* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with monthly entries.
* Of course, the big news continues to be of the COVID-19 pandemic, the biggest global crisis since World War 2. At last count, there were over 3 million diagnosed cases and over 200,000 deaths, with 60,000 in the USA. The coronavirus has been compared to the flu, but it's more contagious -- if not as contagious as measles -- and it is at least twice as deadly, or even an order of magnitude deadlier. The USA has become an epicenter of the pandemic, with New York City being very badly hit.
The world remains largely in lockdown, and it seems to be proving effective, with the death rate having peaked and now in decline -- though still at a high level. The pandemic and lockdown have resulted in massive economic dislocation. We're facing a prolonged recession or a depression.
The Trump Administration has come under fire for its handling of the crisis. Yes, the right things are generally being done, but nothing happens in the White House that suggests an organization that's on top of events, and President Donald Trump inspires little public confidence -- often changing direction, doing all he can to deflect blame onto others, and acting capriciously. He took to conducting "public briefings" that amounted to campaign rallies where he peddled misinformation and attacked the news media.
In parallel, Trump has also been targeting the Federal inspector-general system, in particular firing the IG responsible for the massive government COVID-19 public aid program. When asked how oversight would be performed, he replied: "I'm the oversight." -- which was exactly the wrong answer. It is difficult to believe that his actions do much to inspire a frightened public. His approval ratings blipped up for a time after the crisis started, a phenomenon known as "rally around the president" -- but have since fallen back to their static normal. Ignoring the 5% or so who don't care, his approval is about +45% / -55%, and it varies little over time. Those who like him aren't changing their minds; those who don't like him aren't changing their minds either.
Trump has been inconsistently pushing to relax the lockdown, then warning that it shouldn't be relaxed too soon. Clearly, Trump knows that he has little chance of re-election in November if things are still bad. The central question of a US presidential election is: Are you better off than you were four years ago? If the answer is NO, the party in power is in big trouble. Things are likely to be looking up by then, but they are not going to be remotely back to normal. They won't get back to normal until we have everyone vaccinated, and that may not be until well into 2021 at the very earliest, and possibly more like well into 2022.
* The pressure seems to be getting to Trump. In mid-month, small groups protesting the lockdown began to demonstrate in various states. In response, Trump tweeted: LIBERATE [various states]! That was clearly an encouragement of the protests; when challenged, Trump complained about Virginia's gun control laws, saying the state government was trying to take away everyone's guns. It is becoming unpleasantly possible that Trump will promote an armed insurrection if he loses in November. He's so mentally incoherent he won't understand or care what he's doing.
The quarantine protests are baffling. British comedian John Oliver, host of the late-night LAST WEEK TONIGHT show, ran a segment on the "Resistance", and showed that it was a product of Right-wing media (RWM), most significantly but not exclusively Fox News. COVID-19, of course, is an overwhelming emergency that would strain even the most competent government, and the Trump Administration is not noted for its competence. Rather than making Trump look bad, the RWM has sought to use COVID-19 to make the Democrats look bad, by relying on sets of bogus arguments:
Oliver is a professional hothead, but his bottom line is hard to argue with: that Fox News is selling lunacy to make money. Fox News is on quarantine, and not trying to resist it -- while encouraging its audience to do so. They don't care that the result may be thousands of unnecessary deaths. It is so monstrous that it is hard to believe, all the more so because Trump listens to the RWM and accepts what they tell him. I can only hope that, after the fall of Trump, Fox News and the other RWM talking heads will be called to answer for their actions by Congress.
* Not incidentally, the pandemic has complicated the election process, leading to a push to voting by mail. This is perfectly normal in places like Colorado or Washington State, and it's never been particularly problematic. However, there was a primary vote in Wisconsin early in the month; the governor had tried to delay it and introduce a mail vote, but the Republican-controlled state assembly refused to allow it. When the governor tried to do it by executive order, the state supreme court shot him down -- and appallingly, SCOTUS let it the state court decision stand. That was not the worst judgement SCOTUS has ever made, but it definitely resides in the hall of shame.
Wisconsans bit the bullet and voted anyway, with long spaced-out lines and drive-through voting. It appears the state legislature was trying to protect a state supreme court seat, which they lost anyway; one suspects that the betrayal of the voters will cost the Republicans in November. Trump has been vocal in denouncing voting by mail, claiming without evidence that it is "corrupt". When a reporter said he had voted by mail in Florida and asked how he could justify that, Trump simply replied: "Because I'm allowed to." Words fail me.
In reality, voting by mail is even-handed, not giving an advantage to either side. There was a case of election fraud relative to absentee ballots in North Carolina in 2018. Inconveniently for the Republicans, they owned it. One Leslie McCrae Dowless ended up being indicted on felony charges; it doesn't seem the case has gone to trial yet.
* In any case, the Democrats are solidly lining up behind Joe Biden as their presidential candidate. His last rival for the nomination, Bernie Sanders, threw in the towel and endorsed him, with Liz Warren chiming in a few days later. With all obstacles gone, Barack Obama promptly stepped forward and endorsed his former VP -- ending the endorsement with an earnest plea to the voters:
QUOTE:
Our country's future hangs on this election. And it won't be easy. The other side has a massive war chest. The other side has a propaganda network with little regard for the truth.
