COVID-19: The Simple Solution to Racial Riots

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

DAY           USA   WORLD  Brazil  India South Africa

May     13    1772     5314

            14    1715     5317
            15    1595     5072
            16    1218     4360
            17      865     3618
            18    1003     3445
            19    1552     4589
            20    1403     4685
            21    1418     4934         1188     150         30
            22    1293     5252           966     142         28
            23    1036     4183           965     142         10
            24      617     2826           703     156         22
            25      505     3096           806     148         52
            26      774     4048         1027     172         43
            27    1535     5283         1148     190         28
            28    1223     4612         1067     177         25
            29    1212     4873         1180     269         34
            30    1015     4084           890     205         32

Summary: All drops.  Good.  However, reportage lags on weekends.

The circumstances surrounding racial riots is another example of perceived reality, a state of mind that regularly appears on Sundays.  If a thousand smart people wrote a thousand books on the solution to racial riots, nothing much will spur a real solution.  For one, this has happened already and the nation is today afire.  So what are the odds for me in the next few words to develop the first fail-proof strategy?  Read on.

Let me start with me.  I was born in 1940.  Hawaii had a white above all mentality then.  The society was paternalistic.  Non-whites were largely second-class in stature.  Caucasians never had any kind of racial majority at any time, unlike in the USA, which historically has been white:  81% in 1790, 90% in 1940 and 72% today.  Racial percentage in Hawaii:

           Caucasian  Japanese

1940          26            37
1950          25            37
1960          32            32
1970          39            28
1980          33            25
2010          41            23

In summary:

• Legislators and business leaders were mostly Caucasian.  
• There was racial unrest, mostly due to strikes.  
• Then came World War II where the heroics of the Japanese totally changed the local society when they returned.  The GI bill and new found voting power switched political control from white to asian.   
• Statehood came in 1959 and today the ethnicity with the highest percentage is Filipino, with Caucasian #2 and Japanese #3.  
• Of course there remains a legacy of racial prejudice here and there, but there has never been racial riots.  
• Even when I returned back home to work in the 60's it was difficult for a Japanese-American to find a position in industry, even if you had a chemistry or engineering or architecture degree.  Thus government and education jobs were all that were left.  Engineers worked at Pearl Harbor and females became teachers.
• When I left for Stanford University I was coming from the ghetto called Kakaako which had 90+% Japanese, and a high school known as Tokyo High.  It was a shock to be the only Japanese in my class, with no Blacks.  I also don't remember anyone who was Hispanic.  I was so much a minority that I certainly was not a threat, and I found absolutely no prejudices.  
• My professional career saw this transition.  The sugar industry no doubt made a decision to expand opportunities, so they hired me, and treated me well.  But Stanford taught me how to get along with Caucasians, something that also was helpful when I eventually became a university professor.
• However, it was still a problem to move into certain neighborhoods in the 1960's.  The sister property of 15 Craigside, Arcadia, for example, did not allow asians to move in.
• When I went to LSU I was caught in-between black and white.  Turned out asians are considered to be sort of white in Louisiana and the south.  My wife and I had no problems with life in Baton Rouge, and could drive and stay at hotels throughout the nation.  The Green Book is a good example of how difficult it was for blacks.
• The result is that Hawaii is now a symbol of racial equality and harmony.  Again, this is not totally true, but a lot better than anywhere else...and certainly the other 49 states.  If you think Alaska is like Hawaii, I was just there and saw some problems.

I can't use Hawaii as an example of what the USA can do.  We are different, we worked out our differences, and lucked out by the circumstances.

So what is my fail-proof solution for the nation?  Time, effort and persistence.  How much time?

