Turning Pro

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Twelve

and best friends, 

we both saved 

our weekly allowance

to buy magic tricks.

You'd bring a catalogue

from the local magic shop to school,

and at lunch hour 

we'd peruse the pages together;

the sleight-of-hand effects,

coin routines and gimmicked decks,

jugs that never stopped pouring,

boxes with false bottoms,

Houdini escapes.

Those days,

my parents were always fighting 

behind locked doors.

Yours had split years before.

The week you got your license

your father bought you a Tercel—

an orange tin can.

We drove around the city late at night,

stuffed ourselves with steamies and fries

at the local greasy spoon

and talked.

You loved a girl from school, 

didn't reveal the secret.

She wanted you as a friend.

You hoped

for someday.

I slept with her

when you were away at college.

Told myself 

she wasn't yours to lose.

We tried to hide it—

used misdirection.

When you came home

you didn't leave your bed for months

or answer the phone.

A vanishing act

behind closed curtains.

Then one day

you appeared

in your shit-box car.

We went driving.

I thought we'd talk about our futures

like old times.

"I'm going to turn pro," you said.

"Turn pro at what?"

"Tennis. I'm going to be a tennis pro."

"But you don't play tennis,"

I said.

"I've seen Borg,

I can beat him."

“That’d be quite a trick,”

is all I said.

Titleist

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We must be doing something right

when we can stretch out like this;

spend hours and hours

traipsing through estate grounds, 

around man-made ponds,

across escarpments,

batting a smooth dimpled sphere

about the size of a stone

with awkward bent rods

to deliver it into a tiny hole

marked by a small flag

cut into a patch of shaved grass.

It's called Titleist.

A fox hunt without much left to chance;

We dress for the occasion, wear special footwear,

and soft leather gloves. 

Instead of horses we ride vehicles

with rubber wheels and humming electric motors.

Instead of aiming rifles

we swing metal sticks around our heads.

The swings are counted—

the point is to reach par

which means average.

Below par means you're very good.

For the privilege 

we join expensive clubs—

moms with their neighbourhood friends,

dads with business associates,

after rounds, 

over finger food and cocktails

they compare handicaps.

Mom was club champion.

One time when we were kids

dad handed my older brother

his heavy oblong putter, 

told us to practice on the front lawn.

He used it to whack me in the head.

I’ve hated the game ever since.

The Rope-a-Dope War (aka How Iran Won)

For anyone who cared to listen to my opinions since the debacle and tragedy of October 7, 2023, I had one overarching message about where I thought Israel would ultimately find itself down the line. I said Israel would emerge stronger, safer, and regionally more powerful.

And for a few years, at least, I believe I was correct in that assessment.

Those were the days when Joe Biden was in the White House, Antony Blinken was Secretary of State, and Lloyd Austin was Secretary of Defense. Whatever you may think of that group—and they certainly made some mistakes—their competence and decades of experience cannot reasonably be questioned (not even Biden's mental competence, despite what his critics claimed).

Compare them to Trump, Rubio, and Hegseth.

After a devastating security humiliation—the worst in the country's history—Israel's operations against Hamas militants and Iranian proxies were successful beyond expectations. The Hamas attack failed to draw the other members of the so-called Axis of Resistance into the fight. Instead, Israel seized the initiative through a series of surprisingly effective operations: the devastating pager attacks, the killing of Hezbollah's leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah, and the eventual elimination of Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, the principal architects of the October 7 attacks.

Iran was decidedly on its back foot. Domestically, it was facing unrest brought about by years of crippling international sanctions, while citizen protests were steadily growing in both size and frequency.

Its regional proxies also appeared to be on the verge of serious defeat.

The high point, arguably from a strategic standpoint, was Israel's successful campaign to systematically dismantle Tehran's air defense system. That, in turn, opened the door for the U.S.'s limited strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities during the June 2025 "Twelve-Day War."

Trump proclaimed victory, repeatedly declaring that Iran's nuclear program had been "obliterated," which was patently untrue. Nevertheless, Iran was at a low point, as demonstrated by the widespread street protests at the end of December 2025, which the regime was forced to suppress brutally.

A series of tit-for-tat strikes between Iran and Israel followed over the next several months. Iran was against the ropes and needed to demonstrate both its resilience and its capacity to inflict damage.

This led Netanyahu to press Trump for further, more decisive action against Iran. He calculated that the Iranian regime was teetering and argued that the moment had arrived to act decisively to bring it down.

This was the gross miscalculation that marked the beginning of the conflict turning in Iran's favor.

That miscalculation was operationalized on February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel coordinated a military strike aimed at decapitating Iran's leadership. The theory was that removing the regime's senior leadership would either collapse the government or render it impotent, inspiring a widespread popular revolt.

Although militarily successful in eliminating a large portion of Iran's senior leadership—including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many members of his family—the operation proved to be a major strategic blunder.

Subsequent attacks by Israeli and U.S. forces, including those that killed Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh, Revolutionary Guards Commander Mohammed Pakpour, and Ali Larijani, the senior security official acting as Iran's de facto leader after Khamenei's death, along with internal security chief Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani, only served to demonstrate the depth and resilience of the regime.

We had now entered what I call a "Rope-a-Dope War," borrowing the term from Muhammad Ali's famous boxing strategy during the 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" against George Foreman.

Iran did not need to go toe-to-toe with adversaries that possessed overwhelmingly superior military capabilities. It merely had to absorb the blows, outlast its opponents, and occasionally lash out at carefully chosen strategic targets to demonstrate that it retained the capacity to inflict meaningful damage. Then, when the time was right and its adversaries had been weakened politically and economically, it could strike decisively.

That is exactly how it played out.

Iran retaliated with drone and missile strikes against U.S. military bases, attacked neighboring Gulf states, and finally closed the Strait of Hormuz.

Closing the Strait of Hormuz—which every military strategist and defense analyst had anticipated as a likely Iranian response since the 1979 Revolution—gave Iran the upper hand permanently. It fundamentally changed the stakes of the war and convinced the Iranian leadership that the longer it could sustain the conflict, the greater its chances of achieving objectives that extended far beyond merely surviving.

Those ambitions included lifting economic sanctions, stabilizing the economy through renewed sources of revenue, consolidating and legitimizing its control over the Strait of Hormuz, driving the U.S. military presence out of the Gulf, reshaping the regional balance of power, and extending Iranian influence throughout the Middle East.

That is where we are now.

Almost three years after October 7, Israel finds itself in a quagmire of its own making in both Gaza and Lebanon. It is despised throughout much of the world, and its relationships with the United States and key regional partners are at their lowest point in decades. The strategic opportunities it once possessed have been squandered.

This is what bad strategic planning and overreach look like when combined with hubris, corruption, ignorance, and incompetent political leadership.

The Abraham Accords are effectively dead. The Gulf states now understand—as much of the rest of the world has for some time—that the United States is an unreliable partner. Iran, meanwhile, is well on its way to becoming the region's dominant power.

Oh yes—I almost forgot the supposed reason for all of this in the first place: Iran's nuclear program.

There is now nothing to stop it from moving forward, and Iran has more motivation than ever to pursue a nuclear deterrent. Trump himself appears to have conceded as much with the recent Saudi agreement to assist the kingdom in developing civilian nuclear energy.

Apprentice

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Body I have trusted

you my whole life

I was never more

than an apprentice

of pleasure and pain

of fight and flight

I took you

for granted

as you grew strong

without asking

as you translated

the world for me;

you will

betray me body

and I can't

blame you.

The Blessing of Inconvenience

Some of you might remember the book The Blessing of a Skinned Knee. We still have a copy on our bookshelf. My wife bought it when our children were young and we were struggling with that bewildering new experience called parenthood. Like most new parents, we were hungry for advice.

Back then, a new phrase was entering the cultural vocabulary: helicopter parenting. It described parents who hovered constantly over their children, overprotecting them, overindulging them, and over-managing every aspect of their lives. Childhood became a carefully curated schedule of lessons, sports, and supervised activities. Children were rarely allowed to be bored, rarely given the freedom to explore their own curiosity, solve their own problems, make mistakes, or develop resilience.

The book argued that this well-intentioned approach was producing emotionally fragile children—kids who had never learned how to cope with disappointment, adversity, or failure. It warned against raising a generation of snowflakes.

At the time, that seemed like a cautionary tale. Looking back, though, helicopter parenting wasn't simply a response to irrational fear. It was a remarkably logical adaptation to the world that was already taking shape.

Parents weren't just preparing their children for life. They were preparing them for a culture increasingly built around comfort, convenience, and the elimination of friction. Every inconvenience was becoming a problem to be solved. Every discomfort, something to be avoided.

And isn't that, after all, what parents are supposed to do? Prepare their children to fit into the world they will inherit?

The playgrounds themselves reflected the change. Hard-packed earth and sand gave way to thick rubber safety mats. Risk was engineered out wherever possible.

Today, even that seems quaint.

Forget the playground altogether. Many children are more likely to be "playing" Roblox or Minecraft on a smartphone than hanging upside down from monkey bars. A skinned knee has become the least of their parents' concerns.

When The Blessing of a Skinned Knee was published in 2001, smartphones didn't exist. The danger parents worried about was that children, left to their own devices—in the original sense of the phrase—might wander the neighbourhood, get into mischief with friends, or come home late for dinner.

Compared with today's digital world, those fears seem almost nostalgic.

Now parents must contend with online predators, algorithmic manipulation, pornography, gambling, cyberbullying, endless social comparison, and a torrent of violent and disturbing content delivered directly into their children's pockets. These are dangers no amount of hovering can fully prevent.

