April 2026
Books read:
- These Days by Lucy Caldwell
- Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant
- Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make--and Keep—Friends by Marisa G. Franco
- Normal People by Sally Rooney
- The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton
- The Deadly Rise of Anti-science: A Scientist's Warning by Peter Hotez
Trails walked:
- Lykins Gulch and Golden Ponds in Longmont (April 13th)
- Hewlett Gulch near Fort Collins (April 16th)
Song(s)
of the month: Chip Taylor
- Wild Thing
- Angel of the Morning
- Sweet Tequila Blues (with Carrie Rodriguez)
April Summary:
If you look at the top of this post there seems to be a large discrepancy between my reading and my rambling this month. It all started in mid March when my right knee started complaining after a hike. I did all the things afterwards like icing, elevating, ibuprofen, slowly increasing walking miles etc. It seemed to get better. I was able to go on some hikes. Then boom, the knee said, No More! As of publication time I've seen an orthopedic surgeon, but as most of you know, the diagnosing part takes more time than we'd like. So I'm not sure if I have surgery in my near future or cortisone injections or just physical therapy, but my rambling days will be changing from walks to something else for a while. Maybe other ways to explore, like driving or visiting museums.
For Earth Day this month I tabled at Longmont's annual Earth Day celebration at Timberline elementary school. I walked to the school which was 2 miles from my house and ironically after that walk was when my knee decided it had enough. But anyway, I had some great conversations with folks during my tabling stint, including an in depth conversation about nuclear energy with a nuclear physicist! And also a great conversation with a farmer about solar energy. As you would imagine, the crowd at an Earth Day celebration didn't have many (any) climate deniers, so the conversations were easy ones. Although they are more stressful, I tend to enjoy the conversations I have with deniers or doubters the most. I feel like perhaps I can make a small dent in their armor. See the last book review below for more on why so many people are trending towards anti-science in this country.
Let's see, what else happened this month. Oh yeah, remember my (somewhat) fictional Medicare conversation from last month's blog? Well, we officially started on Medicare this month and already there's an issue. Evidently Medicare didn't get the notice from Social Security that our previous insurance coverage ended in March. So all our April medical bills were denied by Medicare because they didn't show that Medicare was our primary insurance. All of the paperwork that I turned in clearly showed that our insurance ended in March, but government red tape seems to have nullified all that. Anyway, my wife fixed all that with one phone call to a very helpful Medicare representative. When my wife told me that her claims were denied I was peacefully reading a book. I had to go from peaceful mode to whatever mode it is that requires you to 1) remember your passwords for Social Security and Medicare, 2) revisit all that medical information that you thought you had already dealt with, and 3) revisit your tax return to verify some other Medicare charges. These are all things that I'm sure all of you cringe at: Passwords, Medical Insurance, and Taxes. Why are all of these things so maddening in this country? It seems that smart people somewhere could figure out how to make all of these issues a no brainer. Maybe one day....
This month my knee held up enough to hike a local gulch that I hadn't explored and also a different and longer gulch near Ft. Collins (gulches seem to be a thing in Colorado). My reading was not impacted by my knee so I managed six books this month including a fictional account of a family in Belfast during the Nazi bombing in WWII, another fictional novel that turned into a hit TV series and a science fiction book about the last murder at the end of the world. Three non-fiction books included one on how to improve your thinking, one on the importance of platonic friendships, and one on the rise of anti-science in the US. Enjoy!
Things My Grandkids Say: I was watching my 3-year-old grandson one day this month and he said to me, "Grandpa, I want a special treat!" I asked him why he wanted a special treat and he responded, "Because I'm a special guy!" Well obviously he got some candy after that, and a big hug too.
A Cool Thing I Found on the Internet: Not everything on the Internet is political or depressing. I've been subscribing to a New York Times newsletter titled "Good News". And the latest version referenced this NASA website that has satellite images from around the world that seem to be in the shape of alphabetical letters. So if you go to this site, you can get your name spelled out using satellite images from nature. It's very cool. My name is spelled out above using images from: The Potomac River (M), the Holuhraun Ice Field in Iceland (i), Sirmilik National Park in Canada (k), and the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia (e). Here's the site. Enjoy!
