profile_test.py

def print_stats():
    import cProfile
    import rivet

    test_text_1 = "Postmodernist nihilism, Foucaultist power relations and libertarianism\nG. Andreas Reicher\n\nDepartment of Deconstruction, University of Massachusetts, Amherst\nBarbara Bailey\n\nDepartment of Gender Politics, Oxford University\n\n1. Subdialectic cultural theory and the textual paradigm of consensus\n\nThe main theme of the works of Spelling is the common ground between class\nand truth. An abundance of deconstructions concerning the role of the\nparticipant as observer exist. However, the primary theme of Scuglia’s[1] analysis of the textual paradigm of consensus is the\ndifference between sexual identity and narrativity.\n\n“Sexual identity is part of the genre of truth,” says Bataille. Derrida uses\nthe term ‘postmodernist nihilism’ to denote a self-fulfilling totality.\nTherefore, the premise of the textual paradigm of consensus implies that\nnarrative must come from the collective unconscious.\n\n“Culture is fundamentally impossible,” says Foucault; however, according to\nPrinn[2] , it is not so much culture that is fundamentally\nimpossible, but rather the defining characteristic, and eventually the\ndialectic, of culture. Sontag uses the term ‘postmaterial narrative’ to denote\nthe role of the reader as observer. Thus, the subject is contextualised into a\npostmodernist nihilism that includes sexuality as a paradox.\n\nHanfkopf[3] states that we have to choose between\nprecapitalist theory and textual Marxism. But Marx uses the term ‘subdialectic\ncultural theory’ to denote the failure, and therefore the defining\ncharacteristic, of submodern consciousness.\n\nIf the textual paradigm of consensus holds, we have to choose between\nFoucaultist power relations and cultural postdialectic theory. Thus, the\nsubject is interpolated into a postmodernist nihilism that includes art as a\nreality.\n\nWerther[4] suggests that the works of Stone are not\npostmodern. However, several theories concerning Lacanist obscurity may be\nfound.\n\nIf subdialectic cultural theory holds, we have to choose between the textual\nparadigm of consensus and pretextual cultural theory. In a sense, the main\ntheme of the works of Stone is a neotextual totality.\n2. Stone and the conceptual paradigm of narrative\n\n“Class is part of the dialectic of culture,” says Bataille. Lacan’s essay on\nthe textual paradigm of consensus states that the State is elitist, but only if\nLyotardist narrative is invalid; otherwise, we can assume that society has\nintrinsic meaning. It could be said that the subject is contextualised into a\nsubdialectic cultural theory that includes truth as a paradox.\n\nThe primary theme of Sargeant’s[5] critique of the\ntextual paradigm of consensus is the absurdity, and subsequent collapse, of\ncultural class. Any number of discourses concerning the role of the artist as\nreader exist. However, Dahmus[6] holds that we have to\nchoose between postmodernist nihilism and premodern deconstruction.\n\nIf one examines subdialectic cultural theory, one is faced with a choice:\neither reject the textual paradigm of consensus or conclude that sexuality is\ncapable of significance. The subject is interpolated into a postmodernist\nnihilism that includes narrativity as a reality. Therefore, the main theme of\nthe works of Spelling is a mythopoetical whole.\n\nIn the works of Spelling, a predominant concept is the distinction between\ncreation and destruction. Baudrillard uses the term ‘subdialectic cultural\ntheory’ to denote the meaninglessness, and hence the absurdity, of dialectic\nsociety. But Sartre’s model of postmodernist nihilism suggests that academe is\npart of the collapse of consciousness.\n\n“Sexual identity is meaningless,” says Foucault. Lyotard uses the term ‘the\ntextual paradigm of consensus’ to denote the role of the observer as artist.\nTherefore, a number of narratives concerning the neocultural paradigm of\ncontext may be discovered.\n\nIn the works of Spelling, a predominant concept is the concept of textual\nnarrativity. Sontag uses the term ‘postmodernist nihilism’ to denote the\nabsurdity, and eventually the collapse, of predeconstructive class. However,\nFoucault promotes the use of the textual paradigm of consensus to modify and\ndeconstruct consciousness.\n\nSartre uses the term ‘subdialectic cultural theory’ to denote the bridge\nbetween society and narrativity. But Bataille suggests the use of the textual\nparadigm of consensus to challenge the status quo.\n\nAny number of discourses concerning a self-referential totality exist. Thus,\nif subdialectic cultural theory holds, we have to choose between the textual\nparadigm of consensus and cultural libertarianism.\n\nIn Beverly Hills 90210, Spelling deconstructs postmodernist nihilism;\nin Charmed he analyses the postcapitalist paradigm of consensus. It\ncould be said that postmodernist nihilism implies that the significance of the\nwriter is deconstruction, given that art is equal to consciousness.\n\nSartre promotes the use of subdialectic cultural theory to modify society.\nBut Marx’s critique of postmodernist nihilism suggests that culture is capable\nof truth.\n\nCameron[7] states that we have to choose between the\ntextual paradigm of consensus and Foucaultist power relations. Therefore,\npostmodernist nihilism holds that class, ironically, has significance.\n\nThe within/without distinction prevalent in Spelling’s Robin’s Hoods\nemerges again in Melrose Place, although in a more semantic sense. Thus,\nSontag’s model of subcultural sublimation suggests that language serves to\nmarginalize the proletariat.\n\nIf subdialectic cultural theory holds, the works of Spelling are postmodern.\nHowever, the primary theme of Humphrey’s[8] essay on the\ntextual paradigm of consensus is the role of the reader as participant.\n\nThe subject is contextualised into a postdialectic narrative that includes\nreality as a reality. It could be said that Sartre suggests the use of\npostmodernist nihilism to deconstruct capitalism.\n3. Contexts of failure\n\n“Sexual identity is part of the economy of narrativity,” says Lacan. The\nmain theme of the works of Spelling is the stasis of textual consciousness. In\na sense, Hamburger[9] holds that we have to choose between\npostmaterial cultural theory and Batailleist `powerful communication’.\n\n“Sexual identity is intrinsically a legal fiction,” says Debord; however,\naccording to Scuglia[10] , it is not so much sexual\nidentity that is intrinsically a legal fiction, but rather the rubicon, and\nsubsequent defining characteristic, of sexual identity. The premise of\nsubdialectic cultural theory implies that the Constitution is capable of social\ncomment, given that the textual paradigm of consensus is valid. Thus, in\nBeverly Hills 90210, Spelling denies postmodernist nihilism; in\nRobin’s Hoods, however, he reiterates subdialectic cultural theory.\n\n“Class is meaningless,” says Bataille. The subject is interpolated into a\npostmodernist nihilism that includes truth as a totality. It could be said that\nDerrida uses the term ‘Foucaultist power relations’ to denote the role of the\npoet as writer.\n\nIn the works of Spelling, a predominant concept is the distinction between\nfeminine and masculine. If postmodernist nihilism holds, we have to choose\nbetween subdialectic cultural theory and cultural narrative. But Sontag\npromotes the use of Derridaist reading to attack and modify sexuality.\n\n“Society is part of the futility of consciousness,” says Debord; however,\naccording to Prinn[11] , it is not so much society that is\npart of the futility of consciousness, but rather the rubicon, and eventually\nthe fatal flaw, of society. Many discourses concerning postmodernist nihilism\nmay be found. Therefore, Sontag suggests the use of subdialectic cultural\ntheory to challenge outmoded, colonialist perceptions of sexual identity.\n\nThe characteristic theme of la Tournier’s[12] critique\nof the textual paradigm of consensus is the futility, and subsequent absurdity,\nof textual society. However, Bataille uses the term ‘subcapitalist\nappropriation’ to denote a self-falsifying whole.\n\nThe main theme of the works of Spelling is not desublimation, but\nneodesublimation. Thus, a number of materialisms concerning the failure, and\neventually the rubicon, of dialectic sexual identity exist.\n\nScuglia[13] holds that we have to choose between\nsubdialectic cultural theory and constructivist deconstruction. However, if\npostmodernist nihilism holds, the works of Burroughs are empowering.\n\nFoucault uses the term ‘neocapitalist semiotic theory’ to denote not\nnarrative, but postnarrative. In a sense, the primary theme of Long’s[14] essay on postmodernist nihilism is the collapse, and\ntherefore the dialectic, of modern art.\n\nMarx promotes the use of the textual paradigm of consensus to read class.\nBut the subject is contextualised into a subdialectic cultural theory that\nincludes narrativity as a paradox.\n\nSontag suggests the use of postmodernist nihilism to attack class divisions.\nIt could be said that Lacan uses the term ‘subdialectic cultural theory’ to\ndenote not, in fact, discourse, but prediscourse.\n\nIn Nova Express, Burroughs examines postmodernist nihilism; in\nJunky, although, he denies subcapitalist sublimation. Therefore, any\nnumber of narratives concerning postmodernist nihilism may be revealed."
    test_text_2 = "The Expression of Defining characteristic: Postconstructivist theory and\nFoucaultist power relations\nJane K. E. Tilton\n\nDepartment of Semiotics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst\n\n1. Capitalist narrative and neosemantic discourse\n\nThe characteristic theme of the works of Joyce is the futility, and\nsubsequent defining characteristic, of dialectic sexual identity. The main\ntheme of Pickett’s[1] critique of neosemantic discourse is a\nmythopoetical reality. But Sartreist existentialism suggests that reality may\nbe used to entrench capitalism.\n\nSeveral theories concerning neosemantic discourse exist. It could be said\nthat la Fournier[2] implies that we have to choose between\nconstructivist deappropriation and Sontagist camp.\n\nIn Ulysses, Joyce examines neosemantic discourse; in\nDubliners, although, he denies subtextual theory. In a sense, the\nsubject is interpolated into a Foucaultist power relations that includes art as\na paradox.\n\nThe primary theme of the works of Joyce is the bridge between sexuality and\nsociety. Therefore, the premise of postconstructivist theory states that\ncontext must come from the collective unconscious.\n2. Realities of futility\n\nIf one examines dialectic libertarianism, one is faced with a choice: either\nreject Foucaultist power relations or conclude that the goal of the poet is\nsocial comment. Lacan uses the term ‘Debordist image’ to denote a\npredeconstructivist reality. However, if postconstructivist theory holds, we\nhave to choose between textual rationalism and Foucaultist power relations.\n\nIn the works of Joyce, a predominant concept is the distinction between\nfeminine and masculine. The main theme of Finnis’s[3] essay\non postconstructivist theory is the difference between sexual identity and\nclass. Thus, Sartre uses the term ‘Foucaultist power relations’ to denote a\nself-justifying paradox.\n\n“Art is intrinsically used in the service of class divisions,” says Debord;\nhowever, according to Long[4] , it is not so much art that\nis intrinsically used in the service of class divisions, but rather the stasis,\nand thus the defining characteristic, of art. Brophy[5]\nsuggests that the works of Joyce are an example of mythopoetical rationalism.