JCM 2/17/2020 6:44:26 AM

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So left home early no traffic now I have extra time.

Training all week on the new eCAD software.

lucius septimius 2/17/2020 7:28:37 AM

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Reply to JCM in 1:

Not having to get up and make breakfast, lunches, and get kids to school, I slept in until 9:20.  That never happens.

Kosh's Shadow 2/17/2020 7:31:14 AM

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Reply to JCM in 1:

Lab closed today, so I am home. Contract agency does not include today in paid holidays, so I can take a vacation day or take unpaid day.

Would not be allowed in if I went.

Kosh's Shadow 2/17/2020 7:32:06 AM

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Did you hear about the politician who fixed some minor trouble for a restaurant in return for some calamari diishes?

It was a clear case of squid pro quo

JCM 2/17/2020 7:36:38 AM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 4:

Political dad joke.... the horror!

JCM 2/17/2020 7:38:12 AM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 3:

Work follows me, laptop and VPN.

I do appreciate they are hiring based on core skills and are willing to train on the software we will be using.

Occasional Reader 2/17/2020 7:43:10 AM

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Hong Kong + coronavirus panic = “signs of a failed state”:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-09/coronavirus-hong-kong-shows-symptoms-of-a-failed-state

vxbush 2/17/2020 7:55:39 AM

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In #7 Occasional Reader said: Hong Kong + coronavirus panic = “signs of a failed state”:

So what does that make China, then? Sheesh. 

Morning, campers. I'm seeing more and more articles suggesting that the coronavirus was not an accidental mutation at an open air market but the possible release of a bioweapons lab in Wuhan. More people are asking questions. 

JCM 2/17/2020 8:03:33 AM

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Reply to vxbush in 8:

IMAO the coronavirus is way, way over blow.

China you have population density and hygiene factors to consider, in the spread. The virus is simply not spreading out side the China to any significant degree. It's being carried by travelers. If it a bio-weapon it's a crappy one.

The published numbers of the coronavirus are 80k infections and 2k deaths.

This year in the US the the common flu is 250k infections and 14k deaths.

If coronavirus was as bad as the hype there would have more infections and deaths, at least a couple orders of magnitude more than what we see. Even if the ChiComs are under reporting the spread of the virus, and I think they are it's what they do with everything, It still isn't living up to the media hype.

buzzsawmonkey 2/17/2020 8:24:57 AM

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In #9 JCM said: Even if the ChiComs are under reporting the spread of the virus, and I think they are it's what they do with everything, It still isn't living up to the media hype.

But we have to panic! That's necessary! People aren't responding to "climate change" panic like they ought to, despite the best efforts of Greta Thunderthighs!  The economy hasn't crashed!  Trump's still in the White House! So a good pandemic scare is just what the doctor ordered!

Kosh's Shadow 2/17/2020 8:28:06 AM

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Reply to JCM in 6:

Where I am, only employees and a few contractors get lab laptops and can use the VPN.

The rest of us leave work at work.

BTW, around 1980, I was borrowed to explain minicomputers (especially the Rolm line, based on Data General Nova) to people in the sub-basement of the Pentagon, as I was the only one they could find quickly who had experience with the latter. No clearance. They hid everything classified. Signs on the wall saying DON"T TAKE WORK HOME WITH YOU.

And the electronic combination locks on the doors were not like in the movies. They were above eye level, behind shields, and you had to feel which button was which. That way, no one could watch and see the combination.

vxbush 2/17/2020 8:29:10 AM

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In #9 JCM said: If coronavirus was as bad as the hype there would have more infections and deaths, at least a couple orders of magnitude more than what we see. Even if the ChiComs are under reporting the spread of the virus, and I think they are it's what they do with everything, It still isn't living up to the media hype.

Well, there's also the issue about whether China is actually good at anything other than stealing technology. I mean, SARS could also have been a bioweapon, but it fizzled even worse than this did. 

I still recommend this page for the best statistics on the virus. I know at least one of the bumps in the number of cases was because of a change in diagnostic determination and not because a huge number of people had suddenly appeared to be ill. 

I read an excellent piece last week from a medical doctor that put this virus in an excellent context, but I'll be damned if I can find it right now. Grrr.  He talked about the flu comparison and how it wasn't appropriate. 

Kosh's Shadow 2/17/2020 8:29:33 AM

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Reply to JCM in 9:

And the virus genome and proteins are very similar to other coronaviruses. 

Kosh's Shadow 2/17/2020 8:31:36 AM

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In #10 buzzsawmonkey said: But we have to panic! That's necessary! People aren't responding to "climate change" panic like they ought to, despite the best efforts of Greta Thunderthighs!  The economy hasn't crashed!  Trump's still in the White House! So a good pandemic scare is just what the doctor ordered!

I note that the Dems are against Trump's travel restrictions, while doctors support them as proper quarantine precautions.

Maybe they want something to overwhelm the US health system so they can push government healthcare.

Or maybe they are just knee-jerk whatever Trump does is bad.

vxbush 2/17/2020 8:41:40 AM

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In #14 Kosh's Shadow said: Or maybe they are just knee-jerk whatever Trump does is bad.

