The headline reads “Boston pushing for 15-20 mph citywide speed limit after pedestrian deaths.” * I predict the new slower speed limit will trigger people.


Road Rage on Steroids


Have you ever driven through Boston? I have. Numerous times. Maybe my experiences with Boston’s drivers are anomalous, but they have added up to my impression that “This is one impatient and angry city.”


I remember hearing a trucker say over his CB that Boston traffic makes Pittsburgh a drive in the park. He made that comment as I was stuck in traffic in a university van with the school’s name on the side. He recognized the school’s proximity to “the Burgh,’ and made that comment when we asked over our CB radio for help getting into the traffic flow. I say “flow,” but “molasses” is more appropriate for Boston’s rush hour when during warm weather, honking is accompanied by one particular hand signal (or finger signal) and a generous effusion of wash-your mouth-out-with-soap epithets.


So different from Pittsburgh, where people generally give a left-hand wave or flash of headlights as a sign to another driver to take priority at a four-way stop. Basically, “You go first.”


In contrast, during Boston’s rush hour I’ve been passed by someone speeding by in the left emergency-vehicle berm next to the cement Jersey barrier. And Ive been held up in traffic when a big rig driver decided to abandon his tractor-trailer cattywampus in two middle lanes.


Can a City Be Angry?


A city is more than its buildings and roads. Its people have a regional dialect and attitude by which outsiders can characterize it.


Parked on a street at Harvard, my students and I looked at our Mao to plot the best way to our next destination. One of the older students walked toward pedestrian on then sidewalk to ask about directions, beginning with “Pardon me, could you direct us to….” Can indifference be thick enough to cut? But not just one passerby ignored him. Several did, until by chance a recent transfer from Pittsburgh walked by, sensed our problem, and offered help. When told how others ignored us, the ex-Pittsburgher said he’s gotten used to the Bostonian attitude and to the road rage. “That’s the way people are here.”


Anecdotes are never proof, but they accumulate to leave impressions that are hard to ignore. And my impression is that the effort to impose a slower city-wide speed limit will become a thorn on Boston’s drivers’ seats, exacerbating their impatience.


The Characterization of a City Begs a Question

​Do Regions have personalities?


I have no doubt that Bostonians are neither less nor more patient and peaceful than citizens of other cities. But I wish my experiences with their drivers had been otherwise. I’ll keep in mind that I don’t have daily year-round experience in the city, but rather just about a dozen or so visits.


I believe that experience has taught each of us that “place” is more than geography, more than location. Of course, generalizations don’t allow outsiders to know the widely varying composition of personalities that inhabit a city. Anecdotal information has a narrow focus, so my experiences in Boston that led to my personal assessment—I’ve heard the same from others, by the way—might be wholly unwarranted.


And bad apples can spoil the basket filled with good apples. By chance, I might have seen only the angry side of Boston and heard from only those with similar experiences. My greater familiarity with “the Burgh” has provided me with many more anecdotes that average out to favorability. I see the angry Pittsburgh driver as an anomaly, whereas I assume the peaceful patient Bostonian driver is an exception.


What’s your assessment of your city? Are you an exception or a rule?


*https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/boston-pushing-for-15-20-mph-citywide-speed-limit-after-pedestrian-deaths/ar-BB1l4UOq

Want an example of time travel? Uh…I meant traveling times, the ancient world traveling into the present. Just peruse the popular talking points centered on the April eclipse. Across the nation you’ll find people talking about the purely physical phenomenon of casting a shadow as a “foreteller” and harbinger. Yes, the astrologers are having a resurgence among the citizens. No doubt some are collecting a windfall in private readings. We’re reliving ancient times. If it weren’t for the threat of salmonella and bird flu, there would be chicken guts on the streets with soothsayers reading them for prediction.


Of course, astrologers offer less messy prophecies. They merely point to alignments of celestial bodies to foretell: “You are going to win the lottery, meet the person of your dreams, and have great health this year. All that wonderfulness is headed your way if you don’t squander it on distractions.”


Determined, Thus not Accountable


The blame for the persistence of astrology doesn’t lie solely in public education—at least not entirely. It is generally true, however, that just as many Americans can’t point to where they live on a map because the study of geography has ebbed from classrooms, so many can’t place where they live in the local universe and can’t explain the nature of stars, planets, and the physical forces, like gravity, that relate them. But ignorance of the physical world is just one of several reasons for American readiness to accept astrological forecasts.


