Checking the time on one’s smartphone is falling out of style. Just like people are moving away from digital books and back to the real thing, they are also going back to real wrist watches.

Here is my new watch that came in a set with the bracelets:

I remember to put the watch on every day but now the goal is to remember to look at it when I need to know the time. After years of reaching for the phone to see the time, it will take time to learn to consult the watch once again.

Somebody asked me the other day why I consider Elizabeth Warren a populist. Here is an example of her pronouncements that make me cringe:

Here we are, the richest country on earth — we have so much going for us, and yet we have a federal government that works great for millionaires, it works great for billionaires, it works great for giant corporations. It works great for anybody who can hire an army of lobbyists, an army of lawyers, give lots of campaign money. For the rest of America, it’s just not working.

This is garbage, people. This is overwrought, self-pitying garbage that I detest. Everything works great for me and for every single person I know. And it’s obvious that things are working beautifully for Elizabeth Warren, as well.

There is a lot of really bad shit in this country. Poverty, horrible, hopeless slums, segregation. And all this has got to be addressed. But it won’t be addressed by the self-pitying “us against the billionaires” melodrama because things are a lot more complicated than that.

I was driving through East St Louis a while ago and I saw this woman on the porch of a dilapidated house. East St Louis is a slum, in case you didn’t know. The chances of a person there becoming a victim of violent crime is one in 28, more than ten times higher than in the rest of the state. I don’t know what needs to happen for me to find the cynicism and the shamelessness to say that I know anything about the hardship faced by that woman on the porch. She and I are not in the same boat just because neither of us is a billionaire.

I don’t believe for a second that Warren is speaking to the people in East St Louis or Gary, Indiana  (another horrible slum that I’ll never forget.) She is speaking to spoiled middle-class folks who love the “99% vs 1%” slogan because it makes them feel less guilty about the existence of the slums. When they say, “We are all dispossessed compared to the millionaires on Wall Street,” they conveniently erase the uncomfortable fact that some of us are a lot more dispossessed than others.

This is the nature of populism today. It’s all about allowing people to wallow in self-pity and, in return for a chance to feel like victims, they love you. And I hate this shit.

I’m very very worried that during the upcoming meeting with Putin, Obama will hand over to him Ukraine in exchange for a promise to help combat ISIS in Syria.

Obviously, Putin will not keep that promise but it’s not like there are ever any consequences for him when he does that.

I’m afraid that, once again, Putin will dupe the simpleton Americans. Believe me, Putin is not that smart. It’s a real shame to keep losing to such a dumb fellow.

I sometimes feel ready to lose all faith in humanity. People are actually trying to pay Carson for his anti-Muslim statements:

For Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, months of robocalls, campaign speeches, and merchandise sales paled in comparison to the campaign donations he received after a series of anti-Muslim remarks. Carson, who drew widespread criticism after declaring on Sunday that the United States should not elect a Muslim president, is now raking in the cash from donors who share his anti-Islam sympathies.

With the number of Muslims in the US population staying somewhere under 2%, chances are most of these people have not even met any Muslims. So they are parting with their own money, money they could spend on having a good time or buying something for their kids, to pay Carson to say something stupid about a subject they are unfamiliar with.

Trump is now saying that his last debate performance sucked so badly because the room where it was held was too hot. He’s saying it to thinning and increasingly bored audiences.

The guy is a sprinter, not a marathon runner. His talent resides in coming up with goofy jokes and catchy soundbites on the spot. But he soon fizzles out and gets flustered and mumbly. Soon he’ll run out of gimmicks, and everybody will forget about him.

An article in today’s NYTIMES is titled “Obama Seeks A Meeting With Putin in New York.”

Let’s trace what happened here.

Until recently, Putin has been begging for this meeting but kept getting rebuffed. Having this meeting is very important to him domestically.

Putin invades Syria.

Putin immediately gets what he wanted and more: Obama is actually asking for a meeting.

Now I will let you draw your own conclusion. This chain of events suggests to Putin that invading other countries

a) is

or

b) is not

the way to get what he wants.

I can’t know what Obama is thinking but the only actual result of his policies is encouraging Putin to invade more countries and ramp up his aggression in Syria. I’m starting to think that this is not accidental. Obama can’t enhance military engagement because his voters don’t want any, so he is doing it through Putin.

Just to clarify: inserting a sex organ into something or inserting something into a sex organ is only sex if done for purposes of sexual gratification. Nobody thinks that women, for instance, have sex with tampons or with the instruments at an OB-GYN’s office, do they?

So it’s not “Cameron had sex with a dead pig” unless he told you he was trying to get off. And hey, what’s with the stultifying prudery? I’m starting to get reminded of the convent school where nuns had a fainting fit when a student crossed her legs. The poor oversexed nuns were convinced this was a way to fornicate.

This is a brand-new residential area near Sochi, Russia:

The building near the stadium is a school, also brand-new. The residential area was built during the preparation for the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

There are playgrounds for kids, too:

Altogether, this residential area could house several thousand families. But can you guess how many families are actually living here?

Seven. Just seven families, that’s all.

Say, wouldn’t it be a great idea to invite some Syrian refugees to live here? The climate in this region is very mild, so the refugees will not suffer from an unusually cold weather. This isn’t like dumping people in Siberia, or anything. Sochi is a resort zone with beautiful beaches. 5% of the population here is Muslim, there are already several mosques here. And in Russia at large, 15% of population is Muslim.

For obvious reasons, Putin is never going to allow any Muslim-bashing in Russia. Yesterday, by the way, he was at an opening of a new mosque in Moscow and made a speech about Islam being one of Russia’s traditional religions.

Given how hard Russia contributes to ensuring that the war in Syria rages on, wouldn’t it make sense for Russia to help out? The Russians keep whining about their enormous shortage of population for such a huge territory. Syrians could help turn these sad, abandoned buildings into a vibrant area.

I don’t see a downside to this idea. Nobody seems to be thinking in this direction right now but once an idea is expressed and begins to travel, who knows where it will end up and what influence it will have.

I heard on NPR today that there is a school in Philadelphia, I think, that’s assigning Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist as required reading for all high-schoolers. My first reaction was to laugh. Not that I stood out as particularly cynical among my peers, but I can’t imagine anybody getting me to take The Alchemist seriously past the age of 11.

But then I wondered if this might be my problem. What if it’s not such a bad thing that there should be a culture where it’s normal to celebrate a 14-year-old for managing to move a tangle of cords from one box to another? I’m not being sarcastic here. These kids live in a kinder, gentler world, so why shouldn’t they remain innocent enough to take The Alchemist seriously at the age of 16? If I grew up in a harsher reality that made me too cynical to admire the famous clock or to enjoy The Alchemist, maybe I shouldn’t be projecting that inner misery onto people who, through no fault of their own, are more fortunate?

A friend of mine told me yesterday that she is saving to buy a trip to Europe for her daughter and the daughter’s girlfriend. The daughter and the girlfriend are my age and quite successful professionally, so my question to the friend was, “Hey, isn’t Helen a little too ancient for you to help her out financially?”

And now I feel like I’m begrudging Helen the opportunity to remain a daughter who is pampered by her mother in a world that is gentler than mine. I guess that, on some level, what I really feel is envy of Helen, Ahmed of the Clock, and high-schoolers with their copies of The Alchemist. There is no need for them to be schooled in hardship because this is not the kind of life that awaits them. And that’s a good thing.