THE LAST CARAVAGGIO; WHY RUSSIA INVADED UKRAINE AND NOT THE BALTICS; FUN-LOVER OR GO-GETTER? THE MOON IS SHRINKING; COFFEE REDUCES THE RISK OF PARKINSON'S; YOUNG WIFE, OLDER HUSBAND: ARNOLD MESCHES; LEADING CAUSES OF DIVORCE; MANY SMALL MEALS BEST? CENTENARIANS WHO SMOKED;

Skeleton flower, Diphylleia grayi, native to Japan and China. Petals turn transparent when wet.

*
CASTLE ANGER

Like a legend the river flows
under willow leaves,
past a castle called
Anger, Gniew —

In the flooded meadow,
willows’ silver-green,
where the souls from Anger
might have climbed into peace.

And those who are now
root and wood and leaf,
did they ever think
it would be forgotten

who lost and who won —
The natives of these
Pomeranian hills
disappeared long ago

into a forest of spike-helmet
shadows. Only a fragment
of their name survives,
rustling like a sudden wind.
 
Stone, you are too soft.
Legend, you are too kind.
Oh willow, willow,
the dead in your arms,

their souls’ wet torn silks.

~ Oriana

*
Love is metaphysical gravity. ~ Buckminster Fuller

*
NO SELF, NO PROBLEM

How can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself? ~ Dostoyevsky

Here is the voice of Dostoyevesky’s Underground Man:
….. we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don’t know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we … yes, I assure you … we should be begging to be under control again at once.

Something troubles the modern self. If the ‘subject’ is the empty container of whatever characteristics and desires society shapes in making a ‘personality’ then the impossible thing would be to be authentic. The aspiration remains, but the double self comes more readily.

A Fool’s Truth

An early expression in fiction of that duality arrives in Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew (written sometime before 1774). In it a narrator, ‘I’, converses with the the Nephew ‘he’, the most unreliable, ironical, two faced and apparently cynical individual. Crime, gold, hypocrisy are all are extolled. The truth, we hear from him, is that for all the prating about integrity and virtue, the real values are those of personal advantage, the real goal is to be an successful actor.  Above all, one must not be taken in by the false words one speaks. It’s all a sham. Some samples:

– If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can’t deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.

– People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you’ve got to keep your feet warm.

– Gratitude is a burden, and all burdens are made to be cast off.

One gets the impression that ‘he’ is the Id of the bourgeoisie, speaking the nocturnal obscenities that must not be uttered in daylight. The fool that speaks truth.

First published in German  translation by Goethe in 1805, the voice of the Nephew reappears  in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). The Nephew is the very type of the witty single self that uses language and a talent for performing the self, as a means to survive in society. And it knows this about itself. Entirely groundless, there is nothing the self has but itself, and it knows it is the servant of whatever a client will pay. Such extreme alienation seems a kind of liberation: at least one is not taken in by the comfortable bromides of the cultured world.I am not entirely identified with my world, with my actions, and this is kind of freedom.

Embracing Alienation

We might think that contradiction and alienation are there to be abolished. But this is not so. A degree of alienation is constitutive of the subject. For there is no authentic self, lying at the bottom of the subject, waiting to be found and ‘expressed’. What there is, is a divided self: for nothing and no one is at one with itself.  This doesn’t mean we must emulate Diderot’s prancing cynic, but we can certainly learn from him.

Embracing alienation means seeing desire and enjoyment in a different way. Desire is contagious: we catch desires more easily than we do the common cold: all desire is the desire of the other. Rather than looking for the authentic self, we need to locate the authentic passion: the Thing that is your own, and that you must insist on. This might be in art, in work, in love or anything that truly moves us. Our alienation is our freedom. Freedom isn’t in the free floating self of Rameau’s Nephew, or the canting self of Emerson, but in her that can live with alienation and contradiction. Don’t look for your ‘real’ self: it isn’t there.

https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/07/the-absent-self.html#more-258519

Brooks Riley:
Aren't we just a series of consecutive selves, determined by the history of our experience? My present self feels obliged--and somewhat reluctant--to write about an artist who once enchanted the self I was when I discovered him. This means reviving and scavenging an old former self to get the job done.

Blindboy:
If we spent less time thinking about our "self" and more about our common humanity, the world might be a better place. The highest human achievement remains loving kindness. Does analysis such as this move us closer to it? More likely it draws us more deeply into our neuroses.

dan the man:
maybe less thinking is a solution.

*
We must admit there will be music
despite everything.

~ Jack Gilbert, A Brief for the Defense

*
YOUNG WIFE, OLDER HUSBAND: JILL CIMENT REMEMBERS ARNOLD MESCHES

Arnold Mesches and Jill Ciment

Jill Ciment met her husband Arnold Mesches when she was his teenage art student

In 2017, when women across the globe were sharing their stories of sexual abuse and sexual harassment as part of the #MeToo movement, writer Jill Ciment had a realization: "My MeToo story is my husband.”

Ciment met her husband, artist Arnold Mesches, in the 1970s. At the time of their first kiss, he was a married 47-year-old father of two; she was 17 and his art student. In her 1996 memoir, Half a Life, Ciment described herself as the one who pursued Mesches, but in her new memoir, Consent, she reconsiders their dynamic — and the origin story of their marriage, which lasted until Mesches' death in 2016.

In Consent, Ciment writes that it was Mesches who initiated their first kiss — a story that is in direct contrast with her earlier recounting: "I think I told it that way [in the first memoir] not so much to protect Arnold or my marriage, but more to make me a young, willful woman who went after something and got it — not as someone who was a victim," Ciment says.

But now, as Ciment looks back on her 45-year marriage, she's left wondering: Can a relationship that begins with such a clear power imbalance, where one person is legally underage, ever be considered consensual? She notes that attitudes regarding consent have shifted dramatically since she and Mesches met.

"In 1970, he would have been a silver fox and I would have been the coolest girl on the block because I kissed my art teacher," she says. But, she adds, "Today you would probably use the word sexual aggressor, maybe even predator.”

"It's a very complex thing," Ciment says. "Do I think he did something wrong? Yeah. I mean, if I saw men today 47 going after a 17 year old, I would intervene. However, it wasn't a time when people intervened. ... Would I do it differently today? Not for a second.”

On why she wrote that she had initiated her relationship with Mesches in Half a Life

In the most basic sense, I think that I wanted to empower myself. I didn't want to be telling a story that was about the older man going after the younger woman. That had been the trope of almost every novel and movie that came out from 1970 to 1990, whether it was [Italian director Bernardo] Bertolucci or [the novelist] Philip Roth. So I wanted to make myself who I really felt at least then, that I had that kind of agency to be the sexual aggressor, because I felt that was more of the truth to what I was telling. Is that really the truth? I don't know.

On Mesches being married with kids when the relationship began

I came from such a broken family. The whole family, my older brother and me and my mother threw my father out because he was so intolerable to live with. And so I just didn't see marriage as what I see it now, which is this huge commitment of two people to go through the trials and tribulations of life. I just saw it as this thing that kind of ended in a mess. I just had no idea of the damage that I was doing to another family at 17. That's as simple as I could put it.

On whether or not she thought about how their age gap would impact their marriage

I would say at 17, I did not think about that, because it's inconceivable at that age to imagine growing old. At 30, I probably gave it some thought. But Arnold was a really vital man, so he was able to keep up with me. Now that I'm 71 and ... I get exhausted when I do all the things that 71 year olds do, I start thinking: How did I not notice when I was 40 how tired he must have been? And I was oblivious to it. And one of the things that is so interesting about aging myself now is that I try to imagine: How did he keep up with a 40 year old? It's much more amazing to me now than it was when I was the 40 year old.

At a certain point, you realize this person is going to die away before you, and that knowledge changes the way in which you view your future. And it's both good and bad, like everything else. I mean, in one way you think to yourself, "OK, I will start my life again in my 60s, if he lives to be 90," and at the same time you think to yourself, "How can I start my life again at 60?" So it makes the end of our relationship much more precious. If you have a sick partner, for example, a partner who has cancer, suddenly the years that they have cancer before they die become kind of precious to you, because they're finite. And I think that was a huge lesson for me to learn. And I think that's why the marriage continued to have that kind of intensity, because we knew it was going to come to an end.

On becoming equals later in the relationship

It started to change at CalArts. So I would even say in my early 20s, simply because he may have known more about art, but I knew more about the avant garde. And so that was my sort of ace in a hole to become his equal. You know, I think as the relationship evolved, we traded roles as both mentor and student. We were very involved in each other's work. I felt free to pick up a paintbrush and paint over on top of his painting to show him what I thought needed to be done. And he felt empowered to cross off or throw out chapters that he didn't think were working for me. Obviously we waited for the other person’s permission. It was a very collaborative relationship. And so I think it balanced itself out for many, many years. And then the man painted 'til a week before he died. So it kept going.

On becoming old overnight when Arnold died

When you're living with somebody who's so much older than you, you are the person who always has more energy, and you are the person who is always the one who looks better, even when you look horrible. And suddenly, without him, I am my age without any kind of context. My age was always in relationship to his age. And suddenly, when he died, I found myself to be this age. And the most profound thing about growing old without him is understanding what he had been through that I couldn't even perceive. And that, to me, I find quite fascinating.

