Eric The Blue

Charlie Watts, 1941-2021

 

Most of us will never get closer to Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones drummer who died last week, than by watching "Gimme Shelter," the 1970 documentary film best known for its footage of the violence at the Altamont Speedway concert on December 6, 1969. But the movie is more than just that. My favorite scene, of the ones I can now remember, was filmed a few days earlier at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama. The band has just recorded "Wild Horses" and it's being played back to them. The above still is of Watts listening at the moment his drums come in. The whole thing—the scene at Muscle Shoals, not the whole movie—is below: really fun to watch. Seems like a fitting obit for Watts inasmuch as he appears pleased with the work he did. 

 

 

Mortality risk from Covid: FT has the numbers

 

 

The above chart, based on an analysis of health data in England by the Financial Times, is informative and somewhat reassuring. The full article is here. Yes, it's England, but there is no reason to suppose that the virus and the vaccines for it behave differently on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The red dots represent mortality risk from Covid for unvaccinated adults in age groups ranging from 30 to 90. The blue arrows then show what happens to that risk when a person in that age group is vaccinated. There isn't much variation in the length of the blue arrows. The vertical drops are all the distance between consecutive horizontal lines, or a little longer, indicating that for a vaccinated person the risk is diminished by a factor of 10 or more. For example, an unvaccinated 80-year-old has about a 1 percent chance of getting Covid and dying. Once vaccinated, however, the risk falls to less than a tenth of 1 percent: 1-in-a-hundred without vaccination compared to less than 1-in-a-thousand for the vaccinated.

Age is, as everyone knows, a significant risk factor: the chart draws attention to the fact that the mortality risk for a vaccinated 80-year-old is about the same as for an unvaccinated 50-year-old. Still, by getting vaccinated, that 50-year-old could divide his risk by about 12.

Of course, the data is only reassuring in the respect that we have at hand a powerful tool. If everyone who was currently unvaccinated took the step needed to reduce their risk by a factor of 10 or more, hardly anyone would be dying. Yesterday, more than a thousand Americans died of Covid. It'll happen again today, and tomorrow. It isn't necessary!

The FT's analysis pertained only to adults age 30 and up. Someone has added to the chart a red dot showing, from a different source (researchsquare.com), the mortality risk for unvaccinated people under the age of 18. The trend of the protective properties of youth persists on down the line: an unvaccinated kid has less chance of dying of Covid than a vaccinated 35-year-old, which is to say, the risk is vanishingly small—about 1-in-half-a-million. If you're worried about that level of risk, you probably shouldn't let your kid ride her bike around the block, either. 

I understand that death isn't the only bad thing about Covid. It's miserable to be sick and the long-term effects are unknown. But some of us have kids who can't yet be vaccinated, and, speaking for myself, there's been a nagging level of guilt associated with living a relatively normal life and worrying about exposing her to the virus. Fun to know, therefore, that the very worst outcome of going out for a hamburger is more apt to befall vaccinated me than unvaccinated her. 

 

Baseball fans discuss

I know my older daughter has my DNA because

a) she has a sweet disposition; and

b) during today's Twins game she said to me, "Dad, if the Twins were behind by one run in the 8th inning and had the bases loaded with two outs, would you rather have a hundred percent chance of a base hit or a 50-50 chance of either a grand slam or a strikeout?"

Fyi, I opted for the base hit after clarifying that it was the bottom of the 8th inning. Harder call in the top of the 8th, but I still might take the sure hit. Can we assume that it's to the outfield and two runs score? 

Dick Bremer, Twins play-by-play guy, has probably forgotten as much baseball as I'll ever know, but he said something during the game that I think I disagree with. Miguel Cabrera, of today's opponent, the Tigers, recently hit his 500th career homer, and he's also closing in on 3000 career hits. Dick said when he gets his 3000th hit, probably next April, it will be a more amazing achievement than his 500th homer, because (I paraphrase), "Everyone hits homers now but, geesh, 3000 hits: that's 200 a season for 15 seasons!"