• Slavery ended with the Civil War.
• However, it took a century for the Civil Rights Act to pass.
• You saw yesterday a list of all those racial riots, where I stopped counting at a hundred.
• Crime is complex subject.  For statistics, go here.
• Stereotyping has a hugely negative connotation.  But it is real.  We all store in our mind information that determines how we react to situations.  No one would pass a morality test based on our experiences.  Perceived reality is not always right or fair, but you regularly need to make instant decisions.  Let's take a simple case of a white person walking towards a black male on a dark street.  Just one bit of information in your mind (and there are hundreds, like films you've seen, TV news stories, etc.) is the following:

• If you're white, you know that blacks can be dangerous, for they dominate the prison statistics.  There will be a tendency to be watchful, so you walk across the street or whatever your perceived reality decides.  We all have ingrained survival instincts.  Is this wrong?  Probably. But it's my life.
• Similarly, a black youth just approaching a white policeman.  Can you image what is going through the minds of both.  This happens many times a day, your whole life for some, with horrible memories.
• Police officers are mostly dependable at work.  However, growing up, I noticed that there were "many" classmates who were the bullies in school and who did the hijacking joining the police force.  Certainly most will mature and become more responsible, but not all.  Incredibly, 40%...40% of police officer families experience domestic violence.  Say this 5% of the total force, and it could well be 1%, are prone to violence.  When you have 1000 of them in your city, 1% results in 10 danger spots.  Sure you should cull out the worst ones, but the scary part about this potential is that these ten are usually asymptomatic.  You really can't predict what will happen in a crisis.   In an emergency, not knowing the perpetrator (who could well be totally innocent), sometimes the worse can happen.  I think this is what occurred in the George Floyd / Derek Chauvin incident in Minnesota.  It will happen again, and again...for the next few decades.
• People in this democracy have an obligation to protest inequalities.  But peaceful doesn't mean blocking roads/bridges, looting and setting things on fire.
• Sure, you can restructure rules, set curfews, better train the police, pass more laws and everything else that has already been done, many times, without much effect.   
• Equal rights crusades, Black Lives matter or whatever, nothing seems to have any kind of salvation effect.
• How do you get people more equal?  In the U.S. we have recently gone in the wrong direction.  The rich get richer.  Or is this the American way?  Working harder and becoming successful has definite racial overtones.
• You are politically powerless if you are in the minority. That is how the Constitution was written.   In Hawaii it might have been different, but circumstances are not always the same.  
• Why after a century has the black community not normalized?  Look at George Floyd, he abandoned his wife and daughter in Houston, where he spent time in jail for armed robbery.  And, incidentally, nowhere on news channels do they even mention this.  Why?  Blacks:
• and Hispanics have less education and live in higher poverty
• have a household income average of $30,555, less than half of whites and one-third that of asians
• two-thirds of children live in a single-parent family
• What happened to Equal Opportunity?
• equal opportunity is supposed to be a state of fairness in job applicants
• but if your education level is lower, you don't get this opportunity
• But there was an Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974:
• it has mostly worked, for discrimination and segregation were made illegal
• in fact, some universities interpreted this to be:  admit blacks even though they are not quite qualified, for they have financial and educational limitations and need some extra help
• What is equal?
• interestingly enough, the Ivy League schools adjusted their selection requirements to use other factors than say grades or exams to balance their classes, leading to a lawsuit by asians for denying them entrance by merit because they scored so much better than other races
• entrance exams in the University of California System led to an even lower black enrollment and much higher asian percentage, leading to abandonment of these tests
• To summarize:
• a hundred years after the end of slavery the plight of blacks have materially improved
• more than half a century after the Civil Rights Act, with additional laws to skew the educational and job factors to help deserving ethnicities and a past Black President, the relative lifestyle remains deplorable, considering the "greatness" of America
• One thing not to do is to say, forget it, it's impossible and hopeless, so give up.
• I don't think Congress passing any more laws will make much difference, but if Democrats control both houses and the White House on November 3, they can begin to make adjustments that can help in the long term.  Only 8% of blacks voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and this percentage won't change much this year, although surprisingly, it could rise to 10%.
• Essentially, you need to raise the economic level for blacks, which will, over time, lead to a more stable life.  The nuclear family is disintegrating anyway, so the disparity will decrease into the next century.
• When you come down to it, you would hope that education can ultimately make the key difference.  
• Democrats tend to be a lot more understanding, while Republicans push for private schools, so politics can be a difference maker
• as good black role models at home increase, so will motivation for the next generation
• The answer to fewer racial riots is a future with more equal income and education levels for blacks.
• Mutual respect can only come when respect is earned.  We are nowhere close to getting to this stage.
• It would really help if the President of the USA is someone who is not like Donald Trump, who only knows how to worsen any crisis.
• The right prevailing attitude from all sides will naturally evolve, but only if a certain level of equality and respect is reached.  I'm a Democrat, but I never before had any notion that Democrats actually held the key for making Americans better.  Yet, from a Republican viewpoint, will the economy suffer because of this transition?
• So back to Time, Effort and Perseverance.  This will take generations, but only with true effort, persistence and attitude.  That is the Simple Solution.

