Month: July 2020

High school will be two mornings per week here in Maskachusetts

by philg

Friends have a son who had planned to head into Lincoln-Sudbury High School for 9th grade. The superintendent/principal (remarkably, the same person does both jobs in this one-school school system), sent an email to parents:

As you may recall from earlier communications, we are required to develop three learning plans for the opening of school: 100% all remote, hybrid in-person and remote, and 100% in-person. We are required to submit the learning plans to the state by July 31st after approval by the L-S School Committee. The state is also requesting that we indicate which plan we anticipate utilizing when we reopen school this fall. The School Committee is scheduled to take its vote at its meeting scheduled for July 28.

As stated in the preamble for the initial draft for fall opening it is my recommendation that we reopen school with a hybrid of in-person and remote learning and not 100% in-person. This recommendation is based on the challenge of ensuring a safe environment with 100% students in school all at one time and the compromise to delivery of instruction. Maintaining 3’ separation would significantly compromise delivery of instruction in all science classes. Maintaining 6’ separation significantly compromises delivery of instruction in all classes. And, finally, maintaining a strict protocol of social distancing and disinfection during lunch periods, mask breaks and travel through the school between classes is not feasible with 100% in-person.

[Why a limit based on “disinfection” if masks are the answer (the link below says “All staff and students wearing masks”) and if “science” now tells us that people are getting coronaplague from aerosols, not from funky surfaces?]

The “hybrid plan” recommended by Bella Wong (principal/superintendent) features two mornings per week of in-person instruction:

On Monday, the students tracked into “Cohort A” will attend school from 8:25 am to noon on Mondays and from 8:25-11:05 on Thursdays.

I asked the father of the 14-year-old boy who is headed into this arrangement why the teenage boys sitting at home wouldn’t play shooter games during all of the time that they should supposedly be in “remote learning” or “independent activity”. He responded “One of them was doing that already, according to [the son]”.

Will we go back to the Victorian era when families of even slightly above-average means hire private tutors to come to the house?

Also, won’t this heavily favor students who happen to live in super-sized McMansions? They can have a dedicated classroom, not just a desk in a cluttered “room room”.

(Note that teachers will presumably have to clock in four mornings per week in order to collect a full-time paycheck.)

Related:

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Will coronaplague boost teacher income the way that it has for daycare workers?

by philg

Parents in the western suburbs of Boston like to talk about First World problems. The License Raj here in Maskachusetts is has allowed daycares to reopen with some limitations (boston.com). Great news for working parents, right? (or for parents who are simply tired of dealing with their children 24/7) “It is impossible to enroll,” said one mom. “The daycare workers won’t go back because they’re getting $600/week plus regular unemployment plus under-the-table cash from parents who hired them to do in-home care after the daycares were shut down. If they went back to work, it would be a 70 percent pay cut.”

I wonder if the same thing will happen with school teachers. Based on my Facebook feed, teachers and rich parents are opposed to opening in-person schools. Unionized schoolteachers in particular say that they won’t work unless their safety is guaranteed somehow. “School closures ‘a mistake’ as no teachers infected in classroom” (Times of London):

Scientists are yet to find a single confirmed case of a teacher catching coronavirus from a pupil anywhere in the world, a leading epidemiologist has said.

Mark Woolhouse, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Edinburgh University, offered reassurance to staff preparing for the full reopening of schools next month.

Professor Woolhouse is definitely going to be an exception to the #FollowScientists rule!

Is there a cash value to #RejectScienceAndStayHome? In the cower-in-place system, public school teachers in Lincoln, Brookline, and Newton are required to work only a handful of hours per week (see “Massachusetts private school students zoom ahead”). If a teacher must send out one email on Monday morning, host a couple of chats on Tuesday and Thursday, and provide a bit of feedback on assignments emailed in on Friday afternoon, that leaves at least 40 hours in the middle of the week to… teach! Every public school teacher can offer to come into the homes of richer parents and provide some actual instruction at $100/hour in cash. As a practical matter, maybe this works for only 20 hours per week, but that should still be enough to at least double the spending power of a teacher receiving $70,000 per year (plus pension and benefits) from taxpayers.

