Politics

Day 90 – June 14, 2020

Over the years, I’ve been part of many board meetings where there were a lot of people. I always look around and think… what exactly does that person bring to the table? Quite literally, why are you at this table? What do you have to offer? In poker, there’s a saying… if you sit down at a poker table, look around, and try to pick out the sucker… and you can’t… it’s because you’re the sucker. Similarly, I’ve felt that way in meetings. If I can’t figure out who’s the waste of space, jeez… maybe it’s me. There’s one particular board I sit on… we meet every few months, and it’s populated by some very intelligent, well-educated people who are far more familiar with the relevant issues than I am. I feel a little out of place in that one, but every time I make a little noise to the chairperson about perhaps stepping back and letting someone more worthy take my place, I’m met with “No no… we love having you here”, etc… OK. I’ll stick around for now I guess. And so I go, enjoy the catered lunch and drinks… and listen. I’ve learned far more from those people than they’ll ever learn from me. Once in a while, I’ll ask a question which I hope doesn’t sound too stupid… just so they know I’m not just some quorum-filling seat-warming presence. When the real decision-making happens, leave it to the experts.

Yes, experts… what’s an expert these days? There are a lot of people around who are very intelligent and well-educated, but for some reason, what comes out of their mouths is neither… because we seem to be living in the age of the curated expert. Allowed to be themselves, they’d be every bit the expert you’d hope for… but when they’re dangling off marionette strings, being controlled by someone else, it’s a whole different story.

You have to feel for Dr. Anthony Fauci. He is, by any definition, an expert. His education and experience are top notch, perfectly suited to be heading the response team. His experience… HIV/AIDS, SARS, H1N1, MERS, Ebola… and now, of couse, COVID-19. There is one thing that’s different this time… and that is as spokesman for what The President wants out there. The President’s message. Not necessarily just the… you know, truth.

It’s always a delicate song-and-dance for anyone who wants to remain employed under the direction of The President, and Dr. Fauci is no exception, walking a fine line between having to speak for the president, but also disagree with the discernible nonsense. No clearer was that exasperation than an interview in late March where reporter Jon Cohen pressed Dr. Fauci on a certain, very important point… that Trump's response timeline "just doesn't comport with facts.” Dr. Fauci agreed.

"I know, but what do you want me to do?" Dr. Fauci asked… "I mean, seriously Jon, let's get real: what do you want me to do?"

That’s a very honest statement, a subtle version of screaming “Hey, there’s an elephant in the room!” or “Hey, the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes!”. The words of the expert.

Speaking of experts… when my daughter Sophia was around 18 months old, she was pretty skinny. She has been all her life, a result of genetics, metabolism, and healthy eating. But back then, not knowing all that, a few people thought maybe she should get checked out. I didn’t think so, but ok… let’s see what the experts say. We got a referral to a paediatrician.

The paediatrician asked as about her eating habits. He listened to what she ate, mostly fruits and vegetables, some healthy proteins (including sashimi)… not a lot of carbs, almost zero junk. He checked her over, decided she was probably ok, but… just in case… “Let’s make sure she’s metabolizing fat properly. I want you to feed her some foods that are very high in fat… get some fries, nuggets, things like that… feed her that for a few days, collect her stools, and bring them back for analysis.”

Yeah, ok… sure. We stopped at a McDonalds drive-thru on the way home, and picked up some fries and McNuggets. And ketchup… and sweet-and-sour sauce for the nuggets, because even though I hadn’t had McD’s in a while, back in the day, that was my thing.

We went home, put her in the high-chair, and put this selection of junk food in front of her. She was not interested, at all. It was no use trying t feed it to her; she wouldn’t budge. No way. And she started getting upset, and what really got her upset was that she could see the vegetables on the kitchen counter and kept pointing at them and screaming for them… “Want! Want!”… and I found myself saying something like…. “No no Sophia… eat your fries… try this nugget… after that, you can have your veggies”.

It went nowhere. She was frantic, and crying. So were we all. After 5 minutes of this insanity, I scooped up all of the McD’s up and threw it in the garbage. Well, actually, of course I ate those McNuggets (sweet-and-sour, come on)… and maybe a few fries. And then, I cut up some cucumber and carrots, gave that to her… and all was once again well in the universe. And we never went back to that expert.

I’m not saying he was wrong; given what he had to work with, why not check it out. Maybe, like me, in my example at the top, he felt the need to add some value and not label the entire visit a waste of time. Maybe there might have been more to it, and of course we would’ve pursued it if it made further sense… but experts aren’t always right. As a good starting point, if you’re going to listen to an expert, make sure you’re listening to their sincere words, not those of the puppet-master. Dr Fauci said yesterday that maybe there wasn’t going to be a second wave; a curious statement that contradicts what pretty-much every other expert is saying. It doesn’t make a lot of sense… until you consider the bigger picture. Then, of course it makes a lot of sense; like, who might want him to say something like that… oh… yeah.

This has already gotten long, so I’ll stop here… especially since there are no B.C. numbers to report today (or yesterday — I will correct my guesses tomorrow), but just in case you’re wondering what I was going to say… it’d be another paragraph, all about Dr. Henry and how lucky we are to have an expert in our midst who speaks an unfiltered, unscripted and uncensored truth… honestly and convincingly. No filtering needed, no hidden political agenda, no puppet-master. Just what we need to hear. Expertly presented.

