Lift Up Your Hearts!

In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, most people agree that the climax of the story is when Winston finally breaks under torture and betrays his lover, Julia.

Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!

I've written before that I believe the climax to be elsewhere in the book, but Winston's failure here is also a powerful and decisive moment. We may hate Winston for his betrayal and despise him for his cowardice; perhaps instead we sympathise and just feel sad that he has been so completely broken. But how often do we ponder the truth that has been rammed home to me as we are once again directly in the sights of what threatens to become a hurricane.

We are all Winston.

I can keep my spoken and deliberate prayers under control for the most part. I can easily pray that God will diminish, disorganize, disperse, and divert the storm to wherever it will do the least harm. That's my standard hurricane prayer. But I can't deny that at another level, my heart is crying,

"Send it somewhere else! Not here!"

I think our weather warning system is broken. Or in a different time zone. There was absolutely no reason to awaken us with an ear-piercing blast from the weather radio, telling us that we are under a tropical storm warning. Yes, it's important for us to know that the prediction for what is currently Subtropical Storm Nicole looks to be worse for us than it was for Hurricane Ian. Many places around here are still flooded from the previous storm. And it's important for us to know that Nicole will probably reach hurricane strength before landing, and currently looks to pass straight over us as at least a tropical storm. I needed to know that, because I was not expecting anything more than a little wind and rain, which is not unusual for this time of year.

But there is absolutely nothing I needed to know about the storm that couldn't have waited a few more hours. My ears are still ringing and my head aching from standing with the radio in my hands, staring sleep-stupidly at the controls, trying to figure out how to shut it up. An event worthy of that kind of warning ought to be more immediately life-threatening, not about a storm that isn't expected to hit land for another two days.

Besides, I'm done with hurricanes for this year. It's mid-November! I know, that's technically still hurricane season, but quite unusual.

There are a number of people—I certainly am one of them—who strenuously object to being unwilling medical guinea pigs in the matter of the COVID-19 vaccines.

I'm all for medical research, worked as part of a medical research team, and have been a willing human guinea pig in a few experiments myself. This work, when done carefully, knowledgeably, and ethically, is an essential part of scientific and medical advancement. But the ethically part is essential, and I don't think it's ethical to "enroll" masses of people in experiments for which there cannot possibly be adequate knowledge of the risks, and thus they cannot possibly give "informed consent." Plus, when there is no documented, adequate control group, not to mention that the experimenters have done their best to make sure there cannot be an adequate control group—well, then you've lost good science as well as ethics.

You're thinking I'm talking about the COVID-19 vaccines here, and I am—but that's not all. I don't know how many times we've been unknowingly subjected to these unethical experiments, but I do know that it has happened at least two other times in my lifetime.

Aspirin used to be the standard, go-to medication for children, even babies, with fevers or discomfort. I vividly remember the doctor recommending alternating doses of aspirin and acetaminophen when my infant daughter had a stubborn high fever. This was in the early 1980's, and for most people it worked just great. However, there appeared to be a possible correlation between aspirin use in children and young teens, in combination with a viral illness (often chicken pox), and a rare but sometimes fatal condition called Reye Syndrome. We had many doctors among our coworkers, and had no reason not to believe what they told us at the time: The decision to tell doctors and parents to avoid giving aspirin to children was a deliberate, national experiment: They thought aspirin caused Reye's Syndrome in children, but they couldn't prove it, so they hoped that if aspirin use went down dramatically, and so did the incidence of Reye, their point would be made. The disorder did, indeed, retreat significantly, whether through causation or merely correlation is still unknown. The cynic in me insists on pointing out that, whatever the stated reasons for this massive non-laboratory experiment, and whatever good might or might not come of it, one clear result was that a cheap, readily-available, and highly effective drug was massively replaced by one still under patent. The patent for acetaminophen (Tylenol) did not expire until 2007, and Tylenol was still reeling from the 1982 poisoned-Tylenol-capsules scare. Practically overnight, and with timing highly favorable to the pharmaceutical industry, Tylenol became the drug of choice for a large segment of the population.

