Sir, wherever you are. We now have 1159 subscribers to www.watchingpolitics.com but I am damned if I know how they do it. There used to be a prominently posted invitation to readers to subscribe but, to the best of my knowledge, it has disappeared. At least, from my view. Would you be so kind, if you happen to see this note, to make the necessary patch?
Gratefully yours,
Your nonpaying customer.
Okay, so you are fat and stupid. But the good news is that it is not your fault. You are meant to be that way. This cheery news comes from medicine.com.
“European scientists report that a genetic variation seems to virtually guarantee that a person will become obese.
The genetic variation in question robs people of about 30 genes and appears to be found in seven of every 1,000 severely obese people, the researchers report. The same variation also may be linked to mental retardation and learning disabilities.
“Obesity is definitively a genetic trait, and it is very likely that additional small chromosomal abnormalities exist that may dramatically increase the risk of obesity and may also be linked to brain developmental problems,” said Dr. Philippe Froguel, co-author of a study published in the Feb. 4 issue of the journal Nature and head of genomic medicine at Imperial College London.”
This news gives me all the justification I need to sit down by my fireplace and burn all the books in my library I was never going to read anyway. While this goes on, I will be devouring a double cheeseburger washed down with a chocolate malted. Got a dessert suggestion?
First to a minor matter. Rashly, I placed having sex with Jolie or Zeta-Jones among things that should be ranked as negative experiences. In truth, such an experience would be positive - but not by much. Give it 1.2 positive utility. As for the ranking of Hilton or Spears as definitely undesirable, I stand by my guns. (Awful metaphor, I confess, in this context.)
More important is that I plead guilty of thinking the one-time dirty Nips had changed to being respectable Nipponese. No such thing. A recent poll reported in the Japan Times reveals that 85.6% of them still believe the death penalty is a good and fine thing. They also oppose any statutes of limitations. Find some 97 year old invalid who committed a murder 75 years ago and they want to zap him.
Most Japanese are too young to remember what painful death is like. Only a small percentage of them was alive at the time of the atomic blastings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Moreover, the truly ancient among them may have fond memories of the tortures they inflicted on the Chinese during the famous “Rape of Nanking.” An intermediate number may have loved the death marches they imposed on American prisoners during World War II. How else, can I account for their passionate love of the death penalty?
95 nations in the civilized world have abolished death as a penalty and another 50, while retaining it on the books, never practice it. And just when I was beginning to think that these camera-crazed lunatics were civilized people. I apologize.
Whenever I go to a physician or dentist I am asked to rate my pain on a 1-10 scale. They do this because they are mathematically and philosophically challenged. I always tell them I won’t play this game. From now on, I will hand them a card or sheet of paper that gives a few examples of my pains and pleasures. It will read as follows:
Dear Doctor, as you probably want to know the degree of pain my condition is causing me, I have prepared a table for your edification.
10 degrees of pain – Living eternally in heaven with God.
9.943303 – Having a long nail driven into my eyeball.
Same score for having a blowtorch applied to my testicles for three or more seconds.
9. 0208 - Field expediency amputation of a leg without anesthetic.
7.95 - Final throes of whatever is the most painful cancer.
6.2 - Being with a person who does not know the meaning of “edification.”
5.5. Being asked to rate my pain.
3.9 – Attending a rock concert
1.2 Unsatisfactory sex with Angelina Jolie or Catherine Zeta-Jones
1.0 - Having satisfactory sex with Paris Hilton or Brittany Spears.
Not everything that happens to me is painful. Here are some positive utilities
3.5 Reading a novel written by a Nobel Laureate
3.9 – Having a sexual encounter with the wife of a Nobel Laureate
5.9 – Eating the very best Chinese food in the very best Chinese restaurant.
7.332303 – Being cured of whatever condition has brought me to see you.
8.0111 – Having your staff address me as “Dr. Gendin” instead of as “Sidney.”
9.6655 – Learning that no animal will ever again be hunted for pure sport.
10 - Being alive 13 years from now so that I can attend the high school graduation of my granddaughter, Anika. (9.8 for all my other grandchildren.)
A scholar named Paul Tobin has written a book titled The Rejection of Pascal’s Wager. Subtitled: A Skeptic’s Guide to Christianity. One can read it on the internet if one is so inclined. Here is the link.
