Hope Archives • Page 2 of 6 • kemeny.ca | Website and Blog of Horatio Kemeny

August 28, 2020

To be honest, not great numbers today, if you’re looking at new cases… as we head into the weekend, today’s new-case counts are the highest ever, here in B.C… and in Alberta as well. The only positive thing about that, one would hope, is that it serves as a wake-up call. We’re presently heading in the wrong, direction… albeit slowly. And now is the time to address it. We can at least appreciate the transparency with which we’re handed this information. That’s not the case everywhere.

The U.S. election is 67 days away, and Donald Trump needs to make sure things look as good as possible during that time. All other issues aside, his continued waffling and ineffectiveness with respect to managing the pandemic (the U.S. response is now ranked 2nd-worse on the planet, only slightly better than the U.K.) has made him look awful, no matter what he says. His insistence that things are going well, and it’ll soon be over and all that… most people are wising-up that this is far from the truth.

He’s taken two significant steps in trying to put lipstick on this particular pig. One is that the testing data no longer goes directly to the CDC. It goes to the White House, where it’s compiled, curated and released to the public. The other is his strategy of testing less… because, you know, the less you test, the less positive results you get… and the better it looks. Duh.

The combination of those two things has led to a significant decline in positive test results.

If you average the number of positive tests in the U.S. (and Canada, in [brackets], whose population is about 1/9th the size), starting a month ago, the 4 subsequent weeks were:

56,061 [395]
55,197 [382]
47,356 [377]
42,872 [425]

Wow – those are some great American numbers… look at that downward trend, even as Canada, at best, stays flat… or goes up a bit. Let’s hope some aide doesn’t jokingly suggest to The President to cut testing altogether… because what’s better than zero positives!

Of course, when reality checks in, things look a little different. Here are the daily deaths averages for those same time periods:

1,053 [5]
1,095 [7]
998 [6]
1,059 [7]

Remarkably consistent. No matter how you try to hide the numbers with respect to this disease and its spread, it’s hard to hide the deaths. Those numbers are beyond the reach of the White House to “manage”.

The President of the United States may not be aware that there are two things in life that are a certainty… death and taxes. You can’t escape either….and history will not be kind in exposing his attempts to cheat on both.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:09:41-07:00August 28th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Business & Economics, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Trump, Population, Alberta, Respect, Canada, United Kingdom, President, United States, Numbers, Testing, Data, American, Deaths, Pandemic, Hope|7 Comments

August 15, 2020

No numbers here in B.C. today or tomorrow… so notwithstanding the famous “lies, damned lies, and statistics” quote… I’m going to intelligently extrapolate some numbers… and will correct them on Monday. Until then, both our local and national numbers are just good guesses.

The average new case count in B.C. over the last 5 days averages to 67, so let’s just go with that. For what it’s worth, one standard deviation would make it plus or minus 21 (so somewhere between 46 and 88 new cases). Actually, the 90% confidence interval (15) defines the potential range as between 52 and 82… so it’ll be interesting to see what things look like by Monday. If we’re within this range, we’re sort of stable. If we’re growing… well, I guess we’ll know that too. Take it all with a grain of salt. And that’s enough math for a Saturday.

It’s also enough writing for a Saturday, because it’s a beautiful day and I’m going to take advantage of it… but it seems like a good opportunity to plug the blog where all of these posts are going, in case you feel like you missed something. If you visit www.kemeny.ca and click on the red seal, everything I’ve written here recently (like, every single day since March 17th) can be found there.

Hope you’re enjoying this beautiful day… in an appropriately-masked socially-distanced and well-sunscreened sort of way.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:09:47-07:00August 15th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: Math, British Columbia, Numbers, Hope|6 Comments

August 9, 2020

So a student in Georgia takes a picture of a school hallway… crowded with students, no social distancing, few masks… a school where shortly thereafter, 9 people (6 students, 3 staff) tested positive (and you know there will be more)… and what happened? The student got suspended for sharing that picture publicly.

The outcry was swift and biting… and the suspension was rescinded entirely… “optics”, you know… but not before we all got a good look at what’s going on… and it’s frightening.

We get the outward-facing message, quotes like “The health and well-being of our staff and students remains our highest priority” – that from the principal of the school. Yet the inward-facing reality is that these schools will lose their federal funding if they’re not open “for real” – for everyone. Well, not everyone… Barron Trump’s private school is online-only, but you get the idea. Forcing teachers and students into an environment most know isn’t safe.

