A few more post-NY-primary thoughts

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting article at RedState that crunches the delegate numbers and finds that it still won’t be easy for Trump to win the GOP nomination on the first convention ballot. I’m not at all sure about any of these projections (pro or con Trump, it doesn’t matter which) because there are too many unknowns. But this one makes enough sense that it should cheer at least a few of you up, at least a little bit.

I also have noticed the argument that, if the convention goes to a second ballot and Trump the frontrunner doesn’t win, many or even most of his supporters will be so angry they won’t vote for the eventual nominee no matter who he is (and for some, especially if he’s Ted Cruz). While that certainly seems true to me, I don’t think it matters all that much for the simple reason that I don’t think many or most of them were going to vote for the eventual nominee anyway if it wasn’t Trump. The reasons vary from person to person, but here are a few possibilities: they aren’t people who usually vote, and only Trump brought them into the political fray; they are activists who are dedicated to the destruction of the GOP; they are “the base” but are very very angry at the entire GOP and will only support Trump, because all the rest are tainted as far as they’re concerned; they are liberal Republicans who will not vote for a conservative; they believe the constant drumbeat of negative publicity about “lyin’ Ted”; they don’t like Ted Cruz’s face or his voice or his religious beliefs.

The Republican Party has been divided for many years now, and the division reached a fever pitch during and after the 2012 election. I’ve watched it and tracked it, and it’s only grown ever since (with a little blip for the hope represented by the 2014 mid-term election). Trump (helped by the activist alt-right) is a magnet for this emotion—a magnet that has not only attracted the feeling, but has purposely amplified it for his own purposes.

New York primary: if Trump can make it there…

The New Neo Posted on by

…can he make it everywhere?

In other words, what is the significance of Donald Trump’s yuuge win in his home state?

He was expected to win, and win big. That was already factored into projections about his final vote total on the first ballot at the convention, and those predictions have been that he had a good chance of falling a bit short. However, yesterday Trump won even bigger in NY than the polls had predicted, and gets a few more delegates than was expected. That may or may not matter.

Kasich and Cruz did about as expected, with Cruz doing very poorly. New York is not Cruz’s natural territory at all, and he didn’t help himself with his “New York values” statement many months ago. Even though he was quoting Donald Trump, Cruz’s remarks were clumsily phrased and unclear—and ripe for exploitation by Trump, and that’s what happened. But even without those remarks, I don’t think Cruz would ever have done well in NY. And even if Kasich had bowed out and it had been a 2-person race there, I still think that Trump would have garnered all or nearly all of New York’s GOP delegates.

Which brings us to the question of who are these New York GOP voters, and what is their political philosophy? Michael Barone describes them this way:

New York has always believed in commerce and in tolerance, but has had little use for principle. Like Amsterdam in the age of Rembrandt, it is the greatest trading and finance system in the world, with a taste for high art and low life. In New York you are considered “old money” if you have held your fortune for 10 minutes…

It’s a city that, like its son Donald Trump, loves winners — winners like the New York Yankees, hated in much of America but loved in New York. Longtime Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and on-and-off manager Billy Martin may have been brash and boorish, but they were loved in New York. Hey, they were winners.

Trump speaks in the accents and cadences of New York — not of the ancestral rich in Manhattan but in the upward strivers and figure-out-the-angles rich of the outer boroughs and Long Island suburbs…

Only 23 percent of New York state voters are registered Republicans…

In a quick search just now I couldn’t find any statistics on some hard facts about New York’s GOP voters, but I have long noted that victorious GOP politicians in New York (no, that’s not an oxymoron) tend not to be what we’d call conservatives. For example, the city of New York has sometimes had Republican mayors, but those mayors have been far from conservative (Bloomberg, Giuliani, Lindsay).

There have always been more Republicans upstate than in the city, but in recent years they have very rarely been able to overcome the NYC advantage and elect a statewide Republican. In fact, New York has elected only three GOP governors since 1923: Thomas Dewey, Nelson Rockefeller, and George Pataki. Dewey “led the moderate or progressive faction of the Republican Party.” Rockefeller was the quintessential moderate Republican in the same mold. Pataki was more of a mixed bag, but in this year’s primary he endorsed Kasich, which tells us something (and might be one of the reasons for Kasich’s relatively strong showing there).