My question concerns why you would want to. I have corresponded with Mr. Tobin about this and he assures me that he makes converts to the atheist cause. I don’t believe him, even as I confessed to him that his book is excellent and thoroughly destroys Christian pretensions. The book strikes me as a classic case of preaching to the converted. Paul thinks (or says he thinks) otherwise. He thinks he is as good at converting away from Christianity as the original Paul of biblical fame was at converting in the other direction.
Hardly an atheist alive knows the terrain as well as Paul Tobin but what of it? Unless one is preparing for a career as an anti-Christ crusader, why would you want to fill up your brain with so much lubricant? And where will being an anti-Christ crusader get you?
If I am right to think that the book is superfluous for most atheists and would be dismissed by all theists despite their not having any good points of rebuttal, and if I am also right in believing Mr. Tobin knows this, then the reason for his writing the book is a mystery on a par with the doctrine of the holy Trinity. It occurs to me that most books that have a “persuasion thesis” are like this one. Has somebody you know changed his mind about the death penalty or abortion as the result of reading a book? Most of the people I know can’t even be persuaded to see or refrain from seeing a movie because of movie reviews. People are wise. I happen to know that thinking causes indigestion and I recommend against it. I know it never did anything good for me. So, Paul, if you are out there and reading this, watch out for stomach aches.
I have never met the man but I like Greg Louganis. Because Greg is a good friend of one of my most cherished friends, I decided to write to him in order to complain over his taking credit for an “autobiography” that was written by someone else. This is standard stuff in the world of super-celebrities but it bothers the hell out of me. The book, Breaking the Surface, spent 5 weeks at the #1 position on the NY Times best seller list.
Many of you will remember that, at the peak of his career, Greg was the most publicized athlete in the world, bar none. Details of his fabulous career as the greatest diver of all time are readily available on Wikipedia.
Even in something as obscure as academic philosophy, it is not easy to be modest when you are Numero Uno. Think “Kripke.” But academic fame is bush league compared to athletic fame so I did not know what to expect when I wrote to Greg. I had told him he had no business taking credit for having written a book that was purely “as told to.” I told him it was incompatible with his image as a brave and modest person. I went on and on.
Greg wrote back, not only explaining but apologizing. So far as writer’s credit was concerned, that was insisted upon by his publisher but, as Greg also told me, he was seriously dyslectic and had been so all his life. He said he was struggling with his problem and hoped to do better in his next book. Unfortunately, he did not do much better in his next book but he tried, and that is good enough for me. That book, titled For the Life of Your Dog: A Complete Guide to Having a Dog in Your Life, (Simon & Schuster) was an Amazon best seller in 1999 and is still available.
It turns out that for Greg, dogs have always mattered more than his magnificence as a multiple Olympic and world champion in his splashless life in a pool. I am very glad because that is how it should be. Get the book.
Detroit Free Press, Sunday, January 31, 2010.
The following is an excerpt from Eric Sharp, featured outdoors sportsman columnist.
“Have you notice squirrels are unusally active lately? It is the squirrel rut and hunters can take advantage of all that activity, and one of the most enjoyable and challenging ways is to do it with a black-powder rifle……20 years ago, I decided that the black-powder hunting season was so much fun I didn’t want it to end. [I began] with a .45 caliber, percussion cap deer rifle but switched to .40 caliber to be able to use the larger barrel. I soon picked up a long-barreled .32 caliber smoothbore that is also great for rabbits and woodchucks. Just back off on powdered charge to fire a load that kills them without damaging too much meat.
A friend is able to shoot 3-inch groups with his .32 at 100 yards but he uses a telescopic sight, something I don’t like to do with muzzleloaders. I’m content to limit my shots to 50 yards or less.
Something I recommend for squirrel hunters is aiming for head shots. It’s not easy because a squirrel’s head is about the size of a golf ball. But it results in quick kills with no loss of meat.”
Sharp confesses that his miss, after a certain squirrel climbed 5 feet up a tree “and gave me a perfect broadside shot,was entirely my own fault.”
Eric can be reached for good tips on hunting at 313-222-2511 or at esharp@freepress.com. He also has a blog at Freep.com/section/blog33.
Great stuff. Highly recommended. This post has been filed under Sports.