Yes, 3000 is the product of 15 and 200, but does he realize that 25 (homers) x 20 (seasons) = 500 home runs? I liked the 8th inning single in my daughter's poser, but there's something to be said for 25 homers a season for each of those 15 seasons and then 125 more homers in the five seasons after that. The history of baseball suggests that, as achievements, it's at least a close call. Thirty-two players have gotten 3000 hits; counting Cabrera, only 28 have hit 500 homers. 

Life in these United States

Anticipating a message from my rural relatives to the effect that their livestock is infested with worms and the only thing available to treat it is the COVID-19 vaccine.

Lucia chases Sam

I've been progressing through Deirdre Bair's Samuel Beckett at the rate of about 30 pages per day, which means I'll finish it in around three weeks. By page 240, my current book mark, she's gotten Beckett into his early 30s and persuaded me that the life of a Nobel laureate is not necessarily the one I'd want. Here are two somewhat related anecdotes that, as they pertain to Beckett's romantic entanglements, may be of general interest. His life on the whole was more miserable than these episodes represent.

It is often said that Beckett, as a young man, worked as James Joyce's "secretary." I had thought— or, considering Beckett's eventual status, presumed—that this would entail such tasks as typing, proofing, researching, perhaps even dispensing literary advice.  In reality it seems he was mostly an errand boy. Joyce's background was lower middle-class, and it's not as if he was writing best sellers. Ulysses, however, had been published in 1922, the year Beckett turned 16, and its reputation among literary people had made it possible for Joyce to acquire an entourage of admirers who helped him meet his needs. There were financial supporters and then people like Beckett, who kept the claims of everyday life from distracting Joyce from what was then referred to as "Work in Progress"—the book that became Finnegans Wake. 

The upside, for Beckett, was his proximity to Joyce, having conversations with him, being able to observe his work habits and methods, meeting other eminent people, and the like. The downside was that, as you'd expect given his duties, he had even more contact with Joyce's family, which included a daughter, Lucia (pictured), a year younger than he, who became wildly infatuated with him. Beckett was tall, lean, handsome, and, on account of his perpetual silence, somewhat mysterious, all of which probably contributed to her infatuation. But he was also a depressive neurotic, self-absorbed, uncommunicative, and an intellectual snob—these were the traits that explained  the "mystery." Meanwhile Lucia, during the time she knew Beckett, was sliding ever deeper into the mental illness that eventually led to her treatment, and then residence, on the psych ward of various hospitals and asylums. Imagine these two people, as kids say, "hooking up"!

The story of Lucia's aggressive pursuit of Beckett is alternately humorous and pathetic. He did not respond to her entreaties, ignored her letters, took care not to be alone with her. It seems that to avoid alienating Joyce he was reluctant to resort to direct verbal bluntness, and, if he did, it did not penetrate the fog of her mental state. Until one day it did. She had arranged a meeting at a Paris restaurant in order to force a resolution. Bair writes:

Beckett did not want to be alone with her, and so he persuaded Georges Pelorson to go along. The unwitting Pelorson knew nothing of the crisis Beckett anticipated, and accepted the invitation for a free lunch. They waited for Lucia outside the restaurant and watched as she came up the street smiling at Beckett. When she discovered that he had invited Pelorson to join them, her face fell and she began to quiver. . . .

As the meal progressed, the silence thickened. Pelorson was appalled as he watched Lucia staring into space. . . . Her lipstick grew smeared, her mascara blurred, the carefully done hair grew disarranged. . . . After barely touching her food, she stood up slowly as if in a trance, then ran out of the restaurant and down the street. By the time they settled the bill and ran after her, she had disappeared. Beckett and Pelorson parted in mutual embarrassment. For a long time after, they took pains not to discuss the luncheon, but Beckett typically offered no explanation or apology.

And the fallout:

The awful moment had come at last, the one he had been dreading. He told Lucia that he only came to the flat to see her father and could not continue to see her. Lucia behaved erratically for a time, then grew depressed, and both her parents were terrified at what would happen to her. Nora [Joyce's wife] was furious with Beckett, whom she accused of leading Lucia on, ingratiating himself into her affections under false pretenses. Joyce, in tones of icy rage, informed Mr Beckett that he was no longer welcome in his home or his presence. The break that Beckett had feared became a reality.

