You're Not There for You

(Photo from asha.org)

It's been my experience that about half of my acquaintances and relatives who lived past 80 acquired dementia, ranging from mild to profound.

Digression--I might well be displaying some of the early signs: today, while lost in a (business) cellphone discussion in the parking lot, I opened the wrong car door, taking the seated driver by surprise. Apologizing profusely, I told him that I was distracted and imagined it was my car. Thank goodness he didn't have a gun.

For now I am on the good side of the dementia divide, and visit sufferers with more empathy than I had in my impatient youth. Here are 3 traps when talking to someone with dementia:

If you’re a stickler for accuracy, it’s tempting to correct someone who misspeaks.

If you’re impatient, it’s easy to interrupt and steer the dialogue in the direction you deem most important.

If you’re offended by what you hear, it’s understandable if you take it personally and express disapproval.

Don't correct, interrupt, or be offended, which are fundamentally manifestations of pride. You're not there for you.

On the Calendar

Volunteers and clients dine together.

Home and Hope's clients arrived early this evening.

All had cars, which is a good thing because the van service had been discontinued. The charity still owned the van, which is in good condition, but it was very difficult to put together a combination of volunteers and part-time employees to guarantee that the van was operating every day at 7 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.

Another good thing is that everyone had jobs that enabled them to cover the cost of their cars. Affordable housing is the problem; the temporary shelter that H&H provides is spartan, but secure, reliable and well-heated---important when it's 45 degrees outside.

I started the dishwasher and rolled out the sleeping bag. In the morning I'll put the dishes away.

In February it will still be cold. Some of these families will be back, and so will we.

Joking, I Hope

Probably won't survive
a 7.0, though.

The repair work had been completed in September, but the cabinets still were not installed.

Our household has become increasingly worried (paranoid?) about earthquakes that could topple heavy furniture.

I ordered safety straps from Amazon. I couldn't trust plastic anchors to hold to hollow walls, meaning I had to locate the wooden studs.

Stud finders have advanced amazingly since I last bought one 40 years ago. Back in the '70's they were little more than compasses, that is, magnets in search of beams' metal nails instead of the North Pole.

Now they use radar and sensor technology to read changes in density. Costing about $30, the stud finder was successful about 80% of the time; my hit rate got better with experience.

Straps finally in place, the cabinets were set up over the Thanksgiving weekend.

The member of the household in charge of these things said that maybe they would be better in another corner. She was joking, I hope.

What I Can Do

Teresa and Dilip volunteered for the first time.

It had been six months since we last served dinner to the families of Home and Hope. Though our commitment occurs in the middle of the holiday season we have five cooks/servers for each night.

One of the clients, a single mother, was excited by her new job. The downside was that she had the night shift, which meant leaving her teenaged son in charge of his two younger siblings.

The two volunteers who stay overnight--my turn will be on Thursday--must be knowledgable about each family's situation, for their and our sake.

In this economy adults of all skill levels can get jobs. The problem is not finding work but housing that is affordable. In Foster City the cheapest one-bedroom apartment (525 sq. ft.) is $2,295 per month, which would absorb more than half the after-tax salary of someone earning $50,000.

Solving the problems of homelessness and affordable housing is way above my pay grade. Meanwhile, what I can do is bring some food and help look after things overnight.

Offbeat

Actor Jeff Goldblum, known for his quirky heroes, self-aware villains, and oddball funny guys, is a skilled jazz pianist. As a child he was fascinated by syncopation.

Future movie star, 11, in 1964 (WSJ)

In our living room, we had a baby-grand Steinway. My mother, Shirley, knew her way around the keyboard, so we had lots of piano books. I used them to learn chord markings and how to improvise. I also played on our upright piano in the basement. It was the ’60s, so I painted it lots of different colors.

Acting was his dream job, but piano would have been his profession, he says, had the former not panned out.

At 66 he's cut his first album, giving encouragement to all us baby late-bloomers. (Note: his profile on CBS Sunday Morning is here.)

What's My Destiny?

St. Augustine (d. 430) wrote extensively on predestination

For millennia philosophers and priests have tried to reconcile free will with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient Deity. If God knows in advance that an individual will choose rightly or wrongly, then Judgment was foreordained and the individual really didn't have free will.

