What If the Curve Cannot Be Flattened

What if everything we've been trying in order to "flatten the curve," to contain or defeat COVID-19 has been pointless and ineffective because the virus behaves in ways that other viruses have not? As an example, contact tracing works wonderfully well with viruses that are passed through intimate, sexual contact with other people. But what if COVID-19 cannot be traced that way?

What I'm asking is how do you track and control a virus that doesn't cause symptoms for several days after contracting it... and what if 86% of those who do get it never have any symptoms? How do you corral that? And the only contact needed between a host and a new victim can occur at a distance of a few feet... or even by touching something a host has sneezed or coughed on hours, or even days, earlier?

If you're wondering about the 86% figure, that's been known since April and was published in the peer-reviewed professional journal, Science, in May 2020. It's the reason we cannot contain the virus; no one believes they're sick (no symptoms at all!) and so unknowingly pass it on. We can scan everyone entering a building with a fever scanner and make them wear masks, but it's too little too late. This virus isn't going away unless, as we have with influenza, convince enough people to take the vaccine when it becomes available that it fades into the background. Indeed, we may end up needing new vaccines for new strains of it just as we do with influenza each year.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/science.abb3221

The good news is that at least 2 unusually effective vaccines are on the horizon. On this Thanksgiving weekend, I hereby thank those that have worked so diligently on the vaccine and those who cut through the red tape to make it possible.

Who Controls the Information We Use?

Observation: 

On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his presentation making the case for war with Iraq at the United Nations. He was armed with satellite photos showing the movement of weapons of mass destruction! He had numerous intelligence reports supporting that narrative. His claims were supported by intelligence agencies both here in the US and by those in the allied countries.

And yet... The charge has been since been made that "Bush Lied, People Died!" After all, Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq, either during or after the War. So was Secretary Powell lying to the U.N. in 2003?  Those who wanted to believe Secretary Powell was truthful tried to argue that in the long buildup to the war that Hussein had somehow successfully hidden or smuggled those weapons out of the country.

But what if there's another explanation that never occurred to us at the time? Have we learned anything since then that would clear Secretary Powell of that charge?

Observation: 

On November 8, 2016, Donald J Trump was elected President of the United States. His election was certified by Congress on January 6, 2017. A few Democrats in the House of Representatives protested, but because they had no support from the Senate, the certification passed.

Between those two events a rumor started that somehow Trump had had outside help from Russia to win the election. A few months later, on May 17, 2017, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate that claim. That happened amidst an avalanche of news stories in the New York Times and other papers, as well as on CNN and other networks, that supported the Trump-Russia collusion story... and every report was from anonymous inside sources.

Finally, on March 22, 2019, Attorney General Bill Barr received Mueller's report, marking the end of the Mueller's investigation into possible Russian collusion with the Trump Campaign. While Mueller had discovered some ancillary events resulting in indictments for a few Russian operatives for buying ads on social media to spread misinformation and some of Trump's people for crimes unrelated to the campaign (for example: tax issues years before the campaign, perjury for not telling the same story, word-for-word, each time they answered questions by investigators, and so forth), there was NO EVIDENCE FOUND to support the collusion charge. Also, there was no definitive proof of obstruction of justice, just a few instances of Trump, in the privacy of the White House, losing his temper and shouting things about the "witch hunt." But note: Trump never withheld any documents or claimed executive privilege during the investigation as did President Nixon.

Question: 

What do these events have in common?

• Both involved Republican presidents who were elected amidst controversy since they didn't win the popular vote nationwide, but did win in the electoral college. And let's just say that they were not popular with Democrats or with the media.
  
• The materials that Colin Powell used at the U.N. were provided by the intelligence community. The avalanche of reports condemning Trump were coming from unnamed sources...

More Questions:

What if those unnamed sources were also in the intelligence community? What if there were people in those organizations who were leaking misinformation to reporters who chose to believe them without corroboration? What if those leakers resented President Trump because of things he had said about not needing daily briefings from their agencies? (https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-briefings-232479)

A Possible Conclusion:

Republicans are not just viewed as political opposition by member of the Democratic party, many of them also view Republicans as evil, as mortal enemies to all that's good. Therefore anything you can do to oppose a Republican is thereby ethical! The end justifies the means... even if that involves lying, creatively charging them with imaginary crimes, or anything else. And this POV may exist in the intelligence community!

So, creating satellite photos and providing a false narrative to Bush's Secretary of State was permissible in order to embarrass Bush... never mind the lives the war cost. "Leaking" false information to reporters wouldn't be a crime if it brought down the detestable Donald J Trump.

