Category: Life

Last month, my sister celebrated her birthday with a hiking excursion and a family zoom call. Later that night, I found out that my friend lost his wife, leaving him and her young toddler.

The start of one life mirrored by the end of another. Our joyous day will ever be their tragedy.

With the billions of us and only 365 days in a year, I guess every date is memorialized for millions around the world, good and ill.

Even if it’s just math, such a stark coincidence feels gratuitously cruel.

No date is clean.

Every day is both-and.

Aside from bragging about the minor achievement of placing one foot in front of another for an extended period, there were a few thoughts that popped up into my head as I spent five and a half hours on the road that morning.

Even though this was a simple task, not everyone has completed a half marathon. I’ve never done a “13.1” before, but I’m pretty sure I’ve logged more miles in a single day on foot while being a tourist. So anyone can do a half!

But realistically, not everyone can do it. Such an act implies both the ability walk and the freedom to wantonly waste six hours. A half marathon is a luxury. I might indulge in a little credit for my decent health, but most of it is good genes and good luck with a family support structure that let me wander off one long morning.

The week before the half marathon, I walked a 10K. I started that challenge by pushing for a faster pace. However, my body quickly sent me warning signals. After a mile of the uptempo pace, I paused and realized that the goal of each stage of this Quarantine Quartet was to finish each stage. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up with style, and if you can do something better, you should. However, it is important to stay clear on the primary goal of an endeavor.

With the previous week’s lesson in mind, I paced myself during this half marathon. After walking all the interior streets of my neighborhood, I had completed 12.30 miles. At that point, I could rewalk some interior streets and stop at the minimum distance, or I could take a loop around the entire subdivision, which would end up around 15.1 miles. Since I had maintained my leisurely 21’30” pace, I had the energy to go two miles over the top! Sometimes, keeping a little in reserve will still allow you to finish in style.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever indulge in such an activity again, but the Quartet was a good experience, especially since it introduced me to the hills behind my neighborhood. More importantly, it was a reminder I need to walk and exercise a bit every day. I didn’t need this twitter challenge to know that, but sometimes a silly spark is what is needed. Let’s hope the flame keeps burning.

Four weeks ago, I saw a state assemblyman propose a quarantine quartet on twitter. The first challenge was innocuous enough – just a one mile walk.

The second week was a 5k so I hiked the hills behind our new neighborhood.

The third week was a 10k, so I took an longer looping route in those same hills, going in the opposite direction.

This morning, I finished the final challenge, a half marathon, where I walked all the streets in my subdivision.

In all, I guess this is a case of willingly succumbing to online peer pressure. But hopefully the good kind.

After a facebook acquaintance posted that he thought we were overreacting to COVID, citing a recent Oxford Study that estimated the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) at .1% to .36%. So I fell into the trap of playing armchair epidemiologist. First, percentages mean nothing without comparison, so I dug up a website from the CDC that says we have 12-61k deaths for 9.3-45M of symptomatic transmissions.

Just doing a rough average of those rough numbers results is 36.5k deaths for 27,150k symptomatic infections. Which is a symptomatic IFR of .00134 = .134%

However then I realized that Oxford study included asymptomatic cases. So I dug around a little more and found a couple NIH articles on the issue. The first one is a bit complex, but the second one said that 1 in 3 flu cases is asymptomatic. As such the asymptomatic IFR is roughly .048% which would would make COVID somewhere around 2x to 8x as deadly as the flu.

edit: I made an error in that paragraph above. If 1 in 3 flu infections is asymptomatic, that means that the symptomatic flu cases are 2 out of 3 flu infections. So that would change the overall average infection count to 40,725k total infections for an IFR of .000896 = .0896%, which is a little less than the low end Oxford IFC to being 4x worse than an average flu.

The first lesson is obviously I have no business being an epidemiologist, what a minefield of numbers, charts and percentages! (But I have to admit it was fun to mess around with the numbers for a bit this fine morning!)

