COVID on my mind (Savannah, Georgia)

by philg

This is based on a March 2021 trip to Savannah, Georgia.

Residents of and visitors to Savannah are constantly reminded to wear masks and that COVID-19 is likely to kill them. The city hall, festooned with a “MASK UP: Mandatory Mask Order” banner:

The order itself is Maskachusetts-grade in that people are required to wear masks when walking down the sidewalk, even if nobody else is nearby.

Half the stores and restaurants have a sign on the front door regarding “injury or death … from … COVID-19” and reminding customers of the heroic risks that they’re taking by entering. Example:

(If the law exempts businesses from liability, why do they have to post a sign? Maybe the exemption is operative only if they do post a sign?)

While the private economy shrivels, new government jobs have been created (Savannah schools have been mostly closed during coronapanic, but the paychecks to the teachers and administrators continue to flow). “City of Savannah introduces new COVID-19 resource team”:

25 City Marshals will now be patrolling the streets of Savannah in ATV’s as part of the city’s new COVID resource team.

The main goal of the team is to give out masks and educate both locals and tourists about the current mask mandate in the City of Savannah.

We saw these heroes out and about, but never did they leave the security of their vehicles. (Our exposed-to-coronarisk Uber driver was a recent immigrant from Morocco, but the socially distanced COVID resource team appeared to be drawn from the native-born.)

What’s the effect on a population that gets hit by these messages every few minutes and that is placed under a threat of $500 fines for noncompliance? About one third of people out walking were wearing masks. People mingled mask-free into the wee hours in the city’s many bars. I’m not sure if the sign offering $1 Jello shots was honored, but a casual walk-by revealed that the “Face Mask Must Be Worn” sign had no effect on those inside.

Here are some good citizens in front of the Elon Musk statue (“African American Monument”) on a windy sunny day by the river:

Note the range of styles… no mask, chin diaper, full mask. Even if one accepts that, contrary to what W.H.O. scientists said prior to June 2020, masks for the general public have some effect on the transmission of a respiratory virus (see the Czech Republic), it is tough to understand how the Savannah system is supposed to yield a different result than what would be experienced by a society in which government imposed no orders.

Compared to the mask-free Covidiots in neighboring Florida, how did Georgians do with their muscular interventions by city and county governments? From the CDC:

Meanwhile, let’s have a look at some of the stuff that folks in Savannah were able to build in the good old pre-COVID days (when yellow fever and malaria raged). A church with no BLM banner or rainbow flag (I’m convinced that Christianity is a completely different religion in Massachusetts vs. in Florida or Georgia!):

A ride from an unmasked horse:

A COVID-themed statue, “Come from the Four Winds, O Breath, and Breathe Upon These Slain That They May Live”:

The swan here does not seem to lack for breath:

Most of the famous squares seem to be themed around the American Revolution (i.e., the Rebellion of the Traitors), but here’s a problematic one, named after states’ rights and slavery advocate John C. Calhoun (not even from Georgia!):

An unmasked 12-week-old… (leash illegally held by an unmasked adult human):

Presidents Biden and Harris have failed to reach all of the local merchants:

It turns out that “Liberty” may overlap with “Bull”:

Some tips…

  • a hotel with a great lobby (“living room” overlooking the river): Hyatt Regency (we stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn and would not recommend due to noisy A/C unit next to bed)
  • The Collins Quarter for breakfast

Related:

  • August 2020 mask requirements in other cities and counties in Georgia, e.g., “Atlanta – Includes Atlanta’s airport, city parks and other public places. People under 10 and those with medical conditions are not required to wear masks. Anyone not wearing a mask at the airport will be asked to leave. In other parts of the city, violators could receive a citation and in a strict enforcement, charges with the possibility of jail time or a $1,000 fine.”
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Coronapanic now, coronapanic tomorrow, coronapanic forever?

by philg

With apologies to George Wallace (“segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”)…

“‘We have a new pandemic’: Angela Merkel sounds dire warning over dominant UK Covid variant in Germany as she orders Easter lockdown” (Evening Standard):

Mrs Merkel sounded the alarm on Tuesday after announcing tough new restrictions including a lockdown over the Easter holiday.