- Wild Thing
- Angel of the Morning
- Sweet Tequila Blues (with Carrie Rodriguez)
A couple of years ago I heard a song by a duet consisting of two artists I'd never heard of. It was Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriquez. I thought that their voices blended in such a strange and beautiful way. His smooth as whiskey (tequila?) aged voice along with her powerful and piercing voice as clear as the sky is blue. And her fiddle playing is great. The two of them met at Austin's SXSW festival in 2001 and proceeded to make three albums together. He was 61 at the time and she was 22. Taylor died in March of this year of cancer. When I read his obituary I didn't think he was the same Chip Taylor that I "discovered" playing with Carrie Rodriguez. The obit said that this Chip Taylor wrote the hit songs Wild Thing (made famous by the Troggs) and Angel of the Morning (made famous by Merilee Rush and then later by Juice Newton). I kept reading. It was the same Chip Taylor. Wow, how do you go from Wild Thing and Angel of the Morning to this Austin vibe? So I researched, and wow, what a life Chip Taylor lived.
Born John Wesley Voight in Yonkers in 1940, he was brother to the actor Jon Voight and therefore eventually uncle to Angelina Jolie. He tried his hand at professional golf like his father Elmer, but thankfully for us that didn't work out and he went into the music business. He started out as a freelance writer for a New York publishing company and had his first hit at the age of 25. It was Wild Thing, the rock song made famous by The Troggs, although I liked the version by Jimi Hendrix the best. His second big hit came two years later with Angel of the Morning. I was 9 years old when I heard Merilee Rush's version of the song and I fell in love (especially when I saw a picture of Merilee Rush). I don't remember exactly why I loved that song, maybe because it was on the radio a lot, but I guess I wasn't the only one because it's been recorded by many artists throughout the years, including by its writer, Chip Taylor. Other artists that recorded some of his other songs included Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt, the Hollies, Peggy Lee and Janis Joplin. He had only one top 40 hit on his own and had some modest success with a variety of different bands through the 60s and 70s but then a gambling addiction took him away from music throughout the 80s and early 90s. He returned to music in the 90s and had some success in the early 2000s with his duets with Carrie Rodriguez. His concerts during the 2000s always included his versions of Wild Thing and Angel of the Morning. I wished I had known about him, I would definitely have gone to one of his shows. Incredibly, he managed to release 33 albums even with his 15 year gambling hiatus.
Wild Thing - Most people know the Troggs version, which was used for this great scene in the baseball movie Major League where a very young Charlie Sheen plays the Wild Thing....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNCEFn7E34s
...but I like this version by Jimi Hendrix where he lights his guitar on fire at the end during the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVN8_7wVSG0&list=RDxVN8_7wVSG0&start_radio=1
Angel of the Morning - This is the version I fell in love with as a kid. So many people have recorded it since:
Sweet Tequila Blues (with Carrie Rodriguez) - This is the song where I first heard the name Chip Taylor. There are lots of great songs with these two over three albums, and this is just one of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNItDggR6c0&list=RDrNItDggR6c0&start_radio=1
Back to the novel.
Irish writer Fiona Scarlett had this to say about it: ‘These Days is a
deeply moving story of family, loss, sisterhood and how you can find yourself,
even in the darkest of times. A truly gorgeous piece of storytelling, I could
see and feel every word. Another absolute triumph for Lucy Caldwell.’’ It’s a beautiful story about two sisters, Emma
and Audrey (both in their late teens) and their family and friends during the
Belfast Blitz. Emma works with a group
of other young women as part of a war time first aid group in case of attacks
from the enemy. She’s fallen for one of
the other women in the group, but of course in 1941 that sort of thing can’t
ever be talked about or revealed. Audrey
is in love with a young (male) doctor and hopes to plan for her wedding amongst
all the turmoil. So, two sisters
experiencing life changing first loves during chaotic times. Caldwell beautifully describes family life
during this time, especially the love of the girls’ mother Florence, who also
has a 14 year old son to protect. She
perfectly describes the mother’s fear after the bombings when she has no idea
if her family members are safe. One
line, really caught me as Florence was trying to get her 14 year old son moving
after the blitz: “There comes a time,
she thought then, that’s the last time you’ll carry your children, and it comes
without you knowing, without your marking it.”