I'm into 1999, a momentous year for me, as I retired, totally changing my life.  Otherwise:

• The Euro is introduced.
• China controls internet at home.
• Pluto, now not a planet anymore, which was closer to the Sun from 1999, entered an orbit further away than Neptune.  Pluto will again be closer in the year 2231.  It might still not be a planet, by definition.

• Bill Clinton acquitted of impeachment.
• Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic join NATO.
• For the first time, the Dow Jones closes above 10,000.
• Bill Gates becomes the wealthiest person on Earth.
• Oklahoma tornado hits 301 miles/hour, highest ever.

• After 22 years of restoration, da Vinci's The Last Supper (above) is placed back on display in Milan.  Wait a minute, I thought I saw this painting in the Vatican?  Nope, the one I viewed was by Cosimo Rosselli and Biagio d'Antonio, and finished 15 years before da Vinci's.

• Falun Gong banned in China.
• U.S. Senate rejects ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  Big deal you say?  Nope, our Senate rejects all treaties.  Long story.  What about the Kyoto Protocol for global warming?  President Clinton just bypassed the Senate, and signed the treaty.  The Paris Agreement?  Sure Trump will pull out, but he can't until November 4 by how the document is written.  In any case, the U.S. Senate hasn't ratified it, and won't, ever.

• Exxon and Mobil merge, creating the largest corporation in the world.
• Macau returned by Portugal to China.
• U.S. gives up the Panama Canal to Panama.

• Vladimir Putin takes over as leader of Russia.  Yup, he has, changing titles every so often, been running the country for more than 20 years.  I wonder how Donald Trump will try to do this?

Here are the #1 hits of 1999 in seven minutes.  I must have been out of the country, because it took me into 3 minutes of this clip to recognize the first song, I Want it That Way by the Backstreet Boys.  When this was over, I knew three songs.  See how you do.  The #1 song of the year was Believe by Cher, who was 53 years old then.

Today, I end with puppies (what a home!):

-

COVID-19: Riots in Time of Pandemic

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

DAY           USA   WORLD  Brazil  India South Africa

May     13    1772     5314

            14    1715     5317
            15    1595     5072
            16    1218     4360
            17      865     3618
            18    1003     3445
            19    1552     4589
            20    1403     4685
            21    1418     4934         1188     150         30
            22    1293     5252           966     142         28
            23    1036     4183           965     142         10
            24      617     2826           703     156         22
            25      505     3096           806     148         52
            26      774     4048         1027     172         43
            27    1535     5283         1148     190         28
            28    1223     4612         1067     177         25
            29    1212     4873         1180     269         34

Summary:  Brazil is catching up with the U.S. in new deaths and passed us in new cases, 29,526 versus 25,069.

The USA is now further in chaos, sparked by a white officer (Derek Chauvin) killing a black "gentle giant" 6'6" tall victim in Minnesota.  George Floyd has been portrayed as almost a saint.  The reality is that he supposedly was attempting to pass a counterfeit $20 bill, bringing police to the site.  In Texas, he was convicted of armed robbery and spent time in jail.  Further, he six years ago left his wife and daughter in Houston.

So how can a killing (police killings of citizens, usually black) that happens a thousand times annually trigger a national outbreak of protests?  According to the U.S. News and World Report, Minnesota is the healthiest state in the nation, while ranking #3 in opportunity and the natural environment.  It is 83% white and 6% black.  Nearly half the adult population have a college degree.

Apparently, this has little to do with the people of Minnesota.  Certainly in Minneapolis-St Paul, but probably too across the country, peaceful protests have been hijacked by outside agitators.  Interestingly enough, most of them are not black, but white supremacists and other organized anarchists.  Minnesota Governor Tim Walz believes 80% of those taking part in the rioting are not local people.

