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Organized Minds, Glorious Nerds

My grandson is at it again. He’s ticking off African nations — all 54 of them — with the focused serenity of a monk counting prayer beads.

Yesterday it was the counties of Texas. Before that, American presidents in reverse chronological order, which he performed at dinner with the calm confidence of a kid who has seen things. He lives in Washington, D.C., which I suspect is less a geographic choice than a spiritual one: he wants to be near the material.

I recognize him completely. I am him, sixty years earlier, haunting the mailbox in October waiting for the Information Please Almanac to arrive. When it did, I did not read it so much as inhale it — population densities, Olympic records, the gross national products of countries most Americans couldn’t locate on a globe.

Meanwhile, the World Book Encyclopedia sat on the shelf like a cathedral, and I was its most devoted worshipper. Volume P alone — Population, Planets, Presidents, Portugal — could sustain me through a dull February weekend.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who make lists… and those who pretend they don’t.

I come from a proud lineage of list-makers. Not casual, jot-it-on-a-napkin types—but the kind who would alphabetize their anxieties if given a quiet afternoon and a sharpened pencil.

My grandson, at the ripe old age of four, has already joined the guild. He ticks off countries in Africa like a seasoned diplomat, names U.S. states with the confidence of a campaign manager, and is working his way through presidents as if he has a clearance badge to the White House.

The List Gene

I blame genetics. Or perhaps nostalgia.

In my day—back when hair was longer and attention spans were shorter—we didn’t have YouTube serenading us with “Top 50 Rivers of Europe” set to a catchy beat.

We had the annual unveiling of the Information Please Almanac, which arrived with all the fanfare of a new iPhone launch, minus the line outside. And then there was the majestic World Book Encyclopedia—a 26-volume monument to curiosity and back strain.

You didn’t “Google” things. You hunted them. You earned them. You cross-referenced Mongolia like it owed you money—and if you wanted an update, you waited a year and hoped Mongolia hadn’t moved.

Surgical Precision, Trivial Pursuits

There is nothing quite like standing in an operating room, where a vascular surgeon is calmly repairing an aortic aneurysm while casually listing the ten tallest buildings in the world. (“Burj Khalifa, Shanghai Tower… suction please…”)

Meanwhile, a family practice colleague—clearly underutilized—recites the La Marseillaise backwards. Not clinically useful, but impressive enough to make you question your own hobbies.

We were supposed to be saving lives. Instead, we were mentally indexing them.

The Ken Jennings Ideal

And then there is the patron saint of us all: Ken Jennings. Seventy-four consecutive Jeopardy! victories. A human being who appeared to have simply agreed to remember everything, on the off chance someone would someday ask. When Ken Jennings walked onto that stage, he wasn’t showing off. He was reporting for duty.

Every one of us who ever memorized the order of the planets, the presidents, the periodic table, or the airports of Europe by IATA code contains a small Ken Jennings. A tiny, extremely well-organized Ken, sitting in the library of our hippocampus, cross-referencing, updating, waiting for his moment. We are all, in our hearts, training for Jeopardy!.

I suspect this is, at its core, a love of order in a disordered world. The universe tends toward entropy; the list-maker pushes back. You cannot control geopolitics, but you can, by God, know all the landlocked countries of Africa in alphabetical order.

You cannot cure mortality, but you can tell me the ten longest rivers on every continent, and for a moment — just a moment — the world is knowable, mappable, tamed.

The Sports Lists (Where It Gets Serious)

This is where list-making graduates from hobby to religion.

The Mickey Mantle File

Every self-respecting sports fan of a certain vintage has this memorized:

  • 536 home runs
  • 3 MVP awards
  • Triple Crown (1956)
  • Switch-hitter with tape-measure power from both sides
  • Knees held together by willpower and clubhouse tape

We didn’t just admire Mantle—we archived him.

The Los Angeles Lakers Pantheon

You can start an argument at any dinner table with this one:

  • Magic Johnson – ran Showtime like a jazz conductor who never missed a beat
  • Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – the skyhook: medicine’s answer to the unstoppable procedure
  • Kobe Bryant – relentless, surgical, occasionally terrifying
  • Shaquille O’Neal – less a player, more a controlled demolition
  • Jerry West – the logo, before branding departments existed

Ranking them is like choosing your favorite child—except everyone is louder about it.

The Tiger Woods Ledger

This one borders on scripture:

  • 15 major championships
  • The “Tiger Slam” (holding all four majors at once, 2000–2001)
  • Masters wins: 1997, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2019
  • U.S. Opens: 2000, 2002, 2008
  • The Open Championship: 2000, 2005, 2006
  • PGA Championships: 1999, 2000, 2006, 2007

If you play golf, you don’t just watch Tiger—you audit him.

The Modern Evolution: Musical Lists

Today’s children have upgraded tools.

My grandson doesn’t flip through encyclopedias—he watches YouTube videos where animated characters sing the capitals of Europe in a rhythm that gets stuck in your head for three days. I now know more about Slovenia than I ever intended, entirely due to a chorus line of cartoon goats.

It’s hard to compete with that. My generation had mnemonics. His has choreography—and better production values.

