing establishment, and got thoroughly screwed along the way, my sympathy is with the writers and actors. I hope they prevail. Sure, I’d love to get a big Hollywood movie/TV deal and get rich and famous, but that must wait on the resolution of this strike. More power to you, Hollywood writers and actors.
I stopped reading and reviewing novels some time back, because I needed time to do my own writing. Much has happened in the interim, such as the death of my first wife Carol, my marriage to MaryLee, the pandemic, and our move from Florida to California. There are signs in the cloudy sky that things may be thinking about eventually clarifying, possibly, but this is uncertain. In the interstices, I have managed to read two books, so will comment on them here, without guaranteeing that normal reading will resume any time soon.
Angelita [AGL 1111-1] by Gregory Schop. This is a short, 50 page, oddly different book, not exactly fiction, not exactly nonfiction. Angelita, I think, is an AI program couched as a child, a little girl who needs to be educated on the basics, maybe not knowing her own nature. It’s a sort of series of small essays addressed to a child, then to an adult, then to an undefined human, all of which may be Angelita. They are intended, I think, to make the reader think, to question things, and perhaps reconsider prior positions. The first of five parts is about Body: Why do we need to sleep? For the Child, it’s to help our minds and bodies stay healthy. The Adult version is longer and more detailed, with more complicated language, such as “Sleep is essential for cognitive functioning.” For the Human “Sleep is an escape; it’s a chance to dream, to face fears, to experience ‘death’ during a 24 hour cycle.” The next question is “Why do we need to eat and drink?” with the same three levels of answers. Then “Why do we need to move?” and finally “Why do we need to use our senses?” The next part is Mind, concluding with “Why should we think?” Then Soul, addressing Life, Death, the Universe, and God, concluding with a sort of little poem “Who’s there? / God. / God who? / God we wish we knew. / God you have no clue. / God I hope it’s you.” The next part is Deed, and the final part is Love. In sum: if you want to exercise your mind a bit, get a new perspective, get and read this book. Even if you’re not an AI program.
Misfits of Magic, an anthology assembled by William Joseph Roberts. I got a copy because I wrote a kind of forward for it, which they titled “Opening Words of Wisdom.” I had seen none of the stories so had to speak very generally, summarizing how I got into the Fantasy genre and hoping the best for the writers therein. It’s a solid volume, about 350 pages with ten stories, one by the assembler of the anthology. Speaking very generally, I have to say that some have inexperienced writer flaws, like what in my day was called “saidbookism,” where the writer tries to avoid the repetition of “said” and winds up with strained alternatives. It is better just to use the word; it’s to identify the speakers and disappears from awareness the moment its purpose has been served. Rather than describe them all, I’ll just say that I was impressed by “Fire with Fire,” by Benjamin Tyler Smith, wherein a young female fire mage who uses her ability to conjure flames to stop walking saplings from heading into a lethal situation, saving most of them, and gets condemned for using her power where she shouldn’t have. But in due course an experienced supervisor vindicates her and takes her as his protege, a satisfying conclusion. So many of us try to do the right thing, and get in trouble for it. My favorite of the volume is “The Hunter and the Cave,” by Wayland Smith. A dragon hunter enters the dragon’s large, deep cave, hoping to slay the monster and stop its predations. The dragon catches him and knocks him out with a swing of its tail. He wakes later, surprised that he wasn’t killed. A woman comes and brings him water. They talk, and her warm fingers abolish his pain. She evidently works for the dragon. No, it turns out that she is the dragon, who has assumed human form. He learns that she has been misrepresented and is not the marauder he thought. In fact he is coming to like her. She lets him go, and maybe some day they will meet again and mate, to produce a new shape-changing dragon. I love the way it reverses the hero slays dragon and all is well standard; it seems that dragons are more complicated than we thought. “Penitent No More” by Michael Morton is a story of prisoners who are sentenced to ten or twenty years of serving in a military that is fighting constant alien attacks. It’s hard and dangerous, but they have no choice. What remains for them, if they survive to complete their terms? Their families and friends may be gone. So often they elect to remain in the military, with improved status; it’s a life. But clearly, reform is needed, as the protagonist realizes. Overall, all the stories are worth reading, and I recommend this anthology to readers who like hard-hitting fantasy. The volume is the first of a series.
I have two thirds of a slew of old magazines I read but haven’t caught up on here. I will try to do that now. So if this section bores you, quit reading here and go about more productive business. I will try to be brief, but probably won’t succeed, as usual. I am not reporting news so much as airing my opinions and thoughts triggered by the items.
The Progressive for February / March 2023 has an editorial remarking on a carbon copy of the American Trumpist attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, that occurred two years later in Brazil, January 8, 2023. “If there had been any doubt that MAGA’s anti-democratic, fascistic, and violent ideology had gone global, it has now vanished.” That one, too failed, as the country rose up in outrage and the insurrectionists have been arrested. Meanwhile, back in the USA, there was a revolt in North Dakota, where farmers organized, voted out the old politicians, and are now running the state. There are similar efforts in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Montana, South Dakota, Idaho, Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska. The needs of the farmers will now be considered. Ruth Conniff says “In states like North Carolina and Wisconsin, where extreme partisan gerrymandering has locked in big Republican majorities in the legislature, even when Democrats win statewide elections, the ‘independent state legislature’ theory could provide a cover of legitimacy to the fake electors who met in secret after Joe Biden won the presidency, flouted the will of the voters, and sent fraudulent electoral ballots for Trump to Washington, DC.” Her article concludes “We need a new progressive movement for our times, to defend democracy itself and the will of the people against a powerful minority that wants to hang onto power at any cost.” Bill Lueders’ column titled “Does the First Amendment Allow Bias?” discusses the Colorado law that prohibits businesses from turning away LGBTQ+ people. It seems the businesses claim that their right to free speech means they can discriminate on the basis of their prejudices. They want to be able to put up signs saying no Jews served, no Christians served, no Blacks served, etc. With the US Supreme Court stacked as it is, that may happen. Column by Thomas M. Nelson says in part “While worker wages have stagnated in the past four decades, chief executive officer compensation has skyrocketed. From 1978 to 2021, it increased by 1,460 percent, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. Concurrently, the average worker’s compensation package has grown at literally 1 percent of that rate.” Article by Robin Whyatt titled “Violence Against Native Women Has Colonial Roots” says that more than half of Native American women experience sexual violence at some point during their lifetimes, and one out of three are raped. The murder rate for women living on reservations is ten times as high as the national average. Originally such mistreatment was almost unheard of, but systematic rapes began with the Spanish, in fact with Columbus’s 1492 voyage, and got worse. Dealers were looking for girls aged nine to ten; apparently that was what the men wanted. In the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, unprovoked and without warning, soldiers attacked the camp of women, children, and the elderly while the men were away hunting. All were scalped, and women’s genitals were cut out and stretched over the saddle bows or worn on their hats. The California Gold Rush, 1848 – 1855 used sexual abuse of Native women as a tool of open racial extermination. It was “the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world.” And it continues to this day. I understand that many American history texts censor out any mention of this, pretending that America has always been decent, every person equal before the law. Now you know some of the truth. Article by Rann Miller titled “The Supreme Court’s Obsession with Whitewashed History” documents the current effort to prevent the accurate teaching of American history and revert us to an ugly legacy. And a review of the book Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond. Researchers and policy makers have spent decades trying to locate the causes of poverty among the poor themselves. You know, blaming the victim. Actually it’s the collusion of the wealthy and the middle class. “Exploited workers generate vast profits for large corporations and low prices for consumers. Myriad bad actors, including payday lenders and slumlords, but also commercial banks and the residents of exclusive neighborhoods, work together to keep poor people trapped.” Can this be changed? The author calculates that the total cost of erasing poverty in the United States is $1.7 trillion, which he says our nation could come up with just by cracking down on tax cheats among the highest earners and corporations. Why don’t we do it? Because we lack the political will. There is more in this issue, but I think this confirms what I have said before, that this magazine is hard hitting. Tune it out at your own risk.
We now live next door to the city of Torrance, CA, itself a suburb of Los Angeles. We received their hospital publication, Torrance Memorial Advantage for spring, 2023. I hope we don’t have a medical emergency soon, but if we do, that’s where we may wind up. It’s supposed to be one of the best hospitals in California. The first article is “Our Life Asleep” by John Ferrari, subtitled “Sleep is Nothing to Yawn At.” Sure, it’s a pun, but also quite true. It starts “You may think of sleep as rest — it’s when we relax and lay aside our cares for the day. But inside our bodies, sleep is dynamic. Sleep is when the body heals. During sleep, our brains release hormones that encourage tissue growth to repair blood vessels, healing wounds and sore muscles.” It continues, but you get the idea. I’m a health nut, which may be one reason I have lived longer than my mother, wife, and elder daughter, and I know that sleep is a vital component of a healthy lifestyle. So this article and this magazine are on my wavelength.