\nIn a sense, Sontag promotes the use of neosemantic discourse to deconstruct and\nmodify sexual identity.\n\nIn the works of Joyce, a predominant concept is the concept of cultural\nculture. Sartre uses the term ‘postmaterialist theory’ to denote the failure,\nand some would say the stasis, of cultural class. Thus, any number of\ndiscourses concerning not, in fact, dematerialism, but predematerialism may be\nfound.\n\nIf one examines postconstructivist theory, one is faced with a choice:\neither accept neosemantic discourse or conclude that reality is a legal\nfiction, but only if neocapitalist narrative is invalid; if that is not the\ncase, Debord’s model of postconstructivist theory is one of “dialectic\nsubcultural theory”, and hence fundamentally responsible for outmoded\nperceptions of sexual identity. The primary theme of the works of Joyce is the\ndefining characteristic, and therefore the failure, of dialectic class.\nHowever, the fatal flaw of Lyotardist narrative intrinsic to Joyce’s\nFinnegan’s Wake is also evident in A Portrait of the Artist As a\nYoung Man.\n\nMarx suggests the use of postconstructivist theory to challenge class\ndivisions. In a sense, the main theme of Hamburger’s[6]\nmodel of Foucaultist power relations is the role of the observer as poet.\n\nThe premise of neosemantic discourse holds that truth is used to marginalize\nthe underprivileged. However, the subject is contextualised into a\npostconstructivist theory that includes consciousness as a totality.\n\nIn Ulysses, Joyce affirms Foucaultist power relations; in\nDubliners, however, he analyses textual objectivism. In a sense,\nDebord’s essay on Foucaultist power relations states that expression is a\nproduct of the masses.\n\nThe characteristic theme of the works of Joyce is the bridge between society\nand class. However, the premise of postconstructivist theory implies that\nsexuality, somewhat paradoxically, has objective value.\n\nAn abundance of desituationisms concerning Foucaultist power relations\nexist. Therefore, Foucault uses the term ‘neosemantic discourse’ to denote the\nrole of the participant as reader.\n\nThe subject is interpolated into a postconstructivist theory that includes\nnarrativity as a reality. But the within/without distinction depicted in\nJoyce’s A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man emerges again in\nDubliners, although in a more self-fulfilling sense.\n\nMarx uses the term ‘neocultural textual theory’ to denote the difference\nbetween class and language. It could be said that the primary theme of\nHumphrey’s[7] critique of Foucaultist power relations is not\ndiscourse, as Sartre would have it, but postdiscourse.\n3. Postconstructivist theory and the subdeconstructive paradigm of\nreality\n\n“Class is meaningless,” says Bataille; however, according to Parry[8] , it is not so much class that is meaningless, but rather\nthe dialectic, and some would say the stasis, of class. Lacan uses the term\n‘Marxist capitalism’ to denote the genre, and subsequent failure, of cultural\nculture. Thus, a number of narratives concerning a mythopoetical whole may be\nrevealed.\n\nIn the works of Tarantino, a predominant concept is the distinction between\nopening and closing. If Foucaultist power relations holds, the works of\nTarantino are modernistic. However, Foucault uses the term ‘postconstructivist\ntheory’ to denote not dematerialism, but postdematerialism.\n\nThe subject is contextualised into a subdialectic discourse that includes\nart as a reality. In a sense, many situationisms concerning the\nsubdeconstructive paradigm of reality exist.\n\nWilson[9] holds that we have to choose between capitalist\nneodialectic theory and cultural feminism. Thus, the subdeconstructive paradigm\nof reality suggests that the purpose of the poet is significant form, given\nthat language is interchangeable with art.\n\nThe example of preconceptualist theory prevalent in Rushdie’s The Moor’s\nLast Sigh is also evident in Satanic Verses. But Marx’s analysis of\npostconstructivist theory holds that society has intrinsic meaning.\n4. Rushdie and Foucaultist power relations\n\nIf one examines dialectic objectivism, one is faced with a choice: either\nreject postconstructivist theory or conclude that the raison d’etre of the\nartist is deconstruction. An abundance of discourses concerning the common\nground between narrativity and class may be discovered. It could be said that\nthe premise of the subdeconstructive paradigm of reality suggests that reality\nis created by the collective unconscious.\n\n“Sexual identity is intrinsically impossible,” says Debord; however,\naccording to Geoffrey[10] , it is not so much sexual\nidentity that is intrinsically impossible, but rather the dialectic, and hence\nthe fatal flaw, of sexual identity. The subject is interpolated into a\npostconstructivist theory that includes consciousness as a paradox. In a sense,\nDerrida promotes the use of the subdeconstructive paradigm of reality to\nanalyse class.\n\nAny number of destructuralisms concerning Foucaultist power relations exist.\nHowever, Baudrillard uses the term ‘postconstructivist theory’ to denote not\ntheory, but posttheory.\n\nMarx’s critique of the subdeconstructive paradigm of reality states that the\nConstitution is a legal fiction, given that Sartreist absurdity is valid. Thus,\nBaudrillard suggests the use of postconstructivist theory to deconstruct\nsexism.\n\nFoucault’s essay on Foucaultist power relations suggests that culture may be\nused to reinforce hierarchy. It could be said that the main theme of the works\nof Stone is the bridge between sexual identity and society.\n\nBaudrillard uses the term ‘pretextual construction’ to denote the role of\nthe writer as reader. But several desituationisms concerning the defining\ncharacteristic, and some would say the dialectic, of capitalist class may be\nrevealed.\n5. Discourses of collapse\n\nThe primary theme of la Fournier’s[11] analysis of\npostconstructivist theory is the role of the participant as reader. The subject\nis contextualised into a Foucaultist power relations that includes language as\na whole. In a sense, if the subdeconstructive paradigm of reality holds, we\nhave to choose between postconstructivist theory and neodeconstructivist\nsemantic theory.\n\n“Society is part of the genre of narrativity,” says Marx; however, according\nto Pickett[12] , it is not so much society that is part of\nthe genre of narrativity, but rather the failure, and subsequent collapse, of\nsociety. In JFK, Stone denies the subdeconstructive paradigm of reality;\nin Heaven and Earth he examines Foucaultist power relations. However,\nSartre promotes the use of postconstructivist theory to modify and challenge\nsexual identity.\n\nThe defining characteristic, and therefore the genre, of Foucaultist power\nrelations intrinsic to Stone’s Platoon emerges again in Natural Born\nKillers, although in a more modern sense. Therefore, the premise of the\nsubdeconstructive paradigm of reality states that narrative must come from the\nmasses.\n\nHubbard[13] implies that the works of Stone are\nreminiscent of Madonna. It could be said that Lyotard uses the term ‘Debordist\nsituation’ to denote the collapse of neopatriarchialist consciousness.\n\nMarx suggests the use of postconstructivist theory to attack sexism. Thus,\nFoucaultist power relations holds that society, perhaps ironically, has\nobjective value.\n\nBaudrillard promotes the use of the subdeconstructive paradigm of reality to\nread sexual identity. However, the premise of dialectic precultural theory\nstates that truth serves to disempower the Other, but only if art is equal to\nlanguage; otherwise, we can assume that sexuality is responsible for\ncapitalism.\n6. Foucaultist power relations and dialectic narrative\n\nThe characteristic theme of the works of Stone is the difference between\nsociety and sexual identity. The figure/ground distinction depicted in Stone’s\nJFK is also evident in Natural Born Killers. It could be said\nthat the main theme of Brophy’s[14] essay on the\npostcultural paradigm of reality is not, in fact, materialism, but\nneomaterialism.\n\nIn the works of Stone, a predominant concept is the concept of capitalist\nart. The subject is interpolated into a postconstructivist theory that includes\nculture as a totality. In a sense, the primary theme of the works of Stone is\nthe bridge between reality and sexual identity.\n\n“Consciousness is part of the fatal flaw of narrativity,” says Marx. Debord\nuses the term ‘Foucaultist power relations’ to denote not narrative as such,\nbut subnarrative. It could be said that the characteristic theme of Wilson’s[15] model of postconstructivist theory is the common ground\nbetween society and class.\n\nIf Foucaultist power relations holds, we have to choose between the\ncapitalist paradigm of context and postpatriarchial desituationism. But the\nsubject is contextualised into a postconstructivist theory that includes\nsexuality as a reality.\n\nLyotard suggests the use of Foucaultist power relations to challenge the\nstatus quo. However, Dahmus[16] implies that we have to\nchoose between postconstructivist theory and subconceptual textual theory.\n\nThe primary theme of the works of Stone is the genre, and some would say the\nrubicon, of precultural sexual identity. But Marx’s essay on Foucaultist power\nrelations holds that discourse is a product of the collective unconscious,\ngiven that dialectic socialism is invalid.\n\nThe characteristic theme of Cameron’s[17] analysis of\ndialectic narrative is the bridge between class and society. In a sense, in\nHeaven and Earth, Stone analyses Foucaultist power relations; in\nJFK, however, he denies postconstructivist theory.\n7. Narratives of absurdity\n\n“Culture is a legal fiction,” says Sontag; however, according to Tilton[18] , it is not so much culture that is a legal fiction, but\nrather the economy, and thus the paradigm, of culture. The subject is\ninterpolated into a dialectic neoconceptualist theory that includes reality as\na paradox. Therefore, Bataille uses the term ‘Foucaultist power relations’ to\ndenote not narrative, but postnarrative.\n\n“Class is fundamentally used in the service of class divisions,” says\nSartre. The subject is contextualised into a textual nationalism that includes\nconsciousness as a reality. Thus, the futility of Foucaultist power relations\nintrinsic to Stone’s Natural Born Killers emerges again in Heaven and\nEarth, although in a more mythopoetical sense.\n\nBaudrillard uses the term ‘subconstructive cultural theory’ to denote a\npredialectic paradox. In a sense, any number of theories concerning dialectic\nnarrative exist.\n\nIf postconstructivist theory holds, we have to choose between Foucaultist\npower relations and Lacanist obscurity. Therefore, d’Erlette[19] states that the works of Stone are modernistic.\n\nThe primary theme of the works of Rushdie is the economy, and subsequent\ncollapse, of textual sexual identity. However, if dialectic narrative holds, we\nhave to choose between neocapitalist dialectic theory and subconceptual\nfeminism.\n\nThe subject is interpolated into a Foucaultist power relations that includes\nlanguage as a whole. In a sense, Hamburger[20] suggests\nthat we have to choose between dialectic narrative and postsemantic\ndeconstructivist theory."
    test_text_3 = """Programming, like any art practice, is a performance. Our code reflects the physical and virtual environment it was created in, the culture and social weather of the team, the constraints of the toolchain and the target architecture, and the mood and facility of the performer at moment of strike.

