HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, ZAMPOLITS EDITION: Diversity and inclusion monitors to join faculty hiring committees at SDSU. “The memo does not mention meritocracy as part of the hiring process.”
Also, “implicit bias” is mostly junk science.
Archive for 2020
March 11, 2020
WHO SAYS BERKELEY PROFS ARE OUT OF TOUCH? This physics prof is ready for SHTF teaching with backup plans for his backup plans. Though as a ham operator myself, I do want to note that digital modes like Olivia and JS8Call are very robust and much more accessible than CW as long as you have a computer.
AT AMAZON, Concentrated Clorox HE Regular Bleach.
COLD WAR II: China’s navy shipbuilders are ‘outbuilding everybody.’ “The second Type 075 amphibious warship, being built in Hudong Zhonghua shipyard in Shanghai, is about to be launched.”
“I GOT BETTER.” UMD students claim Matt Walsh’s rhetoric ‘gets us killed.’
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: ZOMG CORONAVIRUS CANCEL ALL THE THINGS! “While I have been advocating for erring on the side of caution, I wonder how long this cancelation fever is supposed to go on. Do we keep doing the social distance experiment until the rate of new cases slows or stops completely?”
Well, yes.
Treat this outbreak seriously but not hysterically.
HOLLYWOOD GOMORRAH: ‘Rape of 2 Coreys’ premieres in LA; Charlie Sheen denies allegations.
CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: CDC: Older Americans should consider stocking up on food and medications and avoid venturing out as coronavirus spreads.
As U.S. coronavirus cases top 1,000, mixed signs of recovery in China, South Korea.
3 TSA agents at San Jose airport test positive for coronavirus.
New York City now has 46 cases of the coronavirus, Mayor de Blasio says.
Alex Azar on Federal Coronavirus Response.
Province at center of China’s outbreak lets some companies reopen.
Coronavirus hits ill and disabled people hardest, so why is society writing us off?
Politicizing Coronavirus Will Cost Dems the House.
Uber may suspend accounts of drivers and riders who get coronavirus.
Police respond to massive crowd near University of Dayton after classes canceled due to coronavirus. Not the public-health response we’re looking for.
2 Natick High School Students Test Positive For Coronavirus.
Most people will get the coronavirus, aim is to slow its spread, Merkel says.
Coronavirus conference canceled in New York because of coronavirus.
5 things small business owners can do right now to respond to coronavirus fears.
UofSC to extend spring break amidst Coronavirus outbreak.
Poland shuts all schools, museums, cinemas for two weeks due to coronavirus.
Coronavirus Grocery List: What to Buy in Prep for a Self Quarantine.
Protect yourself from coronavirus by following few preventive measures.
Uber may suspend accounts of drivers and riders who get coronavirus.
JOE BIDEN: Hide the (Cognitive) Decline. “One or two senior moments on the campaign trail wouldn’t have hurt him (mainly because of the (D) after his name). But it’s not one or two a campaign, it’s one or two an appearance, it’s mistakes segueing into non-sequiturs segueing into a buffet of word salads.”
He also seems to be getting shorter-tempered and meaner, which in my experience — admittedly amateur — are both signs of dementia.
CHINESE ASSETS SELF-IDENTIFY: Journalists Argue Use of Term ‘Wuhan Virus’ is Racist as China Seeks to Obfuscate on Origins of Epidemic.
WHY IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM, SEXISM, AND VOTER SUPPRESSION? Did Bernie Sanders Just Accuse His Fellow Dems of Voter Suppression in Michigan?
AT AMAZON, Lightning Deal, Travelambo Front Pocket Minimalist Leather Slim Wallet RFID Blocking Medium Size.
NISSAN IS THE NEW GILLETTE: Nissan USA disable comments on Brie Larson commercial after it bombs. “The All-New Nissan Sentra commercial starring superhero feminist Brie Larson is on track to becoming the most disliked YouTube video on the platform. Nissan respond by disabling the comments.”
I’D THINK IT WOULD BOOST IT: Suntory chief warns of coronavirus hit to alcohol consumption. “The chief executive of Suntory has warned that the coronavirus outbreak is hitting alcohol consumption, which will eventually impact on profits at the third-largest spirits maker . . . The global epidemic has disrupted supply chains and sapped consumer demand, causing a $285m blow to sales at Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s biggest brewer, and a potential £200m hit to operating profits at Smirnoff vodka maker Diageo. In Japan, beverage groups from Kirin to Suntory are preparing for similar fallouts as nightlife and restaurant activity come to a near-standstill even though it is nearly cherry blossom season, normally the busiest time of the year for parties.”
I’ve laid by a couple of extra bottles of bourbon, just in case of quarantine.
A BILL WHITTLE PODCAST: The Cold War: What We Saw | We Like Ike – Episode 6.
Related: When Danger Is Growing Exponentially, Everything Looks Fine Until It Doesn’t.
There’s an old brain teaser that goes like this: You have a pond of a certain size, and upon that pond, a single lilypad. This particular species of lily pad reproduces once a day, so that on day two, you have two lily pads. On day three, you have four, and so on.
Now the teaser. “If it takes the lily pads 48 days to cover the pond completely, how long will it take for the pond to be covered halfway?”
The answer is 47 days. Moreover, at day 40, you’ll barely know the lily pads are there.
That grim math explains why so many people — including me — are worried about the novel coronavirus, which causes a disease known as covid-19. And why so many other people think we are panicking over nothing.
During the current flu season, they point out, more than 250,000 people have been hospitalized in the United States, and 14,000 have died, including more than 100 children. As of this writing, the coronavirus has killed 29 people, and our caseload is in the hundreds. Why are we freaking out about the tiny threat while ignoring the big one? . . .
But go back to those lily pads: When something dangerous is growing exponentially, everything looks fine until it doesn’t. In the early days of the Wuhan epidemic, when no one was taking precautions, the number of cases appears to have doubled every four to five days.
The crisis in northern Italy is what happens when a fast doubling rate meets a “threshold effect,” where the character of an event can massively change once its size hits a certain threshold.
In this case, the threshold is things such as ICU beds. If the epidemic is small enough, doctors can provide respiratory support to the significant fraction of patients who develop complications, and relatively few will die. But once the number of critical patients exceeds the number of ventilators and ICU beds and other critical-care facilities, mortality rates spike. . . .
The experts are telling us that here in the United States, we can avoid hitting that threshold where sizable regions of the country will suddenly step into hell. We still have time to #flattenthecurve, as a popular infographic put it, slowing the spread so that the number of cases never exceeds what our health system can handle. The United States has an unusually high number of ICU beds, which gives us a head start. But we mustn’t squander that advantage through complacency.
So everyone needs to understand a few things.
First, the virus is here, and it is spreading quickly, even though everything looks normal. Right now, the United States has more reported cases than Italy had in late February. What matters isn’t what you can see but what you can’t: the patients who will need ICU care in two to six weeks. . . .
Second, this is not “a bad flu.” It kills more of its hosts, and it will spread farther unless we take aggressive steps to slow it down, because no one is yet immune to this disease. It will be quite some time before the virus runs out of new patients.
Third, we can fight it. Despite early exposure, Singapore and Hong Kong have kept their caseloads low, not by completely shutting down large swaths of their economies as China did but through aggressive personal hygiene and “social distancing.” South Korea seems to be getting its initial outbreak under control using similar measures. If we do the same, we can not only keep our hospitals from overloading but also buy researchers time to develop vaccines and therapies.
Fourth, and most important: We are all in this together. It is your responsibility to keep America safe by following the CDC guidelines, just as much as it is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s or President Trump’s responsibility to lead us to safety. And until this virus is beaten, we all need to act like it.
Indeed.
GRIFTERS WILL SEIZE ON ANY EXCUSE: Hunter Biden using coronavirus to flake out of child support case deposition.
CONFESSIONS OF AN EX-NEVERTRUMPER.
Trump has done plenty of things the old Republican foreign-policy establishment would cheer for, if someone else were doing them. He has labeled China as a threat, condemning its trade practices and calling for investments to counter the country’s military rise. He ditched a nuclear deal with Iran that many Republicans hated, and has financially devastated the regime instead. His administration has added more troops in Eastern Europe to confront Russia, and ended an arms-control treaty that Moscow was violating—even while Trump himself has confused matters by praising Vladimir Putin’s leadership and questioning whether Russia has really interfered in U.S. elections. Whatever Trump’s own doubts, though, at the insistence of Congress, he has imposed sanctions against Russia for 2016 election interference. Sure, he has said mean things about NATO, but Republicans and Democrats alike have long wanted other members to pay more for their own defense, and now they are.
On the flip side, the Trump presidency hasn’t manifested in the precise kind of nightmare the Never Trump letter writers envisioned in 2016. In the first of two alarmed open missives—one that appeared in March 2016 in War on the Rocks and another in The New York Times that August—GOP foreign-policy power brokers warned about specific consequences of a Trump presidency: His wish for trade wars was “a recipe for economic disaster”; his “hateful, anti-Muslim rhetoric” would alienate allies in the Muslim world; he could bring back torture. In 2020, the economic effects of the trade war have been mild, cushioned by a multibillion-dollar bailout to farmers; Muslim allies in the Gulf in particular have overlooked his rhetoric and embraced Trump over his harshness toward their archenemy Iran; the use of torture in war remains illegal, even though Trump has granted clemency to three soldiers accused of war crimes.
None of this consoles the many signatories who still find Trump unacceptable.
What they truly find unforgivable is that he doesn’t respect them, and won’t give them important jobs. When they talk about “character,” that’s what they actually mean.