Side Effects

There is simply nothing funny about being sick. Whether it's a cold or COVID or cancer, there is a personal level of misery involved that each sufferer experiences. Some afflictions are more serious than others, to be sure: more dangerous, more crippling, more debilitating. But even if it's just a bug that has no name and makes you feel lousy for a few days, all you care about is enduring it and coming out the other side. And people, by and large, are sympathetic to your plight, as we've all been there to one extent or another.

Equally unamusing are the side effects of the condition or the treatments associated with it. Just like the underlying cause, they can be severe or just merely annoying. But even if it's just a minor cough or a hitch in your step, you can generally count on deference and a kind word from those around you who know that sooner or later they will be in your proverbial shoes.

Unless your situation results in FAS.

As reported in the British Medical Journal, a man in his fifties was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He underwent treatment, but eventually succumbed to the disease after 20 months. Nothing funny about that at all. With one small exception: somewhere along the line, whether as a result of the disease, the treatment or some other unexplained factor, he developed an "uncontrollable Irish accent" despite never having been to Ireland nor having immediate relatives from the country. "His accent was uncontrollable, present in all settings and gradually became persistent," the report said. Seems that he was one of just 100 or so reported cases of FAS, or Foreign Accent Syndrome.

While researchers aren't sure what the cause is, they surmise that it's due to some kind of injury or condition that is brought on either by trauma or treatment that affects the brain. However, it doesn't even have to be a major event to be a trigger: in at least one case it was brought on by a series of migraines, another by dental surgery, and two more recent cases may have even been caused by COVID. Whatever the root cause, the manifestation of the condition is in timing, intonation and tongue placement, which together results in altered speech which sounds, well, foreign. In and of itself it's not dangerous, other than the mental anguish that comes with friends and family around you telling you to knock it off.

FAS was first reported in 1907 by a French neurologist who detailed a Parisian man who developed an Alsatian accent after a stroke. Since then it has popped up irregularly in speakers of different nationalities whose native speech took on a foreign lilt. The most famous case was in 1941 when a Norwegian woman was hit by shrapnel during World War II; she developed a German accent and was ostracized as a result. Since then there have been cases where sufferers have shifted in all directions, from American English accents to British, Japanese to Korean, and Spanish to Hungarian. 

Linguists and researchers who have studied the syndrome note that sufferers have imperfect accents, and the shift is more in the perception of listeners as to how they sound vs. actual native speakers of another language. It's as though they are affecting an accent, a distinction without a difference for those afflicted. Said one English speaking woman who began speaking with a French accent after a stroke in 1999. "While I have nothing against the French, this is not for me. It does nothing for my street credibility with my three sons." Or another English speaker who began to sound like she was from some Eastern European country, and resorted to carrying a note from a doctor describing her condition after she got fed up with people explaining to her how the buses worked in her town.

FAS is a real thing, but it's only an accent: it changes your pronunciation, not your vocabulary or behavior. So if your American friend's "schedule" starts to slide towards the British "shed-u-ale," they could be a sufferer. If, on the other hand, they give up their two cents to ask for a tuppence worth, or ask for their beer to be warm, they're just taking the piss out of you.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford sounds fluent in American English, he thinks. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

What's In A Name?

Let's say you have to sort out some issues in your neck of the woods. Maybe it's a school thing, maybe a charitable endeavor, maybe a local celebration. You might reach out to other interested individuals and invite them to a local Starbucks, or gather at someone's home over coffee to hash out the details. Someone might write down a few key thoughts, then head home and draft an email which they send around to make sure they got the basic facts right. Then you all would put into effect whatever plan of action you decided on over crumb cake.

When you're talking nation states it's basically no different, just more formal. Last week it was the top diplomats of four Asia-Pacific nations that got together to talk about their common interests and challenges. Japan, Australia and the United States sent representatives to New Delhi to meet with their Indian counterpart. And because there can really be no diplomacy without a name for the alliance, they call themselves the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or for the purposes of team jackets, the Quad.

The Quad follows in a long line of global affinity groups that are no different than Princeton University's Women of Color caucus, Ramapo College's Pride at Work collective or Trinity College's Knitting club. The goal is to bring like-minded people together to advance their common interests. Just as with those groups, the Quad has meetings (such as this one at the Raisina Dialogue, billed as "India's premier conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics committed to addressing the most challenging issues facing the global community"), activities (in this case, joint naval exercises) and takes positions on issues of interest (they do it in diplomatic speak, but more or less it amounts to "we gotta do something about China.") 

That alliance joins such other organizations such as the Group of 7 or the G7, the G10, the G15 and yes, the G77. Each of these groups of nations regularly send representatives to hash out monetary and other policies. Of note is that almost none of the names are accurate, as members have been added again and again. The G10 now has 11 members, the G24 has 28, and the G77 has 134. One has to hope that they are better at economics than they are at branding.

In that light, the Quad are leaders. The group was originally founded around the geographic conceit of nations with beachfront property bordering the Pacific and Indian Oceans. However, the concerns of the pandemic meant that there were other nations in that region that also wanted to join, namely New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam. They were welcomed to the table, but it caused a conundrum: what do you call yourselves? The Seven Ups? Then a year after that addition, Brazil and Israel were also invited to participate even though the closest those countries come to the Pacific is wearing board shorts. Trying to think ahead as more members were added, rather than Fast and Furious 9 (which had already been taken), they went with Quad Plus. Sounds a bit like HBO's new channel, but at least it doesn't limit them.

It's a challenge for any organization as membership and focus changes. More than ever, in a world where policy pronouncements take place via tweet, the short-form handle of an organization needs to mean something. That said, the United Nations are anything but, and NATO has members nowhere close to the North Atlantic. And then there's the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, a group which has nothing to do with Guam. Rather, the name comes from the first letter of member countries Georgia, Ukraine Azerbaijan and Moldova. Delegates to meetings have to be very careful when booking their plane flights, or will wind up 6800 miles off course.

New alliances like the one between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and facilitated by China, will challenge both international order as well as the bloggers. And in that case, if the founding parties involve the one country between them that is virtually a land bridge, Kuwait, then naming might become a real issue. For while the formal name of the new alliance might be the Sino-Middle East Compact or some such diplo-speak, it would likely wind up on Twitter as their initials: SICK.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford doesn't have a nickname. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Home Sweet Server

Maybe you bet $5 with a pal that the Chiefs would win. Or maybe it was $10 in the office pool that the score would be over 50. Or maybe it was $20 with your golfing buddies that Patrick Mahomes would be the Super Bowl MVP. In each of those cases you would have won, but the money was effectively invisible. Invisible, that is, in that it was cash passed between 2 people, and won't show up on any official accounting of gains or losses. (Should the IRS be read this, I stand corrected: I'm sure you will declare it on your taxes. Won't you?)

Those small wagers were just part of the record 50 million Americans who bet somewhere around $16 billion on Super Bowl 57, according to the American Gaming Association. The majority of that money was not in the small, friendly wagers detailed above, but through the mega gaming companies like FanDuel, Caesars Entertainment and DraftKings. And some was also put in play through Indian gaming facilities run by Native American tribes on their own sovereign lands.

Since beginning as bingo games on tribal lands in the 1970's, Indian gaming has grown to about $40 billion a year. That system was formalized by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 (IGRA), and has grown to 524 American Indian gaming operations in 29 states. That actually exceeds the number of commercial casinos operating in just 25 states, and includes the largest 5 physical casinos in the country.

However, in this one area – sports betting – Indian gaming has not kept pace. That's because the growth in gambling in this area has mostly been via the online portals as opposed to physical sports books. These days you can use your phone to place a bet from anywhere in the country where it's legal. It can be your office, your couch or your car, without ever setting foot on an Indian reservation. And since the IGRA specifically says that the Indian gaming franchise is limited to gaming while on a reservation, they are getting bypassed.

But where there's a will, there's a wager. Multiple tribes have entered the online fray, and taken the position that the servers are, in effect, the casino. They say that regardless of where you are, when you place a bet online, and the money flows through computers that are located on their land, you are effectively on the reservation. And in that scenario they should be allowed to profit from online gambling under the rules of the IGRA. 

State by state that ruling is either being challenged or new legislation being introduced to make it permissible. As with any lawmaking, the eventual results will depend on the usual lobbying and arm twisting that accompanies any new edict which benefits one group over another. Millions of dollars are at stake for the formerly protected tribes, so the fights are likely to be long and costly, with armies of lawyers on both sides. 

I can't help wondering if the underlying concept is applicable to all of us. Sure, we have a place we call home, where we put our heads on our pillows. But while we may spend a large chunk of our time there, we spend an increasing amount shopping, socializing, learning, relaxing, playing and working online. And those activities are based not in our basement but in some remote server farm in Reston VA or Council Bluffs, IA or Moncks Corner, SC. 

Following the lead of the tribes, you could make a case that your Etsy business making scarves isn't domiciled in your spare bedroom but in Lenoir, NC. Or that the clubhouse for your Facebook soccer group isn't in your garage but in Mons, Belgium. Or that while you get your Amazon packages delivered to an apartment in Brooklyn, the Gmail box where you get all your bills delivered is in Dalles, OR. And in each case the tax laws and regulations should be based not on your physical location, but where you hang your online hat.

In short, going forward your virtual reality may be realer than your real deal. Afterall, there's no need of an avatar in the metaverse to be someone somewhere else when effectively you are already you somewhere else. The hard part will be remembering where you left your keys.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford lives equally on and offline. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Cooking with Gas?

In a recent discussion one person asked why compromise had become so difficult. Why couldn't we all try and see the merits of another's position we didn't agree with, and use that as a basis to try and understand each other more. OK, another responded, tell us about the positions where you are willing to give ground. Gay rights? No, that was non-negotiable. Abortion? Same. Immigration, gun control, racism? No, no and no. 

Now, while I am not by any means equating those viscerally-held beliefs with cooking, it does echo the same musings on gas vs. electric. Or as Texas Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson tweeted "If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands." A bit over the top (unless you're Bobby Flay), but people who like to cook have strong opinions on the topic. As did I. And then we moved. 

Thirty plus years ago when we looked to relocate, every possible new abode had positives and negatives. Location, floor space, closets: the list goes on and on. You had to weigh each item and see which was a deal breaker, which was something you could live with (at least for a time), and where you were willing to give ground. 

High on our list of important items was the kitchen. The house we were most interested in (and which we eventually bought) had one with a good-sized footprint, though not as updated as we might have liked. No matter: we felt we could deal with it "as is" for a while, and eventually upgrade. The one thing I was forced to give in on was the fuel (my wife was not as committed as me). Whereas the kitchen where we lived at the time was gas, this new home was all electric. 

Like many I was a gas aficionado, used to the fast response, high heat and fine control that that modality gave you. Whether it was eggs for breakfast or stir fry for dinner, gas was how the big boys cooked. But the neighborhood we moved to literally didn't have the pipes, so the standard on the street was wires. When several years later we finally got around to ripping out the old space and installing the new, I had acclimated to electric. Added to that were new glass cooktops that offered other benefits, and it was the path of least resistance. 

Fast forward (actually, slow passage of time), and we find that we are once again noting an inflection point. Not that we want to redo the space: every morning we come down we are delighted with what we have. But many years of use have meant that our existing stove and cooktop are a bit worn and not as responsive as they should be. The oven doors aren't closing as tight, and the flush-fitting range has a number of scratches on it. But while we still don't have gas piped into our neighborhood, we do have a gas-powered emergency generator, and so have a ready if limited supply of propane capable of being tapped if I really felt strongly about it.

However, the state of play also seems to have shifted. On the one hand there's been some discussion of the downsides of gas. Not that I put much stock in the more hysterical spins on Viking ranges rising up to kill us all, but it would be equally foolish to discard new information involving pollution, climate change and health. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ledger, the joys and benefits of electrically powered induction cooking have been making, if not headlines, than at least feature segments. Anecdotally a chat with a food service professional who used to be a chef related that the hype about induction is not misplaced, that he indeed preferred it for heating, cleaning and general usage.

So where does that leave us? Considering our point in life and our future plans, we're not making any sudden moves. But just as I was once convinced that there was no way to caramelize apples on electric, my eyes have been opened. That has forced me to acknowledge that both points of view are legitimate. Or in a broader context, perhaps we all need to try simmering a different way.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford likes to cook with whatever he has. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.