On meeting her second husband, Martino, on match.com

I was with Arnold since I was a child. [After his death] I just had this extraordinary experience. I met someone and I'm remarried. … There's not much of an age gap between us. This is the saddest thing: I've never known a young man. Because when I met [Martino], he was already 70. So I've never had the experience of dating a young man. So I guess that's not going to be part of my life story.

Jill Ciment is a professor emeritus at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/09/nx-s1-5028203/jill-ciment-consent-me-too
Arnold Mesches, from the cycle Double Vision, 2015

*
A SPECTER IS HAUNTING EUROPE

"Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa — das Gespenst des Kommunismus” — A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Communism.” These are the famous first lines of Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

The specter that’s haunting Europe now is not communism. It’s the twin specter of Islamization and repressive governments that regard Putin as a role model. But if I had to reduce it to one word, it would be Islam.

A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Islam.

And Islam, if it’s victorious, might prove to be more difficult to throw off than communism.

*
WILL PUTIN INVADE THE BALTICS TO COMPENSATE FOR NOT WINNING IN UKRAINE?

There’s a Russian propagandist that I used to stay in touch with to know what was happening on the other side. An actual propagandist who frequently appears on Russian TV.

I finally blocked him on February 24, 2022, along with other Russia supporters. However, on February 23 we had a fairly interesting exchange — just hours before the invasion.

We were chatting about the Baltic states and I asked him why he (and Russia in general) cared about their NATO membership — since as we both knew it, they posed no threat to Russia.

This was his answer:
Because it means that now we can’t invade them.

This man literally lies for a living, but what he told me on the eve of the invasion was 100% true. Russians with more than two braincells are very much aware that NATO has no intention of invading them — the average Ivan from Uryupinsk may think so, but not those with any position of authority.

The real reason for Russia’s anti-NATO whining is that once a country is in NATO, it is out of Russia’s reach.

Ask yourself: why did Putin invade Ukraine and not the Baltic states? Ukraine is 3.5 times as large and 6 times as populous as the three Baltic states combined — they would have been much easier targets were it not for NATO membership that rendered them unassailable to Russia.

Russia sucked up the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, sucks up NATO intelligence sharing with Ukraine, and will continue sucking it up because Russia is, plain and simple, not country enough to go to war against NATO.

And that’s why faux intellectuals like John Mearsheimer who argue that Russia was ‘provoked’ by NATO don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. This war began not because of NATO expansion, but because of lack thereof — NATO should’ve admitted Ukraine back in the early 2000s, and then not only would the 2022 invasion not have happened, but the annexation of Crimea would have remained a wet pipe dream of Neobolshevists in the Kremlin. ~ Yaroslav Mar, Quora

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AN AUSTRALIAN SENATOR SPEAKS OUT AGAINST PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTERS

Pauline Hanson, Senator of Australia said people protesting for terrorist organizations have no place in Australia.

Pauline Hanson says “Hamas is a terrorist organisation and it beggars belief that these idiots who are out there protesting on behalf of Palestine have no idea what they’re protesting for.”
They are protecting a terrorist organization that have said time and time again that “there will be no peace, we will go in and try and destroy Israel again.”

“I can’t blame Israel for standing up for the rights to protect their own people.”

“If anything happened in Australia, would we sit back and say oh no just continue to try and take us over.”

'Useful idiots’ is one of the kinder terms to describe the gullible morons now camping out in Australian university campuses and spewing hatred ‘in solidarity with Palestine’.

You’ve got to hand it to the propagandists working for the terrorist group Hamas. They’ve tapped in to the essential anti-Semitism of the West’s political left and have successfully manipulated many thousands of really, REALLY stupid university students to do their bidding.
The terrorists are laughing at how easily these adherents to neo-Marxist identity and victimhood politics have been led by the nose like so many draft animals into supporting a terrorist group that would happily murder all of them. They’re laughing at the weakness of virtue-signalling governments – like those under Anthony Albanese or Joe Biden – who allow the excesses of these hypocritical protesters to go unchecked and unchallenged.

It’s no laughing matter for Jewish Australians, however. They’ve been abused, assaulted and attacked not for any support they might have for Israel’s defense against terrorism, but only and solely because they’re Jews. Australia in 2024 is starting to resemble Nazi Germany in 1934 thanks to the hateful ideology of fundamentalist Islam, the fools manipulated into supporting it, and the moral leadership vacuum left by the worst Prime Minister since Whitlam.

Preachers of this ideology publicly advocate the genocide of Jews – which is a crime in Australia – but are never held to account let alone brought before the authorities. The ideology has directly led to Australian teenagers committing horrific crimes in both Sydney and Perth. Yet it is allowed to flourish among communities that have brought this hatred to our shores.

They should never have been allowed to come here. The ideology is completely incompatible with Australian values of religious tolerance, secular government and freedom of speech. There is no place for such an ideology here.

Australia’s universities could have ended these ridiculous protests quite easily: by saying an unequivocal ‘no’ – a word many of these privileged idiots have probably never been told – to the protesters’ demands and expelling students who did not disperse at the university’s direction. Sadly, the faculties of these universities have been thoroughly infiltrated by the same ideology poisoning the weak minds of the morons protesting.

What’s worse is that these vile protests are taking attention away from the issues impacting every Australian. These useful idiots are not creating a single job, building a single new home or providing a single cent of support for a family on the brink of homelessness.

No, it’s all about them and a conflict taking place more than 12,000km away – a conflict over which Australia cannot possibly have any meaningful influence. That’s the real joke on these morons: all of these protests ‘in solidarity with Palestine’ will amount to precisely nothing as Israel continues to hunt down the sadistic killers of Hamas in defense of its people. ~ Quora

Pauline Hanson

Ejay Djorni-Mal:
There should be a test of sincerity and funding for those who defend Hamas to win a free trip to Gaza.

Codie Mohler:
That's a real Aussie.

Bolaji Lawrence:
Totaly Agree. The useful idiots are the biggest joke of this new century.

Brian Gerrits:
The Palestinians (95+ % are pro Hamas) are in much worse shape economically than the Jews, therefore the radicals see it as a brave virtuous act to stick up for the supposedly repressed Palestinians. This is shallow stupid reasoning. When Israel was created Jews had suffered probably about 10,000 times the oppression that any group alive today. They’re way ahead of Palestine now because of the huge differences in cultural values. The Palestinians are all screwed up with vastly less oppression than the Jews had to deal with.

How to fix this ? Who funds the universities ? Go to whomever that is and have them insist that reality of history be taught again, not the modern distorted version of history that produces the moral idiot radicals that we have today. Parents of college students, you could have a lot of power if you are paying something for your kids tuition if you’d contact other like minded parents.

University age kids are at the age where they’re acquiring their possibly lifelong political values. Universities are being allowed to freely cause a lot of damage by warping historical facts.

There’s a saying I like “If you’re not a liberal at age 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by age 40, you have no mind.”

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70-YEAR-OLD TANKS: HAS RUSSIA SENT ITS BEST TROOPS AND EQUIPMENT YET?

Dead Russian soldiers in a trench

That’s what a Russian trench looks like after an attack by a Ukrainian drone. Russia is sending poorly equipped, barely trained recruits, who sign contracts hoping “to earn big money” (USD $2,000 per month) by safeguarding some warehouses in the rear — instead, the poverty-stricken Russians are thrown into the meat grinder of frontal assaults.

Putin’s generals wasted the best Russian troops within the first weeks of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when they hoped to take over the whole country within 4–6 weeks (Kyiv was supposed to fall in 3 days).

Now, 2.5 years into the full-scale war, the stockpiles of the Russian weapons and machinery are exhausted, and the military-industrial complex is working in full operational capacity, making bombs and tanks 24/7.

Yet, it’s not enough to replenish the massive daily losses due to Ukrainian attacks with the use of cheap drones and precise western missiles and guided bombs.

Russians are now sending to the front their ancient T-54 tanks, which are 70 years old.
In modern warfare, drones destroy everything and everyone. Russia has already lost in Ukraine more than 100 of its newest T-90M tanks, and these ancient T-54s will become iron coffins for the crews.

Already in the 1st year of the war — after the first catastrophic losses of equipment — the Russian Ministry of Defense began sending T-62s from storages to the front, saying that these tanks “would be used as stationary firing points” (i.e. as artillery), but we all have seen these tanks sent into attacks on Ukrainian positions — and burning in the fields, destroyed by the Ukrainian defenders.

Now Russia is sending T-54s. At the front, technicians will put metal rods on them, put kamikaze crews inside — and send them to take the next forest belt, after which there will be another forest belt, and another one — endlessly.

Not many survive the 1st attack, even fewer survive the second. Russia is trying to maintain pressure on the front, throwing more and more disposable soldiers and weaponry into the grinder.

In this war, huge numbers of Russians are dying. The Kremlin gang first robbed them, stripped them bare, plunged them into poverty, and now these poor fellows, in hopes to get out of debts by earning “big money”, sell their souls and bodies: they sign army contracts and go to kill Ukrainians — and then return home in zinc coffins.

