The Truth About First Twins

by Madeleine Kando

My twin sister was born 15 minutes after I entered this valley of tears. As we sprinted for the exit, she almost passed the finish line before me, but due to a last-minute trip up, she fell back and I came out first. It was a close call, though, and had it not been for the tight squeeze, it would have been a tie, branding us the first twins ever to be born at the exact same time.

I actually did all the leg work and my sister just went along for the ride, twiddling her little baby thumbs while sitting on her hiney, doing nothing.

This happened a long long time ago, a period in history when parents of twins were popping them out like rabbit turds, blissfully unaware of the extremely hazardous consequences of being a twin. Here you are, trying to take your first breath, exhausted, hungry, covered with slime, expecting all the attention to be focused on you, and then your twin comes along, stealing all the limelight. You get wrapped in a blanket and placed in a container, while everybody is turning their backs on you giving attention to this other thing. Read more...

Why do American Policemen Kill so Many People?

by Tom Kando

My home town of Sacramento just made the national (and international) news again. Sacramento has  enjoyed a good run lately: First, the   movie Lady Bird was one of the Oscar finalists. Both the movie and the director were hometown products. Something to be proud of. Then another recent  movie, The 5:17 to Paris, depicts three young men from Sacramento  who thwart an attempted terrorist attack on a European train. Two of them were in fact students at my university, and I met one of them.

And now, the trifecta is complete, except that  Sacramento’s third appearance on the world stage within a year is a tragic event: The utterly unnecessary killing of a young black man, Stephon Clark,  by two members of the SACPD.

So once again, I have to write about this  shameful feature of American society: For some reason, this country sticks out head and shoulders above other comparable countries in the number of homicides committed by cops. (I have written about this several times before. See Americans Killed by the Police and Violence, Racism and Law Enforcement.).

Here are some random comparative international statistics:

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In the Future

by Madeleine Kando

In the future there won’t be any poverty. All the poor people will have left, replaced by the economically challenged. There won’t be any more short people, fat people, ugly people or stupid people either. There will be a lot more vertically challenged, horizontally challenged, esthetically challenged and mentally challenged individuals, though.

In the future, there will be many more fast food restaurants, where the food will be so fast, that people won’t have time to chew. All cars will be equipped with puke bags, just in case you gag on the fast food you didn’t have time to chew. That’s ok though, cars will be self-driving, so you will be able to puke your heart out.

There will still be a few slow-food restaurants, but forget about the service. If you go to one of those archaic places and you hear someone say: ‘I’ll have THE chicken’, it’s going to be a mad-dash to the kitchen, trying to grab that one chicken before someone else does. Vegetarian dishes on the menu will be half-price, since vegetables don’t have legs to run with. Read more...

Enlightenment Now: A Book Review

by Madeleine Kando

Every morning I get the New York Times’ ‘morning briefing’ in my inbox, waiting there patiently, until I have had my first cup of coffee and am as ready as I can be, to brace the calamities of the day’s news.

Some of today’s headlines read: Trump imposes tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. Hope Hicks resigns after testifying for 8 hours before the House Intelligence Committee. Nepotism rampant in the White House. Freezing temperatures caused by a weakening polar vortex are battering Europe. Putin is threatening Western nations with a new generation of nuclear weapons.

And those are just the main points. It doesn’t say how many people were shot, how many children didn’t have enough to eat, how long Medicare will survive or whether access to birth control will be made more difficult.

The only thing that gives me hope, is that we, the people can still disagree, gripe, bitch, whine and kick up a fuss about how we are governed. but does that make an iota of difference? Does it decrease poverty, crime and corruption? Does it make us progress?

In ‘Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress’, psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker, shows that we are, indeed, making progress, regardless of what the New York Times tells us.

Pinker's clear intention is to take the wind out of every imaginable argument against the case for human progress. To me, reading this book felt like a breath of fresh air. Is he too optimistic? Many people think so, including social philosopher John Gray, whom Pinker calls a progressophobe.
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The 2018 Winter Olympics: Rankings

by Tom Kando
                                

THE 2018 WINTER OPLYMPICS; RANKINGS

                                                                             
93 countries participated in the  recent Winter Games in Pyongchang. 30 of them won 1 or more medals. 63 did not.

I gave each country 3 points for a gold medal, 2 for silver and 1 for bronze.  I then ranked all the countries by total points. For example, Norway had 13 gold medals, 14 silver and 11 bronze, for a total of 82 points. The US had (9 x 3) + (8 x 2) + (6 x 1) = 49, and so forth.

I then calculated each country’s PER CAPITA score. The table below ranks the 30 medal-winning countries by per capita points earned:

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