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By |2020-10-08T01:22:27-07:00June 14th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |13 Comments
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Day 88 – June 12, 2020

Have you ever wondered why the number of UFO sightings seems to be way down in recent years? It’s really pretty straightforward… once upon a time, people weren’t walking around with cameras (actually, entire TV studios) in their pockets. All UFO stories were relayed by word of mouth. Nobody would’ve expected a person to have a camera on them, and when pictures did show up, it was one-offs… look, a bright blob in the sky… the only reasonable explanation is aliens who’ve somehow managed to bend the laws of physics and time and space… and after their journey that must have taken millions of earth years, decided to just park 50,000 feet above the ground for a few minutes before speeding home for another few million years. Yes, that is indeed the likeliest explanation.

Truth is, if a flying saucer of any sort showed up today, it would be seen and captured by thousands of people. It would be on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter… from a thousand different angles. The fact that’s never happened should tell you something. And to be clear, there are unidentified flying objects all the time — unidentified by you and me. But rest assured, someone probably could identify it. And they wouldn’t tell you it’s little green men.

Funny story about UFOs though… I’ve never seen one, but I did cause a bunch of people to see one… and since this was in 1987, in the middle of the desert of northern Chile, there was nobody around with a camera… and here’s the story. My cousin and I had driven past a guy on the street selling fireworks. Side-note, in many places around the world, Chile among them, every time you stop at a red light, you will be accosted by a salesman of some sort. And they’re not all selling dingy crap… sometimes it’s ice-cold sealed bottles of water, charging cables, hats, cigarettes. But sometimes it is total crap. And sometimes it’s animals, like a skinned rabbit turned inside out. You usually keep your windows rolled up for those ones.

Every corner, someone is hocking something. And so, at some intersection, some guy jumped out with… fireworks… no idea why he had any or where he got them, but it was interesting enough to pull over and check out his stash. We bough a bunch of stuff, including a curiosity you wouldn’t see around here, at any of the firework pop-up shops that show up near Halloween.

What it was… was an open-bottom hot-air ballon, made out of wire and tissue paper. It was pretty big — fully inflated, maybe a 5-foot diameter ball of wire and paper that held a big candle in the “basket”. Does this thing really work, we asked… oh yes he said, very well… and proceeded to explain to us the process of unwrapping it and inflating it… after all, fire and tissue paper aren’t always going to go together well. OK, so cool… let’s get it… and we did. And on one of the following nights, we went a few km. out of town into the middle of the pitch-black desert (pitch black except for the crystal-clear, star-filled southern night sky, a real-life planetarium) and fired off a bunch of fireworks… and left the ballon for last. But eventually we got to it.

My cousin sort of held the balloon “up” while I lit the candle and held the basket straight and flat to the ground. Very quickly, the thing inflated… it was very impressive how little time it took to heat up the air underneath the ballon. Within 2 minutes, he didn’t need to hold it up… it was a big, glowing ball… and that air was hot, and pulling very hard… and I’m not exactly sure at what point I was supposed to let go, but eventually I couldn’t really hold it… so I let go, and the thing shot up into the sky, surprisingly quickly. It was incredibly impressive. Up it went, very quickly and very high. Ooooh. Ahhhh.

And then… well, the air isn’t necessarily still at certain altitudes. The wind caught it, and it started to drift toward town. Oh shit, that’s not ideal. And then… the wind caught the basket and candle, and ever so slightly tipped the basket to the side, causing the candle to come closer to the edge… like the edge of the bottom of the balloon itself. You know, the tissue-paper ballon.

What happened then was really impressive to see, even from far below on the ground. It caught on fire, and it was all entirely consumed within seconds, the entire thing engulfed in flames. For a few seconds, it was an impressive glowing fireball. Of course, that quickly became nothing more than a very hot mess… a collection of burning wire, which came crashing to the ground. Oh, the humanity.

We ran over to where this mess of wires hit the ground, glowing hot and still slightly burning…. and did the responsible thing and called the fire department. Ha ha, as if… no, we just buried it all in sand, and I’d be surprised if it weren’t still there today.

But the next day, no pictures… but a lot of people had seen it Did you guys see the UFO? What UFO we asked… oh yeah, this big glowing ball in the sky around 10pm. Oh yeah… no, didn’t see it. Oh, you missed it… it was huge, like 10 feet tall. An hour later, the story we heard was 20 feet tall. 30 feet… someone saw it land. Someone saw what might have been an alien. Someone’s dog barked, and it never barks; maybe more than one alien. By the end of the day, it was a full-on War of the Worlds.

We kept our mouths shut, because during that time, the country was still under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and breaking laws wasn’t a good idea. There was enough illegality about all of that, that talking about it was a bad idea; but hearing the story get taller and taller… that was amusing.

Anyway, as we’ve recently seen, the ability for anyone and everyone to be able to document what’s going on around them is leading society to new levels of accountability — which can only be a good thing. “Because I said so” is no longer an accepted threshold for the truth, no matter from whose mouth it’s emerging. This is where I’d end up saying something that someone might conclude is a Trump-bashing sort of statement… but I don’t need to. Like with UFOs, look at the evidence (or lack thereof) and make up your own mind. When things are going downhill and the top guy is saying things have never been better, you don’t need to have take a graduate course in critical thinking to figure it out.

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By |2020-10-08T01:22:28-07:00June 12th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Travel Stories, Humour, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |9 Comments
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Day 84 – June 8, 2020

Recently (May 22ⁿᵈ, in fact), I wrote about my way of learning… how difficult I find it to just memorize something… how I actually have to learn it and understand it. And the flipside of that… how if I actually manage to memorize anything, it sticks with me forever…. I suppose because of the way I learned it; to some extent, I understand it… it’s not just a jumble of words.