(“Florida Orders Schools To Reopen In The Fall For In-Person Instruction” (NPR) is a possible exception:

In the state where more than 7,300 new coronavirus cases were announced on Tuesday, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran declared that upon reopening in August, “all school boards and charter school governing boards must open brick and mortar schools at least five days per week for all students.”

but there are no guarantees for taxpaying parents: “Those services include in-person instruction unless barred by a state or local health directive“)

An aircraft owner friend hired a public school teacher at $60/hour cash to teach two children. If this were 4 hours per day, 180 days per year (the standard school year), that’s only $21,600 per year per child, i.e., much less than a lot of Boston-area districts spend even without counting the lavish capital spending.

His children are examples of “The Latest in School Segregation: Private Pandemic ‘Pods’” (NYT):

If they become the norm, less privileged kids will suffer. … As school districts across the nation announce that their buildings will remain closed in the fall, parents are quickly organizing “learning pods” or “pandemic pods” — small groupings of children who gather every day and learn in a shared space, often participating in the online instruction provided by their schools. Pods are supervised either by a hired private teacher or other adult, or with parents taking turns. … Based on what I’ve seen online, the learning pod movement appears to be led by families with means, a large portion of whom are white. Paradoxically, at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement has prompted a national reckoning with white supremacy, white parents are again ignoring racial and class inequality when it comes to educating their children.

Parents are also more likely to join pods with families who have similarly low exposure to the coronavirus. This seemingly rational impulse will, in practice, exclude many Black and Latinx families, who are disproportionately infected by the virus.

Related:

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Musicians of color in classical music

by philg

In May I wondered “What happens to classical musicians in the Age of Corona?”:

The audience for live classical music and opera is perilously close to the 82-year-old average age of a Covid-19 victim in Massachusetts (source). Concert venues are shut down by orders of the governor, First Amendment right to assemble notwithstanding. Even if it were legal to host a concert, would the core of elderly patrons show up?

The New York Times has an answer: the musicians become more diverse, at least in terms of skin color (but if, for coronasafety, there is a limit of one audience member at a time, there can’t be too much skin color diversity in the audience!). “To Make Orchestras More Diverse, End Blind Auditions”:

American orchestras remain among the nation’s least racially diverse institutions, especially in regard to Black and Latino artists. In a 2014 study, only 1.8 percent of the players in top ensembles were Black; just 2.5 percent were Latino. At the time of the Philharmonic’s 1969 discrimination case, it had one Black player, the first it ever hired: Sanford Allen, a violinist. Today, in a city that is a quarter Black, just one out of 106 full-time players is Black: Anthony McGill, the principal clarinet.

The status quo is not working. If things are to change, ensembles must be able to take proactive steps to address the appalling racial imbalance that remains in their ranks. Blind auditions are no longer tenable.

Related:

  • “A Famous Study Found That Blind Auditions Reduced Sexism in the Orchestra. Or Did It?” (Reason) : In May, Columbia University statistician Andrew Gelman took a deep dive into the study. He described them as “not very impressive at all,” and had great difficulty trying to locate the 50 percent statistic within the modest findings. “You shouldn’t be running around making a big deal about point estimates when the standard errors are so large,” he wrote. “I don’t hold it against the authors—this was 2000, after all, the stone age in our understanding of statistical errors. But from a modern perspective we can see the problem.”
  • Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (starring Will Ferrell, on Netflix, in case you are tired of old recordings of older music)
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Impeller-based top-load high-efficiency washing machines?

by philg

Another day, another appliance failure. It is time to replace a washing machine. The space into which this slots is kind of tight, so it would be good to stay within the 27×27″ footprint that was formerly standard before (a) Americans got bigger, and (b) laundry machines got bigger via front load designs.

There are some top loading machines that still fit the old footprint. Supposedly the latest and greatest are impeller-based and don’t have the agitator spindle in the middle. This is an attractive idea, at least, since it would seem to be better for loading in bulky sheets, towels, etc., and not having them get tangled around the agitator. On the other hand, there are a lot of negative reviews of these machines online.

