Another year, another chirpy Family Christmas Letter from us, the lower-case fantastic four! But this wasn't just any year, this was 2020 [insert obligatory dumpster fire image here], which, as everyone knows, suuuuuuucked. Did 2020 get us down? Did 2020 make us frown? Oh, it tried, but you can't be sad for long when you're living with...
QUBIT!
Aside from occasionally masquerading as a sheep, Qubit behaves like a normal dog. Dogs are dogs, that's kind of the whole point. They aren't family members, they don't have intricate personalities, they're just animals who hang around underfoot, hoping you'll drop food. If you expected a paragraph about how cute and special and part of us this dog is, well, you're reading the wrong Christmas Letter. Go find one written about a dog named Quubs, or Q2, or QuberBoober. You're looking for someone whose pen name is WhoQueue, or The Qubinator, or, for some reason, Ms. Badoobs. When you find the story of that dog--Santa's Qubiest Little Helper--you'll know because it will ring Que.
TALIA
Convicted of wasting Qubit's entire training vocabulary on cute nicknames, Talia was sentenced to hard labor breaking rocks, no no no.... Talia was a wonderful person who adopted an elderly villager, painted a parking lot into a dance floor, volunteered at a food bank, sent postcards to hundreds of forgetful people reminding them to vote, and cooked dinner every god damn day of the last 365, so if she wants to buy some rocks then she gets to buy some rocks. And she did, literal tons of. Also rolls of native grasses, lots of small plants, and a fire pit, giving us a brand new backyard in which to place our rebuilt one-room school-from-home barn. Life saver.
FELIX
When not building cartoonishly oversized furniture, Felix is himself growing cartoonishly large. Those of us who have been sheltering in place with him don't notice this so much or even think to buy him new shoes, but if all you've seen of him this year is his disembodied head on Zoom, well, you're in for a surprise. When not away at school in the barn--Felix is majoring in something called "Bed Wars," we are so proud!--you will find him getting his mountain bike repaired (fortunately, in Marin, bike shops are considered essential services). In a major milestone, after somehow accumulating thousands of MTG cards Felix just the other day managed to sell one.
GIDEON
Gid--or, as he prefers to be called, "Rocketman"--had another busy year, which is to say he made a lot of work for other people, specifically us, his parents, who, as a supplement to what we thought was quite enough conversation on the topic, he invited to online surveys, two of them alone for his birthday party next May ("How did you hear about this event?" the surveywriter has the gall to ask). Gideon also conducted a persuasive grassroots campaign to evict Felix from the house, but was defeated in a recount. Salt in his wounds, he finds his teenage brother one cubicle over in the barn-we-call-a-school. Gid spends most of those school hours updating his profile picture (confusing both Google's vaunted surveillance AI and his fifth grade teacher) and trying to talk his classmates out of their lunch at a distance. In a worrisome first, our younger boy attempted to assert editorial control over the 2020 Family Christmas Letter, but not this year, young Padawan, not this year.
ALEC
Alec's proudest achievement of 2020 (possibly ever) was being crowned the King of Payne twice by a local, underplayed pinball machine. He has also been named the Imperator of Impeachment, the Bretwalda of Brexit, the Samrat of Shelter in Place, and the Fidalgo of Forest Fires, but never fear, peasant, We haven't let any of that go to Our head. When not reopening badminton courts, schools, and entire (very small) downtowns, Alec runs a thriving toothpaste import business for which he is the only customer.
THE VACATIONS
Let's not forget that Christmas Letter favorite, travel photos! 2020 put a stop to our globe trotting--that's OK, we were planning to reduce our carbon footprint anyway we tell ourselves--so we bought new sleeping bags and put California on heavy rotation. Radical!
OK, that orangey one is from Nevada (pre-lockdown) but you get the idea. Actual Christmas vacation is being spent at home, because if we leave our county they probably won't let us back in. But there's always a silver lining: this year, lacking distractions, the Christmas Letter is going out right on time! We hope you enjoyed it and wish you a HAPPY (it's finally a) NEW YEAR.
Oh, more pictures? Yeah, we took a few, 'cause what else was there to do? Cue music and...
