Here’s the headline: Columbia grads tear up diplomas to protest school, Mahmoud Khalil arrest: ‘I’m not a proud alumni at all’—Chris Nessi. NY Post. March 30, 2025


Notice anything? Yes in this Age of Disnumbred Pronouns and Illogical Antecedents, when He can be They and She can be Them, Columbia graduate Amali Tower, made the statement Nessi quotes. Sometime, one might think, during the course of a four-year university education at a prestigious school, Amali should have come across the feminine version of alumnus, i.e., alumna. Maybe at her graduation in 2009? And maybe Amali Tower heard at sometime that alumni is the plural for men in particular and for all graduates in general and that alumnae is plural for female graduates. Doesn’t matter. Amali has just ripped up the diploma. Duh, dat dat dahhh daaa, daaa, da dat dahh dahhh.(You know the melody)


So, four years and who can add up how much money for room, board, and all those and items like books for an education all gone in a meaningless symbolic act. Why “meaningless” symbolic act? Well, if Amali needs to prove to a future employer that she graduated from a college, she need only pay a small fee for the school to make a duplicate. Heck. Columbia is so flush with endowment, the school might even print one free of charge. And bypassing paper documentation, there’e always email from the school’s office of records.


But show is all. So, a group of Columbia graduates ripped up their diplomas in a public show of support for a noncitizen who stirred up a campus with unrest, building takeover, harassment of Jewish students, disruption of classes, and general turmoil that included writing graffiti on those sacred ivy-covered campus walls.


I suppose that the diploma-rippers have sincere beliefs that their purpose is just and their actions justified. But I question the nature of an act so easily undone by necessity, that is, the necessity of proving that college education to an employer. And if those diploma-rippers have lifetime jobs that they’ll never abandon till retirement, then what’s the significance of the ripping. In a permanent job, one doesn’t have to prove that degree exists. That’s a fait accompli.


But, as I wrote above, the show is all. Which of the probably relatively wealthy Columbia diploma-rippers has pout money behind the act? Who among them has financially. Supported the Palestinians they say are in need?

It’s hard for me to understand
How others join to give a hand
To those protesting Elon’s brand
By vandalizing someone’s car
In protests now both near and far.
“Why he’s a fascist,” so they say,
“And Trump’s a tyrant, by the way.”


It seems they want the status quo
That gives the taxed both grief and woe
And causes them to work for naught
To pay for this or that whatnot.
And so they gather round the globe.
I ask, “Is each a technophobe?
“I thought the Left was for EVs,
“And all that tech they say relieves
“The Earth from warming fossil fuels.
“Alas, they seem to be such fools.”


The count is not complete just yet,
But 80 owners now regret
They bought a car to do their part
To change the world; it seemed quite smart.
But after raging Leftists burned
Some 80 cars because they spurned
What they once praised and did embrace,
The owners wonder where to drive
A Tesla that can just survive
The damage done in random acts
By vandals roaming in wild packs.


“Is burning cars a Liberal trait?”
I ask, “And what can drive destructive hate
“Toward Tesla owners and their cars?
“Is it the man who’s reached the stars?
“The guy who wants to go to Mars?”
“Or are the vandals willing pawns
“Of foreign actors and their cons?
“Or even puppets pulled by wire
“By libs who can’t relinquish ire
“They have because they’re losing cash,
”The taxes that filled up their cache?”

Whatever purpose they hold dear,
Their object seems to me quite clear;
The mob just wants the good to fear.

Boo hoo. Columbia is now hard pressed to eliminate antisemitism on campus. If the university doesn’t adopt a practical plan, Trump will withhold about $400 Million in federal money (actually, if you are a taxpayer, it’s your money).


Well, as you might guess, the school has scrambled to rectify antisemitism that was years in the making. Whether or not the new plans, which include increased numbers of campus police and more patrols added to investigative and disciplinary committees and tribunals, will satisfy Trump, the DOJ, and Jewish students and alumni remains to be seen.


So, what was at stake at Columbia? What were the 400 million dollars going to buy you? How about taming the climate crisis? You want that, don’t you? Or are you some MAGA dolt who thinks that climate change isn’t an existential crisis? (If you can understand what “existential climate crisis” means, that is, given your inability even to sign your X account “X”). But if I might assume you are interested in what Columbians have to say at your expense…


Taming the Climate Crisis?


Fortunately for those of us still trying to learn which side of an umbrella is up, the folks at Columbia Climate School, where they discuss “Climate, Earth, and Society” while drunk on latte, have produced a document online called a “State of the Planet.” Hold on, Buckaroo, you’re about to go on a wild ride at the academic rodeo.


