“An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton

Against All Odds: Denver to LA in a Vintage RV

The alarm wakes me at 6:30. I check my weather app. It’s 18 degrees – 8 degrees with wind chill. I get up, shout a good morning to Liam and Michael in the adjacent room, take a hot shower, and dress. Long johns, layers, and flannels. And the ski jacket Alec gave me yesterday morning in Cleveland, after he checked the weather and saw that a cold front was moving through Denver.

It arrived yesterday – a blizzard of ice and snow. You couldn’t see beyond a car’s length in front of you. It would have been challenging for a 2020 four-wheel SUV. For what we are driving, it was a no-go.

I look out the window. The sky is clear. As we leave the hotel, the doorman grins at us.

“Where’re you heading?”

“LA.”

“In that?”

We nod.

Now he’s laughing.

It’s a 1973 Dodge Travco. All 12,000 pounds of it waits for us snowbound in front of the hotel.

I kick away the snow bank in front of the vehicle. Michael scrapes the ice from the windshield and Liam checks the engine and then jumps in and cranks it. It starts right up. A good omen.

The engine should be good. Liam had it rebuilt in Missouri before he took delivery. The brakes are new, too, having been replaced when the mechanic took it on a test drive and was almost killed when the old brakes failed while he was going down a steep hill.

On the drive from Missouri to Denver, the temperature began dropping. That’s when the boys discovered that the heater system didn’t work. After stopping every 10 minutes to clean the windshield, they stopped at a Walmart and bought a small space heater, which Liam propped up on the dashboard in front of him. That cleared up just enough space to take them through two days of driving.

“All aboard!” Liam calls after the engine was humming. I climb inside, the first time I’ve seen the interior.

“Wow!” I said.

“Nice, huh?” Liam says with a laugh.

The interior looks like it hasn’t been touched in 47 years. Touched or cleaned, for that matter.  Whatever image that brings to your mind, I promise you: It is worse.

Liam and Michael climb into the front seats. I take one in the back. I notice it doesn’t have a seat belt. (I wonder: Did they have rear seatbelts in 1973?)

Driving through town, I quickly discover that the lack of a seat belt is not the real problem.  The real problem is that the seat itself is not bolted to the frame. I know that because it slides as we change lanes.

And now another problem: The door next to me swings wide open on left-hand turns. My unbolted seat slides scarily towards the opening. I scream. The vehicle stops.

We have a little discussion about this. Yes, the boys were aware of the problem. But no, it didn’t particularly bother them because they were securely strapped into the front seats.

“Don’t worry, Dad,” Liam says.

He fishes through several boxes of what look to be stuff that should have been thrown out by the original owner and finds a length of wire that he ties to the door handle and then again to another handle.

“All set!” he says. And off we go.

As we continue through downtown Denver, pedestrians gawk and grin at us as we pass them. Several give us a thumbs up. That cheers me. I don’t know why.

At the first stoplight, the engine stalls.

“What the heck?” Liam says.

He turns off the ignition, puts the transmission in neutral, and restarts the engine. At the next stoplight, it happens again.

“What’s wrong?” Michael asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe the engine is cold.”

It occurs to me that this is exactly what it must be. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a car with a motor that needs warming up that I’d forgot how common stalling out at a stoplight was back in the day.

It stalls again at the next light, but starts right back up again.

 “It’s warming up,” we agree.

Our destination is Liam’s house in LA. The goal is to get this antique curiosity there in one piece. This is day four for Liam and Michael. Day two for me. Today’s plan is to drive west along I-70 for three hours, and then find someplace to stop that has WiFi. I have a Zoom business meeting at 11:30. When that’s over, we’ll drive on and have lunch in Grand Junction, and then try to reach Green River where we’ll find lodging for the night.

A light snow begins. Liam switches on the windshield wipers. They are vintage. Like skinny teenagers, they move awkwardly over the wind- and snow-battered glass, cleaning with one stroke and smearing with another.

At about 11:00 am, we pull into a rest stop in Eagle, Colorado, that features a Starbucks. Good news. They have socially distanced seating. I find a table in the corner and prepare for my Zoom meeting. Meanwhile, the boys go looking for more engine oil (it needs refilling every 100 miles) at a local auto parts store that also sells power tools and firearms. Two hours later, we are on our way again.

I forgot to mention: The speedometer cable broke some time before the boys arrived in Denver. It’s been rattling ever since, but now the rattle has morphed into an ear-piercing, demonic howl. Liam and Michael make a dozen calls to auto shops in Grand Junction and find only one that has the time to remove the damned thing. They are very kind and accommodating. They remove the cable, change the gas filter, check the tires, and put in oil. The total bill: $50.

 We arrive in Green River at 7:00 and book two rooms in what an online app described as “the finest motel in town,” the River Terrace Inn. I can describe its level of luxury this way: The porte cochere was twice the size of the motel itself.

Dinner is at a diner next door. Social distancing in the foyer. Less than that in the dining room. The menu is vast – like a Greek diner in New York. The staff are friendly and professional. Liam orders ribs. Michael orders pork chops. I order an Asian chicken salad. The food, to our delight, is excellent.

After dinner, we walk down the bank and look at the Green River, smoking and talking about tomorrow’s objective: Las Vegas.

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The Big Interrupter 

“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.” – Edgar Allan Poe

It’s generally agreed that Trump was uncontrolled in his debate against Biden and that he interrupted Biden constantly….

