Copyright David Wolman 2026

Read more

Copyright David Wolman 2026

Read more

Read more

Copyright David Wolman 2026

Dear Horatio,

The heat index is now approximately the temperature of your average wood-fired pizza oven. We walk our Greyhound Pacer early in the morning because Greyhounds have no fat and desiccate quickly. France and Spain continue to fry. And now Greece. It occurred to me the other day it seems feasible (and fusible) that th…

Read more

Copyright David Wolman 2026

Read more

Copyright David Wolman 2026

Read more

Copyright David Wolman 2026

I’m personally glad Dr. Pete Hegseth is going to require testosterone testing for all our boys in uniform, although I’m not sure the Blue Angels need it. It’s a well known fact Einstein proved T=MC². Ancient Roman soldiers were given bull testicle ragu for breakfast and look how many wars they won without drones.

I’m in favor of giving our boys Ivermectin, anabolic steroids, Ritalin, and crack before any engagement with the enemy. The Russians use vodka mostly and the Chinese give their boys Baijiu, a potent, clear spirit distilled from grains like sorghum. I had a sorghum once but I cured it with regular dental checkups.

Besides Testosterone, I think all military personnel should be given Prozac and Skyrizi as well as daily bleach baths. Testing should be conducted on all neurochemicals including Dopamine, Serotonin, norepinephrine, and adrenalin. Then I would see if the boys could tolerate a few rides on X2 at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California, which is widely considered the scariest roller coaster. It’s the world’s first “4th Dimension” coaster, where seats spin 360 degrees independently of the track, taking you head-first, face-down on a 215-foot drop at 76 mph. It has been determined that the total square inches of wet underpants after X2 coincide with low testosterone and high intelligence. Folks with dry undergarments have high testosterone but low intelligence. That’s been the difficulty with TRT (testosterone replacement therapy). High testosterone levels are often equated with illiteracy.

The question I would ask is how much testosterone do you really need to navigate a drone safely tucked away 2,000 miles from any war zone? I mean, you’re sitting there in Doral, Florida munching Doritos moving a joy stick around and listening to Sabaton, the Swedish power metal band. Most drone flyers can check their texts and play Barbie’s Dreamhouse Adventures on their iPhones while blowing up parts of Tehran. They’re drinking gallons of Red Bull with mouthfuls of Big Duke chewing tobacco while watching video reruns of drones hitting the coastline of the Strait of Hormuz. Why is the Strait of Hormuz spelled wrong? And it isn’t straight at all. It should’ve been named the Wiggle of Hormuz.

Another point that should be made is that some of the fiercest warriors in history were eunuchs. And they can sing like angels. Women love them because they can dispense with BCPs and diaphragms. Incidentally, as someone who grew up in the fifties and sixties, whoever invented diaphragms as a birth control method was a sadist, maybe a low-testosterone person. I mean who came up with the idea of stopping coitus at a high point in order for a woman to smear jelly all over a piece of rubber and then insert it deep into her body hoping that her partner isn’t playing Barbie’s Dreamhouse Adventures having lost interest in sex.

Generally, as a medical person myself having practiced for over thirty years, I’m glad to see the trend in a more fantasy view of healing. I think all the self-appointed YouTube docs are doing a great service by exploring some of the great wives’ tales of history, most of which were actually things men thought of while waiting for their wives to insert diaphragms. The ancient Romans used leather condoms which is why the Roman Empire eventually ran out of people. In any event, I’m sick of science when just imagining stuff is so much more fun. Leaches, for example, was a method by which the sick could come in contact with nature as was bleeding the heck out of people until they passed away peacefully without the burden of having to circulate blood.

Pete Hegseth is a great American. By firing women in line for promotions he’s obviating the need to test for estrogen which is very expensive. By firing black officers in line for promotion, he’s taking into consideration an all-white army is easier to see at night. And it’s a truth universally known that white supremacists are literally overflowing with testosterone (or is it bile?).

And I would recommend we get rid of Jewish soldiers. They ask too many questions and kvetch too much. The best military would consist of eighth-generation Kansas farm boys whose Ancestry.com results come back milk white part Viking.

What about women soldiers? you might ask. Ancient armies faced several formidable female military leaders in battle, such as Queen Boudicca of the Iceni and Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, who led their own armies against Roman forces. Palmyra is a town in southwestern Wayne County, New York. I didn’t know the Roman Legions got that far.

In summary, God Bless Hegseth. He’s the most macho man I’ve seen on TV, a cross between the Hulk and Mr. T. Apparently he has an abundance of testosterone as his three wives can tell you as well as the women claiming he sexually abused them. We all want a horny SEC DEF functional alcoholic ex-Fox host running things. And political leaders with as many felonies as possible or ones who’re possibly dead or at least had friends in the Sino-Russian war.

Copyright David Wolman 2026

In my ongoing series of presenting the best of American Sunday sermons, I’m happy to offer this week’s chosen homily given by the Reverend Gladwyn Arthur Minksey of the Calvary Help First Fountain Solid Rock Mercy Anointed Hope Salvation Ark Believers Apostolic Covenant First Congregational Iconium Tabernacle Pentecostal Atonement Church in Nutter Fort, West Virginia.

“Friends, I was sitting on my front porch the other day. It was very hot. I was fanning myself with the Hawaii Catholic Herald which I don’t know why I subscribed to it but it’s very interesting. There was an article about tsunamis. My wife brought me a sweet tea and then headed straight for the woods where she was picking wild huckleberries for a pie she was making to bring over to the Papsies who just moved in at the old Rigorson’s place. Anyway, as I was sitting there sipping my sweet tea, the Lord himself bounded up the steps and sat down in the rocking chair next to me. Imagine my surprise. He sat there rocking for a while. Then he said in a quiet voice sort of like Dick Cavett:

“’What would you do if you found a stamped addressed letter on the ground? Many people would say put it in the nearest mailbox but here you are in the middle of nowhere and there’re no mailboxes. The other thing to consider is that given there’re no mailboxes why would there be a stamped addressed letter on the ground? Very suspicious. I would suggest calling 911 even though the Unabomber is dead, there could be another guy sending bombs. I know what you’re thinking. The bomb squad’s got to get all bundled up in those hot suits since there’re no bomb-sniffing robots at the sheriff’s office here and they have to drive all the way out here and check out the letter. But what I’m saying is the ten commandments I gave Moses don’t include everything, every situation. Stuff happens and you’ve got to use your own judgment. Does the Constitution of the United States cover everything? No. It certainly doesn’t cover convertible debt preferred shares.’”

