Leaders around the world are taking additional steps to combat the COVID pandemic. Our friends in Europe began a couple of weeks ago, now the state of Utah is getting into the action. Luckily, the measures taken here by Governor Herbert fall short of a hard lockdown, and are thus far less stringent than in other places.
Here are some resources for anyone who might be wondering where things actually stand here and elsewhere. Yes, cases are increasing everywhere, but how bad are things in reality? These interative graphics are from ourworldindata.org. This tool is incredible, enabling a dynamic look at many different countries, situations, and timelines. Check them out and make whatever changes curosity might suggest!
First is a look at the status of cases in the United States and several countries of Western Europe:
It looks pretty awful in a few places, but where do things stand with deaths, the saddest statistic of all? The curve is at present surprisingly flat in several places, including the US, due either to improved therapeutics or a decrease in the virulence of the SARS-CoV2 virus:
Finally, death rates (as measured by the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) not the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR), which would account for the MANY assymptomatic and perhaps infectious cases being found worldwide), are decreasing drastically around the world. Indeed, these are a fraction of what they were a few weeks ago:
During a recent discussion with my grandson, Kenneth regarding his upcoming course on Linux, I got to thinking about how my involvment with computers has followed the history of computing. That prompted to me to Google some of the details, which led me to this link this morning on Unix. It was written by Dennis Ritchie, one of the two primary developers of Unix. There I learned that the name Unix was meant by one of the team members, Brian Kernighan, to be a bit of a slam on Multics. That project had turned out to be a failed effort on which they had worked that involved a huge number of players from various companies. Could this have been a perfect of too many cooks spoiling broth?
It is amazing to think about the computer they were trying to get their management at Bell Labs to buy, one they needed in order to develop the new operating system they had come to believe was necessary. It is important to note that Bell Labs’ mission, especially in 1969, had to do with things like satellite and other new telecommunication technologies, and not in developing computer software. Basically, they worked in the research division of the original and primary telephone company of the United States, Bell Telephone. The company had been founded in 1876 by the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell himself!
You can see photos photos of the type of computer they were trying to buy and some others at this Web site of the Living Computers Museum+Labs Think about how that computer had maximum memory size of 1,152 kilobytes (Wikipedia article on the PDP-10), a tiny fraction of what is in a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 GB of memory. (That reflection brought me to calculate the size difference between the two. The tiny, credit-card sized RasPi4 4 GB has 3,472 times more memory than the computer pictured above!
Discovering that Web site was great fun in itself. It was founded by the late Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft with Bill Gates. Now I have to convince my wife to go to the museum in Seattle when it reopens after COVID! ?
All of that got me thinking about something else that Ritchie developed. It turns out that one of the first programs they created for the PDP-7, a predecessor of the DEC-10 was the game, Space Travel. The Wikipedia article very closely describes the first computer game I ever played, which was at the Air Force Academy. I can’t remember the exact date for sure, but it that would have been in 1976 or so when I was first assigned there. It could also have been in 1980 when I returned to the Academy from Ohio State. To play the game, it was necessary to load the program using paddle switches like you see below. The user would set up the memory address and contents using the switches and then flip a switch for each memory address!
The photo was used to illustrate a project to create a program on a Raspberry Pi to simulate a DEC PDP/11!
All thate brought back another recollection, that of using the word processor at the Academy, a PDP 11/78, to write and print my PhD dissertation. What great fun (challenge!?!) it was, transferring my files from the Amdahl 470 at Ohio State to the computer at the Academy using 10.5 inch reels of magnetic tape. The Amdahl and the DEC of course ran different operating systems (the former ran IBM’s OS and the latter ran Unix). Numerous gyrations were necessary to get the new system to read my files from the tape and get them ready to turn into the final version.
One more aside, I did most of the original writing on the dissertation using an acoustic modem running at 300 baud to connect my terminal to the computers at Ohio State and later at the Academy. It was fun to swap out the old acoustic modem and switch to one that ran at 1,200 baud! I still have that terminal, which could do upper case only. To get lower case in my documents I had to create software that enabled me to mark up my text in way that a program would convert everything to lower case except the characters I had flagged with my markup scheme.
Anyway, the excursion into the history of Unix got me thinking about C and my goal from long ago to learn it as a new programming language for me . It is funny to realize that I am back at that point now with the tinkering around I have done with Arduino microcontrollers and compatibles. Ritchie was also one of the two co-authors of THE original textbook on C and Kernighan is the other. I still have a copy of that book that I bought it at the Ohio State Bookstore when I was there working on my PhD and which I am giving to my grandson. Here is Wikipedia article on the history of the development of the C language.