Vanity plays a role. There’s comfort in knowing the causes of both fortune and misfortune reside in a world deemed predestined and accountability-free. Imprecise language also plays a role in acceptance. Astrologers have always had the ability to tell people what they want to hear by offering generalities from which the listener infers specifics derived from a wishlist of possible outcomes or a personal history of failures or successes.


The Perfect Fit for Our Liberal Age


The predetermined world of astrology is an appropriate context for American
Liberalism, the philosophy that places blame everywhere but in the individual actor. “Society made me do it,” the criminal can say. Or, “The fault lies in my stars.” Those two statements are corollaries or reflections of each other. It’s difficult to say which of them is more fundamental. Both belong to the Liberal’s mindset. Look no further than bail-free releases that has placed dangerous criminals back on the street, where they continue to victimize innocent people.


Who Subscribes?


I found this online at a site called Astrologify.* I cannot verify the information:


According to the website, 32% of Americans living in the Northeast believe in astrology. That percentage coincides with this one: 32% of Democrats believe in astrology. The Northeast is, after all, a bastion of Liberalism and a Democrat stronghold. In contrast, 25% of Americans living in the South believe in astrology. And 24% of Americans living in the Midwest believe in astrology. Consider that both of these flyover regions are also
Republican regions and that 29% of Republicans believe in astrology.


What about Christians?


The statistics seem to suggest that more Protestants are aware of the First Commandment than Catholics. How so? That commandment forbids the worship of false gods. Astrology implies putting one’s life in the control of the stars and planets, the “false gods” that are forbidden; yet, 31% of Catholics believe in astrology, whereas only
22% of Protestants believe in astrology, the same percentage as American Jews.


What’s Your Sign?


I recall comedian Bob Nelson’s routine as a drunk at a bar trying to pick up a girl. “Hi, babe, what’s your sign? Im a Feces, but you can call me Number 2.” Think of that the next time someone engages you in a conversation about astrology.






*https://astrologify.com/astrology-statistics/

Mokgweetsi Masisi, President of Botswana, just threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany because Germans apparently have a problem with hunting trophies, you know, an environmentalist’s save-the-tusked-dolphin-owl kind of thing. Germany, which to my knowledge has not had a pachyderm population since the demise of the mammoths and mastodons wants to save Botswana’s herds by banning elephant trophies. Botswana, in contrast, with an estimated 130,000 elephants does have an elephant problem, a burgeoning population of pachyderms whose numbers it wants to reasonably thin.


I suppose President Masisi’s threat derives from another country’s citizens attempting to interfere in Botswana’s business. He seems particularly irked because Botswana’s effort to curb poaching has led to those growing herds, or as he says, ”It is very easy to sit in Berlin and have an opinion about our affairs in Botswana. We are paying the price for preserving these animals for the world.” *


Masisi won’t carry out his threat to send 20,000 elephants to the land of pretzels, beer, Lederhosen, and Wienerschnitzel. Would he send them by plane to Berlin? By ship to Hamburg? Or have some modern day Hannibal march them from Africa to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and Iberian peninsula, then over the Pyrenees, and into Bavaria? It is an empty threat.


America’s Elephantine Problem


Unspoken threats can be more serious than articulated threats.


In contrast to Germany, the US doesn’t have an articulated threat of forced migration from another country’s leader; it has, instead, the unspoken indifference of Central and South American leaders that quietly facilitate city-size populations of migrants marching into the country.


Americans inundated with illegal immigrants would probably prefer an influx of 20,000 elephants. Sure, they might destroy some crops and trees, but they won’t require free phones, transportation, housing, education, seed money, and health care.




* Nadine Schmidt, Sarah Dean and Ingrid Formanek, CNN, reporting on a story in Bild. Online at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/botswana-threatens-to-send-20-000-elephants-to-germany-in-trophy-hunting-dispute/ar-BB1l0NVa   

Cafe talk:


John: Did you see story about the number of people who died from accidents at the Lodi Parachute Center in California, a place that sells sky diving experiences? According to an online report by Andrew Chamings,  “21 people had died in accidents tied to the center since 1985.” *


Jill: Twenty-one? What 20 people decided to jump after the first death? It makes me think of Cervantes’ main character Don Quixote de La Mancha, who decided not to test his helmet’s ability to protect him even though the test on his previous helmet proved its ineffectiveness against a sword strike. So, 20 people died jumping and number 21 thought, “This time it will work.” 


