4/25/2026

 Saturday, April 26, 2026

1953 Francis Crick and James Watson's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA was published in "Nature" magazine

1971 About 200,000 anti-Vietnam War protesters marched on Washington, D.C.

2022 Twitter announced a deal to sell itself to Elon Musk for $44 billion

2025 The German government cut its economic growth forecast to zero, with the Deutsche Bundesbank estimating a future recession. Minister of Economic Affairs Robert Habeck accused  Donald Trump's tariffs of being the primary reason for Germany's continued economic crisis. 

2025 Hannah Dugan was arrested by United States on obstruction charges after allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant evade arrest. 

In bed at 9:05, awake at 3:35 for a pit stop, thinking of the catheter ablation, up at 4:35, thinking I was awake all that time but probably not.  0450 140/77/55, 0500 128/76/54. 205.8; 43/38/54/42, cloudy morning, sunny afternoon.

Morning meds at 7 a.m., including the half-dose of Bisoprolol.  I noticed very little lightheadedness yesterday.  Fingers crossed.

I feel a bit sheepish admitting it, but I miss the Morning Joe program on weekend mornings.  I don't particularly like Joe Scarborough or Mika Brzezinski, each of whom seems like a SNL characature to me, but I enjoy learning from most of their guests: David Ignatius, David Rohde, Richard Haas, Jim VandeHei, Katty Kay, Steve Rattner, and even John Heileman.  I don't particularly enjoy Willy Geis, or Mike Baranacle, and confess to a longtime grudge against Al Sharpton for his behavior in the infamous Tawana Brawley case.  Joe Scarborough himself is probably the rudest man on national television,  succeeding  Chris Matthews.  Each of them is notorious for interrupting other speakers, not letting them finish whatever comments they are making, yet insisting, when they are interrupted, "Let me finish."  Nonetheless, I count on checking in with Morning Joe after I awake and finish my morning protocols to help organize my scattershot thinking about what is going on in the world, or at least in the American part of the world with its tentacles reaching wherever they wish in the rest of the world.

I'm a glutton for punishment.  I seem to be driven by some devilish inner force.  All of which is to say that I am reading more Dostoevski, to wit, Notes from Underground, or as Nobokov translates the title, Memoirs from a Mousehole.  In self-defense, I plead that it is a novella, not one of his magna opera, but it is nonetheless depressing which I should have guessed from the opening lines of Part One: "I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased."  Things can only go up from there, right? Wrong!  The book is about the human mind, consciousnees and its substrata, science and suffering, humman perversity or moral obligquity, as Dostoevski calls it.  The closing lines of Part One are:

 Consciousness is infinitely superior to twice two makes four.  Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or understand.  There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation.  While if you stick to conscousness, even the same result is attained, you can at least flog yourself at tiesm and that will, at any rate, liven you up.  Reactionary as it is, corporal punishment is better than nothing.

With those opening and closing lines from Part One, why would anyone other than a glutton for punishment plow ahead into Part Two? Yet I forge on.