MrG's Blog & Notes

* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with monthly entries.

[*] NEWS FOR JANUARY 2020

* In the continuing misadventures of the Era of Trump, last month got started out with the House and the Senate failing to come to a meeting of minds on an impeachment trial in the Senate. [ED: This was 1st impeachment, in the wake of Trump's attempt to shake down Zelenskyy, with impeachment efforts beginning in December.] GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear that, once impeachment got to the Senate, it would be put on a fast track and dismissed. In response, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held up passing the articles of impeachment on to the Senate, until McConnell clarified how impeachment would proceed in the Senate.

McConnell complained loudly in response and mocked the Democrats for the ploy, but Pelosi simply wanted to shine a light on, and slow down, the GOP's attempts to sideline impeachment. It had the desired effect.

The focus of controversy shifted abruptly towards Iran on 3 January, when Iranian General Qasem Solemani -- head of the elite Quds black-ops force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps -- was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad. The Trump Administration claimed the assassination was necessary, but failed to provide convincing evidence to Congress. The Iranians called it an act of war and promised retaliation.

On 8 January, the Iranians launched at least 15 ballistic missiles at US targets in Iraq, particularly al-Asad Air Base. The Iranians provided advance warning to the Iraqi government, which was of course relayed on to the Americans, and so no one was killed. Satellite photos revealed several structures cratered out; the missile strikes were impressively precise. Dozens of troops were hospitalized for concussive brain injuries.

Everyone held their breath at what Trump would do; responding in kind would certainly lead to a spiral of escalation. Trump sensibly did not escalate, declaring so in a blustery address in which he declared victory, cast Iran as the loser, and blamed Obama for America's troubles with Iran. However, the Iranians obviously took note of Trump's reluctance to go to war and pocketed the lesson for later. It was obvious they weren't done with retaliation yet, but further steps would be indirect.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, war having seemed imminent. The next day, 9 January, the House of Representatives passed a non-binding War Powers Resolution to attempt to leash in Trump. Actually, having had a close brush with war, it seems unlikely -- if hardly impossible -- that Trump will take reckless military action again any time soon.

Unfortunately, as a consequence of the excitement, after the missile strike, jumpy Iranian air-defense personnel fired two surface-to-air missiles (SAM) at a Ukrainian Boeing 737 jetliner, blowing it out of the sky and killing all on board. The incident came to light because the SAMs were picked up by a US missile-launch warning satellite; the Iranian government denied the incident for three days, insisting the airliner had simply crashed, leaving everyone confused as to who was lying and who was telling the truth.

The Iranians finally admitted to shooting down the jetliner, leading to angry protests by Iranian citizens. They followed protests in the fall, triggered by a rise in fuel prices, with demonstrations brutally suppressed. REUTERS.com claimed as many as 1,500 Iranians had been killed in the fall demonstrations, obtaining their figures from Iranian government officials; it appears not everyone in the government was enthusiastic about the brutality, since it was as bad, or worse, than anything that the detested Shah had done.

Trump succeeded in helping destabilize Iran, but it would be a dubious plan that relied on disastrous "own goals" from an adversary. If he were seeking a boost to his embattled presidency, that didn't work at all, his approval ratings remaining the same as always.

* In the meantime, the impeachment proceedings rolled on, with the Democrats making their case and the president's counsel replying, with a torrent of falsehoods and bizarre legal reasonings. However, the defense case was upstaged by John Bolton, noted Right-wing hawk and previously White House national security advisor, who was publishing a book of his misadventures in the service of Trump, and was willing to testify.

There matters stand at the moment. It is not clear what will happen with Bolton; only a few GOP senators would have to vote to call him as a witness, but there's no certainty that enough will. Public support is running at about 75% for calling Bolton, but the White House has been making threatening noises against him. He's obviously not the kind of person who is easily intimidated, but legal action against him might complicate things. One suggestion is that Congress, which does have arrest powers, arrest him -- obviously with his consent -- and compel testimony from him. That would mean the White House would have to take legal aim at Congress, which would be a non-starter.

The Democrats would like to get others to testify, for example Rudy Giuliani -- the president's personal lawyer and at the center of the impeachment controversy -- but that may not be possible. Not such a problem, since refusing to testify is an effective admission of guilt. The GOP has made noises about calling Joe Biden's son Hunter to testify; for those not familiar with that issue, it's all about smoke and mirrors, and nothing is likely to come of tomfoolery over it.

We shall soon see what happens. One of the issues in the impeachment trial is that the president's State of the Union Address is on 4 February, and the Democrats would obviously not want Trump to use the speech to take victory laps for an acquittal. That means stretching out the trial, and that seems likely to happen. One might expect provocations from Nancy Pelosi before the address, in hopes of getting a public melt-down out of Trump. That would be easy to do.

* In the meantime, Australia is in recovery after an apocalyptic brushfire season. The ghastly fire season is widely seen as having been fueled by climate change -- which is awkward for Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is a climate-change denier. That is no longer a credible position with Australian voters. The Australian Right leadership, boosted by Rupert Murdoch's media machine, has been attempting to shift blame, claiming the fires were caused by a massive arson campaign -- in some reads, the arsonists being "Greenies" who are trying to sell the climate-change "hoax". That's not working, either. Climate-change denial is not credible.

* It is not remotely news that renewable energy is on a roll -- while coal, once the mainstay of electric power generation, is in terminal decline. An article from CNN.com ("Solar, Wind, & Hydro Power Could Soon Surpass Coal" by Matt Egan, CNN Business, 26 November 2019), pounded another nail into the coffin of coal.