He was desolated by his loss of Joyce. . . .

I suppose Lucia deserves some slack for being ill. Her parents, including her genius dad, were apparently unable to comprehend any point of view other than hers, and she was literally crazy. Probably Beckett's behavior was worst of all. Not sure there's anyone to cheer for, unless it's poor Georges Pelorson in the role of Rosencrantz&Guildenstern. All he wanted was lunch.

This got sort of long so I'll reserve the other romantic anecdote for later. Maybe by the time I get around to it I'll have come to one even more bizarre.

Power Line does Afghanistan, coronavirus

For insight into the right-wing mind, I rely heavily on the Power Line blog, which has four co-authors, two of them retired lawyers here in the Twin Cities. Lately of course it is all Afghanistan all the time, a world-historical "humiliation" for the United States. Here is one of the local guys, Scott Johnson, panting heavily this morning:

The historic national humiliation of the United States continues in Afghanistan. Several administration officials addressed it in press briefings yesterday, each trying to conceal the scope of the disaster. It is difficult to conceal the scope of the disaster, but in that respect they are doing the best they can.

I read the whole thing and it's apparently also difficult to supply any details concerning the scope of the humiliating disaster. An alternative view might be that, after 9/11, the W Bush administration did a lot of stupid things, and one of them was starting a hopeless war in Afghanistan. Now Biden ripped off the bandage. The ensuing immediate collapse, after 20 years' investment of blood and treasure, shows how futile our effort had always been. But I guess we should have persevered for another 20. 

The Power Line bloggers have also been on the case with regard to coronavirus. This is a little different from our Afghanistan withdrawal, since it's an issue with a history, with the result that it's possible to go back in time and evaluate what, say, John Hinderaker, the other local guy, has said about it. Back in the early days, March 11, 2020, he posted a graph showing deaths from the flu in 2017-18 compared to coronavirus deaths. The bar for coronavirus deaths back then was not tall enough to be visible and he announced his intention to update the chart over time. He thought it would be a "valuable tool." On the same day, he wrote: "I think the likelihood that coronavirus will kill more than 80,000 Americans who died from the flu virus two years ago is slim."

The 80,000 figure is surely inflated, but, even if accepted, the coronavirus death toll now exceeds it by a factor of eight. This may account for his failure to keep updating the chart—it's "value" as a "tool" had declined. He didn't give it up immediately, however. A few weeks later, on April 28,2020, coronavirus deaths were already about equal to those from the flu in 2017-18. He published a graph showing this fact, but he added two new bars showing that in the world (as opposed to just the US) coronavirus deaths were still less than half those attributed to the flu in an average year. His conclusion:

COVID-19 is setting records for media hype and political reaction. For actual fatalities, not so much.

Nine days later, Hinderaker hadn't yet dismounted. His graph now showed coronavirus fatalities in the US exceeding those for the flu, so he focused all his attention on the global figures (the US ones were suddenly denigrated as not an "apples-to-apples comparison"):

According to the WHO we are now a little more than half-way to an average flu season. My guess is that the global COVID-19 count will, in the end, modestly exceed the average for seasonal flu. The US numbers are not necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison.

His graph shows the average global figure for seasonal flu to be just under 470,000. Coronavirus deaths worldwide now stand at just under 4.5 million (World-o-meter), so his "guess" was not necessarily even in the ballpark. As far as I can tell, this post from May 9, 2020, was the last time he ever "updated" his chart. It's his method to make outrageous pronouncements until events disprove them, at which time he simply moves on to new pronouncements.  At the same time he was predicting that coronavirus would prove no more deadly than flu, he was singing the praises of hydroxychloroquine, but he's now left off with that nonsense, too. 

