Edit: It turns out that economists have investigated the corresponding mortality costs from a recession– and they’re negative! Mortality rates go down in recessions. Add that to the environmental benefits of slowing down the global economy, and lock-downs look a lot like a clear boon for society.

We are observing a fascinating social phenomenon. Far from our normal mode, the world has decided to respond to the COVID-19 threat long before it has reached its crisis. I am fascinated, but also concerned. As a society, we have chosen to self-administer a kind of global shock therapy, and if we are not careful, the consequences of the medicine will be greater than the disease.

I do not claim to know how to balance these conflicting forces, but I’ll bet health experts don’t have the interdisciplinary training to make that judgement either. In many ways, this pandemic looks a lot like climate change. If we do nothing now, it will be a disaster in a couple months. If we do too much now, it will be an economic disaster, which could be just as damaging.

Let’s consider the current situation. About 0.003% of the global population has been confirmed to have (or have had) the coronavirus. Across the US, it’s 0.005%; in New York, the hardest-hit state, the infection rate has gotten up to 0.03% (as of March 21). That’s confirmed cases, but it might be a decent approximation to the actual cases: Germany has prided itself with very thorough testing, and it has a 0.03% infection rate. The US has not been doing a very good job of testing, but still 8 tests are administered for every 1 that comes back positive.

So, let’s do a thought experiment with the confirmed cases: Let’s imagine getting a group of randomly chosen people from New York state together.If your group was 1 person big, there would be a 0.03% chance that that person has COVID-19. If it’s 2 people big, the chance that one or the other is sick would be 0.07%. For that risk to get up to 1%– at which point it might make sense to call off the gathering, there would need to be 28 people. For the chance that one or more of them were sick to reach 50%, the group would have to consist of about 2000 people.

It won’t stay this way. Without intervention the real crisis will hit around June. Here’s my simple model, which looks a lot like what the NYT has been showing for the past couple weeks, but I made it almost a month ago:

The disaster hasn’t come yet. We should think more about what we want to do to prepare between now and then.

The right balance depends not only the benefits of quarantine, but also on its economic costs. There are already estimates of the unemployment rate in the US doubling in the next couple months, and maybe going as high as 10%. We have set off an economic recession which is going to derail a lot of livelihoods, and for some people it will mean their lives. Add on top of that the physical and mental health problems that are emerging as a result of self-isolation, and the loss of in-class education for millions of students, and it looks like we have chosen to pay a very high price.

If we were to lock-down less, it would mean that more people could keep their jobs. More people would also get sick, but it would help in the long run as the population of people immune to the virus increases. Some of the extra infections would have to go to the hospital, but current COVID-19 infections are a tiny share of current hospital cases, and many regions can handle the extra load. Or, at least they can handle it a lot better now than they will be able to in a few months, during the peak crisis.

I’m not proposing that older people or other high-risk populations stop self-quarantining at all– COVID-19 is incredibly dangerous to people over 65. But we need more working-age people on the front lines, sustaining our economy.

The chance of dying is low for under-40s– 0.2%– but still high as these things go. That’s twice the death rate of the flu. But the economic recession will also lead to more deaths. I think we need a movement of people who are willing to personally accept the risks that come from an infection, for the benefits that they can provide. They should not interact with those people who are staying in isolation, but this group needs to extend far beyond “essential” workers.

By the way, this can also be a moment to help correct the injustices of the current economy: if we are choosing to risk our lives, we should not be doing it for the benefits of the powers-that-be. But that can be for another post.

I recently discovered all four seasons of Monty Python’s Flying Circus on Netflix, and now I’m fired up about making some surreal animations. I have a particular vision for a series on the life and times of James Rising, born 1618. It would be an inseparable mix of historical research and mythologizing, childhood and adult themes combined in Walt Disneyesque fashion, anarchy and anachronism, set in a surrealist pre-Steampunk world.

I’m envisioning this as an ever growing series of cel-animation episodes. The whole series would be divided into 5 chapters, of which I initially only aim to make a single episode for each chapter. [Really, I just want to make a single episode, but dividing it into 5 segments makes it seem more feasible.]

