Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Over on Stratecherry Ben Thompson discusses a number of technical aspects of SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it’s causing, COVID-19. Among other things, he gets into a bit of information composition theory, which is a some jargon I just made up:

The Internet, though, threatens second estate gatekeepers by giving anyone the power to publish:

Just as important, though, particularly in terms of the impact on society, is the drastic reduction in fixed costs. Not only can existing publishers reach anyone, anyone can become a publisher. Moreover, they don’t even need a publication: social media gives everyone the means to broadcast to the entire world. Read again Zuckerberg’s description of the Fifth Estate:

People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society. People no longer have to rely on traditional gatekeepers in politics or media to make their voices heard, and that has important consequences.

It is difficult to overstate how much of an understatement that is. I just recounted how the printing press effectively overthrew the First Estate, leading to the establishment of nation-states and the creation and empowerment of a new nobility. The implication of overthrowing the Second Estate, via the empowerment of commoners, is almost too radical to imagine. [From an earlier post by Thompson -HAW]

The current gatekeepers are sure it is a disaster, especially “misinformation.” Everything from Macedonian teenagers to Russian intelligence to determined partisans and politicians are held up as existential threats, and it’s not hard to see why: the current media model is predicated on being the primary source of information, and if there is false information, surely the public is in danger of being misinformed?

The Implication of More Information

The problem, of course, is that focusing on misinformation — which to be clear, absolutely exists — is to overlook the other part of the “everyone is a publisher” equation: there has been an explosion in the amount of information available, true or not. Suppose that all published information followed a normal distribution (I am using a normal distribution for illustrative purposes only, not claiming it is accurate; obviously in sheer volume, given the ease with which it is generated, there is more misinformation):

And then Thompson gets on to discussing how he thinks true and false information fill out the area under the bell curve – see right. What impressed me, however, was his omission of perhaps the most important part of any diagram of this sort – the absorption rate of consumers of this information.

Look, in computer science we often talk about data sources and data sinks. The former term should be self-explanatory, but it means the source of the data to be processed: files on disks, data coming from a network link, etc. A data sink, on the other hand, is the processor of that data: how it’s analyzed, transformed, and stored (each of those steps may be omitted, depending on requirements)^[1].

Now, what happens if your data source is providing data faster than your data sink can process it? It’s a complex problem which, depending on the requirements again, can result in queueing data on disk to just throwing away data on a random basis.

In either of the above diagrams, it would be very helpful to have an estimate of the data processing capability of an individual. Long time readers of this blog know that I have a minor fascination with bell curves (and maybe that’s why I’m driven to comment on Thompson’s post), but in this case I don’t see data processing having a bell curve.

Rather, I think the naive supposition would be that it’s a straight horizontal line. Our capacity to process doesn’t increase just because there’s more information out there.

But, worse yet, it may actually decrease, depending on what you’re measuring. True, a simple definition won’t yield much change, but what if you change it to primary information absorbed? I suggest that distraction by the increasing volume of information, since we’re not single-minded computers^[2], would actually decrease our ability to absorb information. Call the loss absorption of meta-data, if you like. I have experienced this myself as I’ve found long-form journalism sometimes difficult to process when I know I can get scatter-shot tidbits off of Facebook and the like.

But, worse yet, for the conscientious, the awareness of false information drives a requirement that we somehow verify the information that is candidates to be processed! That, in itself, takes time and energy from the actual processing – sometimes vast amounts. This changes the net amount of true information that we can absorb.

I think that would have made Thompson’s chart much more interesting.

¹ I’m sure I’ve dropped out a few steps, as my training is from a long time ago and I’m absent-minded, so be nice if you’re going to bust my chops.

² I suppose we could draw an analogy with thread-programming, but why bother? I’m not aware of every single issue with thread programming, as my exposure to it is only in the highly obscure language Mythryl.

Technically, The Pale Horse (2020) is a two part TV series by the BBC, but I’m calling it a movie because that’s how it felt. As a standalone movie, it was nicely done: excellent acting, good cinematography, fun little plot.

