The Usual Quarantine Stuff

Last night was Zoom pub night. Again.

Earlier Thursday, it was more TV. So much TV. I watched some Bosch with the wife, The Expanse with the kids, and The Wire with the wife and kids. I tried my best to watch some of the Parks and Rec reunion but found it awkward and sluggish. Headed back to Zoom pub night (which is also awkward and sluggish, I think that's just what Zoom is like).

I woke up at 4:45 AM this morning. Decided to get up and get some grading done. Waded through a bunch of narratives and some other assignments. Then went back to bed. That's a plus about remote learning: you can work on your own schedule.

Zoom meeting with the English Department at 8:30 AM.

Then I did some community service and went shopping for an old guy. Bought the usual stuff: liverwurst, ham turkey, pineapple chunks, soup soup soup, grapes, applesauce, etc. Old person food. I'm getting quicker in the store. Listening to electronica helps (Amon Tobin and Boards of Canada).

When I dropped the food off, a cute lady finally witnessed my community service! She answered the door. She was either a relative or some sort of aid. It's nice when someone cute sees you doing community service, but-- unfortunately-- I was dressed like a homeless person.

Note to self: if you wear a mask and you forgot to brush your teeth, you're going to smell some bad breath. Your own bad breath. And there's no way to escape it.

Ian and I did our usual three-mile run. It started pouring rain ten minutes in and didn't stop until we got home. Huge drops. Now it's warm and sunny. Springlike.

Ian stumbled on a fawn while walking the dog.

I just finished my second Josephine Tey mystery: a Shilling For Candles. She's a great writer. Weird characters, a run-of-the-mill detective without the tortured past, and a great ear for dialogue.

Here is a sample passage, summarizing the information the police received about possible sightings of an alleged murder suspect on the run:

By Tuesday noon Tisdall had been seen in almost every corner of England and Wales, and by tea-time was beginning to be seen in Scotland. He had been observed fishing from a bridge over a Yorkshire stream and had pulled his hat suspiciously over his face when the informant had approached. He had been seen walking out of a cinema in Aberystwyth. He had rented a room in Lincoln and had left without paying. (He had quite often left without paying, Grant noticed.) He had asked to be taken on a boat at Lowestoft. (He had also asked to be taken on a boat at half a dozen other places. The number of young men who could not pay their landladies and who wanted to leave the country was distressing.) He was found dead on a moor near Penrith. (That occupied Grant the best part of the afternoon.) He was found intoxicated in a London alley. He had bought a hat in Hythe, Grantham, Lewes, Tonbridge, Dorchester, Ashford, Luton, Aylesbury, Leicester, Chatham, East Grinstead, and in four London shops. He had also bought a packet of safety-pins pins in Swan and Edgars. He had eaten a crab sandwich at a quick lunch counter in Argyll Street, two rolls and coffee in a Hastings bun shop, and bread and cheese in a Haywards’ Heath inn. He had stolen every imaginable kind of article in every imaginable kind of place—including a decanter from a glass-and-china warehouse in Croydon. When asked what he supposed Tisdall wanted a decanter for, the informant said that it was a grand weapon.

And here is my favorite line from the book:

It is said that ninety-nine people out of a hundred, receiving a telegram reading: All is discovered: fly, will snatch a toothbrush and make for the garage.

It's interesting what people lose themselves in during quarantine. Some people are watching old sports. My buddy Whitney is mainlining music documentaries. All I want is crime stuff. The chase scenes, the investigation, the freedom of movement, the bars and dives, and the various localities pull my mind from the reality of quarantine confinement.

Weird Quarantine Workouts (Governor Murphy, Open the Parks!)

State and County Parks are still closed in New Jersey; so as far as outdoor activities go, my family is making the best of what is available.

Yesterday, my wife and I went on a bike ride to New Brunswick because we heard Buccleuch Park was open (this turned out to be true, as it is a city park). I would have preferred to bike in Donaldson Park, which is right next to my house-- especially because then I can attach the dog to my bike.

It would also have been nice to bike through Johnson Park and cross the Landing Lane Bridge, but Johnson Park has also closed-- even the roads that cut through the park. So instead, my wife and I crossed the Albany Street Bridge and ducked down under the bridge (this is where the homeless people gather). We took a claustrophobic graffiti and garbage-strewn path between Route 18 and the Raritan River. This is apparently where the "river rats"-- or homeless folk-- camp out. We were stuck between chain link fence and the cliff heading down to the river, biking through clouds of gnats and odd liquids. It was pretty gross.

Once we got to the park, things improved. it was crowded, but people were keeping their distance. We chose to avoid the weird gross path on the way home. Instead, we cut through Rutgers. College Avenue was oddly empty. Emptier than a hot day in July. It was weird (but great for biking . . . no cars and no people). A quiet apocalypse.

 

Today, Ian and I walked down the street to Dead Man's Hill and did seven repeats . . . a new record. Last week, we did six of them, and I nearly had a heart attack. Ian was pretty tired as well. This week, we were fine all the way through.

The hill is one-tenth of a mile, at a ten percent grade. It's steep. Ian was running each repeat in around 33 seconds. Each hill took me about forty seconds (although I did the last one in 35 seconds).

Here is a video of repeat number seven.




Next week, barring injury, sickness, or whatever the hell else might happen in these weird times, we will do eight.

A Great Mystery (If You Know Some History)

In 2012, The British Crime Writer's Association named The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey as the greatest mystery novel ever written.

I just read it. I loved it, but it's an odd choice.

First of all, It's an exponentially faster read than Tom Jones. But that's not saying much. I whipped through The Daughter of Time in three days. I'd like to highly recommend it, but for one thing.

To enjoy the book, you need to have a working knowledge of The War of the Roses, Richard III, The Lancasters and the Yorks, and all that. You don't need to be a historian, but you need to at least be familiar with the key players in the way Americans would be familiar with the main characters of Hamilton.

Despite this cultural caveat, The Mystery Writers of America list the book as the fourth-best mystery ever. That's impressive.

I was already prepped to read The Daughter of Time because I've taught Shakespeare's Richard III and Henry IV many times. I've learned to boil down that period of history to something palatable for high school kids in a fun elective class.  I've also watched the entire Hollow Crown series. So I knew just enough to really enjoy the novel.