Why Lists Matter (or at Least Why We Think They Do)

There’s something deeply satisfying about a list:

  • It imposes order on chaos
  • It gives the illusion of mastery
  • It turns the infinite into something you can check off before dinner

Lists are how we convince ourselves we understand the world. If we can name all 50 states, surely we’ve conquered geography. If we know the presidents in order, history must be under control.

The Family Tradition Continues

And so I watch the next generation.

My grandson, sitting on the floor, confidently announcing: “I know all the countries in Africa.”

I don’t correct him—not because I’m generous, but because he’s usually right. Sudan and South Sudan? That update didn’t make it into my edition of the encyclopedia.

It’s a humbling experience to be outmatched in geopolitical awareness by someone who still needs help tying his shoes.

Final Entry

Somewhere along the way, I traded my encyclopedias for Google and my almanacs for apps. But the instinct remains.

To categorize. To rank. To recall.

And occasionally, to wonder—usually late at night—whether I could still name the ten tallest buildings in the world if someone handed me a scalpel.

Probably not.

But give me a list… and I’ll give it a shot.

A PARTIAL TAXONOMY OF LIST ENTHUSIASTS
1. The Completionist — Cannot rest until every African country, every Texas county, every U.S. president is accounted for. Sleep is optional. Gaps are not.
2. The Performance Lister — Deploys their lists at precisely the right moment. Dinner parties. Operating rooms. Elevators.
3. The Almanac Archaeologist — Keeps a 1965 World Almanac specifically because the 1965 data is still technically accurate for historical purposes.
4. The Trivia Athlete — Trains daily. Has a vision board. Watches Jeopardy! in the way most people watch playoff games.
5. The Backwards Reciter — A rare and specialized subspecies. Requires no further explanation.
6. The YouTube Mnemonist — Has learned 195 countries through earworm. Is unstoppable at parties.

WHAT WE KNOW FOR CERTAIN
1. Lists are not a quirk. They are a calling.
2. The almanac was the internet before the internet, and it had better binding.
3. YouTube trivia songs are a legitimate branch of classical education.
4. Any surgeon who can name the world’s tallest skyscrapers while operating has simply found an efficient use of bandwidth.
5. The Marseillaise backwards is probably not useful. It is nonetheless impressive.
6. A grandson who ticks off countries is not wasting time. He is building a mind.
7. Ken Jennings is proof that there is a God, and that God rewards those who pay attention.

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The Colonoscope in the Park

Seven years into retirement, I assumed I had successfully left gastroenterology behind.

Apparently my subconscious did not get the memo.

The dream began normally enough. I was back in an endoscopy suite performing a colonoscopy—something I had done thousands of times over the course of my career. The setting felt completely authentic: the soft hum of equipment, the glowing monitor, the familiar choreography of scope, suction, insufflation, and gentle navigation through the turns of the colon.

Then I saw it.

A polyp.

Even in my dream I was pleased. Muscle memory kicked in immediately. The snare went out, the polyp was captured cleanly, and I dropped it neatly into the retrieval basket. A textbook polypectomy.

At that point I looked up.

I was no longer in the endoscopy center.

I was standing in a park.

The colonoscope was still in my hands. The basket still contained the polyp. But the patient had completely vanished, as had the endoscopy suite. No nurse, no monitor, no stretcher—just me, the scope, and what appeared to be a perfectly pleasant public park.

Dream logic, as usual, provided no explanation.

I remember thinking: Well, this is unusual.

The next scene shifted again. Now I was back in the endoscopy center, but the situation had somehow become worse. The patient had apparently gotten up and left. The room was empty. I was standing there holding a colonoscope and a specimen basket with a polyp that seemed to belong to no one.

And I was thinking: What exactly am I supposed to do now?

Do I call pathology?

Do I track down the patient?

Do I go back to the park and see if he’s still there?

This was the precise moment I woke up.

Later that same day I spoke with a 90-year-old retired radiologist. He practiced for decades and read thousands upon thousands of studies during his career.

He told me something interesting.

He still dreams about radiology.

Not just occasionally—frequently. In his dreams he’s interpreting films, attending departmental meetings, or planning new hospital ventures. He hasn’t practiced in years, but the machinery of the profession keeps running somewhere in the back of his mind.

Apparently the professional brain never fully powers down.

The whole thing reminded me of another type of dream that many of us have had since our student days.

The classic academic nightmare.

You’re suddenly sitting in a final exam. The room is silent. The test is handed out. And then you realize—with a sinking feeling—that you never attended the class all semester. You don’t recognize the material. You don’t know the subject. You may not even know what course you’re taking.

Yet somehow you are expected to pass the final.

For decades that dream would occasionally pop up in my sleep. It’s the brain’s way of replaying the anxiety of responsibility long after the actual responsibility has disappeared.

My colonoscopy-in-the-park dream felt like the medical version of that exam nightmare.

Somewhere in my subconscious I am still responsible for the polyp.

Medicine leaves deep grooves in the brain. When you spend forty years making decisions, solving problems, and being responsible for other people’s outcomes, those patterns become part of the architecture of the mind.

You may retire.

But the brain occasionally clocks back in.

Sometimes that means interpreting radiology films at age ninety. Sometimes it means taking an exam for a class you never attended.

