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Pulling a Tom Sawyer

In The Pledge, I outlined something I once used to identify which of my many life ambitions corresponded with my unconscious values. I called it the Tom Sawyer Strategy. As in: If you could eavesdrop on your own funeral (as Tom and Huck Finn did in the Twain classic), what are the sorts of things you’d like to hear people say about you?

From my family, I would have liked to hear things about being a good provider and protector. From my business colleagues, it would have been about being smart and energetic. And from my friends, it would have been about being generous and loyal.

The reason to put yourself through this exercise is that you can identify the qualities you admire and want to emulate in each sphere of your life. You can then use what you discover to guide your decisions as time passes.

I still think it’s a good and useful practice. But I’ve come to realize that even if you do your best to behave in accordance with your core principles, you have no control over what those you leave behind think of you.

This little bit of anagnorisis has made its way into my mind several times over the decades. Just this past week, it came to me in an unexpected and frivolous way. AS, one of my golf buddies (most of them high school mates), told a very funny story about a friend of his vomiting. This prompted many other throw-up stories, each one funnier than the last.

It was all good fun. And I was very much enjoying myself when I recognized that more than half of those stories were about me. Me. Vomiting. I had forgotten what a sensitive stomach I had as a teenager. Apparently, my friends had not. And I realized that my lofty hopes of being remembered for my kindnesses or accomplishments would be forgotten. The stories told at my funeral would be soaked in vomit.

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Anagnorisis (an-ag-NOR-ih-sis) – from the Greek for “recognition” – is the point in the plot of a play at which the protagonist makes a critical discovery. As I used it above: “This little bit of anagnorisis has made its way into my mind several times over the decades.”

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Putting Out the Fire on the Gas Stove Debate

Have you heard all the hullabaloo about the danger of gas stoves? According to some, the emissions are causing asthma and other respiratory diseases in people (including children) exposed to them.

Really?

We’ve been using gas stoves for hundreds of years, and we’ve been studying all sorts of things that can cause disease. And yet, in all that time, we’ve never heard a word about gas stoves.

But now it’s in the news. And, like everything else that pops up in our newsfeeds, it’s become a political issue. Liberals are alarmed and want gas stoves banned or discontinued. Conservatives are saying, “Are you serious?”

I was happy to come across an essay on this hot-today-ice-cold-tomorrow topic in a recent issue of Peter Attia’s newsletter. Attia, in case you don’t know, is a doctor and a serious scientist whose work I’ve come to trust.

Here he is explaining the controversy and the science as we know it.

 

Is Book Reading a Dying Art? 

Americans are reading fewer books each year. According to a recent Gallup poll, the average American read 12.6 books in 2022, down from about 15 books ten years ago. The decline is steeper among college graduates, who read an average of 14.6 books last year versus 21 books ten years ago.

It’s not difficult to figure out why. Spend ten minutes on any form of public transportation, and you’ll see what’s going on. Back in the day – i.e., before the iPhone – most commuters that weren’t nodding off or ogling had their noses in books. Today, their eyes are fixed on their phones.

iPhones are especially seductive because they offer super-easy access to short-form media experiences. It’s free. It’s gratifying in its way. And that’s a shame. Because it is definitely dumbifying Americans.

That’s why I believe it’s important to make book reading a discipline. If you set a goal of reading one book a week, you will be way ahead of the pack.

On his website, Scott Young had this to say about the importance of setting that goal:

“Reading books is both a skill and a habit. As an acquired skill, reading is initially effortful but becomes easier as we become fluent, recognizing words and building background knowledge of the matters discussed. As a habit, reading is something we choose to do (or not) in our moments of downtime.

“But both skills and habits can atrophy. If you spend less time reading, it takes more effort to work through challenging texts. If you decide to read less often, choosing to read becomes more effortful. Reading books, and the opposite, can both become self-reinforcing actions – readers read more books, while nonreaders find it increasingly hard to do so.”

