All you men of a certain age might enjoy this Dave Barry piece
My initial reaction to seeing it was, Dave Barry? He’s still writing? Indeed he is, at a relatively youthful 77. I had a book of his on the topic of babies back when my son was little, and it used to make me LOL whenever I read it in that pre-internet time.
And now, dear readers – especially of the male variety but females might enjoy it too – I bring you this recent effort by Barry. It’s entitled “Tariffs: A Technical Analysis.” And no, it’s not about tariffs.
While we’re at it, this one from Barry is very funny too.
Enjoy.
Your first ink goes to his main blog. Here’s the one for the tariff discussion:
https://davebarry.substack.com/p/tariffs
Both of these are funny, because it’s Dave Barry. My husband reports that these days he only has to have PSA blood work and not that exam, but perhaps it lurks in the future. So I still have to have an invasive internal exam and he gets off free. Men! Which leads to Barry’s very perceptive second article about marriage and outsourcing mental functions to the spouse. Funny and so true.
Well I no longer have said organ.
I haven’t said anything here but last September I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. To cut a long, and rather tortuous saga down for the last 8 months…. 6 weeks ago my bladder and prostate were removed. I’m in recovery mode that will take probably another 2 months. And learning to live with an ostomy. Good news is that the disease was totally contained within the bladder lining with no lymph node involvement.
Back to the organ in question: despite it no longer existing I’ve found I am now scheduled for a PSA every 6 months. Apparently any value above zero is a cause for concern.
How lovely to be reminded of Dave Barry, just when I needed something funny. I read a lot of the tariffs article out loud to Mr Whatsit, who laughed out loud at the part about the subject a group of old men are likely to be talking animatedly about.
I don’t know if I ever read anything by Dave Barry that wasn’t funny, but I used to particularly love his columns about bad songs. Half the time all he had to do was quote the lyrics (“Someone left the cake out in the RAIN . . . “) and I’d be howling.
But he could make other topics hilarious too. A favorite quote: “In the old pre-technology days, it would have been almost impossible to replicate Facebook or Twitter. The closest you could get would be to mail dozens of postcards a day to everybody you know, each with a brief message about yourself like: “Finally got that haircut I’ve been putting off.” Or: “Just had a caramel frappuccino. Yum!” The people receiving these postcards would have naturally assumed you were a moron with a narcissism disorder.”
I’m delighted to learn he’s still writing. Now excuse me, I have to go read his whole Substack.
Sorry to hear that physicsguy
I cant say i. Have had that (but i had my episode last year as well as that bout of food poisoning
Yes there should be an easier way of determining that condition (doesnt a blood test do it)
Im reminded when the herald was my fishwrap of record and i looked forward to the sunday magazine
physicsguy, hard times, I’m sorry. May your recovery go swiftly.
physicsguy:
So sorry to hear you’ve had a rough time lately. I hope you continue to heal uneventfully and completely.
Physicsguy: sorry about your ordeal. Glad the prognosis is good and that you’re still here and contributing. As the Poles say: Sto lat!
Getting old, man. It’s rough.
Man, sorry about that Physics Guy.
physicsguy, I’m sorry to hear about your ordeal but glad to hear the cancer did not spread. Best wishes on your recovery.
So sorry about the diagnosis and what you’ve had to go through for the past 8 months physicsguy. I’m glad that it was contained and pray that it will remain so.
@physicsguy, that sounds rough. Hope things work out and your recovery goes well.
physicsguy:
A bad news, good news report. Prayers for continuing negative PSA results and otherwise good health for you.
physicsguy, 9 yrs I had Prostate Cancer, and had Brachytherapy, radiation seed implanted into the Prostate. My Urologist told me that if I have a reoccurrence of cancer, anywhere, it shows up in PSA. Good luck in your recovery.
I just found out something else. Don’t get an MRI if you have the seed implants.
I have a funny (not at the time)story about an interaction I had with Homeland Security over the radiation I was emitting.
Physicsguy, best wishes on continued recovery and good health.
I have come to understand that the organs in question play a very minimal role in the analysis of general relativity, cosmology, or QM; and at best may be helpful in studies of liquid mechanics or ballistics. On the other hand, you may now have some insights about dark matter that other physicists do not have a capability of considering. [/jocularity]
Now, it would be terrible, if not terrifying, if we spelled tarriffs with two rr’s; but maybe we can get around that with a spelling of tearriffs. How do we say tariffs in Chinese or in Etruscan?
[ /end Barry Pranking]
From Barry’s post “Marriage and Dementia”
First, AesopSpouse and I don’t divide tasks exactly the same way as the Barrys, but it’s very close.
Second, I would probably be able to recite “The Cat in the Hat” from memory if someone got me started.
As a side note to that, I have heard an old saying that every child you have reduces your brain capacity by one-fourth. I have five kids. Do the math.
Seriously though, having children does actual rewire some aspects of your brain.
https://neurosciencenews.com/motherhood-pregnancy-brain-23935/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pregnancy-causes-lasting-changes-in-a-womans-brain/
“The researchers found that the new mothers experienced gray matter reductions that lasted for at least two years after birth. ”
Maybe that old saying isn’t too far off base after all!
Let me join in the chorus of well-wishers, physicsguy. Glad it went well and hope you recover fully.
Old age isn’t for sissies, as Dave Barry explained in his dissertation on tariffs. He is a very funny guy, and I’m glad he’s still writing. Thanks for the link, Neo.
I was going to leave a flippant comment to the effect that the good thing about cancer is after the prostate is removed, no more required inspections via the Alabama back roads, but mine was just prostate cancer, no involvement of the bladder, so you have my sympathies Physicsguy. Doesn’t sound fun at all.