The fact is, in Georgia, within hours of opening, a student tested positive, resulting in the closing of that school, and a two-week quarantine for all staff and students. That was one school, but in another school, just up the road, a student tested positive and was sent home, but the school remains open. The following day, more schools… more cases. I don’t know the most recent numbers, but it’s hundreds of staff. And hundreds of students. A tremendous example of how not to do things. A beautiful example.

Closer to home, let’s worry about us for a bit. While the world just saw its 20,000,000th case and the U.S. its 5,000,000th case recently, Canada is close to 120,000. Quebec recently went over 60,000 cases. Ontario went over 40,000 today. And by the time we get our numbers updated tomorrow, here in B.C., we’ll be over 4,000. Whereas B.C. was formerly a shining example… now, not so much. Our numbers are still great, in comparison… up to now. But the trend is not good, and the last thing we need is to wind up trying to force “reality” back in our lives when we’re not yet prepared for it. There are unfortunately too many examples of that. I hope B.C. doesn’t become another one.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:10:31-07:00August 9th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Hope, Fact, Quebec, School, Canada, Idea, Ontario, British Columbia, Numbers|7 Comments

August 7, 2020

I’ve changed some of the data and graphs, to more accurately reflect where we’re at, and to track information that’s now more meaningful. Doesn’t it look good? Tremendous. World leaders are calling me, telling me they’ve never seen anything like it. The colours, the numbers. It’s a beautiful thing.

I’ve removed the growth factor column, because it’s become less relevant as the meteoric exponential growth has tailed off. I’ve left the cases-increase column, because it encapsulates that growth, as well as being directly relatable to what came before it.

I’ve added a “Deaths” column, which is particularly notable in comparison to our neighbours to the south. There is a “Total Deaths” at the very top, and there is a daily number of new deaths reported in the column below it. A blank means zero deaths, and looking at today’s numbers, those at least look really good. Zero in B.C., Ontario and Quebec combined. There were 3 deaths in Alberta and 1 in Saskatchewan today, and that was it, across Canada.

I’ve also changed Deaths / Case to Deaths per 1 million of population… 497 in the U.S., 237 in Canada, 38 in B.C., etc. This more accurately reflects the proliferation of the virus, more apples-to-apples instead of being more about number of tests given. It’s 15,363 in the U.S., 3,137 in Canada, 776 in B.C. and so on. More on that below.

From a Canadian point of view, these are all pretty good. The continuing upward trend here in B.C. is worrying, but we’re being told it was to be expected. I’m not so convinced, and hope the actions we take today will be reflected in those numbers in due course.

Also worth noting… ever since the White House took the number-gathering away from the CDC and decided to do it on their own, the divergence between cases and deaths has grown. I’m not going to accuse the American Government of lying, but I find it suspicious that the numbers of daily new cases (which they control) have shrunk, while the numbers of deaths (which they don’t control) have remained largely unchanged. Like, average deaths over the last week were 1,041 daily… and 1,100 the week before; pretty similar. The number of new daily cases this last week were 55,604, while the week before that, they were 65,373 Ten thousand less daily cases, yet the same number of deaths.

Recall Donald Trump’s musings that maybe too much testing isn’t a good thing, because when you do that, you find too many cases. Whether he’s hiding numbers or testing less, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure though… a few extra coats of paint on the deck of the Titanic probably looked pretty good. Hey, guys, what about this big hole on the side of the ship? Yeah, yeah, but look at the deck! Look at the shiny gloss! Doesn’t it look tremendous? It’s a beautiful thing.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:10:31-07:00August 7th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: British Columbia, Deaths, Hope, Vancouver, Government, Saskatchewan, Relevant, Alberta, Testing, Quebec, Numbers, South, Canada, Data, Virus, Ontario, American|4 Comments

August 5, 2020

The plot device known as “deus ex machina” was invented by the Greeks, ages ago. It literally translates to “god from the machine”, where back in ancient Greek theatre, the actors playing the role would be hanging from ropes, or some sort of machine, sweeping in to save the day, in whatever context was needed.

