The 10th Justice

During the last election I voted for Hillary Clinton because I thought she was the most qualified candidate. I liked Bernie Sanders ideas for making America a fairer and more humane country. My heart was with Bernie but my brain said vote Hillary and I did. Look what happened! So what do we do this time? My problem was clarified in the David Brooks column in which he said that Marianne Williamson best understood how to beat Trump because in the debate she said: “This is part of the dark underbelly of American society: the racism, the bigotry and the entire conversation that we’re having here tonight. If you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in this country, then I’m afraid that the Democrats are going to see some very dark days.” In the past we voted for the candidate with the ideas and character we admired. Trump has no ideas and his character is revolting. He was elected b...

Shadow , the latest film by Zhang Yimou, won't appeal to American audiences for the same reasons that the Peking (Beijing) Opera has never found an appreciative American audience, except, of course for the comedy and acrobatics. Jackie Chan who started off in the Peking Opera, took those two aspects of Peking Opera and added American themes and did quite well. The high pitched voices and twangy musical instruments are too alien. I suspect, Mr. Yimou, who is getting older, was very pleased with this film. With it he has created a truly classic Chinese film. I suspect the film will be very successful in China and not just to an audience of thrill seeking, martial arts aficionados, but people who appreciate the ancient opera tradition of China much in the way that a lot of American still appreciate Shakespeare. The long Chinese classic novel The Dream of the Red Chamber tells the story of the Chinese social system much as Shakespeare told us about western society. Shadow is a cinemat...

Recently the New York Times published an article titled The Surfer's Secret to Happiness . Nice article that fits well with my last blog post about The Magic Mountain in that it talks about the opportunities that come with acquiring a disability. The writer watches surfers and recognizes how little time they spend shooting down the wave face compared to waiting for a wave, paddling in and out, living their lives off the water and working at their "crap jobs" which they did just to support their real job which was surfing. And that is where in the article that I realized the author hadn't really learned the surfer lesson. Forget surfers for a moment. We'll get back to them. First, there are no "crap jobs". Our human life, especially in cities, is so complex, it requires a huge variety of tasks to maintain our stable existence. Picking up garbage, cleaning sewers, selling insurance, baristaring, responding to the complaint hotline, making robo-calls, ar...

Remember Newton's third law of physics - every action has an equal and opposite reaction? The medical equivalent is - every new chronic disability presents a new opportunity. I have a hard time thinking what opportunity comes with difficult and terminal conditions such as pancreatic cancer and ALS except they usually give the victim time to say good-bye to loved ones and settle one's affairs. But most other, non-rapidly fatal or remitting conditions come with an opportunity. Once we get over the shock at realizing we have an a chronic illness or have lost some function, we have the opportunity to develop a whole new set of skills to compensate for what is lost. Unlike the Newton's law where the equal and opposite reaction always occurs, the new opportunity doesn't always get taken up. We are dealing with human beings here, who have free will, unlike ball bearings who have no free will, thankfully. Some human beings, when faced with the loss of a leg, take to the couch, ...