Marty Nemko's Blog, page 280

Delirium? Episode 3: Preferences and Constraints

As I said at the beginning of Episode 1, I’m no James Joyce but like the idea of free-associative writing. So, unedited, uncensored, I offered the thoughts that flew through my head as I sat here at my keyboard. 

I feared that my words could be chastised as self-absorbed, politically unacceptable, who knows what lurks in the hearts of men and women. But the comments were all kind. Interestingly, all the comments weren't on the text but on my reading of it on YouTube.

So, I offered Episode 2, and here, Episode 3:
I go all the way--Obsessive deep dives and then a sudden screeching turn to something else. I did that with bromeliads, with rose breeding, with article-writing for Psychology Today. No harm done there but I fear that could happen to my lifetime of 70-hour workweeks, even if some disgusting disease isn't the cause. Increasingly, a voice whispers in my ear, saying things like, "You didn't make much difference anyway. Go have fun." or "You're not as good as you've thought. Give it up." Or "Everyone can't be wrong in pursuing happiness. Only you, the schmuck, obsess about productivity, maximally benefiting your sphere of influence." Stay tuned. 
It seems so random which pop songs end up being hits. The winners and losers usually seem interchangeable. How much of it is the song rather than the marketing or whether the singer is particularly outrageous? Blinking bustiers, with the singer's career boosted by a conveniently timed equipment malfunction? Does it help be the biggest Trump hater?I like people-watching. For example, does that guy look well? Is that child's sour face characterological? Is that person's prematurely balding and early paunch signs he'll die young?
I love getting a good deal. I think most people do. That's why it's important for me to try to make every client feel like he or she is special, that we have a special kinship or that I feel particular empathy for their plight. 

I love the owners of hole-in-the-wall restaurants. They work so hard and so long to give sustenance and pleasure to others, all for a price than even poor people can at least occasionally afford. I respect restaurant workers too but I know that those small restaurant owners work insanely long hours and usually have invested all their hard-earned money on a venture that is very risky--Most restaurants go bust. I also love coffee. It so, as my mother used to say, "agrees with me." It sharpens my thinking and raises my baseline mood from a 4 to a 7, even an 8. Even decaf seems to move me to a 5 or 6.
I've met people with recurring cancer who are more upbeat than I am. I'm convinced that one's genetics more than external events affect demeanor. 

Okay, I've taken up enough of your time, assuming you've even stayed with me through all these zig-zags. I thank you. And I do welcome your comments. Just don't be mean. 

I read this on YouTube.

Delirium? Episode 2: Mixed Pleasure

As I said at the beginning of Episode 1, I’m no James Joyce but I like the idea of experimenting with free-associative writing. So, unedited, uncensored, I offered the thoughts that flew through my head as I sat here at my keyboard. 

I was fearful that Episode 1 would yield more opprobrium than the benefit justified. I’ve been pleased to see that there was been only positive comment—all on my reading of it on YouTube. 

So, here is another dose:
God, I’m fat. I can’t believe I have a pot belly...after a lifetime of all that exercise. All the attempts to be “good.” Fuck!
How can a person with a 150 IQ who has accomplished a fair amount in a number of  domains be unable to fix anything more complicated than to change a light bulb and who can’t draw more than stick figures, even though my dad tried to show me both.
So here we are at the end of International Women’s Day. It should be called International Anti-Men Day. Then again, increasingly, every day is anti-male day or at least anti-white-male day. Can you imagine what would happen if you proposed an International Man’s Day?
Why do people spend hours shopping and cooking time-consuming recipes when—if there was a pleasure meter attached to your taste buds--you could prepare tasty, healthy food in just minutes, for example, oatmeal with a handful of trail mix, a tuna sandwich or salad, fresh fruit. And if you want something elaborate, even low-income people can, every so often, afford to go out to a hole-in-the-wall but yummy restaurant.
You can buy a comfortable-riding, safe Toyota with 150,000 miles on it for $2,000. It still has at least another 100,000 reliable miles left on it. Yet so many people choose to buy a car that costs 10, 20, 30 times as much, often for a car that breaks down more often—Beemers, Mercedes, Jaguar, etc. There’s no status in standing next to your Beemer on the side of the road waiting for the tow truck. And their “luxury” ride isn’t that different from the old Toyota’s. Are people so insecure they’d pay so much more for a nameplate that screams conspicuous consumption? And people who make such purchases usually don’t limit it to cars, so their materialistic lifestyle often makes them take a job they hate--for example, corporate drone or insurance broker when they’d rather play in a rock band, be a craftsman, or splatter paint on canvas. 
You’re so damned practical. Is there no room for some irrationality, for spending too much, for idling too much, at least for a while? You’re old, or at last rapidly getting old. Isn’t it time to let down the guard? You’ve earned the right to be a little wasteful. Oh but that’s capitulating, throwing down the gauntlet and entering that staging area for the hereafter, pre-drooling, sybaritic silliness: wine, women (alas, my sex drive and my morals preclude looking further than Barbara,) and song. Ah, song. But even that, my greatest talent, piano playing, holds little interest any more. I am in decline even there. I look forward most late nights to, like my childhood friend Joan Klein’s father, reading while listening to the stereo.  That felt so old-man when I was a kid: Now it’s me. It’s one of my few pleasures. Damn.
Pleasure. So little gives me real pleasure. Eating does, for that moment on the lips preceding the lifetime on the hips, or I should say belly (more dangerous) but my constant awareness of all that taints even the pleasure of eating. Yet the awareness doesn’t seem to stop my overeating, or should I say over-inhaling. I eat so ridiculously fast, like a wild animal scarfing it down lest a competitor wrest it away.
Okay, back to pleasures. Reading--Alas, literature, always largely beyond me, especially Shakespeare and the like, is getting harder. Often, I read Chapter 3 or if I’m lucky Chapter 4, without remembering enough of what went on in Chapter 1. Damn. Articles, short-short stories, not so bad.
Come on, Marty. What else is pleasurable? I kind of like writing this. I like my doggie, yes doggie, Einstein. I like digging in the garden—I’m still strong. I also like getting on my knees and weeding. I am in awe--the word “awesome” has been cheapened--but it’s deserved for the miracle of growth, whether plant or animal.
Roses, the ones with that classic form, are among life’s most beautiful objects. I’m especially enamored of the mini roses you get in the supermarket or big-box store. In the Bay Area, I can grow them in my garden, not just use them as throwaway houseplants. I like that I’m cross-breeding those with healthy rose varieties (which all are bigger plants) in hopes of creating a miniature rose plant, a mini flower factory, covered with those perfect flowers and that never needed spraying, as easy to care for as a coleus. I doubt I’ll live that long—It takes a decade or more—if you’re lucky.
I’m compulsive. Actually, that’s the artificially self-effacing term for what I believe is harmlessly thorough. For example, in the name of efficiency and not forgetting a step, my sequence in the shower is quite invariant. (I’ll spare you the details.) I actually enjoy being hyperefficient. So what? Or is that a manifestation of being too self-abnegating, too pleasure denying? Screw it. We should be allowed such deviations from the norm.Well, this is getting too self-absorbed but I hope that this much was interesting enough. 

So I’ll end here, at least for now.
I await, with some trepidation, your literal or figurative thumbs-up or down. 
I read this on YouTube.

Why a Thinking Person Might Support Donald Trump

New York Times reporter Scott Shane suggested I submit an op-ed to the Times trying to explain why a thinking person might support Donald Trump. They ended up not publishing it. Here it is.Of course, no thinking person should support any person’s entirety. And I can’t imagine a thinking person supporting Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip style, his protectionist trade policies, his having demeaned women, his hubris in not sequestering his conflict-potential assets, nor his carelessness if not collusion in dealing with Russia. (Nor of course, is it imaginable that someone would vote for Hillary Clinton, who used a hammer and "bleaching" software to hide emails that could be used as evidence to prove she tried to illegally win the election.)But many people who support Trump, including the 52% of white women who voted for him, thereby shunning the would-be first women president, should not be dismissed as mere ignorant Hillary-labeled “Deplorables” from fly-over states.One reason people support Trump is because they recognize that the Neville-Chamberlain-like appeasement approach of peaceniks like Obama and John Kerry merely embolden enemies. Tough guys like Kim Jong Un don’t respond well to nicey-nicey kumbaya. They, like Hitler, capitulate only if they’re afraid the enemy will destroy them. And Kim Jong Un’s sudden willingness to discuss dismantling its nuclear arsenal supports the correctness of such Trump supporters.Some support for Trump derives from the belief that he is more likely to make policy and allocate resources based on merit, not on redistributing from already struggling  “Deplorables” to other people merely because they are a woman or minority—the infamous identity politics. Many Trump supporters believe that Hillary, like many liberal Democrats, make policy based on the assumption that white male accomplishment is significantly unearned, hence the term liberals love to use: “white privilege” and “white male privilege.” Indeed, that view is widely promulgated by society’s core mind-molders: the colleges and the media, the Times, CNN, PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, LA Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, TIME, etc. Fox News has but a tiny share of the voting public's mindshare. Indeed, a new Pew study finds that Americans rank its media dead last among 38 nations in covering political issues fairly. Thus the media, with little questioning, accept the wisdom of additional redistribution by race and gender, a core difference between Trump and Clinton.The bias perceived by many Trump voters goes well beyond the news media. For example, consider the 2018 Oscar-nominated movies. Nearly all venerate a Have-Not triumphing over an evil Have. To wit, the winner for best picture, The Shape of Water, is about a mute, Latina cleaning woman who topples a team of white male scientists. In the other most Oscar-honored movie, Three Billboards, the requisite spunky woman brings down the white male police chief. And the media starts its indoctrination early. All ten of the top 10 all-time box office children’s movies have an admirable Have-Not felling an evil Have, usually royalty so the Have acquired the wealth by primogeniture, not by earning it. Even commercials have fallen prey. Note how much more often a wise, plucky woman or minority shows up an inferior white male than vice-versa. Minorities and women have long insisted that role-models matter. Well, for decades now, the media has disproportionately portrayed white males as inferior. Imagine your son seeing portrayal after portrayal of his race and gender as inferior. And alas, it’s having the predictable effect. When I started as a career counselor three decades ago, my male and female clients were equally optimistic about their future. Today, disproportionately, the females feel the world is their oyster and the males are disproportionately despondent or angry—and not graduating from college. Today, the ratio is 60/40, the reverse of just a few decades ago. Voting for Trump may have been perceived in part as demonstrating voters’ ability to not succumb to media bias.Most of the aforementioned white women view their white male husbands, adult children, and other family members not as inferior human beings but often as better and more contributory than the beneficiaries of largesse their tax dollars pay for. Some Trump voters may also have been offended by the unfairness to themselves, family members, or society of liberal laws and policies, for example, reverse discrimination, or at least perceived reverse discrimination, in college admission, graduate school admission, hiring and promotion.Trump ran on controlling illegal immigration. That appealed to many Trump voters who believe Hillary and liberal Democrats were unwise in not only rewarding illegals by not enforcing immigration laws but by making taxpayers pay for a panoply of services. Not only are illegals now entitled to free public education at taxpayer expense, because their needs are different, notably their poor English skills, yet most schools mainstream them, the level of instruction for taxpayers’ children declines. Also, the taxpayer is now often forced to pay for illegals’ subsidized housing, transportation, health care, food stamps, etc. Particularly irksome to some Trump voters, because of affirmative action targets, a legal resident is less likely to get into a prestigious public university, for example, my alma mater Berkeley, than is an illegal immigrant, so-called “dreamer” who has a worse high school record. Further, even if admitted, an out-of-state legal resident ends up paying the exorbitant out-of-state tuition while the illegal immigrant pays the taxpayer-subsidized in-state tuition and may even get one of the many scholarships aimed at minorities.   More broadly, many Trump supporters see little personal benefit from their taxes. Disproportionately, schools’ efforts focus on the lowest income residents and the lowest achievers. Too, liberals fight to avoid building new roads, forcing the already harried working-class to give up more time from their already overburdened lives to sit in traffic, or, in many locales, enduring even longer commutes using mass transit. The working class is less likely than the poor to be among the 47% of who receive taxpayer-paid welfare cash and services. Many Trump supporters see such policies as unfair not only to themselves but as a broader injustice and a formula for hurting America, likely to engender sloth or the bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you syndrome. They view Clinton and other liberal Democrats as standardbearers for such policies.Particularly galling to many Trump supporters was the rushing to judgment, the snubbing that pillar of American society--innocent until proven guilty, by minorities who burned down their cities of Ferguson and Baltimore only to learn later that the mixed-race juries found the police officers not guilty. Yet few of the arsonists received significant jail time. Rather, liberal Democrats rewarded the cities with yet more millions of tax dollars for everything from midnight basketball to small business incentives for minority-owned businesses.Speaking of small business, ever increasing and more labyrinthine regulations, taxes, and fees are an intimidating or insurmountable challenge for the typical working or middle-class person who wants to start and run a small business legally. And with jobs for the middle-class hollowing out, self-employment is seen as a last hope, and many Trump supporters feel that is a more realizable hope with Trump as president, who ran on reducing regulations and taxes and indeed has eliminated many regulations already.When Hillary and liberal Democrats frequently use terms such as “inclusion,” “diversity,” "all in," and “the community,” many Trump supporters perceive that as code for wresting yet more money from them to give to others they perceive as, on average, less deserving. When they hear Hillary and other liberal Democrats try to blame the racial achievement gap on white privilege, the legacy of slavery, and  institutional racism, many Trump voters think, “Slavery ended more than 150 years ago, and other people of color, equally distinctive—Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indians, plus the Holocaust survivors have done better in just one generation without all the tax dollars. Some may even wonder why even in countries in which slavery didn't exist, are majority black, and that weren't colonized or have been independent for a half century or more, Blacks still are at the bottom of most if not all those countries' socioeconomic ladders and top of the crime ladders. And that's true not just now but through the centuries. Meanwhile the U.S. black vs white vs Asian achievement gap remains essentially as wide as ever despite the $22 trillion of tax dollars spent trying to close it, starting with President Johnson’s Great Society.The extent to which Trump supporters are correct about all these is subject to debate but it seems unfair to brush away the 62,979,879 people who voted for him as merely ignorant, redneck, racist, sexist yahoos who don’t understand externalities. Many Trump voters believed and, despite the nonstop media assault on Trump, still believe that their lives are likely to be better under Trump policies if not his personality. Many also believe that America as a whole is better when its foundational decision-making principle is not redistribution but merit. I believe that too.

Do you agree with the New York Times' decision to not publish this op-ed?

I read a video of this on YouTube.

Delirium?: Episode 1: Limits

I’m no James Joyce but I'm intrigued by the idea of experimenting with free-associative writing. So here, uncensored, are the thoughts flying through my head as I sit here at my keyboard:

No one needs anything more than a room, a few changes of clothes, simple food: fruits, vegetables, a little protein and bread.

People are more trouble than they’re worth, except in small doses.

How could the human body exist: a heart that keeps beating, a body not in pain, a brain that can apprehend so much?

I’d love to believe in a God, even if it didn’t reach the high bar of being omniscient and omnipotent--as long as it was benevolent. No such thing. Man created God because s/he needs one to deal with suffering and fear of death and dying.

Ah, benevolence. Most people are benevolent only when it doesn’t hurt them to be benevolent. How about people we see as self-sacrificial? Usually it’s just for show or because they’ve given up on life--They feel they have nothing to lose.

What could make a life worth living? Not pleasure—shallow. Making a difference to one’s sphere of influence without the effort being odious--That’s all I can think of.

It’s hard to understand how most people make peace with their decline and death without it swallowing up their good feelings about living.

At least I’m not living in Burundi.

Shaw was right, “There’s no sincerer love than the love of food.” Alas.

All the media says: Woman good; man bad, or at least white man bad. And the colleges keep saying white men are “privileged.” How much of white male “privilege” is earned? Men have done so much good. They do so much good. It makes me really sad, dispirited. I so believe that decisions based on merit will do so much more good for society than yet more redistribution for equality let alone based on who has the least.

Why have Asians--from Chinese to Indian—as visibly different from whites as are Blacks--achieved so much more so much faster? And Blacks are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder and the top of the crime ladder. And that’s not just in the U.S. but in most if not all 200 of the world’s nations: majority Black, white, Latino, or Asian, colonized or not, enslaved or not, now or through the centuries.

Diets are stupid. 98% of dieters gain back what they lose and more. I've tried so hard to stay at a healthy weight and I'm still 20 pounds overweight. If you have a physiological tendency to eat too many calories, you can’t often enough restrain yourself. Extreme diets are unhealthy, defying natural selection. They’re painful without benefit, indeed with liability--the extremity and the yo-yoing. We focus on diet in fear of death and dying, especially as, in our ever more overwhelmed health care system, we're less likely to get access to care, let alone quality, error-free care. We feel we have some measure of control over our diet but the the data that diet matters--except for obesity—is meager, so weak that we wouldn’t make most choices based on such iffy data, let alone force ourselves into a lifetime of dietary struggle, of love-hate relationship with food.

Restraint: That's so hard to inculcate, in ourselves, let alone by counselors, who spend a lot of time trying to inculcate that in clients. I’m confident that the power to self-restrain is heavily genetic, perhaps in part having to do with the amount of adrenaline and other hormones secreted in response to a given stimulus: food, an obnoxious person, pot, whatever. Some people have more impulse control than others do.

For most people, pot is a better high than alcohol so legalization will dramatically increase its use because of  greater accessibility, all the advertising and soon pot cafes, bars, and restaurants, which will make it top-of-mind. That's  VERY dangerous to our mental and physical health, not to mention the increase in car accidents in which we're the innocent victim, and to America’s ability to compete for jobs, and in developing better products. So evil to legalize it.

Indeed, the government is evil. If it cared about us, it wouldn’t allow legal pot, alcohol, or sell lottery tickets, which, Democrats pushed, even though it mainly soaks the poor.  And a benevolent government wouldn’t wrest half or more of our income (when you count everything--all taxes, user fees etc) knowing government so wastefully spends our money.

Liberals are such hypocrites. And I'm not just talking about Al Gore living in a compound, having 5 SUVs, and flying around in a private jet. Liberals praise diversity but live in enclaves from Chevy Chase MD to Piedmont, CA. Liberal politicians laud affirmative action but exempt themselves from it. Ugh.

Who do I respect? No one in totality. But I do have a lot of respect for medical researchers who work tirelessly in quiet anonymity probably to end up dying having done no more than close some blind alleys. But their cause is just: all the pain of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, so many diseases. Oy. I do respect myself. I try to be Ben Franklin-like and pretty much succeed--I get up early, work hard and long, and focus on improving the lives of people in my sphere of influence. Sorry about the hubris but I’m trying to be really honest here.

I hate getting old. By normative standards, I’ve accomplished a lot but really I don’t think I’ve made much difference. Certainly, the world is moving in the opposite direction from my core belief about what does the most good for the most people: meritocracy over redistribution. Now it’s so often the reverse: redistributing yet more from the more contributory to the less. Sure, the top 1/10 of 1%, which the media focuses on, makes zillions, which exaggerates income inequality. But most of the redistribution comes from the middle class. The price they pay, the price society pays, well exceeds to benefits of the redistribution.

That’s more than enough, at least for now. I welcome your comments, I guess. I'm actually scared to get them.
I read this, adding some asides, on YouTube.

Delirium?: My stream of consciousness, uncensored

I’m no James Joyce but I'm intrigued by the idea of experimenting with free-associative writing. So here, uncensored, are the thoughts flying through my head as I sit here at my keyboard:

No one needs anything more than a room, a few changes of clothes, simple food: fruits, vegetables, a little protein and bread.

People are more trouble than they’re worth, except in small doses.

How could the human body exist: a heart that keeps beating, a body not in pain, a brain that can apprehend so much?

I’d love to believe in a God, even if it didn’t reach the high bar of being omniscient and omnipotent--as long as it was benevolent. No such thing. Man created God because s/he needs one to deal with suffering and fear of death and dying.

Ah, benevolence. Most people are benevolent only when it doesn’t hurt them to be benevolent. How about people we see as self-sacrificial? Usually it’s just for show or because they’ve given up on life--They feel they have nothing to lose.

What could make a life worth living? Not pleasure—shallow. Making a difference to one’s sphere of influence without the effort being odious--That’s all I can think of.

It’s hard to understand how most people make peace with their decline and death without it swallowing up their good feelings about living.

At least I’m not living in Burundi.

Shaw was right, “There’s no sincerer love than the love of food.” Alas.

All the media says: Woman good; man bad, or at least white man bad. And the colleges keep saying white men are “privileged.” How much of white male “privilege” is earned? Men have done so much good. They do so much good. It makes me really sad, dispirited. I so believe that decisions based on merit will do so much more good for society than yet more redistribution for equality let alone based on who has the least.

Why have Asians--from Chinese to Indian—as visibly different from whites as are Blacks--achieved so much more so much faster? And they're at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder and the top of the crime ladder. And that’s not just in the U.S. but in all 200 of the world’s nations: majority Black, white, Latino, or Asian, colonized or not, enslaved or not, now or through the centuries.

Diets are stupid. 98% of dieters gain back what they lose and more. I've tried so hard to stay at a healthy weight and I'm still 20 pounds overweight. If you have a physiological tendency to eat too many calories, you can’t often enough restrain yourself. Extreme diets are unhealthy, defying natural selection. They’re painful without benefit, indeed with liability--the extremity and the yo-yoing. We focus on diet in fear of death and dying, especially as, in our ever more overwhelmed health care system, we're less likely to get acces to care, let alone quality, error-free care. We feel we have some measure of control over our diet but the the data that diet matters--except for obesity—is meager, so weak that we wouldn’t make most choices based on such iffy data, let alone force ourselves into a lifetime of dietary struggle, of love-hate relationship with food.

Restraint: That's so hard to inculcate, in ourselves, let alone by counselors, who spend a lot of time trying to inculcate that in clients. I’m confident that the power to self-restrain is heavily genetic, perhaps in part having to do with the amount of adrenaline and other hormones secreted in response to a given stimulus: food, an obnoxious person, pot, whatever. Some people have more impulse control than others do.

For most people, pot is a better high than alcohol so legalization will dramatically increase its use because of  greater accessibility, all the advertising and soon pot cafes, bars, and restaurants, which will make it top-of-mind. That's  VERY dangerous to our mental and physical health, not to mention the increase in car accidents in which we're the innocent victim, and to America’s ability to compete for jobs, and in developing better products. So evil to legalize it.

Indeed, the government is evil. If it cared about us, it wouldn’t allow legal pot, alcohol, or sell lottery tickets, which, Democrats pushed, even though it mainly soaks the poor.  And a benevolent government wouldn’t wrest half or more of our income (when you count everything--all taxes, user fees etc) knowing government so wastefully spends our money.

Liberals are such hypocrites. And I'm not just talking about Al Gore living in a compound, having 5 SUVs, and flying around in a private jet. Liberals praise diversity but live in enclaves from Chevy Chase MD to Piedmont, CA. Liberal politicians laud affirmative action but exempt themselves from it. Ugh.

Who do I respect? No one in totality. But I do have a lot of respect for medical researchers who work tirelessly in quiet anonymity probably to end up dying having done no more than close some blind alleys. But their cause is just: all the pain of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, so many diseases. Oy. I do respect myself. I try to be Ben Franklin-like and pretty much succeed--I get up early, work hard and long, and focus on improving the lives of people in my sphere of influence. Sorry about the hubris but I’m trying to be really honest here.

I hate getting old. By normative standards, I’ve accomplished a lot but really I don’t think I’ve made much difference. Certainly, the world is moving in the opposite direction from my core belief about what does the most good for the most people: meritocracy over redistribution. Now it’s so often the reverse: redistributing yet more from the more contributory to the less. Sure, the top 1/10 of 1%, which the media focuses on, makes zillions, which exaggerates the income inequality. But most of the redistribution comes from the middle class. The price they pay, the price society pays well exceeds to benefits of the redistribution.

That’s more than enough, at least for now. I welcome your comments, I guess. I'm actually scared to get them.
I read this, adding some asides, on YouTube.

The Best of Marty Nemko (3rd edition) is just out

The 3rd edition of The Best of Marty Nemko is now available both in print and on Kindle. It contains what I believe are my best 86 of my 3,400 published articles. They're from TIME, The Atlantic, Washington Post, and from among my 1,400 Psychology Today articles. Topics are: career, personal life, men's issues, and making a difference.

Affirmative Actions: A short-short story about bioterrorism

Lee’s father worked horrendous hours in a restaurant. That, plus a desire to use his natural math and science ability to help humankind made Lee one of the few kids in high school who knew what he wanted to be when he grew up: a scientist. Lee even knew what he wanted to specialize in: infectious diseases, because a few of his relatives had died in China’s 1946 bubonic plague epidemic.

Fueled by that and by an angry, Type A personality, Lee worked with fervor to get top grades in high school and got into MIT. He continued to work tirelessly and got into U.C. Berkeley’s prestigious PhD program in infectious diseases and vaccinology. Again, working prodigiously, even sometimes frantically, he had three journal articles published before he finished his degree. And there was no dabbling. All three articles were on his specialization: mutated bioweapons and vaccine creation.

So it was no surprise that Lee landed a tenure-track professorship, although his options were constrained because his wife got a great job offer in Dallas. So he took a position at Texas State University at Bluffview. She reassured him, “Hey, that’s so close to Dallas’s international airport, that we can easily travel anywhere.”

Not surprisingly, Lee worked hard and well both at his teaching and his research and so when it came time for his tenure review, he was confident. Alas, two professors came up for tenure in his department that year and for budget and political reasons, only one could be granted tenure. It was granted to the other person whom Lee deemed "vastly inferior," whom he believed got tenure for “non-merit reasons.”

When a person doesn’t get tenure, they lose their job: It’s up or out. And so Lee was well aware that his career was likely doomed. There are very few tenurable professorships, especially for people whose gender and race is “overrepresented.” And because there are so many applicants wielding prestigious PhDs and even post-docs, he’d have a particularly hard time. He'd have to convince a university to hire someone who was denied tenure at the Texas State University at Bluffview.

During Lee’s final semester, in one of his various efforts to deflect his fury, he experimented in his lab with creating mutated bioweapons, not that he planned to use them but it somehow felt good, in the way that some kids play sports to let off steam. Indeed, by the end of the semester, Lee had created vials-full of airborne, highly communicable mutated virus. And just to be safe, he created a vial of vaccine.

After his final semester was over, Lee was no calmer. Indeed, his anger grew. It hurt when had to walk his possessions out past the office of the professor who had gotten what he deeply felt was his tenure position. And he got angrier and angrier as the fears about his job prospects were confirmed.

Then, one day, before leaving home for his usual errands, he injected himself with the vaccine. Next, as usual, he stopped for gas, he went to the supermarket, but then he added the short ride to Dallas’s international airport. He parked near the furthest shuttle-bus stop in the parking lot, taking his attaché case with him. When the full-sized bus arrived, he was first on and sat in the furthest back, least convenient seat so his release of the mutated bioweapon would be least likely to be noticed.

At each stop, the bus filled with more people. A minute before arriving at the terminal, he opened his attaché, its cover blocking anyone from seeing, and opened the Tupperware container, which released millions of the bioweapon viruses into the bus’s air. By the time the bus arrived at the terminal, all the passengers had breathed more than enough to become fatally infected and would then infect countless people in the terminal, on the plane, and in all the cities and towns, worldwide, they were flying to.

Lee walked with the others into the terminal, then turned around, waited for the shuttle bus, returned to his car and went home.

By the time, first symptoms appeared 10 days later, those 30 passengers had flown all over the world and with each sneeze or cough had released communicable bioweapon. Within a month, millions of people were infected. Because the virus had been mutated, there was no vaccine. So most of them died. Infectious disease specialists couldn’t even identify the outbreak’s origin because people in many locales all around the world showed symptoms at essentially the same time.As stories of the deaths dominated all thought, Lee’s guilt grew and he told his wife that he was the cause. For a moment, her love for him made her hesitate but she then called the police, and he didn't try to stop her. 

I read this on YouTube. 

Afterword: I have consulted with a former CIA operative who said that this scenario is the type that “keeps the CIA up at night.” I am ignorant of how to manufacture or disperse bioweapons and deliberately have not even attempted here to guess how it could be done. So this story should pose no threat to the public, certainly far less than the hundreds of book-length novels--Amazon’s Goodreads alone lists a top 100--plus the many non-fiction books and articles that have been written about bioterrorism.

Yield: A short-short story about an A student

“Should I answer it or leave it blank. There’s a penalty for wrong answers.”

David was taking the SAT for the fourth time and his score had gradually risen from an already lofty 1420 to 1510. That met his goal: 99th percentile, which would boost his chances of getting into his dream school, Harvard.

In addition, David had completed the requisite absurdity of taking all Advanced Placement (college-level) courses in high school and killing himself to get nearly all A’s at the expense of a social life. Too, he chose expeditious extracurriculars. For example, every college needs a tuba player and few applicants play the tuba. His application essay studiously trod the required line: balancing assertiveness and humility plus a safe foundational principle: urging more redistribution to women, minorities, and the poor.

Thus David got the thick envelope, which invited him to Visitas: “our April celebration for newly admitted students.”  Admissions weekends are more accurately but less appealingly described as yield boosters—Even Harvard worries about losing admitted students to competing universities. Yield is the ratio of enrollees to admits.

Visitas was thus filled with fun events as well as an invitation for admitted students to sample “selected” classes, that is, cherry-picked to be the most engaging. David decided to sample what wasn’t selected to maximize yield. So he left the beehive of admitted students, who were bubbling in their superiority and visions of a Harvard diploma opening fantastical career doors. Instead, David wandered through classroom buildings, peeking into classes. Each one was more boring and irrelevant than even high school: formulas of stochastic processes, Derrida deconstruction of patriarchal literature, a proof of the Cayley-Hamilton Theorem, socioeconomic antecedents of the first Peloponnesian War, chiaroscuro use by Gerrit van Honthorst.

“This is what I worked so hard for? This is what I prostituted myself for, gave up my teenage years for?” David then sat under a tree, thought for what must have been an hour, then pulled out his phone and ordered an Uber. “Logan Airport, please.”

David knew he’d not go to college, figuring that as a smart, hard working self-starter, the benefits of the diploma would be outweighed by his being able to hand-pick his learning opportunities and saving $300,000, which is the true full cost of four years at most selective private colleges. (Four years at a brand-name public costs, total sticker price, $200,000.) And many students take longer than four years to graduate. Plus, David liked that he would take charge of his life rather than toadying along the prescribed, boring, irrelevant, rite-of-passage path.

Nevertheless, David knew he had nothing to lose by, rather than turning down Harvard, deferring his admission for a year, which many colleges, including Harvard, allow. So he sent in the deferral form.

“But now what?” David enrolled in a top-rated Lynda.com course on entrepreneurship but felt isolated and so also enrolled in an honors American literature course at a community college. To see what it's really like to be a lawyer, he volunteered as a go-fer at his dad’s law firm but got to sit in on meetings and even ask questions. He applied for jobs as a personal assistant to a small business owner, figuring he’d learn a lot by seeing an entrepreneur in the real world. But the only person who would hire him, a mere high school graduate, was the owner of a one-person transmission shop who was longer on expedience than on ethics. Revulsed at seeing the owner spray paint a used transmission to make it appear rebuilt, David quit.

And in July, David felt no choice but...to yield. He wrote to Harvard’s director of admission: “I would like to withdraw my request for deferred admission. I’m excited to, this fall, begin my studies at Harvard.”  

I read this on YouTube.

Playing by the Rules A short-short story about success

Decker had become a millionaire largely because he played by The Rules.

Yes, he could have a fancy car but it must look understated—silver Lexus, not red Corvette. His clothes need look inconspicuously expensive, for example, the tiny black-and-white word “Facconable” on the shirt, not the bright green Izod alligator.

