We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
I like this place in semi-rural Warren, CT, in beautiful, sophisticated, and horsey Litchfield County. Mrs. BD has some friends there. Only 40 acres, but a pond, a stream, and an orchard. Plus a barn and outbuildings - things I can not live blissfully without. Look at the photos.
I would not take the ask price seriously, given CT and New England real estate right now. What the heck. I do not need anything but peace of mind wherever I am.
I'm not sure if it's unfortunate fallout or collateral damage, but I had a conversation with a friend who, like me, battled Covid. Their battle was much worse than mine as they were in an at-risk group. But they survived, as did other family members who eventually got milder cases. The net result is this person is now virulently anti-Trump, blaming him for a host of things that simply have no basis in reality. Previously, we'd shared a belief that Trump isn't our favorite president, he's badly flawed, and while I'd been more ambivalent, we basically weren't too far apart.
Yesterday, I realized his experience caused him to jump the shark and become a full-on Trump hater. I don't understand how you can blame Trump for a virus, or even the response to it. This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. H1N1 was, so far, more damaging than Covid worlwide, and it also cut a broad swathe across demographics. Covid has not finished its tour yet - but is clearly very specific in its opportunism. The primary difference that I have noticed in the nature and spread of H1N1 and Covid is that Covid erupted mightily in New York City (media capital) while H1N1 was more damaging to other regions of the US. There could be much to discuss here. What's clear is H1N1 will be seen as less damaging to the US because fewer people died (lower population in affected areas, more diffuse, etc.), while the media attention of Covid was heightened because our media elites felt threatened and made it the #1 story to scare people. Few people will remember Obama's slow (and ultimately meaningless) response to H1N1, nor will they remember that nobody blamed him for over 13,000 deaths. It was a virus.
A newly released study shows how widespread Covid likely is. I shared this with my friend, but was rebuffed entirely. No interest in viewing useful information.
It's about himself: I Contain Multitudes, from Whitman's Song of Myself. Lyrics here
Tune/rhythm is similar to It's Not Dark Yet. He seems to be at the point at which he reviews his life, and shares it. Far from from Mr. Tambourine Man. God bless him for sharing his life with as much truth and inspiration as he could. He will not give up on life, and on his reporting.
35Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. 36When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.
10Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. 2These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.
5These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, 6but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7As you go, proclaim the good news, The kingdom of heaven has come near. 8Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. 9Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, 10no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food. 11Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. 12As you enter the house, greet it. 13If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. 14If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. 15Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.
16 See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. 17Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; 18and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles. 19When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; 20for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. 21Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; 22and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 23When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.
It is not an exclusive club. Funny how people enjoy having things to hate. As they say, haters gotta hate. Hatred is recreational for people, or at least for some people.
Feel free to explain the psychology of that.
Speaking of clubs, Trump was one of the first guys to make an exclusive club in Florida open to Jews and blacks.
My world, like all of yours probably, shrank dramatically 36 days ago. It shrank even more 2 weeks after that when I tested positive for Covid. I'm now a full 10 days since my last symptoms, but I'm not healthy yet, for a variety of reasons. I'd say I'm 95%. So let's pick through what's been going on.
To begin with, there's 'reinfection' taking place, although at very low levels. I'm skeptical of these stories. My guess is these are relapses. I almost experienced a relapse, as did other people I know, when I thought I was healthy enough to rake leaves for one hour. ONE HOUR. That was 4 days after the last symptoms. Nope. Wound up in bed the whole next day. Another person (who had scolded me telling me to be more careful) thought it wise to try and cut his lawn the day after I tried to rake. 6 days out, he wound up in bed for a day after only pushing the mower for 10 minutes. Still another, crazier, friend went for a 3 mile run a week after. He finished a mile and had to struggle to walk home, spending 2 days in bed. My feeling is people recover, feel good, try to do too much, and relapse. Since my raking adventure, I've only gone on walks. None longer than an hour, once a day. I'm still winded, but feeling stronger. As the linked article points out, "For now, the most likely explanation of why people are retesting positive seems to be that the test is picking up remnants of the virus." I'm sure if I was tested again, I'd likely be positive.
So I'm taking it easy, not pushing it. I'll try to push a little a week from now, when I'll (hopefully) feel much better. I've regained 3 of the 8 pounds I lost, so my appetite is back, and that was likely water weight, due to how dehydrated I was.
At this point, I have learned quite a bit more about the nature of what I had. I'm still not overwhelmed by its dangers. I know 10 people who tested positive. I know 10 more who definitely had it, but their doctors told them not to get tested because 'tests are for those in real need'. I have a friend at FEMA, instrumental in doing work in NYC, who told me the scare stories are just scare stories. They saw what was really going on, handling resource procurement and (now) distribution to other states. I know people who lost relatives, and we do believe (as we found out today) a relative who was in a home may have contracted it and died. So I have not said (nor would I say) this is not a dangerous virus. Certainly it requires an abundance of caution and respect. I don't believe in 'solutions' only trade offs, when politics is involved. You have to hurt someone to help someone with a political solution. It is inevitable. As a result, I believe this 'solution' was overkill of the worst kind. The trade offs are starting to be apparent...and will become more stark as they extend this.
For three years, the left has been peddling the story that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election in collaboration with the Trump campaign, with the ridiculous Steele Dossier cited as the proof.Now, the Party Line has shifted.The Russians still did it, says the new line, possibly working with the Clinton campaign, only they fed disinformation to the gullible...
The opening up of work and life is not a black and white choice between health and wealth. If it were, that would be an easy choice. We're not talking about wealth here. We're talking about a functional life, working, being useful and social, paying bills, not losing shelter, staying solvent.
This Chinese virus is not ever going away. It's here to stay like all viruses, and many if not most people will be exposed to it before 2021. However, viruses tend to run rapidly through a population over about two months and then just stick around more quietly forever, waiting for opportunity. Some people will get sick and die, regardless.
The trick now is how to balance illness and death risks with destroyed lives, careers, futures, families, and businesses. I still feel that the lockdowns and stay at home programs were extreme responses, but I understand that they were issued in the absence of data and in an atmosphere of panic (eg, 2 million Americans dead!). Lockdowns do not really save lives, and that is not what they are for anyway.
The Trump administration's plan makes good sense to me, with calm guidelines but leaving local decisions local without a one-size-fits-all for this giant country. After all, the federal officials and world experts weren't omniscient, were they? They never are. Nobody is.
I do appreciate that Dr. Fauci now says I can go back onto Tinder, but where will I go to meet that special girl in person? Maybe for a 6-foot distanced walk up and down 5th Ave...with masks? That would be a memorable way to meet your true love, masked and anonymous. It might work.
One question for readers: Do those with secure cash flows have different ideas from those who do not?
Whether people return to work and restart the economy in time to prevent a depression depends not entirely on what President Trump or, in California, Gov. Newsom decide.
It ultimately hinges on whether the people who have been shut in their homes for a month listening to mostly doomsday modeling (e.g., the March 19 governor’s warning that without his draconian measures 25.5 million Californians could be infected within 8 weeks [a number at fluctuating fatality percentages could imply that over 800,000 state residents will be dead mid-May]) and media sensationalism, decide what to do. The people, not the politicians, will decide.
Media sensationalism has scared the heck out of otherwise rational people, and scared the crap out of those who are fearful people anyway
Unable to chase Trump from office through Russia, Russia, Russia; impeachment; and incessant whining about the Electoral College, the media are now riding the coronavirus panic. If they could just convince the public the president is responsible for every COVID-19 death, that he acted too soon, and acted too slowly, that he’s wielded too much power, and not enough, that he hasn’t said enough, but now he’s said too much, they could get their man elected in November. It’s almost as if the press was working from a list of Get Trump bullet points.
Frantz Fanon and the American Racial Eros - Forty years after the death of Jean-Paul Sartre, who wrote the controversial preface to Fanon’s ‘Black Skin, White Masks,’ white guilt is still tied to masochism
There is this probably particularly American mentality that if we just study a problem long enough, and are somehow smart enough, we will inevitably discover some option that creates a win-win scenario that avoids both the terrible health consequences (more infections and more deaths) or the terrible economic consequences (a depression that forces all kinds of businesses large and small into bankruptcy). The coronavirus may be presenting the countries of the world with a no-win situation.
Unless you have a treadmill or similar at home to dust off and use, track or trail running is a free alternative for endurance exercise. I always advise against true road-running unless you have no history or family history of lower joint issues.
As we have oft repeated, endurance exercise is worth doing once weekly if you do two other days of calisthenics (which also have endurance components). Although many refer to running as "cardio," it does little or nothing for heart functioning unless it includes HIIT, such as sprints.
Related, 10,000 steps: Not quite magical when it comes to weight. Walking is great to maintain mobility especially in the elderly, but it does nothing for the heart and certainly nothing for losing fat. Quite enjoyable, though. Walks are great, with friends, spouse, whatever.
A large swath of the "expert" community cloaked itself with unscientific certitude, beginning on March 16, with a model from the Imperial College London -- the source governments relied upon for the decision to ruin their economies -- which projected about 2.2 million Americans and half a million Brits would die.
Almost every national leader, politician and media outlet in the world believed that model. As I explained in my last column, modern men and women have substituted "experts" for prophets and priests. Science is the secular religion, and "experts" are its prophets and priests. In fact, they have greater authority among the secular, especially those left of center, than the pope of the Catholic Church has among Catholics. Whereas popes have invoked the doctrine of "infallibility" twice in the history of the Catholic Church, "experts" invoke it every day among the secular faithful.
Is social distancing intended to slow the spread and develop herd immunity, as a month of “flatten the curve” messaging claimed, or is it actually intended to minimize total infections? The former implies that we are probably ready to loosen restrictions; the latter implies a far longer and more painful quarantine.
Adding to the confusion is our inability to answer a fundamental question — namely, how useful has the lockdown been in the first place?
Re the former, I believe the purpose is to reduce pressure on medical care, because there is no way to indefinitely avoid exposure, illness, death. This germ is out there forever and a vaccine is a year away. Re the latter question, we'll never know. The US is not Sweden.
You have to give Vox a few molecules of credit for recognizing that while they rage against disinformation, some of their earliest pieces about COVID-19 included information that just wasn’t accurate — in part because it was coming from well-credentialed experts who flat-out misjudged the danger from the virus.
Nobody had the data, so nobody was alarmed. Even in February, 6 or 7 weeks ago, Dr. Fauci was reassuringly saying "just a flu, go to restaurants, etc." Our experts were consistently wrong in their guesses, jumping from sanguine to reckless panic, not just because of China but because they were all flying blind - VFR into IMC.
Do we all agree that nobody knows what the future holds? Or do I have to prove it to you? I ask this because there are some well-studied media effects which suggest that simply appearing in media provides credibility. There was a well-known series of excellent studies by Stanford researchers that have shown, for example, that children take media literally. If you show them a bag of popcorn on a television set and ask them what will happen if you turn the TV upside down, the children say the popcorn will fall out of the bag. This result would be amusing if it were confined to children. But the studies show that no one is exempt. All human beings are subject to this media effect, including those of us who think we are self-aware and hip and knowledgeable.
Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them...
I was speaking with a friend, prior to the lockdown, about Covid and the political repercussions. His view was the politicians would overreact/overreach for one reason - demographics. He believed, and this is now proving to be correct, that the black population would be disproportionately hit. There are higher incidences of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, smoking, alcoholism - all at-risk traits. As a result, there'd be a need to try to 'protect' these people and manage the data. They did a good job with the data, but as usual, you can't hide the truth all the time.
These at-risk traits are the natural result of bondage to the state. As the US moved heavily to institutionalize all kinds of state aid to 'lift up' a downtrodden people, the government created a permanent underclass that is in thrall to the state, and engaging more irresponsible behaviors as a result (please note, I'm not saying black people are irresponsible - this is true of people of many ethnicities who have become multi-generational recipients of state aid). Taking responsibility for one's life is hard, and it's hard work. The state can step in and solve all that for you, though. Free health care, free food, free homes. It's good stuff, if you can get it. You can even become a 'Covid Patriot' full time by just going along with state aid.
So it's no surprise to see calls for 'reparations' for Covid hitting the black population so hard. Yes, they have suffered more. I'm not sure the survivors deserve 'reparations' though. After all, it's hit men disproportionately, too. Perhaps we can have calls for Covid reparations for men?
I'll sit and wait for my reparations check. Pass the chips and bourbon, please.
From Cavalleria Rusticana (trans, Rustic Chivalry), 1890. The opera is set on Easter Day.
Before the action takes place the young villager Turiddu returned from military service to find out that his fiancée Lola had married the carter Alfio while he was away.[11] In revenge, Turiddu seduced Santuzza, a young woman in the village. As the opera begins, Lola, overcome by her jealousy of Santuzza, has begun an adulterous affair with Turiddu.
At the centre of the story is an unhappy young woman, Santuzza, who feels that she is not worthy to attend the Easter mass as she has had a sexual relationship outside of marriage. The opera is based on a short story by Giovanni Verga. It is set in a Sicilian village in the 19th century, where a tense drama unfolds on Easter Sunday. The Easter Hymn is a tribute to the Lord, performed by the villagers and Santuzza:
Let's not take advantage of the self-employed tradesmen and workers: electricians, carpenters, pavers, landscape people, roofers, delivery restaurants, plumbers, painters, fitness trainers, hairdressers, etc. etc. during hard times.
Right now, they are desperate for work and offering bids which are almost 50% of what they would have done 6 months ago. So my feeling is this is the time to get a lot of jobs off your checklist in affordable and prompt ways, but don't be a schnorrer. They are all under-bidding eachother just to stay busy and to keep their helpers working. A minor profit is better than nothing.
These people have families to feed, and times are tough. If you can, put these people to work and don't give them a hard time about it. Do it for America.
My world, like all of yours probably, shrank dramatically 36 days ago. It shrank even more 2 weeks after that when I tested positive for Covid. I'm now a full 10 days since my last symptoms, but I'm not healthy yet, for a variety of reasons. I'd say I'm 95%. So let's pick through what's been going on.
Yeah, the world has gone crazy. What else is new? Get out there and buy a coffee and a donut - and 
TARGETED: 
A 64-year-old man