“Then the Lord got up and left. I thought how special I must be that the Lord chose to visit me. But then I thought: why didn’t I offer Him some sweet tea? That’s just my point. In the presence of the Almighty we forget that He might like something done for Him for a change. We’re all eager to hear what He has to say so we can follow His teachings and get to Heaven but we never consider what He might need. Our reason for going to church is to increase the odds of eternal life and free coffee and donuts. In other words, worship is a selfish act. We want to look good in God’s eyes and thereby glorify ourselves in His eyes. We pray to Him because we want something. We read the Bible to understand what is expected of us but then we argue about what interpretation is the right one. Which is the right one? The one that suits our needs. After the Lord sacrificed his only son what did we do? We went out and divided ourselves into 45,000 denominations. In Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus says: ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.’ He doesn’t say: ‘go unto the world and see who can build the biggest church with broadcast and media studios, sports and recreational centers, full food courts featuring cafes, popular fast-food chains like Chick-fil-A, and large bookstores.

“Here’s an example of what I mean: The world’s richest megachurch pastor is a Brazilian televangelist, Edir Macedo, the founder of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Macedo has an estimated net worth of roughly $2 billion, which he got through global church donations and his ownership of Grupo Records, one of Brazil’s largest television networks. Is this what Jesus envisioned for us? Jesus drove money changers and merchants out of the Temple for God’s sake, literally.”

“So when I didn’t offer the Lord some sweet tea, I was only thinking of myself, how lucky I was to have the Lord our God sit with me on the front porch. I wasn’t thinking about Him. I was thinking about me. But worship is about Him, not us. It’s about thanking Him for what he has given us, this beautiful planet, the streams and rivers and oceans, the animals, the grass and trees, the huckleberries. It’s about giving folks, not taking. It’s not about the size of the church or the flower arrangements in it. It’s not about the ornamental reliquaries. It’s about giving unto Him ourselves and in giving to Him follow the instructions of his son: to love your neighbor as yourself, to serve the less fortunate, forgive others, to practice humility, reject greed, and choose spiritual treasures over material wealth.

That’s it, folks. Simple. That’s why God came to me and maybe he’ll come to you. Don’t be selfish and think he’s chosen you because you’re so special. Just offer him some sweet tea and shut up. But if we all truly believed these things: to love your neighbor as yourself, to serve the less fortunate, forgive others, to practice humility, reject greed, and choose spiritual treasures over material wealth, we’d only need one religion or, perhaps, none at all.”

LOSS OF PRESSURE AT HIGH ALTITUDE

COPYRIGHT DAVID WOLMAN 2026

A man was almost sucked out of a Greek Airplane today I don’t know about you but every time I get on a plane I worry about being sucked out a window it’s happened before perhaps you are aware of my famous often quoted line “if something happens a second time, it can happen a third time” there are so many freakish things that can happen I think there are more freakish things that can happen than whatever the opposite of freakish is so in the middle of the day as I am thinking about what it would be like to be sucked out a window at say 30,000 feet first of all those airplane windows are pretty small so is it the idea of being sucked out a window at such an altitude or the idea of being sucked through something much smaller than your physical frame and is it possible the same person could be sucked out of a window two times on different planes if that is possible then it must be true that it is possible someone could be sucked out of three different planes on three different occasions and live to tell the tale though such a person would now be shaped like a window just another reason to wear your seatbelt at all times though I think people have been sucked out of planes still seat-belted which suggests even if you are extremely compliant of safety rules something freakish could still happen.

It’s thundering now and 98° as the heat ravages across the Mediterranean into the Arabian Sea and then the Red Sea across the Baltic to the Black Sea this raging heat then causes large masses of ice to become raging rivers underneath melting like cheese in a pot on the stove and apparently all the seas are very hot like on the simmer setting of the stove when you wanna keep something warm without burning it the fish don’t like the water to get warm at least not when it is approaching the temperature of a seafood boil the land animals don’t like it so hot either the birds are parched and the snakes are so dry they don’t have enough spit to be a spitting cobra anymore.

Then I started to wonder why so many political candidates are ex-rapists and what is this thing about politicians disappearing for long periods of time remember that guy who disappeared and turned up in Rio de Janeiro or someplace in South America with the woman he was having an affair with and recently another politician disappeared hospitalized for depression and Addison Mitchell McConnell III is in the hospital when people disappear it is usually for a good reason this is another one of my famous quotations which are now in the public domain but I do accept contributions if you live by just two of my stated beliefs that “if something happens a second time, it can happen a third time” and “when people disappear it is usually for a good reason” you will have a good headstart on surviving at least another week.

Now it is raining which is good because the ground is ravenously thirsty having dried out to the level of where the magma is bubbling up from the inner core gulping the drops of water like a man who just crawled across the Sahara as the heat surges across the Mediterranean heading for the Sea of Malta which is near the Sea of Straw and the Sargasso Sea did you know the Sea of Cortez was also known as the Vermilion Sea the South China Sea is very nice this time of year although I prefer the Bay of Bengal when I was in the Mozambique Channel on one of them very ultra fancy cruises by which I mean the faucets had hot and cold running caviar and there was a waterslide that took 2 1/2 hours to get to the bottom I wondered then if it was possible to be sucked out of a port hole which suggests one should always get a stateroom with a porthole whose circumference is larger than your waistline just in case.

If you’ve read this far then you are aware of the fact that three of my famous quotations are “if something happens a second time, it can happen a third time”, “when people disappear it is usually for a good reason”, and “one should always get a stateroom with a porthole whose circumference is larger than your waistline” I believe I am old enough to give good advice I don’t know exactly at what age one becomes qualified to give advice but I think it is generally over 60 years of age at which point you have taken your turn inside the barrel enough times to be able to make suggestions to those young fresh fools who need advice more than anything I just got back from a long cruise down the Volga river famous for breathless views of women with babushkas washing their clothes along the shoreline though I also enjoyed a few days bathing in the Ganges River where one can enjoy observing human remains floating by which come to mind isn’t too much different than my youth at Jones Beach sitting on a small towel with my 13-year-old girlfriend in her two-piece as the surf drummed in the distance like the sound of migrating hoofed animals in the Serengeti.

Everyone is worried and with good reason which is my fourth famous quotation which is “one should always worry with good reason” otherwise you might be a worrywart which word according to Worldwide Words was coined by American cartoonist J.R. Williams in his 1920s syndicated comic strip “Out Our Way” but to worry excessively is a good thing if you have good reason such as the sound of incoming missiles causing you to worry sufficiently enough to seek shelter or if there is a tsunami warning to be sufficiently concerned to pack up your beach umbrella your cooler your toddlers and move to the highest point in town also if one of the engines of the plane you are seated in falls off and this has happened several times you should ring for the flight attendant and inform him or her that the engine has fallen off I wonder if there are people who have been on planes whose engines fell off more than once if that happened to me I would be a worrywart on the subject of commercial flying that is why I have often been heard saying that if something unusual happens during a flight it probably isn’t good this is where routine comes in handy when you are on a plane you want everything to be very routine even boring but you don’t want anything interesting to happen this is one of the few times in life you can tell yourself not to expect your flight from Newark to London to be exciting in anyway.