A bunch of really bright people gathered for a symposium to discuss among other topics how AI might “tame the climate crisis.” * Among them was Adam Sobel, who said,“What’s happened now is that the AI [weather prediction] models—which essentially didn’t exist something like five years ago—have become as good by many metrics or even arguably better by some than the [traditional] physics-based models.” Let’s give that a think. How have those “metrics” worked for us so far? Remember all those IPCC predictions for 2020 made back in 2000? Which one of them has come true? Consider also the actual measurements fudged by “climatologists” who extrapolated (and still extrapolate) data from nonexistent weather stations and from weather stations under the dome of urban heat islands. Or consider proxy measurements that are not quantities that engender faith in their accuracy plus or minus a degree or three. And finally, consider the ass backward historical record that shows some carbon dioxide increases occurred after an increase in temperature.


Sitting on the stage with Sobel was Dustin Rubenstein, a self-proclaimed “behavioral ecologist” (? was my first thought), who said, We can use images to capture individual zebras—I think that was the first species because they have almost a barcode, like a fingerprint—and you can make really good population projections and follow those animals and see where they go, so to see what happens during droughts or periods of land use change ….” You followin’ this?


I think I get it. If you know how an individual zebra, errrr, person behaves, you can extrapolate how a population of zebras, errr, people will or might behave. Rubenstein (Is he a Jew at Columbia? Good for him. Good for Columbia, a seat of antisemitism. Maybe things aren’t as bad as…nah)—but in truth, I knew a Catholic priest named Father Goldberg, so, what’s in a name? as Juliet asks), as I was saying, Rubenstein goes on to say, “we can scale up from actual individual level variation and differences up to populations, up to ecosystems, and make much better projections of how organisms are going to respond to change.” That seems reasonable, but, I see two problems:


    1) We humans don’t always act in our self interest or even in the interest of our survival and
    2) The notion of a “crisis” isn’t a physical phenomenon.


Crisis is a human thing, a perception. One man’s crisis is another man’s transgenderism. That is, one country’s drought isn’t another country’s. Rain not falling on your umbrella is falling on someone else’s. Warmer temperatures might mean that farmers who plant hard red spring wheat might have to switch to planting hard red winter wheat. The timing of the harvest, not the quantity of wheat, might change. Crisis is a human thing. Crises are met with varying attitudes from indifference to panic. Want to tame the “climate crisis”?


Tame the people who have panicked over the past thirty years that the world is coming to an end because no matter what the people gathered at the last 29 conferences (COP 1-29) have said or proposed, they have no more control over climate change than the Vikings did as Greenland turned from warm to cooler temperatures and the Northern Hemisphere transitioned from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age.


Artificial Intelligence, even quantum AI, can run every simulation to arrive at a reasonable and practical solution, but as I have written before, some would-be Rodion Raskolnikov will screw things up simply because he believes he can. (Think of those who attack Tesla dealerships and vandalize owners’ Teslas to achieve—what? Didn't some of those Tesla owners buy their cars to save the planet? Aren't they being punished for their altruistic purchases?) You want a cooler world? Someone else wants a warmer world—thus all those old snowbirds living at The Villages in Florida. You want a carbon-free energy system? Someone else wants cheap energy derived from fossil fuels. Someone who owns millions of tons of coal wants to profit from that resource. Some country called China or India will buy and burn.


That $400 Million


I might be wrong in assuming that you and I paid for the symposium on taming the climate change crisis. But if we did pay with federally distributed taxes, what, Buckaroo, did we get for our bucks?



*News from the Columbia climate School: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2025/03/11/ai-climate-crisis-event/

Frankly, reader, I never knew there was a job for “futurist.” Sure, I knew that there were many secular prophets, prophecies, and “books of revelation,” but “futurism? Making money for suggesting possibilities?

​Suggesting probabilities makes sense because those are near term. But yes, there are actually people who make money “researching” the future. Is this the epitome of modern paradoxes? After all, the suffix re means “back” or “again.” How does one research that which has not happened? Would-be Nostradamuses take note. There’s a job for you in some university like Cambridge, the ivory tower that houses Richard Watson, a “futurist.”


The Complexity in Futurism Stems from the Complexity in Presentism


It’s intellectually dangerous to make predictions that are supposed to reach their fulfillment within a human lifetime. “Hey, didn’t you say we would all live in a single building in Dubai by now?” “Didn’t you predict that everyone would be dressed in exoskeletons to increase human strength ant-like? And didn’t you say we would see people living on Mars and in other dangerous places like American inner cities? What happened to those predictions?”