That’s certainly how I felt…

It’s common knowledge that our biases affect our particular judgements. They color our perceptions, not only in how we come to conclusions about general facts and phenomena, but also in how we interpret very particular facts and events.

One place where this is apparent is in the political arena. For as long as I’ve been watching political debates, I’ve noticed the tendency of watchers to view the same debate differently – with each group tending to downgrade the performance of the candidate of the opposing party and upgrade the performance of the candidate of their own.

Last week, at the first dinner party K and I have attended in months, the conversation turned to Trump. K, L, and G were recounting the many ways they see Trump as a vile person, as well as their hatred for the man. Actual hatred. For a man they’ve never met.

That didn’t surprise me. Nor did it outrage me. There is a great deal about Trump that I find interesting, but virtually nothing I actually like. I could never be friends with him. I’d never trust him as a business partner. But I do think he’s done some good for the country. Lowering taxes, reducing regulations, reforming the criminal justice systems, etc. His trade policy, on the other hand, is a disaster.

In response to their vitriol, I wanted to say: “Do you see how insane you are? That your hate for Trump has made you incapable of having rational thoughts when his name is invoked?”

Of course, I knew I couldn’t say that. But a moment later, when the conversation turned to the presidential debate, I realized I had an opportunity to say some version of that.

“He’s such a bully,” G said. “He interrupted Biden non-stop. He must have interrupted him a hundred times.”

The others agreed.

Coincidentally, I had just read something on that issue that very morning. Rather than repeat what I had read, which would have been dismissed summarily, I decided to ask them a question.

“We all agree that Trump interrupted Biden a lot,” I said. “But we know that Biden interrupted Trump, too. My question is:  What was the ratio? How many times did each candidate interrupt the other?”

L: “I don’t know. Maybe 40 Trump to 10 Biden.”

G: “It was more like 60 to 5.”

K: “It must have been 100 to 1.”

Let’s look at the actual numbers:

The Washington Post counted 71 interruptions for Trump and 22 for Biden, cleverly calling Trump the “Interrupter-in-Chief.”

Fox News counted 71 for Trump and 49 for Biden, reporting the RNC’s declaration of Trump as winner of the debate and Biden as being “too weak.”

I asked Amaru, our number-one researcher, to take a look and do his own count, based on two different definitions of “interrupt.”

1. Interruptions that happened only when one candidate was speaking during the time he was given for “uninterrupted speech.” Amaru counted 55 by Trump and 31 by Biden.
2. Any and all interruptions. This time, Amaru counted 84 by Trump and 69 by Biden.

What’s going on here?

It looks like The Washington Post and Fox were using two different definitions. And each definition was designed to produce a different outcome.

Here’s my takeaway – and I’ll keep it simple…

Facts are not always as factual as they might seem. They depend on the questions, assumptions, and definitions that are made while gathering them. This is true of every set of facts in every field of study. (I’ve been publishing information on health for 40 years, and I can tell you, with confidence, that many of the facts we take as scientific and therefore true are not facts at all, but consciously calculated findings meant to arrive at a desired conclusion.)

I can’t say exactly what criteria WaPo and Fox used to arrive at their very different numbers. But I can tell you that it didn’t take much – in our own little experiment – to dramatically affect our numbers.

So be skeptical of facts – especially when they are used to advance a political or commercial agenda. Keep an open mind. But stay skeptical. And be especially skeptical when the facts support the narrative of your choice.

As Amaru said, “If my mom, the person I trusted most in the world, told me that the stars had all turned into bright red and green sparkles, I’d still want to go out and take a look.”

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“War does not determine who is right – only who is left.” – Bertrand Russell

Baby Boomer Narcissism: It’s All About Us, and Our Game Is War 

On Zoom calls, my colleague Bill Bonner and I sometimes talk briefly about current events. I told him my view is that the COVID lockdown is another symptom of baby boomer narcissism. Ever since we came into the world, in droves, the American economy has been all about us.

Bill tends to be a deeper thinker than I am. So, when he began writing about this issue, he did so from a more interesting perspective. He framed his exploration as “the sellout of America by its geriatric elite.”

By geriatric elite, he means old white geezers like Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell. But he also includes himself. And presumably me. Basically, he’s talking about the millions of baby boomers that have benefitted from the government’s actions and inactions over the last 50 years.

He reminds us that, despite our early flirtation with peace and freedom, we became the generation that chose war as our principal vehicle for improving the world.

First, we launched the war against poverty. Then we began the war against drugs. Then we threw ourselves into a war against terrorism. And now we are in a war against the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, we’ve kept the conventional wars going. First with Vietnam (1965-1975). Then with the Persian Gulf (1990-1991). Then with Afghanistan (2001-Present). And then with Iraq (2003-Present).

He didn’t say, although he’s said it before, that each of these wars cost us a lot of money.

The Cost to Us of Recent Wars 

* Vietnam: $880 billion (adjusted for inflation 2020)

* Persian Gulf: $121 billion (adjusted for inflation 2020)

* Afghanistan: $925 billion

* Iraq: $1 trillion

All told, they’ve cost American taxpayers more than $30 trillion. That came mostly from the middle class and ended up in the pockets of baby boomers in government and private industry.

But the war that has cost us the most, Bill says, is the war against the dollar.

“After Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker ‘rescued’ the system in 1980,” he says, “the resulting fake dollar and fake interest rates produced fake wealth on a scale the country had never seen before. The Dow rose 29 times.

“But the wealth was heavily concentrated in the richest zip codes. The rest of the country got, relatively, poorer…. Wealth migrated from the towns where people made things to the towns where people just made money.