There are so many great scenes in the book, but one I
will remember is a scene towards the end when Audrey is trying to break off her
engagement to the doctor (the reader has known all along that he’s not the right
person for her). The doctor nearly
convinces her parents that she’s not well and should be sedated. But Audrey’s sister Emma suddenly appears
after having been in a state of depression due to her own tragic
occurrences. Emma tells everyone the
obvious thing that nobody wants to hear so close to the wedding: Audrey doesn’t
love him. The book ends with the two
sisters and their mother laying in the grass, looking up at the sky. The stars are beautiful, will there be
another raid tonight? Perfect.
Here are some lines:
Here we are, she thinks, bitterly, the eighth of April
1941, the pinnacle of Western so-called civilization, hiding in a bloody wee
cupboard under the stairs while the world ends around us.
Carol (first aid worker) with her fluffy blonde hair and
heaving bosoms and big doe eyes. The joke among them is she’d just as likely
give a fella a heart attack as save him from it.
What were you like, Mother, when you were my age? says Audrey. Well, goodness, Audrey, Mother says, glancing over the top of the spectacles she now needs for reading or for sewing. When I was your age, I had you and Emma: I didn’t have time to be like anything.
And then there’s a sound that seems to knock all the air
from Emma’s lungs, hurling her backward, and the whole world seems to rock
beneath her, the earth rising and falling as if it’s water, then slate, brick,
glass, raining down, and she can’t seem to move her body, and she lies there
for what seems an eternity, dust choking her nostrils, filling her mouth, I
can’t breathe, she thinks, I can’t breathe, and there is a steady roaring in
her ears and the world floods red then white then—nothing.
A sudden clatter of hooves: and out of nowhere, half a
dozen jet-black horses, skidding round the corner and cantering past,
whinnying, and Emma wonders for a moment if she’s seeing some kind of portent,
some unholy vision, until she realizes they’re the undertaker’s horses, loosed
or bombed from wherever they’ve been stabled, hurtling in blind panic through
the streets.
Oh, not my girls, she thought. Not Audrey—my flighty,
impulsive, earnest Audrey. Not my kind, stubborn, awkward Emma. Not my girls,
you can’t take my girls from me. I won’t survive that.
You need to try to eat a little, and you need to try to
sleep. The horror won’t be diminished, but your capacity to withstand it will
be greater.
He looks at her. She sees in his face the young man he
was, the old man he will be, as if they are all accordioned there, all at once,
as if there is no such thing, really, as time.
It’s the single thing that would make a difference in the lives of so many, says Moya. Contraception. Easy and free access to birth control and abortion services. I have made it my life’s work, Florence—it is the great project of our generation. It will transform society—overpopulation, maternal mortality, poverty, et cetera.
Florence and Mrs. Price hold each other and weep, for Betty, for themselves, for Belfast.
Would it not be safer here? Audrey can’t help saying.
That’s what Mother will say too. But this war could go on for years—for years
and years—and I can’t wait for it to be over for my life to start.
Golden Ponds were named after Vernon Golden who donated the land to the city. There’s a nice statue along the path of him fishing with a small child. Lykins Gulch was named after the Lykins geological formation found throughout much of the Front Range. It was formed 250 million years ago in the Permian–Triassic boundary area and contains limestone and gypsum.
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| Statue of Vernon Golden fishing with a young boy |
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| Great views of Longs Peak from Golden Ponds |
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| Artsy shot |
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| Bridge over the St. Vrain to Lykins Gulch |
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| Small waterfall from the bridge |
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| Views of the Flatirons from Lykins Gulch |
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| One of several air quality monitoring stations throughout Longmont |
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| Lots of planes taking off near trail's end |
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| Artsy shot |
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| Pelican! |
The author shared the following story about how he became an
advocate for rethinking: “Consider a group of students who built what has been
called Harvard’s first online social network. Before they arrived at college,
they had already connected more than an eighth of the entering freshman class
in an “egroup.” But once they got to Cambridge, they abandoned the network and
shut it down. Five years later Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook on the same
campus. From time to time, the students who created the original egroup have
felt some pangs of regret. I know, because I was one of the cofounders of that
group. Since then, rethinking has become central to my sense of self.”