It's bizarre, as far as mystery stories go. Tey's detective, Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, is confined to a hospital bed. He hurt his leg when he fell through a trapdoor during a police chase. He's bored and doesn't want to read the typical formulaic literature that people have been giving him, so he ends up investigating a historical mystery. He is constrained to his bed for the duration of the novel. All the action takes place in the 15th century.

He wonders if Richard of Gloucester-- who eventually becomes Richard III-- really murdered the two young princes in the Tower of London. It's one of the most famous mysteries in history. Shakespeare's version of the hunchbacked Machiavellian villain certainly orchestrated the foul deed (and many other deeds nearly as foul). But the real Richard is much more elusive.

Grant lies in hospital bed and various people bring him books and assist him in his research into the mystery. Tey's book is more a treatise on how history is written to reflect the biases of historians than a crime novel.

This is what Grant says about an author of one of the accounts:

The spectacle of Dr. Gairdner trying to make his facts fit his theory was the most entertaining thing in gymnastics that Grant had witnessed for some time.

Apparently, this debate over the culpability and villainy of Richard III has been up for debate ever since he was deposed by Henry VII. But it took Tey's novel to spark interest among the general public.

If you are going to read the book, you probably want to avoid reading any historical debate over the answers. And even if you know nothing about the history of the Lancaster and the Yorks, you could probably follow along. The research goes step-by-step.

Grant begins his research by looking at children's books.

He then advances to denser secondary sources about Richard, his family, and the Princes in the Tower, learning about the secret marriage agreement the princes’ father had made, which, when discovered after the father’s death, rendered the sons illegitimate. (Richard, next in line for the throne after the princes, became king by an act of Parliament.)

Grant and his research assistant eventually come to an unusual conclusion . . . or so they think. But history is long, ambiguous, and generally lacking in first-hand accounts-- so just about any point of view you can think of has probably been professed at some time or another.

The final irony is that Tey-- in her reversal of procedure and legend-- may have committed the same error in logic that many historians fall prey to. This has something to do with inductive and deductive logic, though I always screw it up. Detectives and historians should mainly use inductive logic-- look at the specific clues and data and draw the most logical conclusion. But they often use deductive logic-- they come up with a hypothesis and then find facts to fit the theory. This is what Detective Grant criticizes, but it may just be the way humans operate-- even when they are trying not to.

Literary critic Geraldine Barnes explains this better than I could:

In the end, Grant’s “solution” to the mystery has less to do with the probabilities of history than with the manipulation of evidence to produce a neat tying up of loose ends and the revelation that, in the best clue-puzzle tradition, the person least likely is the culprit. The novel “solves” the murder of the princes in terms of its own logic, but that logic is predicated upon the unswerving assumption that the prime suspect is innocent . . . the fatal flaw in her method is to stretch the boundaries of detective fiction beyond their naturalistic limits to the point where Richard III is, simply, too good to be true.

I still highly recommend this book-- it's nothing like any other crime novel I've ever read, and the case is compelling, convincing, and still being debated by historians today.

A Book You Could Only Read During Quarantine (Not That You Should)

This is a momentous day for me. Miraculous. I finished something that I started three months ago to the day. Despite obstacles and adversity, I persevered. I can now say, with a healthy dollop of pedantic douchery, that I have read The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling. With apologies to Henry Fielding, there will be spoilers ahead. For good reason . . .

Just as Jesus died on the cross so you don't have to, I have plowed through this enormous tome only to advise you never to read it.

Some of you may know that I'm not averse to reading extremely long, rather old books. I'm a big fan of Tristram Shandy and Middlemarch. I'm also a big fan of novels themselves. They are empathy machines, and they are wonderful ways to model profound decisions without having to live hundreds of different lives. And they are entertaining.

Tom Jones is regarded as a classic. It's one of the first novels written in the English language. I've always wanted to read it, but I only had a paperback copy with a tiny font. I had started the book years ago and felt it was up my alley: the picaresque story of a foundling who must find his way in class-based 18th century England. I love a good picaresque novel.

On January 25th, I had a brilliant idea. I would get the book on my Kindle. Then I wouldn't have to worry about the small font. And I could read late at night and early in the morning. I didn't get very far, but then the pandemic hit and I figured: now or never.

But it was so disconcerting to read the book on the Kindle-- because the Kindle was only acknowledging my progress by percentage points . . . and it took a really long time to move that number. I decided to buy a hardcover version, so it would be easier to read.

Here it is:

I was very excited when it arrived-- you know how exciting it is to receive a package during quarantine-- but when I opened up the copy, to my chagrin, I found that the font was even tinier than that of my paperback copy.

So I kept plowing away at the Kindle version. Apparently, the book is anywhere from 750 to 963 pages, depending on the font. I made the Kindle font quite large, so I probably read 2000 Kindle pages of Tom Jones. Maybe more.

Fielding likens reading his book to taking a long journey. This is what he writes near the end:

We are now, reader, arrived at the last stage of our long journey. As we have, therefore, traveled together through so many pages, let us behave to one another like fellow-travelers in a stagecoach, who have passed several days in the company of each other; and who, notwithstanding any bickerings or little animosities which may have occurred on the road, generally make all up at last, and mount, for the last time, into their vehicle with cheerfulness and good humour; since after this one stage, it may possibly happen to us, as it commonly happens to them, never to meet more. 

I will grant him this. I'm glad I know the story, and I'm glad I met the characters. But I still implore you not to read it. It's just too many pages to get across what happens. It's TOO much time to spend with these people.

The plot does pick up around 92% of the way through, but it still takes a good eighty pages or so to conclude things.

If you care, the main themes are thus . . .

Tom Jones, a foundling who thinks he is of low birth, desires the heart of a truly chaste and lovely beauty named Sophia Western. Due to a gross misunderstanding with the country gentleman, Tom Jones has been turned out into the world, where he engages in various adventures-- violent and lusty. He also attends a gypsy wedding, which is quite fun. The main thing to learn here is that social class is EVERYTHING in this world. And marriage should be a reflection of social class (though some women wish this were not true).