But even those are only the visible threats.

The smartphone's most profound influence is subtler. It trains us to expect that every desire should be satisfied instantly. Need an answer? Google it. Hungry? Tap a screen. Lonely? Scroll. Bored? Swipe. We no longer simply enjoy convenience; we come to depend on it.

Convenience may be the most addictive drug our civilization has ever invented. And the more complex and technologically confounding the world becomes, the more we seek escape—ironically, through technology itself.

Unlike other addictions, it doesn't intoxicate us. It quietly rewires our expectations. It lowers our tolerance for waiting, struggling, persisting, or doing without. It makes friction feel like failure.

In hindsight, perhaps helicopter parenting wasn't creating children who were too delicate for the world. It was creating children perfectly adapted to a world that was becoming addicted to convenience.

The tragedy is that while the world has become more convenient than ever, life itself has not. It's more complex than ever, precisely because of all the effort at greater convenience. 

Relationships still require patience. Character is still forged through hardship. Wisdom still grows through failure. Kindness and generosity still demands effort.

The Homebody Trait

Are you an adventurous type, or a homebody? And is that simply a matter of personality, or could it also be a matter of genetics?

I've always been a homebody. I never cared much for travelling.

The only time I ever lived away from home was for a year in Geneva, Switzerland, while completing my graduate studies. I could have stayed another year to write my thesis, but I couldn't wait to get home.

I attended university in my hometown. The only period of extensive travel in my youth was the obligatory post-high school backpacking trip through Europe. In thirteen weeks I visited twelve countries, from Scandinavia to Yugoslavia.

There were a handful of shorter sojourns after that. The most memorable came while I was studying Russian at university. Our department organized a ten-day trip to the Soviet Union over Christmas break, and I found myself standing in Red Square on New Year's Eve, welcoming 1986.

I've travelled to Israel three times, including a month-long family trip during which we rented a car and explored the country from the Lebanese border in the north to the Negev Desert in the south.

When our children were young, we escaped winter with a few all-inclusive vacations in Cuba, though those hardly count as travelling in my books. Our last real family trip was about ten years ago, to Vienna and Budapest.

I've only taken two trips alone with my wife: one to Israel before we were married, and another to Utah for a hiking vacation.

That's about it.

I'm not counting the trips of my childhood. My grandparents spent every winter in Florida, so we flew down twice a year. In those days, flying still felt like an occasion. We dressed up to board the plane, and there were smoking sections.

We also took several road trips into the United States. Over the years I've probably visited thirty states, every Canadian province except Newfoundland and Labrador, and none of the territories.

Ironically, my children have already travelled more extensively than I ever have. They've been to Europe, Asia, South America, and throughout the Middle East.

Perhaps that's simply because travel is more accessible today than it was for my generation. Airfare is relatively cheaper, flights are more frequent, and crossing continents has become almost routine.

For most of human history, however, the opposite was true. Most people spent their entire lives within twenty miles of where they were born. Today, crossing an ocean can feel almost as ordinary as running an errand.

Since our children left home, home is exactly where I want to be.

My wife, on the other hand, has discovered a new freedom. In the past year alone she's travelled to Mexico, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Italy. This fall she's planning a trip to Portugal.

She goes without me. Usually she travels with one or two of our adult children.

When her friends learn she's travelling without her husband, they inevitably ask whether I'm depressed or whether there's trouble in paradise.

There isn't.

I simply don't enjoy travelling very much.

Part of that is age. My body no longer adapts easily to unfamiliar beds, unfamiliar food, or changing time zones. I've also become a nervous flyer ever since a harrowing approach into Toronto a few years ago. We were literally seconds from touching down when the aircraft suddenly pitched sharply upward and aborted the landing. The pilot later explained we'd encountered severe wind shear.

Flying itself has also become an increasingly unpleasant experience. I'm taller than average, and I'm convinced airline seats have become smaller over the years. Everything about flying seems worse than it once was: the delays, the uncertainty, the endless fees. Passengers used to be treated like customers. Now we're treated more like cargo.

By the time I arrive somewhere overseas, it takes me two days just to recover from getting there.

Yet I often feel as though I have to justify not wanting to travel.

Somehow we've come to equate travel with living life to the fullest. If you aren't posting selfies from exotic destinations, people wonder whether you've somehow given up on life itself.

Recently, though, I've begun to wonder whether there's something deeper going on.

As my mother grew older, she became a homebody too.

So did her parents.

My grandfather retired relatively young after building a successful business. He could easily have spent his retirement travelling the world in five-star luxury.

He had absolutely no interest.

Instead, he rode his bicycle every day for exercise and spent countless happy hours painting in his studio.

His daughter—my mother—was much the same. She had every opportunity to travel but rarely did. She wasn't a recluse. She was active in her neighbourhood, but seldom ventured beyond it. When she sold her house, she moved into a condominium down the street. When she decided condo living wasn't for her, she bought another house around the corner.

That got me thinking.

We know that genetics influence everything from eye colour and body type to the risk of diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and depression. Personality traits themselves are partly inherited.

Why not this?

Perhaps some people are simply wired to seek novelty while others are wired to find deep satisfaction in familiar surroundings.

Perhaps being a homebody is every bit as much a part of one's nature as being an introvert or an extrovert.

I think we're fortunate to live in an age when travel is largely a matter of choice. In many ways, the ability to move freely around the world has become a symbol of prosperity. Owning a private jet has become the ultimate status symbol.

Not very long ago, however, crossing continents usually meant something entirely different. It meant you were fleeing war, persecution, famine, or poverty in the hope of giving your children a better future.

Seen from that perspective, perhaps staying home is the greater luxury. Maybe the greatest privilege isn't having the freedom to leave.

It's having the freedom to stay home.

5786

I watched a five-hour YouTube video this weekend.

I didn't think that was possible. My attention span usually taps out after about 45 minutes. But once I started, I couldn't stop. Thank goodness I had nothing important planned. Vacuuming the carpets and cleaning the bathrooms will have to wait another week.

The marathon video was by an Australian named Stevie Baskin. It's essentially a five-hour debunking of American mentalist Oz Pearlman.

If you don't know who Pearlman is, look him up. His popularity has skyrocketed over the last few years through television appearances and social media, where he performs astonishing feats of apparent mind reading and divination.

Pearlman is an entertainer—a magician in the tradition of David Copperfield or David Blaine. The difference is that he doesn't describe what he does as magic or illusion.

You may ask, if he's a magician, why would he need to be debunked?

Because Pearlman says that what he does involves skills he has spent decades learning. He reads subliminal cues—tiny, unconscious signals that people unknowingly reveal—and it is these highly developed observational abilities that allow him to "read people" and make astonishingly accurate deductions. He has even written a book claiming to teach others how to develop these abilities.

What bothers Baskin is that these abilities, at least in the form Pearlman presents them, simply do not exist.

Certainly, people communicate non-verbally, and psychology has much to say about body language and unconscious behaviour. But those phenomena bear little resemblance to what Pearlman actually does on stage or on television. 

Baskin spends five hours painstakingly dissecting Pearlman's performances, replaying footage from his best-known television and podcast appearances frame by frame, exposing the sleight of hand, gimmicks, audience management, backstage shenanigans (he calls it 'meta-deception') and classic methods that magicians have relied on for generations.

His argument is not that Pearlman lacks talent. Quite the opposite, Pearlman is extraordinarily skilled. The problem, Baskin says, is that Pearlman attributes those skills to something they are not, which matters.

Baskin suggests Pearlman's marketing may even stray into deceptive advertising by using claims about psychological abilities to sell books. But his deeper concern is philosophical rather than legal.

It's one thing to watch an entertainer knowing you're being fooled. Quite another to be persuaded that the impossible is actually possible.

Baskin says he chose to focus on Pearlman because of the comments he kept reading online. Many viewers genuinely believed Pearlman possessed superhuman perceptual abilities. They weren't enjoying the illusion; they had mistaken it for reality.

We live in an age saturated with deception. The music we hear is digitally perfected. Our online appearances are filtered. Our social media lives are carefully curated performances. Conspiracy theories circulate more quickly than facts. Political leaders lie with astonishing frequency, and millions willingly accept those lies.

Increasingly, we lose track of where the performance ends and reality begins. It often seems like we  prefer the performance over the reality. I suspect that's what really troubles Baskin.

I appreciate a good magician as much as anyone. In fact, I practised the art of prestidigitation myself as a kid. I spent my weekly allowance buying magic tricks, took sleight-of-hand lessons, and even performed at a few children's birthday parties. My parents hired the local magician Henry Gordon to perform at my bar mitzvah.

Magic, when honestly presented as an artform, is wonderful.

On one hand, perhaps Baskin goes a little overboard. Pearlman is undeniably an exceptional performer and entertainer.

On the other hand, there is no denying that he walks a fine ethical line by presenting his performances as demonstrations of psychological mastery rather than theatrical illusion. It becomes uncomfortable listening to interview after interview in which he distances himself from traditional magicians, implying that what he does belongs to a different category.

He does this because he wants to leverage his skills to appeal to other lucrative markets, namely self-improvement. In that sense, he resembles countless online influencers, selling mental fitness the way others sell physical fitness and personal optimization.

Here is where I make a left turn.

Listening to Baskin reminded me of a conversation I had two weeks ago with my regular Friday Lubavitch visitors, whose weekly mission is to persuade me to wrap tefillin.

I asked one of them how old the universe was.

Without hesitation, Menachem answered, "Five thousand seven hundred and eighty-six years."

"According to cosmologists," I replied, "it's closer to 14 billion years."

They simply stared at me as though I had lost my mind.