And sometimes it means standing in a park holding a colonoscope and a very nicely retrieved polyp—wondering where the patient went.

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The Lost Language of the Chart-Toppers: Why Bad Bunny Frustrates a Monolingual America

If you scroll through the comments of any major music publication today, you’ll find a recurring grievance: “Why is the biggest artist in the world singing in a language I don’t understand?” Bad Bunny’s refusal to “crossover” into English has become a cultural flashpoint. To some, it’s a triumphant display of Latino pride; to others, it’s a barrier to entry that feels alienating. But if we look back sixty or seventy years, the American listener was actually far more comfortable with a polyglot playlist than we are today.

What changed? It might be that we’ve lost the “shared trauma” that once forced us to look outward.

When the World Was on the Radio

In the 1950s and 60s, Americans didn’t just tolerate foreign-language hits; they celebrated them. Consider the landscape:

• Domenico Modugno’s “Volare” (1958): An Italian ballad that spent five weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the first-ever Grammy for Record of the Year.

• Kyu Sakamoto’s “Sukiyaki” (1963): A Japanese torch song that reached #1 despite the fact that most listeners had no idea it was actually a melancholy poem about walking to keep from crying.

• Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba”: A traditional Mexican huapango that became an indelible part of the early rock-and-roll DNA.

Even Doris Day’s “Que Sera, Sera,” while primarily English, leaned into its Spanish title as a universal mantra. Back then, the American ear was conditioned to find beauty in the melody, even when the vocabulary remained a mystery.

The Military Connection: A Global Perspective

There is a compelling argument that this mid-century musical tolerance was forged in the fires of World War II. After a global conflict that left 60 million dead, the world was irrevocably interconnected.

Millions of young American GIs were deployed to Europe and the Pacific. They weren’t just tourists; they were young people living in German villages, Italian cities, and Japanese occupied territories. They ate the food, heard the radio, and brought those sounds home in their kit bags.

This created a “globalized” generation. They had seen the wreckage of isolationism and, through sheer military exposure, developed a cultural elasticity. To a veteran who had spent two years in Naples, an Italian ballad on the radio didn’t feel like a “foreign intrusion”—it felt like a memory.

The Modern Divide: No Shared Experience

Contrast that with the environment that greets Bad Bunny today. Today’s United States lacks that unifying, outward-facing experience. We are more “connected” via the internet, but more “siloed” in our consumption.

• Algorithmic Bubbles: We only hear what we already like.

• The Lack of National Service: There is no longer a massive, cross-cultural “melting pot” experience like the draft to force diverse groups of Americans to live and work together.

• Language as Politics: In the current climate, Spanish isn’t just a language; it’s often treated as a political statement, making Bad Bunny’s success feel like a “takeover” to those who prefer an English-only status quo.

Final Thoughts

The criticism of Bad Bunny often stems from a feeling of being “left out.” But if the 1950s taught us anything, it’s that you don’t need to know the lyrics to feel the soul of a song.

Perhaps the reason we struggle with foreign-language hits today isn’t a lack of talent on the artist’s part, but a lack of curiosity on ours. We no longer have the grim necessity of global war to force us to see the world; now, we have to choose to look.

⭐ The True Foreign-Language #1 Hits in the U.S.

These were fully or predominantly non-English and went all the way:

  • Volare – Domenico Modugno (Italian) – 1958
  • Sukiyaki – Kyu Sakamoto (Japanese) – 1963
  • Dominique – The Singing Nun (French) – 1963

That’s it — only three in the entire two decades reached #1 in their original languages.

📊 By Language

🇮🇹 Italian

  • Volare – Modugno
  • Al Di Là – Pericoli
  • O Dio Mio – Annette
  • Quando, Quando, Quando – Pat Boone

➡ Italian was the dominant foreign language on U.S. radio in the late ’50s/early ’60s (Sanremo effect + Italian-American audience).

🇪🇸 Spanish

  • La Bamba – Ritchie Valens
  • Guantanamera – The Sandpipers
  • El Watusi – Ray Barretto

➡ Spanish entered via rock & Latin dance crazes.

🇫🇷 French

  • Dominique – The Singing Nun
    ➡ The most unlikely #1 of the rock era.

🇯🇵 Japanese

  • Sukiyaki – Kyu Sakamoto
    ➡ Still the only Japanese-language U.S. Hot 100 #1 in history.
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Boy and Man’s Best Friend: A Life Measured in Dogs

If you want to understand the chapters of my life, don’t look at schools, jobs, or addresses. Look at the dogs.

The Early Years: Borrowed Dogs and Forbidden Longings

The first dog I truly knew wasn’t ours. She lived next door in Clearview, Queens, a mixed-breed named Tippy, grandfathered into a housing development where dogs were technically verboten. Tippy was gentle, cautious, and deeply unimpressed by fireworks. July 4th was not her holiday. While the rest of America celebrated independence, Tippy practiced anxiety.

My cousins in Flushing had Cocoa, a cocker spaniel with a flair for drama. Cocoa pranced through northern Queens as if the sidewalks were runways and she had somewhere important to be. I adored her.

Naturally, my brother and I begged for a dog of our own.

Miraculously, our parents caved.