What's safer under the circumstances? Hang out for a week of no school, with the kids mixing promiscuously with their peers, or isolate in the enormous empty expanses of Death Valley? We made the right call...
When I posted on this topic a lifetime ago in 2016, I made two predictions: that Trump would not be elected (wrong), and that he would be a disaster from a climate point of view if he were (too, too right). Facing the 2020 election, I repeat these assertions, though I would change one thing: Trump has shown himself not to be an undirected force where the climate is concerned, but an active and highly successful agent in retarding or even reversing progress on the environment. The situation in 2016 was already dire, the lost years may have made it irretrievably so. The only positive note is that awareness of the climate catastrophe has grown--being unable to breathe focuses the attention wonderfully.
Voting for Biden/Harris requires no thought (and if you think otherwise, please do reach out to me), but there's more to be decided than just that. Our House Rep is up for reelection (yes, I'll take the Dem over the Republican, who lists his occupation as "Cashier," though honestly I don't know what I'd do if the situation were reversed), as is our state assemblyman (or will we vote for an assemblywoman?). But mostly what's at stake here is control of the schools and of the town (give Chance a chance!): local politics, thus, so not of interest to my mostly non-local readership.
That's all I will say this time 'round about voting for people. But California has a proposition system, so I need to vote on ideas, too. Figuring that out is time-consuming: it's easy enough to react to a proposal, but propositions as stated on the ballot may be very different from those same propositions in effect. Research is required, so research I did, spending many an hour (OK, maybe two) inside the Lincoln/Douglas debate for each one. In the end (and I did not check this until the end), my preferences tallied exactly with those of the California Democratic party's. Except for one thing: they offer no recommendation for Prop 24 and I do.
Prop 24 concerns itself with an issue near to my heart: consumer privacy laws. This is an especially important matter here in California, which, in the absence of federal leadership, is the strongest US force supporting privacy rights. Does 24 move us closer to a new regime in which each individual's data is recognized as uniquely sensitive, uniquely valuable, and uniquely deserving of the protections of law? The answer is yes and no, which is why neither the Dems nor even that most opinionated of online organizations, the EFF, support or oppose it. So why do I urge you, my probably non-eligible reader, to vote NO on 24? Three reasons:
The single most impactful change we could make to the existing California Consumer Protection Act is to make opt out the default selection for data collection permissions. Prop 24 doesn't change the current standard, which means that most of us will continue to be opted in, and the rest of us will eventually give up on opting out as data collection schemes find new ways to make it increasingly laborious to do so.
Prop 24 would end the CCPA's protection of biometric data. That would be a terrible mistake: in the age of facial recognition and Fitbits, biometric data needs more protections and a broader definition of what is included in that rubric, not less.
Prop 24 does not allow consumers to sue businesses for privacy violations, instead inviting a to-be data protection agency to guard our interests. But the struggles of similar agencies in Europe do not give me a lot of hope for this approach, or not, at any rate, as a standalone means of enforcement. We need to be able to sue the bastards because only then will they behave. Maybe.
One final comment: your vote doesn't count unless it's counted. Voting fraud by individuals is negligible, but I'm not as sanguine about vote counting. No, this is not the start of another conspiracy theory, but rather a recognition that there's a lot of work to be done tallying votes, that humans make mistakes, and that it's an easy enough thing to check the status of your ballot, so do so. Then, come November, check the results!
UPDATE: How'd it turn out? Well, I got my ballot in...
I have blogged before about fires here in California, and the destruction they leave behind them. Back then--October 2017--we played a game of cat-and-mouse with the smoke, departing for Yosemite and then coming back once offshore winds had moved the pollution away from our home. What is happening now is on a totally different scale. To escape the smoke caused by the current fires near and far we would have to get on an airplane and fly to the other side of the Rocky Mountains, a distance of about a thousand miles. To be really sure, we would have to go even farther: smoke from these fires has reached Nebraska, five hundred miles further to the East. (For our European readers, that is further than the distance from Amsterdam to Moscow.)
Back here in California, the smoke is so thick that for the better part of a week we haven't seen the sun, except once or twice, as a faint pink ball. We wake each day to a world without shadows, dusted with ash that's fallen from a gray sky. Except for Wednesday, when the sky was orange. "What fresh hell?!" texted a friend of mine from the city, gazing out at this view...
