Drawing of the Day

I identify with the guy on the left.

25 Pictures with Deep meaning 🧵

1. Just enjoy it pic.twitter.com/LwZmH2KqBM

— The Adventurous Soul (@TAdventurousoul) August 12, 2025

Wine in Old Bottles

Churches are also teaching life skills to young men

One aspect of the new gender gap (briefly discussed yesterday) is the return of young men to church.

“Many young men feel like their lives are lacking in structure, purpose and connection,” said Richard Reeves, president of the nonpartisan research organization the American Institute for Boys and Men. “It turns out that churches have 2,000 years of experience at providing these things.”

These efforts appear to be paying off. Women in the U.S. have long been more religious than men, but lately the gender gap in religious affiliation has narrowed. Surveys show that women are leaving the pews, partly in response to the church’s handling of sexual-abuse scandals but also because they are increasingly suspicious of institutions that reinforce traditional gender roles. Men, meanwhile, are staying in the fold.

Among younger Americans, men are more religious than women for the first time in modern history. In a 2024 survey of Americans aged 18 to 29 by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), 64% of men and 60% of women said they were religiously affiliated. A decade ago, 65% of men and 71% of women said the same.

[Pastor B.J.] Holt has noticed an uptick in young men coming to the church with more questions than answers about how to live a meaningful life—or just get through the day. “We’re trying to impart guidance on a generation that’s hungry for that,” Holt said.

Finding purpose in one's life is not about casting hither and yon for new truths but taking the time to find what's worked in the past and asking whether it can work again.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Antonio Gramsci 

For more than half a century America has been arguably a conservative-majority country. Yet liberals have controlled what and how the country talks about through their capture of academia, entertainment, and mass media. Conservatives have studied leftist political thinkers and begun employing their methods with some success. One such writer was Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937):

Gramsci died in 1937, but he can be seen as the godfather of today’s culture wars. A dedicated opponent of Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, he spent most of his last decade in prison, where he developed a highly influential new way of thinking about politics that put culture, rather than economics, at the center of the class struggle...

In particular, Gramsci stressed the importance of universities in shaping culture. That makes him a model for American conservatives in their “fight against critical race theory, against trans ideology, against captured higher education institutions, against DEI,” [conservative Christopher] Rufo believes...

Javier Milei, the right-wing, libertarian president of Argentina, told Tucker Carlson in a 2023 interview that he had to “wage a culture war every single day” because his left-wing opponents “have no problem with getting inside the state and employing Gramsci’s techniques: seducing the artists, seducing the culture, seducing the media or meddling in educational content.”

In the U.S., the Italian thinker’s influence grew more slowly. Gramsci’s name appears in the writing of paleoconservative thinkers Paul Gottfried, Thomas Fleming and Sam Francis, who influenced Pat Buchanan’s Republican presidential bids in the 1990s. One of Gramsci’s biggest proponents in the pre-Trump era was Andrew Breitbart, the founder of Breitbart News, who quoted his axiom that “politics is downstream of culture.”

More recently, far-right writers like Curtis Yarvin, who’s influenced Vice President JD Vance, have talked about how to capture power through a culture war. “This war is not fought with bombs and bullets, or even laws and judges,” Yarvin wrote in 2022. “This war is fought with books and films and plays and poems. It is still a savage war!

Conservatives couldn't make much headway in steering the national discussion until the rise of alternate media (podcasts, blogs, social media). Once they gained a foothold, conservatives could wage counterattacks more successfully by focusing on the Gramscian cultural priority and using leftist tactics, e.g., Saul Alinsky's Rule 5 "Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon".

Leftist institutions, now that their biases have been exposed, are fighting for their lives, because public funding is no longer automatic. In the immediate future American politics will be more competitive, more vicious, and more personal. Your humble blogger will not disengage but will avoid audio and visual content, which tends to rouse emotions at the expense of rational thinking.

Very Old School

100 y.o. tax preparer Else Rike (Hagerty/WSJ)

The WSJ features nonagenerian and even centenarian tax preparers: [bold added]

After more than 70 years as an independent tax preparer, [100 y.o. Else M.] Rike knows how to pace herself. She aims to finish at least three returns a day in the weeks before April 15.

Unlike other tax preparers, she doesn’t rely on software to guide her choice of deductions and exemptions or to do the sums. Instead, she punches keys on a Sharp desktop calculator, setting a tiny roll of printing paper atwirl, and then uses an electric typewriter to enter the numbers onto Internal Revenue Service forms.