At this point, I must admit I’ve never read The Pale Horse, the Agatha Christie novel on which this movie is based, but my general experience with Christie is that she’s a rationalist. She has no problems placing supernatural elements in her books, but by the time the story comes to a close, they have been cleverly explained by one expedient or another. Christie’s interests were not in supernatural horror as a naive element, but as an element of deceit. Ultimately, Christie was interested in people making bad decisions, and what drove them to it.

But the tendency of this movie to explore the dreams of the lead character, Mark Easterbrook, as a major driver of his actions was a little too disturbing, especially in an ending that is entirely too difficult to credit to Christie. It’s true that the movie follows one of her themes, which is the decay of the upper classes of the Great Britain of her times, but it goes off the rails when Easterbrook is either literally sent to his personal Hell – or at least dreams it. It’s quite the jarring ending, no matter how you feel about the rest of it.

But the professionalism of the production was still encouraging and made for an enjoyable – mostly – afternoon view.

Trying to be a proper skeptic and a reader of Skeptical Inquirer, it’s natural for me to wonder at a TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) remedy for Covid-19, but others might not. I hadn’t heard of any, much to my surprise, until I ran across this post tonight by Dutch microbiologist and science integrity consultant Elisabeth Bik on Science Integrity Digest via Retraction Watch:

The recent COVID-19 outbreak has led to an enormous amount of preprints and rapidly-approved papers of variable quality. A recently published paper in Pharmacological Research called “Traditional Chinese Medicine for COVID-19 Treatment” caught my eye. The title suggested that Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) could be used to treat patients that had fallen ill with the viral disease, but a quick read showed that the paper promised much more than it delivered. Here is a critical review.

The paper starts off with a description of the COVID-19 outbreak and how Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) might bring new hope to treat the disease. It describes the successful treatment of a COVID-19 patient with plant-based mixture called qingfei paidu decoction (QPD). At first glance, this might be a welcome alternative treatment for a novel disease that is quickly growing to be a pandemic, and for which there are no good treatments or vaccines available. But with great claims, we need to see great data, and this is where the paper does not deliver at all.

Want more technical information? Visit Bik’s blog post at the link above. The executive summary is that the paper does not use a proper technique for evaluating the medicine under evaluation, is terribly vague when it should be precise, and a few other errors.

Naturally, many people think there’s a lot of money to be made from a cure, although governments from here to Monte Carlo might declare such a cure to be a public good and pay the inventor enough to cover costs – or make them rich, because who knows how governments would operate these days if presented with such a situation.

But what many don’t realize is that there’s a lot of money to be made with fake cures and vaccines. Just like fly-by-night contractors, dishonest medicine vendors will sell you their verified-by-God cure and then disappear, or refuse to return your money – if, in fact, you do survive long enough to file a complaint in court. See this post on disgraced Evangelical preacher Jimmy Baker.

So if you hear of some TCM, complementary, or other less-than-evidence based cure for COVID-19 that doesn’t really have a good stamp of approval from an accepted authority on it, skip it.

Restaurants do seem a natural for this role:

Dear Friends,

As we all know, spring break is upon us and Governor Walz has closed schools temporarily in an attempt to control the spread of COVID 19 as well. We believe this is the right decision, but also understand that it may present challenges to families in the communities we serve. We’d like to help.

If you are concerned about ensuring your children have lunch, stop by Granite City Food and Brewery-St. Cloud. Every kid can receive a free lunch that contains a turkey sandwich, chips, and applesauce. Completely free, no other purchase is necessary. Just ask for a Manager and we will be happy to make it happen.

Valid at Granite City Food and Brewery in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

We are all in this together,

– Your GCFB-St. Cloud Management Team

Link added by me. I occasionally dine at the Granite City in Rosedale, and I hope they are offering something similar. Kudos!

Right now it looks like this outside in the garden:

But we’re off and running with the tomato plants. Well. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Here’s the shelf we used last year, bare, but with grow lights in place.

And here are the tubs of potential tomatoes.

Now to kick back and wait for them to stick their little heads out of the peat.

drum drum drum drum HURRY UP!