The view from Dolores Park
The smoke that caused this apocalyptic effect came down from Oregon, where currently more than a tenth of the entire state's population is under evacuation notice, if they haven't already fled. Oregon, which is known for its lush greenery, is also on fire, with many towns utterly destroyed and the city of Portland itself threatened.
Still, the smoke can mostly be avoided, at least by those of us privileged to work in our own homes, serviced by grocery delivery, and with plenty of HEPA filters around and about. But what about the fires themselves, do they pose any real threat? At the moment, they do not, but things this time do feel even more...personal. For one thing, the Woodward Fire, the source of the smoke I mentioned in my last post, is less than 20 miles from our home, the nearest such event since we've lived here. Sparked by lightning, it has been burning since August 18th, and isn't expected to be fully contained until September 12th. That fire grew rapidly, and scarily, because it is in deep woods difficult to access, and because with so many fires burning elsewhere it couldn't be properly attended to until teams were brought in from Montana.
Fire fighting encampment in the next valley over
That fire is under control, but there are much larger fires raging totally out of control elsewhere in the state. This photo is one of the more terrifying images associated with the current conflagrations:
View from the Bidwell Bar Bridge over Lake Berryessa, 9 September 2020
This is nowhere near us, but we did drive over this bridge on our way back from camping just a few weeks ago. Indeed, Gid and I got out to walk across it:
Same bridge, less than a month ago
Those trees are gone, the road is closed, and the nearby town of Berry Creek, which I noted as we passed through because even from the road it was obvious that the creek was indeed full of berries, has been destroyed.
In truth, it is only a matter of time before fire swings through our neighborhood. We live with go-bags packed, escape routes noted...we are fire safe, but not fire proof. So why stay, you ask? Because, in truth, it is only a matter of time before climate disaster finds all of us, everywhere, and here in California we are at least learning the true scope of that disaster while there is still time to prepare for it.
"Oh, 2020," the Internet moans, "What else do you have in store for us?" Writing from California--blanketed by smoke, with more fire-starting thunderstorms on the way--and facing a third of the year still to come, it is hard to keep a brave face. And more bad news: the epic Trumpfoolery aside, 2020 will be followed by worse years still. The hallmark of climate change is concurrent disasters, after all.
Pandemic living is not the new forever, but we have to accept that disaster living is. I do not expect ever again to enjoy long periods in which the world around me seems calm and well-adjusted. But I do want my internal world to be calm and well-adjusted just as often as it can be. That's going to take work and preparation. Some things I tell myself:
Focus on making progress, not on being done. Because we are--I'll write about the Barn, soon--but will never be.
Meet uncertainty with diversity. You can't prepare for everything, but if you're well prepared for at least a few scenarios--fire, flood, earthquakes--then when something new (a pandemic, say) takes you by surprise you'll probably have at least
a few N95s on hand.
Put yourself out there. Not literally--stay at home, except maybe if you're going camping--but visualize the world you no longer encounter. Those friends are still there, those places are still there, those problems are still there, and there are still ways to interact with and to help all of them.
...let us borrow not just one but two air purifiers. Saved the day (or possibly the week), and reinforced existing mutuality. We are none of us going to get through this alone, nor will we have to.
I mentioned in passing that we now have chickens. Busy creatures, and mostly quiet now that we "took care of" the one rooster among them, the two birds keep to themselves, but always with a sharp eye out for new spaces to explore. This gives the lie to those who claim that even when provided outside space chickens prefer to remain in their coops--please, spend extra for properly pastured eggs! It can also lead to problems, and last week it did: while we were away camping, someone left the gate to the creek open and one of our two birds flew the coop, or, more likely, just walked out. The creek, a wildlife corridor, is frequented by a variety of hungry predators: a chicken wandering down there is not likely to last long. And so, having received the news by text, we mourned its passing.
But the creek is a funny place and often turns up surprises. I recall, a couple of years back, one such surprise: we discovered a little girl, four-year-old Lulu, wandering alone in the creek. A hot day, Lulu was wearing a pink puffy jacket and holding a whistle, which she was blowing as she went. We never found out why she had on a puffy jacket, but the whistle showed some foresight on the part of her parents, as did the tag with a phone number we discovered once we lured her out with some watermelon. Lulu, unaware she was lost, was soon returned to her grateful parents.
