What is or will be the actual, practical, lived outcome of the meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-Un? While the long (or even short) term results are not yet clear, I offer this bit of insight, straight from the 17th century?  Two compatriots, in a hurry for some money, sold their neighbor, a fur merchant, the skin of a living bear. They’d kill the bear shortly, or so they said.   The animal was the king of all bears, according to the would-be hunters. The furrier was going to make a fortune from the pelt. The fur of this special bear would protect from the bitterest cold. In fact, one could probably make not just one, but two coats. Rabelais’…

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A recent headline read The Chemical Industry Scores a Big Win at the EPA. It turns out it’s just too hard for the EPA to analyze whether certain chemicals are toxic. The lucky chemicals that drew a get-out-of-jail-free card include perchloroethylene, which is used in dry cleaning. This news makes me want to rant about the Trump administration and the Republicans in general and their absolute disregard for our precious environment, not to mention our human health. So I turn to the 17th century for a way to frame my thinking. In this story, I want to show the particular idiocy of a vain remonstrance. A young child allowed himself to fall in the water while playing on the banks…

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Last week I wrote about love. As I was putting the last touches on those thoughts, a friend described to me videos of baby girls who had been tortured by Daesh fighters. I can’t shake the images my friend described. So this week I’m thinking about love’s kryptonite, its dark twin, which we might name Fear. We could also use its nickname, Power, which is, after all, how Fear likes to dress itself up. “What is it that creates in men an insatiable lust for power? Is it the strength of their vital energy — or is it a fundamental weakness and inability to experience life spontaneously and lovingly?” The philosopher Erich Fromm poses these questions in his book, The…

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This past week, I read Michael Pollan’s new book, How To Change Your Mind, in which he makes the case for the medical and, yes, spiritual uses of psychedelics. Turn on, tune in, drop out, was the most renowned coinage around psychedelics in the 60s. What does the phrase really mean? Turn on our senses. Tune in to love. Drop out of the rat race. A significant number of the people Pollan interviewed make the point that “the establishment” had good cause to fear the effects of psychedelics, because their use can provoke doubt about the ultimate value of the excesses of wealth, consumption and power we strive for in this society. Instead, such a spiritual journey might just convince…

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Over the weekend I saw Isabella Rossellini’s Link Link Circus. Not a circus (oops—I took a 9 year old to the show), but an eggheadedly interesting theatricalized lecture about the links between human and animal nature. The show was … a mess, but then just about anytime we begin to delve into the issues of instinct versus reason borders get nebulous almost immediately. This next fable of LaFontaine’s is a good example of the mists surrounding the topic. A man cherished his cat passionately. He thought her adorable and beautiful and dainty, with the sweetest meow. He was more fool than the most foolish.  By dint of prayers, of tears, of spells and of charms, he so besieged destiny that…

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As unacceptable as it is in our society, I am a woman of a certain age. That is, a woman no longer young. So despite my younger self’s firm declarations that I would never do Botox or its like, I find myself wavering. Only to discover that I’m already more than 20 years behind. How? Because preventative Botox is a thing now. Women in their mid-twenties set out early on their quest for eternal youth. They abandon their face’s ability to smile, frown, concentrate, cry, disagree, laugh, question and love. All that stretching and crinkling around our eyes and nose and mouths we do when we express ourselves is ironed away. A woman’s face should be like a fresh pressed…

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When President Obama left office, he is said to have warned President Trump that America’s gravest threat was North Korea. Now, North and South Korea have met and resolved to end the decades-long war between them, which started in 1950 and has technically lasted to this day, though an armistice signed between North Korea, the US and China in 1953 ended the active military conflict. And this move toward peace was just a precursor to yet another unexpected event; Trump and Kim Jong-Un are getting ready to meet. Are these epic enemies about to become friends? A certain mountain bear, who may have been a card or two short of a full deck, was confined by circumstances to a solitary forest. Like…

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Last week, I reflected on the perils of big data and its octopus-like embrace in Just Because Facebook is Foxy Doesn’t Mean We Need to Be Goats. This week I offer a silver lining. And if you prefer the option of listening … Fablecast Here We are obsessed by what the Internet, in the guise of Facebook or Google or others, knows about us. And indeed, big data may be our new cerebroscope, a mythological device, which reads the true contents of our brains. While many argue for big data’s eerie accuracy and insight, just as many poke holes in its ultimate efficacy. Yet no one can deny that it yields new, often uncomfortable, insight into the human condition. Privacy…

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Facebook has mad amounts of information about us. And Google has magnitudes more data about us, though the Cambridge Analytica scandal is like a bright shiny object distracting us from that bigger picture. The real crux is that we believe we are individuals, but on an aggregate, big data basis, it turns out that we are massively predictable. Captain Fox was out and about with his friend, Billy the goat, he of the extra-tall rack of horns. Billy couldn’t see past the end of his nose. The Captain had a Master’s Degree in tricksterism. Their parched throats obliged them to climb down into a well. There they slaked their thirst. After both had drunk their fill, the fox said to…

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