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.