From a literary/artistic point of view, this has its detractors… for obvious reasons. It has the potential to wreck an otherwise excellent story with a convenient miracle to undo the entire struggle that led to that point. William Golding was criticized for this in “Lord of the Flies”… after building up an incredible narrative with intriguing and insightful and though-provoking ideas… suddenly, in a just a few pages, a ship arrives, rescues the boys, The End.

It’s not always that blunt, but you get the idea… and it fit well with the narratives of Greek Tragedies (and comedies)… and since then, it’s appeared all over the place. H.G. Wells’s “The War of the Worlds”… big, powerful aliens have the technology to travel across the universe with a battle fleet ready to destroy earth… until they themselves are destroyed by bacteria. Actually, almost identically, Will Smith’s aliens in “Independence Day” – and a computer virus.

You get the idea; it’s when something appears out of nowhere, just in the nick of time… to save the day, like divine intervention.

There are a few versions of this these days to consider. One, of course, is Donald Trump’s hope that this is what will resolve the giant mess his country finds itself in, much of which is his responsibility. Numerous times, he’s stated how it’ll just go away, like a miracle, burn itself out, vanish overnight, whatever. Unfortunately for him, the real world doesn’t operate that way; even the ancient Greeks knew that.

More recently, Trump did an interview with Jonathan Swan on HBO, and the entire thing is now available on YouTube. It is an astonishing 40 minutes of incoherent, delusional nonsense. And great kudos to Mr. Swan who, unlike pretty-much every other reporter, didn’t acquiesce to Donald Trump’s bullshit. He called him on it, repeatedly… though, as expected, when DT has no answer, he deflects away, onto the next incoherent, irrelevant point. The end result of it was asking yourself… what did I learn from that? The answer will be… not much. There was nothing factually useful in Trump’s responses, other than confirmation that he actually doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. You can’t accuse him of actually lying when he doesn’t actually get it. That much was made obvious when the problems with his fist-full of printouts were explained back to him.

Donald Trump has had a hovering “deus ex machina” all his life. First, it was daddy Fred who handheld his inept narcissist of a son through childhood and adolescence, paving and smoothing-out what otherwise would’ve (and should’ve) been a dead-end path.

Then it was Trump’s problem solvers, many of whom are now in prison, having themselves acquiesced to illegalities to keep their guy happy.

Then it was the Republican party and the White House and all the “yes-men” he could gather… and, as we’ve seen with textbook narcissists, once the “yes” turns into anything but… even a “maybe”, let alone a “no” – you’re out of there. The best people, tremendous people, beautiful people… exit stage left, with a knife in their back and a grade-school cheap insulting nickname to be Twittered about incessantly.

During the interview, you could see Trump looking around at his people. “Help”, his eyes pleaded. Help me. Rescue me. Where’s my DeM? It wouldn’t have been too presidential to stand up, rip off the mic and make a scene, like so many celebrities love doing when they’re asked a question they don’t like… no, The President had to sit through it, very uncomfortably in parts, and hang himself just a little bit more with every astonishing, baseless, irrelevant word.

There are no machines big enough, ropes strong enough, storylines believable enough… that would have a Deus sweep in to save the day for him. His mistakes will follow him into eternity, where maybe he can have a discussion with Deus Himself. That’s Who it’d take to make him understand.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:10:32-07:00August 5th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Space, Hope, Universe, School, Narcissism, Question, President, Virus, Understand, Trump, Idea, Country|8 Comments

July 20, 2020

We will leave the “South of the border political bashing” for a day and focus on ourselves.

The little charts that I post below the numbers had become relatively useless, as we’re so far into this pandemic that the logarithmic representations no longer meant much. It would have taken some drastic movement to have made any difference.

So… what you see now is simply a representation of daily new cases, along with a moving average to smooth out the trend.

Looking at B.C., and listening to Dr. Henry… here’s the deal; we’re hearing pretty much what we were hearing the last two weeks of March, when I started writing these daily reports… so I will go back to saying exactly what I was saying back then: It’s up to us.

We flattened this thing out, and now, the nonchalance may be catching up to us, but it’s not too late. Summer, parties, The Interior™… I get it. Anyone who grew up anywhere in B.C. gets it. Except perhaps some of the younger people, who have come to the conclusion that being outdoors, and being young, mitigates the risk to an acceptable level. It doesn’t. You can catch it, and you can give it to others… and with more than 100 cases over the weekend and Dr. Henry warning that we’re at the edge of “explosive growth” – that should hit home.

