Are their mistakes forcing Democrats to become political positivists? Probably not, because their adherence to ideas seems, in the face of all that is contradictory, to be unshakeable. But what if…?


A Fundamental Question


Do you find interesting the reaction of Democrat Mayor Adams as he faces growing crowds of illegal immigrants, now draining billions of dollars from NYC’s annual budget? Are the numbers becoming the message that will change his and other Democrats’ minds? The numbers, you say?


Positivism in Physics as the Analog


From the rise of “scientific inquiry” in ancient Greece to the Renaissance, most “science” wasn’t what we moderns consider to be “science.” It was largely metaphysics based on concerns about “the nature of” or “the source of” concepts like force, mass, and motion. Before ancient Greeks and Romans, as far as we know, most explanations of natural phenomena rested in myth and religion. True, there were exceptions. Archimedes comes to mind, and so do his predecessors Pythagoras and Euclid. But then the approach to understanding changed—thank you, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and others—to mathematical ways that describe and explain natural phenomena. As Menas Kafatos and Robert Nadeau explain in The Conscious Universe: Part and Whole in Modern Physical Theory, “a number of nineteenth century physicists and mathematicians …[concluded] that true, genuine, and certain knowledge in physics is revealed in the mathematical description and that all metaphysical concerns should be excluded in both principle and in practice” (18).* That conclusion is what has become known as Newtonian physics and sometimes even “classical” or deterministic physics as an acknowledgement that effects have causes, clearly defined causes.


The new approach made sense because experiments and inventions seemed to operate on mathematical principles. Think force applied, motion produced, for example. This development in how people “did science” prevailed until the goofy quantum world was discovered, that is, the time when observer and observed could no longer be separated.  But there’s no denying that Newtonian physics produced explanations and measurable results: Thus the physics of cars and banked curves on highways, of rockets lifting off, and of birds falling from the sky.” Yes, the numbers revealed the secrets that those earlier explanations failed to reveal. Motion, Mr. Aristotle, isn’t an inherent component of a rock or baseball. Force, some kind of force is necessary , and that force is quantifiable: It’s all numbers, numbers, well math, really…


Physics before and even now during the era of quantum mechanics allows us to invent engines, heat pumps, and roller coasters with the confidence that our results will be consistent and workable. We don’t need the why as much as we need the how. As Kafatos and Nadeau put it, “This view, which came to be known as positivism, stipulates that [in Ernest Rutherford’s words] ‘true, genuine, and certain knowledge in physics is revealed in the mathematical description, and that all metaphysical concerns should be excluded in both principle and in practice’” (18).


Public Policies without the Numbers Deny the Realities That Numbers Reveal


So, here we are, centuries after Galileo, using “feelings” and “metaphysics” to make public policies that affect millions of people—like those in New York City and Chicago, and Washington, D.C., all “sanctuary cities” and all now with mayors complaining about the product of their beliefs and social philosophies. Those Democrat leaders invented their problems on the basis of metaphysics and not on the basis of mathematical descriptions. If they had only run the numbers…


But in their arrogance, they relied on belief and on impractical theory with no regard for the way the world really works in the sense of physics and invention. In their effort to rule by virtue signaling and socialist policies led by the Far Left, they have uncorked Pandora’s bottle (Yes, the ancient tale involves a bottle and not a box).


Sure, Temper the Positivism with a Little Metaphysics, but…


Is it heartless to say that the numbers matter? Is it unrealistic to say that the “force” moving millions toward the American border doesn’t lie within the migrants. It’s an outside force, one applied by the Biden Administration and sanctuary cities that pulls in migrants the way iron filings move toward a magnet or balls fall toward the center of gravity.


There were ways to thwart the current migrant crisis affecting the cities. But total open-door policies were not among them. And offers of free housing, education, food, shelter, transportation, and even phones only make the numbers punish the legal residents and taxpaying citizens—now to the tune in NYC of billions of bucks per year in addition to the displacement of residents and tourists, and increased crime.


The sanctuary cities and the border are now overwhelmed with migrants. Who would have guessed? Maybe someone with a Newtonian mindset, someone who could crunch numbers without relying on virtue signaling or unproven hypotheses. But the Left left the door open providing little choice right now as the masses crush toward and over the border. Migrants have crowded into NYC and other sanctuary cities. Now there’s little choice other than to deal with the numbers and to care for them as promised. Sure, it’s humane, but it still has its detrimental costs.


The Left could use some political positivism. They could still keep their hearts, but they need to consider what their minds objectively tell them. And mind, not heart, runs numbers, sees cause and effect, and makes predictions based on commonsense and previous experiments. Heart—even the “heart” or emotions that derived from hatred of the Right and Trump to open the border as a “we’re better than you” policy—is incapable of practicality, of real scientific thinking grounded in quantities. The quality that the Left thinks it has provided has been overwhelmed by demonstrable quantities.


* New York. 1990, Springer-Verlag.

People-watching is a common behavior in airports and bus terminals. Variations in human shapes capture our attention for various reasons, but primarily because of our need to compare as a mechanism of self esteem. If we are curious about the variations in form among members of our own species, then our curiosity about other life-forms that differ in shape, size, and habit seems unavoidable. That interest in form and function of objects that are unfamiliar reveals itself in a walk upon a beach with shells and in a store with shelves of toys.


