"The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection." from Introduction to Liberty, John Stuart Mill 1806-1873 I was awakened this morning from a sound sleep by an errant smoke alarm whose battery had seen its end and felt the need to socialize. It was 5 am and, after attending to it, efforts to return to my slumber met with dismal failure as thoughts for my next blog raced through my head. It has been about a month from the previous post and I realized I could count the number of times I've left the house on two hands. This "new normal" has taught me many things, one of which is, will things ever be the same again? I've read articles by futurists who proclaim that much of what we've done in the past is superfluous and that we could all bene