I just rediscovered something I wrote ten years ago. Other than the anecdote, which is old but could still happen today, it's completely current.  And btw, why is it ridiculous to say that the most likely use for a firearm stored in the home (other than hunting or target practice) is suicide? It's just a fact. Maybe it's a fact you don't like, but it is, you know, true. Hed: How to Buy a Miracle Cure Dek: To make cures like gene therapy possible, the US will have to overturn everything we think we know about Economics 101 In 2014, Charlene Dill, a mother of 3 from Orlando who was e ..read more

As I have said, the Book of Proverbs is really several books smooshed together. (Is that the correct verb?) With chapter 10 we come to the next chunk. As far as I have been able to determine scholars don't really have a good idea about the origins of this or when it was composed. It does consist of those pithy two-liners that we usually think of as a "proverb." However, the content not theological. The rabbis who compiled the masoretic text considered excluding this from the canon, not only because of its secular nature but also because it contains contradictions and, well, inanities. Apparent ..read more

 ... and nobody cares what I think, which is why I have largely stayed above the vitriolic fray over whether Joe Biden should withdraw his candidacy for reelection. But now that the dust is settling I'll offer my 1 1/2 cents, just for the heck of it. I think he made the right decision. I think his physical and mental decline is evident -- I've seen it before, I know what it looks like. People who complained that the corporate media weren't paying proportionate attention to the manifest insanity and raving idiocy of his Republican opponent were missing the point. The cult doesn't care abo ..read more

Historically, the U.S. has regularly faced fraught political conflicts over immigration. I'm not going to recount all that history, I just want to keep in mind that controversy about this subject is definitely not new. What I will do here is try to sort out the issues, because there seems to be a lot of confusion. There are not just two kinds of immigration or immigrants, legal or illegal. It's more complicated. First -- and this is important so pay attention! -- the so-called crisis at the southern border is not about illegal immigration. The people who are massing along the border and who h ..read more

Chapter 9 is the conclusion of the first book that became part of the compilation now known as proverbs. Up until now wisdom has been personified as a woman. The figure of the married seductress was not explicitly labeled as folly, but perhaps that was the author's intent. In any case, a female personification of folly appears here. Both are presented as hostesses, but the language is highly figurative, so the intent of the author is often unclear and translations differ enormously. From Wikipedia: A foolish woman is clamorous; she is simple, and knows nothing.[19] Like Wisdom in the previous ..read more

One of the classic problems in the field of public health is that people's perceptions of risk do not remotely correspond to the provable numerical facts. There are a number of cognitive and social-cognitive biases involved. One of the most important is simply familiarity. More than 42,500 American died in car crashes in 2022, which is about twice the number who die of influenza in a typical season. Furthermore motor vehicle crashes are no respecter of age or previous state of health, unlike influenza and other infectious diseases, including Covid-19, that disproportionately kill people who ar ..read more

Literally. Chapter 8 asserts that wisdom is good and we ought to be wise. That's it. Of what does wisdom consist? No clue.  This is just utter, meaningless bullshit. I'll leave it at that. 8 Does not wisdom call out?     Does not understanding raise her voice? 2 At the highest point along the way,     where the paths meet, she takes her stand; 3 beside the gate leading into the city,     at the entrance, she cries aloud: 4 “To you, O people, I call out;     I raise my voice to all mankin ..read more

When Ronald Reagan had the good fortune to be shot by John Hinckley Jr., his presidency was headed for failure. He was widely unpopular, and his policy initiatives were failing in congress. Then, all of a sudden, the corporate media were fawning over him for the "grace" with which he responded to the event, he was  a national hero, and he went on to dominate politics for seven more years.  Hinckley had no political motive for trying to kill Reagan. He had schizophrenia, and he had the delusion that he could impress Jodie Foster by trying to assassinate a politician, because he was l ..read more

It seems my recent post on the randomness and contingency of history was well-timed. Some moron tried to kill Orange Julius and missed by an inch and a half. Just as John Hinckley Jr. was the best friend Ronald Reagan ever had,* this guy has done the Dumpster a huge favor. (At least he didn't turn out to be a transgender illegal immigrant.) But consider the alternate reality in which he had judged the wind correctly. I won't actually speculate about what would have happened, because there are too many other contingencies that would arise. But the point is, an inch and a half to the right and ..read more

I'll step on this shortly with another post but I wanted to get it out of the way.   The author of the book that became the first part of Proverbs obviously has an obsession with adultery. One guesses that somebody boinked his own wife and he's bitter about it, although it's also possible that he was the transgressor and got into trouble for it, since a lot of this consists of threatening bad consequences.  In any case, he purports in Chapter 7 to have observed events on the street outside his house, apparently with the benefit of a high quality directional microphone. This makes ev ..read more