I'm not saying he's left off with the pontificating on coronavirus. From just a couple days ago:

[N]ew cases these days are mostly in the South. Why? Because covid is an indoor disease. In the summer months, it is hot in the South and people tend to stay indoors. In the Northern states, conversely, people are largely outdoors (the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is predominantly an outdoor event) and covid spreads less. When winter comes, new covid cases will be concentrated in the North, where people will then be indoors.

This sort of tic-tac-toe—"In the summer months, it is hot in the South"—isn't a great advertisement for Hinderaker's alma mater, Harvard Law School. He was for years a top-flight litigator at the Faegre law firm in Minneapolis, which makes me wonder whether jurors fall for this stuff. Anyway, you will note that he makes another prediction, and my prediction is that it will prove to be as bad as the rest—because the problem is vaccination rates, not the weather.  

Readings

When humans first went to the moon, and walked on it, the New York Times collected the thoughts of some Big Minds on the import of the event. The above illuminated snippet is the contribution of the artist, Pablo Picasso. I got a kick out of it because I remember distinctly what I was doing that day and my reaction was similar. I was almost 11, and my dad had taken me golfing that afternoon. But he was interested in the moon walk, play was slow, and, to get home on time, we walked off the course after around 14 holes, which really frosted me. Later, watching the shadowy figures at our neighbor's house, because they had a color TV that was also bigger than our black and white, I thought to myself: This is why we quit golfing? And for how long did that astronaut rehearse his precious speech about one small step for a man? Bullshit, all bullshit.

Well, in another 45 years it made for a good Mad Men episode.

For some of you who know me pretty well, and may be wondering why if my dad was taking me golfing in my pre-teen years I'm not somewhat better at it today, I have one thing to say: Do not suppose I haven't wondered the same thing.

As one who reads a lot, and sometimes tries to write good sentences myself, I often come across things that arouse my jealousy. Here is today's example, the opening to a piece in The New Yorker by Philip Gourevitch:

 

Man, I wish I could do that. Haven't ever even  hitchhiked!

Then there is the other end of the spectrum:

Once I overheard my daughters fighting and the older one suddenly asked the younger one if she was "a popular girl at school." The younger one seemed puzzled by the sudden turn but answered that she was not popular. "I'm surprised," the older one said, "because you're definitely mean enough." That's what this makes me think of. What a flip, pompous dolt (to say nothing of being spectacularly wrong)! No wonder he's wildly successful, a best-selling author and syndicated columnist for The New York Times. 

Tolerable and its antonyms

 

I was out driving somewhere yesterday, radio tuned to an NPR news show, when the host said the current situation was "intolerable," whereupon the interviewee asserted it was worse than that: "The situation has been intolerable for the last 20 years," she said. I wonder for how long the intolerable can persist before it arrives at one of Jane Austen's favorite adjectives, "tolerable," as in:

The suitor had a tolerable income. 

Thirty years? Samuel Beckett, Jane's colleague on the Humanities syllabus, would probably say 70 or 80, to coincide with life expectancy.

ESTRAGON: I can't go on like this.

VLADIMIR: That's what you think.

 

At the old ball game

Daughters and I went to the Twins game last night. One, age 13, is a fan. The other, age 10, is not, and to accommodate her I bought tix for a particular section, to the side of the pavilion in dead center field, where last night your ticket came with a pass for all-you-can-eat "ballpark fare." My supper was two hot dogs, a bag of peanuts, two ice cream sandwiches, and two cokes. I spurned pop corn and the corn tortilla chips with "cheese" dip. The 10-year-old spurned all the free stuff. I bought her a $7 pretzel for supper. Oh, wait, she didn't spurn all the complimentary items: I think she drank around four cokes. I'm not saying I'm sorry I brought her. I had reserved a spot in a ramp beforehand, a move that necessitated scanning a QR code on my phone at the ramp entrance. She showed me how to do that when the line behind us grew to three cars. Before that, she was giggling. 