We often imagine a solo act. It’s 2am and our hero works at a laptop at a small desk in a dark bedroom. To their left is an empty can of energy drink. Their level of concentration is so deep that you could stomp through with a marching band and they might not notice.

Or it’s 3pm and our hero is at their desk in a glassy, green-walled open-planned office. They’re listening to EDM, and everyone knows not to fuck with them when the earbuds are in. Distraction is so expensive these days.

Pair programming doesn’t fit these archetypes. Pairing is a graceful duet. It allows two programmers to combine their strengths and build something more thoughtful and cohesive than a single person can build. I believe it’s the fastest way to become a better programmer. And it can be a delightful experience.
Why pair?

Pair programming results in:

    code with fewer defects. With two sets of eyes on everything being written, fewer bugs make their way through the cracks.
    cleaner code that is easier to understand. Just because a solo programmer can comprehend their own code, that doesn’t mean it’s clean. But two people can really raise the quality level together.
    a closer team. We develop empathy and connection with our teammates through pairing. It also reinforces a shared vocabulary.
    faster learning or a faster pace, no matter your skill level. You can trade these things off depending on who you pair with. Sometimes you will learn fast but move slower than when working solo. Sometimes you can get more than two people’s worth of efficiency as a pair.
    consistency of code style across a project. Pairing raises questions of code style and forces developers to agree on good — or at least consistent — answers.
    a diffuse comprehension of the code across the team. Pairing breaks down code silos that tend to form when bigger projects are being built.
    less time dealing with git branches and pull requests. You are reviewing the code as you write the code.

Who should you pair with?
In short: anyone.

Some options include

    Two experienced developers. This is the most efficient pairing setup.
    A beginner and a seasoned developer. This is the best learning environment for both parties. Beginners often ask amazing and thought-provoking questions!
    Beginners pairing together will learn faster than working alone, and will challenge each other.

Preparing to pair

Start by removing as many external distractions as you can. Put your mobile devices into airplane mode. Close Gmail. Turn on Do Not Disturb mode on your laptop. The best programming environment may be a separate account on the laptop that’s dedicated to focused work.

Get a clean glass and fill it with water. Drink the entire thing. Now, refill the glass and bring it with you to the pairing station.

Determine your roles. One person will drive, having control of the keyboard and mouse, and the other will navigate. (You can switch anytime you like.)

Product decisions will emerge as you code. Who will have the final say on these? Is that person within reach?

Everything happens on one monitor (or two mirrored monitors). The navigator should avoid doing side work on a mobile phone or laptop of their own during the session.

The navigator is responsible for deflecting any potential interruptions by other team members.

The navigator is responsible for monitoring any obstacles to development and noting opportunities for improvement of the toolchain. If a common step requires too much energy in the form of mouse work, commands, or keystrokes, make a note of it.

Agree on the development software and key mappings you’ll use. A tried-and-true development environment that is well understood by both of you is much better than a fancy new and shiny one. Efficient pairing depends on alignment around the development environment and key bindings. Role switches during the session should feel super fluid and not require any additional switchover time within the environment.

Clean your workspace, including the monitor.
You will need:

    One machine, two mice, and two keyboards
    A place to take notes

Now you can begin the pairing session.
WPA-era pair weaving
During the session:

    Empathy is key. You should both feel open, relaxed, safe, and aware of the emotional vibe of the session. Psychological safety is paramount! Stress, anxiety, and anger lead to bad code and burnout.
    Sometimes what seems like an offhand remark can be an emotional trigger. If this comes up, it’s time to take a break.
    Don’t allow the more senior person to drive for the entire session, even though it can be faster. The person with less experience will get more out of it if they type, even if they are being told what to type!
    You can switch roles as often as you like during the session.
    Psychological safety allows either person to speak up when they don’t understand something. “I don’t know” will be said often in a good pairing session, no matter your seniority. Typing should not proceed until both parties understand what is being written.
    Don’t code for too long without talking.
    What if you encounter a problem that neither person knows how to solve? Step away from the keyboard, and whiteboard and do some research for a minute. Go outside. Shut the door.
    Monitor your energy level. A pairing session is not time-bound, it is energy-bound. The pairing session ends when either party’s energy level begins to wane.
    Take notes along the way of anything you discover about the codebase that is out of scope of the session: areas of code in need of refactoring, unanswered programming questions, defects discovered, and ideas for improving the toolchain.

Wrapping up:

    Commit what you’ve written, of course.
    Look your pair in the eyes and thank them for the great pairing session.
    Review your notes! What did you learn? Anything you want to research later? What will make your next pairing session even better?

You’re not done yet. How you recharge between pairing sessions is critical:

    If you’re an introvert, this is a good time to be alone for a few minutes.
    You may want to get your body moving.

Optional practices

    A common pattern combines pairing with TDD. One person writes a test and the other writes the code to make it pass. This has worked really well for me in the past.
    As the navigator, you may find it easier to focus if you have something to do with your hands. In Waldorf schools, the students knit while they learn. Why not knit while you code?

Traditional Shaker pair knitting

    What other patterns have emerged for you? I’d love to hear them, in the comments.

Programming requires creativity, discipline, and patience. Pairing is a great way to develop all three. It is a performance practice and a skill in its own right. And it’s fun!"""
    test_text_4 = """Why our food is the single biggest election issue not on the table

By Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH

Dariush Mozaffarian is Dean of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy, and the Jean Mayer Chair and Professor of Nutrition. The only graduate school of nutrition in North America, the Friedman School produces trusted science and real-world impact in nutrition. Dean Mozaffarian joined us at Spotlight Health to talk about nutrition, health, and the tantalizing possibility that once-taboo foods are now good for you. In this piece, adopted from an essay published in the Huffington Post, he looks at why, during this election season, we’re ignoring the most pressing issue of our time: food.

Amid the hoopla and distractions of the 2016 elections, real issues have been raised and discussed. Questions have been posed, and answers proffered, on wide-ranging topics including jobs, Syria, tax policy, immigration, healthcare, education, the courts, banking, our relations with China, Russia, and Europe, and many more. While the replies may not always have been satisfying, at least these many subjects, from large to small, global to local, have been raised and considered.

Yet, astonishingly, the 2016 elections have so far ignored the one topic that is among the biggest challenges and opportunities of our time: our food. Whether for health, the environment, or the economy, nutrition is the dominant issue facing the world today.

    Our food system is also the leading cause of environmental impact on the planet.

Poor nutrition is the leading cause of poor health in the United States and globally, causing more deaths and disability than any other factor. For anyone who has seen their doctor recently, or who cares for patients themselves, just pause to consider the irony: nutrition, the number one cause of illness, is largely ignored by the health system, whether in medical education, the electronic health record, reimbursement priorities, quality standards, or many other facets.

Our food system is also the leading cause of environmental impact on the planet. How we grow our food accounts for 70% of water use, 90% of tropical deforestation, immense challenges to the oceans and fish stock, and as much greenhouse gas emissions as all of the world’s transportation — cars, trucks, buses, planes, trains, and ships — combined. Whether for water, land, oceans, or climate, our food system is the crucial foundation for either harm or positive change. We need a secure, sustainable food system for our children and theirs.

Combining these health and environmental impacts, how we eat is easily the major economic issue of our time. We spend 3 trillion dollars each year on health care — 5 times more than all our military spending, and nearly 1 in 5 dollars in the entire US economy. From small businesses to major self-insured companies, the crushing cost of healthcare represents one of the greatest obstacles to growth, new jobs, and success. We’re fooling ourselves by arguing about cost-control through changes in insurance access, tort reform, copayments, drug development and pricing, or personalized medicine. Such advances may lead to greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness — i.e., a better health return on every dollar spent — but very rarely to actual cost-savings: actually spending less dollars. The only way to substantially reduce the hundreds of billions of dollars we spend each year on preventable and curable diseases is through better lifestyle in the population, and especially better dietary habits.