Projections from the Institute for Energy Economic & Financial Analysis suggest that the USA will get more power from renewable energy than coal by 2021. P.J. Deschenes -- a partner at Greentech Capital Advisors, an investment bank focused on clean energy -- comments: "The next piece of the energy transition is very close at hand. Coal is coming offline as fast or faster than we anticipated."

Coal provided about half of America's power generation from 2000 to 2010. However, coal usage started to fall sharply late in that decade because of the abundance of cheap natural gas, with natural gas overtaking coal in 2016. US President Donald Trump's campaign promise to save has proven hollow, underlined by the 2019 bankruptcy of Murray Energy, America's largest private coal mining company. US power companies are rapidly retiring old coal plants and replacing them with wind and solar farms. Utility companies like PSEG (PEG) and Xcel Energy (XEL), which long relied on coal, are now promising to deliver carbon-free electricity. Not everyone is convinced of their sincerity, but the direction is clear.

Navajo Generation Station, the largest coal-fired power plant in the West, permanently closed late in 2019. The shutdown means that South Nevada's electricity is now coal-free. This transition has already played out in Texas, which was long a coal-first state. During the first half of 2019, wind power surpassed coal for the first time in Texas history. Wind made up just 0.8% of the Lone Star State's power in 2003; that figure has climbed to 22%, compared with 21% for coal.

US power plants are expected to consume less coal next year than at any point since 1978, according to the EIA. That will cause coal's market share to drop below 22%, compared with 28% in 2018 -- which will make coal even less profitable, Deschenes saying: "It's a negative feedback loop."

This trend is happening overseas as well. Global electricity production from coal is projected to fall by a record 3% in 2019. That drop is being driven by record declines from Germany and South Korea, as well as the first dip in India in at least three decades.

* At the start of 2019, I visited the Denver Zoo to take night photographs of the Christmas lights show there. It proved worthwhile; I mentioned it to a neighbor, and she told me that the botanical gardens in Fort Collins, Colorado, just north up the road, also put on a holiday lights show.

Come December, I checked it out online, thinking I had to make reservations like I did for the zoo. I called them up on Tuesday, 17 December, and they said: No, it wouldn't be that hard to get in, just drop by and pay admission at the door. I then wondered when I could find time to go. On consideration, since Tuesdays is my day for running errands, I could easily fit it in that evening before I went to bed: half-hour drive north, half-hour taking photos, half-hour drive back home.

I don't usually like to do things spur of the moment, it usually doesn't work out well, but this seemed straightforward. It was, almost everything going to plan. I got over 80 raw shots, and was able to render them down into 26 keepers. I only got 23 keepers from the zoo, and its display was at least twice as big.

The night photo mode on my Canon SX70 camera works pretty well. I think I can do better, though. I got a financial windfall and passed on some of it to my niece / heir Jordy; she bought an iPhone 11 Max Pro with the money. She travels the world in recruiting for Amazon.com, and it would be good to have a first-class camera phone to take with her. I keep bugging her about taking photos when she travels -- not just for my own curiosity, it's because it would be good for her to keep a record of what she's been doing. Being in her early 20s, it's not obvious to her that she may ask, when she's in her 40s: "What exactly was I doing two decades ago?"

A smartphone is a remarkable device, an extension of the mind, augmenting perception and memory. Might as well make the best use of it. In any case, I'm particularly curious about how well the iPhone 11 does for low-light / night shots. Samples I've seen online are really impressive; I'll have to see what Jordy does with it. I will get a good camera phone, but not until 2021, when things have settled out a bit, and I can get an older or refurbished phone.

I'll do some experimenting with the Samsung Galaxy smartphone I have now in the meantime. It has a 16-megapixel imager, and I can get enhanced camera apps for it. Assuming night mode gangs up pixels in quads, that should give me 4-megapixel night images, or 2500 x 1600 pixels, which is adequate, if not luxurious. I also found out about bluetooth shutter-button key fobs; one of the annoyances of a camera phone is having to clumsily poke the touchscreen to take shots, with the button fob solving that problem. They're cheap, less than ten bucks -- I'll get one soonest.

* A video from REUTERS.com hunted down "Perchten monsters". In Bavaria, in the depths of winter, people dress up in monster costumes, to perform torchlight drumbeat marches and circle dances. The monsters challenge the darkness and the cold, driving out evil spirits and bringing good luck.

Wikipedia says that Perchten monsters are also found in Austria, and are linked to the winter Fastnacht carnivals practiced through the Alpine region. They are derived from the old pagan goddess Perchta, who was originally a Brothers Grimm sort of spirit, doing gruesome things on occasion -- but now she is seen as the rewarder of the generous and punisher of the bad, particularly lying children, who are awarded lumps of coal.

Some Alpine ski resorts have Perchten festivals to bring in the tourists. It looks like fun; it's a bit surprising that Fastnacht carnivals haven't been performed to any noticeable degree in the USA. It seems like something that somebody would have tried back in the Psychedelic Sixties. Maybe one of these days ...

* I finally had to rethink posting comments to Twitter. It was just not a good use of time, it was dealing with endless numbers of loudmouthed dimwits, all the same stuff over and over again.

I still wanted to retain Twitter as a news feed, but I didn't want it to be too obtrusive. A little scouting around led me to a Firefox plugin that lists the Twitter feed, in smartphone format, as a sidebar in the browser. It's unobtrusive, easily turned on and off, without much switching of gears from what else I'm doing.

