Research

May 26, 2021

Just to briefly touch upon a big question mark… that’s slowly being answered as research emerges… what’s the deal with the delayed second doses? Why are we playing with the science, etc…

To rewind a bit, let’s remember that the timeline for these vaccines to be released into the wild was compressed – things happened much faster than usual. This doesn’t mean the science was skipped or compromised; it was the bureaucracy around it.

That being said, in an effort to get the thing out the door as quickly as possible, a different sort of question was asked; not one that’s typically asked of vaccines.

The question was: What’s the shortest period of time where a two-shot regimen would be effective? It was known that one dose of an mRNA vaccine wouldn’t generate enough of a response… and the answer to the question of spacing doses has two answers, because there are two different questions. One is how soon can it be to be effective? And two is… what’s ideal?

The former question was chosen to be answered in the same way that many of life’s problems get solved – decide what’s most important. “Good enough” far outweighs “Ideal” in this case, and that’s what we got. This is not to say that people who got the shots 3 weeks apart got anything bad; on the contrary… that’s what was tested, verified safe, and verified effective with a 95% efficacy.

So, what’s the problem? There is no problem… but now we have enough time and data to answer question two, and it’s what most experts expected… because it’s what’s typically seen with these sorts of vaccines.

Anyone who’s ever had a vaccine booster barely remembers the timing of what’s being boosted. It’s often measured in years… or, at best, months. Never weeks. My recent Shingrix vaccine against Shingles had a follow-up booster that was to be taken within two to six months after the first dose. But what’s optimal? 2? 4? 6? I couldn’t find anything to support a more specific number, but the answer to all of them was “good enough”.

The answer to the optimal spacing of C19 mRNA vaccines… as it turns out, while 3 weeks is certainly good enough, it seems waiting a little longer is “better”. It should be noted that “better” in this context is similar to how, for the purposes of putting out a candle, a firehose is “better” than a garden hose.

Specifically, for Pfizer… people who received their booster 11 to 12 weeks after their first dose were found to have 3.5 times higher peak-antibody levels.

It’s quite likely this is the same for Moderna. And it’s certainly turned out to be the case for AstraZeneca… just ask the U.K.

The whole point of this isn’t really to say what’s “better” – it’s more to point out what’s “not worse”… and the answer is… all of it. All of it is “not worse”. If you’re getting a second jab, you’re good… no matter when. And yes, of course… if the second jab is 5 years from now, it’s a different story. But it won’t be; given supply and demand… everyone is falling into that range… from “good enough” to “more than good enough”.

This big question mark has been shrinking consistently as more and more results emerge, and I expect it’ll vanish by the time any of us need a 3rd booster. In fact, by then, it’s possible we’ll have learned that all that’s needed from now on is a once-a-year boost – one that could easily be combined with the annual flu shot. Either way, one big question mark extinguished.

By |2021-05-26T17:03:22-07:00May 26th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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April 7, 2021

History speaks of many examples of products that were designed for a specific purpose, but were ultimately repurposed for something entirely different. For example, bubble wrap… it was originally designed to be cool, textured wallpaper. That market didn’t catch on – especially in households with little kids, I’m guessing – but the inventors, sitting on tons of unused inventory, trying to figure out what to do with it, came upon the bright idea that it’d he useful for transporting fragile goods. They contacted IBM, who they figured would be interested in having a way of safely shipping their delicate electronics, and they were right; that caught on, and we’ve all had the pleasure of popping those little things ever since… the extra bonus when anything fragile gets shipped to us.

Speaking of wallpaper, Play-Doh was originally designed as wallpaper cleaner. I’m not sure how good it is at that, having never actually needed to clean any wallpaper… but as a toy, very successful; there are very few kids who at some point haven’t gotten their grubby little paws on some.

Speaking of toys… there’s the Slinky, originally designed as a spring used on ships to stabilize devices on choppy seas. Until one day, when a slinky was accidentally knocked off a table… and it walked itself over to a guy who had a light-bulb moment; Richard James, the “inventor” of the Slinky. Even he admits he didn’t invent anything; just clued-in to an excellent alternative use for an already existing product.

Speaking of alternative uses for already existing products… toothpaste. Like, for example, white Colgate. Terrific for keeping your teeth bright and healthy, of course… but you know what else? If you have a scratched CD or DVD that’s unplayable, coating it with toothpaste to “fill in” the scratches and then rinsing off the excess… works wonders. I’ve resurrected many dead Discs in my day.

Speaking of health products that have alternative uses… Coca Cola was originally designed to be an alternative to morphine addiction, and to treat headaches and anxiety. The guy who invented it, John Pemberton, was a veteran of the civil war, and a morphine addict. He wanted a sweet, alcoholic drink with some coca leaves thrown in for good measure, so that’s what he invented: Pemberton’s French Wine Coca. Over time, the recipe was tweaked and carbonated… and the rest is history.

Speaking of ubiquitous products that began their existence as something medicinal with a specific purpose, history may end up grouping Covid-19 vaccines into the mix, because the careful research that led to their initial approvals was based on science that described their intended two-dose use, with the spacing of those doses a few weeks apart. I’m not sure those tiny vials have instructions written on them… and if they do, they’re in an unreadably-small font… but anyway, if you take your magnifying glass and read it, you’d find that we, here in Canada, are not following those simple instructions. In fact, that goes doubly-so for us here in B.C… where we are the lowest percentage of fully-vaccinated people in all of North America (!) – but, that’s by design… and I’m totally ok with it because, as we’re finding, and as I wrote about yesterday, if you shift the goalposts a bit… from “not getting sick” to “not getting seriously sick”, the product can indeed be used differently than designed… and very successfully.

Speaking of not following simple instructions… yesterday marked the 3-year anniversary of the devastating Humboldt Broncos bus crash… caused by a driver ignoring a very simple instruction: Stop. Of course, there was far more to it than that, but it’s a good example of how a seemingly tiny rule violation by a single person can have drastic, far-reaching effects… like how Alberta’s outbreak of the P.1 variant can be traced to a single out-of-province traveller. One guy who broke the rules, and here we all are.

Speaking of there being far more to it than that…

Well, there’s always far more to it than that. Enough for now. Speak to you later.

By |2021-04-07T17:03:00-07:00April 7th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , |3 Comments
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December 27, 2020

Here’s another word you may not have heard of… though it’s been very relevant this year, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. The word is: Agnorant

Interestingly, the word has been around for a while… more than ten years. Somehow, I never heard it till recently… though I’ve been dealing with what it describes for a lot longer than that. We all have.

“Agnorant” is simply a combination of Arrogant and Ignorant… and wow, are there many examples, especially these days… and the primary topic-du-jour is vaccines, where, magically, thousands of people who’ve researched it (if research means sitting on the toilet scrolling through curated, nonsensical content) have decided they know more than real experts, and will happily and arrogantly shove down your throats the results of said research.

“Did you know the vaccine has mercury in it? Mercury is toxic… why would you knowingly inject yourself with something toxic?”

There’s a lot wrong with that statement, but just for fun, and especially if someone says that to you, here is the response:

“The mercury found in vaccines is in a compound called Thimerosal. Actually, the mercury component of that is itself a compound call ethylmercury… which the body has no problem eliminating quickly and efficiently. Unlike the mercury in fish, the accumulation of which can certainly be toxic, it’s not a concern in this case.

“But it still has mercury in it.”

“And table salt has Sodium, which on its own will kill you. And it has Chlorine, which on its own will kill you. But as a compound of Sodium Chloride, it’s salt. That’s the beauty of chemistry; they characteristics of elements change significantly when you combine them.”

“Yeah, that’s what they want you to think. That it’s safe, but I know it’s not. I read this whole thing about how Bill Gates is making billions off this vaccine. You’re just a brainwashed sheeple like the rest of them.”

“Sure. Also, the Covid-19 vaccines don’t have Thimerosal in them.”

“That’s what they want you to think.”

If you’re reading this carefully, perhaps you caught the moment where it turned the corner from rational discussion to all-out conspiracy nonsense. But either way, the Agnorance is there.

The comments sections below many of these posts have some excellent Agnorant content… but then again, and all comments sections these days can say the same.

It’s been written… “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing” – actually, the poem by Alexander Pope begins like this:

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring”

In other words, either know what you’re talking about, or shut the hell up.

Oops… sorry. That probably came across a little bit… agnorant.

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By |2021-03-01T23:38:11-08:00December 27th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19, Interesting Words, Humour, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , |2 Comments
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November 6, 2020

To follow-up briefly on yesterday’s poker analogy… we’re at the point where Joe Biden went all-in, and Donald Trump, hesitatingly, called… so Joe flipped over his cards; what’s colloquially known as “the nuts” — the unbeatable hand, because there’s nothing left to deal that can change anything. Trump is drawing dead, and can only helplessly watch the hand play out.

Normally, a player in Trump’s position would realize he’s beaten, flip over his cards, and watch the chips get dragged over to the other side of the table. But, of course, Trump is trying to bluff an unbluffable hand. Perhaps at some point, his fans cheering him from behind will be able to convince him to just face the fact that he lost, and move on. But it’s doubtful. Many of them continue to cheer him on blindly.

Notwithstanding that this may end up being a bigger victory for Biden than was originally thought a few days ago, there are a lot of posts from people wondering how it’s possible that a misogynist racist narcissist whose policies have further divided a country the desperately needs unity – not to mention his abhorrent handling and messaging of this pandemic – could have received so many votes? There are many takes on it, but it boils down this…

First of all, some simple math… rough numbers, some 144 million people voted. Of those, there is an unshakable core of Republicans who’ll vote that way no matter who the candidate. How big is that core? It depends how you measure it. Here’s a rough breakdown of Trump voters:

American Preservationists (20%)
Staunch Conservatives (31%)
Anti-elites (19%)
Free Marketers (25%)
Disengaged (5%)

Within that breakdown, there are probably 40% who won’t be swayed, no matter what. And 40% of 144 million is around 57 million… so really, perhaps it’s only 13 million who “really” voted for Trump… and the vast majority of those are white men, and it must be noted that the urban voter turnout is what probably made the difference. The People Of Colour… Blacks, Latinos, Indigenous peoples… they showed up. In person, waiting hours to vote… or mailing it in… however they did it, they showed up. It’s no surprise that even in many Republican states, the big cities are hubs of blue votes.

On the flipside, the rural areas, many of them populated by people with very different priorities… Immigration, jobs, terrorism, the economy, national debt. Who cares if the leader is a jerk? These are the things that matter to me, end of story. My house and my job and my gun… mean more to me than whatever is going on elsewhere. Any by the way, for many people who’ve never left their own state, let alone country… “elsewhere” is everywhere else that’s not within driving distance. They couldn’t care less what’s going on in Portland or Kenosha.

While Biden got more votes than any presidential candidate ever, in second place is Donald Trump. His seventy million votes is what Obama got in 2008 when he crushed (365 to 173) John McCain. It should be noted that four years ago, when Trump beat Hilary, it was 304 to 227. And this was viewed as a huge victory, a demographic shift, a fundamental realignment, etc. It’s looking like Biden will wind up with almost identical numbers. So while it’s not a Blue Wave many hoped for, let’s not discount the inherent statement being made: No more Trump – spoken quite loudly.

The voting system may need a bit of thought, but there are no easy answers. It’s hard to fix it when there’s no agreement with respect to what’s broken. One thing about the electoral college system is that without it, given how fractured the country is, you might not see a Republican president elected again for a very long time. Biden is ahead by 4 million votes, but Hilary was ahead by 3 million and lost. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by half a million and lost. In 1960, JFK crushed Richard Nixon 303-219… but won the popular vote by a ridiculously small margin, like 100,000 votes.

The sad truth is as that the chasm gets wider, like the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the popular vote gap between Democrats and Republicans will widen… and that will, at least for the foreseeable future, be reflected in the left-leaning popular vote. Biden has his work cut out for him; he’s inheriting a mess on every level. I hope he, and the excellent people with whom I hope he surrounds himself, are up to the task.

A final, unrelated note… when I started writing these daily thoughts 235 days ago, it was supposed to be exclusively a daily update of C19 numbers and perhaps a paragraph with respect to where things are. It started to turn political when my daily research of what was going on south of here went from surprise, to incredulity, to anger, and all of it directly pointed at Donald Trump.

With him on his way out, and hoping Biden and his administration start taking things seriously, the daily bashing of American politics will be far less frequent. We have more important things to worry about. Here in B.C., almost 600 new cases in the last 24 hours… and I unfortunately know one of those people. Also, more than 600 in Alberta. And in Ontario and Quebec, more than 1,000 each.

The U.S. has its stuff to fix… they quietly reached 10,000,000 cases while all of this has been going on… but here, north of the turmoil, we have ours.

HK COVID-19 Daily Report - Graph for Nov 6, 2020

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By |2020-11-06T19:38:06-08:00November 6th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19, Sports & Gaming, History|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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September 19, 2020

For a while, I was putting in guesses for the weekend numbers… since neither B.C. nor Alberta publish anything until Monday. I was further extrapolating that to give a good guess for Canada overall.

I’ve stopped doing that, because as good as my guesses were (sometimes), it’s effectively false advertising and could lead to false assumptions, so what’s the point. Let’s wait 2 days; no big deal.

Unfortunately, false advertising is all around us. I actually fell for it… something popped up on my Facebook… a radio-controlled near-indestructible plane. Surprisingly inexpensive. Cool, that’ll be fun to play with over the summer. For my son, of course, not me…

What arrived was nothing like what was promised. A tiny, very cheap single-layer Styrofoam cut-out stencil of a plane… that barely flew. No radio control of course. Nothing at all like the pictures or video. And, for the price-point, not worth pursuing, not worth sending back, not worth complaining. They know; just enough to grab your money and run. Not enough for any consumer silly enough to fall for it… to care. Had I done the tiniest bit of research, like read the comments below the item, I’d have seen plenty of entries like “Don’t fall for it!!” and “This is a scam!!”. Oh well, lesson learned.

Indeed… as a result of falling for it, my FB feed is now flooded with offers. Some are, I must say, really cool. Most, if not all, are scams. I fell for it once, and FB has decided I’m a sucker and, accordingly, tries to sucker me in one more time. The latest one that almost got me was a self-solving Rubik’s Cube for $12.99. Wow, cool… except, upon reading the comments, I learned it was a useless, cheap knock-off cube that did nothing special… least of all, solve itself.

Somewhere along the line, slim credibility went to zero… probably right around the time accountability did the same thing. With zero repercussions to just “making shit up”, here we are. Advertisers, politicians, whatever. Say whatever you want… to sell whatever you’re dishing out.

"Caveat Emptor" — it's been around so long that "Buyer Beware" originated in Latin, back in the Roman era. You remember, that great Republic of centuries past, that indestructible centre-of-the-universe Empire that would last forever.

What's the relevancy of all this? Ask me in a few weeks.

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By |2020-10-08T01:08:44-07:00September 19th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19, Travel Stories, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , |10 Comments
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July 28, 2020

A lot of discussions these days – the ones where you ultimately have to walk away, or at least agree to disagree because you can’t actually believe what you’re seeing/hearing/reading… end like this:

“Where on earth did you get that idea from?”

“I researched it.”

The “researched it” thing gets thrown around a lot these days, and as per the famous quote from The Princess Bride… “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Unless you compiled a literature review, and wrote (or at least, read) abstracts of the articles you read… and/or collected a random sample of sources and performed an independent analysis of their credibility… and, if not, at least looked into the sources of those articles (authors, publishers and, most importantly, funders) and dug into that… for fallacies, distortions or just plain-old, flat-out lies… you didn’t really research it.

