Endemic

There’s no finish line.

— Gov. Gavin Newsom

My hat's off to Gavin Newsom for declaring that Covide-19 is no longer epidemic, but endemic, in California. 

And so he's taking steps to mainstream it, acknowledging that government must combat Covid-19 perpetually, as it perpetually combats smoking, obesity, unsafe products, and water pollution.

And naturally, as with other public hazards, some people will die.

News flash, America: death is endemic everywhere. It always has been. It's inescapable and baked in.

Most of us simply choose to deny that cold fact.

Perhaps mainstreaming Covid-19, which to date has killed nearly 1 million Americans, will depoliticize it and wake sleepwalking citizens to the inexorability of their own deaths.

Our country would be a much happier place.

The existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger defined the human being as finite, a "being-toward-death" (Sein zum Tode).

Where man is concerned, death is baked in, Heidegger claimed. Death is life's "fellow." 

Heidegger also believed that accepting death—your own death—brought you unbounded freedom—and unbounded happiness.

"Turning away from a flight from death," he said, "you see a horizon of opportunity." 

Embracing your death—denying your denial of death—"puts you in a state of anticipatory resoluteness with a solicitous regard for others that makes your life seem like an adventure perfused with unshakeable joy."

Who knows but that mainstreaming Covid-19 could make common courtesy and civility—the "solicitous regard for others"—routine again; and make vaccination and mask-wearing badges of honor that announce to the world, "I can't outrun death and don't wish to try. I'm terribly mortal—and happy."

As to those discourteous, miserable many who resist vaccinations and masks I say, so think you can outrun your own death? Good luck with that. 

There's no finish line but one.

Moderates Rise Up

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

― Oscar Wilde

San Francisco voters this week put the kibosh on "Squad politics," according to Axios, when they tossed three lefties off the city's seven-member school board.

It seems the jettisoned board members went too far when they placed priority on renaming 44 public schools in honor of BIPOC over reopening the city's shuttered schools.

That in a nutshell is the problem with immoderate Dems.

Like their right-wing opponents, they never address problems; they only manipulate symbols. 

Moderates, on the other hand, roll up their sleeves and get shit done. (For a vivid history lesson in this, listen to the LBJ Tapes. They're remarkable.)

Moderates also know that America looks like more like Maybury than Roxbury. 

What happens in San Francisco doesn't stay in San Francisco, alas, and as a result left-wingers on the national stage are freaking out.

Their loud-mouthed obsessions with punishing police, tearing down statues, and renaming buildings now threaten their re-elections—and the majority enjoyed by Democrats.

"It's a huge problem," one political strategist told Axios.

Squad politics are left of most voters', who want fixes not to systemic injustices, but to galloping inflation, violent crime, illegal guns, crumbling bridges, diseases like Covid-19, and a rigged tax system.

"The hard-left politics of the so-called 'Squad' are backfiring big-time," Axios says. The Squad has turned the Democrats' brand toxic in the hinterlands.

No surprise, Squad members and their Congressional aides are refusing to comment on the voter uprising this week. No doubt they're working in closed session on a new name for San Francisco.

How about Graybury?

NOTE: Learn more about the voter uprising this week in San Francisco.

Intel Inside

Aristotle, the father of biology, believed purpose distinguished living things from lifeless matter and that purpose drove the evolution of species.

Rather oddly, he also believed that purpose came from "inside" every creature—that purpose was in fact the cause of the creature.

Aristotle's theory pretty much ruled Westerners' ideas about evolution for 2,400 years, when suddenly Darwin exploded onto the scene in 1859, claiming evolution was random and purposeless.

Now, 163 years after the publication of Darwin's On the Origins of the Species, a new study reveals Aristotle was right all along: there is purpose behind mutations, but it comes both from "inside" and "outside" the creature.

The study shows human genes mutate not randomly, but in response to outside pressures.

The University of Haifa researchers responsible for the study have produced evidence showing that the rate of mutation of the genes that protect us against malaria is faster among Africans than among Europeans.

Because malaria grips Africa more so than Europe, the researchers concluded the genes mutated not by accident, but to help Africans survive the disease.

