If Your Disease Has No “F.D.A.-Stamped” Cure, Try Rational Experiments Rather Than Give Up

(p. 9) My whole family was sick in March with Covid-like symptoms, and though the one test we obtained was negative, I’m pretty sure we had the thing itself — and my own symptoms took months rather than weeks to disappear.

But unlike many of the afflicted, I didn’t find the experience particularly shocking, because I have a prior long-haul experience of my own. In the spring of 2015, I was bitten by a deer tick, and the effects of the subsequent illness — a combination of Lyme disease and a more obscure tick-borne infection, Bartonella — have been with me ever since.

Lyme disease in its chronic form — or, per official medical parlance, “post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome” — is a fiendishly complicated and controversial subject, and what I learned from the experience would (and will, at some point) fill a book.

. . .

If you feel like you need something else to get better, some outside intervention, something more than just your own beleaguered body’s resources, be impatient — and find a way to go in search of it.

. . .

EXPERIMENT, EXPERIMENT, EXPERIMENT.

There is no treatment yet for “long haul” Covid that meets the standard of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, which means that the F.D.A.-stamped medical consensus can’t be your only guide if you’re trying to break a systemic, debilitating curse. The realm beyond that consensus has, yes, plenty of quacks, perils and overpriced placebos. But it also includes treatments that may help you — starting with the most basic herbs and vitamins, and expanding into things that, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have ever imagined myself trying before I become ill myself.

So please don’t drink bleach, or believe everything you read on Goop.com. But if you find yourself decanting Chinese tinctures, or lying on a chiropractor’s table with magnets placed strategically around your body, or listening to an “Anti-Coronavirus Frequency” on Spotify, and you think, how did I end up here?, know that you aren’t alone, and you aren’t being irrational. The irrational thing is to be sick, to have no official treatment available, and to fear the outré or strange more than you fear the permanence of your disease.

. . .

. . . I believe that with enough time and experimentation, I will actually be well.

That belief is essential. Hold on to it. In the long haul, it may see you through.

For the full commentary, see:

Ross Douthat. “What to Do When Covid Doesn’t Go Away.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sunday, August 9, 2020 [sic]): 9.

(Note: ellipses and bracketed year added. A few words in the original are italicized, but you cannot see that since my blog formatting has all quoted words italicized.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Aug. 8, 2020 [sic], and has the title “China Wants to Move Ahead, but Xi Jinping Is Looking to the Past.” The heading EXPERIMENT, EXPERIMENT, EXPERIMENT was in bold in both the online and print versions. In the print version it was all in caps. In the online version only the first letter of each word was capitalized.)

Douthat’s The Deep Places book can be viewed as a substantial elaboration of the commentary quoted above:

Douthat, Ross. The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery. New York: Convergent Books, 2021.

Good Scientific Questions Can Be Answered With Empirical Experiments: “In Science, Reality Rules”

(p. A17) . . . I hit it off with the legendary Columbia University physics professor and Nobel Prize winner I.I. Rabi, who discovered the basis for magnetic resonance imaging, among other techniques through which we access and harness the quantum world.

. . .

Naturally, our conversations often wandered across physics. I was full of theoretical ideas and quasi-philosophical speculations. Rabi pressed me—gently, with a twinkle in his eye, yet relentlessly—to describe their concrete meaning. In the process we often discovered that there wasn’t any!

But not always—and the questions that survived those dialogues were leaner and stronger. I internalized this experience, and since then my inner Rabi (he died in 1988) has been a wise, inspiring companion.

. . .

Fully worked-out answers to good scientific questions should include solid experimental prospects.

That is a surprisingly controversial view today, as some prominent philosophers of science promote a “post-empirical physics” that doesn’t require proof, or evidence. And there’s no doubt that physically inspired mathematics, or for that matter pure mathematics, can bring people great joy. But I lean toward Rabi’s attitude: In science, reality rules.

. . .

Another characteristic of most good questions is that the answer is just a little bit out of reach. It should not be too obvious, but it should not be utterly inaccessible either.

. . .

The foolproof way to find good questions is to come up with a lot of them and then throw out the ones that are too vague, too easy, too hard or too inconsequential.

For the full commentary, see:

Frank Wilczek. “WILCZEK’S UNIVERSE; Sifting for the Right Questions in Science.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, July 29, 2023): C4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 28, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

Even in Chinese “Oasis” for “Dreamers,” Space to Think Critically “Is Shrinking”

(p. A8) Welcome to the Chinese mountain city of Dali, also sometimes known as Dalifornia, an oasis for China’s disaffected, drifting or just plain curious.