Here’s the story so far:

Chapter 1: In the shadow of Castle Rising

The Rising ancestors, not yet named Risings, live a peasant life in the Norfolk countryside. But everything is changing in Jacobean era for a young, rebellious youth who runs away to the big city, Norwich. There he falls in some counter-culture Catholic recusants, before realizing that no religion can ensure love. Turning his back on both his old home and his new one, he drives into the horizon.

Chapter 2: The childhood of a Cordwainer

James is born to Risings that have finally made it in the middle class of small-town Beccles. But the world is so much bigger now, and at 18, the other side of the world seems nearer to James than the small-minded village politics around him. A chance encounter with nobility ruins his internship and his reputation, and he finally packs his bags.

Chapter 3: By land and by sea

James hitchhikes to London, through many new lands and strange customs. Along the way, he befriends a world-weary ex-raver, an existentialist dog, and a recurring used-cart salesman. Each offers him the possibility of their way of life, and he barters each one away for passage on the Dorset, bound for Bermuda. After nearly starving on the boat, he’s saved by a rat named Sergeant Buzfuz, who becomes his life-long companion.

Chapter 4: Zeal for the zealots

Ten years of hard labor offer lots of pitfalls, and James’s favorites are drink, women, and religious experiments. He is struggling with depression when a friend’s cult decides to go off-the-grid and they convince James to come and help them. But the boat is wrecked on metaphor-heavy rocks, their cool-aid lost, and life without technology turns out to be pretty tough. The colony gives up, but James and Sergeant Buzfuz, now both bearded and world-weary, stow away on a boat to Boston.

Chapter 5: Englands Old and New

James uses his intrepid instinct for trouble to make a living in Boston. He falls madly in love with a lifestyle where anything is possible, and then he meets Elizabeth Hinsdale. Together they start a family, move to Connecticut, and try to avoid an irate used-cart salesmen. At the deathbed-side of Sergeant Buzfuz, James recounts the dreams of youth and his memories of the future.

I came upon this bit of literary engineering by D. M. Thomas in Best SF: 1969 (ed. Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss). I love the project idea, but I don’t endorse all the content.

“Elstir’s studio seemed like the laboratory out of which would come a kind of new creation of the world: from the chaos made of all things we see, he had abstracted, by painting them on various rectangles of canvas now standing about on all sides, glimpses of things, like a wave in the sea crashing its angry lilac shaded foam down on the sand, or a young man in white twill leaning on a ship’s rail. The young man’s jacket and the splash of the wave had taken on a new dignity, in virtue of the fact that they continued to exist, though now deprived of what they were believed to consist in, the wave being now unable to wet anyone, and the jacket unable to be worn.”

– In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Proust

I like to think I make art, sometimes, but all of my work exists only in this virtual Neverland. My works can be seen, but only through a glorified microfiche scanner, and if you choose to look to the right tiny speck. I wish I had a studio like Elstir’s where people could wander, with real hands tilting back real physical picture frames.

There’s a magic in printing things out, like a spell that reincarnates from the spirit-like 1s and 0s. Flame and I have over a dozen hand-picked photo albums from our various trips, ready should anyone care to open some memories. I want similar momentos for my projects. I thought for a while of building a converter that could represent the structures of code and data as intricate art. But no converter would see the beauty that I see in my own work.

So, I’m thinking of just printing and binding my papers (completed, whether published or not). I’m not above making them into mugs instead, or making blown-up figures etched in canvas. But the first step is to leave them leaning one on the other, and see if anyone takes a peak.

I have fish! Two lovely creatures, my current obsession. I have not had an aquarium since I was 14 (when, at my height, I had tanks’ worth), but my new tank is at the center of our London flat.

Flame knows that I love animals, but her allergy to cats has killed any pet plans until recently. She finally consented to one fish per paper I publish. Since I’ve only published two papers since coming to London, I get two fish. Let me introduce them:

Paige is a Pearl Gourami. You can see her center stage, above. She’s a bit of an attention hog, but she’s beautiful and knows it. I got her for a paper on a model I helped build, named Mimi-PAGE, so it’s no surprise that she’s a model.