I found I couldn't stop commenting anyway, but I reconsidered how to do it. I will post replies to articles, but don't generally look at the comment stream; when I do, I usually regret it. I've also turned off notifications, so people can reply to my comments, but otherwise I don't know they're there. If they give me a hard time -- I can generally recognize that by reading no more than ten words of a reply -- I mute them. Muting means I just don't see the comment any more, with the commenter being none the wiser.

I delete all my comments at the end of the day, and un-mute most of those I've muted. Usually, having been snubbed once, they don't hassle me again. If they're repeat offenders, I keep them muted. I might clean out the list completely once a year or so, to see if they've gone away, and mute them again if they haven't.

I've always had the bizarre impulse to comment online, despite the fact that I know it's more bother than it's worth. Now I've got a formula that is sustainable: in effect, I'm making one-way comments to the world. I do, of course, announce blog updates on a separate Twitter account -- but that one's for work, and never a difficulty. [ED / 2025: Twitter went completely south after Elon Musk bought it in 2022. I gradually faded out there, trying Spoutible for a time, and am now firmly entrenched in BlueSky.]

[*] NEWS FOR FEBRUARY 2020

* The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump came to its expected end on 5 February, with the Republican Senate majority voting to acquit him. That was inevitably followed by an extended noisy Trump meltdown at the White House, with an audience of GOP that encouraged him on.

Of course, he had been also been goaded by other factors, one being that the vote to convict had been bipartisan. All Democrats in the Senate voted to convict -- including Doug Jones of Alabama and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who are from conservative states, and had to think twice about it -- plus Mitt Romney of Utah. Under obvious stress, Romney publicly announced that it was the "hardest decision I've ever made", and he understood that "the consequence will be enormous" for him politically. He added:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Republicans blasted Romney -- the 2012 Republican candidate for the presidency -- as a traitor, and Trump was particularly abusive towards him in his White House rant. However, one wonders if Romney didn't actually make the right decision from a practical point of view, as well as an ethical one. The GOP is on the road to the Devil; possibly Romney has picked a better road. CNN's Chris Cillizza commented:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Trump also blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She was sitting behind him during his State of the Union address on the evening of 4 February, and had to listen to a long list of dubious claims:

• Most of Trump's claims focused on the economy. It is perfectly true that the economy is doing well on Trump's watch, but he systematically exaggerated its health, and painted Obama's tenure as an economic disaster -- when Obama's economic scorecard was at least as good, possibly better in some respects.
  
  
• He proclaimed that "100 miles of wall" had been built along the border with Mexico. That's true, but 99 miles of that was replacement of existing wall.
  
  
• Most obnoxiously, Trump talked about his efforts to improve the broken American healthcare system -- when the Trump Administration is still supporting court cases to destroy ObamaCare, with nothing much planned to replace it.

There were things that Trump did not say -- in particular, nothing about the massive budget deficits that the Trump Administration is building up, thanks to reckless tax cuts. At the end of the speech, as Trump left the podium, Pelosi took her copy of the speech and theatrically ripped it to shreds in full view of the cameras.

The Republicans inevitably howled, but Pelosi was not contrite, saying that Trump had "shredded the truth", and she made the only "courteous" response -- meaning it was more courteous than the unstated alternatives. Trump likes to proclaim that he is "New Presidential" as he talks endless trash; he can then have no credible complaint when Pelosi calls it out as trash. It really amounted to nothing much, one way or another, except for an amusing footnote in the history books. Those who respect Pelosi didn't mind, or liked it; those who didn't like it, hate her anyway.

Trump did get a boost in polls from the State of the Union Address and his acquittal, with his odds of being re-elected being rated up. The good economy works in his favor, but Trump runs his presidency by pandering to the extreme Right, which involves bad-mouthing everyone who isn't the extreme Right. His post-acquittal tantrum did not convince those who don't like him to reconsider their judgement of him. Nothing changes Trump's approval / disapproval rates, which are stuck at -- ignoring the indifferent few who don't care and don't vote -- about 45% / 55%. [ED / 2025: In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had yet to make itself seriously felt.]

* Whether the Dems can turn that into an electoral victory in November remains to be seen. The initial Iowa primary caucuses in this last month were a complete fiasco, due to a defective app, with Trump crowing loud as a result. Unfortunately, having got off to a fractious start, things didn't get better, with Bernie Sanders getting an early lead over the presumed favorite, Joe Biden. The prospect of Bernie getting the nomination created what was labeled a sense of "panic" among Democratic leadership, and for two very good reasons. First, Bernie is not really a Democrat, he's a socialist, and his candidacy would amount to a hostile take-over of the Democratic Party -- just as Donald Trump's candidacy amounted to a hostile take-over of the Republican Party.

Second, and more importantly, nobody with sense would bet that Bernie could beat Trump in the November election. Yes, he mobilizes the faithful, but the Woke Left only wins in safe districts, displacing moderate Democrats, not Republicans. The Big Blue Wave by which the Democrats retook the House of Representatives in 2018 was made of moderates from swing states, who did displace Republicans. The election will be won or lost in the swing states; and Bernie's Woke Left policy proposals have no traction there. The USA is centrist in general sentiment, and Bernie is well Left of center. With Bernie at the top of the bill, it is unlikely that the Democrats will tilt Senate seats in 2020, and may not retain control of the House.