In the end, Tom Jones finds out-- of course-- that he IS a gentleman after all-- this is the big reveal: he is the nephew of his benefactor Mr. Allworthy. But his desired love, Sophia Western, is still skeptical about marrying him. She thinks he is a libertine because she knows of some of the picaresque and bawdy adventures he has partaken. He definitely slept with a few women when he was out in the world, and perhaps even impregnated one-- but he assures her his love is true.

She just needs to understand this:

The delicacy of your sex cannot conceive the grossness of ours, nor how little one sort of amour has to do with the heart.

The ol' double standard. Boys will be boys, but then they can repent and settle down.

And when wenches are so coming, young men are not so much to be blamed neither; for to be sure they do no more than what is natural.

The women can be headstrong and lusty and plotting in the novel too, but not as much as the men.

This Will Barnes was a country gallant, and had acquired as many trophies of this kind as any ensign or attorney's clerk in the kingdom. He had, indeed, reduced several women to a state of utter profligacy, had broke the hearts of some, and had the honour of occasioning the violent death of one poor girl, who had either drowned herself, or, what was rather more probable, had been drowned by him.

The men also succumb to the silliness and stupidity of alcohol.

For drink, in reality, doth not reverse nature, or create passions in men which did not exist in them before. It takes away the guard of reason, and consequently forces us to produce those symptoms, which many, when sober, have art enough to conceal.

One of my favorite sections, which might be worth reading if you are an English teacher, is when Tom Jones attends Hamlet with his trusty (and dopey) sidekick Partridge.

Partridge offers running commentary throughout the play. At first, he is not scared by the ghost, because he knows it is a man dressed in a costume, but then when he sees the great David Garrick playing Hamlet, he gets frightened because Garrick is so affrighted.

"Nay, you may call me coward if you will; but if that little man there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw any man frightened in my life."

Partridge then issues his take on acting, which is fabulous. He does NOT believe Garrrick is the best actor in the play, because Garrick behaved exactly as a normal person would, when seeing a ghost. He prefers the bloviating of the king-- because THAT is acting. Good stuff-- and a fine collision of worlds with another (excellent) book I read called The Club.

"He the best player!" cries Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer, "why, I could act as well as he myself. I am sure, if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did. And then, to be sure, in that scene, as you called it, between him and his mother, where you told me he acted so fine, was never at a play in London, yet I have seen acting before in the country; and the king for my money; he speaks all his words distinctly, half as loud again as the other.—Anybody may see he is an actor."

I'm proud that I finished this book, and excited to be free of it. It weighed on me each and every day, the way that one's social class constricted the folk of 18th century England. I am glad to be free (somewhat) of that burden . . . although it is certainly economic class distinctions that gave me the time during quarantine to read this book-- my house is big enough for me to find quiet spaces, I'm working from home on my own schedule, and I'm not worried where my next meal is coming from. There are plenty of people in much worse situations, though we consider ourselves beyond all this 18th-century class tomfoolery . . . social distancing has been happening in America long before Covid-19.

Required Listening (If You Care About U.S. China Relations)

The new episode of the Freakonomics podcast "Will Covid-19 Spark a Cold War (or Worse) With China?" is a nuanced, non-partisan take on what the consequences might be globally, particularly with China, due to this pandemic.

The episode is going to be difficult for liberals who like to believe everything Trump has said or done is wrong. It's going to be difficult for ethical relativists who don't think you should evaluate a culture. It's going to be difficult for dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, who believe globalization and free trade are always the answer. It's going to be difficult for multi-culturalists who believe that criticizing the Chinese government could lead to racism against Chinese people in the United States. It's going to be difficult for Americans in general because we've trusted China too much, we've not recognized that the Chinese government is at odds with our core values, and the Chinese response to the pandemic has painted this in black and white.

Steven Dubner talks to Michèle Flournoy, who runs a strategic-advisory firm called WestExec. She is a once and perhaps future government official.

This is how Flournoy describes herself.

FLOURNOY: In my former life, I was the undersecretary of defense for policy in the Pentagon in the Obama administration. And in that capacity, I dealt with a full range of policy issues, including U.S.-China relations.

And he talks to Michael Auslin, a historian whose forthcoming book is called Asia’s New Geopolitics.

Here's how Auslin describes himself.

Michael AUSLIN: I am a distinguished research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and before that, was a professor at Yale.

DUBNER: And I hate to force each of you to reduce yourself to a label, but if you had to categorize yourself on the China-hawk/dove spectrum, where do you stand?

FLOURNOY: I’m a clear-eyed pragmatist. I see the challenges and threats pretty clearly, but I also am willing to work towards areas where it’s in our interest to cooperate.

AUSLIN: I’m not a China hawk; I’m a C.C.P. hawk. I just think that we understand the nature of the Communist Party in that it is adversarial to the values and systems that we cherish.

The three of them discuss China's culpability in this pandemic-- and all agree that the CPC's cover-up of events, quashing of scientific opinion, mismanaging information, destruction of samples, lowballing the death toll, and hoarding of personal protective equipment makes them responsible for the global nature of the crisis. Neither Auslin or Flourney is surprised by what China did-- and they both say that we should have learned our lesson sooner. 

Auslin is probably a bit more conservative than Flournoy, but neither of them really talks much about Democratic and Republican politics. The show is more about tactics, globalization, the many promises China has broken over the years, and how we want to shape our narrative with China. We want to think that the fact that we've incorporated them into the global economy has liberalized and democratized their politics, but this doesn't seem to be the case. 

Also, the word "transactional" seems to be creeping into a lot of current writing. Flournoy says Trump has been TOO "transactional" with China and should have sought more coalitions. Auslin says that being "transactional" with China may be the only way forward because they do not share the same core beliefs as America.

The main thing is this: even once the pandemic wanes, our relationship with China is more fraught than ever. This podcast gives some hints as to how that future may play out.

Good News and Better . . .

We got the lab report back. The ancient ceiling above our sub-ceiling in the basement NOT asbestos. So we haven't been damaging our lungs during a pandemic that could potentially damage your lungs.

Good news.

Even better news.