The dryer duct in our apartment is long and windy, thus making the dryer somewhat inefficient. The higher spin speed of the impeller-based machines is therefore attractive.

Does anyone have experience with this new breed of impeller-based top-loading washing machines? The ones that would seem to fit the space best are from Maytag and GE.

How about front loader versus these new-design top loaders?

Related:

Unrelated: a backhoe and/or laundry service in Anguilla, from 2002…

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Freedom to travel, Maskachusetts $500/day edition

by philg

The latest from our governor: a $500/day fine for anyone returning or traveling to Maskachusetts who does not either (a) quarantine for 14 days, or (b) produce a negative Covid-19 test result from within the preceding 72 hours. (But it is now taking a week or more to get a test done in most parts of the U.S.? So prong (b) has no practical effect?)

The new restrictions are effective on August 1.

From our airport management: “Please find below and attached new directives from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Please post these new directives within your leased area and to ensure visibility and cooperation.”

More: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-travel-order and also https://www.mass.gov/forms/massachusetts-travel-form (we welcome undocumented migrants, but the friendly government demands contact information, a precise address within Massachusetts, the ages of any migrant’s child, etc.)

(My Dutch friend: “All of the rights that Americans fought and died in multiple wars to defend, they gave up in one governor’s press conference.”)

Related:

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Free rent today leads to higher housing costs tomorrow for America’s poorest?

by philg

One good thing about the U.S. response to coronaplague has been allowing our low-income residents, documented and otherwise, to skip paying rent while simultaneously forbidding landlords from initiating evictions (maybe until mid-2021 here in Maskachusetts?). So… the working poor are protected from harm by a benevolent government during this period when they are no longer “working” (probably making more money, though!).

Maybe not!

We’ve been doing a lot of helicopter flying lately with a photographer whose bread and butter is aerial real estate images. A typical mission involves going to a town with a lot of low-skill immigrants and/or multi-generational welfare-dependent native-born Americans and photographing an apartment building from the 1950s.

Why does anyone need these pictures? “All the rental landlords are trying to organize condominium conversions. Since they can’t collect rent, it makes a lot more sense to sell the apartments,” was the answer.

Especially given the high transaction costs of buying and selling real estate in the U.S. (5-6 percent every time someone needs to move!), is it fair to say that the result of today’s policy change will be higher long-run housing costs for low-income residents of the U.S.? With millions of immigrants arriving, plus population expansion from children of already-present immigrants, and a shrinking pool of rental housing, won’t that translate into higher rents?

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SAT analogy question: Atomic bomb is to firebombs as coronaplague is to …

by philg

From The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World (A.J. Baime)

General H. H. “Hap” Arnold, head of the army air forces, had gambled $3 billion—and his entire career—on the development of the B-29 Superfortress. (The B-29 program cost taxpayers considerably more than the Manhattan Project did.)

The first incendiary mission was flown March 9–10, using bombs loaded with white phosphorus and napalm; the latter substance was a new highly flammable fuel gel developed in a Harvard laboratory. The B-29 crews had been instructed on the best way to drop their payloads, to create the maximum amount of fire: “The bombs from a single ship must be spaced so as to assure a merging of the fires started by each bomb into a general conflagration before fire fighters have had time to put them out . . . With a full bomb load . . . of M-69 incendiaries, the area burned out by a single ship should be around 16 acres.”

That first firebombing of Tokyo resulted in the largest death toll of any air raid, in any war ever, up to that point—an estimated 100,000 Japanese, likely more. Civilians hiding in dug-out holes that served as crude bomb shelters were baked alive by the towering flames, the heat reaching 1,800 degrees F. Others took refuge in canals only to be boiled to death in the searing heat.

On August 1, Curtis LeMay issued a warning to Japanese citizens in twelve cities to leave their homes and jobs to save their lives, as their cities were top on what was being called in the press LeMay’s “death list”—Mito, Fukuyama, Ōtsu, among others. On August 2, the day Truman met with the king of England and then started the transatlantic journey home aboard the Augusta, the Twenty-First Bomber Command struck the enemy with what the New York Times called “the greatest single aerial strike in world history.” Nearly 900 B-29s pounded targets with 6,632 tons of conventional and incendiary bombs. The flames engulfed miles of Japanese cities. “The sight was incredible beyond description,” recalled one B-29 crewman. These attacking planes saw no opposition. “They knew we were coming but they didn’t do anything about it,” said one officer.