The nation regularly suffers from race riots.  In 1967, three years after the Civil Rights Act became law, racial riots occurred throughout the country.  However, few remember the Red Summer of 1919, when the Spanish Flu Pandemic was sweeping the world.  The racial riots that year featured white supremacists in a three dozen cities attacking African Americans.  There were at least 43 lynchings and a thousand deaths.

Rioting is the nature of our country.  Here is a list, and I stopped counting when I reached 100.  You try.

But why did Minnesota spark the national outcry?  It could have been the recent string of white killing black incidences--Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, Breona Taylor in Kentucky, and now Floyd--the pressure was building.  Then compound the above with the quarantine, and opening up of the economy, leading extremists to explode onto those scenes.  Some coincidence that the nation is also suffering through a pandemic.

Unfortunately today we have Chaos in Chief Donald Trump leading the country, known for egging on white supremacists and having lost control of this pandemic.  Watch a characterization of our Fool in the Oval Office by REPUBLICAN Steve Schmidt:

I'm into 1998:

• Clinton's Monica Lewinsky impeachment.
• Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.  I was on sabbatical at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, where my office saw Mt. Fuji when you could see it.  Never went to an event.  Everything is on television.
• Moon has water.

• Titanic earns a billion dollars and wins the Oscar for Best Picture.  The movie only got 89%/69% ratings by Rotten Tomatoes.
• The $3.8 billion Akashi Kaikyo Bridge links Shikoku Island with Honshu, becoming the largest suspension bridge in the world.  Was driven over soon thereafter, for a karaoke session at the Sheraton.
• Final episode of Seinfeld.
• India and Pakistan test nuclear weapons.
• Opening of Hong Kong International Airport.
• Google founded.

#1 hits of 1998 in less than 3 minutes.  The #1 pop song of the year was My Heart Will Go On from Titanic.

Two days to go and I'm FREE.  Not sure what I'll actually do on Monday.  Probably first see if my car starts.  In any case...

-

COVID-19: Netflix/Prime Films

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

DAY           USA   WORLD  Brazil  India South Africa

May     13    1772     5314

            14    1715     5317
            15    1595     5072
            16    1218     4360
            17      865     3618
            18    1003     3445
            19    1552     4589
            20    1403     4685
            21    1418     4934         1188     150         30
            22    1293     5252           966     142         28
            23    1036     4183           965     142         10
            24      617     2826           703     156         22
            25      505     3096           806     148         52
            26      774     4048         1027     172         43
            27    1535     5283         1148     190         28
            28    1223     4612         1067     177         25

Summary:  Well, it's not getting worse.  In fact, all show drops in new deaths.

The combination of an effective vaccine and herd immunity will ultimately control COVID-19.  The vaccine is not here yet, and won't for the masses until next year, at best.  Herd immunity also is far away, for you need to reach 60% (not shown below, but Wuhan is at 10%):

Until then, face masks and shields will need to be worn in public.  A packed football stadium will not happen this year.  Dine-in will be an issue, for you can't eat with a mask on.

Temperature checks (Amazon has one for $26.)?

• Way back in February, the World Health Organization already indicated:

Temperature screening alone, at exit or entry, is not an effective way to stop international spread, since infected individuals may be in incubation period, may not express apparent symptoms early on in the course of the disease, or may dissimulate fever through the use of antipyretics; in addition, such measures require substantial investments for what may bear little benefits.

• Researchers say anywhere from 25 percent to 80 percent of people with COVID-19 are unaware they have the virus.  The CDC speculated that this figure is around 35%.  Thus, perhaps half of those passing the temperature check could be capable of passing on this virus to you.
• Add on the fact that most others who show any kind of high temperature probably came from allergies, colds and the seasonal flu.  Just consider the flu where in the winter months there can be 2 million cases/week.

• It's been three months since the first COVID-19 case in the U.S., or 12 weeks.  Thus, there could have been 24 million flu cases during this period.  The country has not yet reached 2 million COVID-19 cases.  Just comparing this pandemic with the flu, for every 13 you turn away for having a temperature, only one would have COVID-19.  Of course, you wouldn't want to have someone with the flu serving you food or anything where you can be infected, but this is the case every year during flu season...and we tolerate it, with no effect on the economy.  When you plug in the colds, allergies and everything else that could cause a light fever, the ratio would probably be closer to 20:1 and higher.  Authorities take temperatures anyway because at least it looks like they're doing something.
• Certainly, taking your temperature before boarding a flight would turn away too many people who don't have this novel coronavirus ailment.  But you still need to do this because there is nothing else available.
• Well, there is that Abbot Labs quick-test.  First, you need access to it.  Then, it's not free.  Finally, and worse of all, according to the FDA, this test misses about half the time.  52% accuracy!  
• If this analysis today does not depress you, go watch a film on your television.