Who among us has walked on a beach with shells and not stopped to pick one up? Our curiosity extends beyond just looking as we do in plane and bus terminals. On the beach we touch, pick up, and hold for examination. (Caution: Do not do this in a terminal regardless of your curiosity about the strange and unfamiliar shapes of humans) Mollusks are especially interesting because they offer a seemingly indefinite variety of shapes, colors, and sizes in tens of thousands of living species that produce hard parts mostly made of calcium carbonate minerals.


Shell variety is fascinating. Don’t have the time or wherewithal to travel to a beach to collect? See photos of shells online as posted by The Natural History Museum Rotterdam. Be warned: I think the museum has more than 100,000 of them to see. That’s a rabbit hole of time consumption. I know because I’ve looked through many genera and species in an effort to identify shells for a collection I put together for a friend’s high-end resort. * 


Although I am not a conchologist, I did make an A in a graduate course on mollusk zoogeography that piqued my interest in their worldwide distribution and habitats, and I learned a little more about them in studying and eventually teaching invertebrate paleontology and in collecting fossil invertebrates on many field trips with my college students. But even after having garnered a modicum of expertise, I still find myself as curious on a beach as a little kid who picks up a shell and says, “Look, Mommy.” 


Thus, I deem my own and many others’ curiosity about shells to be nearly universal, especially for those who don’t live near a beach. See a shell? Pick up a shell. Someone is doing that as you read this, and another person is in a shell collector’s shop buying one as a souvenir or as a personal ornament like earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. Remember that wampum, essentially shells, served as currency in pre-Colonial and Colonial America, and wampum had other uses significant in the cultures of Native American tribes. Shell collecting? It’s not just a kid’s thing or a hobby gone wild among conchologists; it’s a people thing, even, back centuries ago, an economic thing. Go to Sanibel Island in Florida, where shells are so abundant that shoes are preferable to bare feet on the beaches, if you need proof. You’ll find shell-collecting a primary draw for Sanibel’s tourists.


All Marginally Interesting, but What’s the Point of the Preceding?


For most people, the shells are pleasant distractions and aesthetically pleasing. The iridescent insides of abalone shells reflect light like car oil on a puddle provide an example. What captures the eye captures the brain as both shapes and colors stimulate the production of dopamine. We’ve been naturally engineered to derive pleasure from seeing.

But in this Age of Social Engineering Gone Wild, leave it to the socialists to force us into an unnatural world in which seeing isn't personal, it's communal and directed by government authorities. "Look here, and not there. See this, and not that." And there’s no better place to start than with redirecting the curiosity of children.


Toy Sales

I suppose that each of us could be accused of social engineering to some extent. We choose our friends, for example, our clubs and churches, and new neighborhoods because we believe we can “fit in,” possibly benefit from, and contribute to the micro-society, in some way bending each a little to our will. And, of course, I need to include families: We socially engineer our offspring, more or less since rebellion in ensuing generations is a constant. Social participation of all kinds is a means of engineering for all but the shyest of wallflowers. Once embedded in the group, each contributes to the makeup either through leadership or compliance. But our lives also have a natural underlayment that is the product of evolution, and with color vision and the ability to distinguish shapes and functions, we have a difficult time suppressing our curiosity and desires just because the government says we should. 

Say what? Where is this going? 

It's going to the recent law in California that requires big box stores to have gender-neutral toy aisles. 


Social Engineers Aren’t the Scientists They Believe They Are

In this Age of Social Engineering, Left-leaning politicians seek sameness through differentiation. And nowhere is this more evident than in California, where a new law requires big box companies to add a new aisle to toy sections, an aisle devoted exclusively to “gender-neutral” toys.

Are you wondering what I’m wondering? Does a ball fit into the Venn diagram of toys in both separate and overlapping sections? What about Legos? Chemistry sets? Models? Paints? Toy ambulances? Toy computers and sound equipment like microphones and baby pianos? Wonder Woman and Superman statues? Board games?

Anecdote: I remember carrying my first granddaughter into a large grocery store/pharmacy and seeing her eyes open widely when she saw all the colorful boxes. The shapes and colors were a feast for her young brain. Think computer games, modern video slot machines, and art museums: Our brains are attracted to and feast on visual experiences. That happens to children in toy stores, where not just the products, but also the toy boxes attract attention. 

Question: And who in the history of department stores' attempts to make money from toy sales has said to a customer, “No, you can’t have that baseball glove because you’re a girl”? Or "No, this aisle is just for gender-neutral people." 

Who among us has walked in a department store and not picked up a toy? What child has not been attracted to a toy in a store?

Do Stores also Have to Carry Age-Neutral Toys?

Believe it or not, some adults buy toys for themselves. I have, for example, a bobble Einstein sitting on the windowsill beside my computer at this very moment. It’s solar powered, so it bobbles only in the daytime. His head and body are fixed, but his hand with a raised index finger keeps pointing to his head as if to say, “Think.” I bought two of the little statues, one for me and another for a granddaughter who is majoring in astrophysics. Is my bobble Einstein a gender-neutral toy? Is it age-specific? Would my great granddaughter not be attracted to the moving hand repeatedly pointing to the disheveled head even in the absence of knowledge about physics or Einstein? Would that toddler not be intrigued by the moving hand? 


It Doesn’t Take a Toy Scientist…


If I ever run into Democratic California Assemblymember (I didn’t know the term assemblymember until I read the article) Evan Low or Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, I’m going to ask about the new law. CNN reports that Evan Low introduced a bill that requires department stores with 500+ employees to have separate aisles with gender-neutral toys (Cheri Mossburg, CNN). Low was inspired by an 8-year-old girl who asked, “Why should a store tell me what a girl’s shirt or toy is?” 