Same could be said in retrospect for Al Gore’s dire predictions about rising seas, dying polar bears, and unending droughts that have been inconveniently interrupted by atmospheric rivers. (Did you know there’s more water in Earth’s air than that contained in America’s rivers? Yep,  3.75 million-billion gallons—3.75 X 10^15 compared to 10^14 gallons. Never shy away from trivia, but don’t become a Cliff Claven, the Cheers character played by John Dezso Ratzenberger)


Anyway, Al Gore’s apocalypse did not occur as he predicted. Eustatic changes (sea level) have been millimeter size if accurately measured; most polar bear groups are flourishing, and recent snowfall and rains in California have inundated the droughty conditions that have occurred on and off in the American Southwest for centuries and even millennia. (Note that where cold ocean currents run off the western sides of continents, semiarid conditions prevail and that where mountains interrupt prevailing winds, deserts lie on their lee sides—the Mojave, Death Valley)


Gore and other climate alarmists made the mistake of predicting events that would occur in the lifetimes of the living. The mantra “only 8 to 12 years left because of climate change” intoned by people like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez  in 2019 puts the credibility of people in jeopardy. Let’s see, 2025 minus 2019…Holy Heat Wave! You realize you have only a half dozen years to put your affairs in order! (But then, in order for what or whom if everything will end? “Dear Children, I’d leave you stuff, but you won’t be around to enjoy it”)


So, there’s a social danger in predicting: History will scoff at failed prophets who said the world would end. I think of Harold Camping, the guy who had to revise his end of the world predictions more than once, his last big prediction being October, 2011. Camping had his own end of the world in 2013) Skirting social jeopardy, Watson, that Cambridge futurist I mentioned above, has laid out a “risk radar” and an “extinction timeline” that identify possibilities, such as those associated with current trends. He has also made an intricate mind map labeled “Mega Trends and Technologies 2017-2050: A Mind Map to
Stimulate Discussion about Current Events and Possible Trajectories.” *


Watson’s complex”Mega Trends” mind map has 16 categories of trends: Society, Work, Economy, Money, Food, Technology, Retail, Environment, Media, Transport, Politics, Energy, Education, Health, Security, and Values. You can peruse the map on your own (see link below), but I’ll point to some predictions here. In the last stages of development under “Work” is “First person fired by an algorithm.” In the category of “Politics” is “Open borders.” (Didn’t western countries just have those?) In “Education” the last stage is “Gamification.” (Hasn’t that happened already with no improvement in learning regardless of the number and types of games employed in classrooms and online courses?)


Your Predictions?


We plan; we adapt; we make new plans. Look at the old Soviet Union. The Soviets generated new five-year plans every three or four years.


Sometimes, we just wait for things to happen. Often we need to radically change plans because of new opportunities or roadblocks. On my car’s navigation screen the other day, this message popped up: “Emergency vehicle ahead.” Nope, I never encountered it. On a trip along I-95, I received the navigation warning “Accident ahead, take detour, the nav system directing me to some side roads. The accident? Never saw it as I traveled parallel to I-95. Went out of my way for nothing.


Life’s like that. Think of all those billions spent on climate change. Think of all those anxiety-driven people worried about climate change. They are half way to climate doom if they believe the alarmists’ mantra of 2019. And when they get to 2031 to find the world is pretty much as it has been for the last ten thousand years of Interglacial Period, then what? Still commit to spending a trillion or more dollars to fight climate change? Still blame climate change for that occasional category V hurricane? Still blame climate change for migration, forest fires, cold weather, warm weather, tornadoes, dengue fever, wars, droughts and floods, crime, plagues, animal extinction, plastic pollution, coral demise and reef proliferation…


It’s difficult enough for us to predict our own futures. As Robert Burns wrote in his poem “To a Mouse” and William Faulkner adopted for Of Mice and Men :


In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
          Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
          For promis’d joy!


Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
          On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
          I guess an’ fear!


Thus, each of us can look back to see foiled plans. And each of us can hope without certainty for an ideal future now made even more uncertain by Artificial Intelligence that can enhance or disrupt our “best laid schemes.”


*University of Cambridge website. “This Cambridge Life” page: The futurist who'd like the future to slow down - just a …; Mega Trends and Technologies 2017-2050 - Infographics Archive ; https://www.infographicportal.com/risk-radar-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/

Let’s start with an American governor and recent VP candidate Tim Walz. At a recent gathering, he said, "Some of you know this. On the iPhone, they’ve got that little stock app. I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day — $225 and dropping, And if you own one, we’re not blaming you. You can take dental floss and pull the Tesla thing off.” (Crowd: Yuk, Yuk, Yuk) The former football coach, caught criticizing an American company whose auto workers make an American car, danced back his comment, probably because of criticism, saying, "I was making a joke. These people have no sense of humor. They are the most literal people.” *


Really, “These people”? This from a member of the intolerant Left whose sense of humor is relegated to making fun of conservatives to the exclusion of Democrats. This from someone whose party cancels anyone who makes a remark about the Left.   