Lulu was in the creek that day because Lulu loves the creek, a fact her parents accommodated. And apparently Lulu still loves the creek, and is still often to be found there. So no surprise that it was Lulu who found our wandering chicken in the creek and brought her home, Lulu having, in the intervening years, learned to return home on her own. The find kicked off a good deal of local chatter as chicken owners up and down the creek were contacted, and, eventually, us among them. So we found Lulu, and Lulu found our chicken. Fairfax, again, provides, as a good village should.
I don't celebrate Father's Day, or rather, I don't celebrate just a single day a year as Father's Day, demanding instead Father's Day treatment, oh, at least once or twice a week. Specifically, a shave.
I taught Gideon how to give a decent shave last year while we were in Amsterdam. The process was not without its setbacks, but there we had a commodious tub, and the shave was a nice way to take up at least some of the time he spends talking about video games and other virtual or imaginary things in the course of a shared shower. But back in Fairfax we had to give it up: our shower here is barely big enough to have two standing together, and sharing it is in no way relaxing, much less shaving in it.
And relaxing is what it's all about, because being a dad stresses me out.
Then, just recently, on a walk with Qubit, we found the chair pictured above. It's been a while since I acquired a second hand seat in this way, but it's how all the best of them have come to me over the years. So now, while we still don't have heat in our bathroom, or a tub, or a shower big enough for two, the luxury of a reclining shave, that we do have.
Even if you don't choose to give up most of your bathroom space to accommodate your budding barber, you can still make your Father very happy by watching Lesson 20 here together. Next up, a towel warmer!
It's time to reopen the economy. A long post about that, and a call to action at the very bottom.
Why reopen the economy now?
Health authorities in the Bay Area have agreed on a set of "Indicators" showing progress in controlling the impacts of COVID-19. These are meant to inform (but not determine) decisions about relaxing per county Shelter-in-Place orders. In Marin, those Indicators look like this:
>80/100k reported in the last couple of weeks. Not even close to the state goal.
Number of COVID patients in the hospital is not only increasing but is indeed at an all time high for Marin.
In most respects Marin has things under control: enough hospital beds, enough resources for contact tracing, almost enough PPE. But the presence of the disease in local communities is increasing, and there is no reason to expect it to slow in the foreseeable future.
So why reopen? Because businesses are dying in droves. We are making a communal decision here to accept a higher rate of infection in exchange for enough economic activity to save the retail establishments (and related jobs) that haven't already given up the ghost. This decision will turn out to be a good one only if consumers participate in their local economies and if they are able to do so safely. If consumers stay home--whether because of real or perceived concerns about their safety in public--then more businesses will go under. And if consumers do come out but many more of them get sick because they did, then the price paid in public health will become too high--those graphs will jump further upwards--and reopening will have to be reversed. This would be disastrous in every respect.
How can we reopen safely and effectively?
There's still a lot we don't know about the disease, but we do know how to keep people from getting it: wear masks, interact outside and only in limited ways, and give each other space. How a retail business can operate profitably while still keeping workers and customers safe, that's a harder question. Here's a highly selective extract from the County's extensive set of rules governing the current phase of reopening for restaurants and shops respectively:
Place tape or markings at least six feet apart in any area where members of public may form a line.
Encourage reservations or advise people to call in advance to
confirm seating/serving capacity. Consider a phone reservation system
that allows people to queue or wait in cars and enter only when a phone
call, text, or other method, indicates that a table is ready.
Limit tables to no more than 6 people; all who share a table must be within the same household group.
Utilize expanded outdoor seating where possible along right of ways or other outdoor areas as approved by local jurisdictions.
The curbside or walk-up transaction will occur outside the building,
such as in the doorway or through an exterior window. Customers will
not enter the premises of the store at any time.
With permission from the local jurisdictions and/or shopping center, Curbside Retailer may display merchandise curbside or create an outdoor retail location. Curbside Retailers must clearly designate and mark any outdoor retail location. Local jurisdictions shall have flexibility to create outdoor space use solutions that work for their communities.