I didn't pursue the discussion. There was nowhere for it to go. We weren't disagreeing over a fact. We were inhabiting different conceptions of reality. For them, the universe cannot exist outside the boundaries established by Torah. Anything beyond those boundaries simply isn't part of the world they understand.

What does this have to do with Oz Pearlman? In my mind, quite a bit.

The question isn't whether magic is real. It's about the limits of reality itself.

If you understand the Bible as a profound collection of stories conveying moral insight and human wisdom, it can be appreciated in much the same way we appreciate a magician's performance. We know we're experiencing something symbolic, imaginative, and meaningful. We may even glean lessons about psychology, perception and the human condition.

But once symbolism becomes literal history, something changes. Evidence begins yielding to belief. And once we become comfortable placing doctrine above evidence, there is no obvious principle limiting what else we might come to accept. In a way, if you believe the universe is 5768 years old you are susceptible to believing almost anything. 

That, I think, is the self-deception Baskin fears.

Not merely believing that someone can read minds from subliminal cues, but gradually losing the habit of distinguishing between performance and reality. He isn't attacking magic. He's actually defending it.

If you're going to deceive your audience, then be honest about the deception. Let people marvel at the craft without misleading them about the nature of the world. Because dishonesty has a way of justifying itself.

Pearlman's most famous routine involved correctly revealing people's bank PIN numbers on television. He famously performed it with Joe Rogan and later with a co-host of The View.

Later, that co-host disclosed that Pearlman had privately "prepped" her before filming. During that conversation he persuaded her to enter her real PIN into her phone's calculator, assuring her that the televised performance would use a fake number. Instead, during the broadcast, he revealed her actual PIN. She was stunned and later said she felt violated.

Baskin demonstrates how Pearlman almost certainly obtained the number. The effect was brilliant, but the method was deeply unethical. It isn't all that different from a scammer tricking someone into revealing confidential information through social engineering.

Near the end of his video, Baskin quotes magicians Penn & Teller: "The best lie is one that the audience tells itself."  

I've been thinking about that line ever since. Perhaps that's what Pearlman is really selling. Not mind reading, but permission to suspend your critical faculties. And perhaps that's what every successful deception ultimately sells. Not the lie itself. The desire to believe it.

Maybe 5786 is just another PIN code. Four digits that unlock a particular picture of reality.

Once entered, everything on the other side begins to make sense—not because it is true, but because you've accepted the assumptions that make it true.

That's what worries Baskin. And perhaps it should worry the rest of us as well.

Information

I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

That's the famous paraphrase of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's 1964 attempt to define obscenity.

It's what came to mind when I started thinking about information.

Most of us never stop to ask what information actually is. We take it so much for granted because it surrounds us constantly. It is so pervasive, and appears in so many different forms, that defining it is far more difficult than it first seems.

There is written and spoken information, conveyed through language and symbols. There is biological information, encoded chemically within living cells and passed from one generation to the next. There is computational information, represented by the ones and zeros of digital computers, and at an even smaller scale, by the qubits of quantum computing.

What could these seemingly different things possibly have in common?

The clue may lie hidden in the word itself. Information in-forms. It gives form within. Once received, it reshapes us. It influences what we know, how we think, what we perceive, what we feel, and ultimately how we understand and act upon the world.

Perhaps information cannot be defined by what it is made of any more than music can be defined by the material of the instruments that produce it. Music is not wood, brass or vibrating strings; it is a pattern expressed through them. Likewise, information is not ink, sound waves, electrical impulses or molecules. These are merely the media through which it travels. Information is better understood by what it does than by what it is made of.

It can be transmitted, stored, received, transformed, interpreted, encoded, compressed and copied. Yet none of those properties quite captures its essence.

I'm hardly the first person to wrestle with the question. Scholars have debated the nature of information for decades across mathematics, computer science, physics, biology, psychology, philosophy and many other disciplines. The subject has become so influential that some regard Information Theory as one of the defining intellectual achievements of the modern age.

Yet information does not require consciousness. Plants process information. Immune systems process information. Even a thermostat responds to information. As anthropologist Gregory Bateson famously suggested, information may simply be "a difference capable of making a difference."

That insight points toward something deeper. Information is not defined by the material that carries it, but by its capacity to produce change. Data becomes information only when it informs—when it alters the state of whatever receives it. It may teach us something new, confirm a suspicion, correct a misunderstanding, trigger a response, or reveal a pattern that was previously invisible. Therefore, information is less a thing than an event: the act of one system changing another.

Similarly, thinkers are also still grappling with a definition of life itself. Is it a 'thing' or a 'process'? Maybe life itself is nothing more—or less—than the continual gathering, interpreting and acting upon information. Every living organism survives by sensing differences in its environment and responding to them.

What about computers? They gather, store and process information too. Does that make them alive? Of course not. Computers manipulate symbols according to formal rules, but the symbols have no intrinsic meaning for the machine itself. The computer's internal state changes, but nothing is 'understood'. 

Data (stored as a pattern of ones and zeros, for example) has no meaning. Meaning is what information provides.

Which brings us back to Justice Stewart.

"I know it when I see it."

He wasn't really offering a definition. He was describing a transformation. Seeing something altered the state of his understanding.

Perhaps that is the closest we can come to defining information. It is whatever has the capacity to make a meaningful difference in the recipient. The means of conveyance doesn't matter. The material it's made from doesn't matter. All that matters is that it leaves us differently formed than we were before we encountered it. It's the receiver, the viewer, the perceiver, the mind, that determines whether it's information not the transmitter.  

That means anything can be information, or not. 

We may have arrived at a definition of consciousness as the process of turning data into information, and information into awareness.

Hoping Brazil Wins

He was sitting in the lounge of the Empire Hotel

He was drinking for diversion, he was thinking for himself

A little money riding on the Maple Leafs

Along comes a lady in lacy sleeves...

- Raised on Robbery, Joni Mitchell

It wasn't the Empire Hotel, they weren't the Maple Leafs, and she didn't have lacy sleeves. But I was watching a FIFA World Cup soccer match in the lunchroom at work the other day when a co-worker came in to check the score.

She is an accounting clerk. A young, petite, impeccably coiffed Chinese woman with an outgoing personality who collects Hello Kitty merchandise. Not someone you would instinctively picture as a sports fan.

Brazil was playing Norway.

"Who's winning?" she asked.

"It's tied," I said.

"I hope Brazil wins," she said.

"Why? I didn't know you followed soccer."

"I don't," she replied. "I put a bet on the game."

I was genuinely surprised.

"You gamble?"

She looked at me defensively.

"Are you judging me?"

"No," I said. "You can do whatever you want with your money. I just didn't take you for a gambler."

Then I asked her something rhetorical.

"Why can't people just enjoy the beauty of the game? Isn't that enough?"

The conversation stayed with me.

Because my co-worker had taken an interest in something she otherwise had no interest in, and didn't know much about. She was only interested because she had a few bucks riding on the result. It wasn't about soccer it was about gambling.

She appeared to have simply absorbed an activity that has become remarkably pervasive in our society. I imagined this was how people took up cigarettes decades ago. 

That's what unsettled me.

Gambling has assumed an historically unprecedented place in our culture. Driven by the explosive growth of mobile sports betting apps, online casinos, and digital prediction markets, the industry is breaking financial records year after year.

The commercial gaming industry has posted four consecutive years of record revenues. The global gambling market is expected to exceed $650 billion, while unregulated online gambling accounts for trillions of dollars in wagers annually. Prediction markets, once a niche curiosity, have exploded into a multi-billion-dollar industry of their own.

The economic costs are staggering. The human costs are greater.

Millions of Americans are estimated to suffer from gambling addiction, and young people appear especially vulnerable. Their brains are still developing while algorithms, personalized advertising, and frictionless betting apps train them to associate excitement, uncertainty, and reward with placing a wager.

Some people undoubtedly possess a biological predisposition toward addiction. But addiction is also learned. Brains are remarkably adaptable. The neural pathways that connect anticipation with reward become stronger through repetition. Habits become compulsions. What begins as entertainment gradually becomes necessity.

But all the pervasive gambling, in so many facets of our daily lives, reveals something even more troubling than addiction.

It changes the way we experience the world.

A soccer match ceases to be simply twenty-two athletes displaying extraordinary skill, discipline, and creativity. It becomes a financial instrument. Every pass, every foul, every goal is filtered through the question: How does this affect my bet?

The game itself becomes secondary. What matters is the payout.

This is what I found so striking about my co-worker's answer. Brazil and Norway meant nothing to her. She wasn't captivated by the beauty of the passing, the tactics, the athleticism, or the drama.

She wanted Brazil to win because she had money riding on the outcome. Increasingly, this seems to be how we engage with the world. We don't simply watch. We speculate. We don't merely appreciate. We monetize.

We don't experience events for their intrinsic worth. We seek an external stake that makes them feel important.

That strikes me as a profound cultural loss. And it tells us something about what we feel constitutes importance.

The greatest works of art, the finest athletic performances, have always possessed value in themselves. They required nothing beyond our attention and our capacity for wonder.

If we now need the additional stimulus of financial risk to become emotionally invested, what does that say about us?

Perhaps the greatest danger of the gambling boom isn't simply addiction. It's that we're slowly losing the ability to value things for their own sake. If the beauty of the game is no longer enough, maybe the problem isn't gambling, or rather it's not the cause so much as a contributing factor of a sort of widespread malaise.

Perhaps the real problem is that we're forgetting how to be interested in life.

Brazil lost.

The Sweet Science

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Married thirty-three years.

Thirty three years of talking,

rehashing the same old conversation

in different words and tones.