Domino: The Dog Who Made Childhood Complete

Ignoring housing rules and common sense, we stopped at Bide-A-Wee, the nonprofit rescue, and came home with a black-and-white mutt. My father named her Domino, a name so perfect it felt inevitable.

Childhood immediately improved.

Domino tore across our 700-square-foot apartment like a Hall of Fame running back, executing sharp cuts between furniture and humans alike. She went on long walks with us and short sprints through the living room. My mother fell completely under her spell, cooking special meals—eggs and ground beef—clearly superior to anything the rest of us were eating.

Domino knew dog people on sight. My Aunt Ardyth—veteran of Cocoa and later dogs—was her favorite human. When Ardyth walked in, Domino’s tail wagged so fast it seemed capable of generating lift.

When Domino gnawed a hole straight through the carpet, my mother patched it and hid the evidence from my father, knowing full well that discovery could mean deportation for the dog. This was marital diplomacy at its finest.

Too soon, Domino died of canine distemper at just two and a half years old. Our apartment felt impossibly quiet. Childhood took its first hard lesson in loss.

The Supporting Cast: Dogs of Relatives and Young Adulthood

Other dogs followed—belonging to family, but partially ours in spirit.

My brother’s German Shorthaired Pointer would stand rigid in the kitchen, pointing at appliances as if the refrigerator contained an adult quail.  He shared Domino’s fondness for carpeting.

Then there was Bea, the bandana-wearing beagle of my college apartment in Buffalo, where I lived with roommates who had signed on for higher education—not wildlife management.

Bea was compact, cheerful, and deeply committed to her work as an urban hunter. She lived in an apartment that technically housed students but functioned as a rodent surveillance unit. Every so often, Bea would surprise us by proudly producing a mouse, tail wagging, eyes bright, as if to say, You’re welcome

She wore her bandana like a union badge. Bea was not embarrassed. We were.

Adult Dogs: Bigger Houses, Bigger Damage

Adulthood brought Scooter, a golden retriever—affectionate, loyal, and refreshingly uninterested in carpets. Unfortunately, Scooter was interested in the pool’s intake piping, which she chewed through, creating a backyard flood best described as Lake Erie-adjacent.

Still, she was a good girl.

Millie: Ten Pounds of Chaos and One Near International Incident

Then came Millie, a Jack Russell terrier with the confidence of a Great Dane and the impulse control of a caffeinated squirrel.

Millie didn’t run—she launched. She bounded up stairs two at a time, sometimes skipping entire steps, occasionally achieving what appeared to be temporary flight. She believed every object was hers, including—memorably—my son’s shin guards, which she stole just before a soccer game.

When panic erupted, Millie eventually returned, head lowered, shin guards in mouth, wearing the unmistakable expression of someone who had won but decided not to press her advantage.

Her greatest performance, however, occurred one summer when my boys were away at camp in Northern California. Millie escaped.

What followed was a harrowing, cardio-intensive chase up the steep inclines of Yorba Linda, with Millie turning the entire neighborhood into her personal agility course. She would allow me to approach within inches—close enough to believe—then bolt a quarter mile uphill, glancing back just long enough to ensure I was still participating.

This went on for hours.

Eventually, exhaustion—mine, not hers—ended the game. Millie finally allowed herself to be apprehended, panting happily, grinning like an athlete who had just set a personal record.

At that exact moment, the boys called.

Sensing that the truth might be… destabilizing, I calmly lied.

“All is well,” I said.

Millie, freshly captured and still vibrating with joy, sat beside me, beaming.

It was parenting, dog ownership, and crisis management rolled into one.

The Next Generation

Now my sons have dogs of their own—Gainy and Charlie—who carry on the proud tradition of hijinks, companionship, and unconditional joy. Watching them with my grandchildren feels like closing a long, happy loop.

Epilogue

Dogs have been our sentries, our comedians, our therapists, and occasionally our demolition crews. They’ve shared our apartments, our houses, our mistakes, and our best days.

For that companionship—and for the early humans and canines who figured out this remarkable partnership—I remain deeply grateful.

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I Went Back to my Kindergarten Class of 1958– Here is What I Told Them

Show and Tell, 67 Years Later

I arrive in Whitestone, Queens, in the soft, milk-glass light of 1958. The air smells faintly of chalk and floor wax. The sidewalks are narrower, the cars longer, the future quieter. I push open the classroom door and there you all are—knees scabbed, collars starched, haircuts obedient to gravity and mothers. Mrs. LaPenna stands watch, ruler nearby, smile doing most of the work.

You look up at me as if I’m a substitute teacher who took a wrong turn off the Whitestone Expressway. I tell you I’m one of you—just borrowed from a later inning of the same game. I’m here on a time pass from 2025, and I don’t have long.

I start with the easy truths.

“First,” I say, “you’re growing up in a good moment. The Dodgers have left Brooklyn, which hurts, but the Yankees are still a juggernaut. Elvis is on the radio. Ike is in the White House. Polio is on the ropes. Milk comes in bottles and your parents still believe tomorrow will be better because it usually is.”

A few of you grin. One kid in the front row adjusts his bow tie like it’s armor.

“Second,” I say, “hold onto this room. You won’t know it now, but classrooms like this—blackboard dust, wooden desks, a teacher who knows your full name—are where the country learns how to argue without fighting. You’ll need that skill.”

