I was still feeling pretty bad through late Friday afternoon, and had made a doctor's appointment for Saturday morning.
But late Friday, things improved suddenly. It all appears to have been a new version of my nemesis, kidney stones. The doctor concurred.
Highly not recommended, but oh, what a relief when it is over. Details will not be provided.
Saturday, September 12, 2020
Friday, September 11, 2020
Superspreader? Supersoaker? Superscience?
None of the above?
Spin, spin, spin. I've already read people claiming the President didn't say what he said on tape, with a handwavy "editing" offered in explanation. Yeah, no, nobody's that good; more to the point, Bob Woodward's not that good: audio editing is as much art as science and you don't get good at it without doing a lot of it, hundreds and hundreds of hours. Even then, it leaves traces, abrupt changes in background noise, changes in breathing patterns, changes in speech patterns.* The comments are almost certainly context-stripped; conversations, especially lengthy ones, wander and expand and unless you have the entire tape, you'll never know quite how any snippet of it came to be.
But, as I pointed out recently, it doesn't matter. If you liked the President, you still will. If you disliked him, you still will.
The Sturgis motorcycle rally is another example. Leading up to the event, it was already established that having a large number of people in confined indoor spaces for an extended length of time was an ideal situation to spread a respiratory virus, no matter if it was COVID-19 or the common cold. ("Con crud," the nasty colds that run through science-fiction conventions, is an example that goes back decades.) Outdoor events are much less predictable -- and Sturgis mixes both.
Bikers, you may be surprised to learn, are not lab rats; they're not even very good experimental subjects. There is no tally of who attended, where they came from, what routes they took or where they went afterward. There's no "control group" of bikers who stayed home to compare them to. There's no real data.
Some economists did a study and inferred a fairly high number of additional infections among rally attendees, their families, and those with whom they came into contact; I read far enough into the news reports to glean that fact and marked it as "interesting but unsubstantiated." The actual known case count -- people who were at Sturgis for the event, went in for testing or treatment afterward and tested positive for COVID-19 -- is two or three orders of magnitude smaller. This all very interesting, but it doesn't tell us much; it just sets a lower and upper limit, with a very wide error band in between, and if you are engaged in a heated argument over it, you're fighting fog: we don't really know a darned thing either way.
Telling people to "get the facts" when there aren't any facts isn't helpful. Calling yourself a "skeptic" when your mind is made up is simply incorrect.
The world is, in fact, duller and less convoluted than it appears. Most everyone is muddling through. Some have less mud in their way; some have got a nice collection of tools to help cope with the muddiness; but the only people with a crystal-clear vision are either mistaken or delusional. Not only is there a lot we don't know, there's a lot we can't know -- not because it's secret, sneaky machinations but because it is unknowable: life does not take place under laboratory conditions.
It is very difficult to see what is really there instead of what we want to see, especially peering into the haze of uncertainty that is our actual world. It's nevertheless rewarding to make the effort.
______________________________
* One of the best analog-tape editors I have known learned her trade producing a talk show hosted by a local writer on public radio. The host had a nice turn of phrase and an easy manner; he was a natural interviewer. He also had a huge "um, er, ah, I meant to say..." habit that required hours of razor-blading to remove. Edited, he was witty and erudite, moving deftly from topic to topic. Unedited, his verbal grace was significantly less evident. It was fun to play "find the edit" when listening to the show -- and became more difficult with every new one she did.
Spin, spin, spin. I've already read people claiming the President didn't say what he said on tape, with a handwavy "editing" offered in explanation. Yeah, no, nobody's that good; more to the point, Bob Woodward's not that good: audio editing is as much art as science and you don't get good at it without doing a lot of it, hundreds and hundreds of hours. Even then, it leaves traces, abrupt changes in background noise, changes in breathing patterns, changes in speech patterns.* The comments are almost certainly context-stripped; conversations, especially lengthy ones, wander and expand and unless you have the entire tape, you'll never know quite how any snippet of it came to be.
But, as I pointed out recently, it doesn't matter. If you liked the President, you still will. If you disliked him, you still will.
The Sturgis motorcycle rally is another example. Leading up to the event, it was already established that having a large number of people in confined indoor spaces for an extended length of time was an ideal situation to spread a respiratory virus, no matter if it was COVID-19 or the common cold. ("Con crud," the nasty colds that run through science-fiction conventions, is an example that goes back decades.) Outdoor events are much less predictable -- and Sturgis mixes both.