Walz didn’t stop with his hatred (envy?) of Tesla, a company whose stock downfall he seemed to relish while his own state’s employees’ pension fund owns 1.6 million Tesla shares. He added the typical Democrat mantra: If I were rich, I would…What, Tim? Feed the hungry, Tim? Buy everyone a house? Maybe as car? (But not a Tesla) Walz said, "Maybe it's just me. If I'm the richest man in the world, I'm like out on the streets handing out money. It'd be fun as hell just to help people out. Go help people out. Not this guy.” Seems Tim never learned that apothegm that about giving a man a fish or teaching a man to fish.


Walz seems to be unaware that since Johnson’s Great Society, the government has spent more than a trillion dollars in handouts without much effect. But Tim would—if he were rich—give away cash. Noble. Liberal. Democrat. Especially with someone else’s money.


It’s an argument my late dear Democrat dad used to make. Rich people have everything. The implication is that they should share their wealth. An argument that my late dear African-American and successful brother-in-law countered with, “When is the last time a poor man wrote you a check?” His point? Yes, the rich are sometimes inordinately wealthy, but many of them took risks, built businesses, and hired employees, providing them with livelihoods sufficient for them to live a Middle Class life, all being capable of feeding, clothing, and housing their families and sending children off to college. Well, maybe not to the extent of Tim Walz  who reportedly withdrew $135,000 from a pension fund to send his daughter to college. That’s a sizable junk of change to liquidate. Anyway, with my brother-in-law, I would say to my dad, “Wealth is relative. You don’t live in a mansion, but you do own a house, car, and have money for vacations. You are richer than most of the world’s population. Isn’t it possible that someone out there, seeing what you have, envies your wealth?” Of course, the argument fell on deaf (literally because he needed hearing aids) ears. He, bless his soul, hated Republicans and the business owners he said made up their base.


Walz’s audience laughed when he joked about Tesla’s falling stock. I would hazard that many of them or members of their families have pensions tied to Tesla and other large companies. And that makes me wonder whether the Democrat base, so hung up on hating the evil wealthy, has an inordinate number of fools, hypocrites, and dunces. That’s harsh, I know, and no doubt could be directed toward members of the Republican Party, also. But certain realities weigh heavily on Democrat values and policies. Apparently, it is all right for billionaires to support Democrats and for the disparity in wealth to have increased during the Biden years, but not okay for billionaires to support Republicans. It is all right for people to burn someone else’s property, to deface a dealership, and to smash someone’s car. Funny, right? Good humor for a late night talk show host like Jimmy Kimmel.


I didn’t want to write this blog. I suppose I allowed emotion to govern. In doing so, I reduced myself to the level of Tim Walz and others in his Party who have expressed joy in others’ downturns. But the hypocrisy on the left keeps inserting itself into the daily news that I foolishly peruse.


Is there a way to judge evenly the actions and value of Right and Left? The Left can’t stop bringing up the January 6 mob action. I’ll admit it was a mob, and like all mobs, it ran out of control. But what does the Left support? Riots and looting? Vandalism and support for murderers and torturers? Antisemitism? The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua? Open borders and the free flow of fentanyl? Government waste and fraud? Allowing terrorists to threaten world shipping? A corrupt FBI and Justice Department that went after parents at school board meetings, Catholics who attended latin Masses, and pro-lifers who sang on sidewalks?


Yuk it up, Tim. And get that audience to hate even when their hatred is aimed at their own retirement funds. You’re a liberal, so whatever you do must of its very nature be better and smarter than what anyone on the Right does.    



*https://www.foxnews.com/politics/tim-walz-cheers-tesla-stock-tumble-mn-state-employees-pension-owns-over-1m-shares

"MANIC MICKEY: Urgent tourist warning as pics show Mickey Mouse pose with beaming fans--moments before launching horror knife rampage"--The Sun, Mar 20, 2025 

The incident occurred in Naples, Italy.
​Coffee shop in Naples: Napoletano (N) and Il tourista (T)

N: "Ti piace Napoli?” (How are you enjoying Naples?)


T: Traffic is challenging, but I love the city and people. And the Volcano! Wow! So close I wonder what might happen if it ever erupted.


N: In realtà… (Actually…)


T: I mean, look, it’s really close to the city.


N: Hai visitato le rovine? Sei stato a Pompei? (Have you seen the ruins? Pompei?)

​T: No, not yet. But I did see Mickey Mouse on the street. Got a picture with him. Didn’t cost much. I have one with me and Mickey in Disney World. I didn’t know Italians knew…


N: Lo sai che Topolino ha minacciato dei turisti con un coltello? (You know that Mickey Mouse threatened tourists with a knife.)