When the brief thundershower is over there is a moment when the leaves are dripping rain onto the ground and the unbearable heat is slightly lessened by the remaining winds of the storm just for a minute or two there is a sense of hope that the tiny puddles of rain in the grass which will evaporate quickly as soon as the sun comes out again will at least give you memories of what the wet and cool after a storm is like so that when the heat coming off the Sea of Troubles and heading across the tundra to the dark Ocean of Misery where all the people who have been missing for quite a while are returning over the distant hills wheeling their luggage across the bumpy terrain just as the greenish algaeic pools turn blue again and the world is blue again then we are mighty strong all of us together needlessly happy.

All of this confirms the possibility that if something happens twice it can happen a third time and when people disappear it is most certainly for good reason make sure the portholes are large enough for you to dive through and don’t worry without good reason because the rainbows may be imaginary mere prisms reflecting different temperatures of light but for the sake of all of us who have been sucked through windows or portholes they are real enough.

THE PANDEMIC OF ANTISEMITISM AND THE SEARCH FOR A VACCINE

Copyright David Wolman 2026

People often think of Jews as one solid constituency all thinking alike. Oversimplifying characteristics and beliefs of a race allows that race to be easily despised. The truth is Jews are very diverse and especially diverse in thought. The Talmud, for example, consists of 2,500,000 words presenting thousands of subjects from business ethics and verbal deception to Astronomy and Lunar Calculations. The pages are crowded with argumentative commentaries in the margins. The lack of agreement is celebrated as an indication of spiritual health.

Jews are historically and religiously capable of embracing two thoughts at the same time. Eilu v’eilu translates to “both these and those.” Originating from the Talmud, it refers to a famous dispute between the schools of Hillel and Shammai. When a heavenly voice declared their opposing arguments were both “the words of the living God”, it established the Jewish value of embracing diverse, seemingly contradictory truths.

Passover, for example, is notably a religious holiday in which Jews both celebrate their freedom from Egyptian slavery and at the same time mourn the deaths of Egyptians.

It is possible for Jews to feel both justified in fighting terrorists such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon and, simultaneously, feel tragically sad for the loss of innocent lives not only of bystander casualties but also of the deaths of the most violent Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists. The usual suspects of antisemitism, however, are spreading the lie that in defending their country and their families, Jews are bloodthirsty, vengeful, racist, colonialist killers. It’s an old trick of antisemitism; the aggressors become the victims and the victims become the villains.

As a Jew these days I am tired. I’m tired of the same illegitimate, uneducated tropes, the falsehoods, the violent attacks not only in the Middle East but in Washington, D.C.; Boulder, Colorado; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; Brooklyn, New York; Poway, California; Jersey City, New Jersey; Colleyville, Texas; Overland Park, Kansas; and Seattle, Washington; to name a few. The lies that are spread by cowards hiding under rocks incite disturbed individuals looking for someone to kill with political impunity, in acts that attempt to become heroic in their wrongheadedness.

Now come the protests, the boycotts, the marches of men in black shirts and white masks. More subtle maliciousness is transmogrified into voodoo politics poured into the brains of vulnerable, uneducated Gen Zs and Millennials.

While we allow Holocaust denial to exist under the flag of free speech, meanwhile removing depictions of slavery and Native American genocide from public view, there is a worldwide attempt to wash away that which we’d rather not face in our pasts, to sterilize the present, and to legitimize terrorist doctrine and fatwahs.

My relatives living in Germany in the 1930s and early 40s were so enamored of the idea of fitting in, of being good Germans, of being good citizens, they never saw the angels of death coming for them, scythes in hand. I’m afraid today we are facing our own extinction with the same equanimity and with the same desire to fit in as the usual forces of bigotry and vitriol resort to their tried and true clandestine, delusive, and treacherous tactics.

TRAMPLING THE WORLD WITH BUCKET LISTS

Copyright David Wolman 2026

The Major Oak (Quercus robur) has died. It lived for 1,200 years near Edwinstowe inside Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, England. It was supposedly the favorite haunt of Robin Hood and his merry men (and Mel Brooks, no doubt). The tree’s death was attributed to the compression of surrounding soil by tourists over many years of selfies.

As Oscar Wilde said: “Yet each man kills the thing he loves ...”

For that reason I’ve always been reluctant to sign up for river cruises. I can’t think of anything more intrusive to historic shoreline environments than motoring through them in boats full of people whose main goal is to be able to tell people they saw places they merely drifted through. Venice has been all but ruined. The last time I was in Florence there was no room to walk without joining throngs of tourists cheek by jowl. The same was true in Rome. It’s wonderful so many people can afford to cruise around the world. But are they really absorbing what they see or collecting iPhone pics to prove to themselves and their friends they’ve conquered the world one attraction at a time, like capturing Pokémon characters?

Of course, for the ultra rich, if you want the more intensive tourist experience, you can take over Venice for your wedding (or Madison Square Garden).

Traveling used to be an adventure, not flash mobbing via smartphones. For example, in 1963, I took a boat from Venice to Dubrovnik via Split in the Socialist Republic of Croatia. The overnight boat trip was like a scene from “Casablanca”. A group of Germans took over all the deck chairs and some Brits got into a fist fight with them. During the crossing, the Communist leader in Italy died and the captain of our ship forbade music or alcohol. The same Brits from the fist fight ignored the captain and drunkenly sang songs around the piano only to be hauled into the captains quarters where they were slapped around (but not keelhauled). During that same trip when I was in London, I heard a new band in a cellar pub. They called themselves The Beatles. In 1967, in Sotogrande Spain there was a dispute over Gibraltar between England and Spain. British jets were buzzing us and Spanish soldiers patrolled the beach with machine guns. I met Y.A. Tittle in the hotel bar and suffered the embarrassment of watching my father shew Otto Preminger out of the way when he was shooting super-8 footage of the hotel parrot.

There were spontaneous and unexpected things happening all the time traveling. We wandered into restaurants and museums allowing ourselves to be flexible and surprised. We weren’t traveling in the Owner’s Suite of the Icon of the World full of canned restaurants offering two-hour excursions on buses stuffed with retired accountants.

Nowadays, cruise ships carry up to 7,600 people dropping them off at duty free port shopping areas (and that’s as far as many of them go). The local cities are swamped by tourists expecting to see the most stereotyped characteristics of each locale. International tourist favorites put on hackneyed performances that have little to do with current culture or style of living. Most travel experiences these days could be just as easily had at Disney World in Orlando without leaving the US.

I think this all goes back to America’s xenophobic and ethnocentric view of the world. It’s born out in present day foreign policy in which we throw around our weight, insult world leaders, back out of treaties, and patronize and condescend in general to the citizens of the world. The confusing ever-changing tariff system we’ve imposed reflects our swaggering arrogance as we literally extort our allies. We cater to fascist dictators while abandoning the very people who are fighting to save democracy for the world. We invade poor South American countries (or threaten to do so) in order to requisition their oil and other resources while the people of those countries suffer and starve.