THE WEEK March 31, 2023 — It seems that the Iraq war cost the US over two trillion dollars and the death of 4,500 troops. Mostly because, as I recall, George W. Bush wanted to be a war president, and a spy was tortured until he said the falsehood that gave the pretext to trigger the invasion. Finland has been named the world’s happiest country for a sixth straight year. A female soldier who reported sexual harassment at Fort Hood, Texas, disappeared, then was found dead. They suspect suicide. Pardon my cynicism; she was taken out because she blabbed. Now there’s a law meant to overhaul how the military deals with sexual harassment. About time, if not way overdue. Some public officials want to roll back long-standing legal protection for journalists. They want to stifle the press. That’s mischief. Better to have the truth made public, whatever it may be. But that would expose high malfeasance, so of course they want to stop it. The pandemic led to more than 1.2 million US deaths, and it’s not yet over. I, as an octogenarian, am highly aware of its danger to my age group. Road rage shootings doubled from 2018 to 2022. States that allow open carry have triple the rate of road rage incidents involving a gun, compared with states with stringent gun control. Stanford law students harassed a conservative speaker off the stage. As a lifelong liberal, I deplore such illiberal action on the part of pseudo liberals. Conservatives, too, have the right to speak, obnoxious as their case may be. Those students need to learn what liberalism really is, as they evidently don’t know. Cartoons: the statue of Justice throwing off her mask, saying “Recognize me, Donald?!” and Trump, amazed, saying “Stormy Daniels!” Janet Yellin’ standing on the edge of a cliff calling “The banking system is safe!” And a man holding a sign saying VOTE FOR PUTIN IN 2024; other man saying “So.. you’re voting Republican!” These are devastatingly pointed, regardless whether you agree with them. If you have prostate cancer, leave it alone; treatment can have ugly side effects like incontinence and erectile dysfunction and doesn’t seem to help, statistically. The continent of Africa is splitting into two pieces in the next five to ten million years, which is tomorrow, geologically, so hang on to your hat. Review of Poverty, by America, covered above. So word is getting around, though I suspect nothing will be done about it, because the moneyed interests are in charge. They don’t want to share the wealth, and seem to have few if any scruples about hanging on to it. 18 million middle-income Boomers will require care for moderate to severe needs but be unable to pay for it, as assisted living facilities start at $60,000 a year on average. Yes, this is the reality for the victims of Poverty, by America, when nothing is done about it. “Ghost listings” are haunting job seekers as companies list jobs they have no intention of filling, pretending they are hiring. I remember when I, as a teen, applied at the employment service, and got my application thrown away. So much for trying. This is reality for the underdogs. Obituary for John Jakes, whom I remember as a prolific genre writer, who turns out to have been born two years before me, and wrote as many as 5,000 words a day. My average at my height was 3,000 a day, and it’s less than half that now. I don’t think I actually read any of his books, so I can’t judge his quality as a writer. Yes, I have to read a book myself, as anyone does, not depending on any news from the critics, But the term “hack” hovers vaguely in the background.
THE WEEK April 7, 2023 — Nearly sixty percent of the deadliest mass shootings have been carried out with assault rifles. So of course conservatives oppose gun control. That won’t change until the gun nuts start targeting them. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to suspend his plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary to facilitate his progress toward dictatorship, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in protest. “Like Trump, he was narrowly elected in a ‘backlash’ against secular, multicultural progressives, and allied himself with racists and religious extremists to gain power….But now genuinely patriotic Israelis who care about democracy have given the world an ‘example of standing up to MAGA in any language.’” “Tel Aviv’s streets may have quieted for now, ‘but the struggle for Israel’s democracy is just beginning.’” Meanwhile America is awash in guns, which is why more than 70 percent of all mass shootings in developed countries occur in the United States. The AI chatbots — artificial intelligence software that communicates like a living person — are coming. Some lonely people have given up dating and fall in love with AI chatbots, and they are expected to transform human life profoundly. Maybe so. When I find a lovely chatbot girl in my bed, I’ll get nervous; MaryLee might be annoyed. More than 80,000 men have filed claims against the Boy Scouts organization for their abuse as children by troop leaders. Apparently wherever there is power, abuse lurks, whether in churches or children’s organizations. In Haiti, gangs’ control of renounces has pushed nearly half of the population into acute hunger. In Russia a twelve year old girl drew an antiwar picture in school, and her father has been sentenced to prison for two years. Obviously the People’s Republic doesn’t cater much to independent thought. The building blocks of life could have come from space; they have been found in an asteroid. A deadly drug resistant fungus, Candida auris, is spreading through hospitals and nursing homes. I hope they find a treatment for that soon, or at least before I get there. The largest starfish in the world is the sunflower sea star which can have 24 limbs and span three feet across. It is on the verge of extinction. It feeds on kelp-eating sea urchins, whose population is exploding with the sunflower’s decline. Suddenly this is personal to me; kelp is the source of iodine, needed for my thyroid. Other folk, too, need it. It is time to step up and protect Sunflower Star. Item says that yes, AI can replace the average CEO. The average CEO is paid close to 400 times the average worker’s salary, so this could save a fair amount. Or will AIs start buying castles, islands, and fast cars?