Bikers, you may be surprised to learn, are not lab rats; they're not even very good experimental subjects. There is no tally of who attended, where they came from, what routes they took or where they went afterward. There's no "control group" of bikers who stayed home to compare them to. There's no real data.
Some economists did a study and inferred a fairly high number of additional infections among rally attendees, their families, and those with whom they came into contact; I read far enough into the news reports to glean that fact and marked it as "interesting but unsubstantiated." The actual known case count -- people who were at Sturgis for the event, went in for testing or treatment afterward and tested positive for COVID-19 -- is two or three orders of magnitude smaller. This all very interesting, but it doesn't tell us much; it just sets a lower and upper limit, with a very wide error band in between, and if you are engaged in a heated argument over it, you're fighting fog: we don't really know a darned thing either way.
Telling people to "get the facts" when there aren't any facts isn't helpful. Calling yourself a "skeptic" when your mind is made up is simply incorrect.
The world is, in fact, duller and less convoluted than it appears. Most everyone is muddling through. Some have less mud in their way; some have got a nice collection of tools to help cope with the muddiness; but the only people with a crystal-clear vision are either mistaken or delusional. Not only is there a lot we don't know, there's a lot we can't know -- not because it's secret, sneaky machinations but because it is unknowable: life does not take place under laboratory conditions.
It is very difficult to see what is really there instead of what we want to see, especially peering into the haze of uncertainty that is our actual world. It's nevertheless rewarding to make the effort.
______________________________
* One of the best analog-tape editors I have known learned her trade producing a talk show hosted by a local writer on public radio. The host had a nice turn of phrase and an easy manner; he was a natural interviewer. He also had a huge "um, er, ah, I meant to say..." habit that required hours of razor-blading to remove. Edited, he was witty and erudite, moving deftly from topic to topic. Unedited, his verbal grace was significantly less evident. It was fun to play "find the edit" when listening to the show -- and became more difficult with every new one she did.
Thursday, September 10, 2020
You Probably Think I'm Going To Comment On Current Events
Wondering what I have to say about the story that's leading TV newscasts and making headlines this morning?
Keep wondering. I've got nothing. Oh, it was mildly surprising, but here is the thing: It's not going to sway the opinion of a significant number of voters either way. People's minds are made up. So it's moot.
Between now and November third and barring natural disaster or sneak attack, the only thing that might -- might -- change the opinions of voters would be, to update an old line to accommodate Ms. Harris, catching a Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidate in bed with a dead member of the opposite sex or a live member of the same sex, and I'm not entirely sure even that would do it.
Come November, you have your choice of septuagenarians, each one with a VP chosen to appeal to their base. Or, of course, the various third-party candidates. I usually go for the LP's pick -- not because I think they will win, but because I'd rather see them in the job than either of the candidates that are going to come in first and second and that's the only way I have of communicating my opinion.
But I'm not going to tell you how to vote. We all pull the lever and take our chances. Even bad choices are better than no choice.
Keep wondering. I've got nothing. Oh, it was mildly surprising, but here is the thing: It's not going to sway the opinion of a significant number of voters either way. People's minds are made up. So it's moot.
Between now and November third and barring natural disaster or sneak attack, the only thing that might -- might -- change the opinions of voters would be, to update an old line to accommodate Ms. Harris, catching a Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidate in bed with a dead member of the opposite sex or a live member of the same sex, and I'm not entirely sure even that would do it.
Come November, you have your choice of septuagenarians, each one with a VP chosen to appeal to their base. Or, of course, the various third-party candidates. I usually go for the LP's pick -- not because I think they will win, but because I'd rather see them in the job than either of the candidates that are going to come in first and second and that's the only way I have of communicating my opinion.
But I'm not going to tell you how to vote. We all pull the lever and take our chances. Even bad choices are better than no choice.
Wednesday, September 09, 2020
Pro Tip
If your comments are paranoid speculation, they're not going to get published. That goes double if they are highly partisan and triple if you're pushing conspiracy-theory nuttiness.
I do not think well of either major political party here in the U. S. and I have an even lower opinion of the fool idea that, "The other guys are so evil that you must support the side I favor." This is the United States; I don't have to like any side at all. I'm not required to vote for any person or party -- I'm not even required to vote at all, and neither are you.
If you are unable to grow up, at least go peddle the crazy somewhere else.
I do not think well of either major political party here in the U. S. and I have an even lower opinion of the fool idea that, "The other guys are so evil that you must support the side I favor." This is the United States; I don't have to like any side at all. I'm not required to vote for any person or party -- I'm not even required to vote at all, and neither are you.
