the devil you know

I was reading offline about World War I in an opinion piece querying various historians about whether they thought the conflict was "worth it" or not. Some said yes, some said no. Some of the analysis included "what if" projections.

If it were not for World War I, Hitler and Stalin would probably be unknown names today. I'm certainly not the first one to say that.

But that overlooks the real possibility that the 20th century may still have been dominated by one or several monsters who were worse than both Stalin and Hitler. We don't know what we'll never see.

A major European power could have developed and used atomic weapons in a European war. Or there could have been a war later in the century that was far more brutal and deadly than World War II. And maybe the good guys didn't win that and a cloud of evil descended over Europe.

Which reminds me of the old saying -- the devil you know is better than the one you don't. The devils of Hitler and Stalin could have paled in the shadows of a dictator or two the world never ended up seeing.

debate gangbang

I did not watch the Democratic debates this week, but I did watch an extended news report with the highlights.

My takeaway thought was this: how does squabbling with nine other people concurrently on a variety of topics in any way reveal aspects of what it takes to be a good and effective head of state?

When does a President ever have to go onto a stage with nine rivals to debate and then win the audience and polling afterwards?

The answer, of course, is never.

But the debates this week, as well as future debates, will play a major part in many people's final voting decision. And I think that's rather silly.

I will say I think the Democrats were smart to split into two nights, rather than try to cram all those people on stage at once, as happened with Republicans in 2016. On the other hand, I think they should have been a lot stricter about who qualified to be at the debate so there would be no more than five or six in a single debate.

Because the reality is, if you're not polling in the top five or six now, the chances of you being the final nominee are close to nonexistent. Time will prove me right or wrong on this. I'll revisit this in a future post to see if I end up with egg on my face or not.

your childhood ruined

Some young mothers might find satirical items like the fake children's book below offensive. I am not one of those.

I laughed so hard at some examples from this gallery dump that I almost peed myself. So of course I typed in the web address found on each of these and that ends up forwarding to a facebook page with more examples. They also have Twitter and Instagram pages with still more hilarity.

Apparently this is done as a labor of love but some T-shirts are also sold. At least if you're going to fart around and do something silly, earning a few bucks out of it isn't a bad idea. Nonetheless, their slogan is "I make a lot of useless stuff." Useless but funny.

fake nurses

Within the last month, two women have been exposed as imposters pretending to be registered nurses -- one in Quebec who has worked for twenty years in hospitals and another in Vancouver working with a special-needs child.

Some might find reports like this amusing, real people pulling off Catch Me If You Can scams. Others like me are not amused.

Based on news reports about the two Canadian women, it does not sound like either could face criminal prosecution for what they have done.

If that's true, then Canada and any other country with similarly lax laws needs to remedy that by passing measures that impose stiff criminal penalties for anyone pretending to be a medical professional.

The potential for such posers to cause serious health problems and even death in the people they're allegedly "treating" is no small matter.

If people can be prosecuted for driving while intoxicated because of the potential danger of causing a serious accident, then I think fake nurses and fake doctors should be prosecuted with the same rationale, the potential danger of causing serious injury or death.

Without serious penalties, other people will be tempted to pull scams like this. And who knows how many fake doctors and nurses are out there right now, pretending to be something they aren't.

the overstory

Last night I finished The Overstory, a long novel by American writer Richard Powers that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

On the whole, I liked the book and really liked some parts of it. But I didn't fall in love. I admire the book and the craft and the originality. But it just didn't capture my heart. I don't regret reading it, however, and won't soon forget parts of it.

The book is structured with two major parts. The first provides detailed character sketches of nine people who, one way or another, have had their lives altered because of trees. The second part then shows those characters interacting with many, but not all, of the other characters.

I had two overall criticisms of the novel.

The first is that the female characters were all cut from the same bolt of literary cloth. And the same could be said for the men, all cut from the same bolt, but a different one than the women.

When any of the women becomes involved with any of the men, the women end up being the dominant partner. They're often flighty and manipulative and emasculating without being shrews. For their part, the men are mostly virginal, sexually frustrated, passive, and easily bamboozled. They're mostly all doormats.