My grandparents always told me that getting old isn’t for wimps. They weren’t kidding.
Thanks for all the support. It has been an experience. I added up I spent over 35 days hospitalized over the past 8 months; 4 surgeries and numerous scans. Usually, 6 weeks post-op is a magic number, but given the extensive nature of the the surgery I’m only about half way through the recovery. Hard to be patient.
Prayers for you, physicsguy.
@ physicsguy – best wishes for your recovery, and thanks for taking the time to join the conversations here despite your surgeries. I always enjoy hearing your “take” on physics and politics.
From the comments from Dave Barry’s piece:
‘And you can’t spell “tariffs” without “ffs”.’
Trump needs to gently explain this to Chairman Xi. This will put his mind at ease about his inevitable humiliation.
there should be an easier way of determining that condition
The PSA is not so reliable, though if it jumps up (as opposed to a slow trend) it usually indicates a problem. There are also MRIs. But there’s nothing much definitive except a biopsy, and even that can have false negatives. I’ve had all of the above, and fortunately all negative, so I just have to deal with the problem Barry refers to, and take medication for that (which helps some). And have the animated conversations with other over-55 guys.
Barry’s column on marriage also pretty much describes my marriage down to a T. When we go to a social event I have to remember to ask my wife to brief me on who’s going to be there, what are their names, their kids names, etc., and be sure to introduce me to people even if I’ve already met them before. And she is always smelling something that I can’t smell, and I have to deal with the plumbing or anything else mechanical.
Best wishes to physicsguy.
AesopFan: “… found that the new mothers experienced gray matter reductions that lasted for at least two years after birth. ” ”
However, this would seem to be a wise and natural evolutionary solution to the problem of getting new mothers into the mode of speaking baby talk during the early developmental stages of their child and its need to learn language(s), etc. Then recovering that lost brain matter to handle the trials of parenthood and grandparenthood going forward.
physicsguy:
Sorry to hear it. Best.
I’m sure you know. Steve Jobs is not your friend. I hope your guitar is.
Throughout adolescence both boys and girls lose gray matter as the brain connections they don’t need are pruned, and their brains are sculpted into their adult form.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pregnancy-causes-lasting-changes-in-a-womans-brain/
AesopFan:
There is a loss of gray matter, but what is happening, is that the child brain has accumulated a large number of not-so-useful neural connections so now the adolescent brain is preparing for adulthood by pruning those connections for efficiency.
It’s similar to garbage collection in computer programming.
Those connections remaining are myelinated– a fatty sheaf is added to protect the important connections.
This is why one’s childhood memories and childhood patterns, the ones which aren’t pruned, become so defining and hard to change in later life.
So for women after pregnancy it’s similar, though not so drastic. Their brains are getting ready for the new intense role of mothering.
@ huxley > “This is why one’s childhood memories and childhood patterns, the ones which aren’t pruned, become so defining and hard to change in later life.”
Thanks for clarifying the points in that article.
I’ve been reminiscing lately with some close relatives and it’s amazing how sharply some of our childhood memories are, and yet none of us can remember what happened yesterday, or “what we came in this room for.”
I’m hoping that reading and conversing about the news regularly will help keep the current brain paths active.
AesopFan:
The main memory slips I notice are names.
Whether it’s people I know or people I know from reading, films, art or music, I can remember what they look like and much other information, but not their damn names!
In programming there are objects — lumps of data about something. Then there are pointers — addresses of where the objects are located in memory. The pointer isn’t part of the object. And the object might be anywhere in memory, so the pointer can change.
Perhaps a human name is *like* a pointer. It’s a different type of information from the object and is stored separately.
On memory: My sister proposed an image that works for me. A person’s memory is like a large filing cabinet with a lot of individual drawers. The drawers relate to places or experiences. If those particular drawers are not used routinely, it can take a while for the mind to locate the exact drawer containing the needed information and open it.
@ huxley > “The main memory slips I notice are names.”
I’m so glad it’s not just me! Real people, including family (!), and authors I’ve read for decades. I have to think about something I know concerning them (I can still remember book titles!) and track them down that way. Sometimes it takes a few days, and then I get a name in my head and have to think why I wanted it.
Pointers may be a good analogy.
@ Kate – the file cabinet analogy is one I’ve seen a lot. Pointers would be like having a list of what drawers hold what memories, but the list is corrupted.
One of my fridge magnets: I finally got it all together, and then I forgot where I put it.
I really liked the way the movie “Inside Out” depicted the internal workings of our brain. Not anywhere close to accurate, but fun.
I still cry when Bing Bong jumps out of the wagon to save Joy and fades away in the Memory Dump. That’s a hero!
I have the same sort of name or other memory issues others are describing.
But this topic also now calls to my mind (or memory) the Sci Fri story by (I believe) Isaac Azimov, wherein the intergalactic civilization grows and grows and the computers and databases needed grow with it. Then they need computers and databases with the indices to the data; then more or fewer and bigger computers to capture the indices for the indices, etc.
Finally one large lonely computer is left cogitating on all of this in space/time. Eventually it says “Let there be light” and there was ….
Asimov had an incredibly deep imagination, probably because he was so well versed in so many different sciences. He could “connect the dots” as well as invent them.
A lot of those old writers seem remarkably prescient today, not in the details perhaps, but in the general scope of events and inventions.
I had an MRI last week because we’re keeping an eye on a few brain things, and the report mentioned slight (so far) indications of this syndrome, which seems to be one of the factors in forgetting names and other symptoms of old age.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22927-microvascular-ischemic-disease