John: Don Quixote… one of my favorites. Sky diving is just the kind of adventure that the man from La Mancha would appreciate. I liked the thoughts Cervantes has Quixote espouse. One is particularly relevant to recreational sky diving. Quixote says, “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!” Recreational sky divers must be among the most bored people on the planet.


Jill: And among the most foolish, risking life for a moment’s thrill.


John: The Don also says, “Take my advice and live for a long, long time. Because the maddest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die.” And sure enough those 21 people, they let themselves die. Oh! Maybe not intentionally, but they increased the chances of dying by jumping. How many of them wore Quixote’s failed helmet?


Jill: And yet people still sky dive for recreation. What’s that blogger guy keep sayin’?


John: Who? Oh! You mean Conte. “This is not your practice life.” He keeps sticking it in his blogs.


Jill: It should be posted at the Lodi Parachute Center, the foot of Mount Everest, and the entrance to every school.




*https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/deaths-california-lodi-skydiving-center-19361603.php

rony Escapes the Feebleminded


That the White House banned all “religious” symbols from the annual Easter egg hunt is an irony that only the feebleminded would miss. Somehow the self-proclaimed elites at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. fail to associate the “holiday” celebration with its origin.  Duh. Easter, the primary religious reason behind the faith of an estimated 2.2 billion Christians. Yeah, faith, Mr. WH Staffer.


Secularizing Doesn’t Require Abandoning Religious References


Holiday? Yes, Holy-day. Holy, as in religious feast day, a liturgical designation specific to followers of Christ. Easter for Christians is the promise that this life—which is not practice, by the way—doesn’t end in an oblivion called death. Easter is the promise that there’s “something more,” something—an existence—that is beyond time, something that has no earthly or cosmic analog.


Skeptics might scoff at such belief, but chances are that in their skepticism, they embrace other beliefs, such as there is no afterlife. Christians might question the skeptics on the very grounds that skeptics use for questioning them. “No afterlife, you say? Your proof?”


White House staffer: “Humans invented religion, indeed, invented God, just as they invented Godzilla.”


Christian: “And scientists, without physical evidence expect me to accept the hypothesis that “virtual particles come into existence out of nothing to make a world of something. Just how does that process work? I can accept a world I cannot see, but I have trouble with your faith in virtual particles. How does your faith differ from mine?”


White House staffer: “We can’t support the display of something that might offend people.”


Christian: “Aren’t you selecting whom to offend?”


Bizarre Game of Twister


It appears that the folks at the White House want their cake after devouring it. They have established that a traditional Easter egg hunt is worth continuing without continuing the very essence of the tradition from which it originated. They appear to be obsessed with not being “religious” lest they offend some random person who is similarly obsessed with not being religious—i.e., someone driven by disdain for any beliefs not his own, usually someone who mocks or dismisses others’ faiths while professing some other faith, such as faith in big government run by anonymous bureaucrats like those who shut down the country during COVID to the detriment of businesses and kids.


Easter egg hunt without religious symbols? It’s like playing some bizarre game of mental Twister, neurons trying to contact different markings on the politically correct game mat.


But Haven’t We Secularized Christmas and Halloween, also?


For differing reasons, there have been efforts to eliminate all public references to faith, particularly Christian faith, mostly on the assumption that permitting a religious display in the public forum is a promotion off the religion. Yes, secularizing is now an American tradition that seeks to eliminate not every reference to religion, but rather any Christian reference.
The removal of public crèches is evidence. Yet, there’s little pushback from local governments that are willing to allow Satanists and other groups to emplace public displays based on First Amendment rights.


BC, AD, BCE, and CE


Even so-called bright people fail to see the irony in their Twister games. Since the time of Dionysius Exiguus, European cultures have run on a time scale divided into BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, “in the year of the Lord,” specifically, all years beginning with the 754th year after the founding of Rome). Dionysius, living half a millennium after the birth of Christ, might have been off the mark by four to six or seven years; thus, the current year isn’t necessarily 2,024 years AD, and that means all those “millennium parties” at the turn of the century weren’t truly millennium parties.


Did I just write AD? Sorry, I meant CE, that is “the Common Era.” That’s the abbreviation used nowadays by “scientists”, “historians,” and “academics,” all seemingly unaware of the irony. They still divide the time scale by the date of Christ’s birth, but…well, as Shakespeare wrote, “a rose by any other name….”