Luckily, there were some drunk 20-year-olds within sight and earshot to occupy her attention during the game. The group was composed of around half a dozen males and one female who, for the occasion, had donned shorty shorts and cowboy boots. Based on my observations, I'd guess there was an informal competition under the terms of which the young man who shouted the drunkest most witless obscenities at the Indians' centerfielder was to be rewarded by bedding Rodeo Girl later last night. I'm so old as to regard with distaste the mating rituals of the young, but 10-year-old was actually enjoying herself, for once. 

In the ballgame, the Twins, despite four fielding errors, won on a walk-off hit by Polanco in the bottom of the tenth: decent pitching throughout, especially four innings of shutout relief from Gant, Minaya, Colome, and Thielbar. It was the Twins' eighth win in their last eleven games—the first ten of which, 13-year-old observed on the walk to the car, had been against first-place teams. To get out of the ramp, I had to scan the QR code again, which this time I accomplished without incident. 

Lame-o

The new "whatabout" theme among Big Thinking wingers concerns the vaccination rates of African Americans. Here, for example, is Paul Mirengoff, of the Power Line blog, yammering about how few young African Americans in New York City have been vaccinated. BLM is to blame, naturally. But, as the above data indicate, young people everywhere, and of any race, are among the least likely to be vaccinated. It's not that surprising. Young adults are healthy and reckless. 

It's as if Mirengoff, feeling sheepish about keeping the company of fools, bucks himself up with the charge that some on the other side believe stupid stuff, too. I'm sure they do but it seems you have to make an effort to find them: certain color, certain age, certain city.  As the data show, the overall vaccination rate of African Americans mirrors that of the general population. This is inconvenient for his argument, which accounts for why he doesn't mention it. Also inconvenient: though African Americans aren't anti-vax outliers, Republicans are, and, of the demographic groups identified, Democrats are the most likely to be vaccinated.

Hard to overstate how lame-o Mirengoff's argument is. Some of his fellow travelers have attributed low vaccination rates in the Deep South to the high percentage of African Americans in those states. That's lame, too. Why the evident determination to make Blacks a punching bag? Take a day off, fellas! The vaccination rates are low in Alabama and Mississippi but not any worse than in Idaho, Wyoming, and West Virginia, where there are very few African Americans. (Vaccination rates  by state, here.) According to the data, the problem is Republicans.

There is one group even more strongly anti-vax than white Republicans: people under 65 without health insurance (thanks to "socialism," the uninsured are all under 65). This may seem odd since the vaccinations are free and don't require insurance. But perhaps the explanation is that people without insurance are not used to seeing a doctor and therefore get their medical information from such reliable sources as Facebook friends. 

 

More on Samuel Beckett

I'm still sunk in the works of Samuel Beckett. Well, actually, I'm taking a bit of a break and reading instead the Beckett biography by Deirdre Bair, which, unlike Beckett's fiction, tells a story (more than 600 pages) with a beginning, middle, and end, what is sometimes called "plot."  There isn't a lot of that in Beckett's fiction. I recently finished the first volume, Molloy, in what is often called The Beckett Trilogy—Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable—which commences:

I am in my mother's room. It's I who live there now. I don't know how I got there. Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind.

Does this sound promising? My thought, having just typed the above words, is that the first sentence sounds a lot like:

I am in my mother's womb

and that this may indicate the narrator's deepest wish. Much more pleasant back then, in there. There are two sections to Molloy, both journeys. In the first, Molloy travels to his mother's "room" and has some adventures, or non-adventures, anti-adventures, along the way. The only way you know he got there is this beginning. In the second section, a private investigator is dispatched by his shadowy bosses to travel to Molloy. The preparations for departure are elaborate and he too has some non-adventures, complications, along his way. The narrative interest, though that is a strong phrase for what most readers probably experience, centers on the question of what is going to happen when he encounters Molloy. But then he is recalled, and the novel ends, before this can occur. At least in Moby Dick, Ahab does in the end meet the Whale. 

