August 29, 2023 - Bad Vibes, Permissiveness, Racism, Violence, Elon Musk, and a Trivia Quiz

 

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Maureen Dowd: ‘All American business schools should have a class on mug shots.’                                                           

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Bad Vibes, Permissiveness, Racism and Violence

I am getting bad vibes about the make-up of the juries in the forthcoming trials of the indicted former president and his sometime loyal acolytes.  It will be difficult to avoid seating that one jurist who will bring about an acquittal or a hung jury, particularly in the cases being heard in Florida and Georgia.  If that occurs in even one case, it will become a weapon for the anti-democratic forces that are at the core of the defendants’ cases in the other trials, and in their inevitable appeals.  This will feed into the very dangerous ‘action-reaction’ spiral mentioned in the previous posting of Jackspotpourri, leading to civil violence.  

That’s why, to save the nation from such violent disintegration, the Republicans must be willing to renounce and denounce the idiocy, bigotry, and venality that has captured their party and sit down and make a political deal with the Democrats before it is too late, before any trials.  As I pointed out, verdicts in either direction will have the same result, the causing of possibly violent reactions. (The previous posting described my ideas for such a deal. It might appear directly below this posting, or you can get there via the Archives off to the right.)  But as I then wrote, if the Republicans do not do so, there will be no deal.  That would leave the nation with the awesome task of calming troubled waters. In doing so, democracy might have to suffer. 

Complicating this task will be the environment of permissiveness that has allowed white supremacy and anti-semitism to periodically manifest itself in the nation over the past century and a half.  Very few politicians openly endorse such racist ideas, but some political parties (generally Democrats in the 1800s, Republicans in the 1900s and later) remained, and continue to remain, silent in regard to them in order to gain the votes of the numerous bigots who think that way.  That creates the environment of permissiveness that threatens us all.

Over the past decade, acts of gun violence have usually brought about public condemnation of their perpetrators, ‘thoughts and prayers’ for their victims, but little to change the environment that allowed these acts to occur in the first place.  Legislation to curb gun violence staggers.

An example of such ‘permissiveness’ is the defeated and now indicted former president’s comment in referring to the violence of the ‘Unite the Right’ antisemitic, white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, where he said that there were ‘very fine people on both sides.’ 

Creating an environment of permissiveness in Charlottesville

Doing so legitimized future acts of bloody violence by white supremacists and antisemites.  We saw that in Buffalo, El Paso, Pittsburgh, and this week in Jacksonville.  He and those who agreed with him must bear actual and historical responsibility for them.  Future history books (except for those used in schools in the Nazi Free State of Florida) will certainly reflect that truth. 

(Addendum:  I still have a tee shirt from a demonstration in which I participated five years ago after the shootings at the high school in nearby Parkland. It reads ‘Grandparents Against Assault Weapons.’  I still haul it out and wear it whenever there is a similar shooting, prompted by lax gun control laws and that environment of permissiveness.  I wore it yesterday out of respect for those murdered on Sunday in Jacksonville. And I still have a sign in my car’s rear window reading ‘Want an Assault Rifle? Join the Army!’  I believe it is the only such sign in Palm Beach and Broward Counties, where the vast majority of people don’t read newspapers anymore. But I belong to another generation, one that has been passed and left in the dust by too many who don’t give a damn about too many things.)

JL

 

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 About Elon Musk

Elon Musk is a very complicated person.  Obviously a genius, he is also the wealthiest person on the planet.  Check out the Ronan Farrow article on him in a recent issue of the New Yorker  To read it, CLICK HERE or visit https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-shadow-rule#intcid=_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc_424506be-cfcc-4d72-a1be-da37ac569a1e_cral2-2t

Musk’s ideas seem to be all over the place in ventures such as Tesla automobiles, space exploration, social media, and Artificial Intelligence, energized by his ego and his wealth, and seemingly all vaguely tied together.  To some he is a progressive and to many he is a conservative, or even a fascist.  He is so in love with world peace that he objects to the scientific discoveries he has enabled being used to aid Ukraine wage war in its military struggle against Russia. But how different is that from J. Robert Oppenheimer’s turning against the hydrogen bomb as a step too far against mankind after developing the atom bomb?  Hmm.

