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Friday, May 5, 2023, Delray Beach, Florida


Notes From My Journal

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Anonymous Giving

The Torah says that the highest form of charity is when the giving is done anonymously. One gives for the opportunity to help someone else, without any expectation of social recompence. When we donate to charities via email or mail, we are practicing that.

When the donations are considerable, like millions, one is tempted to be repaid by some form of acknowledgment, such as a plaque on a wall. The great majority of such plaques record for prosperity the name of the donor. A tiny percentage may attribute the gift to “Anonymous.”

(There’s a great episode in Curb Your Enthusiasm about this. Click here.)

There’s another kind of charity – a common form – that is a bit more selfless than getting one’s name on a plaque. I’m thinking of donating one’s time and/or money to charitable causes that do not award donors with recognition. One performs this sort of charity because one wants the benefit of feeling good about contributing to a cause that is virtuous.

And then there is the sort of charity that is anonymous in the sense that neither the donor nor the donee knows one another – random acts of charity, such as helping a stranger change a tire or giving money to a panhandler.

If the random donation is significant, it has the capacity to brighten up someone’s day. And the recompense to the donor is seeing that moment in the eyes of the recipient. I’ve been doing this sort of giving ever since my personal income exceeded my spending, and I can avow from experience that there is a very substantial benefit to the donor, one that can equal or exceed the value of the gift.

I’m hardly alone in this sort of giving. Millions of people all over the world perform random acts of charity every day. Recently, in fact, videotaping such exchanges has become a trope on social media that is fun to watch. You can find at least a dozen new examples on YouTube every day.

Here are two examples:

Click here.

And here.

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News & Views

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Is AI the End of the World? Or the Dawn of a New One?

Freddie DeBoer believes this “either/or” question, posed by Bari Weiss in The Free Press, is hype, meant to sell you on the idea that AI is something to wholeheartedly embrace:

“The very notion that the world is going to mostly go on the way that it has, always the best bet you can make, has been written out of the conversation,” he wrote in his blog. “It’s unthinkable that we might all be forced to continue to stumble along in the same mundane world, caught up in the same hazy fog we’ve all been caught in for so long.”

I get what he’s saying, but I think he’s wrong. I’m sticking with my lord and savior Elon on this: We shouldn’t take AI lightly.

Freddie’s remarks were made in response to an interview with Sam Altman, the man behind ChatGPT. Click here to read the interview.

And speaking of ChatGPT… here’s a good tutorial on how to use it.

 

A Skirt, a Wig, and a Glock-19 

Jewish American families have the lowest rate of gun ownership of any religious group. But that’s starting to change. And it’s not just the dads that are strapping on the weapons. Click here.

Yes, Orthodox Jewish women are packing heat… and Black women are doing it, too. Click here.

 

Are Harvard Students Smarter Than 5th Graders? 

This bit is fun to watch – a takeoff on a gimmick invented by one of the late-night hosts many years ago. In this case, it is especially interesting because (1) the people attempting to answer the questions are Harvard students, (2) the prize is a thousand in cash, and (3) all but one of the winners was a person of color.

Note: It was pitched as questions that a 5th grader could answer. I thought the questions were harder than that. But they weren’t all that hard. (I was able to answer all but one: “Who was the first US president to reside in the White House?”)

Click here.

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Health & Wellness

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The Statin Diaries: Can High Levels of Cholesterol Be Healthy?

I told you on Dec. 30 that ever since I began taking the statin drug recommended by my VIP doc, I’ve been needing more sleep, taking more naps, and feeling brain-fogged. I couldn’t say for sure that my fatigue was a response to the statin, but when I did some initial research, I discovered that fatigue and brain fog are responses reported by about 60% of those that use these drugs.

Since then, I’ve learned other things. One fact that especially bothered me is that, although statins definitely lower total cholesterol counts (primarily by bringing down high-density lipoproteins – the bad kind), they don’t have any positive effect on lifespan. Take them or don’t take them, your life expectancy is the same.

That didn’t sound right, and so I continued to look for articles and studies that contradicted this conclusion. But I could find none. I brought the question to a few of my doctor friends that prescribe statins. Only one, my cardiologist, had an answer that made some kind of sense. He said that yes, statins won’t extend your lifespan, but they have been proven to lower the risk of stroke and heart attacks.