I tell you what’s coming, gently.

“There will be a man on television named Kennedy who makes politics look young. There will be marches where people insist—out loud—that America live up to its own handwriting. There will be a war you’ll see every night at dinner. Some of you will go. Some of you will protest. Most of you will just try to make sense of it all.”

You fidget. Big words for small shoes.

“So here’s the advice,” I say, and I lean in because advice should never be shouted.

“Be curious longer than is comfortable. Read beyond the assignment. Learn how things work—your body, a carburetor, a balance sheet, a sentence. When the world tells you to pick a side fast, slow down. Speed makes noise; understanding makes progress.”

I point to the windows. “Neighborhoods change. Whitestone will still be here, but it will look different. That’s not a loss—it’s a relay. You’ll carry what matters and pass it on.”

I pause, then add the part I didn’t know in kindergarten.

“You will fail at things you’re good at and succeed at things you never planned. That’s not hypocrisy—it’s growth. Be kind to yourself when the map gets smudged.”

Someone asks about the future—always the future.

I smile. “In 2025, you’ll carry a small rectangle in your pocket that knows almost everything. It will be miraculous and distracting. Use it to learn, not to disappear. And when it tells you the world is on fire, remember this room. Remember how a group of five-year-olds once sat still long enough to listen.”

Mrs. LaPenna clears her throat—the bell is coming.

“One more thing,” I say. “Call your parents more than you think you should. Thank teachers while you can. Save a photograph like this and look at it when you’re unsure who you are. You’re in here. So is everyone you’ll ever be.”

The bell rings. Chairs scrape. Time tightens.

As I step back into 2025, the chalk dust follows me for a second, then settles. I carry it with me—the proof that before the headlines and the hindsight, before the decades did what decades do, there was a room in Whitestone where the future sat cross-legged and waited its turn to speak.

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Santa, ChatGPT and the end of the Naughty-Nice Era

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Published Christmas Day

I watched Pluribus recently, and the idea has been quietly stalking me ever since. The show imagines a superhuman race endowed with infinite knowledge and perfect cooperation. No individuality. No hierarchy of skill. No one stands out, because no one can. There’s no schadenfreude—failure doesn’t exist. There’s no long educational climb, no apprenticeship, no grinding effort to elevate oneself above the rest. Everyone knows everything. Everyone performs equally well.

It’s an orderly world. Efficient. Bloodless.

What struck me wasn’t the absence of conflict—it was the absence of accomplishment. If distinction disappears, what does it mean to achieve anything at all?

That thought followed me straight into our own present moment.

The Great Leveling

We are already living through a quieter version of Pluribus. Recall—once a badge of intelligence—has been demoted to a parlor trick. Sports trivia, historical dates, obscure facts: once markers of expertise, now solvable in seconds by a glowing rectangle in your pocket. You don’t need to know anymore; you just need to search.

And writing—my particular arena—has become the most unsettling test case.

You write a rough draft. It’s honest. Thoughtful. Maybe even good. Then curiosity (or temptation) intervenes. You ask an AI to revise it.

What comes back is cleaner. Sharper. Better structured. The prose you meant to write.

You shrug—not because it failed, but because it succeeded.

So whose work is it now?

Confession Time

The version you are reading was edited—significantly—by ChatGPT. I wrote the draft. I shaped the ideas. But the clarity, the flow, the tightening of loose bolts? That was machine-assisted.

Is that cheating? Is it collaboration? Is it no different from spellcheck, or fundamentally different because the tool now competes with the craftsman?

I don’t have a clean answer. Only an honest one: pretending this isn’t happening feels more dishonest than acknowledging it outright.

Christmas, Santa, and the Algorithm

And since this is Christmas Day, it feels appropriate to bring Santa into the discussion.

For centuries, Santa Claus has run the most ambitious surveillance-based performance-evaluation system in history. Naughty. Nice. Binary. Efficient. Judgment rendered annually, with toys as incentives and coal as penalties.

But imagine Santa with AI.

No more vague moral assessments. No secondhand elf reports. Just a comprehensive dataset: search histories, impulse buys, tone of emails, patience in traffic, comment-section behavior. Naughty and Nice reduced to an algorithmic score.

Santa outsourced.

If that sounds unsettling, it should. Yet it mirrors our larger dilemma: when judgment itself becomes automated, where does human discretion fit? When assessment is perfect, what room remains for grace, growth, or redemption?

What’s Left That’s Ours

AI can recall better than we can. Write faster. Polish endlessly. It can outperform us in domains we once believed defined intelligence and creativity.

But it didn’t decide this question was worth asking.

It didn’t feel uneasy watching Pluribus.

It didn’t wonder whether accomplishment itself is being quietly deprecated.

What remains human—for now—is judgment, taste, values, and the discomfort that comes with change. The choice of what to pursue, why it matters, and when to stop optimizing.

In a world sliding toward Pluribus, individuality may no longer come from knowing more—but from caring differently.

A Christmas Thought

Christmas has always been about imperfect humans trying to be a little better than they were the year before. Not optimized. Not flawless. Just better.