I wouldn't mind one or two of the women and men being this way, but nearly all of them is too much. I'm wondering how much of this is autobiographical on the writer's part.

My second criticism was the book's length. It just went on too long to the point that it seemed redundant. A novel is like a juggling act -- the writer needs to keep adding new things into the mix. But when the writer just keeps juggling the same objects for an exhaustive period, without changing anything, it can just become tedious.

In sum, a mixed thumbs up from me. If you're a frequent reader and consume several books a week, you might like The Overstory. But if your reading is more limited, then I'd recommend a pass.

pediatric strokes

I just happened to stumble on this article about infants who suffered strokes while being born and even before birth itself. What a horrible way to begin life with a serious disadvantage.

I'm glad I didn't read about this when I was still pregnant. That would have totally freaked me out.

While, fortunately, pediatric strokes are quite rare, they can still occur. And there doesn't seem to be much that can be done before they happen.

What a downer I am today. Sorry.

olympe de gouges

I've been reading offline about Olympe de Gouges, an eighteenth century female writer and political activist in revolutionary France. She was beheaded by guillotine during the so-called Reign of Terror because of her opposition to the revolutionary Jacobin government and her association with the counter-revolutionary Girondins.

After her death, a Jacobin leader warned other women not to become politically involved and to remind themselves of her fate after she "abandoned the cares of her home to meddle in the affairs of the Republic."

This reminded me of the fact that early revolutionary groups, which were all worked up about the rights of man, often either ignored or were contemptuous toward the rights of women. We see this in the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the English Revolution, and more.

The Russian Revolution was somewhat more accommodating of women but no women ever served in senior leadership roles. And, of course, many of these revolutions equally ignored or were contemptuous of the rights of men who were not white.

They could all have operated under the motto of "liberty for me but not for thee." Or, as in the famous Animal Farm line: "some animals are more equal than others." Fortunately, these incomplete revolutions were mostly able to upgrade when universal suffrage came along.

jacob's ladder

This clickbait list of "the most iconic movie plot twists of all time" reminded me of what a great film Jacob's Ladder is. It was made in 1990 yet was never a huge commercial success but has since become something of a cult classic.

It's a melange of several genres -- horror, thriller, period drama, and more. I remember the first time I saw it how the movie left me with a keen sense of foreboding.

If you've never seen it, run -- don't walk -- and borrow a copy to watch as soon as you can.

in the deep end

A few days ago, not far from where we live, a four-year-old child got out of the house unbeknownst to her mother and fell into the backyard pool. The kid did not know how to swim and, no surprise, sunk below the surface.

Miracle of miracles, a neighbor happened to witness this and alerted the child's unknowing parent. The kid was pulled out of the pool in tears but with no harm done.

The family in question was spared a lifetime of heartbreak.

Both my husband and I learned how to swim before we could even remember. I have the dimmest memory of my older brother taking me into the middle of the pool, letting go, and then I had to swim to the edge. It was a game. I loved it. (He also taught me about peeing in the pool. So convenient.)

As a professional diver, it should come as no surprise that my husband insisted our boys learn how to swim very early. Both started before they turned three years old. On occasion, he does refresher drills with them when we're out his dad's house where there's a pool. He'll suddenly pick up one or the other child and dump him in the pool. The child always swims to the edge without issue. They think it's a game.

Some might think that was cruel to suddenly heave the kid into the deep end. But I think it's far crueler not to teach your child how to swim as early as possible.

Once you learn, you can't unlearn. It's a skill that will stay with you the rest of your life. Even the dementia-addled seniors at the care home I regularly visit have no problems swimming, notwithstanding they can't remember their own names.

If you have children above the age of three and they don't know how to swim, do something about that right now.

our farther

I guess if you're going to get a big tattoo with some poorly executed art, you have to go all in and add some embarrassingly misspelled word to complete the look.

Our farther who ark in heaver, allowed be thy name...

hong kong

The Hong Kong protests in recent days have received a lot of coverage here in Sydney, likely due to the city's proximity, the large Chinese population here, and the prominence of Chinese-Australian trade.

