THE FINE ART OF STEALING A GLANCE AT A WOMAN'S BEAUTY IN PUBLIC PLACES

We can all agree this is a "time that tries men's souls." I would only add that any time is a time to appreciate a woman's beauty.

Now before you start...! This has nothing to do with objectifying or stalking beautiful women. Simply speaking for thousands of robust men here in Chicago and millions throughout the world exercising their God or Darwin-given right to enjoy the inestimable gift of feminine beauty on a summer day.

To be sure, there's a delicate line between enjoying and gawking. Truck drivers and girder workers gawk. Men of my age (old!) and culture (finally passed chemistry!) have mastered the undetected glance:

* during an expressway gaper's block, you pull up to her car and point down to her tires; while she checks them out, you check her out

* on a commuter train or plane, you work discretely from behind a partly folded newspaper; again proving that modern technology like the Kindle has its limits

* in a restaurant, you simply but innocently ask the waiter for a different (and closer!) table

* at a party, the rules loosen because now you're free to speak as well as stare

Two exceptions to the rules: (1) at a ball game with thousands of screaming fans, you are permitted to stare as long and as hard as you wish (2) if you're married, you explain to your wife the latest scientific analysis for this male behavior: "Honey, it's not me, it's my genes that make me do it!!"

WAIT A MINUTE! WHOSE BABY AND WHOSE BATHWATER ARE YOU TOSSING OUT!

Lets admit it. In America being cynical is cool. Cynical like Bogart in "Casablanca." Like Clint Eastwood, Simon Cowell, Donald Trump, and Cher. Cynicism plays well in bars, parties, even in some early relationships. The cynic holds enormous power, for he or she never has to reveal themself. They can scoff at their world without ever exposing their own doubts and weaknesses.

Among history's cynics were Plato and Marcus Aurelius, Machiavelli and Alexander Hamilton, Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon. Right now the taxpayers in St Mary Parish, Louisiana, have every right to be cynical as their new $3 million convention center just sank five feet into the ground because the contractors built it over a swamp.

Here's the point.

Most times cynicism is so damn easy and cheap, as in the way critics sneer at a Justin Bieber, complain about a do-nothing Congress or a do-it-wrong Presidency, and in general sit comfortably in the stands of life watching the players fumbling but trying.

 One of cynicism's favorite targets is "the way they used to do it." In effect, everything and everybody before them. However, all too often such cynicism scoops up all too many shining babies with the dirty bathwater. At my age this brings to mind "the way we used to do it" like: Honoring teachers, cops, firemen, clergy, flag, country, and those once-upon-a-time MGM favorites Andy Hardy, Mr Smith Goes To Washington, Sullivan's Travels, Leave It To Beaver, and Happy Days.

You wanna talk about corny...? Phony...? Sugar-coating reality....? Yep, those "babies" fit perfectly inside the cynic's "dirty water" scooper. What a shame.

WHAT'S THE BUZZ...? QUICK BEFORE IT'S JUST STATIC!

Making predictions is always hard. Especially about the future. But here's one that's relatively safe. Venerable old museums will be around much longer than most of today's hot new nightlife...

Scan the city and its delights for proof. There's always buzz about the new clubs, restaurants, theatres and night spots; and yet, a year later most are gone from the "recommended" lists. Why? It's safe to argue: What's new travels on a fast and slippery slope, what's past holds steady in place.

While it's true human nature itches for what's novel and different, it usually scratches for what's sure and proven. Perhaps this is one of the reasons we never tire of gathering around the tribal fires to hear [or now watch on everything from podcasts to IMax] the endless narratives of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome;  Alexander, Caesar, Elizabeth; Robert E Lee, Jesse James, George Custer; the Roaring Twenties, the Greatest Generation, the Sixties.

The past is fixed...it's safe...it's retrievable...what's more we can re-live it however we wish. When you think about it, our great museums ought to raise their prices while our new hot spots ought to lower theirs. After all, that first group is sorta like an old friend you can always go to. The second is more like a new lover you can never quite count on.

SUDDENLY THREE GENDERS - MALE, FEMALE AND THAT OTHER ONE

Ever since Mary Shelley created Frankenstein's monster, the narrative of science vs humanity has become legendary. Like her good doctor, we admire our new god Science, but at the same time harbor tiny terrors of what it might do with us mere mortals.

While Hollywood tracks the usual suspects -- monsters, vampires, and ETs -- each of us has gingerly invited the prime suspect into our own homes. The computer. Humanity's latest Good/Evil innovation. We have embraced it with innocent enthusiasm, for after all it is our ltatest greatest creation, isn't it?

As with Dr Frankenstein's creation, the answer is yes, as long as it serves us, not us serve it. Ms Shelley might have added: as long as there are still some things only people can do. Like detecting the subtleties of another's voice, face, smile. Whoops...that last one is no longer true. MIT -- where they oughta know about such matters! -- has just released its findings.

That's right -- the big metallic guy wins. Their computer out-decoded humans in detecting the subtle distinctions in smiles from delight, love, and frustration. And while the program is intended to help autistic people better read emotions....well, we all remember how Shelley's doctor's good intentions quickly led elsewhere. Or as Aristotle grumbled 2500 years before Shelley: "There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man."

THE STRANGERS LIVING INSIDE US

It's been said that as of today the two presidential campaigns have already hosted more benefits, netted more cash, spent more money, and generated more ads, gaffes, halve-truths, and disinformation than all the campaigns of the 20th C combined. And this is only June.

But while newspapers unleash their shrewdest editorialists and cable channels uncage their most shrewish pundits, the American voters may not actually need to understand all these facts. Because in every campaign since Jefferson vs Adams in 1800, feelings not facts have been the real keys to the White House front door. Besides, we've been advised recently we probably couldn't fully understand either the facts or the feelings even if we tried.