What is a gender-neutral toy? I’m at a loss. Children play with whatever attracts their attention and interest at the moment. And then they abandon one kind of toy for another, as attics and closets and storage rooms in homes attest with all those piled up and forgotten toys.


Toys, like shells, attract because of their form and function, because or their cultural association, and even because of their potential worth, call it toy wampum. Collectors trade them, make money from old toys and new.


What prevents any parent with sufficient means from buying whatever toy interests a child? The department store? Certainly not. The goal of a department store is to sell for profit. The money is gender-neutral. More than a few commentators have pointed to the new law as an example of government overreach burdening commerce and free speech.


Imagine a Trip to the Beach


Imagine taking kids to a beach and pointing to the shells with the admonition that you can’t have that one. It’s not gender-specific or gender-neutral. Silly stuff, right? (I suppose one might note the hermaphroditism of gastropods) But isn’t silly stuff the norm for most social engineering in the twenty-first century. Pronouns? And now toys? (Not to mention electric vehicles and lawn mowers, gas stoves, and even house plants, all-Black sororities, sororities with trans women, all, and more, falling in the grand plan for social engineering and all with the purpose of re-engineering what previous generations engineered) 


Should California’s department stores move around toys as a conman moves around shells? Which one is female? Which, male? Which, neither? Come on, kid, make a choice.


Did Newsom play with toy wrestlers or super heroes when he was a child? Would he consider those "dolls" inappropriate for boys? Evan Low and Gavin Newsom need to go back to their childhood homes and look in the attic. How many different toys over their childhood years attracted their attention like shells on a beach, toys that they played with for a time and then abandoned for other toys? Those toys in the attic are like those many shells collected during vacations to the beach. 

People take toys of all kinds home, put them on shelves, move them around for a couple of years till dust accumulates, and then throw them out or store them in some box to be forgotten. And during all that collecting, displaying, and storing, no one asks, “Is this a gender-neutral thing?”



*Plug: You can see the collection at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in the Laurel Highlands of western Pennsylvania.


 

Made It!


Whew! I was concerned I couldn’t’ do it, but here I am four days into the new year, and I haven’t made a political comment—though I have been tempted.


How about you?

Close your eyes. Sorry. Don’t. I just realized that if you do, you won’t be able to read this. I guess I was “talking in my head,” not realizing that this isn’t a podcast or a lecture, venues that would allow me to say, “Close your ideas, and imagine….” Well, if you could close your eyes while still reading this, then here goes.


New Year?


This was my New Year’s Eve text to my grandchildren: Every day begins a new year. Every day is a first day. Every life constantly renews.


Time as a Dependent Variable; You as the Independent Variable


Science and math classes teach us to place the independent variable on the X-axis and the dependent variable on the Y-axis. In many graphs, time is the independent one. The notion is that its regularity can be used as a marker against which to plot the vicissitudes of the variable. We also learn from those classes that time is itself a variable, dependent upon the unwavering speed of light in a vacuum, gravity, and relative speed: Really fast, near C velocities slow time’s flow in a relative universe; muons, for example, extend their lifetimes as they approach the speed of light in accelerators like that of the Large Hadron Collider. But that’s all relative, just as you wouldn’t age like your relatives if you took a near-light-speed roundtrip to Alpha Centauri to find upon your return that your twin had aged more than you.


And then there are the statements everyone makes to show time’s variability: “I can’t believe it’s been a year since…” “Will this pot of water ever come to a boil?” “It seems like just yesterday when…” “Was that the end of the first quarter (vacation, movie, etc.) already?” Time seems to vary against the background of our memories. desires, and varying attention spans. It appears to vary, also, with our perspectives.


Time as the Arbitrary Independent Variable


Maybe it’s because we are so base-10 oriented that we like to measure our lives in beginnings and endings like December 31 and January 1. Look, for example, at all the big celebrations over the “end of the decade,” the “end of the century,” the “end of the millennium” 24 years ago. Look at the penchant people have to recognize birthdays that end in zero as somehow special: “The Big 4-OHH,” is one, the “Fiftieth Anniversary,” another. We like to round up. And we like to acknowledge some temporal designations as special like that end of the millennium in 2020.


But in truth, there’s really nothing special in New Year’s Eve as the end of something significant that differs from December 17th except that we choose to make it special because of tradition. And the same goes for birthdays that end in zero and the ends of decades, centuries, and millennia. Remember that all centuries that we designate as such “civil” time units are so named in western countries—and by adoption, eastern countries—because they center on the birth of Christ. Thus, we label them either BC, “before Christ,” and AD, “anno domini,” for “in the year of the Lord.” That BC has been by “scientific convention” changed to BCE, for “before the common era,” as a concession to non Christians, and AD changed to CE, for “the common era.” The rebrand supposedly makes time-keeping “objective” and “scientific,” but, in truth, the split between years before Christ’s birth and after that birth still center on Christ’s birth. In essence, it’s a silly change, but it gratifies those who think they have freed themselves from the dictates of religion. In studying the eighteenth century, we label those 100 years as the 1700s. Zeroes, represent units we value, but life outside of human custom recognizes no such beginnings and endings, just as waking up on January 1 isn't really different--save for a hangover--from waking up on the previous day. You were the same person the day before your twentieth--or any other decadal--birthday as you were the day after. 