If you are unable to grow up, at least go peddle the crazy somewhere else.
2020: Direct To Video
2020 is the worst monster movie ever. This remake of The Andromeda Strain is lousy.
Tuesday, September 08, 2020
Should Have Written About Labor Day
...I should have written about Labor Day (like why it is when it is in this country), but the way this year is going, we should probably get Labor Week.
"Should," like so many things for those of us who work for a living, is not that same as "is" and so off to work I go.
Monday, September 07, 2020
You're Soaking In It
An online acquaintance, someone at least thirty years younger than I am, was viewing-with-alarm the other day: "I don;t want the world to become a kind of electronic panopticon, infested with a social credit system like Red China, where people get deplatformed or "cancelled" for Wrongthink!"
It's a noble sentiment, but I think it's too late, possibly -- possibly! -- moot and askew from human nature.
Taking those points one at a time:
Too Late: I grew up in a world where you got a Social Security number when you entered the workforce, and were issued a flimsy little piece of cardboard with some of Uncle Sam's nice engraving, your name blurrily picked out in all caps by some kind of computerized printer, and a neatly-printed little notice: "NOT TO BE USED FOR IDENTIFICATION." My parents had received theirs about the time they first got their own ration cards, and their parents-- Their parents had taken a dim view of the whole notion, another one of that over-reaching Roosevelt's schemes, this one cribbed from that scary lunatic Francis Townsend. In that long-ago world, you might have been able to look up someone's name from their phone number or address, if you went to the library and looked it up in a city directory -- and your local library probably only had a current one for your town. The librarian and the clerks at the bookstore and the five-and-dime were the only people who knew what books you were reading. --And we were worried about invasions of privacy by things like yearly automobile inspections* and all those nosy questions on the U. S. Census.† As long as you kept the shades drawn and avoided breaking the law, nobody know what you were up to inside, John Bircher and Commie alike (though all those IMPEACH EARL WARREN stickers on the thicker corner fenceposts made it pretty clear which group was in ascendance.) Mow your yard oddly, though, and you might be the talk of the street. This was the world that my grandparents thought was a bit too privacy-invaded by The Government and my parents admitted, well, yes, it was, but what are you gonna do?
Possibly Moot: The Internet still interprets censorship as damage, and still routes around it. It does the same thing with platforms. The Eternal September eventually killed Usenet; MySpace collapsed of its own...something or other, possibly inertia. Today's huge, dominating platform is very likely to become #YesterdaysNews, especially once it commences pushing people overboard for any flavor of wrongness. Of course, this works as well for bad people as it does for nice ones -- possibly better. But it always has. The ISPs and national/international regulation of them is a weak point (with one bright spot), but the genie (GEnie?) is well and truly out of the lamp and it's not going back.
Askew From Human Nature: Let's go back to the earlier generations I was writing about. My grandparents grew up in tiny communities. You could leave your past (mostly) behind by pulling up stakes and moving far away -- but you had to put them back down again at your new location. People gossiped. People visited. If you never dusted behind the furniture, your neighbors knew about it. If you had loud arguments, your neighbors knew about it. If you were scrupulously honest in your dealings -- or not -- everyone knew about it. No radio, no TV: idle talk was a major form of entertainment.
My parents grew up in small towns, often on the edge of larger ones; they graduated from the same High School a few years apart, with each class having less than fifty people,. By the time I was twelve, I knew all their names. Just from overhearing. I only met a few, but they all kept in touch with one another; they knew what the others were up to. They, well, gossiped. And they kept track of the other people they went to a school with, and their neighbors and their teachers, shopkeepers and civil servants. A very few of them did things of which the rest disapproved, and were ostracized for it. Is any of this starting to sound familiar? Social anonymity is a relatively recent phenomenon.
This is how human beings are wired up. Inserting some electronics and code into the process does not change its fundamental nature.
So, Panopticon? You're soaking it it. Just as all you ancestors did. Most of them didn't have electric lights; few of them enjoyed running water. Social interaction has gotten the same kind of technological upgrade, but the people driving the interacting have not changed.
_________________________
* Bit of a scam, bit of a good idea: cars wore out a lot faster back then and if you were, say, a teenager driving a twenty-dollar Ford Falcon, you were probably not going to replace the brake shoes until they'd scared you, or a turn-signal bulb until a policeman had warned you. On the other hand, plenty of garages either used them to drum up business, or give your car a lick and prayer and handed over a sticker for a small and rapid profit.