In the 70s there was one conservative Republican senator from New York, James L. Buckley (William F.’s brother), who was elected (with only 38.7 of the vote) for one term as somewhat of a fluke in a six-candidate race where the liberal GOP vote was split. Jacob Javits, a GOP senator from NY from 1957-1981, was another liberal. Alphonse D’Amato has the distinction of having been New York’s last GOP senator (1981-1999), initially elected because of another split between two liberal candidates, but re-elected after that despite his relative conservatism. But he was an anomaly, and IMHO the end of a rather short line.

So I think we can safely say that New York’s Republicans are not conservatives and were never voting for Cruz in anything but very small numbers. This can probably be said for much of the Northeast GOP: not only has Trump done very well there (and not just in New York), but Kasich has come in second quite reliably. This has been true in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, all of which have already voted. Maine was the anomaly; it went for Cruz, but that was in a caucus and it’s not at all clear whether Cruz would done nearly as well in a primary. You can see exactly the same “Trump, then Kasich” trend in Connecticut polls.

I’m not going to keep going with this, because I think you get the idea: the northeast GOP has not been conservative for a long, long time, and is not especially interested in Cruz. Cruz’s strength in other states that have yet to vote in their primaries is not such that he could ever win on a first ballot. His chances depend on Trump losing on a first ballot—which still could happen. But let’s not kid ourselves; it seems less likely after last night, because there’s something about momentum that is real, and Trump is going to seem a bit more inevitable (although not actually in fact inevitable) after that New York vote.

It seems ironic to me that it comes down to this, after such a promising beginning to the primary season. Ironic and depressing, because of my oft-stated opinion about Trump. I also think Trump has no chance of winning in a general election against Hillary Clinton (whose nomination has always seemed inevitable to me), and Cruz has a better chance but not a great one. On the other hand, I think Rubio could and would have beaten her. Maybe even Kasich could beat her, strangely enough. I’ve written about both before, and am not getting into their merits or demerits in this post, but feel strongly that either would have been a better president than either Trump or Clinton.

And that’s where we stand today. I have no idea if Trump will win on that first ballot, but I give him a better-than-even chance. And I believe that will lead to Hillary Clinton being the next US president. I also believe the entire situation is abysmal.

[NOTE: I also predict that if nominated, Trump will lose New York in the general to Hillary. By the way, this was my 2012 prediction about Hillary’s chances in 2016.]

[ADDENDUM: John Podhoretz is even more pessimistic than I am.]

Yeah, it’s New York primary day

The New Neo Posted on by

[UPDATE below]

You wanna make something of it?

I’m not expecting a fun result. The real question is how big Trump’s margin will be, and how the various districts will go.

Here’s an open thread to discuss it all.

UPDATE 10:55 PM

All the returns are not in yet, but it’s shaping up to be a very bad evening for those of us who think a Trump nomination would be a disaster. As expected, Trump was strong overall, but it’s the district breakdowns that were the big unknowns. FiveThirtyEight projects at the moment that Trump will get 91 delegates to Kasich’s 4, and Cruz none (it’s changing slightly even as I write, as more returns come in, but that’s the general picture). Cruz has always been weak in NY, but I had thought Kasich might pull out a few more delegates than that. This is the sort of result I have been dreading for quite some time.

Hillary has done very well, too, as expected.

On Rush Limbaugh

The New Neo Posted on by

In comment after comment around the blogosphere, I’ve noticed quite a few Rush Limbaugh’s fans saying that they’re incredibly disappointed in him for his coverage of the 2016 primary, and have abandoned him and his show. Some of them were lifelong (or at least decades-long) listeners.

I’m not a listener. I don’t like talk shows in general and very rarely tune in to Rush or anyone else, probably because I’d much rather read my information than hear it. I get impatient and easily bored with the slow pace of talk compared to reading. With reading I can pace myself—pay more attention to the items that interest me most, skim the others, and go fast or slow as I wish. With talk shows, other people set the rhythm, and the pace usually doesn’t feel right to me. Plus, I find that talk shows usually are more about the personality of the speaker than the issues.

So I’m hardly the best person to opine on whether Rush Limbaugh has been fair this season—whether he’s in the tank for Trump or not, or a betrayer of conservatism or not—although over the years I’ve become somewhat familiar with his show (and the shows of all the major radio hosts on the right) from listening for a few minutes or a half hour or so now and then to get a general feel for the style and message. What I really think about talk show hosts (not just Limbaugh, by any means) is that they are first and foremost in the business of getting ratings. And what pumps up ratings is not sober, intellectual analysis and evenhanded evaluation, it’s the spice of sensationalism, anger, accusations, humor, controversy, and cleverness. Talk shows are a business, and although the topic may be politics, business is business.