As you know, the Romans had a different designation for years, one based “on the founding of the city,” or ab urbe condita.  Julius Caesar’s famous death on the Ides of March was not in Roman minds a negative number, not a year “before Christ,” but we label it 44 BC or BCE. The Soviets tried to get everyone onboard for a “beginning” that coincided with 1917 and the Revolution, and other cultures have designations that do not correspond to the Gregorian calendar now commonly used for civil timekeeping. Characters in Rosemary’s Baby raise their glasses to toast the child’s birth as the beginning of “the Year One.”


BCE and CE numbering fails to recognize that we don’t know exactly when Christ was born since Dionysius Exiguus was probably off by four to six years. And the former Julian calendar had to be adjusted in the Gregorian calendar because of imprecision in the measuring of both solar and sidereal years, that is, astronomical measurements used to mark the seasons, specifically Sun angle from the perspective of a revolving tilted planet. Such measurements depend on a variety of definitions and “completions” of cycles, such as the time Earth takes to fully complete a cycle of seasons or a movement between perihelion and aphelion. The math is complex and irrelevant here, but it indicates what I said above, that timekeeping is not the independent variable we pretend it is.


But enough on matters I covered in another blog a few years ago. The focus here is on the significance of a day, every day, a focus on the present and its constantly renewing potential. Today, January 1, 2024, is a first day, for sure. But January 2, tomorrow, will also be a first day. It might seem a trivial matter, but consider that it allows us to break from a past we can never recover to live in a present that is all we really have in the context of an unfulfilled future. Today’s resolutions, typically made in the hope of the long term, are achieved only in constant renewing in the short term.


Now


With that foregoing in mind, I resolve to consider at the beginning of each day one question: What perspective will govern my life in what seems to be an eternal Now which appears to be both variable and invariable?


I recognize that many of my perspectives are hand-me-downs and that others I hold are products of past and contemporary thinkers, from authors and songwriters to psychologists and philosophers, and from cultural icons to gurus of all kinds, including health “authorities” to economists and politicians. In short, I’m my own “melting pot” of others’ thinking and behaving. What I’m challenging myself to do is to consider daily whether or not my perspectives are my own, some other individual’s, or a mix of experience and adoption. And I’m challenging myself to recognize daily how variable time and variable perspective are interdependent in what I consider to be a Self.


The Resolution


I resolve to start each day by asking one question: “What perspectives now govern my thinking and behavior?”

True story (but second hand telling): My son was relaxing on the beach with a girlfriend, both lying on a large beach towel they had placed on the sand. Suddenly, she sat up, dusting herself and the towel somewhat frenetically, exclaiming in a perplexed way, “Sand! Where’s all this sand coming from?”


It’s Mayor Eric Adams who reminded me of this story. As NYC fills with illegal migrants, Eric has gone to Washington and on TV to ask for financial help with the overflowing shelters that NYC’s residents have to support with their taxes. Eric’s towel is on the sidewalk outside a shelter, and Eric, suddenly bothered by the others getting onto his towel, says, “Migrants! Where are all these migrants coming from?”


The girl on the beach towel knew she was putting her towel on sand at the outset. Yet, that passersby, the wind, and her own feet might have carried sand onto the towel seems to have come as a surprise. Duh!


And there’s Eric—and all the other “sanctuary city" Democrats—suddenly asking, “Where are all these migrants coming from?”


Duh! Maybe even double-Duh! You voted for the President who opened the border. What did you expect?

Different times but same place: Earth, the West, the heritage of European civilization going back to the Greeks, you know, to guys like Pythagoras, Parmenides, Pericles, Plato, Plutarch, all of who might have had on average a larger brain than we have. Today’s people? Pretty much the same as those Greeks in most ways except for the smaller brains—possibly even smaller in Canada, but more on that later. According to Nick Longrich of the University of Bath, “Our brain size is evolving—[they] have actually become smaller over the past 10,000 years since we started living in civilization. Brains seem to be smaller now than even in Greek or Roman times.” *

I suppose we might naturally ask, “If our brains are smaller, what other changes might have occurred over the past 20 or 30 centuries, changes possibly accelerating in a burgeoning population of eight billion humans from every land, all exchanging chromosomes because of mass migrations, military conflicts, genocides, and selective breeding?”

We might be witnessing the process of evolution right now. Didn’t I just read that a giant former male swimmer just switched “gender” and beat all women swimming contenders? Oh! It’s not that kind of evolution. Individuals might evolve emotionally and intellectually, but they don’t evolve biologically as individuals. No, evolution is a species-level process, regardless of all those movie plots driven by the contention that radiation, chemicals, and spider bites indicate otherwise. Artificially induced biochemical and physical changes aren’t evolutionary changes, and as experiments by Weismann with five generations of mice showed long ago, Larmarckian evolution, at least over five generations, is a myth: Mice with tails removed produced mice with tails. Male-female swimmers…well let’s not go there except to say that physically altering one generation has no effect on the ensuing generation because genes do the evolving, not surgeons. Genes are the mechanisms that control form, function, and even sexual tendencies.   

Transformations

However… And this is where Lamarck is turning over in his grave saying, “Well, if all the trees were short, then giraffes would have shorter legs and necks” or something like that. Some people just can’t let their beliefs go. But maybe Lamarck was just de la marque by a little because environmental pressures and circumstances can affect the gene pool.
There were no mammal grazers, for example, until their were grasses on which to graze. And the pressure of a pandemic can reveal how some people aren’t fit to survive certain environmental dangers whereas others are. Recently, COVID demonstrated that some of us had the natural wherewithal to avoid serious illness; some of us even got the disease but had no symptoms; some did all they could do through masking, isolating, and receiving multiple vaccinations but still contracted and spread the virus, and some died, leaving a gap in the gene pool—bad for them, but not an extinction event because most of those who died were typically beyond their reproductive years. Those who survived without the aid of vaccines demonstrated a genetic immunity against the virus.