T: No, you mean…


N: Proprio come negli Stati Uniti, non si può mai dare nulla per scontato quando si è per strada in una grande città. Truffatori e persone pericolose sono ovunque, pronti ad approfittarsi degli innocenti. (Just like in the USA you can never assume anything when you are on the streets of a big city. Grifters and dangerous people are everywhere ready to prey on the innocent)


T: But street actors and impersonators are everywhere, Vegas, New Orleans…


N: Il nostro Topolino sembra essere un pericolo. Più pericoloso del Vesuvio. (Our Mickey Mouse seems to be a danger. More dangerous than Vesuvius)


T: You mean while I was getting a photo with Mickey Mouse with the volcano in the background, he could have stabbed me?


N: Si. (Yes)


T: Have they caught him?


N: Hanno la sua descrizione. Orecchie grandi su una testa da topo fuori misura. Niente coda. È stato visto l'ultima volta mentre correva dentro un buco tra le rovine (They have his description. Big ears on an oversize mouse head. No tail. Last seen running into a hole in the ruins)


T: Certainly, the police will catch him.


N: Forse. Non avete anche voi molti criminali che girano liberamente per le strade di New York? Maybe. (Don’t you have many criminals walking freely on the streets of NYC?)


T: Yes. We do. But we catch them first, and then allow them back on the street.


N: Niente carcere a lungo? (No long jail sentence?)


T: No, not even for repeat offenders.
___


Two comments.


First, as many Lifetime dramas reveal, appearances often mask evil (No, I don’t watch them from start to finish, but while she works in the kitchen, my lovely spouse sometimes turns Lifetime on rather than see depressing news stories endlessly repeated. I guess fictional stories of evil are more palatable than real stories) In a typical daytime drama, some “nice” guy or babysitter gloms onto an innocent person who discovers by the end of the movie that the appearance hides a monster—whom the innocent person ultimately kills during a struggle with a knife.  It’s a lesson about masks we try to pass onto younger generations with little effect. Even we adults are often fooled, as Bernie Madoff proved.


Second, we struggle with the limitations we impose on society. How much freedom do we tolerate? The question becomes a problem when our safety is a concern. Obviously, the politicians in New York whose policies allowed judges to release repeat offenders, have at least indirectly been complicit in ensuing victimization. So, enforcement is an issue, but usually only an issue for those additional victims of crime, victims that might have been safe with a perpetrator behind bars. The politicians and judges not personally affected go on their merry ways steeped in impractical ideologies. The judges who want to prevent the removal of dangerous criminal aliens from American soil fall into this category. They wold not, I’m sure, hold the same position if their wives and daughters were attacked by a Venezuelan gang.


I guess I have a third comment. The TDS media seem not to understand the dangers imposed on Americans by illegal alien criminals. They see characters dressed as an innocent Mickey Mouse. Those who understand human nature know the costume can hide a monster. I am not calling for pessimism, rather for practicality. Keep your head on a swivel.     

We pride ourselves on our mental acuity and wisdom. We flaunt it, for example, and we judge others on our perception of their intelligence. Take Congresswoman AOC as an example of one who haughtily judges another’s brain power. She declared Elon Musk to be a dumb billionaire, the dumbest she knows…er…the dumbest “I know about.” That stuff about electric cars and rockets that return to be captured by gantry arms aside, sure, wouldn’t we all agree that he is dumber than a woman who conned an entire party into voting for a Green New Deal that could cost a trillion bucks with no guarantee of its changing world temperatures by a fraction of a degree while burdening the US economy? Yes, we can certainly judge one another on our supposed intelligence, on our “brain power.” AOC off-the-charts-wise; Elon Musk not-even-on-the-chart of intelligence according to AOC.   


If you are just a fraction as smart as AOC, then you might be concerned about humans having reached the peak of brain power. What we’ve become is in decline apparently. You’re doomed to sit on that stool in the corner, wearing a dunce cap and staring at a wall.


Is It a Plateau or a Slippery Slope?


Thus the question posed in Financial Times by John Burn-Murdoch: “Have humans passed peak brain power?” Whatever that means to you, Burn-Murdoch writes that we are looking at a decline “in human capacity for mental focus and application.” * Seems those 250,000 years of human evolution we shared with other human species have come to a halt. Never mind that you can drive, turn on the turn signal, look for oncoming traffic, and listen to the radio while at the same time glancing at our coffee cup in the cup holder. We’ve peaked; you’ve peaked. The reserves are gone. We ain’t goin’ no further. Our days of rising mental abilities are over, so we might as well just give in to AI and to the AOCs to call us out for our mental decline. It’s apparently all down hill from here for the rest of us if the genius behind SpaceX is “dumb.”