“I’m not that tech-oriented,” she says. “I don’t have the computer figure it out. I do my own figuring.” Ever since childhood, she says, “math was always sort of my thing.”

Rike (pronounced Ricky) does have a computer, but she uses it only to print out forms. She doesn’t use email but does answer her cellphone or landline. To keep up with tax law, she relies heavily on a fat paperback, “U.S. Master Tax Guide.”

Mrs. Rike, like I do, subscribes to the Master Tax Guide. The MTG is sufficient for basic technical needs, and any problems it can't answer probably means the taxpayer needs to hire a specialist (e.g., closely held companies, foreign income, oil and gas) in that particular area. Specialists can be very expensive, and Mrs. Rike's price is right for her retired clientele:

“I don’t charge like others. I kind of try to do it by the hours that I put in or the number of pages of their returns,” she says. Most clients pay between $50 and $150. That includes a set of envelopes for estimated taxes, with the address labels neatly affixed.

At one point, Rike had around 300 customers. Now she has outlived most of them and serves about 80, including the children of former clients. “I don’t do too many difficult ones anymore,” she says. “I do mostly retired people.”

Her customers are loyal, and she enjoys her work. She has found what we are all searching for...life's purpose.

The New Asceticism

(Washington Post graphic)

Asceticism is not new, dating back at least to the ancient Greeks. Asian religions have practiced it for centuries, and many Christians and Jews in the Bible led ascetic lives.

A less extreme version with no religious overtones, "no buy 2025," has sprung up this year.

The “no buy 2025” trend encourages people to purchase as little new stuff as possible. Some people make lists of specific items they won’t purchase, while others vow not to buy any nonessentials.

While it’s occurring on social media, it has very real-life reasons for catching fire. There have been two years of higher prices and rising levels of debt for households. There was also a shorter holiday season that felt rushed, where many Americans on the lower income end cut back aggressively.

Instead of needing to have the latest and greatest viral products, people are finding it’s better to focus on what they already own...

An idea like no-buy has trended before on TikTok (last year, 20% of Americans tried the “no-spend” challenge, says fintech company Chime). Google searches for “no buy challenge” are up 40% year-over-year, while “no spend challenge” searches have hit an all-time high, Google says...

People also are adhering to “project pan,” a similar trend to no-buy that spurs people to finish all their skin care, makeup or body-care products before buying replacements. Some are even combining no-buy with project pan.

Elysia Berman, a 35-year-old who works in the beauty industry in New York, had a credit-card and loan balance of almost $49,000 from feeling pressure to dress a certain way for work. Last year, she decided to focus on lowering her debt.

Berman has used up almost 100 makeup products she’d purchased and received over the years. Now she plans to do the same with skin care products. Her no-buy list includes clothes, beauty products, perfume, jewelry, home decor and books, and she plans to cut down on takeout orders and make it to her Pilates classes to avoid cancellation fees.

“It really forced me to re-evaluate my habits,” Berman says. Since she started last year, she’s paid off $35,000 of her debt and will be done paying it off by April.

Although macroeconomists believe that high consumer spending is a sign of a strong economy, your humble blogger applauds the effort of many individuals to keep their credit cards in their wallets.

There are few actions that are better for one's well-being than paying down debt and/or adding to savings. It's a slow path to happiness but, speaking from personal experience, is one well worth taking,

Who Gets the Credit?

The lady minister preached about one of Jesus' most well-known miracles, the conversion of water to wine:

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come."

His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, "Fill the jars with water." And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, "Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward." So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now." Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.---John 2:1-11

The lady minister said that Jesus did not perform this and other miracles to "dazzle" or prove that Jesus is the Son of God but "to show forth the light and the love of God."

We are now in that period in late January when football players who perform spectacularly sometimes give thanks to God or Jesus first, then talk about the details of the game. Most viewers initially listen through secular filters and think that real credit should be given to thousands of hours of practice and coaching, but a game "hero" has traditionally earned the right to say what he really feels, as long as he's not too preachy. The interview quickly moves on to football.

If one thinks about how to apply today's Gospel, the teaching is not really about the football player's talent, the game's outcome, the players and coaches who contributed, or even his gratitude to God for the above, although that was undoubtedly his intent.