So I’m rather surprised that so many people seem so surprised at whatever it is that Rush Limbaugh is doing, or what they perceive him to be doing. For an example of what that might be, and how his disappointed ex-fans see him now, please read this post and some of the ensuing comments. In the incident being discussed there, Limbaugh apparently described Trump as having lied about what happened in the selection process of the delegates in Colorado, but added that the lie was planned in advance and effective, and therefore a “brilliant” populist move of Trump’s to fool and manipulate voters/supporters (that’s a paraphrase by me, not Rush’s actual words—for the actual quotes, go to the link).

Some people—the Rush defenders—are saying that doesn’t mean Limbaugh was praising that behavior of Trump’s, just that he was exposing it and explaining it. Others—the Rush critics—said that Limbaugh was saying the behavior was fine because it’s the way for Trump to win, and that this whole season Limbaugh has been defending whatever Trump has done in the guise of “explaining” him.

I was also surprised that neither the name “Machiavelli” nor the adjective “Machiavellian” has popped up in any of the discussions I’ve seen on the subject, because it seems to me that Limbaugh, by using words like “brilliant” to refer to Trump’s supposed strategy of losing in order to “win” through a bald-faced lie about what happened in Colorado, was using the word “brilliant” in the Machiavellian sense. And that brings up an old old quandry: how immoral can, or should, a politician be before he or she has crossed a line that means he/she should be roundly condemned?

That seems to me to be the heart of the matter. Is it wrong to purposely plan to lie like that (if you accept Limbaugh’s theory about Trump’s motive, which I don’t)—particularly about an opponent in your own party—in order to stir up populist anger in your favor? If Limbaugh is describing this in a neutral manner, doesn’t he have a duty to say whether it’s right or wrong, good or bad, in more than the pragmatic sense? In addition, how about the harm such a “winning” strategy might do to the conservative cause, and even to Trump’s manipulated and misled followers—in other words, to everyone except Donald Trump?

To me, that’s the biggest failing in Limbaugh—his lack of a moral judgment on what he says Trump is doing. Whether he thinks it’s perfectly fine, or whether he thinks it’s something a candidate shouldn’t do, he should make himself clear and not pretend the action has no moral valence.

Here’s a comment at that same RedState post that points out this problem:

Rush used to mock liberals who marveled at the brilliance of Bill Clinton’s lying. Rush has never been “neutral” with liars in previous campaigns.

I’ve not listened to Limbaugh enough to know whether that’s true, but I suspect it is (and other commenters in the thread said as much). I’m not naive; lying is certainly something that goes hand in hand with politics, but there are degrees of lies, seriousness of lies, types of lies, and targets of lies, and some lies are much worse than others. Being neutral and merely describing a lying technique and praising it as you do so seems to be a bit Machiavellian on Rush’s part, too:

Machiavelli believed that public and private morality had to be understood as two different things in order to rule well. As a result, a ruler must be concerned not only with reputation, but also must be positively willing to act immorally at the right times. As a political theorist, Machiavelli emphasized the occasional need for the methodical exercise of brute force or deceit including extermination of entire noble families to head off any chance of a challenge to the prince’s authority.

Scholars often note that Machiavelli glorifies instrumentality in statebuilding, an approach embodied by the saying “The ends justify the means.”

The right used to be fond of saying that such an “ends justifies the means” philosophy was one of the things that was wrong with the left. Yet it seems to be a universally appealing one—doesn’t it?—because many on the right appear to be embracing it these days.

[NOTE: I’ve written about Limbaugh before, here and here.]

When do you need a tetanus booster?

The New Neo Posted on by

I have to say this is not a question I’ve thought about in recent decades: do you need a tetanus booster every 10 years or will every 30 suffice? Evidence now indicates that 30-year intervals might do nicely, but I am almost certain it’s been more than thirty years since I’ve had mine. Then again, I don’t walk barefoot outside anymore, for what it’s worth.

On the other hand, about forty years ago I was in Costa Rica, running in sandaled feet for a ferry that was about to leave the dock without me, and I tripped a little bit (or my sandals tripped me). As a result, I sustained a nasty scrape/puncture on some very rough pavement and stones. I did catch the ferry, which led me to a place called Jesusita (then very rustic), and I had time to mull over whether my lack of a recent tetanus booster would predispose me to getting the disease.