The predestination conundrum was a focus of intense debate because for most of human history the afterlife was more important than mortal existence, which was nasty, brutish, and short.

By the second half of the 20th century predestination became an intellectual exercise--interesting but hardly relevant. What mattered was this life. And the way to achieve the best outcome for each individual was to improve the environment in which one was reared. Better nutrition, medical care, education, and crime-free neighborhoods all became societal objectives and beneficiaries of government spending.

"Nurture" was the new orthodoxy. Human beings were malleable; given the right surroundings any man could be a caring nurse, and any woman could be a Marine. Johnny liking trucks and Susie liking dolls were mere social constructs that expressed society's artificial preferences, which could be reversed if children were trained differently. However, despite decades of effort to adjust and enrich environments, differences in life outcomes persisted. And Johnny continued to play with trucks and Susie with dolls.

The revolutions in DNA mapping, big data, and number-crunching have given rise to a new determinant of destiny: our fortunes are written in our genes. [bold added]

A century of research has found that these inherited DNA differences account for about 90% of the differences in people’s physical traits, such as height and eye color. What may come as a surprise is that DNA also accounts, on average, for about 50% of our differences in such psychological traits as personality, mental health and illness, and cognitive ability and disability.

Polygenic analysis: math required

But there's no single gene that is responsible for proficiency in the clarinet, there are dozens maybe even hundreds working in concert(!) that produce any trait or attribute. Only now do we have the technology to perform polygenic ("many gene") analysis. Number-crunching combinations of genes across thousands of individuals has enabled researchers to be much more accurate in their predictions:

This prediction of school performance is the most powerful polygenic score reported to date in the behavioral sciences. Predicting 15% of the differences in school performance might not seem like much, but it is a better predictor than the educational attainment of the students’ parents. My team showed that children with the 10% highest polygenic scores are five times more likely to go to university than children with the 10% lowest scores....

Polygenic scores for educational attainment not only predict performance in school but also success later in life, such as mate choice, occupational status, social mobility and even financial planning for retirement,

So, is free will dead? Scientists couch their findings in the language of probability:

It’s just a probabilistic prediction—genes are not destiny and heritability describes what is, not what could be—but it might still be hard to accept.

However, governments have been known to declare that "the science is settled" and proceed post-haste with policies and prohibitions based on probabilistic outcomes from studies that often can not be replicated.

Today an aspiring doctor may not get into the medical school of her choice. In the future her polygenic score may not even allow her to apply.

Yak-yak

(Chronicle photo)

President Trump's sculpture is on tour at the San Francisco wax museum. Constructing his waxwork posed unique challenges:

Every other wax figure at Madame Tussauds has human hair, but Trump’s orange mane could not be realistically duplicated with anything human. The sculptor settled on yak hair.

An electric bullhorn offers visitors the chance to "sing your praises" or "shout your grievances."

Someday historians will look at the sturm and drang surrounding this President as funny. Yak-yak.

The Stock Market and the Fed: We've Been Warned

One of the principal reasons for the stock market rout is the Federal Reserve's higher-interest rate policy. [bold added]

Fed officials have signaled in recent days they plan to proceed with another quarter percentage point increase in their benchmark short-term interest rate when they meet Dec. 19, marking their fourth rate increase this year. The market pullback does underscore however the uncertain outlook for what the Fed will do after that.

Fed officials are divided over how many times the central bank will raise rates next year. Projections released after the Fed’s meeting in September showed officials are roughly equally split over whether the economy will require two, three or four rate rises next year.

CNBC's Jim Cramer has been increasingly vocal about the Fed's actions, openly pleading with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to pause after the December hike.

On Tuesday he made his strongest pitch yet that 2019 should not have any rate increases at all. He fleshes out his eight reasons (pictured right) at the link---his fundamental argument is that the economy is softening more than the Fed data shows.

Long-term Treasury rates are the most important driver of the stock market, and the short-term rates that the Fed controls drive the long-term rates, albeit not perfectly. If the Fed won't budge from its 2019 rate increases, the financial models tell us the stock market will go down. We've been warned.

Happy Thanksgiving

And now for something beautiful: a flash orchestra playing Beethoven's 9th in the Omotesando Hills shopping center in Tokyo. The musicianship and acoustics are outstanding, and the sight of Japanese "shoppers" singing the Ode to Joy in the original German might have moved the master himself.