Every science and historical journal uses the politically correct temporal designations. All today’s “intellectuals” subscribe to the use of BCE and CE, seemingly without recognizing their dependence on Christ’s birth as the foundation of the time scale. They have convinced themselves that doing away with BC and AD has freed them from the shackles of religion and somehow elevated them to objectivity. Do they not realize that the Year One still marks Christ’s birth?


The PC White House, Mainstream Media, Government Agencies, and Iconoclast Liberals


Who is more obsessed with religion, the Evangelicals or those who attack or attempt to quash their language, values, and traditions? Who are the real fools, those who simply carry on traditions two millennia old without making a public issue or those who obsess over others’ beliefs and practices under the assumption that a religious symbol on an egg will cause harm?


Egghead? It’s a word that needs to be redefined. Sorry for the pun, but the yolk, hard boiled or not, is definitely on those in the White House--even though they won't get it.

Watching the current and past American Administrations of both parties has convinced me that large governments operate on expedience and not on prudence.


Vetoing Means Taking a Stand on an Issue Popular Enough to Pass Both Houses


I draw my evidence for this conclusion from the two terms each of Bush and Obama, under whose administrations the debt snowball plummeted off Capitol Hill and now seems to be driven under Biden by inertia. Did neither president Bush nor Obama know they had veto power? In their individual eight years in power, each used his presidential regular veto power only 12 times and neither used his pocket veto power (letting legislation die for lack of a presidential signature). In contrast, during their similar 8-year reigns, Reagan and Clinton used their veto power 39 and 36 times respectively.


Whereas many factors play into the motive for a veto, such as the mood of the nation, the composition of the Senate and House, the pressures of the contemporaneous economy and the effectiveness of lobbyists, plus the election-campaign cycle, presidents play a role in maintaining the “health” of a country that is the world’s oldest surviving democracy. Approaching 250 years, the US could extend its longevity indefinitely…unless


Pocketing Prudence


…unless the current and future administrations act more on expediency than on prudence.


Expediency might ensure a president’s popularity, but prudence ensures the health of the country whose existence can extend beyond the current generation.


So, for example, take three current issues: 1) Biological men In women’s sports, 2) the border crisis, and 3) seeming fecklessness on the international stage. This last issue wrought by appeasement (Iran), capitulation (China), and that catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan. In all three expedience seems to have outweighed long-term prudence. The Biden Administration is bent on destroying the gains women made under Title IX. The product of this expedient policy that is based on a vocal minority ready to fling epithets like “bigot” when they don’t get their way, will be injuries to women and loss of individual championships as men outclass women. It will also force women into situations that were deemed anathema just two decades ago—like having to share locker rooms and nudity with biological males (Are the rumors true that Biden swam nude in the presence of female Secret Service agents? Hmmnnn; maybe now I understand)*


With regard to the border crisis, the open border policy established by Biden as a ploy to win voters and to bash his predecessor has meant cities flooded by immigrants, tax dollars spent to transport, house, feed, and educate hundreds of thousands of non-citizens, and a strained health care system (not to mention increased crime). The lost tax revenue will only add to the burgeoning national debt. In spite of all the evidence that runaway illegal immigration has exacerbated the country's problems, the President has merely pocketed a response, effectively allowing the policy that he initiated to continue. And then there are the expedient but imprudent policies on the international stage. The actions of Neville Chamberlain prior to World War II revealed the imprudence of appeasement. Yet, the Biden ministration seems not to have learned the importance of prudent international policy over expedience. The catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan initiated this snowball of weakness that has gathered mass during the past three years. It has emboldened enemies like Russia and China to take actions that threaten America's future.


There’s Always a Rationalization


I suppose it’s prudent not to consume sugars. They spike the glycemic index. But, hey, you live only once, right? And what’s a birthday party without cake and candles? Then there are the holidays, retirement parties, graduations—all good reasons to indulge. And how much can a couple social drinks hurt?


In the government any popular idea, even untested and failed ideas, can drive inordinate expenditures. Upward Bound, for example, was discovered to have no long term effect on student achievement, but the funding keeps coming in the inertial system. The same throwing good money after bad characterizes the “Green New Deal” that is destined to cost billions to trillions without any substantial effect on global temperatures.