We have a winner! 

Did anyone else read Dov Fischer's article at the American Spectator explaining Trump's speech patterns? It certainly helped me, being a flyover Midwesterner with no friends from NYC. 

buzzsawmonkey 2/17/2020 8:44:14 AM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 14:

As I observed somewhere---I believe here---a while back, when the AIDS epidemic started its death march through the population it was proposed that those infected be quarantined, and that at the known pest-holes of infection, i.e., the backroom bars and bath houses, be closed.

The gay-rights movement opposed both of these suggestions; the first was equated with "shipping gays off to concentration camps," and the second was damned as "cultural genocide" (largely because the movement hoped that keeping open the likely centers of infection, which catered to people "on the downlow," would thereby cause AIDS to break out into the general population and make it no longer a "gay disease").  

As with AIDS, there is clearly political rather than medical calculation driving the response to prophylactic proposals.

Occasional Reader 2/17/2020 9:50:19 AM

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In #14 Kosh's Shadow said: I note that the Dems are against Trump's travel restrictions

As is NPR (but I repeat yourself), who keeps insisting that restricting travel from an area experiencing an epidemic of a highly contagious virus “will do more harm than good.”

These same people want us to believe that completing a border wall is useless in helping secure the border.

They’re gaslighting us.

Occasional Reader 2/17/2020 9:52:18 AM

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In #9 JCM said: IMAO the coronavirus is way, way over blow[n]

I sure hope you are right.

I su

Kosh's Shadow 2/17/2020 11:05:45 AM

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In #15 vxbush said: Did anyone else read Dov Fischer's article at the American Spectator explaining Trump's speech patterns? It certainly helped me, being a flyover Midwesterner with no friends from NYC. 

Thanks. I love this line:

If he really wanted to mess up an election, why bother Putin when the Democrats mess them up so much better?

lucius septimius 2/17/2020 12:30:17 PM

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Reply to vxbush in 15:

Very interesting -- I think he's basically right, though I'd add that much of what he describes would resonate not mere among Jews but among people of a east central European background generally.  

lucius septimius 2/17/2020 12:32:09 PM

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In #16 buzzsawmonkey said: As with AIDS, there is clearly political rather than medical calculation driving the response to prophylactic proposals.

This is almost always the case with public health fiascos.  Someone on Twitter was talking about billionaires spending money to feed the starving.  I pointed out that most famine is not caused by a shortage of food, but rather by regimes deliberately starving people.  You could spend all of Bill Gates' money on canned goods and it wouldn't have an effect.

vxbush 2/17/2020 12:32:29 PM

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In #20 lucius septimius said: Very interesting -- I think he's basically right, though I'd add that much of what he describes would resonate not mere among Jews but among people of a east central European background generally.  

I found it very helpful, as I had no idea about such slang and thus had no context to understand Trump's idiom. It was very helpful. 

Kosh's Shadow 2/17/2020 12:43:17 PM

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In #21 lucius septimius said: I pointed out that most famine is not caused by a shortage of food, but rather by regimes deliberately starving people.

Remember CARE packages? I read that a lot of those just rotted because of both corrupt regimes, and the lack of transportation to get them to where they were needed.

Reminds me of a South Park episode, in which they make a donation to a food for Africa charity shilled by Sally Struthers to get a sports watch, but instead they get an African boy they name "Starvin' Marvin". When they try to bring him back they find Sally Struthers eating all the food in the warehouse.

lucius septimius 2/17/2020 12:56:01 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 23:

That was among the funniest set of episodes.  Starvin' Marvin in space was inspired.

Occasional Reader 2/17/2020 2:56:27 PM

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In #24 lucius septimius said: Starvin' Marvin

And that is a name that dates back to World War II, if memory serves, although I don’t recall the original context.

doppelganglander 2/17/2020 3:08:50 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 25:

Starvin' Marvin was a chain of convenience stores, IIRC.

doppelganglander 2/17/2020 3:39:07 PM

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Reply to vxbush in 15:

This makes perfect sense to me. It explains why I get Trump's rhetoric and have trouble understanding why others don't. I'm a Jersey girl. Many of my classmates were displaced New Yorkers, a high percentage of whom were Jewish. My dad worked with Jews in the garment industry. The comedians I grew up watching were Jews - Jack Benny, the Marx Brothers, Rodney Dangerfield, Henny Youngman, Joan Rivers, Don Rickles, Milton Berle, and of course Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. I saw Annie Hall last week for the umpteenth time and it's amazing how much that film influenced my comedic sensibility (not to mention my fashion sense in the late '70s). And as I've mentioned before, when my birth mother told me my biological father was Jewish, it was as natural as could be.

If you want to get a feel for the culture Fischer describes, try to find a movie called "Mr. Saturday Night" (1992) starring Billy Crystal. You get a taste of it in "Dirty Dancing," but Crystal is really great in an otherwise mediocre movie. And don't forget "My Favorite Year," based on the Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows," for which Mel Brooks and Neil Simon wrote.