Author of the books Can Openers & Letter Openers
Today is February 23, 2021. We are at (approximately) one year since COVID-19 came into our collective consciousness in the United States. This week, we reached another grim milestone: 500,000 Americans have died in the past year from COVID. This screenshot from Worldometers.com: I want to take a moment and observe a moment of silence […]
Today is February 2, 2021. “Groundhog Day” in the United States. The movie Groundhog Day was released in 1993. In the movie, Bill Murray wakes up to the same situation (on Groundhog Day) over and over again, until he learns an important lesson. Sort of like us. We keep waking up to a pandemic that […]
Today is January 24, 2021. The first case of COVID in the United States was diagnosed one year ago. As of yesterday, we recorded 427,635 American deaths from COVID. Since the last time I wrote (January 8), and additional 53,438 Americans have died, or an average of 3143 deaths a day over the last 17 days. At that […]
It is January 8, 2021. This is where we are in the pandemic: Case counts: case counts and fatalities continue to rise. Yesterday and the day before, we experienced 4,000 American deaths each day, the first time that has happened. That translates into a fatality rate of 30,000 Americans per week. Our fatality total as of yesterday (as always, […]
According to CBS News (and several other outlets), COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in the United States this week: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-leading-cause-of-death-united-states-this-week/ Yesterday there were over 200,000 new cases diagnosed in the United States, and almost 3,000 new deaths (from Worldometers.com): For perspective, there were more cases diagnosed in the U.S. yesterday than have occurred […]
Today is November 28, 2020. It is two days after Thanksgiving. This was a Thanksgiving unlike any other. My friends and family generally stayed home this weekend, because of the pandemic. We are now averaging at least 150,000 new cases a day, and at least 1,000 deaths a day due to COVID-19. About one week […]
The Stanford Marshmallow Test was “a study on delayed gratification…in the study, a child was offered a small immediate reward (1 marshmallow) or two small rewards (2 marshmallows) if they waited 15 minutes” (Wikipedia). Children who were able to delay gratification were found to later have better educational outcomes and SAT scores (Wikipedia). We are […]
Today is October 12, 2020. We approach 220,000 COVID-19 fatalities in the United States, and today or tomorrow we will pass 8 million infections. Yet no one cares. At least I think no one cares. The presidential election is next month. We will see how many people care.
Today is August 11, 2020. It’s been a while since I’ve written on this site. As I write this, 5.2 million Americans have contracted COVID-19, and 166,201 Americans have died. I have been keeping a “doubling” chart, that looks like this: When viruses spread, they tend to “double” over time. This virus continues to spread, […]