Anyone with the power that Musk has over the economy, society, and to some extent, government as well, should be elected to that position of power and influence by the people and not arrive there through their own efforts.  No one elected Musk to any office that I know of.  Others with such non-elective power have historically been adequately regulated by the government, as were the ‘robber barons’ of the late nineteenth century, and as our largest financial institutions and businesses are today.  

Government has difficulty doing that with Musk, however, because his wealth and resources sometimes exceed that of government in certain areas such as those where government involvement has retreated, leaving them to the private sector, which can mean cooperating with or even succumbing to Musk.  Space exploration is one of those areas. 

Elon Musk enables scientific and engineering Ideas and ventures that are the kinds of things traditionally found in academic or government environments where experimentation is not as risky as it can be when our society and economy serve as the testing laboratories.  Every once in a while, don’t you read of an explosion or some other tragedy when an experiment goes wrong somewhere as happened, for example, with the recent loss of a submersible attempting to visit the wreck of the Titanic?  When they happen to him, Musk just blows those occurrences off, something the American people should not be doing. 

There has to be a ‘resetting’ of the relationship of this unusual person to our government, society, and economy.  There is something about him now that doesn’t ring quite true.  Could it be that he exists only because he finds himself in an environment of permissiveness, and runs with it as far as it takes him?

 JL

 

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Trivia Quiz #3 -  Finish the Pair (Each of the following was usually accompanied by someone else.  Name them. 

Note:  Answers to Numbers 6 and 7 are not their horses’ names, (but take an extra credit if you can also name them.)

1.   Edgar Bergen and ___________.

2.   Spencer Tracy and __________.

3.   Bud Abbot and _____________.

4.   Rodgers and _______________. (two acceptable answers)

5.   Bausch and ________________.

6.   Roy Rogers and ____________ . 

7.   The Lone Ranger and _______ .

8.   Penn and __________________.

9.   Horn and __________________. 

10.Lerner and _________________. 

 

Answers to Trivia Quiz #2:  

 The NHL is older than the NBA.

Bing Crosby preceded Frank Sinatra.

Mussolini preceded Hitler.

Colgate preceded Proctor & Gamble.

The National League is older than the American League.

Hot Dogs preceded hamburgers. 

(And if you disagree, check them out on ‘Google.’)

 

 

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

Email Alerts:  If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do.  And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com.  

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.

If you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to them.   I think this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though!   Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible.  If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a comment from you.  Each will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the 'sidebar' features such as access to the blog's archives.

Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I recommend sending them the link. 

Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it.

JL

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August 25, 2023 - A Doubly Sad Day, Satanic Similarities, Democracy, Spiralling Actions and Reactions, a Solution, and a Trivia Quiz

 

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Yesterday Was a Sad Day for the United States of America in Two Ways

A former president was arrested, and released on bail awaiting trial, charged with numerous offenses, the most serious of which included an attempt to have the State of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results changed and another, helping to organize an illegitimate group of presidential electors to vote in the Electoral College instead of the ones the voters chose.  Regardless of the results of his eventual trial, these undeniable and proven actions represent a low to which no president has ever sunk.  

The other aspect of yesterday’s sadness is how it illustrates the failure of democracy to provide governance that is in the hands of those it governs, and which acts in their interests.  Millions of Americans still support that former president, ignoring the fact that we live in a nation governed by laws that he felt it was acceptable for him to ignore.  Worse than selling their souls to him, they sold their votes to him and in return received only pain.  That is so sad. 

JL

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JL

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 Democracy, Neo-Cons, and Originalists

 Winston Churchill once said that "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms."  At its worst, democracy’s Achilles heel exposes it to destruction from within, from corrupted media, less than honest politicians, and their followers, who manage to convince gullible voters to support positions that are not in their own interests.