In a more personal sense, life is itself an adventurous excursion both geographically and psychologically. Reflection and memory have to do with where we were, when we were there, what we did there, and what memorable experiences we had. We create are own itineraries for the short time we have here on this gorgeous planet. But it’s often a struggle to break out of our claustrophobic daily routines and find some way to travel (mentally or physically) to another place, a new and different place, a place that may bring joy and/or anxiety, but a place and an adventure we can look back on with whimsy and fulfillment, not a sense of lost time. There are Brigadoons and Shanga-Las and Bali Hais just as there are Zanzibar and Marrakech and Namibia. We may not have the resources to travel far away but there are always exotic destinations within walking (or thinking) distance. We just have to look.

There is a universal desperation as we age to check off items on our bucket lists. The world population when I was born was 2.5 billion. It is now 8.3 billion. That may explain the cruise ships filled to the brim, the streets of London crowded with tourists, the hotels fully booked, the restaurants noisy and jam-packed. Everyone wants to go somewhere but somewhere is chockablock with bucket-listers. Or course, it’s not just a matter of everything overflowing with humanity. As with the Major Oak, our billions of footsteps are trampling the very things we wish to admire, photograph, share on Facebook. The weight of our celebration of civilization may soon fall through the floor of the earth. As we sit at that cafe in Crete or watch the sunset over Lake Como, we must acknowledge with whatever satisfaction we get that our wanderlust may be killing the things we love.

AMERICAN HISTORY WITH A DASH OF SCRUTINY

Copyright David Wolman 2026

At this time of manic romanticization of the American semiquincentennial, let us acknowledge our sublimation of the bloody, greedy, avaricious history we all share (and try to forget).

According to the Equal Justice Initiative, the National Park Service has removed and altered exhibits, signs, and online materials addressing slavery and Native American history. And, according to The Guardian, the Department of the Interior initiated these changes in compliance with executive orders directing the agency to remove exhibits deemed to “inappropriately disparage” the U.S. or that are unrelated to the grandeur of the landscape. The effort aims to restore a more patriotic focus on the nation’s founding ideals.

It’s our own version of Holocaust denial. We’ve buffed our history to comport with our Judeo-Christian hypocrisy. We’ve elevated our land-stealing, murderous, slave-owning forbearers to the status of demi-gods.

Yes, I’m fortunate that my ancestors survived a long trip in the bottom of a steamship, arrived barely alive at Ellis Island, and benefited from the American dream by becoming prosperous enough. And I’ve certainly benefited from living in America. But should I be thankful without being cognizant of the trail of tears that preceded and paved the way for my wonderful American life? Should I not be skeptical of all the hoopla, have mixed feelings when I look up at the sky at fireworks exploding to the rhythms of patriotic tunes? Isn’t part of the American character to engage in a little critical thinking along with our fervent allegiance?

Is it really possible to truly celebrate a history filled with genocide, racism and misogyny? Can I enthusiastically join the big July Fourth party without at least hesitating, without feeling the least bit inappropriately festive? And does being critical of our nation’s history prevent me from also acknowledging the things we got right? Of course not. I am proud of that part of the American story in which we were generous, innovative, protective of our allies, caring for the poor and sick, adhering to the principles of the Emma Lazarus poem. I’m proud of any soldier who fought not only for America but for the world in World Wars I and II. I’m proud of any American soldier who fought for dubious wars contrived by self-serving old men in Washington. I’m proud of so many essentially American things and the people who gave their lives for them, but I can’t blindly fall into lockstep with the kind of devotion that ignores the mistakes, black marks, smudges on our often admirable past.

Allow the majority of Americans who presently can barely afford food to hope without acquiescing to the fanfare, to be patient without being passive, and to be fearful without being despairing.

It can be a time to hang the bunting and sing the anthems at the same time as we look to the future with a determination to accept our checkered past and persevere to do better in the future.

Perhaps the most important thing about America is that it’s forever evolving, never complacent, always searching for ways to make life better for every one of us and the world, not to bury the truth of our Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde narrative with apocryphal histories and jingoistic self-promotion.

Let the blemishes be known. And let reparations be given to those whose ancestors we’ve buried in a storm of cosmetic lies.

Copyright David Wolman 2026

How hot is it in South Carolina you ask? I went outside to find our hot lava fountain spewing ash and molten granite. A poultry thermometer popped out of my thigh. I’m using SPF 432 sun screen. In order to hydrate I go to the nearest fire hydrant and wrap my lips over the pumper nozzle.

Don’t worry, it isn’t climate change or global warming or whatever you want to call it. People are so damn pessimistic these days. There’re a lot of good things about extreme heat. You tan quicker. Heat stroke is easily treatable if your tires don’t melt on the way to the hospital. And I like yellow grass better than green. From the dead birds you can gather feathers for your summer memory book. Thirsty squirrels lick the sweat off your neck. Feels refreshing.

By the way, what’s the deal with Europe? No air conditioning? Swimming in the Seine? Germany can’t hold neo-Nazi bund picnics? People in London are too hot to throw stones at Muslims?

When it’s hot people get angrier. It’s a fact. According to CNN “high temperatures directly increase feelings of anger, irritability, and aggression. When the body overheats, it redirects energy and blood flow toward cooling down, which drains the brain’s cognitive resources. This makes it significantly harder to regulate emotions, solve problems, and tolerate frustration.” I’ve noticed this myself. When I went into the sauna at the fitness club the other day, a guy tried to brain me with the water ladle.

Along with heat come terrific summer thunder storms. Here in South Carolina it’s fairly routine to see cows flying overhead. The Evangelicals take weather in stride, however. According to the Pew Research Center “many evangelicals express doubt about the severity of global warming or attribute temperature changes to natural environmental cycles. A common theological view holds that God is ultimately in control of the Earth’s climate and that humans lack the power to fundamentally alter the planet’s divinely appointed timeline. Additionally, some view extensive government climate policies as unnecessary overreach or an usurpation of divine sovereignty.”

I wish I believed in the kind of God that’s going to take care of everything for us. I could’ve skipped my education because “divine sovereignty” would’ve been all I’d have to write down in my blue book. Science is just an exercise in making us feel depressed. Everything will come out okay. It’s all meant to be. That’s what I tell myself every time I step on the gas pedal. My carbon footprint makes Sasquatch’s footprint look like a ten year old girl in ballet slippers starring in “The Nutcracker”.

I try to be a good caretaker of the earth but it’s hard because I’m used to my stick blender and my electric toothbrush. Sometimes the heat makes me so confused I blend the spaghetti sauce with my toothbrush and I don’t want to tell you what happened when I tried to brush my teeth with the stick blender. Let’s just say thank God for dental implants.

But let’s not worry. As Tom Lehrer’s lyric says: “We’ll all go together when we go”. When we finally reach the melting point of human flesh, it’ll be like a party, a final party. Everybody bring a dish, preferably hot. Misery loves company, they say, and Armageddon loves it, too. Yes, we can all dance the apocalypso to the hot beat of a firey band.