Remember Congress’ great budget sequestration battle in 2013? The entire disputed amount, across all the programs cut, was about $85 billion per year. Just the cost of diabetes and pre-diabetes — most of which is preventable and curable through better lifestyle — is $322 billion per year. If we add the costs of other diet-related diseases, such as heart disease, obesity and its many other downstream effects, cognitive decline, and several cancers, we easily reach $1 trillion annually. Imagine how much less wrangling and partisanship there would be, and how much more achievement and accomplishment, by returning all these dollars back into our coffers. Improving our food system, and how we eat, should be a bipartisan priority.

Importantly, our food system also contributes to harsh inequities. People with lower incomes and less influence often have the worst diets, leading to a vicious cycle of poor health, lower productivity, increased health costs, and poverty. And this starts early, with kids suffering less optimal development, decreased ability to concentrate and succeed in school, lower wages, and a greater chance of poor health. Food not only influences disease, the environment, and the economy, but has profound implications for equity and social justice.

How can this be? As we’ve watched the 2016 elections unfold, where are all the corresponding questions on food, nutrition, and health? On food and the environment? On the impacts on healthcare spending and the economy? On nutrition and social justice? This gap, between the size and scope of the problem and the attention it receives, is larger for food and nutrition than for any other issue.

As we enter the final phase of the election campaign, our food system should be front-and-center, receiving abundant attention from candidates, the media, debate moderators, and the public. Whether for president, congress, governorships, or local elections, the candidates must be familiar with nutrition’s central role in the current and future success of our nation, and the voters must demand to know where the candidates stand on the issues. This will lead to a new series of elected nutrition champions in federal, state, and local offices who make these health, equity, environmental, and economic issues a central platform of their efforts.

    This is nutrition’s time.

Whether in the current administration or the next one, we also need another White House Conference on Nutrition. The last and only such conference was held in 1969–47 years ago. It was directed and organized by Dr. Jean Mayer, Special Consultant to the President, who went on to lead Tufts University and found the only graduate school of nutrition in North America, our Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy. That Conference achieved many successes, including improved programs for school lunch, child nutrition, and nutrition education; greater access to food assistance including a new program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); and consumer protection and information activities for the public and industry. Since that time, many other White House Conferences have been held on topics such as bullying (2011), conservation (2012), mental health (2013), working families (2014), and aging (2015, the sixth such White House conference since 1961). In 50 years, our food system has changed radically. A new, executive-level emphasis on food and nutrition is essential, including for health, hunger, medical care, jobs and the economy, and sustainability.

This is nutrition’s time. More than ever, the public is deeply interested in healthy and sustainable eating, while many across industry recognize that their success depends on being part of the solution. And, tremendous advances in nutrition science and policy science have us poised to deliver major breakthroughs toward a healthier and more prosperous America. With strong elected leaders, we can bring together modern science and robust stakeholder networks to achieve real change. And we could do this quickly, learning from past successes to accomplish in 10 years what required 50 years for tobacco reduction, 70 years for car safety, and 100+ years for water and sanitation.

But first, we have to have the conversation. If no one is talking about these issues, they will remain buried, overshadowed by tangential topics. As we enter the last lap of the 2016 elections, it’s time for food to be a major issue on the table."""

    test_text_5s = (
        """Brexit, a rotting corpse, and me.

Listening to Spotify rather than the news, I drive to work, deadened by a night of broken sleep. A blue van, a plumber’s, passes in the opposite direction. The driver, gone before I see his face, sounds the horn at an attractive woman, short skirt and short hair, waiting at a bus stop. At the sound, she deflates, shoulders sagging. I drive on, thinking:

‘I bet he voted LEAVE.’

What that reaction makes me, I don’t know.

I wake at midnight, needing a piss. When I get back to bed, I open the BBC News app on my phone. The live coverage of the referendum and results from the north-east suggest a larger than expected vote for LEAVE. I have a Han Solo bad feeling, stomach cramp, like my insides know something I don’t yet.

I have fitful dreams before waking at three, further gains for leave, and then six, when the BBC is predicting a LEAVE victory. Turns out my insides were right.

I message my wife, who’s away with the kids: ‘fuck’. But the word doesn’t communicate what I mean because I don’t know what I mean, other than a LEAVE victory is pretty shitty. Like a character reversal in a B-movie where the hero’s mate turns out to be the villain — yes, the mask drops, and Britain’s not a nation of cosmopolitan social liberals, after all.

Fuck.

I didn’t think #Brexit would happen. I didn’t think Trump could be elected president.

This morning, I drink coffee in my kitchen, tiny — it’s London, while staring at nothing. The caffeine makes me more tired. I thumb through social media. My contacts, of course, are all mortified and predict cataclysm and ruin and the referendum isn’t legally binding, right?

I know nobody who voted LEAVE.

Before showering, I delete my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Sometimes, you can be too connected. They’ll be back — it’s a decision I can reverse.

Work was as quiet as a wake. Instant reaction forces loss of perspective and, like Angela Carter said, nothing is a matter of life and death except life and death. Nobody’s died. But my country’s taken a headfirst dive into unknown waters and is plummeting darkly … like the financial markets. I watch Cameron’s resignation speech on my laptop, shut away in my office. His voice wavers as he says he loves his country. I minimise the feed and Google ‘Canada gun laws’. If they’re stricter than the US, I reckon that Canada would make a nice place to emigrate to. My kids would love all the mountains and the moose.

My wife messages. She describes a conversation she had with my son.

‘You know you said you wanted to be in the EU?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, we’re going to be out.’
‘Owww why???’ *sad face*

A man on the television, with the dead eyes and expensive accent of every British rightwing nutjob, says today he’s finally proud to be British. I’m sitting on my sofa, in my suit, eating Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.

‘I’m not, mate,’ I say and turn off the television.

Nigel Farage, the braying victor, claims ‘independence day’ and ‘without a bullet being fired’. Last week, Labour MP and ‘remain’ supporter, Jo Cox was shot and stabbed by a man who shouted ‘Britain First’ as he murdered the mother of two.

Last week, Nigel Farage unveiled a poster that fellow members of the LEAVE campaign criticised for being a bit Nazi. He won’t apologise for his ‘Breaking Point’ poster because, I guess, apologising is something foreigners do.

Nigel Farage’s wife is German. And his side won the referendum.

Somebody said not every LEAVE voter is a racist, but every racist is a LEAVE voter.

Change, in life, comes in increments. You don’t wake up an adult. It’s a creeping maturity. One morning you see a pubic hair, fifteen years later, you’re paying a mortgage. You stop dancing every weekend because it’s more fun to go out once a month, what with the hangovers. You pay more attention to the garden. First a weed, eventually a new patio. This is how I see #Brexit going. A slow disintegration. Refrigerated food slowly turning. Muscular dystrophy. A rotting corpse. Everything turning to shit — it’s the natural way.

‘There’s always alcohol!’ I say to a colleague as I leave work. I have a bottle of French red at home. I should probably be drinking English bitter.

Conversations:

‘Why don’t we just open all the important decisions to referendum?’ says someone. ‘Capital punishment? Abortion? Let the people decide.’

At lunch, I tell a friend that I wouldn’t mind if England were beaten by Iceland in the European Championships.

‘Isn’t ironic?’ I say. ‘We might get kicked out of Europe twice in a week.’

My friend says that’s not irony. I say something about situational irony and the conversation fades, in the same way that conversations have faded all day.

After voting on Thursday, I asked the election officials if turnout had been good.

‘We’re always good in this ward,’ said one.

‘Today is better than a general election,’ said the other. ‘Slow and steady.’

I was the youngest person in the polling station, a church hall, by decades. I looked at the faces of a couple who were limping towards a ballot box with the singular determination of the elderly. The man, bent double, had a mouth in the shape of the letter ’n’. His partner looked like she’d been a victim of the old wives’ tale about your face being set by a change of wind. And she’d not been smiling when the wind had changed. We, me and the elderly, had been told by both sides of the importance of voting — a democratic right that we’d be fools not to exercise because of the two world wars etc etc. That may be so, but nobody here appeared to be having much fun in their exercise, like every gym I’ve ever visited.

Despite what Twitter had promised, there were no cute dogs tied up outside, no toddlers brought to their first poll. Just miserable looking pensioners, with skin as white as their hair. And, outside, puddles from the morning’s thunder storm.

After voting, I went for a sandwich. It was lucky, I thought, that this polling station, a church hall, wasn’t representative of the country. Because if it were, the UK would 100% be voting for LEAVE. Which would clearly never happen, I mean: come on! Brits are the good guys, right?

I had a mozzarella and chorizo toastie. It was delicious.

During tonight’s drive home, I see a young man walking with a young woman. He’s wearing a nylon suit that catches the sun. His hair is greased back from his forehead. He walks with a swagger, his mouth, as he speaks to his girlfriend (who has a face full of obvious make-up, masking features that were pretty before she realised they were pretty), a half-smirk.

‘I bet he voted LEAVE,’ I think.

What this says about me, I still don’t know.

Approaching home, lost in thoughts of alcohol and family, I notice someone’s tied blue and yellow ribbon around a tree trunk. I think first that it marks a past accident, but I realise the colours are of the EU flag.

The accident isn’t past. The accident is today.""",
        """I work on a 5 year time frame. Anything less is a loss.

I have a rule of never starting any project that I can’t commit the next five years to. I don’t work on anything that I can’t see myself doing in 5–7 years, and I never try and gun for a short term pay off. I’m a big believer in wider time frames.

Any project that’s truly worth doing, whether it’s writing a book or starting a business, is worth putting years into. Years allow you to grow, years allow you to succeed to the best of your abilities.

It comes down to the fact that when I begin projects, I want to see them through. I want to work on them and bleed for them and put every ounce of sweat that I’ve got into them. I want to get them across the finish line.

