The value of reading, and of writing things down that we read, or hear, cannot be overstated. Two expert guests (who specialize in speech and memory) on the Huberman Lab podcast explained that when we read text or listen to something and then write key aspects/takeaways down by hand- not typing, it engages our motor control centers in ways that deeply embed that information to our memory. Taking notes, however cursory, turns out to be the best way to remember and implement information later.
In full disclosure, I did not follow college basketball like I have years ago. For example, I used to be able to tell you the top 10 or 15 players in NCAA basketball. Today, the only All Americans or top draft picks I know about are the Purdue center, Edey and the Alabama forward, Miller, who just got in trouble. My NCAA picks (below) are basically wild hunches based on only a cursory study or familiarity of the teams. I am picking Purdue to win at all even though I have only seen a few of their games. Two of the games were against Rutgers. Rutgers beat Purdue in the regular season and barely lost to them in the Big 10 tournament.
Speaking of Rutgers, I was one of those people who were a bit disappointed that they did not make the NCAA tournament. However, I can’t feel too bad for Rutgers today. Last night, as the number 1 seed, and playing in their gym, they lost to Hofstra in the first round of the NIT. Rutgers did not exactly bolster their objection into not getting into the field of 64 or 68.
No Big Five team (Villanova, Saint Joe’s, Temple, Penn and La Salle) made it into the NCAA tournament. This was the first time since 1977 that a Philadelphia-based school failed to play in the tournament. Penn actually came the closest to playing in the tournament with their semifinal game in the Ivy League tournament against Princeton, which they lost. Not sure that any team will play in next year’s tournament either…
I have not seen a lot of Big Five teams play. However the two best players in the Big Five for this year are Jordan Dingle for Penn and Erik Reynolds for St Joe’s. I’m not sure that either of those players or NBA caliber or will be drafted. However they impressed me more than Cam Whitmore of Villanova who probably will be picked early this year in the year’s NBA draft.
One of the best ideas that I have read on Twitter of all places is that Dawn Staley should replace Aaron McKee as head coach of Temple’s men’s basketball team. If any woman could succeed in coaching men’s basketball at a major college level, it is Dawn Staley. It would be nice to see her back coaching in Philadelphia!
What H.L. Mencken might say about our current politicians and celebrities based on his past writings…
| Current Politician or News Celebrity | Menckenians |
|---|---|
| Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lisa Bobert | “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” |
| George Santos | “It is [a politician’s] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.‘ |
| Kevin McCarthy | ‘The only way to success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the mob. A candidate for office, even the highest, must either adapt its current manias en bloc, or convince it hypothetically that he is done so.“ |
| Donald Trump | “It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.“ |
| Fox News viewers | ‘The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.“ |
| Tucker Carlson | “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” |
| Alex Murdaugh | “It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.“ |
Though having the fewest amount of days, February feels like the longest month.
EAB
100% Eric Burleigh; 0% ChatGPT
With all due respect to Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali and others, the GOATS (Greatest of all Times) in their sports have probably not been born yet.
Wish we can transplant the spirit, unity and enthusiasm of a professional sports team fanbase to unite this fractured country.
Memories of a deceased loved, like a candle, may flicker or dim but the love continues to beat strong.
The concentration and focus of the average American lasts midway between the time spent reading a Tweet or viewing an average TikTok reel.
How soon before we eliminate teachers, classrooms and books for a child’s education and upload knowledge and information by injection of data to their brain?
1776 Continental Congress: Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Henry, Franklin and Adams.
2023 Congress: McCarthy, Gaetz, Boebert, Greene and now George Santos.
Perspicacity of sports and political insights by friends > collective wisdoms of “talking heads and commentators” on TV.
Pickleball acts as viagra for some men of mature age. Both get the blood flowing, creates raised expectations and allows for pleasant times with the ladies.
“The saddest thing is to be
a minute to someone,
when you’ve made them your eternity.”
Sanober Khan
I speculate that nonfiction books are headed down the path of academic journals. They will be useful for academics positioning themselves for tenure, but they will be too slow and ponderous for communicating ideas. People who really care about ideas will turn to reading and writing substacks instead of books and journals.