Anyway, whereas much that defined “human” in ancient times still applies and the human genome is largely unaltered though we live in a different world by an unknown magnitude of change from the past. We have undergone both complex gene-exchanges and occasional isolated breeding within groups separated from other groups of humans, as in Australia and the Arctic wilderness. We have experienced wars that eliminated lines of genetic transmission, also. In this last example, consider the viably reproductive individuals who never had kids because their lives were truncated by the random violence of modern warfare. Or consider instances of genocide.

In the context of human activities over millennia, we can argue that the mixing of genes in a population of eight billion added to evolutionary pressures. We can also argue with Lamarck that artificially induced environmental changes across the planet have probably had as yet an undetermined effect beyond our shrinking brains—on the assumption that Longrich is correct.
Has our manipulation of the natural world hastened the rate of mutations? If cosmic rays and natural background radiation have modified genes over millennia, is it possible that our nuclear age has affected our species? Certainly, if we watch sci-fi movies, the idea pervades the common shrunken brain: It’s easy to suspect that above ground tests of bombs, nuclear waste dumps, and nuclear power plant disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima have affected the gene pool. How much strontium-90 did people consume in the milk they drank during during the 1940s through the 1960s? How many who lived in the shadows of Chernobyl and Fukushima have passed on or will pass on some slight genetic variation?

We might consider, also, Erasmus Darwin’s contention that sexual selection plays a role in evolution, citing as evidence the “ideal” body styles favored through history—somewhat plump in days when starvation accompanied being poor and somewhat thin when abundance accompanied diet fads. (What, I might ask, is the body style that most attracts you? What is your idea of beauty? Has your culture induced you to reproduce based as much on “ideals” as on pheromones?) In a corollary to Longrich’s contention, culture, Lamarck might argue, exerts an environmental pressure on genes.

Apples and Oranges, or Maybe Stew, or Pot Luck, or Vegetable Soup: The Following Is Hard to Follow

It’s almost impossible to discuss any topic nowadays without getting tangled up in political and social controversies. Some will argue that climate change, specifically global warming, will speed up human evolution. But they ignore that we’re not reptiles. Why should I say that? As Matt Ridley writes in Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, “At some point in our past, our ancestors switched from the common reptilian habit of determining sex by the temperature of the egg to determining it genetically. The probable reason for the switch was so that each sex could start training of its special role at conception. In our case, the sex-determining gene made us male and the lack of it left us female, whereas in birds it happened the other way around” (109)**

Today, many young people seem to be confused about gender. Much of that confusion stems from the drumbeat of a liberal press and entertainment industry intent on pushing an agenda and from a compliant group of adults too timid to challenge political correctness. But for argument’s sake, let’s contend that confusion is warranted at times because a pure X and Y chromosome division is often interrupted through, as Ridley argues in his book, a built-in antagonism centered in the SRY and DAX genes. And with regard to Y’s SRY, we can note that Ridley calls it one of the fastest evolving genes. So, males beware; you might be evolving faster than females—but probably not.

Enter Gary Trudeau

Leave it to Leftist leaders to make assumed changes political. Canada now has tampon dispensers in men’s restrooms, required dispensers, that is, in public buildings, by the way, not voluntary stuff…***
As many have remarked, wait till wives of government employees tell their husbands not to stop at the store for such products, where asking a teenage female clerk for directions to the aisle of tampons embarrasses both her and the husband on errand, but rather to stop in a government building’s restroom for free stuff. Never underestimate the wide ramifications of Leftist policies aimed at transforming humanity into some “equitable” ideal. ** To paraphrase the Gospel, “Make straight the way to equity.” E pluribus unum, as we say in America. Menstruating men. Are there bunches of them? And do they require financial assistance to purchase personal hygiene products? If they are on government salaries with cushy benefits, does Mr. Trudeau think they can’t afford a little absorbent cotton?

By the way, one in every 300 Canadians over 15, according to the last census, identifies as trans. So there are, in fact, bunches of them. But are 100,800 in a population of 30 some million deserving of a benefit that the majority of taxpaying Canadians don’t want or don’t use? Will the government check to see that only those who are trans with uteruses get the free tampons from the mandated bathroom vending machines? (Hey, now there’s an opening for another government job: Tampon Guard in Men’s Rooms: By the way, isn’t the term “Men’s Room” like the term “Women’s Room” obsolete?)

But hold on. Am I objecting to tampons in men’s restrooms? No. As an anti-socialist, I’m objecting to “free tampons” in men’s restrooms and to forced “equity.” Why? Because just about everything that big government does ends up not doing what it was intended to do. There will be husbands carting off free tampons for wives and daughters (and maybe girlfriends). And the cost will be another burden on the Canadian taxpayer. Then again, with some 330,000 federal employees in Canada and a rate of one in 300 identifying as “trans,’ that would amount to a little over 1,100 government trans employees, but not all of them would be trans women, and not all men who undergo the transition to womanhood will have transplanted uteruses. How many humans are we actually talking about here? Tens? A couple hundred? ****
Can I ramble or what?

Government. Big government. What could go wrong? What could go wrong especially when the government decides to “aid” evolution? Now I remember: Hitler’s final solution and the Aryan race.