And I have big dreams. I’ve always had big dreams. I want to put a dent in the universe, and change the world, and found a street wear brand, and I want to take on another CMO role, and I want to work for a VC firm.

That’s a lot of shit to do. I’m a realist. I know that none of those goals are ever going to be attainable if I can’t fucking focus and put a long time frame on them. And it’s the same thing with any other dream or goal.

If you set a 5 year time frame, you’re giving yourself room to win. Here’s why.
A short time frame means you want a quick pay off.

When I meet founders who are only thinking about the next year of their company, and they haven’t even started to look beyond it, I have to question why they’re building their startup. And I’m always scared that “why” is because they want to make a quick buck.

You don’t accomplish anything of value if you’re just trying to rush to the finish line, get paid and get out. When you’re only living inside of a short time frame, that means the quick pay off is the sole goal, it’s all you care about. Every other aspect of your project won’t matter.
Which means if you don’t get it quick, you’ll quit.

I’ve seen this time and again, with musicians and artists and startup founders. When they’re only focusing on the short term, they just can’t hack it when their pay off doesn’t come rolling around the corner. They give up. They quit.

They’re too easily demoralized, when they wake up and smell the coffee and start to understand that their get rich quick scheme isn’t going to happen, and they throw in the towel too early. It’s tough to see, because you know that some of these creatives and entrepreneurs have a lot to give. They’re letting themselves down.
5 years gives you time to shake the foundations.

Why 5 years? Because it’s enough time to go from zero to hero. It’s enough time to take an idea from its very conception, the earliest tiniest version, to one of the biggest ideas in the world. That time frame could be all it takes, or it could be more, but there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of it being any less.

That’s not to say you’ve got to refuse to take opportunities that could lead to success in a much smaller time frame, but you use the 5 year mark as the measure of what you’re doing and how it’s going. You use the 5 year mark as the target, and you take aim and fire.

I know that I’ve got every chance of failing. No matter how much time I give myself, no matter how focused I am on the long term, I’ve got every chance of completely fucking up and never reaching where I want to be. That’s a total possibility, and I understand that.

But I don’t want to sell myself short, or limit my chances, by trying to rush anything. I want to put the right amount of time in and work to make my goals happen the right away, accomplish everything to the best of my abilities.

I’ve tried to rush my life and my career before, and it’s always ended in bitter disappointment. I don’t do that anymore. I work on 5 year time frames, because I know that setting anything lower is setting myself up for a loss.""",
        """On the Death of James Rhodes — War Machine
‘Making America White Again’ one page at a time
James Rhodes as War Machine meeting his end against the Mad Titan, Thanos in Civil War II #1.

I had refused to make much commentary about the death of James Rhodes in the recent Civil War II series because I recognize a truth about being Black in America that comics merely reflect what People of Color already know to be true:

White people don’t care about effective representation of People of Color. They just don’t give a fuck. Why should I bother to have any feelings at all about something I know doesn’t make a difference wherever the hell @Marvel is headquartered these days?

And I was perfectly prepared to let James Rhodes go of into comic oblivion where Black heroes go and rarely ever return. Until I remembered this:
Bill Foster (Giant Man) dies at the hands of a genetically-engineered Thor in the first Civil War series.

If you’re Black, you know this image and it sits poorly with you. I know it did with me.

I didn’t say anything when the first Civil War had this travesty. I wasn’t happy with it, but I figured Marvel wasn’t doing anything good with the character so it was only a matter of time before his ticket got punched. I accepted this travesty and seethed inside, quietly.

Then when they killed Rhodes, I could not let it happen a second time without speaking my True Mind. Then I hesitated. What if I ever wanted to work in comics or at Marvel in the future? How could they let someone who was going to be as critical of them in the next few minutes ever be a part of their bullpen?

Before I could close the window and just seethe again on the inside, repressing more unhealthy rage, a news article posted this right in my Twitter feed:
Third-party congressional candidate for Tennessee’s 3rd District, Rick Tyler tells WTVC that he erected the sign to provoke thought and to get people thinking about pre-1960s America when whites were a “super-majority.”

Yep, ‘Make America White Again’ Is This Guy’s Actual Campaign For Congress
So, without further ado:
A couple of quotes from an interview with Brian Michael Bendis

From the io9 interview

The one hurdle I had was the idea that [Iron Man and Captain Marvel] are both smart, good people and they’ve been through Civil War. What would make [these characters] throw the gauntlet down again? It was really what other writers had gifted me — that Rhodey was Tony’s best friend and also romantically connected to Carol — and then I said out loud [his death] is something they would fight for.

Bendis: The fear is that there won’t be any drama. Like if nothing bad is going to happen to Miles Morales, then why would you buy Miles Morales? You’re buying it for the events and the drama and for stuff to happen. I used to get crap like this when I was writing Daredevil.

They said, “Man you hate Daredevil. You never give him a break.” I said, “You wouldn’t buy the ‘I’m giving him a break book?’” You wouldn’t buy it. I know you wouldn’t. So that went into the equation when thinking about it. If the story is going this way… cannot do something. Any other reason just seemed false and bullshitty.

My biggest problem was, after losing Bill in the first one, it’s such a well-worn annoying trope when it comes to black characters in pop culture and genre fiction. It’s like, “Okay, yeah, we can lose him because whatever imagined numbers for our audience won’t care about him.”

Bendis: May I say you’re completely right. I’m not colorblind and please understand, I’m not whitesplaining or mansplaining. Ask me questions and I’ll tell you what I was feeling about it. I’m not saying it’s the only way to feel or that this is the last statement on the subject, because I don’t think it is at all.
The untimely remains of James Rhodes

Yes, I wanted to pull the whole quote so you can see why this sits so poorly with me. Like a body on a slab.

Comic fans want to think writers aren’t bastards and don’t look at the characters as disposable. But in this case, that is exactly what he did. In his own words: he considered Rhodes to be nothing more than a thing to be disposed of so two White Characters could have feelings?

#blackdeathsforwhitetears?

Are you fucking kidding me?

(Sorry kids, you might want to leave the room for this one. I will write something family-friendly again tomorrow, I promise.)

Brian Bendis felt the need to “white-man-splain” how it was necessary for James Rhodes, one of the longest running Black male protagonists of the Marvel Universe to die in order to make the stakes of Civil War II seem worthwhile.

What? We couldn’t imperil the Universe one more time?

You have so many Black characters you can just kill one ’cause you want folks to feel something?

Let me explain to you why this is a problem for me. It may take away from the initial article but it makes the personal affront just a bit more meaningful.

Like Rhodes, I am a military veteran, who has spent the last thirty years working with computer technology in a variety of industries and in a number of capacities.

As a Black man, it had always been my unfortunate lot, at least in Northern California to find I was invariably the only Black man working in a technical capacity in most companies that I worked for.

In some companies where I was a leading executive, I found I was only Black man to have EVER worked with that company, at that level, in its forty year history.

Why is that important?

Because James Rhodes as a character, was part of the iconic roster of characters who guided my choices growing up, a part of the ideals I aspired to being a child of the late 70s when his character first came into existence. I remember being excited to see him in the pages of Iron Man however infrequently he was allowed to grace the pages.

When James Rhodes became Iron Man, it was a momentous occasion to me, a confirmation that a Black man could have been doing that job quite well. The only failure of the character was that he did not invent the technology himself.

I came to grips with that when I remembered Green Lanterns didn’t create their rings, Captain Marvel didn’t create the Nega Bands which augmented his skills, and that Captain America didn’t create his amazing shield. I accepted that Rhodey would be forever linked to the annoyance that was often Tony Stark and I could be okay with it.

Using this as a personal cautionary tale, I would do better than Rhodey. I would master the technology I controlled. Even in my emulation of the character, I learned from him. But there was another aspect Marvel and the real world never addressed.

Where were all the other Black and Brown people in the company?

Stark had no other Black employees, and when I went to work, I never passed a Black man in the corridors, I never passed one on the street at lunchtime, I barely saw one at the technical conventions I attended where 50,000 to 100,000 people might attend.

When I did see one at a conference, I felt compelled to stop and chat, as if I were finding a long lost friend I hadn’t seen for years, an oasis in a desert of White, parched for Color of any kind. Parched for a sense of someone who knew my struggle, who didn’t overlook me as if I were nothing more than an impediment to their success.

And in their eyes, I saw they felt the same damn way. Where were all the people of color in the world?

Most Black men won’t ever say these things. They don’t want you to know how alone they feel. How out of place some of the things they hear in the office are and how hurtful some of the things that are said can be. They need that job.

Especially if it was a job of some significance, a job that was hard for anyone to get, let alone a Black man fighting against systemic racism, a mad cultural bias which says:

Black men are the worst thing to happen to America. Lazy, sexual predators, taking advantage of the system, using drugs and violence to control their urban hellholes held in check only with the valiant efforts of a hyper-vigilant police force.

Ask Bill O’Reilly, he will let you know that any day of the week.

When Marvel’s leadership decided James Rhodes had to die for the White characters of the Marvel Universe to give a damn and push the story along, I had to say, stop. Just stahp!

You see, Marvel writers and editors:

 You don’t care about Black characters. You don’t care about Brown characters. You honestly don’t care about People of Color in any way shape or form. You know how I figured this out?

 You hadn’t hired People of Color (for the longest time) and never in representational quantities.

Yes, I know about your recent hires. Nice, but a long way to go before you start looking like the population of the nation you draw your income from…

I am going to let my friend Hannibal Tabu take the floor for a second:

“Let’s run some numbers here. The last Black writer at Marvel was Reginald Hudlin, who left without fanfare in August 2009. The last Black writers at DC were Eric Wallace and Marc Bernardin, two television writers who were unceremoniously dropped in a slate of cancellations (Bernardin even commented on the struggles of Black writers in comics). Before Hudlin, screenwriter and actor Kevin Grevioux contributed The Blue Marvel to the canon, a character so ridiculously powerful that it’s hilarious to have him on the sidelines through most of Marvel history, and then … years of nothing.