It was heartwarming to see so many people turn out for the massive demonstration march on Sunday. Official estimates hold that two million people marched -- more than a quarter of the city's population.

The source of the contention -- a measure that would have allowed routine extradition from Hong Kong to mainland China -- was abruptly shelved as a result of the protest and the city's chief executive apologized for its proposal.

This shows the power of democracy and the power of dissent. The Hong Kong people spoke up loudly and resoundingly and with a single voice.

The mass protest has drawn comparisons to Tiananmen Square, where a democratic reform movement died a brutal death thirty years ago this month. Thank goodness things turned out differently in Hong Kong.

everything to lose

Last night I finished reading Everything to Lose, a thriller by Andrew Gross, a writer I've never encountered before. While the book wasn't without some flaws, the story and writing were both compelling and made for a very satisfying read.

Gross does an excellent job tightening the jeopardy throughout the story. The characters are richly drawn with believable depth. Much of the plot grows out of character, which is always more satisfying than characters trapped in a plot.

On the downside, I thought at times the author belabors his point. He makes something very clear, then he keeps repeating that point to the extent the redundancy becomes annoying. But that's a smaller flaw in an otherwise addictive read. The book's a true page-turner.

I definitely plan to read more of Gross's novels after this. All of his books appear to be thrillers, and the nineteenth one will be published this fall.

the cat's press conference

Pakistani politician Shaukat Yousafzai last week attempted to hold a serious press conference online. But that was wrecked when someone on staff accidentally left on a cat filter, giving Yousafzai pink feline ears and whiskers in every photograph.

IMHO, politics would be vastly more captivating if all politicians appeared with animal ears. Or perhaps when the politician in question is lying, critter ears would sprout onscreen to alert the audience that porkies are in progress.

one in seven thousand chance

There's a one in seven thousand chance that the asteroid known as 2006 QV89 will smash into planet Earth this autumn. The object measures about 130 feet in diameter, nothing like the size of the six-mile diameter asteroid that probably killed off the dinosaurs.

The good news -- if you could call it that -- is if QV89 hits the earth, it will not cause a global impact. If it his a smaller city, however, it could literally wipe it off the map with the force and destruction of an atomic bomb.

You need an asteroid of about a mile wide or more to render the kind of damage as the dinosaur killer. If such an asteroid were to hit New York City, most every building between Washington DC and Boston would be flattened from the impact.

Although one in seven thousand means the chances of something happening are quite slim, they're worse odds than the chances of being killed in an airliner crash (which are at least one out of a hundred thousand) or the chances of winning a major lottery prize (one in three hundred million).

Hopefully, on the slim chance this happens, it will smash into some remote place and end up being nothing more than a curious news item for a few days.

a mad dog's breakfast

I think my favorite Britishism is saying that something resembles a mad dog's breakfast. It's easier to understand if you remember that "mad" here means crazy, not angry.

A mad dog's breakfast is a complete and utter mess. When the pressure cooker blows up and you have string beans on the ceiling, curtains, and lampshade, that's a mad dog's breakfast.

Many people abbreviate this to a dog's breakfast. I think that loses the punch. Not every dog is messy -- ours certainly isn't and is a very dainty eater -- but all mad dogs are.

the numbers game

Back when the husband and I were beginning to contemplate having a second child, several parents said to me various permutations of "two kids are barely any more work than one."

I learned through experience that's not true. While two children are not twice as much work as one child, it seems like the second child adds about two-thirds more work.

So I knew heading in to a third child that it would not be "barely any more work" than two. Turns out that's correct. I'd say a third child is no less additional work than a second child.

So that means three children is about 2.33 the work of a single child. I don't know how this calculation will work as the children get older. Joey is old enough to do some chores for himself, but at the same time, now that he's older, he creates new time requirements.

I certainly don't regret or begrudge my children. At the same time, don't ever let anyone try to convince you that child-rearing several kids is not much more work than one. That's nothing short of ludicrous.

churchill

Last night I finished the mammoth Winston Churchill biography I've been reading over the last ten days or so, interspersed with several novels. I had read around the periphery of Churchill's life but wanted to read a good biography so I could learn about him from cradle to grave.