I long for my youth these days, the days before cholesterol and climate change. We didn’t have air conditioning when I was a kid living with four people in an eighth storey apartment. We had oscillating fans, though I didn’t know what oscillating meant. I used to fill the bathtub with cold water and get in it. The windows were open. Sometimes a breeze coming off 86th Street from Central park wafted through my room scented by the bouquet of empty garbage cans next door. I didn’t know anything. I was a tabula rasa. I vaguely knew there’d been a war. My father’s helmet and gas mask were in the cedar closet. It was the fifties, before Kennedy, Viet Nam, the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was ignorant and blissfully unknowledgeable. I guess that’s what whoever wrote the Bible was trying to say in Genesis. There was a time before worry, a time before the sense that everything was out of control.

I try to go back to Eden by emptying my mind of everything and viewing YouTubes of Pomeranian puppies doing funny things. I’d love to visit Pomerania, wherever it is. I bet it’s cool there

.

REFLECTIONS ON A POOL

Copyright David Wolman 2026

Reflection is an interesting word. In the case of the Washington reflecting pool the word refers to photons interacting with water molecules resulting in the creation of an image off of which the photons are bouncing. Reflection can also mean thinking about something. It can also mean reproach as in “he is a bad reflection on the presidency”.

The images or colors coming off the reflecting pool are more accurately described as refractions. So the color, for example, stars and stripes blue or algae green, is a product of the electromagnetic properties of the photons hitting the water or what’s floating on the water.

The problems with achieving the “right” color for the reflecting pool are analogous to the problems DJT is having creating the “right” truth. His apocryphal story about bogeymen cutting a slit in the blue pool liner is analogous to the way light reacts with water molecules interrupted by algae molecules resulting in the “wrong” color.

By the way, one way to prevent algae is to dye the water. Algae loves sunlight because it photosynthesizes. If you block the sunlight, the algae can’t propagate. Dyeing the water dark blue might have solved the whole problem in the first place but it wouldn’t have involved large sums of money given to an old crony. Cronyism is the opposite of refraction.

Putting up security cameras around the reflection pool creates another set of images wherein photons bounce off a mirror in the video cameras creating a refraction of the image off of which the photons bounced, bogeymen, for example. Washington is apparently teaming with bogeymen whose mission in life is to make DJT look bad. Vandals, weasels, stokes, immigrant rapists are all over the place. Supposedly the National Guard took care of this but judging from the number of reflection pool assassins the National Guard wasn’t nationally guarding so well.

As someone who has had many ponds and fountains, it doesn’t take a genius to know that if you create a shallow body of water and give it plenty of sunshine, algae will grow. This is one reason people plant water lilies in their ponds and fountains to prevent sunlight from coming into contact with the water. DJT spent $14.65 million awarded to Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings to repair leaking joints, sandblast exterior walkways, and coat the pool’s floor in “American flag blue” paint. He spent an additional 1.74 million paid to Ohio-based Green Water Solutions to install a specialized “nano-bubble” ozone filtration system designed to eliminate algae. That’s a total so far of over $16 million. Water lilies cost wholesale about $25 a piece, so DJT could have planted 640,000 water lilies.

Having turned the Rose Garden into a parking lot, the East Wing into a giant hole, the Kennedy Center into an empty building, along with plans to build a triumphal arch and, of course, a golf course in the middle of DC, DJT seems to be mimicking the aesthetics of Albert Speer. The architecture of ancient Greece seems to be preferred by the fascist-leaning. There seems to be something about all those columns, caryatids, friezes, architraves, and cornices that appeals to the present day ego-driven. The splashes of gilt I don’t quite understand. It makes the White House look like the Kremlin coffee break room.

On another subject, why is Hegseth firing all the generals and admirals he can lay his hands on? Maybe he should fire all the minorities, too. That would be 31%. And let’s get rid of the LGTBQ+. That’s another 7%. Women make up 18%. That leaves 44%. Of those, about half have had woke thoughts. The remaining 22%, based on DOGE numbers, could do the job very nicely thank you very much, but they’d have to use slingshots and bows because we used up all our bombs dropping them on Iran.

Meanwhile, the alternative to DJT’s and company is a party transforming itself into a wing of the Islamic Jihad. I’m trying to understand the Dems. They allow a very nice but blithering old guy to run for president, then give an outstanding qualified mixed race woman five minutes to convince the country she’s right for the job. In the aftermath of that debacle, they go to their rooms, shut the door, and refuse to come out for dinner. They don’t present a plan to recreate and rehabilitate the middle class. Oh, I forgot, you can’t have actual plans because people are adverse to change and even if it’s a great plan, the voters go to their rooms, shut their doors, and refuse to come out for dinner. The Dems who get all the sound bites speak in vagaries like Free Palestine without a better plan than the 2000 Camp David Summit in which Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a Palestinian state encompassing roughly 90-95% of the West Bank and the entirety of Gaza. Arafat did not accept, and the talks ultimately collapsed. Or how about the 2008 proposal in which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas a Palestinian state on roughly 93-94% of the West Bank, territorial swaps, and joint control over Jerusalem. It was not accepted. Am I missing something here? The Dems proposal is Free Palestine? How? Under what terms? A proposal in what ways better than 2000 or 2008?

And what ever happened to the environment? It’s 105 in Paris. Hello? California is burning, the Midwest is blowing away, and Florida is sinking and the Dems dare not mention climate change?

How about detailed plans for child care, health insurance, inflation, national debt and a plan to somehow rejoin the world after DJT has managed to insult Giorgia Meloni, Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron, and Mark Carney?

All I can say in closing is, well, the reflecting pool is still green. And green is the color of money and jealousy.

Copyright David Wolman 2026

Antisemitic coffee shops? I always thought they were cool places where disheveled people spent the day pretending to do stuff on their computers. And why pick on Dan Goldman? His views on Israel are so measured, calm, all-embracing. He’s for a two-state solution for god’s sake. He’s for scrutiny of US military aid for Israel. Jesus ...

I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to boycott coffee. I think coffee is basically against Jews. When was the last time they served coffee at a sader?

By the way, this thing about vandalizing the reflection pool ... I’m having the same problem with my pool. People are showing up during the night and slicing my liner. I think I’ll get a camera so I can catch the vandals. I should mention that algae produce about half the world’s oxygen, so maybe we should leave it alone and let the oxygen help Washington breathe again.

But seriously, Dan Godman? This seems to relate to my thoughts expressed the other day about antisemitism becoming mainstream. I must’ve been prophetic or something. Because he doesn’t believe Israel’s actions after October 7th were genocidal Dan Goldman is banned from the Poetica Coffee Shop? That’s not very poetica of them. Maybe they should question customers as to their views on Israel, whether they lean Zionist or not, before letting them get one of those fancy coffees with swans made out of steamed milk. In fact, I think there should be a Zionist test for all products on Amazon, or maybe a discount if you’re anti-Zionist.