DC briefly had screenwriters Felicia Henderson and Angela Robinson, but neither lasted very long. These numbers may seem spurious, but luckily there’s always hard data, thanks to this Google document showing that only twenty Black people have ever written more than one issue for, again, seventy percent of the marketplace.

Not “twenty Black people in the last ten years.” Not even “twenty Black people in the last twenty years.” That’s twenty Black people ever. Sure, you can bring up segregation for part of that period, but still. Even the ones who have gotten hired have not exactly had the best experience.”

You [Marvel] haven’t hired them as a significant part of your staff in over 40 years. You have hired no-talent Whites whose skills were barely nascent when there were highly skilled writers and artists of Color all over world.

And the recent hiring of talent of a diverse nature may be your way of making up for your failings but for at least 40 years, when you created Black characters they were never venerated, never esteemed, if they had powers at all, they were from the bottom of the basket in the superpower department

For example:

Though I love the character to death, Luke Cage is an epic cultural train-wreck no Black writer would have let you get away with. His origin is straight out of the Tuskegee Experiments, couple with being framed for a crime he didn’t commit. After being imprisoned he is then forced to participate in criminal experimentation upon his person.

After all of these indignities was he gifted with amazing ability? Amazing reflexes, superhuman speed, strength, stamina, regeneration, wall-crawling and a preternatural sense of danger? Who would have started their career with all of those powers?
First appearance, Hero for Hire, 1972

No. Luke Cage gets steel-hard skin, to protect him from bullets and a smattering of barely defined super-strength. I’m surprised he didn’t end up being called ‘Black Power’ Man.

He would go on to have to be hired for his services, and without appreciable education, he would never be inducted into the likes of SHIELD or any other agency and would take at least thirty years before he would become an Avenger.

His most famous feat was showing up in Doom’s castle and demanding he get paid the $200 he was owed. (Seriously, I kid you not.) He gets Doom to pay up.
The Captain Britain Corps, an entire collection of White metaheroes protecting all of time and space. Of course they do.

Meanwhile Captain Britain would appear in 1976 with a similarly modest set of powers but would in time come to rival the heaviest hitters of the Marvel Universe.

He would travel through space and time, visit alternate realities and find White people controlling entire realities throughout the Multiverse. An entire legion of heroes just like him.

You are not slick, Marvel.

Your viewpoint is exactly the same as the world you reflect. White heroes reflect the best humanity has to offer, the best the species can be. Exploring, commanding, taking control of how things work everywhere.

Black heroes exist only to make White heroes look good. Luke Cage highlights his White super-rich partner who stumbles into a Chinese temple and walks away with one of the most formidable powers in the Marvel Universe, the Iron Fist.

War Machine, highlights Tony Stark, the creator of the War Machine suit which had gotten LONG in the tooth while Tony was upgrading his armor every time he got his hair coiffed.

In the real world, being a Person of Color often means holding your tongue when racist shit goes down. When a White man guns down and entire nightclub, he gets to be mentally ill, not a racist white bigot who shouldn’t be allowed to own firearms. Because no white man represents anything other than himself, unless he is a paragon of virtue, then any White man could be Superman.

But a Black or minority person has to represent their entire race.

    They have to be the best of the best to be allowed to show up at the table with Whites.
    They have to be amazing and yet understated.
    They have to outperform everyone at the table, but never let it actually be known.
    They have to maintain a sense of supreme confidence, perfect poise, and a state of immeasurable mental fortitude that can never crack or show emotion.
    Because if it does, they are out of a job — considered too temperamental.

James Rhodes fighting against a room full of techno-ninjas in his nothing but his BVDs, and making them look bad. The big boss had to help out… Invincible Iron Man #8, 2015

When Brian Bendis had the nerve to say, we killed Rhodey because we knew the characters cared about him, what he effectively said was: We DIDN’T care about the effect it would have on the community who enjoyed that character. Which while unspoken reveals, the same way we didn’t care about Bill Foster, the last Black male to be killed in the previous Civil War series.

And don’t think the irony is lost in the story titles killing these Black Characters. Civil War? Really? Are you still chafing over that?

In case no one has said this to you Marvel, let me be the first to say:

What you did was a travesty. It was a statement as sure as if James Rhodes actually existed and you decided he offered too much hope, too much representation to Black men at a time when they are NOT in the workplace, due to racially-motivated fears, when they are unable to care for their families at the same capacity as White men.

White unemployment in the US is about 4.9% but Black male unemployment in some parts of the country are as high as 25%. While the nation cries and says we realize something is wrong but nothing changes, we all know the truth behind it.

White America simply doesn’t give a damn.

Just like you, Marvel. And to add to your sins, you have decided to make a young Black woman, your War Machine replacement. I know you probably won’t call her that, but the end result is the same. Will she get the same press and push as Spider-Gwen and Silk? I think not.

You created her to cast further disparagement upon Black men in the Marvel Universe. No, you won’t see it that way, and most people won’t be able to hear what I am saying because they will consider it too extreme and that your company couldn’t be thinking like that. In the end, that is exactly what it does, like it or not. Know it or not.

You could do it without knowing. This is the greatest benefit of White Privilege. You can create things, do things, terrible things and say, we didn’t know. Honestly, it could be true.

But the truth is more insidious than that.

You just didn’t care. You couldn’t be bothered. You were warned and just didn’t give a fuck. In a different interview it was admitted you had even talked to Ta Nehisi Coates (who is on assignment at Marvel writing Black Panther) who suggested this wouldn’t be a wise thing to do — killing Rhodes, such a step could send the wrong message.

James Rhodes was just a thing to you. Something to be disposed of when the time was necessary to get some White feels to hit the table. Tony Stark cared about Rhodes, you say. Carol Danvers cared about Rhodes, you say.

But the truth is borne out that YOU don’t care about Rhodes or any other Black characters you have kept under-powered in your universe to remind readers of comics that Black and brown characters are subservient and designed to cause division in the Marvel Universe. This is why they don’t have significant powers or abilities in comparison to White characters.

Name a Black character with reality-alteration powers in the MU. I’ll wait. (Really, name one, cause I can name three White characters who can alter reality like I can put on my pants in the morning.)

Now name a Black Character with NO POWERS. (Nick Fury, Night Thrasher, the Prowler)

Name a Black Character with intermittent or barely defined or described powers. (Cloak, who has a complete dependence upon his White counterpart, Dagger. He literally has no powers without her. Rage, whose powers of super-strength fall into the category of no other powers in the grab-bag.)

Name a Black Character how has inherited his powers, name or legacy from a previously established White Character. Bucky, er… Battlestar, (Captain America — Sam Wilson, and the Prowler when he is dressing up as Spider-Man…shameful — Oh, yes, you did have a Nova for a time who was a Black woman and her family. Whatever happened to them, I wonder…)

Name a Black character who you will admit could handily put Thor on the ropes. (I can only think of one and a Black writer created him.)

And you will say there are plenty of white characters who fail within those categories. But I will refute with one vital difference: They are not the only characters in your universe. There are thousands of others who don’t.

Tell me again how progressive the Marvel Universe is and how supportive you are of minority characters and how integral they are to the Marvel Universe.

You killed James Rhodes, you replaced him with a younger, Black woman only adding fuel to the diversity fire because she will create her own technology, displacing Rhodes who could not. Thus ensuring the quota of Black heroes remains unchanged except we now get to add a Black woman to the roster. And maybe she will be here two years from now and maybe she won’t.

(Almost like what happened to John Henry Irons over in the DC Universe, except he created his own technology and STILL got replaced by his niece…)

Just like in the corporate world, Black women replace Black men because they fill two slots on the diversity play-card: female and Black. Let’s find out in a few months Ri ri (the new War Machine) is gay and she will be a trifecta.

I admit to having an unnatural love of comics and an awareness of how poorly Blacks have been portrayed in comics. I can recognize attempts at creating some degree of diversity in the Marvel Universe recently with the additions of Miles Morales (legacy Spider-Man), Ms. America (the Ultimates), Jane Foster as Thor, Captain Marvel getting a big girls costume and the option of a larger, more prominent role in the Marvel Universe and maybe even a movie, Spectrum getting her powers adjusted so she can return to being a contender in the Marvel Universe, the young Latino Nova, and other tiny actions of diversity you promote as the changing of the guard and the like.

But like most things done by White people, they are done over the bodies of other Black people. A reminder to know your place. A definer of the relationship between Blacks and Whites.

I know no one has said this to your face writers, publishers and editors of Marvel and I doubt you would ever give me the opportunity. So I say to thee with all due humility to the vastness of the Marvel Universe and for any Black fan who would let you know what they think if they didn’t want to work for you so badly.

Fuck you. Very much.

You think because we buy your comics, we don’t see your shit.

You think we aren’t capable of seeing that we are second-class citizens in your fictitious universe. We see your White Superiority showing up in the aggrandizement of White heroes and the denigration of minority ones. We read comics but we live the lives of People of Color. If you hired some of us to work with you, you would actually be aware of just how fucked up many of your Black stereotypes really are.

The one thing you can’t try and push off on us is racial disparity, piss on our heads and tell us its just rain.

You have pissed on characters of color in your works for decades and the death of James Rhodes was just one more way to remind us, we don’t matter, no matter how prominent, no matter how powerful, no matter how beloved, we can be undone with the stroke of a pen, a cup of coffee and a scone; with the bullshit conversation about how it will be meaningful and necessary.

Just stop. If you are a creator of comics and you have minority characters who have never had a minority writer on the staff that wrote for that character:

Fuck you, too.

That is as polite as I think it needs to be.