The next example I remember of such a huge, non-controlled experiment happened in the early 1990's, and was not a drug but a parenting practice: the insistence by the medical profession that all babies never be allowed to sleep on their stomachs. Sleep position recommendations have flip-flopped several times over the years. The professionals never think it safe to leave that decision up to the babies and their parents, they just keep changing what it is that is "the only safe way for a baby to sleep." Personally, I think "whatever helps the baby sleep best" is almost always the right choice. (But I am not a doctor, nor any other medical professional, so make your own choices and don't sue me.)

Early in the 1990's the thought was that back-sleeping might reduce the incidence of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Indeed, there was a decline after the "Back to Sleep" push went into effect, though once again the experiment was unscientific with no significant control group. Certainly there were still parents who put their babies to sleep on their stomachs, but if there was any widespread study of them I never heard of it, and indeed the data was necessarily corrupted because the pressure was so great not to do so that few parents talked openly about it. And doctors, even if they were well aware of the advantages of stomach-sleeping, could not risk mentioning them to their patients. I remember vividly the one young mother who, months later, confessed to the pediatrician that her son had always slept on his stomach. The doctor laughed, saying, "Of course I knew that! Look at how advanced he is, and look at the perfect shape of his head!" But stomach-sleeping is still very much a "don't ask, don't tell" situation.

These massive, uncontrolled, and to my mind unethical experiments on the human population are justified in the minds of many because, after all, they "did their job." Deaths from Reye Syndrome, SIDS, and COVID-19 have all fallen, so who cares how we got there?

Well, I care—and so should anyone who believes in the scientific method, the Hippocratic Oath, and open, honest, and ethical research.

The idea that those who criticize Fauci are inherently on the right is insane and really makes the left look like a bunch of baboons, frankly, and you know, we're not—not all of us.

I think both left and right can smile at that. It is one of my favorite quotes in this excerpt from DarkHorse Podcast #143, though it's just one small part. The larger topic is the capture of our most venerable institutions, such as journalism, academia, and science, by ... Something. Bret and Heather don't have a name for it, but find it has become too obvious to be ignored. They leave out government, but maybe that goes without saying.  (20 minutes)

Our internet came back while we were at church this morning. It took much longer to be restored than power did, but I know which one is more important! I was also impressed that it came back without our intervention—we didn't even have to reboot the modem. We weren't suffering, just burning through data by using my phone as a wi-fi hot spot, so it's good to have the house wi-fi back.

Our water supply has been fine throughout, but since the beginning the city has asked residents to cut down on our water use (read: don't flush so much, take short showers, limit laundry), and we're still doing that. We have a wonderful sewage treatment program that produces water that's good for irrigation and washing cars, and it's so popular they still have to limit its use during times of drought. But these are not times of drought, and when the big storage tank is full, it is full, and the overflow goes into the Little Wekiva River. It's perfectly safe—except that the last thing the overflowing Little Wekiva needs is more water.

Here's a video Porter took early this morning, showing both that the flood waters have receded considerably and that they still have a long way to go. To reiterate: this is not our street, but a couple of blocks away.

In between all of the cleanup (which for us is a LOT less than it might have been), we've ventured out a few times: Friday, to Outback for dinner with our neighbors; Saturday morning to church to help clean up the campus (Porter), Saturday afternoon to one of our very favorite museums, the Morse in Winter Park. There we encountered our first evidence of flooding outside of our neighborhood: nothing that hindered our travel, but water was bubbling up through a manhole on one street. Today was a completely normal Sabbath, except that the choir may have spent a little more time than usual exchanging stories.

I've said for a long time—at least since Porter had a job in New Orleans after Hurrican Katrina went through—that you never know what kind of leadership you have until hard times come. It's like insurance: it doesn't matter who your company is, or what kind of policy you have—as long as you don't need to make a claim. I'm very pleased by how our local government and utilities responded in this crisis.

WE HAVE POWER!

