Smoking

With the coronavirus lockdown I’ve been spending less time at the office and more time at home.  That means watching more TV.  Giving the Simpsons a rest after finishing Season 12, I’m picking up on “The Twilight Zone”, which started in 1959.  I’m vaguely familiar with it but never seen the whole series from start to finish.  So every morning I’m watching two episodes.   I’m barely into season 1, and I dare say I’ll write a blog when I finish the whole thing.

Barring commenting on the show itself, the major thing I noticed is the prevalence of smoking.  Practically every character on the show smokes.  Huh?   This is 1959-60.  The Tobacco Lobby was alive and well in terms of pushing TV to feature people smoking.  Here’s a brief discussion thereof, written by someone else: https://crazynate.com/cigarette-companies-sneaking-into-movies/

Myself, I have not smoked a single cigarette, cigar, pipe, or chewing tobacco in my entire 51 year existence.   I would normally have started at high school in Paris, but no one there pressured me to do so, and I would have refused if they had.  For that matter, I rejected offers of marijuana and LSD in college.   So far as I could tell, the only benefit to smoking was that it supposedly made you look cool.   That was not my concern in high school and has not been since then.  Marijuana’s benefit seemed to be to induce “recreational stupidity”, as I call it, and likewise no one managed to persuade me to toke up in college, despite being surrounded by peers doing it seven days a week. 

Risks.  By now we know that nicotine is highly addictive, and that smoking can and will kill you.  In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell stated that there’s actually a threshold point for smoking:  keep below that point (I think it was 3 cigarettes a day) and you are a “chipper”, non-addicted, but cross that point and you will be addicted for life.  Never had the urge to find out.

Who do I know?  Few of the people I know smoke.  My father did, centuries before I was born, and quit “cold turkey”, as he said, in the early 1850s, sometime before the Civil War.  I believe I have a cousin who started late, “when I should have known better”, as he described it.  My buddy Ed smokes.  I seem to recall some aunts and cousins on my father's side - from Brooklyn and Long Island - smoking, which added to their thick accents, added to their charm. That’s about it – so few I can name them specifically.

Benefits.  To this day, I’ve yet to hear the benefits of smoking, whether from an actual smoker, from an ad, from TV, or a movie.  No one has explained to me what nicotine actually does. 

Barring that, I’ve had to surmise on my own by observing smokers on TV and movies.   They appear extremely nervous until they’ve smoked, at which point they suddenly seem calm and relaxed.  But they participate in all sorts of normal activities like driving, working, etc. while smoking.  This tells me that smoking relaxes you and removes your stress without making you loopy or uncoordinated, as alcohol or marijuana might do.   If that’s the case, it’s a major benefit, one which might explain why people keep up the habit to the point of crossing that threshold and becoming addicted. 
  

Soldiers.  As noted multiple times, my hearing kept me out of the military and I’ve never served in combat.  Umpteen times I see US soldiers in movies and TV shows smoking.  I can’t tell if this reflects the reality of warfare or just another example of the tobacco lobby’s success at promoting smoking on screen despite a ban on advertising. Given the circumstances I’m inclined to conclude that soldiers do, in fact, smoke fairly heavily.  However, anyone facing combat has more to worry about than whether cigarettes will kill them 20-30 years down the line – so I’ll cut them a break. 

Note that US soldiers are not unique in smoking: other countries' soldiers recognized the same benefits.  On December 15, 1944, the Germans launched a surprise attack on US forces in Belgium, the so-called Ardennes Offensive, which eventually petered out later in December.  In the meantime, Germans managed to capture substantial US materiel.  Pictures show German soldiers wielding M1 Carbines in the snow, and enjoying American cigarettes.  It seems the Germans had a preference for our tobacco....

Even knowing that still doesn’t induce me to start at 51.  I’ll stick with beer (No DUIs as yet either – and I’m not an alcoholic).  My sole comment about marijuana is that it should be legal.   Given that MJ is non-addictive and cannot kill you – it is physiologically impossible to die from THC, and even with hashish and concentrates out there since Colorado paved the way for us, no one has died – I’d say our risk in trying “maconha”, as the Brazilians call it, is somewhat low.  But to each his own….   

Alone in the Universe

Amidst this business of “social distancing” thanks to the COVID19 virus pandemic, a larger perspective occurred to me.  And no, it’s not induced by any mind-altering drugs, but merely my own overactive imagination.