If AI eventually knows everything, writes everything, and judges everything—including Santa’s lists—then perhaps the last true human accomplishment will be choosing imperfection when perfection is available at the click of a button.

This post was edited by ChatGPT.

The unease behind it was not.

Merry Christmas.

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Transportation as a Gateway to Learning—From Subways to Skies

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Early Fascination as a Pathway to Discovery

Some kids memorize baseball stats. Others can name every dinosaur from Allosaurus to Zuniceratops. I was the kid who memorized the New York City subway map.

Four hundred eighty-six track miles, a tangle of lines more intricate than any anatomy chart, and 472 stations—each with its own personality. I used to sit with that map the way other kids sat with comic books. The G’s lonely green line, the A stretching heroically from Inwood to the ocean breeze of the Rockaways, the way the 4 and 5 shadow each other before peeling off like old friends heading to different boroughs. It wasn’t just a system of rails; it was a world of possibility.

Funny thing is, I now have a grandson with the same spark—except his passion lives on the streets and in the skies. At four, he stands on the curb like a miniature car sommelier, announcing make, model, and year before most adults could even identify the color. He studies maps like treasure charts, and when a plane crosses his field of vision, he looks up as if receiving a transmission from some aeronautical muse. He’s never been to San Diego—but when he finally visits, he’ll find it a transportation playground.

How Transportation Curiosity Shapes Learning

There’s something powerful about that kind of early fascination. People think it’s a hobby. But really, it’s a honing mechanism. When a child becomes obsessed with the mechanics of how things move—cars, buses, trains, planes—they’re not just naming machines. They’re building neural circuitry for attention, pattern recognition, systems thinking. They’re learning to follow a thread from point A to point B, and—without realizing it—training themselves for the long game: the ability to learn deeply, persistently, joyfully.

Transportation has always been more than conveyance. It’s a metaphor for growth. Anything that takes you from one place to another reminds you that there are other places, other ideas, other horizons waiting. Whether it’s a subway snaking under Manhattan or a plane banking over Mission Bay, movement awakens possibility.

The journey itself becomes a teacher.

A Few Stops of NYC Subway Trivia

The New York City subway—my first great teacher—remains a marvel. A few favorite bits of trivia:

  • The A train still holds the title for the longest uninterrupted ride in the system—over 32 miles from tip to sea.
  • Times Square is the busiest station, but the deepest is 191st Street in Washington Heights, sitting 180 feet below ground.
  • The 6 train still makes the elegant “City Hall loop,” passing through a hidden 1904 station closed since 1945.
  • And Fulton Center is one of the few places where more than nine different services intersect, creating a kind of transit symphony.

Maps, tracks, transfers—they were my first textbook.

A Balcony Classroom Awaits

Today, my vantage point is different. From a condo on 6th Avenue beside Balboa Park in San Diego, cars glide past in a steady parade. And every few minutes, a plane descends toward the airport, banking low enough to cast a brief shadow across the street. It’s a living exhibit in motion: automotive, aerial, and constant.

Someday, when my grandson finally visits San Diego, he’ll sit on that balcony for the first time. He’ll watch the cars flow by and begin identifying each one with the effortless precision he’s already mastered. He’ll look skyward and recognize the aircraft type, the engines, maybe even its probable origin and destination.

And from that mosaic of motion, he’ll continue his own journey—moving toward new ideas, new abilities, new horizons.

Because transportation, at its core, is a promise:

that where you begin is never where you have to end.

Sometimes all it takes is a subway map, a passing car, or the shadow of a jet to set a lifelong journey in motion.

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Liberty, Land Deals, and the Lost Colony of Vandalia:

How Real Estate Speculation Helped Spark the American Revolution

Everyone learns the American Revolution was about liberty, rights, Enlightenment ideals, and maybe some cranky guys in Boston who took their tea way too seriously.

But there’s another story (highlighted in Ken Burns documentary on the Revolutionary War) — the property story — where the Revolution looks less like a philosophical uprising and more like a group of wealthy Virginians who believed deeply in freedom, self-determination, and their God-given right to buy land west of the Appalachians and flip it for profit.

This is that story.

The story of land, liberty… and one spectacularly failed frontier real-estate venture called Vandalia.

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1. Before They Were Founders, They Were the Original Real Estate Syndicate

The Virginia gentry of the 1760s weren’t just planting tobacco and writing political pamphlets.

They were busy accumulating land like it was a colonial version of Monopoly.

The roster of early-American real estate titans included:

George Washington

If Washington were alive today, he’d be on HGTV explaining riverfront parcels and ROI on Kanawha Valley acreage. The man owned tens of thousands of acres in the Ohio River Valley, much of it technically illegal under British law — a detail he resolved by ignoring British law.

Thomas Jefferson

Dreamed of a nation of yeoman farmers cultivating the American West… on lands Jefferson already had his eye on.

Patrick Henry

Before “Liberty or Death,” he might as well have said, “Kentucky land grants or a very stern letter.”

George Mason

Wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights and bought frontier acreage in roughly the same breath.

Richard Henry Lee

The man who proposed independence also proposed a number of highly optimistic western land investments.

This group was less “Founding Fathers” and more “Colonial Berkshire Hathaway.”

Their philosophy was simple:

Buy cheap, survey often, hope the Crown doesn’t notice.