Inertial Government Cannot Be Stopped
​
Driven by expediency and not by prudence, the US government is the proverbial snake devouring itself. Can the country survive?




*Easter, 2024, and Catholic Joe Biden will celebrate “transgenderism” and oversee an Easter egg hunt that bars eggs with any religious symbols. Expediency on display! (Offending Christians is fair practice, but offending any vocal group with a special agenda is forbidden) The irony escapes the feebleminded president that having an Easter egg hunt is based on the primary Christian celebration.

#How do you respond to this endorsement from a friend?
“You should watch … [name of show] on Netflix. We’ve been binge-watching. You’ll love the characters. Great show.”


#Or this?
“Ladies and gentlemen,” a celebrity announces,
“Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (standing ovation) and the current President Joe Biden.” [cue the music, drop the confetti]


That’s the scenario for a NY fundraiser for Joe Biden on March 28 in the heart of the city.


Flashback to the Fifties


‘More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” * That’s a statement typical of cigarette commercials in the 1959s and 1960s. Appeals to authority—like the medical community— and to celebrity are still in play today. Obviously, advertisers believe such tactics work.


Do you find yourself persuaded by appeals to authority and celebrity?


Obviously, politicians also believe the tactics work, thus the Clinton-Obama-celebrity endorsement of Joe Biden in NY. Is it a homily to the choir? Who in attendance will favor another candidate? Who in attendance needs to be persuaded?


Dead Doctors


How many Camel-smoking doctors died from lung cancer or smoking-related ailments? Now, there’s an example of “ostensible” expertise. Which celeb-expert has been affected personally—like the dead doctors and millions of cigarette-smokers—by the rampant illegal immigration caused by Biden? Which of the wealthy willing to pay $100,000 for a selfie with the three presidents have been affected by Biden’s inflation?


Of course, it's easy to simplify. The commercials for cigarettes in the 1950s fell on the ears and eyes of people probably already addicted to cigarettes. It is difficult to know whether or not the endorsement of Camel cigarettes by doctors had any influence on non-smokers.


How many will vote for a politician because of endorsements? How many will vote because they rationally evaluated policies?


I suppose that in an age of influencers endorsements might be effective, but…


Let's return to that original question: How do you respond to an endorsement of a TV series? Let's broaden the question: How do you respond to endorsements of any kind?

​Your response indicates the level of your independence and the extent of your rationality.




*See YouTube for the video of this specific endorsement of Camels and for other 1950’s cigarette commercials with celebs.

This morning I woke to the news that a 984-foot-long container ship rammed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, causing a collapse. The incident immediately reminded me of the 1980 collapse of Tampa Bay’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge after it was struck by a freighter called Summit Venture. In that previous incident 35 people died. The extent of human loss from this morning’s collapse is unknown at this time, but early reports indicate at least two people might have died while the number of people missing is still under investigation. The collision occurred at 1:30 AM when traffic was light. There were, however, construction workers on the bridge at that time, so drivers might not be the only victims. Thus, the extent of the tragedy is still unfolding.


Bridges


There's no escaping the need for bridges on a planet with an uneven topography. From small gullies to deep gorges, Earth’s surface obstructs the easy flow of human traffic. In our ingenuity, we humans have constructed bridges and tunnels to overcome these obstacles. From simple logs to complex suspension spans, bridges make a statement that “No natural barrier impedes us from moving where and when we want to move.” The New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia, for example, crosses over a gorge about 900 feet deep with a single steel arch. Impressive.


In spite of that ingenuity, however, all of our bridges are precarious structures because of natural forces and human error. The collapse of both the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and the Francis Scott Key Bridge are evidence of error. Rusting steel and raging flood waters are evidence that Nature itself poses a threat to every bridge. In other words, all bridges are at best ephemeral structures.


Human Gaps


The same ingenuity that enables us to bridge physical gaps has enabled us to bridge all gaps. Pick up your phone to connect with a distant relative.We humans can bridge any physical obstacle—at least for awhile. But human gaps are far more difficult to cross. Take the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a prime example. No bridge seems to connect the two groups. Similar unbridgeable gaps occur between religions, political parties, and social groups. We humans have spent our entire history making gaps. We have also spent our history building temporary bridges. Think treaties and truces, ceasefires and renewed fighting. Think of tenuous bridges and outside forces like a terror or subversive group hitting the bridge like a runaway ship.