Robbie is a Red-tailed Black Shark (not an actual shark sadly). He’s quite shy, and you can just see his tail behind Paige. He inches along the gravel, propelled by his flaming tail, and I got him for a paper on transportation in Nairobi.

As I get more fish, I fully expected to be in a constant publication race against their perishing, but I didn’t do my research. Given the opportunity, Paige is going to grow 5 inches long and 5 years old, and Robbie is going to get 6 inches long after 9 years. And by the time Robbie comes of age, his instinct for territory is likely to be the terror of any other paper I try to publish.

Flame got me a 23andme genetic testing kit (report? procedure?) for Christmas! I’m excited to get some cliffnotes to my user manual, but I was surprised at how daunted I would feel. Preparing my saliva sample felt fatalistic, like each spit was nailing closed the possible; though, I suppose it was just a knock on the door to the actual.

I’m afraid of what I’m going to see. I got the genetic health option, and one of the items on the list is Parkinson’s, with which I watched my grandfather slowly die. That alone tells me that I have a chance that I’m predisposed– do I want to know that it’s definitely waiting in my future? I want to want to know.

On a happier note, I get to find out my paternal haplogroup. From an uncle’s genetic test, I know that my mother’s side comes from the lost land of Doggerland. And I think that my Y-chromosome comes from the east coast of England, but the story is so murky against 300 years of being American that I’m really curious what I’ll find.

Part II when I learn more!

Totality is different! I’m back from eclipse-viewing in Southern Illinois, at a secluded wildlife refuge just 3 hours from the point of maximum eclipse. This isn’t my first eclipse, but it’s my first total eclipse, and I’m still in awe.

I trekked through a little wood to a languid river, with fish jumping at gnats, butterflies and dragonflies, a white crane and a raccoon that came up to check me out. I got out my picnic and book and enjoyed the perfect blue sky.

About a half-hour after the partial eclipse started, I noticed the air cool. The sky looked a shade darker, and contrasts softer. Even at the height of the partial eclipse, all I could notice without the glasses was like a minor dimming of the sun.

And then, totality. I was looking through the filter glasses as the crescent dwindled away, one moment appearing not to move at all, and gone the next. Through my glasses, the sky was completely black. I took them off to a touch of beauty: a blazing one-ring, hanging in the sky, like the sun had been plucked out and just a hole left behind:

(That picture is doctored, combining two real pictures I took, but it’s closer than either to what it was really like.)

It was suddenly twilight. The empty circle in the sky was sharp, perfect, and delicate. I was transfixed, until I noticed beautiful colors on the horizon, like the pink of sunset. I edged to the water to get a better view, not realizing what the colors portended: as I found my footing, it was suddenly bright again, and the eclipse was over:

But after a day of listening to podcasts in the car of a changing world and the ever-growing potential of fake news, the eclipse gave me hope. Our grasp of reality can seem so tenuous, but we understand that the sun doesn’t just dim. You can fake a lot, but you can’t fake this.

This wedding is going to be the culmination of a dream I have had for almost 2 decades: Finally, I will have a professional-grade set for playing Rythmomachy, the Philosopher’s Game!

I have been having so much fun laser-cutting for the wedding, and putting together activities like a massively distributed crossword puzzle. Last week’s inspiration was to laser cut a board and pieces for Rythmomachy, and I want to share them with all of you.

What is Rythmomachy, you ask? I call it “Chess on steroids”, and one medieval scholar said,

Pythagoras did first invent,
this play as it is thought:
And thereby after studies great,
his recreation sought.

Here I just want to share my design for a board and pieces. You too can have this for your very own:

It took about 1 hour on the Berkeley laser cutter I was using. The design is in two files:

Download the board	Download the pieces

I thought to put etchings on the board to tell you how to set it up, since this has always been one of the greatest barriers to starting a new game.

Also note that every piece has a version colored dark and light. These need to be glued back-to-back. Each piece starts out as one color, according to the etchings on the board. If it is captured, it’s flipped over and becomes the other player’s piece.

I put some foot pads on the back and set it up to be flipped closed:

Enjoy!

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