I was on the back porch-- drinking a beer and playing the guitar-- when our neighbor's generator went on. God knows why-- the power is fine. It just happens sometimes. Even though it's two houses away, it's fucking loud. So I went inside and sent them a mildly irate email . . . and they shut it off.

So I'm going back outside.

Quarantine Workouts (Mental and Physical)

I am proud to announce that my son Ian and I completed a set of six sprints up "Deadman's Hill" on Monday. This is one more than our last effort. We're trying to build up to 8 reps. "Deadman's Hill" is a steep incline at the end of our block-- the sprint is a tenth of a mile (528 feet) and (according to Google maps) you gain fifty feet of elevation during the run. That's about a ten percent grade. It's brutal. We always finish morning workouts during double sessions at the hill, and the soccer players do several sets. Coach runs them in class order-- seniors, juniors, sophomores, freshman-- so they get a bit of a rest in between. We did not have this luxury. We ran up, walked down, and did it again. My son Ian (14 years old) is 99 pounds, so he had an easier time than me. I think I maxed out my heart rate and then some. I will provide a video of the final interval the next time we do it. It will be slow and disturbing. 

Tuesday morning, my sixteen-year-old son Alex told me that after everyone went to bed, he got a video call from a tennis player buddy of his. Ten students were trying to do 10,000 push-ups in one day, but they needed help. It was getting late and they weren't going to make it. From 11 PM to 11:45 PM, Alex did 450 push-ups. This put them over the top. A couple kids did over 2000 push-ups in a 24 hour period. Alex is very sore.

My mind is also obviously working overtime to process all the new normal, and I don't have to get up as early as norm, so I'm actually remembering some of my dreams. While I normally never talk about dreams or want to hear other people's dreams, we are in weird times. Perhaps they are premonitions.

Dream #1

I was attending an interminable faculty meeting in the auditorium-- it was dark and boring and I was getting sleepy-- but my only ray of hope was that my friend and colleague Zach had smuggled a baby raccoon into the meeting and he was going to release it at the appropriate moment to cause maximum chaos. I helped concoct the plan, but my friend had the raccoon in a bag. We didn't sit next to each other, to avoid suspicion. I was waiting and waiting for him to release the baby raccoon, the meeting was so boring, but he was stalling. I was frantically signaling to him. Release the raccoon! Release the raccoon!

He finally did and it climbed up the wall, like a monkey, and made it's way to the stage. Everyone freaked out. Pretty sweet dream.

Dream #2

Warning: this one is not as sweet. I was at a funeral, but in an open field, more like a party. It seemed similar to the memorial for an actual fraternity buddy who died in a motorcycle crash many years ago (but it was not for this person). When I inquired about the person who died-- a college friend of mine-- my friend Joe told me that guy's funeral happened the day before . . . I had missed it, gotten the date wrong, and that this funeral was for another college friend (who had died at yesterday's memorial event). I was totally broken up and surprised and sad. I did not like this dream at all. I'm leaving the names of the dead people out of this for obvious reasons, I don't want to hex anyone. I hope I'm not clairvoyant.

Remember When Your Biggest Concern Was Being Attacked by Feral Hogs?

Back in October of 2019, I was worried about this impending menace:



I was so wound up about feral hogs that I wrote a long post about them.

I was enthralled by a vision of giant fecund razorbacks ravaging their way across our country, tearing up crops, fields and ponds, thundering through suburban yards, slowly making their way towards the coasts. I even (temporarily) changed the name of my one-man-band to Feral Hogs at the Strip Mall.

Those were simpler times.

I've since changed my Soundcloud moniker back to The Moving Rocks, but I did finish a song celebrating this possible porcine apocalypse. I updated the lyrics some to reflect our current situation--obviously, the feral hog scourge has been pushed to the back burner-- but there's no question that as we invade various spaces on our planet, we're going to uncover some nasty creatures. Not all of them can be shot with an assault weapon.

The song is safe for work, home, working at home, and listening when there are kids in the room, so check it out. I'm quite proud of the guitar riff, I had to use some unusual scales and chords to get the groove I wanted. The sound is certainly inspired by the wonderful and creepy song "Ghost Town" by The Specials.

Feral Hogs (at the Strip Mall)

Feral hogs at the strip mall
Feral hogs at the mall
These little piggies are having a ball
These little piggies want it all

Pangolin in the market
Horseshoe bat in your soup
Rhino horn in the basket
Circus cat, flaming hoop

Crocodiles in the sewer
bedbugs roam between the sheets
Snakehead fish in the river
Multiply while you sleep

Bone Tomahawk!

If you're looking for something to watch that will make the menace of Covid-19 seem trifling, check out the Old West/horror flick Bone Tomahawk. 

Warning: at times it is gruesome.

The story is set in the late 1800s, out in the fabled West, in a small settlement (ironically) called Bright Hope. 

It's back in the days when if you get wounded in the leg, you might die of gangrene. And the sheriff-- Kurt Russell-- has a penchant for shooting suspicious folk in the leg.

But gangrene is the least of your worries if you live in Bright Hope. We learn what the real danger is from an erudite Native American the townsfolk call the Professor. Only he could deliver the bad news (if a white-man described what is to come, it would sound like xenophobic racist bullshit). The Professor explains that the two good people who have been abducted-- a helpful and pretty wife and the deputy to the sheriff-- have been taken by a tribe of indigenous cave-dwelling cannibalistic troglodytes.

He is not optimistic about the prospect of saving them.

The movie becomes comic for a bit, as a ragtag band of folks: one on crutches, one old, one something of a fop, and Kurt Russel-- the old sheriff with a few tricks up his sleeve-- make their way through the high plains to the troglodyte caves.

It's The Searchers meets The Descent.

There are some great lines and a wonderful campfire conversation about how hard it is to read a book in the bath (with a brilliant low-tech solution).

Then things get ugly.

This was a nice break from the gritty realism of The Wire and Better Call Saul and Bosch and even The Expanse (which is as realistic as you get for a sci-fi show, pretty much the opposite of Star Wars).

Comment of the Quarantine!

Yesterday, I lamented the fact that some of us are not cut out for all this extreme hygiene during the quarantine. Masks, gloves, hand-washing, no face-touching, six-foot distancing. It's an OCD ballet, and I can't find the rhythm.