A letter from Frank W. Fox addressed to “Arizona Mormons” is being circulated on social media and around the country. It has been picked up by various news outlets in the West such as the Salt Lake Tribune as well as nationally. Its distribution on Facebook is being supported by paid promotions, apparently by Fox himself.
Furthermore, not only has this letter been sent to many people in Arizona in mailings that were supported by the Democratic Party there, but at least one candidate for congress in Arizona has used it in her campaign efforts.
Fox is free to support whomever he chooses, but his denigration of President Trump, with documented falsehoods, needs to be called out. While Annie and I support Donald J. Trump for President, we are not, as Fox describes, members of “a mindless, militant personal following” who support the president. We recognize that Trump, like the rest of us, is imperfect.
While we are open about our support of President Trump for reelection, we are not blind to his failings. Our position is described quite well, however, in an excerpt of one of the sources we came across, a Facebook group, “LDS Fact Checker.”
Some have asked: Why would any Latter-day Saint ever vote for Trump when we all know Trump exaggerates excessively, tweets too much, viciously attacks his critics, and gloats and boasts ad nauseum? What is it that has convinced so many Latter-day Saints to “hold their noses” while mindfully and thoughtfully choosing to support Trump and vote for him?
Maybe it’s because they believe, as a popular Facebook meme states, that a vote is not a Valentine nor a way to profess one’s love for a candidate, but rather, it’s a strategic chess move—a strategy, designed to move the various chess pieces toward a desired end.
President Trump, despite his great weaknesses and flaws, has done more than any other president in the last several decades to protect the sanctity of life and religious freedom, and he has committed to continue doing the same if re-elected. Biden and Harris, on the other hand, have done the exact opposite in their political careers and have committed to continue to do the same if elected. Biden and Harris’ voting records on religious freedom, life, and on other critical issues of great concern to members of the Church speaks volumes.
This group describes itself as “Members concerned about confusing & harmful misinformation often perpetuated by media, social media and in public and political discourse in relation to life and family.” Their Facebook page was created on 14 October 2020, most likely in response to Fox’s efforts. The entire response of the group is located here. We found another, slightly shortly document that also takes issue with the various points of Fox’s attempted justification at his anti-Trump position, this one by Kevin Ray Hadlock.
We also subscribe wholeheartedly to the description of one political commentator, who recently said that the president “violates rhetorical norms on a daily basis,” which is an apt description. This commentator, Ben Shapiro, explains his views in this short video, which we strongly recommend. He states that although he did not vote for Trump in 2016, he is definitely voting for him this time. Our feeling is that people who consider themselves conservatives but who have doubts about voting for Trump would without a doubt benefit from watching what Shapiro has to say. For anyone who lacks the time to watch the video, the transcript of this video is available here.
Here are links to several additional interesting resources:
Three Video Documents These were created by “actor, writer, and director,” Darrin Southam. Southam is earnest and perhaps even a bit overdramatic, but the essence of his response to Fox’s letter is sound.
Comments written in reaction to the first video above:
Thank you, thank you for making this video. I was so upset when I was sent this letter as an alumni of BYU. What a wonderful rebuttal. We need to stand up to falsehoods and lies. We need President Trump desperately to continue to support our freedoms as written in the Constitution. Thank you for your courage.
I keep hearing that quote about ” Imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. ” played over and over in my head. Anyone who wants to condemn president Trump over his imperfections ought to be thankful that our Savior, Jesus Christ doesn’t condemn them for their own imperfections.
Amazing!!! Thank you for saying so eloquently what so many of us felt after reading Prof. Fox’s letter. God bless America! And God protect all true freedom fighters!
I about puked when this professor bet his eternal salvation that the brethren were not supporting Trump. He doesn’t know and neither do I. Thank you for putting this together.
Click on the link below to interact with a chart from an interesting site. It is possible to look at what is going on with COVID-19 around the world with various lock-down strategies. Mouse over the country names to see each plot. You can also add other countries for comparison.
The chart is based on population and with rolling seven-day averages to smooth the curve a bit. Sweden has not locked down as other nations have, so for comparison I have included Denmark and Norway that did lock down. Nevertheless, it appears that they might be turning the corner at the upper plateau and are now on the way down, without having reached the high per capita mortality rates of other countries.