† I dodged the Census twice because of discomfort with all the questions. "Enumerate," fine, but until the flush toilets in my house get the vote, I still don't see any reason for the Federal government to know how many I have.
It's a noble sentiment, but I think it's too late, possibly -- possibly! -- moot and askew from human nature.
Taking those points one at a time:
Too Late: I grew up in a world where you got a Social Security number when you entered the workforce, and were issued a flimsy little piece of cardboard with some of Uncle Sam's nice engraving, your name blurrily picked out in all caps by some kind of computerized printer, and a neatly-printed little notice: "NOT TO BE USED FOR IDENTIFICATION." My parents had received theirs about the time they first got their own ration cards, and their parents-- Their parents had taken a dim view of the whole notion, another one of that over-reaching Roosevelt's schemes, this one cribbed from that scary lunatic Francis Townsend. In that long-ago world, you might have been able to look up someone's name from their phone number or address, if you went to the library and looked it up in a city directory -- and your local library probably only had a current one for your town. The librarian and the clerks at the bookstore and the five-and-dime were the only people who knew what books you were reading. --And we were worried about invasions of privacy by things like yearly automobile inspections* and all those nosy questions on the U. S. Census.† As long as you kept the shades drawn and avoided breaking the law, nobody know what you were up to inside, John Bircher and Commie alike (though all those IMPEACH EARL WARREN stickers on the thicker corner fenceposts made it pretty clear which group was in ascendance.) Mow your yard oddly, though, and you might be the talk of the street. This was the world that my grandparents thought was a bit too privacy-invaded by The Government and my parents admitted, well, yes, it was, but what are you gonna do?
Possibly Moot: The Internet still interprets censorship as damage, and still routes around it. It does the same thing with platforms. The Eternal September eventually killed Usenet; MySpace collapsed of its own...something or other, possibly inertia. Today's huge, dominating platform is very likely to become #YesterdaysNews, especially once it commences pushing people overboard for any flavor of wrongness. Of course, this works as well for bad people as it does for nice ones -- possibly better. But it always has. The ISPs and national/international regulation of them is a weak point (with one bright spot), but the genie (GEnie?) is well and truly out of the lamp and it's not going back.
Askew From Human Nature: Let's go back to the earlier generations I was writing about. My grandparents grew up in tiny communities. You could leave your past (mostly) behind by pulling up stakes and moving far away -- but you had to put them back down again at your new location. People gossiped. People visited. If you never dusted behind the furniture, your neighbors knew about it. If you had loud arguments, your neighbors knew about it. If you were scrupulously honest in your dealings -- or not -- everyone knew about it. No radio, no TV: idle talk was a major form of entertainment.
My parents grew up in small towns, often on the edge of larger ones; they graduated from the same High School a few years apart, with each class having less than fifty people,. By the time I was twelve, I knew all their names. Just from overhearing. I only met a few, but they all kept in touch with one another; they knew what the others were up to. They, well, gossiped. And they kept track of the other people they went to a school with, and their neighbors and their teachers, shopkeepers and civil servants. A very few of them did things of which the rest disapproved, and were ostracized for it. Is any of this starting to sound familiar? Social anonymity is a relatively recent phenomenon.
This is how human beings are wired up. Inserting some electronics and code into the process does not change its fundamental nature.
So, Panopticon? You're soaking it it. Just as all you ancestors did. Most of them didn't have electric lights; few of them enjoyed running water. Social interaction has gotten the same kind of technological upgrade, but the people driving the interacting have not changed.
_________________________
* Bit of a scam, bit of a good idea: cars wore out a lot faster back then and if you were, say, a teenager driving a twenty-dollar Ford Falcon, you were probably not going to replace the brake shoes until they'd scared you, or a turn-signal bulb until a policeman had warned you. On the other hand, plenty of garages either used them to drum up business, or give your car a lick and prayer and handed over a sticker for a small and rapid profit.
† I dodged the Census twice because of discomfort with all the questions. "Enumerate," fine, but until the flush toilets in my house get the vote, I still don't see any reason for the Federal government to know how many I have.
Saturday, September 05, 2020
Well, Now
Firefox was very crashy; I cleared out the fattest cookies, deleted Cache2 and did a "restore Firefox," which is supposed to cure such ills, which that made it much, much worse instead.