On the other hand, pandemics have a way of cutting through a lot of noise and spin to remind us of what is real, and what is important. This crisis has reminded us that government matters. It's reminded us that good government matters. That facts and science matter. That the rule of law matters. That having leaders who are informed, and honest, and seek to bring people together rather than drive them apart -- those kind of leaders matter.
In other words, elections matter. Right now, we need Americans of goodwill to unite in a great awakening against a politics that too often has been characterized by corruption, carelessness, self-dealing, disinformation, ignorance, and just plain meanness. And to change that, we need Americans of all political stripes to get involved in our politics and our public life like never before.
END_QUOTE
Although Bernie Sanders' supporters have long tended to snipe at Biden and Moderate Democrats in general, Bernie has been pushing back, telling them that a failure to support Biden would be, given Trump as the alternative, "irresponsible". Most of his supporters are likely to fall in line -- however grudgingly. Joe Biden has promised Bernie a role in his administration, but it's hard to figure out one to which he is particularly well-suited. No worries, really; as Biden knows, Bernie isn't a team player, and is unlikely to want to be on the Biden team. Bernie will prefer to go back to Congress.
That out of the way, the primary focus of the Biden campaign is to select a VP candidate, who will have to be a woman. There's a push on Biden to select a black woman; on being asked if Michelle Obama could fit the bill, he gave an enthusiastic YES. However, as Biden also knows, Michelle Obama has made it clear she is not interested in being vice president, or president.
Just as COVID-19 is America's biggest national crisis since WW2, the election is the decision point in America's biggest political crisis since the Civil War. It is not much consolation that in neither case is the crisis close to as bad as its predecessor. Exactly what happens in or after the election, no one knows. We'll just have to see when we get there.
* In late March a pandemic-modeling group at University College London released the results of a simulation that showed over 40 million people would have died had governments not taken social-distancing measures. The model that if governments implement these measures when fatalities reach 2 per week for each million of population, the total deaths will be a little less than 2 million. If they wait until it's 16 per week, the total deaths will be over 10 million.
There's been much discussion of wearing masks, which have become mandatory in some countries. There is considerable debate over whether they do any good, and concerns that mask production should be reserved for healthcare workers, who need them more and can use them properly. The professionals say that masks won't do much to prevent the public from picking up COVID-19, but they could do something to prevent somebody who's infected from passing it on.
One KK Cheng, a public health expert at the University of Birmingham in the UK, is in favor of face masks, with some qualifications. Cheng says: "Just imagine you're traveling in the New York [City] subway on a busy morning. If everyone wears a mask, I'm sure that it would reduce the transmission. Don't ask me to show you a clinical trial that it works."
* As discussed in an article from BLOOMBERG.com ("Health Scares Slow the Rollout of 5G Cell Towers in Europe" by Thomas Seal & Albertina Torsoli, 14 January 2020), there's been a lot of buzz over the past few years about the introduction of fast 5th-generation ("5G") cellphone technology -- one or two orders of magnitude faster than current cellphone tech. Alas, the rollout of 5G tech has run into an obstacle: people are scared of it, worried that it will cause cancers or other maladies.
Swiss communications provider Sunrise Communications AG has found setting up a 5G network in Switzerland troublesome, since many locales, including Geneva, have objected to setting up 5G towers. Yes, 5G does involve more broadcast power, but it still doesn't generate enough energy to do any real harm to the human body. Some experiments have shown high levels of electromagnetic radiation can cause cancers in rats -- but the levels are much higher than those generated by 5G towers, and regulatory authorities like the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) have been unimpressed.
The International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, which works with the World Health Organization on research and policy, agrees with the FDA. Commission Chairman Eric van Rongen, a radiobiologist, says: "There's no reason to be concerned" about the potential for 5G to raise the risk of cancer or other ailments.
There hasn't been much trouble over the matter in the USA so far, partly because the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is headed by Ajit Pai, who toes the Trump Administration line on de-regulation. That attitude may lead to trouble over the longer run, but for now resistance in the USA is scattered and inconsequential. Not so in Europe; the resistance varies from place to place, but it can be found from Bristol to Berlin.
Europe's biggest carrier, Deutsche Telekom AG, has had to modify its 5G program in areas where there's been pushback. In 2019, residents of the small Bavarian district of Graswang protested the company's plans to build a mast near their homes, in part because of health risks. Deutsche Telekom agreed to build the tower at a site that's farther away. In England, local governments including that of Glastonbury, are threatening to deny mast applications on health grounds, forcing providers to work around them.
Olat Swantee, previously CEO of Sunrise, says Swiss officials could help wireless carriers by providing reassurance to citizens -- but they haven't, so far. Swantee would like them to say: "This is fake news. Telecoms are applying normal laws. Birds are not falling from the sky because of 5G."
* Of course, in the age of COVID-19, nobody's paying much attention to 5G, for the moment. The pandemic is the biggest US national crisis since 9-11 -- indeed, it's the biggest US national crisis since Pearl Harbor.
As far as my personal life goes, it's not so different from before. I normally spend most of my time at home writing, and that's what I'm doing now. COVID-19 has yet to ravage Loveland, Colorado, though it could happen any day. I guesstimate my changes of getting the disease as about 1 in 3, not great odds; and my chances of survival if I do, about 9 in 10 -- not great odds either, in consideration of the downside.