It's because I've become inured to people and germs. I teach in an enormous, crowded high school.

Kids come to school sick, they cough, they drool, they fall asleep with their snot-covered faces plastered to the desks, they blow their nose while you're giving directions, and they occasionally leave menstrual blood on chairs (seriously, this has happened more than once . . . you call the janitor instead of doing the clean-up yourself).

I eat in a tiny office shared by twenty other teachers. There's always random food on the table, often long past the expiration date. I bring a cooler because I'm scared of what's inside the refrigerator.

Thousands of people are touching the doorknobs, staircase railings, and bathroom surfaces each and every day. If you need to get from A Hall to F Hall during the five-minute passing time, you inevitably get stuck near the library in a mass of bodies that resembles an Anthrax mosh pit. It's no place for claustrophobes, germaphobes, or tiny sophomores.

Ironically, this year our school decided to crack down on two things. Teacher absences (especially sick days on Mondays and Fridays) and bathroom passes. Obviously, the teacher-absence thing went out the window when the pandemic started. Teachers were encouraged to stay home if they were sick-- which is how it should be. We get our sick days for a reason, so as not to spread virulence in a building with 3000 closely-packed inhabitants.

The bathroom passes are another issue. Students are required to take a laminated pass if they leave to go to the bathroom. These passes obviously harbor bacteria, fecal matter, and worse. They are disgusting. But star commenter Zman offered an elegant solution:


You should keep the bathroom passes in a glass cylinder of Barbicide like the combs at the barbershop.


While I'm sure when we finally go back to school, we will abolish shared, laminated passes for some other more hygienic system, I am definitely going to take my old passes and put them in a glass cylinder of Barbicide on my desk.

I can never pass up some good prop comedy.

Thanks Zman!

What Is the Cost of a Quarantine Bagel? Maybe Dave's Life . . .

On Tuesday at his daily press briefing, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that the economy and public health are not an either/or scenario. He's right, of course. An increase in public health is going to help the economy. But he also said something that's patently false. 

“But if you ask the American people to choose between public health and the economy then it’s no contest, no American is going to say accelerate the economy at the cost of human life because no American is going to say how much a life is worth.”

This is logical silliness. We HAVE to put a value on human life. It can't be worth nothing-- then you're Stalin. It can't be sanctified and worth an infinite amount, because then you can't allocate resources. 

Plenty of Americans say how much a life is worth. Americans that work in federal agencies that decide whether a regulation is too costly to enact. Car manufacturers say how much a life is worth when they decide which safety features to add to their vehicles and which to leave out (and how much to charge for them).  Actuarial workers say how much a human life is worth on a daily basis.

Professor W. Kip Viscusi says how much a human life is worth. He gets specific about it.

Often, these federal agencies rely on Viscusi's number. Back in 1982, one statistical human life was worth 300,00 dollars, but Viscusi revised this figure. He used data on dangerous jobs-- he looked at how much more a worker needed to be paid to accept a job that had a higher risk of death. He came up with three million dollars per statistical life-- ten times the old amount. Because of inflation, that number is now estimated by the federal government to be around 10 million dollars. 

Planet Money Episode 991: Lives vs. the Economy give an excellent rundown of this math (along with an interview with Viscusi himself!)

And that's why I was able to go and get bagels yesterday morning. We haven't completely shut the economy down. We are still allowing people to shop at Wal-Mart and get take-out food and go to the grocery store as many times a week as they'd like. We're still delivering and receiving mail. We're still ordering from Amazon. 

Do these things spread the virus? 

Absolutely, but at a lower rate than normal. But not at a rate of zero. If one human life were priceless, we'd have to shut it all down. We'd get one chance every two weeks to go to the grocery store. We'd be eating beans and rice. By leaving some businesses open, we're making a cost/benefit decision and putting a price on the lives that will be lost because social distancing is fairly voluntary. And imperfect, as you will learn at the end of this post, when I describe my journey to buy bagels.

We'll keep making these decisions, balancing public health and the economy, and recognizing that plenty of people WILL be deciding what a statistical human life is worth. That's why the speed limit isn't 15 miles an hour. If it were, we would save many many thousands of lives, but we've decided that those lives are worth time and convenience. How many statistical lives are 50,000 jobs worth? I don't know, offhand, but someone is going to have to make that decision. The same way we know opening bars will lead to some drunk driving deaths and some cirrhosis of the liver. And some spread of Covid-19. At some point, that number will be low enough that we will reopen. But it's never going to get to zero.

Some people are better at minimizing the risk than others. That's baked into the system. I don't seem to be very good at minimizing the risk. 

Yesterday, I went to the La Bagel in Edison. I put on my mask, picked up our order, and carried it back to the car. The place was busy: four customers and four people working. One of them was a uniformed health care worker. Everyone wore masks, but still. The virus is around.

I got my bagel toasted and with cream cheese. I had never gotten my bagel toasted before, but my wife gave me this option. La Bagel is only a four-minute ride from my house (three minutes, really, because there's no traffic) but I decided I needed to eat my toasted everything bagel with cream cheese NOW. In the car on the ride home. I was hungry.

I didn't realize that the cream cheese would be slightly melted from the toasting. I got cream cheese all over my hands. I licked the bulk of it off-- which is probably not proper pandemic hygiene. Then I put the bagel down on the console so I could find some napkins. After getting the napkins out of the bag, I noticed that I put the bagel down on a pair of used gloves. Also probably not proper pandemic hygiene. But I ate it anyway, of course.

In the next few minutes, I got cream cheese on all kinds of surfaces, including my mask. I licked my fingers clean and ate a bagel that had touched my mask and some gloves. 

I'm not a doctor. 

I don't have this protocol down pat. I'm like most people. And we still have a whole mess of people behaving like this, so the virus will spread, slowly. Hopefully, slowly enough. But this is a tough adjustment for me. 