In addition, although Bernie's fans idolize him, those not so infatuated with him see him as a ranting, crankish, annoying old man, strong on high-flown ideas and weak on realism. His Leftist past makes him only too vulnerable to the smear tactics the Trump campaign is sure to use against him. Not incidentally, Trump is saying nice things about Bernie for the moment, clearly liking the idea of Bernie becoming his opponent. Bernie's fans insist he can beat Trump -- but that's a delusion, being rightly compared to climate-change denial. Bernie versus Trump would be a noisy little chihuahua up against a fat, ugly, and nasty pit bull. There would be no doubt as to the outcome.

Everything is still in flux, and primaries are always fractious, if maybe not normally this much. A lot can happen in the next few months. Super Tuesday, when a cluster of states have their primaries, will be on 3 March, and will do much to clarify the race. It'll be settled out in July. If Bernie gets the nod, even his detractors among the Democrats, lacking any choice, will vote for him and not complain. They will, however, also resign themselves to four more years of Donald Trump.

* Trump believes the good economy will bring him a win in November in any case. CNN's Fareed Zakaria, in a video essay, acknowledged that the US economy has been doing well -- though not, as Trump would have it, better than it has ever been. Zakaria suggested that Trump, in his crowing about his economic successes, is most thoroughly off base in his central economic plank, the trade deficit.

During the 2016 election, Trump relentlessly hammered on the trade deficit, saying that foreigners were looting the USA. He promised to drive down trade deficits -- but instead, they've risen substantially on his watch. Zakaria points out that, when the US economy is booming, the trade deficit tends to rise; and in a recession, tends to fall. The biggest drop in America's trade deficit was in 2009, in the depths of the Great Recession.

Zakaria cited a paper by economist Roger Martin titled "Why The Trade Deficit Can Be A Sign Of A Healthy Economy". Martin postulates a country that has less than 5% of the world's population, but produces 20% of the world's GDP. America buys more than it sells to others, but sells more services -- banking, insurance, consulting -- than it buys. This country also has laws protecting private investment, plus a strong stable currency, which makes it a great place for foreign investment.

Of course, this is the USA. America buys more from other countries than it sells, resulting in a deficit, but other countries like to invest in America, and the USA has a huge surplus in selling services to other countries. 80% of US jobs are in services; manufacturing employment as a percentage of US employment has been declining at a steady rate for 70 years. Martin says: "On this basis, the trade deficit should be something to brag about, rather than denounce."

Trump's war on trade deficits has been painfully costly, forcing Americans to pay tens of billions of dollars in taxes -- tariffs are not often paid by other countries -- and then using tens of billions of dollars to subsidize farmers who are being hurt by retaliatory tariffs. As Zakaria said: "All this to solve a problem, that isn't really a problem."

Zakaria said nothing about the other irony of Trump's obsession with trade deficits, in that he doesn't care about budget deficits at all. That, however, is another story.

* As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Factbox: Global Efforts To Develop Vaccines, Drugs To Fight The Coronavirus", 19 February 2020), the emerging global coronavirus pandemic has killed thousands of people, leaving researchers scrambling to come up with a response.

The most important long-term effort is to develop a vaccine. China released the genome of the virus, formally designated COVID-19, early on, allowing researchers to get a quick start on the work. A dozen or so different vaccine projects are underway around the world -- but given the challenges of test and qualification, not to mention mass production, a vaccine won't be available until well into 2021, or even into 2022.

Over the short term the focus is on treatments, with researchers repurposing existing drugs in hope of finding something that works against the new virus. BioCryst Pharmaceuticals' Galidesivir works by interfering with a virus' ability to replicate. It has shown promise against a number of viruses, including coronaviruses, and has proven safe in healthy volunteers. The work is backed by the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is developing REGN3048-3051, a combination of two antibodies, produced by from immunized mice that have been genetically modified to produce "humanized" antibodies. The work expands on Regeneron's partnership with the US Department & Health and Human Services for a related coronavirus. Regeneron will test its drug in humans through the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Gilead Sciences Inc's remdesivir is an antiviral that didn't work on Ebola, but has shown promise in monkeys against a related coronavirus. Gilead has partnered with Chinese researchers to conduct two clinical trials, under the coordination of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing. The studies are expected to be completed in April. Other efforts include:

• AbbVie's dual-drug HIV treatment Kaletra, which was designed to keep HIV from replicating in people.
  
  
• Favipiravir, an antiviral from Japan's Toyama Chemical that was developed to fight RNA viruses such as the new coronavirus.
  
  
• Chloroquine phosphate, an anti-malarial drug that is being tested in China to see if it can slow down the coronavirus.

Chinese scientists are also treating patients with blood from COVID-19 survivors, an older technique that has been used to fight rabies, diphtheria and other infections. A small batch of patients has shown significant improvement with the treatment, with no severe side effects.

[ED: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the emergence of antiviral drugs. That's one of the silver linings of the HIV pandemic; before HIV, we had few drugs that had any effectiveness against viruses. Although not much has been said about it, there's also the possibility of drugs being used for "pre-exposure prophylaxis (PREP)", as is done with HIV, with people at risk taking drugs to treat COVID-19 before it can take hold. I suspect chloroquine phosphate is being evaluated with an eye towards PREP, since it is used as a guard against malaria.]

* As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("As The US Ages, Older Americans Flock To Video Games" by Khristopher J. Brooks, 2 January 2020), a survey by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) says that in 2016, there were 40 million Americas age 50 or more who played video games. That number grew to about 51 million in 2019. Older women are more getting into video games than older men.

To be sure, people in their mid-30s still make up a majority of the gaming industry's customers, but companies like Electronic Arts and Nintendo are adjusting their product lineup and marketing to factor in geezer gamers. Older Americans have a number of reasons to be interested in games: they help to connect with grandkids, they help the oldsters stay sharp, and they're simply entertaining.

Besides, it's not like they never saw video games before: video games were well-established by the late 1970s, so some of the oldsters have 40 years of history with video games. Modern video games can offer online connectivity as well, to allow elderly Americans, who don't get around much any more, to hook up with others.

Barbara Evans, a 79-year-old Pennsylvanian, loves to play Nintendo Wii bowling with three of her friends in their retirement community. "It's a lot of fun when there's other people coming and going and they'll stop and watch and they'll cheer on this one or that one." She was once a nurse, and would bowl in a competitive league after she got off work. When she got married, she and her husband would bowl with a league as well.

Kansas City resident Michelle Kelley, a 73-year-old clinical psychologist, prefers the Xbox car race game FORZA HORIZON 4. Kelley says: "It's got cars that I currently own and cars that I owned as a teen ... I can drive my own car in the game."

It doesn't appear oldsters gravitate towards massive online RPG games, preferring instead interactive games and puzzle games. The intrusion of older Americans into the gaming market suggests new technology paths for the industry, for example adding voice and other controls to allow the elderly to keep up with games, even when they're not very nimble any more.

* As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("Tag, You're It!" by Ben Morse, 24 January 2020), everyone remembers playing "tag" as children. As it turns out, there's a global competitive league for playing Tag as well.

"Chase Tag", as the game is called, was created by brothers Christian and Damien Devaux in 2011. It is only faintly like children's "tag", being played in a 12 x 12 meter (40 x 40 foot) "quad" filled with barriers. It's like cat & mouse with break-neck gymnastics, demanding a high level of stamina.

There are variations on gameplay, the most popular being "Chase Off". Two teams engage in a set number, 10 to 16, of 20-second chases between a "Chaser" and an "Evader". The Evader wins if the Chaser can't catch him, the Evader's team being given a point, otherwise the Chaser gets the point. The team with the most points at the end wins. The World Tag League has held four grand championships. Competition tag is only for the hard-core, but the playing quad can be detuned for any level of capability.

* I had long been thinking of buying a new car in 2020, and in December I got to thinking I should just go ahead and do it. I bought a Honda Fit -- better known as a "Jazz" outside the USA, I prefer that name -- on the last day of the year. I took delivery a week later, and spent January getting it kitted up and legal.

My old 2007 Toyota Yaris was an excellent machine -- it was in good shape, I sold it cash to a friend -- but it was bare-bones, no bells and whistles. Since this is likely to be my last car, since I'll be too old to drive by the time it needs replacing, so I splurged and got the high-end Jazz EX model.

The new car has turned out to be a bit of a learning experience. The Jazz EX has an automatic continuously-variable transmission (CVT); the other three cars I've owned were all manuals, so that took a little bit of getting used to. I've stopped pounding on the clutch that isn't there, but I still am inclined to try to shift gears I don't have.

More confusing was the keyless entry scheme, using a wireless fob; not having to stick a key into the ignition to turn the car on was something very new, and I found it hard to know if the car was honestly locked when I walked away from it. What really puzzled me was that the hatchback will always open if I have a fob on me. Eventually, I figured out that when I walk off with the key fob on me, the car locks automatically; I try to open it with the key fob on me, the car opens automatically -- or at least, after I pull on the handle twice. "Now I get it."

Some minor puzzle of the auto-locking scheme did puzzle me more. When I walked up to the car, I could see a red light flash on the dashboard; I finally figured out the car was acknowledging that it spotted the fob. Another trick was that if I walked off from the car in my garage, I would get a rapid set of chirps from the car. It turned out that meant the auto-locking system was confused, it appears by my proximity to the car. No problem, one just uses the fob to lock the car up manually.

A lot of the gadgetry is neither here nor there, for example pushbutton windows, including the pushbutton sun roof. It is nice to have many of the controls attached to the steering wheel -- audio system controls on my left hand, cruise control on my right, plus menu buttons to traverse through the dashboard display. I've taken to cycling through the menus when I'm waiting on a stop light, so I can embed the menu system in my brainware.

The audio system has plenty of features, such as satellite radio reception, but all I want is to listen to tunes off a USB drive. One weird feature is the paddle shifters on the steering wheel. I didn't know what they were for, so I poked around online; it turns out they allow the driver to adjust the CVT settings. Nobody can really figure out a good reason to do that, so the paddle shifters are just a silly gimmick.

The rear back-up camera is nice, as is the right-mirror camera, which is activated when I indicate a right turn to give me a view into the car's blind spot. The cruise control is very nice; I'd used cruise control on rental cars before, but I had thought it was really only useful for long-range driving. On the contrary, it's useful in driving around town: if I'm on an arterial, I use the accelerator to get up to speed, and set cruise control to the posted speed limit. No point in setting it to any other speed; now I maintain the speed limit with robotic precision, and never ride the accelerator pedal. Oddly, when using cruise control, I feel like I'm driving more slowly.

I have yet to much notice the more sophisticated driving aids: lane-keeping, automatic spacing, and collision avoidance. I did have the collision-avoidance system warn me when I was following a van a bit too close the other day. It does seem to be touchy when making a left turn against oncoming traffic.

One other nice little feature is the "eco" button, which conserves fuel by damping out the throttle response and other little tricks. I'm not very concerned with power; the car purrs along nicely with the eco button on, so I leave it on. The shifter has a "sport" setting for higher acceleration, but I suspect I will never use it.