“The Fed launched five major assaults. There were three waves of interest rate cuts – 1989-1992, 2000-2003, and 2007-2008 – along with a $3.6 trillion heavy artillery barrage after the crisis of 2008-2009 and $3 trillion more to fight the COVID Shutdown.

“Almost every penny went to the richest, oldest 10% of the country… leaving 90% of the population behind.

“This COVID Shutdown – another attempt to protect the old at the expense of the young – forced much of the economy onto the internet, leaving behind millions of face-to-face, hand-to-mouth workers.

“Waiters, parking lot attendants, landlords in some areas, clowns in Disney World, strippers in Las Vegas… whole industries were decimated…. Meanwhile, the Boomer Elite… bless their hearts…  are living high on the hog.

“Maybe we weren’t as lucky as The Donald or The Nancy, but we can’t complain.

“We went to college. We avoided the assembly lines and shop floors. We punched a keyboard, not a time clock…. And come the coronavirus… we could work from home.

“And we made investments… partaking of the great promise of degenerate American capitalism – that the government would make sure we didn’t lose money.

“Three times this century, the markets have tried to correct… and three times, the Federal Reserve has fought back, making sure the wealthy elite retained its ill-gotten gains.”

Not to worry if you are a baby boomer, Bill says. No matter how bad things get in the coming years (and they will surely get bad at some point), we of the Geezer Elite will be safe and unscathed.

“We can leave behind the whole complex of crime, poverty, job losses, politics, and social disruption… and live far enough away from the big city, where it is safe, beautiful, and pleasant… but still with enough bandwidth to let us ‘visit’ with our children and grandchildren… and carry on with the rump ends of our careers.”

File this under: War

Wars are always expensive – in deaths, in property destruction, and in dollars. And with very few exceptions, they never achieve their stated goals. Since President Eisenhower warned us against the military industrial complex, we’ve fought and lost wars on foreign soil that benefitted only the stakeholders of that industry. These wars cost us trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. But our high-minded wars against drugs and poverty have cost us even more.

Yet none of that has diminished our attachment to war. We continue to declare new wars almost every year. This most recent war against COVID and the continued wars against fossil fuels are costing us trillions. But the biggest war of all is our secret war against the stability of our currency. We are devaluing it, by a trillion dollars, every 60 to 90 days. We are standing at the precipice of national bankruptcy – and nobody, not the media or our elected politicians from either side of the aisle, seemed the least bit concerned about it.

Protect yourself. This war is coming to you.

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“Do not say little in many words but a great deal in a few.” – Pythagoras

6 Cuss Words I’m Trying to Include in My Conversations 

I must be going through some sort of nostalgia phase. I’m watching old movies, rereading books I read when I was young, and studying history.

Recently, I came across a list of antiquated cuss words that made me wish I was living back when I could work them into my conversations. Maybe I still can!

Here are six (from Merriam-Webster) for your consideration:

1. Thunderation 

Thunderation has gone through some evolution as a swear word. It’s a lighter, more appropriate version of “tarnation,” which is in turn a lightening of “damnation.” This term came to popularity in the 1850s and faded in the late 1950s. And it should come back. It can be used in the same way as “Hell!” or “Damn!” Example: “Thunderation, that’s a strong horse! You can barely control it!”

2. Swounds 

Much in the same way as thunderation, swounds is a proper swear word. It’s a shortening of “God’s wounds,” a common oath used in the Middle Ages that refers to the wounds in Christ’s crucifixion. There are a number of similar terms, such as “strewth,” which means God’s strength. Example: “Swounds! What a horrible accident!”

3. Bloody Nora 

Cockney slang is a very specific style of speech native to England. London, in particular. By creating rhyming phrases, speakers of Cockney slang had a unique vocabulary that almost operated as a secret code. “Bloody Nora” is an example of such slang – a stand-in for “flaming horror.” It can be used as a description, such as, “You look like a Bloody Nora!” Although this is best done with your worst/best Michael Caine impression to really sell it.

4. Sard 

During the medieval period, “sard” was a popular alternative for, we’ll call it, “seducing a woman.” It phased out in the 1600s, and hasn’t been used since. But it flows off the tongue well and doesn’t sound as vulgar as some modern-day alternatives. Example: “I’m going to sard her and even stay for breakfast afterwards.”

5. Quim 

Quim actually had a very short resurgence in 2012, when the first Avengers movie came out. Loki, the villain of the movie, calls Black Widow a “mewling quim” in order to shock and insult her into giving him information. It ultimately doesn’t work, but it brought “quim” to the public consciousness, where it hadn’t been for a long time. “Quim” refers to the female anatomy, and is one of the more insulting ways to refer to it. It’s not a term that should be used lightly, but as a more archaic insult, it has value.

6. Fustilarian 

Fustilarian is a Shakespearean word, and is a beautiful way to insult someone (especially when they don’t know what it means). The word was first used by Shakespeare in Henry IV in a string of insults by Falstaff to a woman who is on the scene when he is arrested: “Away, you scullion, you rampallion, you fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe.”

Fustilarious is an adjective meaning low/common and foul smelling. When you call someone a fustilarian, you’re calling him a low fellow, and a stinky one to boot. The word is very rare, passing out of fashion almost as soon as it was coined… which means it’s prime for a comeback.

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What Do You Know about COVID-19? 

1. The US is known to have recorded the highest number of COVID-19 cases at 7,241,000. Which country has the next highest?

