Hindsight 2020

 It's been a long, strange, difficult year. As of the writing of this, the United States has lost a total of  568,962 lives to COVID-19. By my rudimentary mathematical calculations, that equates to an average of 1,425 people dying every day since the lockdown began last March. Sure, people die every day. It's a fact of life. In 'normal' times, an average of 5,500 people die in the United States everyday. But it's the way that a lot of COVID victims died -alone, isolated, afraid, struggling to breathe- that really weighs heavy on my mind. And what about all those people who survived their initial bout with COVID-19 only to continue to suffer "long haul" effects and ailments? I consider myself and my wife and two kids some of the extremely lucky ones. None of us contracted COVID-19 yet and my wife and I are fully vaccinated while both my kids have just received their first vaccine doses yesterday. I feel like we've managed to dodge a bullet for over a ye...

 Prince Philip dead at age 99. It's all over the news today. I'm sure there'll be dozens of touching tributes to this man. He obviously led a full life. 99 years. Can you imagine? He also led a life of privilege and prestige because, well, he was royal . Royalty . In this modern day and age, we still have kings, queens, princes, and princesses who are revered and honored because they are royal . It's laughable to me. Royal people are just rich people who, somewhere along the line in history, had a title bestowed upon them or just simply had a great-great-great-great-great grandfather who declared himself King. There's no such thing as royal blood . We know this as a scientific fact. And yet millions of people in Britain swoon over Queen Elizabeth and the rest of the royal family. While they have no real political power, they have plenty of influence and are still included in various ceremonial/political events. As if they were something special. Millions of British...