I'm used to teaching in a classroom all day. Kids cough on pieces of paper and then hand them to me. The desks are sticky and gross. There's never enough tissues. I touch my face, pick my nose (you can't teach with a booger) and cough all kinds of droplets into the air. I'm used to seeing one or two sick kids in every class I teach. They slobber on the desks and blow their noses. And I don't even want to get into the bathroom passes . . . yikes. This is business as usual when you do five 45 minute classes a day. There's no way we're going to be able to control the situation inside the schools, but we're eventually going to open the doors anyway. 

Here are a couple of other good podcasts on this topic:

Making Sense with Sam Harris: 198

Freakonomics 413: Who Gets the Ventilator?

Attention Governor Murphy! Try Rollerblading Down My Street Now That the Parks are Closed!

While I empathize and understand that Governor Murphy is dealing with an incredible crisis right now, I don't think closing down all the parks is having the desired effect. Instead of keeping people farther apart, closing the parks is packing them closer together.

My street-- which is adjacent to Donaldson Park-- has now BECOME the park. It's packed (and much narrower than Donaldson Park). I shot some video while I was rollerblading down the hill next to the park. If I was a decent cinematographer, you'd be able to tell how packed my street is-- with walkers, joggers, bikers, and occasional cars.

But due to some lousy camerawork, you might throw up. Fair warning. It's the Blair Witch Project of quarantine rollerblading video.

Despite the unsteady hand of the auteur, I still think this film proves my point. 

Governor Murphy, open the parks (and close Wal-Mart . . . every time I drive by, that place is packed).

Spring Break Coronavirus

It's back to work this week for my wife and me, but our kids are still on Spring Break. Remote teaching is fairly awful-- it pretty much strips all the fun out of teaching and makes it much more transactional. It makes me think of this scene from Office Space.




I've been getting a lot of my news through podcasts, and the news hasn't been very good. The Indicator: The Story So Far gives a quick (nine minute) run down of some economic indicators that run from interesting to grim. Americans aren't traveling-- very little traffic on the ground and in the air, and we aren't consuming as much electricity. Both entrepreneurship and state/local budgets are suffering. So new businesses and jobs aren't being created, and local governments are starting to lay people off. Pretty ugly. And the pandemic is exposing income inequality. White collar jobs are suffering less than service. The poor are dying at a more rapid clip than the rich.

But everyone is dying, from all walks of life. To hear about this in greater detail, you can listen to the new episode of The Daily. "24 Hours Inside a Brooklyn Hospital" gives you a picture of what it's really like in a medical center overwhelmed by Covid-19. It's scary and fast-paced and utilitarian. There aren't really drugs that work. All sorts of people have the potential to go downhill.

I listened to these podcasts this morning while walking through the park. It's officially closed and it was empty. I guess it was early enough (and cold enough) that I was able to avoid detection, but when the weather gets nice and we're all stuck walking up and down the street, I'm sure they will bolster security.

I whiled away the time on Spring Break playing low-stakes Texas Hold'em on Pokerstars. You can play nickel/dime or even penny/two-penny. It's great practice. I'm going to try to set up a friendly game on there for folks who are interested (though you probably have to live in New Jersey). You can make a club, invite your friends, and play for whatever amount of money you like.

Catherine and I also did some community service-- we are shopping for old people. They like soup and pineapple chunks and Ritz crackers. We have to wear masks! The ones they gave us are very uncomfortable and make our glasses steam up, but now we have more fashionable face wear. The daughter of a friend made us some. Thanks Kaylee!

The kids and I have been playing a lot of darts, ping-pong, and tennis. There are still a few tennis courts open in the vicinity (but if I told you where they were, I'd have to kill you). One set of courts we frequent had a cheesy lock on the gate but it was easy enough to pry open. A maintenance worker came by while Ian and I were playing and asked if we had put the lock on. We said no. Apparently, someone had taken the initiative to try to lock the court privately. The maintenance guy said he was going to cut it off. We went back yesterday and the lock was gone.

The kids have been obsessively watching Adventuretime and they finally finished yesterday. We've been watching The Wire and Better Call Saul as a family. The boys and I watch Letterkenny and The Expanse. Catherine and the boys watch cooking shows. I never watch TV alone (which is a great trait during regular times but not so much during the pandemic). Ian has been playing Magic and D&D with friend online. Alex has a group of friends that go running everyday. We're all sore from working out so much. I miss low-impact weightlifting at the gym.

If anyone wants to join my book club, I'm trying to read three mammoth books: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding, The Anarchy by William Dalrymple, and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Andrew Treuer. I have a feeling I will finish all three by the end of this.

Quarantine has been relatively uneventful for us, and I hope it stays that way. We took down some collapsing ceiling tiles in the basement and found an old ceiling above the newer ceiling. I've sent a sample out for asbestos testing. I really hope it comes back negative-- I don't need asbestos lung damage on top of the possibility of Covid lung damage.

I hope your quarantine is healthy, boring, and uneventful. Hope to see some of you in person soon.

Governor Murphy: Here Are 9 Reasons NOT to Close the NJ Parks

                       

Dear Governor Murphy:

While I'm sure you had the best intentions when you decided to close the NJ state and county parks, let me offer a few reasons why this is a bad move:


1. You are incentivizing the very thing you are trying to prevent. Now instead of taking a walk in the uncrowded county park one hundred yards from my house, I'm driving around to other towns to find open municipal parks and spaces, where I can run, walk my dog, and bike with my wife and kids. So you are causing more movement and forcing people into smaller spaces.

2. You don't want to make it hard for people to exercise. Obesity and heart disease kill FAR more people than Covid-19 ever will. Over 600,00 people a year in the United States die of heart disease. Hundreds of thousands more die from obesity-related diseases. Then there's high blood pressure, depression, etc. And running on the road hurts my knees! The benefits outweigh the costs.

3. Stress and anxiety reduce the effectiveness of the immune system. Nothing combats stress more than exercise (especially in green spaces).

4. You are punishing poor people. People with smaller houses. People that live in apartments. People who don't own large swaths of land. People who live with a large number of people. This is class warfare.

5. With fewer options, people are going to get bored and head to where the virus is actually being spread: Costco, Walmart, convenience stores, and grocery stores. Would you rather have people walking around in parks or convening in those spaces? You're going to cause more people to cough on the soup cans.