“We basically have a new pandemic,” Mrs Merkel told reporters in Berlin in the early hours.

“Essentially we have a new virus, obviously of the same type but with completely different characteristics,” she added.

Unless the coronavirus gets the memo about evolution being only a theory, Coronapanic now, coronapanic tomorrow, coronapanic forever?

(Note that Angela Merkel has a Ph.D. in quantum chemistry, but the misogynists at the Evening Standard call her “Mrs.” and not “Dr.” as would befit a colleague of Dr. Jill Biden, M.D., Ed.D.)

A late-1990s photo from Munich. Note the cultural appropriation (“Chinesischer Turm”) and the sitting ducks for a respiratory virus.

From the same trip (visit to Siemens, a major adopter of our ArsDigita Community System software), tourists try to cram themselves into Neuschwanstein.

Looking at these photos how humans used to behave, what is most shocking is that viruses didn’t drive us into our bunkers centuries ago.

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If you love engineering, business, and transgenderism….

by philg

… you will love The Lady and the Dale (HBO), a documentary regarding Elizabeth Carmichael, best-known for trying to bring Americans a lightweight three-wheeled automobile.

Ms. Carmichael was hugely successful from a biological/genetic point of view. From Wikipedia (10 kids total):

According to the FBI, Carmichael married four times while identifying as Jerry Dean Michael. She was charged with desertion for leaving her first wife, Marga, whom she met while stationed in Germany, and their two children. In 1954, she married a woman named Juanita, with whom she had two children before their relationship ended in 1956. In 1958, she married a woman named Betty Sweets after knowing her for four weeks. They conceived a daughter, but the marriage ended within a year. In 1959, she married Vivian Barrett Michael, her fourth wife, and together they had five children.

One aspect of the documentary is what happens to an opposite-sex marriage following a gender reassignment.

Americans are not as fascinated with engineering as with transgenderism and crime so the series does not explore what is most interesting to me: Why are cars so heavy?

Passenger rail turns out not to be fuel-efficient because railroad cars are so heavy, dwarfing the weight of even the most obese group of humans who might occupy a car.

The lightest cars on the market today weigh roughly 3,000 lbs. (Toyota Corolla, for example). Electric cars are heavier, e.g., a Tesla 3 is around 4,000 lbs. with a battery offering comparable range to a compact gasoline-driven car. The Chevy Bolt is around 3,600 lbs. Liz Carmichael’s Dale was 1,000 lbs.

It looks as though a prototype has been preserved in a Nebraska museum:

If we want to save our beloved planet, either by burning less gasoline or consuming less electricity, why don’t we slim down our vehicles to what is actually required to transport 500 lbs. of humans? Because we can’t make a car that rides comfortably at 70 mph unless it is heavy? First, with the U.S. population headed toward 500 million, it is unclear that anyone will be driving 70 mph. Second, could we improve the ride quality of lightweight vehicles with active suspensions?

Readers: Who has seen this show? What did you think?

Related: Can-Am Spyder, a modern 3-wheel vehicle made by a Bombardier subsidiary.

See also Facebook uses a Malibu-flying engineering manager to promote careers in engineering…

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Fighting coronaplague with an extra layer of fat (weight gain during lockdown)

by philg

“How Much Weight Did We Gain During Lockdowns? 2 Pounds a Month, Study Hints” (New York Times):

… a very small study using objective measures — weight measurements from Bluetooth-connected smart scales — suggests that adults under shelter-in-place orders gained more than half a pound every 10 days.

That translates to nearly two pounds a month, said Dr. Gregory M. Marcus, senior author of the research letter, published on Monday in the peer-reviewed JAMA Network Open. Americans who kept up their lockdown habits could easily have gained 20 pounds over the course of a year, he added.

Many of these people were losing weight before shelter-in-place orders were issued in their states, Dr. Marcus noted. “It’s reasonable to assume these individuals are more engaged with their health in general, and more disciplined and on top of things,” he said. “That suggests we could be underestimating — that this is the tip of the iceberg.”

Rachel Dolezal could be included as Black:

3.5 percent identified as Black or African-American; about 3 percent identified as Asian-American.

What was the precise mechanism by which we went from fat to obese?

An earlier study by U.C.S.F. researchers looked at daily step counts, as tracked by smartphones, among nearly half a million people in nearly 200 countries. The number of steps people took declined by 27 percent a month after the World Health Organization declared the pandemic.

The concern about exercise also extends to children, who are known to pack on unhealthy pounds during the summer recess months when they are not in school. The risk is even greater for Hispanic and Black children than for white children, said Andrew G. Rundle, an associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, author of a recent paper that expressed concern that school closings would exacerbate existing racial health disparities.

Of course, here in Maskachusetts schools for white children are generally open while schools for Black/Hispanic children are generally closed (see Competitive white suburban parents quite happy about school shutdown).

My own recent efforts to diet with hushpuppies at Southern Soul Barbeque, a short walk from KSSI (St. Simons Island, Georgia, which also has an on-field hotel).

But why walk or waddle when you can drive? This car from Avis had ample horsepower (485, which is more than 2X the engine in a Cirrus SR20) for accelerating even the heaviest American into a low Earth orbit.

(There is no surer way to feel stupid than driving a Dodge Charger around a sleepy golf resort! It might have been smarter to take a crew car from the FBO.)

The coronavirus will never make it through our layers of blubber!

Related:

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How did the coronanxious come into power?

by philg

Still celebrating the start of Year 2 of “14 Days to Flatten the Curve”…

I closed out Commercial flights during Coronapanic: a mostly mask-free experience with

I wouldn’t recommended the experience for those who are anxious about COVID-19. While you’re constantly being reminded about how hazardous COVID-19 is, there isn’t enough room in the airport to be truly distant from those who are potentially infected. People sit glumly with their masks on, waiting to see how the Russian roulette game that they’ve chosen to play will turn out. Unless you believe in the effectiveness of crude non-N95 masks, it’s the same risk level as being in a crowded Miami club, but a lot less fun.

One of the great things about Internet, which even Facebook hasn’t managed to destroy, is that reader comments can be much more interesting than the original post. From RS:

Can we just say that about all other aspects of life? I would love if people who are anxious about COVID-19 would just stay home so the rest of us can get back to normal life. It feels like they’re holding society hostage so they can have the illusion of protecting themselves without having to do the one thing that actually protects them (staying home).

With a handful of exceptions (Florida, South Dakota, Sweden, Russia), it seems as though the coronanxious are in charge and able to force those who don’t mind coexistence with this virus and its myriad variants (the “covidiots”) into various forms of shutdown, mask theater, etc. The coronanxious have pretty much sat at home for a year anyway. It wouldn’t have cost them anything or increased their personal risk if they’d let the non-anxious carry on with their lives, education, and careers.

So that raises the question… why is it obvious that the coronanxious would prevail in setting government policy? (i.e., could we have predicted Mass Karenhood?) Is it because leaders tend to be old and therefore personally vulnerable? Is it because the restrictions imposed don’t hurt the elite and the elite are indifferent to the suffering imposed on the non-elite? (public school shutdowns aren’t a problem when your children and/or grandchildren are in private school…)

From the CDC, March 14, California and Florida, at opposite ends of the shutdown spectrum:

Note that more than 20 percent of Florida’s residents are over 65 (and therefore potentially vulnerable to COVID) while just 14 percent of Californians are over 65. So the COVID death rate among the elderly in Florida is almost surely much lower than in masked-and-shut California.

An objective measure of panic from one of America’s principal vendors of panic, the New York Times (March 18, 2021):

First of all, it is unclear whether the 1-5% hospitalized answer is actually “correct” if you consider “with Covid” to mean “could produce a positive PCR test”. With the CDC estimating that more than half of Americans have been infected with coronavirus, is it conceivable that COVID-19 means a 5 percent risk of hospitalization? We should have seen 2.5 percent of the folks we know carted off to the hospital (with a median personal network size of 472, the typical person should know 12 people who’ve been hospitalized with COVID). Leaving that aside. Casual inspection of this chart shows that 88 percent of Democrats overestimate the risk of hospitalization from COVID-19 while 70 percent of Republicans do. The journalists at the New York Times nonetheless report that “Republicans tend to underestimate Covid risks”. Based on the chart, it would be more accurate to say “Four percent of Republicans tend to underestimate Covid risks.”