​Remember “We Are the World”?
Song writers have had their Buddhist moments over the years. Lennon’s “Imagine,“ Richie and Jackson’s “We Are the World,” Marley’s “One Love” all express a desire for unity. Maybe Gary Trudeau thinks we are disunited when we don’t supply men’s rooms with tampons. “Imagine all the people, menstruating together with you, ooh ooh ooha ooo” Period.
Or maybe we should stop the world on which life has randomly evolved over 3.8 billion years, generating differences. In the words of Robbie Grey and Modern English’s song, “I’ll melt with you.” And why not, especially in Canada, where everyone is “one.”
Much Ado about Little Things: Some Rambling Thoughts for You to Reject or Accept
That we are the playthings of genes disturbs me. I like to think of humans as having free will exercised by a rather complex brain and that we are products of both nature and nurture. That thought enables me to exercise free will in accepting or rejecting any physical or cultural predetermination and allows me accept that others, men, for example, might not want to accept any stereotypes. That’s fine. But do I have to pay for their personal hygiene?
Now I find out that my brain is probably smaller than the average brain in pre-civilized humanity, making me wonder  how resistant I am to the pressures of nature and nurture. Ridley writes, “Most evolutionists believe in the Machiavellian theory—that bigger brains were needed in an arms race between manipulation and resistance to manipulation” (116). He’s writing mostly about sexual orientation and the drive to procreate in that statement, but it is applicable to our ability to resist political manipulation through the seduction of propagandists.
The trend toward political correctness and equity in Canada seems to find little resistance in the media, where I suspect brains aren’t as large as they self-contend. Canadians have demonstrated the fast-tracked shrinking of the brain and have given themselves over to the socialist manipulators. They’ll pay for tampons in men’s rooms now, and later for all manner of equitable causes as determined by officials like Gary Trudeau. The exercise of free will will fade as mandated differences fade into oneness. Canadians—all western peoples, in fact—will melt into one another in a forced evolution in which there are no distinctions, not even X and Y distinctions.
Yes, it’s true that given a uterus, some men menstruate, and some men are male in form but female in tendency. Maleness is, after all, a biological afterthought that arose with sexual reproduction long before there were mammals. Once established, it operated first on the basis of temperature of the egg to which genetic control was eventually added. In the latter, X and Y chromosomes shape sex, Xs coming from mothers and Ys, from fathers. What we inherit differs, however, from what is determined.
And that’s where this little rambling piece will end, with “determined.” Canada under Trudeau and the politically correct socialists want to determine the nature of humans, to force them into some equitable ideal. Socialists often play the role of the Fates, determining not only the sexual nature of youth but also the length of life in the elderly, as Canada’s push for euthanasia intensifies, the latest centering on euthanizing the mentally ill. Can anyone say “Nazis” or “pure race.” What’s next, Canada, in your desire to manipulate evolution? *****
Genes might play a cruel trick in mixing gender form and identity, and they appear to do so in one out of every 300 Canadians—if we can trust polls and surveys that are often subjective. But they have most likely been playing that trick since the rise of mammals in the Triassic Period, when Brasilodon quadrangularis evolved at about the same time as the earliest dinosaurs. If humans survive the vicissitudes of a dynamic Earth and their own self-destructive ways, what will the future entail? Will we, as so many sci-fi stories project, enter an age of petri dish reproduction, designed genetics, and even smaller brains?
As I asked above, can I ramble or what?
*https://www.newsweek.com/humans-evolving-rapidly-ever-scientist-evolution-genetics-1852884
**New York. MJF Books. 1999, 2010.
***https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/12/26/justin-trudeau-installs-taxpayer-funded-tampon-dispensers-canadian-mens-bathrooms/
****https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220427/dq220427b-eng.htm
*****https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/transgender-top-surgery-canadian-children

The lyrics of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” a hummable, singable song, express what has been unrealizable. Somehow peace and harmony always lie over the horizon of ensuing generations though hints of both might appear briefly in a single local. Lasting peace? Myth. Lasting harmony? Myth. At least, that’s what our history tells us.


Look, for example, at Christmas, a holiday centered on the birth of Christ, a messenger of peace. During the “buying season” fights have broken out in department stores as angry customers push one another over a limited supply of clothing items or toys. The incidents are head-shaking moments caught on video: Christmas, commercial Christmas, that is, has become a context for public displays of greed and anger. Poor little kid in that manger! Think he foresaw what his future birthday parties would entail? Probably, if the story of Herod’s “killing of the innocents” is true.


One could argue that the same event, the celebration of Christ’s birth, that triggers department-store conflicts might also breed one of those occasional moments of peace and harmony. There was that famous World War I incident in Bois de Ploegsteert in Belgium when German and British troops, without any formal negotiations, briefly laid down their arms, met in the “no man’s land” between the trenches, and exchanged greetings during the famous Christmas Truce. Imagine. People at war met without fighting in contrast to Christmas shoppers not at war fighting. Just remember that the truce lasted only through Christmas Eve. They went back to killing one another shortly after the spontaneous moment of peace and harmony.


Enter Jeff Bezos


But now there’s a way to ensure that no people will harm one another in department stores at Christmas: Simply remove them from the department stores. Thanks to a trend largely started by Jeff Bezos, many people buy their products online. And because of his company, peace and harmony, the messages of Jesus and Buddha, have peeked at us from the horizon like a Christmas morning sun’s crepuscular rays beneath our long dark night’s purple cloud bank of incessant hostility.