6. You are punishing everyone because a few bad apples that congregated in the parks Issue the offenders a steep fine and allow the rest of us-- who are practicing social distancing-- open space in which to walk. These people are going to find other spaces in which to illegally congregate, anyway. At least if they are in parks they can be ticketed and monitored.

7. You are forcing little kids to bike in the streets. You are also encouraging people to drive around more. That's a recipe for disaster. Do you want that on your soul?

8. Without the parks, some people may lapse back into addictive, obsessive, and abusive behaviors. You may see a rise in alcoholism, gambling addiction, spousal abuse, suicide, gun violence, etc.

9. You've seen The Shining, right?

                                        

If you agree, send a message to the Governor . . . and sign this petition.

Quarantine Claustrophobia: The Walls Are Closing In

My wife and I donned dust masks this morning-- but apparently for the wrong purpose. We were down in our basement, tearing down some rotted ceiling tiles. We also wore snowboarding goggles, to protect our eyes form the dust. Here a picture of Catherine getting all her gear on:

We had grand plans to yank all the tiles down, but when we found another (very old) drop ceiling above  the newer ceiling, we decided to just pull down the tiles that were falling apart. I was nervous that the old drop ceiling, which was decayed in spots, might contain asbestos. I ordered a DIY test kit.

We probably should have saved the masks, as Governor Murphy just mandated mask-wearing in grocery stores. And maybe it wasn't such a good idea to expose ourselves to toxic dust when there is a virus going around that compromises the lungs. I wasn't down there all that long-- I got really claustrophobic in the mask and goggles. Catherine was heroic. She cleaned up the entire mess, vacuumed, wiped every surface clean, threw out the plastic drop cloths, etc. I pray for her lungs.

Governor Murphy also closed all the state and county parks, including the one next to my house. I'm hoping they're not going to really enforce this (aside for motor vehicles). I was able to walk the dog in the park this morning, we'll see if I get kicked out tomorrow morning. Either way, I can feel things closing in around me, restrictions getting tighter, and it's making me anxious and stir-crazy. I suppose that's good-- if you're feeling stir-crazy, it means you're not dead/dying/on a ventilator. And the numbers keep growing. Now, 1 in every 200 people in New Jersey has tested positive for the virus.

If You Eat Food (Or Own a Tiger) You Should Probably Read This . . .

If you still go to the grocery store (or eat food) then you need to listen to the new episode of Reveal. It's called "Essential Workers" and it's mainly about the duress farmworkers and grocery store employees are suffering during this pandemic.

Farmworkers-- undocumented and on temporary visas-- are living in tight quarters, without much information. Most of them don't have benefits, and while they have been deemed "essential" they are not being treated as such. They don't have paid sick leave and the stimulus bill largely ignores the actual workers-- the people we really depend on. It's a scary mess that could have grave repercussions for all of us.

Grocery stores are pretty much a Petri dish for Covid-19. Many stores haven't enacted safeguards to insure social distancing. Some stores have paid compensation for employees that test positive for Covid-19, but tests are in short supply so lots of sick employees are working until they collapse. My takeaway from listening to this section of the podcast is this: if you go to the grocery store, you will (or have) come in contact with the virus.

Our federal government needs to show some national leadership. In addition to healthcare workers, the people who produce, deliver, and sell our food need to be given as much support and aid as possible during this pandemic.

In other Covid news, fans of the salacious, species-specific Netflix series Tiger King, will be sad to hear that tigers can contract Covid-19. So can lions. Several big cats at the Bronx Zoo tested positive for the virus. One of the tigers had a "dry cough." So it's probably inevitable that all those tigers kept in close quarters on the show are going to get it.

In general, it seems that cats can contract the virus, but dogs not so much.

Trainspotting: The Finale

If you're my age and have a certain Gen X hipster sensibility, you probably love Trainspotting. The book AND the movie. The characters are the archetypes of your mates:


Renton: the scheming, slightly ambitious, slightly amoral, easily influenced, cynical mainstay, with the capability too (almost) fit into normal society.

Sick Boy: the lecherous womanizer

Spud: the slightly daft, but always loyal and kind whipping boy. The gang alternately tortures and takes care of him.

Begbie: the psychopath.


The last chapter of this saga is on sale on Amazon Kindle for $1.99.

Dead Men's Trousers by Irvine Welsh.

It's not a great book, but if you're stuck in quarantine and feeling a little nostalgic for wilder times, it's not bad.

The gang is middle-aged, estranged, and scattered about the world. If the book just took a look at the lives of some ex-addicts and how they've managed to fit into our modern society, that would be interesting . . . but it wouldn't be an Irvine Welsh novel.  Instead, we get the gang in their full glory and a plot that is a hodge-podge of weird sex and wanton violence and soccer and venereal diseases and stalkers and murders and art exhibitions and EDM music and the criminal underground and an illegal kidney racket.

It's a farce and a mess.

I still had fun reading it: you get to hear narration from all the members of the gang. There's plenty of action . . . too much really, it gets surreal, and while this worked for a gang of heroin addicts on the scam, in Trainspotting, it doesn't so much for a bunch of middle-aged adults.

But if you want to read about realistic middle-aged adults, you can read a Jonathan Franzen novel. This is something different. And now I think I'm done with Irvine Welsh and the gang, but it's a fitting end to the cynical, misanthropic, nihilistic tone of the '90s.

The youth today are much more compliant and socially aware. And anxious.

For example: for the most part, young people seem to be obeying all the Covid-19 social distancing rules, even though this is mainly to benefit their elders. If the Trainspotting gang were asked to hole up to protect the over 60 population, they'd just laugh and head out to the club to score.

Big Day for Dave in the Quarantine State

Three things of note today . . .

After an unsuccessful attempt yesterday, I completed my first shopping trip and drop-off for the Highland Park Civilian Outreach Program (COPE). The program provides up to $100 dollars of groceries a week for folks that can't do the shopping for themselves during this pandemic. You get paired up with someone, call them, find out what they need, and bring them the groceries. You leave the groceries on their doorstep, to avoid Covid transmission. Catherine does all the phone calls because she can actually talk to old people on the phone and understand what they are saying. Once we got a list worked out, I donned some gloves, went to Stop & Shop, got a weird slip of paper at customer service and bought a bunch of soup, bread, bananas, canned pineapple chunks and such for an older gentleman. Then I brought the groceries to his house and put them on the stoop. He came out and carried them in. The only disappointment was that no hot chicks saw me dropping off the groceries. Next time I'll have to wait until I see a cute jogger, and then hop out and deliver the goods. A good deed doesn't count unless a good-looking woman witnesses it.