The second installment, Malone Dies, which suggests that the name of the title character in Molloy was a mistake, a misheard shout (or whisper), begins:

I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all. Perhaps next month. Then it will be the month of April or of May. For the year is still young, a thousand little signs tell me so. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I shall survive Saint John the Baptist's Day and even the Fourteenth of July, festival of freedom. Indeed I would not put it past me to pant on to the Transfiguration, not to speak of the Assumption. But I do not think so, I do not think I am wrong in saying that these rejoicings will take place in my absence, this year.

Absent from the rejoicing: this year, next year, last year, and the year before that. From the first chapter of Bair's biography, concerning her subject's religious upbringing:

The late Beatrice Orpen, who was a prominent painter in Dublin, sat with her family in the pew opposite the Becketts at Tullow Church, and remembered Sam frowning at her week after week during services. Years later she discovered that "his dissatisfaction was nothing personal—it was toward the whole cosmos rather than with me in particular."

This 'n that

I took a picture of my window box on about Memorial Day and laughed at myself as the flowers were barely peaking out: not enough dirt, or short plants, or something. The above was taken this morning. Someone (Jan), encouraging me back in May, said that in a couple of months we wouldn't be able to see out the window. To the degree that's true, it's because of paw prints in dog drool on the glass, but the flowers are doing well enough. You can see them from the street now. Next year, maybe I'll go for more colors and the creeping, flowing, tumbling, luxurious effect. See if I can screw that up.

Regarding the dog, whose name is Cooper, affectionately Coopsie: he is the source of the following hilarity, played out once or twice a week:

13-year-old: Oh, no, Coopsie, I can't believe you did that!

10-year-old: What'd he do?

13-year-old: Come look!

[Sound of running feet]

10-year-old: Oh, God, gross. I can't believe he did that.

Me [from another room]: WHAT NOW? WHAT'D HE DO THIS TIME?

One Of Them: Nothing, he's sleeping on the porch. 

Both Of Them: [Gleeful laughter.]

Jeopardy! has been in the news. I don't have any opinion about the guest hosts, or the recently announced winner[s] of the audition, but the current champion, Matt Amodio, has caught my attention. He's been the champion for about three weeks now and has won more than a half million dollars, which I guess places him third on the all-time money list, behind only Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer. Jeopardy! groupies are put off by his tics, such as his way of using "What" in his answers, including when "Who" would be more appropriate. Whatever. I was a little annoyed by his penchant for ringing in, then pausing before answering, as if the correct response had slipped his mind but then always replying correctly just in time. It seemed like maybe the affectation of a drama prince, but my new theory is that for him being the first to buzz in is more of a challenge than knowing the answer—he knows practically everything—so lots of times he hasn't even entered the question into his mind when he presses his buzzer. He then has to think of the answer, the easy part for him. 

Shohei Ohtani is the Matt Amodio of baseball—an outlier of the outliers. I feel like in my youth I paid insufficient attention to the likes of Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Roberto Clemente and that now Ohtani is flying beneath my radar too. I mean, I know about him, but why am I not more amazed? In the Angels' game last night, he batted lead off and pitched. At the bat, he had a double, a walk, and scored a run. Ho-hum, since he leads the majors in home runs with 38 and has an OPS north of 1.000. He pitched six innings, allowing 3 hits and 2 runs. He fanned 6, got the win, and his ERA for the season actually rose a smidgen—to 2.93. He's such a unique player that, like Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain in  basketball, he raises questions about the rules. Does the designated hitter have to bat in place of the pitcher? Or can you pitch Ohtani, put him in the batting order, and use the designated hitter for the weakest hitter among the other eight? I see that in last night's game the Angels went without a DH, and it looks like that's how it has to be if Ohtani is going to pitch and bat. And why wouldn't he bat when he pitches?  He's pretty near the best in baseball at both. 

More Covid stupidity

The lede to an AP story yesterday:

As the delta variant of the coronavirus sweeps across the United States, a growing number of colleges and universities are requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination for students to attend in-person classes. But the new mandate has opened the door for those opposed to getting the vaccine to cheat the system, according to interviews with students, education and law enforcement officials. 

How do they cheat? Forged vaccination cards!

Both faculty and students at dozens of schools interviewed by the Associated Press say they are concerned about how easy it is to get fake vaccine cards. 

