There’s too much to say on the topic, so I’ll just write in small chunks, over several days.

To correct the belief that no one is born prejudiced: the grim fact is for us moderns that evolution gave us millions of years of the unsocial tendency called kin selection, which means that evolution favored maintaining one’s own genetic family line over others’.  (Remember all the kin in the white house?)

“People of different races are different. Although we are all one species and quite capable of exchanging genes, the fact remains that members of any race seem likely to share more genes with each other than with individuals of a different race. Physical resemblance almost certainly has some correlation with genetic resemblance, and accordingly, we can expect the principles of kin-selection altruism to operate on this fact.” (David Barash, The Whisperings Within, 1979 p. 153).

“…we’ve got to be carefully taught not to hate others who are different from ourselves, because it may be our biological predisposition to do so…If evolution does incline us to a degree of racial bigotry, that certainly does not mean that such inclinations are justified. What may have been adaptive under the conditions of our early evolution , when groups rarely met and were likely to be strongly competing when they did, is today not only dangerous and stupid and socially reprehensible but woefully maladaptive…We must demand that our cultural institutions, such as education and child rearing, make sure that we are “carefully taught” to love one another. Because, but true, we seem unlikely to do so by ourselves.” (Ibid 154, 155).

P.S.  A post has appeared on my website several times showing the supposed enlarged penises of black natives.  I wonder if its purpose is to feed competitiveness between men of different races.

Next: The Malleability of Humans’ Attitudes toward outsiders.

When I filled out the papers for my second covid vaccination I checked “Female,” and then saw that I was offered the option of “Prefer not to say.” I felt good about the fact that the LGBTI population was being taken into consideration.(The I stands for Intersex, about which I was totally ignorant). I decided if I was ever offered the choice I would check that box, to support those groujps of humans who experience what has been called “medical racism.” I had an eye-opening experience this morning when I visited Intersex and Transgender on Google. The illustration above comes from one of those sites. The articles explain the difference.

A reasonable (not one-sided) article on Alter Net caught my attention today. It was by Issac J. Bailey March 04, 2021 and appears to be free of so much of the extreme bias floating around today. It relates to the firing of a N.Y. Times reporter who used the “n” word. The clarity of it is refreshing.

I’m curious why two Capitol police committed suicide on or after Jan. 6. Maybe it’s due to confidentiality or something, in which case that’s okay. The limited performance of many capitol police suggests either poor training or poor screening, but I guess the same could be said for the Defense Department and the Pentagon.

It kinda hurts to see another momentary hero bite the dust, with Cuomo’s hiding the nursing home deaths. And did “Me Too” have more impact than “Black Lives Matter?” I’m not sure I’ve seen Trump criticized as much for his behavior and verbiage re disrespect of women. Seems everywhere I look someone is experiencing the Humpty Dumpty Syndrome. .

I cannot understand how anyone could admit that they want to make it more difficult for others to vote. That sounds almost as dishonorable as admitting you want your child dead.

Here’s a head’s up if you ever suffer vertigo. It’s called the head tilt procedure and a physical therapist trained in the procedure can fix it. Two sessions with a similar therapist and my daughter was permanently cured of a really disconcerting 6-month bout of it. The therapist explained something about a ball bearing in the head getting off kilter…

Almost as good news is the “drug to fight obesity” reported in the March 3, 2021 The Week magazine pg. 23, basedon an article in the New York Times. Robert Kushner from Northwestern University says the findings mark “the start of a new era of effective treatment for obesity.” People on it reportedly lose20 percent of their body weight. It’ a “semaglutide, already in use for type 2 diabetes.” It is a synthetic version of G.L.P.-1, a naturally occurring hormone released by the body after a filling meal.

What should we do with depressed thoughts?  Keep them inside in a cage so they don’t harm others?  But that leaves them inside us, perhaps to be devoured.  Don’t read the following if you’re already depressed:

DOWN

Tainted by a fallen moon, the mountain crags with menace lay their heavy burden across the throats of all.  A putrid mess around us pools as evolution rises to amend.

Nan