Evidence


Is there any evidence that we are a species in mental decline? Well, take the story of Michael Garcia, the recipient of a $50 million lawsuit against Starbucks. * Poor guy—or maybe world’s smartest guy. Michael picked up an order of hot coffee from Starbucks and spilled it into his lap. Shades of 1994! Reminiscent of the coffee burns suffered by Stella Liebeck at MacDonald’s and her subsequent award of $3 million. What’s a bit of scalding if the payoff is so good?


So, how stupid are we? Depends on how we judge, or rather on what we base our judgments. Obviously, from the perspective of history, we haven’t learned the lesson that hot coffee is…hot. That lesson could have been learned by anyone who knew of Lieback’s incident and the Seinfeld episode in which Kramer suffers a similar hot coffee scalding after hiding the coffee in his pants to sneak it into a theater. Dumb or smart? Dumb, I suppose, if there’s no multimillion dollar restitution awarded by some jury with a mind to punish a corporation for the action of a kid in an apron standing at a drive-thru window. But what of the jury’s smarts? $50 million!?!?!? How do 12 people come to that conclusion?    


In 1994 Liebeck’s $3 million award was over the top, but a jury’s collective brain just awarded $50 million for an action that was just as much the fault of the plaintiff as it was of the barista who failed to put the lid on tightly. The size of the award begs the question asked by Burn-Murdoch. Tell me now, do you hold hot coffee over your lap while driving? Do you even care how you handle hot coffee handed to you at the drive-thru? How do you not handle hot coffee with care? Humpf. There! Point proven. Brain capacity in decline. Humans incapable of understanding and focusing. Decline in application of intellect for sure. (If you do hold hot coffee over your lap, by the way, sit in on that stool in the corner and stare at the wall)


“No joke,” as former President Biden is wont to say before drifting off into…zzzzz or to some totally unrelated topic. Speaking of mental decline…


I suppose the annual Darwin Awards are further evidence of a downward trend in application. If not in focus. We all do dumb things, but some actions are dumber than others, resulting in serious injury or death. The number of annual Darwin awards seems to be proportional to or indicative of the decline in brain power.


But Is It Failure to Think or Failure to Learn?


Maybe, however, in wishful thinking, I might say that it isn’t reaching a plateau or starting a decline in brain power that characterizes us. Instead, our failure to learn lessons already taught makes us seem less focused. Is there a universal ADHD or universal ignorance? A crowd of college students imbibing on a narrow and insufficiently supported college house balcony is a crowd destined to learn something about architecture and gravity the hard way. Teens train- or car-surfing exhibit the same folly. The tragedies associated with spring breakers who go off to dangerous lands or take foolish risks with alcohol, precipices, or oceans are examples that never seem to get passed on to the next freshman class. “Here, Pledge, guzzle this entire bottle of cheap whiskey if you want to belong to this fraternity.” Glug, glug, glug. Alas, I preach to the choir because you made it through life’s perils self-imposed or placed into your path by accident or design.


Consider those self-imposed tragedies associated with taking Selfies that seem numerous: Marianka Swain of The Telegraph reports that up to 480 people lost their lives while they took pictures of themselves on precipices or next to dangerous animals. * Here’s a story someone  told me. (Anecdote alert, dive, dive, dive). At a beautiful resort in Orlando where I recently visited friends, alligators inhabit two small lakes on the property. A fellow I chanced upon said that last year a woman went down to the water’s edge to take a series of Selfies with the alligators. Walking up the bank, she greeted her husband by saying, “They look so real.” She thought they were some type of Disney animatronic devices. How does one reach adulthood without knowing that real alligators live in Florida?


Maybe a Decline in Critical Thinking Characterizes Modern Americans: Case in Point


Not much research is necessary to discover that many reporters are so steeped in fashionable narratives that they write articles simply to validate their confirmations. Cases in point: In no reporting is this more evident than in reports on weather events and natural disasters like those recent tragic California fires. Inevitably, the news stories turn to a single topic. Tornado outbreak? Climate change. Snowstorm? Climate change. Heat wave? Climate change. Floods? Climate change. Drought? Climate change. Earthquakes? Climate change. Asteroids? Climate change. Migration? Climate change. War? You guessed it, climate change. Trump? Climate change. Sunrise?…


Reporters rarely question the premises behind their slanted stories because of bias, ignorance, or pressure to conform. And over the past nine years the premise that Trump is evil, an assumption generated by widespread liberal TDS, has governed the brains of political reporters.    