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2. Enter Britain, Stage Left, With a Giant ‘No Trespassing’ Sign

After the French & Indian War, Britain was:

• Broke

• Tired

• Allergic to further Native wars

• Deeply suspicious of ambitious Virginians with surveying equipment

So in 1763, the Crown issued the Proclamation Line, banning settlement west of the Appalachians.

This did not sit well with men who had already purchased, surveyed, subdivided, or preemptively named half of West Virginia.

Then came the Quebec Act of 1774, which effectively reassigned part of the Ohio region to Canada.

To Virginians, this was like finding out your beachfront condo had been rezoned as “Greater Toronto.”

If Parliament wanted to anger Americans, they were doing a stellar job.

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3. The Shawnee Perspective:

“Stop Surveying Things That Belong to Us.”

Here’s the part land speculators usually glossed over:

People already lived there.

The Shawnee, along with the Mingo, Delaware, and other Ohio Valley nations, did not want Virginians marching in with compasses, boundary chains, and vague promises of “fair compensation.”

Their viewpoint was clear:

“This is our home.

You are not invited.

Please go back to Virginia.

They had just fought the French, fought the British, and now watched survey parties tromp across their hunting grounds like they were measuring for a golf course.

When Virginians pushed deeper, the Shawnee pushed back — diplomatically at first, then militarily.

Conflicts like Dunmore’s War (1774) were basically the Shawnee saying:

“I’m serious. Stop drawing lines on my land.”

Britain, trying to avoid more frontier wars, sided with the Shawnee.

This was completely reasonable…

and completely infuriating to land-hungry Virginians.

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4. And Then There’s Vandalia:

Franklin’s Frontier Colony That Never Was

Benjamin Franklin, never one to miss a business opportunity, helped conceive Vandalia, a shiny new British colony carved out of what is now:

• West Virginia

• Kentucky

• Western Pennsylvania

Part real estate venture, part political project, part ambitious retirement plan, Vandalia would’ve had:

• Pittsburgh as the capital

• Tens of thousands of acres available for settlement

• Investors counting their profits before a single settler arrived

The plan actually received preliminary approval in London.

Then three things happened:

1. The British treasury panicked

2. The Shawnee objected (see above)

3. Virginia and Pennsylvania both screamed, “That’s our land!”

Finally the British said:

“Never mind. No Vandalia.”

Franklin’s investments evaporated, along with his patience for British land policy.

When a man loses a fortune, he reflects deeply on liberty.

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5. The Ingredients for Revolution (Real Estate Edition)

By the 1770s, a combustible mixture had formed:

• Wealthy Virginians with land they couldn’t use

• Franklin with a failed colony he couldn’t build

• Veterans promised land grants they couldn’t claim

• A British government blocking westward expansion

• Shawnee nations refusing displacement

• A colonial belief that “freedom” meant expanding westward without London’s permission

Add taxes, stir gently, and light with a spark from Lexington and Concord.

Voila.

Revolution.

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6. So Did America Fight for Liberty or Land?

Yes.

Both.

The founders passionately believed in:

• Natural rights

• Representative government

• Self-determination

• And turning a tidy profit on riverside acreage in the Ohio Valley

We aren’t cheapening the Revolution by saying this.

We’re telling the truth in full.

America was absolutely founded on high ideals —

and also on an epic real estate dispute.

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7. The Bottom Line

The Revolution wasn’t just about Parliament and taxes.

It was about a tug-of-war between:

• British officials trying to avoid frontier wars

• Shawnee communities fighting for their homeland

• Virginia gentlemen defending their right to buy land they didn’t live on

Freedom and property were so intertwined that by 1776, the Founding Fathers could barely tell them apart.

So yes — America was born out of liberty, Enlightenment ideals…

and a very early form of frontier real-estate frustration.

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🎃 Trick, Treat, and Radiology: Reflections from a 1950s Halloween

From candy corn kernels to X-rayed Milky Ways — one man’s sweet evolution through the decades

Halloween has always been that magical time when ordinary citizens—young and old—put on masks, defy curfew, and demand sugary tribute from strangers. For me, the magic began in the 1950s, when the phrase “trick or treat” meant something pure, thrilling, and slightly unsanitary.

Back then, the concept of getting candy for free by merely showing up at someone’s door was revolutionary. Armed with a paper grocery bag from A&P—free of charge, mind you—I roamed the sidewalks of Queens like a miniature bandit. The rewards were astonishing: a few loose kernels of candy corn, an occasional Lincoln head penny, and from the more affluent homes, a full-sized Hershey bar—the Holy Grail of confectionery.

Packaging was optional, hygiene was theoretical, and nobody used words like “processed sugar intake.” The candy haul was superb thanks to the dense, row-house geography—door to door in seconds. Contrast that to when my own sons went trick-or-treating in the suburbs, where each house sat on half an acre. Their candy-per-step ratio was dismal. I considered handing out Fitbits.

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🍫 The Evolution of a Sweet Tooth

As my palate matured, my candy preferences evolved—from humble candy corn to Reese’s, and then to the sophisticated allure of Milky Way bars during my college days. That was my version of fine dining on a student budget: nougat, caramel, and chocolate—three food groups in one.

