Oct 312020
 

The ghosts of Halloween have not completely forsaken us.

Here is the driveway of one of our neighbors tonight:

I doubt there will be many trick-or-treaters, but it was nonetheless good to see this. I especially appreciated the lit candle that turned a jack-o-lantern into, well, an actual jack-o-lantern. But it is really the other pumpkin that looked truly frightening. Thank you, neighbor!

 Posted by at 7:53 pm
Oct 312020
 

Would you like me to scare you into offering me some Halloween candy?

Here are some plots from the spreadsheet that I’ve been using to keep track of COVID-19 numbers since the spring.

I am tracking global figures, numbers in the US, Canada, the province of Ontario and my city Ottawa, as well as the country of my birth (and where our elderly parents live), Hungary.

The number of cases needs no explanation. The trends are not good. Hungary, in particular, appears to be a representative case of Europe in general, where the numbers began skyrocketing in recent weeks, per capita figures far exceeding those in Trump’s America. (So perhaps it’s not politics, after all.)

The daily growth rates are also alarming. The only place with a downward trend is Ottawa. Everywhere else, the growth rate is increasing. A constant growth rate in this chart would correspond to an exponential rise in the total number of cases; an increasing growth rate implies super-exponential behavior.

This is also reflected in the doubling rate. In this chart, the higher the number, the better; a high number of days means that the spread is slow. Again, with the exception of Ottawa, the numbers are trending downward (which is bad), or at best, are perhaps stagnating (in Canada and Ontario). And look at Hungary again! According to the latest data, the number of cases there doubles every 16-17 days or so, which is frightening.

These charts show seven-day averages. Again, the usual disclaimers apply. Country-to-country comparisons need to be made with care, due to differences in testing and reporting regimes. But the trends are another matter.

 Posted by at 1:14 pm
Oct 302020
 

The latest figures from the United States are scarier than ever. It appears Dr. Fauci was right when he predicted that the daily number of new cases will reach 100,000; according to the World-o-meter data that I’ve been following, there have been 101,461 new cases in the US today.

Does this mean that the United States officially qualifies as a “shithole country” with regards to how it manages the pandemic?

Not so fast.

Per capita, these figures mean 306 new cases per million people in the past 24 hours.

But look. Here’s my country of birth, Hungary. They were doing well until they weren’t. In the past 24 hours, they produced 3,286 infections. For a country with only 9.65 million people, that’s a lot. So much, in fact, that at 340 cases per million people, they are actually ahead of the United States. (What a relief: America is not number one.)

And wait! Before you jump to the conclusion that Mr. Orban’s illiberal populism is to blame, look at France. In the past 24 hours, they produced a staggering 49,215 new infections. Granted, that’s less than half the number of new cases in the US. But they only have less than one fifth the population! So per capita, their figures translate into a truly whopping 754 new cases per million people.

So perhaps it’s not politics, after all.

None of that excuses Mr. Trump as he mocks experts and holds “super spreader” campaign events. Perhaps 306 is less than 340 or 754, but it is still a lot of people. And as a result, around a thousand Americans die every day who could otherwise have lived. Clearly, the country could do a better job.

Canada, too. Perhaps our statistics look better than American statistics, but there is no room for complacency. This second wave is hitting us hard, much harder than the spring outbreak, and there is no sign of it ending anytime soon. On the national level, the rate of new infections is below 100 per million people, but it’s much higher in hotspots. Today’s breaking news: The province of Manitoba registered 350 cases per million, exceeding the US average.

A vaccine may or may not be coming soon. Even if it does, it will likely be imperfect, offering limited immunity. And it will take months for a mass vaccination program to reach the requisite level for vaccine-induced “herd immunity”. Long story short, the end is not yet in sight. This is likely going to get worse, perhaps a lot worse, before it gets better.

But it’s not politics, people. Wear those damn masks. Wash your hands. Keep away from other people. Resist the temptation to visit grandma on her birthday or hold a large Christmas family dinner. For crying out loud, this is not some backdoor to communism. You are not a lesser human, a less manly man if you wear a mask and keep your “social distance”. This is centuries-old science, which is how human society was able to cope with past epidemics. Ignore it and you may be directly responsible for infecting, perhaps crippling, even killing your loved ones.

 Posted by at 9:55 pm
Oct 302020
 

I don’t usually write about such matters, but a letter like this one is always a nice one to get even when there is no raging pandemic:

Let this serve as a public service reminder: If you are, like me, in your fifties, especially if you are a male, with a sedentary lifestyle (spending your days in your office chair), perhaps overweight: You are at risk. Early detection may mean the difference between surviving to a ripe old age in good health vs. dying before you get to enjoy life as a pensioner.

 Posted by at 5:53 pm
Oct 282020
 

My revulsion over Trump notwithstanding, every once in a while, when I am confronted with the blatant intolerance of “cancel culture” and the frequent dishonesty of “progressives”, I do feel that the Trumpists have a point.

Case in question: On October 13, 2020, SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett responded to a question concerning sexual orientation by stating the following: “I have no agenda, and I do want to be clear that I have never discriminated on the basis of sexual preference and would not ever discriminate on the basis of sexual preference. Like racism, I think discrimination is abhorrent.”

Progressive outrage was swift. Sexual “preference”? Sexual orientation is not a preference. You do not choose to be gay, queer, or bisexual. True. (Though allow me to observe that pedophiles also do not choose to be sexually attracted to children. No, I absolutely do not equate a loving relationship between consenting adults and the abuse of children. Just making a factual observation, a rhetorical point if you wish, highlighting that “orientation” does not, by itself, make a person’s sexual behavior socially or legally acceptable and that sexual orientation notwithstanding, a person can choose, or prefer, to refrain from committing unlawful acts. Besides, if sexuality was just a matter of preference, would that make persecution acceptable? Is it okay to persecute on the basis of religion, which is obviously a matter of preference? Which is why, I think, the “consenting adults” standard is far more appropriate than any distinction between orientation vs. preference when we define what is legal, socially acceptable, and protected as a basic human right. But, I digress.)

So here is the thing. Here is how Webster’s online dictionary defined the word “preference” as late as September 28, 2020, according to the Wayback Machine:

And here is how the definition changed on or before October 14 (when the Wayback Machine next captured the page) and what it says today:

Can you spot the difference?

Yes, somehow magically, overnight maybe, the word “preference” acquired an offensive meaning that was previously unknown to the editors of Merriam-Webster. The explanatory paragraph states that “The term preference as used to refer to sexual orientation is widely considered offensive in its implied suggestion that a person can choose who they are sexually or romantically attracted to.”

If your conservative friends respond with “what the [expletive]!”, I think they have every right to be upset. This kind of altered reality smells like the work of the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984, or the altered photographs of the Stalin era with their vanishing commissars. In any case… “widely considered” by whom? (Expressions like this are actively discouraged by Wikipedia as weasel words, expressions of anonymous authority that should be avoided in encyclopedic definitions.)

It is one thing to condemn bigotry and racism. It is another thing to actively search for opportunities to be offended, even altering reality if that’s what it takes. This is not tolerance. This is virtue signaling. This is phony outrage, cheap political theater. The fact that the “progressive left” sinks this low, feels justified to sink this low (because, you know, Trump!) is sickening.

Of course there is a charitable explanation: Perhaps Webster’s simply responded to the “facts on the ground”, the criticism of Judge Barrett serving as a reminder to check, and update, this dictionary entry. But even if that were the case, shouldn’t such an update be based on more than a single instance of a political firestorm in the final weeks of a hotly contested US election cycle? Was it really necessary to make this change with such urgency? Given the fact that the entry directly relates to an unfolding, current political event, didn’t that deserve at least a footnote? Or perhaps just wait two weeks until the (badly rushed) confirmation process is over?

Bah. Who cares about such niceties, when there is such a wonderful opportunity to engage in righteous shaming.


NB: The screen captures above are mine. They are slightly altered (I removed commercial banners and information related to my personal privacy.) Their content was not manipulated.

 Posted by at 1:24 pm
Oct 192020
 

Since when is listening to the scientists a bad thing?

Now as to the claim that if he listened to the scientists, he’d have tanked the economy… here is what Mr. Trump’s pandemic response accomplished with respect to the US economy:

Compare this against China, where the totalitarian government, to their credit, actually listened to the scientists:

Even Canada, with a much less spectacular pre-pandemic economic performance than the United States, fared much better than our southern neighbor on which much of our economy depends:

So I suppose, Mr. Trump, you just gave millions of thinking Americans another reason to vote for Mr. Biden. I’d laugh but… neither the state of the US economy nor the number of dead, rapidly approaching a quarter million, qualify as laughing matter. Not to mention the seemingly inevitable march towards an increasingly illiberal, increasingly authoritarian America, driven by structural causes that go back decades and which a Biden Administration is just as unlikely to address as preceding administrations.

 Posted by at 1:21 pm
Oct 182020
 

I rarely remember my dreams. It was therefore striking when this morning I woke up from a vivid dream. In my dream, I visited my long dead grandmother’s old apartment, except that she was very much alive, sitting in front of a desk facing the window of her room. I stood at her doorway, not wanting to get any closer, COVID-19 and all. I said to her that we should keep our distance, and at first she nodded but then, bah, she approached me anyway with the intent to hug and kiss me. Not having any better ideas, I quickly held up the sheet of paper or book or whatever it was that I had in my hands, so that instead of kissing each other on the cheek, we ended up kissing through that paper object. I truly was worried that if we are careless, we risk her frail health.

In actuality, my grandmother, who was born in 1901, passed away 26 years ago. I was wondering what prompted this dream. Then I realized: last night, I saw an image on Twitter, a 1908 Canadian painting titled Mrs. Davies at the Sewing Machine, by Albert Henry Robinson.

Not quite the same as my grandmother’s room, but it has the same vibe, same atmosphere.

What an unusual dream.

Yes, I loved my grandmother very much. But I don’t think I ever saw her using a sewing machine.

 Posted by at 12:46 pm
Oct 112020
 

I learned the other day that Jeff Lynne was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Lynne is one of the founders of the supergroup Electric Light Orchestra. Though there were inevitable changes and periods of inactivity, ELO has been in business for a remarkable 50 years.

I first “met” ELO in the mid-1970s when my uncle returned to Hungary from a trip to Canada. He brought a few records, including ELO’s On The Third Day, and he let me make a cassette copy.

This was my first encounter with ELO’s brand of progressive rock, a mix of pop rock and classical instrumentation. It was instant love on my part. Their interpretation of Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt, in particular, left a lasting impression. Incidentally, it also increased my appreciation for classical music.

These days, I often listen to ELO when I am working. It works better than almost any other piece of music, helping me focus on my work. Especially useful when I am working on a difficult problem, whether it is physics or a tough code debugging exercise. As a matter of fact, I was actually listening to ELO when I first heard the news.

I suppose I cannot call Mr. Lynne Sir because for that, he’d have had to be made a Knight of the OBE, not a mere Officer. Even so, all I can say is that it’s an award well-deserved. Thank you for the music, Mr. Lynne, OBE.

 Posted by at 6:27 pm
Oct 092020
 

So I try to start a piece of software that accesses a classic serial port.

The software locks up. The process becomes unkillable. Because, you know… because. Microsoft has not yet discovered kill -9 I guess.

(Yes, I know that unkillable zombie processes exist under Linux/UNIX, too. But in the past 25 years, I remember exactly one (1) occasion when a Linux process was truly unkillable, hung in a privileged kernel call, and actually required a reboot with no workaround. On Linux, this is considered a bug, not a feature. In contrast, on Windows this is a regular occurrence. Then again, on Linux I have fine-grained control and I can update pretty much everything other than the kernel binary, without ever having to reboot.)

Ok-kay… this means Windows has to be restarted. Fine. At least let me check if there are any Windows updates. Oops… error, because an “update service is shutting down” or whatever.

Oh well, let’s restart. The browser (Edge) will remember my previously opened tabs, right?

After restart, another program tells me that it has an update. Clicking on the update button opens the browser with the download link. Fine. Just checking, in the browser history all my previously opened tabs (lots of them) are still there. Good.

Meanwhile, Windows Update does come to life and tells me that I need to restart my system. Couldn’t you freaking tell me this BEFORE I restarted?

Oh well, might as well… restart #2.

After restart, let’s open the browser. History… and all my previously opened tabs are gone. The only thing the bloody browser remembers is the single tab that contained the download link for that application.

@!##%@#!@. And @#$$!@#$@!$. And all their relatives, too. Live or deceased. And any related deities.

Oh well, let’s restore the bleeping tabs manually; fortunately, I also had most of them opened in Chrome, so I could reopen them, one by one, in Edge. (Maybe there’s a more efficient way of doing this, but I wasn’t going to research that.)

Meanwhile, I also restarted Visual Studio 2019. It told me that it had an update. Having learned from previous experience, I shut down a specific service that was known to interfere with the update. It proved insufficient. When Visual Studio was done updating, it told me that “only one thing” remains: a teeny weeny inconsequential thing, ANOTHER BLOODY RESTART.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, in the fine year of 2020, the great software company Microsoft has not yet found a way to UPDATE A BLEEPING APPLICATION without restarting the WHOLE BLEEPING WORLD. Or at the very least do me a bleeping failure and warn IN ADVANCE that the update may require a restart.

My favorite coffee mug survived, but only just barely. I almost smashed it against the wall.

So here we go… restart #3.

It was nearly two hours ago that I innocently tried to turn on that program that required access to the serial port. Since then, I probably aged a few years, increased my chances of a stroke and other illnesses related to high pressure, barked at my beautiful wife and my cats, almost smashed my favorite mug, lost several browser tabs but also my history in some xterm windows, and other than that, accomplished ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Thanks for nothing, Microsoft.

And I actually like Microsoft. Imagine what I’d be saying if I hated them.

 Posted by at 1:18 pm
Oct 082020
 

I’ve not blogged in a while as I’ve been insane busy.

But tonight… tonight I feel more strongly than ever that we are all extras in some galactic entertainment show.

Remember the Breaking Bad episode that was about a fly landing in Walter White’s meth lab?

Well, here we are, with the US vice presidential debate, and the Internet is abuzz… about a bleeping fly that landed in Mike Pence’s head. Not the substance of the debate. Not its (reasonably pleasant) tone. But the bleeping fly.

I wonder if they saw the fly in China. One thing they didn’t see was certain comments about China. The censors of the Middle Kingdom were swift to protect their great nation from undesirable thoughts:

What a world we live in.

What November will bring, I don’t know. The worst possible outcome: A disputed election. Even a Trump landslide is preferable. And of course a Biden victory will do nothing to resolve the systemic issues that led to Trump’s presidency four years ago in the first place.

What fresh madness does 2020 still have for us? I hope none. But in light of the fly tonight, I just don’t know anymore. Perhaps we are indeed extras in a scripted show that is created by a deranged group of writers.

 Posted by at 1:18 am