Although some natural geographic barriers inhibit crossing some of these gaps, the reality is that in most instances people merely refuse to cross the bridge. Some just don't trust the bridge. Some want one-way traffic. And some would prefer to take a circuitous route, going for out of their way rather than meeting on the bridge or crossing it.

Think of the many bridges in your life. Have they been stable and trustworthy? Have they been affected by natural or human forces of decay and collapse? Have you been the architect of bridges that connect you to others? Have the bridges you have built to connect with others withstood collisions with people or events?

To live among others peacefully requires us not only to build bridges, but also to consistently maintain them. Every human bridge is a work in progress. Only constant maintenance will ensure that you can cross gaps when you want to reach those on the other side.

“In the middle of things” is a relatively common plot device. The reader or audience first encounters the action and characters in the context of an unknown past. At some point, by verbal revelation or by a scene introduced with a caption like “Five years ago,” the author brings the bewildered audience up to speed: “Oh, so this is how we got here…,” “Now I know why she’s sad…,” and “I get it; the aunt is her real mother….”


In Medias Res


It’s “in the middle of things” where a group of debating geologists recently found themselves. The International Union of Geological Sciences rejected the addition of the Anthropocene to the long list of eras, periods, epochs, ages, stages, and phases that comprise the geologic time scale. In spite of arguments, the members rejected “the age of Man (“anthrop,” Greek for ”Man,” or more generally “human”) and the term Anthropocene that some wanted to emplace in the scale that includes Holocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, all the way back to Jurassic and earlier time.


The rejection was contentious because there’s good evidence that since the rise of agriculture and the proliferation of our species, humans have altered Earth’s surface to a considerable degree. Think Aral Sea, reservoirs like Lake Mead, sea walls, and levees. Think denuded forests, asphalt, concrete, and steel cities, open pit and deep mines, and plundered ground water, natural gas, and oil. And think extinctions: The Dodo, mammoths and mastodons, the western black rhino…


The human impact is undeniable and ongoing, but can its true significance be understood as we understand periods now long gone whose effects we can see in total and in retrospect? Ordinarily, autobiographies and biographies come near the end or after the end, not before.


That’s not to argue against insight into the present. Just about every intelligent person knew, for example, where Biden’s open border policy would lead though the magnitude of that policy’s effects won’t be fully felt for years.  Similarly, just about anyone with a modicum of insight knows that human activities, like highway construction and both urbanization and suburbanization alter habitats and exacerbate natural rates of extinction and species stress.


But to rank an Anthropocene age with, say the Maastrichtian, that time frame at the end of the Cretaceous associated with the dinosaur extinction event, is a premature designation. The past is easy to categorize in generalities, such as the Enlightenment of the 18th century or the Roaring 20s of the last century, but the present? What categorizes your present in the context of an incomplete lifespan?


Of course, that some period is ongoing doesn’t in itself inhibit us from categorizing. But Earth has a 5.6 billion-year history marked by biotic and abiotic events. The time frame of the past allows us to mark beginnings and endings on grand scales. We can see Earth-altering events encapsulated by relationships left in fossil and petrological records. In contrast, our current modifications to the planet might be fleeting, just as, for example, natural drainage systems are fleeting. The destiny of drainage divides like the Appalachians on either side of which rivers flow to the Gulf or to the Atlantic, is to be worn down. Sure, that’s a multi-million-year process, not visible to short-lived people in the present, but it is happening, nevertheless. What’s the end of the Anthropocene look like? Right. We have only conjecture, good conjecture, but still just conjecture.


The Present Is Always the Middle: That’s Why We Prophesy

Prophets—every age has its share of them. Well, maybe our age of political polling and scientific predicting has more than previous ages. Prophecies—even negative ones—provide us with a sense of security that comes with predestination. The climate alarmists are steeped in this security, ironically so because the prophets they follow have failed to predict their supposed consequences repeatedly over the past quarter century. A grey-beard Al Gore, dressed in kaftan and descending from Mount Sinai like Charlton Heston's Moses holding the Ten Commandments admonishes us to keep holy the IPCC, to abandon our black calf made of coal, and to amend our ways by going green lest we suffer the consequences of Earth’s wrath in never-before-seen storms, and droughts, and coastal inundations, all of which his sacred tablets proclaim with surety.