So I chose Churchill by Roy Jenkins, which various reliable sources said was either the best biography of the legendary British prime minister or one of the two best. The book is a very long read -- 912 hardbound pages with tiny type and tiny margins.

On the whole, I don't regret reading the book, but if this is the best Churchill biography out there, someone should definitely write a better one because it has a number of deficiencies. To start, it had very little about his early life, a serious oversight in my opinion because both his parents were quite famous and notorious in their day. Churchill himself first became famous because of his escape from a POW camp during the Boer War, but that was barely touched upon as well.

The book's author, Roy Jenkins, was a member of Parliament for nearly forty years, so his Churchill book is very parliamentary-dependent. Long passages are filled with descriptions of rather arcane matters in Parliament in great detail and what Churchill was doing about it.

At the same time, there isn't an awful lot of historical context. Enigma is mentioned in passing but never a discussion about how intelligence was so crucial to Britain nor Churchill's role in inspiring its gathering.

The best of the forty-six chapters of the book is when the author gets Churchill out of the House of Parliament and into London neighborhoods right after a particular bad Blitz attack. Then the historical context oozes out of the pages as well as a real understanding of Churchill's empathy and how he connected with ordinary Brits.

So I will continue my search for a really good Churchill book that will help to understand what made him tick. I'm hoping there's one out there.

a horrible job

I don't know what this woman is doing. Whoever posted that seems to have put the wrong description on it, because if it was a loom, why would she put empty spools on the machine?

All of that aside, this looks like an absolutely horrible job. It looks physically taxing, dangerous, and worst of all, mind-numbingly repetitive. Imagine doing that all day long, day after day, week after week, year after year.

I have not had a wide variety of jobs in my life but have been fortunate that none have been truly awful. Exotic dancer was ultimately rather boring because it's just dancing all day and chatting up horny guys.

But I was motivated in that job because the money was so ridiculously good. I knew I wouldn't do it for decades so I figured I put up with it until something better came along. I decided to travel and then met my future husband, so "better" turned out to be fantastic.

Before that I did office temp work and waited tables. None of those were particularly fulfilling jobs, but at least with waiting tables, if I was really cheerful and friendly, it really boosted my tips.

And then there was modeling, which never made me enough money to be a full-time gig, but the per-hour earnings were very good. Modeling in and of itself was not particularly thrilling but the possible a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow -- which I never did find -- was enough to be motivational.

But whatever work I may do in the future, that spool shit the woman is doing in the link will not be a job I seek. I think I'd turn to crime before doing something like that.

not my nose

Do stupid people think everyone else is as stupid as they are? That thought came to mind after reading the following Florida man crime story.

When Tampa police pulled over a driver this past weekend at 3:45 AM, they noticed his passenger had a white powdery substance on his nose. He was field tested by swabbing the skin on his nose and in his nostrils, and the powder was revealed to be cocaine.

At this point, the man tried to convince the police the cocaine on and in his nose was not his. Maybe he thought the cops would believe little cocaine pixies put that up there while he was napping.

When the cops searched his shoes, they also found a small bag of cocaine. No word if he tried to convince them the shoes he was wearing weren't his. Or maybe the feet he was wearing weren't his.

The man was arrested on three felony narcotics possession charges. He also faces probation violation charges stemming from a guilty plea last year for -- wait for it -- cocaine-related charges.

One is left wondering if he'll attempt to convince a jury with his "not my nose" logic.

wild about harry

I'm now past three-fourths of the way through the massive Winston Churchill biography I'm currently reading. I switch back and forth between reading that and a novel.

The author is now into the World War II period when Churchill was Prime Minister for the first time. The American Harry Hopkins is discussed quite a a bit in this section.

Now I knew who Hopkins was, having read other books about the World War II era. But I suspect if you walked down any American street and asked a random hundred people who Hopkins was, less than a handful could answer correctly.

Yet Hopkins was, seventy-five years ago, one of the most powerful men in America. He was so close to the President he actually lived in the White House. He literally worked himself into an early grave.

Was Hopkins driven by a desire to do good? Was he intoxicated by power? Or by fame? Was he a Doug Stamper-like character who was so loyal to the President he served that he would do anything? (Stamper was a slavishly devoted assistant to the fictional President in the American TV series House of Cards.)

I'm thinking aloud about all this because Hopkins is sort of a poster boy for how fleeting fame actually is. In the 1940s, millions of Americans could tell you who he was. Today, the number must be a tiny fraction of that first number.

If Hopkins was driven by a desire to do good, then fleeting fame would not matter to him. But if he was driven by dreams of glory, he serves as a good reminder that fame has a very short shelf life in the grand scheme of things.

tubal cauterization

The husband and I have begun discussing what we want to do about permanent birth control now that our family is complete. He is willing to have a vasectomy, but I'm not keen on that idea.

One of my family members had a vasectomy horror story, so I'm worried the same thing could happen to darling husband. On the positive side, a vasectomy can usually be easily and successfully reversed with a minor procedure.

I am leaning instead on getting a tubal cauterization myself, which would sever my Fallopian tubes. My body would still go through the monthly cycle but fertilization would be impossible because the egg could not escape my tubes.

The downside to this is the fact that the procedure is not easily reversed and, when completed, the success rate is poor. It can also lead to an ectopic pregnancy if the tube is not entirely severed by cauterization and some sperm sneaks through. This latter fact is why one must be certain the MD performing the surgery is completely competent.

We don't have to decide this minute on our final choice, given I'm still breast feeding and thus not yet fertile. But we will have to decide sooner rather than later.

assembly line writers

I'm now more than halfway through the mammothly long biography of Winston Churchill that I'm currently reading. I already knew that in addition to his political role, he was a much celebrated writer who went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

What I did not know -- and perhaps many don't know -- is that he rather substantially relied on ghost writers and researchers to write significant portions of his work before he did a sort of final draft. Hence, all the heavy lifting of research and drafting was done by any number of ghosts/researchers whom Churchill paid at five to ten cents on the dollar of his own earnings, which were substantial.

He did this both with his many books and also his innumerable articles. This went on for many years and he went through a long stable of these ghosts/researchers.

That led me to contemplate -- is it somehow dishonest for a writer to allow only his or her name to appear on a book or article when substantially assisted by others, to the point where the unknown others did most of the work? I know that Churchill was not alone in doing this; many popular and high volume writers, particularly novelists, do this today.

They're not that difficult to spot, although you'll only see their names on the covers of their books. If a writer releases ten novels of 75,000 words or so or more a year, are we actually supposed to believe that only he or she wrote them? That defies logic.

At least some best-selling assembly-line writers share the cover credit with another writer who does most of the work. But are the ones who don't do this but use a whole stable of ghosts -- are they being dishonest with their public?

create your own freeway lane

When I lived in Las Vegas, for a while I dated a motorcycle cop whom I've written about here before. He was a very funny guy and we both liked to make each other laugh.

He used to tell me stories about stupid drivers whom he pulled over and, on occasion, arrested. I remember he said that when he saw people driving at night without their lights on and/or they were driving on the wrong side of the road, they were usually very drunk.

But what about in the middle of the day when somebody is driving on the wrong side of the freeway while completely stone-cold sober? That happened earlier this week in Indiana where police arrested a 19-year-old driver, who was not impaired, speeding down the wrong side of the freeway because, he said, "it was faster."

Like he didn't think anybody would notice? Or that no one would call 911?

If you follow the link above, you'll find there's a video of the driver merrily tooling down the wrong side of the freeway. What you also might notice is that the traffic on that side is actually heavier than on the correct side of the freeway. If speed was so important, he could have easily sped down the correct lanes.

Sometimes human behavior defies logical explanation. I think this is one of those times.

the lucky safecracker

While visiting a small museum in Canada with his family a few weeks ago, an Alberta man tried to crack a safe that no one had been able to open for decades.

Within a few minutes, the safe opened. Amazement all around.

The downer to this story is that the safe contained nothing of value. Too bad he didn't have Geraldo Rivera with him, who could have turned the whole experience into a two-hour television special.

the 108-year-old pianist

I thought this was both a touching and an amazing story -- a 108-year-old woman in Poland still practices her piano for several hours every day. The piano itself escaped destruction during World War II when he family hit it in an abandoned barn.