Dammit. I don't like Edge and I don't want to have to try to move all my saved stuff over to it.
Dammit. I don't like Edge and I don't want to have to try to move all my saved stuff over to it.
Friday, September 04, 2020
Maybe Later
Today's blog post of any content will have to be written later. Today is a mess -- misremembered the time for a doctor's appointment, feeling lousy in a slightly new way, and so on.
Thursday, September 03, 2020
Where Did I Have Them Last?
Not much change, but one minor triumph -- after a lapse.
Wednesday, abut dinner time, I needed the spare set of house keys. There's a hook we keep them on, but when I went to get them, the keys weren't there.
I wasn't entirely sure when I had last used them. Checking all the obvious places didn't turn them up. Eventually, I gave up and went to bed. It would be easier to find them with daylight anyway.
Woke up this morning and still felt lousy, but between trying to work from home and napping, I kept looking. I kept going back to the jeans I wore to the doctor's on Sunday, folded over a pile of pillows for later, since I'd only had them on for a couple of hours. Nothing.
In early evening, I was looking for my favorite leather belt. I'd misplaced, it, too, but it showed up under the jeans and a pillow. As I picked it up, something else hit the floor with a clunk. I couldn't find it at first; I was looking for something larger than what the cause turned out to be.
Yes, the spare keys, which had probably fallen out of the jeans pocket when I first put the jeans there -- fallen onto a pillow, silently.
Another reminder to put things back in their proper place promptly after use. You'd think I would have learned that by now.
Wednesday, abut dinner time, I needed the spare set of house keys. There's a hook we keep them on, but when I went to get them, the keys weren't there.
I wasn't entirely sure when I had last used them. Checking all the obvious places didn't turn them up. Eventually, I gave up and went to bed. It would be easier to find them with daylight anyway.
Woke up this morning and still felt lousy, but between trying to work from home and napping, I kept looking. I kept going back to the jeans I wore to the doctor's on Sunday, folded over a pile of pillows for later, since I'd only had them on for a couple of hours. Nothing.
In early evening, I was looking for my favorite leather belt. I'd misplaced, it, too, but it showed up under the jeans and a pillow. As I picked it up, something else hit the floor with a clunk. I couldn't find it at first; I was looking for something larger than what the cause turned out to be.
Yes, the spare keys, which had probably fallen out of the jeans pocket when I first put the jeans there -- fallen onto a pillow, silently.
Another reminder to put things back in their proper place promptly after use. You'd think I would have learned that by now.
Wednesday, September 02, 2020
Keeping On
Nothing else to be done, really. I'm taking my prescribed medicine, doing what the doctors tell me to do, and things seem to be slowly improving. Actually went in to work yesterday, and got some things done.
Tuesday, September 01, 2020
Is There Nothing People Won't Try To Spin?
On one level, I get it. We're the optimistic primates, who will try everything when confronted by adversity and figure out what works by seeing who survives. We're the species that understands the joke about the fellow who jumps off a very tall building, and when someone yells, "How's it going?" as he passes the halfway point, he shouts back, "Okay so far!"
This is who we are at a very basic level. It crops up over and over in our myths and our genetic history: we squeak our way through long odds and one of the reasons why is that we tend to make up our own version of reality and stick to it -- and the people whose version was too far askew, well, they encounter abrupt correction from the physical world and adapt, or they're not around later.
But this trait, frustrating and admirable as it is, gets in the way of just looking at the evidence and not trying to hammer it into the pattern we want to see. And yet that's the first step in understanding anything: seeing what's really there and no more, without preconceptions.
It's hard work. Peel away one layer of "It ought to be.." and "It's supposed to be.." and there is another one underneath. But it's worthwhile work.
Not everything is hype. Not everything fits neatly on one "side" or another. We would do well to remember it.
This is who we are at a very basic level. It crops up over and over in our myths and our genetic history: we squeak our way through long odds and one of the reasons why is that we tend to make up our own version of reality and stick to it -- and the people whose version was too far askew, well, they encounter abrupt correction from the physical world and adapt, or they're not around later.
But this trait, frustrating and admirable as it is, gets in the way of just looking at the evidence and not trying to hammer it into the pattern we want to see. And yet that's the first step in understanding anything: seeing what's really there and no more, without preconceptions.
It's hard work. Peel away one layer of "It ought to be.." and "It's supposed to be.." and there is another one underneath. But it's worthwhile work.
Not everything is hype. Not everything fits neatly on one "side" or another. We would do well to remember it.
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