What This Means to Us:

In our lives we rely on certain sources to inform us so we can make wise choices. That includes things like Consumer Reports to warn us off buying bad products, and news networks to report the news accurately, using multiple sources to confirm their stories.

What if those sources are not accurate? What if they're deliberately lying? Who do we trust? And why do we trust them?

Hate?

Hate?

Whom do you hate? And why do you hate them? How does it feel to hate someone? What does it cost you?

The Political Divide

Much has been said since the 2016 presidential election about the increasing rift between parties. The truth is that there are multiple fissures that have been developing and widening for generations. This isn't new! Even the rift between President Trump and the Republican leadership isn't really new; that one is just a new facet in the divide between "insiders" and "outsiders" within the party.

On the Democratic side of things there's a similar rift between elements in their party. This was visible during their 2016 primary when Senator Bernie Sanders won primaries in state after state but lost in the total delegate count when "super-delegates" chosen by each state's party leadership went mostly to their eventual nominee, Hillary Clinton. Since the election of 2018 another rift has appeared between younger Democrats, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the older ones, like Nancy Pelosi.

The Cost of Hating

Hating is an expensive hobby! It excites the hater with an adrenaline rush and the heady feeling of a righteous anger, but consider the costs:

• Time and Energy--While you're busy hating someone, perhaps plotting against them, or only daydreaming about your eventual revenge, or visualizing seeing them being carted off to jail, you're not working towards your other goals. 
• Exhaustion--Living on adrenaline simply wears you out! Your body isn't capable of running on it 24/7... and your health will decay.
• Bitterness--Your monomaniacal focus on the object of your hatred affects your other relationships. You may soon neglect family and friends; you may even judge them as unworthy of your time and attention unless they share in your hatred. And the longer it takes to "make things right" in your eyes, the more they'll wonder why they even put up with you. A hate-filled heart has little or no room for love!
• Regret--As your other relationships fall apart, as you discover that you've failed to live up to your potential, you learn the truthfulness of the poet's observation:

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”
― John Greenleaf Whittier

Your Legacy

How will you be remembered by the people in your life? Do you want your tombstone to read, "A dedicated hater"? Will you have spent your time and energy on social media explaining why you hate someone? Or will you be known for acts of love and service to others?

If You're a Hater...

If you're into hating, please make the world a better place and give it up! Find ways to build people up, not tear them down. Take care of yourself and those around you.

Math Isn't PC, It's White Privilege?

Sometimes words fail me. I can't begin to describe my mixed emotions when I read articles that tell me things like:

• algebraic and geometry skills perpetuate “unearned privilege” among whites

or

• math also helps actively perpetuate white privilege too, since the way our economy places a premium on math skills gives math a form of “unearned privilege” for math professors, who are disproportionately white

Then there's

• "all knowledge is “relational,” because “Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively"

These quotes are from an article about Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Illinois, who argues that teachers must be aware of the “politics that mathematics brings” in society.

Really?

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10005

BTW, her bio shows her degrees as follows:

Ph.D., Curriculum and Instruction, University of Chicago, 1995
M.A., Curriculum and Instruction, University of Chicago, 1995
B.A., Human Biology, Stanford University, 1990

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Stepping Up My Stargazing Game

1. On April 4, I received my early birthday presents: A decent pair of Celestron astronomical binoculars with a tripod adapter, a set of Plossl eyepieces, a Celestron NexStar 102SLT refractor telescope, and a Celestron Lithium Phosphate (LiFePO4) PowerTank. Of course the skies didn’t cooperate until, finally, Friday night, but we were out for the evening (watching Casablanca on a big screen at a local university). Saturday was still decent, so I finally got to play with the telescope.
   My wife was more impressed with the binoculars than the telescope, I think, because there weren’t any electronics involved and she knows how to use them. 😉
   For anyone bemoaning the fact that I’m skipping over the steps of learning the night sky, I’d like to offer a few reasons for going with the computerized (GoTo) system the telescope uses.
   First, I’m turning 65 this month and I’ve already found out what it’s like to survive a cardiac arrest. I don’t want to spend too many hours studying how to find things by star hopping.
   Second, I’ve already had the experience of having what I’m trying to view slide out of sight before I can drag family members out to see anything. With the GoTo it tracks, so that’s no longer a problem.
   Third, I’m wanting to play around with astrophotography, so tracking is important. Without tracking the stars’ apparent motion turns them into light trails within a few seconds. With it, I can get exposures of up to 20 to 30 seconds before other problems interfere (such as field rotation).
   Finally, with the light pollution we have here I can only see perhaps two dozen of the brightest stars without a telescope. But once the GoTo has been aligned to 3 of the brightest, it can point itself to anything in its catalog of over 4,000 stars, nebulae, galaxies. Through its 102 mm lens I can then see so much more… and that’s easier and quicker than driving for 45 minutes each way, not to mention loading up the car, setting up the scope, and reversing it for the return home.
   Ad astra!

A Demonstration of Astronomy on the Cheap!

I don't yet have a fancy telescope that can track stars and take long exposures of them. But the moon is a different story!

That photo was taken from my hometown, in the midst of real light pollution, and with a street light across the road. As for the technical details:

Taken on January 28, 2018, with the moon at about 92% full

Telescope: Orion SkyScanner 100 telescope ($95)

Camera: Taken with iPod Touch, 6th Generation

Software: NightCap Camera ($1.99)

Settings (in NightCap): ISO 30, Shutter 1/150, Zoom factor 1.8

I plan eventually to get a decent refractor scope with tracking capability to minimize the "smearing" of images caused, of course, by the earth's rotation during time-lapse pictures.

Added Photo 1/31/2018:

I took this one last night when I set up my gear preparing for the eclipse this morning. You can see some clouds swirling around the moon... and it got MUCH worse. This morning, during the eclipse, our valley was totally covered with clouds. 😒

How Do You Measure a Planet’s Temperature?

Why I Think Global Warming Is a Fraud: How Do You Measure a Planet’s Temperature?

When astronomers measure the temperature of a planet, they have both an advantage and a disadvantage over meteorologists here on Earth. Their instruments can acquire data from nearly 50% of a planet’s surface at a time… but they cannot measure that temperature as accurately as someone on that surface might be able to at a specific location. In other words, astronomers can only measure the average temperature of the portion of the planet that their instruments can "see." And until satellites were first used in 1979 meteorologists here on Earth had to measure the temperature at multiple points and mathematically average them.

How Accurate Was the Global Record Before Satellites?

The first continual instrumental record of temperature in the world is the Central England Temperature record, started in 1659. During the mid-19^th century the measuring and recording of temperatures spread to other locations, but not until 1873 with the foundation of the International Meteorological Organization that people began to try and take the temperature in the same way.

But note that these temperature readings were limited mostly to urban locations in Europe and North America until after World War II. And that they were not monitored for changes to the environment of the thermometers, such as the introduction of asphalt roadways and parking lots. Or the introduction of new heat sources, like nearby mechanical equipment.

At no point was there any real attempt to set up a regular network of automated thermometers at set distances apart over the entire planet. The expense would have been immense and the technical difficulties, such as placing devices in high mountainous areas or positioning them on the open seas, insurmountable.

Other Attempts to Establish a Global Record

Lacking direct measurements hasn’t been a barrier to some. They have chosen to infer temperatures through such means as ice cores from Antarctica or variations in the thickness of tree rings. Yet how accurate can those be? What assumptions are they making?

What Satellite Measurements Show

Since 1979 the satellite data does show a warming trend of 0.114 degrees Celsius (0.2052 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. If it continues for a full century, that would be 1.14 degrees Celsius (2.052 degrees Fahrenheit)! But is that truly significant?

That raises yet another question for me: measurement error. In my college physics classes we were cautioned about relying too much on apparently precise measurements. To quote Wikipedia:

Observational error (or measurement error) is the difference between a measured value of a quantity and its true value. In statistics, an error is not a "mistake." Variability is an inherent part of the results of measurements and of the measurement process.

A simpler way to put it is that we cannot be certain that any measurement is as accurate as multiple digits after a decimal point imply. Before digital calculators became common and affordable, most calculations were performed with slide rules. We assumed that there were perhaps 3 significant digits in each calculation we made, and only 3 or 4 in the final result. Now we can quickly add together hundreds of values from thermometers and find their average, with results like 72.36426229… But the fact is that those initial values were probably recorded as whole numbers and that final calculation should be rounded to 72. Reporting those extra digits give a false impression of accuracy that’s not supported by the instruments used.

Confirmation bias also plays a role in this situation where we emotional, semi-rational humans unconsciously look for reasons to put more emphasis on data that support our beliefs and, of course, to reject data that conflict with them.

My Bottom Line

I believe that many who are accepting the global warming hoax are often ignorant of how the data is being collected and reported by researchers. I think those who know better are guilty of knowingly violating the rules and standards of data collection in order to gain power or financial rewards.

Simply put: The truth is not in them.