Curbside pick-up/delivery access points are clearly designated and marked and meet the criteria established by the local jurisdiction to do so.
Provide a location for customers to pick up their goods and a contact to allow for delivery without direct interaction, except as necessary to accept payment.
Limit the number of customers waiting in line at any one time that will allow for customers and employees to easily maintain at least six foot distance from one another and allows sufficient sidewalk or outdoor space to allow safe pedestrian right-of-way at all times.
Be prepared to queue customers outside while still
maintaining physical distance. No non-household group gatherings around
outdoor retail displays are allowed.
Shade structures. Umbrellas, canopies and other shade
structures are only allowed if they do not have sides and allow for the
free flow of air through the space and as permitted by the local
jurisdiction.
The question again: How can we do this safely and effectively? The Town Council considered a proposal brought by the talented and persuasive John Bela at a previous special meeting (see my last blog post on the topic) and thereafter voted as follows:
In an effort to temporarily streamline Town regulations regarding outdoor dining and other business uses (e.g., outdoor retail), the Town Council took several actions at its June 3rdmeeting. Specifically, the Town adopted an urgency ordinance to create a Temporary Use Permit (TUP) process. TUP’s will allow restaurants and other businesses to temporarily expand their operations outside on their private property (e.g., parking lot) for such uses as dining, retail, or exercise classes.
The Council also adopted a resolution that: 1) authorizes the Town Manager to establish a special administrative permitting process that allows restaurants and other businesses to temporarily operate in a safe, expanded outdoor capacity in the public right-of-way adjacent to their businesses (e.g., parking spaces) and 2) allows for the temporary closure of portions of Mono Ave.(alley) adjacent to Bolinas Rd. for outdoor dining. There is no fee for either the TUP or special administrative permit. All businesses must comply with the MarinRecovers safety guidelines.
In addition, the Council intends to "Discuss/consider the further use of public spaces (e.g., parking lots) for temporary outdoor businesses uses and provide direction to staff" this Wednesday the 17th. Attached to this item on the agenda you will find an even more detailed proposal from John. To my mind, this is the best way forward for Fairfax--not a perfect solution, nor the last word on the matter, but a great place to start. And that brings me to my ask: please read it and, if it has your support too, please come out again to voice that support at this Wednesday's meeting. Can't make the meeting (or can't stay up until this agenda item comes around)? Email Michelle, the Town Clerk, to state your opinion, and if you do so during the meeting (which starts at 6 PM) there's a good chance it will be read out on your behalf when the item comes up. Participate!
Shelter in place orders are still in effect, and it's not until Stage 3 of the California Reopening Plan that smaller gatherings will be allowed. In the meanwhile, I play badminton with my bestie and mostly just miss everyone else. Mostly. It's hard to keep in mind something so unwelcome as not seeing your friends.
Social distancing is a drag. Masks are a drag. Things that drag fall off eventually. And summer's coming, which is not going to help compliance. I don't see people making this habitual without a concerted effort to communicate, corral, and possibly even coerce these new behaviors.
We don't know anyone in our immediate circle who has had the disease, though we have one high-risk friend who had something that seemed an awful lot like it, but tested negative. What to make of that? If nothing else, that quarantining a single family member is a challenge of another order.
The psychological impact is not to be underestimated. Even without personal trauma, the situation is and remains disturbing in a general and most literal sense. The new practice of forced domesticity, school-from-home, and the day-by-day sameness of it all have yet to translate into a comfortable routine. Worry creeps into our dreams and days, exacting a varying and unpredictable price in happiness and concentration.
Though we have not yet been seriously impacted by this financially, we know many who have been. That is both a practical and a serious psychological concern, especially in the US with its famously cavalier approach to social safety nets.
I'm tired of not being not at home and I'm tired of not being home alone.
As people have retreated nature has returned...which means more coyote dinners
Now
that restrictions on non-essential construction have been lifted, our
barn reconstruction is again proceeding. This will allow us to
reconfigure our always-at-home lives and, just in time, provides a cool
space on hot days (it's the only insulated structure we have). A
wonderful prospect and welcome distraction.
