ON MATTERS OF DUBIOUS INTEREST
Boredom is beautiful, a necessary component of human existence. Like good food, too much can be harmful. Like marijuana, take your boredom in small doses. Being bored for a whole day is way too much. Boredom teaches us what’s important. Seen reflectively, it can inspire us. Albert Einstein said, “Creativity is the residue of time wasted.” Continue reading “Boredom and Its Variations”
Some of us remember that great movie, Dr. Strangelove (1964), in which Peter Sellers can’t restrain his impulse to give the Nazi salute. It looked like Elon was overtaken by the same urge, and he even turned around and gave it twice. Continue reading “Elon Appeared Sixty Years Ago”
I thought I’d reprise an old post to respond to some of the current doom and gloom. Here’s “Who Cares? 2.”
The old Gershwin song goes this way:
Let it rain and thunder,
Let a million firms go under.
I am not concerned with
Stocks and bonds that I’ve been burned with!
Continue reading “A Thought Post-New Year’s Eve”
Short-term memory loss can be a horrendous pain in the ass that most of us, young and old, have endured. It gets worse as you age. I’ve written about this before, but it’s usually been in a partial, piecemeal way. I’ll give it another shot, while using some of my more brilliant former insights into how memory works―or breaks down for old people, as it did for Joe Biden. Continue reading “The Trials and Tricks of Memory”
Well, I passed on Thanksgiving with friends this year because I had just endured a medical test and wasn’t up to an afternoon social affair. As always, there is the grand tradition to celebrate and gather with others, but there are plenty of good reasons―like mine―to stay home. Continue reading “Thanksgiving? Or Not?”
moment of silence for 9/11 victims
Despite the furor about his recent appointments, Trump hasn’t changed all that much. He still executes the same performance at rallies, peddling the same bullshit but more so. He feels invincible, I think, but many of us feel outrage fatigue. We are tired of his unpredictability and bored with his schtick.
It’s going to be neurotic and tense for gringo transplants. We probably have much the same reactions here as our U.S. counterparts, at least so far. The difference is that we have a partial refuge from the madness here. And most of us here are older, which may give us a different perspective. Continue reading “Living in Mexico under Trump”
We news junkies seem to be vastly dependent on polling in this most fraught of elections. That’s a big mistake. As has been many times demonstrated, the polls often conflict and are thus wrong. The “why so?” is complicated, as Robert Kuttner explained in The American Prospect. He cites Michael Podhorzer,
who astutely points out that all polling is “opinion journalism.” Why? Because pollsters make assumptions about who is a likely voter and how to weigh or overweigh different demographic groups. “The ‘opinions’ are not about issues or ideology, but about methodological approaches.”
There is a long history of presidential polls being wrong, some of which is explained here. The pattern has remained unchanged for about a hundred years. The polls now predict no better than they did then. Even so, the polling practice has proliferated. It’s a business, after all, and following polls can be addictive.
Last month, Pew came out with a study, “Key things to know about U.S. election polling in 2024.” It’s a little more positive than I’ve suggested, maybe because Pew is a major pollster. A big problem, they say, is predicting who will actually vote.
Roughly a third of eligible Americans do not vote in presidential elections, despite the enormous attention paid to these contests. Determining who will abstain is difficult because people can’t perfectly predict their future behavior – and because many people feel social pressure to say they’ll vote even if it’s unlikely.
Nate Cohn in a recent NY Times post says, “The newer opt-in [online] pollsters haven’t fared any better,” and newer ones keep popping up. So Why are they doing no better than traditional polls? The problem is, as always, “how to find a representative sample without the benefit of random sampling, in which everyone has an equal chance of being selected for a poll.”
Instead, the internet has made things messier and more difficult. So many problems in verifying the data, and so few solutions. I found another fascinating study that illustrates a difficulty other than what the critics have been talking about. Axios summarized it this way: There are stark gaps between what Americans say they think and what they really think about hot-button political issues.
I think the findings from that new study are amazing. To wit, how the general public [61% of all Americans] misrepresents its views:
You can check out more of these results here (scroll to Key Findings). If indeed valid, what these outcomes plainly mean is that nearly all public opinion polling sampling may be invalid. Can pollsters ever really discover how people are going to vote?
this Jell-O apricot salad.
“Hey man, how ya doin’? How’s your life?”
“Fine. It will be over soon.”
National Library of Medicine on Aging (NIH): “The anterior-posterior, dorsal-ventral, and proximal-distal axes are sequentially specified and involve interactions between different compartments in the imaginal discs.”
“Rishi Sunak is coming to dinner.”
2025: President Harris could put Trump in jail.
2025: “President Trump paid me to kill you.”
Boeing Stock has “45% Upside, According to 1 Wall Street Analyst”
Jill Biden’s kindergarten tone after the debate: “You answered all the questions, you knew all the facts!”
Sean “Diddy” Combs
Tesla
Saks Fifth Avenue will acquire Neiman Marcus
One opinion in Newsweek: “Israel Must Target Iran at the Same Time as Hezbollah”
AI scientist Ray Kurzweil: “We are going to expand intelligence a millionfold by 2045.”
Despair is always in fashion. Turning 90 keeps it at bay.
Thou hast nor youth nor age
But as it were an after dinner sleep
Dreaming of both.
Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
I was neither at the hot gates
Nor fought in the warm rain
Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,
Bitten by flies, fought.
My house is a decayed house,
And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,
Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,
Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.
The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;
Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.
The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,
Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.
I an old man,
A dull head among windy spaces.
Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign”:
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger
In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering Judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero
With caressing hands, at Limoges
Who walked all night in the next room;
By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;
By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room
Shifting the candles; Fraulein von Kulp
Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles
Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,
An old man in a draughty house
Under a windy knob.
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last
We have not reached conclusion, when I
Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils.
I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use it for your closer contact?
These with a thousand small deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,
With pungent sauces, multiply variety
In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do,
Suspend its operations, will the weevil
Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled
Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits
Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn,
White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims,
And an old man driven by the Trades
To a sleepy corner.
Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.