Jul 11th 2012 08:22 am Ennui and upward
I’m sorry about missing yesterday. It couldn’t be helped. Speaking of yesterday, here’s an old cartoon that alludes to the era being discussed after Monday’s post, roughly the late 50s and early 60s. Remember The Bomb? Nostalgia is a funny thing, isn’t it? We lived with the threat of simultaneous incineration of our major cities (as did our geopolitical opposition), but a threat so serious seemed to put all other problems in perspective. It was as if, in an overarching sense, it was all we had to worry about. Of course, it wasn’t, but now it seems that we live in a constant state of nervous exhaustion, and we’re not even sure why—or maybe we could name a hundred reasons. No, I’m not advocating an overt return to a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction. I think the reduction of the threat of global nuclear war is one of the best developments of my lifetime. I just thought we’d feel a little better about things.
Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
45 Responses to “Ennui and upward”
Dave from Phila on 11 Jul 2012 at 8:46 am #
I agree that the level of anxiety is similar, if not worse, to the early sixties. I blame it on 24/7 cable news … of all stripes … breathlessly telling us how dangerous everything and every one esle is.
Bob, near Mark on 11 Jul 2012 at 8:46 am #
David Cadogan, Re your comment yesterday about Jimmy Stewart. He was not only a great actor, he was a General in the US Air Force. He was a bomber squadron commander in WWII, and was still serving in the reserves when I was in the Air Force in the 1960s.
Galliglo in Ohio on 11 Jul 2012 at 8:52 am #
Jimmy: Do you write these thought first thing in the morning? If so, you wax philosophical much too early for me! To paraphrase Scarlett – I’ll think about this later! (When I am more awake…)
Mindy on 11 Jul 2012 at 9:01 am #
I remember my Dad saying, long before it became a popular movie line, “I’m not nearly as concerned about a nation with a thousand atomic bombs as I am one crazy guy with one.” Somewhat prophetic, I think, but now the danger is as much chemical and biological as it is nuclear. There are a lot of crazy people out there.
And no smart comments from sandcastler and Ghost!
Jeff in Ann Arbor on 11 Jul 2012 at 9:02 am #
Since I’ve appreciated reading some OT personal news from other regulars here (I guess I’m sorta that), and since I’m feeling particularly up about this news, let me risk imposing and share it.
In May I was diagnosed with moderately aggressive, early-stage prostate cancer, the disease that killed my father, uncle and grandfather. Theirs were not easy deaths, so I’ve insisted on annual PSA screening for 20 years, even though they’re no longer recommended.
I had DaVinci robotic surgery Thursday and am recovering very well. I got the pathologist’s results yesterday and it was all within the prostate, so that should be that! Recovery from side effects of the surgery should be good over the coming months.
I’m 65 and I fully believe that in a few more years this would have spread and killed me. Most men will die with PC, not from it, but not in my family.
I encourage any other men here to discuss annual screening with their primary care physician if they have a family history. A recent government panel has come out against this as it isn’t statistically supportable, but I’d rather be alive than a statistic.
James Pollock on 11 Jul 2012 at 9:20 am #
Thanks to comic-strip aging, Gene is slowly moving from Gen X to Gen Y…
Robin in Fl on 11 Jul 2012 at 9:26 am #
Jeff
Hurray for good news!
nonegiven on 11 Jul 2012 at 9:50 am #
I lived in a small town during the cold war. It is located in the center of a triangle formed by a SAC base that housed large troop carriers like the C5A, a major artillery training base and a major fighter pilot training base. I just knew when the S*** hit the fan we’d get a large one intended to irradiate everyone on all 3 bases.
Ghost Rider 6 on 11 Jul 2012 at 10:24 am #
Moi?
Brian in Tallahassee on 11 Jul 2012 at 10:28 am #
Wonderful news, Jeff – congratulations!
I think your comment “… in a few more years this would have spread and killed me” is true the other way too: if it had happened a few years ago it may not have been detected or as treatable in time.
BTW, I keep hearing about “DaVinci robotic surgery”. What exactly is it, and why is it called that? (I’ll resist the temptation to make a lame attempt at a joke – there’s gotta be one somewhere – involving miniature wooden tanks or flying machines.)
