Flattening the curve

From The Washington Post: “Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to ‘flatten the curve.’”

The graphics make the point: “If people are less mobile and interact with each other less, the virus has fewer opportunities to spread.”

Elaine and I stayed inside today, with short trips to the garage to use the elliptical machine. If the weather is better tomorrow, we’ll go for a walk in the open air. And that’ll be it.

Thanks, Rachel.

“Nancy?” “Sluggo!”

[“Dueling Dualities.” Zippy, March 14, 2020.]

Today’s Zippy is a flurry of choices: column A/column B, blue state/red state, iPhone/Android, Nancy/Sluggo.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Andreas Brown (1933–2020)

“A bibliophile since childhood who bought the revered Gotham Book Mart in Midtown Manhattan from its idiosyncratic founder, Frances Steloff, and kept it alive as a frowzy literary shrine for four more decades”: from the New York Times obituary.

I’m pretty sure I saw Andreas Brown on one of my trips to the Gotham. He might have been the guy showing me the rare Ted Berrigan stuff — I just don’t know. I know that I saw Frances Steloff at least once, sitting in an alcove back near the tables of little magazines.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Brad Wilber, was surprisingly easy, aside from the southeast corner. But man oh man that southeast corner. It had arcana: 60-D, three letters, “Onetime North Island herbivore.” It had a tricky spelling: 48-D, six letters, “Trifling.” It had general weirdness: 59-A, eight letters, “Verdict of disapproval”; 64-A, six letters, “Creatively turbulent.” And it had a clue that reminded me of what must be my considerable distance from current trends in entertaining (62-A, eight letters, “Cutlery carrier”). I’m glad that those clues were not the whole puzzle.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

11-D, seven letters, “Boston Public Library muralist.” Because Boston.

16-A, eight letters, “Fashion effect aka ‘manscara.’” Not that I use the stuff.

25-D, seven letters, “108 Odyssey fellows.” I always like seeing Homer in a crossword. The 108 is an extra treat. And that is the number, which a reader can work out by adding numbers as Telemachus gives them in book 16.

36-A, four letters, “‘A nightingale who sits in darkness,’ per Shelley.” I like to think that my late friend Rob Zseleczky is pleased whenever Shelley turns up in a crossword.

46-A, five letters, “Many a paperweight.” Mine are rocks and tile trim.

And another one of the clue-and-answer pairs that baffle me until I begin typing them out: 58-D, three letters, “Fellow from Wheeling.”

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Unfit

I’m watching Donald Trump* struggle to read what’s been written for him and thinking, Unfit, unfit, unfit. What are those standing behind him thinking?

Recently updated

“By the Book” for the rest of us Now with more childhood reading.

Even in a pandemic

[January 23, 2020.]

Representative Adam Schiff (D, California-18):

“You know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump.”

Even in a pandemic. Lies, misdirection, and xenophobia (“foreign virus,” “very strong border policy”) to stir the base. Of course.

[The words that might be chopped off by the ad: “The American people deserve a president.” Yes, we do.]

“The socks-shorts moment”

David Staunton remembers:


Robertson Davies, The Manticore (1972).

The Manticore is the second novel of The Deptford Trilogy.

Other Robertson Davies posts
“Fellows of the first importance” : “Visible branch establishments” : “Like a duck to water” : “A designer and a manufacturer” : “The intrepid Orph”

Jon Batiste FTW

As Sanjay Gupta came on stage on The Late Show tonight, Jon Batiste played a bit of Billy Strayhorn’s “U.M.M.G.” The initials stand for Upper Manhattan Medical Group. Arthur Logan, Duke Ellington’s doctor, was a member.

Batiste has used this medical tag before. See this post for more on “U.M.M.G.”

Allegory redux

I am dismayed to find friends already declaring that they won’t vote for Joe Biden in November. On Monday I voted for Joe Biden here in Illinois. I would have preferred to vote for Elizabeth Warren. But I waited to see what would happen on Super Tuesday, and after Warren brought her campaign to an end, I voted for the candidate who has (as I see it) the best chance of defeating the current occupant of the White House.

I know what it’s like to not want to vote for a candidate. That’s how I felt in 2016 about Hillary Clinton. But I voted for her in the general election, “utterly without enthusiasm,” as I wrote at the time. If Joe Biden becomes the Democratic nominee, I will vote for him with only the mildest enthusiasm. But enthusiasm or no enthusiasm, no one should imagine they have the luxury of not voting in 2020.

Here, for anyone who might find it persuasive, is most of a post I wrote in August 2016. The post title was Allegory:

The restaurant has a limited menu — very limited. There are, for practical purposes, just two dishes, A and B. If you order one of them, you will get it or the other dish. There are other dishes on the menu, but no chance of getting them. If you order one of these other dishes, you’ll get A or B, and you’ll have lost your chance to choose between the two (which, of course, might not have made a difference). There are no other restaurants. So you choose from what’s available: A or B.

In 2016 the other dishes on the allegorical menu included the Green Party. In 2020 the allegory might be altered to include writing in your own choice of entree. But the real choice remains: A or B. In November that will almost certainly mean voting for Joe Biden.

Something else I wrote in August 2016, in a comment on a friend’s blog: “It’s good to know your own mind, but it’s good, too, to know that you can change it.”