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Why aren’t motherboards mostly USB-C by now?

by philg

I’m beginning to think that the Windows PC that I built in 2015 is ready for retirement (though if Joe Biden can be president at 78, maybe this PC can last until 2029?). In looking at new desktop PCs and motherboards I am struck by the paucity of USB-C ports (standardized in 2014). It looks as though 0 and 1 are the most common number of USB-C ports on a 2021 PC.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for all of the USB ports on a new PC to be USB-C and then use adapters for legacy components?

From The Last Castle, describing events of 1921:

Not everyone was immediately captivated with technology’s advances. Just months after Cornelia [Vanderbilt] celebrated “reaching her majority,” author Willa Cather gave a speech in which she presciently waxed philosophical on the subject of the phonograph. “We now have music by machines, we travel by machines,” she said. “Soon we will be having machines to do our thinking.”

(Note that adulthood and voting in those days came at 21, not at 18!)

The great Willa Cather expected great progress from the world’s nerds. What do we have 100 years later? A Dell XPS desktop PC, “Engineered and designed with purpose for ultimate power and expandability”, equipped with a mechanical hard drive and a feeble 8 GB of RAM (is that even enough to run Windows by itself?).

The machine has a single USB-C port and eleven legacy USB-A ports.

What if you want to spend $5,000 on an Alienware gaming desktop from Dell? You get… a 2 TB mechanical hard drive (also an SSD), a healthy 128 GB of RAM, and two USB-C ports (plus a bunch of USB-A ports).

Apple fanboys/fangirls/fanothers: even the Mac Pro includes two legacy USB-A ports (admittedly it also has four Thunderbolt ports). Why is this relic of old tech cluttering the clean design of an Apple product in 2021?

Related:

  • USB4 was standardized in 2019, but PC motherboards still don’t support it at all? (and therefore nobody should build a new PC right now because the USB4 motherboards are around the corner?)
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If 96 percent stay in the US, why not open the borders to young-looking migrants?

by philg

Considering migrants who’ve arrived since 2014, of those who have said that they were under 18 years old at the time of border crossing (as these folks are undocumented, there is no way to know their actual age), 96 percent are still in the U.S. according to “Hundreds of minors are crossing the border each day without their parents. Who are they?” (Washington Post):

Central American and Mexican children, tweens and teenagers traveling without parents are crossing the border in soaring numbers, once more creating a logistical and humanitarian emergency for the U.S. government.

If the climbing trend line continues, the Biden administration will take in record numbers of unaccompanied minors this month, an influx made more challenging by the coronavirus pandemic.

To accommodate the growing numbers and meet social distancing guidelines, the administration opened a tent facility in Carrizo Springs, Tex., last month. The Biden administration is planning to open additional tent sites in the coming weeks and is looking at Moffett Field in California, Fort Lee in Virginia and other federal properties where it can set up temporary shelters.

Most unaccompanied minors cross the border into the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. Some try to evade capture after crossing, but most seek out U.S. border agents to begin the process of making a humanitarian claim.

The odds of being deported are low. DHS statistics show that just 4.3 percent of the 290,000 minors who have crossed the border without a parent since 2014 have been returned to their countries. Of the rest, 52 percent had immigration cases pending. An additional 28 percent had been granted humanitarian protection by U.S. courts and 16 percent had been ordered to leave, but lacked a confirmed departure or deportation.

Most of these folks will end up on a lifetime of means-tested “not welfare” government programs, e.g., public housing, Medicaid, SNAP (“food stamps” or “EBT“), and Obamaphone. Why add to the working taxpayers’ burden by funding immigration courts, lawyers, border guards (the “welcoming committee” since the minors do not try to avoid being “captured”), and detention facilities (#TentsNotCages?) if the almost inevitable result is the “minor” staying?