Happy Thanksgiving!

House Prices Falling: Furthering Progressivism

Last January it was obvious to your humble blogger that Bay Area real estate was headed for a fall, but I just didn't know when:

As of this writing house prices continue to rise, despite the reduction of favorable tax treatment for expensive houses in the recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

The warning signs are widespread. I don't know what may trigger the fall; perhaps it will be rising interest rates, dropping tech stock prices, or fed-up tourists, but it would not be surprising to see a collapse.

When is now: Price cuts on Bay Area homes are surging

(Chronicle graph)

The TCJA struck high-income professionals hard, especially if they have low equity. The Act limits the itemized deduction for total state-and-local taxes to $10,000 per year. Sure, a $1,000,000 purchase incurs slightly over $10,000 in property taxes, but a portion of the property taxes on more expensive homes is no longer deductible. It also means that high-income professionals can no longer deduct their state income taxes paid because property taxes consumed the entire SALT allowance.

The TCJA struck another blow against high home prices: interest on the portion of a mortgage exceeding $750,000 is non-deductible. For example, on a 5% $1,000,000 mortgage the monthly payment is $5,368.22. The first 12 months of payments total $64,418.64, of which $49,664.94 is interest that would be deductible under the old law. Because of the mortgage cap, one-fourth of that interest, or $12,416.94 is non-deductible.

The cash-flow hit to potential buyers on their Federal income taxes can be in the many thousands of dollars. Buyers can't pay, and home prices are falling. And we have not even factored in this year's mortgage interest-rate increases of over one point (less than a 4% rate to 5%) and the wealth-shrinkage effect of the recent collapse in tech stock prices.

As a homeowner I don't like the price drop, but it seems to this observer that liberal California should be applauding what President Trump and the Republican Congress did with Tax Reform.

Declining prices make homes more affordable, and those with high incomes are paying more of their fair share, thereby lessening inequality. I guess the silence means that they just haven't yet realized how great the tax bill was in furthering progressivism.

Thanks, Willie, But It Didn't Work

Former SF-Mayor and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown has advice for Republicans. (Appreciate that his tone is not snarky or insincere, as is much of the "advice" given by partisans to their opponents.) [bold added]

Willie Brown (OC Register)

It’s clear that Republicans’ slip in California relevance has turned into an all-out slide. The midterm results show that Republicans are being hurt as young adults and other progressively inclined people fan out from the Bay Area and Los Angeles into onetime GOP territory like Orange County and Central Valley cities.

Add in the toxicity of President Trump, and you have a party that is clearly in need of major retooling if it ever again hopes to be a factor on the state level.

Republicans could start by getting rid of the Tea Party and Freedom Caucus types who have made the GOP platform so distasteful to new voters.

But if they really want to make a comeback, the GOP should turn the party over to women. Not only would they give the party a better public face, they would inject a better balance on social issues.

Well, the Republicans did try the woman strategy; they had a textbook candidate in Korean-American Young Kim:

Young Kim (CNN)

Kim was considered by many to have an edge going into the race because of her name recognition and long history as a district staffer for [ex-Representative Ed] Royce, who had endorsed her....Kim broke with Trump on several of his policies, including family separation at the border and curtailing family-sponsored visas. Nearly a third of the district’s residents are Asian American, and a third are Latino.

If ever there was a seat that Republicans should have taken it was the seat held by Ed Royce(R) in the formerly conservative bastion of Orange County.

Democrat Gil Cisneros was the eventual winner, overcoming Young Kim's lead with provisional and mail-in ballots days after the election.

Gingko Leaves Left Out

This is too easy. Why didn't you put ginkgo in the gingko supplement?

Gingko supplements are
extracted from leaves.

Two dietary supplements promoted as improving memory using Ginkgo biloba contained either none of the ingredient or a lower amount than advertised, a government watchdog said Wednesday.

Answer: I forgot.

Without excusing it, this consumer fraud may not make much difference for health purposes. [bold added]

Supplements containing Ginkgo biloba extract, made from one of the world’s oldest living tree species, are often bought by consumers trying to prevent or treat age-related memory loss, the GAO said.....There is no “conclusive evidence” the extract is helpful for any health condition, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, a part of the National Institutes of Health.

