Category: Science

Five weeks

The job of president of the United States was meant to be a manager who would lead the executive branch to efficiently carry out the business of the nation’s government.  It still is that, but it’s also become a symbol of the battle between competing claims to exercise a moral imperative: on one side, those who want government to enforce upon the rest of us their idea of the one right way Americans should live their lives, and on the other those who have a broader view of the meaning of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  The situation is tedious, and divisive, and destructive of our ability to get along with those of our fellow citizens who have different opinions of the proper role of government in our lives.  What’s worse is, the campaign for the job never stops—thank you, sir, may I have another!

Right now, five weeks before the election, is when we should be starting the campaign.  That’s time enough to review information about the candidates, time for reflection…and after election day it would be time to go back to regular life, where if you choose to you could escape the obsession with the daily minutiae of politics.  Time enough to make a reasoned decision, and move on.

The two major party candidates for president have their first side-by-side appearance tomorrow night (I’ll be surprised if they actually engage in debate), to talk about issues and make the case why we should give him the responsibility of managing—just for starters—our national defense; our response to global pandemics and natural disasters; our relationships with our allies and with our enemies; the delivery of our mail!  Someone we can trust to look out for our country’s best interests, and to obey its laws.

So, I’ll watch the debate tomorrow and I’ll think, which of these guys do I want representing us…me…for the next four years?  Will it be the guy who

(There are plenty more where those came from.)

No, it will not be that guy.

You get to make your own choice, and you’re pretty smart, and there are five weeks left to think it over…before you get to make a secret choice, and no one will ever know who you voted for unless you tell them.  Just sayin’…

Telework Journal: Irrational exuberance

Another week working from home kicks off with a few changes.  My wife is also working remotely but is spending this week helping her mother who just got out of the hospital, so I am working from the house by myself, unless you count the two dogs.  They are not working at all, except for pouting because I won’t feed them treats all day long.

The “new” in the “news” is coming from here in Texas and other locations where people are ignoring stay-at-home warnings and social distancing recommendations to express their…their what, their unhappiness with the pandemic, I guess.  I don’t know anyone who’s pleased with the situation, but some folks are taking a threatening stance to “demonstrate” their desire that government officials ease restrictions that have—no doubt about it—cost millions of Americans their jobs and others their businesses, in an effort to fight the spread of a deadly disease for which we don’t have another effective weapon.

Let me get this straight.  There have been some 42,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the United States to this point, out of almost 800,000 confirmed cases.  When the medical experts called for social distancing and self quarantine to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus, they warned that if we didn’t take these drastic steps there could be deaths in the hundreds of thousands.  Right now it seems there will be far less than that…emphasis on “seems,” since nothing’s for sure.

And people are taking to the streets, wearing their camouflage and carrying long guns, making the argument that the relatively few deaths suffered so far, an amount comparable to a season of the flu, are prima facie evidence that the dramatic actions taken to curtail COVID-19 are not needed?

No.  It’s because of those actions—the social distancing, the restaurants and bars and all manner of places of business shut down to prevent us from infecting each other with a virus for which we have no vaccine and no immunity—that we have not had the hundreds of thousands of deaths that had been predicted.  They are arguing that the results of the preventative actions they oppose are evidence that those actions are no longer needed (if they ever were), but it’s the opposite: the results of the actions they’re protesting are pretty clear proof that the actions were successful, were necessary, based on the best medical evidence as interpreted by the medical experts.  The same experts who are warning us that if we’re not patient, if break this quarantine too soon, the virus will surge through the population.  Listen to the doctors, not the other dopes.

Trump is angry that “he wasn’t told” there was a problem?  No one mentioned the pandemic, huh?  Is that the same pandemic that he told us he knew all about even before everyone else did?  That pandemic?  Jeez…

Some perspective on landing on a comet

The world hasn’t seemed very excited that the European Space Agency landed a probe on a comet last week, me included—even after learning that it bounced, twice (when it wasn’t supposed to have bounced at all), before settling down.  Landing on the moon in 1969 was much cooler: first of all, there were people involved, and second because the moon is something we all know and Comet 67Pwhatchamacallit is not.  There has been little sense of the scale of this achievement, until now: thanks to @TLBKlaus for providing this excellent graphic on Twitter.

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Now you’re talking my language…

Dear Pat Ryan,

I just thought I’d check in to see how things are going with you.  Some of us have gotten a little curious because we haven’t heard much of anything from you in a while now and we started to wonder what was going on.  I mean, if you say you’re going to write a blog, it is customary to actually write something from time to time.  You know, something to make the customers realize that you’re not stone dead, or ignoring them, or “too busy with work and other things” to be bothered keeping up with your commitments.  C’mon, just six damn posts in the last four months?  What’s the deal?

I mean, fercryingoutloud, in just the last few months you’ve passed up the chance to say something about:

You’ve sort of led people to believe that you cared about civil liberties and the whole gay marriage thing, or were at least interested in the subject, but when

you observe radio silence.  I mean, you gotta understand why the people would at least wonder if you’ve given up, or converted or something.

You even let this great picture on Twitter go by without any acknowledgement!

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So anyway, I’d just like to say I hope you get your shit together and try to be a little more regular contributor in this space, or the owners may start thinking seriously about changing the name up there at the top of the page.

Watch Cosmos, be less dumb

I wouldn’t be much of a television professional if I didn’t watch a lot of TV, have an opinion on all of it, and insist on sharing that opinion even when you don’t ask.  But I do; I do; and even though you didn’t, here goes.

I hope you’re watching Cosmos.  If you’re not, you can catch it online here as well as on Fox and a few of the Fox-affiliated networks; next new episode is Sunday night.  Astronomer/rock star Neil deGrasse Tyson is an engaging if slightly self-absorbed host for a journey of the imagination that’s not only exploring out in space, but back in time.  This version takes full advantage of the capabilities of the medium in the modern day and tells a great story.  I don’t find it as enthralling as the original with astronomer/rock star Carl Sagan back in 1980, but it’s not fair to compare the two, not for people like me who saw the Sagan series when we were young and the things he talked about were actually new and unknown to us.  For me, it had the advantage of provoking wonderment in a way the current version just can’t; I hope it does for the kids of today.

The new series, produced by Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan, Seth McFarlane and others, is providing easy-to-follow explanations of some difficult scientific concepts.  The writers and producers have found a way to lay things out so you can understand the concept in the same way you eat an elephant (one bite at a time); it’s not scary to learn new things here.  I particularly liked Episode 2 for the explanation of evolution by natural selection.  Anyone who didn’t watch that show with a preset determination that evolution is for atheists could grasp the basics; yes, you’ve got to give up the notion that the Earth is only 6000 years old and that people and dinosaurs lived side by side, but you will understand what the scientific terms “evolution” and “natural selection” really mean.  It should be required viewing for the members of the Texas State Board of Education, that’s for sure.

If you prefer yours in a handy graphical form, here’s a swell chart from Reddit user SlipperyFish done for The Infographics Project (thumbnail image via Thinkstock).  Thanks to Upworthy for the link to this short answer to a perennial favorite dumb question:

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