The car has a well-thought-out seating scheme. I can lay down the rear seats for something like a flatbed in the rear, or I can keep them up, and tilt up the seat cushions to store things in front of them. I can tilt the front seats all the way back. I keep one rear seat down, using the space for a big plastic toolbox, with two wheels on one end and a pull-out handle on the other. I use it to store jumper cables, tire chains, and other emergency kit. I was thinking the lay-flat seats produced a nice flatbed, but not quite, there being obstructions; it wasn't so easy to roll out the toolbox, until I put a large doormat under it.

I had to get new chains -- they're cables, actually, with metal coil windings. The car manual told me true tire chains wouldn't fit; true enough, when I put on the new chains, the clearance between tire and fender was so tight that I had to take off my watch to fit my hand in. Incidentally, having obtained the chains, I soon tried them on, since the middle of a snowstorm is not the time to learn how to put them on, much less find they're broken or don't fit. I may never use them. I never used the chains for my Yaris.

The car is black; it's what they had, I'm good with it, but it's not perfectly my style. I named the car "Kurokoneko", Japanese for "Black Kitten". I won't take it out on the open road until May, when I go down from here in Loveland, Colorado, to Baylor University in Waco, Texas, for my nephew's graduation. I only drive errands around town twice a week, so I may not even refuel it before then. I have yet to become really fond of the car, but I'm sure I will in time. By all appearances, it's the best car I've ever owned.

* After buying my new Honda, somewhat to my surprise -- though it shouldn't have been -- I started to get a litter of spam in my postal box, for example trying to sell me an extended warranty. Extended warranties are nonsense in the first place, just overpriced insurance; it is hard to understand why anyone would think to get an extended warranty from fly-by-night operations. They push a number of different scams. I'm not working too hard to figure out what they are, I just toss the mails now.

[*] NEWS FOR MARCH 2020

* The overwhelming news for March was the global spread of the "novel coronavirus" COVID-19, with tens of thousands being infected all over the world, thousands being killed. The proportion of those who die is actually small; four out of five infected will not be severely or even noticeably ill, and it mostly kills the elderly and those in otherwise marginal health. It's still ghastly; it's compared to influenza A, but it's more contagious and hits harder. Dr. Anthony Fauci, boss of the US National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease -- who has become America's hero of the pandemic, providing calm and credible public counsel -- says it is close to a "worst case" for a pandemic,

There has been some light in the darkness. There have been scenes from hard-hit Italy and Spain demonstrating public spirit, for example a video of Spaniards in Grenada standing at the windows and balconies of their apartments, applauding and cheering public-health workers like they'd just won the World Cup. Another viral video involved Hollywood stars collaborating in singing John Lennon's IMAGINE, which is becoming an anthem for the pandemic. Aquariums and zoos generated videos of animals let out of their enclosures to explore their habitat buildings; one video of two little big-eared fennec foxes playing hide-&-seek through the hallways of their home at the Chattanooga Zoo was particularly endearing.

There have also been some flashes of humor, if of a dark sort. Inspector Rajesh Babu -- a traffic cop in Chennai, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu -- had a local artist fashion a "corona helmet", covered with ghastly protrusions. It looks like something out of a cheap old sci-fi horror flic, but Babu says it's effective: "Especially, the children react strongly after seeing this and want to be taken home." In some places in India and Pakistan, the police cane curfew-breakers, or have them do push-ups or take humiliating punitive positions.

* There's a certain need to see humor in things, to keep from dragged down by the ugly reality that the pandemic is continuing to build up steam. The Trump Administration quickly came under fire for tardy and slapdash response to the crisis. Administration officials complained that the pandemic was being weaponized against the president -- which seems true, but given the slipshod nature of Trump's presidency, both inevitable and hardly unfair. Trump persistently made of statements to downplay the crisis; he wasn't convincing, nor did he give the impression that the White House took the pandemic as seriously as it deserved to be.

Trump delivered an address to the nation on 10 March. The pre-announcement of the address suggested the Trump Administration was finally taking COVID-19 seriously; instead, Trump blamed the pandemic on foreigners, and said he was cutting off all flights from Europe. The EU howled; US government officials quickly clarified that the travel ban wasn't as peremptory as Trump made it out to be, but the damage had been done. The address was a disaster. Journalist Eric Black wrote:

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One Rod Dreher, writing for THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE website, was even more scathing:

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To be sure, Trump obviously is worried about the pandemic, since it's driving the world into a recession; the stock markets have dramatically. Trump's only real ace in the hole for re-election is the healthy economy, and once he loses that, he's got little to fall back on. He's had an uptick in approval in the face of the pandemic, but it's clearly just due to the tendency of presidential approval to rise in the face of a crisis. Pollster wonks attributed the raised approval level to non-voters, who don't follow the news and aren't paying real attention to what's going on. It won't last. Trump's approval ratings are effectively invariant: about 45% approval, 55% approval, if the indifferent few are ignored.

An emergency economic bill was quickly passed; there was a dispute over what it would include, but it appears the Democrats generally got their way. It was followed by a much more comprehensive, $2 trillion USD bill, passed with bipartisan support late in the month, leading to a sharp rally in the stock market. Alas, more bad news sent the markets back down again.