Kremlin is committing genocide not only against Ukrainians, but also against its own people.

There will be time when this period of the Russian history will be reassessed in Russia — and no doubt, that’s how this Putin’s war will be viewed. ~ Elena Gold, Quora

Mark Kempson:
I wonder if Putin even knows what he hopes to achieve now?

Elena Gold:
The same things he wanted to achieve at the start: own Ukraine, recreate the USSR, destroy the West. Dollar and Euro to crash, civil war in America, the collapse of the European Union. That’s the plan.

Neil Quorite:
Putin is destroying the thing that was the reason for embarking on this venture in the first place. He wanted to enshrine his name in Russian history and instead he's going to make his name synonymous with Pol Pot or more recently Rwanda.

Bernard Kellerman:
Elena, while i can’t disagree with your main points, I would add that most dead Russian soldiers are not going home in zinc coffins. They’re usually left where they fall, to be reported as missing in action. This avoids the need to compensate their families, with the added bonus that the commanders can still collect their dead soldiers’ wages.

Oriana:
One of my impossible dreams is that one day the Russian Army will be confined to what they do best: sing and dance. Here is a lovely Tzarist waltz (Shatrov, 1906) going back to the Russo-Japanese war:

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=on+the+slopes+of+manchuria+waltz#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:4271e4a1,vid:EG2ZSPsDSMY,st:0

Barry Watson:
Russia has sent its best. They’re dead.

RUSSIA FACES ARTILLERY BARREL SHORTAGE

Regardless of whether you find logistics in war fascinating or dull, it is one of the most critical elements in warfare, alongside dedication, morale, and political savvy. Russia severely lacks in all these areas and tries to compensate with sheer manpower, though even this is insufficient.

Many have been overly focused on ammunition and production, which are indeed important, but just one part of a larger chain. For instance, the wear and tear on gun barrels is a significant issue. Russian forces are reportedly depleting their stockpiles and cannibalizing gun barrels due to a lack of production capacity for new ones. 

Artillery barrels typically need replacement after firing 3,000-5,000 rounds, but with Russia firing 30,000-50,000 rounds daily, they lose 10-16 barrels a day, and possibly more given the low quality of North Korean shells.

Russia's annual production of 100-200 barrels is insufficient to meet this demand, meaning their artillery capability is largely dependent on inherited Soviet stockpiles, which are depleting rapidly. Analysts predict this critical path will be exhausted in 2-3 years, forcing Russia to reduce its artillery usage or find alternatives.

This predicament explains Russia's urgent push for a strategic breakthrough, either politically or militarily, as time is not on their side. They need to pause the war soon to rebuild their military industry. This urgency is why Russia's allies in the West are advocating for a ceasefire, knowing Russia cannot sustain a prolonged conflict.

Western and European supporters of Ukraine must ensure Ukraine remains capable of fighting during this critical period. Lasting peace can only be achieved with a victorious defending side, and the necessary means and industrial capacity, particularly in Europe, are available. What is needed now is political will and a strategic vision, especially from Berlin, to realize this outcome. The responsibility lies in our hands. ~ DRP, Quora

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THE PRICE OF WALKING UPRIGHT

A reconstructed skeleton of Lucy, the famous human ancestor. By 3.2 million years ago, Australopithecines were walking upright, imposing strict limits on the size of the female pelvis.

Looking around our planet today, it’s hard not to be struck by humanity’s uniqueness. We are the only species around that writes books, runs experiments, and builds skyscrapers. Our intelligence must have also been useful when we were evolving—presumably it helped us to be better hunters and avoid being hunted ourselves, for instance. Perhaps even more importantly, our growing intelligence enabled early humans to compete with each other: We evolved to be intelligent to keep up with everybody else evolving to be intelligent. Smarter people are more attractive to others, and are better at jockeying for status within complex social groups. It is well-known that humans underwent an intelligence arms race that resulted in a rapid growth in cognitive ability. What is less well-known is how the need for women to be able to walk and run helped this boom in smarts.

A lot of our growth in intelligence is due to an increase in brain size. Even when looking at the differences between one person and another, brain size accounts for 16 percent of the variance in intelligence. A bigger brain might have been the simplest way to make us smarter. As brain sizes grew, so did the pelvises of the women who had to give birth to all of these big-headed babies.

The problem was that there was another evolutionary pattern at work—walking on two legs.

This may have happened for a variety of reasons, and like most theories based on hypothetical survival advantages, this one is debated. But it is clear that walking upright requires smaller pelvises. So there were two evolutionary pressures in opposite directions. An uneasy balance was struck, where women can walk and run yet can also give birth to babies with relatively big heads. If women’s pelvises were any bigger, they would not be able to walk and run well. A cost of this balance was safety. Childbirth is more dangerous for humans than for any other primate probably for this reason. (The fact that so many women die in childbirth outside the context of modern medicine is a sign of how important intelligence is for our species.)

This is the kind of impasse that encourages innovations that might be considered “creative,” or at least as creative as an evolutionary process without explicit goals, without a guiding intelligence, can be. Evolution found some important mechanical tricks to get around this constraint: Babies’ skulls are made of pieces that shift during birth, women’s pelvises temporarily separate during delivery, and the space for the brain increases dramatically in infancy. But another key adaptation was in how the brain itself worked. Evolution made human beings learn what they need about the world, rather than having it inborn.

A baby bird can start walking around a looking for food moments after hatching; young horses can run when they’re a few hours old. Human beings, on the other hand, need years to be self-sufficient. Traditionally, this intense parental investment lasts until puberty, but in the modern age can extend until the child is leaving graduate school at 33 (or maybe that was just me). This is, in part, because our brains are not fully developed until we’re adults. As Richerson and Boyd put it, “We are the largest brained, slowest developing member of the largest brained, slowest developing mammalian order.” We are born not knowing much, but with an incredible ability to learn. If people get smart after birth, the brain can be smaller at birth, effectively making a workaround for the pelvis-size constraint. The brain then grows dramatically after a baby is born.

Rather than being made perfect right out the gate, we can adapt to almost anything the world presents to us. One effect of this is that babies born in an incredible variety of environments are able to learn to live there, from the Kalahari desert to the Arctic. If we were more competent at birth, or precocial, we’d be limited to a much smaller range of environments. Furthermore, our environment is technological—we fill our world with culture and technology that kids take for granted and then build on themselves as adults, resulting in a positive feedback loop. This would not be possible without the long learning phase that humans have.

If we’d stayed on all fours, women’s pelvises could have remained bigger. Without the pelvis limiting brain size, our intelligence might have had more built-in, “brittle” smarts, specific to a particular environment, but less fluid intelligence. But as it turned out, we are as smart as we are, in part, because of some more humdrum biomechanical demands. Like in many creative situations, a constraint lead to a productive workaround.

Paradoxically, our utter inability to care for ourselves as babies is a key to the genius of our species.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-are-you-so-smart-thank-mom-your-difficult-birth?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

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RUSSIA HAD A CHANCE FOR NORMALCY WITH BORIS NEMTSOV

Boris Nemtsov was a governor and a vice prime minister in the democratic 1990s in Russia.
Throughout the naughts, he was Vladimir Putin’s outspoken critic number one and yet he was also instrumental in bringing him to power for which Putin made him an untouchable and permitted to express himself freely.

Nemtsov’s friend and political partner from Nizhni Novgorod, Sergey Kirienko, switched gears and made a career in Putin’s administration. He’s currently in charge of the occupied territories of Ukraine.

Nemtsov’s conscience didn’t allow him to become part of the authoritarian model.

In 2015, he was gunned down by the Chechens in front of the Kremlin walls as a present to Vladimir Putin for his birthday in the year following Maidan, annexation of Crimea and war in Donbas.

This was a symbolic murder because in the new totalitarian Russia there was no place for criticism of the people who usurped power and waged war on the West.

The killers of Nemtsov are known but they walk free, protected by the FSB.

There are two quotes that I present below that very much encompassed Nemtsov’s political vision: he wanted to see Russia become a prosperous and independent country where people thrived and government consisted of servants of people and not vise versa.

“Do you understand that Russia is rarely in luck. And then suddenly in the 2000s we got very lucky. We recuperated from the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union. We built market economy. Oil prices steeply increased. Nobody was fighting with Russia. There were no serious threats to the country. We could have built modern healthcare, modern education, modern pension system. We could have approached in living standards to European countries. All of that could have been done.

Has Putin done any of it? Putin has done nothing of it. What has he done? He stuffed his pockets and pockets of his friends with money. These were years of degradation and collapse. Moreover, he’s enforcing amoral, cynical, thieving behavior in the society. When our submarine Kursk was sinking, and our guys were dying he told Larry King with a smirk on his face, “she has sunk” to the question what happened to The Kursk. That encapsulates the whole of Putin. Cynical, mean, small who loathes and despises Russian people and at the same time is afraid of them.”

“The two Slavic countries chose different directions of development. Ukraine is like a large truck that moves along the rut of a country, bumpy road. This track, although not comfortable, is heading to Europe. There are people in the back, 45 million people, in the cabin there are three – Tymoshenko, Yanukovych and Yushchenko. They snatch the steering wheel from each other, the truck shakes, people are unhappy, they hit the cabin, they say, you will finally calm down there. But she is traveling in a European direction and that’s good.