THE WEEK April 14, 2023 — I love their covers. This one illustrates their lead story, titled “In bed with Trump — Why the GOP just can’t quit the indicted ex-president,” and shows the Republican elephant in bed between Trump and I think sexy Stormy Daniels, badly bemused. Yes, I suspect Trumpism and the MAGAs will be the death of the Republican party, just as the Civil War was the death of its predecessor, the Whigs. Trump has been arraigned on 34 felony counts. We’ll see how that works out. An American journalist has been arrested by Russia, on a fake charge, triggering global condemnation. Maybe he is to be offered in trade for a Russian criminal. The Davis County, Utah, school district is reviewing a book to see if it violates a new state law banning “inappropriate content” from school libraries, after an anonymous parent complained that it is “one of the most sex-ridden books around,” containing references to “incest, onanism [a loose term for masturbation; originally a man named Onan who practiced withdrawal just before ejaculation, spilling his seed on the ground so the woman wouldn’t get pregnant], bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide.” What is this horrendous screed? The Bible. Will it be judged as other books are? An estimated 15 million people will lose Medicaid, after a policy expired that protected coverage for low-income people during the pandemic. An urban planning ideal is the 15 minute city, where everything residents need is within a short walk or bike ride away. It’s healthier for residents and the environment and creates cohesive mini-communities. The pandemic gave the idea a significant boost. But wouldn’t you know it, there’s a major backlash on the Right, and the author is being barraged by death threats. Apparently because it would reduce the need for cars. There’s profit to be made there; to hell with the welfare of the people or the environment. Since George W. Bush launched the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS relief in 2003, 25 million lives have been saved. Patriotism is no longer very important to the majority of citizens. I suspect that’s because the concept has been abused. I remember when I served in the US Army, 1957-59, I was concerned that if I found myself on a battlefield, I would be unable to pull the trigger to kill an enemy draftee. I was raised as a Quaker, and though I did not join, I still respect the principle of pacifism despite not being a pacifist, and of course I am a vegetarian because I don’t like killing animals, either. So I went to the Post Chaplain. He said “I’m sorry your patriotism isn’t better than that.” I was considered unpatriotic because I didn’t like killing? Never mind that at that time I wasn’t a citizen; I was British draftee. It still stinks as a definition of patriotism. I never joined any religion, and this pretty much guarantees I never will. I believe Jesus would have agreed with me rather than that chaplain. Christianity is supposed to favor peace, not war; I’m sorry that religious officials seem to have forgotten that. A federal judge in Texas struck down a major part of the Affordable Care Act, you know, Obamacare. The Republicans have hated Obamacare from the outset, I think because it helps the poor too much, and their judges are still trying to chip away at it. American health care coverage could get much worse if they finally succeed in abolishing it. An amateur mathematician has discovered the first known “einstein,” a single shape that can form an endless non repeating pattern. The name is not from the physicist but from the German word for “one stone” or one tile. It has thirteen sides that looks a little like an angular manta ray. Special feature titled “How to Create Wealth” advises keeping calm when investing in rough financial seas. Make your retirement savings count. Make sure your insurance coverage is good. Hire a pro to manage it. In sum, handle your money prudently. You won’t go from poverty to wealth, but you can grow what you have a bit. The woman who leaked a classified document about Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election got a long prison sentence. When you expose the government’s lying you get squelched. If I ran the world, I’d punish the liars, not the ones who expose them. From 1970 to 2021 the median US income increased 7.7 times, the mediun rent 11 times, and the mediun home sales price 18 times. No matter how much you gain, you’re still losing. It reminds me of the plaque that says THE HURRIEDER I GO, THE BEHINDER I GET. Article says that Elon Musk is remaking Twitter in his own image, and for now the general Twitter experience is getting increasingly worse. I have no personal experience, as I don’t really go online, and I belong to none of the social outfits there, but MaryLee is a Twitter fan and she loves the pictures she finds there. I think time will tell; this game ain’t over yet.