It actually took us a little while to realize that power had been restored: we have to disconnect from the grid when we connect the generator.  Given what you saw in the video in this post from yesterday, I am very impressed with Duke Energy.  It seems many of us learned a lot from the Year of the Hurricanes (2004).  The infrastruction is more robust, and better response systems are in place.  It's hard to believe we were little more than 24 hours without power.  We've now entered that blissful and blessed period when we have heightened awareness of and gratitude for the amenities we rarely otherwise contemplate.

Speaking of blessings:  We had been anticipating three days, perhaps much more, of miserable, hot, humid weather, with no air conditioning, non-working fans, and un-functional pools.  Instead, Ian brought with it a most amazing respite from the temperatures-still-in-the-90's weather of last week.  It was 63 degrees when we awoke this morning!  Now that the storm is gone, the temperatures are expected to rise again, but only to the 80's for this week and with much lower humidity, they way.

Time to get on to other work.  We're still without internet, and I don't want to overdo the phone wi-fi hotspot usage.

Having watched the sensationalized devastation caused by Hurricane Ian, and seen too much of it even in our own neighborhood, it's time for some good news.

What I love best about hurricanes is that neighbors come out and talk to each other! They're walking around, assessing the situation, they're outside cleaning up, they check in on people, they help each other ... and we re-discover that most people are really nice.

Guess what? Not one person of all those we met on our walks asked us about politics. And absolutely no one asked if we were vaccinated.

I wonder why one kind of emergency (pandemic) makes people nasty, suspicious, and exclusionary, while another (hurricane) brings out the best in us.

We lost power just after I published the last post. Here you can see why we are not expecting restoration any time soon. This is one street downhill from us, houses that back up against the Little Wekiva River, which in this storm shattered by 12 inches its previous crest record of 30'.

You can see how these people will not be expecting mail delivery today. (In theory the mail is being delivered to our zip code, but I'm not holding my breath for it.) You can see that the electrical box is not in any shape for carrying current. And if you look on both sides of the house, you can see where the Little Wekiva River is pouring into the street, aptly named Little Wekiva Road. In a previous update I was hard on the engineers who designed the expensive improvements that were supposed to fix the Little Wekiva Road problem, and I still fault them, since this road floods even during normal storms. But no road construction, no drainage improvements, can handle the sudden influx of a river that overflows its banks. I heard an official on television blaming past developers who built houses in a flood zone, and past governments that allowed it. But we've been here more than 35 years, and although the low-lying parts of the road always flooded some, it was never anything like this. The kids used to ride their bikes through the flood waters without getting wet (if they were clever), and the houses themselves never flooded. My own suspicion is that it is not past, but recent construction that has made the difference, by paving the fields that used to absorb the rainwater.

Be that as it may, a few people in our neighborhood made out badly with Ian. We are without power and internet for an indeterminant period; we have a pool enclosure screen panel to replace; and we haven't had a chance to inspect the roof for damage, but all in all we have nothing to complain about.

I had been looking forward to an enforced time when we wouldn't have much to do but sit around and read—I have just finished Brian Jacques' Martin the Warrior and am eager to devour Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying's A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century—but that time came in the middle of the night when we were trying to sleep. Now it is (almost) life-as-usual. Except a bit darker, and we both reflexively flick on the lights as we enter each room.

Ian is now officially a tropical storm. It has passed southeast of us, but still hasn't reached the coast; it's creeping along at 7 mph. "Passed" is perhaps not the right word, because this morning we are experiencing the same winds and rain we had all night. We are officially under a "tropical storm warning" instead of a "hurricane warning," but only the name has changed.

It wasn't the most peaceful of nights, but that doesn't stop us from being grateful for what sleep we had. Quick checks in the middle of the night and this morning revealed no obvious damage inside, and what little we could see of the outside (in the dark, from inside) looked pretty good. All night we heard the sounds of small branches landing on our roof; we learned long ago that they sound a lot bigger than they really are. Waving tree branches frequently set off our neighbors' motion-sensor floodlight, waking us up to let us know we still had power—not altogether a bad thing. And we received full assurance that our weather radio works just fine, producing a sound piercing enough to wake us thoroughly.

