A little more support for my ventilation system upgrade idea

by philg

Build downdraft paint booths for K-12 schools? (July 2020, here on this blog):

The technology for downdraft paint booths is highly advanced … Why not a system for schools in which (a) each classroom has its own HVAC system, (b) there are 8-12 outlets in the ceiling, and (c) there are 8-12 exhaust outlets in the floor? For maximum safety, the system would have no recirculation.

More than a year later, in Atlantic, “The Plan to Stop Every Respiratory Virus at Once” (9/7/2021):

The original dogma, you might remember, was that the novel coronavirus spread like the flu, through droplets that quickly fell out of the air.

A virus that lingers in the air is an uncomfortable and inconvenient revelation. Scientists who had pushed the WHO to recognize airborne transmission of COVID-19 last year told me they were baffled by the resistance they encountered, but they could see why their ideas were unwelcome. In those early days when masks were scarce, admitting that a virus was airborne meant admitting that our antivirus measures were not very effective. “We want to feel we’re in control. If something is transmitted through your contaminated hands touching your face, you control that,” Noakes said. “But if something’s transmitted through breathing the same air, that is very, very hard for an individual to manage.”

The WHO took until July 2020 to acknowledge that the coronavirus could spread through aerosols in the air. Even now, Morawska says, many public-health guidelines are stuck in a pre-airborne world. Where she lives in Australia, people are wearing face masks to walk down the street and then taking them off as soon as they sit down at restaurants, which are operating at full capacity. It’s like some kind of medieval ritual, she says, with no regard for how the virus actually spreads. In the restaurants, “there’s no ventilation,” she adds, which she knows because she’s the type of scientist who takes an air-quality meter to the restaurant.

(See “Australia has almost eliminated the coronavirus — by putting faith in science” (Washington Post, 11/5/2020)_

I guess Professor Morawska wouldn’t like the simplest science-based way to get schools back to normal operations:

(some responses to the above:

  • “If they hold classes in a Walmart then schools can stay open”
  • “The hardest part of 14 days to flatten the curve is the first 18 months.”
  • “Possibly have the teacher come to their table to collect homework , so they can ask “menu ” questions….”

; Why is Kimberly’s idea “science-based”? The orders from governors that have reshaped U.S. society are purportedly science-based, including orders that restaurants can reopen at up to full capacity so long as masks are worn between the front door and the table. Therefore, by transitivity, Kimberly’s proposal for schools is equally science-based.)

If we have $trillions to spend fighting COVID-19, which we apparently do (though it is unclear why we wouldn’t instead spend the money on CO2 vacuums to deal with what our leading intellectual has called a “code red” threat to all of humanity from climate change), why wouldn’t we invest in ventilation?

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Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) was itself the cause of loss of pressure…

by philg

The idea of indirect monitoring of tire pressure with sensors already on the car, e.g., wheel speed from the ABS system (just look to see if wheels are spinning at different speeds and/or look at GPS distance traveled versus wheel rotations), seems to be unpopular. In trying to clean up our 2007 Infiniti M35x so that the hulk could be sold (rather than moved to the Florida Free State where one gets no points for being a frugal Yankee driving an old car into the ground), it turned out that the slow leak in one tire was actually being caused by the TPMS sensor itself. Also, the shop said that the systems in older cars usually accumulated programming mistakes that led to the display being inaccurate regarding which tire was at what pressure. An indirect system wouldn’t be subject to these human errors.

A good example of how a system that is great in theory is weak in practice? Direct TPMS is presumably engineered to work well for the three-year standard new car warranty. But the service life of a car is closer to 20 years (average age of a car on a U.S. road right now is 12.1 years).

Would it have been smarter if we’d insisted on indirect sensing that couldn’t be a new source of leaks?

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The governments that preserved us from coronavirus now start giving us the bill

by philg

“National insurance hike sets UK on path to record level of taxes” (CNN):

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to hike payroll taxes to raise billions in funding for health and social care will raise Britain’s tax burden to its highest ever level, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Johnson described the plan as “the biggest catch-up program in the history of the [National Health Service],” which is grappling with a chronic backlog of non-essential treatments that has been made worse by the coronavirus pandemic.

UK government spending coming out of the pandemic is set to reach a record peacetime level, according to the IFS.

What are folks in the UK paying for? In the COVID Olympics, the country has suffered 1,992 deaths per million tagged to COVID-19, a somewhat higher rate than the U.S. and 1.4X the rate in give-the-finger-to-the-virus Sweden.

Proof that “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have”?

Where does this end? Now that most people in most countries have begged for salvation at any price (and simply decided, without any precedent and contrary to W.H.O. pandemic advice through 2019, that muscular government action actually could prevent us from contracting a respiratory virus), are we going to enter a new era of much bigger government?

OECD data show that the UK government was previously spending a somewhat higher percentage of GDP than the U.S.:

Note that most countries include health care in “government spending” and some include nearly all higher education costs. If we add 10 percent of GDP to the headline U.S. number to adjust for these factors (i.e., the money that we have to spend on health care and higher ed privately that would be included via our tax bill, e.g., in Denmark), the U.S. government spending is about the same as in Sweden or Italy (and a larger proportion of the economy than in the U.K., even after Boris Johnson’s latest raid on the residents).

Same story, WSJ:

Related:

  • Wave of death among the elderly bankrupts Social Security (if governments and media are telling us the truth about COVID-19 killing reasonably healthy people, governments with big social insurance obligations, such as the UK and the US, should actually be flush with unexpected cash (due to beneficiaries having died 5-10 years prematurely))
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Intersection of aviation and coronapanic: the flying COVID-19 testing lab

by philg

From a flight planning service (for Gulfstreams and similar jets):

As mentioned last week and in yesterday’s webinar, we now have a program to help you eliminate the wasted time and risks associated with securing pre-arrival COVID tests on international missions – by getting your N-registered aircraft certified as a mobile testing center.

You administer the tests yourself, safely and discretely onboard your own aircraft. Our lab partner … remotely analyzes the results and issues you a digital COVID test report – accepted in over 150 countries.

This is a new service we’ve been slowly scaling up over the past several months, and it’s proved to be a VERY EFFECTIVE alternate to trying to coordinate COVID testing abroad.

A reminder that the elites who order the various restrictions on crossing borders don’t necessarily have to scramble to meet those restrictions when they themselves feel like traveling…

Related: Let’s look at the other end of the spectrum of general aviation. Here are photos from a stop for Southern Soul Barbecue, walking distance from KSSI, during our Cirrus SR20‘s escape to the Florida Free State:

This Quik GT-450 is perfect for reassuring passengers that a Cirrus, Piper, or Cessna is comparatively safe!

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We care more about Afghan migrants than about homegrown indigent?

by philg

Prior to coronapanic, approximately 40 million Americans were suffering in poverty (HHS). To these unfortunates, 8 million were added via shutdowns, mask orders, and economic slowdowns (Bloomberg). Who is first in our thoughts when we’re looking to extend a helping hand? Afghan migrants, says the NYT. “Americans Stretch Across Political Divides to Welcome Afghan Refugees”:

In rural Minnesota, an agricultural specialist has been working on visa applications and providing temporary housing for the newcomers, and she has set up an area for halal meat processing on her farm. In California, a group of veterans has sent a welcoming committee to the Sacramento airport to greet every arriving family. In Arkansas, volunteers are signing up to buy groceries, do airport pickups and host families in their homes.

The moment stands in contrast to the last four years when the country, led by a president who restricted immigration and enacted a ban on travel from several majority-Muslim countries, was split over whether to welcome or shun people seeking safe haven. And with much of the electorate still deeply divided over immigration, the durability of the present welcome mat remains unknown.

(How many Muslims immigrated or traveled to the U.S. during this purported “ban”?)

Uber thoughtfully interrupted my locked iPhone with a notification:

(The canine portion of this image is a friend’s Samoyed puppy.)

Where does the urgent notification lead?

What’s interesting to me about this is that Uber has never notified me regarding the need to help the homeless encamped within a few blocks of their headquarter. From Working in San Francisco today (January 2019):

[the meeting is] inside of WeWork Civic Center on Mission between 7th and 8th wedged between a homeless encampment and emergency heroin detox center. I would recommend picking a hotel in another part of town. … Due to the layout and direction of the one way streets and traffic I’ve found cabs/Uber to work fairly poorly and often take longer than BART. I stopped using cars when junkies started trying to open my door at stop lights.

The described location is literally 2 minutes away from the Uber HQ. As with other rich Californians, it’s not that Uber couldn’t help these people, e.g., by funding construction of an apartment building or the rental of one or more apartments … it is just that Uber doesn’t want to.

