ENNUI, AND THEN SOME

When I was young, the go to phrase to express boredom was, “That’s about as exciting as watching paint dry.”  Along about now, I would pay for a livecam shot of paint drying!

ROLLING MY TUB

Why do I blog when my country is threatened with the death of millions?  I can give no better answer than this passage from the Preface to Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments:

"When Philip threatened to lay siege to the city of Corinth and all its inhabitants hastily bestirred themselves in defense, some polishing weapons, some gathering stones, some repairing the walls, Diogenes seeing all this hurriedly folded his mantle about him and began to roll his tub zealously back and forth through the streets. When he was asked why he did this he replied that he wished to be busy like all the rest, and rolled his tub lest he should be the only idler among so many industrious citizens. Such conduct is at any rate not sophistical, if Aristotle be right in describing sophistry as the art of making money. It is certainly not open to misunderstanding; it is quite inconceivable that Diogenes should have been hailed as the saviour and benefactor of the city."

A DEADLY SERIOUS QUESTION

I want to ask a question to which I really do not know the answer.  It may sound on first hearing like a heartless question, but it is in fact exactly the opposite.  It is a question asked out of anxiety bordering on terror.  Here it is:

In 2018 there were about 2.8 million deaths in the United States from all causes, and I think the deaths in 2019 were comparable.  Obviously, many of the people who died were old people like me and everyone else who lives where I do.  Dr. Fauci has offered the informed guesstimate that between 100,000 and 200,000 Americans will die from COVID-19.  Does that mean that he expects the 2020 death figures to be 2.9 million or 3 million rather than 2.8 million, or are some of those expected to die from the disease people who, statistically speaking, could have been expected to die from other causes?

Second question.  By the time we are done with this disease, it is estimated by many experts that between 30% and 60% of Americans will contract it, which is to say between 100 million and 200 million people.  World-wide, the mortality rate for the disease seems to be 1% to 1.2%.  If that is right, then we could expect between one and two million Americans to die from COVID, not between one hundred and two hundred thousand.  Does that mean that 2020 will see 3.8 to 4.8 million American deaths rather than 2.8 million?

Does anybody know?

THE GOOD USE TO WHICH I AM PUTTING MY EXTRA TIME

Just in case anyone is under the impression that I am using this enforced seclusion to reconsider the lesser Greeks or finally finish reading Ὰ la recherche du temps perdu, let me just say that I have, on this computer, played a total of 6087 games of FreeCell.  I have a winning percentage of 97.4 and for some time I have been striving to raise it to 97.5, but a sacattering of losses has slowed my progress.

Now, back to my lecture for tomorrow on chapters XI-XIV of Capital.

THE EFFECTS OF THE VIRUS

Some of you may recall that ten months ago, on May 3, 2019, I had a go at telling you what I had learned of Modern Monetary Theory from a book by L. Randall Wray.  I was rather taken by what I had read, although quite unfit to form a reliable judgment of the book.  The theory goes very much against the grain of establishment Economics, and I have seen Paul Krugman refer dismissively to it from time to time.

Yesterday, as I was listening to the reports of the unanimous Senate vote and almost unanimous House vote for a 2.2 trillion dollar stimulus, emergency, bail out, or whatever bill, it occurred to me that one of the unanticipated side effects of COVID-19 has been to make MMT mainstream. 

BIRD WATCHERS ARE ODD DUCKS

On my walk this morning, I saw a crow.  Nothing remarkable about that, I see crows all the time, sometimes a dozen all at once.  But it reminded me of the fact that crows hold absolutely no interest for bird watchers, who will go wild over an unremarkable finch or a confusing fall warbler [that is what the bird books call them, and there are dozens  of them, all virtually indistinguishable.]  I observed the same disdain for blue jays when I lived in Massachusetts [there don’t seem to be any blue jays down here in North Carolina.]

Now crows and blue jays are impressively large birds, and blue jays, at least, are strikingly colored.  So why the disdain?  Familiarity, one might think, but blue birds have lots of street cred among bird lovers, and at least where I live, they are quite common visitors to our window bird feeders.

If you want to see a beautiful bird, take a look at this:

I took this picture on a safari in the Okavango Delta of Botswana in 2014.  It is a lilac breasted roller, and at least in the Okavango they are quite common.  By the way, Botswana safaris are extremely expensive, even after you get to Botswana.  Susie and I could afford it because I was still making big bucks at UMass and my textbook was selling.  But if you are affluent and old and have a bucket list, put a Botswana safari on it.  It is the only tourist attraction I have ever experienced that exceeded the hype of the advertisements.

LFE IN THE TIME OF COVID

I am reminded of the old Chinese curse:  May you live in interesting times.  What are my three principal concerns today?

1.  Do I need to wash the Food Lion grapes with soap as well as water after antiseptically removing them from their plastic bags and carefully discarding the bags?

2.  Do I need to quarentine the medicines delivered to my door by the local pharmacy for 3 days or 4 before unpacking them?

3.. Which passages shall I read and comment on from chapters XI-XIII of CAPITAL when I meet my class on Monday via zoom,com using my newly acquired microphone headset?

This is not exactly like wandering down to the Agora to meet Glaucon and Adeimantus for a chat.