At its best, democracy provides for, as Abraham Lincoln put it, ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people,’

Some of those dissatisfied with the self-destructive potential of democracy seek to temper it with a measure of authoritarian leadership.  Unfortunately, history shows that  for every benevolent monarch, there have been a dozen despots. Those who retreat from democratic principles to less egalitarian conservative positions have been called ‘Neo-Cons.’  Eventually though, they feel unwelcome and unhappy with their new compatriots, and will return to the philosophy of our sixteenth president, as quoted above from his Gettysburg Address.

Some even find justification for soft-pedaling the ‘equality’ promised by the Declaration of Independence with the more conservative approach of the Constitution, taking its every word in its precise, original meaning, carefully crafted in 1789 to ignore slavery and maintain leadership by propertied white males, still affecting us today despite the three post-Civil War amendments, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth.  These folks are ‘Orignalists.’ Until the Neo-Cons and the Originalists open their eyes, democracy is at risk.

JL

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Actions and Dangerous Reactions (Political or Constitutional), the ‘Debate,’ and a Suggested Solution

For every action, physicists say, there is a reaction.  And in resolving the current crisis in our democracy, there will be a reaction to whatever action is taken. 

Among the ‘actions’ you might see over the next few months are convictions of the indicted former president in one or more of the trials in which he is involved, convictions of some of his advisors, the imposition of sentences on those convicted, refusal of some States to include the defeated former president on the 2024 ballot, or the failure of Federal and State prosecutors to successfully win these cases against the defeated former president and his advisors, setting them free, and court decisions, including that of the Supreme Court, either supporting, negating, or modifying any of these actions.

Whichever of these actions takes place, they will arouse those who disagree with them.  Their disagreements would be Constitutional rather than political, but this distinction would not be noticeable. The reactions, unavoidable, would range from peaceful demonstrations to acts of violence. Such reactions will in turn result in further reactions.  And media on either side will be there to stoke the fires. It is conceivable that at some point, law enforcement will be unable to maintain the peace without National Guard or even regular military support.  Things must not be allowed to reach that point.

I cannot see red-hatted MAGA supporters sitting idly by when the sentencing or imprisonment of the false idol from whom they believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen, despite reams of evidence and court decisions to the contrary, takes place.  Nor can I see those who have followed his undemocratic and unconstitutional actions since 2016 allowing him to go unpunished, due to some misguided legal hocus-pocus by lawyers, some of whom will have been indicted too.  From these groups will come reactions.

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A Few Words about The Debate:  Minus the defeated and now indicted former president, eight Republicans desirous of being their party’s presidential candidate in 2024 held a debate on Fox the other evening.  None demonstrated any serious fitness for the job, other than attacking the Biden administration, often with lies and half-truths.  Former governor and  U.N. delegate Nikki Haley summed up what the G.O.P. was doing by saying at one point that ‘We can’t win a general election that way.’  Those were the wisest words spoken during the entire two hour event. Republicans must change. The evening did conclusively demonstrate why, in addition to the absent former president (about whom negative comments by several of the debaters drew booing from the live audience there), neither ‘businessman’ Vivek Ramaswamhi nor Florida governor Ron DeSantis should be allowed anywhere near the White House, even on a bus tour. 

But getting back to actions and reactions, there still are cool heads in Washington (and even in Atlanta and New York) who recognize that we must short-circuit this ‘action-reaction’ spiral before it destroys our nation. Opposing viewpoints can be resolved politically only through cooperation between the Democratic and the Republican Parties.  This must be done right now, before it is too late. Some consensus must be reached.  