The city’s nickname is a homage to California, and the easy-living, tree-hugging, sun-soaked stereotypes it evokes. It is also a nod to the influx of tech employees who have flocked there since the rise of remote work during the pandemic, to code amid the picturesque surroundings, nestled between snow-capped, 10,000-foot peaks in southwest China, on the shores of glistening Erhai Lake.

. . .

But recently, Dali has filled with a different crop of wandering souls: young people from China’s megacities, fleeing the intense lifestyles that so many of them once aspired to. Worn out by the high cost of living, cutthroat competition, record youth unemployment and increasingly suffocating political environment, they have turned Dali into China’s destination of the moment.

“Young people who can’t fit into the mainstream can only look for a city on the margins,” said Zhou Xiaoming, 28, who moved from Shanghai three years ago.

. . .

. . . nowhere in China is truly immune to the tightening political climate — as Lucia Zhao, the owner of the bookstore where Ms. Chen was reading Beauvoir, recently learned.

Ms. Zhao, 33, moved to Dali from Chengdu in 2022 after being laid off from a tech company. She opened her bookstore, which focuses on art, feminism and philosophy, because she wanted to create a space where people could relearn to think critically, she said.

But in August [2023], officials suddenly confiscated all her books, on the grounds that Ms. Zhao had applied for only a regular business license, not a license specifically for selling publications. She shut down for several months while applying for the license and rebuilding her inventory.

She was now more cautious in her book selection. Local officials dropped in occasionally to inspect the store and had recently scrutinized a display of antiwar books she had put out.

“You definitely have more latitude in Dali than in cities like Beijing and Chengdu,” Ms. Zhao said. “But compared to when I got here last year, the space is shrinking.”

For the full story, see:

Gilles Sabrié and Vivian Wang. “Enclave in Southwest China Offers Oasis for Drifters and Dreamers.” The New York Times (Monday, Feb. 5, 2024): A8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Feb. 5, 2024, and has the title “Welcome to ‘Dalifornia,’ an Oasis for China’s Drifters and Dreamers.”)

House Advances Bill to Senate, Asking Nuclear Regulatory Commission to Weigh Benefits as Well as Costs of Nuclear Power

(p. A19) The House this week overwhelmingly passed legislation meant to speed up the development of a new generation of nuclear power plants, the latest sign that a once-contentious source of energy is now attracting broad political support in Washington.

The 365-to-36 vote on Wednesday [Feb. 28, 2024] reflected the bipartisan nature of the bill, known as the Atomic Energy Advancement Act. It received backing from Democrats who support nuclear power because it does not emit greenhouse gases and can generate electricity 24 hours a day to supplement solar and wind power. It also received support from Republicans who have downplayed the risks of climate change but who say that nuclear power could bolster the nation’s economy and energy security.

. . .

The bill would direct the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the nation’s nuclear power plants, to streamline its processes for approving new reactor designs. The legislation, which is backed by the nuclear industry, would also increase hiring at the commission, reduce fees for applicants, establish financial prizes for novel types of reactors and encourage the development of nuclear power at the sites of retiring coal plants.

. . .

Proponents of this change say it would make the N.R.C. more closely resemble other federal safety agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, which weighs both the risks and benefits of new drugs. In the past, critics say, the N.R.C. has focused too heavily on the risks.

For the full story, see:

Brad Plumer. “Once Pariah, Nuclear Power Finds Broad Political Support.” The New York Times (Saturday, March 2, 2024): A19.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “U.S. Seeks to Boost Nuclear Power After Decades of Inertia.” The online version says that the print version appeared on p. A20. The Replica version said that the print version appeared on p. A19.)

Apple’s Bold “1984” Super Bowl Ad, Had Failed Marketing Test

(p. C4) Conceived by the Chiat/Day ad agency and directed by Ridley Scott, then fresh off making the seminal science-fiction noir “Blade Runner,” the Apple commercial “1984,” which was intended to introduce the new Macintosh computer, would become one of the most acclaimed commercials ever made. It also helped to kick off — pun partially intended — the Super Bowl tradition of the big game serving as an annual showcase for gilt-edged ads from Fortune 500 companies.

. . .