She made it a point of mentioning the younger people, and even made a plea to all of those younger people so adept at managing their social media; get the word out. Take this seriously. Social distance. Wear a mask.

Hopefully many of them do exactly that. My daughter will be blasting something out to the 10,000 or so followers that she has distributed among her social networks, and hopefully from there it’ll further propagate when all of those people do the same.

Indeed, getting the word out exponentially isn’t that hard to do. And that’s the only exponential thing we should hope to see around here. Or anywhere.

If you look at the now-more-useful graphs, you’ll see some definite trends… Quebec had a huge problem, resolved it, but needs to be careful… there’s a slow, gradual uphill in the making. Ontario seems to be trending downward and holding. And B.C…. well, you can see it pretty clearly… and that’s not the direction we want to continue. The same can be said for Canada overall.

And the U.S….? Pull up Trump’s interview with Chris Wallace from yesterday. Have a look at that graph. There’s little more to say.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:21:22-07:00July 20th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: Dr Bonnie Henry, Hope, Quebec, Canada, Ontario, British Columbia, Pandemic, Masks, Numbers|8 Comments

July 17, 2020

What a beautiful day… I hope you all managed to take advantage of it, and if not… good news… it’s mostly supposed to stick around over the next few days.

That is good news; what’s not so good news, as usual, is what’s going on south of the border. I know I sound like a broken record, but sometimes it’s important. Many news outlets are keeping track of Trump’s lies, as they should… otherwise, you get used to it and normalize it and it becomes par for the course. Accountability is important, even if it’ll ultimately be after the fact. Some things are not an OK part of the new normal.

Yesterday came the news that the White House will be controlling the data. Today comes the news that the White House will block the CDC from testifying on re-opening schools.

Not everyone believes in prayer, but whether you do or not, keep Ruth Bader Ginsburg in your thoughts. She is a fighter, a trooper, a survivor… a legend. And, for the moment, her presence implies a significant tipping point for the Supreme Court.

But she is 87 and is now undergoing chemo for a 4th recurrence of cancer, this time pancreatic… having fought off lung and colon over the last 20 years. The reality is she’s unlikely to be around another 4 years, though we can hope. But given her fighting spirit, perhaps we can see her hanging around till the end of the year… or at least, long enough that Trump wouldn’t have the opportunity to replace her with a frightening ultra-conservative.

It’s funny (or perhaps tragic) to listen to some of the fervent Trump supporters screaming things like “This is not a democracy! This is a republic!”

There isn’t enough room nor enough time for me to voice what I’d like to try to explain to some people, and unfortunately, it might go in one ear and out the other. But, to be honest, when I started writing this daily thing exactly 4 months ago (to the day), it was all about the pandemic. It’s shifted to the management of the pandemic, where the vast majority of the world is handling it properly, or at least making an effort to do it as well as they can. We’re all familiar with the glaring exception.

But interestingly enough, with all my Trump bashing, I think I’ve gotten through to a few people. Every time I write about Trump, I hear about it from a few people, including family… not because they disagree, but because they know I’ll be facing a barrage of negative comments.

And for a while…initially, that was true. A few Facebook friends took exception to my continual bashing of their guy, and left. A few others have stuck around, and stuck to their… guns. And I do hear from them.

But there’s also a contingent that perhaps has seen the light; perhaps has managed to differentiate their political leanings from the person who’s supposed to be promoting and leading those ideals. Trump's falling ratings… the only thing he seems to genuinely care about… are indicative of that.

I’m not American and I don’t get a vote. But I have family and friends who live down there, and while I fully support keeping the border closed for now… I miss them; they miss me. Trump’s spokesman yesterday said, “Why would anyone want to go to Canada, anyway?” … and he continued with the usual “this is the greatest country in the world, and Donald Trump, blahblahblah”.

Well, to reply to that rhetorical question, the answer might be “to get the hell away from exponentially growing coronavirus numbers”.

It’s kind of melodramatic to say that the suvivial of the U.S. as we know it depends on it… but history is full of examples of Republics rounding that ugly corner. It all used to be a joke, how Trump might be the last democratically elected president. Ha ha, it’s not so funny now.