The real story is about how God's glory is revealed in the events that have just occurred, a philosophical attitude that is often derided in fiction ("The surgeons saved his life." It's a miracle! Thank the Lord!)

Manifest Destiny

(From Cambridge dictionary)

There's an irritating self-help phrase that thankfully one doesn't see much of anymore--"controlling your own destiny" (by definition you cannot change your destiny/fate)--but the sentiment, however awkwardly stated, is clear: achieving one's goal requires planning and execution and now many people add something else, manifesting.

Visualizing the success you want to achieve, or manifesting, took off this year.

Go online, and seemingly everyone is making vision boards, writing down their goals repeatedly and saying them aloud like a mantra.

Singer Dua Lipa swore by it to achieve big goals, and Cambridge Dictionary named “manifest” its word of the year. In the first eight months of 2024, there were more than 130,000 searches for it on the dictionary’s website. On TikTok, the hashtag #manifesting has 1.6 million posts and #manifestation has 6.5 million.

Some psychologists say its current meaning, which involves visualizations and affirmations to make something happen, can be traced to the bestselling 2006 book “The Secret.” Its recent resurgence reflects a desire for people to exert control over their lives, even when the outcome might be largely out of their hands...

Successful people have long worked to visualize the outcome they wanted or repeated positive phrases to achieve a goal. But recently, as more people have taken it on, they say they have learned a key lesson: If you don’t couple manifesting with action, it can be a waste.

What distinguises manifesting is the picturing of the goal before one plans and executes. Your humble blogger didn't do much visualization during his productive years and undoubtedly could have accomplished more than he did. But he...I...ended up happy in ways that I did not envision. Manifesting can help, but it isn't for everybody, especially if life is more journey than goal.

Heaven from a Shoeshine

Executive Shoeshine, Charlotte

A lawyer catches a glimpse of the divine when his shoes are shined at the airport:

Hunched over, he toiled for what seemed an impossibly long stretch. The diligent and humble effort reminded me of something St. Thérèse of Lisieux said about the merits of redemptive suffering. “I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies,” said the 19th-century Carmelite nun. “To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.” From where I sat, that’s what the worker was doing: a small thing with great love.

There seemed no past or future, only a continuous present in which he was fully engaged. How often I selfishly worry about tomorrow or dwell on yesterday. Yet this man knew, as the proverb goes, how to be where your feet are.

His efforts breathed new life into my wingtips. Shoes that could have been mistaken for the worn-out kicks of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Mr. Bojangles suddenly looked good enough to pass military inspection.

When it was time to settle up, I asked what I owed for his services. “Whatever you think it was worth,” he said. Surprised, I asked the question again but got the same answer.

It had been years since I’d been to this shop, but I recalled its prices and figured they hadn’t changed much. Inspired by this man’s trust, I paid him a premium. Our circuitous path to price discovery got me thinking.

A cynic, Oscar Wilde said, is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. This most uncynical man demands no price for payment, only value for consideration. I think I understand why. Transactions in the material economy may be zero-sum—a dollar in his pocket was one out of mine—but ones in the spiritual economy never are. The abundant trust he placed in me didn’t diminish his stores of unperishable virtue.

How man sees himself and the world around him largely depends on which part, matter or spirit, he identifies as the seat of his authentic self. By transacting in values, the laborer chose the better part. As with shoes, I suddenly realized, so with people.

It’s fitting that a boot polisher would be the one great-souled enough to help me make this connection. He surely knows how life’s curb spares nobody, but that no matter how abraded our exterior, we’re never without intrinsic value. Once the imperfections are lovingly made right, interior magnificence is visible, and we are again glorious bodies.

A typical transaction in a capitalist economy this wasn't. Not only did the vendor insist that the buyer pay only what the buyer thought "it was worth", but the shoeshine man told the customer to do so after he rendered the service, i.e., after he had lost all negotiating leverage. He had made himself vulnerable and had to trust the customer to do the right thing. The latter did, and for just a moment the curtains of the world parted, and we caught a glimpse of the divine.

Happy Birthday, Again

On my birthday I knocked over the dietary guardrails and ate a week's supply of beef, dairy (clam chowder and ice cream), and sugar.

The penalty will be short-term only (I hope), but the memory of this outing with the family will linger for months.

When I was a child, I liked opening presents and being the center of attention. After I grew up, birthdays came and went for 40 years with little recognition. Now I'm beginning to appreciate them more...