Separately, should we be funding hot drinks from Chocolate Mayordomo for migrants passing through Oaxaca (photo from a 2005 trip)?

Also from 2005, modern-day migrants repopulate, at least during the daytime, a city that had been abandoned for more than 1,000 years (Monte Alban):

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Harvard and MIT: Love Asians, but don’t let them into your school

by philg

My inbox has been filling up lately with emails regarding purported hate crimes against Asian-Americans. Somewhat curiously, these emails are coming from institutions that explicitly discriminate against Asian-Americans (see “A Ceiling on Asian Student Enrollment at MIT and Harvard?”, for example, and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard).

Harvard graduate Tom Lehrer wrote about this in his song “National Brotherhood Week“:

it’s Fun to eulogize the
People you despise
As long you don’t let them in your school.

From Larry Bacow, President of Harvard:

For the past year, Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders have been blamed for the pandemic—slander born of xenophobia and ignorance. … Footage of individuals being targeted and assaulted has driven home a rise in aggression and violence across the nation. Today, we continue to reel in the wake of eight murders in Georgia—six of the victims of Asian descent—and to contend with events that shock the collective conscience.

(If only six of the victims were of Asian descent, what’s El Presidente’s theory for how this was an anti-Asian hate crime? The murderer hated Asians, but was not intelligent enough to distinguish between Asians and non-Asians?)

Harvard must stand as a bulwark against hatred and bigotry. We welcome and embrace individuals from every background because it makes us a better community, a stronger community.

I long for the day when I no longer have to send such messages. It is our collective responsibility to repair this imperfect world. To Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders in our community: We stand together with you today and every day going forward.

(Is there, in fact, anyone who blames “Pacific Islanders” for COVID-19 or coronapanic? Readers: Have you heard someone curse Samoans, Fijians, or Tongans for causing the deaths of 82-year-olds in Maskachusetts?)

From Martha Tedeschi, director of the Harvard Art Museums, where the paychecks keep coming despite the museum being closed.

I am reaching out to the extended museum family of the Harvard Art Museums in the face of Wednesday’s breaking—and heartbreaking—news of the deadly shootings and violence against women of Asian descent in Atlanta. I want to state my own shock and horror—sentiments I know so many of you share—that once again we are confronted by a wave of racist violence that makes it impossible for so many communities in this country to feel safe. Anti-Asian hostility has a long history in the United States. … want to say emphatically that the Harvard Art Museums stand firmly against Anti-Asian racism. It feels only moments ago that I was writing to you about the murder of George Floyd and so many others and the importance of banding together in support of our black and brown communities.

(Do we think that George Floyd, with his minimal employment history, would have been a likely customer for a $20 ticket to Martha Tesdeschi’s museum? If not, what qualifies Martha Tedeschi to talk about those in Mr. Floyd’s socioeconomic stratum?)

What if we go downmarket and down the river? From L. Rafael Reif, President of MIT:

This message is for everyone. But let me begin with a word for the thousands of members of our MIT family – undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, staff, faculty, alumni, parents and Corporation members – who are Asian or of Asian descent: We would not be MIT without you.

(But, as noted above, “we also don’t want too many of you”?)

Bizarrely, for a school that claims credentials are important enough to spend years and hundreds of thousands of dollars acquiring, the president of MIT, with no credentials in criminology or political science, claims expertise in criminology and political science:

Across the country, a cruel signature of this pandemic year has been a terrible surge in anti-Asian violence, discrimination and public rhetoric. I know some of you have experienced such harm directly. The targets are very often women and the elderly.

These acts are especially disturbing in the context of several years of mounting hostility and suspicion in the United States focused on people of Chinese origin. The murders in Georgia Tuesday, including among the victims so many Asian women, come as one more awful shock.