Such is the case with my favourite poem of all time, one I learned over 35 years ago. A classic and a favourite, written about by countless students over the years. I learned it back then, I and I still know it… and next time we’re having a coffee or a beer or whatever, call me on it… I’ll be happy to recite it for you. And if you want a far better version, check out Bryan Cranston’s reading of it on YouTube. It’s incredible.

“Ozymandias” – by Percy Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert… near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

OK… great poem. Fantastic imagery. You can totally see it… and the symbolism and message is pretty clear. Some very powerful king, thousands of years ago (it’s understood this was Ramses II, who was Pharaoh around 3,300 years ago) built these colossal cities, huge monumental cities that will survive forever. And in the middle of it, a huge statue of himself, proclaiming to the world how great he is, fear him, worship him, etc. And… today, it’s all gone, except, ironically, for this shattered remnant of all that boasting. Look around at all my awesomeness… but there’s nothing to see. It’s all been swallowed up by the desert.

The conventional analysis has to do with us, 3,300 years later, softly chuckling to ourselves at the colossal ego of this guy, thinking his stuff would last forever. Ha Ha, silly pharaoh, don’t you get it, nothing lasts forever, ha ha, you narcissistic, pretentious ego-maniac. If you read my report, and those of my fellow students… and those of thousands of others who’ve had to analyze this poem, that’s what you’ll get. Every variation on that theme; the poem is about hubris, period.

I learned this poem when I was a kid. I thought about it when I started my first job, about how I was building a colossal city… for someone else. I thought about it a lot over the years, building my own cities, knowing full well that I’ll get to enjoy them while I’m alive and so will my kids and close friends and all that, but, of course, one day it’ll all be gone, or, better put — transformed into something else. Ozymandias’ empire crumbled to literal dust — the very sand from which it emerged. I’m now wondering about the present-day versions of that. What will become of these words… things that barely exist… ones and zeroes, which, in the right order — mean a lot, but scramble them a bit and you have nothing. And stuff… the house, the cars, whatever. All transient. Just stuff. And it made me realize something recently, after 35 years of thinking about this poem. That maybe Ozymandias wasn’t such a short-sighted inward-facing fool after all. Maybe what he’s proclaiming to the world is the opposite… it’s like, look around — all of you — everything you are doing today — for what? It’s all going to crumble. Look at me, and everything I built! Gone! All gone! Now there is something to despair about. He wasn’t throwing into our faces how awesome he was and how immortal he was… he was saying… jeez, people… look… if I can’t build something that’ll last forever, what chance do you have? None! It’s all for nothing. That is what you should despair about.

I wish I could go back to grade 10 and present that. Get a serious “wow” look from the teacher, who I would hope would see the genius in that interpretation and give it the A+ is deserves. As opposed to the C I got because, you know, “Mr. Kemeny, I find your effort lacking”.

What’s also lacking in effort, and arguably missing in action, is leadership south of the border. I’ve been bashing Donald Trump, and his response to this pandemic, for a while now. With good reason, in my opinion. I had thought it’d be the crisis that would define his failure as president. That’s going to be a smaller part of the story, as it turns out. Never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, he perhaps could have had some redemption in the proper handling of what now, no doubt, will become the defining issue of his presidency.

The masterful reading of that poem by Bryan Cranston is him speaking in relation to his character, Walter White. If you haven’t seen Breaking Bad — you’re lucky, because now you get to experience what’s arguably the best TV series ever made. Queue it up. Go watch it. Walter White starts off as a pretty normal high-school teacher. Then, you could say, he gets into drugs. And, over the next few years, things change dramatically. And, no spoilers, but… you could say, things don’t end well. Things crumble.

Donald Trump has literally built the sort of empire that’s meant to crumble. Towers, casinos, golf courses. Similar to those towers and ski hills and fake islands in Dubai… all will be swallowed up by the sand one day. And none of that matters. Nor should it. History will not judge him on how awesome his (now bankrupt) casinos were. It’s everything else. I look upon his mighty present-day works and despair. Fortunately, one day, every aspect of what’s defining this presidency will crumble, and the U.S. will come out of it in better shape than how things were when it all started… not because of this particular president, but in spite of him. And the students of the future will have plenty to discuss.

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By |2020-10-08T01:23:05-07:00June 8th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |12 Comments
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Day 81 – June 5, 2020

My list of top-ten favourite movies has evolved over the years, but since 1994, the number-one spot has been held by a title that’s unlikely to ever move from that spot. The movie is “The Shawshank Redemption”, based off a Stephen King novella by a similar name. Stephen King movie adaptations are very hit-and-miss, especially as SK is known for giving movie rights away to aspiring film makers for $1. The good ones get proper treatment though, and it doesn’t get any better than this one. If you haven’t seen it — just do. Don’t Google it, don’t preview it, don’t research it. The less you know, the better it’ll be.

I’m going to talk about one particular scene… and don’t worry, this doesn’t spoil anything. In this scene, which takes place in Shawshank prison, a particular prisoner gets hold of a record player and some vinyl. The record happens to be from Mozart’s opera “The Marriage of Figaro”. He starts playing it, and quickly realizes he’s in the same room from where the P.A. system for the entire prison is operated. He flips on all the amps and starts blaring this beautiful duet to every corner of the prison.