I’m always impressed by how often I foul up by failing to consider possible negative consequences to what I perceive to be a positive course of action. So when this NASA decision concerning evaluation of proposals was mentioned by an old friend, I began to wonder:

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) is strongly committed to promoting a culture that actively encourages diversity and inclusion and removes barriers to participation. One important way of achieving this objective is to ensure that the review of proposals is performed in an equitable and fair manner that reduces the impacts of any unconscious or implicit biases.

To this end, and motivated by a successful study conducted for the Hubble Space Telescope, SMD is conducting a pilot program in ROSES-2020 to evaluate proposals using dual-anonymous peer review (DAPR). Under this system, not only are proposers not told the identity their reviewers, the reviewers are not told the identity of the proposers, until after they have evaluated the scientific merit of all of the anonymized proposals.

Certainly there’s almost immeasurable merit in anonymizing proposals in order to negate bias, conscious or unconscious, in reviewers. The loss of contributions from talented minority members who are not, as a group, considered competent has been demonstrated many times over.

But there is also merit in considering the history, negative or positive, of teams who have had proposals accepted previous to this NASA program, or related programs. Experience has to count for something, even if NASA supplies project managers. And some science is difficult to evaluate, or at least so I suspect, even if I am just a simple-minded programmer who, despite his degree in Computer Science, probably hasn’t committed a single science-thingie in my lifetime. But NASA seems determined:

NASA will appoint a “Leveler” to be present in the panel room for all discussions. The Leveler is not a reviewer or a panelist, but is an individual trained to ensure that the panel deliberations focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the proposal and do not deviate into a discussion of the identity, qualifications and experience of the PI and team.

Here are some specific points:

1. Levelers are present to keep the panel discussions focused on scientific merit. Unlike the chairs, they are not listening for issues pertaining to the science, rather they are focused on the discussion itself.
2. If the discussion veers to comments on the proposing team, their past work, their validity, or their identities, the Leveler’s job is to refocus that discussion.
3. Levelers have the authority to stop the discussion on a proposal.

I wonder if NASA has instituted any attempt at measuring what they’re gaining through better inclusion of minority contributions – as well as losing. A difficult metric, I fear.

Jupiter as you’ve never seen it before!

Ok, an experiment showing Jupiter in ultra-wide-angle fisheye from North to South. Uses @NASAJuno imagery. Bunch of things to tweak but it's not too bad pic.twitter.com/MGOHj9HXnz

— Kevin M. Gill (@kevinmgill) March 15, 2020

I actually like this animation less for its cuteness and more for how it shows scale. Too bad it doesn’t include 486958 Arrokoth (aka Ultima Thule), the second and final target of the New Horizons probe.

Warp speeds to scale because why not
Also hey @startrekcbs @jonathansfrakes @Brentspiner, Star Trek was one of the sci fi that made me want to do space science, and here I am! 🖖 pic.twitter.com/VbVBTmsgJn

— Dr James O'Donoghue (@physicsJ) February 11, 2020

As noted above, Pluto’s semi-major axis is roughly 39.5 Astronomical Units (AU), where 1 AU is the average distance from Earth to the Sun. Yeah, I’m not exactly sure how to characterize the semi-major axis – average distance won’t be quite right, but close enough for us civilian-types. 486958 Arrokoth? 44.581 AU. I suppose the animation would get a little too squeeze.

I always wonder why the actors of the show, any hit show, are referenced, but hardly ever the scriptwriters – the storytellers who provide the backbone memorable tale. Without them, the actors would simply be flailing about.

I feel compelled to praise Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN, who appeared on The Late Show with Colbert Thursday, and made the very important point that being personally irresponsible with our health means we’re endangering our families, friends, and strangers. Here’s the last segment:

There are two prior segments which are also worth viewing.

I’ve made this point before, including in this critique of a fairly immature petition here:

Let us honestly assess reality: we are not independent islands, inviolably separate from each other. Along with voluntary bonds which we often assume with each other through association, contract, and other forms, there are also the involuntary bonds over which we have no control, as we share the resources of this reality, amongst which we can enumerate air and water. Because of these involuntary bonds through which pathogens travel, we are vulnerable to the illnesses of the age: mumps, measles, etc. — their names are legion.

