Donald Trump vs. Boris Johnson as the Curtain Falls on 2019

Well, the Trump impeachment hearings really hit their stride in the USA, with angry tweets, snubs and rebuttals flying around like mad.  This went down just as they decided to hold another election in the UK, amid angry calls for Boris Johnson's resignation. BOJO WON BY A LANDSLIDE just as Congress voted to impeach the 45th president.

NEVER A DULL MOMENT

WITH THESE GUYS!

Chaos: The Year In Review 2019

Well, FIGURES CONTINUE TO POUR IN about the state of the nation, and IT'S NOT A PRETTY PICTURE.

FERTILITY IS DROPPING.  Americans are not having enough children to replace the people who are dying off.  Marriage itself is fading out, especially among people young enough to be highly fertile, and that goes hand in hand with the low birth rate. 

AND THE DIE-OFF RATE IS RISING.  Just for starters, deaths from pregnancy complications have risen 200% in the USA from 1999 to 2017, and 64% just from 2007 to 2017.  And I've been reading for years and years that our death rates from those causes have always been much, much higher than in other developed countries.  NOW THEY'RE EVEN HIGHER.

Says here, in a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, that American life expectancy has dropped every year since 2014 -- we are the only developed country that is experiencing this -- in great part because of the spiraling rates of addiction and suicide. 

How many people are dying this way?  Says here that in 2017, about 150,000 Americans died of one or the other, pointing out that this exceeds the combat deaths in the Vietnam War, the Korean War and the Great War COMBINED.  IN ONE YEAR.  Another way of counting it:  imagine if about 3 full Boeing 737s crashed every month.  FOR SEVEN YEARS. 

Hey, think about it -- the count may be even higher than we realize.  Some suicides look like accidents, and even death researchers are happy to count a death as an accident if they can. 

We've all been trained to think of dying young as the fate of poor, hardscrabble people in countries stalked by famines, epidemics and chronic, grinding poverty.  BUT AMERICA IS ONE OF THE RICHEST COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD.  Funny, huh?  I keep hearing about how well our economy is doing, about how everyone who wants a job can get one, about the rise in the stock market.    So what's going on? 

Have you ever read this?

The book explains that in general, the better things get, the worse people feel, probably because they have less reason to look ahead and feel challenged by whatever they see there.  A nation of people who can just sit in front of the idiot box watching game shows don't have much reason to live.  Why not just drink yourself to death right now?

Okay, maybe that's it, but then why isn't that happening in every developed country?  Why are we Americans killing ourselves off, like a vast mob of lemmings hustling into a sea of tequila?  Why not the French or the Chinese or somebody?  Maybe people in other countries have more to protest:

Does anyone see where I'm going with this?  I think the sliver of Eris in every human being DEMANDS CONFLICT.  If we can no longer risk our lives hunting down woolly rhinos with pointed sticks, well, we'll become lawyers and get paid to ARGUE for a living.  If we represent a religion of some sort, we're oddly HAPPIER when there is some sort of argument about it -- pagans to roast alive, a widening gulf between the Eastern Orthodoxers and the proto-Catholics, a Protestant Reformation to get everyone hollering insults at each other.  I also remember reading somewhere that there are always about 11 wars going on, somewhere on earth.  Even a sneering contest with the neighbors over the back fence is a reason to gird yourself for battle.

Have you ever seen this in action?  The way people seem to come to life when they have something to fight against, argue about or disapprove of?

My advice, people, is GO WITH IT.  Do what comes naturally.  Eat that apple!  Then go spit the seeds in someone's face!

Woolly Bear Update (As We Get Closer To Xmas)

I'd have to say that so far, the Legend of the Woolly Bear is HOLDING TRUE.  I'm writing this on December 14th, 2019 and so far we have had only 3 really cold days -- in the 20s or lower (Fahrenheit) -- and only a little snowfall, swiftly banished by the next 40-degree day.  People are walking around in windbreakers today and we're in Michigan, for crying out loud -- the state where Alaskans complain that they wish they could go home because the winters are SO MUCH HARDER here.

So the wide red band on the woolly bears appears to be accurate, so far, in predicting a mild winter. 

I do wonder what the caterpillars look like in the areas nailed over the Thanksgiving weekend by Winter Storm Ezekiel.  Thousands of flights were cancelled, cars were twirling all over the roads until stopped by trees, and everything in the storm's path looked more or less like this:

I picture the blacker caterpiggles gathering in  places like Montana and signaling to the storm:  "This way!  We're over here!  Bring it, baby!" while the the redder ones where I live say something more like "Please do not step over the red line!  There is plenty of space to drop all that white stuff directly north of here, you will be welcomed father north, PLEASE PROCEED NORTH..."

...and somehow, the storm listened and obeyed!  OK, I'm sure it doesn't really work that way BUT IT'S NICE TO THINK ABOUT.