The movie is narrated by a character named Red, played by Morgan Freeman, and he describes it like this:

“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't wanna know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you those voices soared, higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”

I had the experience of seeing this opera in Italy, and experienced something I’d never seen… after this particular aria (an aria in this context is a little song within an opera), the applause was so thunderous that it brought the performance to a halt. The applause turned into a standing ovation, and the chants of “Brave!” — side note, the plural of Bravo is Bravi — but when it’s feminine, like if you were applauding a single female, you’d say Brava!, but the plural, as would be appropriate in this duet sung by two women, is Brave. Anyway, the chants of Brave turned into “Encore!”. Typically, of course, an encore comes after the performance, not during it… but technically, in French, “encore” means “again” — and that’s what the crowd wanted. And that’s what the crowd got, much to their rapturous delight. The performers and musicians turned back a few pages, rewound 4 minutes, and did the aria again. Very powerful.

The aria (“Canzonetta Sull’aria”) comes along at the perfect time in the movie, and its effect on the audience is similar to what Red describes in the prison. Again, very powerful. Red doesn’t know what the aria is about, but I do, so I’ll tell you… these two women are scheming… one of them is a Countess, and she’s dictating a note to her maid… because, as it turns out, the Count is sort-of into this maid, and the Countess is trying to catch him cheating. So, she’s dictating to the maid, a note… a sort of “Meet me later tonight out by the bushes” sort of thing… where she (the Countess) intends to dress-up like the maid and catch him red-handed. Good stuff — not anywhere near as pure and powerful as Red may have interpreted it, but at least it’s intriguing.

And that’s sort of what this is about… when Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “The medium is the message” back in 1964, there was no Internet. People’s present-day information came from 4 sources.. TV, radio, print and word-of-mouth. The stakes back then were much, much higher. The words of Walter Cronkite were gospel; indeed, he was known as “the most trusted man in America”. Republicans, Democrats, Communists, Anarchists…. whoever — they may all have vehemently disagreed on many things, but they all listened to the same source. And perhaps that’s the fundamental issue; broadcast news went from boring to entertaining when competition came in… 3 major networks (and 2 here in Canada) were the critical mass… “real” news could survive in that environment. But beyond that, if you wanted to grab those advertising dollars, you’d better have had a competitive product… and that’s clearly when things went downhill… down to where we are today, where it isn’t news that people are after; it’s easily-digestible content confirming what they already believe, or want to believe, disguised as news. And the social media platforms welcome those clients with open arms, spoon-feeding them curated “news” that’s right up their alley… click-click-click… $-$-$.

The education that’s necessary that I spoke about yesterday… it has to begin at an early age, and it has to begin with critical thinking. Someone who can’t think for themselves will welcome the spoon-feeding that comforts them. I don’t want to think, I don’t want to change my mind… I’m happy with my beliefs, and look, a lot of other people think the same way. We can’t all be wrong. Gimme gimme gimme. Feed me. Om-nom-nom.

In the movie, Red is a convicted criminal with a grade-school education. He’s touched by something he doesn’t understand, but at least manages to guess the language correctly, and knowing full-well he can’t understand a word of it, comes up with an interpretation that suits the moment. There’s a huge difference between “this is what it says” and “this is what I hope it says”, and knowing when and how to apply that difference… that is the key for an educated, peaceful and harmonious future.

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By |2020-10-08T01:23:06-07:00June 5th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Science of COVID-19, Travel Stories, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |13 Comments
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Day 80 – June 4, 2020

I had a whole thing written out today… but it’s taken a sharp turn… and I ended up pulling the plug on the latter half of it. It might not surprise you to learn that I have a lot to say about all sorts of topics, and sometimes my personal opinion perhaps clouds my judgement… or let’s just call it objectivity. I have a pretty clear idea of what I think is right, but that’s never stopped me from trying to put myself in someone else’s shoes, to see how things look from their point of view. Everyone has their story, as incongruent as it might be, so let’s hear it. I might learn something from it.

I’m going to get a little technical for a moment. There are two techie things to understand: A Virtual Machine and a VPN. Feel free to skip the next two paragraphs if you know what those things are.

A Virtual Machine is basically a computer running inside a computer. A host computer runs the virtual machine, and the virtual machine (and everything running in it) thinks it’s running as a stand-alone computer. For example, this is being written on a Mac, my primary computer (and host computer). But off in the corner, at the moment, I have a tiny VM… running, of all things, Windows XP. I need to do this because I have some hardware that needs controlling and for which there’s no current software; the old stuff runs fine, so rather than having a whole computer dedicated to it, I have this 20-year-old operating system running inside a VM that makes it look like 20-year-old hardware. That operating system thinks it’s running on a computer with a Pentium 4 chip, 512 megs of RAM and a 5GB hard drive. Minuscule numbers for today, but they work just fine for the purpose.

A common use for a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is to establish a location different than where you actually are. Typically, VPNs are used to grant access securely to some remote resource, but people quickly figured out a convenient by-product… that often, those VPNs are based elsewhere. From there sprung-up a whole industry for people trying to bypass local controls. For the most part, a website can only tell where you physically are from the IP address you’re using. It’s a big no-no in some places in the world to connect to a VPN… like everywhere that the government controls access to the internet, because many VPNs allow you to select the location you want… be it a country, state or even city. Around here, people mostly use VPNs to watch US-based Netflix. When you connect to a VPN, you can “be” anywhere in the world that you want.

So a while back, I created a completely clean VM — like a brand-new installed operating system. I then set that VM to always connect through a VPN, in what we would all call a very red state. Serious MAGA country. Then I signed up for a new fake email address and then, Facebook. That FB profile had a fake name and fake credentials… no pictures of me… just many of American flags, Donald Trump, etc.

The intent here was research. I had no intent on engaging with anyone. I just started “Liking” lots of different groups, friending lots of American patriots, to see what my feed would look like. What would show up, and, more importantly, what “news” would show up? I just wanted to see what this world looks like from a very different lens… and you’d be surprised… slick and professional. Totally believable… so much so, a few times I had to go back and check other news sources to compare. What actually did happen today?

