Prayer is not meant to be a one-way conversation: when we get inside our own heads, we are trying to condense our own thoughts, and listen very intently. In this way, prayer (along with its cousin, meditation), has been compared to very slowly and carefully twiddling the knobs on a shortwave radio, trying to detect, and then hone in on, a specific signal.

There is actually a series of subtle hints in the Torah that tell us how conversations can be had with G-d. The first is that the voice of G-d comes to Moses from between the two gold keruvim, angels, on top of the holy ark. Those angels are reaching for each other, telling us that G-d’s voice is found where two entities seek to have a connection, a relationship. G-d can be found in the yearning that we each have for connection.

I admit I am stunned. Out of France, incredibly, comes a report ordered by the French Senate, analyzing the practice of transitioning adolescent patients with gender dysphoria.

The bottom line conclusion:  This practice is the one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine.

So in the last few years there have been some serious advancements in genetic medicine that I have recently learned about. My first reaction was surprise that I didn’t hear about these earlier while being ceaselessly bombarded by political minutiae. Every darn day it’s Trump and Biden and Congress not doing anything. But while that’s happening or not happening as per Congress, scientists and doctors are boldly healing diseases that have never been healed before. It’s like Star Trek up in the lab.

Geordi La Forge (WikiMedia Commons)

I watched part of a tiresome interview of the always excellent Douglas Murray in which the interviewer continued to use hackneyed, intellectually lazy “genocide” to describe the Israeli war of survival against Hamas. I wondered why any network would hire a journalist too dim to realize when they are being made to look foolish by a much smarter interviewee and then remembered it is now the hiring norm in the industry .

It also occurred to me that if “genocide” applies whenever civilian casualties accrue, then General Dwight Eisenhower was a genocidal monster.  The D-Day invasion at Normandy was preceded by many thousands of tons of bombs dropped and intense naval shelling. The landings and airborne drops turned into a large scale desperate battle over the entire peninsula lasting for weeks.  An estimated 20,000 French civilians were killed, hundreds of thousands injured and most made homeless. Ike had to know this was a likely outcome.

Billy Collins was born 83 years ago, on March 22, 1941.  I don’t know a lot about him (I’ve made avoidance of modern poets a hallmark of my literary experience), but he was beloved of a dear friend of mine and–on occasion–I can see why.

Above all else, Collins’s poetry was accessible.  Sometimes funny.  Heartwarming, and heartbreaking.  This one in particular (full poem at this link), last stanza:

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap.

I have to renew my Texas driver’s license this year.  The last few times I have been unable to renew by mail (as in the somewhat distant past) because of an endorsement for driving oversized fire trucks. That requires me to show up in person.

This time, however, I have to show proof of citizenship.  I recently sent off my passport for renewal, so instead of my passport I need a birth certificate.  My wife was suitably impressed when I pulled out certificates for both of us from the important documents folder I keep in the gun safe (in a fire resistant bag, in the fire resistant gun safe; nothing is truly fireproof).  It looks like my passport will show up before my May drivers license appointment, so the birth certificate goes back in the safe.

But here is the point:  a federal judge ruled that there is nothing wrong with illegals voting in local elections (District of Columbia,in this case).

It all began the morning I started coughing up bright red blood. I only did it once or twice, but the amount of blood was not insignificant. So it left me wondering whether I should go to the hospital or something. I hate hospitals, so of course I resisted the obvious answer to that question which anyone else would have understood immediately. I was assisted in my temporary denial by the fact that I actually felt perfectly normal. Other than the blood coating the palm of my hand, I didn’t seem to be in any distress.

Except that I was a few hours from dying.

Armed gunmen burst into a concert venue in Moscow this evening and opened fire and threw an incendiary device that has caused a fire in the hall and partially collapsed the roof. Andrei Vorobyov, Moscow’s regional governor has said in a Telegram message that 70 ambulances have been dispatched to the Crocus City Hall, a large shopping and entertainment complex northwest of central Moscow.

“Everything is being done at the scene to save people,” he wrote in the Telegram message that was translated by NBC News. “The Special Rapid Response Unit (SOBR) has been deployed. There are over 70 ambulance carriages near Crocus, doctors provide the necessary assistance to all victims.”

Despite a tumultuous and volatile marketplace; scandals, arrests, and bankruptcies at rival digital exchanges; and social issues disrupting his own company, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is a devout believer in digital currencies and the power of the blockchain. In this interview, Armstrong describes how he co-founded Coinbase, explains the basics of how digital currencies work, and responds to criticisms of cryptocurrency from Warren Buffet and others.

The New York Times published a story yesterday titled “What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later.”  The summary paragraph, toward the top, seems quite accurate to me:

A variety of data — about children’s academic outcomes and about the spread of Covid-19 — has accumulated in the time since. Today, there is broad acknowledgment among many public health and education experts that extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of Covid, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting.

The State of Washington’s highest court has determined that its bar exam is racist.  A lower passing score and “alternative pathways” into the legal profession have been mandated.  It would be nice if the esteemed justices could point to a single exam question and explain how it is racist. How exactly does one go about excluding minority test-takers from correctly answering questions about the law of property or about search and seizure?  Smuggle in references to polo, yachting,  formal table settings or tuna-on-white sandwiches?

Systemic racism is a near-magical thing.  White people are pulling it off and yet have no idea how exactly we are doing it, so we can’t stop it.  It is much like the way women have always been intensely drawn to me.  Sure, there are some obvious assets present but clearly, there is some ineffable extra something at play that I no longer bother to try to define.  And as with Washington Supreme Court Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis’s grasp of the reality of systemic racism, there is just no way to fully capture the phenomenon and its causes other than acceptance of its validity and proceed from there.