Salutations ye who frequently read the museum signage:
I honestly do not know what captivated me about this shark. Maybe its bizarre jaw. Maybe the freakish nature of its feeding habits. Or maybe just the juxtaposition of something wonderful (cookies!) with something not quite so warm and yummy (sharks). But if you must… here’s the cookiecutter shark.
The shark is just a distraction. I needed to have your mind good and open so that I could repost this amazing quote I found on Twitter:
Do not forget this as we discuss Russian Oligarchs and how much money they have. Billionaires are not millionaires.
I was intrigued by this local story of 2 cops caught on an “integrity sting.” Both were fired — they pulled over a drunk driver (undercover cop) and stole money in stashed in Arizona Tea cans in the back. One guy stole around $250 and one stole about $5000. Both were fired.
They did it separately: the one guy said he threw the cans away but was caught on video stashing them under his car. The other stole cash when he thought no one was looking.
Here’s my ethics question: is it better to be the guy who could only stomach scraping a little off the top that no one would miss, or is it better to be the guy who goes down for a chunk of change? I’ll let you think for a second.
Here’s a picture to entertain you while you think.
Here’s a list of top 10 places that seniors hide money (what’s equally disturbing is that there are pages and pages devoted to “how to hide things from your parents”)
Remember the initial question though? Is it better to be the guy who skims a little off the top or the guy who risks it all for a significant sum?
Answer: They are the same. The cops in this example were acting individually. If they had been acting in tandem, I would say that one took only a little and one took a lot, but what actually happened was that each took the amount they thought no one would miss. So think twice before pocketing the post-it notes at the office.
This week I got to go to the American Natural History Museum and I noticed that the iconic statue of Teddy Roosevelt was taken down outside (he and his horse) but inside, Ted was chilling on a bench on the first floor. He also still has a huge rotunda on the second floor…not to mention the fact that the parkland that the museum is on is called Theodore Roosevelt Park.
Do we learn from this:
A) racisim is easy to fix on the outside but hard to get rid of internally?
or
B) No matter how hard you try, it’s not easy to excise history.
My long essay was finally published on March 15 in Mutha Magazine - I’ve been waiting for a couple of weeks for it to come out so I was thrilled. Many of you have already read it and commented. For the rest of you, here it is!
I don’t often write personal essays (this newsletter aside) — so I hope that if it speaks to you, you’ll share it on your social media. Thanks!
Last thought: The surface of an opal can be covered in little fractures and this is because the water caught inside the opal sometimes rises to the top. That’s interesting, but what is so glorious is the name for this process: crazing. That’s right. The opal that is not smooth is crazed. I love this.
PS: a fascinating 2 minute video from Saint Petersburg Russia — guy walking around seeing what he can see. #standingwithUkraine
Being a math person, I like the Twitter framing of a million and a billion, and it's true, I think it would surprise most people. Systematic error would be found in this jelly bean guess if examined. I certainly did a double take. A billion is a thousand times greater than a million. So another framing is that, in a fortunate life span of 100 years that is also conveniently a round number, if that is represented as a billion, the million mark is reached at 0.1 years, or 1.2 months. So 5 weeks is to 100 years what a million is to a billion.
When you referenced the 10 places seniors most commonly hide money, since they are hiding it, my first thought was, how do we know? And I thought of estimates where sexual assaults are involved. (What percentage of women are sexually assaulted? What percentage of sexual assaults result in convictions?) The uncertainty will always nag.
I have more storage places than true hiding places, but I would guess the same still holds for them, that a danger is forgetting your choice. I keep a "what is where" folder on my computer, and sheets of paper with my various passwords (I will blame my lack of consistency on the increasing requirements for complexity.) But maybe this isn't spoken as a true paranoid.
Hiding is an interesting in-between state. There's a distinction between hiding and destroying. Just as the person who hides money wants to have access to it, if you hide a secret vice, you are not giving it up. You want the best of both worlds: the thing, but not the public acknowledgment of it.
What a particularly interesting essay on language and culture!