The Road Not Taken

Perhaps the importance of "which road
do I take" is not the decision but the fact there
are at least two roads (WSJ/Carole Hénaff)

In unhappy situations where we tell ourselves that there's no other option (e.g., staying in a bad job or marriage), we really do have a choice. It's just that we are unwilling to face the consequences of that choice. [bold added]

But the truth, though it often makes people indignant to hear it, is that it’s almost never literally the case that you have to meet a work deadline, honor a commitment, answer an email, fulfill a family obligation or anything else. The astounding reality—in the words of Sheldon B. Kopp, a genial and brilliant American psychotherapist who died in 1999—is that you’re pretty much free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

Consequences aren’t optional. Every choice you make comes with some sort of consequences, because at any instant you can only pick one path, and must deal with the repercussions of not picking any of the others. Spending a week’s holiday in Rome means not spending that same week in Paris. Avoiding a conflict in the short term means letting a bad situation fester.

Freedom isn’t a matter of somehow wriggling free of the costs of your choice—that’s never an option. It means realizing that nothing can stop you from doing anything at all, so long as you’re willing to pay those costs. Unless you’re being physically coerced into doing something, the notion that you “have to” do it just means that you don’t want to pay the price of refusing to do it. After all, it’s perfectly possible for you to quit your job with no backup plan. You could book a one-way ticket to Rio de Janeiro, or rob a bank, or tell your social media followers your honest views.

The economist Thomas Sowell summed things up by saying that there are no solutions, only trade-offs. The only questions to ask about any choice is what the price is, and whether or not it’s worth paying.

The benefit of the I-really-do-have-a-choice perspective may have an effect on one's psychological well-being.

If a path you’d love to take is genuinely likely to leave you destitute, or seriously harmed in some other way, then you probably shouldn’t take it. But for most of us, if we’re being honest with ourselves, the temptation is often to exaggerate potential consequences, so as to spare ourselves the burden of making a bold choice. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed that there’s a secret comfort in telling yourself you’ve got no options, because it’s easier to wallow in feeling trapped than to face the dizzying responsibilities of freedom...

Whatever choice you make, so long as you make it in the spirit of facing the consequences, the result will be freedom—not freedom from limitation, which is something we unfortunately never get to experience, but freedom in limitation. Freedom to examine the trade-offs—because there will always be trade-offs—and then to opt for whichever trade-off you like.

Thanksgiving will soon be here, and, although circumstances stay the same, changing our viewpoint toward life is a glass half full instead of a glass half empty makes all the difference in our feelings about the world.

Money and Happiness: Not So Simple

We've commented before on the 2010 study that asserted that more money does lead to happiness, but only up to a relatively modest level of income, i.e., $75,000 per year:

In 2010 Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton analyzed data from over 450,000 responses to a daily survey of 1,000 U.S. residents by the Gallup Organization. They found that money does influence happiness at low to moderate levels of income. Real lack of money leads to more worry and sadness, higher levels of stress, less positive affect (happiness, enjoyment, and reports of smiling and laughter) and less favorable evaluations of one’s own life. Yet most of these effects only hold for people who earn $75,000 a year or less. Above about $75,000, higher income is not the simple ticket to happiness that we think it is.

(WSJ illustration)

Since that 2010 study more research has been performed on the relationship between money and subjective well-being. Now it seems that more money in absolute terms does make higher-income people happier. [bold added]

A big raise provides significant boosts in happiness even at household incomes of $500,000, according to a new research report...according to a paper by Matt Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the bonuses and leaps in income high earners reap are so large that they keep adding to well-being in the same way that smaller pay bumps do at lower tiers of earnings.

“I think of this as a ladder across society. The rungs are separated by more and more dollars, but exactly the same amount of happiness,” said Killingsworth, who published his report on his Happiness Science website.

An academic paper in 2010 popularized $75,000 as the salary threshold beyond which earning more money didn’t make people any happier. More recent research indicates that there is no such plateau.

Killingsworth and other researchers stress that many things influence human happiness, including your relationships, your job and the country you live in.

“No single factor, including money, dominates the equation,” Killingsworth said.

Previous studies on money and happiness have consistently demonstrated two things: that richer people are happier, and that it takes progressively more money to keep generating a well-being boost of a given size.