Where Are The Aliens?   By now we know there is no one on the Moon, no Martians or Venusians, and no one on the remotely habitable moons of Jupiter or Saturn or those planets themselves, which are gas giants and not suitable to sustain life.  We haven’t received transmissions from Alpha Centauri or the Andromeda galaxy.   In fact, in all this time we’ve received no contact from any alien civilization, at any time in our history.   Of course, there are plenty of assertions to the contrary, but none of them stand up to any serious scientific scrutiny.

Look at how consistently cruel we are as humans.  We kill animals with no remorse.  We've had several waves of genocide - and the victims were fellow humans.  If there are aliens out there, chances are they would be hostile to us and wipe us out without a second thought.  Assuming they would be friendly and helpful is not a good idea - though I don't suppose we could rule that out absolutely.  But it's moot - again, we haven't found any evidence of aliens, friendly or hostile.

That being the case, the true horror is that we are ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE.  There is no other form of life anywhere, and there never was.   When the last human dies, the universe will be utterly devoid of intelligent life.

Life Here, a Timeline

13.8  billion years ago.   The Big Bang.  The Universe itself comes into existence – not sure how or why – and begins expanding.  What was there before that?  Absolutely no clue.

4.5 billion years ago.   Earth finally coalesces from the matter surrounding the Sun.

3.7 billion years ago.   Microbes, bacteria, and other single-celled organisms evolved into existence.

900 million years ago.  Multi-celled organisms came into existence.

540 million years ago.  The Cambrian Explosion, a large increase in life.

400 million years ago.  The first four-legged animals came into being.

250-65 million years ago.  The Dinosaurs.

100,000 years ago.  Humans are here. 

For 10 billion years, there was no life anywhere in the Universe – including Earth.  Until 100,000 years ago, there were no intelligent species.  That means 13,799,900,000 years with no intelligent life anywhere in the universe.       

Sun.  The Sun will not last forever.  It’s not big enough to go supernova on us, but it will exhaust its fuel and expand into a red giant in approximately 5 billion years (give or take a few days) and engulf Mercury, Venus, and probably Earth too.   Even if it doesn’t actually absorb Earth itself, it will be too hot to live here.  Any of us still around by then need to move somewhere else. 

Open or Closed Universe.  So far as we can tell, the universe is expanding, and has been since the Big Bang.  The question is, whether it will continue expanding indefinitely (open) or will eventually stop expanding, begin contracting, and then we’ll have a Big Crunch (closed).   We might imagine that the Big Bang itself was subsequent to a prior Big Crunch, and that the universe bangs and crunches indefinitely, over and over again.  If so, were there humans or other intelligent species in those prior universes, who simply perished when the universe crunched?  

More horror here concerns an open universe.   If the universe expands indefinitely, without a crunch, all the stars will eventually run out of fuel and go dark.  Eventually we’ll be left with a cold, dark universe forever.  That scenario actually makes a closed universe, with its cycle of bangs and crunches, somewhat more preferable. 

Parallel Universes.  If there are, in fact, parallel universes, there might be any number of them, or perhaps an infinite amount of them.  Some might be open, some might be closed.  How we might ascertain their existence is beyond my skill set as an attorney.  How we might travel from one universe to another is even further beyond that.  I dare say the top scientists, assisted by our array of helpful science fiction writers, are working on the problem now and will have an answer for us in our lifetimes.   Stay tuned.  

Adidas vs Puma

I was catching up on many of the shows I watch, including “Altered Carbon”, season 2.   That one threw the curve ball of recasting main character Tadeshi Kovacs from Joel Kinnamon, a white guy I recall as NY Governor Conway, Underwood’s Republican challenger in “House of Cards” and Rick Flag in “Suicide Squad”, to Anthony Mackie, a black guy I recall as Falcon in the Marvel films.  Fortunately many of the other characters, including Edgar Allen Poe, are still played by the same actors.  One character struck me as strongly resembling Ashton Kutcher, the actor being Torben Liebrecht, who plays Rudi Dassler in this film, Duell der Brüder - Die Geschichte von Adidas und Puma.  It’s a German film, in German, with English subtitles.