___ China

___ India

___ Indonesia

2. When talking about the virus, what does the “R number” refer to?

___ The lethality of the virus

___ The average number of people a person infected with the virus can pass it to

___ The rate at which the virus replicates in an infected person

3. Which of the following are common symptoms of COVID-19?

___ Fever, dry cough, and tiredness

___ Sneezing, memory loss, and difficulty breathing

___ Metallic taste, nosebleeds, and diarrhea

4. Vaccines have been developed and are available for the following coronavirus(es):

___ MERS

___ SARS

___ Both SARS and MERS

___ Neither SARS nor MERS

5. Which of the following countries has performed the most COVID-19 tests?

___ US

___ United Kingdom

___ Italy

___ China

___ India

6. What percent of the US population has died of COVID-19?

___ 6%

___ 0.6%

___ 0.06%

7. How many children (under 18) have died from COVID-19?

___ 9320

___ 932

___ 93

8. What percent of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 were people over 50?

___ 94.8%

___ 55%

___ 33%

9. What does the body produce to fight off and kill the COVID-19 virus?

___ Antibodies

___ T-cells

___ B-cells

10. According to the CDC’s current best estimate, what percent of people infected with COVID-19 are asymptomatic?

___ 10%

___ 30%

___ 40%

11. Were ICU beds ever completely full in the US?

___ Yes, in NY in late May

___ Yes, in Florida in July

___ Never

12. About what percent of people whose deaths were attributed to COVID-19 had pre-existing comorbidities?

___ 65%

___ 75%

___ 94%

13. In late May, an article critical of Sweden’s refusal to lock down its economy predicted that its death toll would reach 60,000. What is Sweden’s current death toll?

___ 158,930

___ 58,930

___ 5893

14. What is the overall survival rate from – i.e., what is the overall chance of surviving – COVID-19?

___ 79.7%

___ 89.7%

___ 99.7%

15. Approximately how much damage was done to the US economy by the shutdown – i.e., how much has US GDP (gross national product) fallen since March?

___ 6.0%

___ 18.1%

___ 31.4%

16. How many Americans have lost their jobs since the shutdown?

___ 4 million

___ 12 million

___ 22 million

17. African-Americans are how much more likely than Caucasian-Americans to contract COVID-19?

___ 266 times more likely

___ 26 times more likely

___ 2.6 times more likely

18. If African-Americans are the most likely to contract and die from COVID-19, which racial/ethnic group is the least likely?

___ Hispanic-Americans
___ Asian-Americans

___ Caucasian-Americans

19. Lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders helped cities like New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island keep COVID-19 cases to a minimum.

___ True

___ False

20. In all large, wealthy, and scientifically advanced countries, the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 this year is significantly greater than the number of deaths attributed to flu or pneumonia.

___ True

___ False

21. What percent of COVID-19 deaths have occurred in nursing homes and assisted living facilities?

___ 12%

___ 22%

___ 42%

22. At a press conference in April, President Trump suggested drinking bleach as a potential means to kill COVID-19.

___ True

___ False

23. Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has been a controversial topic since Trump touted it at the beginning of the summer. What is the current scientific consensus?

___ It has been clinically proven to kill COVID-19 cells.

___ It has been proven to be ineffective and has serious side effects.

___ It has shown potential in a number of tests, but the results are inconclusive.

24. According to an August report from The New York Times, up to 90% of the people who have tested positive (so far) for COVID-19 in America…

___ Were infected as a result of failure to social distance

___ Had a compromised immune system

___ Had statistically insignificant levels of COVID-19

Answers 

1. India – With 6,312,584 cases, According to the World Health Organization, India currently has over 15 times as many cases as China (91,061) and Indonesia (287,008) combined.

2. The average number of cases a person infected with the virus can pass it to – As put by the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, the R number, or “reproduction number,” represents the maximum epidemic potential of a pathogen. The goal is an R number below 1.

3. Fever, cough, and tiredness – According to the World Health Organization, these are the most common symptoms of COVID-19. Difficulty breathing and shortness of breath are symptoms but are less common.

4. Neither SARS nor MERS – There are currently no approved vaccines for SARS or MERS.

5. China – China claims to have performed the most tests, with 160 million. The US is second with 107 million. Then India at 77 million, the UK at 25 million, and Italy with 11 million, according to Statista.

6. 0.06% – As of now, COVID-19 deaths represent 0.06268% of the entire US population, according to data provided by the Johns Hopkins Center for Science and Engineering.

7. 93 – To date, children under 18 account for 93 total deaths due to COVID-19, according to CDC records.

8. 94.8% – According to the CDC, the 139,593 deaths of those aged 50 and older make up 94.8% of total deaths attributed to COVID-19.

9. All three – Antibodies are the first line of defense against dangerous viruses. But the body also responds with B-cells, which can be formed from previous responses to other viruses, like SARS or COV-2. B-cells recognize related viruses (like COVID-19), quickly proliferate, and change to secrete antibodies and neutralize the virus again. In addition to B-cells, our adaptive immune response also includes the production of T-cells. There are multiple types of T-cells, the two main ones being helper and killer T-cells. Helper T-cells overall play a supportive role, such as helping B-cells expedite the production of antibodies, whereas killer T-cells are more aggressive, actively searching for and destroying virus-infected cells.