It makes sense that more money always makes people happier, ceteris paribus.

However, as people age money's importance diminishes (caveat: as long as one has enough to provide for retirement and health care) and no longer is the measuring stick of one's life; family, legacy, and discernment of life's meaning become foremost.

I wonder if there's research being performed on that.

The Hell of Our Imaginings

(From infernodotblog)

There are as many--perhaps more--visions of hell as there are of heaven. They range from the elaborately constructed nine circles of Dante's Inferno to an infinitely large room of emptiness.

Is the eternal fire a metaphor? If so, what does it mean? Is hell a physical place or a state of mind? Is there such a thing as eternal life—and if God’s verdict goes against you, does that mean a life of everlasting torment? Is it possible to believe in hell if you don’t believe in God, or is hell the terrible solitude of living without God?

Pope Francis himself has defined hell as “eternal solitude.” By contrast, Jean-Paul Sartre, the pontiff of existentialism, wrote that “hell is other people.” Which is it?

Evelyn Waugh proposed a darkly witty version of hell in his novel “A Handful of Dust.” It ends with the hero, an English gentleman lost in the Amazonian rain forest, held prisoner by an illiterate mixed-race Guianan who happens to own a complete set of Dickens and forces his captive to read it aloud, over and over again, without hope of release.

Hell expanded centuries ago from theology into literature. Great writers have had a crack at it. Dante set the standard. Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is magnificent, although, as Samuel Johnson remarked, “no one wished it longer.” Milton’s fallen Lucifer sounds unexpectedly modern when he cries, “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” Is it the case that we make our own hell?

Whatever our visions of hell, it does seem that we are much less concerned with the afterlife than were our ancestors. The rewards of heaven and the miseries of hell don't seem to motivate people's behavior. As for me, as I enter the winter of my life, the reasoning of Pascal's Wager appeals, so I may as well try to be good and do good.

Life's Purpose: A Psychiatrist Has the Answer

I'm always interested in hearing what people have to say about life's purpose (while noting that a sizeable number who are overwhelmingly atheist assert that life has no purpose).

Yale Associate Professor of Psychiatry Samuel Wilkinson thinks he has found the answer based on his studies of evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology.

In an interview with Yale News, Wilkinson discusses what inspired his fascination with understanding life’s purpose, how nature instills in humans a “dual potential,” and the evolutionary forces that spur us to be our more altruistic selves.

“When you combine the concept that we are free to choose with the dual potential of human nature, to me this strongly implies that life is a test,” said Wilkinson, who is also director of the Yale Depression Research Program. “The purpose of life is to choose between the good and evil impulses inherent within us.

“This seems to be written into our DNA.”

...I totally acknowledge we have a capacity for selfishness, but in other ways we also have a deep capacity for altruism. In a way that was unexpected to me, evolution has shaped us such that we are pulled in different directions. This is a core example of how nature has left us conflicted, what in the book I call the “dual potential” of human nature.

Prof. Wilkinson has a scientific explanation for the selfish and altruistic duality of human behavior--it's built into our DNA. But I'm still at a loss to see why one is necessarily better than the other, or why life is a "test" to see whether we will choose altruism. Who is the Grader?

Science is excellent at explaining why things work, but it's so far been lacking in determining answers to basic questions, for example, if I died today did my life have value? By the way, by what criteria does one determine that value?

Or maybe I had value because I left children behind. So that's it: propagate the species? If so, individual rats and cockroaches do more for their species than I did for mine. And so on and so forth.

For now I'll search for answers in the writings of philosophers and theologians rather than psychiatrists. One good things about Prof. Wilkinson's attempt is that it prompted me to get cracking on reading Paul Tillich and Teilhard de Chardin while there's still time to do so.

Musings at the Dog Park

At the Foster City Dog Park dogs who are 25½ pounds are out of luck. They are neither "small" (25 pounds or less) nor "large" (26 pounds and over), so they have nowhere to go.

I blame the signmaker, who may have thought that weight was only measured in whole numbers. He probably has never been on a diet.

On the other hand, there were no visible weight-patrol officers in the Dog Park, or even a scale to verify entrance requirements.

Measurements like weight are not objective but a man-made construct. If a small dog identifies as large, he's entitled to his truth.

Don't be species-ist.

