Global Cooling

I know the title caught you off guard, but the research is in.  We are cooling off. The “we” being human beings.  The “normal” healthy body temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is no longer normal.  The average American’s body temperature has evidently dropped. Take a look at the research for yourself.

The 98.6 F standard was established in 1851 and is now being updated to 97.9 F.  Anyone who has watched their own temperatures over their lifetime has probably noted that our body temperature moves around, so what does average really mean anyway.  Plus, if you have been infirmed in a hospital you may have noticed your body temperature changes all day long.

What I find most interesting is that for once, this is not being blamed on climate change!

We hear what we want to hear…

Perhaps you have been watching the Disney Plus online movies which include the series called The Mandalorian.  He is a bounty hunter in the Star Wars series who takes a liking to one of his assignments: finding and rescuing what looks like the baby form of Yoda we all know in that series.  The baby, by the way, is 50 years old, but given that the Yoda species can live 1,000 years or more, I guess this still qualifies as a baby.

You may not be aware, but Disney never anticipated people would be so captivated with baby Yoda that they wanted one for Christmas.  It was insane how many “knock-offs” emerged to fill this void.  That was certainly a missed opportunity for the Disney franchise.

Well, a cartoon showed up on my Facebook page which I thought was a riot.  It shows a girl receiving a baby Yoda for Christmas and her complaining that she wanted a Toyota.  That triggered a whole series of thoughts to me about how selective our hearing really is and how easy it is to miscommunicate and talk right past each other.

I am sure you can recount many situations where customers misinterpreted your ideas and offerings, and how difficult it is to be sure we are communicating.  That reminds me of a pastor who runs across one of his parishioners in the grocery store who had not been in church for a long time.  He asks her, after exchanging greetings, “I’ve noticed you haven’t been in church lately.  Aren’t you worried about the hereafter?”

She nods knowingly and states: “Yes, I worry about that all the time!  I walk into a room and ask myself ‘what am I here after?’”

I rest my case.

Banning Singing in Religious Gatherings

We really need to all take a deep breath and step away from the abyss.  Breath out … breath in … breath out … breath in.

Now, let’s stop the polarization over ideas and consider some obvious facts.  The question here, brought into focus by recent news in Germany, is the question of HOW we let people get back to things they value, with going to their places of worship is certainly one of them.  We can ask people to wear masks, gloves, and even hazmat suits if that is the right thing to consider, but posing an emotion-laden statement that we are going to ban singing in church fails to move the discussion along productively.

Notice this article from The Guardian that says: banning singing in churches, Read it here.

If you read it, which you should, you will see the key consideration in this reporting is the question of how we let choirs sing … NOT the congregants!

And, these are good questions.  Why should we take a group of generally elderly people and put them right next to each other and breathing forcibly over the heads of people right in front of us with no face masks repeatedly for an hour or so?  Doesn’t that seem to be an obvious risk?  Sure it does.

What are the creative answers here?  I hope you are not thinking face masks or hazmat suits …

How about we just let the choirmaster sing to lead us?  How about we just ask a few soloists to sing along or perform as a duet, trio, or quartet … spaced appropriately.

It is time we think critically about how we transition back to normal.

It is also time that journalists stop trying to scare the bejesus out of us.

Just sayin …

 

 

 

The Not So Invisible Hand

Most of us are aware of the image of how the laws of supply and demand work.  We often attribute the phrase “invisible hand” to Adam Smith and use it as an illustration of how efficient markets work.  Very few would argue that efficient markets are better in the long run than regulated markets, but almost everyone is aware of the dangers of free markets: price spikes when demand exceeds supply in the short run.  We are all seeing this in hand sanitizer, face masks, and even toilet paper.  Few, however, study the damage done when supply greatly exceeds demand, and prices plummet or can even go negative.  That is happening in our wholesale electricity markets at times when solar plus must run generation resources exceed the demand.  It happens for hundreds of hours a year in many places in the US.

As with any market mechanism, some people will seek evil wrongdoing, and others will simply take advantage of price movements to arbitrage this or that.  But, now we have a huge external governmental wrecking ball to our economy which is very likely to put many free-market businesses out of business.  We are living through an experiment rightfully conducted to protect human lives, but also likely to destroy a huge swath of the world economy.  Most know that economic growth is driven by small business but these are also going to be the casualties of the government shut down of businesses.

What is the cost?  Far be it from me, a mere mortal to know these things, but we do have a small experiment being conducted by Sweden breaking from the world’s pattern of a shutdown.  If you compare Sweden with Norway, you can see the casualty of this … many more deaths in Sweden even now with many more in the future until either a vaccine or a medical cure is discovered.

We are about to see some stark differences and could learn quite a bit for the next time if we studied them.  I do hope we take a close look at the not so invisible hand and decide what it is telling us.

As one of our key employees used to say: the handwriting is on the wall and widely spaced for easy reading.

“One for All, and All for One!”

I grew up with this quote from The Three Musketeers. Perhaps you remember the rest of it: for united we stand and divided we fall.

I remember that as an inspiration for our national life. But, now I am beginning to doubt the wisdom of that saying for the first time.

Are we one nation? I don’t think so. We are the most divided I can remember. I felt we came together on 9-11. You might have thought we would come together for Covid-19. Nope, the tensions are running high these days, despite the appearance that we may be gaining on this. So much of what you hear in news soundbites is crafted to discredit the other political party.

How do we set national policy when there are such strong divisions within our societal fabric? I hope you would agree that we must be sensitive to those who have little to no voice and can so easily be swept under the carpet with cavalier phrases like let them eat cake. But, we still try to solve problems on a statewide basis even when there are huge disparities within these states.

Take a look at what is happening in Michigan: Read the NPR story here.

Averages are so misleading. We all know you can drown trying to cross a lake

that averages 2 feet in depth. We average health insurance premiums where healthy people pay for those who choose unhealthy lifestyles. Which doesn’t happen in car insurance? People with bad driving records pay far more for insurance than those with safe ones. And this certainly doesn’t happen with life insurance where premiums for smokers and the overweight are higher than their healthier counterparts. Why does it happen on health insurance?

Will we have a sober debate about this? Let’s see what happens in Michigan. We will all learn lessons by comparing the different approaches to the pandemic taken by Sweden and its neighboring country, Norway. Sweden didn’t force business closures, Norway did. These otherwise similar countries have chosen markedly different approaches, and here are the results as of April 18. The impact on the Swedish economy may be less, but the loss of life far greater. Which begs the question, at what cost of a single life?

This has been a tragically costly experiment whose results may radically change how we make decisions about our economy, our provision of healthcare, and our expectations of federal, state, and local governments.

I hope it reinvigorates the spirit of “All for one and one for all, for united we stand and divided we fall.”