Antisemitism is now part of the platform of the Democratic party which has become even left-ier than me. I thought being liberal meant caring about income disparity, medical insurance for all, pro-choice, in favor of marriage for anyone who wants it, anti-racist, etc. But now liberalism includes misunderstanding the history of the Middle East, a Middle East, mind you, where Iran just sentenced a young woman to 72 lashes for singing in public without wearing a hijab, not to mention killing 30-40,000 of its citizens for protesting the regime. What ever happened to applying some critical judgment to other cultures who engage in barbaric practices like invading a country, killing babies in front of their parents, raping women and then burning them alive?

Should Hamas be banned from Poetica

?

Copyright David Wolman 2026

I wasn’t prepared for the viral reaction to my article “The Genocide of Ill-Conceived Thought” (available on Substack or Facebook). I’ve written about Israel and the Jewish experience before (several times) and written a personal history of Jews over a 150-year period, “Arkady the Jew”, and never had such an overwhelming number of viewers and comments. As of this writing, there have been over 35,000 views with over 5,000 comments or reactions. Many of the people who commented have started their own discussions within the post, commenters with commenters. It keeps going and going. This is good. I think my article struck a nerve having to do with the frustration of people trying to make sense out of thousands of years of strife and war in one ironically small region of the world. But the title of my article had more to do with my belief that ill-conceived thought has generated its own form of genocide, a sweeping condemnation of all Jews throughout the world, without considering the nuances and diversity of Jewish thought and arising out of pure hatred for Jews regardless of of their assumptions as to what Jews think, whether Jews are Zionists or purveyors of genocide. Some people treated my article as a jumping off point for their own messaging. Most readers, however, seemed relieved to have me raise important issues for a considered, rational, courteous discussion. Judging by the numbers, people wanted to talk about the broad brush with which Jews are being painted throughout the world.

The reaction of so many people can be attributed also to the difficulty these days of defining morality and ethics. The war in Ukraine, for example, involves killing on both sides which some people want to define as “genocide”. People are having difficulty dealing with the rationale for wars wherever they happen and for whatever reasons. The fact is that war produces casualties both military and civilian. (It is estimated that as many as a million Russian soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the Ukraine war.) The degree of brutality presents the problem of defining which form of brutality crosses the line into some new form of amorality for which there is no name yet. Yes, there are rules to war that have been created at various times in history and codified, everything from the Code of Hammurabi to the Ottawa Treaty. But these rules are hard to define in the midst of new, terrifying techniques of war, whether they involve drones, or new kinds of deadly weapons unleashed as a result of all sorts of daffy political machinations and/or failed diplomacy. Most reasons for war are indefensible and trying to cast characters in war as either villains or heroes is often ontologically impossible. During the Afghan and Iraq wars were so-called “dark sites” compatible with the rules of war? Did waterboarding fall under the definition of forms of torture forbidden by the Geneva Conventions? Were America’s wars with Afghanistan and Iraq genocidal?

Though the intention of my article was to keep the discussion within certain boundaries, the comments I received seemed to extend the discussion to all sorts of wide ranging issues outside the purview of my article. What exactly is genocide? Obviously, for Jews, the word “genocide” is a loaded term because of the Holocaust, which was an organized, minutely efficient process of exterminating one ethnic group of people with the intention of wiping their race off the face of the earth. That’s the definition of genocide I accept. The word should not be used lightly. In the recent case of Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, for example, I think it’s inaccurate to say that Israel’s response to the murderous attacks of a terrorist group is “genocidal”. It’s awful, yes, but just as the United States is presently fighting with drug cartels on the border with Mexico, countries do have to defend their people against those who would harm us or our neighbors. In all of these cases, whether it’s in Iran, Ukraine, Israel, Lebanon, or anywhere else, I think we should be able to make distinctions and judge each situation for what it is while at the same time agreeing that it’s always tragic people kill one another for whatever reason, good, bad or indifferent, land, oil, or food. But organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and Hezbollah explicitly characterize their conflict with Israel and their political objectives as jihad. They often frame the armed struggle, including major attacks, as a core religious obligation. The idea is to destroy Israel and all Jews.

Another point I made which I think created enough controversy to generate much discussion and in some cases disagreement is the appearance of a new form of antisemitism in which people’s viewpoints concerning the actions of the State of Israel become justifications for condemning all Jews merely by association. The so-called boycotts of all things Jewish imply that all Jews should be (financially or artistically) punished and assumes that all Jews must believe the same things and therefore are all equally guilty of whatever offense the boycotter thinks they are guilty of. This creation of a singularity in Jewish opinion is the building block of antisemitism. It’s always been this way. There’ve always been tropes about Jews. You can find them in everything from Shakespeare to Dorothy Sayers. And believing that all Jews are Zionists (as if being a Zionist can be defined as one singular thing) is just an excuse for generalized hatred and bigotry. And what does Zionism really mean? Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism now broadly means supporting the continued existence and development of Israel as a Jewish state. Yet some would try to transform the term to mean whatever falsehood serves their particular agendas.

The younger generations seem particularly vulnerable to half-truths and conspiracy-driven, fictional mythology along with their dragons, vampires and zombies. Otherwise why would Jewish students at certain universities have to run from building to building to avoid being attacked by pro-Hamas student gangs? When I was at Wesleyan, eggs were thrown at our Jewish center by other passing students—and that was in 1970. Things don’t change. Whether it’s apocryphal manifestoes like the “Elders of Zion” or the conspiracy of “blood libel”, or, for that matter, the implication in some interpretations of the New Testament that Jews killed Christ, antisemitism follows, and, in the case of my Polish Jewish ancestors the effect of the falsehoods resulted in their having to run for their lives. Fortunately for me, some of my ancestors ended up at Ellis Island. The ones that remained behind experienced true genocide. It wasn’t a label or an accusation; it was their fate: death. Yes, if they could speak from the grave, they would tell you what genocide is really about. It wasn’t just a word to them. Genocide is a deliberate act of killing a certain group of people for the sake of killing them. War, on the other hand, as we’ve recently seen in Iran, involves destroying aggressive infrastructure, attempting to destroy enough of the enemy’s missiles, guns, et al to cause them to surrender. The civilian casualties of war aren’t necessarily one ethnic group and the strategy of war is not to kill civilians. You may debate this with regard to the Bosnian genocide or “ethnic cleansing” that took place between 1992 and 1995. But I don’t believe Israel’s efforts to defend itself come close to any form of “ethnic cleansing” especially given the fact that two million Arabs live freely in Israel. If Hamas embeds itself with innocent civilians, it’s Hamas that’s engaging in the genocide of its own people, not Israel.

