We would have endless energy if we learned to harness stupidity

Jobs, Journalism, Justice

Dr. Wes Browning is a one time math professor who has experienced homelessness several times. He supplied the art for the first cover of Real Change in November of 1994 and has been involved with the organization ever since. This is his weekly column, Adventures in Irony, a dry verbal romp of the absurd. He can be reached at drwes@realchangenews.org.

Articles by Dr. Wes Browning

Everybody gets hydroxychloroquine! And you can stay home only if your home looks like mine

by Dr. Wes Browning | May 27th, 2020

According to the interweb, NASA has found a parallel universe where time flows backward. Big deal. Time has been flowing backward for me since March.

Time has been in reverse in Washington, D.C., since Jan. 20, 2017, and now it is starting to look like the 12th century. The Department of Justice wants legislators to suspend habeas corpus from now until at least a year after the COVID-19 emergency is over without telling any of us what would constitute it being over. When no one has died from it anywhere in the world for one year? Or one month before that?

Read more in the May 27 - June 2, 2020 issue.

‘Your honor, of what am I being charged?’ ‘You’re charged with having been charged’

by Dr. Wes Browning | May 20th, 2020

Trump now accuses Obama of a crime, but won’t say what crime. (“You know what he did.”) If he can do it to a former president, he can do it to anyone. This is very dangerous behavior.

Also dangerous is Mitch McConnell saying Obama “should have kept his mouth shut” rather than criticize the administration’s COVID-19 response.

Hey, Trump, I need underpants mailed to me from Cincinnati

by Dr. Wes Browning | May 13th, 2020

After decades of telling us that shelter couldn’t be found, it got done as soon as it seemed homeless people could pass this virus to the non-homeless.

I don’t know what’s crazier: we’re all going down the tubes because of a virus, we’re all going down the tubes because of a president, or NASA is going to let Tom Cruise shoot a movie at the International Space Station.

So far, who’s even trying to guess what the movie will be about? Mission Impossible 9?

Surprises around every corner to ingest with toast, sardines and cheese

by Dr. Wes Browning | May 6th, 2020

Sign of the time: Facebook, in the interest of bringing people together online in spite of physical isolation, has made available a “care” reaction. In German, it’s called umarmung, which means “hug.” I’m now virtually hugging friends who complain about having to stay home.

The Seattle Times has an article featuring recipes for canned sardines, because canned tuna is getting hard to find. The big takeaway: Get the expensive European imports packed in oil and grill them until the skin is crispy. Mmm, I want to try that on toast with melted provolone.

I’m fixin’ a hole in New Zealand, where I’ll live with the rest of the introverts

by Dr. Wes Browning | April 29th, 2020

“There’s no circumstance in which you should take a disinfectant or inject a disinfectant. ... It can cause death and very adverse outcomes.” — Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb

Trump is actually leading his own supporters to inject themselves with Lysol by suggesting, essentially (not his exact words but close), “Hey, it’s a disinfectant, right? Disinfectants kill the virus, right? Why wouldn’t it work?” He actually said he thought it was a good idea to try injecting disinfectant directly into the lungs of a coronavirus patient. Wowwy wow.

Read more in the Apr. 29 - May 5, 2020 issue.

You get a postal service! And you get a postal service! Everyone gets a postal service!

by Dr. Wes Browning | April 22nd, 2020

I want to talk about some other anxieties besides the Big C, for a change.

That USPS might fold in June is scary. I rarely get mail that matters to me anymore, but there are some serious problems with the end of postal service.

Read more in the Apr. 22-28, 2020 issue.

Our curve is inconveniently lopsided and telling. Plus, I hate statistics

by Dr. Wes Browning | April 15th, 2020

Flattening the curve! Flattening the curve!

We shall come rejoicing, flattening the curve!

Our whole country is playing limbo with hospital capacity as the bar.

I do love a curve. One of my earliest memories was seeing Koko Head Mountain in Oahu, Hawaii, from the coast. To your left the mountain rises steeply toward a summit, just like the curves of infected numbers observed in a pandemic, such as ours.

Read more in the Apr. 15-21, 2020 issue.

I’m just a poor country mathematician trying to add it up, like everyone else

by Dr. Wes Browning | April 8th, 2020

Now: lockdowns within lockdowns.

Shelters are finding clients suffering from COVID-19. After getting them to hospitals, the shelters are locking down. Within a city that is already living under a lockdown order.

At Union Gospel Mission (UGM) in Pioneer Square, clients may leave but can’t come back. So they must decide where they’d be safer: confined to a shelter where someone without symptoms could still pass the disease on, or outdoors, or trying to find another shelter that’s taking new clients.

We are all in this together

by Dr. Wes Browning | April 1st, 2020

I rode a bus yesterday for the first time since COVID-19 hit King County.

People looked at me like I was either there to kill them or to die in front of them. I think I’m going to walk a lot in the near future. Yet, a silver lining to the global pandemic is I’ll get more exercise.

I’m also getting lots of leisure. If you’re reading this at all, you are most likely reading online, or off a downloaded PDF, because this paper is not going to be sold by vendors for a while.