Fact

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 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 62 – May 17, 2020

Queueing Theory is a fascinating branch of math that deals with the science behind… queues, as in line-ups. First of all, let’s take a moment to admire that word… queueing… how often do you see a word with five vowels in a row?

When it comes to line-ups, there’s more to it than you might think. The variables used in analyzing queues involve things like how often do new people show up to join the queue? How often is the person at the front getting pulled out of it? How long does it take to process and then get rid of that person? How long is too long? …because arriving people may see a long line and just say forget it.

The red velvet rope that delineates where to stand plays an important psychological role. If you arrive, and the queue extends past the end of the rope, you might think the line is too long, and bail….but if there’s lots of room and the rope extends way back… well — it can’t be too bad, right? Straight line vs snaking line? Should you be able to see the whole line, or should some of it be hidden?

Nightclubs play a balancing act… perhaps you’ve been to clubs where you wait outside a while, finally go in, and the place is half-empty. They make you stand in line to appear busy… to attract others to come…but, of course, if the line is too long, you may be dissuaded to wait… it’s a fine… line.

Some of it is fancy math, and some of it is just social engineering, but fundamentally, there are right and wrong ways to do queues. Like, what’s better… 6 independent line-ups for individual bank tellers, or one central line-up that sends the person at the front to the next open window? That one is a no-brainer… pretty-much everywhere that can support the latter has switched to that model. It’s not necessarily better for an individual who might luckily pick the fastest line, but it’s the fairest… and from a psychological point of view, that keeps everyone happy because it’s balanced. It’s very aggravating to be standing in a slow-moving line while everyone else is moving around you. And if you picked that line, part of you is thinking you “lost”.

I think about that whenever I’m stuck in a bank line-up… that this is the best way to do it, and it could be a lot worse. How much worse? Allow me to describe what’s possibly the worst way to do it…

In Copiapó, back in the day, here’s how it worked… one day, I was told to run to the bank… here are some papers, some forms… just go there and hand them over; they’ll know what to do. And go now, and hurry, it’s 11:45. Doesn’t the bank close at 4? Yes, but you need to be there before noon — go!! So off I went to the bank, a couple of blocks away.

There were four tellers open, and each with a few people waiting, each with its own line-up. I joined one with 2 people ahead of me… like, who knows, right? Go with the shortest line, of course. But as I’m standing there waiting, time is ticking and ticking… and the people around me all seem to be getting more and more agitated. Grumblings of “what’s going on” and “hurry up” and so on. Whatever, I’m up next, but as soon as the person ahead of me is done and leaving, the teller pulls up a “closed” sign. In fact, all 4 tellers do it at the same time. It’s exactly noon, and it’s lunch time. Much groaning from the people all around me… but nobody moved, so neither did I. And I watched, as she pulled out a paper bag. From it, a sandwich, an apple, an orange Fanta and a paperback. And I stood there, for exactly 30 minutes, watching her and her co-workers have their lunch, simultaneously. She ate her sandwich, she ate her apple, she drank her Fanta. During that, she read her book as if there weren’t a crowd of people, me at the front of it, staring at her during the entire time. And at exactly 12:30, she put all that way, removed the sign and it was back to business. My thought at the time hasn’t changed: there can’t possibly be a worse way to have organized this.

Most places that can afford the space have moved to the “single lineup feeding into multiple spots” model. In that model, it’s best to leave the decision-making to the very last minute… everyone is in the same queue, and as soon as a spot opens up, the next person, which by definition is the person who’s been waiting the longest, gets it. Sometimes, that decision point has to be made earlier, and that tends to unbalance things. For example, airport security… you’ll often be thrown into a single long line, at the end of which some person will look around for what looks more open, and send you to that security screening area (one of 6, let’s say) which will already have its own line-up. Depending on many things, you may end up 10 minutes ahead or behind the person that was next to you.

Line-ups have been around forever, but different cultures treat them with varying degrees of respect. And in some cultures…

Yeah, speaking of airports and speaking of Chile… when you fly down to South America from Vancouver, you have two choices… go through the U.S., or don’t. Which means either flying through L.A. or Dallas…. or flying through Toronto. From a hassle point of view, a no brainer. Avoid the U.S. and TSA and security line-ups and all of that. But there’s one part of the trip that you have to see to believe.

We’re all used to respecting queues, like when boarding a plane… Zone 1, Zone 2, etc. We all get into that little set of chutes and wait for our turn. But if you’re in Toronto, flying down to Santiago, Buenos Aires or Rio…. all bets are off. There is no semblance of respecting any sort of queue. It is an angry mob that’s standing, jammed and jostling, for an hour before boarding. Forget the children and families first, forget the elite status business class VIP whatever. None of it matters. But one thing those Latin American cultures do respect is the elderly… so what you will see in front of the mob are wheelchairs. One or two? No… try 30, most of them with surprisingly mobile people once it’s time to board… oh, don’t worry, they say as they miraculously rise from their front-of-the-line chair, I can take it from here. I’ve asked the gate agents about all of this, and it’s very simple, especially since it’s a late-night flight and they just want to get home: “We don’t even bother anymore”.

One thing we’ve all gotten used to these days is finding queues where we never had them… especially grocery stores. Queues that tell you where you can stand, and where you can’t. Big Xs on the ground and arrows to point you in the right direction. A visit to many groceries these days is a moving, one-way queue — first in, first out, no going back. It’s evident to me, that in some cases, not a lot of thought went into it initially, and that’s fair. Everyone is trying to figure things out as they go along, and most people don’t have an arsenal of queuing-theory formulas at their disposal. Even before all of this, the supply/demand for cashiers at Safeway wasn’t dictated by some supercomputer. The cashiers themselves see things suddenly getting busy and just page someone to come help. And when things get slow, that person disappears to the back. That “busy-ness” has now moved to the outside of the store, which in many ways is a better place for it.

Ultimately, that’s the way we’re all doing it these days; just go with what works, and course-correct it as needed. And for what it’s worth, as time has gone on, certain things seem to have improved… as you’d expect. People have realized when it’s “good” to go, which self-balances things. People have realized if they can make their shopping trip efficient, it helps a lot. No aimless wandering up and down aisles… plan ahead, know what’s where, and do it all at once. Far less time wasted. There are now many things in place that didn’t exist until recently, and will likely stick around when things are back to normal… just one more thin, silver lining to the big cloud of the day: this pandemic is making parts of our society much more efficient.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:23-07:00May 17th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Business & Economics, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver, Travel Stories, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Day 60 – May 15, 2020

“Collect as much data as you can for now.” — this is a mantra that is common in many different disciplines, especially the ones where you’re not sure what data matters. One day, you’ll have a chance to look back on it and figure out what matters, but for the most part, especially initially, the thing to do gather as much as you can, and eventually learn from it.

“Eventually” could mean decades from now. It could also mean tomorrow. In fact, it could even mean 15 minutes from now. On that note, as you’re reading this, somewhere, on the periphery of your focus, there are ads and sponsored posts and other slight differences that are being thrown at you; an experience that will differ slightly for someone else. Some of it is based on your history, but some of it is just data collecting… like, does it work better to use this ad or that ad? Does it work better in red or green? Does it work better positioned here or there? This data is all being crunched, often in real-time — to deliver to you the most pleasant experience possible. Haha, sorry, not quite — to deliver to you the most profitable experience for someone… is the better answer. Facebook is worth $500 billion, and their revenue stream has to come from somewhere, since 99.999% of the people who use Facebook have never given them a penny… so, rest assured, those who are paying want to make sure they’re getting their maximum bang for the buck.

And, of course, an awful lot of data is being collected about this virus, and there are disagreements about what’s important. As per above, it’s always a good idea to gather it all and then figure out later what matters and what doesn’t. Sophisticated modelling techniques do this all the time. For example, a neural network. That sounds a lot fancier or scarier than it really is. It’s not some sort of artificial brain which can think for itself, become sentient and launch an attack on humanity… rather, it’s just software for taking a ton of data, much of it possibly unrelated, and grinding through it in such a way that it “learns” what inputs are relevant to outcomes, and which are noise. A properly trained neural network can be very useful for predicting outcomes that a person may not as easily see, because it’ll have filtered out the irrelevant aspects and focused only on what makes a difference.

A simple example would be trying to train a neural network to predict the outcome of horse races. This is a project that as been on my “to-do” list for about 30 years, and perhaps if enough horse racing returns soon, and I’m still locked up at home, I’ll finally have a chance to work on it. And I will tell you exactly what I plan to do, and what I hope to find. The first thing is to take tens of thousands of historical races and format the data in a way that it can be fed into a neural net. Then, it will grind away on it, “learning”… and I would assume it’ll find a high correlation for specific horses with respect to things like fractional quarter-mile times, weight carried, relative class of opponents and track-surface-conditions. It’ll find a low correlation with things like the name of the horse, what time the race was run and what day of the week it was. That’s the beauty of the neural network; just throw all of the data at it, and let it figure out what matters. It might figure out correlations for specific horses… that even the most astute handicapper or sharpest bookie might miss.

I know a lot of people reading this are thinking whoa dude, that’s pretty cool. Yes, it is… it would be. I’ll keep you posted.

More relevant to all of us are our local numbers, and there are many to look at. We are on track (haha!!) for opening things up soon, and, at least around here, it makes sense. It’s been a while since I’ve talked about “Time To Double”, so let’s look at that a bit. The graphs below don’t do justice entirely to where we’re at, because TTDs when presented in this fashion becomes a “lagging” indicator. Things are better than what those graphs imply, if you’re looking at the TTD lines.

Recall, back in the day… like back in March, which seems like it was 20 years ago… we were looking at some scary TTD numbers. The new-cases numbers were increasing by about 25% day-over-day, a TTD of about 3. Scary exponential growth.

If we take some averages of the last 5 days of confirmed new cases… the TTDs and percentages look like this:

B.C.: 130 (0.53%)
Ontario: 43 (1.63%)
Quebec: 37 (1.89%)

Canada: 44 (1.62%)

These are obviously very-flattened curves, compared to where we were.

I am well aware of the people standing up screaming that those numbers aren’t real. Have a seat, and let’s discuss the obvious. Of course not. There are more, and have been more, cases than we’ve “known” about. We will in due course know how “off” we were… like is the real number 10x that? 100x? 1,000x? I’d love it, if it were 2,000x because that’d mean we’ve all been exposed to this, and if you believe that gives you immunity (and that seems to be the case with coronaviruses in general), we’d be in great shape. That number is way too big, but while I’m here, in an effort to make numbers and guesses and projections more accurate for all of us, I urge you all to visit the bccdc dot ca site and take the survey. You may even get a serological antibody test out of it.

Inaccuracy of those particular numbers aside, there are some concrete ones which are indisputable… hospitalizations, ICU cases, “pressure on the medical infrastructure” and excess deaths… to name a few of the most critical ones. These numbers vary wildly around the world, but they’re the best indicators, along with new cases, to indicate how close jurisdictions are to phasing-in re-openings. At least around here, those numbers look good… good enough that we’re marching ahead to the next phase.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:24-07:00May 15th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Science of COVID-19, Travel Stories, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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Day 57 – May 12, 2020

One of the most interesting times in my life was a year away from school, Vancouver, and real life in general as I knew it. I packed my bags in the late Summer of 1987 and headed down to Chile, returning in the late Spring of 1988. I wasn’t here for the Calgary Olympics… in fact, I missed them entirely because where I was had no T.V.

Where I was… was in a town called Copiapó, in northern Chile, in the middle of the Atacama desert. No T.V., one radio station, one very old movie theatre, three questionable restaurants, lots of dirt roads. It’s grown a lot, both in population and modernity, but back then, it was like living in the 1930s. There were telephones, but not many. My phone number had 4 digits.

The relatable aspect these days was the culture shock of going from what we’re used to around here, to that — literally overnight. It’s the same sort of jarring impact life around here has recently given us. As tough as it was down there, especially initially, you get used to it… and over time, it seems normal. Those three questionable restaurants… well, they seemed to have gotten better over time.

One of them was Chinese food, and it the first couple of times, it was awful. The next few, not so bad. By the end of my time down there, it was among the best I’d ever had. Same thing with another hole-in-the-wall restaurant, where the food was awful to begin with… and it ended up being my favourite. By the end of it, they’d named a dish after me… where I’d described to them how to cook giant clams… by soaking them in white wine, then coating them in garlic butter, smothering them in parmesan cheese and baking them. Squeeze a lemon over all of that at the last minute. Certainly not my recipe, but they’d never heard of it. Deeeeelish.

But as much as you get used to it, you remember your old life… and you miss it. The one thing that made it all palatable is what, in common terms, is called an “out”. “Outs”, like in poker, where after the flop, your hand is behind and you need some help — but you’re not dead yet. Perhaps the only chance you have is to pair that King in your hand with one of the last two cards. As far as you know, there are three Kings left in the deck. You have three outs. When you have a crappy but well-paying job… and sometimes you’re close to just saying to hell with it… because in the back of your mind, you have a “anytime you want to join us, just call — start tomorrow” job offer pending in the background, there’s your Out. In baseball, quite literally, as long as you still have some outs, you’re in the game. It might be the bottom of the 9th with two outs and nobody on base and you’re down 10-0… but you still have an out. Many teams have come back to win games from exactly this situation. As long as you have an out.

Down there, my Out was that I could, with little more than a couple of week’s notice, find myself on a plane back to Vancouver. Knowing that Out existed made things tolerable, no matter what. It was there if I needed it, and the peace of mind that came with that… made all the difference.

As distant as they are, we have Outs here. Many of them. They’re not on the near horizon, but life will eventually get back to normal.

For the moment, we’re stuck in this new-normal, and that’s what it is — for now. I’m actually sick and tired of the dystopian “new normal is here forever”, “your life will never be the same” bullshit-scare-tactic click-here-to-read-more stories. They’re awful, pandering to our worst fears. Trust me, things will eventually get back to normal. There will be restaurants and operas and music festivals and beaches and hockey games and race tracks and graduations… with full crowds. It’ll be more than 10 days from now and less than 10 years from now. We can refine that range as time goes on… call it within a one-to-three year window before things are back to totally normal, with hopefully some remnant changes that make sense now and make sense in the future.

And when things are back to normal, we will look back at this time and think… yeah, that sucked. As used to it as we got, as new-normal as it was, it was nothing like the real thing. Indeed, that’s what went through my mind when I came back from Chile and went to one of our local Chinese restaurants. Truly, there was no comparison. But that in no way diminished the fact that what I got used to, at the time… it had its moment, and it served its purpose.

In baseball, when you hit into that final out, you’re Out. In poker, when your opponent flips over his cards to reveal a hand so strong that nothing can help you, it’s called drawing dead.

Nobody around here — not you, not me, not society — is drawing dead. We have Outs. Let’s continue to play our cards right, like continuing to do what we’re doing — and we’ll win this thing.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:25-07:00May 12th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Life in Vancouver, Travel Stories, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |22 Comments
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Day 56 – May 11, 2020

William Henry Harrison was elected to the presidency of The United States of America in 1840, as only the 9th president of that young nation. Indeed, right around the time he was born, George Washington was giving his first State of the Union address. His running mate, John Tyler, was elected vice-president. But this posting has little to do with the presidency of Harrison, because he didn’t do much, and died a month into his term, leading to his VP’s ascension to the throne.

John Tyler (1790-1862) was sworn in as the 10th president, and served in that capacity from 1841 until the next election, where he was soundly defeated, making him the longest-serving president who was never actually elected.

Tyler may not have made a great president, but he did make a lot of children… 15 of them. He was 63 years old when one of them, Lyon Gardiner Tyler (1853-1935), was born.

Lyon Gardner wasn’t quite as good as his dad at fathering lots of children, but he did ok, having 6 of his own. And he was certainly good at having them at an older age. One of them, Lyon Gardiner Tyler Junior, was born in 1924, when Senior was 71. And another, Harrison Ruffin Tyler (we can only assume after whom he was named) was born in 1928, when daddy was 75.

These Tylers clearly come from good stock… but it’s still mind-boggling to realize that since those latter two are still alive, John Tyler, born in 1790, has two living grandsons. Three generations that span the entire existence of the country.

That was perhaps the best example I could find of just how “new” the U.S. is. It’s arguably three generations old. From a Canadian point of view, someone born at the time of confederation (1867) could easily have a child that’s still alive today. Two generations.

There’s a rich history between these two young countries, who at times have been mortal enemies. In fact, it was a war that started both… and depending with which side of history you want to associate, you could say, as an American, that you “won” — and those defeated British, who went on to retreat to what ultimately became Canada, “lost”. If it means so much to call it that, by all means — take your victory. And of course it should be noted that both sides of the war were being fought by people who had much more in common with each other than the indigenous people, whose land it actually was.

The two countries weren’t done squabbling quite yet. The war of 1812, which technically was between the U.S. and the U.K. was really more Canada vs. America. We burned down the Capitol and White House in that one.

It’s not fair to summarize a complex war — that went on for years — in one paragraph, but the summary is that it was probably a sort of stalemate, which of course, in North America, means both sides thought they won. Or at least claimed they did. There is no overtime or shootout or sudden-death to an entire war, but by the time the Treaty of Ghent was signed, both sides simply had had enough. Nobody had any fight left in them, so that was that.

The fighting didn’t end there, as far as America was concerned because of course, the civil war came along… more similar people just fighting each other over ideology. The soon-to-be Canadians fought in that war too, on both sides — but the vast majority with the anti-slavery Union soldiers, who eventually defeated the Confederate states. Interesting little factoids… the soldier who organized the detachment of Union solders that captured and killed Lincoln-assassin John Wilkes Booth — was Canadian. And the composer of “O Canada” was a French-Canadian Union soldier.

By the time the two World Wars rolled around, the countries were strong allies, and have been ever since. The world’s longest undefended border. Each other’s largest trading partners, till recently.

But as young nations grow — and by any measure, these are still mere children in the sea of adult countries from around the world that have existed for many centuries or millennia — personalties begin to develop, and whatever the older generations may have had in common… well, things change. It’s sometimes hard to gauge whether you’re dealing with the attitude of an entire country, or just a vocal minority, or just its leaders… especially when the messages are so mixed. For two countries that are really pretty similar when you compare populations with anywhere else… we sure seem to be on different paths these days. Americans really like to stick to their guns… in every sense of that statement. The vast and conflicting confusion that’s becoming evident is worrisome to say the least. A cohesive plan is by no means guaranteed to succeed, but a confused, mismanaged one is doomed to fail. It seems like a lot of state governments aren’t listening to the feds. It looks like a lot of municipal governments aren’t listening to the state. It looks like a lot of people aren’t listening to any of those three, and just doing what they want — or cherry-picking what works for them, and hoping for the best.

I’ll end this with my usual profound gratitude that I was on the “losing” side of a War of Independence… and as much noise is being made about how poorly Canada is handling this at a federal level (it’s not a lot of noise, and it’s not really true) — or how the government here, whether provincially or municipally, could be doing so much better, because jobs economy lockdown jobs money jobs economy — yeah, we get it, we are all suffering. We’re also all surviving, and are far more likely to with an infrastructure that can handle it. I’ll take Canadian-handling criticism all day long. If what we’re doing is some version of failure, some version of “losing” — like the British or Canadians from wars of the distant past — I’ll take it.

Some numbers… the U.S. counted its 80,000th death over the weekend. Canada is under 5,000. That’s deaths per million of 247 vs. 132. And today was the third straight day of declining new-case numbers in Canada.

Bring on the phased re-openings… with all things continuing as they are, that’ll be just after the upcoming long weekend.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:26-07:00May 11th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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Day 55 – May 10, 2020

As it’s Sunday, no B.C. numbers today… so I’ll throw in my usual guess, which today is just the same as yesterday’s +15, and we’ll leave it at that… and hopefully that’s pretty accurate (we’ll know tomorrow) because it’d imply another good day all across the country. Speaking of good days, Happy Mother’s Day to all the mom’s out there… I hope those who are celebrating in person have found a safe and socially-responsible way to do so. The weather is certainly cooperating… outside is good, for many reasons. Just stay away from others and it’ll be more than fine. You know the drill.

Mother’s Day every year marks the point in the NHL playoffs where fans around here are trying to figure out who to cheer for now, because if the Canucks made the playoffs, they’ve probably been recently eliminated. There’s a reasonable chance they could’ve gone a little deeper this year, but we’ll never know what this season and post-season would have looked like, were it not so rudely interrupted. We can only speculate.

Speaking of hockey and speculation… back in the day, when Wayne Gretzky dominated the NHL, it became a bit of an issue what to do with him in hockey pools… the pools where you draft players and then accumulate points as the players on your team accumulate goals and assists throughout the season. Fantasy sports leagues do this on a whole new level, where you have to decide who on your roster you’ll “dress” for tonight’s game, because you can’t play your full team of 22 players. Rest assured, in today’s world, the guy who got to draft Gretzky would dress him 100% of the time. In fact, Gretzky was a bit of a hockey-pool one-man wrecking machine, because whoever got him usually ended up winning everything. To prevent that, one possibility was to break Gretzky’s goals and Gretzky’s assists into two, as if he were two separate players, and then someone could draft one or the other. But even there, his assists alone were dominant. Or, of course, nobody got the opportunity to draft Gretzky, and that kept things even.

That was a good example of the tail wagging the dog, a good metaphor where one little statistically-significant aspect of something can have a profound and obfuscating effect on everything else. And, as mentioned, one option is to remove it entirely,… but then things look a whole lot different.

Today’s example of the tail wagging the dog involves a pair of U.S. states, New York and New Jersey, very much the hotspot of this outbreak in the U.S. Let’s call that area NYJ for simplicity.

NYJ has a population of 28.4M out of the American total of 331M which is around 8.6%. But out of the American total test case count of almost 1.4M, they have 35.6% of them. And 44.7% of the more than 80,000 deaths. Not just the hotspot, but now very much the epicentre, which was not always the case.

What’s interesting, and good for NYJ, is that they’ve managed to get things far more in control than was the case not so long ago. The individual numbers there are flattening and trending well. Who knows what that will look like after seeing the crowds in Central Park, but at least they’ve contained things to a manageable level… and, in doing so, made the U.S. numbers in general look a lot better… and consequently, created a lot of false optimism.

The Federal recommendation for re-opening involves declining case rates over a period of 14 days. This does not mean 14 straight days of succeedingly-declining numbers. It simply means a 14-day period after which the number of active cases is simply lower, ie recoveries (plus deaths, I suppose) have out-paced new cases. At present, numerous states are in varying stages of re-opening. At present, the number of states who meet that 14-day criteria is… zero. Nevertheless, openings with reckless abandon. Because that’s Freedom.

Perhaps a better spelling of that word these days, in some places, would be “Free-dumb”. Somehow, freedom and the constitution and liberty and guns all get wrapped up in the same, confused package. There’s the word for it.

Indeed, more than 200 years ago, American founding father Patrick Henry proclaimed “Give me liberty or give me death!”

It seems some Americans, not happy with having to make a choice, and perhaps a little greedily — both from inward-facing and public-facing points-of-view — have found a way to obtain both.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:26-07:00May 10th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Life in Vancouver, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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Day 54 – May 9, 2020

Especially these days… you know what’s worse than no WiFi? Crappy WiFi. Where the email kind of crawls in, but the attachment is now stuck and won’t refresh. Where you swipe down on Instagram, and it just hangs there forever. Where the webpage only half-loaded and managed to lock-up the browser. Where you need to get onto that Zoom meeting but it won’t connect. Or when it connects, you’re getting two frames per second and your face looks like the guy from Minecraft.

Such has been my day, trying to do all of this… outside! But the trade-off in quality and quantity of this post is offset by all the glorious sunshine I managed to absorb, so we’ll call it even. And ZoomHanging with some friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in 10 years.

But I should point out that I did my outside gig — at home, in my yard, where social distancing is imposed by fences, hedges and the laws that apply to private property. Unlike some of the pictures and videos I saw from yesterday evening.

A stunning sunset by any definition, the sort where last year we’d all run down to English Bay or Spanish Banks and soak it all in. Except that this isn’t last year and things are a lot different. Or, should be a lot different, but judging from what I’ve seen of last night, there is a large part of the population that seems to have had enough, and to hell with restrictions and social distancing and everything else. It looked like the typical crowd getting ready to see the fireworks. It looked like a lackadaisical attitude of “We’ve had enough” coupled with “I’m young and healthy” coupled with “Even if I get this, outcomes around here are exceedingly optimistic” coupled with “I probably had this already and am immune.”

The combination of that will lead to — well, I have no crystal ball. We seem to have been spared the worst of it, around here, for now. It doesn’t take a lot to radically change that, and this entire thing is evolving very differently all around the planet. We’re doing very well around here — a world-class example when measured against other comparables — in fact, in populations of 5 million or greater, we are amongst the best on the planet, if not number one. This is the sort of false confidence that can lead to real trouble as the Summer drags on, as the heat sticks around, as the curve stays sort of flat but… annoyingly, still new cases popping up… and then the fall hits, and the second wave that’s looming on the horizon… which everyone seems to agree will be bad in some places. The question, of course, is where.

I have been following South Korea from the start; they are a good model to follow, and if you’ve been looking at my charts for any period of time, you’ll have seen that black line flat, and far below everything else. Five days ago, their new test-positive counts were +3, +2 and +4 for a few days. And in the last two days, they’ve been +12 and +18. They’ve had a flare-up, which started in a nightclub or two. South Korea, from the start, has managed things with massive testing and contact tracing, so it will be interesting to see how well they can contain this. Hopefully it flares down as quickly as it flared up. In a perfect world, it’ll get squashed right down, but… nightclubs? A hot, enclosed environment where people are sweating and breathing heavily in close proximity? We shall see.

Unfortunately, as we well-know, there’s a 14-day lag to know for sure. That’s in South Korea, and that’s also around here. We won’t know what effect, if any, the beach-crowding from last night will have. Or, tonight’s expected beach-crowding. Or tomorrow’s. Or next weekend’s long weekend. The problem with that is that neither outcome is great. If nothing bad comes of it, as in we don’t see a big rise in numbers, that will empower the “See? No big deal” crowds and it will become harder and harder to convince people to stick to it… and when people stop enforcing upon themselves what’s in the best interest of the greater good, we all suffer the consequences…. especially when September/October and the possible second wave all roll in.

Or, these numbers do generate a visible spike in positive tests… in which case the business re-openings and social relaxations… the phases 2, 3 and 4… all get pushed back until we have numbers which align with when those things should happen. And if you want to see what happens when rules get relaxed when the numbers aren’t where they should be, the U.S. will be providing many examples in the weeks to come.

For now, great day all across Canada… declining numbers everywhere… but now is not the time to irresponsibly give back all we’ve gained from all the sacrifices we’ve collectively made over the last couple of months. It seems a lot of people don’t understand that and/or don’t care. The effects of that remain to be seen.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:26-07:00May 9th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Business & Economics, Humour, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |9 Comments
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Day 51 – May 6, 2020

During my first week of university, back in September of 1986, SFU set up a number of booths in the Academic Quadrangle where all sorts of vendors could set-up shop, catering to the wet-behind-the-ears first-year crowd. Student credit cards, cheap dentists, bus passes, discounts on numerous things. One that caught my eye was Cypress Bowl; I was an avid skier back then, and they were offering a heavily-discounted season’s pass for students. $120 for the entire upcoming ski season. The quick math on that indicated it to be a no-brainer. I’d have it paid off in a few weeks, for a ski season that’d hopefully last 6 months.

There was a catch though… it was a restricted pass. Only good for daylight hours, and not on weekends. Monday to Friday, dawn to dusk — and that suited me just fine; my intention was to ski outside of class… before or after (and, as it turned out — on particularly sunny days — during) school. I had Tuesdays off, and only morning classes on Thursdays. And Fridays, done by noon… plenty of time. SFU to Cypress was about 30 minutes.

They took my picture (with a fancy Polaroid that printed two of the same), kept one and created my pass… logo, picture and name, all professionally laminated. And since it was restricted, as per above, the word “RESTRICTED” stamped right across the face of it, in bright red letters.

I wore that thing out. True to my word, I paid it off in weeks — I was up there at least twice a week, usually 3 times. That turned into 4 after I dropped a course that was nowhere near as engaging as flying down the slopes.

Curious thing though… when you’re skiing, and you get to the chairlift, there’s that 10 seconds of time when you’re next, and you shuffle-up to the marker, awaiting the chair to scoop you up. During that time, you usually have a 1 or 2-sentence discussion with the chairlift operator -the “Liftie”.

“Hey, what’s up”
“Have a good one”
“It’s icy, eh”

That sort of thing. Well, that would be typical… but for some reason, with me… I’d always get, “Oh, hello! And how are you doing today? Are you having a good day? Is everything OK?” — some version of that. “Yeah, man, it’s all good…” I’d say… but think to myself… well, that was weird.

One particular day, months into this, I got to the bottom of the hill, and joined the lineup to the chairlift… and noticed, ahead of me, a group of intellectually and physically-disabled individuals, many of them with an accompanying care-aid. And then a few more of them, having made their way down the mountain, drifting in behind me in the line-up. And all of them had the exact same pass I did, “RESTRICTED”, boldly planted on their own, individual, professionally-laminated passes.

Oh…. now I get it. Now that makes sense. I watched ahead of me as these folks made their way onto the chairlift… and then it was my turn. And before I could say a word, there was the Liftie, a very nice older lady… 2 inches away from my face. “Oh, you’re going up all by yourself! Good for you! Have fun, but be safe!”. Well, thank you! I certainly will!

Amusing story, but if the lesson of it hasn’t hit you yet — with the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the stomach — it’s this: Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover.

There’s a lot of book-cover-judging going on these days, and perhaps I’m a little guilty of it. I painted the state of Michigan yesterday with a pretty broad paintbrush, and it’s unfair to do so. The majority of residents of Michigan are not government-defying white-supremacist gun-toting swastika-tatooted Covidiots. They’re just normal people, and if the state were a book, those normal people would be pages 689 or 472 or whatever, any white page with black letters, indistinguishable from all the others. But the cover, that’s what you notice, and that’s what we see when the majority sit back and don’t make their voices heard (or seen). Michigan, in fact, is a good example of that. Back in 2016, that state was a given…. it hadn’t gone Republican since 1988, and Hilary Clinton had it in her “checked-off” list. All polls pointed to a Blue state, and when many voters stayed home and didn’t bother voting, guess what happened. By a margin of 0.23%, the state, and all 16 electoral college votes, went to Trump — a significant piece of the unexpected, complicated and surprising election result.

It’s the bright cover that gets the attention… the squeaky wheel that gets the grease… the tall trees that get the wind… the nail that sticks out that gets pounded down. So many versions of the same thing. In Spanish, “El que no llora, no mama”, with reference to crying babies: “He who does not cry, does not suck.” — that seems to lose some meaning when you translate it. On the other hand, perhaps it gains a different one…

Dr. Bonnie Henry keeps saying the same thing over and over, to the extent it might one day become the provincial motto: “Be kind, be calm, be safe”. It’s working well around here, and it’s probably working well elsewhere, but we never hear about it because the Covidiots take front and centre stage, and that’s what we judge. But they are the cover to a book that has a lot more to it; a book that is far from completion. We are writing the chapters as we live them. One day, we will judge that book — as will history — by its contents. Not its cover.

But if one day I write a novel, the title of the book will be “Stephen King” — in that familiar Stephen King font, Scary Times Roman™ or whatever it’s called. That will be the cover. Actually, let’s make it better… “Stephen King”, in that lettering, “Pandemic,” in a smaller font just below it. And far below that, in the tiniest font allowable, in the most transparent colour possible: “a novel by horatio kemeny”. All of this text overlaid on top of pandemic/apocalypse art: viruses, guns, militia, flags, doctors in masks, burning hospitals in the background. That thing would fly off the bookshelves and be #1 on every best-seller list on the planet… before anyone had a chance to say, “Hey… hey wait… what is this crap!?”.

That book, you’re allowed to judge by its cover. But that’s the only one.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:28-07:00May 6th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , |7 Comments
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Day 50 – May 5, 2020

As always, on the heels of Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you, if you don’t get it), comes Cinco de Mayo. I guess we’re all getting a little tired of hearing that same old refrain… “It’ll be different this year”. But yeah, indeed it will. As you may recall, around here, the first “celebrated” holiday affected was St. Patrick’s Day… and the decision to pull the plug on pub gatherings was made only a few days, if not hours, before March 17th. My first post of this entire series was on that day, me sitting here in front of the computer with a pint of Guinness, digging into some numbers, trying to figure this out for myself.

Good trivia question… how many countries in North America are called the United States? I obviously wouldn’t be asking this if the answer were obvious… the answer is two, because the official name of the other one is “Estados Unidos Mexicanos” — literally, the United States of Mexico.

Now that you’re back from Googling that, let’s continue…

There are 32 states in Mexico, and most of us haven’t heard of many of them. Looking at this list… the following stand out: Jalisco, Baja California Sur, and Nayarit… because I’ve vacationed there. Chihuahua, Sonora and Sinaloa stand out because they’re continually in the news related to drug cartels and violence (and cute dogs). Mexico City, of course. And Veracruz, but only because my buddy, two-time-Kentucky-Derby-winning-jockey Mario Gutierrez is from there.

The Mexican federal government has their hands full fighting this thing, but they have the added headache of the very powerful and ubiquitous drug cartels, who control many areas, especially near the border. It also doesn’t help that these criminals are stepping-up, handing out care packages to locals who happily accept them and who can use any help they can get. Big-time criminals love this sort of stuff — step up for the little guy, do more for the people than the government is doing, etc. Pablo Escobar was good at it. So was Al Capone. Optics.

There hasn’t been much talk of the border wall these days; remember, the big wall Trump was going to build and which Mexico was going to pay for. I think they may have built some parts, or maybe that was just refurbish/remodel. I don’t know. What I do know is that Mexico hasn’t paid a cent for it. Whatever.

The border-wall, or lack thereof, that worries me a lot more, is the virtual one that exists 30km south of here. For the moment, that border is closed, and that suits me just fine. And if our neighbours to the south could follow along with what’s best for the common good, I wouldn’t be against re-opening it. But, at the moment… well, at the moment, let’s look at a different state that borders Canada.

Recall the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer… at some point she called-out President Trump, labelling his federal response to the pandemic as “slow” and “mind-boggling”. Trump’s response was to sit back, reflect and admit he was wrong, and quickly move to provide whatever help he could.

Ha ha! Of course not. As expected, he lashed back, made up a name for her on Twitter ("Gretchen ‘Half’ Whitmer” — because, I guess, she only does ‘half’ a job? Or because she's a half-wit?) — and proceeded to insult her. By the way, even by Trump’s infantile-nickname standards, that’s pretty lame. I would’ve expected something like “Grumpy Gretchen”. This was the governor that Trump made a point of not calling, and telling us all about it.

In any case, Governor Whitmer was doing the best she could under exceedingly difficult circumstances. As of yesterday, Michigan was in third place for most deaths in any state, and that’s not a good spot to be in when it’s only New York and New Jersey ahead of you. Going with the best advice she could get, from all of the intelligent people she’s surrounded herself with, by evaluating what’s going on elsewhere, by listening to her medical experts… Governor Whitmer renewed the state emergency order a few days ago, extending it from April 30th to May 28th. This led to loud and crowded protests at the state Capitol building. You know the kind, lots of flags, guns and “MAGA” hats. But this time, add to the mix — nooses, Confederate flags and swastikas. With all due respect (which isn’t much), f#@& these people.

President Trump, upon whom the game “How low can he go?” is based, tweeted his support for the protesters, which in a sense validated and empowered their insanity. A man in Flint, Michigan shot and killed a security guard — who’d simply asked him to put on a mask. Also, in Holly, Michigan, a man wiped his nose on a store clerk who told the man he needed to wear a mask.

Michigan has a population of 10 million, exactly double that of British Columbia. But while we’ve had only 2,232 confirmed cases since day one, they’re over 44,000… a clean 20x… which makes it about 10x more than it would be if people were following orders. And while B.C. is at 121 deaths, Michigan is at 4,179… a staggering 35x. They’re not in good shape, and it’s about to get worse. And, of course, Michigan borders Canada. In fact, given the twisted border situation of Windsor and Detroit, parts of both countries are actually inside of each other. All I can say is I much prefer our Washington neighbours to the south, who I suspect wouldn’t be anywhere near as tolerant of the insanity. The Peace Arch border crossing has engraved on it “May these gates never be closed”. Indeed, those gates can’t literally be closed as they’re not hinged; they’re bolted into the stone. But virtually, the border is closed to all non-essential travel, and until things get sorted out and settled to both sides’ satisfaction, it needs to remain that way. We are doing well here, and we don’t need to mess with that. We apparently have bee-murdering hornets now visiting from Washington State. That’s enough for now.

On that note, around here, our single-digit increase (+8) in known cases is the lowest since March 14th, when things were just starting up, and heading in the wrong direction. Dr. Henry thinks we may be down to zero by the middle of June. We are approaching the end of the beginning, but there’s a ways to go. Moving too quickly can mess this up; things will be gradually eased, but it has to be done right. And if we do it right, and stick to the new normal for a while… we’ll be ok.

Wow, look at that sunshine… time to go get some Vitamin D… and after that, time to go crack open a bottle of Corona and find a slice of lime. Salúd.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:28-07:00May 5th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |16 Comments
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