Random Thoughts – Page 6

Earth and the Pandemic

Planet Earth is indifferent to the covid-19 breakout. Wildlife has noticed, though. After many generations of human development pushing animals further into the brush, the pandemic-caused sheltering-in-place is giving the animals a chance to creep back into territory that once was theirs. Coyotes have been spotted checking out the Golden Gate Bridge and wandering along Chicago’s storied Michigan Avenue. Monkeys in India have entered homes, opening refrigerators to look for food.

Griffith Park, home of the Los Angeles Zoo, now has opossums, skunks, deer, bobcats and even a lone mountain lion running around unmolested outside its gates. The absence of automobile traffic has reduced the squirrel, rabbit, snake and toad roadkill in the park to near zero.

The world-wide reduction in vehicle use and factory production has cleared the skies. Air pollution has reduced by half in Paris and a third in Los Angeles. Carbon dioxide levels are still rising, but not as fast as last year. If you believe in unicorns, you may even fantasize a world not being suffocated by burning fossil fuels.

Wild animals aren’t alone in taking advantage of now-deserted streets. Police are seeing an increase in drivers traveling at extremely high speeds. A Washington state trooper ticketed one at 122 mph and one at 133 mph in a day. “So driving 127 mph or 120 mph in a 60 mph zone will definitely get our attention and we will be able to introduce ourselves to you!”

And in Orange County California, city officials, fed up with skateboarders ignoring the “Closed” signs at the skateboard park, dumped thirty-seven tons of sand into the troughs. It worked. Skateboarders were unable to use it. So dirt bikers showed up to replace skateboards with motorcycles.

Thriving on Coronavirus

So we thought plastic was on its way out? California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon and Vermont have banned plastic bags. To encourage reusing bags, some areas require merchants to charge customers for paper sacks.

Oregon and California have also limited the use of plastic straws.
Not so fast says the covid-19. Just as we’re getting used to bringing our own cloth bags to the grocery store, plastic manufacturers think they may have found their savior in the pandemic. The plastics industry is lobbying hard to overturn bans on single-use plastics. They argue that disposable plastics are the best option for safety and the general well-being of population during this crisis. (Plastic is “disposable” only in the sense that after one use it’s thrown away, out of sight until it turns up in the ocean or elsewhere.)

In the short term, this may be the way to go. In the long term, as John Maynard Keynes said, we’re all dead. But a plastic bag takes as long as a thousand years to decompose. At some point we’ll have to face up to that reality. And what to do with medical waste is another growing long-term problem.

Scenes from the Pandemic

Burglars recently broke into Tillie’s Cafe in Schulenburg Texas — halfway between San Antonio and Houston. After gaining entry they apparently had sanitized the place, using a can of Lysol they left behind. The intruders got away with $150 cash, some ice cream and a few checks. They exited through the front door, which they locked behind them.

The ongoing societal upheaval has become so desperate the state of Oregon has lifted the ban against motorists pumping their own gas. (Oregon is one of only two states prohibiting self serve. New Jersey is the other.) The easing of the restriction is temporary, until — for now — April 11, the day before Easter. “During this unprecedented time of state emergency, we need to ensure that critical supply lines for fuels and other basic services remain uninterrupted,” said the State Fire Marshal in a press release. Naturally, this has set off a new panic. “We were the only ones touching the pumps. Now if you let everybody touch the pumps, that’s a higher breeding ground to spread the virus,” said an attendant at a Chevron station near Portland.

An anti-gay activist and three Houston-area pastors have filed a petition to the Texas Supreme Court arguing that Harris County’s stay-at-home order violates the Constitution by ordering the closure of churches and failing to define gun shops as “essential” businesses. Because that’s what Jesus says.

And in politics…

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blamed Democrats for the spread of the coronavirus. “And it came up while we were tied down on the impeachment trial. And I think it diverted the attention of the government, because everything every day was all about impeachment.”

In a rare moment of candor, the current occupant of the White House explained his opposition to vote-by-mail and other proposals for the 2020 election in response to the pandemic. He fears “…levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

And now, this… click here

Privacy – ha-ha-ha-ha

One sidelight of the coronavirus pandemic is a warning about Alexa. Lawyers working at home are being advised to keep Amazon’s or Google’s voice assistants far away, or better yet, turned off during any phone conversations about client matters. Although the tech giants assure us that these devices don’t listen until they are awakened by “Okay Google” or other voice trigger, they have yet to explain how the devices respond to the voice stimulus if they are not listening. Voice assistants regularly come to life from mistaking spoken words for the woke word: “Seriously” is heard as “Siri.”

Vignettes from the Pandemic

Palm Springs is overrun with rental cars that have nowhere to go. With the California governor’s shelter-in-place order in effect, tourists and snowbirds have headed home. Car rental companies do not have enough space to park all the returned vehicles. Automobiles line Kirk Douglas Way near Palm Springs International Airport. More are parked on Gene Autry Trail next to the Palm Springs Air Museum. The total rental fleet numbers about seven-thousand, most of them typically in use. Nearly all of them are now un-rented, many more than rental companies have space for.

The Group of Seven nations rejected a draft presented by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo using the term “Wuhan virus” in a joint statement about Covid-19. Pompeo also wanted the statement to assign blame to China for the virus’s spread. At a virtual meeting, the G7 voted six to one against issuing a joint statement. Instead, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada opted to issue their own statements.

A Pennsylvania women is undergoing mental health evaluation after being arrested for purposely coughing on produce, meat and baked goods in a grocery store. The Hanover Township Police Department plans to file criminal charges. Gerrity’s Supermarket, a small family-owned chain, said that it threw out $35,000 of food and stripped bare, sanitized and disinfected all the areas of the store that the woman visited. In New Jersey, a man was charged with harassment, obstructing law enforcement and making terroristic threats after intentionally coughing on a Wegmans grocery employee when she asked him to not stand so close to a display of prepared foods. He told the employee he was infected with coronavirus.

The Redding California Public Works Department dispatched employees on an urgent mission to remedy a backed-up sewer lift station. The clog put the station in imminent danger of a sewage spill onto city streets and overflow inside residents’ homes. The cause? Shredded t-shirts that had apparently been used in lieu of toilet paper. The next day city employees distributed door hangers throughout the neighborhood emphasizing that that nothing but toilet paper should be flushed. “Anything and everything is flushable, but it doesn’t mean that it’s OK to put it down the toilet.”

Americans Respond to Crisis

Sure, store shelves have been denuded by panic buying of toilet paper, bottled water and pasta.

But in the U.S. anxious citizens are lining up to buy guns and ammunition because… well, because this is America. (News reports have not noted any concurrent surge of people signing up to join a well-regulated militia.)