FRED GOLDBERG The original idea was actually done in 1982. We presented an ad [with] a headline, which was “Why 1984 Won’t Be Like ‘1984,’” to Steve Jobs, and he didn’t think the Apple III was worthy of that claim.

. . .

HAYDEN Steve Jobs was excited but frightened by it. Steve Wozniak offered to pay to run the commercial himself.

SCULLEY Before the commercial ran, we had to take it to the board of directors. The board sees the commercial, and then there’s just dead silence in the boardroom. They turn and look at me, and [a board member] says, “You’re not really going to run that thing, are you?”

HAYDEN As the closing credits scrolled up, the chairman, Mike Markkula, put his head in his hands and kind of folded over the conference table, and then slowly straightened up and [proposed hiring a different ad agency].

SCOTT I made it. I thought it was pretty good. But I was thinking, “Really? They’re going to run this on the Super Bowl? And we don’t know what it’s for?”

GOLDBERG I had them do a theater test. We get back the results, and it’s the worst business commercial that they’ve ever tested, in terms of persuasiveness.

SCULLEY The board said, “We don’t think you should run it. Try to sell the time.”

GOLDBERG And it was Jay Chiat who told us to drag our feet, basically, when we were told to sell off the time on the Super Bowl.

HAYDEN At long last, it came down that we would run the “1984” commercial once.

For the full story, see:

Saul Austerlitz. “The Super Bowl’s Big Ad Touchdown.” The New York Times (Saturday, February 10, 2024): C4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added. The bracketed words in comments from Goldberg, Sculley, and Hayden were in the original.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Feb. 5, 2024, and has the title “40 Years Ago, This Ad Changed the Super Bowl Forever.” In the print and online versions, the names of panelists were in capitalized and bold fonts.)

Apple’s bold and famous “1984” Super Bowl ad could only be understood by those who were familiar with:

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: The New American Library, 1961 [1st published in 1949].

Social Security Administration Is Lax in Stopping Fraud and Slow in Aiding Fraud Victims

(p. A1) For the past two decades, Liz Birenbaum’s 88-year-old mother, Marge, has received her Social Security check on the second Wednesday of each month. It’s her sole source of income, which pays for her room at a long-term care center, where she landed last October after having a stroke.

When the deposit didn’t arrive in January [2024], they logged into Marge’s Social Security account, where they found some startling clues: the last four digits of a bank account number that didn’t match her own, at a bank they didn’t recognize.

“Someone had gotten in,” said Ms. Birenbaum, of Chappaqua, N.Y. “Then I hit a panic button.”

It quickly became evident that a fraudster had redirected the $2,452 benefit to an unknown Citibank account. Marge, who lives in Minnesota, had never banked there. (Ms. Birenbaum requested to refer to her mother by her first name only to protect her from future fraud.)

Ms. Birenbaum immediately started making calls to set things right. When she finally connected with a Social Security representative from a local office in a Bloomington, Minn., the rep casually mentioned that this happens “all the time.”

“I was stunned,” Ms. Birenbaum said.

. . .

(p. A18) It can be a lucrative fraud, and a devastating benefit to lose. An estimated $33.5 million in benefits — intended for nearly 21,000 beneficiaries — were redirected in a five-year period ending in May 2018, according to the most recent audit from the Office of the Inspector General, an independent group responsible for overseeing investigations and audits at the agency. Another $23.9 million in fraudulent redirects were prevented before they happened over the same time period.

“Fraudsters were able to obtain sufficient information about a true beneficiary to convince the Social Security Administration that they were that beneficiary,” said Jeffrey Brown, a deputy assistant inspector general at the Office of the Inspector General, who analyzed the issue in 2019. “Once they were in the front door, they were able to change their direct deposits.”

. . .

Just months before Marge’s benefits were redirected, the O.I.G. issued a report that said the administration’s portal, called my Social Security, did not fully comply with federal requirements for identity verification: It said it didn’t go far enough to verify and validate new registrants’ identities, in all cases.

. . .

The issue would have been impossible for someone like Marge to rectify on her own. It was challenging enough for Ms. Birenbaum, a marketing consultant, and her brother, based near their mother in a Minneapolis suburb, who worked together to recover the benefits and secure Marge’s account.

Ms. Birenbaum — who reported the crime to the O.I.G. and the F.B.I. and alerted her state and federal representatives — once spent two and a half hours on hold with the Social Security Administration before connecting with a regional case worker. The rep was able to see that her mother’s direct deposit information had been altered in early December, the month before the benefits vanished.