Jordan Peterson's Rule 8: "Tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie"

"At the beginning of time, according to the great Western tradition, the Word of God transformed chaos into Being through the act of speech. It is axiomatic, within that tradition, that man and woman alike are made in the image of that God. We also transform chaos into Being, through speech. We transform the manifold possibilities of the future into the actualities of past and present.

To tell the truth is to bring the most habitable reality into Being. Truth builds edifices that can stand a thousand years. Truth feeds and clothes the poor, and makes nations wealthy and safe. Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word, so that he can become a partner, rather than an enemy. Truth makes the past truly past, and makes the best use of the future’s possibilities. Truth is the ultimate, inexhaustible natural resource. It’s the light in the darkness.

See the truth. Tell the truth.

Truth will not come in the guise of opinions shared by others, as the truth is neither a collection of slogans nor an ideology. It will instead be personal. Your truth is something only you can tell, based as it is on the unique circumstances of your life. Apprehend your personal truth. Communicate it carefully, in an articulate manner, to yourself and others. This will ensure your security and your life more abundantly now, while you inhabit the structure of your current beliefs. This will ensure the benevolence of the future, diverging as it might from the certainties of the past.

The truth springs forth ever anew from the most profound wellsprings of Being. It will keep your soul from withering and dying while you encounter the inevitable tragedy of life. It will help you avoid the terrible desire to seek vengeance for that tragedy—part of the terrible sin of Being, which everything must bear gracefully, just so it can exist.

If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise.

Tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie."

Excerpt From: Jordan B. Peterson. “12 Rules for Life.”

Don't Hold Them Back Became Let's Give Them an Advantage

Katherine Johnson (1918-2020) received
the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The 2016 film Hidden Figures was based on the true story of African-American women mathematicians who were crucial to the success of NASA's early missions. They had to overcome extreme race and sex discrimination, accompanied by condescending attitudes, to be taken seriously.

By the end of the movie their skill and reputation became so widely known at NASA that John Glenn insisted that the numbers be checked manually by Katherine Johnson, one of the "hidden figures," before his historic flight. She also performs emergency calculations to bring John Glenn home when one of his capsule's heat shields broke loose.

It's a popular theme in fiction and real life: the talents of a person who is discriminated against are so outstanding that the powers-that-be must call on the person to solve an important problem. Anti-discrimination narratives appeal to both the heart and the head: the former because the victims are treated unfairly and the latter because society's potential is unrealized by holding back skilled people.

60 years later the pendulum has shifted too far in the other direction. Anti-discrimination has given way to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) quotas. DEI is especially damaging in the technological contest with China: [bold added]

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute reported this year that China leads the U.S. in research on 37 of 44 critical technologies, including advanced aircraft engines, electric batteries, machine learning and synthetic biology. In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, Dan Wang, an expert on China’s technology landscape, wrote that “China now rivals Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in its mastery of the electronics supply chain.” In 2007, the Chinese added less than 4% of the value-added costs of iPhones made in that country. Now it’s more than 25%...

Given this challenge, you might imagine that America would re-emphasize the principles of objectivity and merit that made it the world’s leading scientific innovator. You would be mistaken.

Where it once was taken for granted that expanding knowledge was more important than a scientist’s sex or skin color, anyone adhering to that approach in the U.S. now must fend off charges that it is racist, patriarchal, colonial, or a tool of oppression. As a group of 29 scientists and academics contended in a recent paper for the Journal of Controversial Ideas, scientific progress in the West “is being hindered by a new, alarming clash between liberal epistemology and identity-based ideologies.”...

The U.S. will only find it harder to compete with China if activists and administrators are allowed to bully scientists into caring more about artificial diversity goals than about their work. To quote the 29 authors who stood up for merit, “for science to succeed, it must strive for the non-ideological pursuit of objective truth.”

In the liberal arts and social sciences, the DEI crowd can advocate for individual revealed truths and personal lived experiences. By contrast, those who work in STEM fields believe that there are objective truths, and the goal of science is to discover these truths. I am 100% sure that the mathematicians who worked for NASA would agree.

Groundhog Day, 2023

Today is Groundhog Day, when Phil, the groundhog from Punxsutawney, PA, predicts the weather for the next six weeks (cold if he sees his shadow, warm if he does not, and he did see his shadow.)