But hasn’t the past 12,000-year period been only a middle, one of maybe as many as 11 interglacial periods of the Pleistocene and Holocene that marked the last 2,58 million years? Even if the prophet Gore had been alive 13,000 years ago and had all of current science at his disposal, could he have predicted the Younger Dryas and its drop in temperatures that interrupted the Pleistocene warming? Could he in the midst of change have been able to point out the beginning of that cooling 12,800 years ago or its ending 11,700 years ago?


Nevertheless, we often follow prophets and adopt the generalizations of historians who frame beginnings and endings. Those geologists who recently argued about the legitimacy of the Anthropocene played the roles of both prophets and historians. Those arguing for the Anthropocene cited among other phenomena the anthropogenic rise in greenhouse gases, somehow, equating fossil fuel emissions with agriculture, deforestation, and fresh water impoundment. Yet, neither agriculture nor any other human activity had any effect on ending the Younger Dryas, a period that occurred and ended before humans adopted their modern lifestyles.


Was the end of the Younger Dryas the beginning of the Anthropocene? Were its beginning sometime around 12,800 years ago and its ending about 11,700 years ago abrupt events?  The Younger Dryas didn’t end in a day or few years like the Maastrichtian extinction of the dinosaurs—though it might have begun the way the Maastrichtian ended with a bolide impact event. *


Sudden Beginnings and Endings


It is inevitable that every human will encounter some sudden beginning or ending: An unexpected job opportunity or job loss, a winning lottery ticket or slot machine hit, a fire that destroys a residence, a car accident that alters life, or a chance encounter with a soulmate that leads to a lifelong commitment.


Our lives are marked by many such events. They interrupt “middles” and initiate new episodic sequences. But more sweeping sets of episodes, like beginnings of epochs and periods, are usually foggy smears of time. The attempt by some geologists to frame the Anthropocene met with failure precisely because of such smearing. But the attempt gives all of us a point of departure for examining our lives.


So, I urge you to see your life in the context of beginnings and endings and to ask whether or not you currently find yourself in medias res—assuming you could actually determine a middle when “middle” in fact occurs only in the context of a beginning and ending.


*Nothing in this blog is meant to deny the temporal markers we call beginnings and endings. There seems to be evidence that the Younger Dryas began “all of a sudden” with an unpredictable impact event 12,800 years ago just the way the dinosaur extinction event occurred to end the b See “The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: Review of the impact evidence” in Earth Science Reviews online at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012825221001781 .  The abstract has the following statement: “Firestone et al., 2007, PNAS 104(41): 16,016–16,021, proposed that a major cosmic impact, circa 10,835 cal. BCE, triggered the Younger Dryas (YD) climate shift along with changes in human cultures and megafaunal extinctions. Fourteen years after this initial work the overwhelming consensus of research undertaken by many independent groups, reviewed here, suggests their claims of a major cosmic impact at this time should be accepted.”

My late brother-in-law, a self-made African-American, grew up poor. I miss him dearly for the many talks we had about the nature of society and economics. One statement he made that remains locked in my memory is that if I thought I owned my house, I needed only to quit paying my property taxes to find out otherwise. That the state of New York intends to abscond with Donald Trump's properties in an obviously politically motivated legal maneuver demonstrates that anyone's property is, to use the metaphor of Puritan revivalist Jonathan Edwards, like a spider hanging by a thread over a fire.


Marx on Property


In 1843 Karl Marx wrote an essay that seems applicable to the current New York case and judgment against Donald Trump. Marx wrote: “is private property not abolished ideally speaking when the non-owner has become the lawgiver for the owner?” * Was Karl Marx a 19th-century reincarnation of Nostradamus predicting 21st century, New York?


Are You Next?


Are the case and judgment against Donald Trump limited to Trump? Does the case not foreshadow a potential case against you even if you are not a New York resident? With so many Left-leaning politicians and voters peopling America, your ownership isn”t assured.


We should all keep in mind, the post-Holocaust poem by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller, who wrote about the silence of those who recognized what was going on around them, but who said or did nothing:


    First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out –
    Because I was not a socialist.
    Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out –
    Because I was not a trade unionist.
    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
    Because I was not a Jew.
    Then they came for me--
    And there was no one left to speak for me.


Will we we rewrite those lines a decade from now to include the words neighbor, property and Trump?



*Mclellan, David.(2000, Second Edition) Karl Marx: Selected Writings, page 52.