After a tough day on the computer, exercise room and .... actually, not much, I usually spend the evening watching Netflix and Amazon Prime.  However, those series are addictive and take up too much of your time.  Films are easy, watch one or two and go to sleep. 

Film                                                   Rotten Tomatoes      My Rating
                                                       
                                                            Critics  Audiences

Sahara (2005)                                          38          53                 B+
Extraction (2020)                                     68         70                 B-
Burning (2018)                                         95         82                 B+
Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)                    92         87                 C+
Fyre (2019)                                               92         87                 B-
Jim and Andy (2017)                               94         87                 B-
The Obscure Object of Desire (1977)  100         90                 B-
Harlan Ellison (2008)                             100         85                 B-
Cosmos (2019)                                          ?          78                 A-
Uncut Gems (2019)                                 92          52                 B-

Sahara featured Matthew McConaughey playing Dirk Pitt in a Clive Cussler movie dealing with a possible virus outbreak in Africa and a lost Civil War ship with rare gold coins, that somehow ends up close to the later epidemic site.  Reviewers hated it and the effort is among the biggest box-office failures.  I kinda liked it.  Nostalgic songs pervaded, like Magic Carpet Ride, Sweet Home Alabama, On the Road Again and a dozen more.

Extraction is a 2020 film starring Chris Hemsworth.  Lot of action in Dhaka, Bangladesh.  The citizenry of the country complained that their city was misrepresented.  The Netflix premiere drew 90 million households, the largest in its history.  Rotten Tomatoes reviewers got it about right.  A sequel is planned.

Burning is a Korean mystery drama that is not what you think it is.  One reviewer called it a masterpiece of psychological unease.  The key actor is Stephen Yuen, who was born in Seoul, but moved with his family to Canada and then to Troy, Michigan, a town I know well.  He graduated from Kalamazoo College and went on to Second City (that comedy group in Chicago).  You've seen him in Okja, Mayhem, the AMC series, The Walking Dead and Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone series.

Y Mama Tambien is an R-rated Mexican film, on the edge of being an X, directed by Alfonso Cuaron.  Of course, you've heard of him.  He has won two Oscars for direction, Gravity and Roma.  You might say this is a coming of age erotic road movie in search of a mythical beach, Heaven's Mouth, which turned out to be real.  Of all the places, it made its U.S. premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival.  Ranked #9 in a Film of the Decade listing.

Fyre was the greatest party that never happened.  Think about the mud of Woodstock.  This was supposed to be the once in a lifetime rock concert on a Bahamian island, featuring high luxury.  It was a total disaster.

The Obscure Object of Desire, was released 43 years ago.  The 100% reviewers rating drew me to this production.  Luis Bunuel has vision, passion and absurdity, well characterizing this effort.  Using two different actresses who did not look similar in the same role was confusing.  Never explained in the film but later as a means to save money, for the first actress abandoned the production.  This was his last film when he was in his mid 70's.  Fernando Rey was cool, but too patient.  How many times do you need to learn a lesson?  Can't imagine why it got a 100% rating.

Harlan Ellison:  Dreams with Sharp Teeth is another anomaly to me.  How did it get a 100% reviewers' rating?  All he does is rant and rage for the entire film.  Sure, he must have been a kind of genius, who was prolific with 1,700 short stories, etc., winning all kinds of awards.  He certainly had experience, working as a tuna fisherman, itinerant crop-picker, hired gun, driver of a nitroglycerine truck, short-order cook, cab driver and door-to-door brush salesman.  Prepared him well.  But 100% for a non-stop tirade?

