Althouse: Daybreak after the rain.

March 30, 2020

Daybreak after the rain.

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This morning, at 7:06.

221 comments:

«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 221 of 221

Ralph L said...: My dad rents half his small office building to a "non-profit" that counsels troubled families under state contract. Fortunately, they signed a 3 year lease a month ago, because they might have wanted to move to bigger quarters when they're able to see clients again.; 3/30/20, 9:52 PM
walter said...: Howie,
The "fish tank cleanse" is the shit.; 3/30/20, 9:55 PM
Ralph L said...: My gg grandfather was in the Confederate Senate for a year before he left in disgust. Gov. Vance sent him to surrender (and hopefully save) the city of Raleigh to Sherman. He ended up spending the night in Sherman's tent. The 19 y.o. who drove the train through the Yankee lines was my grandmother's uncle on Dad's side.; 3/30/20, 9:59 PM
Sebastian said...: "I also fail to understand the logic of people who are hair-on-fire about"

You assume rationality persists in an epidemic. That weighing the costs of actions as we normally do, including some tolerance for some ordinarily very bad outcomes, might continue. But no.

Italy, to take an example, had some 68 thousand excess deaths due to flu alone in four recent years. Now many of those excess deaths could have been prevented--many were old people who with some isolation could have been protected. Did Italy close down? No. Did it take any special measures to prevent bad flu outcomes? None that I know of. Did Italy force young people to isolate for the sake of saving tens of thousands of seniors, as it could have? No. Italy willingly accepted 68K as the reasonable cost of continuing as a viable country.

Of course, that is not an argument for doing nothing: the spike in health care demand is worth flattening, and some social distancing may prevent Wuhan from turning into more than a bad flu. I advocate rigorous isolation of risk groups. But the current approach, here and abroad, is disproportionately costly.; 3/30/20, 10:02 PM
Gahrie said...: @Original Mike:

What I like with the time displacement genre is problem solving and survival, along with the what-if.

OK..I'm going to assume that you have read the classics like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Time Machine, Lest Darkness fall and Guns of the South.

Have you read the Cross-Time Engineer books by Frankowski? The Paratime books by H. Beam Piper (one of my favorite all time authors)?

Replay by Grimwood is an interesting variation I really enjoyed.; 3/30/20, 10:07 PM
tim in vermont said...: "were his ancestors perhaps Dutch Reformed?”

So it was said it was claimed in one county history that mentioned ggg granddad who was born in Kingston NY around 1802 or so. My ancestors came a couple decades prior to the main Palatine wave of about 1710. The histories I can find say 1680s for this particular person. However tradition is that he married a Dutch girl and spoke fluent Dutch. on account of being settled for a time in Rotterdam, but came to the New World under the auspices of the British. It is very possible that the Palatine thing is a red herring and just was assumed because so many Upstaters are from that stock.

Unfortunately, these were lost years in the Livingston history I was reading, so the other histories must have had sources that the Livingston writer lacked. IDK. It’s still a mystery, but there were a couple of good anecdotes in that book.

Unfortunately libraries are all closed, because there is a book I would really like to look at over at the University of Vermont which might shed some light. Settlers of the Beekman Patent.; 3/30/20, 10:10 PM
tim in vermont said...: I could also be mistaken about the Thirty Years War, but I had assumed he was born to refugees. I could be wrong on that, but he was a German living in Rotterdam for one reason or another, and came to New York in the 1680s. So much of it is gathered from oral histories and not really documented.; 3/30/20, 10:18 PM
mockturtle said...: Ralph L.: Very informative posts! Thank you, I'm saving them.

BTW, can we really trust masks coming from China? Video of Chinese worker rubbing shoes on masks for export, Taiwan News; 3/30/20, 10:22 PM
tim in vermont said...: Come to think of it, I have always been told Palatine but haven’t found any proof of it, I just accepted it, like Warren’s Indian grandmother or whatever. Thank you, I think you moved the ball for me.; 3/30/20, 10:22 PM
Kyjo said...: Sorry, my comment above is a little involved, especially since I’m just loosely speculating about a possible explanation why tim in vermont’s grandfather was involved in an anti-papal society. :) But this stuff fascinates me.