Some time in the 1920s, the Dassler brothers, Adolf “Adi” and Rudi, developed a shoe company, which became Adidas (from Adi Dassler).  Adi was the shoe guy, whereas Rudi was the business guy who knew how to run a company, pay the workers, keep the place running, etc.  The business continued into the 1930s, at which point the NSDAP took power.  The brothers joined the Nazi Party and were somewhat friendly with the leadership.   It’s intriguing that the film doesn’t make them either particularly enthusiastic nor reluctant:  with the war several years in the future and the horrors of the Holocaust well down the road, I suppose many Germans could be excused for some amount of support for the Nazi Party.  However, Dachau as a camp for political prisoners, the Gestapo, and the regime’s treatment of Jews, were all well known long before Poland was invaded. 

[Incidentally, of the six million Jews who perished in Auschwitz and the other death camps in Poland, most were Polish.  German Jews, for the most part, decided to “get the hell out” of Germany when they could.  Many came to the US, though US immigration policy tended to prefer Jews like Einstein who had some special skills.  Moreover, many moved to France and other countries which were later overrun by the Germans.  Denmark, for its part, allowed its Jews to escape to Sweden, and the Swedish not only let them in, but also gave them work permits.  Bulgaria earned the notable distinction of flat out refusing to cooperate with the SS in sending Jews to Poland to be executed.  It turned out that the SS was somewhat shorthanded with the war and all, so it relied heavily on local assistance in logistics of finding Jews and getting them on trains to be murdered in Poland.  When the locals, as they were in Denmark and Bulgaria, weren’t keen on helping out, there wasn’t much the SS could do to force compliance.  Sadly, Denmark and Bulgaria were the exception, not the rule, and in places like Romania the locals were extremely enthusiastic about helping get rid of their local Jews.]

Anyhow. 

In fact, the company ran into issues with Adolf & his buddies when the 1936 Berlin Olympics came by.  Adi felt that having Jesse Owens, the famous American athlete, wear Adidas shoes in the events would be good publicity for the firm, and the Nazis weren’t particularly happy with that marketing decision, as astute as it might have been.   At the very least it shows that the firm was willing to buck the ruling party when it came to making decisions.

When the war itself erupted in 1939, Adi somehow gained “exempt” status and remained home making boots, and later Panzershrecks (German copies of the US bazooka anti-tank weapon).  Rudi, much to his dismay, was not exempt, and had to put on field grey and serve in the Wehrmacht.  The movie does not say whether he served on the Eastern Front fighting the Red Army, or the Western Front fighting the Amis (Americans) and Tommies (English), but somehow he survived and came home. 

Fortunately for the brothers, their factory is in Herzogenaurach, a gingerbread village 14 miles northwest of Nuremburg, which is in northeast Bavaria.  This meant the enemy forces occupying it wore olive drab and spoke English with US accents.  I dare say if the company had been located in eastern Germany, with brown-uniformed soldiers riding T34s, speaking Russian coming in to take over, none of us would ever know Adidas or Puma.  Anyhow, the brothers initially ran into trouble, as they were both Nazi Party members, the company made those Panzershrecks, and like many other German companies during the war, relied on forced labor to make its war materiel.  Fortunately, Adi pulled out the Olympic archives showing Jesse Owens at the ’36 Games wearing Adidas shoes, and the Amis were satisfied.

However, by this point Adi and Rudi had come to blows about all these issues, each believing the other had ratted out about Nazi Party membership to the Americans, plus it seems there was some issue about the brothers sleeping with each other's wives, even to the point of disputing their children's paternity (!!!).  Moreover, Rudi felt that his business acumen was given insufficient credit for the company’s success.  They finally agreed, amicably, to part ways, and Rudi formed the company we know today as PUMA, which is also based in Herzogenaurach. 

Some time in the 1950s, Adi decided to differentiate his shoes from his brother’s by inventing the three stripes.   He provided the shoes to the 1954 German World Cup team which defeated Hungary in the World Cup Final in Switzerland.   The movie starts and ends with the German team facing off against the Hungarians in the rain, wearing long cleated Adidas shoes.

Shoes.  From the narrative, it appears that before Adidas, Germans wore normal boots when playing sports.  Adi came up with the idea of lighter, softer, more comfortable shoes to wear on the soccer field and elsewhere.  Again, a few decades later he added the distinctive three stripes.

Myself, I love Adidas shoes the most, in particular the Superstar model.  Usually it’s either black with white stripes or white with black stripes, but occasionally I’ve found them in black with red stripes (which I’m wearing as I write this).  I also love Adidas soccer jerseys, which generally tend to have the three stripes down the sleeves.  