Today also celebrates the 30th anniversary of the movie, released on February 4, 1993. Groundhog Day was well-received when it came out and has grown in esteem to the extent that it is now considered to be one of the top films of all time. At its center is a vision of the meaning of life, but it is enclosed in a comedic wrapping that can be enjoyed on its own merits. As I wrote seven years ago:

Groundhog Day was a quirky custom in an out-of-the-way town--it didn't rise in the popular consciousness until the 1993 film.

I came across the movie on HBO in 1996. At first glance it was a cleverly written comedy about a jaded, world-weary weatherman who mysteriously must re-live Groundhog Day over and over again.

Bill Murray's character, Phil Connors, is trapped. Even when he despairingly "kills" himself he wakes up the next morning in the same hotel bed to the strains of Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe" on the clock-radio.

Phil-the-human cannot escape, yet in a sense he is totally free. He can commit any number of sins without consequence because he will have a fresh start tomorrow. No one but he remembers what he did.

Repeated viewings struck a chord. The movie plumbed deep waters. And I'm not alone in that realization.

In the years since its release the film has been taken up by Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, and followers of the oppressed Chinese Falun Gong movement. Meanwhile, the Internet brims with weighty philosophical treatises on the deep Platonist, Aristotelian, and existentialist themes providing the skin and bones beneath the film’s clown makeup.

theology professor Michael P. Foley wrote that Groundhog Day is “a stunning allegory of moral, intellectual, and even religious excellence in the face of postmodern decay, a sort of Christian-Aristotelian Pilgrim’s Progress for those lost in the contemporary cosmos.”

The movie ends on a hopeful note. Phil makes positive changes of his own free will, without expectations of a reward. Only then is he released from the prison of endless repetition.

Part of the genius of Groundhog Day, the movie, is that it doesn't pummel you with philosophy. It invites you to think, but if you just want to laugh, that's ok, too. As Jonah Goldberg observes,

We’re talking about the movie in which Bill Murray tells a big rat sitting on his lap, “Don’t drive angry,”

Further musings in 2023 about Phil Connors' journey and our own:

In the film — written by Danny Rubin, a Zen Buddhist, according to Ramis’ DVD commentary of the film — Phil reincarnates each day, but he also transforms his behavior over “time.” He takes self-centered advantage of his unique predicament — robbing bank trucks, stuffing his face with angel food cake, tricking a woman into bed — but eventually perfects the day with creative self-improvement tasks and compassionately helping others. Once he becomes the best possible version of Phil Connors, he is released from his temporal prison, while simultaneously winning the love of his virtuous producer, Rita...

But something does change every day, even if it’s imperceptible. It’s ourselves. And we can choose how this day will unfold, and how we will slowly evolve. There might even be a “Groundhog Day”-inspired resolution: memorizing French poetry, playing the piano, figuring out how to help others more often. Like Phil, we can utilize creativity and compassion to change a glass-is-half-empty paradigm, to half full. The pursuit of meaning is itself meaningful. And today, as well as everyday, can be your first day of spring.

Wow, that's heavy! But putting it in perspective, Groundhog Day is also just about a big rat.

“The eyes are truly the window to our souls”

Maybe her eyes can tell us what she's thinking

The nature of consciousness has long been a fundamental question of human existence, and it's no surprise that scientists are employing scientific methods to improve our understanding of the subject.

For example, human beings are not "conscious" when they are asleep, so one criterion of consciousness is that a person must be aware of objects in the person's surroundings: [bold added]

[Researchers] used a combination of artificial intelligence, mathematics, and a close examination of the eye movements of individuals as they were shown images of people’s faces.

As it turns out, they found that important clues are revealed in the eyes. When people were shown clear images, their eye movements showed a distinct pattern that indicates they were aware of their surroundings. However, as the subjects were presented with progressively dimmer images of faces, the pattern of eye movement changed. Tracking these changes, [Yale Prof. Hal] Blumenfeld said, allowed researchers to discern whether the subjects actually perceived the face or not without asking them.

“The eyes are truly the window to our souls,” he said. “We can tell if people are aware of something by simply looking at their eyes.”

The eye-tracking tool allowed researchers to explore the amorphous dividing line between consciousness and unconsciousness, a state most obvious as we awake from sleep. People become progressively more aware of their surroundings as slumber recedes, a process that is controlled in a region of the brain known as the thalamus.