On the topic of today’s comic and JJ’s musings, as usual there’s a Jimmy Buffett quote that applies. I’m not positive he wrote it, but in Party At The End Of The World he sings:
“In case you hadn’t heard
Things are getting quite absurd
Nothing really shocks us that’s for sure
Roadside bombers and tsunamis
Oh god, How I miss those Commies
No one seems to play fair anymore”
Mindy on 11 Jul 2012 at 10:53 am #
Gee, I just changed the font size on my browser and now it’s so much easier to read what’s written here! Progress! I love it. And I love to hate it!
emeritus Minnesota biologist on 11 Jul 2012 at 10:53 am #
It rarely makes the front page but there are now about twice as many people as there were when MAD was our big focus. Maybe we should consider overpopulation as our major problem. Many respond that science and technology will save us. An applicable science has been around for generations: ecology. One ecological concept is carrying capacity, the ability of an ecosystem to sustain a given population density over the long haul. I expect humanity has already exceeded Earth’s carrying capacity. Science can never save us in all respects, but few pay attention to the science that can help in this respect.
Mindy on 11 Jul 2012 at 10:54 am #
And, yes, Ghost…yoi.
Galliglo in Ohio on 11 Jul 2012 at 11:29 am #
Wonderful news, Jeff! At your age – and family history – I am glad that you opted for the surgery. You should have many good years to enjoy. And enjoy every minute!
A Mindful Webworker in reverie on 11 Jul 2012 at 11:56 am #
The figure I remember was nineteen minutes. Time it takes an ICBM to get from USSR to USA.
“We thought we’d be blown away any day.” Yeah. Good times, good times. :/
John in Virginia on 11 Jul 2012 at 12:22 pm #
Mindy quoted her Dad and I’ll quote mine. I remember some drills in school, what to do in case of nuclear attack. They involved avoiding panic and crawling under desks. I got in trouble when I quoted Dad, saying the desk thing was a waste of time, and, when asked what I thought the correct thing to do was, I told the teacher — then the Principal — “Bend over, put your head between your legs and kiss your…” Well, I suspect you know the rest of the quote. I think I was a lot like Mindy at that age. A real troublemaker. And I didn’t have a clue.
Tom in Southern Ohio on 11 Jul 2012 at 12:57 pm #
I was a Cold War Warrior, as we’re called these days. My first duty station was HQ Strategic Air Command. We never had any military exercises on the base as we were doing what we’d be doing in war every day. We didn’t expect to survive if “the balloon went up.”
In the late ’80s my wife was stationed at Carswell AFB, a SAC base outside of Ft Worth. The focus of their exercises was to get all the tankers and the bombers airborne within a certain amount of time. Every one of their exercises ended with the base being hit with nuclear weapons and everyone on it being “killed”.
After the Cold War ended there was a rush to draw down the military as we weren’t perceived as being needed as much any more; the world was a much safer place, doncha know. Apparently it isn’t.
Cheers,
Tom
MWL on 11 Jul 2012 at 1:10 pm #
I do not think the planet is anywhere near tapped out in regards to resources. What we have is severe distribution problems and world governments that are not designed to produce but to control the producers. We grow food to put inefficient fuel in our cars when we get better results from petroleum. In doing so we deprive others of food. Many farms in other countries have been ruined. Portions of South Africa were the bread basket in that part of the world. Now? Not because the earth is unable to provide but because of mans mismanagement/greed/stupidity/hate…
Dave in MA on 11 Jul 2012 at 2:16 pm #
Amen MWL.
Tom in Southern Ohio, how right you are, “apparently it isn’t”.
John in Virginia, I asked a teacher once, “if getting under the desk is the safest place to be, then why is it the state’s official policy in the event of nuclear attack that school is dismissed? Do they want us to go play in the fallout instead of being safe under our desks?” —– I got in a lot of trouble.
A Mindful Webworker in reverie on 11 Jul 2012 at 2:26 pm #
“We grow food to put inefficient fuel in our cars when we get better results from petroleum. In doing so we deprive others of food.”
Um…. tempting, but never mind. Not going there. Too nice a day, too nice a blog.
NK in AZ on 11 Jul 2012 at 3:13 pm #
Jeff: Yay for good news, indeed! Your story sounds very much like my husband’s, except that when his prostate cancer was detected, he and I together opted immediately for surgery rather than “watchful waiting.” Good thing–his cancer was outside the prostate capsule. He also had the daVinci robotic surgery. For those wondering, it’s just about as sci-fi as it sounds. The surgeon sits a few feet away from the table the patient is on, looks inside with a teeny-tiny TV camera thing, and does his work with teeny-tiny instruments. (DaVinci is the name of the apparatus.) It’s very minimally-invasive; Jim had five little “poke holes.” One night in hospital. Less pain, less recovery time, less chance for infection, etc. Because of the DaVinci unit, they are now able to do some things like certain kinds of heart repair minimally invasively that they couldn’t do before. Statistics indicated (good old statistics) that it would be good for Jim to have a radiation course afterwards, but he wouldn’t have had to. I talked him into that. Yeah. Getting checked is really important, particularly if there’s a family history of prostate cancer, which there also was in Jim’s case.