When I say the Fourth Amendment applies to everyone, I mean that I and my progeny have an equal right to protection under the Amendment, and that protection, in my case, is from easily propagated disease. Here we see the tension to which I alluded: I do not wish to become infected with a pathogen which can cause severe damage or death, yet is easily negated. The author of the petition does not wish to accept the vaccination. The tension comes in the fact that we have unavoidably shared resources (air, water. etc.) through which many pathogens travel to infect a new victim.

This isn’t like buying a couch or a toothbrush – our individual decisions can affect, positively or negatively, many other people. Not only is this of immediate significance, it also plays into the debate concerning the proper nature of our health system.

It’s worth considering.

This is how you tell if a corporate entity is part of the community, or merely preys on it under the guise of capitalism:

Just to get the word out there. With all the school closings and families relying on the lunch for their kids that are now out of luck. Billy’s on grand ave [St. Paul, MN] is offering free lunch for kids until this calms down. No other purchases needed, just feed your kid. [Facebook posting]

If you’re company isn’t helping out in the face of disaster, whether imminent or post, then they may be a predatory corporation.

Kudos to Billy’s on Grand.

Panspermia:

For generations, some astronomers have speculated about whether our planet was pollinated with an alien seed. This theory, called panspermia, suggests that primitive life can travel from world to world on space rocks, kick-starting evolution in each new environment.

This all sounds more like science fiction than science, but there are also good reasons to think panspermia is possible.

With the recent discovery of the alien space rock ‘Oumuamua and the interstellar comet Borisov, some astronomers are rethinking how far life could travel to trigger a “Second Genesis.” Could life spread across the galaxy? If alien asteroids and comets commonly travel between stars, then the interstellar version of panspermia may be more possible than astronomers imagined. [“Could Alien Life Travel on Interstellar Asteroids and Comets like ‘Oumuamua?“, Eric Betz, Discover]

A reader remarks on my review of Dark Star:

You found a lot more meaning and more in that film than I did. Seemed more like a semi-tongue in cheek film made by a bunch of stoners who couldn’t quite keep their not-very-funny jokes together long enough to deliver real laughs. I saw it in college, and was semi-amused because it was so camp and so bad.

I think it the consistency of its awfulness. Sure, other films can be bad, but the dreadfulness of the entity relationships was so distinctly terrible and, well, noir, that I thought there had to be a little more here than met the eye.

Or maybe I just made it all up out of whole cloth.

Even then, I think the only reason we watched it was because it had a myth (true? false?) of having been the place where some of the crew who did Star Wars amazing special effects got their start.

The late Dan O’Bannon co-wrote the screenplay, was editor of the movie, played Sgt Pinback / Frug, and worked on special effects. He also contributed special effects to Star Wars, as well as the legendary chest-bursting scene in Alien. Ron Cobb did design work on both movies; incidentally, he also designed the Ecology symbol, later incorporated into the Ecology flag. Greg Jein did model work for Dark Star and various Star Trek franchise episodes.

Of course, many folks in the United States have an interest in the results of the next big election in November 2020, from the House to the Senate to the Presidency, as well as the state and local elections. I’ve talked about the 35 Senate races here, myself. But the Presidency is a little harder, since the mathematics of the Electoral College is confusing as votes are allocated two to a State plus the number of House members it has, making for wildly differing results depending on where votes are won – as President Trump demonstrated by losing the popular vote by several million votes, but winning the Electoral College.

Still, it comes down to what we call the mood of country: perceptions of policies, ideologies, dislikes & demonizations, likes and canonizations, perceived levels of competency, misleading statements from foreign entities, and a dozen other factors, which are then put together into a single vote (at least until Ranked Choice Voting goes national) by the voter. And while we wait for that final judgment day in November to come around, we have more than just polls to examine to forecast the future, and I’m not talking goat guts.

Special elections, those elections called to fill local or national elective offices prior to the big day!

As it happens, the Democrat’s propaganda machine likes to update me from time to time on these, and the first one of which I’ve taken any notice was last Tuesday, a special election to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Merrimack 24. As it happens, in New Hampshire a district may send more than one representative to the legislature, with Merrimack 24 sending four. What happened in 2018?

They sent four Republicans.

2016? Ditto. In fact, it repeats back to 2012, where Ballotpedia stops.

But when one of the 2018 class passed away, a special election was called, which ended up pitting Kathleen Martins (D), an educator, against Elliot Axelman (R), an EMT. Democratic propaganda demonized Axelman, and it’s difficult to find much on his web site, beyond keeping taxes as low as possible and 2nd Amendment absolutism – neither of which fills me with feelings of wellness, as they are religious tenets of the current brand of Republican Party, but neither are alarmingly extremist, more naive than anything. Martins is even more bland.

Enough suspense, eh? Democrat Kathleen Martins beat Axelman, breaking the Republican lock on Merrimack 24, 1000 to 961. Yeah, the numbers are small enough that it only takes a small swing in sentiment for Martins to lose next time.

But consider this Ballotpedia tidbit as the greater context to this election:

In fact, the Republicans have held the chamber after the 2010, 2014, and 2016 elections; the 2018 elections signaled quite a change in the voter’s mood. Whether this means Martins will hold onto her seat is impossible to forecast, but the 2018 election behavior suggests that the Republicans have, at least temporarily, lost their grip on the sentiments of New Hampshire voters.

New Hampshire only has four electoral votes. Nevertheless, President Trump, in what I suspect is a calculated political ploy, has repeatedly claimed, without presentation of substantive evidence, that he in actuality won those four electoral votes, but the state was swamped with illegal votes that were not detected. These allegations were investigated and found to be without basis in fact. Whether this ploy will sway New Hampshire voters in November is to be seen, but I suspect President Trump, if he and his team continue to underperform in the realm of disaster response, will find it harder to find an inhabitant of New Hampshire who’ll take any such claims seriously in 2020.

Today, the jumpy market whiplashed us with a nearly 10% jump after the big 10% drop of yesterday. At this point, I wouldn’t even care to guess what Monday will bring – but those who pay attention to events over the weekend may be able to hazard a guess. But I think Max Boot’s observation of how Trump will likely manage the response is spot-on:

He did not even declare a national state of emergency — something he has previously done for the southern border and cybersecurity. An emergency declaration could give Trump broader powers to mobilize the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the military, among other resources, but Politico reports that Trump is concerned it “could hamper his narrative that the coronavirus is similar to the seasonal flu and could further agitate Wall Street.” Actually, it’s Trump’s failure to take decisive action that is agitating Wall Street, with stocks in free fall the morning after his speech. Trump is heightening, not ameliorating, pandemic panic. [WaPo]

Trump’s propensity to make things look good suggests he doesn’t understand that judging work on its own merits is actually a thing. He could have rebuilt much of his shattered reputation if he had simply attacked this problem with vigor and honesty, but I suspect there was never a possibility of that happening. For Trump, it’s disaster and coverup, disaster and coverup, all through his business life and now his political life – but with a much larger audience.

And don’t forget what his immediate audience thought of him at the 2016 election:

Trump’s home town vote in 2016.

For the investor, this suggests a continued roller coaster: big losses one day, big gains another. Those will with balls of brass will try to profit, and many will succeed. I hate heartburn, so I won’t be among them.

But I will be looking for a bottom by watching Trump and public opinion. If it appears he’s given up and will let others deal with the problem, then predictability concerning the governmental response may finally become a reality.

Until then … keep your seat belts tightly fastened.

Sometimes the most amazing things are found, like, oh, Oculudentavis khaungraae, specially protected from the elements. Not sure what that is? It’s awfully damn cool. Here’s Dr. Jingmai O’Connor talking about it.

Sounds utterly fascinating and cool until you think of a bunch of hungry ones chasing you. Then they’re flying piranhas.

Not really. They’d be good for taking care of irritating insects, though. Maybe a good pet?

