Cricket World Cup update

The T20 World Cup now entering its final stages has seen some major surprises. One of the biggest was the rank outsider US team beating perennial powerhouse Pakistan in its group game. That proved pivotal in taking the US to the second round of just eight teams of the 20 that started out, with Pakistan not making it. Then we saw another powerhouse New Zealand get completely routed by Afghanistan in their group game, enabling the latter to make it into the final eight while eliminating the former.

In the games involving the final eight teams, Afghanistan pulled off another shocker by beating Australia, the team that, along with India, were favored to win the tournament. They then went on to beat Bangladesh, propelling them into the semi-finals where they will play South Africa. The other semi-final will be between India and England.

It is clear that Afghanistan is the Cinderella team of this tournament and one hopes that they can keep pulling off these upsets and beat South Africa and then whoever they meet in the finals.

Rishi Sunak’s hapless election campaign

The British prime minister gambled when he dissolved parliament and called elections for July 4th when he was about 20 points behind in the polls. For him to succeed in spite of that handicap would require everything to go right for him. And yet, there has been one thing after another that seems to be dragging him down.

It started with the announcement itself when a sudden downpour began when he was in the middle of delivering the news of parliament dissolution to the assembled press outside Downing Street. If the rain had started before the speech he could have changed the venue or the time. But since he had already started speaking, he had little choice but to gamely continue while getting soaked. It was not a good look and was considered an inauspicious start. Things have not gone better for him since.
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Trump’s second term agenda

Serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) has made all manner of statements about what he wants to do if he should be re-elected in November. But while he was erratic and chaotic during his first term, there is a well-organized group that is working to create a detailed agenda that will provide a blueprint that they want him to implement. It is called Project 2025 and it calls for the steady dismantling of many of the checks and balances that prevent ideologues from using the government as if it were a private company run by a CEO who can make unilateral decisions that will affect the entire population.

On his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver looks at who is behind Project 2025 and what they seek to achieve. It is not good.

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.
…

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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