Cosmos is a film I just stumbled across.  Checked Rotten Tomatoes, and it too hardly heard of it.  It's not even in Wikipedia!  This is a British production following the attempt by three educated amateurs to detect extrasolar intelligence.  It was slow and technical with moments of unnecessary urgency.  I loved it!  You won't.  Why?  Brought me back to my days working at NASA's Ames Research Center 45 years ago on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  Contact with Jodie Foster was splashy and extravagant.  Liked it too.  But Cosmos, not related to Carl Sagan, was simple, understated and real, although with flaws.  I hope there is a sequel because, I'm still not clear what they found.

Uncut Gems is an R-movie starring Adam Sandler about a Jewish financial hustler.  While he remains frenetic and uncontrolled, it was in a serious way.  This is that breakthrough role every actor seeks.  He won the Razzie Redeemer Award presented to a Golden Raspberry Award winner who became respected.  Also has Judd Hirsch and Kevin Garnett, the basketball player.  He really acts, and well.  It's stressful, exhausting and exciting.  If you want a quiet evening, avoid this at all costs.  Maybe opals are bad luck.  Oh, that 52% score by the audience.  That included me...it was too, too stressful.

On to 1997:

• Dolly, sheep cloned in Scotland. 
• President Clinton bans human cloning.
• Divorce legal in the Republic of Ireland.  The Philippines is the only country left today without this option.

• IBM's Deep Blue, defeats Garry Kasparov, the first time a computer has beaten a World chess champ.  Kasparov is today the symbol of opposition to Vladimir Putin.
• Handguns banned in the UK.
• UK returns Hong Kong to China.
• F.W. Woolworth goes bankrupt.

• Oldest person ever, Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment passes away at the age of 122.
• Princess Diana killed in auto accident.  Her funeral watched by 2 billion.  Elton John and Bernie Taupin re-did a song first written in 1973 in honor of Marilyn Monroe, Candle in the Wind.

• Bobbi McCaughey gives birth to the only surviving septuplets in Des Moines, Iowa.  To the right, their photo at the age of 21.
• James Cameron's Titanic premieres.

• First Toyota Prius.
• Kyoto Protocol for global climate warming control adopted.  I was a small part of the process and had one of my pet projects included.

The 100 best songs of 1997 in 11 minutes.  #1 was Candle in the Wind.  Elton John released this as a double A-side with Something About the Way You Look Tonight.

I end with Waltz of the Flowers (click bottom right corner to view on full screen):

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COVID-19: New New Deal

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

DAY           USA   WORLD  Brazil  India South Africa

May     13    1772     5314

            14    1715     5317
            15    1595     5072
            16    1218     4360
            17      865     3618
            18    1003     3445
            19    1552     4589
            20    1403     4685
            21    1418     4934         1188     150         30
            22    1293     5252           966     142         28
            23    1036     4183           965     142         10
            24      617     2826           703     156         22
            25      505     3096           806     148         52
            26      774     4048         1027     172         43
            27    1535     5283         1148     190         28

Summary:

• What?  The USA new deaths figure doubled.  Tripled from two days ago.  The World also went up, and is back to where it was two weeks ago.
• Brazil is now the official international epicenter, exceeded in new deaths only by the U.S.
• Two days ago India hit an all time high for new cases.  Yesterday, this number jumped almost another thousand with 7293 new cases.
• Typical of White House attitude, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos indicated she would force public school superintendents to share coronavirus rescue funds with private schools.

Just the kind of mindset fostered by our nitwitted president, who keeps saying the USA is doing a great job in combatting this pandemic.  If he says this enough times, people, being what they are, begin to believe him.  So what he is saying is not totally dumb but calculated.  But you need to look at the facts:  with 4% of the world population, we have 28% the global deaths.  So he, nevertheless, fits the tag of lunatic, surely.

And what about this?

If anyone should get the blame for this disparity, it has to be our president.  Since that graph, one in four Americans is now unemployed.  We had a similar problem in the 1930's:

Out of work Americans needed jobs. To the unemployed, many of whom had no money left in the banks, a decent job that put food on the dinner table was a matter of survival.

Herbert Hoover, a Republican, refused to offer direct assistance to individuals.  Democrat Franklin Roosevelt replaced him and created the New Deal.

