This map from The New York Times shows the proportion of Americans, by county, who were planning on eating Thanksgiving dinner with people outside their own household. (The darker the color, the higher the proportion of people who planned on celebrating Thanksgiving with people outside their household.) Nationally, surveys suggest slightly more than 1/4 of Americans were planning on eating Thanksgiving with people outside their own household this year. For county-specific data, click on the link and mouse over each county: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/24/upshot/thanksgiving-dinner-survey.html

A new book, by Australian philosopher and scuba diving enthusiast Peter Godfrey-Smith, contributes to the conversation about what it means to be intelligent and to be a conscious being. The Wall Street Journal reviews Godfrey-Smith's Metazoa:

"Life undersea has a mesmerizing strangeness, from glass sponges—lacy matrices draped with cellular nets—to rococo sea dragons and soft corals like trees in a slow wind. It’s the stuff of a thousand documentaries, but for Peter Godfrey-Smith the spectacle is a curtain-raiser to a profound scientific drama, in which the lives of quite un-human creatures illuminate deep mysteries about the nature of sentience, and what it means to possess a mind. ... As a biological materialist, Mr. Godfrey-Smith sees consciousness as an evolutionary product emerging from the organization of a 'universe of processes that are not themselves mental.'... From sponges and corals, 'remnants and relatives of early forms of animal action,' Mr. Godfrey-Smith glides on through arthropods, cephalopods, fish and the creatures that eventually clambered onto land. In each group, he probes the complex effects of evolutionary innovations. Nervous systems, which probably first emerged as simpler neural nets more than 600 million years ago, tie 'the body together in new ways': Neurons have thousands of synapses, enabling vast interconnectivity. The emergence of bilaterally symmetrical bodies allowed movement with direction and traction—a big step. ... As nervous systems evolved further, other kinds of activity and integration arose. Octopuses, revisited here, are a compelling case. Two-thirds of the cephalopod’s half-billion neurons are lodged in its eight arms, part of a 'distributed brain’ that may help in controlling its shape-shifting body. Combining his observations with findings on the animals’ behavioral complexity and sensitivity, engagement with novelty, play and problem-solving, Mr. Godfrey-Smith sees octopuses as conscious, although their perspective is probably 'protean and perhaps sometimes chaotic.' ... No marine animal, however, evolved with 'a capacity for manipulation, openness of bodily action, and centralized braininess' all at once. That key mix came with land vertebrates.... Looking back at these immense journeys, Mr. Godfrey-Smith asserts a gradualism in the development of mind. In evolution, key traits don’t pop up suddenly: They 'creep into being.' If these traits are the basis for subjective experience across animals, mind too is a case of more or less rather than present or non-present, lights on or off. Its 'thereness is a matter of degree.' This view has obvious implications for how we see, and treat, other organisms."
www.wsj.com/articles/metazoa-review-marine-minds-11604678664

With Vanuatu reporting its first COVID case earlier this month, this map shows the remaining handful of nations that have had no reported COVID infections. ("Reported" is an important caveat, especially in the cases of Turkmenistan and North Korea.) www.statista.com/chart/21279/countries-that-have-not-reported-coronavirus-cases

Science News for Students is a free award-winning online publication dedicated to making cutting-edge science news accessible to students and science educators.
www.sciencenewsforstudents.org

The wild turkey is native to North America, but there are at least half a dozen subspecies of wild turkeys that reside in the U.S., Mexico, and a bit of southern Canada.  This map from the National Wild Turkey Federation shows the current ranges of the various subspecies of wild turkey. www.nwtf.org/hunt/wild-turkey-basics/habitat

As we are nearing the end of a hurricane season with an unprecedented number of named storms, extreme weather -- and forecasts surrounding extreme weather -- are becoming big business: "Fugaku is the fastest supercomputer on the planet. Recently built by Japanese company Fujitsu, it’s capable of 2.6 quadrillion operations per second. This staggering processing power is now at the service of the Japanese Meteorological Research Institute to help weather and climate forecasting and, above all, disaster warning. Extreme weather, largely fuelled by climate change, is an increasing liability to the world’s economy. ... As extreme events become the new normal, trucking companies, commodity traders and utility providers – not to mention insurance companies – need reliable hour-by-hour forecasts and analysis, just to save money. ... In late August, hurricane Laura made landfall at 150 mph in almost the exact location in Louisiana predicted 3.5 days earlier. Such a result would have been unthinkable a few decades ago, yet it’s precisely what is needed as we move forward into a more uncertain world. A constant increase in processing power, coupled with artificial intelligence, machine learning and cloud-based systems are anticipating the near future. Not only do they tell an airline to reschedule flights to avoid storms, or suggest to a farmer when to irrigate crops, they also inform millions of people when to evacuate from a hurricane’s path, or simply when it’s time to grab an umbrella. ... It’s strange that countries, companies and families promptly react to the flash warnings of meteorologists, but still fail to act in the face of the dire predictions of climatologists. They both use the same processing power, the same artificial intelligence and essentially the same science."
geographical.co.uk/opinion/item/3866-climatewatch-the-insecurity-market