Take the serious matter of the tragic destruction and deaths by wind storms and tornadoes on March 15, 2025. US News poses this: “DOGE sackings at NOAA spark new warning over tornado response as 34 killed in twisters.” It is, of course, possible that some people died because even with preparation they could not protect themselves from the violence of those storms. It is possible that the messages on TV, the Web, and radio of impending storms didn’t reach the ears of those in the zones of jeopardy. It is possible that travelers with car windows up couldn’t hear the sirens that blast warnings in the South or possible that many rural areas have no sirens to sound a tornado alarm. Sure, all that is possible. But the DOGE firings would have had no effect on the Weather Channel, on YouTube meteorologists, or on local weather forecasters. Reporters seem to fall in lock step with all those opposed to DOGE.


Are politicians the least thoughtful? Those Los Angeles fires prompted uncontested comments to the Press like the following: "And what has happened is that climate change has dried out our foliage, our flora. And coupled with these massive winds, these 50 to 100 miles an hour winds that happen every year around this time, a little ember can turn into a massive fire," Rep. Dave Min, D-Calif told NewsNations “The Hill.” And Bernie Sanders said, “"The scale of damage and loss is unimaginable. Climate change is real, not 'a hoax.' Donald Trump must treat this like the existential crisis it is.” *** Reporters seemed to ask no followup questions, such as, “Representative Min, “Didn’t you just say ‘that happen every year’?” Or, “Are you aware that circulation around seasonal High and Low pressure systems and downslope winds are common on every planet with an atmosphere?” “Do poor forest management and emplacement of a dense population in wooded areas have anything to do with the destruction?”


Do we even need reporters? People could just make whatever comments they like to an old fashioned tape recorder that cannot question the input. Reporters are like computers; bad information in, bad information out, no filter, no questions asked. Let the prevailing assumptions and past reporting dictate the news.
  
Die Emotionen über Alles


In taking pride in our intellect we exhibit our penchant for anti-intellectualism. Seemingly more driven by emotions than by reason, we allow politics to restrict our brains. And this is most evident in liberal news media that cannot tolerate those whom they once favored, Trump and Musk—or any former Democrat turned Republican. “A pox on them!” Hatred clouds reason because all emotions cloud reason. And so does political power supported by unending funding.


A decline in brain power is not responsible for our hypocritical behavior. Political agendas, power, and greed make us hypocrites. Every bureaucracy favors its inertia over reasoned analysis because, once established, it wields power and garners cash. Thus the head of the teachers’ union can decry cuts to the Department of Education while forgetting that her union shut down schools for a year for a virus that did not pose an existential threat any more serious than the yearly flu to the young. After DOGE cuts, the AFT head Randi Weingarten voiced outrage over “depriving” children of their education, education, I might add, that has not translated into achievement. The government employees who abandoned offices for home in 2020 say the call-back to the office is unfair and unreasonable. The agencies that spend money on empty buildings cry “foul” when DOGE says the rent money is wasted.      


The premise of Burn-Murdoch is that the plateau in brain power is new. A perusal of ancient, medieval, and modern literature indicates it isn’t. We’ve been on the plateau almost from the time we separated from other human species. Take technological advances out of the discussion; few of us can say we’ve invented the cars we drive or airplanes we fly. I know I might never have discovered that the black rock we call coal burns or that petroleum could be divided into different hydrocarbon substances. I merely turn on the propane fireplaces, the car, or the lawnmower. A difference between modern and ancient brain peaks and plateaus lies in the intensity of sameness infused by modern communications and education manipulated by those with an agenda and social homogenization. Put out some word on FaceBook or X and reach millions of inner brains critical of that which differs and uncritical of that which conforms.


Maybe what Burn-Murdoch should have written was an article not on focus and application, but rather on sloth, on humans too lazy to exert the little brain power they have left. And I’m as guilty as the next. Some 100 billion humans have left a complex legacy; today’s eight billion of us mostly mimic that legacy. There really isn’t much new under the sun. Sameness is easier than invention, analysis, and inquiry.


As usual, I apologize for any rambling and add that if any thought in the above stimulates an insight on your part, then I’ve done what I set out to do, to inspire your thinking. And maybe in the context of this topic, to keep you on that mental peak Burn-Murdoch says we’ve reached.


*Feb 3, 2025. The ‘ultimate selfie’ has claimed up to 480 lives – yet the craze shows no signs of ending


** Ramishah Maruf, CNN Starbucks ordered to pay $50 million to delivery driver burned by hot beverage.  https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/14/business/starbucks-hot-coffee-driver-verdict/index.html


***https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-blame-fire-climate-change-despite-cutting-fire-department-budget

With a dubious origin, the question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” has some relevance to the last two months of political wrangling. The question might have its origins as far back as the fall of Constantinople as “academics” (scholars) debated it during the siege. Or it might have originated in Protestant refutations or satires associated with Scholastic theologians and philosophers. Whatever its origin, the question might well be on our minds today as Americans face various problems associated with out-of-control spending, a hegemony by Russia, and a belligerent Iran, N. Korea, and China. Just how would we word the modern version?