In other altruistic news, Planet Fitness has frozen all the memberships during the pandemic-- a nice gesture since I would have never remembered to cancel (and we all know how difficult it is to cancel a gym membership).

Last, but not least: for the first time on my new rollerblades, I went down the big hill by my house that goes into Donaldson Park. I waited until there were no cars, and then let the good times roll. The descent was a little fast and bumpy-- and I definitely had that moment where I thought: Do NOT end up in the hospital right now!-- but then I clattered over the brick crosswalk and onto the smooth flat main road without mishap.

Great Mysteries of Life (Spoilers Ahead)

My body is in an odd battle with itself. Fatness versus fitness. It is a mystery how it will turn out. To begin, I am snacking way too much during this quarantine (Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups are a particular problem . . . I've told my family to hide them from me, but I always manage to find them. And then I consume them all. I've also been eating cupcakes for breakfast. Covid-19 has claimed Adam Schlesinger from Fountains of Wayne, so if I want a cupcake for breakfast, I'm having it. Same goes for beer (but not for breakfast . . . contract hours are over at 2:15).

On the other hand, I've been working out like a madman. Running, kickboxing, tennis, biking, push-ups, pull-ups, random weight-lifting in the living room, etc. What else is there to do?

Today, after a fifteen-minute warm-up run, I ran a 7:27 mile. Ian and I were out on the canal path, and I didn't kill myself. I kept a smooth, steady pace and felt fine when I was done. This is thirty seconds better than the last time I ran a baseline mile. I think I could do an even better time on the track (where I would have a better idea of my pace).

I ran this faster time despite the fact that I've gained two or three pounds since the quarantine started. So I'm just a shade over 190 pounds instead of just a shade under.

What's going to happen in the end? Who knows?

 I'll be most annoyed if I get into really great shape, and then contract Covid-19 and end up on a ventilator. That's going to kill my fitness level fast (and perhaps me).

The other mystery I'd like to discuss today is Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. This is a good one and I highly recommend it-- as does the Crime Writers Association-- but if you're not going to read it, forge ahead to hear why it's brilliant (there will be spoilers . . . but you philistines never read the mystery novels I recommend, so you might as well learn what happens).

The novel starts with a suicide and then a murder. There are lots of characters, alibis, timelines, clues, and sequences-- it's hard to make sense of them all. Then, Hercule Poirot comes out of retirement and sorts it all out.

The narrator of Poirot mysteries is usually Arthur Hastings-- he's Hercule's Watson-- but this book has a different narrator: Dr. James Shepard. Weird, right?

Dr. Shepard has a nosy sister, who is always prying into things, and the good doctor himself seems quite curious about this crime. In fact, he writes everything down. In chapters. Weird.

Late in the book, Poirot discovers this and asks to read them. It's super-meta.

Here's the moment:

Still somewhat doubtful, I rummaged in the drawers of my desk and produced an untidy pile of manuscript which I handed over to him. With an eye on possible publication in the future, I had divided the work into chapters, and the night before I had brought it up to date with an account of Miss Russell’s visit. Poirot had therefore twenty chapters. 

Poirot reads Shepard's "book," which is the same book we've been reading . . . and-- of course-- he solves the mystery. The narrator did it! It's as if Watson committed the crime, and Sherlock Holmes had to catch him. From Watson's own journals. Totally wonderful.

Here are some other moments I enjoyed . . .

Dr. Shepard's description of his sister Caroline:

Caroline can do any amount of finding out by sitting placidly at home. I don’t know how she manages it, but there it is. I suspect that the servants and the tradesmen constitute her Intelligence Corps. When she goes out, it is not to gather in information, but to spread it. At that, too, she is amazingly expert. 

Poirot's purpose in life:

Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to the seeker after it. 

The reason I was fooled by the narrator:

Fortunately, words, ingeniously used, will serve to mask the ugliness of naked facts. 

The truth about men, according to Caroline:

“Never worry about what you say to a man. They’re so conceited that they never believe you mean it if it’s unflattering.” 

The one thing I will say with conviction about this quarantine is this: thank the good Lord (and Edgar Allan Poe) for the detective story.

Random Thoughts While Walking the Dog (During a Pandemic)

I took the dog for a walk today at the Rutgers Ecological Preserve. Here are a few of my thoughts:

1) If you're hiking in the preserve and you suddenly get a fever and a cough, you're conveniently located just a half-mile away from the Middlesex County Covid-19 Drive-Through Testing Center. It's at the Kilmer Road DMV (and I would expect the same level of customer service as any DMV endeavor).

2) Even though it was brisk weather, I had to pull a couple of ticks off the dog. We had a really weak winter, which means tick season is going to be awful. Combine this with all the extra people walking around outside-- because the malls and bars and restaurants are closed-- and we're looking at a gigantic spike in Lyme Disease. Corona with a splash of Lyme (thanks Whit!)

Is there any way to parlay this idea this into a stock investment?

3) Next year in Philosophy class, I'm going to have a lot of good examples during our utilitarianism unit.

4) I listened to two positive podcasts on Covid-19. I highly recommend them, especially if you're tired of being inundated with grim numbers.

They both share the same theme: globally, we are engaged in a weird, semi-cooperative race. People want to win the race-- and make some money-- but they also realize the humanitarian role they are playing by engaging in this scientific and capitalistic race, and so there is a greater level of cooperation amidst the competition.

The Daily: The Race for a Vaccine

Planet Money: Episode 987: The Race To Make Ventilators
I actually got choked up during the Planet Money episode (which is about the race to make more ventilators) when the Michigan die-casting guy said he could make the steel two-ton piston mold "a lot faster than you think" because he realized it was a life or death piston mold. Supply and demand at it's finest!