Books are not Information Dense
Substack is much better
Arnold Kling
A Neurologist’s Tips to Protect Your Memory: 1. Pay more attention. 2. Find regular everyday memory challenges. 3. Read more novels. 4.Beware of technology. 5.Work with a mental health professional if you need to.
Dr. Richard Restak, a neurologist and clinical professor at George Washington Hospital University School of Medicine and Health
“The average American — even if they’re a highly sophisticated college graduate or a law school student — really doesn’t know an awful lot about the many different ways in which even innocent people can regret for the rest of their lives the biggest mistake of their lives, the decision to waive their Fifth Amendment right and agree to talk to the police.”
James Duane, a professor at Regent Law School in Virginia
Senior citizens are like older cars without a gas gauge. Both have travelled many miles and not sure how much time or travel is left.
As years grow, handshakes, hugs and kisses among friends and family are longer.
Photo by Pixabay
Those who are truly happy, if offered a chance to enter a time machine and go back to relive their lives, would decline and say, “I would not change a thing.”
Emptying contents from my mom’s home of 54 years, I sensed fond memories of my youth following them solemnly from the house to the truck taking them away.
One’s definition of “success’ matures with age. Success becomes not so much in what we have but what we contributed with what we had.
If you still believe in 75% of the things you learned or were told in the first 25% of your life, you haven’t been paying attention.
I am late for making 2023 predictions but this is mainly a fun exercise as no one is very good at figuring out the future. Based on my mediocre abilities to pick winners in my NFL pool, the reader should not expect great foresight here either.
Politics:
Photo by Virgil Cayasa
Sports
Business
Science
I bought and read this book over 20 years ago. I was about the same age as the author at the time and I had a sense of my advancing age, mortality and the need to make changes. I did not have a spiritual guru like Katz did with Thomas Merton. ( I do share his interest in the writings of HL Mencken.) While there were times when I would have liked to be alone, I had absolutely no desire to find and buy a distressed cabin in the woods and live there.
While Katz was a far more successful professional man, I fortunately did not share most of the childhood traumas that he experienced with his parents and siblings. His demons followed him from childhood to adulthood.
This book had far more influence on me when I read it at 50 years old than it did re-reading it at 70 years old. Maybe I am a bit wiser, maybe I am a bit more resigned at my current age. Plus I have very little enthusiam for change.
Interestingly, I read an update on Jon Katz and noticed that he divorced his wife Paula in 2008 and remarried in 2010. Reading between the lines in his book, I sensed that he may have had some dissatisfaction with his marriage. I guess that that was part of the change that he was looking to make.
This is an inspiring book for those on a spiritual search or reconciling their mid life crisis. Very good story…
Excerpts from the book I found interesting…
I am not nearly as afraid of dying as I am of the hinges inside my mind and soul rusting closed. I am desperate to keep them open, because I think that if they close, that’s one’s first death, the loss of hope, curiosity, and possibility, the spiritual death. After that, it seems to me, the second one is just a formality. I wanted to oil the hinges, force the doors to stay open.
I’ve struggled mightily to figure out how to be spiritual without having to be religious, how to find peace without bending my knee before an altar.
I’d lost close friends this way before, even abandoned a couple myself. When men are pressed, their friendships go to the bottom of the list.
There is huge risk involved whenever you seek to discover yourself. You might find that you’re not as happily married as you thought you were. That you’re growing older than you’ve permitted yourself to acknowledge. That you have few true friends, or the wrong ones. That you’re not happy with the place you’re living or fulfilled by the work you’re doing. That you’re not happy or fulfilled, period.
As with so many other boomers, death was suddenly in the air around me, the consciousness of mortality emerging as parents, older friends and mentors, and the first of my peers began to falter and fall. I was writing my own history. I wanted immortality, though not in the conventional religious sense. I wanted to live on in the fond memories of the people I left behind, to be recalled as a supportive father, a loving husband, a devoted friend, a man who struggled to be a good person.
Esot-eric 