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.
“The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”
In my neck of the woods, traffic is up, bars are re-opening as speakeasies, Home Depot is full of customers. In other words, people are fed up. Many states are "opening up," whatever that means, but people are doing it regardless. Some of it is necessity, some of it is a refusal to live in fear, and some of it is people realizing that much of this is pointless.
From my end, I am back in the office today, fishing this weekend, and getting together with friends on Sat. night. No masks - enough of that except for the supermarket which still requires them. Time's up for the extreme stuff.
What are our readers doing this weekend? Quarantining, Soft Quarantining, or doing your best to get back to normal work, recreational, and social life?
Master the fundamentals of drawing with this discounted course bundle. Get the bundle for $40.
Painting is a fine challenge, but drawing is the basic visual art form. This is excellent, and I have no talent for it. I did it before it went on sale. All it takes is a pencil and piece of paper. No tech, no paint, no cameras.
I remember working with charcoal and pencils in secondary school, and I loved it but never pursued it.
Drawing has been the foundation of the visual arts for over 50,000 years, and it still is.
Mike Rowe, who has plenty of life experience, had a good podcast yesterday about safety. I'd vote for him for president or for anything else.
His point is that "Safety First" is just a reminder to be careful. If people took "Safety First" seriously, nobody would drive a car or take an airplane trip, much less do all of the hazardous jobs (like fishing or construction) that people do.
If you actually live by "Safety First," you will not have much of a life.
Rightly or wrongly, Trump and other national leaders took the advice of medical experts when they offered terrifying predictions.
Experts are of course fallible, but another problem with expertise is the tendency to view things through their specific lens. Safety experts, for example, might wish the max speed limit to be 35 mph. It would save many lives.
Last weekend was emptying a storage closet. 95% of what was in there ended in the trash. Even some good stuff, but never needed.
As in Babar, we found an old Father Christmas in there, and, stuffed in the furthest back under the eaves, two boxes of Christmas decorations and ornaments. Forgot we had them, but we do less-decorated Christmases these days.
Yesterday's project was the kitchen drawers. Just for a few examples, we found my wife's grandmother's walnut pasta rolling pin, her mother's rolling pin, and of course, ours. I think we have enough kitchen tools for three households. And I found two sets of meat-injectors (I guess I couldn't find the other one so bought a new one), and three basters. One steel, two plastic. Clearly, could not find a baster so got new.
And you know those great tongs you use to take pasta out of the pasta pot and dump directly into the sauce? We had three. The thing with cooking tools is that there are many of them that you use rarely, like meat thermometers or meat injectors, so they end up invisible in the backs of drawers, so you say the heck with it and just make do without.
Virus projects. We are not on any sort of phobic lockdown, but there aren't many places to go except for hikes and horses. Have we been home-cooking more? You betcha. Twice/week takeout from our favorite places, but otherwise, more.
There have been times in my life when I would have preferred being a serf safely working a lord's cabbage fields instead of taking on all of the risks and responsibilities that I have done.
I tend to do most of my thinking in the morning shower where there are no welcome distractions. This morning, some of my thoughts had to do with virus panic and the desire for a risk-free life, if not a death-free life. Most of all of our ancestors were serfs, slaves, or something similar, for thousands of years.
Maybe it's dreams of childhood, or dreams of Eden, or some vision of utopia or Heaven that inspire. One thing diseases do is to remind us to be humble in the face of nature. Two days ago an asteroid passed close to earth, which could have eliminated much of civilization not to mention millions of humans.
Are governments supposed to have the powers to do the job of an all-powerful, merciful, and loving God? I kind-of thought so, or hoped so, in my youth, but no more. Life, even as a peaceful serf with others well-armed to protect me, was no free life. Relatively safe, but no freedom or opportunity.
Fears of injury, damage, financial ruin, or death? Most of us have those. Rightly so. But there is probably a Bell Curve (as with most things) of fearfulness and risk-aversion amongst humans. An ordinary pandemic, like the Hong Kong flu of 1968, or another Chinese bug of 2020, highlights that as you can probably see in the people you know. There is such a range of fear.
There is prudence of course, but in the end there is no safety in life if one lives with energy and adventurousness. The most dangerous things I do in life is to drive my car and tractor, ride my horses, and to invest.
If you want a risk-free life, try another planet or become a timid mouse.
Ever since I graduated from grad school I have kept a major medical plan. Yes, it it portable.
Over my lifetime, medical costs have expanded enormously, mainly because of what medical science in the the US is able to do. Miraculous things. All worth doing? I do not know, but the USA has the best medical options in the world, however expensive. Among many other problems with Obamacare (a stalking horse for government medical care) was the absence of a regular cheap major medical plan like the one I still have.
Shop around. These policies still exist.
Speaking personally, I am not afraid of dying if I am in bad shape, but I think life is a kick and I'd be glad to stick with it for a while, working, making a living, and having an interesting life.
I think Voltaire should have a say in this matter, just as he did when that lunatic, Rousseau, sent him a copy of the "Discourse of the Origin of Inequality."
"I have received, sir, your new book against the human race, and I thank you for it. You will please people by your manner of telling them the truth about themselves, but you will not alter them. The horrors of that human society--from which in our feebleness and ignorance we expect so many consolations--have never been painted in more striking colors: no one has ever been so witty as you are in trying to turn us into brutes: to read your book makes one long to go about all fours. Since, however, it is now some sixty years since I gave up the practice, I feel that it is unfortunately impossible for me to resume it: I leave this natural habit to those more fit for it than are you and I. Nor can I set sail to discover the aborigines of Canada, in the first place because my ill-health ties me to the side of the greatest doctor [1] in Europe, and I should not find the same professional assistance among the Missouris: and secondly because war is going on in that country, and the example of the civilized nations has made the barbarians almost as wicked as we are ourselves. I must confine myself to being a peaceful savage in the retreat I have chosen--close to your country, where you yourself should be."
Yet creationism in government shows no sign of fading. To this day, despite the resurgence of liberal values that came after the Second World War, and especially after the Cold War, the knee-jerk assumption on the part of much of the intelligentsia is still based on planning rather than evolutionary unfolding. Though politicians are regarded as scum, government as a machine is held to be almost infallible.
We have a rather soft-quarantine going on here. Soft quarantine meaning pushing the limits of what is allowed. Not by choice, but because there are few places to go outdoors other than road hikes with friends, Costco, market, drug store. An hour of morning calisthenics in the living room before breakfast, of course, with adult music, is a good way to begin a day.
Rainy day with the goal of emptying two closets. So much crap that will never be used, and that Good Will would never want. (They are fussy about your old stuff - nobody wants it.)
I have a prosperous friend who added a 35X35' laundry room on the second floor when his four kids were young, above a new kitchen addition. Two washers, two driers, linen/blanket shelves on all the walls, and dedicated rolling racks all around: one for ski gear, one for hunting gear, one for bad-weather gear, etc. etc.
I praised him for this, but was green with envy.
Mrs. B and I are cleaning out two closets today. It feels good. Much of it is good stuff, but nobody would want it. The garbage man will need a $20 tip on Tues to get rid of it all.
"When in doubt, throw it out." The Collier Brothers never learned that. I have learned, over time, that most of our stuff is dumpster fodder.
What to do? Surfing in the intertube is a complete waste of life, like counting flowers on the wall. Reading Maggie's doesn't count.
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...
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.
How are our readers dealing with this current mess?
Your work situation, getting outdoors, shopping, exercise, masks, level of fear, etc.
As for me, working from home (no choice), shopping every other day, using Purell, and exercising in the barn. No socializing. Riding and hiking this weekend. Not paranoid, just going along with the general tendencies.
A long read but worth every minute: 