Unfinished Thoughts

Sometimes I think that the major factor lost in the discussions about scarcity overlook the fact that there are a LOT MORE PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY than when they were children. Just to pick a couple of random years: 1985 & 2015. The former because it's close enough to be representative of my childhood and it's a multiple of 5; the latter because it's +30 and why not round numbers? Anyway, the US population in 1985 was about ~235M and in 2015 it was ~324.5M. That's a whopping 89.5 million extra people all trying to have many of the same singular experiences. Go to Yellowstone, get into an Ivy League college, live in a coastal city like Washington DC or Seattle, go see an NFL game, see Taylor Swift (or the popstar du jour), etc, etc. But while the population increased by about 38% between those years, they did not make more Seattles, more Yellowstones, more skiing mountains, or more Ivy League colleges. And while I suppose in theory it...

The Christmas season is officially upon us, which means Christmas music is back. For some reason this year - despite having heard perhaps half-a-dozen versions of the song - the lyrics of Santa Baby finally registered with me. Maybe because in past years it seemed tame compared to "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and the implications in those lyrics but let's review Santa Baby on its own: The song is clearly a kept woman singing to her sugar daddy. This part doesn't really seem up for debate. Each verse the requests get a little wilder starting with a fur coat, working up to a platinum mine and finally a ring, which clearly means she aims for half. Of everything. Chimney is clearly a euphemism. "Hurry down my chimney tonight." Somehow this didn't register with me for YEARS. I am embarrassed. But check #7 on the list of Christmas songs on this page. Ella Fitzgerald's "Santa Claus Got Stuck in My C...

After the attack, there has been a strong urge to analogize to a historic event - 9/11, Pearl Harbor, etc. - and then extend the metaphor to create a warning for Israel not to invade so they don’t' make the same mistakes the US did in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Then there are the armchair warriors haranguing the Israelis for invading, saying they should be able to get Hamas without resorting to aerial and artillery bombardment so as to minimize civilian casualties. Several commentators have already explained why 9/11 isn't a great analogy since the attack was never existential, the equivalent number of deaths in 9/11 would have been closer to 42,000 and the enemy did not share a border. A true equivalent would be if Mexican drug cartels crossed the southern border and murdered 42,00 people in El Paso, McAllen and other border towns before melting back into the Mexican civilian population. Clearly, the 9/11 analogy fails. I'm not sure why anyone brings u...