I would, however like to make a few suggestions for the service's software. (1) It is not really necessary to wake us at 3:17 to inform us of a flash flood warning until 6:15 a.m., then again at 3:25 to extend the warning to 6:30, then at 4:50 to let us know it's now in place until 6:45, and at 5:42 extend it to 8:15, and at 5:51 to tell us that the endpoint is still 8:15. We know it's going to be like that all morning; why not just say "till noon" and be done with it? (2) We want to know upgraded warnings (e.g. tropical storm to hurricane, or watch to warning) right away. Feel free to wake us up. But if you're downgrading the warning (e.g. hurricane to tropical storm), that news can wait till most people are awake. 

At the moment, we still have power, for which we are beyond thankful. There are a lot of people nearby who don't, however, and we remember that with previous hurricanes, the outages have come after the storm has passed. So we remain hopeful, but cautious.

What we don't have is internet. I'm posting this while using my phone as a mobile hotspot. Spectrum says, "An outage is affecting your Spectrum services. We're working quickly to restore your service." That notice hasn't been updated since eight o'clock last night, however.

We did get an update last night about our Cape Coral folks: significant damage to yard and porch, but the house was okay and so were they.

One of the newscasters we heard yesterday emphasized the importance of helping children feel a sense of adventure during events like this, rather than overwhelming them with adult concerns. He's right. It's up to the adults to model the calm reactions and coping skills that build resilience in children. When I was growing up, blizzards and winter power outages were fun! Clearly not for my parents, who had to deal with keeping the family safe and warm, cooking on a camp stove, worrying about frozen water pipes, and cleaning dirty cloth diapers. But they made it an adventure for us.

We remain grateful for your prayers, and to all those who expressed concern for our well-being. So far, so good.

I normally don't like watching TV coverage of hurricanes, because it is always sensationalized and apparently calculated to evoke panic.

But today was different.

We watched quite a bit of news of various channels, and I was actually impressed by the coverage I saw on our local ABC affiliate, WFTV Channel 9.  Maybe they've learned that in an era when hype and panic are in the air we breathe, the only way to get people's attention is to be calm and reasonable.

The winds are picking up a bit, though the rain is still light (at least for Florida). We both made a point of getting a shower in while we still have hot water; similarly a wash and a dishwasher load are in progress. Not that either machine is full, but it's a good instinct to keep more than normally current with cleaning at such times. The lights did flicker once while I was in the shower, so it is none too soon to get those done.

Mostly we're puttering around now; there are always things that a hurricane (like a pandemic) is a good excuse to work on. Our neighborhood was on the 6:00 news, not for what has yet happened, but for what is anticipated. There are a couple of sections that flood badly in ordinary Florida storms, and were a major disaster last hurricane. The really annoying part is that the city spent an incredible amount of money to fix the problem, and as far as I can tell it is worse than ever. As Bret Weinstein said about his beloved city of Portland, Oregon (rough paraphrase): Taxes are not theft. Taxes are the price we pay for services that we want from our government. But collecting the taxes and withholding the services—that's theft.

Anyway, so far, so good, but the eye of Ian is still far away. I keep hearing small branches fall onto our roof—may they stay small!

The other concern is tornadoes, which are often spawned by hurricanes. We've been under a Tornado Watch since 5 a.m.—may it never turn into a warning!

I just learned that we are now considered to be in the "27-inch zone" for rainfall! May it never ... you get the picture. Ian is moving s-o s-l-o-w-l-y—just 7 mph at the moment—and is expected to take eight hours to go from Kissimmee to Daytona Beach (about 75 miles). That is the crux of the problem.

We have no news about our folks in Cape Coral; we're not close enough to be on an update list, and so must get news second- or third-hand.

Unless something noteworthy happens, My next update will be in the morning.

I have been negligent in posting Hurricane Ian updates, perhaps because our preparations have been slow and methodical over time, and perhaps most of all because until recently it didn't seem to be that much of a threat to us. Now that is changed, and I find people looking here to keep an eye on us, so here we go.