I survived without the booster, but when I got home I made sure I got the shot. That was the last time, though. The subject just hasn’t been on my mind since. And you?

Ukraine’s new Prime Minister…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is Jewish:

The Jewish speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Volodymyr Groysman, has been elected prime minister after a months-long political crisis.

The parliament on Thursday voted 250-57 for Groysman, who was nominated by President Petro Poroshenko.

The outgoing prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, resigned earlier this week after weeks of pressure for him to step down. He had survived a no-confidence vote in February.

Groysman has been perceived as a conciliatory figure after the governing coalition refused to support U.S.-born Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who has been lauded as a West-friendly reformist untainted by cronyism and corruption.

Speaking ahead of the vote, Groysman said his government was committed to tackling graft and strengthening ties with the European Union.”I understand the threats that face us. In particular I would like to highlight three threats – corruption, ineffective governance and populism, which do not pose less of a threat than the enemy in eastern Ukraine,” he said, referring to a pro-Russian separatist rising.”I will show you what leading a country really means,” he added.

I have no idea whether Groysman will be able to stem corruption and “ineffective governance.” If he succeeds, however, that would make him a very unusual person. I’m not at all sure what he’s talking about when he says that “populism” is a threat—does it translate from Ukrainian to the same word here, with all its ramifications? Nor am I particularly conversant with Ukrainian politics or Ukrainian issues, other than the very obvious difficulties they’ve had with Russia. So I can’t really comment on the merits of Groysman’s taking on the office, or whether he will be a success.

But an elected Jewish leader of any country other than Israel is unusual, to say the least. It is even more striking in a country such as Ukraine, which has a very lengthy and complex history with its Jews. No doubt you’ve met Jews in this country whose ancestors are said to be “from Russia,” but that’s more likely than not a shorthand for “from Ukraine.”

Jews in Ukraine have a lengthy history:

Jewish communities have existed in the territory of Ukraine from the time of Kievan Rus’ [882-1240] and developed many of the most distinctive modern Jewish theological and cultural traditions…According to the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish community in Ukraine constitute the third biggest Jewish community in Europe and the fifth biggest in the world.

In the 1800s and well into the 1900s, pogroms that murdered up to 50 thousand Jews occurred in Ukraine, where the blood libels was very active. But that violence paled in comparison to what the Nazis did there—it was the home of the famous Einsatzgruppen slaughters in which over a million Jews were shot in western Ukraine by the Nazis, with the cooperation of some of the locals. That reduced Ukraine’s Jewish population by about 70%, and the number of Jews there was further reduced when Communists persecuted much of the remainder, many of whom emigrated.

But quite a few remained, among them the ancestors of the youngish (38) Groysman, an entrepreneur who was previously city councilor and mayor of Vinnytsia, a member of Parliament, and then chairman of Parliament. I find his election as prime minister an encouraging sign that anti-Semitism has probably declined in that country recently. In much of Europe—and the world—it seems to be doing quite the opposite.

Large Roman villa found in England

The New Neo Posted on by

When I was a newlywed my husband and I took a trip to Europe, spending most of our time in England and France. It was the 70s, and Europe (and the world) was a lot less crowded and traveling not particularly hectic compared to today. We rented a car and drove around the countryside in a leisurely fashion (that is, my husband drove around—I was the happy passenger) wherever the mood took us.

I had studied my history, and so of course I knew that long ago the Romans had gotten around those parts rather extensively. But what I’d never realized, probably because I’d never thought about it, was how much of a mark they left. Roman ruins were all over the place, almost wherever you drove in the countryside, standing in their classic splendor and reminding us of antiquity. In New England we’ve got some old buildings, but nothing quite like that.

And so I find this news very exciting:

It started off as a bit of basic home improvement, but it ended up with the discovery of one of the largest Roman Villas ever found in the UK.

While laying an electricity cable beneath the grounds of his home, near the village of Tisbury, in Wiltshire, Luke Irwin found the remains of what appeared to be an ornate Roman Mosaic.

But what emerged when archaeologists from Historic England and Salisbury Museum began excavating the site was even more of a surprise.

They found the mosaic was part of the floor of a much larger Roman property, similar in size and structure to the great Roman villa at Chedworth.

But in a move that will surprise many, the remains ”“ some of the most important to be found in decades – have now been re-buried, as Historic England cannot afford to fully excavate and preserve such an extensive site.