Maybe it is because we have more hope for Afghan migrants than we do for people who’ve already failed within U.S. society? (they couldn’t even get organized to collect welfare, which in some states is more lucrative than working at the median wage)

I talked to a Harvard graduate and lifelong Democrat about this. She said “It will probably take three generations before they are fully integrated into American society.” I thought it was interesting that she assumed that adopting our value system was inevitable and desirable. (See also Omar Mateen, the most famous second-generation Afghan-American, reared by “All-American” and “moderate Muslim” immigrant parents.) Is it fair to call the assumption that immigrants would want to assimilate a sign of white supremacy? The U.S. is plainly richer than Afghanistan (Afghans are close to being the world’s least economically successful people), but is the U.S. value and moral system superior to what prevails in Afghanistan? Other than white supremacy, what is our basis for saying that our rainbow flag religion is better than Islam, for example?

Related:

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Meth head Sudafed policies adapted for PC sales

by philg

A lot of retail in Cambridge, Maskachusetts did not survive the coronapanic shutdowns and mask orders. Micro Center did however, and while up in Boston to retrieve the Cirrus SR20 I stopped in for nostalgic purposes. These are photos from August 26, 2021, shortly before the City of Cambridge went back to its indoor mask order (coronaplague was an emergency on August 27 when the order was enacted, but they decided to let COVID-19 rage until September 3 when the order went into effect), so masks were optional and, in fact, mask usage in the store was lower than the observed voluntary average in Palm Beach County.

As you can see from the below, people can’t buy a PC or video card without presenting a government-issued ID, similar to the process that would be required to purchase Sudafed (a precursor to meth, or so I am told). Even motherboards are limited to 1 per household. (When everyone in the same house uses a single PC, privacy can be compromised; see Au pair to green card.)

And, since I like to follow the examples set by our Presidents (even the one-termers)…. let’s remember that this is Pearl Harbor Day. (“I wonder how many Americans remember today is Pearl Harbor Day. Forty-seven years ago to this very day we were hit and hit hard at Pearl Harbor and we were not ready.”

“In a Bush administration that lesson would not be forgotten,” said Bush, who was a Navy flier decorated for combat missions during the war. “It would guide my defense and foreign policy.”)

Should we be grateful to meth heads for preparing U.S. retailers to distribute motherboards, graphics cards, and PCs?

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Unable to cure COVID-19, physicians turn to planetary physics

by philg

“Action on Climate Change Is Urged by Medical Journals in Unprecedented Plea” (WSJ, today):

Editors of 220 leading medical, nursing and public-health journals from around the world called for urgent action on climate change, in a joint editorial published on Sunday.

The editorial, which appeared in journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal and The Lancet, warns that current efforts aren’t enough to address health problems resulting from rising global temperatures caused by emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

“Health is already being harmed by global temperature increases and the destruction of the natural world,” the journals’ editors say in the editorial. If unchecked, they say, rising temperatures “risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse.”

In their shared statement, the editors press for “fundamental changes in how our societies and economies are organized and how we live” to limit future global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels—a goal arising from the 2015 Paris climate summit.

“It is an unusual happening and it is driven by unusual circumstances,” Dr. Eric J. Rubin, editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, said of the editorial. “It is evident that climate change is a problem. What is less evident to people is that it is a public-health problem, not just a physical catastrophe.”

“Health professionals have been on the front-line of the Covid-19 crisis,“ Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of the British Medical Journal, said. “And they are united in warning that going above 1.5 C and allowing the continued destruction of nature will bring the next, far deadlier crisis.”

I showed the article to a medical school professor friend: “Since doctors can’t help COVID-19 patients, they need something to stay relevant.”

I remain just as confused as ever about why people who predict impending climate doom also worry about COVID-19. Regardless of coronapanic level and government action or inaction, there is no country in which more than 1 percent of people have died with a COVID-19 tag (stats by country). If something like 50 percent of humans will soon be killed by climate change, absent some sort of dramatic coordinated action by all of the world’s nations (unprecedented in the history of humanity), why spend a huge amount of attention, time, effort, and money on COVID-19?

Maybe doom isn’t impending? The article itself contains enough information to predict certain doom. We are 1.1 degrees C warmer than 150 years ago:

Greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity have raised global temperatures by 1.1 degrees C since the Industrial Revolution began in the mid-19th century, according to scientific studies.

