Interesting insider view of UK politics

As the UK heads into its general election on July 4th, David Remnick had an interesting interview with Rory Stewart who was at one time an ambitious Conservative politician and member of parliament in the UK, intent on climbing up the leadership ladder and someday becoming prime minister. He had all the pre-requisites for a Conservative party leader, coming from a privileged family, attending an elite private school (Eton) and then Oxford University, and he quickly rose up the party ranks after he first became an MP in 2010. He competed for party leader in 2019, losing to Boris Johnson.
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Lessons of Covid for the next pandemic

Public health experts say that another pandemic is inevitable, that it is not a question of ‘if’ but when and what form it will take. So what lessons have we learned from the Covid-19 pandemic we just had (and that still lingers on) that we can apply to the next one?

Clearly scientists and health experts were scrambling to contain the virus and various measures were adopted, not all of them successful. Some will depend on the nature of the virus itself and how it is transmitted. If it is in the form of droplets that fall, then physical distancing will help though the distance required may be different from the six feet that we were told. If the virus is transmitted in the form of aerosols that float through the air and linger longer, distancing may not help. But in either case, masking helps but only if we use high quality N95 or KN94 masks and not the paper or the homemade cloth ones. So having a stockpile of those good masks at the ready to hand out to the public would be a good idea.

Avoiding crowded indoor spaces where lots of people gather is also recommended. If one has to be indoors with others, it would be better if the place is well ventilated.

Working at home, if possible, is probably beneficial. When it comes to closing down schools, offices, and restaurants, the cost-benefit analysis is more complicated.

One positive thing that came out of this pandemic is that scientists seem to have developed new techniques to quickly identify the nature of the virus and develop vaccines for it. Of course, that will not help much if the same nutters who opposed vaccinations the last time around are still vocal.

Kevin Drum provides a comprehensive list other the measures that were taken and how effective they were.

Ok is not ok?

I feel that it is a basic act of courtesy to acknowledge, however briefly, when someone has communicated with you via text message. So if they send me some information, I often will just say ‘Thanks’. If they have made a suggestion to which I agree (“Let’s meet at 10:00am”), I will reply ‘Ok’. If they ask me to confirm some choice (“Shall I come at 10:00?”), I will reply ‘Sure’.

I notice that some of the people will use the thumbs up emoji instead of words. But I am not an emoji kind of guy and felt that my words conveyed the same sense of agreement or acknowledgement.

But I am not an expert on social media communication and recently I was listening to a radio program and someone said that just replying ‘Sure’ was bad, in that it implied sarcasm, as if I had said ‘Yeah, sure’ in a disdainful voice. However, I was assured that ‘Sure!’ was fine.

She then went on to say that ‘Ok’ was even worse than ‘Sure’, which startled me since that is my most frequent from of acknowledgment.

I am not sure how universal this sentiment it. The mores in the world of online communication can change rapidly over time as well as vary a lot from person to person, so maybe ‘Ok’ and ‘Sure’ are ok despite what the speaker said.

Sacrificing functionality for style

I recently got a ride from a friend in his Tesla and he showed me the many electric features that have replaced formerly mechanical ones, like a button that when touched opens the door, rather than a latch that you pull to release the catch. Many of the familiar knobs and buttons were gone, replaced by a touch screen. My friend showed me how the screen showed the presence of people and trash cans on the sidewalk, which I could also see by looking through the windshield. It seemed like the design emphasis was on looking cool and slick rather than boring old functionality. I am not particularly impressed by tech gimmickry that does not provide substantial benefits in functionality and so was somewhat underwhelmed.

But it appears that there is a serious downside to having everything be electric-powered as a woman found out when she was trapped inside her Tesla when the battery unexpectedly died and she discovered that she could not open the door or windows.
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Charges dropped against Columbia student protestors

Columbia University had a terrible response to the student protests over Gaza, unleashing the police in a heavy-handed crackdown and arresting many people. Now charges against almost all of them have been dropped.

Dozens of pro-Palestinian student protesters arrested in April after occupying and barricading a building at Columbia University in New York City have had all criminal charges against them dropped, Manhattan prosecutors said at a court hearing.

The hearing at the Manhattan criminal courthouse came seven weeks after Columbia administrators called in hundreds of armed and heavily armored police officers to the university’s campus in a high-profile law-enforcement response that was broadcast live on national news channels.

Police arrested 46 protesters who had barricaded themselves inside Hamilton Hall, and cleared a weeks-old tent encampment on a nearby Columbia lawn that has inspired similar pro-Palestinian protests at universities around the world.

All 46 protesters, who were arrested on the night of 30 April about 20 hours after taking over the academic building, were initially charged with trespass in the third degree, a misdemeanor.

Stephen Millan, a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, told the court on Thursday his office would not prosecute 30 protesters who were Columbia students at the time of the arrest, nor two who were Columbia employees, citing prosecutorial discretion and lack of evidence. A case against another student was dismissed earlier in the month.

Millan said protesters wore masks and covered surveillance cameras, and there was insufficient evidence to show that any individual defendant damaged property or injured anyone.

No police officers were injured during the arrests, the prosecutor noted.

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Public health safety measures that would never pass now

The Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has been warning of the dangers of social media on young children and proposes warning labels for them. I am not sure what form that it will take and how effective it would be (assuming that it ever gets enacted) but it did make me think of one of the biggest positive acts by a former Surgeon General and that was the warning labels on tobacco packs promoted by his predecessor C. Everatt Koop. “As Surgeon General, he released eight reports on the health consequences of tobacco use, including the first report on the health consequences of involuntary tobacco smoke exposure. During Koop’s tenure as Surgeon General, smoking rates in the United States declined significantly from 38% to 27%”.

Thanks to actions like those taken by the government in those days, we now have cleaner air and water, fluoride in the water, and bans on the widespread use of some pesticides like DDT.

We also had the ban on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were destroying the ozone layer. That story of how the fight against that harmful chemical was won by scientists can be read here.
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Too busy to read books? There’s an app for that!

We are all familiar with the sinking feeling that the list of books that one would like to read but have not yet found the time to do so grows longer by the day. It is hopeless to think that we will ever catch up and most of us are resigned to that somber fact. But Anthony Lane alerts me to a new app called Blinkist that addresses that need..

Blinkist is an app. If I had to summarize what it does, I would say that it summarizes like crazy. It takes an existing book and crunches it down to a series of what are called Blinks. On average, these amount to around two thousand words.
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Once you are Blinked in, your days will follow a new pattern. Instead of being woken by an alarm, or by a bored spaniel licking your face, you will find yourself greeted by a Daily Blink. This will arrive, with a ping, on your phone, alerting you to a book that, suitably pruned, is ready to be served up for your personal edification.

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Senseless deaths

Common sense would tell you that when temperatures rise to extraordinarily high levels, you should avoid exertion and stay indoors. The hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia undertaken by devout Muslims is done outdoors and is pretty grueling at the best of times. But when it is done during a heat wave, it is positively dangerous, and so it proved this year when temperatures reached 125F.

At least 550 pilgrims have died during the hajj, underscoring the gruelling nature of the pilgrimage which again unfolded in scorching temperatures this year.

At least 323 of those who died were Egyptians, most of them succumbing to heat-related illnesses, the two Arab diplomats coordinating their countries’ responses told AFP.

“All of them [the Egyptians] died because of heat” except for one who sustained fatal injuries during a minor crowd crush, one of the diplomats said, adding that the total figure came from the hospital morgue in the Al-Muaisem neighbourhood of Mecca.

At least 60 Jordanians have died, the diplomats said, up from an official tally of 41 given earlier on Tuesday by Amman.

The new deaths bring the total reported so far by multiple countries to 577, according to an AFP tally.

The diplomats said the total at the morgue in Al-Muaisem, one of the biggest in Mecca, was 550.
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Saudi authorities have reported treating more than 2,000 pilgrims suffering from heat stress but have not updated that figure since Sunday and have not provided information on fatalities.

At least 240 pilgrims were reported dead by various countries last year, most of them Indonesians.

The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and all Muslims with the means to must complete it at least once.

The pilgrimage is increasingly affected by climate breakdown, according to a Saudi study published last month that said temperatures in the area where rituals are performed were rising 0.4C (0.72F) each decade.

Temperatures hit 51.8C at the Grand Mosque in Mecca on Monday, the Saudi national meteorology centre said.

It is madness to choose to go out in such temperatures. These people died because of their religious fervor.

Biden hammers Trump leading up to the debate

Up to now, Joe Biden has been relatively subdued in his attacks on serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT), despite getting severely attacked by SSACFT and his supporters in the right wing echo chamber. But in a new press release, the Biden campaign hammers SSACFT harder than anything I have seen so far. It is a pretty comprehensive takedown. It looks like this is the tack Biden is going to take in the debate on June 27th.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 17, 2024

Trump’s Debate Lies Show How Scared He Is

Donald Trump is a liar and a fraud. His campaign is full of liars and frauds. And their desperate leaks and lies to the right-wing media only underscore how scared Donald Trump is to debate.This is Donald’s debate playbook: lies, distractions, and deceit. Donald Trump and his campaign are scared because they can’t defend his record, personal conduct, or extreme agenda in front of the American people.Donald can’t defend that he’s a criminal who has been convicted of 34 felonies, was found liable for sexual assault, committed financial fraud, and is only out for himself.
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Another monolith appears!

In 2020 there were several gleaming monoliths similar to the one that was shown in the classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey that mysteriously appeared in remote areas of the world. As far as I am aware, the question of who was responsible was never solved.

Now yet another monolith has appeared, this time in the Nevada desert.

Las Vegas police said on the social platform X that members of its search and rescue unit found the otherworldly object over the weekend near Gass Peak, part of the vast Desert National Wildlife Refuge where bighorn sheep and desert tortoises can be found roaming. At 6,937 feet (2,114 meters), it is among the highest peaks in the area north of Las Vegas.
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In November of [2020 a similar metal monolith was found deep in the Mars-like landscape of Utah’s red-rock desert. Then came sightings in Romania, central California and on the famed Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas.

All of them disappeared as quickly as they popped up.

The Utah structure, which captured the world’s imagination during the pandemic, is believed to be the first in the series. It stood at about 12 feet (3.6 meters) and had been embedded in the rock in an area so remote that officials didn’t immediately reveal its location for fear of people getting lost or stranded while trying to find it.

Hordes of curious tourists still managed to find it, and along the way flattened plants with their cars and left behind human waste in the bathroom-free backcountry. Two men known for extreme sports in Utah’s sweeping outdoor landscapes say it was that kind of damage that made them step in late at night and tear it down.

The article does not give the dimensions of the latest monolith but whatever its size, it is a pretty impressive stunt to pull off.