How did folks on the home front feel about this?

No outrage came from the American public. All the critics who had hurled calumny at the British for their willingness to bomb civilian population centers in Nazi Germany now remained silent. In fact, popular American opinion now seemed to embrace this form of warfare. Newspaper articles ran long columns with pictures of the factories where the firebombs were built. FILLING “GOOP BOMBS” THAT ARE FRYING JAPAN LIKE MIXING CAKE DOUGH, stated a Boston Daily Globe headline. “The M-69s [firebombs] become miniature flamethrowers,” reported Time magazine, “that hurl cheesecloth socks full of furiously flaming goo [napalm] for 100 yards. Anything these socks hit is enveloped by clinging, fiery pancakes.” Only Secretary of War Stimson urged an end to the indiscriminate killing. Stimson went to see the president. “I told him I was anxious about this feature of the war for two reasons,” Stimson wrote in his diary. “First, because I did not want to have the United States get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities; and second, I was a little fearful that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength.”

Obliquely threatened with the atomic bomb prior to its use, the Japanese refused to surrender:

On the same day the Senate ratified the UN Charter, Japan responded officially to the Potsdam Declaration. Tokyo was rejecting it. The Japanese government “does not consider [the Potsdam Declaration] of great importance,” Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki said in a press conference. “We must mokusatsu it.” When the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service translated the word mokusatsu, it used the word ignore. In reality, the word meant “to kill with silence”—a vague notion. Another report from a Japanese news agency quoted the Japanese reaction to the ultimatum, saying Japan would “prosecute the war of Great East Asia to the bitter end.”

Of course, Japan did surrender after the atomic bombs were dropped, despite the fact that these bombings were less destructive to life and property than the firebombings had been.

I wonder if this is analogous to the coronaplague situation. Losing millions to influenza over the years never bothered us. Losing millions to automobile accidents that would be easy to prevent with lockdown-style regulations (e.g., only “essential” trips are authorized and private car ownership/amateur driving are banned) has never bothered us. Losing Americans to diabetes, heart disease, and other inevitable side effects of obesity doesn’t bother us enough to outlaw restaurants serving 2,000-calorie meals (or make us think twice about locking people into sedentary habits for 3 months). Losing Americans to cancer didn’t bother us enough to refrain from shutting down ultrasound and other cancer screenings from March through June 2020.

Unmitigated coronaplagues are sharp and painful, however. Even with a “do almost nothing” approach like Sweden took, the total number of deaths is smaller than causes of death that don’t motivate us to change behavior or policy. But the deaths are concentrated over a two-month period rather than being spread out over a year or two. From IHME:

Readers: What do you think? Correct SAT answer? “Atomic bomb is to firebombs as coronaplague is to influenza”

Bonus, from my Japan photos, Kyoto (spared both firebombs and the atomic bomb):

Related:

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Should this be Year 1 in the new calendar?

by philg

(Or maybe Year 0?)

The epoch for a variety of calendars is the moment at which a new religion was born. For example, the Islamic calendar starts at the year that Muhammad and followers moved to Medina. The Buddhist calendar starts the day in which the Buddha attained parinibbāna. The Zoroastrian calendar starts from the birth of Zoroaster. Our calendar starts at the year in which Jesus was born.

As measured by whether heresy and infidels will be tolerated, the most important and popular religion in the U.S. right now is the Church of Shutdown. Shouldn’t this then be Year 1, AS (“After Shutdown”)? Or maybe Year 0, AC (“After Corona”)? Or Year 1, ME (“Mask Era”)?