If you were appalled by President Trump’s speech concerning the coronavirus on Wednesday night – I only caught clips on Colbert myself – this fumbling, mistake-littered speech which appalled our allies and the markets alike made for a gaping opening for Trump’s political opponents.

Into this, Joe Biden (D-DE) charged with a proper delivery – by presenting his own plan. A speech on the subject, clearly laying out the proper principles for dealing with a pandemic on American soil, is in this ABC News link. I was impressed, because in a way he reminded me of Obama’s initial campaign. I voted for Obama, in part, because he insisted on treating Americans as adults. The preceding Bush Administration had admonished us to keep on shopping in the face of not one, but two wars. Obama was clearly a more serious politician than Bush or, following the Palin pick, Senator McCain.

I have to agree with conservative NeverTrumper Jennifer Rubin of WaPo:

Biden closed with a series of promises that should not have been noteworthy. However, they now stand out, a bright light at the end of our very dark Trumpian tunnel. “No President can promise to prevent future outbreaks. But I can promise you that when I’m president, we will prepare better, respond better, and recover better. . . . We will listen to experts and heed their advice. We will rebuild American leadership and rally the world to meet global threats.” He added, “And I will always, always tell you the truth. That is the responsibility of a president. That is what is owed to the American people.” What a delight it would be to have a president who did not compulsively lie.

That moment when you want to roar and make the humans run, but you can feel that sneeze coming on instead.

Gorgo (1961) follows a not unfamiliar plot line. Man finds monster, man catches monster, man takes monster home for a bit of exploitation, Mama Monster catches wind and comes a-hunting … man. Throw in a dumb little boy who has mysterious knowledge and probably should have been thrown over the side of the private salvage ship (read: treasure hunter) he stows away on, two really awful monsters – I mean, the rubber feet on these beasties were embarrassing! – and a lovely destruction of London with, perhaps surprisingly, many of its inhabitants in a welter of collapsing walls, and that’s about it.

Glowing red eyes, some OK acting. No profound themes, some questionable behaviors, and that damn kid. This one was not worth the time.

To say the market seems jumpy is an understatement. Here’s the DJIA sometime in the middle of the day:

Since I took that snapshot, the markets have closed, with the DJIA just a smidgeon short of 10% down. I’m expecting a dead cat bounce tomorrow, but I won’t try to take advantage of it.

The current contretemps have been driven by the emergence of the Wuhan virus. Certainly, a few investors saw the early reports on the virus and decided to liquidate, so they’re relatively financially safe. For the rest of us, including me, it’s time to ride the rollercoaster. I believe it was Buffet who said, The wise investor, upon seeing panic in the financial streets, licks his lips and begins to plot.

Well, maybe not in so many words. But you get the gist.

However, as I mentioned in the prior post on this thread, politics also will play into the market. Our current President is a political amateur whose main gift is communicating with his base and reinforcing their grievances, with a secondary gift of using his base and the Republican Party structure to keep his Congressional allies in line. After that, he doesn’t appear to have any strengths.

That means, while the Wuhan virus is certainly the main driver of our current financial meltdown, the massive inefficiencies of the current Administration are magnifying the effect, or, in today’s case, purely driving a drop in value. Last night the President suddenly announced travel restrictions, and this is credited with driving the market over the cliff.  For those investors who have been ignoring politics as either irrelevant or too painful, here are the factors that concern me:

1. President Trump’s inclination to minimize the effects of the Wuhan virus. We’ve seen Trump declare the virus as good as beaten and not important, when professionals and the World Health Organization (WHO) have stated otherwise. We’ve also seen him and his allies use the Wuhan virus to attack political opponents. This is the lesson to be learned: this White House and its allies cannot be trusted to treat this health threat with honesty. Anything that comes out of Trump’s mouth should be disregarded; anything from members of his team with an overtly political role, such as VP Pence, also disregarded. And, yet, the fact that their words and actions, disparate as they may be, makes their words important. This is a hard time for the serious investor.
2. President Trump’s crippling of our pandemic response capability. The firing and failure to replace the pandemic response team is merely the latest in a series of miscues and blunders by Trump and his team. But it remains important because it’s a signal of what the future may hold: more failures of competency. Trump’s defense of this failure holds the key: “And rather than spending the money — and I’m a business person — I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.” He thinks like a business leader, effective or not, not like a government leader. He’s had three+ years to learn differently, and has failed to remand himself. As an investor, I can hope that someone will pull a miracle out of their ass – but I have to expect that the minimum time of creating, validating, manufacturing, and distributing a vaccine is at least a year, more likely closer to two. And that has strong consequences for the market.
3. President Trump’s mistaken belief that he has something important to say. Trump has engaged in the classic amateur’s behavior of believing he’s a professional and has a competent understanding of the material, and, for this investor, that means he may undertake actions and communications which are, at best, inaccurate, and, at worst, deleterious to the efforts of the professionals who should be in charge. Fumbling the effort makes the crisis last longer.
4. President Trump has a big, loose mouth. Last night, President Trump announced some sort of travel ban – you’ll see why I phrase it that way in a moment – and today Viking and Princess, two cruise lines, announced they were closed for business until further notice, while Norwegian, an airline, laid off 50% of its employees. This I picked up just in passing; no doubt there’s more. Was this well-thought out? No. Reportedly, he surprised advisors with this announcement. And when he didn’t, he screwed up the message. For example, as Steve Benen notes, Trump went on to tell the public, “Earlier this week, I met with the leaders of health insurance industry who have agreed to waive all co-payments for coronavirus treatments, extend insurance coverage to these treatments, and to prevent surprise medical billing.” A spokesperson for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the leading trade association for the nation’s private health insurers, soon after clarified to a Politico reporter that the president didn’t get this right, either: insurers waived co-pays for coronavirus testing, but “not for treatment.” Understandable when taken out of context, but in context, President Trump does this all the time – he can’t, or perhaps won’t, clearly communicate simple facts. For me, as an investor, bad information is the devil’s favorite tactic. My best counter-tactic? Ignore the font of bad information, and wait for the professionals to speak up. I understand that they are laboring under an idiot who’ll fire them if they make him look bad, so some interpretation is necessary.

This is going to be a rough patch, with a dip into recession, led by an Administration more concerned with reelection than with honest governance.

But, for me, the question isn’t how my 401K is doing, as my late conservative friend Jim once asked, but whether we’re going to come out of it with the least fortunate members of our society still relatively healthy, or if they’ll be broken: dead or so deeply into debt that they have no hope.

Good luck, folks, and always remember there’s someone else far worse off than yourself.

I haven’t had time to harp on the climate change situation, but I just ran across this beautiful visualization from about a year ago, and I share it, if only as a lesson in data visualization.

The "wait-for-it" million year tour of atmospheric CO2 is back. This time with some RCPs (the future) for context. Wait for it…. pic.twitter.com/RmwOz7Dk5B

— Kris Karnauskas (@OceansClimateCU) March 9, 2020

Speaking of CO₂ measurements, what’s the trend line at Mauna Loa?

Still upwards. I am looking forward to checking in on this in 6 months, out of curiosity as to whether it reflects any reaction to the slowdown in human industrial activity due to the Wuhan virus.

A few days ago, President Trump floated the idea of reducing the payroll tax (used to fund Social Security) as a way to keep the economy going. Regardless of the utility of the idea – I think it would ineffectual and reflects an unhealthy fixation on taxes and entitlements – I found this note about Senator McConnell’s (R-KY) reaction deeply amusing:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has privately told several allies in recent days he personally opposes the payroll tax cut idea Trump has endorsed, according to two veteran Republicans briefed on the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly.

McConnell has made clear he “detests” pursuing this particular policy, which would probably add to federal debt and deficits, and he has said many conservative GOP senators share his view. Still, he will hear out the White House on Tuesday, they said. [WaPo]

Source: St. Louis Fed

Really, Senator McConnell? You helped pass legislation which increased the deficit by how much, and now you’re worried about the deficit?

Hypocritical at best.