A Revision of Matthew 18:20


The passage in Matthew 18:20 reads, “Where two or three are gathered in my name….” The implication is that when people gather in Christ’s name—as they supposedly do at Christmastime—Christ will be present among them, and with his presence peace and harmony will reside in their hearts. Bezos has effectively revised the passage by keeping people in their homes and separated from one another. Essentially, the revision is this: “Where people don’t interact, the peaceful existence that is the promise of Christ’s birth will, as it did briefly in the no man’s land between the trenches on that Christmas Eve in World War I, pervade humanity.


You want people to be peaceful and harmonious? Separate them.

What Would AI Recommend?


Lacking wisdom sufficient to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem, I went elsewhere, climbing to the top of the cyber mountain to seek a solution. This is what ChatGPT wrote when I asked it for a three-paragraph solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:


   Addressing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict requires a comprehensive and balanced approach that acknowledges the historical grievances and aspirations of both parties involved. First and foremost, a two-state solution remains a viable framework for achieving lasting peace. Negotiations should be facilitated with the goal of establishing a sovereign and viable Palestinian state alongside Israel, with defined borders based on pre-1967 lines, adjusted through mutually agreed-upon land swaps. International actors, including the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union, should play a facilitative role in mediating these negotiations and ensuring that both sides commit to the process.


Furthermore, efforts should be made to address the core issues at the heart of the conflict, including the status of Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, security arrangements, and the equitable distribution of shared resources like water. These negotiations should be based on the principles of justice, equality, and mutual recognition. To build trust between the two communities, confidence-building measures and people-to-people initiatives should be promoted, fostering cultural exchange and understanding. Educational programs should be developed to promote tolerance and coexistence, particularly among the younger generations.

Finally, international support is crucial for the successful implementation of any agreement. The international community should provide economic assistance, security guarantees, and diplomatic support to both the Israeli and Palestinian states. This support can help ensure the stability and prosperity of the region, addressing the underlying socio-economic issues that contribute to the conflict. Additionally, a monitoring and enforcement mechanism should be established to oversee the implementation of any agreed-upon solutions and hold both parties accountable for their commitments. By embracing a balanced and cooperative approach, the international community can contribute to a just and sustainable resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.


Duh! Thinking what I’m thinking right now? Haven’t humans already attempted all those recommendations? Is this wisdom or just a recap of human efforts? Does any of this have anything to do with the reality of human relationships? It’s logical. But is it effective? It reveals knowledge, but does it reveal wisdom?


Historical References


The complexity of modern Middle East relationships is easy enough to trace: There’s the British interference in the early twentieth century, the League of Nations proceedings, and the UN’s solution in 1948. None of those actions have quelled the on-and-off warfare between Palestinians and Israelis. And these modern conflicts rest on a history of regional conflict that goes back a long way, back into the Bronze Age: Canaanites, Israelis, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians under Alexander, Hasmoneans, and then, starting in 63 BC, Romans. I probably missed some…Oh! What of the “sea peoples”? Then the Rashiduns, the Umayyads, the Tulunids, the Ikhshidids, the Fatimids, the Seljuks, followed by crusading Christians, theAyyubid Sultanate, the Mongols, Mamluks, and the Ottomans, all before the British with a League of Nations’ mandate got involved and issued the Balfour Declaration, making the region a Jewish homeland. Finally, the UN screwed up the area by establishing the rudiments of the current situation.


Embracing a “Balanced and Cooperative Approach”


Apparently, ChatGPT believes the logic of international cooperation is a path to solution. It isn’t, of course, as all those previous attempts to reconcile the two sides have demonstrated. Add to the tensions of the Israelis and Palestinians the interference of countries that see continued strife as a means to their own ends and anyone can see that the strife is probably destined to continue.


And as all humans know but AI has yet to find out, little that is resolved in one generation continues as a resolution in the ensuing generation.

Illegal Migration


The migrants? They all call him Joe,
And Mexicans watch as they go.
They travel right through
On trains with the crew
Then end up right here as you know.


Homelessness


The sidewalks are covered by tents
And landlords keep raising their rents.
The cities are dying
‘Cause no one is trying
To mend all those holes in the fence.


Urban Crime


The stores on the streets are now vacant.
The owners that left were quite blatant.
“Protect us or else
“They’ll clean off our shelves.
“The DA is criminally complacent.”


Gas Prices


“The prices are down so they say,
“From the highs that they were yesterday.
“We cannot admit
“We raised them a bit
“When we shut down the pipe underway.”


Green Energy


From the start we had a fixation
On energy from wind for the nation.
“You’ll drive in a car,
“But not very far,
“The air’s not the country’s salvation.”


Justice


The symbol of justice was blind,
And her reach was quite unconfined.
But now she can see
And Libs guarantee
With Democrats she is aligned.


Foreign Policy


Afghanistan was quite a disaster;
We couldn’t withdraw any faster.
The Taliban cheered
As Joe engineered
The rise of those Afghani masters.


Climate


It’s the lure and the hook, line, and sinker
That with weather humans can tinker.
What happened before
Alarmists ignore.
They seem to prefer a cold winter.


Student Loans


The Left thinks it’s right on the movement
To spend more in the hope of improvement.
They’ll give all away
To students, they say,
To drive up the Party’s recruitment.


DEI


Diversity is not what they said.
It’s politics perfectly spread. 
The people they hire
They’ll always require
To be loyal Fabianists till dead.