Our exterior spaces
are receiving some attention as well. We've made chicken coops, new
garden plots, and additional fencing of various sorts (and yet still the
deer get in!). We're hanging things from trees, burying posts in the
ground, and otherwise trying to make our outdoor spaces more attractive
and enjoyably inhabitable.
We are using the superpower that is
an electric bike to explore the magnificent hinterlands between us and
the ocean. Lots of thoughts (and many, many miles) on this. My current
model and recommendation here.
We are doing our best to train and to socialize our puppy, Qubit. Also, our children. For the latter, with the school year nearly over, we're asking them to make a list of skills or achievements to be attained this summer. The goal being to continue our at-home learning, school or not.
In the hopes that SiP orders will lift, we are making vacation plans. A few thoughts on that:
In many places, short-term rentals are currently prohibited to discourage visits of exactly the sort we would like to make. Despite this, hosts on Airbnb and such sites are accepting reservations (and don't expect a refund outside of the stated policies: we all know COVID is a factor now). The fact that you can book a place doesn't mean you will be able to use it.
Campgrounds and other facilities that rely on shared bathrooms are likely to remain closed for the summer, at least here in Northern California. Back country camping, on the other hand, is currently permitted.
Remember global warming? Well it's still happening. Expect a hot summer and you won't be disappointed. Maybe now is the time to order that misting system, lawn sprinkler, or mini-pool?
Fairfax, adapting. How can we help restore our downtown?
"I have a 3X5 index card thumb tacked to the bulletin board in my kitchen," writes Renee Goddard, Mayor of Fairfax, "it reads: “Assume Benevolence”." This in the latest of a series of Special Edition Fairfax Updates. Always a good read, yesterday's Update announced a Presentation on the Use of Outdoor Spaces to Assist Downtown Businesses to be held, virtually, on Wednesday the 27th at 6 PM PST. Why the boldface? Because I want you to attend, and invite you to do so while wishing well and assuming the same of others. But....
Fairfax must learn to use its spaces, indoors and outdoors, differently because what is happening in those spaces has changed. Currently, there is no on-site dining, little in-store shopping, hardly any "normal" commerce at all. Even moving around downtown has become challenging or, in spots and at times, actually impossible, if one is serious about the geometry of our social distancing orders. Those orders will evolve, but they aren't going away any time soon. Again, things must change...but how?
That's what Wednesday's meeting, sponsored by the Town Council, is about. John Bela will present a range of possibilities for the precious few blocks that Fairfax calls our primary commercial district, and some data about how that space is used on a now-typical COVID weekend day....
There's John, surveying traffic. Not an unpleasant way to spend a Saturday morning.
John is a recent transplant, close friend, and a genius at reconfiguring public spaces to better serve the humans who occupy them. Together we have spent quite some hours researching what other communities are doing (just one amazing resource here), and some more time walking through the downtown--masked and mostly six feet apart--debating how those examples might translate to here. There are a lot of options to be considered, but the status quo isn't one of them. And that's why I want you there: change must come, it must be designed as a match for this crisis, and the more people who recognize and attest to that the better.
I really do believe my fellow villagers are benevolent (and smart, too), but I'm also sure that for some of them benevolence will manifest itself as resistance, a reflection of their desire--understandable but simply not of the moment--to hold things in place. We need to get past that as quickly as possible to avoid wasting precious time and to make it clear, to each other and to the Council, that the large majority of people who depend on our downtown recognize that something really new is needed.
We will all be impacted by changes to how our business district works. We may be left with a struggling and depopulated downtown if we choose wrong, perhaps with a more attractive and economically sustainable one if we choose right. But one way or another we have to choose, and that 'we' should include you. See you Wednesday?
You've stocked the house, set up your at-home office, negotiated a cleaning rota with the family...and then they cancel school-at-school. The funny thing about this pandemic is that in cancelling so much it has made some things, long delayed, now possible. I've been meaning to teach the boys a few things, and to write about what those things are. This is my chance, so here's my hopefully frequently updated log (in reverse order) tracking this effort. Your suggestions for future classes in the comments please!