Gingko's improved blood-flow doesn't reach the gullibility section of the brain, apparently.

As Long As We Are Able

The "cruel irony" of the Bay Area's food insecure: [bold added]

While their income doesn’t keep up with the cost of living in the expensive region, the relatively high local minimum wage can make them ineligible for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps. And even when they do qualify, the benefit only covers a fraction of the cost of each meal.

At Home and Hope we can't feed everybody, but we
can feed four families at a time.

Your humble blogger has spent some time with charities that feed the hungry, but I do occasionally wonder why SNAP / food stamp ($73.6 billion) and child nutrition ($24.3 billion) expenditures are inadequate to prevent the starvation of millions of Americans. Government payments dwarf what private efforts can provide.

It turns out that a $50,000 income--about $25 per hour--is too high to qualify for SNAP. Meanwhile payments on an apartment--$2,500-per-month ($30,000 per year) is a bargain in this area, by the way--take priority over eating for most people facing such a choice.

These are the working poor, and we'll help them as long as we are able.

Forest Management Facts and Logic

President Trump's tweet on November 10th, two days after the Camp Fire destroyed most of Paradise, CA, sparked controversy:

There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2018

Reaction on Twitter was negative, of course. A plurality of responses were of the Trump-is-an-idiot genre, with a subcategory pointing out that, because the Federal Government owns most of the forestland, the President should point the finger at his own Executive Branch. That argument might have some validity if environmentalist lawsuits had not stymied government efforts to clean up the forests.

Sacramento Bee, 2015: Anti-logging lawsuits hurt fight against forest fires, officials say [bold added]

The largest fire ever recorded in the Sierra Nevada, the Rim Fire that began in August 2013, ultimately burned 402 square miles, spanning parts of Yosemite National Park, private lands and the Stanislaus National Forest. In September 2014, the Forest Service proposed a plan to allow logging on 52 square miles of the affected wildlands.

The Center for Biological Diversity and several other environmental groups subsequently sued to stop the Rim Fire plan [snip].

More than 40 percent of the [1,125 environmental lawsuits between 1989 and 2008] challenged the Forest Service’s “vegetative management” decisions, meaning logging and salvage programs, and these were also the lawsuits the agency was “most likely to settle,” the analysts found.

(WSJ graphic)

The destruction of Paradise may be the decisive event that will force environmentalists to withdraw their opposition to government forest management practices. Even before this year's wildfires the sentiment was moving in the direction of thinning trees.

In 2017, California joined with the U.S. Forest Service and other groups in creating the Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative, which aims to thin millions of trees from about 2.4 million acres of forest—believed to be the largest such state-federal project in the country....The thinning coalition represents a new front. The Nature Conservancy’s Mr. Edelson used to sue to block logging plans in national forests as an attorney for another green group. Now he said he sees the need for limited logging because of the dramatic rise in wildfires.

President Trump's tweets are often crude and disrespectful, but they also give rise to learning. Thoughtful opponents who wish to respond with more than name-calling are forced to counter with facts and logic. Often to their surprise, sometimes the President has facts and logic on his side as well.

Promises, Promises

Dancing, singing, eating, and pledging

Speaking of philanthropic commitments (see previous post below), tonight was the church's annual stewardship dinner that marked the end of the pledge campaign. Members fill out cards that indicate how much they will donate to the church next year. There's a practical reason for pledges; they're the primary funding source for next year's expense budget.

The pledge is not a legal obligation; one can reduce or cancel one's pledge for any reason. Typically changes are made because of a move out of the area, the loss of a job, or health.

But a pledge is not nothing. I know people who have moved away, yet have finished out the current year's pledge. If they had not signed the card, who knows if they would have continued donating?

Given the importance everyone--yes, even the supposedly religious--places upon money, pledge information is restricted to very few, usually the rector and the treasurer. In fact I know one rector who instructed the treasurer not to tell him the specifics; the rector did not want such knowledge to influence his ministry.

As for me, I've tried stretch pledging (for more than is comfortable) and no pledging (when joining a new church). Lately I've been setting a relatively easy target and beating it slightly. This makes the church look good in the eyes of the Diocesan statistician.

A low personal target also leaves some funds in reserve for the inevitable special pleas--for example, aid to fire or hurricane victims.

Repeating yesterday's advice: it's always better to under-promise and over-deliver.