Starts with

I want…

and ends with I feel…

In between there are pauses,

like pugilists to their corners.

We’ve been talking less and less lately,

my wife and I. 

As if it’s taken thirty-three years

for the conversation to wind down,

realizing that all the back and forth

was really shadowboxing,

learning The Sweet Science.

And when you’re evenly matched

and gone the distance, as we have,

bruised, swollen, sweaty and exhausted

from gut-punches, 

upper-cuts,

right hooks, 

left hooks,

there comes a point when 

you fall into each other’s arms:

Then time reverses,

you stand there, surrounded by well-wishers,

wrists held by a bow-tied man centre ring

under lighted canopy,

await the ceremonial chime of a bell

and fateful words: 

We have a decision.

Hugs of congratulations,

and consolation.

You've done your best,

given everything you have,

held nothing back.

The America I Once Knew

For America on its 250th birthday

The America I once knew believed that all people are created equal.

The America I once knew was founded on ideals.

The America I once knew believed in basic human rights and dignity.

The America I once knew cherished individual liberty.

The America I once knew believed in government of the people, by the people, for the people.

The America I once knew believed that voters should choose their politicians, not that politicians should choose their voters.

The America I once knew believed in the rule of law.

The America I once knew believed that no one is above the law, and in equal justice under the law.

The America I once knew respected the independence of its courts.

The America I once knew believed that public office is a public trust, not an opportunity for grift, corruption and self-agrandizement.

The America I once knew understood that power exists to serve the people, not the other way around.

The America I once knew believed that leadership carries responsibility.

The America I once knew believed that great power came with great responsibility.

The America I once knew believed that democracy depends on compromise.

The America I once knew defended freedom of speech, even when that speech was unpopular.

The America I once knew respected a free and independent press.

The America I once knew valued truth over propaganda.

The America I once knew believed that facts matter.

The America I once knew understood that patriotism is not blind loyalty or nationalism, but love of country.

The America I once knew welcomed disagreement without treating opponents as enemies.

The America I once knew valued kindness, decency, and good works.

The America I once knew believed that freedom carries obligations as well as rights.

The America I once knew believed that opportunity should depend on talent and effort, not birth or privilege.

The America I once knew revered innovation, expertise and education.

The America I once knew believed that diversity is a source of strength.

The America I once knew welcomed immigrants and refugees—a haven for people fleeing violence, persecution, and oppression.

The America I once knew measured strength by character rather than military power.

The America I once knew believed that alliances made America—and the world—stronger.

The America I once knew believed in free and fair trade.

The America I once knew believed in competition on a level playing field.

The America I once knew believed in the dignity of work.

The America I once knew believed in an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.  

The America I once knew protected the vulnerable and gave assistance to the needy.

The America I once knew kept its word.

The America I once knew stood against totalitarianism and fascism.

The America I once knew believed it could be a force for good in the world.

The America I once knew believed that every generation had a duty to leave the country better than it found it.

The America I once knew believed that hope is stronger than fear.

I miss the America I once knew.

Interesting People

Lately I've had the uneasy sense that I'm in danger of becoming a dullard.

When people I haven't seen for a while ask how I'm doing, I almost invariably answer, "Not much." Which isn't true. There's always plenty going on in my life. As there is in everyone else's.

Maybe too much has happened to distill into a single anecdote on the spot, so "not much" becomes the easiest way to move the conversation along.

Or maybe I've begun to assume that real life happens online, posted somewhere—on Facebook, Instagram, or whatever feed we've curated for one another. Note: I don't have Facebook or Instagram accounts.

I've been thinking about this since hearing Alain de Botton in conversation with Sam Harris. They were discussing self-reflection and, more broadly, the ways people lower their emotional barriers and come to know themselves.

At one point De Botton asks a deceptively simple question: Why are people boring?

His answer surprised me. Human beings, he argues, all lead immensely complex inner lives. Yet we've all met people around whom our own minds seem to go blank. We know we have things to say, but somehow nothing comes.

He suggests this has less to do with intelligence or experience than with self-exploration. A genuinely interesting person is someone who has spent time opening the doors of their own mind—not in an egotistical way, but with curiosity. Other people unconsciously sense that curiosity, and it invites their own. Conversation flourishes because both people are interested in making sense of experience rather than merely reporting it.

I've certainly experienced that. There are people who make you feel more articulate simply by listening. They ask how you are because they genuinely want to know. Their interest gives you permission to think out loud.

And then there are the opposite encounters. People ask the same question, but only as social lubrication. The exchange is transactional. According to De Botton, these are often people who haven't cultivated much curiosity about themselves either. They may travel widely, collect accomplishments, and accumulate experiences, but those experiences become content to upload rather than material to reflect upon. The outer life expands while the inner one remains largely unexplored.

When I answered "not much" the other day, I immediately regretted it. It felt dismissive, almost disrespectful.

Part of me suspected the other person wasn't really looking for an honest answer. Few people seem to be anymore.

But another part of me wondered whether I'd become complicit in exactly the habit De Botton was describing. Maybe "not much" wasn't simply an efficient reply. Maybe it was evidence that I hadn't done the work of turning experience into thought.

After all, something is always happening. The question is whether we've spent enough time with our own lives to know what it means.

Once we begin to think of ourselves principally as online personas, and experiences as 'content', it not only drains our real-life exchanges of vitality; it drains our own lives of meaning and interest—even to ourselves.

Answered Prayers

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Everyone is so sad these days

about the general shittiness of things—

how we neglect

and carelessly destroy

the world and each other

in small ways

in big ways.

Yet there are mornings we rise

to discover that

overnight the rain 

has glazed the streets

for the summer sun to bake the day

like fresh bread.

People stream into the streets

to ply their trades:

the scent of cinnamon buns

sweetens my walk to work;

a policeman blows his whistle

and waves traffic through;

above us,

welders stitch I-beams together

with birthday sparklers

to shape a bridge;

below,

street crews in orange jumpers

connect underground pipes

so that I need only 

press a park fountain button

when I am thirsty.

The music is undeniable—

one movement

after another,

like so many daily prayers 

answered

we barely notice.

The rhythm is poignant,

intervals of internal 

sadness

while outside the celebration

never stops.

Canada Day!!

Happy Canada Day!’

Y’all better be celebrating this great country you are privileged to live in!

Belonging

I’ve been watching, along with billions of others around the world, the greatest sporting event on the planet: the FIFA World Cup.

I’ve enjoyed the spectacle as much as anyone—the millions of spectators filling stadiums across North America, the colourful clothing, painted faces and thunderous chants. The anticipation (because, let’s face it, soccer is mostly anticipation), and then the explosion of joy—bordering on hysteria—that follows every goal and even every near miss.

And for what, exactly?

Twenty-two players dressed in tight shirts and shorts, running around an open field, trying to kick a sewn hunk of inflated leather into the opposing team's mesh. A skill for which many of them are among the highest-paid professionals in the world.

So why does this tournament captivate billions? Why is it the greatest spectacle on Earth?

It's not simply because we are privileged to witness the extraordinary talent of ball-kicking.

The answer, I think, is that the World Cup satisfies, better than any other mass-spectacle we have, our deepest human need: belonging.

Belonging lies at the heart of almost everything we value. It shapes our families, our friendships, our religions, our nations and our communities. It is woven into our survival instinct because, throughout most of human history, those who belonged to a group stood a far better chance of surviving than those who stood alone.

The worst punishments - spiritual ones like excommunication and physical ones like banishment and imprisonment - were based on being separated from the group.

We tell stories because they enhance our sense of belonging. We embrace religions, philosophies and ideologies because they give us a shared identity. We celebrate holidays, citizenship and traditions because they remind us that we are part of something larger than ourselves. We gather for concerts and sporting events for the same reason—not merely to be entertained, but to experience belonging.

We are born into a world we did not choose, knowing neither why we are here nor what awaits us. In that uncertainty, connecting with others satisfies more than our physical need for food and shelter. It fulfils our emotional need for companionship and our intellectual search for purpose and meaning.

The need is so powerful, so fundamental, that we sometimes carry it to extraordinary—even absurd—extremes. Every time I watch fans in makeup and colourful t-shirts, waving flags and blowing horns and generally losing their shit because a ball crosses a goal line, I'm reminded of just how profoundly we need to feel like we belong.

Part of me admires it. Another part wonders what might be possible if we channelled even a fraction of that passion into causes that shape our shared future: peace, human rights, democracy and individual freedom.

If even a bit of the mass sadness and disappointment felt when our preferred team loses a soccer match could be channeled into outrage at the poverty, suffering and injustices affecting so many people around the world. 

The capacity for collective commitment is clearly there. The World Cup proves it every four years. The real question is what else we might accomplish if our sense of belonging extended beyond our teams to our common humanity.

Eno

There's a moment in the wonderful 2024 documentary film Eno that shows archival footage of a television interview with the artist and musician Brian Eno in the 1980s. He is demonstrating how he replaced the paper diaphragm of an audio speaker with latex because it was more flexible and he wanted to experiment with how it would sound. He inserts a cassette, presses play, and the speaker immediately malfunctions and blows out.

A total disaster, right?

At first Eno reacts with alarm but then, listening to the muffled, thumping noise now coming from the broken speaker, he says, "Wait, listen to that."

It's a moment that perfectly captures the spirit of the documentary. For Eno, there are no mistakes or disasters in the creative process—only changing and unexpected conditions that create new opportunities.

The film is an affectionate portrait of the British artist, musician, and record producer. Eno first came to prominence in the early 1970s as a founding member of the glam-rock band Roxy Music and later became the producer of some of the most influential artists of the modern era, including David Bowie, Talking Heads, and U2. He is also known as a pioneer of ambient music—a term he coined and, as he admits in the film, eventually grew tired of.