 

Cocaine, Crime, and Consequences

How Bukele Beat Back the Cartels in El Salvador

Since I first traveled to El Salvador 12 years ago, the country has visibly improved in many ways. One of the most obvious is that it’s now rare to see armed bodyguards accompanying government officials and businesspeople in public areas. Statistically, crime is down. And you can feel this improvement in the air. Compared to the past, being in public feels relatively safe.

The improvement is largely due to the administration of El Salvador’s young and charismatic president, Nayib Bukele. In his campaign, his strongest promise was to “go to war” with the drug cartels, defeat them, and then restore law and order to the country.

This is a claim that has been made by Salvadoran presidential candidates for decades, as it has been for presidential candidates in Mexico and several other Central American countries. Until now, none of those promises had been achieved. It’s arguable that none had even been honored. The exception is Bukele. Against all odds, he seems to have accomplished the impossible: successfully defeating the dominance of the drug cartels.

Of course, this story is far from over. Bukele’s growing popularity (even with many opposition voters) is giving him more power. The challenge for him now will be to resist the urge to use that power to turn El Salvador into a dictatorship. We will have to wait and see.

Click here for a very good account of the situation that was sent to me by LC.

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Freddie deBoer 

Freddie deBoer is a writer, an academic, and a self-proclaimed Marxist. I began following him after a friend recommended him to me as having an “interesting and independent” mind.

I’ve read a dozen pieces by him so far, and I think my friend’s description is fair. There is very little that deBoer says that I embrace wholeheartedly, and much that I vehemently disagree with. But I never feel like I’m listening to politically manufactured bullet points when I read his arguments.

Here’s an example: He talks about how and why the political Left split in two after 2016.

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The COVID Response: What We got Wrong.

The CDC on Mortality Counts: “Okay, You Caught Us!” 

The CDC is finally adjusting its mortality count to correct for its absurdly disingenuous and misleading decision, at the beginning of the pandemic, to instruct hospitals and coroners to report any deaths that occur WITH COVID as deaths FROM COVID.

I’ve told you about a study that looked at past CDC mortality rates and recalibrated them, adjusting for this absurdity. That study estimated that the CDC exaggerated deaths from COVID by 70% to 90%!

Perhaps because they know “the truth will out,” the CDC has come out with new mortality rates of their own. The new numbers are about 40% less than they reported, or about half of what the study suggested. I wouldn’t be surprised to see another retroactive “adjustment” in a year or two, bringing the numbers down to what they should have been all along. We’ll see about that.

But even at the 40% adjustment, the COVID mortality rate comes to roughly 64,000 deaths per year. That’s not nothing. It’s like a very severe flu. But it pales in comparison to the top four ways to die in America:

* Heart Disease – about 700,000 per year

* Cancer – about 600,000

* Accidents – about 225,000

* Stroke (cardiovascular diseases) – about 160,000

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Good Cop? Bad Cop? You Tell Me 

This is, IMHO, a good cop acting badly. Click here.

Here is a cop trying to do his job. But he’s being a bit of a bully. Everything he’s doing, according to a retired cop friend of mine, is within the range of what most cops used to think of as normal. “We were taught that to stay safe you had to take immediate control of every encounter with civilians. And that the only way to do that was to be dominant.”

In recent years, this approach is becoming less common because civilians are getting educated on their 2nd and 4th amendment rights. And they have dash-cams and iPhones to record their encounters.

In this case, you have what I believe is a cop trying to bully his way through an encounter. But the civilian is standing up for himself. Everything the cop does incriminates him and exculpates the civilian.

It’s not going to be easy, but the police are going to have to figure out a way to establish control within the limits of their constitutional power.

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Re the Mar. 28 issue: 

“Check out this article. It ties in with what you’ve been saying about the government’s position on the COVID vaccines. (These people are, irredeemably evil!)” – G

“A bummer about killer bees in your owl houses. One idea that might help is putting glasses of beer for the killer bees to drink. That’s worked for me in the past with stinging not-sweet bees.” – AD

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It was hard to get my head around this video: “Armed Chicago Woman Shoots Man Attempting to Rob Her, Now His Family Is Suing for 10 Million.”

But it was easy to get behind this one: “Florida Woman Fights Off Attacker Inside Apartment Gym.”

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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."