Lumped in with the discussion regarding spa workers, because she happened to have identified (maybe?) as an Asian female:

Earlier this month, we lost an extraordinary citizen of MIT, ChoKyun Rha ’62, SM ’64, SM ’66, SCD ’67, a professor post-tenure of biomaterials science and engineering, at the age of 87. Raised in Seoul in a family that expected her to become a doctor, she came to MIT because she wanted to be an engineer. In 1974, she joined our faculty; in 1980, she became the first Asian female faculty member to earn tenure at MIT. Dr. Rha went on to build a remarkable career as a teacher, a mentor and a scholar.

It is difficult to imagine how alone she must have felt in her early years at MIT, when women students and Asian students numbered in just dozens. But the trail she and so many others blazed helped lead to the rich diversity of MIT we treasure today.

Is this an example of “All Look Same”? In the context of killings of spa workers in Atlanta, what’s the relevance of someone who defied her family by becoming an engineer rather than a doctor and never lived in Atlanta?

(Also, Rafael Reif says that she must have felt alone (how can he know?). If so, given that she stayed at MIT for four degrees and to work as a professor, isn’t that equivalent to calling her stupid? An intelligent person would have left MIT, presumably, and gone somewhere where she didn’t feel alone.)

Circling back to the title of this post… if the presidents of Harvard and MIT love Asians so much, why won’t they let them into their respective schools?

(If the answer is, “we just can’t find enough Asians whose personalities we like, notwithstanding their superb academic achievements,” here are some numbers from “The Rise of Asian Americans” (Pew, 2012): “The modern immigration wave from Asia is nearly a half century old and has pushed the total population of Asian Americans—foreign born and U.S born, adults and children—to a record 18.2 million in 2011, or 5.8% of the total U.S. population, up from less than 1% in 1965.”

)

Readers: Are you getting a lot of email from bureaucrats expressing their new-found love for Asians?

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Why aren’t Florida schools run from 11-5:30?

by philg

Happy First Day of Spring!

In Florida, though, it will feel more like what we in Maskachusetts call “summer”. This gives rise to the dumbest question you will hear all season…

Elementary school in Miami is 8:35 am to 3:05 pm. Given that school buildings are air-conditioned, why not run the schools from 11-5:30 so that the kids can do outdoor stuff during the comparatively cool morning?

Instead of children running around on a soccer field during the hottest time of day, they could be enjoying sports during the most comfortable time of day and enjoying taxpayer-funded A/C during the hottest hours.

Obviously this is a bad idea, but why?

An iPhone snapshot from the Cirrus SR20, flying up the Miami Beach shoreline in January 2021. This proves my hedge fund manager friend’s adage regarding how it is impossible to lose money on a real estate investment: “They’re not making any more condos.”

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MIT takes credit for the mRNA vaccines

by philg

“The MIT scientists behind the Moderna vaccine” (Technology Review) appeared in my mailbox:

In the 1970s, at MIT’s Center for Cancer Research, Phil Sharp discovered RNA splicing and revealed the potential of mRNA. … In the 1980s, Moderna cofounder Bob Langer, PhD ’74, was pioneering new ways to deliver medicines, including RNA—work that ultimately contributed to the development of the new vaccine. .. Noubar Afeyan, PhD ’87, another cofounder of Moderna and its chairman, got into biotech after earning his doctorate in biochemical engineering.

One thing that is awesome about the Moderna vaccine, at least for computer nerds, is that it comes from the building formerly known as “545 Technology Square,” the home of the MIT Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science labs. Awesome thing #2 is that production happens with the help of Ginkgo Bioworks, founded by Tom Knight, a titan of AI/CS research at MIT (also helped by a $1.1 billion loan to Ginkgo from the Trump administration).

As with previous issues of MIT’s alumni news (see COVID-19 and the MIT community), the March/April 2021 edition suggests that American elites aren’t been substantially harmed by either COVID-19 or coronapanic. There are many reports of deaths among the roughly 140,000 living MIT alumni, for example, but none mention COVID-19. MIT alumni die “peacefully at home” or succumb to cancer. Nobody seems to have lost a job or money as a result of coronapanic shutdowns.

Faculty at the 1998 graduation…

See also this New York Times story on how the elites managed to stay home, have everything delivered, keep their jobs, etc. Excerpt:

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