Ironically, Eno was never formally trained as a musician. In Roxy Music he 'played' an early synthesizer, generating textures and electronic sounds that embellished the group's songs. His training was in visual art, and he says that the recording studio is his true instrument. He thinks less in terms of writing songs than of painting landscapes with sound. Ideas begin as notes, sketches, and diagrams in notebooks before being translated into music and other artistic projects.

As a producer, Eno developed a boundary-pushing philosophy that encouraged experimentation and created an environment in which musicians often discovered possibilities they would never have found on their own. Asked what made Eno so effective, Bowie responds in the film with characteristic amusement: "I have no idea."

Art-school graduates and dropouts who became successful musicians are not uncommon in Britain. Among them are John Lennon, Pete Townshend, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, and Freddie Mercury. They seem less common in the United States, though David Byrne is a notable exception.

I've never been a particular fan of Eno's solo music. I love Roxy Music, and I think Bowie's finest work emerged from his collaboration with Eno on the celebrated Berlin trilogy of albums Low, Heroes, and Lodger. 

What I appreciate most about Eno is his approach to the creative process and philosophy of life.

Increasingly rare today is his authenticity, the openness of his thought process and the way he joyfully embraces risk. He embodies a kind of intellectual freedom that pushes boundaries, not by imposing rigid control, but by welcoming chance, uncertainty, and complexity. If we choose to impose structure on the creative process, Eno argues, we must also leave room for the unexpected—for accidents, interruptions, in order to create a space for what the listener brings to the work.

For Eno, creativity resembles the organic processes of the natural world. An idea is like a planted seed that grows in directions that cannot be fully predicted as it encounters new conditions and influences.

To understand that philosophy in practice, look up Eno's creative tool Oblique Strategies: a deck of cards containing prompts designed to disrupt habitual thinking and invite unexpected solutions. Like the broken speaker in the documentary, the point is not to avoid accidents, but to recognize the accident as the beginning of something more interesting.

Watching Eno, I found myself thinking about the fertile cultural milieu in which someone like him could flourish creatively: the 1970s and 80s. In the film, Eno argues that great art is not the product of isolated genius so much as the convergence of historical, political, economic, and social forces that create an environment in which creativity can thrive. In other words, art is inextricable from the cultural scene, just as flowers and lichen are inextricable from their soil, or fish from their river. 

It's understandable that this is one of his major concerns today.

Eno views artistic creativity as environmentalists view the natural world—not as an inexhaustible resource, but as a fragile ecosystem. Just as biodiversity depends on conditions that allow life to flourish, creative breakthroughs depend on conditions that encourage experimentation, risk-taking, and even failure. It's part and parcel of the process.

What worries him is not that people will stop creating. Human beings are irrepressibly creative. Rather, it is that we may be eroding the cultural conditions that make genuine innovation possible. A society increasingly organized around efficiency, predictability, metrics, and optimization can still produce an endless stream of content. But content is not the same thing as creativity.

The question raised by Eno is whether we still value the kinds of environments that produce unexpected ideas, strange experiments, and beautiful failures. Because once those environments disappear, we may not immediately notice what has been lost. We will only discover it years later, in the absence of the works that were never given the chance to exist.

Stranger Than You Think

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The aliens have landed,

They visit when it's dark.

I think they're all left-handed,

The encounter leaves a mark.

Call the authorities,

Agents to direct us.

The army and the navy,

The people who'll protect us.

You'll find me in the bar, 

Telling stories with a drink.

'Cause out there on the road,

Life is stranger than you think.

I fell in love one time,

She made me feel alive.

I climbed aboard her spaceship,

Didn't know if I'd survive. 

You'll find me in the bar, 

Telling stories with a drink.

'Cause out there on the road,

Life is stranger than you think.

She took me to her planet,

In another galaxy.

She used sharp instruments,

To perform her surgery.

You'll find me in the bar, 

Telling stories with a drink.

'Cause out there on the road,

Life is stranger than you think.

Still not sure I believe,

What I know happened to me.

This alien abduction,

Was it just a fantasy?

You'll find me in the bar, 

Telling stories with a drink.

'Cause out there on the road,

Life is stranger than you think,

Life is stranger than you think,

Life is stranger than you think...

Judging Character

My late mother expressed a visceral dislike for trump from the moment he appeared on the political scene.

That surprised me because she rarely expressed opinions about politicians one way or the other. In truth, she never cared much about politics at all.

But there was something about trump that struck her as different. She felt strongly about him.

Mom was reclusive in her later years. She wrote fiction, maintained a blog, and largely kept to herself. She didn't socialize much.

Except on Facebook.

Facebook was almost tailor-made for her. It allowed her to stay connected with friends and family without having to see them in person. And that's where the trouble started.

She found herself in more than one heated argument over trump.

One day I asked her what it was about him that got her so worked up.

"He's a narcissist," she said.

"Aren't all politicians narcissists?" I replied.

"Maybe," she said. "We're all a bit narcissistic. But not like trump. He's a lying, destructive narcissist."

My mother instinctively recognized something that many political analysts, journalists, and voters either missed or chose to ignore. She saw a man with a bottomless need for attention and validation—someone who would say whatever was necessary to get it and who seemed incapable of caring about the damage left behind.

At the core of that kind of personality is an emotional black hole that eventually consumes everything around it. And as with a black hole, proximity is unsurvivable. As political strategist Rick Wilson famously titled his 2018 book, Everything Trump Touches Dies.

What strikes me now is how clearly my mother saw it from day one. I often find myself wondering how so many others failed to recognize what seemed so obvious to her.

Perhaps they saw it and decided it didn't matter. As long as trump appeared willing to give them what they wanted, character became a secondary consideration.

But that's the mistake.

Ultimately, character is not secondary. It is everything.

Which brings me to the Iran MOU.

Trump-supporting Jews around the world, and Israelis in particular, are suddenly confronting the same reality my mother recognized years ago.

Until recently, trump consistently polled as the most popular political figure in Israel, by far. Now, after the Iran MOU, many supporters feel betrayed because he failed to deliver what they believed he had promised.

People often support politicians the way children love a parent: completely and unquestioningly, until they stop getting what they want. Then affection instantly turns to anger.

It is a deeply immature way of engaging with politics, and not just poltics, most relationships as well.

If a politician promises people what they want to hear, many will overlook almost everything else. Trump understood that better than most. He built support by telling different audiences exactly what they wanted to hear.

The problem is that promises mean very little to someone without character. Commitments are tools. Principles are either non-existant or negotiable. Truth is whatever is useful in the moment.

What many Israelis may now be learning is what my mother understood from the beginning: politics ultimately comes down to character.

No politician gives people everything they want. Democracies do not work that way.

But character always matters because it tells you what remains when circumstances change and compromises become necessary. You may not always agree with a politician of character. You may not always get what you want from them. But at least you know where they stand and where their limits are.

My mother saw that trump lacked that foundation from the very beginning.

She wasn't a political analyst. She wasn't a journalist. She wasn't a political activist.

She was simply a good judge of character.

And as Heraclitus observed more than two thousand years ago, character is destiny.

MOU

It's not a deal, or even an agreement, it's a 14-point Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Sort of like an agreement about an agenda for discussions. And that's the best part.

The rest is a disaster. Worst than most people imagined it would be. Terrible for the US. Horrible for the world. And an unmitigated catastrophe for Israel. 

It's not just complete capitulation, it's a road map for Iran to consolidate regional power.

Here are some juicy highlights:

4 — ...The United States of America further undertakes to remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days after the final deal.

My read is that removing forces from Iran's proximity will be interpreted as including the bases in the Gulf states. 

 5 — ...The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialog with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.

My read is that this consolidates Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz and the collection of 'administrative' fees.

6 — The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran...

Trump is saying this will be private investment. Yeah, right. Private investors will be clamouring to invest with the mullahs and IRGC. 

7 — The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions, IAEA Board of Governors resolutions, and all unilateral US sanctions, primary and secondary, in an agreed upon schedule as part of the final deal...

This one is self-explanatory.

8 —...The two parties also agreed to discuss the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters related to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs, based on a satisfactory framework being agreed upon in the final deal. 

In other words, Iran is keeping their 'nuclear dust' and their program.

11 — The United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the implementation of this MOU...

Can it get any better than sanction relief? It sure can because there are funds to unfreeze. 

Trump says that if Iran doesn't comply he’ll start bombing again. How likely is that as the midterm elections get closer. Zero. And Iran knows it.

Anyway, what’s not to comply with? This is everything they want and more.

Conclusion: The war was the best thing that could have happened to Iran. The Art of the Deal in action.

Stranger

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Earth is a stranger;

a shimmering,

spinning,

stranger

in the universe,

like a silver coin

tossed with a wish

into a river.

Or the way 

dogs and cats are

strangers 

to us.

Stranger still

that we seldom think

how strange life is,

and instead

invent words

like normal

when

in reality

normal

means dead.

Mrs. Sanderson

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Mother ordered me to go next door,

To Mrs. Sanderson who lives alone.

She needed help to hook up her garden hose,

Move some flowerpots and decorative stones.

I was a self-centred lad of fifteen,

Couldn't care less about my old lady neighbour.

Had more important business I was in between,

No time for a widow’s stupid chore.

Mrs. Sanderson, who’d lost a son in the war,

Expected the worst from sudden door knocks.

She called out to me, “What are you here for?”

I answered bluntly, “Come to move some rocks.”

Mrs. Sanderson opened, still unsure who I was—

I’d only lived beside her since I was four.

