Holiday Gloom re COVID

I agree with Chris Hayes here. Cold weather + holiday parties + travel + Thanksgiving feasts + Christmas gathering would seem to be a perfect storm for COVID, especially with numbers already spiking. We were concerned about the pandemic back in March, when the rate of infections was a tiny fraction of what it is now. This is insanity.

BTW, my elderly mother and her adult children WILL have an hour-long in-person Thanksgiving celebration this year. We will meet outside at my mom's house during the "heat" of the day, spread far apart from each other on lawn chairs, eating our BYO snack and drink for about an hour. Unless it's surprisingly warm, in which case we might linger longer.

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Differential Investment in Procreating in Terms of Money and Risks

In her column at Psychology Today ("How to Train Your Boyfriend"), Evolutionary Psychologist Diane Fleischman illustrates the time investment differential in terms of money:

We know women have had to carry a baby for 9 months. But over our evolutionary history, a mother would have had to breastfeed for 3 years, on average, before the baby would be weaned. What's the minimum amount of investment a man could put in to have a baby? Let's be generous and say the minimum amount is an hour. This is called "minimum obligatory parental investment" and in human men and women, the asymmetry is bigger than in most other species. . . . If you think about the asymmetry between men and women in the minimum amount they would have to invest to make a baby in terms of dollar amount- a man would have to invest $1 and a woman would have to invest $32,000.

In her article, Fleishman points out many difference in behavior between men and woman (see the extensive list below), as well as reproductive risks, stemming from this procreation investment asymmetry.

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Neil Postman on Orwell vs. Huxley

I had seen this quote before and posted a cartoon on this idea, but tonight I heard Tristan Harris read this passage by Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death) toward the end of his discussion with Joe Rogan. It hits the nail on the head:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumble puppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists, who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny, “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

In 1984, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.

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NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory Shows Moon Crossing Face of Earth

What an awesome photo from 2015. I hadn't seen this image until today: From NASA (and this article also includes an animation of there moon crossing): EPIC maintains a constant view of the fully illuminated Earth as it rotates, providing scientific observations of ozone, vegetation, cloud height and aerosols in…

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