10. 40%– With an Rnumber of 2.5, the CDC reports that infected people without symptoms are 75% likely to infect relative to symptomatic people. The CDC admits, however that “The percent of cases that are asymptomatic, i.e., never experience symptoms, remains uncertain. Longitudinal testing of individuals is required to accurately detect the absence of symptoms for the full period of infectiousness.”

11. Never – During the 2018-1019 flu season, the CDC reported 490,000 hospitalizations, and the issue of bed availability wasn’t pursued as it has been this year. To date, there have been 408,649 COVID hospitalizations according to The COVID Tracking Project.

12. 94% – According to the CDC, only 6% of all COVID-19 related deaths had no other conditions listed.

13. 5893 – The most recent count provided by the World Health Organization shows 5893 total COVID-19 deaths in Sweden, a number well below the predicted 60,000 by epidemiologist Rod Jackson.

14. 99.7% – Amid the anxiety this virus has caused the country, it should be comforting that the survival rate, as provided by the CDC, is this high. Unfortunately, it’s not a statistic you hear very often.

15. 31.4% – US GDP fell at a record rate of 31.4% in the second quarter of 2020 (April to June), but since the opening began, it has started to recover. A big rebound is expected in the quarter that just ended.

16. 22 million – The good news is that more than 9 million (about 42%) of those lost jobs have been recouped. Restaurants lost 6.1 million jobs and recouped 3.4 million; retail lost 2.3 million and gained 1.4 million, according to MarketWatch.

17. 2.6 times more likely – The CDC reported that African-Americans account for a 2.6 times increase in case risk markers.

18. Asian-Americans – According to the same CDC risk markers, Asian-Americans are least in danger of being infected with and dying from COVID-19 (1 in 2470 or 40.4 per 100,000).

19. False – There is no evidence of that. Despite some of the toughest controls in the country, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island rank 15, 20, and 18 in terms of cases per population, while West Virginia, Wyoming, and Hawaii rank among the least affected states, despite having relatively relaxed shutdown standards.

20. False – The ONS reported that, since June, flu and pneumonia have contributed to more deaths than COVID-19.

21. 42% – Of all COVID-19 deaths in the US, 42% have occurred in nursing homes and/or assisted living facilities, according to an analysis conducted for the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity.

22. False –While the President did inquire about the effects of disinfectants as a possible treatment for COVID-19 in his April 24 press conference, he never suggested ingesting bleach.

23. It has shown potential in a number of tests, but the results are inconclusive – HCQ has shown some promise in some cases, especially when administered early, but it has not been clinically/scientifically confirmed or denied as a viable treatment for COVID-19.

24. Had statistically insignificant levels of COVID-19 – According to an analysis published in The New York Times, about 90% of the positive tests conducted so far in the US contained viral loads of COVID-19 that were so small they should be properly categorized as “statistically insignificant.” Standard (PCR) tests for COVID-19 work by amplifying the virus’s genetic material in cycles until it is detected by a machine. If any DNA is detected by the machine, the test is marked positive. Experts have said that any more than 30 amplification cycles will cause inactive, dead, or insignificant amounts of the virus to ring positive. The US tests have been running 35-40 cycles. Testing data from Massachusetts, Nevada, and NY revealed that 90% of people that tested positive “carried barely any virus.”

So, how did you do on our little COVID quiz? 

Were you surprised by any of the answers? If so, don’t be alarmed. The reporting has been so partisan, it’s nearly impossible to find out the facts without digging through the reports and going directly to – and reading – the actual studies.

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I’m in LA now, visiting the kids.

I came up to the rooftop terrace to work, thinking I’d have a nice view of the hills and the valley. But there’s no view. Just a gray landscape beset by smog.

“No, it’s not smog,” this Latino guy that was cleaning up tells me. “It’s smoke. It’s coming from over there, where I live. It’s a lot worse over there.”

The streets are mostly deserted. The stores are closed – as are almost all of the restaurants, because they still don’t allow inside seating. Those that have tables outside are serving customers, but they are aren’t crowded. It looks like the city has given up.

So many of Hollywood’s apocalyptic movies were shot in LA. Here are two bits of B-roll that could be inserted into Blade Runner 3:

1.- Last night, I was sitting on the curb in front of the hotel, working and smoking a cigar. (They don’t like cigar smokers in California.) A homeless woman came up to me and stood by me, muttering. I tried to ignore her but she wasn’t going to go away. So I handed her a dollar. She took it and furiously ripped it up, threw it on the ground, and walked away.

2.- This morning, as I entered the hotel, two young Black guys who were exiting stopped me.

“That’s a Richard Mille,” one said, looking at my watch.

I acknowledged that it was.

“How much you pay for it? A buck twenty-five?”

I explained that it was a very early model and that I paid “only” thirty-five.

“That’s crazy!” he said. “Can I take a photo?”

“Sure,” I said.

He did.

“How much you want for it?” the other one said.

“Oh, I don’t want to sell it,” I said.

“I’ll give you eighty right now,” he said.

“You know your friend was talking thousands?” I said (only later realizing how racist that was).

“Hey, dude. I know watches,” he scoffed. “And I love Richard Mille. I’ll give you eighty-five thousand cash. Right now.”

I looked at him. He was dead serious.

What a town!

“Many nations use language simply to convey information, but it’s different in Ireland. With most conversational exchanges you get an ‘added extra’ like the free little biscuit you sometimes get with a cappuccino in a fancy coffee place.” – Marian Keyes

Eight “English” Words From an Unexpected Source 

When I got my Irish passport many years ago, I resolved to learn something about my ancestry. I read a bit of history. I reread some of the great Irish writers. And I listened to my favorite Irish singers – of which there are many.