The book is divided into three sections: Individual Rethinking (opening our own minds), Interpersonal Rethinking (how we can encourage other people to think again), and Collective Rethinking (how we can create communities of lifelong learners). I really enjoyed Grant’s process of telling stories as he unveiled his ideas on how to better think for yourself. It’s easy to become set in our ways and in the things we’ve learned. It has turned many of us into ideologues rather than thinkers. He has many drawings and charts that were really enlightening. One of my favorites was his pyramid showing the hierarchy of rethinking styles:
If he had a main theme throughout the book, it was to think more like a scientist. Embrace the times when you are wrong about something because that means you’ve just learned something new. Another image that I loved was a cartoon showing a line of people looking for answers. Most people look for the easiest answer, even if it may be wrong, but most answers to complex issues are…complex. I see this on a daily basis with the issue of climate change. It’s a complex issue and climate deniers are great at stating some simple, but incorrect fact that people take at face value. It can take hours of research and commentary to refute that denier’s statement, but few people want to take on that task. Here’s the cartoon:
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There are so many great ideas in this book that I think
I’ll just leave you with some of the lines I found interesting:
We refresh our wardrobes when they go out of style and
renovate our kitchens when they’re no longer in vogue. When it comes to our
knowledge and opinions, though, we tend to stick to our guns. Psychologists
call this seizing and freezing. We favor the comfort of conviction over the
discomfort of doubt, and we let our beliefs get brittle long before our bones.
We listen to views that make us feel good, instead of
ideas that make us think hard.
we become so wrapped up in preaching that we’re right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don’t bother to rethink our own views.
In preacher mode, changing our minds is a mark of moral
weakness; in scientist mode, it’s a sign of intellectual integrity. In
prosecutor mode, allowing ourselves to be persuaded is admitting defeat; in
scientist mode, it’s a step toward the truth. In politician mode, we flip-flop
in response to carrots and sticks; in scientist mode, we shift in the face of
sharper logic and stronger data.
the purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s
to evolve our beliefs.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does
knowledge. —Charles Darwin
In a meta-analysis of ninety-five studies involving over a hundred thousand people, women typically underestimated their leadership skills, while men overestimated their skills.
if we can’t learn to find occasional glee in discovering
we were wrong, it will be awfully hard to get anything right.
Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves
stronger. Weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker.
AN HONEST INTERVIEW
INTERVIEWER Where do you see
yourself in five years?
INTERVIEWEE Taking your job
and asking better interview questions
One afternoon in Maryland in 1983, Daryl Davis arrived at
a lounge to play the piano at a country music gig. It wasn’t his first time
being the only Black man in the room. Before the night was out, it would be his
first time having a conversation with a white supremacist.
“You’re actually rooting for the clothes,” Jerry Seinfeld quipped. “Fans will be so in love with a player, but if he goes to a different team, they boo him. This is the same human being in a different shirt; they hate him now. Boo! Different shirt! Boo!”
Eager to have a jaw-clenching, emotionally fraught
argument about abortion? How about immigration, the death penalty, or climate
change? If you think you can handle it, head for the second floor of a brick
building on the Columbia University campus in New York. It’s the home of the
Difficult Conversations Lab.
Although no more than 10 percent of Americans are
dismissive of climate change, it’s these rare deniers who get the most press.
In an analysis of some hundred thousand media articles on climate change
between 2000 and 2016, prominent climate contrarians received disproportionate
coverage: they were featured 49 percent more often than expert scientists. As a
result, people end up overestimating how common denial is—which in turn makes
them more hesitant to advocate for policies that protect the environment.
across a wide range of industries, grades are not a
strong predictor of job performance. Achieving excellence in school often
requires mastering old ways of thinking. Building an influential career demands
new ways of thinking.
How do you know? It’s a question we need to ask more
often, both of ourselves and of others. The power lies in its frankness. It’s
nonjudgmental—a straightforward expression of doubt and curiosity that doesn’t
put people on the defensive.
Temps were in the lower 60s to start and warmed to the
lower 70s by the time I finished this walk. It’s mostly a steady uphill with a few
steeper sections during the upper loop. It
seems to be a popular mountain biking trail as I saw 9 bikers today and 8
hikers. Many of the bikers would repeat
the upper loop several times, using a spur trail to get them up to the top for
the fun ride down each time. I didn’t
hike the spur trail, but instead walked the entire 4.5 mile loop, which turned
this into a 9 mile walk. It was a good
test for my recovering knee injury; not too steep (around 1,000 feet of
elevation gain), but long enough to be a good test. I passed! My knee was a bit sore afterwards but recovered quickly after some
icing.
