Be curious but don't expect clear answers today

Humans have a tough time with cause and effect, perhaps because our frame of reference tends to be too small to see true patterns.

It may reach 113 degrees in Portland today, for instance, and evidently some storms in the Pacific affected the jet stream which, in turn, allowed a "heat dome" to form over the Pacific Northwest. Is this related to climate change or is it simply one of those vagaries of the weather that occur from time to time?

No one really knows.

Part of a building collapsed in south Florida and over a hundred are missing. If I had to guess, they were pulverized under the tons of concrete and steel, but a frantic search continues.

Engineers are already speculating about what caused this disaster, though it's way too early for anything definitive. There is good reason to find the cause ASAP since there may be more buildings at risk of a similar collapse. We rational humans demand the cause (and the implied "fix" that would follow), and we want it right now.

But a clear description of what happened and why is unlikely for some time. And by then we will have moved on.

The rate of Covid infection right now is much higher in counties that voted for Trump in 2020 compared to counties that went for Biden. The rate was not much different between counties just a few months ago. No one is sure why, though everyone has a theory.

It seems probable that being fully vaccinated is the only sure-fire way to insure against serious illness and death, but it's a big country and big world, and only time will allow enough statistics to be gathered to distinguish between causation and correlation. 

We live in a country that has come to accept a level of violence and death from guns that appalls the rest of the world. I'm quite certain that Covid can easily be folded into our national mythology about freedom, liberty, and choice. 

People die every day. Lots of them. The causes are many. In the widest possible view, the precise reason for each death is a stray detail. But that macro view results in seeing that life expectancy for Americans decreased by two years over the pandemic.

Will that result in more people taking social security earlier, since you need to live to at least 75 for delaying payments to benefit them? No one knows, of course. Ask in 20 years, however, and we might have some answers.

A week ago, highs around here were in triple digits. The past few days the high temperature has barely reached 70. Who would be surprised to see Denver back in the high 90s in just a few days?

I see that Amazon accounts for only 6 percent of all American retail sales, yet Amazon is all we talk about. Maybe that 6 percent is just a glimpse of a future that basically wipes our local retail, or maybe it's just a blip. 

It would be helpful to know, wouldn't it? 

Check back on this in, say, ten years. I will explain it all then.