Mark in TTown on 11 Jul 2012 at 3:37 pm #
Jeff in Ann Arbor, glad to hear that news. Great that it was caught in early stages and that new technology helped remove it. The hospital that I work for uses that same robotic surgical system. Ours has 3 arms, (there are two-armed versions too). Dr. needs special training in using it, since there is no direct feedback as in hands-on surgery. The Dr. uses special hand controls and an assistant changes tools on the robot as needed.
Robert Heinlein described such a system first, in “The Man Who Sold the Moon”. He called the remote controlled manipulators “Waldos”, after the main character.
sandcastler on 11 Jul 2012 at 3:55 pm #
Scary, a three armed robot going where no man has gone before.
Mary in Ohio on 11 Jul 2012 at 4:58 pm #
Jeff – all the best to you and any others out there dealing with diseases of such risk. (Awkwardly worded, because I want to include things besides cancer that I know some of you are fighting.)
Another thing people forget when they wax nostalgic about the 50′s is the polio epidemics. Public fountains closed down, because there seemed no more idea as to what caused the disease than they had about Black Death in the Middle Ages. I was in high school when the vaccine became available and what a miracle that was!
Mindy on 11 Jul 2012 at 5:29 pm #
Then there was the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was, of course, far beyond my time…right, well…anyway…we didn’t have to dig fallout shelters since, being hillbillies [just ask our "betters" to the north, east and west] we already lived in caves and didn’t have shoes, much less running water, indoor plumbing and electricity. I can’t remember how many outlander sociologists and do-gooders who showed up here all hot and bothered and eager to be taken to the real backwoods areas. Granted, some didn’t have the abovenoted conveniences. That was mostly their choice, though. Mostly. But it was insulting for the “foreigners” to come in like a swarm of locusts and treat us all so disrespectfully. I hate to say this but I’ve seen people living like that in every major city in the country. It’s disgusting, it’s terrible, it’s wrong, but, like the said, Leave Virginia Alone. And Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, etc. [I gotta be mean here: West Virginia is fair game simply because it had the bad taste to secede from the Commonwealth, which begs the question, if we were punished for seceding, why wasn't WEST Virginia dragged back into the fold and punished for seceding the secessionists?]
Say goodnight, Mindy.
Mindy on 11 Jul 2012 at 5:30 pm #
Like the song said…Leave Virginia Alone. Gosh! My typer busted!
Bryan on 11 Jul 2012 at 6:16 pm #
Jeff –
Best wishes to you. I went under the DaVinci for prostate cancer 6 months ago. I was way young for a full prostectomy, only in my early 50s, but my PSA was going up almost monthly so we opted to cut out all the nasty beasties. Prognosis is excellent, as I’m, sure yours is.
Good luck in your recovery.
Ghost Rider 6 on 11 Jul 2012 at 7:57 pm #
nonegiven: I believe the current terminology is “SHTF.”
Mindy: I’m glad the engorgement of your font yielded the desired outcome. BTW, they have these things now called “corrective lenses.” You really should look into them. Or better yet, through them.
Mindy on 11 Jul 2012 at 8:07 pm #
Who said I “engorged” the font? I could just as easily have dehydrated or emaciated it, no? As for corrective lenses, I’ve always looked through the looking glass, Ghost. Men DO make passes as girls who wear glasses, BTW.
Big E on 11 Jul 2012 at 8:34 pm #
When I was a kid, we got more radiation from Nevada than we did from the U.S.S.R.
Ghost Rider 6 on 11 Jul 2012 at 8:37 pm #
I did consider that, Dear Mindy. But it came out funnier if I assumed you, ah, enlarged the font. And you did, didn’t you?
As far as the passes/glasses thing goes, I certainly always have.
The looking glass thing I won’t touch.
Ghost Rider 6 on 11 Jul 2012 at 8:44 pm #
Mindy, I do hope you meant “passes at girls who wear glasses,” rather than “passes as girls who wear glasses.” Otherwise, it sounds as though you were referring to bespectacled trans-gendered persons. For the record, I am neither.
Mark in Boston on 11 Jul 2012 at 9:24 pm #
Our current constant state of anxiety comes from TV, which has to make us keep watching it so that the advertisers will pay for showing the commercials.
“Are you feeding your children something that is KILLING them? Find out tonight on News Center 5!”
Mindy from Indy on 11 Jul 2012 at 10:30 pm #
Jeff, Congratulations on your prognosis.
Reading everyone’s stories about the Cold War and such, it seems to me almost as surreal as basing judgment on someone based on religion or skin color – I just don’t get it. And for those reasons, I’ll take today over yesterday.