LESSON 20: How to give a shave
Nearly impossible to find, and almost certainly not allowed unless your county/country is a lot more "open" than ours, shaving remains a necessity. And, if someone else does it, shaving becomes a luxury. Here's how:
Just watching it is so relaxing....
LESSON 19: How electricity works
Well, not all of it, but here's a guest post on the simple (but we didn't guess it) design for a two-way switch.
Let's imagine that I have two pens and an ant that is stuck on a ledge.
The pens can rotate around their centers and pen one is positioned at 90
degrees and the other at 180. To get the ant down from the ledge both pens have to connect but they can connect in two different ways; up, up or down, down.
I hope that explains it because it's all Felix had to say.
The assignment: find videos teaching about three different important industrial manufacturing processes. The result: discovering thousands of "How It's Made" videos on YouTube. A few of our favorites:
We recommend watching at 1.5x speed because it makes all the industrial production machinery look even cooler.
LESSON 16: International shipping
How does stuff get from one place to another? A vital thing to understand in times of supply chain disruption. Chief MAKOi's Seaman VLOG is a fine place to learn about big ships, which do most of the work of hauling stuff internationally and, to surprising degree, in-country as well. So we're spending some time watching his vids (the ones on transiting the Panama Canal, the port of Singapore, and a tour of the ship are recommended by Felix), but mostly this is an excuse to introduce one of my long-time favorite websites: the Gallery of Transport Loss. The Gallery doesn't seem to be getting updated, but that doesn't stop accidents from happening every day. LESSON 15: How to raise chickens
Every few years I attempt to get my head around the biggest questions: what is the nature of physical reality, of time, of the universe and everything in it? And every few years I fail. I came closer than usual in my last attempt though, thanks to Brian Greene's especially good book on the subject. So I was ready with a few choice quotes when Felix strayed into the topic, as he does now and again. Even better, turns out they made a video series, so that's up next for us.
Citizen science is science done by amateurs. There is an infinite amount of science to be done, so plenty of room for amateurs. You cango findyour own wayto contribute, but today's lesson is about how CS can help us make progress against COVID-19, and specifically about using FOLDING@HOME, a massively multiuser protein folding application, to this end. Fold along with us by joining team 260889.
LESSON 12: How to tie your shoes
Because you may not already know how to do it (Gideon), and if you do,
you're probably doing it wrong. Two minutes that may change your life.
LESSON 11: Lots of TED talks from Felix
Recommended by someone who watches way more TED talks than I do:
A Dutch documentary film festival has released online a set of short documentaries for kids. So far we've watched one about a boy who became a girl and about playing marbles. Lovely films, and a good way to practice Dutch, too (though many of these are subtitled), but simply scrolling through the list and reading the summaries communicates the main lesson, which is empathy. Even without COVID, children face enormous challenges simply surviving in many parts of the world.
Cool visualizations, and the animation of viral spread across the globe is worth watching, but we didn't find this data set as easy to work with as we had hoped. We were not able to get details for the one sample sourced from Marin, for example, so don't know which strain is active in our area (though here's a good article highlighting the fact that for California as a whole there have been many vectors). Still, this led to some further research that convinced us that while there is enough genetic variation in samples to support tracking transmission, there isn't reason at this time to be concerned that the virus is learning lots of new tricks, or that multiple vaccines will be required to combat it. LESSON 8: How to deal
A lot of people talk about expecting the best but preparing for the
worst, but I think that’s a seductively misleading concept. There’s never just
one “worst.” Almost always there’s a whole spectrum of bad possibilities. The
only thing that would really qualify as the worst would be not having a plan
for how to cope.
So pleased to discover him and Gideon watching "What I learned from going blind in space," Hadfield's related TED talk. Maybe they'll figure out how to get us out of this mess....
LESSON 7: Find the oversight provisions
Today's lesson comes to us via Zephyr Teachout, the most political of a very well educated family of sisters (I went to school with her older sister, Woden). Zephyr tweets:
A good home-schooling project for your kids: find the oversight provisions on the corporate slush fund in the multi-trillion dollar bill just passed by the Senate. Questions that will help guide the project:
Who appoints the special Inspector General?
Does that person have any history of not appointing Inspector Generals?
Does the Congressional oversight committee have any power? Unfortunately, this is only a 20 minute lesson. Good luck with the rest of your day.
