Beautiful and sunny right now but more rain expected tomorrow and possibly Tuesday. Happy Mothers' Day. Let's see if I can gather up some stray thoughts from the last few days that I haven't expressed.
Stray thought #1--so many of the news readers have had a good laugh about RFK, Jr.'s announcement that he has cognitive and memory problems thanks to a dead brain worm doctors removed some years ago. I decided to check out the medical possibilities and discovered that there really is such a condition. It is rare but it does happen and presents the symptoms RFK, Jr. described. People contract it when they ingest tapeworm eggs which hatch and travel through the blood to the brain. Kennedy traveled extensively in Asia, South America, and Africa where he could have acquired the parasite. I still don't care much for his ideas which deserve much more critical comment than the "brain worm" story.
Stray thought #2--I have no sympathy for either the pro-Palestinian or the pro-Israel side of the college protests. They remind me too much of the wandering "preachers" who appeared on the campus of the college I attended almost 50 years ago. I called them "blooming idiots" because they came every spring but there was nothing beautiful about them. They put up a box on the quad and drew crowds venomously calling all the women sluts and whores and claiming all of us, men and women alike, were hell bound. Some students (and perhaps a faculty member or two) tried to engaged them in thoughtful discussion but found that nothing they or the preacher said mattered. They ended up shouting past each other. Exactly the same situation holds with the two sides of the Palestinian/Israeli "debate". They self-righteously shout past each other while disrupting the activities of everyone around them. I am sorry if they are losing their assistantships, scholarships, and/or student housing but why should the schools reward atrocious behavior by letting them get off without consequences? I will say that some even handedness would be nice since some of the worst violence (apart from police action) came from the pro-Israel side.
On a more pleasant note is this post from Carol Michel. She talks about the three gardeners in her garden: Carol Past, Carol Present, and Carol Future. Carol Past reminds Carol Present (who does the actual work) of the results of ambitious plans that didn't pan out well which Carol Future thinks up for Carol Present. I can relate to that.
Stray thought #3--according to the news this weekend, Trump is "selling himself"--again. Along with the digital "trading" cards featuring himself in all kinds of heroic poses, the gold sneakers, the pieces of the suit he supposedly wore when arraigned in Georgia, he has now promised oil executives he will get rid of all the regulations and environmental measures they feel constrain them and their profits if they will just raise $1Billion to get him reelected. So he will sell himself for a measly $1Billion. Problem Trump can't be bought. He can only be rented until he find someone willing to pay more. I wonder if we can find a group willing to pony up $1.5Billion if he will emigrate to Russia and disappear.
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