Earlier this month, the Congressional Research Service published a short primer on the linkages between geography and U.S. political/military strategy and design of U.S. forces. This article from the U.S. Naval Institute shares the CRS report and provides its own context: "Most of the world’s people, resources, and economic activity are located not in the Western Hemisphere, but in the other hemisphere, particularly Eurasia. In response to this basic feature of world geography, U.S. policymakers for the last several decades have chosen to pursue, as a key element of U.S. national strategy, a goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia." news.usni.org/2020/11/06/report-on-world-geography-and-u-s-strategy

Further down the ballot in several states' elections in earlier this month were measures addressing the legality of marijuana. This map from Statista looks at current state laws regarding marijuana for recreational and medical use (dark green) and medical-only use (light green). www.statista.com/chart/6681/the-states-where-its-legal-to-smoke-marijuana

Before heading into Thanksgiving, when some of us may be gathering with family members with whom we disagree, it might be useful to consider this short piece from 1000-Word Philosophy on the "epistemology of disagreement": "People tend to care deeply about their political, religious, ethical, and philosophical beliefs. For many of these beliefs, however, you know of people who disagree with you and are roughly as intelligent, informed, and open-minded as you are. How should you respond when you recognize this fact? Should you lose confidence in our own beliefs, gain confidence, reject your own beliefs, adopt others’ beliefs, suspend judgment on the issue, or some other response? This is the epistemological problem of disagreement." 1000wordphilosophy.com/2018/05/14/the-epistemology-of-disagreement/

Last weekend the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership was signed by 13 Asian countries plus Australia and New Zealand to create the world's largest trading bloc, covering roughly 30% of the world's population and GDP. This map, from Asia Times, shows the 15 countries now joined in the RCEP free-trade zone (in teal). India withdrew from negotiations last year over concerns the agreement would hurt domestic producers. (The RCEP is the successor to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the U.S. had initialed during Pres. Obama's term in 2016 and then withdrew from on the first full day of Pres. Trump's term in January 2017. The RCEP is widely seen as a signal of China's economic influence in the region.) i0.wp.com/asiatimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/world_map_dec09.jpg

Test your geographic knowledge with this short quiz that requires only one thing: name any country with a four-letter name... then a five-letter name ... then a six-letter name ... up to a 13- letter name: www.buzzfeed.com/andyneuenschwander/country-naming-geography-quiz

Ethiopia's northernmost regional state of Tigray (shown in orange on this Al Jazeera map) has been in the news recently: after the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) reportedly launched an attack on the Ethiopian military's northern command earlier this month, Ethiopia responded by declaring war on Tigray. Although ethnic Tigrayans account for about 6% of Ethiopia's population, TPLF ran Ethiopia, either directly or as the dominant partner in a coalition, for nearly 30 years until current prime minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. As a semi-autonomous state, Tigray itself has a military of roughly 250,000, suggesting any conflict could be prolonged and draw in neighboring states, including Eritrea (which is majority Tigrayan), Sudan, Somalia, and Djibouti. www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Etiopia-map-01.jpg (Map from www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/10/ethiopias-tigray-conflict-explained-in-500-words)

Some have argued that the recent war fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan foretells the end of tanks on the battlefield. Azerbaijan used relatively inexpensive drones (reportedly purchased from Turkey, Israel, and China) to destroy hundreds of Armenian tanks and artillery pieces as well dozens of Armenian air-defense systems, allowing the drones to pick off additional targets at will. This Forbes article provides a look at the military technology and its implications. www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/11/10/the-magic-bullet-drones-behind--azerbaijans-victory-over-armenia

Trees don't just lose their leaves. Some lose their bark as well. This article profiles the rainbow eucalyptus tree, the only eucalyptus tree native to the Northern Hemisphere (the Philippines) and one of only four eucalyptus species (out of 700+) that is not found in Australia. When the bark peels, an assortment of colors is revealed. www.insider.com/rainbow-eucalyptus-trees-bark-photos-nature

A cartogram is a map weighted for a particular variable; in this case, the variable is the number of state electoral votes. This cartogram, from National Popular Vote, shows the progress of the National Popular Vote initiative through the state houses (from www.nationalpopularvote.com/state-status). (The National Popular Vote initiative encourages states to pass laws that require their electors to vote for the presidential candidate that won the popular vote in order to ensure that every vote cast in all 50 states is weighted equally. The initiative does not take effect until states totaling at least 270 electoral votes have enacted the necessary law.)