The problem with that is that there is no longer a Republican Party, just a bunch of misfits, many of whom depend on lies believed by the gullible to remain in office and who kneel before the big dollar donors who keep their party’s ghost alive in name only. They no longer constitute a real political party.  Anyway, for what it is worth, …

I PROPOSE A SOLUTION - The solution is for the Republican Party to support the Constitution and denounce the indicted and defeated former president right now, and then decide on someone else to lead their party.  And that someone cannot support any of the lies which at this moment remain the foundation of the G.O.P.  (Wealth never did and never will ‘trickle down.’) They must rid themselves of the fascists, bigots, white supremacists, racists, and believers in economic and social fairy tales that today dominate their party, including the phony users of Constitutionally-provided ‘States Rights’ to suppress democracy.   One might ask why the Republicans would go along with this.  Well, for one thing, they would get their party back from the scoundrel who stole it.  And just maybe, their big donors would approve such a move.  It might be a generalization, but such donors would prefer a party loyal to the Koch family and the businesses they control rather than a party loyal to the titular head of the Trump family and the dangerous extremists who blindly follow him.

As for the indicted former president himself, as part of the deal, he would plead guilty to everything, be sentenced to permanent lifetime probation, avoiding establishing the dangerous precedent of jailing a former president, with the conditions that he be restricted to an area no further than twenty miles from Mar-a-Lago for the rest of his life, turn all of his assets over to his family (who could be sued by his creditors), be forbidden to engage in any political discourse whatsoever, and of course, never run for any political office. In short, he would become no more than a golf-playing tourist attraction.  One might ask why he would go along with this. One reason:  It is better than prison.

As for those indicted along with him, they would agree to plead guilty and their punishment would be that same lifetime probation, limiting their travel outside of their home States, and being similarly forbidden from engaging in political discourse.  None should be allowed to hold public office and if lawyers, they should be disbarred, if it were found that they crossed the line between defending criminals and being criminals themselves.

(Those who have already been tried, sentenced, or imprisoned for invading the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or are somewhere along in that process, comprise a separate group, a group that physically committed acts of violence for which proper punishment, according to law, cannot be excused.  They neither deserve nor should get a ‘deal.’)

One might ask why the Democrats would go along with this. Certainly, some of them will object to what they will call a sweetheart deal, in view of other convicted criminals usually having to serve their time in jail.  But these other criminals didn’t get 70 million votes in a presidential election as the head of this ‘crime family’ did in 2020 in losing the election.  That happened and that difference just cannot be disregarded, so the Democrats will have to swallow and accept such generously compassionate sentencing as something essential to defuse the present ‘action-reaction’ spiral.  That is what is important today.

But remember, the Republican Party must do its part too, as described above, or as they say while the casino was burning down, ‘all bets are off.’  REPUBLICANS MUST CHANGE.  OR THIS DEAL WILL BE CANCELLED.

The generous sentences described above that the convicted former president and those who worked with him to destroy democracy would receive in the courtroom ought to serve to convince them, and the entire Republican Party leadership to change.  What is important today is that the ‘action-reaction’ spiral be short-circuited immediately.  If it is not, the alternative for the nation is frightening. 

And it would enable Democrats, along with the Republicans who will have reclaimed their party, to get to work on climate change which is an even greater threat than the former president was.

 JL

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Trivia Quiz #2 – Which or Who Came First?

The NBA or the NHL

Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby?

Hitler or Mussolini?

Proctor & Gamble or Colgate

The National League or the American League

Hot Dogs or Hamburgers

(Look for answers in the next posting.)

 

Answers to Trivia Quiz #1 – Short-Term Presidents

These presidents served less than the only full term to which they were elected:  William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, James Garfield, Warren Harding, and John Kennedy.

These presidents, all of whom were vice-presidents, served only to complete the terms of their predecessors, and never were elected to terms of their own: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, and Gerald Ford.

JL

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

 Email Alerts:  If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do.  And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com.  

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.

If you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to them.   I think this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though!   Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible.  If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a comment from you.  Each will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the 'sidebar' features such as access to the blog's archives.

Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I recommend sending them the link. 

Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it.

