But first, some news of the day. The  New York Times  this morning had some nice history of gerrymandering, which is what Democrats in California pulled off on election day this week with Proposition 50. Lawmakers realized in the 19th century that they could increase their party’s political power by redrawing legislative districts. The term of art is   gerrymandering , named after the map for the Massachusetts State Senate drawn under Gov. Elbridge Gerry. (One district looked like a salamander. Get it?) Typically, legislators gerrymander once a decade, after the census. Today, gerrymandering is a weapon of constant political warfare. State legislators, both red and blue, are furiously redrawing congressional maps in a quest to control the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections. The skirmishing began in August, when Trump persuaded Texas lawmakers to redraw congressional districts, which will probably let them send five more Republicans to Congress....

What to do about the elderly is an age-old question, yes, a pun.  However, when Yale assistant professor,  Yusuke Narita , remarked that elderly Japanese residents should essentially commit seppuku ( the honorable method for dishonored samurai to commit suicide-- I had a dream  about this a long time ago which became a  Huffington Post  article ), he outraged the world. He is 37 years old with an economics PhD from MIT, previously taught at Stanford, and is obviously of Japanese ethnicity, so the issue has relevance and ire.  This euthanasia discussion actually had first occurred with a group of students two years ago about a scene from the Swedish film,  Midsommar , in which a cult sent out one of its oldest members to jump off a cliff.  He then said: Whether that's a good thing or not, that's a more difficult question to answer.  So if you think that's good, then maybe you can work hard creating a society like that. Narita in the past also ...