Russia is a huge truck, 142 million people in the back. The truck moves on smooth ice. There is one person behind the wheel — Putin. The truck drives smoothly, without skidding. People are happy, some are very happy. Nobody hits the cabin. The driver is relaxed, the air conditioning is working, pleasant music is playing. What the people in the truck don't know is that the ice can become thin and the truck will fall through. People do not know that the thickness of the ice depends on the price of oil and other raw materials of the country. They feel good. These are the two different destinies of our countries.” ~ Misha Firer, Quora

Steve Jones:
Compelling insight.
Sounds like a man who had the vision to have made Russia a real power in the world.
Instead the Russian people toady up to Putin in the hope of scraps from his very long conference table. Pathetic.

James Urie:
I was upset when he was killed as I thought he was one that could turn Russia around.

Peter Greenwood:
Revolts, demonstrations — that doesn’t work in a highly repressive society. Countries like Russia, North Korea and Iran have the resources and are ruthless enough to destroy any opposition.

Marcus Brinkmanis:
These so called “resources” are people too. All the police, army and security forces are composed of people, not machines. Claus von Stauffenberg rings a bell?

Tim Orun:
Once a government evolves into a labor union for elites and their minions it always results in death and destruction as they seek self-perpetuation. The first targets are political opponents. After that it becomes the general population as their fear becomes paranoia.

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CONCENTRATION CAMPS TO DE-BRAINWASH RADICAL MUSLIMS?

You need to de-radicalize and de-brainwash the Muslims making up the 2.2 million population of the Gaza strip. Since the age of 6 all they have had when attending schools is not an education. They’ve not been learning math or science. They have been taught radical antisemitic propaganda and lessons on how to murder Jews.

This is extreme levels of brainwashing that is going to be next to impossible to overcome. The only possible way would locking the Muslims into a concentration camp and giving them 24/7 of reconditioning to try and remove Islam from their way of thinking.

This is what Mosab Hassan Yousef received and it worked wonders for him. He received a 16-month jail sentence and he left this time completely de-brainwashed, no longer wanting to murder Jews and in the end converted to Christianity.

And by the way, before radical leftists and Muslims come along with their feigned outrage at this notion of concentration camps. think of this. If you live in the West and want to quit alcohol dependence or quit drug addiction, or if you want to lose weight when you are severely obese or even just sort out your mental health out if you are in a mental health crisis —

you voluntarily check yourself into facilities that are run like concentration camps. This is because these types of facilities work. They offer safe places that offer structure to your daily routine. Remove temptation and give you a place to be away from all the negative peer pressure.

Israel won’t do any of this. But they should do this. If they wanted to permanently get rid of Islam from the Gaza Strip and stop all wars and conflicts this is what they would need to do.

There is no way you are going to easily remove from the mindset of 2.2 million people the notion that God himself wants you to murder Jews. This is what they have been told daily since they could first understand words. And when it comes to Muslims they believe this absolute nonsense.

You cannot reason with these people. You are going to need complete de-brainwashing camps setup in the Gaza strip like China has setup to de-radicalize the Uyghurs. Without this, the only solution left is to just follow John Carpenter's Escape from New York idea. Put a large wall around the Gaza strip, leave them to their own devices and kill anyone who tries to cross the wall.

There is not a third solution. You cannot live peacefully with people who believe their God wants them to brutally murder you….   ~ Quora

Peter Sisk:
Not concentration camps — a caretaker government whose aim would be the rehabilitation of a population that’s been systematically brutalized by at least a century of terrible leadership.

Ayanna:
I would prefer a third party to carry out the de-brainwashing instead of Israel because it will not be able to convince the Palestinians because they are angry with Israel and will refuse to listen.

Joe Altamura:
This is the underlying cause of the problem with Palestinians. Hamas has controlled all aspects of Palestinian life since 2007, that’s the last 14 years. Every Palestinian under the age 30 has had “Destroy Israel and Kill All Jews Everywhere” lessons in school.

Oriana:
“Kill all the Jews” is enshrined in the Koran. The problem is Islam. If Islam significantly declines on its own — the way all religions are currently in decline — then there is hope. Otherwise, there’s just more and more hate.

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THE WONDEFULLY SHOCKING “DOCTOR RUTH”

Dr. Ruth as a child

Dr. Ruth Westheimer has passed away at the age of 96. She once famously said: “I’m like a Jewish mother. A Jewish mother who talks explicitly.”

When she was 10, the Nazis came to her Frankfurt home and took away her father. Not long after, her mother sent her to an orphanage in Switzerland which ultimately saved her life. Both her parents were murdered in the Holocaust.

At the age of 16, she emigrated to pre-state Israel and joined Haganah, the Jewish resistance, where she became a skilled sniper.

She later moved to NYC, earned a PhD and went to work for Planned Parenthood where she caught the attention of a radio station. She ended up hosting a radio program about sex and eventually got her own tv show.

May Dr Ruth's memory forever be a blessing

Oriana:

This is of course not true, but I think a wonderfully shocking ending to this brief bio would be: "She lived and died a virgin."

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SIX LEADING CAUSES OF DIVORCE

A classic 1997 study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family analyzed over a decade’s worth of data from thousands of married couples to figure out the top causes of divorce. The researchers came up with six, which are explained below.

While the research was conducted more than 20 years ago, the results are as relevant today as they were when first published.

Infidelity and Jealousy

Infidelity remains one of the primary precursors to divorce, significantly undermining trust and emotional security within a relationship. When one partner breaches the fidelity pact, it leads to profound emotional pain and a sense of betrayal. This breach can erode the foundation of the relationship, making it difficult for the injured party to regain trust or for the relationship to recover fully.’

Psychological studies consistently show that infidelity is not merely a physical act but a breach of emotional commitment and integrity, which are crucial for sustaining a healthy marital bond.

“Consistent with prior literature, infidelity was associated with an especially large increase in the odds of divorce,” write the authors, Paul Amato and Stacy Rogers, of the 1997 study.

Jealousy, whether rooted in past experiences or current insecurities, can poison a relationship by fostering mistrust and controlling behaviors. Excessive jealousy often reflects underlying issues of low self-esteem, fear of abandonment, or unresolved trauma, which can lead to obsessive thoughts, accusations, and attempts to control the partner's actions.

Over time, jealousy can suffocate intimacy and erode the emotional connection between partners, making reconciliation challenging without addressing its root causes.

Interestingly, the researchers found that husbands, more than wives, were more likely to cite wives’ jealousy as a significant relationship strain. This is also consistent with the finding that husbands reported fewer marital problems overall than wives.

Therapy aimed at building self-esteem, improving communication skills and fostering trust can help couples navigate jealousy constructively and strengthen relationship bonds.

Spending Money Foolishly

Financial disagreements are a leading cause of marital problems, often exacerbated by one partner's irresponsible spending habits. When one spouse consistently makes financial decisions without consulting the other or disregards agreed-upon budgets, it can lead to resentment, stress, and, ultimately, marital breakdown.

This issue goes beyond financial stability—it reflects deeper issues of respect, communication, and mutual goals within the relationship.

Drinking or Drug Use

Substance abuse, including excessive drinking or drug use, can severely strain a marriage and is frequently cited as a precursor to divorce. Substance use disorders can alter behavior, impair judgment, and lead to emotional instability, creating an unsafe or unpredictable environment within the relationship.

Moreover, substance abuse often correlates with other issues such as financial strain, neglect of responsibilities, and emotional distance—all of which contribute to marital dissatisfaction and conflict.

Moodiness
Chronic moodiness or emotional volatility can strain marital relationships by creating an unpredictable and tense atmosphere at home. Mood swings, whether caused by underlying mental health conditions or situational stress, can lead to frequent conflicts, emotional distancing, and difficulty in resolving disputes calmly.

When one partner's mood fluctuations dominate the relationship dynamics, it can leave the other feeling emotionally neglected or on edge, contributing to feelings of dissatisfaction and, ultimately, the breakdown of marital harmony.

Irritating Habits
Over time, seemingly minor habits or behaviors that initially seemed endearing or tolerable can become significant sources of irritation and tension in a marriage.

Whether it's leaving dirty laundry around, constant lateness, or persistent forgetfulness, these habits can wear down patience and goodwill between partners. What may start as mild annoyance can escalate into frequent arguments or emotional distancing if left unaddressed.

Couples therapy often focuses on improving communication skills and negotiation strategies to address these problems constructively, fostering mutual understanding and compromise. Addressing problematic habits and behaviors early can prevent them from becoming entrenched sources of conflict that contribute to marital dissatisfaction and, potentially, divorce.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-instincts/202407/the-6-leading-causes-of-divorce

Oriana:

In some obscure decades-old publication, I found a statement about lower marital satisfaction that I never found in any other source, but it remained in my mind: delay of childbearing.

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WHY WOMEN ARE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO INITIATE DIVORCE THEN MEN

Divorce is common. For instance, in 2019, one million American women divorced.