This is the past and predicted path as of noon today.

It doesn't pay to fret too much about a hurricane when it's still days away, because the models always change. We thought we would be mostly in the clear because it was predicted to hit land far north of us, and at nothing worse than a Category 1. How things change over time! Now it's about to hit Cape Coral as very nearly a CAT 5, and follow Interstate 4 right across the state. Very much like Hurricane Charley, which was a CAT 1 by the time it got to us, though Charley was much smaller and moved much faster. Ian is HUGE.

We're pretty much ready, having prepared, as I said, over time. Thanks to COVID, we didn't need to make any panicked grocery store trips. We even have toilet paper. The generator works. We have gasoline for the generator and in our cars. The freezers are organized and filled with both food and frozen jugs of water. We've brought in "flight risk" items from outside and our back porch, including the picnic table—you never know. Porter climbed on the roof to bring down our wind chimes. We have batteries; our phones, power blocks, and computers are charged. We've lowered the water level of the pool to accommodate the coming rain. Oh, yes, I still have to make my customary walk through the house taking pre-hurricane pictures. As soon as I post this.

Did I mention rain? We have had light rain off and on all day; we started feeling Ian's effects yesterday, well before landfall. We've had weeks of rain, so the ground is already totally saturated, leaving little room for the "up to 24 inches" expected before Ian is done with us. I'm grateful that our big trees are live oaks, which have deep and sturdy roots! They also tend to protect us by breaking up the wind. On the other hand, they have branches that may or may not stand up to the winds that we are expecting. I'd much rather have the trees than not; we're also counting on our abundant foliage to help protect our windows from flying debris.

Flooding is a big concern here, but not for us, as long as we don't want to go anywhere. We live on what passes for a hill in this part of Florida, though the rest of you might not even notice the elevation change.

That's about it for us, for now. I'll try to check in here occasionally, to keep loved ones updated and for my own records. The center of Ian is expected to arrive mid-morning tomorrow, but the serious effects will begin much sooner; indeed they have already started not far from here. As I said, just light rain for us, but some places in Central Florida are already without power, having seen some significant winds.

Right now I'm more concerned for our friends in Cape Coral. The first predicted path I saw showed the then-unnamed storm coming ashore there as a hurricane, but after that the forecast changed radically to the north. Turns out the original prognosticator was the better one.

A liberal Democrat Constitutional lawyer speaks on why everyone should be concerned about illegal behavior on the part of the FBI, and why he's involved in a lawsuit against "his own" party's actions. The video is long (26 minutes), and more relevant at the beginning than the end. You can get a good summary at about minutes 13-17. Or just this:

The Constitution is not only for people you agree with; it's primarily designed to protect people you disagree with, people whose views are out of fashion, people who everybody wants to see prosecuted.... I'm going to especially, especially, focus on people who are having their Constitutional rights violated by my political party, by my people who I voted for ... that's the special obligation that every citizen has to hold to account those who are on your side.

Also, look at about minutes 5-10, covering search warrants, and the dangers of having our whole lives on our cell phones. One day, out of the blue, we may find government officials seizing our phones, and our computers, and our external drives, ruining our businesses and even our lives in ways that cannot be redressed, even if we are eventually vindicated in court. So it behooves us to be grateful for those lawyers and politicians who seek to enforce strict Constitutional limits on when and how that is allowed—even against the most heinous people. (Cue the A Man for All Seasons devil and the law speech.)

Also, who knew (about 8:30-9:15) that it's safer—from the point of view of privacy—to store medications in a medicine cabinet rather than in a drawer?

It's time for another in my series of YouTube channel discoveries. I resent the amount of time it takes to get information out of the video/podcast format, but it's so popular these days that it has become a major source for interesting and helpful information. So I'm unapologetically recommending another video channel: Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying's DarkHorse Podcast. That link is to their podcast website, but I usually watch it via their two YouTube channels: Full Podcasts, and Clips. Full podcasts are long. Very long. They would be great on a car journey, not so much in everyday life, unless you have a lot of work to do that doesn't require much thinking. I can fix dinner while listening to a podcast, but I sure can't write a blog post. Clips, on the other hand, are much shorter (maybe five to twenty minutes). Focussing on clips means I miss good insights, but giving in to Fear of Missing Out is a pathway to madness.