And even if you didn’t do any of that, did you at least think about the source of the article and why the aforementioned list (author, publisher, funder) might have been motivated to distribute it? What about the people who refer or promote the article; what might be their motivations? This wouldn’t be research, but it would be at least a semblance of critical thinking that might serve to possibly justify your opinion with respect to the credibility of your sources.

To be clear, clicking a link to a video or an article from your finely-tuned, curated feed on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok or whatever flavor-of-the-day social media platform serves as your de-facto news source – no, that’s not research. In fact, given the way with which that information is making its way to you, it’s perhaps as opposite to research as you can get. It’s spoon-feeding you exactly what you want to hear, because then you’ll click on it and generate some revenue for someone far down the line. And, in doing so, pad your conformity-bias just a little bit more because something new agrees with it… and set you up to click the next related thing.

Digging around the internet is the place to do research these days, but what exactly you’re doing makes all the difference. There’s a lot of good stuff out there; it’s just a question of wading through the crap to find it, and using some methodology to achieve that.

Incidentally, Wikipedia… a relatively good place to find a pretty good summary of anything within the entire body of knowledge of human history — can be easily downloaded. As crazy as it sounds, it’s only 10GB (compressed)… which is 42GB uncompressed, ie plain text… which means all of it, like all of Wikipedia – every single article – fits easily onto a $15 64GB USB thumb drive. You can carry around with you the entire knowledge base of humanity on your keychain, with lots of extra room for pictures and family videos. Not a bad thing to carry around in case you’re shipwrecked in the middle of nowhere with your solar-powered laptop. Or abducted by aliens.

Yeah, aliens… they’re here, living among us. It’s true; I researched it.

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By |2020-10-08T01:10:34-07:00July 28th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19, Humour, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , |15 Comments
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July 18, 2020

The year 2010 was only 10 years ago, but wow, does it ever feel like a long time ago. That was when the Winter Olympics were here; the memorable Iginla to Crosby gold-winning goal… also the year I should’ve been generating and holding Bitcoins… but, who knew.

It was also the year of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Notwithstanding the catastrophic uselessness with which British Petroleum managed their little “faux pas”, there was an interesting footnote to the whole thing… which was that the environmental impact was far less than people imagined.

Don’t misunderstand; it was brutal, among the worst environmental disasters in American history. Almost 5 million barrels of oil leaking into the water over a period of months. The impact was felt for years, and BP ended up paying close to $20 billion to make it right; the largest corporate settlement in U.S. history.

But that interesting footnote of a lesser impact was due to… microbes. Little bugs that actually ate the oil and broke it down. While there had been some talk of trying to infuse the water with some sort of oil-eating bugs, and arguments whether the benefits outweighed the risks… and perhaps some little tests to sanity check it all… well, in the midst of that, mother nature came along and provided its own version, on top of what the humans were throwing at it. And surprisingly successfully.

Over the last couple of years, a lot of research has been done with respect to microbes and bacteria that eat plastic. And really, by “eating”, we mean consuming it and breaking it down… literally bio-degrading landfill waste. There’s that huge 600,000 square-mile garbage patch swirling in the Pacific Ocean, halfway between California and Hawaii… which some people think will be there “forever’. It won’t be… far from it. For now, it keeps growing, because we keep adding to it. But one day, when man is no longer around, that thing will start shrinking on its own… a far cry from “forever”.

A few days ago, scientists announced finding a bacteria that oxidizes manganese…and there are other microbes that can create conditions on other metals, leading to their breakdown.

The summary of all this is not that we shouldn’t care about our planet and the environment… we certainly should, because we have to live in it, in the present. More importantly, our children and grand-children have to, as well.

But it’s sobering and reassuring to know that no matter how badly we screw it up, it’ll all fix itself in due course. Unfortunately, that due course is measured in glacial, geological time frames. A million years isn’t much to earth (.02% of its existence), but it’s a lot if we’re hoping humanity lasts that long. It’s good knowing our super-long-term problems have solutions. Now let’s work on the present-day ones.

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By |2020-10-08T01:21:23-07:00July 18th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , |8 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 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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