Aging: Learning, Forgetting, Mismatching

 Had to wait at the self-service checkout for the clerk to help another old man, who complained that he had so many cards--I guess he hadn't used the right number for his Safeway loyaltt account.  This ties in with something from the weekend. I can imagine a graphic--two dimensional, though it ought to many dimensions.  Stage one--birth: the baby icon is at one edge of a colored circle, the circle representing all the things about the world which the baby can learn and the color representing the status of the information--current, obsolete, new.  At stage one the whole circle is the same color, since with respect to the baby all the information is currrent.

Stage two--the baby icon has grown, representing the information which has been learned.  Meanwhile the circle has increased in size, with the increase representing new information while a little of the circle has changed color as information becomes obsolete.

Successive stages see a continuation of  these developments:  as time passes the amount of information which can be learned increases, the amount of information the person has learned increases, but as time goes by some of the learned information becomes obsolete.

Fast forward to my 80's: 

• my interest in learning new information and my ability to do so has declined, so the modern world is getting away from me (too many cards)
• the information I've learned is increasingly obsolete.  I know so many things which are of no use now. 
• bottomline--there's mismatch between me and the world, which is increasing.

The Ending of Government Mental Institutions

 Some discussion on twitter about the ending of government mental institutions, the deinstitutonalization movement.  Apparently some believe that President Reagan was responsible, only to be corrected that his actions were as CA governor. 

 I remember the State Hospital in Binghamton, NY, not from personal experience but as a reference point in discussions when growing up.  According to the website I linked to it dated to mid-19th century, was noted for its architecture, and treated alcoholism as a disease. 

I also remember my sister had a paperback of The Snake Pit, the novel on which the award winning film was based (1948).  I think I tried reading it when young; likely one of the books I never finished.

Anyhow, for me the reform movement started in the 40's, with the Snake Pit, then One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962 novel)  followed by the documentary Titicut Follies (1967). 

It seems to have been a case where liberal good intentions and fond hopes for drugs in place of institution were misplaced. Will it be 100 years before we get another effort for reform?

Will, Ford, and Pardons

 George Will's newest column is a review of a new biography of Gerald Ford.  I don't know what Will thought of Nixon and Ford in the 1970s, but today he likes Ford and likes his pardon of Nixon.

Comments on the column don't. IIRC when it happened, I understood the logic and was pleased that Ford's approval rating crashed--I wanted the Democrats to resume their rightful place in the presidency, not realizing Carter's one term would be followed by 3 Republican dinosaurs.

I still don't know what to think now.  Would seeing Nixon on trial have been helpful to the nation? Or would it have further entrenched partisanship? I don't know.

I do know that while Ford seemed a good person, by 1974 I still harbored resentment over his role in getting Justice Fortas to resign.

How Soon I Forget--Debt Ceiling

 Discussing the debt ceiling issue this morning I had completely forgotten that prior negotiations had included a "temporary suspension" of the ceiling in order to have more time to negotiate.

Born Round

 Just read Frank Bruni's memoir on food and his other loves. 

One point of his interest--he goes to Italy as the NYTimes correspondent soon after reaching a turning point in his food obsession which he'd lived with and denied since he was small. So he's very sensitive to Italy and their food ways (his grandparents were from southern Italy).  

Based on his memoir, and partially his analysis, at least circa the late 1990s, Italians enjoyed their food, but eating was wrapped in manners and routines, the servings were smaller and the eating slower. In his American milieu, the cooking was competitive (among his grandmother, aunts, and mother) and the amounts signified prosperity and success. 

Tyler Vs Hennepin

 George Will wrote about this case, as did Somin in Powerline and Tottenburg at NPR.

If I understand Tyler owned a condo, she left for assisted living and apparently left the condo unoccupied. Years later the county took the condo for nonpayment of taxes, auctioned it off, and kept the proceeds.  It sounds like a case of injustice.

What the brief summary seems to miss is that Tyler not only didn't pay her taxes, she didn't pay her HOA dues nor her mortgage.  The Minnesota law says if the county takes the property for unpaid taxes, that action wipes out all mortgage and HOA fee debts.

To me it's hard to see how Tyler should get any money. If she'd declared bankruptcy, then the three creditors: county, mortgage holder, and HOA would presumably fight over the proceeds of the auction.

To be clear, I don't have a problem with invalidating the law. 

This is a tear-jerker case, which might lead to poor decisions.  we'll see.

Biden's In

 I'll vote for him.  What I really want, and won't get, is a victory wide and deep enough to include Democratic gains in the House, the Senate, and state legislatures.

Slavery Everywhere?

 Americans, some of us, know that slavery was part of our history from 1619 to the Civil War.  We're less knowledgable about the slavery in the Caribbean and South America.  I'd have to use Google to find out the extent of slavery in Canada or Chile, Bolivia or Mexico.  

I know, of course, that "slave" derived from "Slav" because Slavs were often enslaved sometime back in history. The TV series "Vikings" touched on slavery there. 

The Bible includes codes for treatment of slaves. 

My recent reading has included discussions of slavery among Native American tribes and enslavement and slave trading in Africa.

Fraud, Waste, and Abuse

 Those terms are the mantra for conservatives attacking the size of government, and those who believe it's possible to reduce the deficit without cutting programs.

As a liberal and retired bureaucrat I'm dubious of the idea.

One thing we don't do is focus on is private companies.  Mr. Zuckerberg has been presumably cutting "waste, fraud, and abuse" in his Meta company--40 percent cuts? And Mr. Musk is cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in his Twitter company. 

Surprising Defection from TFG on Right

 Given Powerline Blog's support of TFG over the years, even going so far to oust one of its bloggers for insufficient loyalty (Paul Mirengoff), I never expected to see this post from John Hinderaker, who I think has been the most consistently supportive of the remaining three bloggers: