Can't sleep? Don't count sheep — use this guided meditation for healthful snoozing

     Hey there, and welcome to the Chicago Sun-Times guided meditation for sleep. I'm your host, Neil Steinberg, and I'd like to invite you to get comfortable in a secure location. If you are driving your car, reading this on your phone at a stoplight, as people actually do, you are invited to ease your car over to the side of the road, angle your seat back, and hold the phone a comfortable four inches from your face.
     Or better yet, set this to MurmurMode, where one of 12 artificial voices will narrate this for you: Unemployed Hunky Actor, Older Lady Librarian, Whispering Mermaid, and such. Then you may place your hand over a flat surface, gently open your fingers, and execute a maneuver known as "setting your phone down." If you are experiencing the residual frozen claw that comes from holding an iPhone for 110 minutes straight, try wiggling your fingers until the numbness and tingling dissipate. Do not be alarmed by your hand being empty — your phone is still nearby and available. Give it a gentle pat to reassure yourself that it's still right there.
     Now sit back and close your eyes. Draw in a deep breath, filling your lungs with air. Hold that, savoring the quality of fullness. Then exhale the air out, preventing yourself from wondering how you've come to such a degraded state that you need to be told to breathe, an activity heretofore done automatically and without guidance, by you and most living creatures. Worms breathe unaided — through their skin, a process called cutaneous respiration.
     Now set an intentionality — what sort of sleep would you like to experience? The serene snuggling sleep of an infant nestled in a completely empty crib, devoid of bumpers, blankets or stuffed animals, because apparently those are considered lethal nowadays? The bivalve bliss of the ocean oyster, resting in the warm sand of an antediluvian sea? The restorative slumber of someone who didn't spend the past 40 years madly dashing like a gerbil on a wheel in a profession that was steadily dying all around him? The choice is yours.
     Identify something that happened today and be grateful about it. Is your skin pale enough that you could go to the Home Depot for a box of nails without worrying that ICE would grab you out of the parking lot and send you to a nameless prison in El Salvador? Do you live in a city where the mayor is not a bumbling buffoon trying to balance the budget on the backs of those businesses that stay despite his constant death-of-a-thousand-cuts harassment? Focus on this good thing while crossing your hands over your chest, executing the butterfly hug while repeating, "I am grateful. I am snug. I am protected."
     While we are utilizing the my-wishes-become-reality linkage between flitting intangible thoughts within and the generally harsh and unresponsive reality without, a charmed notion that Oprah years ago somehow convinced us was real, feel free to add: "I live in a functional democracy, where laws apply equally to smirking billionaires and nugatory losers such as me." Reach for the stars.

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'The Carrot Seed'

 

     The Thanksgiving holiday began early in my household this year, with the arrival of my older son, daughter-in-law and their 5 month old baby brood on the Monday before Turkey Day, and ended with their departure more than a week later. 
     For one week, first thing, I'd do every morning is pad downstairs to visit with my granddaughter, and let me tell you, what a great way to get the day off to the right start. Hard to play the crusty annoyed curmudgeon after that. I wish I could post a picture, but such things are forbidden — social media has not won over the young the way it supposedly has. We're back to photos stealing their souls. Just as well —the blazing cuteness might sear your retinas, like staring into the noonday sun. They've been gone 24 hours, and I'm still fairly dazzled.
     What did we do all day? We sang —I did quite an accurate cover of "The Gummy Bear Song"  — "Oh, I'm a gummy bear/Yes, I'm a gummy bear/Oh, I'm a yummy, tummy, funny, lucky gummy bear...") even getting the slightly electronic warble in my voice (though, I admit, I tossed in a few rhyming adjectives not in the song itself —like "rummy" and "scummy." No reason the adults can't entertain themselves as well.  We danced.

     We read. We were always a book household, and many, many old books were pulled down and read. The one that sticks in my mind is "The Carrot Seed," the 1945 classic written by Ruth Krauss, with pictures by her husband, Crockett Johnson, once famous for the "Barnaby" comic strip and his book, "Harold and the Purple Crayon."
     The plot of "The Carrot Seed" is simplicity itself. On the first page, an unnamed little boy —in the requisite beanie —plants a carrot seed. A parade of onlookers — his mother, father, big brother — tell him it won't come up. Still, he pulls up the weeds around the seed and sprinkles the ground with water.  Nothing happens, except those who told him it wouldn't come up continue to tell him that. This affects his persistent care of the seed not at all. He weeds. He waters and then — spoiler alert — a glorious carrot, bigger than he is, shoots up. "Just as the little boy had known it would."
    That's it. I don't know any young writers —or young people seized with any ambition. But its message  —keep plugging, your carrot is coming, no matter what people say —is an essential one. And not just for young people. Success waxes, and wanes, and you can reach a point where nobody but nobody knows or cares what your projects happen to be. You weed, and water, and persist. Even if the carrot never sprouts. What else can you do? 

       

     

Is this 'rage bait' if I'm not provoking you deliberately?

 

     Unlike you, I actually own a full set of the Oxford English Dictionary. A dozen massive volumes — each a foot tall and weighing about 8 pounds. A linear yard of navy blue spines — "Oxford blue," aptly enough — if you include the four supplements, stretched out across the upper shelf of the rolltop desk behind me. Spin around in my chair and I can yank one down, and sometimes do.
     Why go to the trouble when a few clicks will bring up any meaning without the risk of handling one of these big boys? Really, drop it on your foot, you could break a toe.
     My set was published in 1978, making it nearly a half-century out of date. The meaning of "computer" is given as, "One who computes; a calculator, reckoner; spec. a person employed to make calculations in an observatory, in surveying, etc." That's it. A brief, old definition — the way the word is defined in Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary.
     Plug "computer def" into a search engine and you get: "an electronic device for storing and processing data, typically in binary form, according to instructions given to it in a variable program." Much more current.
     But not in-depth. If you find that explanation, like so much online, thin gruel, navigating a lake a thousand miles wide and an inch deep, you can also subscribe to the OED for $10 a month, $100 a year, then plunge into the etymologies and stay up on the blizzard of changes to a language that is mutable and plastic ("5. Susceptible of being moulded or shaped.") Why be behind the times?
     Well, for starters, have you had a close look at the times we're in? In a lunge for publicity, the folks who publish the OED designate a "word of the year." On Monday they announced 2025's term: "rage bait" defined as, "(n.) Online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account."
     Rage bait won out, by public vote, over two shortlist contenders: "aura farming," ("The cultivation of an impressive, attractive, or charismatic persona or public image by behaving or presenting oneself in a way intended subtly to convey an air of confidence, coolness, or mystique") and "biohack" — ("to attempt to improve or optimize one's physical or mental performance, health, longevity or wellbeing by altering one's diet, exercise routine or lifestyle by using other means, such as drugs, supplements or technological devices.")
     I'd never heard of any of them — of course not. I'm marooned on one of the increasingly scattered and windswept islands of professional daily journalism, my signal fire guttering, subsisting on coconut milk and grilled voles, watching the water rise up the beach. Though I'm told that kids in their 20s toss "rage bait" out regularly. Last year's word was certainly on point: "brain rot," which is "low quality, low value content found on social media and the internet" and what lapping that up three hours out of 24 — the average chunk of life blown every day on social media by Gen Z types — does to a person.

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Maybe if we put on a better show they wouldn't hate us so much.

      Lots of feedback to Monday's column about the Chicago Quantum Exchange at the University of Chicago, interviewing its director, David Awschalom. Somehow, this email stood out, from a medical doctor:

     Mr. Steinberg,
     If Dr. Awschalom is of our faith, it would have been an appropriate mention given the context of your article.
     All efforts to remind others of our worth, our contribution to society would be a benefit in this era of overt prejudice and anti-semitism.
     My thoughts are a sad commentary of our times.
     Sincerely,
     Lewis C., MD

    While Dr. C.'s remark appeared in my spam folder — he must have said something annoying in the past, though I can't recall what — it touched on a pet peeve of mine, and I thought it deserved a response:  

   Dear Dr. C:
    I disagree wholeheartedly. I don't have many personal rules of conduct, but one ironclad stricture is: don't write for people who hate you. The Jews constitute 0.2 percent of the world population, yet make huge contributions to most realms of culture and science, far outstripping our numbers. Either someone knows that already or they never will.  
    You are giving antisemites too much credit. There is an assumption in your suggestion that is common, and I would argue against: that people who are prejudiced reach that point by weighing reality, assessing the facts before them before coming to their conclusions. Just the opposite: they blinder themselves with their bigotry, and cherry pick what facts support them, when they're not fabricating calumnies out of whole cloth. 
   I see this attitude sometimes if I write about something that departs from the traditional practices of our faith —eat a pork chop, for instance. I'll hear from Jews frantic to put on a good show for the goyim. I guess we need to be all exemplars of our religion. Guess what? We don't.   
     Given the sort of people who go about unashamed, I don't see why I, or you, or Dr. Awschalom, can't do the same. I didn't mention his faith because it wasn't germane — he's not refugee, yet. Though the way our country is going, I could see that happening — no matter how many Jews are making the world a better place — so perhaps I'll have reason yet to mention his religion, prior to his fleeing to the relative safety and tolerance of a nation such as Germany.
     Thanks for writing.
     Neil Steinberg 

     I assumed it would end there — discussion doesn't seem high on anyone's list anymore. But Dr. C. did reply, in a thoughtful way that deserves sharing.

     I appreciate the eloquence and contents of your comments. However, there is a reversal, a stirring exhibited within the American Jewish communities.
Whereas until recently, we hid our Jewishness on campuses or walking down Michigan Avenue so as not to be the recipient of the wrath from irrational bigots, we now have struck a tone of “ here we are and we’re proud of who we are”.
     I do agree there was no natural transition to add the religion of Dr. Awschalom in a seemless way into your column.
     The newsroom guys, the medical colleagues, the factory workers, the small shop owners, the Amazon Prime drivers, the waitresses, the police, the construction workers, the housewives — it is directed toward them, a silent majority, that the Dr. Awschaloms of the world are the shining light, the vibrancy of our religious culture and invent the insanely brilliant stuff that benefits humanity.
     Thank you for reading this.

     It broke my heart, a little, to read that, the old-style notion of blue collar America nodding in admiration of the Jewish molecular physicist changing the world. Maybe they do — I can't speak for them. But looking at the politics of the moment, it's hard to imagine. 

     In my view, the religion would be buoyed, not by more public scientists, but by emphasizing the Jewish truck drivers, waitresses, police, construction workers, etc. — salt-of-the-earth sorts automatically admired in a way researchers are not. It dislodged an old memory. The Chicago Police Department has a Jewish chaplain, Moshe Wolfe. Intrigued by the idea of Jewish Chicago cops, I got him on the phone, and asked him to be the focal point on a story. He flatly refused — not so much because he's Jewish, I believe, but because he's a cop. The code of silence, remember, isn't just about bad apples. It's about everything. A Chicago Police Officer wouldn't want to be subject of a story about rescuing a kitten from a tree — anyone who stands up is hammered down. Not courage in the way I understand it. The whole thing struck me as very sad. 

     

Chicago's quantum computing center a benefit of tolerance

     Seeing that Chicago is the epicenter of a major effort in the future of technology, at the very moment our government is waging a glittery-eyed war on science, I checked in with the man coordinating it all.
     What's going on?
     "In the last couple of decades, scientists and engineers have been able to engineer the way that matter behaves at the atomic scale," said David Awschalom, a professor of molecular engineering and physics at the University of Chicago. "We can take the rule of nature and develop a new technology, which has unusual properties, while common in the atomic world, we don't see every day, like entangling bits of information, or thinking of a bit as not just a zero or one but an infinite combination of the two."
     While those with knowledge of physics are collecting their jaws off the floor at the suggestion of practical applications of entanglement and departure from the binary 0 or 1 holy writ of the digital age, I'll point out that Awschalom is director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange, a massive initiative based in Hyde Park but involving Argonne National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and more — over 60 partners.
     "This could really be a new way for universities, national laboratories and companies to all work together at the birth of a new technology to move discoveries rapidly into society," he said.
     One way to conceive of what this is about is to consider the first sustained nuclear reaction — Dec. 2, 1942, also at the University of Chicago. If that was harnessing the energy locked in an atom, this is finding a way to access the information hidden within.
     "It's possible now to take a number of quantum bits, entangle them with one another and share a single bit of information," Awschalom said.
     Today, if you order your dog pajamas for Christmas on Amazon, your credit card number passes through intermediaries, where it can be stolen. But someday it could be sent directly, via entanglement.
     "A special link between two points," Awschalom said. "You could transmit information in a secure way."
     The strings of 0s and 1s are shattering into an infinite set of values, "like a miniature gyroscope you can spin in all three directions." Navigation could no longer need satellites orbiting the globe but use the earth's magnetic field, the way birds do.
     "This is important given the number of spoofing attacks on commercial aircraft," Awschalom said. "If you had a quantum system, it's safe."
     Plus the creation of very small computers would reduce the enormous amount of electricity artificial intelligence currently requires.
    The question that always fascinated me about Fermi splitting the atom in 1942 was: "Why here?" Why perform an experiment that Edward Teller worried might set the atmosphere on fire in the middle of a crowded college campus in the nation's second-largest city?
     The top reasons are gloriously random. For starters, Columbia University tried to split the atom first. But their uranium wasn't sufficiently pure, and the experiment failed. And they were building a lab to do the deed southwest of the city, in the Argonne Woods. But a labor dispute shut down the work and, with a war on, the empty space at Stagg Field was pressed into service.

     So why is quantum computing happening here? Did Caltech and MIT drop the ball?
     "It's not the weather," said Awschalom, who left California to come here. "This part of the country just collaborated beautifully, quickly, with support, from the mayor at the time." Rahm Emanuel, if you've forgotten that a mayor can draw business to the city as well as drive it away. Gov. JB Pritzker was an early advocate.
     Strong community colleges are also key, supplying workers for the hundreds of thousands of "really interesting, high-paid, high-tech jobs" that might come from "scalable atomic-size technologies."

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How to unfreeze a cheesecake

      "Ross is making us cheesecake," my daughter-in-law announced bright and early Saturday, as the snow gently fell. "The breakfast of champions."
     "It sure is in this house," I said, approvingly. 
     My older son is a gourmand — he not only notches Michelin stars on his belt like an astronomer surveying the skies on a clear night, but also cooks and bakes. One visit he whipped up a croquembouche, which I couldn't pronounce, never mind conceive of preparing — though I ate some easily enough.
     Not that he was "making cheesecake" in the sense of combining ingredients in a bowl and baking a cheesecake. That would be crazy, particularly when the superlative cheesecake in the world, Eli's, was waiting in the freezer, ready to be roused from frozen slumber. I noted, with concern, that he chose to breathe life into their pair of slices — one classic, one mixed berry —through the wonder of microwave technology.
     Now microwaving is fine for, say, heating up yesterday's coffee. I did so this morning. But, as a semi-official representative of the Eli's Cheesecake Company — their 13th season of advertising on this blog began last week — I must express disapproval of the idea of thawing a cheesecake by microwave. The box instructs patrons lucky enough to find themselves in possession of an Eli's cheesecake to thaw it by either allowing the cake to sit in the refrigerator overnight, or by placing it at room temperature for three hours.
    Strategies which posed insurmountable problems to a person, such as myself, who, inspired by the notion of cheesecake for breakfast, wanted cool and delicious Eli's cheesecake now. Not in three hours. And especially not tomorrow morning.
     So I decided, against my better judgment, to experiment with the microwave method. My wife suggested the gradual approach. I put it for just 10 seconds. There was still frost on top. Another 10, and it seemed frozen. A third 10 seconds, which had to be sufficient.
     I set it out with a cup of hot coffee. The tip was warm — not the ideal cheesecake experience. But the whole thing was not ruined — most was cold, though parts were still frozen. I still ate the slice in short order.
     I would be ashamed, as a semi-official representative of Eli's, to admit this folly on my part. But I'm sharing it because I believe it speaks to an important truth. Two important truths, in fact. 