• Part One was the Federal Emergency Relief Act, providing $3 billion to help state and local governments.  We are today going about this backwards, something the Republicans are still fighting.  
• Part 2 was the Civilian Conservation Corps specifically aimed at the 2 million unemployed unmarried men between the ages of 17-25 who left their homes to live in military-type camps to build bridges, clear forests and so forth.
• Then the Civil Works Administration to tutor illiterates, build parks, repair schools, etc.
• The largest came next, the Works Progress Administration, employing 9 million (our population today is almost double that of those times, so the equivalent would be 18 million today).  Included was the Federal Theater Project for actors and artists.  John Steinbeck was one.  Republicans especially criticized this portion, calling it  "We Poke Along" and "We Piddle Around."
• Republicans never supported the New Deal, which hurt them into the future, for seven of the nine presidents into 1970 were Democrats.

Now's the time for a New New Deal.  Chances are that the economy will continue to be terrible into next year and longer.  We can wait until a Democrat becomes president on November 3, or do something smarter, especially if your name is Donald Trump.

Yes, that was a contradiction in term, but President Donald Trump and the Republicans have a golden opportunity, with Democrats, to create an inspired piece of bipartisan legislation in the range of $5 trillion to fix the nation's airports, roads, bridges, electricity grids and blighted areas by hiring the millions that will lose jobs from COVID-19.  Certainly include Parts 1 and 2 of the New Deal as shown above.  

In most ways we already have a Part 2.  It's called the military.  More specifically, the Army Corps of Engineers.  Their job is the infrastructure.  All 37,000 led by Lieutenant General Todd Semonite, who is already a hero for helping cities like New York City solve their hospital problem.  Have the Corps manage a few million unemployed to rebuild our bridges, airports, grid systems, roads and other local needs, while taking the first few steps towards a national bullet train network.

New New Deal is not exactly the captivating name we need for this opportunity, but someone will come up with something better.  However, it is symbolic of how our nation recovered from the Great Depression.  Will this happen?  That's even beyond my imagination, but November 3 is only a little more than 5 months away.

Yesterday I indicated that to get COVID-19 you need around 100 new corona viruses to get to your throat.  So big deal, you say.  Well, one sneeze releases 30,000 droplets traveling at up to 200 miles/hour.  However, ONE droplet may contain 200 million virus particles.  One single breath releases up to 5000 droplets.  If you're in a room with an infected person, he/she takes 16 breaths/minute, 960 breaths/hour and 23,040 breaths/day.  Close quarters compound the problem, for you multiply  virus concentration by time.

Continuing my trek to the present, I'm now into 1996:

• Motorola introduces the world's smallest mobile phone.  Unless you have kept up, you don't know that what now exists of Motorola is owned by Lenovo, a Chinese company.  ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?  THE NEW 5G NETWORK IS OWNED BY HUAWEI.  They are ready to share this technology.  Sounds too close to another Trojan Horse.

• Hale-Bopp passes only 1.3 times the distance from the Sun and is the brightest comet of the 20th century.  It will return around the year 4380.
• The Likud Party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, wins victory in Israel.  Yes, he has been around a long time, and might finally now go to jail.

• City of Madras in India restored to Chennai.  I remember having a madras shirt in college.
• Dolly the sheep is cloned in Scotland.
• Atlanta Summer Olympics.  Centennial Olympic Park bombing.
• A three-parent baby is conceived in New Jersey.

• In Chicago, when Binti Jua was eight years old, a three-year-old boy climbed the wall around the gorilla exhibit and fell 24 feet into the gorilla enclosure below, suffering a broken hand and a large gash on the side of his face.^[2]Binti walked towards the unconscious boy while spectators screamed. Binti cradled the child and laid him down when she heard her shift door open to her downstairs enclosure. Her 17-month-old baby, Koola, clutched her back throughout the incident.

• Time Warner acquired Turner Broadcasting System.
• Bill Clinton elected President of the USA.
• Tamagotchi released by Bandai.
• Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signed.
• Prince Charles divorces Diana.
• Galileo space probe indicates water on one of Jupiter's moons.

The top 25 songs of 1996 in 2 minutes.  The #1 hit of the year was the Macarena.  Here is a clip of dancing politicians, including Al Gore doing this dance.  Tonight:  Watch Anderson Cooper and his partner Andy Cohen on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  Will they win a  million dollars for charity?  They just adopted a son.  Here is something really interesting:  The Evolution of Music Genre Popularity.  

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