Near the end of the experiment, I made the mistake of engaging, because I was getting frustrated at all the crap I was seeing, and the same non-questioning, non-critical-thinking RaRaRa MagaTrump etc… there was such misinformation being posted that it begged asking… so I sent this blurb to a few people:

“I am curious about something — are you propagating misinformation on purpose? Are you just blindly copying/pasting information because it aligns with what you hope is reality? I apologize in advance if this comes off as a personal attack; it’s not meant to be. I’m just noticing a lot of people taking information that can’t possibly be correct and reposting it because it agrees with their version of reality, as warped as it might be. What you posted — do you know it’s bullshit? Do you not expect to get called on it? I’m genuinely curious.”

The result was what you’d expect, but far worse. It became impossible to manage.

I ended up shutting it down. I closed the FB account, closed the email, dragged the VM to the Trash. The whole fake identity no longer exists. Unfortunately, the reality with which that identity briefly interacted — it’s all still there.

I am desperate to see real change in the word, but I am incredibly discouraged by what I experienced. There is a whole block of population that simply can not understand, doesn’t want to understand, is unwilling to understand… it doesn’t matter how you word it. There are people who will post something so outrageous that it’s literally impossible for it to be true, yet they will defend it to the death. There is no logic that can be applied to convince them otherwise, because they don’t want to be convinced. They have their truth. So if you can’t convince someone who seems intelligent and educated… that their COVID-19 numbers, claiming a death-rate that would require the US population to be 15 billion people — are bullshit, how far do you think you’re going to get with more subtle, reasonable arguments… be it the pandemic, politics, racism, whatever. Their minds are made up, and nothing will ever change them.

As per the first sentence of this post… I’m cutting it here. My intent here is not to insult people, just inform… be it facts, or simply my opinion.

I talked recently about it being a steep uphill, but this looks like a vertical rock face. I do have my ideas, and perhaps I’ll eventually get around to sharing them… but honestly, at this point, I’m open to suggestions. It has to start with education… but how?

 

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By |2020-10-08T01:39:57-07:00June 4th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Follower Favourites, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |34 Comments
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Day 77 – June 1, 2020

One of my all-time favourite movies is “Inception”. Christopher Nolan’s film-making and story-telling won many awards, and deservedly so, but above and beyond that is one of the fundamental concepts of the movie, and it’s a fascinating one. Its importance plays out in the world continually. Even if you haven’t seen the movie, that basic idea is easy to understand… the difference of a thought, and its origin, and how different you treat a thought, depending on whether you came up with it yourself, or whether it was suggested to you. And how you might act completely differently, depending on that.

The simplest example… I tell you to think about pink elephants. Now you’re thinking about pink elephants… but you know it was me that made you think of them.

A better example… after dinner, you realize you haven’t done the kitchen cleanup all on your own in a long time, and decide you’re going to be a nice person and do everyone a favour. “I’m going to wash the entire kitchen”, you think to yourself, happy and proud to be a helpful and appreciated part of the family.

Compared to… you thinking that, but before you get a chance to announce it, someone says… “Hey… you haven’t done the kitchen in a while… go do it”. The end result of the action you ultimately take might be the same, but you’ll be thinking about it very differently.

In fact, you might have been mere moments away from announcing your intention, but now that someone else suggested it to you, it completely reframes it… and you probably feel differently (and not as good) about it. So much so that you might be tempted to say, “Hey, I was going to do it, but if you put it that way — forget it. You do it.”

The magic would be, from someone else’s point of view, if they could plant that thought into your head. They want you to do the kitchen, but they want you to come up with the idea. When you own the idea, you feel a lot differently about it, and… more importantly, you’re far likelier to take responsibility for it.

Throughout my life, I’ve been on both sides of that… well all have… professionally, personally, whatever… there’s no technical solution to Inception, as in the movie, with fancy (and presently non-existentent) technology… so in the real world, the closest thing would be social engineering — not in the sinister fashion of trying to extract login or bank info from people, but by simply interacting with people in a way that guides things in the direction — and ultimately, conclusion — that you’re hoping for.

From one point of view, this can happen when someone has managed to surround themselves with excellent, intelligent people… but because of corporate hierarchies, they’re the one in charge, and the decisions and responsibility fall on them… yet the real brains may be “below” them. Nobody down there wants to be responsible; it’s better for those people if the boss comes up with the idea… so while they won’t come right out and say it, they know exactly what needs to happen… and will dance around it until the boss says, “Hey! I have a great idea!”. “Great!”, they will reply… knowing exactly what’s coming.

The other point of view… well, as a parent, you quickly learn that there comes a point where telling your kids what to do… doesn’t work. As per above, “Do the dishes, now!” isn’t often met with the success for which one would hope. But here’s what does work… “Hey, we want to try to start watching the movie at 8. Try to get everything you need to get done… out of the way by then.” They know they have to do the dishes; you don’t need to even mention it. And, now the power is entirely in their hands. It’ll be their idea of “Oh… better do the dishes”.

With respect to this pandemic, I’ve spoken about the difference between having a doctor instead of a politician in charge. And that even though there are politicians involved, they’re deferring to her order, and the messaging is clear. There is one voice…. but… Dr. Henry isn’t really telling us what to do. Like an excellent parent, she’s transparently presenting us all the facts, but to a great extent, letting us figure out for ourselves how to act. She’s never said “Don’t travel this weekend.” — but she’s hinted as to why it’d be a bad idea and suggested against it… yet left it in all of our collective minds to consider… to the extent that if you did, or if you’re not socially distancing, or if you’re not wearing a mask when you really should… you’ll actually feel a little guilty about it. You’ll actually have taken ownership of the decision… and I think our high compliance numbers and resulting success are a great testament to that one simple fact… a fact that has even bigger implications these days; great success can be found by educating people, and arming them with enough knowledge that it allows them to reach correct conclusions on their own.

