Humans and Vulcans

There's a lot of talk about "Federation values" in the Star Trek universe, but humans and Vulcans are pretty much always jerks to each other, except when they learn the lesson not to be at the end of the episode.

No, journalism is not 'morally indefensible'

Also from Ryu Spaeth's takedown of Ben Smith:

However, every journalist, very much including Smith, at some point will have to face the morally indefensible way we go about our business: namely, using other people to tell a story about the world. Not everyone dupes their subjects into trusting them, but absolutely everyone robs other people of their stories to tell their own.

Oh, bullshit.

At its best, journalism provides journalists a platform not to rob other people of their stories, but to amplify the stories of people who might not otherwise be heard widely. This is especially true of journalists at local papers, who go to church and shop in the same stores and send their kids to the same schools as the people they both serve and cover. It's an imperfect, messily human process, and journalists don't always get it right. I haven't always gotten it right. But to characterize this process, of listening and then passing on what you have heard, as a robbery -- instead of the necessarily flawed process of communication that it is -- is morally obtuse.

Question about the assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist

I get that hawks are hawks, and they're going to want to go to war. But why do hawks in Israel and the U.S. seem to want a war with Iran so badly? What am I missing?

Have I been using em-dashes incorrectly?

 From TNR's critique of media columnist Ben Smith:

Wait. I often use em-dashes like Smith does, basically as a replacement for a colon. I also use them, paired, basically as parentheses within a sentence.

Have I been doing it wrong the whole time?

Presidential transitions are bad

 If we can’t shorten transitions after a presidential election, perhaps we could at least make them less-prone to mishchief? A president should serve out the full length of the term, of course. But maybe rule making should cease between election and inauguration, when a new president is arriving in office. If you didn’t get it done in the four years before now, well, you had your chance. 

Donald Trump demands proof of a negative

 

Needless to say, we don’t require people in America to prove their innocence. It’s up to Trump to prove fraud happened in the election. So far, he has made a lot of allegations. Proof? Not so much. But it is worrisome to suggest the White House is Biden’s only if Biden can prove he didn’t do the stuff that Trump is making up about him. He may be a bad authoritarian, but this is still authoritarian behavior.  

I couldn't sleep for a long time. Now I can.

This year, I am thankful for the ability to sleep. Because until earlier this year, I hadn’t slept well for most of a decade. And it was killing me. Let me tell you a story...

I trace my years of bad sleep back to the surgeries I had in 2011. My already-bad nasal passageways were messed up even more by a bad attempt to shove an oxygen tube up them before the second surgery, with the result that almost no air got through afterward. (I was a mouthbreather by necessity.) I never really recovered from those surgeries -- my torso is broken -- and my sleep was the worst outcome of all: During my last years in Philly, I would fall asleep at work (humiliating -- I even fell asleep during a cop corruption trial in front of colleagues) or wake up in my home at night having sleptwalk around the place. A couple of times I woke up because I was accidentally injuring myself.

And the exhaustion was total.

My life felt awful. My ability to hold a regular job, instead of freelancing, felt awful. (Spending eight hours in an office was an ungodly challenge.) My blood pressure and weight ballooned. Depression set in. I couldn’t read a book or watch a movie without falling asleep. Everything was a struggle.

A nasal surgery a couple of years back helped restore some function -- I haven’t sleptwalk in a couple of years -- but honestly -- I entered 2020 ready, and maybe even willing, to be done. To die. It was that bad. It had been years since I slept more than about two hours at a stretch, and even that sleep was nastily oxygen deprived.

I took a sleep apnea test the night of the Iowa caucuses. It came back how I expected, but with a discouraging result: The CPAP machine they tried to use on me was impossible. I felt like I was drowning. I couldn’t keep it on for more than a few seconds at a time. I felt like I had run out of options.

Only, I hadn't.

One weird thing about the pandemic lockdown. They made me reset. I stopped eating out much. The result: No more fried foods. The reflux that had been a regular part of my life for years just ... kind of disappeared. And the anxiety made my heart palpitate a bit, so I stopped drinking coffee. And I adjusted my sleeping arrangements to prop my upper body up a bit so that my sleepy breathing is better. 

And sometime over the summer, I realized I'd had a few good nights of sleep. That I wasn't waking up all the time.

That I felt ... rested.

There is something of a virtuous feedback loop to all of this. Not being exhausted and out of oxygen has made it possible for me to exercise better than I have in a long time. Starting in August, I regularly walk two miles a day. When the year started, that would have been beyond me.

So the weird thing for me about 2020 is that I arrive at Thanksgiving more personally hopeful about my ability to live than I have been for years. I am a better father and husband than I was, I think. Not so crippled by depression, or an inability to walk more than a block without needing to find a seat. I am not all the way back -- and honestly, I probably won't get there. But I am a lot further back than I expected to be. I'd lost hope. Now I can sleep again. And everything about me is better for it.