This is the country by country graph showing the “doubling rate” for cumulative Coronavirus cases. Countries on the left have the fastest doubling times. In other words, the countries on the left have the most new cases in the fastest amount of time. The United States has the fastest doubling time in the world. We […]
COVID-19: A Perfect Storm
I have never written an essay like this. I have never experienced a time like this. The U.S. Surgeon General just stated that “It is going to get really bad this week”. He was referring to the COVID-19 virus, also known as the coronavirus. Spare me 5 minutes of your time, while I share some […]
Y 2020 K
I am going to record some personal observations here, for myself, and for you. I believe that 5 or 10 or 20 years from now, this will be of interest to us. It is March 12, 2020, and the world is experiencing a pandemic from a virus called COVID-19, or Coronavirus. It was first identified […]
Fear Not
In the movie “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, Charlie Brown notices a lot of commercialism and bad behavior. After struggling with this for a while, during the practice for a school Christmas pageant, he yells out “isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?!” Linus steps up to a microphone at the practice, and begins […]
Ken Buddy
I live in the Philadelphia area, and have had two jobs in Princeton, NJ. Princeton is about 60 miles from where I live. I worked in Princeton from 2005-2008, and then again from 2011 to end of 2019. When I first started commuting to Princeton, I noticed a memorial on the side of the road. It was a […]
The Shell Game
I watched a scene in a movie this week where one of the main characters steals meat from a meat truck, and then sells it to a third party. I was reminded of the word “grift”, which means to “obtain money or property illicitly” (thank you Merriam Webster!) When I was little, I remember seeing […]
Please Remind Me
I have a chore that I am supposed to do once a month in the utility room of my house. It takes about one minute to do this chore. I need to look at something. That is all the chore involves. But I only do this chore about four times a year, because I forget […]
Bring a Snow Shovel
A month ago, I agreed to call a contractor and ask him if he was available to do some work in our house. I made the call. That week, I asked someone at work to do something. Also during that week, I called three landscapers to see if any of them would like to do […]
You Get What You Pay For
I had a conversation with a friend yesterday about how we create financial profit. Our conversation turned toward the idea of industries that profit from misfortune, or even create misfortune in order to make money. Healthcare: this is the largest expenditure in the 2019 U.S. budget. Total planned 2019 healthcare spending by the U.S. government […]
Hungry Children
I was travelling to visit my daughter at college this past weekend, and an article appeared in my news feed: “Colleges Should Not Have to Have Food Pantries” (The Nation). The article was about the growing problem of hunger and homelessness among college students. The article cited a recent survey (College and University Basic Needs […]