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By |2020-10-08T01:23:07-07:00June 1st, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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Day 73 – May 28, 2020

The whole “too many chefs in the kitchen” or “too many cooks spoil the broth” — the thought behind it applies to pretty-much everything in life. Certainly, from experience… having been both the guy being told what do do — and the guy telling others what to do — I strongly believe in it.

One key to success — again, in many facets of life… and I’ve said it often… surround yourself with capable people and let them do their thing. This means understanding that they will do things… differently. Compared to what you would’ve done, it might be better or it might be worse… but it’ll certainly be different. The thing is, as long as you were right — that they were the right person for the job, capable of doing it — it should turn out alright. And this doesn’t mean that person is the one who does everything; it’s just clearly understood that the entire thing, no matter what it is… they answer to it. They can delegate jobs, hire extra people, whatever… but it’s up to them.

The chef/kitchen thing is a great example, actually. One can only imagine the chaos a large-scale kitchen would endure if multiple bosses were screaming out orders. There is a hierarchy, and at the top of it is the head chef. There may be a sous-chef, a pastry chef, a number of others… and multiples thereof. But there is a well-defined tip of the pyramid.

On one particular day… around 20 years ago, three former premiers of this province were all in Provincial Court on the same day. A complete coincidence… Bill Vander Zalm with his Fantasy Gardens scandal, Mike Harcourt with his BingoGate scandal, Glen Clark with his casino-license-for-deck-repairs scandal…. all there for different reasons, but all there to face the music with respect to abusing the public trust in some way, scandals that drove all of them out of office. That’s a SoCred and two NDPers, but corruption crosses all party lines. Subsequent to that came Gordon Campbell, Liberal, ultimately driven from office by the BC Rail Scandal. What is it with B.C. and our elected premiers? Scandalous.

I guess I’m relieved that the guy in charge these days isn’t some wild-west shoot-from-the-hip sort, doing whatever he pleases for personal gain. That would be a disaster in this present climate. John Horgan picked the excellent people with whom to surround himself, Adrian Dix and Dr. Henry, and he’s letting them run with it… and they were the right people for the job, and they continue to deliver outstanding results. This is textbook good management and proper delegation, and we in this province are very fortunate to have it.

Can you imagine a scenario where first Dr. Henry gives her daily update, then Adrian Dix gives his, and then The Premier stands up and discounts all of it? Questions their numbers, questions their strategies, makes up some stuff to suit his narrative? Suggests we ignore what we just heard? What a nightmare for the people listening and trying to figure it all out. That’s perhaps the biggest blessing around here, and perhaps the biggest differentiator than many other places; at the end of the day, our response is being led by a scientist, not a politician. On paper, Dr. Bonnie Henry isn’t the top of that pyramid, but in every other practical sense, she is…. and the consistent messages we get on an almost-daily basis, and their transparency, may well be the biggest reason we’re doing so well around here, compared to even other parts of Canada, where the response has been driven by politicians.

The corruption aspect — at the expense of the greater good — is nowhere clearer than in some of the head-scratching decisions we have seen being made elsewhere. The push to open gyms — enclosed spaces of people breathing heavily and touching many common surfaces? Sure, they have to open eventually… and around here, some are — under strict regulation. But in places where numbers are still rising? You have to look no deeper than the political connections and influence being imposed. That was the easy and obvious part to understand. Political business as usual. Like everywhere. Except the stakes aren’t money; they are people’s lives.

And now, there’s a more serious problem… some of those governors, intelligently ignoring the confusing and conflicting directives coming from higher up, are imposing their own orders… and many people are simply ignoring them, choosing to listen to whomever is in charge, somewhere up there — that agrees with what they want to hear. Many businesses, gyms among them, in numerous states… will be (if they’re not already), defying their respective governor’s orders to stay closed for now. Business as usual.

What a mess, from so many different points of view… legal, health, practical. And when it all goes to hell, the fingerpointing will be fierce. Sure, the mayor said we should’t open, but the governor said it was fine. Yeah, the governor said we shouldn’t open, but the president said it was ok. Unfortunately, those mixed messages may come back to haunt them.

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By |2020-10-08T01:23:09-07:00May 28th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Science of COVID-19, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |8 Comments
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Day 72 – May 27, 2020

As per usual, researching things leads to interesting facts. What do you think is the driest place on earth? I always thought it was the Atacama Desert in Chile, but turns out it’s in second place… to an area in Antarctica where it hasn’t rained in somewhere between 2 and 14 million years. You’d think you could safely assume there isn’t much life around there… but there actually is. Way underground, inside the rocks… bacteria that feed on iron, potassium and sulfur. And, for those bacteria that aren’t doing keto (or cheat a bit sometimes), carbon.

I can attest to the dryness of the Chilean desert because I lived there. In the driest parts… the further north you go, the drier it is. Some weather stations record 1mm of precipitation a year. Some have never recorded any.

Where I lived, Copaipó, a bit further south than that, rain was rare enough that it was talked about like a big event… The Big Rain of ’85. Part of the reason it’s such a big deal is that every single place around there spends zero on mitigating it. No drains, no gutters. So when it rains, it’s an unmitigated disaster. Everything floods. Everything… because there’s nowhere for the water to go. People will be sweeping water from their homes into the street. The streets are a flooded mess of mud. Eventually, often sooner than later, the sun comes out and it all evaporates away, leaving the usual Martian landscape. And a huge mess to clean up.

