Loyal readers will remember that, ever since January 2021, I’ve considered the Vietnam War to be the best analogy to American efforts in the fight against SARS-CoV-2 (see Lockdown is our Viet… | Continue reading
“Naming Elon Musk person of the year is Time’s ‘worst choice ever’, say critics” (Guardian, today) ranks Elon Musk at least one notch below Adolf Hitler (Man of the Year in 1938). My ha… | Continue reading
How about this as a business idea: a travel site that answers the question “Where can I go conveniently and safely in the age of COVID-19 and restrictions imposed in the name of preventing CO… | Continue reading
We were invited to a birthday party for one of the kids in the neighborhood. A slender mom who appeared to be in her early thirties, on finding that we had moved from Massachusetts, said. “I … | Continue reading
A friend, who was forced to abandon his $10 million custom-built house in San Francisco after the wife refused to continue to live in a neighborhood where people injected heroin in their driveway, … | Continue reading
On a recent trip to Naples, Florida, we discovered that the Seed to Table supermarket (across the main road from our Marriott TownePlace Suites hotel; we explained to the kids that this was a doubl… | Continue reading
From the Federation of State Medical Boards: The FSMB is closely monitoring troubling legislation that has been introduced in a number of states aimed at limiting state medical boards’ authority to… | Continue reading
Almost time for serious Christmas shopping. Personally, I prefer to pay for everything with someone else’s credit card. Apparently, this idea is not original because I started getting U.S. ma… | Continue reading
From page of the New York Times today: Whom does inflation harm? It has to be bad for someone, right? Otherwise it wouldn’t be front page news. The NYT story: The Consumer Price Index is risi… | Continue reading
A friend texted me that Jussie Smollett had been convicted. I replied “Racism and homophobia in the U.S. are a lot worse than we thought.” (How can I be sure that Mr. Smollett was innoc… | Continue reading
Previous looks at estimating Covid death risk from insurance rates: COVID-19 is sure to kill you, but life insurance rates haven’t changedThankful that life insurance rates are still down From Cana… | Continue reading
“For Afghan Refugees, a Choice Between Community and Opportunity” (NYT, 11/24/2021): In resettling thousands of displaced Afghans, the Biden administration must weigh their need for sup… | Continue reading
“U.S. Hospitals Feel Strained as Virus Cases Surge Again” (NYT, today): As the Delta variant fuels hospitalizations in the U.S., health care systems struggle.Health officials may be bra… | Continue reading
I met a real estate developer in Sarasota who said that his specialty of buying “Class B-/C+” apartment buildings on behalf of investors and lightly fixing them up no longer made sense.… | Continue reading
As we remember the day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we can look at a recent attack on our shores by the Omicron variant of COVID, arriving inside the bodies of rich art world people from … | Continue reading
“U.S. Will Not Send Government Officials to Beijing Olympics” (New York Times, today): American athletes will still be able to compete in the Winter Games, but the diplomatic boycott is… | Continue reading
Me, in October… Does raging inflation prove or disprove Modern Monetary Theory? … is it fair to say that MMT is actually the mainstream economic philosophy in the U.S. and has been sinc… | Continue reading
I have been fighting a losing battle all semester with students who do not see the importance of plural versus possessive, capitalizing proper nouns, distinguishing between “it’s”… | Continue reading
Following up on Omicron Question of the Day: What good is PCR testing that takes 2-3 days for a result? … A repeat of an earlier question asked here: What is the point of our travel restricti… | Continue reading
Edwin Barnhart’s 22nd lecture in Maya to Aztec: Ancient Mesoamerica Revealed explains that ancient cultures in Central America and Mexico collapsed due to overpopulation combined with governi… | Continue reading
One thing I love about SARS-CoV-2 is that the inevitable mutations enable me to ask the same questions over and over. Suppose that Johnny starts feeling unwell after Art Basel. It takes him/her/zir… | Continue reading
One thing that I didn’t count on when we contemplated our move from Maskachusetts to the Florida Free State was the difference in “the built environment” (as architects put it). I… | Continue reading
We’re told that house prices across the U.S. are up by 20 percent compared to a year ago (see Inflation would be 10 percent per year if house prices were included). Yet in our neighborhood he… | Continue reading
If you’re going to Art Basel (today and tomorrow are the last two public days; the elites went on Tuesday and Wednesday), the pro move is to park at Miami Beach Senior High School, where the … | Continue reading