But I also promised myself that I’d finally learn more about the language. And when I did, I discovered some very common Irish/Gaelic/Celtic words that have made their way into everyday English.

Here are 8 colorful – and useful – examples…

1. Galore

Galore comes from the Irish expression go leor. Leor means “enough” and go means “to.” So, literally, “to enough.” The word was rendered as galore in English in the early 1600s.

2. Hubbub

Hubbub is thought to come from the old Irish interjection Ub! Ub! Ubub!, which conveyed contempt. It may be related to the ancient Irish war cry Abu!

In England in the 1500s, before hubbub had the general meaning we know it by today, it was specifically associated with a certain kind of Irish rowdiness.

3. Phony

Although the exact origins of phony are unknown, it’s likely the word comes from an old con known as the fawney rig. Fawney is from an Irish word for “finger ring,” and rig is an old term for a “trick” or “swindle.”

Here’s how the con worked: The swindler would “accidentally” drop a cheap ring in front of their mark, or target. They would pick it up, while expressing relief that they hadn’t lost such a valuable piece of jewelry. And if they were lucky, they’d then sell it to the mark for much more than it was worth.

By the 20th century, the spelling of the word had been modified from fawney to phony.

4. Slew

Slew – meaning “a large number or quantity” – comes from the Irish sluagh, meaning “crowd, throng, army, or host.” In Irish folklore, the slua or sluagh are said to be restless ghosts or evil spirits, depicted as a flock of birds that cause trouble for the living by destroying property or killing domestic animals. (Yikes!)

5. Slogan

 Slogan comes from sluagh-ghairm, a word in Scots-Gaelic, a Celtic language spoken in Scotland that developed out of Middle Irish. As we just learned above, sluagh means “crowd, throng, army, or host.” Ghairm means “cry or shout.” Taken together, a sluagh-ghairm is the cry given by Celtic warriors in battle. Usually, these battle cries would be the last name of their clan or the name of their place of origin.

Sluagh-ghairm was adopted into English as “slogan” by the 1670s. By the early 1700s, the word was being used much the same way as it’s used today.

6. Smithereens

Smithereens is first found in Irish-English in the late 1700s. While its origin isn’t exactly known, it may come from smiodar, which means “fragment.” And –een is a diminutive suffix (which denotes something small).

7. Whiskey

Whiskey is short for whiskeybae, from the Irish uisce beatha or the Scots-Gaelic uisge beatha – both of which mean “water of life.” These terms, however, are ultimately translations of the Latin aqua vitae (also “water of life”), an even older name for alcohol. The word was adopted into English in the early 1700s.

Whiskey is also spelled whisky. The difference has to do with its country of origin. American and Irish producers spell it with the extra “e.” Canadian, Scottish, and Japanese distillers prefer “whisky.”

Sláinte! (Cheers!)

 And my personal favorite…

8. Craic

Craic (pronounced “crack”) is a Gaelic word with no exact English translation. Maybe something like fun/amusement/having a good time.

In Ireland, a fun night out could be said to be “good craic.” The expression “What’s the craic?” can be a casual greeting, like “What’s up?” In one of Van Morrison’s sung poems, there is an easily misunderstood line about spending a morning with a friend: “And the craic was good.”

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“Experience, contrary to common belief, is mostly imagination.” – Ruth Benedict

20 Maxims for Life 

When I first began collecting beer bottles, a friend of mine warned me that the experience of collecting anything is rewarding, seductive, and habitual. Unless I resisted its temptation forcefully, I’d end up with many collections and one day wish I would have kept to just the one.

He was right. Soon after I had lined my office wall with collectible beer bottles, I got into cigar lighters, rare coins, outsider art, vintage cars, fetishist carvings, Asian statuary, modern art, Central American art, and palm trees.

If I had stopped with objets, I might have had more time to actually enjoy them. But somewhere along the way, I began collecting ideas, too. Every day, for example, I find a word, a fact, and a quotation that I like and add each to my idea collection. I’ve accumulated thousands of them so far, with no clue as to what I could do with them.

And then I thought of the perfect thing: Share them with you!

So here’s a sampling of my “idea collection” – 20 of my favorite quotations that have to do with living a rewarding life.

 1.- Lao Tzu on contentment: “When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

 2.- Socrates on contentment: “He who is not contended with what he has would not be contended with what he doesn’t but would like to have.”

 3.- Louis Nizer on art and craft: “A man that works with his hands and brain is a craftsman. A man that works with his hands, and brain, and heart is an artist.”

 4.- George Orwell on communicating: “If you simplify your English… when you make a stupid remark, its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.”

 5.- Frank Lloyd Wright on the heart: “The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind.”

 6.- Martin Luther King on love and hate: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

 7.- Pearl S. Buck on joy: “Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.”

 8.- Leonardo da Vinci on learning: “Learning never exhausts the mind.”

 9.- Zig Ziglar on learning: “If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.”

10.- C. S. Spurgeon on anxiety: “Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.”

11.- The Bhagavad Gita on entitlement: “You are only entitled to the action, not its fruits.”

12.- Epicurus on wealth: “Self-sufficiency is the greatest form of wealth.”

13.- Ben Franklin on education: “The only thing more expensive than education is ignorance.”

14.- Brendan Behan on critics: “Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They’re there every night, they see it done every night, they see how it should be done every night, but they can’t do it themselves.”

15.- Charles Darwin on ignorance: “Ignorance more often begets confidence than knowledge does.”

16.- Saul Bellow on ignorance: “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is great.”

17.- George Washington Carver on a purposeful life: “No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it.”

18.- Bertrand Russell on manners: “The essence of good manners consists in making it clear that one has no wish to hurt.”

19.- Alan Simpson on integrity: “If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.”

20.- James Clear on making decisions: “If a decision is reversible, the biggest risk is moving too slow. If a decision is irreversible, the biggest risk is moving too fast.”

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 “Progress is exactly that which rules and regulations do not see.” – Ludwig von Mises

Is the Traffic Light a Menace to Society?

Traffic was heavy when the traffic lights went out. With hundreds of cars on Atlantic Avenue, the main thoroughfare in Delray Beach, it should have been a minor disaster, with honking and screaming, fender benders and eventually gridlock.

But it wasn’t. It was, in fact, a stress-free and inspiring experience. I reached the beach house, a four-mile trek, in record time. With a smile on my face?

What happened?

Without being told what to do, drivers were treating the intersections like four-way stops. Instead of relying on a traffic light to direct their stop-and-go decisions, they were using common sense and civility, and it worked. Not just well enough, but better than usual.

Every so often, someone would move out into the center when it wasn’t his turn. But since everyone was paying more attention than usual to the flow of traffic, this was not a problem. No one seemed upset with the rule breakers. We all seemed to have the same thought: “It must be someone scared and confused. No reason to make it worse by honking at him.”

This was not the first experience I’d had like this. Living in South Florida, it happens at least once a year. I’ve also had it a dozen times in Rome and Paris while driving through traffic circles.

I remember reading in a Malcolm Gladwell book about a town in Europe that removed all of its traffic lights and stop signs. The result: significantly fewer accidents than they had before.

In the past 10 or 15 years, there have been dozens of  studies that have come to the same counterintuitive conclusion: When it comes to traffic safety, less can be better than more. And not only because, in the absence of governance, everyone pays closer attention.

One example: In an effort to cut costs, officials in Detroit were considering removing more than 1000 traffic lights in the city. (Operating a single traffic light can cost a city upwards of $8000 a year.) Michael Schrader and Joseph Hummer, civil engineers at Wayne State University, were hired to look into the situation. They did an initial study of a sample of 100 of the lights. And of those 100 lights, they found that 21 could be replaced with a two-way stop and 24 could be replaced with a four-way stop, without any negative impact on traffic flow. Extrapolating those findings to the entire 1000+ lights deemed eligible for removal, they determined that 460 of them could be safely removed.

A side note: Schrader and Hummer pointed out that many of the signals that had not been eligible for removal were lights serving traffic between the city and the suburbs. “In effect,” they wrote, “a poor city is subsidizing the travel of residents of wealthier ones.”

Reid Ewing, who literally wrote the book on this subject (Traffic Calming: State of the Practice), pointed out that though stop signs may help make traffic flow in a more orderly fashion, they do not necessarily make it safer. “They don’t do a lot for speeding,” he said, “because there’s a tendency for drivers to make up for the lost time.”

And I found this on the NYC DOT website: “Studies made in many parts of the country show that there is a high incidence of intentional violations where stop signs are installed as ‘nuisances’ or ‘speed breakers.’ While speed is reduced in the immediate vicinity of the ‘nuisance’ stop signs, speeds are actually higher between intersections than they would have been if those signs had not been installed.”

Instead of stop signs and traffic signals, street safety advocates recommend speed humps or curb extensions – self-enforcing measures that force drivers to slow down.

So if traffic lights and stop signs are of limited use, why is it that they are being installed across the country at an ever-growing rate?

The answer, experts say, is simple: Citizens demand them.

And if the answer is that simple, you might be justified in asking (if you’ve read this far), why I have just written nearly 700 words on the overabundance of traffic lights and stop signs?

I have two answers:

First and most importantly, it’s to illustrate that government regulations, however well-intentioned, tend to become excessive and counterproductive unless there is a constant force to question them. Some are downright damaging, causing unintended harm that exceeds that which they were enacted to reduce.

And second, the cost of unnecessary regulations is much, much larger than most people think. In terms of traffic lights and stop signs in the US, it’s not millions of dollars, but billions. And once we move into other areas, such as public health and defense, these excesses amount to trillions of dollars – enough to feed millions of the world’s poorest people, with hundreds of billions left over for boondoggles. And where there is government, there are always boondoggles.

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“There is creative reading as well as creative writing.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

10 Books That Made Me Feel Smarter

(They Might Make You Feel Smarter, Too) 

Some books make you wiser. Some books make you kinder. Some books make you reconsider your beliefs. And some books make you feel – well, they make you feel smarter.

Here are 10 books that did that for me…

1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari 

I’m reading Sapiens now for the 3^rd time. It’s not really anthropology, although it’s framed that way. It’s a philosophical look at the nature of man and his belief systems.

The thesis: Human history has been shaped by three major revolutions – the Cognitive Revolution (70,000 years ago), the Agricultural Revolution (10,000 years ago), and the Scientific Revolution (500 years ago). We developed the ability to think abstractly during the Cognitive Revolution. It is what distinguishes us from other animals and has allowed us to command the planet. But, Harari points out, it’s not all good. Not by any means. Most of our core beliefs today are based on unconsciously accepted myths.

I rejected this last idea the first time I read the book. Now, I think it’s brilliant.