JL

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August 22, 2023 - That Trial's Date, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a Short Story, Earth's Resiliency, Triva Quiz #1, and the Latest Covid 19 Vaccines

 

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There’s Good Reason to Firmly Fix Trial Dates, and More

Now that the indicted former president’s lawyers in the Federal case being heard in a D.C. court have requested a trial date in 2026, even that lengthy delay will turn out to be inadequate.   Based on the enormous amount of evidence of his trying to overthrow the results of the 2020 election that the defense will want to review before the trial, even 2026 will turn out to be far ‘too soon,’ with further delays even then certain to be requested. 

Why? The defeated former president continues to provide ongoing evidence likely to deepen the hole he has dug for his defense.  And there is no indication, regardless of any ‘gag’ rules imposed, that he or his acolytes will ever stop doing so, providing a never-ending Niagara Falls of evidence.

Therefore, I suggest the trial date be firmly fixed once and for all at one year after the death of the defendant, at which point chances are that at least personally, he probably will not be able to further add to the evidence against him that must be reviewed by his lawyers.

Of course, that won’t happen.  Getting back to reality though, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is now coming into the spotlight.  

For an interesting summary of its historical basis and how it can apply to the likely Republican presidential candidate in 2024 election, should he be convicted in the case discussed above or the case pending in Georgia, read Professor Heather Cox Richardson's comments at https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/august-19-2023?r=50599&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email  or just CLICK HERE.  

In a nutshell, it would make his candidacy illegal.  Obviously, delaying the trials beyond the 2024 presidential election is the aim of the defense’s strategy, based on the small hope that he will win the election.  They know that once convicted, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment would prevent him from running for office in 2024.                           

JL

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Here’s Some Fiction for a Change

Long-time followers of Jackspotpourri know that it isn’t just politics.  Occasionally, it features some short creative fiction by me, or even by you if you wish to submit it for inclusion.  Examples are the eight-part Chrissy Frost chronicle repeated earlier this year, the annual children’s holiday story about Santa’s Belt and several stories over the years by the late Sid Bolotin. 

Here’s another attempt at a piece of fiction.  As with most such efforts, it has a basis in reality, in this instance explained in the author’s note at its conclusion.

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 'The Kosher Epidemiologist'

Jack Lippman

Rachel never fit in with her family’s very orthodox background in Boro Park.  Though fully observant, in her head she never fully bought into the role assigned to orthodox Jewish women, the way their social structure insisted that it was supposed to be. 

Though she seemed just like the others, she was not.  She did dress modestly, did learn how to cook and keep house, shun worldly diversions, learn all the prayers women were supposed to learn, and after what amounted to the kind of religion-based high school education such girls receive, she got herself a job as a waitress in a kosher restaurant in the neighborhood, as an alternative to working in one of the schools she had learned to dislike. 

Rachel's Neighborhood

Rachel had to earn a living because she had made it clear to her parents that she was not interested in a pre-arranged marriage, as her parents had negotiated for her older sisters, the usual route to matrimony followed in such families.  ‘Oy,’ her father moaned. ‘Not enough that my son moved to Manhattan and doesn’t go to shul anymore.  But at least Rachel is still observing the Laws.’

The only one who seemed to understand her was, in fact, her brother Sam, the computer programmer who had deserted Boro Park for Manhattan.  They did talk whenever they had the chance.

Rachel had loved science ever since she was a kid.  She loved the chapters in Genesis that described Creation, but even then suspected that there might be a better explanation somewhere. Stuff like that just didn’t happen in six days, or just maybe in those times what we call a ‘day’ might have been defined differently.  Science was given little attention in her limited schooling, but that did not deter her from devoting every spare moment when she wasn’t working to learning what she could from the books available in the public library and from the internet terminals there that Sam had taught her to use.  She wouldn’t dare bring such studying into her home, where the only approved reading was the Torah or commentary on it, so her scientific education was a clandestine affair.

The area that interested her most was why some people get sick, some don’t, and how sicknesses spread differently among different groups of people.  Those plagues that afflicted the Egyptians in the Bible fascinated her, as she sought to find some more scientific basis for them, something making sense of how these events had been used as tools by the Creator in those chapters of Exodus.  If a book or scientific paper had been written on these subjects, Rachel knew about them and perhaps had even read some of them.