Though divorce is financially costly, particularly for women, the percentage of divorces initiated by women is higher than men-initiated divorces. Furthermore, a surprisingly large number of women report post-divorce life satisfaction. For an explanation of this paradox and reasons why women divorce, we turn to a recent paper by Parker and collaborators, published in the February 2022 issue of Current Opinion in Psychology.

The authors argue, using the evolutionary theory, that various mismatches between the sexes increase the likelihood of divorce. These mismatches are detailed below. (Note, most of what follows applies to divorces initiated by women in heterosexual relationships in Western countries.)

Good genes, deep pockets, and other mismatches in mate preference

When it comes to mate selection, women value characteristics such as masculinity, facial symmetry, attractiveness, and social dominance. Quite a few of these characteristics signal good genes. For example, they correlate with health and physical strength, which are attributes that increase survival and reproductive success.

Why might a desire for genetically superior men result in mate preference mismatch? Because men with good genes are usually more interested in short-term relationships and do not make the best long-term partners (e.g., are less resourceful). So, women, especially those able to financially support themselves, may not feel motivated to stay in a relationship with such men.

Another mismatch concerns financial resources: not only do women desire physically healthy and attractive romantic partners, but they also often desire resourceful mates (i.e. rich and successful men).

Mating preferences concerning money and resources might have an evolutionary explanation—e.g., women’s need to rely on men capable of providing for them during pregnancy and breastfeeding, which are periods of high energy expenditure and low mobility.

Though these mating preferences have not changed, society has changed drastically. Fewer women need to depend on men; indeed, an increasing number of women outearn their husbands.

This presents a problem, however, for women desiring a partner who is wealthy and is professionally more successful than they are. It may also result in relationship dissatisfaction for married women who, over time, begin to earn more than their husbands and achieve a higher status.

Care giving or interference mismatch

Contemporary romantic relationships are characterized by lower levels of interdependence than they used to be. Again, this is partly related to women earning more than they once did.

Nowadays, women are less willing to sacrifice their own happiness and well-being just to make their romantic partner happy. Indeed, an increasing number of women have the power to threaten or actually walk away if their romantic partner does not change his behavior.

But with less interdependence, there is less commitment, investment in the romantic relationship, and willingness to persist when new problems emerge.

Another mismatch, also related to decreases in interdependence, is a caregiving mismatch. Women, more than men, have a strong desire to provide care for their spouses and children. This desire or willingness to take on housework and childcare even applies to women who work outside the home or earn more than their romantic partners.

Having to do household chores and take care of children, on top of a job outside the home, significantly adds to women’s workload. It increases stress and reduces their well-being, relationship satisfaction, and sexual desire for their romantic partner.

What about stay-at-home fathers? For one, men who request family leave are often judged by their coworkers as weaker and less assertive, competent, and ambitious. In addition, stay-at-home fathers do more male-typed work, like home repair, as opposed to cooking, cleaning, or taking care of children. So they are not very helpful.

The result is that both partners are under stress these days: women often from having to do “everything” (and not enjoying the benefits of a partnership) and men from social pressures to engage in more masculine work. These stressors can increase the likelihood of separation, including divorces initiated by women.

Potential Solutions

Challenge gendered norms. One approach is to challenge gendered norms, especially the view of men as breadwinners and women as caregivers; or the perception that certain jobs or chores are masculine or feminine. The goal is to help men and women become more comfortable with activities that are not gender typical. Otherwise, neither husbands nor wives will be happy functioning in gender-atypical roles and may thus choose divorce instead.

Obtain assistance with childcare. If the above proves too difficult, another solution is assistance with childcare, especially in marriages where women are the main breadwinners. The assistance could come in many shapes and forms—paid for or provided by an employer, the government, the child’s grandparents, etc.

Become specialists. One way to foster interdependence between couples is to emphasize not merely sharing household duties but specializing in specific household chores. Like organizations running more smoothly when each employee is an expert in what they do (and rely on the help of other employees/experts in areas unfamiliar to them), specialization may allow a marriage to run more smoothly too.

Obtain meta-knowledge. Just as greater awareness of the evolutionary past helps dieters see things more clearly regarding our evolved preferences for sweet, salty, and fatty foods, so might romantic partners gain a new perspective on relationship satisfaction by looking at their desires from a more detached perspective. This may be particularly helpful for individuals who take relationship problems (i.e. preference mismatches) too personally, as though reflecting their personal shortcomings.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-new-home/202203/why-women-are-much-more-likely-men-initiate-divorce

Oriana:

I continue to be surprised by the lack of attention to what I found a central skill in marriage: learning how to resolve conflicts. A satisfying division of labor is perhaps equally important, but there are those "trying times" when knowing how to resolve conflicts can mean everything when it comes to the quality of the marriage.

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THE LAST CARAVAGGIO

It is phenomenal that a man so often prone to brutishness and self-destruction nonetheless successfully cultivated links with elite patronage, maintained a considerable work rate, and was responsible for one of the great transformations of European painting before dying under the age of forty.  

The discordant life of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) came to an end within weeks of his completing The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula (1610). Said to be his last painting, it serves as the centerpiece of a concentrated and free-admission exhibition at London’s National Gallery.

The painting of Saint Ursula was confidently attributed to Caravaggio following a discovery in the Naples state archives, where two letters from 1610 revealed the work as a commission for Marcantonio Doria, a Genoese nobleman. Conditions the artist experienced in the run-up to producing the painting were characteristically extreme.

Caravaggio: The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, detail

After fleeing Rome for killing a pimp, Caravaggio went to Naples and then Malta, where he forged links with the ruling Knights of the Order of Saint John. He hoped these connections would elevate his status and support his appeal for a pardon from Rome. Despite his joining the order, however, an argument with a knight resulted in Caravaggio’s imprisonment. He escaped but forfeited the advantages of belonging to this group.

In Caravaggio’s later works the subject matter of Dionysian boys, cardsharps, and lute players is discarded. In their place something of a pronounced Catholic severity combines with a handling of light and shade that has come to exemplify so much of his work. For Caravaggio, times became crueler. On leaving a tavern in 1609, he was attacked, his face supposedly severely disfigured. In The Martyrdom, he appears behind Ursula, with no sign of the assault. For an artist so often bound to forms of realism, the omission is a curious one; this was a man who had depicted his own face on the severed head of Goliath. Perhaps he sensed that the special kind of violence he had made his own in art would soon overpower him in life.

Ursula herself had suffered a brutal end. Having rejected a proposal of marriage from a Hun king, she was killed, along with her companions. Caravaggio paints her martyrdom up close; this is in sharp contrast to other depictions of Ursula together with her followers, such as Vittore Carpaccio’s conception of a large-scale slaughter in open air.

The martyr peers down at her death sentence, blood squirting from the arrow wound. The Hun looks on, his hand still raised from having made his shot at short-range. Appearing above Ursula’s left shoulder is Caravaggio’s face, probably his final self-portrait, gazing toward the light and outside of the picture, away from the focus of others in the scene. The composition is crowded and enclosed; dark hangings seal the figures, all men except for Ursula, in a claustrophobic space. A light source entering from the left illuminates part of the scene, focusing attention on the enigmatic expressions of the group.

The painting has endured much. Doria’s business agent, Lanfranco Massa, wrote that he took the liberty of leaving the painting outdoors in the sun to dry it; a softening of the varnish was the unintended consequence. The work then suffered damage during transport and crude “restorations.” But the harsh pale appearance of Ursula’s skin that appears in reproductions is not so pronounced when viewing the painting in person.

Centuries old and poorly handled—still, not a bare patch of canvas shows through today. This raises the question whether it is really that important to “restore” all areas of damage in a painting. The acceptance and even celebration of damaged sculpture has never translated to oil paintings. It led this writer to wonder whether the loosely feathered-in arrow penetrating the saint and the accompanying blood spurt were from the artist’s own hand.

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Decapitation seemed to fascinate Caravaggio, and as a companion piece to the Ursula painting hangs the National Gallery’s Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist (ca. 1609–10). An account of the tale states that on Salome’s command King Herod ordered the execution of the baptist and requested his head on a platter. A savage scene results, with the figure of Salome caught looking away from the result of her vengeful order.

Caravaggio: Salome receives the head of St John the Baptist

Both works have invited psychological interpretations, but these may say more about the interpreter than the work itself. With Ursula, the Hun has barely let loose his arrow, and we may be tempted to read a note of regret in his expression, the mouth perhaps indicating a change from a grimace of rage to guilt. In Salome, a tuft of the Baptist’s hair is still gripped by the executioner as the princess takes delivery of the decapitated head. She is pictured looking away while her white drapery leads the viewer’s eye back to the salver and its grim offering. Next to her, an aged attendant appears to offer prayers with clasped hands.

Nicolas Poussin abhorred the Italian artist’s work and claimed that Caravaggio had been sent forth “to destroy painting.” This may have been what he did: the powerful forging of new forms is at times a prerequisite for becoming a major artist. There is nothing of Arcadia in this show; when so much material from the street is assimilated in the way it was by Caravaggio, this absence is fitting.