In the excerpt above, the article tells us that 1.5 degrees C is where Mother Earth will strike back by killing many or most of her human parasites. But if the mechanism by which we got to 1.1 degrees warmer is the greenhouse effect from CO2, isn’t it certain that there will be an additional 0.4 degrees of warming? Even if human C02 emissions went to zero tomorrow, wouldn’t there be enough CO2 in the atmosphere to keep us on the Venusian trajectory?

If the authors believe their own cited science, shouldn’t their recommendation be to shut down most health care services and put the money (20% of U.S. GDP!) into CO2 vacuums?

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How relevant is diversity and inclusion to AT&T?

by philg

Our Internet provider here in the Florida Free State is AT&T. I was trying to contact them about changing my name on the bill to “Greenspun” from “Greenstun” and somehow landed on about.att.com. Here’s what’s at the top:

If they stand for equality, should we infer that they don’t stand for equity?

As a child of the 1960s, of course I am all in favor of equality, e.g., Equality Feminism. Nonetheless, this is not why I am an AT&T customer. If I scroll down a little, I find out that the company gives equal weight to “Internet & Fiber” and “Diversity & Inclusion”.

I’m assuming that this is a profit-maximizing behavior, but I wonder why. Are American consumers equally interested in diversity and inclusion from an Internet provider as they are in the Internet service itself? Is it that regulators might stumble on this page and a lot of regulators are themselves affirmative action quota-fillers?

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Andrew Cuomo as the modern Boethius

by philg

Fortuna’s wheel has spun downward for Andrew Cuomo. Who could have predicted this? Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, for one.

From Wikipedia:

In 522, the same year his two sons were appointed joint consuls, Boethius accepted the appointment to the position of magister officiorum, the head of all the government and court services. … In 523 Boethius fell from power. After a period of imprisonment in Pavia for what was deemed a treasonable offence, he was executed in 524.

He went from being the most powerful official in the world’s most powerful empire to being imprisoned, in other words. While in prison, Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy. a book that was required reading for scholars until the Age of Enlightenment began in the 17th century. More than 1,000 years of being a touchstone for every educated person in Europe, in other words.

Here’s a question… what important intellectual work could Andrew Cuomo write during his corresponding period of being on the wrong side of the Rota Fortunae? What would it be titled and what would it be about?

My vote is a work that shows that the 7 elements of the modern catechism are not in conflict. Here they are on a Sign of Justice:

Black Americans are the biggest losers from low-skill immigration (NBER), so “Black Lives Matter” and “No Human is Illegal” are in apparent contradiction. “Love is Love” refers to the full slate of LGBTQIA+ and therefore the next line, “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” doesn’t make sense because the term “Women” is no longer precisely defined. “Science is Real” is the kind of thing that Plato would have liked to consider. Is #Science real like a table is real? Or is #Science more real than a table because #Science is already an ideal form whereas the table is merely an attempted (imperfect) implementation of a real table form? “Water is Life” is confusing without reference to the other elements of belief. Is distilled and UV-sterilized water life? Is it “injustice” when Harvard discriminates against Asians? If so, why doesn’t that threaten justice anywhere, much less everywhere?

I’m not sure what this work would be called.

Related:

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Wave of death among the elderly bankrupts Social Security

by philg

COVID-19 is the world’s greatest source of cognitive dissonance. We are informed by the CDC that roughly 640,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. The same agency tells us that deaths are concentrated among those who are old enough to be collecting Social Security:

Roughly 80 percent of the deaths are 65+.

We are informed by our brightest science-following minds in the media that COVID-19 has been killing people whose best years were ahead of them. Maybe the median age of a death in Maskachusetts was 82, but, absent coronavirus, those 82-year-olds being killed would have lived to 92 and, thus, collected an additional 10 more years of Social Security checks.

What happens to a financial enterprise when the obligation to send 10 years of month checks to hundreds of thousands of people goes away? “Social Security trust funds now projected to run out of money sooner than expected due to Covid, Treasury says” (CNBC, August 31, 2021):

The Social Security trust fund most Americans rely on for their retirement will run out of money in 12 years, one year sooner than expected, according to an annual government report.

The circumstances, which were exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, threaten to shrink retirement payments and increase health-care costs for Americans in old age sooner than expected.

So… our minds are supposed to simultaneously hold the following truths:

  1. COVID-19 kills mostly people old enough to be entitled to Social Security.
  2. The average old person killed by COVID-19 was healthy enough to live for at least another 5-10 years.
  3. Social Security will become insolvent as a result of not having to send checks to those killed by COVID-19.

Unless I am missing something obvious, the human mind is a wonderfully supple device!

Related:

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