I've mentioned Bret and Heather before, in my Independence Hall Speech post, so it's about time I gave them their due. I must also give due credit to the good friend who introduced me to DarkHorse, as well as to Viva Frei, and remained patient with me even though it was at least a year later before I finally got around to checking them out.  Thank you, wise friend.  (There's but an infinitesimal chance he'll actually see that, but still, credit where credit is due.)

By way of introduction, the following quotes are from their DarkHorse Podcast website:

In weekly livestreams of the DarkHorse podcast, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying explore a wide range of topics, all investigated with an evolutionary lens. From the evolution of consciousness to the evolution of disease, from cultural critique to the virtues of spending time outside, we have open-ended conversations that reveal not just how to think scientifically, but how to disagree with respect and love.

We are scientists who hope to bring scientific thinking, and its insights, to everyone. Too often, the trappings of science are used to exclude those without credentials, degrees, or authority. But science belongs to us all, and its tools should be shared as widely as possible. DarkHorse is a place where scientific concepts, and a scientific way of thinking, are made accessible, without diminishing their power.

We are politically liberal, former college professors, and evolutionary biologists. Among our audience are conservatives, people without college educations, and religious folk. We treat everyone with respect, and do not look down on those with whom we disagree.

Needless to say, I often disagree with them—sometimes strongly—but more often I find their insights at least reasonable. And it is always interesting to listen in on their conversations. I take great pleasure in hearing smart people interact with each other—assuming they're polite, which Bret and Heather always are. It's also particularly satisfying in the rare circumstances when I find I know something that these highly intelligent people, with much greater knowledge than I, don't. I love living in Florida, at least in its current free-state situation, but I've never gotten over the loss of the intellectual stimulation that came with having the University of Rochester within walking distance.

I find DarkHorse so diverse and absorbing that it's really hard to limit myself to three examples here. But you can always check it out for yourself. Here are a couple of hints: Bret and Heather's speech is measured enough that I can hear it at 1.5x speed, and Porter can manage 2x. I prefer not to speed it up, but it is a time saver. An ever greater help with the full podcasts is that, once the livestream is over and the video is set on YouTube, you can hover your mouse over places along the progress bar and see where a particular subject begins and ends. I sure wish more long videos would provide that information.

Warning: Objectionable language occurs, though rarely, in the DarkHorse Podcasts.

Multi-age education (11 minutes)

When science is not science (9 minutes) 

Wikipedia redefines recession (19 minutes)

I'll close with some advice from their website, which makes me smile every time I read it.

Be good to the ones you love,
Eat good food, and
Get outside.

Some people are fascinated by large numbers; others just tune out when they see them.

Many people don't trust the statistics from the Centers for Disease Control. Me? I don't trust their proofreaders. How else to explain this, from one of their vaccine safety updates:

CDC has verified 131 myocarditis case reports to VAERS in people ages ≥5 years after 123,362,627 million mRNA COVID-19 booster vaccinations

In case you are one of those whose minds go on strike in the presence of large numbers, that's over 123 trillion vaccine boosters. More than 15,000 boosters for every person on the planet. Put another way, if, instead of getting a shot, each person boosted "according to the CDC" contributed twenty-five cents, a mere quarter, the entire national debt of the United States would be paid off.

Foolish speculations over an "obvious" error? I don't think so. If we don't pay attention to numbers, we will make mistakes, some of them fatal. Bridges will collapse. People will be killed by medications that should be life-saving. Bombs will land in the wrong places. Citizens will be misled. Disastrous policy decisions will be made.

If I can't trust the "123,362,627 million" part of the sentence, what makes me think I can trust the "131" part?

Numbers matter. Accuracy matters.