Though, it should be noted, and this is super-cool because it’s so rare… there is some version of suspended life under the Atacama desert — seeds just waiting for their one chance. They wait decades for their one big moment… and then it comes… and the desert flourishes with life for a few hours — an incredible array of colour, albeit briefly. That happened in 2015, and it was spectacular. But also, it was more rain than they’d possibly ever had… almost an inch of water fell… and caused massive flooding and landslides, killing 25 people and leaving thousands homeless.

The ability to count on no rain leads to some interesting possibilities. Very few people had a dryer; clothes-lines everywhere. And.. there was a road up in the mountains made of salt… and when you think about it, cool idea… salt water is free (Pacific Ocean is nearby), and all you do is lay it down and let it evaporate. What’s left is salt. Then you do that again… and again… till you have a nice bed of salt…then crush it with one of those Looney Tunes machines with the rolling drum… and voila, salt road. Every once in a while, top it up and flatten it out, and you’re good to go for years. Until it rains and completely destroys it, washing it all away.

Those two examples are just a couple of many of the sort I’ve talked about before; what’s normal and expected here can be very different elsewhere in the world.

And it’s becoming evident that you don’t need to travel 14,000km south of here to find them. They start just south of the 49th. And no, I’m not going to turn this into a Republican/Democrat thing, at least this time. Enough of that for now. Chile is doing what they’re doing because it makes sense to them. That’s how they’ve built their culture, one that’s been around longer than Canada and the U.S. combined. The U.S., of course, in their terribly-mismanaged responsibility-deflecting fashion, are doing the same.

For all the mistakes Canada may have made in what’s an incredibly complex situation, at the end of the day, numbers don’t lie. We are looking at a national trend that’s very encouraging. We’ve seen two straight days of less than 1,000 new cases. The last time that happened was in late March, when things were headed in the wrong direction. Last 5 days in Canada, from 5 days ago to today: +1156, +1141, +1078, +1011, +937, +872. That’s a trend. B.C.’s numbers are so low, there’s no way to define a trend. +10, +7, +6, +11, +9. It’s like the trend would be skewed by the time of day the test was taken, and whether the result counts for today or tomorrow.

Anyway, that’s what we're doing around here and across the country. And I like it.

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By |2020-10-08T01:23:09-07:00May 27th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Life in Vancouver, Travel Stories, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , |5 Comments
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Day 70 – May 25, 2020

Yesterday’s post was met with a wide range of reaction, and the questions and comments lead me to think a bit of clarification and more detail would be appropriate. Some of those comments came from Swedes themselves, a little bit upset at being painted somewhat ruthlessly; to clarify, I’m speaking about leadership and their policies; not the general population, many of whom don’t agree with the official policy in the first place. And to also clarify, I’m not implying their leadership and epidemiologists are evil. They simply came up with a strategy, and it’s not working as they’d hoped. So, här är del två…

I first wrote about Sweden on April 10th… more than 6 weeks ago. I welcome you to scroll down and find it — it’s a pretty good summary of where things stood at that point, what measures where (and weren’t) in place, and what I thought of the whole idea. And sure, “What do you know?” is a fair question to ask of me… especially 6 weeks ago. We’re all continually asking the question of each other, and hopefully learning something. That same article also mentions a famous letter signed by more than 2,000 Swedish doctors, scientists and professors… the contents of which can be summarized succinctly as it relates to government policy (which hasn’t changed): “They are leading us to catastrophe”.

First of all, let’s clarify exactly what is meant by herd immunity.

Herd immunity is where enough people of a population are immune to the extent that the infection will no longer spread within that group. The more infectious a disease, the higher that percentage has to be. For example, mumps is very contagious. It has an Rø of 10 to 12, meaning every infected person will infect, on average, 10 to 12 others. Left unchecked, this would lead to 95% of the population getting infected. After that, the population can be considered to have acquired herd immunity, and the other 5% will inherit the benefit of that… because at that point, there’s no one left to catch it from. Measles has similar numbers. That particular herd-immunity threshold is very high, and can only be reached via vaccination because allowing everyone to catch either of those horrible diseases is not an option. And these days, completely preventable.

With the way the math works, the higher the Rø, the higher that herd immunity threshold. For COVID-19, estimates seem to run between 1.4 and 3.9. Both of those numbers seem extreme, but for the record, they imply a range of 29-74% to achieve herd immunity. An Rø of 2.3 seems to be generally accepted, implying herd immunity could be achieved with 57% of the population having become infected.

Is that likely in Sweden? Anywhere?

Before we answer that, it’s worth noting that the policy-makers in charge in Sweden have been backing away from claiming this was the idea in the first place. It’s a mixed message for sure, and it’s changed over time. I think it’s reasonable to assume it was the original intent; shelter those most at risk (an impossible task, but that’s also a different discussion) and then let the virus do as it may. But, to confuse things a bit, while businesses were to be open, a vast number of Swedes, not too different from Americans in some confused places, said to hell with what the government tells us; we will take our lead from others, perhaps like those 2,000 who signed that letter.