Across the internet, a cottage industry has sprung up to accommodate people who say they won't get vaccinated for either personal or religious reasons. 

An Instagram account with the user name "vaccinationcards" sells laminated COVID-19 vaccination cards for $25 each. A user on the encrypted messaging app, Telegram, offers "COVID-19 Vaccination Cards Certificates," for as much as $200 apiece.

The captains of this cottage industry should get together and do some price-setting—the Instagram guy is giving them away, laminated! But I'm interested in the reasoning of their customers. They can break the law ("for either personal or religious reasons") by spending good money on a forgery that will leave them at risk of contracting a serious disease.  In the alternative, they can get a free vaccination that will protect them from said disease. They choose the former. 

One thing I won't miss when I'm dead is hearing the news of the day. Was it yesterday—or the day before?—that I walked into a room where the radio was on just in time to hear a reporter sign off with words like

. . . a new record high, although the previous record had been set just the day before

and had to wonder whether the story had been about Covid hell or climate hell. 

Innumeracy and the vaccine debates

Looks like Coke employs some top-flight MBA grads in its marketing department.

I remember reading somewhere that after McDonald's introduced its quarter pounder, a competitor tried to one-up the industry leader by marketing a new one-third pound burger. (Please no joke about actually trying to 1/12-up the industry leader.) The third-pound burger never caught on and was soon discontinued. In trying to figure out what went wrong, McD's rival supposedly discovered that lots of Americans don't comprehend that 1/3 > 1/4. (I guess because 4 is bigger than 3 and they don't know what it means when the number is on the bottom like that? Or maybe they don't know that "quarter" means "1/4"?) Anyway, I thought the story must be an invention, but maybe Coca-Cola knows it isn't and that therefore it makes sense to mention on the packaging that

15 > 12

and not just by 1 or 2.

Perhaps pervasive innumeracy has something to do with our inability to beat back Covid. A self-styled internet contrarian (and regular Fox News contributor) recently cited the following data,

from the state of Oklahoma, as proof that the Covid vaccines are essentially worthless. He highlights the fact that, over the past 30 days, "almost half" (actually, 114 out of 263, which is 43 percent) of those 65 and up admitted to hospital for Covid had been fully vaccinated. Sounds like a poor vaccine, right? But a crucial piece of information is left out: the percentage of people who have been vaccinated. Let's say that figure is 80 percent—I think the percentage of seniors who have been vaccinated, nationally, is higher than that, but Oklahoma has its full allotment of swaggering fools and 80 percent is convenient for calculation. Out of 1000 Oklahoma seniors, then, 800 will have been vaccinated and 200 will be unvaccinated. If 40 end up hospitalized with Covid, 17 will have been fully vaccinated and 23 will be unvaccinated. You can see that, when the issue at hand is vaccine efficacy, it's extremely misleading to say that "almost half" of hospitalizations for seniors are for vaccinated seniors. Here are the ratios that matter: out of 800 who were vaccinated, 17 end up in hospital, and, of 200 who were not vaccinated, 23 end up in hospital. That's 2.1 percent versus 11.5 percent. The unvaccinated are more than 5 times more likely to be hospitalized. 

And this almost certainly understates vaccine efficacy, since those who choose to be vaccinated likely self-select for being, on the whole, in more tenuous health, and therefore more cautious, than those who spurn the vaccine. Thus a breakthrough infection, when it occurs, is more likely to require hospitalization. 

The allure of anti-vax arguments often relies on innumeracy, of which there seems to be plenty. I wonder whether the purveyors of these arguments know how bad they are. Maybe in their innocence it just doesn't occur to them that their argument sinks when you take account of all that needs to be considered. The alternative, it seems to me, is that they are actively seeking to increase the amount of misery and suffering in the world. 

Good boy!

 

 

We've had our dog for a few months now. First one ever for me. I've heard they're smart, but ours never tires of freaking himself out by looking at his reflection in the fireplace glass. See above. A few other notes:

The phrase that comes to mind when he realizes he's about to be fed: the joy of life. 