Several researchers have explained it this way. There is a stranger living inside us. The brain. An organ which, contrary to years of campaign expertise, tends to function without seriously checking in with us. Best selling books like 'Thinking Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahneman and 'How Your Unconscious Rules Your Behavior' by Leonard Miodinow appear to be saying our brains often act before we think. Call it impulse, intuition, instinct, but for heavens sake don't call it what it isn't:Thinking.

In tandem with the stranger that is our brain there is the stranger that is our genes. Jonathan Haidt, 'The Righteous Mind,' is among those who find our genes actively at work shaping our political behaviors often without our knowledge. He speaks for many today: "Genes contribute to just about every aspect of our personalities. We're not just talking about IQ and basic traits such as shyness....Whether you end up on the right or the left of the political spectrum turns out to be just as heritable as most other traits."

Are today's well-funded campaign machines being sufficiently oiled by today's brain-and-gene research? The candidates are still pumping hands, hugging babies, and catering to special interest audiences as they have for generations. And yet, it's not hard to imagine their profilers and vetters working hard to calibrate this brain-and-gene research into their plans between now and November.

If we actually are captives of some biological determinism in that neural world known as the brain, and if we are also at times the result of some genetic functioning of our neurotransmitters, how might Mr Obama's and Mr Romney's writers be drafting those upcoming acceptance speeches?

I remember writing for President Clinton and some of President Bush II's cabinet members. But back then a speechwriter had a given body of facts&stats to work with. Now however, layering in this latest brain-and-gene research must be keeping some of my colleagues up long into the night. I guess this when my calls are now answered by recordings like: "And you think you had it hard...!"

Whether or not we're living with virtual strangers within us, there surely are actual strangers outside us. Each making an enormous difference. In effect, this election may be the first in which our national fate is inextricably bound up in history's first  globalized economy. So many strangers at work impacting so many issues in so many uncontrolled ways. And so little time....

OK, YOU CAN CALL OFF THE SEARCH FOR A PARALLEL UNIVERSE. I FOUND IT!

If you consider yourself an artist, you will appreciate this from Bee Gee's Robin Gibb:"An artist is an artist because he is not happy with the world, so he creates his own...."

Lewis Carrol's 'Alice in Wonderland' was an inside-out world in which he traveled and laughed.  Edgar Allen Poe traveled into far darker worlds where rather than laugh he eventually became lost. Who of us can say in which of our own worlds it is best to be?

Still, we repeatedly choose are own. Which is probably why, when we look out from it, whatever we see is seen as if it were a parallel universe. Parallel but not quite correct. As we look out, we are constantly judging it by the norm. The norm, of course, being us.

Once you get the hang of this parallel thing, it's easy. Everything and everyone out there is Them; everything and everyone in here is Us. Them are always slightly out of sync. Us, we are the sync! Accordingly, there will always be parallel ball teams, political parties, nationalities, races and religions to see as if through a glass darkly.

Exactly how each of us landed in our particular universe rather than that out-of-sync one is hard to explain. Anthropologists might argue it was mostly a matter of when-and-where we were born. Demographers could make a case for the particular generation into which we were born. Racists... well we know what racists will say.

The important thing to remember here is the record shows very few if any of us have ever jumped universes. Have ever been able or willing to leave the comfort of their "own" for the strange encounters that loom in that "other." It's like asking a Sox fan to buy a Cubs skybox....a Republican to attend an Obama rally....a subsidized corn grower to buy a Prius...a Viet veteran to go to a Jane Fonda movie....a Redneck to go to Temple....Grover Norquist to approve a tax...a Muslim to make a pilgrimage to Rome.

What, are you crazy! Which instantly begs the question: In which universe do the crazies live?

IF YOU HAVE TO ASK IF YOU'RE COOL, YOU'RE NOT!

To be cool is to be many things. Hard to put into words, but if you've got it, easy to put into a suit or a dress. Cool is as cool looks.

To find the cool people you can check the Top Ten lists in TIME and PEOPLE magazine. But you won't find any hard and fast rules to the game. It's a vague notion first spawned by the post-World War II rich-and-famous. Eventually being rich-and-famous wasn't quite enough. Next they needed to let the world know they really didn't need to be rich-and-famous.

Now that's cool!

Cool as in Frank Sinatra's Vegas Rat Pack...the Kennedy clan...Jack Kerouac's Beatniks ...the Woodstock generation...Hugh Hefner's Playboy...the three-piece-suiters on Madison Avenue and Wall Street.

Consistent with human nature's eternal inconsistencies, today these are among the most un-cool. Today's cool can range anywhere from Paul Newman's Cool Hand Luke, to Clint Eastwood's flinty anger, to John Lennon's martyred music, to white teenyboppers' favorite Rap and Hip Hop artists like DiddyCombs, Jay-Z Carter, and Birdman Williams.

Clearly cool is a moving target. So where do most of today's young wannabe look for role-models? One place is the many cop shows on television where cool is the name of the game...where cool is how the good guys nab the bad guys...where you can pick up just the right swagger and repartee for the part. As in the patented formulas of CSI, Law & Order, NCSI, and Hawaii 50.

Check 'em out. Each has just the right role model for your wannabe cool. The cool-talking boss...the cool-looking chick...the cool but offbeat buddy...and the lab technician whose quirky ways are so uncool they're actually cool. Yep, they're all there in whichever program you wanna make your homework assignment tonight.

Just remember, though, history's biggest wars and baddest recessions were probably started by cool wannabes....!