THE WEEK April 21, 2023 — FDA approved an abortion pill, but a Texas judge is reversing that approval. [But that ruling is being blocked.] Columnists are saying that the ruling will go down in history as one of the judiciary’s most shocking and lawless moments, and that the ruling isn’t about safety, it’s about power. I’d be happier if legal rulings were about justice. Two black Democratic Tennessee state legislators were expelled by the Republicans, which provoked a national outcry and condemnation from civil rights leaders. Now they have been returned to office. Sometimes the rightists go too far in showing their racist agenda, and the public catches on. The article says that Republican policies on guns, abortion, voting rights, and other issues are highly unpopular, so they are launching an asymmetrical civil war against democracy. This could get interesting when the 2024 election arrives, as this time the voters should be aware what’s at stake. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been called most plainly corrupt. For two decades he has secretly accepted luxury travel and accommodations worth millions of dollars from a conservative billionaire. Let’s face it, a columnist writes, the Supreme Court is not going to police itself. Congress needs to impose an enforceable code of ethics on the court. If the justices won’t do the right thing, then we should make them. I agree; American democracy itself may be at stake. Claudia, an attractive 19 year old brunette who is selling nude photos of herself on the website Reddit, turns out to be the imaginary creation of an AI-powered image generator. Who says AI is not attuned to popular interest? Ugly business in Peru over the course of forty years as the Shining Path guerrillas hacked victims to death and army troops and paramilitaries committed massacres and mass rapes. 70,000 people dead. In Iran they are installing a network of security cameras. To make the streets safer? No, to spot women who flout the hijab mandate. Hundreds of women have been killed for demonstrations against it, going bareheaded. Women are expected to know their inferior place, or else. I wonder whether the critics who call me sexist without a basis ever look at places like Iran, where real sexism is rampant? China conducted three days of intense military maneuvers near Taiwan, intended as intimidation. Maybe they are forgetting that Taiwan has some powerful Western allies who just might decide to intimidate back. I am not into contemporary culture, and never heard of Emily Ratajkowski, but her picture shows a lovely woman wearing, I think, a newspaper dress. That is, a garment made to look like newsprint. I remember a limerick: “There was a young woman named Small,/ Wore a newspaper dress to the ball./ The paper caught fire/ And burned her entire,/ Headlines, sport section, and all.” But Emily’s case is more serious. She’s a supermodel who will no longer put up with how the Hollywood “boys clubs” treat women, not as artists but as pieces of meat with breasts. “None of you have my best interest at heart. And you all hate women.” So she is giving up acting in favor of writing, exposing what’s going on. More power to her. If I got a movie and had any control, I’d want her to be in it, maybe directing it, and to hell with the boys club. Cemeteries are running out of space, and more people are considering human composting. This is an environmentally friendly way of burying people, who get turned into rich soil that their families can use to grow flowers, vegetables, or trees. This interests me, as I am an environmentalist. I learn that cremation, which I had planned on, uses up fuel and releases carbon monoxide pollution. California plans to allow human composting by 2027, four years hence; I’ll try to hold out until then. Yes, it costs more than cremation, but the price should come down if more people use it. So if any of my fans want a piece of me, some fertile compost may be available, in due course. (That’s a joke.) It seems like a good thing, overall. Naturally a number of religious denominations oppose it. Jesus would weep. Average life expectancy is one of the mosh fundamentally revealing facts about a country, and the US. is moving backward at unprecedented speed. Why? Because this country is a violent place and getting more so. Folk aged 25-34 are dying at twice the rate of their peers in Japan and Britain. I have outlived the average American man by about a decade, and expect to gain on that, unfortunately, as the average lifetime declines. The prime minister of India is now getting opponents arrested for the crime of insulting him. India had been known for its democracy; not any more, I suspect. A quote from their regular Wit & Wisdom feature: “A good police force is one that catches more crooks than it employs.” Said by British police chief Robert Mark. For decades we have been told that a couple of alcoholic drinks a day is healthy. That’s false. I checked this out decades ago, and concluded that none is best. Now the larger society is catching on. I used to wonder why so many folk seem dedicated to zonking out their minds, until I realized that depression over their suppressed status and scant finances probably accounts for it. The average person is a peon, or in unfunny humor, a pee-on, and those who begin to catch on are depressed. They should be.