Caravaggio cast a novel paradigm of beauty, allowing new representations of savagery, labor, calloused palms, and feet ingrained with dirt. He found aesthetic qualities in places where people had not thought or ventured to look. In the seventeenth century, this scheme must have had a revolutionary quality about it, almost Baudelairean. A tragic view of life is on full display here, focused on women in two diverging ways: one, Salome, turns her gaze from the death of another; the other, Ursula, experiences her own demise. If the timelessness of art is a myth, then with his paintings Caravaggio resisted this assertion as far as anyone can.

Caravaggio: Self-Portrait

https://newcriterion.com/2024/06/martyrs-murderers/

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FUN-LOVER OR GO-GETTER? IT'S ALL IN THE COMBINATION    

The simplest way to think about personality is as one central tendency. People describe themselves as introverts, neurotics, or risk-takers, and leave it at that.

However, this approach fails to acknowledge the many subtleties that truly characterize the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors as they interweave within whatever it is we call "personality." You are a combination of multiple factors. You might be an extrovert, but don’t you have other qualities? Maybe you’re super-nice (agreeable) and/or concerned with detail (conscientious). If someone only looked at your extraversion levels, they would miss out on these other important modifiers.

Applying this principle to understanding personality's role in health, researchers are beginning to consider these many complexities as influencing whether people engage in behaviors that help them live longer and better. A new study takes this idea as its starting point and goes on to provide some concrete ideas about how this can work.

The Role of Personality in Health

According to the University of Edinburgh’s Andrew Weiss (2024), working with an international team of personality and health researchers, “The identification of factors that promote recommended levels of physical activity (PA) and exercise are a priority for public health” (p. 2). Supporting the need to see personality as more than one quality, large-scale “meta-analyses,” fail to produce any reliable relationships between single personality traits and levels of PA. Maybe, Weiss and his collaborators propose, it takes “two.”

The Five-Factor Model (FFM) in personality proposes that the traits that make up your personality include the factors of agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience. These trait names are pretty self-explanatory, but what isn’t always clear to people who learn about this is that each trait has six sub-traits or “facets.” Much of the research on the FFM examines these 30 qualities, as do people who use the FFM for clinical or personnel assessments.

With this background, the U. Edinburgh-led researchers proceeded to develop a set of predictions about how these personality trait combinations might work. They hypothesized that “an individual’s standing on one personality domain or facet will weaken or potentiate the effect of another personality domain or facet.” The best way to test this hypothesis, the authors believed, is to put the FFM traits and domains into combined personality “styles.”

Two-Factor Personality Styles

Before getting into the details of the series of studies designed to test this hypothesis, it’s worth explaining more about the idea of a personality style. As used in the Weiss et al. study, a personality style represents a combination of FFM traits; a profile-derived concept in which people’s scores are plotted along dimensions created by two traits at a time.

Consider the combination of extraversion (E) and conscientiousness (C). In a diagram crafted by the researchers, high/low E and high/low C combinations form 4 potential personality styles, which they characterize as follows:

Fun-Lovers (High E/Low C): Full of energy and vitality, but are too impulsive to channel this in constructive ways.

Go-Getters (High E/High C): Productive and efficient at work, and always ramped up in high gear.

Lethargic: (Low E/Low C): Passive, unenthusiastic, few plans or goals.

Plodders (Low E/High C): Methodical, measured, and careful; slow to get the job done, but always does.

You can already see how naturally these four categories would seem to relate to health. You’ll find the Fun-Lover at the gym, perhaps, but only there to chat. The Plodder may never get there, but the Go-Getter will be the one who puts everyone else to shame on the elliptical. The plodder will also be in the gym, but only cautiously and carefully. The question is, though, would these types have any measurable differences in health?

The Weiss et al. team, in exploring this question, didn’t limit themselves to the E/C combination, as they had all five traits (plus facets) to work with. Instead, they used pairwise combinations of all traits to profile people along all combinations of two traits at a time.

Participants were drawn from a longitudinal study carried out on University of North Carolina Chapel Hill alumni with nearly 5,000 adults ranging from their 40s to their 70s, and followed over nine waves of testing. In addition to providing data on their physical activity patterns (using a NASA-based activity test), they were also tested for depression. The personality measure consisted of the NEO-PI, a well-validated FFM measure in which participants answer 240 questions about themselves along the 30 facets within the 5 domains.

Across the three studies, which varied in specific methods and predictions, the final results came in showing that, as the authors predicted, personality trait pairings produced better predictions of physical activity than any single trait alone. The Lethargic indeed were less likely to engage in physical activity across time, but so did another combination of low E with high A (i.e., nice introverts). The combination of high openness and high extraversion (outgoing and curious people) was associated, in contrast, with high physical activity.

In explaining the agreeableness piece of the data, Weiss et al. note that “these otherwise less active, less gregarious individuals who are highly communal and compassionate are likely to put other people’s needs before their own” (p. 8). They just don’t want to engage in anything like a competition. The Lethargic just don’t want to exert themselves, period.

How to Tap Into Your Two-Factor Type

One of the key takeaways from this study, in addition to the findings themselves, is that you can’t simply judge personality by any single individual trait name. No one is truly an “introvert” (low E) or a slacker (low C). It’s the “potentiation,” to use a word from the authors, that creates the dynamic interaction among these qualities, all of which everyone possesses.

Additionally, although the facet level analysis didn’t add much, activity level (an E facet) gave the prediction equation a bit of a boost, suggesting a more nuanced approach than even combining pairs of traits is necessary.

One other point, not necessarily implied in this study but consistent with its framework, is that people aren’t stuck with the personalities they have when young for the rest of their lives. It might take some effort, but jumping from one quadrant to another is possible. Knowing that the Lethargic combination can be lethal might lead you to experiment with building up your C. The motivating effect of feeling better could help propel you even further in your health journey.

To sum up, typing yourself with one overarching trait will not help you gain self-insight about what you need to do to improve your health. The larger lesson is, furthermore, that personality is not easily reducible to single letters. It’s in the combination that the fascination, and the fulfillment, seem to lie.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-at-any-age/202406/fun-lover-or-go-getter-which-fits-your-personality


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THE MOON IS SHRINKING

A region of the moon that’s at the center of a new international space race because it may contain water ice could be less hospitable than once thought, new research has found.

Interest in the lunar south pole spiked last year, when India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission made the first successful soft landing in the area, just days after Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed en route to attempt the same feat. NASA has selected the region as the landing site for its Artemis III mission, which could mark the return of astronauts to the moon as soon as 2026, and China also has plans to create future habitats there.

But now a study funded by NASA is ringing an alarm bell: As the moon’s core gradually cools and shrinks, its surface develops creases — like a grape shriveling into a raisin — that create “moonquakes” that can last for hours, as well as landslides. Much like the rest of the natural satellite’s surface, the area of the south pole that is the subject of so much interest is prone to these seismic phenomena, potentially posing a threat to future human settlers and equipment.

“This is not to alarm anyone and certainly not to discourage exploration of that part of the south pole of the moon,” said the study’s lead author, Thomas R. Watters, a senior scientist emeritus in the National Air and Space Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, “but to raise the caution that the moon is not this benign place where nothing is happening.”

Finding the source of moonquakes

The moon has shrunk by about 150 feet in circumference over the last few million years — a significant number in geological terms but too small to cause any ripple effect on Earth or to tidal cycles, according to researchers.

On the lunar surface, however, it’s a different story. Despite what its appearance might suggest, the moon still has a hot interior, which makes it seismically active.

“There is an outer core that’s molten and is cooling off,” Watters said. “As it cools, the moon shrinks, the interior volume changes and the crust has to adjust to that change — it’s a global contraction, to which tidal forces on the Earth also contribute.”

Because the moon’s surface is brittle, this pulling generates cracks, which geologists call faults. “The moon is thought of as being this geologically dead object where nothing has happened for billions of years, but that couldn’t be more far from the truth,” Watters said. “These faults are very young and things are happening. We’ve actually detected landslides that have occurred during the time that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been in orbit around the moon.”

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, launched in 2009, and it’s mapping the moon’s surface with various instruments. In the new study, published January 25 in The Planetary Science Journal, Watters and his colleagues used data collected by LRO to link a powerful moonquake — detected with instruments left by Apollo astronauts more than 50 years ago — to a series of faults in the lunar south pole.

“We knew from the Apollo seismic experiment, which were four seismometers that operated for a period of about seven years, that there were these shallow moonquakes, but we didn’t really know what the source was,” Watters added. “We also knew that the largest of the shallow moonquakes detected by the Apollo seismometers was located near the south pole. It kind of became a sort of a detective story to try to figure out what the source was, and it turns out that these young faults are the best suspect.”

The strongest recorded quake was the equivalent of magnitude 5.0. On Earth, that would be considered moderate, but the moon’s lower gravity would make it feel worse, Watters said.

“On the Earth, you have a much stronger gravity keeping you attached to the surface. On the moon, it’s much smaller, so even a little bit of ground acceleration is going to potentially pop you off your feet, if you’re walking along,” he said. “That kind of shaking can really start throwing things around in a low G environment.”