That last sentence is less exciting. But perhaps some day—

Take a look at how elaborate the villa was, and how it wouldn’t look so out of place today were it to be reconstructed:

SCOTUS hears immigration challenge

The New Neo Posted on by

Reading SCOTUS tea leaves is a difficult but nearly irresistible temptation. This time the case is a big one (and Justice Scalia will be sorely missed by the right, as he has been several times since his death): whether President Obama overreached when he granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.

Some historic background:

“In 225 years, the Supreme Court has never had occasion to ask the president whether he has reneged on his oath to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. However, with pens and phones replacing checks and balances, the Supreme Court is now poised to break new constitutional ground in order to preserve our embattled separation of powers,” said Josh Blackman, associate professor at the South Texas College of Law, who has followed the case from the start and filed amicus briefs opposing Mr. Obama’s claim of powers.

At issue is the Take Care Clause, which is what scholars call the Constitution’s charge to presidents to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

That clause has been read to be both empowering to presidents, emboldening them with independent authority to see through the execution of laws, but also as a check ”” that, in the end, he carry out laws rather than write them.

Illegal immigration is a very large issue, to be sure. But the issue described in that quote is an even larger one, because it applies to executive power vs. legislative power as a whole, not just regarding immigration. Is not enforcing a law within the scope of “faithfully executing” it? I think it’s clear that it is not—except in the Orwellian sense. But of course the justices on the left side of the Court can probably come up with some excellent-sounding counter-arguments if they wish to, and I think they will wish to, because it’s President Obama who did it.

Now that there are only eight justices on the Court, many pundits say that the result of this case is likely to be a tie. That’s not a bad bet, considering the way SCOTUS has been split in the past and the way these justices usually decide. There’s much extra speculation about Justice Roberts, of course, who—despite having been appointed by a GOP president—twisted himself into a rhetorical knot in order to allow Obamacare to stand. Roberts may indeed, as the article I just linked indicates, avoid the hot issue of Obama’s overreach by ruling on narrow grounds that the states suing don’t have standing because they haven’t suffered the kind of damage that would give them a cause of action. That would preserve the question for a possible later date.

That’s certainly the sort of thing Roberts might do, because if there’s been one constant in his rulings it’s the desire to avoid making the Court the arbiter of tough decisions that overrule one or another branch of Congress. IMHO, that is why he didn’t want to overrule Obamacare—because it was an act of Congress and supposedly represented the will of the people (ignoring, of course, how it was passed). In this case, though, we’re talking about a conflict between Congress and the president in which the president has usurped both the power of Congress and the explicit wording of the Constitution (“faithfully execute”). That seems different to me—but will it seem different to Justice Roberts?

In this particular case, by the way, a tie vote would have the effect of leaving a lower court’s injunction in place, which would block Obama’s plan for now. So a tie would be something like a small victory for the right.

Edward Villella: on “a guy” called Stravinsky

The New Neo Posted on by

In my relative youth, Edward Villella was one of my favorite dancers—and to tell you the truth I was more than a little bit in love with him. Here he talks—with his usual modesty—about what it’s like to be in the presence of greatness. I think he’s in his 60s or 70s here (he’s now close to 80):

Edward Villella Interview from Deb kaufman on Vimeo.

It shows why I love Villella, who in his prime once taught a class of mine and had me swooning. I married someone who looked more than a little bit like him, by the way.

Years ago when I last checked, I could find very little video of Villella dancing, even on YouTube. But let me just say he was handsome, virile, graceful, and emotional all at once, although I don’t think his power as a dancer would transfer all that well to film or video. Yes, his technique didn’t have the perfect polish of many of today’s male dancers, but in person that didn’t detract, it somehow added.

I’ve just noticed, though, that someone has uploaded on YouTube a lengthy documentary on Villella. I haven’t had a chance to look at it except for a couple of minutes, but I like Villella’s little speech at the beginning of this segment:

[NOTE: I’ve written before about Villella, here.]

Vash your hands

The New Neo Posted on by

You know those hot air hand dryers found in almost all public restrooms? I’ve never liked them to begin with. Time-consuming, don’t really dry your hands thoroughly—and now I discover that they throw a bunch of viruses into the air, particularly one of the newer designs called the Dyson:

Researchers have long known that warm hand dryers can launch bacteria into the air””compared to dabbing with paper towels, which unleashes virtually none. But new jet air dryers, made by Dyson, are significantly more problematic””they launch far more viruses into the air, which linger for longer periods of time and reach much farther distances, researchers recently reported in the Journal of Applied Microbiology. This is particularly concerning because viruses, unlike many infectious bacteria, can easily maintain their infectiousness in the air and on surfaces, and just a few viral particles can spark an infection.