2. Ten Philosophical Mistakes

by Mortimer Adler 

Critics of this book, of which there are many, condemn it because it’s a criticism of the best-known Enlightenment philosophers (Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Kant) that, according to Adler, made some critical errors in their thinking – errors that lead to sloppy and dangerous ideas by the modern and post-modern philosophers that followed them. Adler’s recommendation: Stick to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.

I haven’t read Aquinas, but I’m a big fan of Aristotle. I wasn’t bothered by Adler’s critique of Hobbes and crew. In any case, this is a great primer on philosophical thought. If you’d like a thin book that can teach you a great deal about the major philosophical ideas beneath the dominant political and social ideas today, you won’t do better than to start with this.

3. Motivation in the Real World: The Art of Getting Extra Effort From Everyone – Including Yourself

by Saul W. Gellerman 

You’ll have trouble finding this book. I’m glad I made the effort. It is simply the best book I’ve ever read about group motivation and productivity. It was the first book I’d read on these subjects that made sense to me, that mirrored my experiences in business.

One of Gellerman’s key insights is that people generally, and employees in particular, are much less malleable than business management theories would have you believe. In fact, if you apply his logic to your own business, you may discover, as I have, that much of the commonly accepted “best” practices are useless at best.

If you can find it, buy it.

4. A Glossary of Literary Terms

by M.H. Abrams 

Sometimes definitions can provide more than just the literal rudiments of understanding. Sometimes they can unlock worlds of thought and history. That’s what Abrams’s classic glossary does. I was lucky. I read this when I was young. It helped me appreciate every work of fiction I’ve read or seen since.

5. Man’s Search for Meaning

by Viktor E. Frankl 

This is on many lists of important/influential books. And with good reason. Part memoir and part psychological treatise, Man’s Search for Meaning recounts Frankl’s experiences in a Nazi death camp and presents the philosophical and psychological theories he developed as a result.

At the time of the author’s death in 1997, the book had sold over 10 million copies and had been translated into 24 languages.

6. Economics in One Lesson

by Henry Hazlitt 

The first book on economics I ever read was Das Kapital, by Karl Marx, when I was in high school. I didn’t read it cover to cover. I was using it rather than reading it, using it to confirm the naïve ideas I had about economics back then.

I read Hazlitt 30 years later, after I’d had enough life experience to understand the fundamental flaws of Communism. Economics in One Lesson will be an eye opener for anyone that gets their economic theories from newspapers and magazines. It explains why so many of the most popular views about economic dysfunction are unsound and why social agendas will almost always fail. And it does so in the clearest and most reasonable way.

7. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

by Harold Bloom 

In The Western Canon, published in 1994, Bloom defends the idea that there is such a thing as a tradition of great thinking in Western literature by discussing the work of 26 writers whom he sees as exemplary.

They include William Shakespeare, Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, Miguel de Cervantes, Michel de Montaigne, Moliere, John Milton, Samuel Johnson, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Fernando Pessoa, and Samuel Becket.

What makes this book exceptional is Bloom’s criticism of what he calls The School of Resentment, which includes Marxist literary criticism, feminist literary criticism, New Historicism, Deconstructionism, and other post-modern idiocies.

8. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

by Malcolm Gladwell 

I have always been a fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s essays in The New Yorker. This was the first book of his that I read, and I was startled by it. It helped me understand how big money is made in business – not by coming up with “innovative” products but by jumping on a trend that has been around and percolating for years.

As I’ve said before, of all the marketing ideas I’ve heard over the years, this one was among the most useful.

9. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

by Robert Cialdini 

There is nothing here that any seasoned marketer doesn’t know at least as well as Cialdini, who is an academic. But he does such a good job of explaining his “principles of influence” that the book became, accidentally, a bestseller.

You see, Influence was originally positioned as a caveat emptor for consumers – i.e., watch out for these nasty tricks that marketers play on you. Consumers, understandably, had no interest in it. (Such books rarely sell more than 5000 copies.) But businesspeople loved it. They bought thousands and thousands of copies, using it, ironically, as a training manual for their marketers and salespeople.

10. Always Looking: Essays on Art

by John Updike 

I’ve been reading art criticism for more than 40 years. In my humble opinion, 90% of it is unbearable bullshit. And if you read criticism of the moderns, the percentage of BS is even higher. Maybe 99%. The only exception to this that I have found is the criticism of John Updike, the novelist.

Updike’s essays are a pleasure to read. They both inform you about the work and comment on it in a way that is not pretentious. He takes a phenomenological approach to criticism. He reports on each piece in terms of his own intellectual and emotional experience of it. He doesn’t make judgments. He makes observations. And most of them make sense.

The Importance of Reading the Right Books 

Coming from a family of teachers and writers, I’ve always believed that reading was a special kind of virtue. But since I’ve always had a touch of dyslexia, I could never match my role model readers: Frank and Joan, my parents, who could consume a 400-page book in a single sitting.

Still, I try to read one or two books a week, and I generally read about 60 to 80 books a year. That’s more than most people my age read, and much more than millennials, but it’s just a tiny fraction of the 700,000 to 800,000 books published in English each year.

Given how much there is to choose from, I remind myself that it’s quality, not quantity, that counts. The trick is to read the right books – the rare books that will make you in some way better than you were when you opened to the first page.

The above 10 books stand out in my memory as books that, as I said, made me feel smarter. They not only opened my eyes to different perspectives, they presented challenging ideas and helped me understand new ways to think. In retrospect, it doesn’t surprise me that they were almost all controversial in some way when they were published and, in some cases, still are.

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