The Penguin

Pictured: Cholera, not COVID. Still pretty evocative though. From Le Petit Journal, 1912. You, me, and everyone we know, all of us, have probably at one point contracted COVID-19 in its various forms. If you haven't yet, you probably will. In the middle of the illness, time seems to contract inward; all you can focus on is your pounding head, your labored breathing, your aches and pains. It's only later that you may - or may not - stop to consider the global ramifications of what you just went through. You and me, Gentle Reader, and probably everyone we know, are now part of history. I won't re-hash the last two years of the Great Plague of 2019. You can go anywhere on the internet, or the radio, or TV, or any other media for that. I also wonder about the value of establishing a timeline for events that are still transpiring, as though we're in some kind of half-time show, recapping the events so far...that only makes it more exhausting. To my eyes, this virus showed th...

Image from American Psychological Association ( apa.org) Just like all of you, Gentle Readers, I'm struggling to come to terms with the number of school shootings occurring in this country. I'm not going to wade into politics here; blame whoever you want - the gun lobby, lax mental-health support, the free availability of assault-style weapons, the breakdown of the family, whatever - just don't blame the victims. Something needs to change, and it's not our attitude toward violence: we cannot become numb. We must fight this rise in savagery by whatever means are available to us. It's a bad cliche that human beings are inclined to violence. From the beginning of our history, and quite a ways before that, we've been maiming and killing each other as casually as batting our eyelids. Everything from war to crime and punishment, on down to domestic abuse and self-harm, we're infused with bloodthirstiness and a savage intent to create pain. While we ...

When do issues stop being as important as which side you're on? I've been asking myself this question a lot over the past five years. So often political and social arguments seem to fall along the exact same lines, over and over, regardless of the arguers or their  intelligence level - they parrot the party line, as though they are trained spokesmen. Otherwise well-educated, well-meaning people will jump to the defense of the reigning sociopath, simply because he claims to support "their" issue. Objectivity comes off as wishy-washy; reason is a cursable offense. Even truth becomes negotiable - so long as "our side" is upheld. This isn't some new, modern plunge into pre-revolutionary polarization. It's a side-effect of the human instinct toward tribalism. We're social animals, after all; social interaction is, for us, as primal an urge as reproduction and feeding. Loyalty to a group is not in itself good or bad, naturally; it's how the ins...