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👻 The Tricks of Yesteryear

“Tricks” in mid-20th-century Queens were mostly good-natured. We filled socks with chalk to “decorate” each other’s coats. (Why? Don’t ask. It was a simpler time.) The truly daring among us escalated to egg throwing—back when eggs were so cheap you could use them as projectiles. Imagine that today: “Sorry, officer, I assaulted a Buick with $6 worth of cage-free organics.”

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☠️ When Treats Got Tricky

By the late 20th century, the innocent fun had soured. News reports surfaced of razor blades and metal fragments hidden in candy. Pediatric radiology departments found themselves X-raying trick-or-treat bags. “No cavities,” the doctor would say, “but your Snickers has shrapnel.”

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🦇 Costumes Then and Now

In my childhood, costumes were simple: Batman, Superman, or a random Disney character. The masks were molded plastic that cut off oxygen but never enthusiasm. Today, the front yards are equipped with animatronic zombies, motion-activated ghosts, and sound effects that could raise the dead—or at least startle your Apple Watch into detecting atrial fibrillation.

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🍬 The Spirit Lives On

So, when kids ring my doorbell today, I smile. They’re carrying store-bought pumpkin buckets instead of crumpled A&P bags, and they’re dressed as everything from Spider-Man to Taylor Swift’s cat. But the gleam in their eyes is the same—the age-old thrill of getting something sweet for nothing, of prowling the neighborhood under cover of darkness with permission.

And when they hold out their hands, I drop in a mini-sized candy bar, silently lamenting the extinction of full-size generosity. But hey—at least it’s sterile, gluten-free, and X-ray safe.

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“Back in My Day”: A Field Guide to Modern Sticker Shock


There’s a sound older people make when they see a grocery receipt.

It’s not quite a groan, not quite a gasp — more like the sound you’d make if someone told you a gallon of milk now costs more than your first apartment.

It’s the sound of inflation-induced disbelief — the national anthem of anyone over seventy.

We don’t mean to complain. We simply remember when things were affordable — back before the Dow, the debt, and the avocado entered their current bull markets.

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When Everything Was a Quarter

In the late 1960s, a loaf of bread cost twenty-five cents.

Milk was eighty-nine.

A gallon of gas was thirty-six cents, and the guy pumping it cleaned your windshield without asking for a tip or your Wi-Fi password.

The subway in New York was twenty cents — the same price as a phone call or a cup of coffee, both of which involved more warmth than bandwidth.

Now the subway is $2.90, coffee is $7, and the phone call has been replaced by a “Zoom follow-up.”

Progress, apparently, has a subscription fee.

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The Egg Cream Index

But nothing, nothing, captures the moral collapse of American pricing like the Egg Cream.

In Queens, NY in 1968, an egg cream — that fizzy, chocolatey, seltzer miracle — cost 25 cents.

It was cheap, delicious, and, for reasons no one could explain, contained no egg and no cream.

Last month, I ordered one in West Palm Beach.

It was artisanal, hand-stirred, and served in a mason jar — because apparently all beverages must now resemble something from a farm wedding.

The price: $5.75.

For that, I expected at least a side of nostalgia and maybe a complimentary trip back to Queens.

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Tuition, Steak, and Other Crimes Against Memory

In 1972, you could attend a public university for about $400 a year.

Today, that might cover textbooks — and not even the digital kind.

A rib-eye steak, once $2.49 a pound, now costs $17.

Same cow. Different accountant.

I recently saw a dozen “pasture-raised, stress-free” eggs for $7.99.

At that price, they should hatch a trust fund.

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The Myth of Modern Improvement

We’re told things are better now: cars are safer, thermostats talk, and milk has 47 plant-based alternatives.

Yet somehow, the grocery cart has become a rolling cry for help.

In 1968, I bought a a used Oldsmobile Cutlass for $800.

It started with a key, not a retina scan.

Now it politely reminds me I’m late for a subscription oil change.

We used to own things.

Now we rent the illusion of ownership and call it “smart living.”

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The Economics of Outrage

Wages have risen too, but not nearly enough to prevent the occasional coronary event in the produce aisle.

The cashier asked if I’d like to “round up” for charity.

I told her, “At these prices, I am the charity.”

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Why We Complain (and Why We’re Right)

Younger people think we’re nostalgic.

We’re not.

We’re auditors of reality.

We complain not out of bitterness but because we remember a time when a splurge meant ordering dessert — not securing financing.

Our griping isn’t crankiness. It’s fiscal anthropology.

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Perspective, Adjusted for Inflation

Back in my day, a dollar was a dollar.

It could buy a newspaper, 4 cups of coffee, and the comforting illusion that adulthood came with change back.

Now, a dollar buys… anxiety.

Yes, we live longer, travel faster, and have refrigerators that snitch on us for running out of oat milk.

But deep down, I’d trade it all for one more twenty-cent subway ride, a twenty-five-cent egg cream, and the satisfying thunk of a TV turning off.

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The Moral (Priced to Sell)

So when you hear an older person sigh at the gas pump or glare at the eggs, don’t roll your eyes.

We’re not angry — we’re doing mental arithmetic in 1972 dollars.

And in 1972, math was free, too.

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