Darwin's insistence that mutations were random looks wrong.

"The results show the mutation is not generated at random, but instead originates preferentially in the gene and in the population where it is of adaptive significance," one researcher told Science X.

"We hypothesize that evolution is influenced by two sources of information: external information that is natural selection, and internal information that is accumulated in the genome through the generations and impacts the origination of mutations."

Since Darwin's book, scientists have assumed that mutations occur by accident and that natural selection—survival of the fittest—favors beneficial accidents, leading to evolutionary adaptations.

But the new findings suggest otherwise.

"The results suggest that complex information accumulated in the genome through the generations impacts mutation, and therefore mutation-specific origination rates can respond in the long-term to specific environmental pressures," the researcher said. 

"Mutations may be generated nonrandomly in evolution after all."

The study opens doors to reimagining evolution and to curing diseases caused by mutations such as cancer. While lending no credence to creationism, it also makes old Aristotle look pretty smart.

The study appears in Genome Research.

Guilty Pleasures

 

Hold onto your taste, even when you're embarrassed by it.

— Jerry Saltz

Connoisseurs and critics often look down on art that's driven by pop culture (the source of the "pop" in the term "pop art").

Not me. 

I guess I'm a child of the '60s, because I love pop paintings and subjects.

New York critic Jerry Saltz nails it when he says of pop subjects, "Never renounce them for the sake of others' pieties.

"Own your guilty pleasures."

My latest stab at depicting what I term a "nostalgic goodie" is Ding Dongs.

I could just have well titled the painting Ring Dings.

Ding Dong aficionados know that in 1967 their maker, Hostess, engaged in an all-out, take-no-prisoners brand war with Drake's Cakes, the maker of Ring Dings, by copying the latter's immensely successful product.

The bloody war, known to history as the "Ding Dong-Ring Ding Conflict," lasted for nearly 20 years. Hostess only won by buying its rival and discontinuing the Ring Ding.

That takes the cake, you might say.

If you're anywhere near Delaware in the next 10 days, be sure to drop into my solo show, Cold Comforts. It features 30 paintings of food.

And if you're not near Delaware, pop onto my website.

I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

— William Faulkner

Above: Ding Dongs by Robert Francis James. Oil on canvas. 20 x 16 inches.

Come on Sunday without Fail

Since on this ever happy day, all nature's full of love and play,
yet harmless still if my design, 'tis but to be your Valentine.

— World's Oldest Printed Valentine Card

While there's a Valentine's letter from 1477, the world's oldest Valentine card dates from 1790, a time when literate lovers of every social class secretly exchanged soupy notes.

The card features the word Love and a hand-drawn dove and hearts on the front, and inside a handwritten poem that begins, "Life they say is but a span, let's be happy while we can." 

The sender probably cribbed the poem, as in the 18th century you could buy books full of suggested verses for lovers.

The world's oldest printed Valentine's card, dating from 1797, features hand-tinted cupids on the outside, surrounded by the verse quoted above.

The card was sent by a certain Miss Mossday to Mr. Brown of Dover Place, Kent Road, London. 

Inside she wrote, "As I have repeatedly requested you to come, I think you must have some reason for not complying with my request. But as I have something particular to say to you, I could wish you make it all agreeable to come on Sunday without fail."

Clearly, she didn't copy that from a book.

Two centuries later, we still send our squeezes cards on Valentine's Day. 

Most of us rely on Hallmark to express our feelings.

But if you're feeling lovey-dovey this Valentine's Day, you might consider buying a blank card and using Poem Generator to pen a love poem.

I tried it, and here are the results:

For My Lovely Rose

A Love Poem by Bob

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Ladies are lovely,
And so are you.

Orchids are white,
Ghost ones are rare,
My speech is free,
And so is your hair.

Magnolia grows,
With buds like eggs,
Hands are shapely,
And so are your legs.

Sunflowers reach,
Up to the skies,
Your grin is foxy,
And so are your eyes.

Foxgloves in hedges,
Surround the farms,
My air is warm,
And so are your arms.

Daisies are pretty,
Daffies have style,
A baby is cute,
And so is your smile.