From up here, all we can do is watch…enjoy our sunshine and our safe, closed border. And worry. And hope, that down there, they figure it out.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:21:23-07:00July 17th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Data, South, American, Canada, Country, News, Coronavirus, Hope, Fact, Pandemic, Question, Trump, President|11 Comments

July 16, 2020

It’s been one of those days where I haven’t had much time to think, let alone write anything… so I will simply dig into my trove of cool words and pull out this beauty:

Semaphorism (noun): a conversational hint that you have something personal to say on the subject but don’t go any further—an emphatic nod, a half-told anecdote, an enigmatic ‘I know the feeling’—which you place into conversations like those little flags that warn diggers of something buried underground: maybe a cable that secretly powers your house, maybe a fiberoptic link to some foreign country.

I didn’t write that definition; I literally cut-and-pasted it… but I’ll give you my 2 cents, because, like some many oddities these days, it’s relevant.

I’m finding that as things migrate from the complete “WTF is going on” that we all felt in March and April… to May and June where we got used to the weirdness… that here’s what July and August will look like; very familiar, yet unfamiliar. It’s worth noting that this has all been (and continues to be) the strangest of times, and that applies to us all equally…. like, my life has been derailed in ways that make it completely unrelatable to what I was used to. You can say the same thing; everyone can. But what used to be normal for you was never normal for me to begin with. You’’ve been dealing with your own issues, as have I.

Forget the pandemic for a moment… even without it, we’ve all been absorbed in our little worlds from the day we were born. We’ve all had unique experiences. But suddenly, we’re all in the same boat, and it’s curious to think that the present derailed versions of what we’re all going through have a lot more in common with each other than ever… 6 months ago, we were all so different. Now we’re all derailed… and much more similar. Recall that word Sonder… the realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own… isn’t it ironic (don’t you think) that it took a global pandemic to “normalize” life to this extent? A huge earthquake, a meteor strike or a nice, huge unexpected nearby volcanic blast would all achieve the same thing (and let’s hope we don’t find out anytime soon… but 2020 is only halfway done…), but when you think about it, we all have a lot more in common than we used to. We don’t need to fake it in conversations; we know exactly what someone is talking about when they talk about something that until recently, would’ve been completely unfamiliar to all of us.

A bit of a silver lining on the huge cloud… and I’m looking forward to the day when talking about all of that commonality will be within conversations that begin with, “Remember when…”

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:21:23-07:00July 16th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Interesting Words, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Hope, Relevant, Space, Pandemic, Country|5 Comments

July 10, 2020

We’re heading up to Whistler today, so this space may be emptier than usual for the next little while…and I’ll update the charts and graphs to the proper size eventually…

In the meantime, a couple of somewhat-related words that come to mind as I watch the world, and its contents, spinning around me…

Sonder (noun) The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Onism (noun) The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.

It’s kind of mind-bending when you try to step outside your “existence” – in other words, to truly try to visualize things from any other point of view, other than your own. I don’t just mean trying to understand someone else’s opinion; I mean literally, through their eyes. Stop and consider that every single experience and memory you have is from your own, unique point of view. But it’s more than that; all of reality is only what you’ve experienced. There is literally nothing of existence outside of your experiencing it. If you’ve never seen it or heard of it, until you do, it doesn’t actually exist.

Elon Musk thinks we’re all living in a simulation, and the longer it all goes on (life, in general), the more I get the idea that it’s true. The complexity and vastness of the universe, in both directions… infinitely big or small, feels a lot like the way these vast worlds of online games work… there’s a big map (like our universe), but until you actually need to go somewhere, it doesn’t exist… the game just creates that place when it needs to. It would take way too much memory and disk space for it all to be there. What’s the point of generating all of that for some distant galaxy we can barely see? We’ll create it when we get there… which we never will.

Closer to home, as per the words above… this vivid version of reality you hold in your mind; 7.8 billion other people have their own, unique version of it. It’s mind-blowing to think about, and it’s cool that there are words for it. I have this sonder every time I feel onism.