Besides the old building remnants, this trail has lots to offer. Some nice green canyons with water running though it, expansive views of the Poudre valley where a couple of fires have removed many of the trees; lots of grass and NM locust growing as a result. Saw lots of birds, including meadowlarks, bluebirds, and towhees. Even a possible Bigfoot sighting…I imagine this is a popular trail during the weekends, being so close to Fort Collins. There were a few spring flowers making their way, but I imagine in another month or so this will be a much prettier hike with more color. I wouldn’t recommend the hike in the summer as there is not much shade. Nice day outdoors in a pretty valley with some history to it.
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| This vehicle has seen better days |
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| People love to prove their marksmanship on old metal |
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| Pretty sky today |
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| Lots of love goes into maintaining this trail |
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| Remnants of an old home. I can see Ada Mae curled up by this fire |
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| Lots of bridges |
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| ...made in different ways |
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| Mt bikers making their way up to the fun loop |
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| Pretty mini canyon |
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| Nice views up high |
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| Trail was improved for mt. biking |
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| Some flowers making their way |
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| This rock cracked me up |
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| Nice view of the valley on the way back |
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| Bigfoot sighting! |
Of course, I learned in the book that as you age, it’s
more difficult to find friends, and unsurprisingly it’s nearly five times as
impossible for men. There are lots of
reasons for this and the book goes into pretty good detail about it. This line made
me do a double take: “perhaps you’re convinced you don’t really need friends,
because you are somehow an outlier in the human experience. Or maybe…you’ve
recognized that you’ve been passive about making friends and are hoping to do
better. You’re ready to put in the work, and you’re wondering, Well, what now?”
The author filled each of the chapters with true stories
of people and their experiences with friendship. She holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology
from the University of Maryland and works as a professor there currently. She
writes for Psychology Today and she has been a featured psychologist in The New
York Times, NPR, and Good Morning America. Here are some lines:
I must admit I have an agenda in writing this book: to
help create a world that is kinder, friendlier, more loving.
This book is about becoming a better friend. It’s also about becoming a better human.
Our ancestors lived in tribes, where responsibility for
one another was diffused among many. Friendship, then, is a rediscovery of an
ancient truth we’ve long buried: it takes an entire community for us to feel
whole.
as the Zulu saying goes, “a person is a person through
other persons.”
most of us aren’t just insecure or secure; we’re insecure
at times and secure in others. Growth is bending toward security even if total
security eludes us.
Before 1800, there wasn’t even a word for loneliness as we know it today. The word “lonely” described the state of being alone, rather than the exquisite pain of it. With the rise of industrialization, and of parents leaving home to work in factories, community bonds tapered and the nuclear family became the center of people’s world.
Someone living in the 2000s has four fewer friends, on
average, than someone living in the early 1980s. Another analysis found that
four times as many people have no friends in 2021, compared to 1990.
remnants of our evolutionary past lead us to assume that
friendship happens organically. Because it once did. But it doesn’t anymore.
Here’s a simple, sometimes surprising truth: making
friends as an adult requires initiative. We have to put ourselves out there and
try. It’s a process of reaching out over and over again. One
hello can be the difference between being lonely and finding your best friend.
maintaining friendships while in a romantic relationship is a part of what healthy romance looks like, one that isn’t crushed by the weight of each partner having to be everything to the other.
Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.
so many of us are stuck in the friendly acquaintance stage, deprived of not just friends but true intimacy. We may have someone to go to the movies with, but no one to call from the hospital.
People who excel at making friends have one thing in common, and it’s less who they are and more how they treat people. They make people feel like they matter.
Marianne is a high schooler in the west of Ireland (where
the author grew up) and she’s somewhat of a misfit. She’s wicked smart, very opinionated, reads a
lot, is interested in world affairs, and lives in a mansion with her brother
and mother (ie like no other high school kids in her town). Connell is a star soccer player, well-liked
by all, also wicked smart and lives with his mother who works part time as a
maid for Marianne’s rich mother. He
eventually befriends Marianne during the many times he drops his mom off and
picks her up for her job as a maid. They
seem perfect for each other, but Connell refuses to allow the relationship to
be known at school due to the school’s rejection of Marianne. Kind of a douche
move, but understandable from an insecure high schooler point of view. Marianne understands this and is not
seemingly annoyed by it. Their
relationship ebbs and flows over the years finishing high school and into
college. They each date others but
always seem to come back to each other. Connell’s
mother, Lorraine, was my favorite character.