Ms. Birenbaum’s brother visited their mother’s local Social Security office and became Marge’s “representative payee,” which allows him to handle her affairs (Social Security does not accept powers of attorney). They had to find ways to make the correction without bringing Marge to the office, which Ms. Birenbaum said would have been a “herculean task.”

Marge received the missing money on March 1, [2024] about a month and a half after they discovered the problem.

For the full story, see:

Tara Siegel Bernard. “Internet Thieves Drain Social Security Accounts.” The New York Times (Saturday, March 9, 2024): A1 & A18.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed years, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “How Fraudsters Break Into Social Security Accounts and Steal Benefits.”)

Bystander With Pistol Kills Heavily Armed Mall Shooter: “Nothing Short of Heroic”

(p. A1) It was an act of pluck and composure worthy of a scene in the movies. But this was real life: A heavily armed man emerged from the bathroom in a Greenwood, Ind., shopping mall on Sunday evening [July 17, 2022] and began shooting — until he was killed by an armed bystander.

Mike Wright, manager of the Luca Pizza di Roma in the mall’s food court, remembers taking shelter when the firing started and then emerging when it stopped to see the bystander behind a low-slung wall with his handgun trained on the assailant he had shot to death.

“He stood there maybe 25 or 30 feet from the body and held that pistol pointed at him until law enforcement arrived,” Mr. Wright remembered on Tuesday. “The good Samaritan guy seemed poised and under control. He appeared to be very disciplined.” Jim Ison, the local police chief, went further, saying that his engagement with the gunman, who had killed three people, was “nothing short of heroic.”

. . .

In a discussion about the Indiana shooting on Fox News, Brandon Tatum, a conservative commentator and former police officer, echoed the N.R.A.’s position that armed bystanders could make an important contribution to peacekeeping. “I think good gun owners, or at least legal gun owners, are the recipe for success against people who do not want to follow the law,” Mr. Tatum said.

This week in The Federalist, a conservative website, the senior editor David Harsanyi noted a number of recent incidents in which armed people were able to stop people with bad intentions from committing acts of violence.

For the full story, see:

Richard Fausset, Eliza Fawcett and Serge F. Kovaleski. “Lifesaving Act in Indiana Mall Renews Debate on Gun Access.” The New York Times (Wednesday, July 20, 2022 [sic]): A1 & A19.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 19, 2022 [sic], and has the title “After Indiana Mall Shooting, One Hero but No Lasting Solution.”)

A PC Industry Run “By Middle-Manager Types” Is No Longer “Fun”

(p. B10) John Walker, a groundbreaking, if reclusive, technology entrepreneur and polymath who was a founder and chief executive of Autodesk, the company that brought the ubiquitous AutoCAD software program to the design and architecture masses, died on Feb. 2 [2024] in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

. . .

AutoCAD — the “CAD” stands for computer-aided design — was based on a program called Interact created by Michael Riddle, another company founder. With the contributions of Mr. Walker as well as Greg Lutz, who was also a founder, and the rest of the team, AutoCAD would go on to revolutionize industries including architecture, graphic design and engineering by allowing design professionals to ditch their pencils and paper and render their creations on a screen using an inexpensive personal computer.

“To him goes the credit for the Second Design Revolution,” the California software executive Roopinder Tara wrote in a tribute to Mr. Walker on the site Engineering.com. The “First Design Revolution,” as Mr. Tara called it, was the creation of earlier CAD programs that ran on expensive mainframes or minicomputers. But, he wrote, it was with AutoCAD, which “burst onto the scene in 1982, after the advent of the IBM PC, that the computer actually started to deliver on the promise.”

. . .

“In 1977, this business was fun,” Mr. Walker wrote in a book-length history of Autodesk that he published on his site. “The sellers and the buyers were hot-shot techies like ourselves, everybody spoke the same language and knew what was going on.”

“Today,” he added, “the microcomputer industry is run by middle-manager types who know far more about P/L statements than they do RAM organization.”

For the full obituary, see:

Alex Williams. “John Walker, 74, Recluse Who, as a Tech Mogul, Popularized AutoCAD.” The New York Times (Thursday, March 7, 2024): B10.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date March 6, 2024 and has the title “John Walker, Tech Executive Who Popularized AutoCAD, Dies at 74.” In both the online and print versions, the word fun is in italics.)