If I live this long, I hope I remain as sharp as Wanda. Statistically speaking, however, that's not terribly likely.

the undercover fascist

To take a little break from the massive Winston Churchill biography I'm reading, I read this article about a former modern-day fascist turned informer. Not surprisingly, the fascists discussed in the article are for the most part uneducated, incurious, and easily slide into violence. There is no low to which they will not stoop.

I thought this line was really telling, describing a self-realization by the former fascist: "He found it thrilling to be hated." That thus reveals what I've long suspected about people on the far, far right and the far, far left -- they really don't give a shit about the politics. They just want the attention, not unlike the Westboro Baptist Church loonies who interrupt veteran funerals with deeply offensive signs.

In their core, I suspect many fascists are such because of very poor self esteem. They have a shitty job -- if at all -- with few to no prospects for a better one. So when they see someone succeeding, like a minority business owner or professional, they look for somebody to blame rather than realize they fucked up their own lives and that's why they have dead-end employment.

The other thing that struck me in this article was the fact that it would be infinitely harder for the government to outlaw a political organization than in the UK. And that's not a bad thing. Banning an organization could only serve to make it stronger or drive it deeper underground, this making it harder to track.

the king is dead

James Holzhauer, the phenomenal Jeopardy! player who repeatedly broke the record of total winnings for the show, is no more, having been defeated in his thirty-third game in an episode broadcast yesterday.

I have not yet had a chance to see the show because no one has posted it on the file sharing sites. But I did see him on four or five of the previous shows and he was absolutely incredible, like a machine as he mowed down category after category and rarely missing a solution.

Far from "breaking the bank," Holzhauer pushed the show to its best viewership numbers in fourteen years. I will admit I was worried that his streak would never end, and that while that would be a short-term benefit to the program, it might be a longer-term harm.

It will be interesting to follow the play of the woman who beat him, using many of his same all-or-nothing strategies, coupled with a phenomenal command of trivia. Good luck Emma!

lottery luck

I don't ever recall buying a lottery ticket in my life. Like in the United States and many other countries, Australia has lotteries, although I don't believe you can win more than a few million. No half-billion jackpots here.

The reason may have something to do with the fact that the country has about 25 million people and no land-based neighbors. It just can't sustain a lottery with massive prizes.

I read some time ago in a financial magazine that buying a lottery ticket once every few years is actually a good investment, because although your chances are very small of winning, the rate of return on investment is massive if you do win. However, per the article, buying lottery tickets regularly is a waste of money.

I thought about that when I read this article talking about people who have won lotteries more than once. It does say that some of them play regularly, which actually doesn't increase your chances of winning, but it doesn't reveal how many tickets these people buy each time.

The more you buy per lottery, the greater your chances. Did the multiple winners quoted in the piece buy a big fistful of tickets each week or did they buy only one?

I remember waiting in supermarket lines in the states behind someone buying a hundred dollars of lottery tickets at one time. So, yes, they were increasing their chances, but their chances were still tiny. And were they avoiding necessities as a result of spending so much on lottery tickets?

door-to-door callers

At the risk of killing you with cuteness, I just could not stop myself from posting this today (enlargement).

The kittens look like they're Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. "Good morning, sir, do you have a few minutes to talk about your lord and savior?"

In case you're wondering if we have either or both Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons door-to-door callers here in Australia, the answer is both. I've come to believe there is no place you can go on earth, save possibly North Korea and Iran, where they don't regularly knock on the door.

over-anticipation

Last night I was struck by these two lines in a Winston Churchill biography, quoting a letter to his mother: "Schopenhauer says that if you anticipate you only use up some of the pleasure of the moment in advance. And that therefore things that are greatly looked forward to usually disappoint."

I never thought of anticipation this way but nonetheless agree. When you overthink and over-anticipate something, you elevate it to an imagined perfection. But that standard is so impossibly high that the real thing can't live up to the anticipated zenith.

So I guess the best thing is to try to think about something as little as possible. Immediately change the subject in your mind if you find yourself wandering into that territory.

I can usually do that but not always. I will try harder in the future, however.