And this was the way things were when the Covid 19 pandemic struck in 2019.  Its effects were starkly evident in Brooklyn’s orthodox enclaves like Boro Park, where there were more infections and deaths than in other neighborhoods in New York City.  She repeatedly asked herself why and made sure to try to read every newspaper article or scientific piece about the spread of Covid 19 that she could find.  She had the time to do this because the restaurant where she worked had closed due to the pandemic, leaving her to become a full-time denizen of the public library that in a limited manner, had remained open.

Although government agencies were already advocating masking and avoiding contact with groups of people in theatres, restaurants,  schools, and even in houses of worship, the synagogues of Boro Park were filled with worshippers, unmasked, and close upon each other.  Most rabbis there shunned the suggested restrictions, believing faith was enough to triumph over the spreading infection. It was not.

Rachel read how the same thing was happening among some Christians far from Boro Park, where congregations were being similarly decimated.  In Time Magazine, she read about a professor with a strong Christian religious background at a college in Texas who had established a website called ‘Friendly Neighbor Epidemiologist,’ advocating masking and avoiding crowds, even in churches, as ways to avoid Covid 19 and its spread.  When vaccinations for the disease came onto the scene, that professor advocated them, despite strong opposition from the local clergy.

‘Just like the rabbis here,’ Rachel thought.  She became a little frightened though when she read how the life of the professor in Texas was being threatened by those who disagreed with her.

The next time she spoke to Sam, she asked him what an epidemiologist was.  He showed her the online definitions that said it  was a branch of medicine which dealt with the incidence, distribution, and possible control of diseases and other factors relating to health.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘That’s what I’ve been looking into over the past couple of years, controlling diseases.  But do you have to be a doctor to get a job in that field?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Sam replied.  ‘But epidemiologists work closely with doctors. They usually have a college degree in it and some graduate work too. Rachel, sit tight and I’ll see if I can find out some more information for  you.  Okay?’

And that’s how Sam, after speaking to a friend of a friend of a friend got Rachel an appointment with the doctor who headed the Epidemiology Department at one of the big teaching hospitals in Manhattan. 

The meeting went well, with that doctor telling Rachel that knowledge-wise, she appeared to already be above the level of the best of his epidemiology graduate students, her only shortcoming being a lack of formal studies in statistics, essential to epidemiologists, and telling her to keep in touch with him.

It took many hours of online coursework, and attendance at a few mandatory lectures to acquire what she later found out to be the equivalent of the statistical know-how that a master’s degree in epidemiology required.  But Rachel didn’t even have a college degree.

Again with Sam’s assistance, Rachel borrowed an idea from that professor in Texas.  She decided to develop a website directed at the orthodox community on the internet.  An increasing number of orthodox Jews, especially women, were beginning to access it, either at home or in libraries as she had done.  It would stress the necessity of masking, avoiding crowds, and vaccinations as the best tools to use to prevent Covid 19 infections, and be presented in language to which those with family backgrounds similar to Rachel’s would easily relate.  And if others were attracted to it as well, that would be fine too. 

Rachel named the site ‘The Kosher Epidemiologist,’ despite her having no professional credentials whatsoever.  In explaining this on the website, Rachel said she really was a ‘Pseudo-Epidemiologist,’ and hoped this wouldn’t get her in trouble with anyone. Thus far, it has not.

Rachel was unaware that over its first few months, ‘The Kosher Epidemiologist’ had acquired about three thousand followers.  One of these was the doctor from the Manhattan Hospital whom she had met. 

Unexpectedly one day, she received a call from him. He had been following her website and was impressed by it, but despite that and the catching up she had done in statistics, he still couldn’t offer her the graduate faculty position he was trying to fill, something Rachel had known nothing about.  It required having a degree, he explained, but he would be able to hire her as a ‘consultant’ instead, receiving the same modest salary to fill the slot.  After a moment of speechlessness, she accepted the job offer!  