She had Connell as a teenager and has raised him as a single mother,
working hard and doing her best to raise him well, calling out the poor way he
treats Marianne at times. Both Connell
and Marianne are at times good and interesting, and at other times maddeningly
frustrating in the way they act. I
suppose the novel is in a sense showing how all of us have our flaws no matter
how well we may seem to have life figured out.
Here are some lines:
She has no friends and spends her lunchtimes alone
reading novels. A lot of people really hate her.
You’re not learning if you’re staring out the window
daydreaming, Mr. Kerrigan said. Marianne, who had lost her temper by then,
snapped back: Don’t delude yourself, I have nothing to learn from you.
He left the room then but he could hear his mother
laughing as he went up the stairs. His life is always giving her amusement.
in college she often feels there’s no limit to what her
brain can do, it can synthesize everything she puts into it, it’s like having a
powerful machine inside her head. Really she has everything going for her. She
has no idea what she’s going to do with her life.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, says Marianne. I don’t
know why I can’t be like normal people.
He had just wanted to be normal, to conceal the parts of
himself that he found shameful and confusing. It was Marianne who had shown him
other things were possible.
I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I cared
what people thought of me.
I guess you could say that there are spoilers in the
Table of Contents. In an interview with
the author, Turton described the book: “This is an enormous book that had to
feel small. It’s a dystopian/utopian end-of-the-world story about family and
humanity and what’s worth valuing in this world. I had to bundle all of that
into a ninety-thousand-word murder mystery novel with suspects and red herrings
and a conclusion that felt earned.”
Pretty good description, but then he should know, he wrote it.
The book tells the story of people on a Greek island
after the apocalypse that has destroyed civilization with a black fog of
insects. However, the 122 villagers and
3 scientists on the island are protected by a barrier created by scientists
that were living on this island 90 years ago when the apocalypse occurred. There are several strange mysteries that take
most of the novel to unfold: Why are the villagers so different looking than
the three remaining scientists? Why do
the villagers have to die on their 60th birthday, only to be replaced
by a fully developed 8-year-old the next day?
What is this memory gem that gets created upon the death of a villager? Why
is there a curfew for the villagers? Why
do the villagers feel exhausted and covered with dirt and cuts and bruises when
they awaken? Why do they revere the three
scientists? Who is Abi, the voice in
their heads that guides them throughout their lives? And the biggest mystery to be solved in the
book; who murdered Niema, the elder scientist on the island?
The murder of Niema breaks the barrier protecting the island
from the fog, but if the murderer is discovered in time and killed, then the
barrier will be restored. Emory, the
most curious and intelligent of the villagers, is tasked with solving the
murder to save her people. She has 107 hours.
Here are some lines:
Start your countdown, Abi. In four days, we’re either
going to change the world or die trying.
His eyesight has been fading for the last decade, but
there’s nothing we can do. Even if we could, there’d be little point. He’ll be
dead tomorrow.
Magdalene’s fear for her son is obsessive. She sees
snakes in every patch of grass and strong currents under every stretch of calm
water. Every splinter brings sepsis, and every illness is fatal. By Magdalene’s
reckoning, this island has a thousand clawed hands, and they’re all reaching
for her child.
None of the villagers have a problem with empty doors,
privacy being a concept that has remarkably little value when you’re born with
a voice in your head that can hear your thoughts.
This is the way they revere the dead. They remember what
they offered the world and what everybody else has to do to fill the gap. There
are no prayers here, no thoughts of an afterlife. The reward for a good life is
the living of it.
Every child has a parent, but that’s an emotional title,
not a practical one. They’re raised by the village. It’s the only way of making
the job manageable.
She wants to know why a good man such as this, with so
much energy and talent, has to die to appease a rule that was created long
before he was born.
The human race had been on the precipice for almost a
century before the end actually arrived. We’d dug the earth dry of its
resources, and climate change was forcing huge population migrations while
destroying arable land and living space. In the end, we destroyed our own
society before nature could do it for us, but it was a close-run thing.
