Mental competency testing - I'm all for it

(Nikki) Haley wants to require mental competency tests for politicians older than 75. In other words, her leading opponents. In other words, ageism. David Banks, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 11, 2023

Ageism or common sense? Each year at my health checkup, I get a little cognitive test along with my blood pressure levels. I am given three words (captain, chair, window) early in the exam. Then toward the end of it, I am asked to remember and repeat the words back to the physician. I am also asked to draw a clock (I always ask “digital or analog” hoping for the chuckle that never comes) and then asked to draw the hands to indicate a certain time. So far I have passed. 

Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test (which at least I had the cognitive ability to find online) is the test Halley suggests using. It asks for long strings of words and numbers to be memorized and repeated back - a test similar to the one I have described above. I don’t know how well I would do since my short term memory has never been all that good.

So thank heavens I am not in public office and subject to such tests. But if such tests are good to evaluate the competence of our political leaders, might we also want to use them on other folks who rely on their brains as well? And why wait until age 75 to give such tests? Why not give them every year to all workers? I’d just as soon my 27-year-old trash hauler didn’t have an impairment that would cause her to put my recycling into the regular trash. I would like my dentist to remember which tooth needed a root canal. I rely on my auto mechanic to use the right motor oil in my car. Perhaps voluntary cognitive checks could a type of endorsement used in promoting one’s services? “Our hair stylists all pass a cognitive ability test each year!”

I have long advocated for competence in adults making educational decisions. Johnson’s Test Fairness Plan: Require no high school tests that the adults who insist on them can’t pass was written quite some time ago. 

But when it comes to politicians, I would be less insistent on a cognitive or fact-based test than I would on a morality test. (Yes, such things exist.) I can tolerate a forgetful person. I can even identify with an ignorant soul. But I dislike people who are selfish, dishonest, mean, intolerant, and sneaky. A politician’s score on a test that measures these traits would certainly influence my vote.

Spring training

Machu Picchu, 2006 

Kilimanjaro, 2010

“We have two good seasons here in Minnesota,” the old joke goes. “Spring and autumn. On good years both fall on a weekend.” 

That certainly seems true this year. Spring has only just sprung this week, it seems, after a very cold, wet, and windy March and April. But today I am putting on my cargo shorts (purse pants) in anticipation of a nice couple of days.

I am getting a slow start to my spring training for activities in which I will be participating this summer. In June, I will be doing a week-long bike ride from Venice to Mantua with one of my favorite tour groups Boat Bike out of Amsterdam. (I’ll tag a few extra days of day hiking near Cinque Terre afterwards.) 

In July, I will be in a small group backpacking in Yosemite National Park for five days or so, anticipating a lot of elevation gain and loss.

The photos above show the happy outcomes of two big hiking adventures from my past. The first shows my group arriving at the Inca Trail overlook of Machu Picchu in 2006 after four days on the trail at relatively high altitudes in the Andes. (Highest point: Dead Woman’s Pass at nearly 14,000 feet.) 

The second shot is from the summit of Kilimanjaro four years later. This was an eight day hike with a summit elevation of 19,300 feet. But surprisingly, the African hike was the easier of the two. Why?

In my slim research of the Inca Trail, I found it most often rated as only a moderately difficult trek. “What the heck,” I thought, “a tough guy like me should breeze through this.” I was wrong. Both the elevation and the altitude made the hiking extremely challenging for me. A co-hiker commented that she found it more difficult than doing a marathon in Denver. After completing one of the more rigorous days, a physician on the trip told me that I could skip my next cardio exam! And I was a youthful 54 years old at the time.

So when I had the opportunity to climb Kilimanjaro four years later, I did a good deal more investigation into the hike itself. I found a great hike leader, Destination Tanzania. I learned that there are multiple routes to the summit and that the longer the trail, the greater the acclimatization and likelihood of success. I got medication that helps combat altitude sickness. 

And I trained. That made all the difference. I summited without a problem. (Although losing in a day and a half the elevation I had gained over six days played havoc with my knees. I was sore for a week afterwards.) I enjoyed every day of the hike.

Lesson learned. An activity for which one has trained is more fun than one for which one is unprepared. And you are thinking, “Well, duh…”

Spring training for me started in earnest this past weekend. Two three and a half mile hikes with my backpack partially loaded. Eight mile rides to my local YMCA with a few good hills. As spring progresses, I will add weight to the backpack and miles to both the hikes and bike rides.

The training hikes and rides are in themselves quite enjoyable. As is the anticipation of the big events this summer. For me, a happy life has anticipation in it. And while I slog my backpack up the local hills, I will also be anticipating the beauty and company of Yosemite. I hope all my readers are in some kind of training.

Don’t take any wooden nickels: a cashless society

 

I received this little rant in an email from a friend. I suspect he shared it as food for thought rather than actually promoting its message - as I am doing here.

A cashless society means no cash. Zero. It doesn’t mean mostly cashless and you can still use a ‘wee bit of cash here & there.’ Cashless means fully digital, fully traceable, fully controlled. I think those who support a cashless society aren’t fully aware of what they  are asking for.

 A cashless society means:

• No more tuck-away cash for those preparing to leave domestic violence.
• No more purchases off marketplace unless you want to risk bank transfer fraud.
• No more garage sales.
• No more cash donations to hungry homeless you pass.
• No more cash slipped into the hands of a child from their grandparent.
• No more money in birthday cards.
• No more piggy banks or tooth fairy for your child.
• No more selling bits & pieces from your home that you no longer want/need for a bit of cash in return.
• Less choices of where you purchase based on affordability.

What a cashless society does guarantee:

• Banks have full control of every single cent you own.
• Every transaction you make is recorded.
• All your movements & actions are traceable.
• Access to your money can be blocked at the click of a button when/if banks need ‘clarification’ from you which could take weeks, a hundred questions answered & five hundred passwords.
• If your transactions are deemed in any way questionable, by those who create the questions, your money will be frozen, ‘for your own good’.

And before anybody slams this post... don’t go shooting the messenger! I’m sharing it because maybe we all need to take off our blinkers.

Forget about cash being dirty. Cash has been around for a very, very long time & it gives you control over how you trade with the world. It gives you independence.

If you are a customer, pay with cash. If you are a shop owner, remove those ridiculous signs that ask people to pay by card. Cash is a legal tender, it is our right to pay with cash. Banks are making it increasingly difficult to lodge cash & that has nothing to do with a virus. Please stop believing everything you hear on the TV. Almost every single topic in today’s world is tainted with corruption & hidden agendas. Politics & greed is what is wrong with the world; not those who are trying to alert you to the reality

Please pay with cash & please say no to a cashless society while you still have a choice.

The move toward a cashless society does not rank among my top ten (or perhaps top 100) concerns, but it is something rather interesting to think about. Like most folks,  I find myself using my debit card when making even small purchases instead of cash. I don’t slip bills into my grandsons’ birthday card but email them Amazon gift cards instead. I usually take out $100 in cash at the beginning of each month and usually have a bit left at the end of it. I leave the pennies and nickels I get in change in the penny dish at the checkout.

The writer above seems to have two major complaints with a cashless society. The first is sentimental (no slipping bills to grandchildren, no garage sales, no donations to the homeless). Yeah, if I want to hold a garage sale, I’d probably need to figure out some means of using my phone and an online account to get paid for that old recliner. Support for the homeless ought to be done through established charitable organizations anyway. These traditional ways of doing things don’t sway me.

The second concern is about the ability for others, including the government, to track one’s monetary transactions. Other than as a matter of principle, I don’t think that is of major concern for too many of us. I don’t use cash to buy heroin, hire hit men or prostitutes, or buy guns from the black market. I don’t receive any money that I don’t want taxed. I’ve never felt the need for a suitcase full of bills hidden under the bed in case of emergencies. But then, I lead a boring life. If Uncle Sam wants to know I bought a Blizzard at the DQ yesterday, so what?

I suspect most illegal transactions involving monetary exchanges are done with cash. At least that’s what the popular media would have one believe. Does that mean that if cash were outlawed, outlaws themselves would have problems? A lot of big money schemes I read about involve transfers to off-shore bank accounts. And I understand crypto currency has a degree of invisibility crooks rather like. Perhaps the rant above was written by a money launderer.

I think it is rather interesting that some vendors at the Twins baseball stadium in Minneapolis no longer accept physical money, only plastic. The solution for those cash-only nutters like the writer of the opening piece? “Cash machines” in the hallways into which one can insert cash and have a prepaid cash card returned.  I’ve never used one of these machines so I don’t know if they allow prying eyes to see the transaction. But it may be a compromise some may need to make. Kind of like burner phones.

Oh, did you notice how the original message above moved from argument to political rant? I’d have been more sympathetic to the argument had the writer stopped before adding the last few paragraphs.

What will it take to move society back to a place where one can explore two sides of an issue without paranoia, denunciation, and hyperbole?