Rachel is very happy with the work she does there in regard to Covid 19, particularly in orthodox communities. She has already won several prominent rabbis over to her ideas.

Another follower of ‘The Kosher Epidemiologist,’ which Rachel still finds time to produce, is the Texas college professor she had read about earlier.  They have become good friends and have visited together.  Each has recognized that in their work, a faith-based background can be important, particularly when the audience they hope their work influences shares that background.

 

Author’s Note:  Rachel and Sam are made-up characters.  ‘The Kosher Epidemiologist’ website does not exist. This story is a work of fiction although the college professor from Texas and her website are real.  I had learned of her when I found in a ‘used’ book that I had purchased online (on another scientific subject) an airline baggage check that contained her name, used as a bookmark.  Someone whom I assumed was the one named on the baggage check had made several incisive comments in the book’s margins and underlined many significant passages, which prompted me to try to learn more about her through a ‘google’ search. By visiting her website, mentioned above in this work of fiction, you can see how it inspired it.  Unfortunately, I no longer have the baggage check that had indicated a flight from Waco, Texas (site of Baylor University) to Dallas-Fort Worth by someone with her name.

JL

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 And Speaking of Covid 19 Vaccines,

It appears likely that a new version will be available in two or three months.  It will better protect against the current variants of Covid 19 than earlier vaccines that were developed before these latest variants appeared, the ones that seem to be causing the current increase in infections.  Whether or not you should wait depends on your age and medical history.  Ask your primary physician to answer this question.

If you don’t have a primary physician, you might want to check out a recent article in the New York Times.  Find it at https://www.nytimes.com/article/covid-booster-fall.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20230818&instance_id=100401&nl=from-the-times&regi_id=78918068&segment_id=142395&te=1&user_id=02fa158150d34dc186b01b1b8ec7a224 or just CLICK HERE.

JL

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Planet Earth’s Self-Adaptive Resiliency – (Climate Change Unmasked.) 

Planet Earth is very resilient to changes resulting from activities taking place on it, to some extent brought about by human beings over which we have some control, as well as by ‘cosmic’ changes over which we have no control.  

Planet Earth’s tools available to assure that resiliency, demonstrated by its efforts to survive, include the weather, the temperatures on and below its surface, and the ways the winds blow and the waters covering most of its surface flow, all of which seem to be interrelated. The planet is able to ‘self-adapt’ these kinds of things to assure its resiliency.  Mankind has little or no control over them.

That these tools may interfere with where and how mankind, just one of the many species inhabiting the planet, has chosen to settle down and live is no concern of Planet Earth.  Droughts that enable wildfires that can destroy communities or rising waters or violent storms that can make them uninhabitable are not concerns of Planet Earth. They are the collateral damage, by-products, of the efforts of the planet’s built-in resiliency activated in the face of challenges to its survival. 

Their interference with mankind is mankind’s problem.

 JL

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Trivia Quiz #1 (Replacing the Nostalgia Quiz Series)

Excluding the White House’s present occupant, ten of the 45 presidents of the United States were ‘Short-Timers,’ not serving a full term as president because of either:

  (1) having died while in office during the one single term to which they were elected, or

  (2) succeeded to the presidency via the vice-presidency, to complete another president’s term, without ever being elected to a term of their own. 

Here are their names.  Which are in each of these two categories? (Clue: there are five in each category.)  Answers will appear in next blog posting.

Chester Arthur

Millard Fillmore

Gerald Ford

James Garfield

Warren Harding

William Henry Harrison

Andrew Johnson

John Kennedy

Zachary Taylor

John Tyler

JL

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

Email Alerts:  If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do.  And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com.  

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.

If you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to them.   I think this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though!   Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible.  If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a comment from you.  Each will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the 'sidebar' features such as access to the blog's archives.

Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I recommend sending them the link. 

Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it.

JL

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