Finally, I should note (because some people seem to need to be reminded) that violent antisemitism in its most rampant form is an ever-increasing reality. In 2025, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded 6,274 total antisemitic incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault in the US. The FBI reports that Jewish people, who account for roughly 2.4% of the U.S. population, are targets in nearly 60% to 69% of all religion-based hate crimes. The perpetrators of hate crimes don’t really care what kind of Jew you are, what you think, or whether you’re a Zionist or not—they just hate Jews for the sake of hating Jews.

What used to be an undercurrent (antisemitism) has become a kind of fad, a popular set of thoughtless opinions uttered by uneducated followers. It’s cool to throw around slogans (like “from the river to the sea” or “free Palestine”) but it’s also potentially deadly for the 2.4% of us who live in this country, who’ve contributed so much in science, medicine, the arts and intellectual thought. In fact, because of the diffuse conflating of issues, Jewish humor may also be dead. After all, it just isn’t cool to be a Jewish anything anymore. Like my parents, it may be time to hide again. History does repeat itself. The philosophical attics may soon be filled with Jews waiting for the knock on the downstairs door

.

COPYRIGHT DAVID WOLMAN 2026

It’s never been easy being a Jew, but antisemitism has become so mainstream lately it seems almost impossible to not “see something, say something”. Political office holders who are Jewish are now in fear of losing elections. Books by Jewish authors (including my own) are not being published. Israeli films are not being shown at film festivals. Celebrities and movie stars are forced to spout anti-Zionist rhetoric. Even in my own small community the stench of antisemitism is noticeable. People display their American flags as we approach the 250th anniversary of a country that was supposed to have been founded on principles of tolerance and religious freedom but has become more and more a breeding ground for irrational hate.

Young people in particular, young people who are history-illiterate and susceptible to influencers are creating a new form of ideological “concentration camp”. Even Jews are turning on one another (in a Kapo sense) out of stupidity, illogic, and the worst kind of antisemitism, the kind that comes from within our own ranks.

I’m not going to review again the history of the Holocaust, the attacks on Israel from its borders, the multiple peace accords that have been rejected or broken by Israel’s neighbors. Read my historical review on Facebook or read “The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace” by Dennis Ross.

What’s clear to me now is that all the formerly closeted hatred of Jews throughout the world is now acceptable and “politically correct”. I never thought I would see antisemitism legitimized in this way. All the whispers and dog whistles have become shouts. Its open season on Jews.

It’s been said many times that being Jewish in the diasporic sense should not allow the automatic assumption that Jews support every one of Israel’s policies. The word “Zionist” can have many meanings. Jews have a multitude of views about the Israeli State and its government. The population of Israel is very diverse and there are diverse viewpoints within Israel.

And calling Israel genocidal is wrong unless you are willing to assign that opprobrium to the United States because of its bombing of Dresden during World War II or, for that matter, the nuclear bombing of Japan. The collateral damage of war is the responsibility of the people who attacked in the first place, not the people who are defending their country, their families, their way of life. Surely Hamas knew that the October 7th massacre would result in the death of many Gazans and the destruction of their land. Hamas is responsible for the so called “genocide”, not Israel. The same is true of Hezbollah and Iran. No one is blaming everyday Gazans or Palestinians or Iranians. The leaders are to blame and they are responsible for the repercussions of their blatant desire to “kill all Jews”.

Calling Jews genocidal has so many horrific reverberations. It’s perverse. Comparing Jews to Nazis is the worst kind of inversion of truth as is equating Zionism with Naziism. The only true genocide is foreshadowed in the determination of terrorist organizations to refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist and teach generations of their children to murder. This begins in kindergarten. “If you kill six Jews and then kill ten more, how many have you killed?”

To some extent these terrorists are winning the public relations battle as their homicidal intentions become part of the “woke” generation. Having lost most of my ancestors in Nazi gas chambers, I have no illusions about ever seeing the end of antisemitism. I remain saddened by the deterioration of what little tolerance is left for my people. As I am proud to be an ethnic Jew, I am at the same time respectful of all people, Muslims, Christians, Palestinians, or any peaceful inhabitants of this planet. I do not respect those among us who easily adopt ill-conceived points of view, start slinging slogans, and accept the easy bigotry of historical antisemitism without knowing what they’re talking about, without understanding actual history, and who adopt hypocrisy as their only form of logic.

The other day I ran into a friend of mine who’s just turned eighty. Here’s what he said to me:

“I don’t care how many times a trillion dollars goes around the moon and back.

“... I got along okay without the internet. I got along okay without a laptop. I got along okay without a smartphone. I used to look things up in an encyclopedia. I got along without streaming. I got along okay ...

“... Yes, Elon is the first trillionaire. He wants to put more things in space. He wants to build a city on Mars. Earth is nothing. Giant data centers suck up water, electricity, land, make tons of digital waste. Even the Democrats don’t talk about “the environment” anymore.

“... They say thousands of people in Elon ‘s orbit will become millionaires just by virtue of sharing his rarified air. You’re probably thinking I’m spitting out sour grapes. In this country, age is political power. We don’t look for wisdom. We see old people stick around long enough in the halls of power to establish sinecures: Biden, Trump, Pelosi, Grassley, Sanders, McConnell, Clyburn ... But then there’s the non-political non-office-holder-elderly (NPNOHE) treated like we all have various forms of senility, that we’re stealing wealth from the young, hoarding all the homes, basking in our social security checks as if we didn’t earn the money. We’re condescended to, underestimated, patronized, underutilized, and forgotten.

“... As we all bask in the vicarious glow of imagining what it’s like to be a trillionaire, we gather by the hundreds of thousands in arenas while outside nature rings its bells. No one hears them. Boys sit in their basements trying to impress their AI girlfriends. We’re back on oil and gas because we needn’t worry—there’ll be cities in Mars to move to, lovely insular, domed, digital destinations where we’ll grow hybrid, genetically engineered edibles that resemble something we once ate ...

“... It’s the Big Forgetting, that’s what it is.

As wars are fueled by various racial hatreds and the earth is forgotten, simplicity is forgotten, joy is forgotten, bankruptcy reins, tornadoes blow, houses cost too much, fires rage, tectonic plates tear apart, volcanoes spume, the Straits of Somewhere are closed and all the ships are waiting, waiting, full of the stuff we don’t need ...

“ ... Go into the woods and see it all again, the underlayment of micro life spreading throughout the world we cannot see below, the fungi hyphae filaments connecting all things to all things, removing more carbon than a trillion filters and in their micron small kitchens making oxygen in loaves of bubbles. They stretch wider than a trillion dollars or a trillion trillion. They have always been just as we have not, and we are new, nouveau riche, the children of tree fellers, explorers, hunters, killers of the tribes. There are ancient trees in the furthest reaches of the world a thousand feet high with roots a hundred miles long, their canopies reaching out, silently hosting a trillion, yes, a trillion little lives in the curves of their endless branches. They are alone now, these silent watch towers, chlorophilianaires, whose craggy barks are deeper than gorges, these giant trees the ghosts of Grizzly Giant, Boole, Stag, Genesis, King Arthur, Euclid, Methuselah, Black Mountain Beauty ... cut down but their roots swimming towards the earth’s core a trillion miles down. There is no beautiful word for the green land on top whose view is of the drooping sky stretched out to the horizon like an old blue curtain.