“Why were (past humans) always fighting?” “We could
always find a reason,” she replies. “We had different gods or different skin,
or the fight had been going on so long we’d forgotten how to stop it. Somebody
had something we needed, or we thought they were planning to hurt us. Often, it
was as cynical as our leaders believing it would prolong their own power.”
I don’t miss the poverty or the anger or being afraid of
every hate-peddling psychopath who might win an election.
“Why?” Children always ask this question. They’re more
perceptive than adults. His curiosity will dim eventually. Adults are allergic
to complication
She
opens her mouth and the truth pours out, which is very rarely what people want
to hear.
She can’t imagine how hard that was for her, to be full
of doubt in a world of conviction.
Of course, he’d wait until the end of the world to
finally believe in her.
Since the beginning of our country there have always been
contrarians and peddlers of snake oil.
But these individuals were always part of the extreme and never really
taken seriously, and more importantly never really had power. Unfortunately, in today’s
world, contrarians with agendas and false information now have a platform. And more often than not, that platform includes
extreme right politicians, extreme right news organizations, and social media sites
with little to no appetite for the truth.
I’ve repeated that old saying that by the time a lie has travelled
around the world, the truth is still tying its shoes. That’s the main problem we have now. Lies and disinformation are easy to publish while
scientifically proving them wrong takes thought and time. How can we possibly fight this? The author has some ideas, but he admits that
there are no quick answers. One of his parting
comments was: “…what I desperately seek is to find ways to convince far-right
groups to shun the anti-science element. Because anti-science is such a killer
and destroyer of lives in America, my message is to say: This is not your
fight. You are entitled to your conservative political views, even extremist
views in many cases, but please distance yourself from the anti-science.”
[Although I agreed with the author on nearly every point he made, I do believe he missed an opportunity to also point out that many extreme far left groups have also been part of the anti-vaxxing community.]
Here are some lines (there are a lot since it's the last item on this post, so you can just stop reading, but you'll miss some interesting facts):
In 2021–22, more than 200,000 unvaccinated Americans
needlessly lost their lives to COVID-19 because they refused vaccines.
when I decided back when I was an adolescent that I would
one day become a scientist, I never imagined a segment of society turning
against me or my scientific colleagues. It is still almost unbelievable how
many Americans now view us as enemies.
Across the conservative strongholds of Texas and the
southern United States, where I live and work, as well as in Appalachia and
areas of the Mountain West, open contempt of science has become a new normal.
Millions of Americans who live in conservative or
so-called red states now think of scientists as dangerous shills for the pharma
industry or conspirators with global elites to acquire vast wealth and power.
They believe this because their elected leaders tell them such falsehoods,
while each weekday evening such distortions are amplified on conservative news
outlets
1998 paper published in the Lancet, one of our most
prestigious biomedical journals, provided the spark. It made claims that the
measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine was somehow linked to autism. Even
though the article was eventually retracted by the journal’s editors in 2010,
by then a full-on movement was under way.
Anti-vaccine activists embarked on a new propaganda
campaign of “health freedom” or “medical freedom.” By invoking freedom rather
than autism, the anti-vaccine movement had become increasingly political.
A survey conducted by Science magazine found that almost
40% of COVID-19 scientists reported attacks via e-mail, social media, or phone,
or even physical confrontations
Partisan leanings were strongly associated with the
likelihood both to be unvaccinated and to lose one’s life to COVID-19. The
“redder” the county in terms of the percentage of Republicans, the higher the
loss of life.
The first PAC committed to “vaccine choice” was created
in Texas in 2015
Since the start of the pandemic, multiple polio
vaccinators have been assassinated in Afghanistan, including eight over a brief
period in the first quarter of 2022, and nine the year before
Whereas a majority of the deaths in western European
nations and Canada occurred before the arrival of COVID vaccines, two of the
leading tracking centers (UW-IHME and Johns Hopkins University), as well as the
New York Times report that deaths in America continued to climb precipitously
even after vaccines were made widely available to the public
During the period of Delta predominance (July to
November), the incidence rate ratio comparing unvaccinated patient deaths to
fully vaccinated patient deaths was approximately 16.3 to 1 . However, this
ratio was as high as 21.9 to 1 prior to Delta, when the Alpha variant
predominated.
I think Fox has been almost single-handedly responsible
for the politicization of public health in the US and the creation of vaccine
hesitancy in a significant portion of the population. . . . It’s been
tremendously damaging. —Joseph Azam, former senior vice president at News Corp (Fox's parent company) in New York
Early in the pandemic, I appeared several times on Fox
News nighttime programming and even did interviews with two of its most-watched
anchors—Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. However, as I began to call out the
Trump White House in 2020 for spreading disinformation about the pandemic,
including false claims that downplayed the severity of COVID-19, comparing it
to the flu, and aggressively promoting hydroxychloroquine as some sort of magic
cure, I was eventually cut out of the evening hours. While I still appeared
from time to time on Fox News, it was only during the daytime.
Media Matters cited Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham,
two of the most-viewed Fox anchors, as major disseminators of anti-vaccine
disinformation
The right-leaning elected officials and the courts,
conservative news outlets, and contrarian intellectuals combine to create a
dangerous alliance that now dominates the news media and Internet.
While the pharma shill accusations were nothing new, I
found it truly shocking that an elected member of the Texas state legislature
would launch an unprovoked public attack against a private citizen, especially
against a scientist working at the Texas Medical Center to develop lifesaving
vaccines for the world’s poor.
In response to my article in Nature (in the spring of
2021) that highlighted the risk of a globalizing antivaccine movement, a
well-known anti-vaccine activist and promoter of conspiracies compared me to
Hitler and Stalin in his publication. He then proceeded to list my contact
information, including my email address and office telephone number, an
intimidation tactic known as doxing. A torrent of threats via email followed,
with several calling for my torture or public execution.
Dr. Fauci also added, “I have threats upon my life,
harassment of my family and my children with obscene phone calls because people
are lying about me”… the examples of Drs. Fauci and Daszak point
to something especially insidious, namely, attacks and threats that are either
tacitly or overtly endorsed by US elected officials.
We have entered a very dark and scary chapter in the
intellectual life of the nation, one of a sort I thought had not been seen
since the McCarthy era.
The type of rhetoric employed by Fox News provides the
red meat its viewers crave. Shrill tones and free use of name-calling have
become a Fox News signature.
the assault on American science and scientists from the triumvirate—conservative news outlets, far-right members of the US Senate and House of Representatives, and contrarian intellectuals or pseudointellectuals— comprise elements of an emerging far-right authoritarian movement that is every bit as aggressive and dangerous as what Orbán engineered in Hungary or Bolsonaro in Brazil.
We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never
the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we
must interfere. When human lives are endangered . . . sensitivities become
irrelevant. —Elie Wiesel, The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident
Only 46% of Republicans now favor required vaccinations
for school-aged children, down from 59% the year before, and far less than the
85% of Democrats polled who support school-required vaccinations.
we should expect the return of some childhood infections that had previously been eliminated from the United States. The first is likely to be measles, owing to its high transmissibility and the fact that measles reemergence was already beginning in the year prior to the pandemic because of accelerated anti-vaccine activities
although training scientists to communicate better and more frequently is essential, it is not sufficient to compete with an expanding anti-science universe.
democratization has been weaponized by ideologues to
oppose science-based policies against the pandemic. It’s not just the pandemic,
either. A similar dynamic is at work in climate science, evolution,
‘integrative medicine,’ and the war against women’s reproductive health and the
rights of LGBTQIA individuals
success in combating anti-science aggression requires that we must at some level be prepared to do battle on multiple fronts. It means that at least some biomedical scientists must show a willingness to learn and practice science communication in the public marketplace. It also means that we must face the reality that neutrality favors the aggressor, and we must start feeling comfortable in the political realm.
An estimated 200,000 died unnecessarily because they
believed more in their elected officials, Fox News, and the contrarians than
they did the scientists.
we need to work harder to remind Middle America or what some call the “flyover nation” that vaccines and other products derived from cutting-edge science are not woke, but lifesaving interventions. We must help everyone understand that the United States is a nation built on science and technology, and that preserving its greatness depends on embracing scientific principles as a fundamental American value.
Our obligation is to uncouple the anti-science movement from political extremism on the right.
Until next month, happy reading and rambling!