Time to Think

It’s a Small World By Hank Silverberg No apologies to the Walt Disney Company. Our world IS getting smaller, in more ways than you think. And the biggest challenge to our survival as a human race may come not from China, Russia, Iran or nuclear weapons, but from things we can’t see or mistakes the whole world made decades ago. This week I am   highlighting just a few small things. If you are one of my readers who likes my continued attack on Donald Trump, sorry. Only one of these items can be indirectly blamed on him. A news story about the polar icecaps caught my attention. It seems that Antarctica and Greenland have lost enough ice in the last 16 years to fill Lake Michigan. The source, NASA, is as reputable as you can get. The agency put the details out in an official news release. The big ice melt has raised sea levels around the world by half an inch. Now that’s not going to invade your beach front property just yet, but it is a warning of what could be coming....

A Haircut vs. Covid-19 By Hank Silverberg I have lost count of how many days it’s been since Virginians were ordered to “stay home.” I have had a few excursions to the supermarket wearing a mask where many people, after standing outside on a line for a while, had a "get me out of here" look in their eyes. I’ve gone to local restaurants a few times to pick up take-out food at curbside where I was startled that the people who brought out the food were not wearing gloves or masks. But other than that, like millions of Americans, I'm staying home. My Zoom lectures to my college students have become easier to manipulate technically, but it has been harder for us all to engage in the meaningful dialogue that enhances education. Like a lot of people I don't miss my commute, but Zoom fatigue has hit the country in many places.  So now we have a small minority of people going out and staging protests, demanding   that things be re-opened. It seems they all need a h...

Your Right to Spread Covid-19? By Hank Silverberg Your right to extend your fist ends just before my nose! That’s a paraphrase of an old quote often attributed to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.                                      (Justice Holmes,  courtesy of Harris and Ewing ) I thought of that quote a lot this past week as I heard about people out protesting the “social distancing” policies in several states across the country. These were some of the  same folks who were running around a while back with the “Stars and Bars,”  carrying assault weapons and screaming about their “Second Amendment rights.” (Commonly mislabeled as “the Confederate flag," the “Stars and Bars” is  actually the battle flag of the Confederacy.) It seems they somehow think that an executive order from their governors to stay home and to close businesses to pr...

The Great Pause Part Two by Hank Silverberg It's Passover, a holiday where Jews around the world re-tell the story of our escape from slavery in Egypt over 3,500 years ago. The name of the holiday comes from the story which is recounted in the Old Testament Book of Exodus (11:4-6). Jews put lamb's blood over their doorways as God eliminated the first born of the Egyptians as the tenth and final plague to convince the Pharaoh to let the Hebrew slaves go. The Angel of Death passed over Jewish homes. You probably know the passages, though it is told a bit differently depending on which version of the Old Testament you read.  It is an event that rings loudly this Passover as most Jews spent the holiday social distancing instead of holding huge Seders with extended family to commemorate our freedom from bondage.  My family, which often holds a huge Seder on whatever Saturday falls in the Passover week, was forced to do so virtually this year. Three generati...

"The Great Pause"   By Hank Silverberg  I had hoped that the United States, in the midst of it's biggest crises since 9-11, or more comparative, World War Two, would pull together to fight the corona virus without any political nonsense. But that has not happened, and it has simply made the pandemic worse.  (Microscopic Covid-19. Courtesy of CDC) President Trump has shown once again his inability to listen to the advice of experts, and has in fact increased resistance to protective measures by basically making things up. And then when the media points out that he has been contradicted by very credible scientists, he attacks the media for reporting it with his usual crude tone.   Trump's vindictive attacks on governors like New York's Andrew Cuomo, have been counter-productive and misleading, making the job more difficult for a number of local leaders.   His minions haven't been much better. His son-in- law, Jared Kushner, said perhaps...