No Guarantees July 28, 2021
Posted by Peter Varhol in Technology and Culture, Uncategorized.Tags: COVID, mask, vaccine
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Yes, I’m writing about Covid-19 again. After returning from a road race in Florida, where masking discipline is nonexistent, I have to confront the reality of people’s excuses for it being so.
First, you can’t tell me with any level of seriousness that 98 percent of people anywhere are vaccinated. Yet that’s about the percentage of people who don’t wear masks in Florida, indoors or out, according to my admittedly unscientific estimate.
Certainly we might consider Florida an exceptional case, where the governor has mandated, well, the lack of a mask mandate across the state. You can’t fix stupid. But this has largely been the case in other states (North Carolina, Alabama) I have visited this year. In fact, in Key West in January, the police were enforcing masking even on the streets.
Not now. People are using a wide variety of excuses to shed masks. Whether it is my choice (not really), personal freedom (absurd as a logical statement), government imposition (the government can impose health measures), experimental (but still tested with tens of thousands of subjects), infertility (I can’t think of anything more stupid), I think just about everyone would agree that we declared victory too early.
Much of the blame lies with the CDC. Rather than saying unmask willy-nilly, it should have provided a step-by-step rollout of relaxing restrictions. Now it is reinstating masking guidance, even for the vaccinated. They have managed to confuse just about everyone, including me.
Vaccinated people are apparently getting frustrated. If around 80 percent of the population were vaccinated, there is a good chance we would be beyond this point. But too many people don’t care a whit about public health.
One of the more pervasive, yet stupid, arguments against vaccines is that vaccinated people are still getting Covid, so why should I bother. Um, there are not, and were never, any guarantees with any vaccine. We are greatly improving the probability that we won’t get Covid, but if we do, it is far more likely to be a light case. That’s what the vaccine provides us, not guarantees. Get it through your heads, people. There are no guarantees in life. But we do have chances to greatly reduce risk.
Now, I want to say something personal. I am a reasonably healthy, 60+ year old male who had priority on the vaccination list in my state, and took full advantage of it. I mask, and I wear a face shield and gloves when traveling.
People are still dying. Covid-19 cases are increasing dramatically. We can fix this. Why do people still insist in acting against public health?
Space, the Never Frontier July 20, 2021
Posted by Peter Varhol in Technology and Culture, travel.Tags: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Space travel
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A couple of years ago I ran in the Gateway to Space “road” race, which actually involved going to Cape Canaveral and running the Space Shuttle runway (I’ve since done it again, but have to pass later this year). A part of that experience is being on hand to visit the Kennedy Space Visitor Center, the central tourist attraction for those inclined to understand and appreciate our space program.
Despite the seeming somnambulance of our national space program over the last decade, the Kennedy Visitor Center presents an optimistic and glowing future, led by a public/private partnership that emphasizes exploration with exploitation of both the moon and of Mars.
You see where this is going. This year Richard Branson, through Virgin Galactic, and Jeff Bezos, through Blue Origin, have participated in suborbital flights, perhaps marking the dawn of a new Space Age that seamlessly combines science, exploration, and commercial ventures. It’s only a matter of time before Elon Musk joins them through his own venture, SpaceX.
Yes, all are billionaires. And I will not begrudge their (financial) ability and willingness to be the public face of space exploration in the future. If I had a few billion dollars, there is a high probability I would do the same. If the recent flights are a little too reminiscent of little boys flaunting their expensive toys, I might be willing to excuse that in favor of a renewed excitement over space exploration.
But it is troublesome that this is coming almost entirely from private industry. In one sense, this is little different than thirty years ago, where private industry (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Thiokol, etc.) essentially designed and built our space capsules and delivery vehicles, under the loose control of NASA. Industry was still the building blocks of our space program.
But this feels very different today. Space will be commercially exploited at some point in time, and these three entrepreneurs and companies will likely be at that forefront. My problem is with the public faces.
But with NASA and the government in charge, we had ordinary people who we could think of, ultimately, as hero explorers. Here in New Hampshire, we have the Christa McAuliffe-Alan Shepard Discovery Center and Planetarium. I met John Glenn once, as a United States Senator, and Neil Armstrong, outside of the Delta Sky Club in Cincinnati.
These were ordinary people, defined by their exceling in their respective fields and demonstrating that anyone can make the space travel dream a reality. We could be among them. Today we don’t have that. Instead we have billionaires who are in that position by virtue of their wealth rather than their ability and drive. Yes, they made their billions on their own volition, but now space seems to be a fun distraction for them.
And that troubles me for the future of our space program.
This is the Best Scam I Have Ever Seen July 1, 2021
Posted by Peter Varhol in Technology and Culture.Tags: Domain Services, scam
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Today I received a paper bill, to my home address, to renew my primary domain (I own five others), petervarhol.com, for the next year for the sum of $228.
Problem. I own this domain through Register.com, and it is already paid for through the next year. I looked it up, and contacted Register, and they confirmed.
The bill is very professionally done, even offering payment by credit card (yeah, right) and including a return address envelope (no stamp though).
I do believe this is the first time I have been disconcerted by a scam. I suppose it’s possible for a scammer to get my home address, using a combination of whois and generally available address databases. I wonder how many people would simply pay the bill, believing that it was simply a renewal notice, albeit an expensive one.
This one was scary, because of the seeming legitimacy of a bill on paper (yes, I am of that generation), and my dependency on this domain for my life activities.
So, fair warning. Don’t fall for something that looks like the bills we get on a regular basis. If it doesn’t pass the smell test, it may just be an increasingly sophisticated scam.
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