THE WEEK April 28, 2023 — Fox News paid $787 million to settle a suit over their election lies. It’s too bad when news outfits dedicate themselves to lying, but with them, money trumped truth. More shootings of innocent people in the news. Guns now outnumber people in the US. The sensible answer is to cut down on the number of guns, but I think that until the gun nuts get targeted by other gun nuts, that won’t happen. The data show that living in a heavily armed society isn’t safe for anyone. Shoplifting is up 300% over pre-pandemic figures, thanks to gangs. Stores are putting more goods under lock and key. New York tops the list of the world’s wealthiest cities, with 340,000 millionaires. Meanwhile 63 billionaires live around Silicon Valley and San Francisco. AI investing still isn’t close to beating the market, so it seems that AI is not that smart yet. “Virtual boyfriends,” by Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz, says women are using AI to create ideal companions that they actually fall in love with, in part for the promise of safe relationships they can control. Sex, too; some say that sex with their AIs is the best they’ve ever had. I have a problem with this, not moralistic but practical: how can you have sex with a person who has no physical existence? One of my novellas, To Be a Woman, features a lady robot made for marvelous sex, who achieves consciousness and sues to be recognized as a legal person. I favor conscious fembot rights. But so far AI is more like a concept than a robot. In 2017 Replika was launched, a sort of therapy app that provides companionship for lonely folk, male and female, and intimacy. Then Replika suddenly began censoring chats and disabling sexy photos, panicking and enraging clients, as their loved ones were crushed or lobotomized. In my fantasy Land of Xanth this restrictive attitude is parodied as the dread Adult Conspiracy that oppresses more than children. I suspect there will soon be a successor to Replika that addresses its clients more effectively, without sending censors into the bedroom to control their private behavior. We’ll see.
THE WEEK May 5, 2023 — President Biden has launched his re-election campaign. There is some savage criticism from the right, but a recent poll among swing voters indicates that Biden would crush Trump 54 to 15 percent. MAGA loyalists will control the GOP nominating process, so it seems likely to happen. I wonder whether the Whig party will return after the Republican party commits suicide? Fox News paid $787 million when Dominion sued for its lies. Now its proponent Tucker Carlson has been fired. So will Fox stop lying? “In coming weeks, Fox will easily find another entertaining demagogue to whip up its audience into a frenzy of hatred of immigrants, China, liberals, and the Bidens. Soon ‘Murdoch’s network’ will birth ‘another star.’” Sigh; it’s probably true. As a liberal immigrant who voted for Biden, I am sorry to see it. Hospitals are going broke, as Republicans oppose the expansion of Medicaid. Rural Black women’s maternal death rate is triple that of their white counterparts. Yet again, that shows the agenda. America has its problems, but today the typical US worker produces five times the economic value of a Chinese worker. Ninety percent of all Americans favor legalized birth control, but the Right opposes it, and means to abolish it one way or another. India is now the world’s most populous nation, surpassing China. Of course what we most need is to reduce global population, lest the carrying capacity of the planet be overwhelmed and there’s an ugly crash. Lightning may have helped create life, by generating reactive phosphorus, found in all forms of life. If lightning occurs on other planets, they could have life too. The key to reversing diabetes may be to diet and lose twenty pounds. I was once diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. That turned out to be an error, and I have stayed lean all my life, so am at low risk in that respect. But other folk wold do well to get the weight off. A new type of mRNA vaccine can reduce the risk of recurrence of melanoma skin cancer. I never had that deadly type, but my daughter Penny died of it. Sigh; this is too late for her. Floating plastic trash in the Pacific Ocean has generated a whole new ecosystem. It doesn’t seem that creatures are eating the plastic, but they are living with it. Review of the movie Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Based on the children’s book by Judy Blume, popular when my children were young, this is a movie I want to see. I understand that Blume was criticized for writing too candidly about the real problems of childhood; I condemn the critics, not the author.
I still have a pile of back magazines to catch up on, but I think this is enough for this column. Maybe some day, eventually, I will catch all the way up. Meanwhile I want to reassure my readers that I remain alive and kicking, and I hope that before too long I will be able to resume answering letters and such. I don’t really like being this far out of the loop for so long. Maybe I’ll even be able to get this HiPiers column running monthly again. Maybe. There’s always hope, isn’t there?