Peachy keen.

Then again, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right? Doesn’t exposure to a “normal” amount of bacteria (not sure about viruses), particularly when young, increase our resistance and in particular decrease allergies?

Not only that, but you know those antibiotic soaps and washes that have become so popular in recent years? Just to show you how curmudgeonly I am, I go to great lengths to buy soap that doesn’t have them, because from the start I haven’t trusted them. I ordinarily wash my hands with regular soap in order to reduce colds and the like, and when I’m leaving a hospital or medical building I usually do take a shot at those antibiotic washes, but otherwise I steer clear of them.

And it turns out I might be wise to do so:

Aiello next considered the antibiotic soaps and wipes now used, in one form or another, by 75% of American households. Odds are that you use them. Go check your labels. Sadly, Aiello and colleagues found that antibiotic soaps and wipes with triclosan were no more likely than good old-fashioned soap to prevent gastrointestinal or respiratory illness. In Aiello’s words, “There was little evidence for an additional impact of new products, such as alcohol-based hand sanitizers or antibacterial soaps compared with nonantibacterial soaps, for reducing either gastrointestinal or respiratory infectious illness symptoms.”

For example, in a study Aiello reviewed that was conducted in Pakistan, gastrointestinal illnesses were reduced by half when people washed their hands with soap and by a little less than half when they washed their hands with antibiotic soap. What is worse, perhaps the most comprehensive study of the effectiveness of antibiotic and non-antibiotic soaps in the U.S., led by Elaine Larson at Columbia University (with Aiello as a coauthor), found that while for healthy hand washers there was no difference between the effects of the two, for chronically sick patients (those with asthma and diabetes, for example) antibiotic soaps were actually associated with increases in the frequencies of fevers, runny noses and coughs. In other words, antibiotic soaps appeared to have made those patients sicker. Let me say that again: Most people who use antibiotic soap are no healthier than those who use normal soap. AND those individuals who are chronically sick and use antibiotic soap appear to get SICKER.

Not only that, but take a look at this:

…[A] group of scientists recently made artificial drains clogged with bacteria (oh, the difficulties of science) and then subjected them to low and high doses of [one of the main ingredients in these antibacterial soaps] triclosan (similar to what happens when your detergent goes down the drain). Even at high concentrations, triclosan appears to have no effect on the number of bacterial cells in our drains. BUT, it does affect which species are found there. Triclosan kills “weak” bacteria but favors the tolerant, among them species of bacteria that eat triclosan. Yes, I said eat triclosan. Triclosan may also favor lineages of bacteria that are also resistant to the oral antibiotics used in hospitals and elsewhere, though how often and consistently is, as of yet, unclear.

Not good. No, not good, and pretty much what I suspected might happen from the start, when I first saw these products on the market.

But I also know—from many long years of involuntary observation—that the majority of people don’t even wash their hands after using the bathroom. And scientists back that up when they try to quantify it: “A study of nearly eight thousand individuals in five U.S. cities found almost half of the participants failed to wash their hands after going to the bathroom.”

Somehow, though, most of us manage to survive pretty well, until old age or some non-catchable disease gets us. We are a hardy bunch for the most part, at least nowadays when the plague and smallpox and many other traditional scourges of mankind have been mostly eradicated. That doesn’t mean something new couldn’t rise up—as the scaremonger media often likes to suggest is happening. Nor does it mean we shouldn’t wash our hands assiduously. We should.

Which reminds me of an old Jewish joke. It goes like this:

In the olden days, pharmacies often had soda counters too. An elderly woman walks into that kind of pharmacy and goes up to the pharmacist, and asks (best done with a Yiddish accent), “Do you test the pee here?” The pharmacist answers (best done with a generic American accent), “Yes, we do urine analysis here.” Then she asks, “And do you test the spit, too?” He answers, nodding, “Yes, we do sputum analysis.” Then she asks, “And how about the kaka? Do you test that, too?” He nods and solemnly says, “Yes, we do fecal analysis.”

She says, “Okay, then—vash your hands and make me a chocolate malt.”

ADDENDUM: And then there’s Sheldon: