Upgrading our masks


As the pandemic wears on, we need to consider switching to better masks. The simple pleated masks, or homemade fabric masks, no longer cut it. N95 masks are certainly an upgrade. But from an article last week in the Economist, I learned about an even better mask, the FFP2 mask. The FFP2 masks are available on Amazon, or were last week. I ordered 50 of them.

The FFP2 masks have two straps rather than one. One stap goes around the back of the neck, the other around the back of the head. There is a kind of foam gasket over the nose that improves the over-the-nose seal. The filter material is four ply. I ordered a 50-pack last week from Amazon for $28.99. That should be more than enough to last me a while, plus some to give away.

I’ve had all my shots, but the Omicron variant is spreading very fast. As we all struggle to keep the world going around while staying healthy, the simple precautions of masks (with the best masks we can get) and washing our hands are still the best defenses.

Stars



Source: Hubble telescope, NASA, Jesœs Maz Apellÿniz, and Davide De Martin via Wikimedia Commons


An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics. Bradley W. Carroll and Dale A. Ostlie. Cambridge University Press, 2017. 1,342 pages.


Quick now: How old is the universe? Answer: About 13.8 billion years.

If you were to walk out under the night sky this evening, photons of light would reach you that are billions of years old. You wouldn’t be able to detect those photons with your unaided eyes, but the photons came from the far edges of the observable universe. That light is very, very old and was generated by a star that was among the first to form after the Big Bang. When you look out into the far reaches of the universe, you are looking into the distant past. Even the light from our sun, of course, is about eight minutes old. What’s happening at the edges of the universe right now? We can’t possibly know for billions of years, when the light reaches us.

It is almost criminal that light pollution and modern living have robbed us of a relationship with the stars. Our ancestors must have felt that relationship very keenly, given some of the artefacts they left — the clay tablets of the Babylonian astrologers and astronomers, for example, or the prehistoric henges.

One of my favorite bedside books is an astronomy textbook last revised in 1964. There’s very little in that textbook that is actually wrong; astronomers then knew what they didn’t know and what needed to be figured out. But in the 55 years or so between the two textbooks, our knowledge of astrophysics has exploded. There are very few equations in the 1964 textbook, but the 2017 textbook is full of them. We now have mathematical models for (and therefore substantial understanding of) all sorts of phenomena, including what happens in the interior of stars, how elements heavier than hydrogen are formed inside of stars, how gravity works its magic in the gas and dust of the interstellar medium to form galaxies, etc. Astrophysicists love their equations.

I cannot follow the math of all those equations. However, not being able to follow the math should not stand in the way of reading books like this. I frequently read books that I can’t completely understand. There is still much that can be learned. The processes that are modeled by equations can also be described in text, and this book is lucid in its descriptions of astrophysical phenomena.

But, as is often the case with nerds, it’s not just about the science. The wonders of the universe also are food for the imagination. I can almost imagine that stars have personalities. Though stars can be classified according to type, size, age, temperature, and many other factors, each star is different. There are even not-exactly-fringy theories that stars are conscious. Stars, like life, have the almost magical ability to create order in a chaotic universe. Stars can do amazing things, such as make oxygen or iron or gold out of hydrogen. Stars furnish the chemicals out of which life is made and the energy that sustains life. Like stars, each galaxy also is different. Both stars and galaxies cluster, almost as though they have social needs. Stars (and galaxies) are very frequently found in pairs like friends or lovers, orbiting each other around their mutual center of gravity. Like us, stars are born. Some live longer lives than others, but eventually all stars die. The earth, of course, is made from the bodies of long-deceased stars, which is why scientists like to point out that we are all stardust.

The table of contents of this book is an excellent outline of what we know so far about the universe.


Cambridge University Press. Click on images for high-resolution version.




Oh no. I hear the hum.


I first noticed the hum many weeks ago. When I first became conscious of it, I gave it little thought. Though this area is very quiet, engine noises can carry a long way. When I heard it in the middle of the night, it became more puzzling, because I couldn’t think of any reason why a large diesel engine would be idling a mile or two away in the middle of the night. Now that I’m aware of it, I hear the hum almost every day — or night.

Before I had read about the hum, I had described it to a neighbor the same way many others have described it. It sounds like a large diesel engine idling — a train engine, for example — about a mile or more away. It does not change pitch or volume. The sound is either there or not there. Eventually I Googled for something like “low pitched rumbling sound” and discovered that it is called the hum. It has been reported all over the world. Here is a link to the Wikipedia article. If you Google for “the hum,” you’ll find many articles about it. It has been reported that only 2 percent of people can hear it. Why me? My hearing is pretty good, especially for someone my age. Also it’s usually very quiet here.

At first I dismissed the sound as a form of tinnitus, or as some sort of pneumatic phenomenon having to do with how the outside air flows around the roof of my house. But after a few weeks, I became increasingly confident that the sound is real. Then it dawned on me to see if I could measure the sound with a sound-measuring app on my iPhone.

I have not yet done enough measuring to feel highly confident of what I’m seeing in the “Decibel X” app. But so far I think the app is confirming what I hear. When I don’t hear the hum, the background noise level averages around 30 decibels, at the whisper level. When I do hear the hum, the noise level averages about 37 decibels. The background noise here always seems to be concentrated at frequencies below 90Hz. But if I had to guess at the frequency of the hum, I’d put it as around 50 Hz.

Assuming that the hum is real, I have no theory about what is causing it. But I’m now 99 percent convinced that it’s real.

Does anyone else hear the hum?

The coveted card



I’m including an image of the card, because I think everyone would like to know what these cards look like. I’ve obscured identifying information and information that could be useful to counterfeiters. What the blank card looks like is no secret.


I have hesitated to post very much here about having gotten my Covid-19 shots, because it seems unfair to those who are still waiting. But I came across an article at the Washington Post or the New York Times arguing that it’s probably OK to talk about getting the shots or to post about it in social media, because it may reassure those who are hesitating about being vaccinated.

Once everyone has had a chance to get the vaccines, then the next big cause of disagreement is probably going to have to do with “vaccine passports.” On Feb. 4, the New York Times wrote a piece saying that it’s probably going to happen: Coming Soon: The ‘Vaccine Passport.’ And today the Times has another piece, Vaccine Passports, Covid’s Next Political Flash Point.

If the United States reaches its current goal of being able to vaccinate all adults by the end of May, meaning that all adults have had a fair chance at getting the vaccine, then it seems entirely fair to me, come the end of May, that those who have helped the U.S. achieve herd immunity should gain some privileges. There will be a huge outcry from those who have refused the vaccine for political reasons or because they believe in conspiracy theories. I will not be sympathetic to their complaints.

A mere card is useless. They’d be far too easy to counterfeit. If there is to be a vaccine passport, then there must be an international database that can be checked when traveling internationally.

I was curious about what kind of information is gathered when you go for the vaccinations and who subsequently gets that information. I have no idea if it’s possible to get the shots while refusing to give the information they ask for, and I have no idea whether there are people who would want to do things that way.

After my first shot of the Moderna vaccine, I received email from the health department in my state. So, the state I live in knows. Also on that first visit I was asked to show my health insurance card. I have a Medicare Advantage plan, so it’s safe to assume that my insurance company will get the information. Today, when I went for the second shot, I was asked if I have my Medicare card. I didn’t, so they asked for my Social Security number instead. From that I think it’s safe to assume that the information will go into a national database. No doubt the information in that database will have the same privacy protection as all other medical information, as required in the U.S. by the HIPAA Privacy Rule.

I don’t have a problem with either the state or national government knowing that I got the shots. In fact, I’m glad, because if there are going to be vaccine passports, then I want one. Plus, the government paid for all this. Plus they need all the statistical information they can get, for tracking the epidemic.

For what it’s worth, the only symptom I had after the first Moderna shot was a slightly sore arm for about three days. I understand that flu-like symptoms are more likely after the second shot. A nurse was stationed in the waiting area at the small rural hospital where I got my shots, asking and answering questions after the 15-minute wait was up and giving out a sheet of paper about what to expect and how to handle it. “And drink a lot of water,” she said. So far so good. But I’ll update this post tomorrow.


Update: Twenty-four hours after getting the second shot, I’m feeling a little tired, and my arm is a little sore. But there have been no other side-effects. Getting the two shots was altogether an easy process, quick and efficient. For a county as small as the county I live in, no doubt the logistics are much easier.


Gothic weather for a gothic election



Source: Screen shot from Windy.com, 8 a.m. EDT, Oct. 29, 2020. The remnants of Hurricane Zeta, moving northeast, will pass over Acorn Abbey in a few hours.

Here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, we’d be hard pressed to say which time of year is the best. The two choices are pretty clear, though: October or early May. October is the gothic month: cool air, the first frost, dry leaves blowing and rattling, pumpkins, long nights, the first fire in the fireplace, voles stealing insulation to line their nests, insects trying to sneak inside for the winter, soups on the stove, and, finally, Halloween, the most gothic day of the year.

Early voting started in North Carolina on Oct. 15, and I’ve been putting in six-day weeks as a poll observer. I’m taking today off, though, because few people will vote in this heavy rain and heavy wind, and I wanted to stay home and savor such a gothic day.

As a poll observer, I’ve been sitting in a chair near the voter check-in desk, watching hundreds of voters file by in the little suburban town of King, North Carolina — a place with hardly any non-white minorities, but lots of churches and lots and lots of Republicans. I don’t dare make any predictions, after the traumatic election day of 2016. But if this election goes the way I expect it to go — a landslide against the Republican Party and Trump — then the people of King don’t quite know what’s about to hit them. I think they suspect it, because quite a few of them come into the church gymnasium where they’re voting testy and not wearing masks. They find it necessary to smart off with a Republican talking point to a poll worker loud enough to be heard. A few days ago, someone left a pile of chicken bones underneath a Biden-Harris sign out in the electioneering area. Occasionally, insults fly, and petty complaints get filed with the county board of elections. There are rumors — unsubstantiated — about what one of the several militias might do on election day.

I’ve been involved in local politics for going on eight years now. Never before have I seen the Democratic Party so well organized at the state and national level. In 2016, operatives for the Hillary Clinton campaign asked for office space at Democratic headquarters in our little red county, and soon they vanished, the thin staff redeployed to urban areas where there were more votes to be had. But, this year, we have Democratic operatives falling all over us. It seems the word went out months ago that lawyers were needed in swing states such as North Carolina to protect the vote. I’m reporting to a young Harvard lawyer who is responsible for a 10-county district.

These lawyers arrived early (in August), and they have stayed with us. A couple of days ago, one lawyer (a volunteer from Washington state), troubled by the aggressiveness of local Republicans, asked to be reassigned to a different county, because she feared for her safety here. But another lawyer was immediately assigned to take her place. The Democratic Party and these lawyers have built tracking and scheduling systems for poll watching at all 100 North Carolina counties. Normally, as a county-level Democratic operative, I’d make my own decisions about where to be on election day. But this year I’m just a local volunteer in this statewide operation. The cavalry is here.

I’ve also been attending the two weekly meetings of the county board of elections, at which the board members open and approve absentee ballots. During each meeting, a lawyer is assigned to be in touch with me by telephone and text messages. After each meeting, I file a detailed report about how the meeting went and how many absentee ballots were approved (or disapproved, if any). A local Democratic lawyer also is attending most of these meetings.

Republicans are trying like hell to suppress the vote and steal the election in North Carolina, but, from what I’ve seen, they’ll have a very hard time doing it. Just yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against efforts by North Carolina Republicans to shorten the window for counting absentee ballots received by mail. Republicans, certainly, are turning out to vote. But Republican efforts to suppress the vote seem to have backfired, as all across the country people are turning out in record numbers to vote early.

I have a four-year-old bottle of champagne left over from Election Day 2016. The bottle was never opened, for obvious reasons. Next week on Nov. 3, it’s going to be chilled and ready. The rain and wind are picking up now. Radar now shows that I’m in a red zone for heavy rain. The brownouts are starting. I’ll probably lose power today. The forecast for election day, though, is for sunny and cool, with a high of 58. It should be one of those autumn days with a golden sunset.


Republican chicken bones under a Biden-Harris sign, King, North Carolina

Rock Castle Gorge


Yesterday was a get-out-of-the-house day. The hike was to Rock Castle Gorge near Floyd, Virginia. The trail is near the Blue Ridge Parkway and is on land owned by the National Park Service. The trail follows a fast-flowing creek through the gorge. Many years ago, the area was sparsely settled. Now the pastures are mostly overgrown, but one abandoned house remains, with a well-preserved barn and outhouse. There are trout in the stream. We saw at least three fishermen.

These are iPhone photos. I didn’t want to carry the heavy Nikon camera on a six-mile half-uphill hike.

A morbid measure of mass insanity



Wikipedia photo from the entry on Multi-Vehicle collisions

During the weekend, in Pennsylvania, yet another traffic pileup killed five people and injured more than 60. Oddly, I can’t find any information on how many vehicles were involved in that pileup, though several of the stories have referred to a pileup in Virginia two weeks ago, involving 69 vehicles. Other pileups in that area of Pennsylvania have involved 100 vehicles.

This is not just an American phenomenon. According to Wikipedia, the record for the pileup with the highest number of vehicles was in Brazil, at 300. In 2009, 259 vehicles were involved in a pileup in Germany. The record in the Czech Republic seems to be 231. In Los Angeles, it’s 216. In the Pennsylvania crash this past weekend, several of the drivers who were killed were professional drivers, who ought to know better than to drive too fast for conditions.

When one car rear-ends just one other car, that’s bad judgment — often fatally bad. But when 100, 200, 300 cars pile up, that is mass insanity. We have normalized the kind of insane traffic conditions in which pileups occur — too many cars, too close together, traveling too fast. If a driver can’t stop to avoid a hazard ahead, then that driver’s vehicle is not under control. That 300 vehicles should be out of control in the same place at the same time blows my mind.

Wikipedia has a good article on the subject, Multi-Vehicle Collisions, though the article says that very little research has been done on the causes. Some of the details in the Wikipedia article are hellish:

Multiple-vehicle collisions are particularly deadly as the mass of crumpled vehicles makes escape for survivors difficult. Even if survivors are able to exit their vehicles, other cars may strike them. Individual vehicles in a multiple-vehicle collision are often hit multiple times at high speed, increasing the risk of injury to passengers who may have survived the first impact with the benefit of now-discharged protective airbags. Collisions after the initial collision may occur from the side of the vehicle, where the passenger compartment is more vulnerable.

A fire in one part of the collision can quickly spread via spilled gasoline and cover the entire crash area. Multiple-vehicle collisions can also overwhelm local firefighting, ambulance, and police services making speedy rescues more difficult. If the collision takes place in a remote area, getting medical help to the scene can be a daunting task.

Suburban commuters drive every day in traffic conditions in which a pileup would occur if a single mistake by a single driver started a chain reaction. My guess is that people who routinely drive in such conditions have normalized it to such a degree that they no longer sense the danger. They may even be eating or talking on the phone.

Fortunately for me, my lifestyle rarely gets me into the kind of traffic in which pileups occur. I stay off of freeways, and I don’t drive into big cities. Last summer, while driving to the Raleigh airport, I drove through a severe thunderstorm. Visibility was terrible, and water on the road made hydroplaning inevitable. But the traffic around me didn’t slow down. I realized that if I slowed down to a safe speed, I’d be inviting the congestion of speeding drivers behind me and increase the risk of being hit from behind. So I got off the road and waited. That’s why I left for the airport early — to not put my flight at risk if there were traffic problems. But most drivers are in a hurry and won’t slow down, which multiples the dangers.

This is a form of mass insanity that is getting worse, not better. We keep building freeways, and new freeways seem to be overloaded as soon as we build them. If you’re forced to drive on these freeways, even if you’re aware of the insanity of it, you can’t protect yourself by driving at a safe speed, because you’ll be hit from behind. Maybe that’s why good drivers, including professional drivers, get trapped in pileups: They know that if they don’t maintain the same speed as the rest of the traffic, they only increase the danger to themselves and others as traffic packs up behind them. They’re trapped in a fast-moving slug of traffic vulnerable to a pileup. You either entrust yourself to luck in spite of the danger, or you get off the highway.

As readers of this blog know, I’m no techno-utopian. But I wonder if this is one of the problems that self-driving cars might be able to solve. But self-driving cars seem to be a bigger challenge than was expected. For a computer to drive a car is easy. What’s difficult for computers is the same as what’s difficult for good drivers — keeping track of all the idiots around you.

Are we overdue for a cat picture?



Click here for high-resolution version.

I apologize for not having posted for a while. For now, here’s a cat picture, because I don’t think I’ve posted a cat picture for a long time.

It’s shocking to me that Lily, who still thunders up and down the stairs like a kitten, is almost 11 years old. In this photo, she was sitting with me while I was reading (she often does), and I caught her in a contemplative moment with the iPhone camera. I regret that I’ve never had the experience with other domestic animals such as horses and cows, but with cats and dogs, if you raise them from infancy, converse with them constantly, give them every possible privilege and the same dignity a human being deserves, they become people. In fact, they become better people than a lot of people. The older they get, the more language they learn, and the more they talk back. The briefness of their lives is a great pity. I can imagine what a 70-year-old cat raised from a kitten in a good home would become.

On other matters: I decided not to write a post about this, because I try to avoid posting when I’m angry, but here’s a link to a New York Times story on the rogue Navy Seal Edward Gallagher and how he has become a right-wing celebrity after Trump pardoned him for war crimes. It is extremely difficult for decent Americans to understand how a criminal sociopath got into the White House and why so many people make heroes of men who are cruel and depraved. I stand by my argument that the entire conservative spectrum, especially when it is socialized, is a cognitive and moral impairment, not just another way of being, and that authoritarian personalities are both sick and dangerous. Decent societies normally can contain and manage these people, but we are living in yet another era in which demagogues and predators have overwhelmed the safeguards.

Reviews to come: I am working my way through Katrina Forrester’s new book about John Rawls, In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy. It’s a book that must be read slowly, but I’ll have a review before long.

His Dark Materials“: I’ve watched one episode and found it interesting enough that I’ll watch another. I may have a review. It’s an eight-part series produced by the BBC and HBO, and you can stream it from HBO.

No-meat meat pies in Scotland, from Herald Scotland: Greggs launch vegan steak bake.

A globe is worth a thousand maps



North America at sunset in New York, winter solstice. Click here for high-resolution version.

Maps are fascinating. But maps also are highly deceptive. That’s because there is no way to represent the surface of a sphere on a flat piece of paper without distortion. Today is the winter solstice, when the earth’s northern hemisphere is at its maximum tilt away from the sun. While testing a new portrait lens (a Nikon 105mm f2.5 prime lens), I shot photos of my globe, doing my best to light the globe the way the sun lit the earth today.

The first thing that I find striking is just how far north the United States and Europe are — particularly Europe. In the photo below, even sunny Italy is far to the north. The United Kingdom and Scotland are spookily close to the winter darkness inside the Arctic Circle. And just look at the vastness of Africa, even just the part of Africa that is north of the equator.

Maps are great for showing relatively small areas, because that can be done with minimal distortion. But to really see the vastness of our planet in perspective, you must consult a globe.

Just before sunset in northern Europe, winter solstice. Click here for high-resolution version.

Barley twist


I recently came into possession of this strange table, which belonged to my grandparents. Frankly I find the table somewhat ugly. But I’m amused by the eccentricity and whimsy. To try to find out about the style, I Googled for “double helix furniture.” That turned up lots of images of antique furniture and revealed that the style is called “barley twist.”

Judging from online photos, most barley twist is found in the legs of a table or the posts of a bed. The central double helix post of this table is less common. Barley twist furniture is not as hard to find as I thought it might be. According to online sources such as this one, barley twist first showed up in France in the 1600s. It apparently was popular in the 1800’s, and some custom furniture makers are still doing it. I’m still confused, though, about how it’s done. My guess is that it’s started on a lathe and then carved. There may even be some twisting involved for all I know.

This table is walnut, including the balls in the claw feet. It now sits by a north-facing window and supports a globe.