My first German ancestors to settle in America left the Rhineland and arrived in Pennsylvania in the 1740’s or ’50’s. (I haven’t ascertained whether they were Lutheran or Reformed, or something else, but they lost any religious affiliation by the time my grandfather converted to Catholicism to marry my grandmother in 1948.) If they’d stayed in Pennsylvania, I suppose they’d have blended into that state’s “Dutch” population, but as it was they moved soon after arrive to Rowan County, NC. The next generation went to Virginia, crosses the Appalachians, and settled in what is today Oldham County, KY, where they largely remained through the course of the 19th Century, intermingling with English and Scotch-Irish Americans. The surnames associated with this German line were Americanized early and in such a way they aren’t often immediately recognizable as German; Lail (Lehl or Löhl) and Admire (most likely Erdmeyer), for example.; 3/30/20, 10:34 PM
Ray - SoCal said...: Following up on Yancy’s comment, it got me thinking...

CA is still way behind on testing. The strategy seems to hope stay at home solves the infection.

Couple of scenarios:

1. Ca is just incompetent
2. CA is only allowing limited testing by the right people / labs.
3. CA is deliberately throttling tests to understate the number of infections
4. CA has tests on order, that will arrive soon
5. Shortages of reactants and such are causing delays

Be nice if the press would investigate this CA Snafu...; 3/30/20, 11:34 PM
narayanan said...: Blogger Paco Wové said...

"slow the progression of the disease in seriously ill coronavirus patients"

I was under the impression it showed the most beneficial effect if given before patients got seriously ill.
__________
you lose I win set up - try it where it does least good; 3/30/20, 11:58 PM
Yancey Ward said...: "Stop taking Hydroxychloroquine if your tongue swells, and you have difficulty breathing, or you see flashes of light and inability to focus your eyes."

Also if you have an erection that lasts more than 48 hours.; 3/31/20, 12:50 AM
narayanan said...: tcrosse said...Easy for you to say, if you have a prescription pad. Forbidden in Nevada whether you have one or not.
_________
Can Governor override FDA recommendation/relaxing rules; 3/31/20, 1:00 AM
Kyjo said...: @tim in vermont, if your ancestor came to New York in the 1680’s, it seems doubtful his parents were refugees of the Thirty Years’ War in a direct sense. Of course, the fallout of the Thirty Years’ War extended decades after it ended, especially in the Palatinate, so it’s still plausible that your ancestor or his parents were Palatines displaced for reasons ultimately stemming from the war. (The French also invaded the Palatinate in the late 1680’s, triggering the Nine Years’ War, but that may have been after your ancestor had left for America.) The Rotterdam connection is interesting, because that was the main port through which the later, larger wave of Palatines departed for London during the War of Spanish Succession.; 3/31/20, 5:09 AM
Big Mike said...: @Ralph L., people who think Sherman’s men treated the stretch of Georgia from Atlanta to Savannah harshly should take a look at what his troops did when they marched north from Savannah through South Carolina. The federal troops had plenty of reason to regard South Carolina as the birthplace of secession, and they were not gentle at all! I can picture Governor Vance desperate to avoid having a repeat of what happened to Columbia, SC, be reprised in Raleigh.; 3/31/20, 6:37 AM
tim in vermont said...: Thanks KyJo, that was interesting, sorry everybody else for my blather, but I am getting stir crazy :^); 3/31/20, 8:00 AM
Original Mike said...: "Have you read the Cross-Time Engineer books by Frankowski? The Paratime books by H. Beam Piper (one of my favorite all time authors)?
Replay by Grimwood is an interesting variation I really enjoyed."

Nope, didn't know about those. Thanks!; 3/31/20, 8:04 AM
Narr said...: The Palatine refugees of post 1680 were fleeing Louis XIV's deliberate policy of scorched earth to deprive his Imperial enemies of a base of operations after his aggression.

Heidelberg, Speyer, Mannheim, and Worms were devastated; those romantic ruins at Heidelberg are a memorial.

And just think, the French would invade, beat-up, loot, and oppress through German lands for another century and more . . .

Narr
Long memories are a great European tradition; 3/31/20, 11:04 AM
tim in vermont said...: Thanks Narr.; 3/31/20, 12:33 PM
Narr said...: You are most welcome, tim in vermont.

Narr
I Love Vermont; 3/31/20, 1:43 PM