Victimhood of the Dem Staffer Making a Sex Tape in the Capitol


You’ve heard it from here and from there,
“To blame me for this isn’t fair.
“You should be ashamed
“For what you have claimed.
“It’s dalliance, not ‘sordid affair.’”


Victimhood of Hunter Biden


I was under the influence of drugs
And numerous prostitute hugs,
When I didn’t pay taxes
It was just me being fractious.
My dad says he, too, likes some hugs.

The “good Samaritan,” for those who are unfamiliar with the tale, was a person who stopped to help—unlike the Seinfeld characters who watched, but did not help in the plot of the last two episodes of the series.


We all know that it isn’t just indifference to the pain of others that causes some of us to look the other way. In a super litigious society, one can never know how “helping” can become a serious liability, costing one not just money, but also reputation—and sometimes life.


Being a good Samaritan was never easy, but being one in today’s drug-infused and compunctionless society begs caution. In 2021 Linda Robinson was killed after she stopped to help George Faile and Amber Harris, both high on meth. * I have no doubt that you have heard similar stories about those who went to aid others only to become victims like Linda.


Samaritanism for Fun and Profit


Now Samaritanism takes on a new and dark twist: Videoing addicts wallowing in the stupor of tranq, or xylazine, in North Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. *** Tranq is a sedative that disables its human users, making them incapable of rational consent to being videoed by people who then upload their work onto TikTok channels they have monetized. Under the guise of wanting to show the world the dangers of the drug, those who video simply profit from the Schadenfreude of those who might well be described as social media addicts.


What Makes Us Look without Helping?


Fess up! You’ve rubbernecked as you’ve driven past a wreck with ambulances and police cars still on the scene. What motivated your rubbernecking?


Were I a cognitive psychologist, I might ascribe the morbid curiosity associated with rubbernecking as a juxtaposition of empathy and fear: Empathy for the victims and fear for oneself, that is, fear that the same fate might await the rubbernecker who has so far escaped such tragic events. This latter emotion generates adrenalin and maybe activity in mirror neurons. Certainly, it seems to be related to our mutualism. Any of us can become victims, making us ask, “What if…?” And that question we follow with various hypothetical scenarios in which we star in survival or heroic mode.


Uploading videos of others suffering from tranq and other drugs reveals an underlying crassness, a willingness to debase others and oneself for profit. Taking those videos is little different from robbing the dead of their effects because the videographer steals the dignity and reputation of the zombie-state addict. You know that now repeated expression, “No animals were harmed in the shooting of this movie”? Now, TikTok videographers can say, “No humans were helped in the shooting of this video.”


The Kensington videographers remind me of a Sam Kinison skit I’ve related elsewhere. News cameramen filming Ethiopian child victims of drought and famine in the early 1980s drove the late comic to ask, “How come the film crew didn’t just give the kid a sandwich? How come you never see that? What are they afraid of—that it would spoil the shot?”


There’s Much in Humanity That Isn’t Likable


Two to three hundred millennia of torture and cruelty through many wars and conquests, domestic abuses, and teenage bullying reveal a not-very likable species. Sure, we’re cute when we are infants, then much less so when we are in our “terrible twos,” and almost universally obnoxious when we are teens. And then, as adults, we find ourselves in the midst of biases and self-aggrandizement that devalue the lives of others.


Wow! Isn’t that pessimistic? Probably.


Those Truly Good Samaritans


But among us are people like the late Linda Robinson, people who are willing to stop to help. I think, also, of Amy Biehl, a Fulbright Scholar and anti-Apartheid activist who was killed in South Africa by the very people she tried to support in 1993. ****


Those who lost their lives in the service of others are real examples of Samaritanism at its finest, action that Charles Dickens encapsulated at the end of A Tale of Two Cities when Sydney Carton says:


“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”


That well known passage makes the novel’s ending a tear-jerker, but it should be read in the context of another passage Dickens writes into the book:


“For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sincere in this one thing.” 


So numerous are self-sacrificing humans that the hippocampus is stressed to remember recent Samaritans, and ensuing generations rarely read about them, save for individuals like Mother Teresa. Samaritanism persists even in this crass contemporary world, even under the pressure of profit and self-aggrandizement, both of which are driven by social media. And that persistence breeds hope that every generation will birth and nurture those who will echo those words of Carton—albeit in melodramatic passages—that Dickens wrote into his novel.


One can only hope that in every rubbernecker and in every indifferent and unsympathetic individual videographer there lies a seed of empathy that will drive them to place the welfare of those in need above any self-centered tendencies and insecurities.


From St. Paul’s writings through those of more modern authors, we get the expression, “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” words ascribed to various sources. That expression isn’t, however, action. Just recognizing that others are victims of some accident or human cruelty is just the beginning of Samaritanism; its fulfillment comes only with help and not camerawork.




*https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/chester-county-deputies-search-damaged-van-after-body-found-side-road/5IOCVFMXXZFVJFEKTZAVACX57Q/


**https://countylocalnews.com/article1/2023/12/17/tragic-accident-two-good-samaritans-struck-killed-in-raleigh-while-assisting-crash-victims/ and https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/latrell-sanders-dui-high-speed-crash-good-samaritan-killed-i395-baltimore/ and https://www.foxnews.com/us/good-samaritan-killed-helping-crash-victim-arizona-worst-case-scenario and https://www.foxnews.com/us/los-angeles-good-samaritans-die-from-electrical-shock-while-aiding-crash-victim and other stories too numerous to list.


***https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/17/tranq-tourism-tiktok-philadelphia-drug-use-xylazine


****https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Biehl