It's a new month! Always a chance to start afresh. Read some stuff!
A good analysis of the 1994 crime bill—a topic of interest now because of Biden’s support for it back in the day—and a careful accounting for what we can say about its effects, and what it was doing at the time. As ever, policy choices take place in a confined space of options, and within a finite time-frame.
Another thing about the virus, what the lesson of Sweden can teach us:
Here is one takeaway with potentially universal import: It is simplistic to portray government actions such as quarantines as the cause of economic damage. The real culprit is the virus itself. From Asia to Europe to the Americas, the risks of the pandemic have disrupted businesses while prompting people to avoid shopping malls and restaurants, regardless of official policy.
(Also, this story reports on a medical study that suggests Swedish doctors took it upon themselves to let older people die of COVID-19 rather than tie up ICU beds, even when there was no ICU bed shortage. If this is so, that’s . . . disturbing.)
Is this true? That actual hurricane experts used flight simulator—a video game—to provide real-time analysis of what was going on inside Hurricane Laura? Just think about this idea:
“Microsoft Flight Simulator” is a combination of global data from Bing Maps satellite data and the Azure AI cloud system to process and recreate the entire planet. At launch, the game rendered 5 billion houses and 2 trillion trees across the planet, all of which is subject to change as the world changes. The game also pulls in real-time air traffic and weather data to mirror real-world activity.
Amazing. Thought-provoking. I will leave you to provoke your own damn thoughts.
I love thinking about places for thinking, and this small essay, on composers’ summer retreats for writing music, is wonderful for that. Makes me dream of getting away from a noisy and smoky Vienna in June, taking a train several hours into the Alps, and stepping off into solitude, the scent of pine, and the sound of birdsong. Don’t puncture my illusion, dude.
Two pieces about solitaries, people who live mostly alone, away, apart somehow. The first is about Alice Koller, a brilliant woman whose book An Unknown Woman, about a winter spent on the shore of Nantucket Island, a kind of “Feminist Walden,” is something I’m going to pick up. The second is about Larry Pardey, who with his wife Lin Pardey sailed around the world in boats they made and crewed together. Koller never settled down, and seems to have died alone; Pardey, for all his wanderings, clearly had some fixed moorings in the world with his wife. It's quite clear that Koller’s route through life was damaged severely by misogyny, while Pardey clearly had a lot of support. Still, I have no point to make or to write about here, it's just interesting to imagine the high-risk/high-reward strategy of being a solitary in this world. And the advantages of being a man, if you choose that life.
How we distort probability assessments. Not sure this is deeply illuminating: “the brain can represent a wide range of probabilities, but not very accurately, or a narrow range at high precision.” But, you know, science! Oh—I mean, psychology.
“A new blog post has eight facts about the connections between religion and government in the United States, based on previously published Pew Research Center data from a range of sources, including an original analysis of state constitutions and congressional data collected by CQ Roll Call in addition to the Center’s own surveys.“ Enjoy, if that's the verb.
Be well everyone. Let's leave September with one thing accomplished, in a fairly permanent fashion, that we didn't have accomplished at its beginning. For me, I think I'm finally going to do something about my hair.