Important holidays in the new calendar:

  • Anthony Fauci‘s birthday: tree with decorations, gifts under the tree, songs about the birth of our savior Fauci
  • NYC Shutdown day (March 22): instead of crowding into Manhattan stores, as was actually done in Year 1, people celebrate by buying a year’s worth of toilet paper, while wearing a mask, from the safety of their Internet-equipped bunker
  • Anders Tegnell‘s birthday: somber day of mourning, cut and paste liturgy from Yom Kippur
  • Elon Musk’s birthday: just to make the Tesla zealots happy

Readers: what should the other holidays be?

(Bottom photo: Carhenge)

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Face mask may lead to a medical emergency

by philg

My Facebook feed is packed with Karens expressing hatred for those who say that wearing a mask is bad for health, uncomfortable, or results in oxygen starvation. (Advantage: Sweden, since they have no mask requirement and therefore citizens of Sweden can’t hate each other over this.)

Samples:

Flabbergasted at the number of people I see not wearing masks IN THE AIRPORT. Airport employees not wearing masks. People with masks under their noses. New rule: you can not wear a mask in public, but only if you write “I’m an asshole” on your forehead, with a sharpie. You can wear it under your nose if you write, “I’m stupid.”

I’m wearing a mask, not because the government says to, but because I’m a doctor’s kid, and I have a brain. I’m from Chicago, and every since I was little, I could see how far the moisture in my lungs and throat and mouth travel, because when it’s below freezing, you can actually see it. So I don’t need any damn government telling me not to be an asshole. On the other hand, mask-refusers are ruled by the government. They’re like kids shouting, “You’re not the boss of me!” and doing the opposite of whatever the government says. In this way, the government controls them. They don’t get to make their own decisions any more, because they’ve handed the power over to the government.

Marco Iannelli, at the end, says that wearing a mask does not make it difficult to breathe. What do the experts say?

From my inbox, July 6:

WEARING FACE COVERINGS SAFELY IN HOT WEATHER

The City of Cambridge and the Cambridge Public Health Department understand that wearing masks or cloth face coverings may not be possible in every situation or for some people, especially during the summer months.

In some situations, wearing a cloth face covering may worsen a physical or mental health condition, lead to a medical emergency, or introduce significant safety concerns.

#BelieveExperts?

Update from 7/22. A post from a friend in California (after months of wearing masks, now hosting an exponential epidemic of the virus that is prevented by wearing masks):

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Gulfstream owners are suffering too (international destinations open to Americans)

by philg

From a company that helps jet owners plan their trips….

A lot of countries require that the PCR test be taken within 48 hours of arrival. This is challenging for overseas travelers (like from the U.S.) and/or travelers from countries where it takes longer than 24-36 hours to get the results (also like the U.S.). The workaround…secure a PCR test in a country near your destination. (For instance, Croatia now has a 48hr PCR test requirement. You can fly to Turkey (which is wide open for travel), get the test (24-36 hour turnaround), and proceed to Croatia. Our office in Turkey can help you arrange a testing provider.)

So… the Mediterranean beach holiday in Croatia can happen, but there might be a stop in Turkey. #InThisTogether

Want to prove that Donald Trump was wrong?

Haiti – Open.

Agree with Donald Trump on the superior cleanliness and development level of Western Europe?

France – France’s NOTAM is departure-based and not nationality-based. This significantly opens up access to third-country nationals (including U.S. citizens), … As long as the aircraft first clears in another Schengen country or the UK before proceeding to France, third country nationals can enter France. … How it works: Arrive in the UK, which is open, get your stamp in the UK, proceed to France. We’ve tested this option for Nice with some of our clients, and it is a workable path in.

You can go to Belarus (no shutdown, no banning of mass gatherings, and minimal coronaplague so far) without paperwork or ceremony. The rest of Europe is often open if you can claim a “business purpose.” Most of the Caribbean is open.

Here’s a question… how can anyone know whether a Covid-19 test result is genuine? What stops people from printing up Covid-19 PCR test results at home using the same laser printers that doctors and hospitals use? Passports have all kinds of forgery-prevention features, but medical test results don’t.

Bonus: A Gulfstream G650 at our local airport. (I motivated some defriending by posting this on Facebook with a caption of “We’ve taken out the middle seats for Covid-19.”)

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