Ultrasound waves directed at the
thalamus can "jump start" coma
patients (Medindia)

The Yale researchers found that when people awake the thalamus discharges a brief pulse which jumpstarts the transition to consciousness. However, this activity is only a first step in a series of actions throughout the brain that leads to full awareness, they found. For instance, that initial pulse from the thalamus may fail to activate other neural networks, keeping the individual unconscious of most surrounding stimuli. However, the pulse can also activate neurons involved in processing visual cues in the frontal cortex, which in turn amplifies circuits involved in arousal and attention. At the same time, signals irrelevant to the event are turned off.

To those of us who have friends or relatives who regularly experience visual and/or auditory hallucinations, the research into consciousness and awareness can't proceed fast enough.

But for those like your humble blogger, whose brain is healthily grounded in reality (!) and is concerned about scientists being able to read thoughts through eye movements, wearing sunglasses is strongly recommended.

They Weren't People Like Us

Nassim Taleb (NYU photo)

Mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, best known for his bestseller, The Black Swan, reviews Tom Holland's Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World : [bold added]

Christianity did stand the entire ancient value system on its head.

The Greco-Romans despised the feeble, the poor, the sick, and the disabled; Christianity glorified the weak, the downtrodden, and the untouchable; and does that all the way to the top of the pecking order. While ancient gods could have their share of travails and difficulties, they remained in that special class of gods. But Jesus was the first ancient deity who suffered the punishment of the slave, the lowest ranking member of the human race. And the sect that succeeded him generalized such glorification of suffering: dying as an inferior is more magnificent than living as the mighty.

The modern world is guilty of "retrospective distortion". Because we have absorbed many of Christianity's principles (the value of an individual, the importance of character over money and power) we think, mistakenly, that the original Christians were a lot like us.

We see this lack of contextual understanding, for example, on a much lesser scale in our college children who can't imagine a world where they would have to write a physical letter home to ask for money then wait for a check to come back, or go to a library, refer to its card catalogue, then delve into the stacks in the hope of finding the right book on a subject.

If the world has changed so much in 30 years, how alien must it appear after 2,000 years have passed?

Today's lectionary reading, appropriately, was from Luke 14:

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, `Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

The Days Are Long But the Years Are Short

Before entering retirement the priority had to be on finances, that is, making sure that income covered expenses, not only immediately but for the long-term.

Physical changes due to aging have needed to be addressed, too, and more consideration and planning had to be given to diet, exercise, and sleep. Of course, these "burdens" are nothing compared to life while working.

What I didn't think about was how I would respond to removal of the necessity to keep a daily calendar, with its prioritized task list and careful scheduling of due dates.

To the extent I thought about it at all, it seemed that I would be even more productive and efficient, tending to long-deferred home and learning projects. Taking to heart the accounting concept of depreciation, "remaining useful life" of, say, 20 more years instead of 50 years that it was just yesterday, I would surely be more productive now that I'm working for myself instead of others.

But that's not how it's turning out to be. In a corollary to Parkinson's law, retirement activities have expanded to fill the time available for completion. Visits to the gym used to take an hour. Now two- and three-hour walks burn the same number of calories as one-hour workouts, yet I do the former because I find them more enjoyable.

Managing time has become less important though paradoxically the time remaining is shorter.

One of the major joys of retirement has been the luxury of spending more time on those things I look forward to doing, with no deadlines to rein me in, no obligations that require me to make those hard choices about how to spend each day. What continues to surprise me is how many of those activities turn out to be exactly the ones I have been advised to cut back...

While grinding away on an exercise bike or in a gym is always an option, hourlong walks up and down the hills in my neighborhood is my favorite go-to exertion. They stimulate new ways of looking at a particular challenge, including something as simple as coming up with the words to help reconnect with a long-lost friend...

Meal preparation is another area ripe for shortcuts...I could assemble a dinner with almost no prep work to be ready at whatever hour I punch in. It’s easy, but it defeats one of the most enjoyable aspects of cooking—preparing meals with implements that might have been used hundreds of years ago whose sturdiness and texture I can feel as I begin dicing, grating and mixing.

I know these idyllic days won't last. There will come a point when a health scare will force me to dust off the daily planning calendar with its hard deadlines and concomitant stress. Meanwhile, I shall live as if these days will go on forever.

Because we don't know when we will die,
we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well.
Yet everything happens only
a certain number of times,
and a very small number really.
How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood,
some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive
of your life without it.
Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that.
How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?
Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

--Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

&copy 2022 Stephen Yuen