And if this is a simulation, I get the impression someone found some cheat codes and is trying them out on us. Threat of nuclear war? Killer hornets? Pandemic? Massive political upheaval with the world’s biggest superpower? Something new pretty-much every day. Today it’s a new virus in Kazakhstan, potentially worse than COVID-19. Gee, I wonder what this sequence of buttons does…

This unfortunately has the feel of when someone gets bored with a game. You spent some time building villages or planting crops or whatever… you’ve been doing it for a while, but the game has gotten stagnant or boring… so you throw the crazy at it. Storm the villages, burn the crops. Let’s hope that’s not what we’re dealing with… let’s at least hope that if whoever is running the show got bored, there’s that guy behind him watching… and now, saying, “Wait.. wait… seriously, wait… I got this… here, give me control.” Let’s hope… because then we should be good for another 65 million years… before that guy gets bored and sends a big meteor. Or whatever he needs to deal with his own onism at the sonder he sees on earth.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:21:25-07:00July 10th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Interesting Words, Humour, Sports & Gaming, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Understand, Idea, COVID-19, Pandemic, Game, Space, Hope, Universe, Mind, Virus|17 Comments

June 30, 2020

Lobsters are fascinating creatures… they can live to be over 100 years old, they’re fertile till the day they die, they have blue blood, and every other sea creature generally leaves them alone to live their lives. They live long, untroubled lives… unless they wind up in a dirty tank at the front of a restaurant with their claws trapped by rubber bands.

Many years ago I was at a Chinese restaurant and was looking at the menu which was written in both English and Chinese… so I was trying to map the 3 Chinese characters to what they mean. By comparing “Lemon Chicken” and “Sesame Chicken”, I could figure out “Chicken” and then quickly figure out “Lemon” and “Sesame” and verify it against “Sesame Vegetables” and figure out more from there. A fun brain exercise. A fun game of decoding. Anyway, what I think I figured out is that “Lobster” is described in Chinese as “Little Sea Dragon” — isn’t that cute? I was so proud of myself for figuring that out.

Actually, another restaurant story… this one from Costa Rica… a group of us went to a really good restaurant… seafood, of course, right on the beach. We were there for about 5 hours and consumed at least twice as many bottles of wine. And when we were staggering out of there in the wee hours of the morning, we passed the lobster tank near the door. It was full of normal sized lobsters, and one giant monster. One of my friends… Scotty, who is almost certainly reading this… asked about that lobster… how old is he, how long has he been here? And upon hearing the answers, declared, “I’m freeing him!!”

“What, señor?”

“You heard me! I’m buying that lobster right now, and I’m setting him free!!”

So he did. Not a cheap lobster… but we all ceremoniously marched him down to the water and launched him into the pitch-black abyss of freedom. I’d like to hope he made it into deeper water, and wasn’t to be found back in that tank a week later.

Actually, another side-note… there’s a very interesting/bizarre movie called “The Lobster”. If you want a real “WTF was that?!” movie experience, I highly recommend it. Don’t google it or read about it; just watch it… and… nah, ok, no spoilers.

Lobsters… here’s the thing… a lobster is actually a soft-tissued creature that happens to live in a shell all its life. And as it grows, it needs bigger shells. Multiple times in its life, it’ll shed its shell by a process called “molting”, and inhabit the new one it’s been growing. The interesting thing is that it only grows into a new shell when it’s grown big enough to get uncomfortable in its current one. In other words, the lobster only grows as a result of its discomfort. If he were a happy little lobster never pushing his boundaries of comfort, he’d never grow. Which is all, of course, a bit of a metaphor to simply state that as we navigate through life, it’s sometimes when we push through our points of discomfort and challenge ourselves a bit, that we grow. Correction — that’s pretty much the only time we actually grow. Knowledge can come from the outside, but growth comes from the inside. And if we all sit around getting fat and lazy because life no longer poses any challenges, I guess it’s up to us individually to impose some discomfort onto ourselves and make the best of it.

Certainly this pandemic has thrown us all into an unforeseen amount of discomfort; what we do with it seems to be about the only thing left in our control. And to extend the meaning a bit further… the lobster is most vulnerable when it sheds its shell… for a period of time… between a few minutes up to a few hours, he is without his armour… naked and exposed to the world. The epitome of truly uncomfortable. If that’s the way 2020 has left you feeling so far, you’re not alone… but tomorrow begins the latter half of the year… every day is one day closer to being able to look back at this year with 20/20 hindsight (haha, that used to be a lot funnier) and figure out what we made of it. The shell we’re all trying to grow is a silver lining around a pretty big cloud.. what it all ends up looking like… individually, collectively… remains to be seen.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:21:58-07:00June 30th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Humour, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Pandemic, Game, Movie, Brain, Hope, China|16 Comments