When he's done eating (about 5 seconds), he goes back and forth between the food storage area and his food dish. I think he's foggy about the cause and effect. Maybe just hopeful.

He throws up on most car trips.  It then becomes evident how he manages to eat so fast.

I used to think it would be the end of the world if a dog crapped inside the house. Actually, peeing is worse, unless it's diarrhea, and even that isn't the end of the world. I think dog ownership has taught me fortitude.

Taking him for a walk is a good way of meeting neighbors from a block or two away. They'd never say Hi to me alone, but now they want to talk. 

We all like to conduct arguably sadistic experiments in animal science. A few days ago, older daughter made a snack of pretzels and mustard. When she was done, she set her bowl on the floor to see what would happen when he licked mustard residue.  He howled and jumped backward before jogging off. Next sound she heard was the very distinctive one of him drinking from his water bowl in the next room. 

Hashtags

Pro tip: if you see me at Target, do NOT get in line behind me at checkout as I have an unerring sense of who is going to argue with the cashier, and then the cashier's boss, about the $5 gift card that you may or may not be entitled to when you purchase $20 worth of qualifying health & beauty products.

#watchingmyicecreammelt

While recently prosecuting another errand, it occurred to me that the fanatical opponents of vaccine passports make a strong case. If you have to prove you've been vaccinated in order to enter a bar or restaurant, then, next thing you know, everyone will need a license in order to operate a motor vehicle. You'll probably even have to renew it at regular intervals so that the government always has an updated photo of you in its files, along with your height, weight, eye color, and residential address.

#slipperyslope
#socialistdystopia

Twins in July

Uff da.

Eleven wins, sixteen losses, their fourth losing month of the season (of four), and the worst since April. Cruz and Berrios were traded before the deadline (along with Robles and the hapless J. A. Happ), and Buxton and Rogers are hurt, so, if you want to watch prospects in action, Target Field is now an expensive substitute for the Saints' home field in St. Paul.

Speaking of Happ: he was the starting pitcher in one of the team's more memorable losses of the season, this past Wednesday, when they scored 14 runs and still came up short by a field goal, 14-17, against the Lions, I mean Tigers. I heard it was the first game in major league history in which one team hit seven more homers than their opponents and lost anyway. Happ's line for the game: 3 innings, 10 hits, 9 earned runs.  That the Twins were able to trade him for two beating hearts is something of a mystery to me. I guess it's because he's left-handed? Kids, if you have a  baby, and it develops that he's left-handed, make him work on his curve even if he'd rather be in the chess club: major league minimum salary is $570,500, and the pension is more than serviceable.

It's not only the pitching. Here is the Twins' batting order in that game against the Tigers, with the guy's 2021 batting average, after it had been fattened by the unlikely outburst, in parentheses:

1. Kepler (.214)
2. Rooker (.212)
3. Polanco (.266)
4. Sano (.208)
5. Larnach (.227)
6. Astudillo (.257)
7. Gordon (.259)
8. Jeffers (.205)
9. Simmons (.214)

For shits and giggles, I just added the averages and divided by 9: .229. But hitting is so depressed around baseball that there has been talk of banning infield shifts and moving the pitching rubber farther from home plate. Only the Twins' pitchers can't get batters out.

Just so that I'm not all Negative Nellie, Jorge Polanco is having a decent season. If he stays on his current trajectory, he'll bat about .270 with 25 homers. Also, he's been durable, especially by team standards. Hope I haven't hexed him by saying that.

I'm watching today's game as I type this. I kind of like pitchers having to take their turn at bat. The Cardinals' starter, Wainwright, has two sacrifice bunts in the game. His other at-bat (so far) came after the Twins intentionally walked the #8 hitter to put runners at first and second with two out. Wainwright then worked the count full, hit about four fouls in a row, and then smashed one down the third base line: Arraez was so startled that it went in his glove that he bounced his throw to Sano, who failed to scoop it, and a run scored. By the way, only one team (the Marlins) has committed more errors this season than the Twins.