That’s intelligent on their part, but certainly affects the plan of “get the virus out there”. You can’t have it both ways, and perhaps you end up in a purgatory of sorts… where there’s too much illness to be handled properly, but nowhere near enough to be even close to establishing herd immunity. Indeed, by an order of magnitude, nobody on the planet is even remotely close. What do we need? 70% 60%? I’ll give you 50%. What’s Sweden at? Maybe 9%. More likely closer to 7%. And let me clarify… I am in no way blaming Swedish society for not doing their part; I’d have done the same thing, isolating myself and not frequenting crowded places. Even without any sort of lockdown, achieving herd immunity was not going to happen. Even if it were possible, it’d take years. To be sure, there are a lot more people who’ve been infected than we know… but still… that Stanford study that implied infection rates 50 to 85 times higher than thought… there are problems with that study, but let’s take it at face value… where are we at with that, near San Francicso? 2%. Nobody is even close to herd immunity, and it’s likely nobody will get there. Of course, a vaccine achieves that instantly, and that’s why we’re diligently aiming in that direction.

That sad thing about Sweden is that they could’ve seen it coming, but did nothing to prevent it. The U.K. tried this strategy… shelter the weak, keep things open, weather the storm… and bailed on it around March 17th. The U.K. was only at around 2,000 cases, but it was the drastic nature of growth that led them to quickly understand how bad this could get. Sweden had seen its 1,000th case by then, but it wouldn’t have been too late to re-evaluate then. Or the next day. Or any of the 40+ days since.

There is a discernible and not-too-surprising pattern emerging around the world; here are the worst three countries… for total cases, and daily new cases. In other words, not only have they seen the most cases, but they’re all still growing — faster than anyone else: U.S., Brazil, Russia. What do they have in common? Here’s a hint: Trump, Bolsonaro, Putin. Try changing those minds.

The Prime Minister of Sweden, Stefan Löfven, is no renegade populist. He’s a social democrat. And he’s dealing with a population of only 10 million people. It’s not great now, but it’s not too late. I wrote recently about the joys of being wrong, and the opportunities it affords. Perhaps it’s time for Sweden to give it some thought.

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By |2020-10-08T01:23:10-07:00May 25th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |7 Comments
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Day 68 – May 23, 2020

Imagine a good old-fashioned campfire. The kind where you roast old-fashioned marshmallows and sing Kumbaya. Much like the kind many of you will be enjoying around here soon… as long as you’re a B.C. resident. Works for me… a policy I very much agree with, especially if we’re all being told to not leave the province. Here’s a great advantage to living in Beautiful B.C. — we have world-class everything at our disposal.

But imagine you’re sitting by that campfire, and you have an old-fashioned 1,000-page phone book that you want to burn entirely. There are right and wrong ways of doing that. For example, you can tear out one page at a time, scrunch it into a little ball, and throw it into the heart of the fire. What will happen? That little ball of paper will burn to a crisp 100% of the time. And if you do that for every page, you will have a 100% success rate if the intent was entirely burning that phone book.

But what if you throw the whole phone book in there? It’ll catch on fire, for sure… the entire brick of paper will be burning.

But eventually, when everything has gone out, what will be left? Chances are, that phone book will not have been entirely consumed. It’s a big thick block of paper, and oxygen probably couldn’t reach the very center of pages 470 to 530. There will probably be some fragments of paper that’ll still have some legible print on them.

Would it be fair to say that this particular fire was only 99.8% effective in burning this phone book? No… it’s not the fire’s fault. It would’ve done the job just fine if you’d given it the opportunity.

Similarly, we’re told hand washing is 99 point whatever percent effective in disinfecting your hands. Well, not quite — it’s actually 100.0% if you do it right. As it happens, COVID-19 is pretty fragile… and to make a long chemistry story short, the virus is wrapped in fat, and soap annihilates fat. Whatever armor the virus had while trying to hop from host to host — is gone. Common soap is as effective as alcohol in wiping out this virus — perhaps better — unless you have the necessary concentration, like what is found in hand sanitizers. If you wash your hands properly, ie. you get soap on every surface of your hands, the virus can’t survive. There is no tiny fraction of super-protected virus balls that make the percentage less than 100, just like there’s no magical page 567 of that phone book that, when crumpled alone, will survive burning.

And so… masks. Yes, masks. Dear, lovely, sainted masks. Let’s talk about masks one final time. Haha! Yeah, you’ll be hearing a lot more about masks, whether from me or numerous other people. One thing you might hear is that they’re not 100% effective, so why bother… and the simple answer is that if you need to burn the phone book quickly, getting all the edges and most of the pages is better than nothing. A lot better.

The arguments you hear against wearing masks are many, but they all have a common denominator. Me, me me… my rights, my freedoms, you’re free to wear a mask and I’m free to not wear one. Sometimes coupled with the “scientific” reasons to try to justify that… they cut off oxygen, they hurt your lungs, they’re bad for the immune system. Come on.

The truth is… me wearing a mask helps you more than it helps me. Conversely, you wearing a mask benefits me more than you. There’s that old parable… religious/inspirational/team-work — whatever the set-up is, I’ll go straight to the punchline… it’s the one were everyone’s arms are suddenly frozen, sticking straight out. Suddenly, people can’t feed themselves and are starving. But of course, those that learn to cooperate… feed each other, and humanity is saved, yadda yadda, It’s not a difficult lesson to understand… the kind you can wrap your head around; no need to memorize. Also works for me.

I was amused with a Facebook ad that popped-up on my feed; an ad for masks, but they’re all branded Trump and MAGA and “It’s my choice not to wear a mask” and “U.S.A” and all the rest of it. For those whose intellect is incapable of indulging in the delicious irony provided, great! Wear them as your protest…. “See this mask I’m wearing?! Well, I don’t have to be wearing it!! It’s my choice, and I’m showing you how much I’m against them and how you’re trampling my rights… by wearing it!!”. I love it — more power to you. Just wear the mask. Yeah… works for me.

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By |2020-10-08T01:23:11-07:00May 23rd, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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