For Puma, I've noticed I have several pairs of socks of that brand, and several boxers.  I'm fairly certain I've never owned a pair of Puma sneakers.  This was not out of any loyalty to Adidas - until recently I was oblivious to the brothers' history - but merely a an exclusive preference for Adidas shoes (a subtle distinction).   Rudi (died 10/27/74):  very sorry!

Quarantine

Looks like another occasion where what might otherwise be writer’s block is rescued by some huge problem which merits some discussion.   The COVID19/corona virus shitstorm has resulted in a quarantine here in the US.   Ideally, stay home.  If you do go out, try minimizing such excursions and stay at least 6 feet away from everyone.  Then go home and catch up on whatever it is you could do at home were it not for having to be out 40 hours a week working.

My own job is an attorney, in a firm by myself, an office manager (Vietnamese woman old enough to have met Japanese officers as a little girl during WWII), and a secretary who is as difficult and headstrong as she is attractive (actually, considerably more so).   Part of my practice is personal injury, meaning I can call insurance adjusters from home and try to settle cases.   Ultimately, many of my cases require some form of court appearance, whether be a status hearing to set a case for trial, a one-and-done traffic or misdemeanor case, a one-and-done 341 hearing on a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, or a simple uncontested hearing on a divorce.  The local courts have removed most cases from the docket for the time being, subject to being rescheduled later. 

As of yet, I don’t feel any aches, pains, fevers, chills or any other illness.  Just the last week I went to the ER for a tongue infection, though I was discharged that day with a prescription.   That issue is healed.  I live alone, in a huge condo building.   My mom is in an assisted living building 30 minutes northwest (Herndon), and that building is taking the sensible precaution of prohibiting visitors, so I call my Mom and talk to her on the phone.   My brother lives not too far away, in Centreville, with a wife and three kids.  They are all stuck in the house together.   Last time I visited, though, I found the local parks and trails within walking distance of his house.

Despite the obvious temptation to bring up the ever-popular plague, there are huge differences.  First off, corona-virus is…a virus (!) whereas the plague is caused by bacteria.  As such the latter can be treated with anti-biotics.  It’s usually caused by rats and fleas, which means in normal First World environments the sanitation system is inhospitable for the plague and we rarely see it.  Back in the Middle Ages, when sewer systems weren’t always around, and anti-biotics were nonexistent, the plague would have been a much bigger problem.

Even so, “quarantine” still applied.  A map of Europe in the mid 1300s appears to show that Poland was relatively little affected, allegedly because the king, Casimir the Great, quarantined Poland from the rest of Europe.  In practice, this seems to be an oversimplification and difficult to verify.   The truth is that Poland did suffer the plague, but less than surrounding countries, and we really don’t know why.   However, with 3 of my 4 grandparents originating from Poland, to the extent that the plague was not as serious there as elsewhere, to the extent 3 of my ancestors survived a disease which might otherwise have killed them, making my own existence impossible, I have to thank God that this was in fact the case, to the extent it was and for whatever reason.

As of April 2020, I am staying home most of the time, wearing a mask when I do go out, and catching up on Rick & Morty (season 4) and Ozark (finished season 1).  As yet I know of no one I know personally who has contracted the virus, but I would hope and expect that the geniuses are at work on a vaccine which will address the issue.  

I’m still unclear as to what anyone is doing about keeping these viruses to spring forth from the Wuhan market in China, which seems to breed these viruses from the exotic animals kept in close proximity.  The experts agree that the virus was not man-made, but to the extent the PRC is a totalitarian dictatorship which could summarily shut down the market if it cared to do so, I’d say the Chinese government’s willful inaction amounts to de facto germ warfare, by default, against the rest of the planet.  

Likewise, I won't blame our own Orange Fuhrer for having developed this disease himself.   But you would think that he would at least have consulted with experts and managed the crisis here a little better:  giving us accurate information about the threat the virus poses and what we should do about it.  Firing the team, ignoring his own experts, and dismissing the whole thing as a hoax was criminally stupid.  I'm not particularly impressed by the Democratic challengers in 2020, but even the dumbest of them (most likely Biden) would have enough brain cells to manage this whole thing more competently than the current yahoo.  He can Make America Great Again by resigning, effective immediately, as even Pence can tie his shoelaces better than his own boss.