Loveland is in lockdown. I can get a hamburger at McDonald's, but only via the drive-through; the local library is not only closed, I can't even return books through the drop slot. In my last two trips to the supermarket, the shelves were increasingly barren. I should hope they start to fill back up over the next few weeks, though given the interruptions in transport and labor, there are likely to be shortages and price hikes. I wash my hands before I eat, and when I return from an outing, singing the "Looney Toons Theme" to keep time. At least, I try to, I keep forgetting to, but I'm getting better at remembering. Fortunately, Walmart is not running low on Ivory liquid soap in the large-size squirt bottle -- it's my favorite, a good balance between quality and cost.
The cops haven't hassled me for my morning walk yet, though I consider it possible they may, even though I'm almost the only person walking the streets in the dark of the morning. I actually do walk in the streets when I can, there being less there to trip over in the dark. Nobody's expecting things to let up until May at earliest. Infections and deaths continue to rise for the time being.
Nonetheless, there's some humor in the matter, at least to help keep up our spirits. The online satirical website THE ONION scored a hit, they don't always, with an article titled: "Violently Bored Americans Begin Looting Puzzle Stores" -- featuring people hauling off shopping carts loaded high with jigsaw puzzles. In response to reader comments about getting jigsaw puzzles, I replied I had an app that I could use to convert wallpaper images into jigsaw puzzles, the app allowing me to select the number of pieces and their elaboration. That seemed to get some interest; I told people numbers of such apps can be found cheap in any appstore, just check the reviews.
* I mentioned last month that, after making purchases with the new touchscreen system at a local McDonald's, I was interested in using mobile money. That ended up being a protracted and troublesome exercise.
Mobile money, in itself, turned out to be a dead end. The problem is that I don't have a phone subscription -- I don't have any phone service but a free Google Voice number, which works through a web page. If I tried I try to set up a credit card under Google Pay, it would balk at the Google Voice number. That failing, I found out that Google Pay can use Paypal. That's what I really wanted; all I needed was a wallet account for running up petty expenses, and not have to bother to balance my account against them.
Alas, that ran into the same obstacle: a Google Voice number doesn't work. OK, I decided, mobile money is a dead end for me. That was really a shrug; a debit card is about as convenient, maybe more so. How about a Paypal debit card, then? On investigation, I found that Paypal does offer debit cards. That got my hopes up, only to have them dashed: Only for business accounts.
Next idea: aren't there online-only banks that offer debit cards? I didn't know for sure, but I poked around and found Chime. It seemed perfect, targeted at younger clients who made small debit-card purchases. Alas, on trying to set up a Chime account -- and at two other online banks -- my applications were rejected. I wasn't told why, but I had a fair idea it was the Google Voice number. Since it's a disposable number, it tends to imply: scam.
Well then, why not an online account at a brick-&-mortar bank? After some searching, I found that Bank of Colorado (BOC) offers a free checking account with a debit card. I got online to set it up, and was moving along well -- until they asked me for a copy of my Social Security card. I couldn't find it; I think that I had my folks put it in their safe-deposit box, and never retrieved it.
I got online to get a copy of the card from the Social Security Administration, then realized I had an outdated email address logged with them. Since they need email to do validations, I had to update the email. The reply was that they would slow-mail me a security code to allow me to do it. Well OK, but that left me hanging with BOC. I asked if they'd take a Medicare card; they said NO, but added: "Why not just go to a local branch bank and get an account?"
Well, DUH. I looked up branch locations in Loveland, Colorado, and realized there was a branch office across the street from the McDonald's. DUH again, I knew it was there. Anyway, I went in and, after an amiable chat with a staffer, got an account, with a pretty cobalt-blue Colorado Rockies debit card. Bank of Colorado, it turns out, is the official bank of the Colorado Rockies baseball team.
Next issue was transferring money from my normal bank account to the BOC account, which took about a week. My regular bank had to validate the hookup to the BOC account, by depositing and then withdrawing two petty sums, then asking me what they were. That took about three business days; then I transferred $3,000 USD to the account, which also took about three days. That was a reasonable wait, though I was getting impatient. Anyway, now I have a wallet account -- and it turns out, at precisely the right time. Until we come out of quarantine lockdown, I'm not handling cash unless I have to.
* As a side effect of this petty adventure, I got insecure about my Google Voice phone number -- worrying that if I didn't have a backup phone number, I might lose it some day. I decided to track down another free internet phone number, with exploration leading me to the "TextFree" app.
TextFree -- previously "Pinger" -- is an ad-supported smartphone app that comes with a free internet phone number. It offers unlimited texting, and comes with 60 free call minutes; I can buy more minutes, or acquire a minute by watching an ad video. The only trick is that they will recycle the number if I don't send out a text for a month. No problem, twice a month I send a text from TextFree to Google Voice, and then the reverse. I'll also watch an ad video on TextFree to get a free call minute. Since I do all my calling on Google Voice, I don't make any voice calls on TextFree, but it's fun to pile up call minutes, and the vendor should get a bit of revenue from me anyway. [ED: I didn't actually make any use of TextFree, and forgot about it.]