In the Mississippi primary that played out yesterday, Mike Espy has won the right for a Round 2 with now-Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), having lost the special election to her in 2018 by a relatively large margin of 7 points.

Now we shift focus to November. This campaign will decide what we want the next decade to look like for Mississippi. #MSSen https://t.co/HITdZmoqDv

— Mike Espy (@MikeEspyMS) March 11, 2020

Mississippi may be the most reliably Republican state in the nation, so Espy can only be hopeful, not confident. The latest poll I can find suggests Hyde-Smith has a comfortable 10 point lead.

This has been bugging me for a couple of days, and since I run the blog to let the bugs roam free … some more email, but this time from the author to an email list to me. The author? Former Redstate editor in chief and general far right-wing personality Erick Erickson. What is he purveying? It’s in support of some newsletter he’s trying to hawk, so I shall only quote the salient parts.

What is truth? The dictionary defines truth as “the quality or state of being true.” So then what is true? The dictionary defines true as “in accordance with fact or reality.” Scripture tells us that Jesus is “the way and the truth and the life.”

What does that mean? Well, in short, it means Jesus is reality — God is real and factual and existent. Christians are to walk in that truth. We, as Christians (assuming here that you are), have an obligation to fact and reality because Jesus is fact and reality. We harm our witness for the truth of the gospel when we are unwedded from fact and reality. We cannot say the resurrection is real when we say an ascertainable, real fact is false. No one will believe us.

Note this emphasis on truth. Almost everyone loves truth. Yes?

What is not allowed is your truth and my truth. The truth is in accord with facts and people talking about their own truth are talking about emotions more often than not. That leads me to this picture that is going around on conservative corners of social media. I drew the red BS on it.

This picture is designed to minimize concerns over the Wuhan coronavirus. But it is not true. It is not the truth. If Christians are supposed to walk in truth and be grounded in truth, then to disseminate this is to sin because this is such a willful distortion of truth as to be a lie. A lot of Christians on social media are sinning.

It’s quite a lovely sentiment which makes me want to applaud Erickson. Yes, yes, take down someone on your own side! He goes on to debunk all of the paranoid remarks on the whiteboard, with which I shan’t burden you, makes some speculative historical remarks, suggests how those might apply to today, and then journeys down a path leading to an allegedly hypocrisy by the mainstream media concerning the appellation “Wuhan virus” being supposedly racist, which I have not heard from anywhere but Erickson. And that brings us to this:

But, being honest and truthful, I really do think this has everything to do with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Team Trump as adopted a universal naming convention for a virus, but because it is Trump doing it, it must be racist.

And then, of course, Erickson goes on to justify his use of the Trump Derangement Syndrome phrase in view of the objective fact that Trump himself has no love for truth, only for advantage, and Erickson did so in the most eloquent and persuasive of terms.

Nyah, just kidding. Erickson ignored the entire subject. He ignores 16,000+ verified lies. He tars his ideological opponents with a goofy phrase, covers himself in the cloak of virtuous truth, closes the rips in the cloak with thread made of the mistakes your own side has made, and struts off as if he’s been persuasive.

Alas for him, I smell hypocrite, I smell someone who decided to join the side of Father of Lies, and has shucked any devotion to truth or intellectual honesty in the process.

And that just sort of drives me crazy.

In the Sessions v Tuberville Republican primary runoff scheduled for the end of March, President Trump has made his selection known:

Tommy Tuberville (@TTuberville) is running for the U.S. Senate from the Great State of Alabama. Tommy was a terrific head football coach at Auburn University. He is a REAL LEADER who will never let MAGA/KAG, or our Country, down! Tommy will protect your Second Amendment….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2020

And I expect Tuberville will win the primary. There are two questions then to be answered.

1. Will Alabama still be enamored with President Trump in November?
2. Will the Sessions supporters be willing to support Tuberville despite the bitter loss of their candidate?

If either of the answers goes against Tuberville, incumbent Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) may find a way to victory. I suspect if Jones does win, it’ll be because the hardball tactics of Tuberville will offend the Sessions supporters to the extent that they’ll simply stay home, even in the face of team politics demands of the Republican Party.