In 1960, Oxford University philosopher Isaiah Berlin laid out the difference between negative liberty (being free from restraint and interference) and positive liberty (the ability to make choices and act on them). Sixty years later, these different conceptions of "liberty" frame much of the conservative/libertarian and liberal/progressive political agendas. This article from the online journal Aeon lays out similar differences in our concepts of "security": is "security" protection of material goods and the existing social order ("antagonistic security"), or is "security" a good that is only manifest when those in the community have the means to secure what is necessary to satisfy basic needs ("collective security")? In common usage, we intuit the different concepts of security when discussing "law and order" and "food security," for example.  In practice, this distinction leads to a more nuanced understanding of the difference between the conservative/libertarian concept of "security" and the liberal/progressive concept of "security" and what it means for issues as diverse as police reform and state surveillance.  aeon.co/essays/on-liberty-security-and-our-system-of-racial-capitalism

Elections and wars are inflection points rich in counterfactuals. The series of maps in this BBC Future article considers alternate histories, which have become a field of serious historical scholarship: what if the U.S. had lost the American Revolution? what if WWII hadn't been fought? what if the states of the United States had splintered in line with some actual proposals?  www.bbc.com/future/article/20201104-the-intriguing-maps-that-reveal-alternate-histories

Wondering about why Friday the 13th is considered unlucky? Curious about ill-fated historical events that occurred on Friday the 13th? Then you might enjoy this short article from The History Channel: www.history.com/topics/folklore/friday-the-13th

Earlier this week, Armenia and Azerbaijan announced the end of months of fighting. Under the Russian-brokered peace deal, Armenia will be withdrawing troops from parts of Azerbaijan (shown in lighter blues on this BBC map), Russia will be deploying peacekeepers to much of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority region within Azerbaijan (shown in brick red on this map), and Azerbaijan will be regaining control of Azerbaijani territory Armenia had previously been occupying (shown in dark blue on this map). ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/13DAC/production/_115342318_nk_peace_deal_detailed_map_640-nc-nc.png  (from www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54324772)

Denmark, the world's leading producer of minks, made the decision last week to cull all of the country's domestic mink population, as many as 17 million animals, because a mutated coronavirus that seemed to reduce sensitivity to antibodies was being passed back and forth between people and minks. In announcing the decision, Denmark's prime minister said, "We have a great responsibility towards our own population, but with the mutation that has now been found, we have an even greater responsibility for the rest of the world as well." Human-mink coronavirus transmission has not been limited to Denmark: the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the U.S. have also reported infections this year and have culled infected animals. It is relevant to note that the world's #2 and #3 mink producers, Poland and China, have not yet responded to scientists' calls to ban mink production. (quote from www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-denmark-mink/denmark-to-cull-entire-herd-of-mink-due-to-risk-of-coronavirus-mutation-tv2-idUSKBN27K1X6)

Diwali, the Hindu holiday often referred to as the festival of lights, starts on Saturday. India is one of only two Hindu-majority countries. (The other is Nepal.) In northern India, at the edge of the Thar Desert, the city of Jodhpur is known as the blue city because of the azure pigment used on hundreds (thousands?) of Jodhpur's houses: www.tripsavvy.com/top-attractions-in-jodhpur-1539658

The series of maps in this article from The Washington Post details movement right and left politically between 2016 and 2020 as well as comparing 2012 to 2016. www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/elections/electorate-changes-2016-election-vs-2020/

Looking for a game to play with family or friends over Thanksgiving? Or maybe a holiday gift? Check out Trial by Trolley, a board game based on the classic runaway-trolley thought experiment associated with utilitarianism. The game requires at least three players: a "conductor" and two individuals or teams competing to convince the conductor to run over whatever is on their opponent's track and spare whatever is on their own track. It's sort of like the Apples to Apples of moral philosophy. The game is about $25 at Target, Amazon, and other retailers. www.target.com/p/trial-by-trolley-game/-/A-78138830

This short looping video from Visual Capitalist compares the continents by land area, population, and GDP: www.visualcapitalist.com/animated-map-the-comparative-might-of-continents/

If you have a student interested in a reading challenge or just finding classic literature that might otherwise be overlooked, Mensa for Kids has an Excellence in Reading program that is open to all students, not just Mensa members. The book lists themselves are worth checking out even if your student is not planning on reading them all (and, yes, reading EVERY book on the grade list is required for the certificate and t-shirt).  Because this is a Mensa list, the grade lists include a generous helping of above-grade-level literature. www.mensaforkids.org/achieve/excellence-in-reading/