At least five couples have had marriages that lasted 85 years. The longest living couple are Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher in North Carolina. This past August they celebrated their 85th anniversary. What I like best about them is that they do not pretend to be sages. They offer no advice as to how to make a marriage last and they have no explanation for their own longevity or successful marriage. They go along happily, sometimes spending lots of time together, sometimes not. Herb is a sports fan who watches lots of sports on TV and while he does this, Zelmyra busies herself with other things. They sleep in the same room but in separate beds. Herbert wakes frequently to make sure his bride is still sleeping soundly.
They enjoy sitting on their porch together, watching the world go by and they love having grandchildren and great-grandchildren come for visits. They are church goers but Zelmyra attends the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Herbert prefers the Pilgrim Chapel Missionary Baptist Church. Zelmyra, but not Herbert, reads the Bible daily.
Neither of the Fishers ever had boyfriends or girlfriends before marrying, and neither has regrets on that score. They were downright poor but by doing what thousands of other poor people did, they managed to put all their children through college.
Given a chance to do something in their lives all over, they both say they would do nothing differently.
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However, make no mistake about it, many long lasting marriages are disasters from start to finish but I won’t rehearse the reasons for that. Marriage may, at its best, enhance the love and solidity of a union but, given the astonishing growing divorce rate, it is beginning to seem to be a very unnatural state. That is why I puzzle over the desire of some homosexuals to emulate the married. Unfortunately, (or fortunately?), most homosexual unions do not last very long. I haven’t the statistics but I would be surprised to learn few homosexual unions last 65 years. This may not be anything to feel bad about. Long term relationships have their charms but, apparently, so do sexual encounters that come with such blinding speed they cannot be tracked. In Marriage and same-sex unions: a debate, researchers Bell and Weinberg claim that 28% of white homosexual males have at least 1000 partners over the course of their lives and 550 different sexual partners is the average.
Many heterosexuals jump at those numbers as if it is all the proof they need that homosexuals are depraved but I suspect that many more heterosexual males read those numbers with incredible envy. Of course, the numbers have some sort of sociological significance but it is very hard to know what lessons to draw from them. We can be sure of one thing - that it is no sign that more gay couplings would be a threat to the much ballyhooed family unit as the foundation of The American Way. There is no one pillar on which our society rests but, among the ones that are not cracking, is the nonhypocritcal recognition of diversity. We don’t get that from our Head-Honcho-in-Chief who sometimes boasts that he believes that, because he is a Christian, marriage is a union between a man and woman. This ridiculous boast reminds me of the person who rises from the audience, screaming “Mama loves shortbread” because he got a post-hypnotic suggestion from the guy on the stage to call that out on a signal from him. A brainwashed president is nothing for us to cheer about.
So, yes, I celebrate the success of the Fishers but I don’t believe long-lasting marriage is “What it is all about” and I don’t even know what the “it” refers to. I suppose a good long-lasting marriage is a wonderful thing but it is not the be-all and end-all of existence on planet Earth.
Just as it happened to all other red-blooded American males, my testerone went into steep ascension when I first saw Jacqueline Bisset in her celebrated wet T-shirt scene (The Deep, 1977). Little did I know at the time, it ws because the gorgeous Jackie was ovulating. At the sight of Her Loveliness, I made the mistake of supposing my erectile disfunction had ended because I wanted to have plain, unadorned sex with the goddess. Now I know the truth, thanks to Saul Miller and his collaborators in their article published December 22, 2009 in Psychological Science. PS is the source of all things worth knowing.
The study shows that when men smell T-shirts worn by women while ovulating, it triggers a surge in the sex hormone testosterone. Researchers say it’s the first study to show that olfactory cues to a woman’s ovulation stimulate a biological response in men that affects mating behavior.
Men who smelled a T-shirt worn by a woman on her estimated day of ovulation responded with higher testosterone levels than men who smelled a T-shirt worn by a woman earlier or later in her cycle,” write researchers Saul L. Miller and Jon K. Maner of Florida State University. To be sure, they were not sniffing downwind (or is it upwind?), Miller and Maner also had men smelling women’s T-shirts that had never been worn by anyone. Such sniffings did not arouse the “mating instinct.” According to these nostril masters, the findings confirm that human mating behavior may be influenced by some of the same sensory triggers found among animals from rodents to primates.
I find this very ennobling. Prior to this wonderful, exculpatory news, I thought the mere sight of a super attractive Babe in a wet T-shirt was just debasing me with old-fashioned HORNINESS. I feel much better knowing that what I wanted was to be the father of some woman’s child. Why, it could have been any other ovulating woman in a T-shirt, not just the over-the-top Ms. Bisset.