The nation's focus ended up on Dr. Fauci, some calling him a "comfort blanket" for the USA. It is a peculiar sort of comfort, since though he's been perfectly level-headed, he doesn't hesitate to hand out bad news when it seems due, saying that we could easily lose 100,000 to 200,000 Americans -- and always corrects Trump when he says silly things. New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has been another public hero, as he struggled to cope with the pandemic running out of control in his state. [ED: Cuomo would not look so shiny a year later.]

Trump would occasionally make sensible statements, then follow them with absurdities. On 26 March, Trump called into the show of Fox News talking head Sean Hannity. It was more of the same rubbish, with Trump in particular complaining about governors who were screaming for help from the Federal government -- flatly calling Andrew Cuomo's call for 30,000 ventilator systems "unbelievable".

He also defended calling the COVID-19 the "Chinese virus", saying that "everyone's picked up on the term." The reality that it's only the Trump Administration, and Trump supporters, who play the China card, in an attempt to deflect blame onto China. The pandemic is clearly going to have a big effect on the election in November. The fact that we don't know what kind of an effect is worrisome, but it's hard to believe the changed landscape will be to Trump's advantage. He ends up doing what Dr. Fauci tells him to do -- Fauci tactfully praises him for it -- but keeps on shooting off his mouth.

* It did look as the first three Democratic primaries unfolded that Trump was getting a boost, in that radical Bernie Sanders was taking the lead. Trump has long tried to pretend that radicals have taken over the Democratic Party; if Sanders got the nomination, Trump would be proven right. That would inevitably mean Trump's re-election, since Sanders would lose the pivotal swing states -- Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Radicalism does not fly well in such places.

Joe Biden, who had been favorited early on, was badly lagging in all respects -- being seen as lacking in energy and muddled. Biden was trounced in Nevada on 22 February; on 29 February, however, he turned the tables on Sanders, crushing him in South Carolina -- and on 3 March, Super Tuesday, he fought him out in 14 states, getting a clear edge. The result was that the other candidates -- Elizabeth Warren, Mike Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar -- all dropped out.

The dropouts were generally bad news for Sanders, since Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar quickly endorsed Joe Biden, implying that he would get their delegates, and increasing their edge. Worse for Sanders, Biden got Bloomberg's financial backing, who pledged his support. Bloomberg had spent vast sums for his own campaign, but only amounting to 1% of his net asset value; there's obviously much more where that came from. One suspects Bloomberg will get a seat in a Biden Administration -- commerce secretary might be a good fit. [ED: He didn't.]

Six states had their primaries on the 10th, with Sanders faring badly again. Biden then politely asked Sanders to join forces with him to fight Trump; Sanders predictably said he would continue his campaign. Biden likely expected that, knowing that Sanders would then be in the position of continuing his insurgency against the Democratic Party, instead of taking on Trump. Biden couldn't lose that exchange.

Biden's turnaround was remarkable. The South Carolina win clearly revitalized him; he became confident, and stayed on message. However, another big factor was that he called in favors, getting endorsements from many prominent Democratic political figures. Biden's spent decades in Congress, being both liked and respected, giving him a deep source of support. Sanders has spent as much time in Congress, but he is inclined to regard his colleagues as agents of the "corrupt political system", and so he is neither much liked nor respected.

Another big boost to Joe Biden was Sanders' Nevada win, which made a Sanders nomination seem frighteningly possible -- frightening because nobody with sense could believe he could beat Trump. That was a big drive behind the political endorsements, with members of Congress from swing states worrying, with good reason, that Sanders would drag down their own prospects for re-election were he to be nominated, allowing Republicans to re-take their seats.

Joe Biden hasn't got the nomination in the bag yet, and the pandemic has thrown the primary campaign into limbo. Biden is holed up in his basement, working through social media; states that have yet to perform primaries have been delaying them, with a push towards setting up the primaries for exclusively voting by mail. Nonetheless, there seems little reason to doubt Biden will get the nomination. In a debate with Sanders on 15 March -- in which Biden was clearly ascendant, while Sanders continued to sink -- Biden committed to picking a woman as a running mate. He later said that he had a list of about a dozen candidates, but couldn't say anything in specific.

Sanders has refused to give up his campaign, challenging Biden to another debate, which Biden shrugged off. It would be just a rehash of the 15 March debate, and would amount to no more than Sanders trying to pump up his flagging campaign. There's nothing in it for Joe Biden; he's best off simply ignoring Sanders. In any case, the Democratic primary has become a sideshow for the moment, overshadowed by the world crisis. It won't remain a sideshow indefinitely.

* As discussed in an article from THEVERGE.com ("UPS Has Been Quietly Delivering Cargo Using Self-Driving Trucks" By Sean O'Kane, 15 August 2019), there's been a lot of hype about robot vehicles in the past few years, with the general perception now that the concept has been oversold. So goes the "hype cycle": initial hype, then disappointment ... with low-key refinement continuing, ultimately leading to establishment and acceptance.

As an example of the low-key refinement of robot vehicles, United Parcel Service has had autonomous trucking startup TuSimple hauling cargo for UPS between Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, since May 2019. UPS has announced a partnership with TuSimple and has taken a minority stake in the robotruck firm. This exercise follows an earlier hookup between the US Postal Service and TuSimple, with TuSimple trucks hauling mail from Phoenix to Dallas, Texas. That experiment has ended, but the USPS and TuSimple are in talks about future collaborations.

TuSimple, which was founded in 2015, uses Navistar trucks kitted up with the startup's self-driving tech. Each truck has nine cameras and two lidar sensors, the focus being on a vision-based autonomous driving system -- similar to that which Tesla uses in its cars. TuSimple is backed by Nvidia and Chinese technology company Sina, with headquarters both in San Diego, California, and in Beijing.

