An unusual case of identity crisis

We have all heard of stories from fiction and real life of infants switched at birth. But the radio program This American Life had a true story with an unusual twist to this familiar tale.

Jason and Randy are identical twins, with Jason being born first and Randy emerging five minutes later back in 1972. Randy had to spend the first few days of his life in an incubator but after that the twins were identical, so similar that even their parents could not tell them apart. To keep track of which was Jason and which was Randy, their mother Annette dressed Jason in blue and Randy in red. As a backup, she would use blue diaper pins for Jason and pink for Randy.

All went well until they went for their six-week check up to the doctor. Annette dressed them in identical fancy outfits an aunt had sent them but kept the diaper pin system in order to tell them apart. But then the nurse took them from the mother, presumably for weighing, and when she returned she proudly told Annette that they had just started using pin-less disposable diapers (disposable diapers that used adhesive fasteners only came out in 1968) and she had put the boys in them, thus making them indistinguishable to their mother
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An amusing monologue by Jimmy Kimmel

Last night he covered several topics that have been in the news these past few days.

At the 4:45 mark, he mentions anti-mask zealot Fox News’s Tucker Carlson’s calls to people to report the parents of children who wear masks to the police or Child Protection Services for child abuse. I think we have to conclude that at this point Carlson has deliberately chosen to become a parody of himself so that he can gain attention by generating ridicule for the things he says. (Having scorn rain down on you and being seen as an idiot is, for some inexplicable reason, viewed as some kind of victory by right-wingers and is known by them as ‘owning the libs’.)

I cannot believe that even his loyal audience will follow his advice. If some do, I would love to listen to their conversations with the police and CPS dispatchers as they try to convince them of what abuse the children are being subjected to by wearing masks.

Long overdue recognition that Israel is an apartheid state

While some prominent people like Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter have labeled Israel as an apartheid state, some human rights groups and progressives in the US have long shied away from criticizing Israel’s awful treatment of Palestinians, earning them the label of PEPs, standing for ‘progressive except for Palestine’. Hence I am glad that at least one prominent human rights group has finally come right out and stated that what is going on in Israel and the occupied territories is nothing less than apartheid.
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India’s massive second wave of covid-19

It was just a month ago that I posted about how the numbers of covid-19 cases in so many countries in Asia and Africa were much lower than models predicted and India was cited as one example. That situation has changed dramatically since then. The average number of daily deaths in India had reached a low of less than 100 on March 8th but as of yesterday had rocketed up to about 2,500. This figure shows that it is now around Brazil’s daily death rate. That country’s leader Jair Bolsonaro is being blamed for his downplaying of the danger of covid-19 and ignoring expert advice on how to deal with it.

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A new low in US anti-vaccine misinformation

A private school in Florida (of course!) is actually barring vaccinated teachers from interacting with students. The school fees are pretty high which shows that this school caters to the high income and high wealth population.

A Miami school has discouraged teachers from getting the Covid vaccine, saying any vaccinated employees will be barred from interacting with students.

Centner Academy leadership cited debunked claims of non-vaccinated people being “negatively impacted” by contact with vaccinated people.
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Is this harsh treatment really necessary?

The treatment of people caught up in the US penal system is often brutal. One of the results of celebrities going to jail is that we get to hear of harsh treatment that is meted out to detainees that are ignored when poor and unknown people are subjected to it. One such case is Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s close associate, who has complained to an appeals court during a bail hearing that she is not allowed to sleep at all. Recall that Epstein died by suicide in jail though no evidence has been presented that Maxwell is suicidal.

Two of three judges on a second US circuit court of appeals panel in Manhattan expressed concern about light shone in her cell every 15 minutes at night as Federal Bureau of Prisons (BoP) guards make sure she is breathing.
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California slated to have governor recall election

The state of California is famous for having all manner of issues decided by placing propositions on the ballot. Its state constitution also has a provision in which any statewide office holder can be removed from office and replaced. All that is required to trigger such an election is for just 12% of the number who voted in the previous election to vote in favor of a recall. That has just happened with governor Gavin Newsom, who won election to the position in 2018 with more than 60% of the vote. The vote will be held later this year.

The recall effort is led by Republicans who opposed Democrat Newsom’s pandemic shutdowns and mask mandate, as well as his immigration and tax policies. The campaign has tried to distance itself from its ties to far-right groups, including QAnon, following the deadly 6 January attack on the US capitol.

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ESL not yet dead?

It appears that reports of the death of the new European Super League following the announced intention of withdrawing by the six UK clubs from the project may have been premature.

The Real Madrid president, Florentino Pérez, said the 12 clubs announced last week as founders of the European Super League cannot abandon it due to binding contracts and promised the project would return soon.

Pérez, whose club is one of three along with Barcelona and Juventus yet to withdraw, said it was not so simple for clubs to leave. “I don’t need to explain what a binding contract is but effectively, the clubs cannot leave,” Pérez told Spanish newspaper AS. “Some of them, due to pressure, have said they’re leaving. But this project, or one very similar, will move forward and I hope very soon.”

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Perceptions of time

I have long been interested in how we perceive time. There are many markers of time’s passage, daily and seasonal changes and biological changes being just some of them. Albert Einstein revolutionized our understanding of time by saying that physical time of an event is what is given by clocks placed at the location of the event, and then showed that the interval in clock readings between any two events depended on the state of motion of the clocks.

But there is also the psychological perception of time, the sense of how much time has elapsed when one has no external means such as a clock or diurnal rhythms to keep track of it. In an experiment, 15 volunteers were kept in a deep cave for 40 days without any means of knowing the passage of time other than their sense of it.
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Keeping track of right wing extremist groups

It can be difficult to keep track of the various extremist groups on the right since even though they share certain broad goals, they each have their own agendas and membership. In an article After The Storm in the April/May 2021 issue of The Progressive magazine, Matthew N. Lyons provides a handy list to enable us to keep track of whoo’s who and doing what.

Boogaloo bois: Started around 2018, this loose collection of people advocate overthrowing the state and view law enforcement as the enemy. While largely made up of white nationalists, they claim to have factions that support Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ movements. They often wear Hawaiian shirts as identifiers.
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