Decker was tired at the end of his venture capitalist workday but The Rules deem visible fatigue (or any emotion other than mild pleasantness) unacceptable. So he took a deep breath, struggled out of his car, and turned his game demeanor back on for his second shift: the one at the club’s bar.

That demeanor was well practiced—Of course, shoulders back, head slightly above 90 degrees to look confident but not pompous. No matter how tired you are, you must stride, not trudge, but not so fast that you seem hurried. As the old commercial said, “Never let them see you sweat.” Inside the bar, the stride must give way to a confident amble, but certainly not the padding of an insecure wannabe. He had tried out dozens of smiles in front of the mirror until he settled on the one that appeared most natural and brought out the best in his facial features. And Decker practiced it until it was firmly in muscle memory and could be summoned on command.

On seeing his fellow denizens at the bar or in the clubby chairs, Decker nodded with that crafted smile, varying it just enough to avoid it appearing pasted. At this point he could have approached them without paying the price of seeming too anxious but he preferred to slow his amble and slide to the bar, hoping someone would ask him to join them. The Rule is that the power resides in the recipient of the request, not in the requester.

Decker wouldn’t even call the bartender even though she looking in the other direction and wasn’t busy. Decker waited until she saw him. Thus, when she finally did, she might feel the need to apologize, whereupon Decker would graciously say, “Not a problem,” all of which conveys to any onlookers that Decker was a gracious good egg. “I’d like a Beefeater Martini, please.” The right drink, the right gin.

So, as usual, Decker had laid his foundation properly and as a result, before even his drinky-poo had arrived, Bill Oliver a fellow venture capitalist sidled up. All clubby types had read How to Win Friends and Influence People or one of its myriad derivatives, and they knew to not talk business too quickly. So although they had not the slightest interest in each other’s family, hobbies, and other innocuities, that was the requisite discussion for the first five minutes. Decker kept a list of the names of even casual acquaintances’ spouse and kids’ and their core interests, so he could toss off,  for example, “Bill, I recall last time we spoke, you mentioned you were hoping Bradley would be getting into Choate. Any luck?” Decker would not, of course, say, “I recall you were trying to pull stringsto get Bradley into Choate.” That would violate The Rule against willfulness.

Decker and Bill were in the middle of their pre-deal dance when Decker’s phone rang. “Would you excuse me a moment? It’s my boss.”

Decker ambled to a quiet spot and listened: “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, Decker, but I wanted to let you know as soon the decision had been made. Decker, we’ve decided to go in a different direction.”

Decker couldn’t maintain his The Rules demeanor: “What do you mean, a different direction?! I’ve been an above-average performer. What is this about? . . .What do you mean you’re looking for someone with a fresher approach? Are you firing me because I’m an older white male? No, you wouldn’t admit that.”

Decker then realized that his show of emotion could hurt the reference he’d get and perhaps his severance. So he mustered as much restraint as he could. “James, I am sorry. Thank you for letting me know.”

Decker couldn’t muster an amble. He plodded back to Bill and simply said, “I need to go. We’ll continue this next time.” (Of course, Decker knew there might well not be a next time but The Rules prohibit such candor ...unless it’s expedient.)

He drove home and told his wife who said all the right things, including telling him to “Feel free to take a week or so off to regain your bearings.” (Internally, with him being the primary breadwinner supporting a lifestyle, including two kids in private school, she was nervous: “He’s 50 and has only soft skills. Will he get a job without our having to dip into savings?”

But she never imagined what he ended up doing. Yes, he took a week to think about it all but his conclusion was unexpected—utterly: Decker entered an ashram and renounced all his worldly goods. I won’t regale you with all the details. I’ll merely let you know that when he did it, she divorced him. Oh, and I should tell you that he went onto the Berkeley campus with $100,000 in $100 bills, flung them all into the air and enjoyed the “anti-materialistic” Berkeley students swarming, diving, fighting for as many bills as they could grab.

After three months of meditating, chanting, and eating locally grown, sustainable organic vegetables over fair-traded brown rice, Decker was bored. Then one day, as he was padding around the ashram, (In an ashram, padding is The Rule), he noticed an unused utility room that faced a busy street. He got permission to open a bookstore and cafe there called The Town Hall Meeting Cafe. On the cafe’s website, anyone could sign up to lead a one-hour discussion on any topic. Also, there were read-alouds for children, teens, adults, and seniors. Such events attracted a good number of customers who stayed a long time and thus often bought food and drink and occasionally, with the good will acquired, bought a book, even though they could use Amazon to peruse a far bigger selection at a far lower price. Decker ended up only netting $15 an hour but was much happier than as a venture capitalist.

His wife used part of the divorce settlement to get an MBA and then got hired by Decker’s former employer.

I perform this short-short story on YouTube.

Vivids of My Life