“I’m here to do what a good neighbour does,”

I smiled, looking mildly bored.

I saw a flicker of recognition cross her face,

As she let me in, seemed as puzzled as me.

She wore the neglect of her forsaken place,

I counted the minutes until I could flee.

“Mother told me that you needed a hand,”

I hollered, not sure if she could hear,

Adding a smile to help her understand,

My salutary purpose for being there.

Mrs. Sanderson directed me to the task,

She pointed to the back yard through the kitchen.

Not a word was passed between us, no eye contact,

She followed behind me like a guard in a prison.

With the job done I marched out full of myself,

Like a returning hero who deserved a medal and cheers,

A pigeon circling above had seen how I’d helped—

Nailed me with a dollop right between the ears.

The Bible vs. UFO

From an evidentiary perspective, does it make more sense to believe in UFOs or the Bible?

I decided to ask AI. Here is the response:

From a strict perspective of formal logic and modern evidentiary standards, your argument highlights a major strength of the UFO/UAP phenomenon: the freshness, volume, and modern verifiability of its data.

 

If your definition of what "makes more sense to believe" is based strictly on empiricism—meaning data that can be tested, measured, and cross-examined using modern scientific instruments and living witnesses—then your logic is sound.

Here is how that specific logical comparison breaks down, along with the counter-perspective that keeps the debate alive.

The Logical Case for UFOs (Empirical Priority)

If you prioritize modern, empirical evidence, the logic leans heavily toward UFOs for several reasons:

The Nature of the Claim: Believing in UFOs (defined strictly as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) only requires believing that there are physical objects in the sky that we cannot currently identify. It does not inherently require a leap into the supernatural. 

The Living Chain of Custody: As you noted, there are thousands of modern accounts. Many come from radar operators, commercial pilots, and military personnel whose jobs depend on accurate observation. They can be cross-examined today. 

 

Instrument Data: UFOs are backed by physical sensors—radar tracks, forward-looking infrared (FLIR) cameras, and satellite data. This is data created by machines, not human imagination. 

The Logical Case for the Bible (Historical-Textual Priority)

Scholars who argue that the Bible presents a highly rational case use a different logical framework, prioritizing historical-textual consistency and circumstantial fit:

The Nature of the Claim: The Bible claims that a single, intelligent God interacted with human history over thousands of years.

The Explanatory Power: For believers, the logical strength of the Bible isn't found in a laboratory, but in how it explains human nature, the origin of the universe, objective morality, and the rise of historical movements (like the sudden spread of the early Church). 

The Archaeological Footprint: While you cannot record a biblical miracle on a FLIR camera, archaeology routinely verifies that the Bible’s historical framework (kings, battles, cities, and dates) is remarkably accurate compared to other ancient myths.

The Logical Friction Point

The reason this remains a debate is that both options carry a significant logical "gap" that requires a form of belief:

   1. The UFO Gap: The data proves something unidentified is there, but it cannot yet logically prove what it is (e.g., secret human technology, atmospheric anomalies, or extraterrestrial life). To leap from "unidentified object" to "alien spaceship" requires a step beyond the hard evidence.

   2. The Bible Gap: The historical texts prove ancient people believed miracles happened and recorded them with high textual fidelity, but history cannot logically prove the supernatural cause. To leap from "historically accurate text" to "divine intervention" requires faith. 

Conclusion

Your logic is entirely consistent if your standard of evidence requires living witnesses and physical sensor data. By that modern standard, UFOs provide a more immediate, testable dataset than any ancient text can offer.

The Salty Soup

The clearest conclusion is that Benjamin Netanyahu's strategy has backfired.

He succeeded in convincing trump to involve the United States directly in a war with Iran. The assumption appears to have been that decapitation strikes, combined with a coordinated strategic bombing campaign, would topple the regime.

It failed.

Worse, the intervention exposed the limits of American military power and political will in the region. The United States could inflict damage, but not impose a new political reality.

It also brought America's regional partners—UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman—within the conflict's reach, demonstrating the price of hosting a U.S. military presence. Bases once seen as guarantees of security became potential liabilities.

Iran, meanwhile, has shown an ability to connect the Lebanese front to the broader Gulf confrontation, underscoring that its ambitions remain regional and that its network of influence has not been dismantled. Despite significant military and economic setbacks, Tehran has emerged hardened rather than broken. It retains the capacity to project power across critical waterways stretching from the Gulf of Oman to the Gulf of Aden, ensuring that it remains central to the region's strategic calculations.

Israel has demonstrated formidable military capabilities. Yet despite impressive battlefield successes it cannot solve the problem of Hezbollah. Once again, it finds itself occupying southern Lebanon in pursuit of a buffer zone—a strategy that echoes the quagmire of its earlier Lebanese occupation. There is little reason to believe this iteration will produce a different outcome.

The soup has been stirred, but the ingredients have not changed. Netanyahu and trump mistook escalation for strategy. They dumped too much salt into the pot, believing force alone could transform the recipe.

Instead, they have made the region more volatile, America's allies more vulnerable, and Iran more deeply embedded in the very equation they hoped to solve.

The result is not a new Middle East. It is the old Middle East—angrier, more unstable, and now carrying fresh proof of the limits of military power. And Iran has taken advantage of it, re-positioning itself to have greater influence.

"מה שלא הולך בכוח, הולך במוח" (ma she'lo holech b'koach, holech b'moach)

It's an well-known Israeli phrase that means "What can't be achieved by strength (force) can be achieved by intelligence (brains)."  

The Iranians seem to have benefited from the Israelis (and Americans) not heeding their own advice.

Love More, Laugh A Lot, Expect Less

People always want to get what they expect. When they don't, they become disappointed. And when they direct that disappointment toward someone else, they become resentful. Countless marriages have ended in divorce because partners carried expectations that went unfulfilled and they harbored resentment until the breaking point.

Expectation, resentment and blame are so powerful they are the basis of political movements.

Having expectations feels as natural to us as breathing. It almost feels like 'a right'. Our relationship to expectation is something we contend with throughout our lives: what we expect from ourselves, what we expect from others—especially those closest to us—and what we feel others should expect from us. 

When we're young, expectations seem to be at their peak. It's why Charles Dickens titled his coming-of-age novel Great Expectations, the story of the orphan Pip and his education in the realities of life. Like Pip, our lives are often shaped by learning to expect less, or at least differently. Adulthood is, in part, defined by discovering what we can and cannot reasonably expect from the rest of our lives, and by how we learn to reconcile with that emotionally.

I once came across a gravestone in a cemetery in Bennington, Vermont (incidentally where the novelist Saul Bellow is buried, I was on a sort of pilgrimage). It was a final message to the living: "Love More, Laugh A Lot, Don't Expect."

The problem of expectations, at least in the way we understand it today, is relatively modern. It emerged alongside the expanding opportunities of the nineteenth century, around the same time Dickens wrote Great Expectations. For most of human history, people certainly had hopes and fears, but expectations weren't much of a consideration.

Life was largely prescribed, preordained, and predetermined. I don't mean that in a spiritual sense, although many people believed that too. I mean it in a practical one. The circumstances of your birth determined almost everything that followed: your wealth, your education, your occupation, your marriage prospects, and your social status. Social mobility was limited, economic opportunity scarce, and political freedom restricted. If expectations existed, they were often focused on avoiding misfortune rather than achieving personal fulfillment.

We often hear it said that having children reflects optimism about the future. It's a measure of expectation. A completely contemporary concept. In the past, having many children more often reflected something closer to necessity. Infant mortality was high, and surviving children provided a measure of economic security in old age.

The rise of expectations—made possible by prosperity, freedom, and choice—has created an unexpected challenge in the pursuit of happiness.

In their book Engineering Happiness, Rakesh Sarin and Manel Baucells offer a simple formula: Reality minus Expectations equals Happiness.

Therefore, if you want to be happier, they argue, find ways to narrow the gap between expectations and reality. Since altering reality is a heavy lift, it is usually the more sensible approach to modify our expectations.

But that's the rub.

The moment we begin lowering or changing our expectations, we worry that we're settling. We tell ourselves we're not getting what we deserve. We fear we're rationalizing failure. We feel ashamed, incompetent, or insufficiently ambitious. Social media, with its endless parade of curated perfection,  amplifies those feelings exponentially.

It seems to me we should consider having expectations at all as a privilege.

I'm not saying you shouldn't aim high in life. By all means, pursue ambitious goals. Just don't expect the outcome. If reality happens to match your expectations, you might consider yourself 'successful'. The hard work paid off.

But if reality turns out to be something you never expected, consider yourself luckier still. Expectations confirm what you already know. The unexpected, for better or worse, teaches you something new.

Skeptical of Skepticism: By The Numbers

The Universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old.

The Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago.

Doing the math (13.8 - 4.5 = 9.3), the universe existed for about 9.3 billion years before Earth arrived. 

That means roughly 67% of cosmic history had already passed by the time our planet was born. 

The earliest undisputed evidence of microbial life on Earth dates about 3.5-3.7 billion years ago.

The Milky Way is just one local drop in the ocean. There are an estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.

When you multiply billions of habitable planets per galaxy by trillions of galaxies, the sheer probability of life existing elsewhere seems almost certain.

It took roughly 4 billion years for that primitive microbial life on Earth to evolve into intelligent, technologically advanced civilization. 

In the Milky Way alone, there are an estimated 100 billion to 400 billion stars. Roughly 10% to 20% of them are sun-like (G-type stars), meaning there are tens of billions of solar cousins out there.

