The Manx Missile

Six years ago, the Manx Missile, Mark Cavendish, was thought by many to be the greatest sprinter in bicycle racing history. He had dominated fast finishes in the Tour de France for years, winning on thirty different days. He never came close to winning the race overall--it's a three-week race that includes climbs through the Alps--but on relatively flat days, he was the quickest. 

About five years ago, he seemed to be slowing.  He was badly injured in crashes (the fate of most pro bike racers), and he came down with Epstein-Barr for the second time. He was finished and won nothing for five years. Some years he wasn't fit enough to participate, until yesterday. 

This year Cavendish did not train specifically for the Tour. No point in it. But the Bahrain team lost its formidable sprinter at the last minute and made Cavendish a starter on its Tour team. No one had expected that. And then the team leader and world champion Julian Alaphilippe led an effort to help Cav--as they call him--into a striking place at the end of a very long day of riding. With cunning and 39 mph burst of speed, the old guy won for the 31st time and burst into tears. 

 

How Much Do Black Lives Matter?

 So the judge gave Derek Chauvin 22.5 years, which means he will likely serve 15. That is a long time. But it's about 3/5ths of what Chauvin deserved, for some reason. 

Childhood Memories

Experts say that early childhood memories (memories before the age of three) are rare. A kind of fog blocks most events until a child reaches about six. We apparently need the structure of language to organize most memories. 

Keep in mind that memories are inaccurate, and they become increasingly inaccurate. Each time you remember something, you change it a little. When you remember something, you also reinforce it (inaccurately) in a general way. 

I have memories I'd rather forget. I suppose that if I resist remembering bad events, the memories may fade over time. 

The Bishops

 

As you probably know, American Catholic Bishops are now considering the denial of Communion to President Biden, because he supports the right of women to terminate their pregnancies, a decision antique dogma tells us belongs to men.  The genuine issue here may be that of credibility. How credible are the Bishops? The Pope disagrees with them. Are they deaf to Rome? 

About 49% of voting Catholics supported Biden for president, and Biden seems to me to be sincerely religious. 

My mother's side of my family was Catholic, and I am familiar with my grandmother's response to church authority. "What the priest doesn't know won't hurt him." In fairness to the church, she was excommunicated for about 40 years, then saved again.

The Infusion

A family member needed an iron infusion, and she had to go to the cancer center to get it, although she does not have cancer. I waited for her in the lobby for two hours, and I observed human interactions. The most interesting was a middle-aged man talking to one of the aides. I could not hear much of what the man was saying. The aide spoke in a loud but nice voice.

Man: blab blab blab for three minutes.

Aide: Yes, of course, but I can't schedule an appointment until after you go back to the hospital's record department and have them send over your wife's medical records.

Man: blab blab blab for three minutes.

Aide: We will schedule a second opinion as soon as you drive to the hospital and have them send over your wife's medical records.

Man: blab blab blab for three minutes.

Aide: We will schedule a second opinion. It's not a problem. We are happy to do it. But you will have to ask the hospital to send over your wife's medical records. You'll need your wife's signature.

This went on for about 25 minutes.The aide remained friendly and courteous, repeating the same message. Finally the man left, promising to do exactly what the aide had asked. Twenty minutes later, the man returned  and went through the same dialogue again. The aide never showed impatience. 

Building Memories

According to experts, our memories often consist of events to which we paid close attention (so they got processed by our hippocampi). When something awful happens, we pay attention, of course. We acquire an unpleasant memory. 

I suspect that I tend to let good experiences slide away. I can have pleasant memories if I pay attention when nice things are happening. 

The Successful Amendment`

The second amendment has been our most successful change to the Constitution. The Founders’ goal was to ensure that there would be people familiar with weapons in every hamlet. That way it would be easy to pull together a militia in a few hours. At the time it was thought we needed to be ready to defend ourselves against the British (see the War of 1812) and populist mobs (see Shay’s Rebellion). 

Today 72 million Americans own firearms. In theory we can call up a militia of 72 million fighters, many of them genuine shit-on-the-floor patriots. 

We are currently protected from invasion by two vast oceans, regular military forces and nuclear weapons. We spend 715 billion each year maintaining our regular military.  That’s too much under the circumstances. We could scale it down. Imagine an invader being met on the beaches by 72 million irrational men and women with their faces painted blue.  

Race Norming

Race norming as a formal process began about 40 years ago. I don't know much about it, but I suspect that it started from a good motive, an attempt to level the playing field for people of color. Race norming attempted to do that by adjusting scores on standardized tests for different racial groups. In other words, the score of a black person would be compared only to the scores of black people in general, not to the scores of Caucasians or Asians.  

Probably the assumption was that in a land of unequal opportunity, black people would tend to score lower than white folks, who had gone to better-funded schools. 

Biologists today do not find enough differences among peoples to justify dividing living humans into subspecies or races. 

The National Football League has put aside money to aid former employees who have suffered concussions and a loss of cognitive functions. To receive that money, the former players must be tested. Standards have been set. A Black player must show a lower level of cognitive ability than a White player to get help, because--wait for it--Black players are supposedly dumber to start with. That's one type of race norming in 2021.

How Fundamental Is the Filibuster?

Most Americans have no idea how fundamental the non-speaking filibuster is to our governance system. To discover how central the non-speaking filibuster is, all you need do is look up the many legislative bodies in our fifty states. You'll find many assemblies, senates, city councils and county boards. Add up how many have the non-speaking filibuster. To this number add all the other governments in the world that allow them non-speaking filibuster. The total will yield a number quantifying how vital the non-speaking filibuster is in maintaining a democracy. 

Shuttered

 ''Donald Trump’s blog site, designed to give the disgraced former U.S. president an online outlet after he was banned from Twitter, Facebook and other services, has been permanently shuttered about a month after it debuted.''

No, it was shut down. Blog sites don't have shutters.