What I really lament is not experiencing a world where children have more power than adults. It’s not doing anyone a bit of good. Heaven forbid if anyone enforces restraint and basic manners. Or even worse, teens and young adults who are incapable of counting money or basic reading skills.
(Okay, I’d also love to go back and check out the music scene. Old school music – ROCKS!)
John in Virginia on 11 Jul 2012 at 11:11 pm #
I know an officer who wrote a traffic citation to a graduating honor student for speeding. The graduating honor student asked if he could print his name showing receipt of the citation since he hadn’t been taught cursive and could NOT write his name in script. It wasn’t the graduating honor student’s fault. The System and the Teachers had failed him.
Mindy on 11 Jul 2012 at 11:19 pm #
In Virginia, the big thing in education is the State mandated “Standards of Learning,” which it THE measure of a student’s comprehension and level of achievement. More than one high school teacher has lamented, in private where the school system’s administrative geeks and goofballs couldn’t hear, that what the teachers are expected/required to do is teach the students how to take the SOL tests! [And, yes, Ghost, SOL SHOULD be what immediately leaped to mind!] Kids graduating today, including the Honor Students, often cannot make change for a dollar, cannot name ten state capitols, do not know the date of the Pearl Harbor attack, and don’t know the years the Civil War was fought. A couple, and this is a crying shame, could not name the sitting President of the United States or our District’s Congressman or even one of our U. S. Senators. Can’t blame the kids. Can blame the Standards of Learning idiocy. And can blame a system where SPORTS if far more important than LEARNING. Plus, unless a kid is the offspring of the local Social and Political Elite, he or she does not get off the bench very often unless he/she is just so good that the team would lose without him/her.
I climbed on the soapbox again, didn’t I? But I didn’t do it twice in the same day. It’s not 19 minutes into tomorrow! I apologize.
Mindy from Indy on 11 Jul 2012 at 11:22 pm #
John in Virginia,
They are trying to do away with cursive in Indiana schools. They want the time for computer skills. I guess I can sort of see the point, but then again, I’m not one to judge. I mix print and cursive all the time; either way my handwriting is just short of impossible to read – if I have to convey lots of information to someone, I will type it up if at all possible because I know how bad it is to read.
Mindy from Indy on 11 Jul 2012 at 11:36 pm #
I once read of a situation where someone called the police on a guy because the person swore the guy was trying to pass counterfeit money – it was a $2.00 bill. I had a kid just this week how much three quarters added up to.
Mindy- I remember standardized testing. For some reason, I remember those types of questions (capitols, historical dates, etc.) actually being on the tests I took. What really concerns me are these text books with major events missing because some group is in denial.
TruckerRon on 11 Jul 2012 at 11:47 pm #
Mindy, I had similar experiences with kids in NJ. My family was from the Ozarks.
eMb, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon–Ehrlich_wager for another perspective on running out of resources.
Lost in A**2 on 12 Jul 2012 at 5:16 am #
(I’d thought “Waldo” was in a separate volume, with “Magic, Inc,” not _The_ _Man_ _Who_ _Sold_ _the_ _Moon_.)
Education. One of my interests. Everyone wants “objective” measures of student progress and achievement. The “No Child Left Behind” legislation demands them, trying to tie school funding to school performance. Then folks are “surprised” by the focus on success on the measuring tools, to the detriment of all else. All I can say is, “You get what you pay for.”
Lost in A**2 on 12 Jul 2012 at 5:34 am #
Years and years ago, I asked an author about posting one of his short stories on the web. It looks like he’s done so: http://www.alternities.com/html/gardenof.htm has “The Garden of the Cogniscenti,” by Michael Kube-McDowell. Well worth reading, if you are interested in education.
Lost in A**2 on 12 Jul 2012 at 5:36 am #
I never could spell “cognoscenti.”
Dale on 12 Jul 2012 at 8:27 am #
This comic is from 1995… It’s amusing reading a “the kids these days!” comic that is nearly 20 years old. In a few years, Gene should be telling Meg, “You think I nag you! You should have heard my father …”
Dan in SWMo on 12 Jul 2012 at 9:56 am #
Regarding both the Cold War and the present threat of International Terrorism, my philosophy continues to be this. Take reasonable precautions, but don’t obsess.
Dan in SWMo on 12 Jul 2012 at 10:12 am #
For reference, my personal timeline: born the first year of the Korean War, started college a year and a half after the Tet Offensive, hit my half century mark the year before the Twin Towers attack.
I certainly don’t shrug off the threats I have seen during my lifetime, but thinking too much about the dangers doesn’t really help anything.