Current estimates suggest that a significant fraction of those sun-like stars host planets in the "Goldilocks zone" where liquid water can exist. We are talking billions of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy alone.

Conclusion: The chances that intelligent life predating Earth by billions of years exists in the universe are extremely high. And if true they are likely to be far more technologically advanced than we are.

A Poem like a UFO

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A poem like a UFO

vaguely seen           hovering  

above the treetops

at night

                              a craft 

   guided by super intelligence

                 flashing coloured lights

moving

                in ways

       that defy 

                              known physics:

most people don't know

what to make of it

imagine 

strange beings 

with enlarged heads

and dark eyes

visiting

from a distant 

                        galaxy

come

to convey

                        telepathically

a profound message 

that could save us

from ourselves

and leave

one

forever changed.

Skeptical of Skepticism

Can I trust my skepticism?

It's a question I've been asking myself lately because of UFOs.

They aren't called UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) these days. They're called UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena). Perhaps the name was changed to distance the subject from the "flying saucer" imagery that dominated popular culture since the late 1940s.

One thing is certain: the phenomenon is being taken more seriously than it once was. There have been televised Congressional hearings in the United States, along with the ongoing release of government materials and testimony from military personnel.

For most of my life, I've regarded UFOs as a subcategory of Cold War kitsch. Even if the phenomenon is entirely fictional, it remains worthy of interest. Like any enduring cultural artifact, it tells us something about who we are and what preoccupies us. It is, in its own way, another form of storytelling.

That's why I'm a sucker for eyewitness accounts, which forms the vast majority of 'evidence'. I've tried to avoid the more sensational material, but I've read a number of books by reporters who strike me as credible. I've watched fighter pilots testify before Congress about encounters they cannot explain, and followed the release of government videos with genuine interest.

Even more tantalizing is the archival material, much of which is now easily accessible online. Yes, there is an enormous amount of garbage out there. But if you know where to look, some of what you find is remarkably compelling, particularly the older eyewitness reports, interview recordings and photographs, before the existence of iPhone filters.

What becomes difficult to dismiss is the sheer volume of accounts. Thousands upon thousands of documented reports spanning decades, continents, cultures, and social classes. The witnesses include fighter pilots and police officers, scientists and teachers, farmers and businesspeople, children and grandparents. They come from every conceivable background. 

Even if one were to presume that the vast majority of the reports are hoaxes, the remaining percentage would constitute a very large number of encounters. 

Some cases, in particular, resist easy explanation. The most persuasive to me involve multiple sources of corroboration, large groups of people observing the same phenomenon. And of those (there are many dozens) some are especially compelling because they involve children who report having the same experience. One such event happened at Westall School in Melbourne, Australia, in 1966 in which there were reportedly as many as 300 first-hand eye witnesses. Another more recent event took place at Ariel School near Harare, Zimbabwe in 1994, where 62 children aged 6-12 described a remarkably similar encounter with a craft and unusual beings.

At what point does the cumulative weight of evidence begin to outweigh lingering doubt? When the tables turn, and it's the skeptics who start looking like the ones pulling at loose threads to preserve a conclusion. That's when skepticism begins to resemble a belief system rather than a method of inquiry.

We live in a strangely incongruous time. We are surrounded by technologies that would have seemed like magic only a generation ago. Smartphones, artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles—each would once have belonged to the realm of science fiction. Reality seems to be melding with the imagination.

At the same time, this is an era of manipulation and deception, where images can be fabricated and videos altered convincingly with your personal device, making trust ever more difficult. Even believing your own eyes comes into question.

The obvious recent example is how the assault on the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021, became questioned, despite millions (perhaps billions) of witnesses on TV, countless hours of video footage, and extensive testimony and documentation.

It seems that today, more than at any other time, if an alien spacecraft landed in the middle of Central Park, was witnessed by thousands of people and filmed from every angle, most people would refuse to believe it. More likely they would find reason to call it a hoax and dismiss it as some kind of conspiracy. 

Check out the dark satire Don't Look Up. It's a film about a comet on a collision course with Earth and how easily we are manipulated and lulled into a state of collective denial.  

But human beings are fundamentally believing creatures. The battle is always over what we believe and, as Orwell documented, who controls that belief. 

Belief makes ordinary life livable. Every morning you head out to the driveway because you believe your car will start. Or you wait for the metro or the bus because you believe it will arrive. You believe you'll arrive at work safely. You make plans for next week, next month, and next year based on belief.

None of these things is certain, it's solely based on past experience. Plus, verifiable facts take us only so far. Beyond them lies a vast territory of assumptions, expectations, probabilities, and trust.

Even deeper, the aspects of life that give existence meaning—creativity, invention, ambition, hope—are all rooted, to some degree, in belief. We make decisions based on assumptions we believe to be true and commit ourselves to futures that do not yet exist.

Which is why I've started becoming skeptical of my skepticism. After all, skepticism relies on a set of beliefs too.

Not in UFOs, ghosts, or miracles, but belief in the reliability of certain methods for knowing anything at all. Belief that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Belief that human perception is flawed. Belief that simpler explanations are usually preferable to more complicated ones.

These are reasonable assumptions. They are probably indispensable assumptions. But they are assumptions nonetheless.

At some point, every worldview rests upon foundations that cannot themselves be proven, even skepticism.

I'm not ready to entirely abandon my skepticism. Just a little more prepared to be open to possibility.   

George

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George is the man who mops my floor,

He comes every day at half past four,

Greek with a thick mustache, speaks broken French,

Arrived here after serving as a driver in the war.

Every day I ask George if he’s doing well,

Most days he mutters "The world’s going to hell,"

Then adds, "What choice is there, we have to soldier on,

If you only knew half the stories I could tell."

George was part of this building’s construction crew,

Poured concrete and swept the floors in ‘62,

The owner liked him, said "Start a cleaning company, 

And I’ll give all of my business to you."

George’s company employed 300 at its peak,

Today he's rich as an Arabian sheik,

Turned eighty last Thursday, never said a word,

Came to mop my floor as he does every week.

"The Blacks have no respect, the Asians and Indians too,

I clean up after them like I’m paid to do."

George says he's not racist, just telling the truth,

Then smiles and says he owes everything he has to that one old Jew. 

Self-Worth

When I was growing up there was a lot of talk about self-worth, or self-esteem. It was the pop-psychological buzzword of the 1970s. Books were written on how to raise children with a healthy sense of self-worth because low self-worth was thought to be the root of almost every problem. Violent criminals had low self-worth. Moral degenerates had low self-worth. Losers had low self-worth. Self-worth seemed to explain everything.

It was defined as the feeling that you had value. Parents were told they had to make their children feel wanted and cherished so they would grow up believing they were valuable. Conversely, emotional neglect was said to lead inevitably to a lifetime of pain and unhappiness.

My parents were very preoccupied by this. At least my mother was. An avid reader of pop psychology, she seemed convinced that her own struggles stemmed from a lack of self-worth. Her parents had come of age during the Depression. Their priorities were making money and climbing the social ladder. They succeeded. My mother grew up with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, so material deprivation could hardly explain her unhappiness.

The discovery that her problems were rooted in low self-worth was a revelation. The emotional neglect, ignorance, and occasional cruelty of her parents suddenly became the obvious culprit.

I sometimes wonder if previous generations of the past blamed their parents for their personal shortcomings. I suspect that before the earned affluence of the postwar era, most families were too busy trying to put food on the table to spend much time analyzing their emotional wounds.

They didn't turn out so badly.

Which raises the question: is self-worth really a thing, or is it just another piece of pop-psychological mythology?

I think self-worth is largely a fiction. A convenient explanation that transformed unhappiness into grievance and gave people somewhere to hang the blame for lives that had not turned out as they hoped.

That is not to say that a structured and supportive family life is unimportant. Of course it matters. It is to a child what water, sunlight, and fertile soil are to a plant. But it is not destiny.

History is filled with people who emerged from deprivation, neglect, and dysfunction to accomplish remarkable things and live extremely fulfilling lives.

Worth works psychologically much as it does economically. You may believe something has value, but unless someone else is willing to pay for it, that value remains purely theoretical. There is no such thing as self-worth. Worth is actually determined by others.

And that's a good thing, because it means worth is not intrinsic—it is earned.

To have value, you must be useful. Productive. Capable of contributing something that others need, want or at least respect.

This is where family life matters. A supportive upbringing does not instill worth; it cultivates empowerment, independence, and resilience. A child who learns to navigate the world, solve problems, and recover from setbacks develops the capacity to become useful and productive. And from that, a sense of one's self-worth naturally follows.

One of the great lies modern parents have told their children is that they are perfect just as they are. And related to that is the idea that love means smothering their children with attention and affirmation.

The result is often not confidence but learned helplessness.

Children do not become strong because they are told they are valued. They become valued because they are taught how to become strong.

Beaufort

News today that Israeli forces have crossed the Litani River in southern Lebanon and recaptured the medieval Crusader castle called Beaufort. 

I say recaptured and not captured because it’s not the first time. The story of the last time Israel held Beaufort is fictionalized in the acclaimed 2005 novel of the same name (originally entitled in Hebrew ‘If There Is A Heaven') by Ron Leshem which later became a harrowing Academy Award nominated film.

I reviewed the novel for The Gazette, and also had the privilege of introducing Ron at a reading at the JPL.

If you haven’t read the novel, now may be a good time. Suffice to say, the story - which is essentially about the futility of war and the sacrifice of a generation - does not end well.

Spent

I have spent my life

       trying to make some money;

Not too much of it.

Your Biggest Fan

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I'm no mind reader,

But I might get something right.

Give me a hint,

Then let's go for a bite.

I barely know myself,

No matter what I do.