Why we need the Daily Mail: What other news outlet would highlight the inequality of the situation? (The liar enjoys freedom (well, until the lockdowns) and a $6 million house, paid for partly from… | Continue reading
Devoted readers may recall a report on an August 2021 trip to the Palm Beach County library (Jupiter branch): Not everyone in Florida is a Deplorable Neanderthal (children’s section of a Palm Beach… | Continue reading
If you read the news, you might think that Floridians are protected from demands to show medical records, such as vaccine papers. A November 18 story about a new law (passed by the actual Legislatu… | Continue reading
One of America’s greatest poet-philosophers, Merle Haggard, released “Are the Good Times Really Over” 40 years ago. Now that we’re in the last month of 2021, it seems like a… | Continue reading
From the #Science-following experts at the CDC: I hope that everyone is inspired to come visit in the near future, just in case our blue status does not last. Here’s the forecast for Jupiter,… | Continue reading
From the American Medical Association’s Organization Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity: We acknowledge that we are all living off the taken ancestral lands of I… | Continue reading
“The Netherlands finds 61 Covid cases in air arrivals from South Africa, and is checking for the variant.” (NYT): Sixty-one people from two flights from South Africa to the Netherlands … | Continue reading
“Revisiting the Bangladesh Mask RCT” covers the one “gold standard” paper looking at the question of whether ordering the general public to wear masks has any effect on coro… | Continue reading
From August 27: 130-hour pilot takes off for a round-the-world flight in a light airplane It looks as though the 19-year-old pilot had some maintenance and perhaps weather delays in Alaska, but as … | Continue reading
Herschel Mendelbaum goes to the Boston Police Department and applies for a job. He’s interviewed by Sergeant O’Leary, who concludes by saying, “You will be a strong candidate for … | Continue reading
Someone at Disney did not get the memo about the official inflation rate being 6 percent. Email received today: A 14 percent increase is especially painful for those of us who do not have TVs. Why … | Continue reading
In COVID-19 is sure to kill you, but life insurance rates haven’t changed (August 21, 2021), I cited a December 2020 study of life insurance rates from 100 different companies. COVID-19 was killing… | Continue reading
One weekend per year devoted to being thankful doesn’t seem unduly burdensome. Today I’m expressing thanks for archive.org. Especially given the recent American tendency to rewrite hist… | Continue reading
Happy Thanksgiving to Native American readers! I’m sure that you all are grateful for the waves of immigration and associated novel viruses that have washed up on U.S. shores since 1492. The … | Continue reading
Neighbors in Maskachusetts were so passionate about political and social justice causes that they would run out of space on the liftgates of their cars and/or front lawn space in their 2-acre minim… | Continue reading
One of the things that I have always appreciated about New Orleans is the city’s commitment to public health, e.g., ensuring that visitors are adequately hydrated (“This Trendy New Orle… | Continue reading
The phenomenon of anchor babies merits a Wikipedia page: “a child born to a non-citizen mother in a country that has birthright citizenship which will therefore help the mother and other fami… | Continue reading
A friend in Ireland sent me this meme, which is widely circulating on WhatsApp: This is a counterpoint to Irish media pieces such as “Ireland will face severe Covid lockdown if people behave … | Continue reading
I’m not a regular Facebook user anymore, but an MIT friend shared a screen shot of his interaction with a desk job physician who went back into scrubs to do some COVID-19 vaccine injections o… | Continue reading
Today is the last day of Transgender Awareness Week: “a one-week celebration leading up to the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR), which memorializes victims of transphobic violence.”… | Continue reading
There was a period in the 1970s when China and the U.S. were expanding trade ties and a sticking point was a requirement that a county couldn’t get low tariffs (“most favored nationR… | Continue reading
On the way to a swamp wetlands boardwalk, we stopped at a strip mall and found Uncle Joe’s: Here’s the menu: Depending on who was reading the menu, the General Tao’s Chicken was e… | Continue reading
It was Veterans Day last week, when we celebrated anyone who carried a gun, flew a desk, stocked shelves, or conducted gender reassignment surgery on behalf of the U.S. military. The United States … | Continue reading
Readers (especially those who followed the complete trial, which I did not): What is your prediction regarding the most likely verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case? I probably shouldn’t offer… | Continue reading