The crux of the question is “should we keep flatlining the economy for something that is 4x worse than the flu?” If our hospitals were fully stocked with PPE and ventilators, I’d be open to the idea of getting the economy back up and running. There is definitely a balancing act between letting a few people die versus keeping the economy flowing, after all, we don’t shut down the economy for the flu.

Then again, the flu doesn’t result in global shortages of medical supplies. With the continued panic in the medical supply markets with the feds and states getting into bidding wars, we’re clearly not ready to reopen yet.

I suspect we will eventually be forced to open before a cure or vaccine is found. However if I’m gonna die of COVID for the great American Economy(TM), it better be due to co-morbidities, bad genes, or shitty luck — not a lack of PPE, equipment, or hospital staff.

And this is may be the greatest disappointment of the moment, because I don’t think we’ll be ready when the time comes. I fear we will have squandered the time of quarantine for no good reason.

Postscript: Lest the first half of the post lull you into a false security. Another of my friends posted this stark analysis from the Washington Post. Basically, COVID was logged as the 2nd highest cause of death in the past week, only after cardiac arrest. Whatever magic you might be able to spin using percentages, you can’t get around the body bags.

I spent all Sunday editing a video on making sourdough bread.

Here are some thoughts from that experience.

Time

• It took about 4~6 hours to do put together the initial cut, adding annotations, doing some initial splices, and learning the macOS program, iMovie.
• The initial cut of the video was 36 minutes long, the final cut was 17 minutes long.
• The rest of the 14~12 hours was grinding away those 19 minutes out of the duration. I think this is an example of Abe’s quip, “I would have written you a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”
• I suspect that the process would have taken about 10~12 hours of editing if I knew the software and wasn’t learning its capabilities as I went. However, I might get much more finicky and thus still spend a lot of time. I vaguely remember hearing some rule of thumb of an hour per minute, which feels about right.
• Much of it is run at 1.3x speed because I felt that I was talking too slowly. I really hope the video is comprehensible to people who haven’t been listening to me say the same thing again and again for an entire day.

Equipment

• My basic tools were extremely basic – my Macbook Air (from 2012), an iphone 6s (from 2017), Quicktime, and the native macOS app, iMovie.
• Of course some better equipment would not have hurt, but I think the most impactful extra piece would have been a microphone. After that would have been a couple directional lights.
• However, I suspect that the 80-20 rule applies here. Yes the major expenditures of an actual camera and mount would have been nice, but I doubt it would have made nearly the difference as having a basic bluetooth wireless headset and a decent intentional lighting.
• I’m certain that there are better video editing software, but iMovie was perfectly adequate. It is a simple, easy to use program which still gave the user a good amount of control. My guess is that the next level programs give the user a lot more fine tune control, but most likely with an incredible amount of complexity.
• I remember the first video my sister and I made using a friend’s apple digital camera. I wish I had a copy of the file. But yes, we’ve gone a long way in a quarter century.

Execution

• The biggest mistake was not preparing enough. Every single item must be on the counter, ready to go. Every door must be closed. Every line must be mentally rehearsed. Every thing should be ready before you press record.
• Otherwise you’ll be wasting time on film and wasting a lot more time editing out every little item later.
• This lack of preparation is a classic first timer mistake, and exactly why attempt a project like this. It is a glimpse behind the curtain of real professionals.
• Obviously real cooking shows have crews, etc. But I suspect it is really all about combining the skills and experiences of all these pros, not so much their equipment. Decent lighting and a microphone was sorely needed in my video, but what was really needed with the experience and knowledge on how to use my tools well — and the required prep work before pressing record.

Postmortem Template. I have a standard template I use after a project.

• Was the directive clear? Not when I first began, but once I really started yes. Put together a video documenting my breadmaking process in April 2020. It wasn’t going to be amazing, but I wanted it to be decent.
• What went wrong, and how to fix? As noted above, I did not prepare properly before each shoot. Given the experimental nature of this project, I don’t mind too much about the final product, but not having mise en place before hitting record is not really excusable. I knew better.
• What went well, how to do better? This was a glorious one off experiment, and I think I got the peak behind the curtain that i was hoping for. I should more try odd projects like this in the future, maybe with the kids next time.
• What opportunities were missed? The three things I would want before doing another video, and once procedural tweak:
  1. A microphone. I think the sound quality would be vastly improved for a minimal expense.
  2. An outline. I’ve been making the bread a lot, so this video had an instinctive flow. I’m not sure I would have known what to write this first time around, but now I have a feel for what needs to be thought through before jumping into record.
  3. Better lights. This is the most involved of the three additions, and I may jettison it, but if a video is to look good it needs to be decently lit…so if I’m not willing to put effort into lighting, it may just not be worth the effort at all.
  4. Next time I would edit as I go. This was shot over Saturday and Sunday morning, and then I spent all day editing. If I had started editing on Saturday, I would have a learned things which would have improved my footage on Sunday.

Next Steps

• Well there isn’t much of a next step. I’ve posted the video to youtube, sprayed it all over social media, and I think I’m pretty much done. This project was a confluence of a very odd set of circumstances which I doubt will be repeated anytime soon.
• iMovie is a nice little program. I can’t imagine having much use for it in the foreseeable future, but it was good to learn what it can do.
• Indeed if I have any use for this project, it would be for work. I suspect that using iMovie is the best (free) way for editing and annotating video tutorials for the various work processes I may need to present.
• I will however watch youtube videos (food and otherwise) with even more respect. I’ve always rationally known that a considerable amount of effort goes into making even the most basic youtube video, but it’s another thing to actually experience it.

It is worth taking a moment to marvel at our interconnected world. Without discounting the myriad of problems around us, those of us who are fortunate enough to be reading this post are truly living in a magical age.

One morning, a person decided to make an instructional video and two days later, it was shared to the entire world, without spending a penny.

If that isn’t magic. What is?

A couple weeks ago, it was disconcerting to hear that school meals were one of the reasons why local administrators were hesitant to shut down schools, as the virus headed our way. With the wide reach of local charities, I was aware of the issue of food security, but good lord we are staring down a pandemic here!

Yesterday afternoon, the governor mentioned that half a million meals had been handed out by the school districts over the past two weeks. Nevada isn’t that large, so this is truly a big number.

At that moment, a definition of privilege crystalized in my mind. It is a difficult concept to convey because it is a layered idea, several steps removed from the primary problem.

Privilege is not about avoiding a problem.

It is not about avoiding the need to worry about that problem.

Rather, privilege is not realizing the problem exists. Privilege is being happily oblivious.

Privilege is never ever having to think about worrying about if there is a next meal.

I finally got off my duff and found an interval timer for the iphone.

Amelia Timer is so simple that it is free .

I didn’t expect it would make a big difference with doing my morning exercises, but wow! It suddenly made doing the 8 Brocades exercises quite enjoyable.

Unlike kung fu or tai chi forms which are extended series of differing movements, these exercises are closer to calisthenics. Without a timer my mind would end up focusing on when was the right time to move on to the next exercise.

Letting a computer do that cognitive load allowed me to concentrate on my body and feel my way through these movements.

On the other hand, I listened to music yesterday. As I exercised in silence this morning, I realized the music had distracted me from myself.

So there is always a balance to be made. But for me, the balance is not at zero tech.

Chinese qigong is not generally associated with modern tech, but even here, it looks like an iphone will come in handy.

Now let’s just see how long I will keep exercising going.

Seth Godin has a riff about about running marathons. It’s not about whether you’re tired or not, it’s about where you put the “tired”. Those who can dance with the tired are the ones who can finish the race.

In this time of insanity, I’ve been living in an odd island of solitude. Due to a nicely timed departure by my in-law’s tenant, I got moved into a separate house as I kept working out in the world. So unlike the rest of America, my quarantine has been without the kids.

First off, this sucks.. I’d much rather be with them than to live vicariously on Facetime and Zoom.

But I can also acknowledge there is a silver lining. I have rediscovered the privilege of living as a single person, with the relative free time such a lifestyle entails.

Even so I still got my job and I still get tired. It has been long days at the office, even if the commute is just across the bedroom to the desk. And when I’m tired, but I don’t got to take care of the kids…where do I put the tired?

I’m not cocky enough to think this is the time to learn something new or do something great.

But I decided that (unless I’m reading or sleeping) I should at least type something up here on this blog before I truly veg out.

So here it is.

Given the Iowa debacle, the NV Dems quickly dropped their app resulting in a new cumbersome manual check in process that resulting in really long lines for early voting in their caucuses. All in all, it took us 4 hours between leaving the house and returning home.

But the weather was lovely. Gorgeous actually, in the shade of the highschool courtyard we were queued up.

I spent most of the time chatting with Sandy. She was a retiree from West Virginia who moved to Vegas after her mother passed away. She works part time at Marshalls, who she said treats her well. She grew up in Baltimore, and her father passed away on on Valentines day in the 70’s. He served our nation as an engineer and logistics agent in World War 2, the Korean War, and Vietnam. We killed him with Agent Orange. Her uncle was native american and would attend high school games with his palomino in full regalia.

This was her first time early voting in the caucus. She said she was more conservative in the past, but this town had loosened her up.

Her cousin, Nancy, was the one who enticed Sandy to move out here to Vegas. She used to work in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. One of her friends was a high roller at the Rio and brought her out to this town a couple times. She liked it so much, she decided to retire out here in the early 2000’s. She was happily waiting in line after a horrible experience in the 2016 caucus which dragged out for hours in a contentious room.

She mentioned an acquaintance Chef Sheridan who was opening up a third restaurant. I had the pleasure of telling her the Every Grain is already open! She used to eat Sheridan’s Bao’s at the salon counter when he was working out of a truck, I think near at Tropicana and Decatur.

The guy in front of us was stocky a long haired dude who worked on the crew of a reality TV show. He grew up in New Jersey and got his MFA from CCA, which was still California College of the Arts and Crafts when I was at Berkeley. We compared notes on life in the Bay and lamented the high cost of living out there. We were both flummoxed on how anyone with a menial wage job can continue to survive out there.

He mentioned he was here to vote for Bernie. An hour later, my wife asked why ranked choice voting wasn’t more common. I’ve heard about the concept as long as I’ve been following politics as a kid, and my opinion is that it has never been implemented because the two parties want to keep their structural deathgrip on the political system. The danger of ranked choice voting is that it might make people feel more comfortable about voting on something crazy, such the Green party. We had a good laugh over mess we’re in.

And of course we shouldn’t ignore the hard work of the volunteers to keep the process running as smoothly as they could given the hand they were dealt. The caucus is managed by the political party so everything was being handled by volunteers. The district leader said he and his team got thirty minutes of training the day before. When they were overwhelmed that morning, he called in some favors from his friends in the Warren campaign who came and helped out. The guy who kept tabs wait times was just a voter who decided to hang around and help out when he saw how long the lines had become.

They passed out waters, and pulled out seats. They picked up some donuts, and shared some pizzas.

It was a long wait, but they kept the spirits up. It was as close to a civic party as you could get, queued up in a line with your fellow citizens.

It was a long wait, but you know what we didn’t waste our time talking about?

Yup.

He wasn’t worth mentioning.

We had better things on our mind.

I just voted in the early caucus for Buttigieg.

Throughout 2019 I was rooting for Warren as a sentimental favorite, bitter by the corporatist slant and the ascendance of the GOP under the watch of the Obama administration. I was unconvinced by Pete’s youth, and harbored a deep suspicion of yet another precocious young white man, quickly climbing the ladder with effortless ease, leapfrogging others with much deeper resumes. However, as Warren’s campaign continued to stall, I became concerned about her political acumen, falling for Trump’s ancestry gambit and a lack of results from the first two contests.

After the results of New Hampshire, I surveyed the field. Klobuchar’s cruel treatment of Myon Burrell as well as her own staffers scratched her off my list. I didn’t need to lose another election to Trump by trying 4 more years of Biden. Gabbard is in her own universe. Tom Steyer does nothing for me other than clog up the Facebook feed. Yang quit. And Bloomberg isn’t even on the Nevada ballot.

I voted for Bernie in 2016, preferring his clarion call of income equality and fearing Clinton’s hawkishness. Even then, I knew I was overlooking the problem of whether the dude could actually govern. I’ll still happily vote for Bernie over Trump, but after almost two years inside the department of “Administration”, I have much greater appreciation for the vast apparatus of government. I suspect the federal civil service is already tottering, and I worry about the lasting damage that may come with a revolutionary firebrand immediately following the current lout. Income inequality is important, but I am one of those dreaded “temperamentally conservative” liberals, so this issue is not my end-all, especially after becoming intimately familiar with the daily exertions of good government.

Which brings me back to the primary protagonists, both of whom I trust will execute fine administrations. Up through this Tuesday, my knowledge was merely a mental collection of memes, vibes, and clips. So I finally decided to listen to their campaign announcement speeches and compare the two candidates as politicians. How did Buttigieg and Warren sell themselves on day one?

From those two speeches, Mayor Pete won my vote – not in policy but in approach. I think the two candidates are headed in the same direction, they are both quite progressive. Warren wants to get there a little faster, which is great, but she is proposing even more fighting as the route to the promised land. As much as I relish the idea of fighting force on force, the Dem’s are awful at direct confrontation with the GOP.

We live in a 45/55 society which has been gerrymandered towards the minority, in the House, the Senate, the electoral college, and the Supreme Court. We can keep banging our heads against power politics, but we’re a diverse rabble running up against the well drilled formations of a conformist political party in the grip of an awesome propaganda machine. The progressive ideals I hold are so self-evident and Trump is so repugnant, I have to believe there must be another way to create an overwhelming majority that could engulf the GOP’s steadfast obstinance. After all, if we can merely flip a tenth of Trump voters we’re in Nixon-McGovern territory.

That said, I’m not pollyannaish about our prospects. I can see the stubborn recalcitrance of most Trump voters, especially as the economy hums along. It is a well nigh impossible task to reframe the current dichotomy to create a new paradigm and convert or attract new voters outside of the polarized mess that is making our mass and social medias stratospherically wealthy.

However, after listening to those two speeches (colored by my feel for the trajectories of these two campaigns) I have come to the opinion that Warren will be crushed by Trump in the general campaign, whether she wins or loses.

If you want a direct confrontation with Trump, you must be ready to battle beyond rules or norms, as he has been happily doing his entire campaign and administration. And even if she wins the general, her victorious path to the White House will have exacerbated the current polarization and enmities. I feel guilty for saying it, but I’m just tired of the prospect of four more years of this siege warfare. I’d rather take another flier on a hopey changey guy who has a shot at outflanking the opposition. Does that make me a sucker?

Yes, I’m betting on a lot of unproven potential. During my short time in government, I have observed the unique difficulties of being an “executive”, though we all must still acknowledge that South Bend is vanishingly small compared to the gig he’s pursuing. I know the guy’s perspective is circumscribed by his white, male privilege, however the recent New York Times article shows an ability to learn, grow, and develop alliances in spite of initial missteps. I know he’s taking money from rich folks, which is not preferable, but not disqualifying in this particular game we’re playing. He certainly loves his rhetoric. Is he also likely to defer too much to the corporations or dawdle in the hope of building a non existent consensus?

Maybe. But if he can defeat the wannabe authoritarian with small hands, advance parts of a progressive agenda, and restore a functioning government, I’ll take the trade.

Will Pete succeed in doing rhetorical jujitsu on Trump’s full frontal assault? Does his celebrated 2019 performance at the Fox News Town Hall translate for the general election? Will it reach the voting masses in swing states, beyond caressing the intellectual erogenous zones of the coastal elites? And if he gets elected, is there any way he can get anything done with an obstructionist GOP, that will likely claim one or both houses of Congress in 2022 if Pete is president?

I doubt it. But at least I can see a glimmer of hope.

So take it for what it’s worth, a tepid endorsement for the youngster out of South Bend and for Freedom, Security, Democracy.