What's in Dave's Head

I went to college many years ago at Washington College in Chestertown, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Life on the eastern side of the Chesapeake Bay is like a different world from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., where I grew up: a much slower pace, fewer people, more agrarian. I remember marveling that at the town’s one stoplight (there are more now as the village has grown), when the light turned green, the driver of the first car (if in fact there was more than one car in line) would proceed in due time in a leisurely fashion, and the other motorists would patiently wait to go. What’s the rush? Imagine that scenario playing out in my hometown of Rockville, or any densely populated suburb. I have a lot of fond memories of W.C., as it was then known (today it is referred to as WAC). Everything was in walking distance, so many of us didn’t have cars, at least until junior or senior year. We would walk to friends’ off-campus house on Saturday nights to watch a new gro...

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted everyone’s life. We all have a responsibility to practice social distancing by sheltering in place and all the rest. Over the past week, my anxiety about the novel coronavirus has increased at roughly the same rate as the virus’s exponential spread. I worry that my wife, our children and theirs could become sick. So far, I don’t know anyone who has contracted it; a person who works in the same building as me tested positive (I don’t know who and was told that we won’t be contacted unless we were believed to be in contact with them), and the friend of one of my brothers-in-law lost his dad to COVID-19 a few days ago. It’s just a matter of time before it hits close to home. As far as impacts on me, they are relatively minor. We are fortunate: I still have my job. We have food. Our daughters and their families are close by so we can visit them (our son and his wife are in lockdown in L.A.). We can stay in touch with friends and family thr...

A frequent topic of news articles here in America and elsewhere in the West is about China being a “surveillance state.” Sample headlines include:           “’The Entire System is Designed to Suppress Us’: What the Chinese Surveillance State Means for the Rest of the World” – Time , Nov. 21, 2019           “Big Brother is watching: inside China, the ultimate surveillance state” – The Times of London , May 26, 2019             “Inside China’s surveillance state” – Financial Times , July 2018           “Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras” – The New York Times , July 8, 2018 China’s authorities keep tabs on citizens’ whereabouts and activities at all times. National police use facial-recognition glasses, hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras in public places, a database of citizens’ voices, artificial intelligence and big data analytic...