Huh?!!! Did I really just say that?
Many people spend their lives in back-breaking work and it is not puzzling that they look forward to retirement. The work most of them do was not a chldhood dream and even as they entered adulthood, they were not imagining 40 years of ditch digging or burning out their lungs in a mineshaft. Even pumping gas or being a waitress seem unlikely candidates for fulfilling a life’s ambition. Of all these people, we can only say, “Good luck; may your retirement be all you hope it will be.”
But what is it they hope it will be? The essence of their lives has been exhaustion, so I suppose rest, long hours of sleep, nobody bossing them around and watching television endlessly are what they want. These are not bad things and I join in the army of well-wishers.
However, I am interested in a different class of persons: the college professors, the physicians, the successful entrepreneurs and others who “made it.” Why are they so often consumed by thoughts of retirement?
The puzzle arises because, for the most part, they got what they wanted - their ideal job. Yet many persons look forward to “early retirement.” It seems that many of these folks entered into their world for the sake of an early exit. For those of them who, in time, fell out of love with their work, nothing is strange about wanting to quit once one has the financial resources. Does this account for the majority who yearn for early retirement? If so, it is baffling. Do people become doctors,lawyers, college professors because they don’t want to be in these fields? Is all that attracted them to the work in the first place were high incomes, the prestige, the pleasant working conditions and all the other external trappings of the “professional man or woman?” Shouldn’t the work have been entered into for intrinsic rewards? Shouldn’t one leave it only with great reluctance?
Some people discover, perhaps after a decade or more, that they have made a mistake, that the work they imagined would be fulfilling is drab and dreary but, if they are young enough - say under 50 years old - should they simply “stick it out”? Don’t they have time to pursue new careers?
Perhaps I just don’t understand the difficulties of starting all over. Yet many persons I know don’t want to start over because they have begun to idealize retirement. Unlike the people who burned their lungs in a mineshaft or wearily pumped gas all days, six days per week, they are not looking forward to nothing else but watching TV without bosses hovering over them. They have turned their recreational fantasies into ambitions. Whereas once upon a time they looked forward to seeing the Great Wall of China or the paintings in the Louvre as vacation experiences, now they have performed the seeming miracle of transforming such experiences into the meaning of the rest of their lives. In any event, it seems a miracle to me.
For me, retirement came when I thought it was right for me to stop. I didn’t replace my old work with an imaginary new world. I felt I was no longer very good at what I had been doing for 35 years. I did not pack my bags and take off for exotic places but continued doing most of the things I had been doing - writing and reading. I had never regarded these as leisure time activities but thought of them as that which defined me. I did not go at them with any greater intensity because I always knew how much of my day I wanted to devote to them. The additional time that now came my way was pleasant and I spent these hours doing what the gas pump jockey does. It doesn’t seem to me to be shameful to stare mindlessly at a TV set in the evenings even though it does drive my wife crazy. Of course, I never had her mental energy. She began her career as a college teacher when she was 22 years old. This is embarrassingly young, and she does not talk about it. She has now been at it - I hope she doesn’t mind that I give her age away - 48 years. For all I know, this is a world record or, if not, in time, it may be such.
She has now tacked on a new ambition, one so time and energy consuming, that her passion for being a college professor has begun to fade. We have a granddaughter - among 4 others that we have - whom she and I dote on, as we do the others, but only this one, among the five, positively needs her. The other four are blessed with magnificent parents, and that allows JoEllen merely to be your standard Sears Roebuck catalogue-like gram-ma with them. This one, soon to be six years old, has what we may call a “disadvantaged” life for 4 days out of the week. Whether she is willing to admit it or not, JoEllen is the second coming of the Savior. She is determined that this child will grow up to be normal - nothing more than that. It is not easy work. In fact, it is more back-breaking than being down in the mineshafts. For this reason, and only for this reason, JoEllen has been considering “early retirement” after a mere 48 years. Her little Anika needs her, and the good professor is finding it hard to juggle two full-time jobs.
For what it is worth, I approve of her decision to take that “early retirement” and focus on her granddaughter. If anybody has earned early retirement, it is she. I’ll make her coffee in the mornings. Everyone must have some responsibility.
