LEADING BY BAD EXAMPLE

I'm with you, bros. 

The worst thing about having low platelets, outside of the possibility of spontaneously bleeding from my pores if I don't take my meds, is no longer being able to enjoy a beer or glass of wine with dinner. Alcohol, I learned, is a blood-thinner, and mine is more than thin enough.

Just when you thought Corona 
couldn't be more bland.

Over time I found non-alcoholic beers that tasted more or less like the real thing. Good Mexican restaurants were able to whip up virgin margaritas that would have fooled me had I not known. But... whenever the best reviews of a red wine say it's "easy to drink" and "not overly sweet", I know it's one or two steps above Hi-C, so a faux vino is out-o.

After a year and a half, my desire for the real thing has abated somewhat. While I've adjusted to the faux beers, I still get a physical twinge of envy when watching Stanley Tucci enjoying a good red on his watch-me-eat-Italian-food series. And at times I would gladly trade a few thousand platelets for a couple of real frozen margaritas. 

So -- does this make me a potential alcoholic? Apparently, I already was one before being forced to clean up and my act. But don't think that lets you off the hook. Just look at the headline of Discovery magazine's recent online scolding: Social Drinking Could Mask Alcoholism, or Provoke Problem Drinking. 

Wipe those smiles off your faces!

Now wait a minute, you demand. I thought drinking alone was the problem. No, you're the problem. The article states, "While solitary drinking might serve as a useful early indicator of alcohol use disorder risk […] research suggests that individuals reliably consume more alcohol in social contexts than when alone." I

Cripes, there's no winning with these people. And by "these people", I mean Discovery's source, Current Directions in Psychological Science. The current issue includes such hard-hitting pieces as "The Development of Dance in Early Childhood", which sounds like a parody of a scientific study: "Dancing to music is prevalent to human cultures. It is also developmentally precocious -- most children display dance-like behaviors before their first birthday. This early emergence precedes a long maturational trajectory with broad individual differences..." 

Oh my God, why is my baby behaving
like this?!

Come on, doc! Can't we just enjoy our toddlers jumping up and down to "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" without freaking analyzing it?

Another piece, "Interdependent Minds: Quantifying the Dynamics of Successful Social Interactions" might as well be retitled, "Yo, How Do People Become Friends?" To which my diagnosis is Having shared interests. No wonder why so many of these journals fall for satiric articles passed off as the real thing -- the stupider it sounds, the more likely it's taken seriously.

Social drinking can mask alcoholism. Why not Dining out with friends can mask overeating? Or Driving cars can lead to accidents? Maybe Jogging could provoke charley horses? Good Lord, anything can lead to anything, anything can hide anything! It reminds me of the very old joke about two psychiatrists passing each other. One says, "Hello". The other thinks, Hmm. I wonder why he said that.

Here's a piece someone should write: Overanalyzing Stuff Can Lead to Derisive Laughter. No need to have that peer reviewed.

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JAVA JIVE

In my younger and more tasteless days, my standard answer to "How do you like your coffee?" was "The way I like my women: hot, strong, and black." For some reason, this went over better with guys than women, especially those who hadn't reached voting age yet. 

But according to two recent medical studies, I seem to have been on to something. Now I just have to figure out which one to choose.

I'd rather live a 15%-17% shorter life than wear an
apron like that in front of my homies.

The first, from something called StudyFinds, tells us that drinking one to three cups of coffee daily offers a 15%-17% chance of living longer than those who drink either decaf or tea. And if you do drink java juice, make sure it's black without sugar. Otherwise, you won't live as long as tough guys like me who prefer it straight. 

The second comes courtesy of SciTechDaily. In a study involving people age 55 and over, regular coffee drinking helps to reduce the onset of frailty. But as with the other study, there's a catch. In order the reap the benefits, you need to drink four to six or more cups a day. 

First tip: convince the police you aren't a
suicide bomber.

What the what? Six cups a day? Many years ago, I spent 24 hours strapped with a Holter Monitor when just three cups a day started to make my heart go into its Buddy Rich tribute. 

Those several extra thousand heartbeats that the monitor recorded didn't make me several thousand times healthier. I spent the next decade or so drinking decaf until eventually easing myself up to one or two cups a day, where I remain today. 

Hey kid, didn't I tell you? Lay off the milk
and sugar!

Does drinking only two cups mean I will eventually become 2/3 more frail than the old fogeys who drink coffee by the quart? Not if it's as accurate as similar studies I've seen, like the one claiming that coffee prevents dementia. Ask my lifelong coffee-drinking mother how well that turned out. Oh wait, you can't -- she died from complications from dementia! But she lived to be close to 100, so maybe the coffee did some good. Too bad she wasn't cognizant of it at the time. 

Then there was another study that found that one cup of coffee prevented hearing loss by 15%. The catch: only men reaped that benefit. Yes, it's true: coffee is sexist. Flip side: husbands have no reason to claim they didn't hear their wives tell them to take out the garbage. 

No word if cigarettes help or hinder.

And if you're going to follow any of these rules, another study claims you better pour it all down your throat in the morning, because coffee does no damn good after lunch. Have fun when your body crashes at 3:00.