In truth, neither I nor Zephyr mean to send you on this wild goose chase, but it is a good opportunity to talk with your kid (and maybe learn yourself) about one of the major tools governments can employ to manage the economy, or try to. Here's some material to assist you.
Filling out basic information? Child's play. Or rather, child's work: we assigned it to Gideon and are taking the opportunity to explain what it is, why it is important, and that we are worried it will be screwed up, like so much else of a scientific nature, by the same venal politicians who are responsible for us having to teach at home in the first place.
LESSON 5: Using product management to save the world
Felix had an idea: what if we could use special effects in videos to show people the infectious trails they leave behind them as they move around? Well now, maybe we could. Great opportunity to teach him product management (which is what I do), so we made a presentation to explain our idea and shared it with Autodesk Research. Here's how we built our case:
Current visualizations about social distancing are too abstract:
What's needed, we propose, is a system that lets you take your own video clip and mark it up with social distancing metrics. In any video of humans passing by one another or transiting the same space the system should illustrate the "viral trails" each person leaves behind them as they move, and should flag all instances when one person intersects another trail or, more direct, violates their social distancing radius. In addition, the system should note all of the times when a person has touched something, and mark that spot, flagging it, too, if another person touches it later on in the same video. The goal is something anonymized--we propose using skeletonization a la the MX3D smart bridge project--so you can share it. And, of course, the system should also predict the probability of viral transmission given the flags thrown.
Autodesk has all of the tools required to make this service, but ours is only one of many ideas submitted (and perhaps not as needed as it once was as the police seem to be stepping into an educational role). Still, an educational experience.
LESSON 4: Zoology as taught by Safari Cards
Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of Safari Cards, fun to use and crammed with fascinating facts!
Remember these? I've got hundreds, been waiting for an excuse to break them out. Today, Gideon and I tried to make combinations of six cards that covered all six living continents (sorry, Antarctica) without any overlapping classes or habitat. Harder than it sounds, we only got two such sets assembled. Much trivia for the budding naturalist. Good times, though I can't help but wonder how many of these animals have become extinct since getting their card, and how many more will do so in Gid's lifetime.
LESSON 1: Data visualization and why you can't blame China for its role in the climate crisis
If you don't know Hans Rosling,
the recently deceased Swedish statistician and data whisperer, you're
missing out. He was a particularly clear-sighted individual, and a great
communicator. Here's something he said:
I
do not deny that there are pressing global risks we need to address. I
am not an optimist painting the world in pink. I don’t get calm by
looking away from problems. The five that concern me most are the risks
of global pandemic, financial collapse, world war, climate change, and
extreme poverty. Why is it these problems that cause me most concern?
Because they are quite likely to happen: the first three have all
happened before and the other two are happening now; and because each
has the potential to cause mass suffering either directly or indirectly
by pausing human progress for many years or decades. If we fail here,
nothing else will work.
Hans Rosling, et al., Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why
Things Are Better Than You Think (New York: Flatiron Books, 2018), 237.
But before he said that, Rosling helped me understand just how much progress we have already made. I watched with the boys, and recommend to you, these videos:
It will teach you that the US is not the center of the world, that using data to explain things is powerful but only if you can keep it simple, and that China has done the most colossally amazing thing in human history by lifting a billion people out of abject poverty in a few short decades.
Boys need dogs, my boys maybe more than most. But getting a dog turns out to be complicated. It used to be you'd hear about a friend who had a litter, or there would be a box of them in front of the supermarket, or you just waited until someone threw a puppy over your fence. You didn't have to seek to find. Now it's more like adopting a child, with forms to be filled out, interviews to be had, fees to be paid. And new now, which is to say under the current circumstances, a lot of people have drawn the obvious conclusion, namely that having someone at home who actually wants to spend the entire day with you would be lovely, the result of which is that a dog has become quite hard to find.
Hard, but not impossible. Welcome Qubit, a small dachshund/terrier (?) mix puppy we fetched yesterday from the Humane Society of Sonoma County. She is healthy and happy and friendly and not too nervous and totally untrained and almost as lovable as Talia I mean just look at that smile...
There's nothing like a dog to give one a sense of future.