Palestinian Group Defaces Portrait of Balfour, Who Tried to Save Jewish Lives

Peo-Palestinian slashes portrait of Arthur James Balfour at University of Cambridge. Source: NYT article quoted and cited below.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 advocated the establishment of a Jewish homeland (Dershowitz 2003, p. 35). “In 1937, 1947, and 2000-2001,” Jewish leaders accepted the establishment of a Palestinian state, but Palestinian leaders “each time . . . rejected the offer and responded with increased terrorism” (Dershowitz 2003, p. 159). If Israel had existed by the 1930s, “hundreds of thousands—perhaps even a million or more” European Jews could have immigrated to it before the Holocaust, saving their lives (Dershowitz 2003, p. 52). Arthur James Balfour’s portrait should be honored, not “slashed and spray-painted” (article quoted below).

(p. A6) A pro-Palestinian group slashed and spray-painted a century-old portrait of Arthur James Balfour at the University of Cambridge on Friday [March 8, 2024], defacing a painting of the British official whose pledge of support in 1917 for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” helped pave the way to Israel’s founding three decades later.

For the full story, see:

Marc Tracy. “Balfour Portrait at University of Cambridge Is Defaced.” The New York Times (Saturday, March 9, 2024): A6.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 8, 2024, and has the title “Activists Deface Portrait of Balfour, Who Supported Jewish Homeland.”)

Dershowitz’s heavily referenced book, cited above, is:

Dershowitz, Alan. The Case for Israel. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003.

Navalny to Russian People: “Not Give Up”

(p. C1) In the opening moments of “Navalny,” the Oscar-winning 2022 documentary about the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, the director Daniel Roher asks his subject a dark question.

“If you are killed — if this does happen — what message do you leave behind to the Russian people?” the voice asks from behind the camera.

Navalny’s ice-blue eyes narrow just a little, and he sighs. “Oh, come on, Daniel,” he says in heavily accented English. “No. No way. It’s like you’re making a movie for the case of my death.” He pauses, then continues. “I’m ready to answer your question, but please let it be another movie, Movie No. 2. Let’s make a thriller out of this movie.”

. . .

(p. C8) But if “Navalny” wasn’t intended as a postmortem, it’s chilling to watch it after reports of his death. He knows what might happen but doesn’t seem scared, just determined. The day of his return to Moscow, he appears nervy and intent, but with fellow plane passengers, he makes jokes about the weather, accepts their well wishes and watches “Rick and Morty” as they descend. This is, you realize, a resolutely unflappable man.

At the end of the film, Roher once again asks Navalny what message he would leave for the Russian people if he was imprisoned or even killed. Answering in English, Navalny responds, “My message for the situation when I am killed is very simple: Not give up.” Recognizing there’s more to the sentiment, Roher asks him to repeat his answer in Russian.

“Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you,” Navalny says rapidly and fluidly in Russian, according to the subtitles. He’s looking straight into the camera and picking up steam as he goes. “You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes. We don’t realize how strong we actually are.”

. . .

Navalny takes a breath, then continues. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive.” He stares sternly into the camera, steel in his eyes.

And then his face cracks into a wide, joyful grin.

For the full review, see:

Alissa Wilkinson. “More Chilling, Posthumously.” The New York Times (Tuesday, February 20, 2024): C1 & C8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review was updated Feb. 18, 2024, and has the title “The Documentary Aleksei Navalny Knew We’d Watch After His Death.”)

In Final Message, Navalny Quoted “Hope, My Earthly Compass”

(p. 26) Aleksei A. Navalny, an anticorruption activist who for more than a decade led the political opposition in President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia while enduring arrests, assaults and a near-fatal poisoning, died on Friday [Feb. 15, 2024] in a Russian prison. He was 47.

. . .

Mr. Navalny dedicated his final post on social media to his wife on Valentine’s Day.

. . .

The song he quoted, “Hope, My Earthly Compass,” is one of the best-known hits in Russia. Its refrain is “Hope is my compass, and success is a reward for courage.”

For the full obituary, see:

Valerie Hopkins and Andrew E. Kramer. “Aleksei A. Navalny, Russian Opposition Leader, Dies at 47.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, February 18, 2024): 26.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated Feb. 18, 2024, and has the title “Aleksei Navalny, Russian Opposition Leader, Dies in Prison at 47.”)