MOONQUAKES: short-term vs long-term implications

NASA has identified 13 Artemis III candidate landing regions near the lunar south pole, she added, using criteria such as the ability to land safely in the region, the potential to meet science objectives, launch window availability and conditions such as terrain, communications and lighting. As part of the mission, two astronauts will spend about a week living and working on the lunar surface.

However, Weber said, for a long-term human presence on the moon, the site selection process could indeed factor in geographic characteristics such as proximity to tectonic features and terrain.

Like flashlights on the moon

Moonquakes could indeed be a problem for future manned landing missions, said Yosio Nakamura, a professor emeritus of geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin, who was among the researchers who first looked at the data collected by the Apollo seismic stations.
However, Nakamura, who was not involved with the study, disagrees about the cause of the quakes, and said Apollo data shows the phenomena originate tens of kilometers below the surface.

“We still don’t know what causes shallow moonquakes, but it is not the sliding fault near the surface,” he said. “Regardless of what causes those quakes, it is true that they pose a potential threat to future landing missions, and we need more data about them.”

Regardless of the underlying cause, the potential danger moonquakes pose to astronauts will be limited by the fact that — at least in the near future — humans will be on the moon for short periods of time, a few days at most, according to Allen Husker, a research professor of geophysics at the California Institute of Technology who was also not involved with the study.

“It is very unlikely that a large moonquake will happen while they are there. However, it is good to know that these seismic sources (causing the quakes) exist. They can be an opportunity to better study the moon as we do on the Earth with earthquakes,” Husker said. “By the time there is an actual moon base, we should have a much better idea of the actual seismic hazard with upcoming missions.”

That sentiment is shared by Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna, an associate professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona, who also didn’t participate in the work. “Moonquakes are an incredible tool for doing science,” he said in an email. “They are like flashlights in the lunar interior that illuminate its structure for us to see. Studying moonquakes at the south pole will tell us more about the Moon’s interior structure as well as its present-day activity.”

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/31/world/moon-shrinking-moonquakes-south-pole-scn


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NO ATHEISTS IN THE TRENCHES?

My father fought in WW2 and was a surgical nurse. He saw a lot of men die. They called out to their mothers, to their wives, to their kids to their pets but few called out to a god. He said about half refused the services of a chaplain. I know an atheist who survived Eastern Airlines flight 401 crash. He was a atheist before and still is one. He said rather than engaging in futile prayer he plotted how to survive,

I have been near death at least 3 times and it didn’t make me believe in a deity. ~ Quora

M.A.Steinberger:
A friend of mine who served in combat in Vietnam said that turned him into an atheist.

Robert L. Hill:
I actually DID DIE when I had a bad brain bleed from a truck crash — actually DIED, and I have the brain scans from the ER to prove it.

But God, Allah, Zeus, or any other god never spoke to me. Never, not a word. And I remember TRYING to talk to “god” — any god. I was met with total silence.

I did manage to recover — kind of. It took YEARS, and it is not total recovery. Still walk a bit funny, cannot run, and my eyes are a bit screwy. But — you take what you can get.

I take my experience as knowledge as to who will talk to me when I die — NO ONE. I know that now, very well.

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PSILOCYBIN DISRUPTS BRAIN NETWORKS AND  INCREASES PLASTICITY

In the name of science, Dr. Nico Dosenbach had scanned his own brain dozens of times. But this was the first time he'd taken a mind-bending substance before sliding into the MRI tunnel.
"I was, like, drifting deeper into weirdness," he recalls. "I didn't know where I was at all. Time stopped, and I was everyone."

Dosenbach, an associate professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, had been given a high dose of psilocybin, the active substance in magic mushrooms, by his colleagues.

It was all part of a study of seven people designed to show how psilocybin produces its mind-altering effects.

The results, which appear in the journal Nature, suggest that psychedelic drugs work by disrupting certain brain networks, especially one that helps people form a sense of space, time and self.

"For the first time, with a really high degree of detail, we're understanding which networks are changing, how intensely they're changing and what persists after the experience," says Dr. Petros Petridis of New York University's Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study.

The research also provided a close look at how these drugs temporarily enhance the brain's ability to adapt and change, an ability known as plasticity.

The disruptions in brain networks appear to be "where the plasticity effects of psychedelics are coming from," says Dr. Joshua Siegel, a researcher at Washington University and the study's lead author.

If that's true, he says, it could explain why psychedelics appear to help people with addiction or depression.

A brainy trip

Dosenbach and other participants were randomly assigned to receive either a stimulant or 25 milligrams of psilocybin, a dose high enough to cause hallucinations.

"It was definitely an awesome experience for a neuroscientist," he says.

"It's really fascinating how your brain can fall apart — because how something breaks tells you how something works."

Dosenbach's trip took him places only a neuroscientist is likely to go.

"I was inside the brain, and I was riding brain waves, and I was Marc Raichle," he says, referring to Dr. Marcus Raichle, a colleague and co-author of the study, who also happens to be a towering figure in the world of neuroscience.

As part of the study, participants' brains were scanned an average of 18 times over a three-week period. Four repeated the experiment six to 12 months later.

"You're bringing in single individuals many times," Siegel says, "and that allows you to get a very detailed and precise map of their brain networks.”

The scans showed that psilocybin caused swift and dramatic changes to certain brain networks. Usually the neurons in a given network become active at the same time — often in tandem with other networks too.

"What's going on during psilocybin is that populations of neurons that are normally in synchrony are out of synchrony," Siegel says.

The brain "falls apart." And it appears to respond by entering a state of enhanced plasticity that can last for weeks.

"Desynchronization probably is a critical clue as to where the plasticity effects of psychedelics are coming from," Siegel says.

The loss of synchrony was greatest in a brainwide group of neurons called the default mode network, which is active when the brain is daydreaming or otherwise not focused on the outside world.

This network was discovered by scientists including Raichle, the man who became Dosenbach's alter ego in the scanner.

The default mode network is critical to self-referential memory, which helps the brain keep track of information like, Who am I? And what was I doing? Siegel says.

Changing your mind

The study hints at how psychedelic drugs could be incorporated into the treatment of people with addiction, depression or post-traumatic stress.

"There seems to be this time of increased change that could be taken advantage of by therapists," Petridis says.

A patient with addiction, for example, might be able to reframe their relationship with substances in the days and weeks following a dose of psilocybin, he says.

But the approach has risks, says Dr. Ginger Nicol, a psychiatrist at Washington University whose husband was in the study and took psilocybin twice.

“He had an almost religious experience the first time," she says. "The second time, he saw demons.”

Even so, psychedelics may offer a way to help psychiatric patients recognize their own capacity to change, Nicol says.

"It takes years to figure that out in therapy," she says. "This gives us a different way of thinking about learning and recovery.”

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/07/18/g-s1-11501/psilocybin-psychedelic-drug-brain-plasticity-depression-addiction

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COFFEE REDUCES THE RISK OF PARKINSON’S

~ Research shows coffee-drinkers have a lower risk of developing Parkinson's disease.
Studies find that caffeine may be a key ingredient that helps protect against Parkinson's.

There is no evidence that drinking coffee helps with symptoms once someone has developed Parkinson's.

Across the globe, more than 10 million people suffer from Parkinson’s disease, a neurological disorder that leads to unintended and uncontrollable movements such as shaking, stiffness, and difficulty with balance and coordination.

Scientists are working to better understand the mechanisms involved in Parkinson’s disease. At a basic level, they know that the disease occurs when nerve cells in the basal ganglia, an area of the brain that controls movement, become impaired or die. Most researchers believe a mix of genetic and environmental factors trigger the disease.

There is no way to prevent or cure Parkinson’s, but scientists have identified a simple way to reduce the risk of developing the disease: drinking coffee. A substantial body of evidence finds that coffee drinkers have a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease compared to people who don’t drink coffee.

One large study followed more than 100,000 men and women for more than 10 years. Over the course of the study, 288 participants developed Parkinson’s disease. Men who consumed the most coffee—up to five cups a day—were significantly less likely to develop Parkison’s disease compared to those who consumed the least amount of coffee. For women, the relationship between coffee consumption and risk of Parkinson's disease was U‐shaped, with the lowest risk observed at moderate caffeine consumption—one to three cups of coffee per day.

An earlier study followed more than 8,000 Japanese-American men for 30 years; 102 participants developed Parkinson’s disease over the course of the study. After adjusting the data for other factors, including age, researchers found that participants who did not drink coffee were two to three times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease compared to those who report drinking coffee.

More recent studies have investigated the mechanisms at work. A study published last year found that caffeine consumption helps to prevent the inflammation associated with Parkinson’s disease. Researchers also pointed out that caffeine consumption can increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, therefore, the researchers suggest limiting increased caffeine consumption to people with a genetic predisposition to Parkinson’s disease.

Increased caffeine intake may be especially important for Asian populations, who are more likely to carry the genes related to Parkinson’s disease, according to a study published last year in The Lancet.

Finally, despite clear evidence that caffeine consumption can help to prevent Parkinson’s disease, there is no evidence that coffee or caffeine helps to reduce symptoms for people who have already developed Parkinson’s disease, according to a study published earlier this year in the Annals of Neurology.