Along with this exercise, I finally got Google Voice working on my smartphone. I normally use it on my desktop, plugging in a USB phone handset to make calls. I bought a cheap bluetooth headset with an earphone and lip mike to use on the smartphone -- I find talking into a smartphone awkward -- and tinkered with the Android Google Voice app a bit. I'd had some problems getting it to work, but it was just my misunderstanding; once I figured out what to do, it was trivial. In short, now I have my wallet account and phone communications all straight, at least for the time being.
BACK_TO_TOP* It appears that time is stuck in a loop in 2020. The world remains mired in a COVID-19-driven lockdown, while the USA, under President Donald Trump, lurches towards an election in November.
Resistance against the COVID-19 lockdown has been strong in the USA, with loud objections, armed protests, some deranged acts of violence, and vandalism of government buildings. The lockdown resistance rests on shaky foundations; it's based on minimizing the impact of the virus, maximizing the economic problems of the lockdown, then claiming that the USA ought to simply end the lockdown and move on. That's preposterous; the virus, left unchecked, would bring the economy to its knees anyway. We're stuck with it. Open up movie theaters? What for? People are watching Netflix, and too few will be willing to go to the movies to make theaters much of a paying proposition.
As far as the November election goes, the simplest thing to be said is that things are not looking good for Donald Trump. One Matthew Dowd wrote on Twitter:
QUOTE:
Exactly what can the incumbent President run on? He can't run on the economy. He can't run on healthcare. He can't run as a moral leader. He can't run on bringing the country together. He can't run on leaders he put in power. He can't run on justice. Exactly what can he run on?
END_QUOTE
The general reply was: "Bigotry and hate." Even that doesn't seem to be working well any longer; increasing numbers of Twitter posters who say they voted for Trump in 2016 say there's no way they'll do it in 2020.
Lincoln once said of a general that had suffered a defeat, and was no longer functioning: "He's acting like a duck that's been hit on the head." Trump barely pretends to take the pandemic seriously, encourages resistance, and attempts to shift blame to everyone else -- notably China, which is part of the basis of his re-election strategy. Trump has been talking about China paying reparations; CNN's Fareed Zakaria suggested that would happen the day after Mexico pays for the border wall. As far as the tanked economy goes, Trump is claiming that he will lead an economic recovery better than Joe Biden will. The only people who think Trump is right in the head, are not right in the head.
* Biden is being afflicted by sexual-assault claims made by an ex-staffer named Tara Reade, but they're not causing him much trouble. Reade has no credible evidence to back up her claims, she's changed her story on a regular basis, and nobody else has made such claims about Biden. Yes, he has a reputation for being a "huggy" person -- but he's been read the riot act on that, and has made amends.
Reade appears to be backed by sorehead Bernie Sanders fans, who believe that if they can derail Biden, Bernie will get the Democratic nomination instead. Attempting to sort through the lunacy of that idea is not a useful exercise; enough to say that the Reade backers on the Left are few in number, with Reade's story being amplified by Trump backers. Nobody else believes Reade. Biden came out and said that she had a right to be heard, and that what she said was not true.
In response to continued agitation over the matter, Biden said that those who believe Tara Reade should not vote for him. That dismissed the matter: he knows perfectly well that everyone backing Reade wouldn't vote for him in any case. If something new comes up, maybe Reade will start causing Biden real trouble. However, if she'd had anything of substance, she would have used it by now. Reade is going nowhere.
Once Biden is formally nominated, it is likely that Reade will effectively disappear. [ED: She dropped out of sight well before that.] Nothing sticks on him; the Trump campaign plays up his famous gaffes, but Biden apologizes, everyone shrugs and moves on. We're used to them. In the meantime, Trump churns out an endless stream of trash on Twitter -- recently having gone so far as to accuse MSNBC TV host Joe Scarborough of murder.
Scarborough had once been a Member of the House; in 2001, one of his young interns had a heart attack, to fall and hit her head. There was no evidence of foul play in her death, but that didn't slow Trump down in his accusations. The husband of the dead woman wrote a heart-breaking letter to Twitter to ask the company to remove the tweets; they just flagged them instead. We're used to such things from Trump, too, but it's hardly done much to enhance his prestige that he conducts himself so badly while Americans are dying.
Biden is continuing with his virtual campaigning, and doing very well at it. It appears likely there will be at least a partly virtual convention, which sounds like a major technical challenge. [ED: It was fully virtual, and went well.] It has been pointed out that Biden's Twitter following is much smaller than Trump's -- but that's missing the fact that Barack Obama has the biggest Twitter following of all, and he retweets Biden.
By the way, Tara Reade is often pushed by Twitter posters with clearly African names, which leads to the question of: "Why do you care?" I was very puzzled for a time, but it turns out that the Kremlin has a number of troll farms in African countries, which explains a lot of things. The Afro-trolls are particularly fond of agitating black Americans, playing up the killings of blacks at police or vigilante hands.
* As per the comment above on the fadeout of cinemas: they were fading out before the pandemic, and the pandemic has all but done them in. However, drive-in movies have been making a comeback in the era of COVID-19. Back in their prime, drive-ins featured a speaker on a post that could be hung in a car window, but it appears they use short-range FM radio now. Viewers can listen using their car sound systems.
Incidentally, Android smartphones often have FM receivers, though smartphone vendors don't like to point it out, lest they divert users from audio streaming services. One can obtain apps to get to the FM radio on a smartphone; it seems wired headphones are required, since they provide the antenna. It also seems Apple doesn't support FM radio on iPhones, again because streaming services.
In any case, the pandemic has been a boon to virtualization. Some US states are no longer conducting driver's tests to give teens a driver's license, apparently delegating testing to parents. It's an experiment, driven by necessity; it will be interesting to see how it works out. In another virtualization exercise, here in Colorado recipients of SNAP food stamps can use them to buy food online. On a personal note, my nephew Graham just graduated from Baylor University in Texas; since they couldn't have a graduation ceremony, they listed all the graduating students on the stadium Jumbotron screen, and put images of them on Facebook.
In the meantime, Trump has been trying to undermine the movement by a number of states to vote by mail. He claims it encourages cheating, which is nonsense: it's been done here in Colorado -- and some other states -- since ever, without problems. It appears that Trump is trying to step on mail voting as a means of vote suppression. That's also absurd, since to the extent undermining mail voting suppresses votes, it suppresses Republican votes at least as much as Democratic votes. I doubt that he'll accomplish much more than increase the vote against him.
It would seem the real solution would be internet or email voting, but that's predicated on implementing a robust system of national ID -- both for online use and street use, one implies the other. There's a screaming need for that, since it's hard to implement virtual interactions without it. However, there's going to be a lot of resistance to the idea of national ID, and the national data system that would back it up.
One last comment on virtualization: many churches have embraced drive-in religious services, presumably using short-range FM, or virtual services. That led THE ONION, the well-known satirical website, to run an article titled: "Teleconferencing Pastor Requests Any Worshiper Currently Speaking In Tongues Go On Mute". THE ONION tends towards the crass, but that was cute.
* COVID-19 is, to no surprise, leading to a lot of public hysteria, in particular chasing after quack cures. The one that took center stage, after being boosted by Trump, was hydroxychloroquine -- a drug used to treat malaria, and also to suppress auto-immune reactions. The main push for hydroxychloroquine was from an eccentric French researcher named Didier Raoult, who published a study claiming remarkable improvements in COVID-19 patients from use of hydroxychloroquine.
The study was preposterous, covering only 20 patients; worse, it started out with 26, with 6 removed for awkward reasons, for example dying. Similar and also sketchy studies showed no improvement in patient outcomes from use of hydroxychloroquine. On top of that, Raoult is a climate-change denier who also denounces randomized double-blind medical trials. He runs a research institute that appears to be devoted to churning out papers for him to sign, while he cultivates Rightist French politicians. His bogus study was leaked to Fox News, to then make its way to Donald Trump.
It is not entirely clear that using an immune-system suppressant is a good way to treat someone with a raging viral infection. In any case, proper trials of hydroxychloroquine are underway. An antiviral drug named remdesivir appears much more promising, Dr. Anthony Fauci having put in a good word for it -- but it hasn't been properly qualified by trials, either.
Not so incidentally, Dr. Fauci was asked who should play him if SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE did a skit featuring him. He replied: "Brad Pitt, of course." And of course, SNL got Brad Pitt to do the skit, with Pitt getting in a few good shots:
QUOTE:
I'm going to be there, putting out the facts for whoever's listening. And when I hear things like: "The virus can be cured if everyone takes the Tide pod challenge!" -- I'll be there to say: "Please don't."
END_QUOTE
At the end of the skit, Pitt took off his wig and said: "To the real Dr. Fauci, thank you for your calm and your clarity in this unnerving time."
* As discussed in an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("Hypersonic Weapons Reclaim The U.S. Army's Long-Range Offense" by Steve Trimble, 18 October 2019), in the 1990s the US Army acquired the "Advanced Tactical Missile System (ATACMS)" for the "long-range precision fires (LRPF)" mission. ATACMS is based on a surface-launched, solid-fuel missile with a design range limited by a now-defunct treaty to 300 kilometers (185 miles).
The Army is rethinking the LRPF mission, with plans to field an ATACMS replacement -- the "Precision Strike Missile", with a range of up to 800 kilometers (500 miles) by the middle of the next decade -- as well as a cannon-launched projectile with a range of 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles), and a "Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW)" with an unclassified range described only as "thousands of kilometers."
This projected arsenal will allow to the Army to give up its reliance, established in the postwar period, on the US Air Force to support long-range strike. In fact, Army planners assume that improvements in adversary air defenses will effectively neutralize aircraft in defended airspaces. Brigadier General John Rafferty, the Army's LRPF commander, says:
QUOTE:
Our access really is challenged. And our aircraft have become incredibly vulnerable I think there is a realization across the joint force that surface-to-surface fires by themselves don't eliminate the A2/AD [anti-access / aerial denial] complex, but they enable the Air Force and the maritime component to penetrate and then disintegrate the A2/AD complex.
END_QUOTE
The Army envisions that, in a future conflict, "strategic fires battalions" will launch an opening salvo of LRHWs costing millions of dollars each at hardened bunkers and over-the-horizon radars, along with a barrage of projectiles priced in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each from a future "Strategic Long-Range Cannon." The emphasis would be on targeting launchers and communications centers, to pave the way for Air Force and Navy air power.
The Army launched the LRHW prototype program by selecting Huntsville, Alabama-based Dynetics to build 20 hypersonic glide bodies. The batch will be split between the LRHW; the Navy's "Intermediate-Range Conventional Prompt Strike", and the Air Force's "Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW)". All three programs are leveraging off the same bi-conic glide body. The Army and Navy weapons will both use a two-stage rocket booster, while the USAF HCSW will use a small, single-stage motor. Lockheed Martin is partnering with Dynetics to support assembly, integration and test of the common hypersonic glide body.
To date, only the Army has committed to fielding operational hypersonic weapons. Until last year, the Army planned to deploy a single LRHW in a fixed-site launcher by 2023 as a limited response to the planned deployments in 2020 of Russia's Avangard and China's DF-17 boost-glide weapons -- according to Robert Strider, deputy director of the rapid capability and critical technologies office (RCCTO). Now the Army plans to field a battery of six LRHWs and three transporter-erector launchers in four years. The schedule is dependent on flight tests and Congressional funding.
* The COVID-19 pandemic is producing literally a world of personal stories, varying in some ways from place to place, in some ways staying the same. Colorado has pushed for everyone to mask up in public; it doesn't offer much protection for oneself, but it helps to keep from contaminating others if infected.
I had some old bandanas in a box, they work as well as any other informal mask. I went to the King Soopers supermarket with a bandana first Tuesday of April, wondering how many people would be covered; it turned out to be the majority, if not the overwhelming majority. Some people are not quick to get a clue.
I was chatting with a Californian on Twitter who said he had been at a Safeway supermarket, with people social-distanced in a line, and a fellow started ranting about how foolish people were to go along with the pandemic hoax, that it was all fake news -- and then dared people to tell him if they knew anyone who had died. Two hands went up. He went quiet.
Anyway, the checkout clerks are masked now, and have plastic shields on their stations. I have to bag my own groceries, but I normally do anyway. The sales clerk -- a sweetheart, many of the customers are fond of her -- told me: "I'm sorry I can't help." I replied: "I wouldn't let you."
The store shelves are slowly starting to recover. Toilet paper is still scarce, but at least the store has breakfast cereal. I could understand the run on TP, but I was puzzled as to why there was a run on breakfast cereal. Anyway, I was running low on Sugar Crisp ... they call it Golden Crisp these days to duck the sugar bullet, nobody is fooled. The shortages persist. Meat looks like it will be a real problem -- that almost certainly being good news for makers of plant-based meats. It's an ill wind that blows no good.
Incidentally, in 1973 late-night TV host Johnny Carson heard a story that there might be a shortage of toilet paper, and told his TV audience: "There's a shortage of toilet paper." BOOM! It disappeared off the store shelves all over the USA.
And then, there's The Howl: at 8 PM, people go out and howl at the night sky. It's big down in Denver, it's caught on here in Loveland, I think it's going super-viral. I have a box of police-type whistles, and use one of them, too.
Alas, in the last ten days of April, I came down with a nasty case of hay fever, coughing all the time. There's never a good time to have hay fever, but with COVID-19 on the loose, walking around in public with a cough is likely to evoke fear and hostility.
BACK_TO_TOP* If things seemed bad in the USA in May, the pain went up another notch in June. The big thing was that, on 25 May 2020, a black man named George Floyd of Minneapolis died under more than merely suspicious circumstances after being apprehended by police. The death of Floyd led to a wave of demonstrations across America -- accompanied by out-of-control rioting that resulted in massive damage.
The rioting was not in the main by the protesters, instead being performed by malicious actors exploiting the disorder. It seems that the rioters included opportunistic looters and vandals; gangsters engaged in organized looting; Leftist terrorists, known as the "Antifa" for "anti-Fascists"; and white supremacist terrorists. Thousands were arrested, with the authorities attempting to sort them out and determine if people were coordinating the attacks. The protests then became more peaceful, in part because night protests stopped; in part because protesters began to police their ranks better, jumping on people who broke windows and otherwise acted up.
There remained worries about COVID-19 spreading through the protests -- though surprisingly, over the remainder of the month, nothing much happened on that front. The protesters were generally masked and in the open air, where the virus doesn't spread so easily -- while the number of people in them was much less than the number of people who decided to stay home and out of trouble.
In response to the unrest, on 1 June President Donald Trump decided to make a gesture of toughness, leaving the White House to visit an Episcopalian church that had been damaged during the riots. The event was a fiasco. To make way for the president, peaceful protests in Lafayette Square were cleared out by force, with the president finally having his picture taken in the church, looking like a wax figure, awkwardly holding a bible.
Criticisms were loud and angry, all the more so because Trump had been called governors "weak" in their response to the protests, saying the protesters needed to be "dominated", and threatening to send military forces into the states. That was going way too far. Defense Secretary Mark Esper seemed to back up the president at first -- but then emphatically said that he did not favor sending troops into the states, much to the annoyance of the White House.
Senior military brass did not like the idea of bullying American citizens -- it would severely damage the military's reputation. Marine General Jim Mattis, once Trump's defense secretary, did not want to criticize a sitting president, but finally had enough, issuing a statement titled "In Union There Is Strength":
QUOTE:
I have watched this week's unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words "Equal Justice Under Law" are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand -- one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values -- our values as people and our values as a nation.
When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens-much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a "battlespace" that our uniformed military is called upon to "dominate." At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington DC, sets up a conflict-a false conflict- between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that "America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat." We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.
Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that "The Nazi slogan for destroying us...was 'Divide and Conquer.' Our American answer is 'In Union there is Strength.'" We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis-confident that we are better than our politics.
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people -- does not even pretend to try; instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.
We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln's "better angels," and listen to them, as we work to unite.
Only by adopting a new path -- which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals -- will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.
END_QUOTE
Other retired military brass joined in on the condemnation. The US military has long scrupulously obeyed Trump, even when they didn't like it, but he threatened to corrupt the military to his own personal use.
* Trump's presidency is now falling down a very long flight of stairs. Uber-hawk John Bolton, previously Trump's national security advisor, published a book titled THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED that was most unflattering to Trump. The Trump Administration tried to block publication of the book, but the courts didn't go along. Ironically, the book was more damaging to Bolton than to Trump, since it didn't say anything bad about Trump that wasn't basically already known -- while Bolton came across as, to put it simply, a jerk.
Bolton rationalized his refusal to testify in the impeachment trial by bad-mouthing the Democrats, calling them foolish for taking on an impeachment that was doomed to fail, while also saying that Trump needed to be impeached. Of course, the Democrats were compelled to try to impeach Trump, they had no choice; and the fault in the matter was the Republicans, who gave Trump a green light to do whatever he pleased. The Democrats have no cause to regret their actions, while the Republicans discredited themselves over the longer run. Bolton also declared that re-electing Trump would be a disaster, but then said he would not vote for Joe Biden. One might hope Bolton is given his come-uppance eventually; but if not, he can at least be forgotten as the irrelevance he is.
America continues to lurch painfully towards the election in November, burdened by a medical crisis, a social crisis, and a political crisis. Trump's re-election campaign is in chaos, attempts to smear Joe Biden don't work -- Tara Reade, who implausibly accused him of sexual assault, has effectively disappeared -- while everything is going wrong for Trump. Over protests, Trump conducted a campaign rally in Tulsa OK on 20 June, proudly boasting that a million had signed up to attend. The local fire marshal said the headcount was only 6,200, the count having been inflated by pranksters from the TikTok video site, who signed up and forgot about it. It's too early to know how much contagion there was at the rally.
There is little reason to fear the outcome of the election; Trump is tanking dramatically in the polls. Maybe half of those who voted for him in 2016 didn't idolize him, they just didn't like Hillary Clinton, and now Trump is bleeding those voters. The worry is that the chaos will take over, throwing the USA into convulsions. The reassurance is that the chaos is rooted to some considerable degree in Trump, and he will pass. [ED: As it turned out, not soon enough.] America will return to normalcy, if not the same normalcy as before.
The election is four months away. In the moment, America's health crisis is getting worse, with COVID-19 rates soaring in states that were lax on dealing with the pandemic. The problem is rooted in a "resistance movement" of sorts that refuses to wear masks and proclaims the pandemic is a hoax, created by the Liberals working with the Chinese. They are taking their cue from Trump, who refuses to appear in public with a mask and tries to dismiss the pandemic -- while making sure that extraordinary measures are taken behind the scenes to protect himself from the virus. July is going to worse than June; August will either see a change in national mindset, or a further progression downward. [ED: Things continued to stumble along until after Trump left office ... things looked up for few years, then went deeply south.]
* As discussed in an article from GIZMODO.com ("MIT Researchers Designed this Robotic Worm to Burrow Into Human Brains" Andrew Liszewski, 28 August 2019), researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a threadlike robot worm that can be guided by a controlled magnetic field to navigate the narrow and winding arterial pathways of the human brain. The ultimate goal is to develop a robot worm that can clear blockages and clots that contribute to strokes and aneurysms.
Currently, dealing with such blockages and clots requires a skilled surgeon to manually guide a thin wire through a patient's arteries up into a damaged brain vessel, followed by a catheter that can deliver treatments, or yank a clot. Not only is the procedure potentially damaging to the patient, the surgeon has to use a fluoroscope to guide the wire, meaning exposure to x-rays with every operation.
The MIT researchers based their design on water-based biocompatible hydrogels, and schemes to magnetically guide simple machines. They built the robot worm using:
The MIT researchers tested the robot worm by guiding it through a twisting path of small plastic rings, and then through a dummy brain model. They made another robot worm with a fiber-optic core that could be used to channel a laser, and have also considered payload systems, for example to deliver drugs. One particular challenge is building a "smart" magnetic guidance system, with some similarities to an MRI machine, to allow a surgeon to conveniently guide the worm.
* The COVID-19 pandemic, hideously troublesome to begin with, has become even more troublesome in the USA, as the RWNJ (Right-Wing Nutjob) element of the population protests the lockdown, and even wearing face masks. People have been killed in disputes over them.
It's not all bad news, however. Rock legend Gene Simmons of KISS got a shot of a 15-year-old fan named Abby who had devised a KISS ARMY face mask. He reposted the shot on Twitter -- she's really cute -- and replied: "Abby, you rock!"
Simmons then got flak from the nutjobs on Twitter, one writing: "Except those cloth masks don't keep you safe only a medical mask does and a good one at that." Simmons, a legendary bad boy, replied in calm, measured, and articulate terms: "You are incorrect and misinformed. The idea of cloth masks or any other kind of mask, is not to protect you. It's to protect everybody else around you in case you cough or talk."
Of course, the nutjobs didn't give it up, they never do: "Face covers don't prevent the spread of viruses. It's more of a psychological thing. It's social pressuring. You are disrespectful if you don't cover your face. It's nonsense." Simmons: "I wish you good health, despite your point of view. Please wear a mask, to prevent your cough, sneeze or other, from infecting people. Be safe, not sorry."
Another nutjob said there was no reason for healthy people to wear masks. Simmons: "You need more information. You can show no symptoms and STILL have Covid 19, and STILL be spreading the virus to others. WEAR A MASK!"
Still, they persisted: "Sorry Gene, some of us don't have the luxury of mansions, and have to go to work." Simmons got a little annoyed: "This has nothing to do with mansions. Cut it out. Just wear masks, to prevent other people from getting whatever it is you may have. And stop the blame game. This affects every one of us."
KISS is now selling official face masks off the band's website. It's not for the greed, Simmons is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, instead to support a Global Relief Fund For Live Music Crews. If there isn't a public service campaign for masks going yet, there should be, with Simmons as a frontman.
* Along the same lines, REUTERS.com reports that Africans are getting into stylish face masks. In Lagos, Nigeria, fashion designer Sefiya Diejomaoh designed a mask of gold cloth and covered with bling to match her floor-length dress. She says: "When you come out in a stylish mask or with an accessory such as this, it doesn't seem as though we're fighting a war. It seems more fun."
Africans have their own style, tending towards the brightly colored, and they have adopted masks with enthusiasm. Sophie Zinga, a fashion designer in Dakar, Senegal, has set up a website, fashionfightscovid19.com, to sell her masks. She says: "As a fashion designer I think we are going to have to integrate each outfit with fashion masks."
Inga Gubeka of Johannesburg, South Africa, produces masks of leather and fabric, with traditional South African Ndebele prints. She says: "My business has been heavily affected in such a sense that the retail is on lockdown. There was a big shortage, we realized, of masks that can be usable every day without having to throw it away."
Back in Lagos, Diejomaoh says her face mask is a form of self-expression: "People going around in surgical masks is depressing. I have to maintain status quo and who I am despite the situation."
CNN adds that inventive face masks have become a global phenomenon. They're not so new in East Asia, where K-pop stars have used them as fashion statements. In Amman, Jordan, designer Samia al-Zakleh sells glitter masks, while in Hamburg, Germany, Sebastian Marquardt offers a range of styles, including copies of his own face. Marquardt felt too limited in expression wearing a mask, and wanted to emphasize that he is an "open and funny" person.
* As for here in Loveland, Colorado, mask wearing is common but not universal. There's not so much flamboyance yet. As I mentioned last month, I've been wearing old bandanas I had in a box, and they work very well, with a bit of style. I just bought a set of new ones from Amazon.com, waiting for them to come in; these appear to be better optimized for use as masks.
Masks have become a social statement. I always wear a bandana when I leave my house, even on my early morning walks, when I don't run into people. It's a statement that I care, and that I'm not embarrassed to show it. Although wearing masks is mandatory in town, a checkout clerk at my local supermarket told me a few people still refuse to wear them. They're making a statement, too -- a big middle finger to everyone.
They certainly must be feeling defensive, when everyone around them is wearing them. Indeed, the last time I went to the super in May, I didn't notice anyone without a mask. Studies show that, if everyone masks, the masks are highly effective, cutting viral transmission in half. Patience with anti-maskers seems to be running low; a video went viral of Staten Islanders chasing a woman out of a supermarket when she came in without a mask, screaming abuse at her. These are New Yorkers, of course, who are relatively quick to scream abuse at people, and NYC has been hit very hard; but I'm hoping it will be the start of a trend. I wouldn't go out of my way to light into anti-maskers -- but I saw others doing it, I'd join in, and get it on video with my smartphone.
In any case COVID-19 is, for now, under control here in Larimer County. With a population of over 350,000, we've had about 500 cases and 20 deaths. I continue to worry about a change for the worse; there's too much lunacy at the top and the bottom. Trump thinks he can gaslight COVID-19, but he can't. Confusion and muddle in the face of a dangerous threat is a recipe for disaster.
Incidentally, when I go for my morning walks, these days sometimes I find face masks as street litter. Street litter of course tends to reflect current trends; there was a time maybe a decade ago when CD-ROMs could often be found, but not now.
One thing that has long puzzled me has been often finding empty mini bottles of hard liquor, but I think I've finally figured that one out. I spotted an indigent in my neighborhood a few weeks back, having never seen one that close to my home before -- and it all snapped together. Indigents buy mini bottles of booze because that's all they can afford, and being indigents, they just throw them aside when they're done. I don't see the indigents around because they're generally only coming through at night, and keeping a low profile. The Loveland cops are not very patient with them.
Oh yes! I almost forgot to add, I was able to buy a bulk pack of toilet paper in my last trip to the super. Things are not getting back to normal, but they are improving.
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