Harvard first year becomes youngest person ever to serve in Icelandic Parliament. Extra credit if you can spell her name.
Kohler can now run a bath with just a voice command. Need.
Forget giant asteroids, the Doomsday Glacier is coming for us all.
Next up in Ethiopia. Deepest bench in the world.
Politics, in the (dis)United States is similar to sports in that one of two parties wins each election, but politics is significantly different from sports because the parties’ policy differences directly impact our quality of life. When your favorite athlete or sports team loses, life goes on, the same as before. There’s far, far less at stake.
Politics is a never-ending contest to create more hopeful, opportunistic conditions in which people might thrive; while sports is about unfulfilled fantasies mixed with the delusion that you can will your team to victory and the temporal bragging rights winning accords you. The bragging rights are fleeting because after every season records are wiped clean and there’s a complete reset.
In politics, we’re at a point where each side almost instinctively questions one another’s sanity and humanity. In contrast, we don’t wonder how can a sane person be a Chicago Bears fan, a Minnesota Timberwolves fan, a Chelsea fan, a Duke fan? Well, maybe Duke isn’t the best example since any Carolina fan will tell you that Duke has a distinctively Republican vibe. But I digress. We know sports fans choose their teams based upon some mix of nostalgia and geography, not a sense of superiority.
In contemporary U.S. politics, resentments continuously build. Records are never wiped clean and there are never any resets. As the last 5-10 years so clearly illustrates, antipathy just builds and builds and builds.
It’s to the point now, where I believe many Republican opinion leaders care more about Democrats doing poorly in elections than they care about the country doing well. Undoubtedly, many Republicans suspect the same of many Democratic opinion leaders.
That myopia of only seeing electoral trees at the expense of the forest is distinct to politics. Sports fans don’t cheer when opposing players are injured. In fact, despite a minority of “boo birds”, the majority don’t root against the other team, they simply root for their “home” team.
Of course, the problem with my “less politics, more sports” plea is that political apathy enables incompetent and/or corrupt politicians to harm the common good even more. In the end, I’m advocating for being more sports-like in our politics. How about organizing and rooting for your team without demonizing the other one nearly as much. And for a change of pace, root for your country even more than your team.
Among many contenders. Leonardo, I mean Dr. Mindy, at the Last Supper, when he reflected, “We really did have it all, didn’t we?” “It” wasn’t the materialistic, resume building, status-driven hedonic treadmill that entraps so many. “It” was family life. “It” was being in nature. “It” was preparing meals together, telling stories, and enjoying food and wine. “It” was knowing a few people well. And “it” was being known.
A close friend asked my opinion on Netflix’s newest BIG budget film with an all-star cast.
Before watching “Don’t Look Up” I heard some of the buzz including the fact that half of people loved it and half hated it.
I’m firmly in the first camp, in fact, it’s easily among my favorite films of the year, if not the very best. At first, as I sat on my indoor bike as the credits rolled, I couldn’t imagine what the negative nellies were thinking, then it dawned on me. The film is a brilliant, hilarious satire of popular culture, but especially of our political landscape’s right wing. For the Pro-Trump, anti-vax, “Make America Great Again” viewers it had to have hit WAY too close to home. As is written in the Torah, “We see things not as they are, but as we are.”
At almost two and half hours, one reviewer who liked it said it was too long. He’s wrong, there are no lulls, it’s non-stop searing social commentary from the drop.
It’s also scary as hell. Not because of the asteroid heading towards earth, but because it feels like a highly credible glimpse into our near-term future as a deeply divided nation. The filmmakers predict our future is one where exorbitantly wealthy and deeply flawed individuals have a disproportionate effect on public life; politicians and scientists are powerless in light of those individuals; and things go from bad to worse with regards to social and traditional media.
Is it too late to emigrate to Canada? Is the border between our countries a sufficient defense against the downward spiral depicted in “Don’t Look Up”?
Some on Twitter would take exception to me labeling it a satire. They’re arguing it’s a science fiction film since Leonardo DiCaprio is married to an “age-appropriate” woman.
Must maintain a sense of humor.
According to Zvi Cohen. I know you’re burned out, we all are, but it’s an especially comprehensive, clear, level-headed, hopeful summary.
That kid in science class that was so smart they had a hard time relating to others of lesser intellect. Yeah, the one with thick hard plastic framed glasses that you weren’t very nice to. Your similarly insecure friends and you called her a brainiac and other not so nice things.
Remember losing track of her after high school? Probably not since since no one ever paid her much attention to begin with.
While you were spinning your wheels drinking too much and trying to “find yourself”, she completed three degrees in biology and other sciences. Threw in a post-doc for good measure.
Initially at least, you may wanna call her Doctor at the next reunion, but why would she attend given the grief your knucklehead friends and you gave her?
She’s a contact lens wearing tenured professor of epidemiology now with 162,000 twitter followers. Drives a Tesla Model S Plaid and knows more about viruses than all your high school homeboys and you combined. Turn on the right cable news station at the right time and you might catch her helping everyone who slept through science better understand covid’s innumerable complexities.
Finally, she’s the center of attention.
There is no vacation from reading. Indeed, some take the view that there’s no vocation, but reading.
The rich vs the very, very rich: the Wentworth Golf Club rebellion. The makings of a great novel.
The very, very rich vs the Mormon church. I’d read that novel too.
It’s time for car companies to shut up about electric vehicles and just ship them. Amen.
Norway’s most popular cycle route. Yes please.
Here’s what schools are doing to try to address students’ social-emotional needs. Shame on me, I shoulda lead with this.
I grant you that’s a strange question from me given my aversion to personality cults and celebrity culture. For some of you it’s probably me, but for me, it’s Desmond Tutu. Shook his hand in 1989 or 1990 when he visited Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I was teaching at an international school there. Not sure where the picture is.
Talk about leaving the world a better place. Rest in peace Desmond.
Pressing Pause 