Miscellaneous Thoughts

• The Covid vaccine was developed in almost miraculous time by the private pharmaceutical sector, but the government at the federal, state and local level is struggling to get the vaccine distributed. Millions of Americans over 70 are still waiting for their first shot.
  
  Why is it so hard? Doubtless it's because government does very little very well. Maybe the feds and states should've contracted with Amazon to deliver the vaccine.


• Can we please declare an informal moratorium on the phrase "getting shots into arms"? The phrase is beginning to suffer from extreme overuse by commentators who either wish to sound hip or lack sufficient imagination to come up with alternatives.


• This is the passage that gave rise to the expression that there's a God-shaped hole in every human heart that only God can fill. It's from Blaise Pascal's (1623-1662) Pensées:

  What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.

  Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, theologian and philosopher. He discovered what became known as Pascal's Principle in physics, did important work on conic sections, laid the ground work for the mathematics of probability, invented a digital calculator, the syringe and the hydraulic press, wrote one of the most famous works in Christian theology (Pensées) and developed an argument justifying belief in God that came to be called Pascal's Wager.
  
  Quite a life packed into only 39 years.


• As I get older this story becomes a lot more like my everyday experience:
  
  An elderly couple had dinner at another couple's house, and after eating, the wives left the table and went into the kitchen.
  
  The two gentlemen were talking, and one said, 'Last night we went out to a new restaurant and it was really great I would recommend it very highly.'
  
  The other man said, 'What's the name of the restaurant?'
  
  The first man thought and thought and finally said, 'What’s the name of that flower you give to someone you love? You know, the one that's red and has thorns.'
  
  'Do you mean a rose?'
  
  'Yes, that's the one,' replied the man. He then turned towards the kitchen and yelled, 'Rose, what's the name of that restaurant we went to last night?'