I thought that was interesting. It suggests that even though statins won’t help you live longer, at least they will reduce the chances that you’ll be spending your remaining time on earth partially paralyzed and/or unable to speak.

This conversation with my cardiologist happened a week ago, so I haven’t had a chance to verify his stance. I’m looking into it now and will report my findings to you when I feel like I have some reasonable level of confidence in answering the life-expectancy question.

One thing I’m looking at now is a conversation between a doctor and a scientist who specializes in cardiovascular disease. They cover a broad range of topics related to statins and cardiovascular health, including some startling facts that challenge the conventional wisdom about cholesterol levels. High levels of overall cholesterol, they seemed to agree, is not necessarily an unhealthy thing.

In fact, for people in their seventies (like me), high cholesterol levels can be a considerable plus. You’ll see that in the attached video when, about half through, the scientist shows a graph of how statins affect mortality over various ages. And it turns out that people in their seventies with high cholesterol (and particularly high HDL) outlive people of the same age whose cholesterol counts are in the recommended range.

Imagine if that is true!

It will mean my chances of living longer will improve if I stop taking this drug that is tiring me out. I’m not drawing any conclusions right now. I’ll keep doing my research and will ask a few of my doctor friends what they think. But the results of this macro-study are giving me hope.

Check it out here.

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Worth Watching

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Fauda 

A 4-part (so far) Netflix series

Season 1 premiered (US) Feb. 15, 2015

There are two series that I’ve been watching steadfastly for the last two years. Trailer Park Boys, a goofy comedy about ne’er-do-wells living in a trailer park somewhere in Canada, is my go-to when I need a laugh. Fauda is what I depend on for excitement.

The Plot: 

After retiring from the Israel Defense Force (IDF), Doron, a former commander of the special unit, gets roped back into active duty to hunt for a Palestinian fighter he thought he had killed. The plan goes awry when the team’s cover is blown, setting in motion a chaotic chain of events. (Fauda is an Arabic word meaning “chaos.”)

Currently in its fourth season, Fauda was developed by Lior Raz, its lead star, and Avi Issacharoff, an Israeli journalist, drawing on their experiences in the IDF. It is perhaps the hottest Netflix import from Israel. It’s also the first Hebrew-and Arab-language series to make it big overseas.

You can watch the trailer here.

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Worth Listening

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“I rise at eleven, I dine about two,

I get drunk before seven, and the next thing I do…” 

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester 

Number Two Son sent the following link to me and my brother, a professor of ancient literature at Princeton. He said, “I thought you two would appreciate it… but you should listen to it in private…”

I was intrigued.

It was a poem by John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester, who lived during the reign of Charles II in the late 17th century. The poem itself, as you will see, is bawdy. But it is also technically impressive.

I love the idea that proficiency at writing verse might have been something that the king and his gentlemen friends considered important. In that sense, Wilmot is typical of a group of courtiers of his time that are now known as the Cavalier poets. (Although back then they were sometimes referred to as “roistering gallants.”) For these aristocrats, wit and poetry were considered de rigueur for their class, just as playing the pianoforte was expected of gentle ladies a century later.

(I took a few extra minutes to write that last paragraph because I wanted to see if I could sound like a Princeton professor. My brother said, “Not quite!”)

You can hear the poem beautifully read by Douglas Murray here.

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Fun and/or Interesting

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Cinco de What? Mayonnaise? 

Living in South Florida, I’ve had ample chances to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, which I assumed was a Mexican holiday of some historical event, presumably the day it won its independence from Spain.

Yes and no.

Cinco de Mayo does celebrate a military victory, but not against the Spanish. It was a victory over France at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. In fact, Mexico had achieved independence from Spain fifty years earlier.

Click here for more things you may not know about Cinco de Mayo.

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"Were it not for hypocrisy I’d have no advice to give."
"Were it not for sciolism I’d have no ideas to share."
"Were it not for arrogance, I’d have no ambition."
"Were it not for forgetfulness, I would have no new ideas to write about."