You can't really expect me, 

To have a clue about you.

Here's a little something,

I think you might like.

Try not to be insulted,

If it don't fit right.

Cause nothing's perfect honey,

Let's enjoy what we can.

Keep doing what you do, 

Cause I'm your biggest fan.

Yeah I'm your biggest fan.

It's getting hot in here,

And the music's getting loud.

The opener did a good job,

Of winding up the crowd.

Left just enough for us,

To use our imaginations.

I'm counting on you baby, 

To help me finish what I'm making.

There'll be a bit of you, 

And a bit of my creation.

There'll bit of truth,

And a bit of fascination.

Cause I'm your biggest fan.

It's getting hot in here,

I'm your biggest fan.

Gonna cool you down baby,

Cause I'm your biggest fan.

Gonna cool you down baby...

Remote Work

I'm like some kind of contemporary superhero. Death-defying. Call me SuperJew. Impervious to termination.

Not in the crime fighting sense, which always made me wonder - why do all the classic superheroes, freaks of nature who possess inhuman powers, use them to fight crime? Why not just enjoy the everyday benefits? 

Here's what I mean.

Maybe you've heard this story. I read it in a novel, so don't give me credit. 

The setting is a concentration camp during WW2. Imagine Auschwitz. Gas chambers. Public gallows. Ovens with massive smokestacks.

A train arrives. A selektion on the ramp is made, and a man is sent left - straight to the 'showers'. He is stripped naked and along with women, children, and other men, herded into the gas chambers for immediate extermination. The Zyklon B pill is dropped in. 

Fifteen minutes later the doors are open and a Sonderkommando team gets to work dragging lifeless bodies out, loading them onto wagons and rolling them over to the ovens for incineration.

Lo and behold the aforementioned man, an utterly ordinary-looking man - he could be a regular bookkeeper, or a banker, or a journalist - walks out of the gas chamber as if he had been casually taking a Sunday afternoon stroll in the park.

This has never happened before. The growing pile of corpses proves the gas worked perfectly. The SS guards stand there in shock. 

Except for one who immediately grasps the gravity of the situation, and in fear of accusations of incompetence extracts his pistol from its black leather holster and fires a bullet from behind the prisoner directly into his skull at close range.

Nothing happens.

The man does not drop to the ground. He flinches, and then rubs the back of his head as if he had bumped it on the door frame.  

Panic sets in.

The man is grabbed by the arm and rushed off to the camp Commandant's office. 

The Commandant is told what happened. 

The Commandant does not hesitate. Being a skeptic, he slides the pistol out of his holster and fires a bullet into the chest of the Jew seated in front of him. The chair jumps, but otherwise the Jew seems to feel nothing. He yawns because it has been a long, exhausting day.    

After some interrogation, the Commandant learns that the newly-arrived prisoner was a well-known journalist before the war. He wrote for one of the popular daily newspapers. In fact, before the Commandant was a Nazi, he worked as structural engineer for a company that built bridges and was an avid reader of this Jewish journalist's stories. 

Now both men arrive at simultaneous realizations.

First, the journalist-Jew realized what was in store for him at this terrible place: An eternity of torture and suffering.

Second, the Commandant realized that this one Jew, who appeared to be impervious to death, will spoil the Führer's ultimate plan to exterminate all the Jews of Europe. He decides that the only thing to do is to keep this man a secret.   

The Commandant says to the journalist-Jew that he must stay and work in his home as a servant for the duration of the war. 

The journalist accepts but makes one request. He asks if every evening he may tell the Commandant a story. If the story pleases him, the Commandant will attempt to kill the storyteller. This is a no-brainer for the Commandant. He gets a delightful story and a chance to kill this SuperJew.  

I am the storyteller. The SuperJew. Okay, I'm exaggerating.  

It's not The Final Solution, and my eternal life of drudgery isn't exactly working in the home of a Nazi.  

But like the imprisoned journalist-Jew who wants to die but can't, I have a superpower that is both my salvation and my purgatory. 

I can't be terminated in an HR sense. As in become unemployed. Terminated from my current employment position; Vice-President Actuarial at the Insurance brokerage firm of Caine Fitzpatrick (hereinafter CF). At least until AI inevitably comes for my job. And trust me, I've tried. Over and over again.

It all started when I sold my family's insurance brokerage company. 

Rothstein & Sons Insurance was founded by my grandfather eighty years ago. My father eventually took over the firm, and after him, twenty years ago I took over.

I got my Actuary Degree, and worked hard to build-up the firm. I expanded our clientele fourfold over ten years, which naturally made us acquisition bait. Eventually the big fish swallow the small fish.

I was happy about it. Always thinking of my exit strategy. Cash in and enjoy the proceeds while I still had my health and could enjoy myself.

I'm 62. It's been two years now and I still can't get out.

We agreed on a price, they gave me a position with a fancy important-sounding title, an office and an expense account to ensure a smooth transition. 

After about a year I slowed down the pace of work. These days I do almost nothing. Barely even go to the office anymore. Make a few calls. Spend most of it looking after personal investments. Day trade stocks. 

I started dropping hints to my 'boss' - a nice enough guy named Cleeve Sidwell 15 years my junior - that it was time to give me the boot. To drive the point home I started answering his message with monosyllables without being rude. Yes and no slowly became maybe.

Also started ignoring most of the emails that came my way from the six agents who report directly to me. Cut them loose.

Told my 'assistant' Linda that she didn't have to work so hard, and to take afternoons off whenever she wanted. She's got young kids. All this did was endear me to the employees I oversee. 

CF has 4,000 employees in 23 countries. My little division doesn't really exist for them. I won't quit because I want a severance offer. There's still three years left on my contract. 

The only question is how long it will take for them to notice. I work hard at trying to get noticed in the worst possible way.   

Months passed. I ignored messages, skipped afternoons, and barely showed up at work. People just assumed I was working remotely. Remote work, what a joke.

Making myself scarce wasn't working so I tried the opposite tactic.   

One time I told Cleeve that we needed to talk. I barged into his office like a madman. Took the phone out of his hand - he was midsentence. Slammed a bunch of papers on his desk like he was being served a lawsuit. 

I said, "Cleeve, do you have any idea how much money I'm costing this company?! Do you?! I cost this company over 100 grand a year! It's here in these spreadsheets. I'm keeping track. Column one is the revenue my clients bring in. Column two is my salary, my expense account, the cost of renting my office, my assistant's salary, yadda yadda yadda. Look at all of that red ink!

It was a rounding error on their balance sheet.

He just laughed. "You're such a jokester." 

Big companies are like cruise ships. They have their own language, customs, and sense of belonging, everyone in the same boat. The captain sits somewhere unseen above deck steering a massive structure that can't easily change course.

The harder I try to get canned, the more they ignore me. I'm like a passenger who jumps overboard, waves his arms and screams Help! and no one notices. 

Except I can't even do that. 

The only thing I haven't tried yet is stripping down to my boxers, climbing up on the desk and singing I Will Survive at the top of my lungs.

Then the day finally arrived. 

Cleeve called me up and said, "We need to talk. How about we get some lunch together on the company's tab at Walter's?" 

I was more than happy to oblige. In fact I was giddy, certain that he was finally going to cut me loose and wanted to do it over cocktails, to ease the shock. 

A few days later we met. I was looking upbeat, bouncing on the balls of my feet, while Cleeve looked preoccupied, anchored firmly to the ground. 

We were shown a quiet table in the far corner of the resto. No doubt Cleeve's secretary arranged this particular table so there was no chance we'd cause a scene. 

"How are you?" Cleeve said, sitting across from me, his face long.

"I'm great," smiling broadly.

"Health? The wife and kids?"

"Couldn't be better."

"Good, good."

There were more inane pleasantries for five minutes. We reviewed menus, ordered something expensive and doubles.     

Waiting for our meals to arrive, Cleeve reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a piece of paper and pen.  

"I have something I need to talk with you about," he said.    

I am thinking, finally, someone read the spreadsheets. The memo has gone up the chain. The upper echelons have commanded that it's time to trim the fat, and he's seen the obvious. I'm the fat. 

"Yes, yes," I said, anxious for the news. 

He's going to make me an offer. Write down a figure to buy me out. It'll be on the low side, but I won't care. I'll be so happy just to get out. Even so, I'll protest. Not too much. Just enough so Cleeve feels gratified to have done a tough job. 

He wrote out a number. High five figures. Slid the paper across the table.

It was quite a bit more than I thought it would be. 

He said, "Look, I know it wasn't what you were expecting."  

I didn't say anything. Stared down at the paper, biting my upper lip, trying desperately to suppress a triumphant laugh.

"It's all we can offer."

"But are you sure I can't get a bit more." 

"We haven't had a great year. Didn't quite hit our revenue projections." 

"Well," I said. "I guess this is it then."

"Yes," he said, looking disappointed. 

"I understand. I've really enjoyed working for CF. It's been a great experience."

"Next year," Cleeve said, "with any luck, we'll have a better year. I'm sure we will." He grinned reassuringly.

"Next year?" I said.

"Yeah, the annual bonuses are tied to a formula that's locked in."

"Bonuses?" I'm feeling dizzy, and not just from the second round of doubles. 

I failed again. 

I was quiet for the balance of our meal. Felt like I'd tried everything and was now resigned to working for CF forever. His phrase 'locked in' echoed in my mind.

These days I'm still being as unproductive and absent as I can be. 

The summers are easier because at least there's golf.

I expect that someone from HR will soon be sending me time-management and mindfulness webinars and asking if I want to increase my remote work hours.

And I've started practicing my Gloria Gaynor imitation.