The take-home message: The evidence is clear that regular, caffeinated coffee consumption reduces the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. This is especially true for people genetically predisposed to developing the disease.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evidence-based-living/202407/what-we-know-about-coffee-and-parkinsons-disease

Oriana:

Reading this may arouse curiosity if coffee also decreases the risk of dementia. So far the evidence isn't very impressive, but the overall conclusion is that it does. Stimulants in general (nicotine needs to be delivered by patch) appear to lower blood sugar, increase insulin sensitivity (remember that Alzheimer's has been called "Type III diabetes"), improve cognition, and lower the risk of cancer and dementia.  

What about nicotine? There is evidence that smoking tobacco has links to Alzheimer’s disease and reduced life expectancy, but nicotine, on its own, could help prevent cognitive decline. Nicotine enhances the activity of an enzyme known as protein kinase B (Akt), which is essential for various cellular processes.

Nicotine also stimulates phosphoinositide 3-kinase and Akt signaling, which regulates processes involved in learning and memory." 

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/nicotine-and-alzheimers

The weight loss drug, semiglutide, also appears to lower the risk of dementia.

The average age of onset of Parkinson's is 60. The country with the highest incidence is China. Is that genetic, or does it point to some neurotoxic chemical more prevalent in China than elsewhere? We don't have the slightest idea. 

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/semaglutide-linked-to-lower-cognitive-decline-risk-and-reduced-nicotine-cravings

Because my father died of Parkinson's, I have a special interest in this mysterious disease, and the occasional strange findings in Parkinson's research. The latest of these is the finding that three drugs used in the treatment of benign prostate hyperplasia show a positive effect on Parkinson's: "terazosin, doxazosin, and alfuzosin (Tz/Dz/Az), have an unexpected side effect; they can boost energy production in brain cells. Preclinical studies suggest that this ability may help slow or prevent neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's Disease and DLB [dementia with Lewy Bodies]." https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/06/240619182331.htm

Black tea and dark chocolate (both black tea and chocolate contain some caffeine) also appear to be protective against Parkinson's (https://www.oaepublish.com/articles/and.2022.2).

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ARE FREQUENT SMALL MEALS BETTER THAN ‘THREE SQUARE’?

Many of us may have heard that eating several small meals daily can help improve metabolism and achieve optimal health. However, the evidence for this claim is mixed.

It is widely accepted in modern culture that people should divide their daily diet into three large meals — breakfast, lunch, and dinner — for optimal health. This belief primarily stems from culture and early epidemiological studies.

In recent years, however, experts have begun to change their perspective, suggesting that eating smaller, more frequent meals may be best for preventing chronic disease and weight loss. As a result, more people are changing their eating patterns in favor of eating several small meals throughout the day.

Those who advocate for eating small, frequent meals suggest that this eating pattern can:

improve satiety, or feeling full after a meal
increase metabolism and body composition
prevent dips in energy
stabilize blood sugar
prevent overeating

While a few studies support these recommendations, others show no significant benefit. In fact, some research suggests it may be more beneficial to stick with three larger meals.

MEAL FREQUENCY AND CHRONIC DISEASE

Early epidemiological studies suggest that increased meal frequency can improve blood lipid (fats) levels and reduce the risk of heart disease.

As a result, many experts advise against eating fewer, larger meals a day.

Over the years, some studies have supported these findings, suggesting that people who report eating small, frequent meals have better cholesterol levels than those who consume fewer than three meals per day.

In particular, one 2019 cross-sectional study hat compared eating fewer than three meals per day or more than four meals per day found that consuming more than four meals increases HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol and lowers fasting triglycerides more effectively. Higher levels of HDL are associated with a reduced risk of heart disease.

This study observed no differences in total cholesterol or LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol. It is important to note, however, that this is an observational study, meaning it can only prove association, not causation.

Additionally, one review published in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation concluded that greater eating frequency is associated with a reduced risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to epidemiological studies.

MEAL FREQUENCY AND WEIGHT LOSS

There is a commonly held notion that more frequent meals can help influence weight loss. However, the research on this remains mixed.

For example, one study compared eating three meals per day or six smaller, more frequent meals on body fat and perceived hunger. Both groups received adequate calories to maintain their current body weight using the same macronutrient distribution: 30% of energy from fat, 55% carbohydrate, and 15% protein.

At the end of the study, researchers observed no difference in energy expenditure and body fat loss between the two groups. Interestingly, those who consumed six smaller meals throughout the day had increased hunger levels and desire to eat compared to those who ate three larger meals per day.

Although calorie intake was controlled in both groups, researchers hypothesized that those who consumed frequent meals would be more likely to consume more daily calories than those who ate less frequently.

Results of another large observational study suggest that healthy adults may prevent long-term weight gain by:

eating less frequently
eating breakfast and lunch 5 to 6 hours apart
avoiding snacking
consuming the largest meal in the morning
fasting for 18-19 hours overnight.

Moreover, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), due to inconsistencies and limitations in the current body of evidence, there is insufficient evidence to determine the relationship between meal frequency and body composition and the risk of overweight and obesity.

DOES EATING SMALL FREQUENT MEALS BOOST METABOLISM?

Small, frequent meals are often touted as a cure-all for obesity. Many believe that eating every 2 to 3 hours can help boost metabolism.

Digestion of food does require energy. This is known as the thermic effect of food (TEF). However, it does not appear that meal frequency plays a role in boosting metabolism.

In fact, some studies suggest fewer, larger meals may increase TEF more than eating frequent meals.

DIET QUALITY

People who eat more frequently are more likely to have better diet quality. Specifically, those who consume at least three meals per day are more likely to have a greater intake of vegetables, greens, legumes, fruit, whole grains, and dairy.

These individuals are also more likely to consume less sodium and added sugars than those who consume two meals per day.

Similarly, another 2020 study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that increased meal frequency — approximately three meals per day — is associated with higher diet quality.

Researchers found that snack frequency and diet quality varied depending on the definition of snacks.

IS ONE BETTER THAN THE OTHER?

Based on the presented studies, no substantial evidence supports one eating pattern over the other. Yet many of these studies also have limitations.

For example, there is no universally accepted definition of what a meal or snack consists of. This can have an impact on study outcomes.

With that said, both eating patterns can be beneficial as long the primary focus is on healthful eating habits.

Who should consume small, frequent meals?

A review published in Nutrition in Clinical Practice shows that certain populations may benefit from six to 10 small, frequent meals. These include people who:

experience early satiety
are trying to gain weight
have gastroparesis (slow emptying of the stomach)
have gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, or bloating.

If your goal is to lose weight, it is important to be mindful of your portion sizes. Be sure to stay within your allotted daily calorie needs and divide them among the number of meals you consume.

For example, if you need 1,800 calories to maintain your weight and choose to eat six small meals daily, each meal should be around 300 calories.

Small, frequent meals often come in the form of ultra-processed foods and snacks that fall short in many vital nutrients your body needs. Thus, it is essential to focus on the quality of the foods you consume.

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Who should consume fewer, larger meals?

People who may benefit from three larger meals per day include:

those who have difficulty practicing portion control
those who tend not to eat mindfully
people who live busy lives and may not have time to plan and prepare several nutritious mini-meals a day.

Again, keeping diet quality in mind and prioritizing whole foods is essential. Fewer meals mean fewer opportunities to get in key nutrients the body needs.

The best diet for optimal health

While we do not have strong evidence to support the importance of meal frequency, substantial evidence supports the overall health benefits of following a well-balanced, nutrient-rich diet.
According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025 a healthy diet should:

emphasize fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat or fat-free milk or dairy products
include protein from various sources, including seafood, lean meat and poultry, eggs, nuts, seeds, soy products, and legumes
stay within your allotted calorie needs
limit added sugars, cholesterol, trans fats, and saturated fats.

The bottom line:

Evidence is mixed about the importance of meal frequency. While there is no solid evidence to suggest that one eating style is superior to the other, both can offer health and wellness benefits if you follow a healthy eating pattern.

Thus, it ultimately comes down to personal preference and which approach works best for you. Additionally, if you have certain health conditions, one style may benefit you over the other.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/is-it-better-to-eat-several-small-meals-or-fewer-larger-ones#The-best-diet-for-optimal-health

Oriana:

It’s funny how views on the best diet change, often dramatically, every few years.  The current fad is fasting, or only one or two meals a day. But I remember the time when all “experts” urged many small meals (they also urged the consumption of margarine instead of butter, and avoidance of eggs, particularly the super-nutritious yolk). Today the main trend appears to be the opposite, especially after animal studies showed that one big meal a day yields best results in terms of health and longevity. Some believe in eating every other day, or in fasting for five days a month. But a word of warning: humans are different from rats in many ways, and until human studies unequivocally show that one meal frequency is better than another, it’s best to experiment with what works for you.

In California diet is the new religion, and false prophets abound.

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ending on beauty:

THE SUPPLE DEER

The quiet opening
between fence strands
perhaps eighteen inches.
Antlers to hind hooves,
four feet off the ground,
the deer poured through.
No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.
I don’t know how a stag turns
into a stream, an arc of water.
I have never felt such accurate envy.
Not of the deer:
To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.

~ Jane Hirshfield