     First, most everything good in life requires planning. You, reading this, probably cannot eat some cheesecake right now, no matter how much you want to, because you haven't any in your freezer, despite years of reading this blog and having the centrality of cheesecake to a life well-lived drilled into you. No shame there ... well, not too much shame ... okay, some shame because, really, aren't you paying attention at all? 
    No harm though — your current cheesecakelessness can be easily remedied by clicking on the Eli's web site and ordering one, or several, right now, whisked to your house through the wonder of dry ice technology. There isn't much you can do to fix the world right now. But you can have a slice of cheesecake. It'll help. Trust me on that.
     But even if, like me, your freezer is well-stocked with Eli's, a second factor comes into play: Don't do things half-assed. Be patient. Do it right. A slice of classic Eli's cheesecake is a superlative sensual experience. One doesn't rush it. Screw microwaves. Wait. Be patient. Let it properly thaw, in the refrigerator overnight or, in a hurry, with three hours on the counter. What's your rush, bub? You'll be dead and forgotten soon enough. As will I, as will everybody. 
     But we are alive, right now, given a fleeting opportunity to live our lives to the fullest, and part of that is indulging in cheesecake for breakfast. 
     As part penance, part celebration, I removed a second superlative slice of classic Eli's cheesecake and put it in the refrigerator. There it thawed gradually, as God intended. Sunday morning I first spent a delightful 20 minutes singing and talking to the baby, then patted my column into shape, then rewarded myself by padding down to the kitchen and pulling open the refrigerator. There was the slice of Eli's classic cheesecake, smiling right at me. I grabbed a fork. Mmmm, let's just say, worth the wait.

    

'The worst of the worst'

"Public Notice 3," by Jitish Kallat (Art Institute of Chicago)

      This is the Golden Age of Stupidity. Or is it the Renaissance of Ruthlessness? The Heyday of Hypocrisy? No reason it can't be all three, with an unhinged, jabbering dupe of a president, served by a growing army of craven underlings, hand-picked for their servility. Unfettered by the counterbalances and restraints the Founders intended to keep a president in check. Having himself fomented the worst act of rebellion since the Civil War, he dares fling out the word "treason" like spittle off the lips of someone having a seizure. Just one drop of venality in a continual downpour.
    No matter. It's still good to say it, loudly and clearly, from time to time. Not because doing so represents anything new. Or does any good, except remind ourselves that, no matter how accepted it has become to many, despite the silent chorus of shrugs, this is all still unacceptable. Still very wrong. This is a continuing, grotesque abuse and departure from cherished American norms. Not just another Tuesday.

     Particularly the ICE kidnappings — less prominent in Chicago the past few weeks, true, but still growing, as more masked thugs are hired, more detention camps built. Lives are being upended, parents torn from children, hard-working immigrants exiled even as they try to follow the law. 
     Yes, as the months grind on, it becomes difficult — first because one has to wonder, "What is the point?" — to find new ways to convey the venality, the gaslighting, the cruelty, the hypocrisy, the lies, the incompetence, the self-dealing, the corruption.
     Not that I am alone here. I'm blessed with smart, well-spoken readers, in the main. Yes, there are the denizens of the spam folder, vomiting back whatever Fox News told them last night — they care very much about the letter of the law, when it comes to immigrants, but when you wonder why that love of legality doesn't translate to their beloved leader's constant, blatant criminality, they flutter away. I spend little time reading their outpouring, less reacting to it, though occasionally I'll toss out a canned, "The scorn of traitors is praise to a patriot" or "It might come as a shock, but the low opinion of a dupe in thrall to a traitor doesn't carry the sting you seem to imagine it might."
     But the bulk reflects the unease, pain, despair, insight of intelligent people confronting a nation gone mad. One cogent blog reader left this comment, anonymously, and in case you missed it, I want to highlight it today, because it has truth and brevity:

I don’t really know the ‘crime’ business…but, I’m guessing that anyone who is good at it … you know, the worst of the worst … they’re probably not out mowing lawns or shoveling show. I don’t know…it’s just a guess.

     That's it, right? No more need be said. Today anyway. As for tomorrow...