TuSimple has educated UPS on the "requirements for Level 4 Autonomous trucking in its network" -- the "Level 4" referring to the Society of Automotive Engineers' scale for self-driving vehicles, meaning full autonomy that's locked into a designated geographic location. As a pilot program, the trucks still must have a safety driver and an engineer on board.

TuSimple is only one of a number of startups and established companies working robotrucks, including Kodiak, Einride, Waymo, and Daimler. Uber gave up, after one of its self-driving SUVs killed a pedestrian. TuSimple, however, is one of the few hauling actual commercial cargo, in a limited capacity on just a few routes.

The partnership with TuSimple represents UPS's determination to future-proof its business, which has a challenge from Amazon, which is determined to build its own delivery infrastructure. To keep up with Amazon, UPS is working on a drone delivery service, and it has electric trucks in the works. Rival FedEx recently announced that it didn't renew its contract with Amazon, though UPS is still working with the tech conglomerate for now.

* As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("Cremation Has Replaced Traditional Burials" by Sandee LaMottem 23 January 2020), burials are an American tradition -- but cremation became the top choice in 2015, and continues to grow. According to the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA), more than half of all Americans who die in 2020 will be cremated, and NFDA predicts that the ratio will approach 80% by 2040.

Fading of religious restrictions is a factor, but cost is a big issue. In 2016, the cost of a funeral was $8,000 USD, and it continues to grow. Even if people have plenty of money, they don't see any point to going to considerable expense after they're dead. The average cost of a cremation in 2016 was $2,400 USD. Mike Nicodemus, licensed funeral director and vice president of cremation services for the NFDA, says:

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People are becoming increasingly imaginative in handling the ashes:

• Tattoo artists will mix ashes with ink, and tattoo memorials on a spouse or offspring's skin.
  
  
• The ash can be mixed with paint, and turned into a portrait.
  
  
• Ash can be stored in a small container or glassified, to be used as a pendant.

Other options include integrating the ash with fireworks; sequestering it in a stuffed toy; mixed with concrete in an artificial reef; or even blasted into orbit. Most of the time, however, people just want their ashes scattered in some pleasant place.

* My sentiments exactly. I have instructed my niece and nephew -- my heirs -- to handle my funeral as cheaply as possible. It's not like it's going to concern me. Speaking of my niece and nephew, I communicate with them regularly, and much of that involves money ... from me to them, it's a mercenary sort of relationship. I like it that way. It can involve communications of vital information that has to be kept secret, and that means encrypted communications.

I searched around online and found out about the "Signal" app from the Signal Foundation, an open-source group. It's free, and I downloaded it to my two Android phones. It's easy to use, it's just a messenger app, I just plug in a name or a phone number and write a message. The message ends up in the Signal app on the remote end; if there isn't a Signal app on the remote end, I believe I get an error message back. I have the option of sending an invitation to install Signal, along with a link to download the app. It is possible to send text messages with Signal, but it seems like a bad idea, leading to possible confusion over whether a message that's sent is encrypted or not. I leave that setting OFF.

My only problem was trying to figure out how to set up a phone number; I didn't see an option for it in Signal. I finally realized, duh, that I should use the Contacts app on the phone. Samsung has its own Contacts app, but for consistency I downloaded the Google Contacts app, which complements the Google Contacts webpage I use on my PC. That figured out, I ran into another problem, in that my nephew had changed his phone number -- but when I updated his contact information, the old phone number was still listed,

After getting a bit flustered in searching for a way to delete it, I finally decided to make a new Contacts entry with a dummy name, fill out my nephew's information in the new entry, delete his old entry, and change the dummy name to the proper one. Clumsy, but it worked. One fun thing was that I had both smartphones running the Contacts app at the same time, just to see how the one I wasn't adjusting reacted. It magically followed right along with the one I was adjusting.

I found out there was a Signal app for Windows, too, and downloaded it. I haven't played with it yet, but it should be straightforward -- and I'd certainly prefer to use a proper keyboard, instead of punching at a smartphone screen.

* My local McDonald's began a renovation about a month ago; I could still get a burger, but I had to use the drive-through. That annoyed me, I hate to just sit in my car, using up fuel on idle and going nowhere. Fortunately, that didn't last long, with the remodel done in about four weeks. When I went up to the updated building, I thought to myself: "Touchscreen ordering!" Yep, just as I expected. Touchscreen ordering in fast-food joints is nothing all that new, but it's not something I'm used to.

I really like it, my only difficulty being figuring out the protocol -- which wasn't a big problem, it just took a little fumbling. For a time, I paid cash to a worker after ordering, but that was clumsy, and I decided to start paying with a charge card at the kiosk. Normally, I don't like to charge petty expenses because I have to log them against my checking account, but I don't go to McDonald's all that often, and it's less difficulty overall than paying at the counter.

The kiosks also support mobile money, so I got to thinking about using Google Pay instead of a charge card. When I found out that Google Pay could transfer funds from Paypal, I was really intrigued: I could load up my Paypal account with a few hundred dollars periodically, and perform petty charges against it, without much worry about balancing it.

Alas, getting Google Pay to work on my smartphones was not trivial. That's what happens when I do something new and unfamiliar, going from one petty obstacle to the next. One was that my older smartphone doesn't have a near-field communications interface -- okay, duh again, it won't work. More of a problem was validating my charge card and Paypal, which was troublesome. I'm not done yet, but I'm over the worst. At least I think I am. [ED: I wasn't.]