You can’t say to me: We are producing comics, we are producing the legends, the dreams the aspirations of a generation if the only people in your worlds to aspire to power and acquire it are White.

Fuck you.

Now a friend pointed out to me that I shouldn’t feel this way. That things are changing and we need to hold you accountable for what you produce. That if we hang out and hang on long enough you will get your act together. I don’t happen to agree.

Why?

You have no interest in the experiences of people of color. You have no friends of color. You have few if any employees of color. And if you are like most Whites in America, 75% of you have never known a person of color at more than a passing level, EVER.
I read this issue of Invincible Iron Man with great pride in my heart. Rhodes was bad-ass. Who knew a year later he would be dead. Marvel, that’s who.

To you, we are nothing more than scenery to be replaced at will. Able to die so that others might live (the Sacrificial Negro) to offer our advice which will keep White heroes moral and upright (the Moral Negro), and with the use of native and spiritual magic redeem the White man so he may achieve his apotheosis (the Magical Negro).

America’s shame is often written in the mythology of comics, shared with youth to perpetuate the same ideals in the future. But I didn’t always believe this was the way.

Once upon a time, I believed that comics could save us all.

I thought the aspirations of the heroes in comics could improve our relationships with each other as we struggled with our legendary challenges, our mythic tales writ large, our emotional and cultural challenges presented in a fantastic format with one vital difference.

Comic and their heroes would right those wrongs. They would address inequality, not foment it. They would give hope to children of all colors and all creeds, no matter where they were in society, anyone could aspire to be an Avenger.

I was wrong.

The same petty shit we fight over in our real world is still part of what we see, with pretty four-color splendor reflected in our modern mythology.

White men get to rule the Universe.

Black men and women get to take out the trash.

Or occasionally become the trash upon which the legend of White heroes will rest.

Writers and leaders at Marvel: Say whatever helps you sleep at night.

But I want you to know there are comic companies out there aborning right now. They will force you to be better, more inclusive, to do better, and acknowledge a world that is really outside your door.

A diverse and magnificent world you are too fearful to show. A world where you are not as significant as you like to think you are. A world where other people can create the Universe and participate in it at the same level you do.

My friends say it’s wrong to expect that Marvel or any other White run comic company will ever create characters that could challenge the nature of the White Metamyth of Superiority. Why would they create legends for their kids to look up to that look like you, he says?

Fine. Then the best I can hope for is to watch a new generation take a stab at bringing down the beast that is Marvel or DC or whatever companies still treat anyone who isn’t White like they are an incidental part of the world at large.

These new talents are very good. I hope they keep you up at night. I plan to help them do exactly that. Do better or I will lead the group that will destroy you. I will make it my life’s work.

James Rhodes, 1979 -2016

I know you were a clone body of the original James Rhodes, (but presumably with a completely downloaded mind) but in a comic universe, that didn’t make you any less special.

You deserved better than to be used as a pawn in a story that should have had nothing to do with you.

You served with distinction, valor and honor. No Marine has ever done more for the imaginations of young Black men. You will be missed.

Semper Fi, my brother.""",
        """Nouriel Roubini: ‘Brexit could be the beginning of the break-up of the EU’
This could be the disintegration of the Eurozone, says the economist who predicted the 2008 housing crash. Image: REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

Mark Jones, Head of Digital Content, The World Economic Forum Agenda

Brexit could mark the start of disintegration in Europe, says Nouriel Roubini, one of the few economists to predict America’s 2007–8 housing crash.

Roubini said: “It could be — I’m not saying it is going to be — the beginning of the disintegration of the European Union or the Eurozone.

“At some point in the future, the Scots might decide to go for another referendum and it may be the break-up of the United Kingdom.

“Then the Catalans in Spain might say ‘me too’ and that might lead to the break-up of Spain.

“Some of the Nordic members of the European Union might say ‘without the UK the European Union is mostly the Eurozone, so what’s in it for me?’” — Sweden, Denmark and so on.

However, the economics professor was careful to put the Brexit decision in context. It’s a concern rather than a crisis in his eyes.

“I don’t expect a global recession or another global financial crisis. I think that the shock that comes from Brexit is significant but not of the same size and magnitude as the one we had in 2007, 8 and 9.

“However, I would say it is a major, significant financial shock, as the reaction of the markets on Friday suggested. It creates a whole bunch of economic, financial, political and also geopolitical uncertainties.”""",
        """A Father’s War, a Son’s Toxic Inheritance

Stephen Katz’s estranged father was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. Now the photographer wonders if that caused his own health problems.

By Stephen M. Katz
Stephen M. Katz shares his 45th birthday with his father Al and son Sawyer, their first birthday celebration together in nearly 40 years. (Photo: Stephen M. Katz)

The package from my father arrived in 2009, a few months after my latest heart surgery. The yellow envelope contained a two-inch stack of documents: handwritten notes, old photographs, newspaper clippings, medical files, and military service records.

Together, they told the story of a man I barely knew. I hadn’t heard from my father, Al Weigel, in more than 20 years.

At first, I didn’t read any of it. Why would I want to rip open that wound? I tossed the envelope onto a shelf in a closet, and there it sat for years, forgotten behind a pile of clothes. I didn’t know it held information that would link my life — and health — to a war waged before my birth.

It wasn’t until 2012, not long after I’d become a father, that I remembered the envelope. I pulled it back out, figuring someday I would want to tell my son where he came from.

I studied pictures of Al, noting our shared features: I have his smile and broad shoulders. I learned that his family was part Irish and part German. That my grandfather had been a college track star — and later an alcoholic. That my dad had grown up in a middle-class New Jersey town before attending the United States Naval Academy and going off to fight in Vietnam.

The package also delivered a warning: A handwritten note attached to a stack of Veterans Affairs medical records. During the war, before I was born, Al had sprayed Agent Orange along riverbanks in Vietnam, often soaking his uniform in the herbicide. The exposure, he wrote, had caused him serious health problems, including a neurological disorder, and he believed it also might have harmed me.

My mind raced as I thought of my own troubled medical history. A heart defect diagnosed at birth. An underactive thyroid. Problems with my nervous and immune systems. More recently, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and a nerve disorder that severely limits the use of my right hand.

I’m now 46. A lean 6-foot–2 and 190 pounds. I don’t smoke. I try to eat healthy. But the number of pills I swallow every day would make you think I’m twice that age. As a teenager, I was sick so often, I joked that my healthy brother and I couldn’t be related. He’d been born before the war, before Agent Orange.

“There really is nothing that can be done now, as far as I know,” Al had written in 2009, “except be aware of the ravages of A.O.”

What my father didn’t know was that I’d already become familiar with Agent Orange and its consequences.

I’d made several trips to Vietnam by then, photographing people with much worse health problems than my own. They were descendants of the Vietnamese who’d come in contact with the chemicals — those on the other end of my young father’s fire hose.

I’m a photographer for the Virginian-Pilot, and I often spend my time off traveling overseas to document the work of humanitarian charities and working on other projects. When I finally opened Al’s package, I’d been working on a documentary film set in Vietnam about a second-generation victim of Agent Orange.

Now I wonder: Could I be one too?

I’m not the only one asking the question, it turns out. Thousands of adult children of Vietnam veterans are wrestling with the possibility.

Researchers, too, are wondering.

My father was one of at least 2.6 million U.S. veterans who may have been exposed to Agent Orange. The military sprayed it by the millions of gallons across Vietnam, aiming to kill thick brush and trees and make it harder for the Viet Cong to spring out of the jungle. In the years since, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has acknowledged the chemical harmed those who came in contact with it and compensates them for a growing list of illnesses.

A small number of veterans’ children — those born with spina bifida — are also eligible for Agent Orange payments. So are the children of female veterans born with about a dozen other defects, though the vast majority of Vietnam veterans are men. Researchers have long been cool to the idea that a man’s exposure to chemicals could hurt children fathered later.

Recent studies, though, suggest it’s at least plausible. Male rats exposed to dioxin — the most hazardous component of Agent Orange — have passed genetic mutations on to their babies in laboratory tests. But researchers say more work is needed to prove what many Vietnam vets have long feared — that their children have inherited the burden of a war they had no part in.

Members of Vietnam Veterans of America have hosted town hall meetings across the country in recent years, urging vets to pass on medical and service records to their children, even if they’re no longer in touch with them. That way, veterans advocates say, children of vets will be prepared to fight for disability benefits if the science someday proves Agent Orange can impact a man’s children.

VVA is backing a bill in Congress, the Toxic Exposure Research Act, that would require the VA to study the effects of wartime exposures on children and grandchildren of vets — from Agent Orange in Vietnam to burn pits in Iraq.

My father sat in on one of those Agent Orange meetings in New Jersey. Soon afterward, he put together the package of information and sent it to my brother, who passed it on to me.

For years, I had no interest in re-connecting with the man.

Agent Orange brought us back together.

My childhood recollections of my father are like hazy dreams.

I remember going with him to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. He lifted me on his shoulders to see above the crowd. Another time I recall watching a boxing match with him. Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks, I think.

I was too young then to understand the problems brewing between my parents. They separated when I was seven. Dad had returned from the war a different person, and over time they’d drifted apart. He would come home late some nights and say he’d been out on his boat; Mom would call him a liar. I remember closing the door to my room and slipping under my covers to drown out the yelling.

I didn’t see him much after the divorce. My brother and I were told he was a deadbeat, that he didn’t want to be part of our lives. I accepted that as fact.

Growing up in New York in the years after, I used to search for him in crowds, wondering if we’d bump into each other. Hoping.

I was sick often back then. I took antibiotics like they were vitamins. After I turned 13, the murmur I was born with worsened. Caused by a defect known as aortic stenosis, blood had begun back-flowing into my heart, straining it. After months of feeling nauseated and lightheaded, my pediatric cardiologist told me I needed open-heart surgery.