What do all these studies have in common? They're all from Europe. So many different countries, so many different results! 

So here's what American smarty-pants have to say: Java jolters who have one to three cups have a 15% lower risk of dying in the next nine to eleven years. Add a fourth cup and you have a 64% lower chance of "all-cause mortality" than non-drinkers. As I scan the news headlines, I'm not sure which group I want to be part of anymore.

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JUNIOR MINCEMEAT

Well, maybe not temporary after all.

 I'm not the type to second-guess experts, so I went all-in on whatever they were telling us in the first year of covid. Now that the dust has settled, these same experts are admitting that it might not have been such a hot idea to, say, shut down schools for a year. 

I don't hold it against them. We were dealing with a disease that nobody had ever encountered before. 

But then there are other things that can be understood even by dolts like me without the experts weighing in. According to the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, a recently unearthed 60 year-old study proved once and for all -- brace yourself -- middle school students who are not athletic or attractive become increasingly unpopular across the school year.

That last statement provides a hotlink to the article, just so you know I wasn't making up such a shocking discovery. Next thing you know, they're going to tell us mixing antifreeze with orange juice doesn't make for a good cocktail. 

Nerdy teens aren't considered cool. Why in the name of Poindexter was this study kept under wraps since the Kennedy administration? Generations could have saved endless hours of misery if they had been given the choice of Zooming junior high from home. If Zoom had existed then, I mean.

Monkey in the middle.
I should have acquired a stronger eyeglass
prescription before going clothes shopping.

Yes, I would have thrived on attending classes from my laptop. I'd have kept a cover over the camera so I wouldn't have been seen, either. I mentioned it in passing a while back, but it bears repeating: my junior high (and early high school) years were as close to hell on earth I ever want to experience. If I could live that time over, I'd do it in a coma. 

People like me would agree. You don't need a study for it. All you have to do is think back to your own school years. Remember those nerds nobody hung out with? The ones that might have been the recipient of laughter, insults or sucker punches? There's your study. And free!

It's been my experience, both personally and through reading, that many people look back at those years as best time of their lives, no matter what they've accomplished since. Yet

Grey skies are gonna clear up...

 I wouldn't trade places with them. Because for me, things could only get better. And they did.

I became less geeky, more confident and popular, and, yes, better looking throughout the decades. If I'm ever reminded of school days, my only thought is, Thank God that's over. Give me what I've got now.

But for plenty of former campus big shots, it's apparently been all downhill for the past half-century or more. That would make for a more interesting study. Until then, experts can use their grant money to study why experts study the obvious.                                 

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OUT ON A LIMB

"... And so, Johnny, one day free TV will be a thing of the
past, thanks to satellites on your roof!" 

There used to be a TV series called Mr. Wizard, hosted by Don Herbert. Every week, 
Herbert would perform cool  experiments while explaining the science behind it in words kids like me could understand.  

And by "kids like me", I mean those who were fascinated by what they were watching while still getting C- in Science  on every report card.

I wanted to do well but for some reason never had the brains for it. Even now, you could explain how a radio tower transmits music to my radio and I still wouldn't understand it. And I bet you wouldn't either.

Now that we have that off the table, I want to give you  my own scientific theory -- one that may take its place alongside Isaac Newton's gravity jazz and whatever the hell Albert Einstein was talking about.

Think you're going to look this good at 1,000 years old?

While in Central Park looking with awe at the trees that were there long before I took my first bow and will be there long after I'm thrown off the stage, an admittedly unoriginal thought came to me: Trees live a lot longer than us people. 

But not just longer. For as we gradually deteriorate and actually shrink in size, trees grow taller and stronger. 

And so begat my theory: Trees are supposed to be here.  This is their world. We humans are mistakes. We shouldn't be here.

Now, don't get on your optimistic high horse and start saying But Mozart! Jonas Salk! Marie Curie! Thomas Edison! And what about OPRAH for God's sakes?! Because when you say that, I'll reply with, Read the news. Better yet, read history.

Unlike humans, trees don't convert you to religions at the point of a gun. Nor do they become junkies, drive drunk, murder for sport, or do any of the other  countless other terrible things humans are known for. Trees leave each other alone -- except to communicate useful information to make themselves even stronger and healthier. We communicate in order to gain power and make money. When we're not killing each other.

Green is free, yellow partly-free, purple is what's left
(and what we're all headed for).

While trees are living creatures, humans (I argue) are merely bacteria that somehow hit the lottery. And while there  are more good human bacteria, the bad bacteria are stronger  -- enough to take over much of the world.

Population-wise, the democracies admittedly outnumber the dictatorships by roughly 15%. But what the map on the right doesn't show are the bacteria in democracies that would love to turn it into different kind of -ocracy, whether it be autoc, plutoc or theoc.  

In other words, the human population could easily be destroyed from within. But trees? Only from without, whether it be insects, viruses or bacteria (human and otherwise). 

There you have it: Humans are truly nature's mistakes. All I need to do now is rewrite this using fancy jargon (some of it made-up) and sell it to a gullible science journal. Although it would be easier to let the late Norman Lloyd demonstrate mankind's inevitable end:

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