“... The sequoia whisper: will it all be forgotten or remembered?

”

COPYRIGHT DAVID WOLMAN 2026

Recently the Supreme Court of the United States temporarily stayed the execution of a man in Alabama who was to be executed by nitrogen gas asphyxiation. Alabama has tried this cockamamie execution method before and it didn’t go well. According to CBS News, Alabama Department of Corrections execution team members who carry out nitrogen hypoxia executions do not receive medical or specialized scientific training. A recent victim of the nitrogen method struggled against the straps, then had convulsions. No one really knows the amount of pain and distress this method causes because no one has volunteered to try it themselves.

Before I comment on various forms of capital punishment, I should review some science. We have something here on earth called “air”. It is composed of approximately 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. For some reason, known only to the intelligent design crowd, the oxygen part of air turns out to be pretty darn important. We humans are basically oxygen addicts for life. We love the stuff. We take it with us on Mount Everest expeditions as a snack. It’s better than milk and cookies. When we go diving, we strap tanks of air onto our back containing 21% oxygen. Our brains really love oxygen. According to the university of Rochester Medical School, despite making up only 2% of our total body weight, the human brain consumes 20% to 25% of the body’s oxygen supply. This translates to roughly 49 milliliters of oxygen every single minute. Our brains are guzzling the stuff.

In a nitrogen execution, a mask is placed over the prisoner’s face and nitrogen gas is infused without oxygen. What actually happens, from a medical point of view, is that the prisoner slowly suffocates. During this process the condemned experiences hypoxia which quickly leads to anxiety and panic. You can try this yourself at home. Hold your breath as long as you can. When you feel you can’t hold it any longer, imagine waiting another few minutes or so before you become unconscious.

Of course, I have to give some credit to Alabama for their horror movie creativity. They are no longer able to obtain the ingredients for lethal injections because pharmaceutical companies, for some reason, don’t like the idea of their products being associated with deliberately killing people. Lethal injections have been botched, too. Recently, an IV wasn’t inserted properly and the liquid defused into the prisoner’s arm. After about an hour of sticking the prisoner with needles in an effort to find a viable vein, the execution was called off.

I’m thinking, why not try helium? I guess the concern is that the condemned might float away like a birthday balloon or utter his last words in a high pitched voice.

There’ve been many botched executions. Why? We can put Rovers on Mars with helicopters but we can’t kill people cleanly? Even a recent firing squad execution was botched because they missed the man’s heart. How can you miss the middle of a man’s chest at 15 feet? They should’ve hired some ICE guys and placed them at 5 feet.

Twenty-seven states presently allow capitol punishment. Coincidentally, those states combined have the lowest education scores. I’m not equating low intelligence with capitol punishment, just stating a fact.

Personally, I’m a big fan of creative execution techniques. Crucifixion was good because it led to some great homoerotic paintings. In Southeast Asia they used to crush people with elephants. I love that one because it brings in a whole wildlife aspect. Some cultures used to tie the prisoner’s mouth to a canon and then fire it. What a display! That’s like a firing squad without wasting bullets.

I remember in the movie “Gunga Din” they threw people into a pit of vipers. I would embellish that by putting a mask on the condemned first with nitrogen gas, then shooting him on the way down, and darting him with a lethal injection. If that didn’t work, bring in the elephants.

What confuses me, though, is that now that our nation is a Christian theocracy it would seem counterintuitive to murder people even if the people we murdered were themselves murderers, rapists, serial killers or worse. I thought the old vengeful Bible had been replaced by the new improved merciful version. And Alabama is in the Bible belt.

The other issue, of course, is the risk of executing an innocent person. According to the Innocence Project, since 1973 over 200 people sentenced to death have been officially exonerated and freed. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, leading criminologists and major research organizations overwhelmingly conclude that the death penalty does not deter crime. Evidence shows no meaningful correlation between capital punishment and lower murder rates, with many states and countries that have abolished the death penalty actually experiencing lower homicide rates.

I think the answer to this madness lies in the darkest recesses of human psychology. None of us know what death is like. We are fascinated by watching others experience death as a kind of coming attraction. Watching bad guys get killed on TV over and over again inures us to the idea of state-sponsored murder.

Then there is just the lurid sadistic pleasure of watching someone suffer.

PIGS IN POKES

COPYRIGHT DAVID WOLMAN 2026

What’s the deal with president DJT calling Graham Platner a pig? Pigs seem to be Trump’s favorite epithet. I would remind Trump pigs are biologically, anatomically, and genetically similar to humans. We share approximately 90% of our DNA and about 98% of our genes. Trump also called Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey “piggy”. Did Trump’s mom play “this little piggy went to market” too often with his toes?

In the case of Trump and Platner is it as simple as a pig calling a pig a pig? It’s an amusing conundrum for Democrats to be embarrassed by their own porcine-accused candidate who has, um, a few flaws, depending on how you define “flaws” these days. But let me attempt to compare the president with Platner.

Trump has an historical reputation for being a racist landlord in his early career. Maybe he doesn’t have an SS tattoo, but I think it’s more important what’s in your heart than what’s on your skin. He avoided the draft with heel spurs. Platner joined the marines after high school. I was living in New York City when Trump was building gaudy, gold-encrusted high rises. I was there when his Atlantic City casinos became too big to fail (but did). Platner raises oysters. More recently, as we all know, Trump’s been convicted of felonies, found liable for sexually assaulting a woman in a department store, and violating election laws by paying hush money to a porn star. Those are just the highlights, or should I say lowlights. Platner’s never been indicted or convicted of anything. He’s been accused of sexting and being an abusive boyfriend. I’m not underestimating the wrongs he may have done. Speaking of sexting, can someone explain that to me? Is it a generational thing? If people want to show off their genitals, why don’t they just go to a nude beach together?

As much as I question Platner’s tattoo choice in the face of most of his extended family being Jewish, and as much as I find sexting during marriage indicative of something amiss in the marriage, Platner did voluntarily join the Marines, go on active duty deployments, and, frankly, his political persuasions would seem to be excellent ones for the Democratic Party to embrace: housing affordability, universal healthcare, strengthening labor unions, reducing the political power of billionaires and ending American involvement in never-ending wars. Compare these reasonable ideals with Trump’s inflationary war and billionaire favoritism.

I also have to admit Susan Collins’ voting record and political views aren’t really that bad. I just think she’s been around too long. It’s time for some hyper-masculinity-marine-testosteronic-oyster-ness. He may not be perfect but where do you find perfect men these days? Leo’s already got a job.