I didn’t know it at the time, but as they wheeled me into the operating room, my father showed up. He’d learned of my surgery and wanted to make sure I was OK.

He wasn’t there when I woke up though.

My family, I’d learn years later, had told him to leave.

I was feeling unusually ill during my first trip to Vietnam in early 2009.

I’d traveled with a group of dentists who’d set up a free clinic in a remote village. The charity that sent them paid for my travel, and, in exchange, I photographed their work for use in promotional materials.

I pressed on despite feeling lightheaded, short of breath and nauseated for much of the two weeks there, not wanting to squander a chance to explore a new country. On a previous trip to the Philippines, photographs I took of children with untreated hydrocephalus led a pharmaceutical company to donate thousands of dollars’ worth of medical supplies and send a surgeon to treat the kids.

In Vietnam, I hired a local guide and asked him to find an orphanage like the one in the Philippines, figuring I might be able to re-create that effort. Something got lost in translation. He drove me to a rural orphanage, but as we stepped inside the darkened building, I didn’t see anyone suffering from hydrocephalus.

The sound of moaning and the stench of feces filled the air. Dozens of children sat atop metal beds without mattresses. Some were hitting themselves. Some were chained to the beds — to protect themselves and others, I was told. Many had severe physical deformities.

“What is this place?” I asked a worker.

The orphanage was for those believed to have been harmed by a parent’s exposure to Agent Orange. I didn’t know anything about the chemical before then, but I’d soon learn Vietnam is full of places like this. Vietnamese parents who can’t afford to care for a child with disabilities often face an unthinkable choice: Abandon the child at one of these orphanages, or let their other children go hungry.

I watched as a father made that decision. The sadness in his eyes as he walked away from his screaming son haunts me, especially now that I’m a dad.
An image from Katz’s first visit to an orphanage for victims of Agent Orange exposure in April 2009. (Photo: Stephen M. Katz)

I asked my guide if he knew anyone who suffered because of a parent’s Agent Orange exposure who was capable of speaking. He drove me a few miles to the town of Cu Chi to meet Thanh Thao Huynh.

The woman, known as Thao, was born with crippling deformities — a shrunken body, stunted legs, brittle bones — that prevented her from attending school. But she’d taught herself to read and had created a small library in the shed where her father, a pig farmer, stored feed and fertilizer. Many neighborhood children visited her library to read or borrow books.

I asked Thao, “If you could have anything, what would you ask for?” Her answer surprised me: just a few hundred dollars to buy more books to share with children.

Months later, after I’d returned home, that short story and a photograph I made of Thao would inspire a friend of mine and lead to the start of the documentary project, which would span several years.

But first, I needed to take care of myself. I was feeling even more nauseated and short of breath as we left Vietnam. Back home, my cardiologist conducted tests and came back with an urgent diagnosis. Blood was again back-flowing into my heart.

I needed surgery, and right away.

A few years later, after my son was born and I’d begun grappling with what it means to be a father, I finally opened the package from Al. I read through the documents over several sittings. I noticed, mixed in with his records, a letter of recommendation from his commanding officer in Vietnam. It was dated April 4, 1969. Al was being considered for a job with the Central Intelligence Agency.

“I know Mr. Weigel personally,” the letter stated, “and highly recommend him to you for any position.”

Signed: “Bud” (E.R. Zumwalt, Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy)

My father, it turns out, had served as an assistant to the man who had commanded naval forces in Vietnam and who later became the youngest to serve as chief of naval operations.

Zumwalt’s legacy is also tragically entwined with Agent Orange. He’d given the order directing river boat crews like my father’s to spray the herbicide along riverbanks. Among those who carried out that work: Zumwalt’s son, Lieutenant Elmo Russell Zumwalt III.

A decade after handling the chemical, the younger Zumwalt was diagnosed with lymphoma, and later Hodgkin’s disease, another deadly form of cancer. He died in 1988 at age 44, leaving behind a wife and two children — including a son born after the war with a severe congenital dysfunction that confused his physical senses.

The elder Zumwalt had been misled about Agent Orange, he said years later. He’d been told it posed no threat to humans, though the chemical companies that made it — Monsanto and Dow — already had plenty of evidence that wasn’t true.

Despite all that, the admiral said he had no regrets: His decision likely harmed his son and grandson, he acknowledged in an interview with the New York Times in 1986, but it also probably saved the lives of countless U.S. service members, he said.

“That does not ease the sorrow I feel.”

In 1985, the same year that Zumwalt’s son got his second cancer diagnosis, tens of thousands of Vietnam War veterans put on their combat fatigues and marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and down Broadway in the biggest parade in New York’s history to that point.

The ticker-tape march was advertised as a belated “welcome home,” 10 years after veterans returned to protests.

I was 15 and living on Long Island. I pestered my mother to take me to the parade that May, secretly hoping to spot my father. I hadn’t seen him in more than five years but still thought of him often.

If I saw him that day, I didn’t recognize him.

A few months later, we met at a lawyer’s office. My brother and I were filling out paperwork to take our mother’s maiden name, Katz. Because I was a minor, I needed my father’s permission. I stared at the ground as I explained my decision. He said he understood.

I told him that we’d gone to the veterans parade, trying to change the subject. He said he’d marched in it and was sorry he missed me.

We shook hands, and he left.

I wouldn’t see him again for nearly three decades.

It’s incredible what fathers pass on to their children, even when they’re not around. Even when they don’t mean to. Last year, a groundbreaking study found that the children of men drafted to fight in Vietnam are worse off today than the children of men who stayed home.
Katz and his newborn son Sawyer in 2012. (Photo: Amanda Lucier)

On average, according to the study, we earn less than our peers and are less likely to have steady jobs. There are many possible reasons for the disparity, but researchers suspect the psychological impacts of the war play a major role. When someone suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder — as was the case for many Vietnam combat veterans, including my father — it affects the whole family, research shows, and can cause behavioral problems in children.

The economists who conducted the study didn’t look at the generational impacts of Agent Orange. That isn’t surprising though.

When I’ve asked doctors if my father’s exposure to the chemical could be affecting my health, they typically look at me as if I’ve asked if they believe in aliens.

Heather Bowser, the president of Children of Vietnam Veterans Health Alliance, knows the feeling. Her father was exposed to Agent Orange. A few years later, she was born premature, missing a leg, a big toe, and several fingers. She leads a group of more than 3,700 other children of Vietnam veterans who believe their health has been affected by Agent Orange.

Most doctors have no clue about the herbicide, Bowser told me. But neither do most children of veterans, she said.

Many in Bowser’s group suffer from problems with their spinal cords. Heart conditions like mine and problems with the thyroid and immune and nervous systems are also common. Not everyone has obvious physical conditions like her, she told me.

Bowser, 43, recognizes that not every illness can be blamed on Agent Orange. And she acknowledges the science hasn’t proven a generational impact, though the anecdotal evidence she’s gathered seems significant. She agrees more research is needed.

I asked her how I could help.

She told me to tell my story.

I finally picked up the phone and called my father a few years ago. He seemed shocked to hear from me.

He told me he’d always wanted to be a part of my life, but that others in my family kept him away. He said that he’d sent birthday cards that apparently never reached me. He told me he’d re-married and had been a good dad to his step-daughters.

After nearly an hour, I realized he was afraid this would be his only chance to talk to me. “Al,” I said, cutting him off, “this won’t be the last time we speak. I’ll call you again and we can stay in touch.”

“Promise me,” he said.

He drove to Norfolk three years ago to meet my wife and his grandson, Sawyer. It was hard to reconcile the tall, strapping figure from my memories with the hunched and frail man who came to visit.

He’d recently moved into a condominium in Hackensack, New Jersey, because he was tired of falling down the stairs at his home of 25 years, he said. He’d had six spine operations before he learned he had peripheral neuropathy, among other debilitating conditions tied to Agent Orange exposure.

He’s 73, younger than some grandfathers, but was too feeble to hold his grandson.

In 2015, my family and I visited him on my birthday. I felt like a small boy as he joined the chorus singing to me before I blew out candles.

Last year, the documentary I helped make, Thao’s Library, was released and won the top award at a major film festival. It was later screened at AMC theaters across the country.

I traveled to New York for the premiere in Times Square and invited my father.

He’d told me he was proud of the work I do and couldn’t wait to see the film. He talked about it for weeks. I was excited for him to be there.

But a couple hours beforehand, he called and said he was sorry. His health had worsened, he said. He didn’t think he could handle the hour-long drive into the city.

He sounded heartbroken. I felt the same as I settled in to watch my film on the big screen that evening.

Agent Orange brought my father back into my life.

I fear it’s also left us too little time together."""
    )

#    from .tinydb_lexicon import lexicon as t_lex
#    def test_tinydb():
#        with t_lex.new(1000, 8, 'test', overwrite=True) as lex:
#            res1 = rivet.compare_documents(test_text_1, test_text_2, lexicon=lex, ingest=True)
#        print(res1)


#    from .mem_lexicon import Lexicon as m_lex
#    def test_lexicon():
#        lexicon = m_lex(1000, 8)
#        res1 = rivet.compare_documents(test_text_1, test_text_2, lexicon=lexicon, ingest=True)
#        print(res1)

    from sqlite3_lexicon import Lexicon as s_lex
    def test_sqlite():
        with s_lex.open('dbs/test.db', 10, 5, overwrite=True) as lex:
            res1 = rivet.compare_documents(test_text_1, test_text_2, lexicon=lex, ingest=True)
            res2 = rivet.compare_documents(test_text_3, test_text_4, lexicon=lex, ingest=True)
            res3 = rivet.compare_documents(*test_text_5s, lexicon=lex, ingest=True)
            count = lex.count()
        print(count)
        print(res1)
        print(res2)
        for res in res3:
            print(res)

    p = cProfile.Profile()
    p.runcall(test_sqlite)
    p.print_stats()