Try this one: How many male athletes can play on a girls’ team? If the Democrats insist on putting males on girls’ teams, could entire teams be composed of males? There isn’t, it, seems, a finite limitation. Like the proverbial angels on the head of a pin, males could play in indefinite numbers on a girls’ team. The whole league could be composed of males.


Apparently, Democrats are more concerned about including males to the exclusion of females than they are about waste, fraud, and abuse in government agencies. They would rather scream or sing songs to rail against efficiency than supporting efforts to prevent American tax dollars being stolen. They are very much like those academics in Constantinople

A conversation between college mascots, Testudo (order Testudines) of the University of Maryland Terrapins and Mr. Duck (order Anseriformes) of the University of Oregon centers on a human (order Primates) “turtle.” *

Mr. Duck:  Now that we play in the same college football league, I feel a personal relationship to you, allowing me to talk freely to say what’s on my mind. I’ve been a little upset recently because board of the Consumer Advisory Council of the Oregon Health Authority (the OCAC) includes a person who identifies as a turtle. Are you Terrapins trying to take over my territory? This is Duck Country, you know. And we beat your football team in 2024.

Testudo: No, actually, I saw that news story, and it befuddled me. Turtles and ducks can share a pond, but humans and turtles can’t share an identity. Although there are many examples of mimicry in the animal kingdom, most are associated with predator-prey or reproduction-care. The “turtle” on the OCAC is a human. Really, I’m twice befuddled, first because the human turtle’s turtleness serves no purpose other than some self-gratifying but unreal physical identity and second because the “turtle” serves on a board that specifically addresses mental health. Why put such a person on such a board?

Mr. Duck: I see your point, and I’ll add this. Over the past few years I’ve noticed humans adopting identities normally associated with the animal world, furries, for example. Most of those appear to be mimicking as best they can as mammal species. This identification as a member of the order testudines is a bit odd because its only in that reptilian part of the brain where that mimicry lies though it is true that upon being frightened, many humans instinctively imitate retraction of their heads by raising their shoulders and by ducking (my word) into a nonexistent shell.

Testudo: I’m no an expert on human behavior, but I agree that there’s little in humans that seems turtle other than their embryonic form that seems to verify the principle that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Early on we seem indistinguishable. Later on, we have virtually nothing in common; we turtles live a lifestyle few humans could tolerate for long.

Mr. Duck: And yet, there’s a human claiming to be a turtle while serving on a mental health board. And probably—this is my guess—no one on that mental health board has the courage to say, “What the H-e-double-toothpick is wrong with you? You’re clearly not a turtle. You have neither a soft shell nor a hard one. You live in a human structure. You walk on all fours unless you choose to crawl. You can read and speak a human language. If you get sick, you go to a doctor not a vet. How do you justify calling yourself a turtle?”

Testudo: Strangely, in spite of all their illogic and folly, humans still call themselves an advanced life-form. I think of how they choose to ignore the real nature of the world. Their conscious denial of reality and lack of understanding remind me of a famous tale associated with Bertrand Russell. After giving a lecture on the astronomy, a woman challenged him by saying that the world rests on a giant turtle. Russell then asked on what the turtle rests, and she responded, “Why it’s turtles all the way down.” The question to ask the human “turtle” is “On what basis do you see yourself as a turtle?” Now, as a Maryland Terrapin, I would like to think that it’s turtles all the way down, and for me it is on the tree of evolution. But such an infinite regress is as improbable as a human being being a turtle. Humans, can’t live with them; can’t keep the out or our habitats; can’t get them act human.

Mr. Duck: if I run into the Oregon “turtle,” I’ll use a duck pun and say, “You’re quackers.”

Testudo: Oh! Don’t do that unless you can accept being cancelled by the libs at the university. They’ll make sure you never wear the duck costume again and will probably put you in front of a tribunal for saying a human can’t be a turtle and that any human who declares “turtlehood” is “quackers.” Nowadays, Libs say identity is not an absolute in any sense, even a biological one. A human can be any life-form—maybe even any inorganic form, say, a crystal of quartz, for example. Just keep your bill shut to avoid the grief. Libs seem to have neither a sense of humor nor commonsense when someone points out their folly. Do what I do. I take it slow and easy knowing I will probably outlive with my renowned turtle longevity all the foolishness of the current generation. Slow and easy, Mr. Duck, slow and easy. Be, if I may also use a corny pun, unflappable.

*Alec Schemmel, Fox News Published March 13, 2025 "Oregon mental health advisory board includes member who identifies as terrapin species"
https://nypost.com/2025/03/13/us-news/oregon-mental-health-board-consumer-jd-holt-uses-turtle-pronouns/