Crossing the T

 In 1905 in the Battle of Tsushima, the Japanese Fleet demolish the Russian fleet. In 1944 the US Fleet demolish the Japanese fleet in the same move in the battle of Surigao Straits. 

In the most recent event the Russian Cruiser was sunk by a low cost version of this tactic. 

It is worth examining this in the context of Naval warfare.

NJ 2022 04 08

 I thought I would continue with town and county. The state data is useless and the CDC is absurd. 

Here we go. The town prevalence is increasing. Now remember these are all positive PCR tests not home tests which just get lost in the mix. This is one of the continuing gross incompetence steps of the CDC. They should have developed some reporting mechanism. But alas, it is Atlanta.

This is also a troubling chart. The doubling times become critical as they approach 200 days. The town is down to 250. Some are already below 200.

This is the incidence averaged. It is rising again. Is it a new variant or just more break through cases. No clue.

The town doubling by date shows a concern.

Now the following is truly amazing! This is the incidence per PoP. Washington has almost half the population infected! There are five towns over 25%. Almost all are above 15%. This tells us a great deal that they are break through.

This virus will be around for a long while.

The End of MIT

 Thanks to all you Marxists! You have achieved what you set out to do. Now let us see what will happen.

According to The Tech at MIT:

MIT graduate students voted to unionize with the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of  America (UE), Chancellor Melissa Nobles and Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz announced in an email to the MIT community April 6. 75% of 3,823 eligible graduate students voted, with 1,785 students (66%) voting in favor of unionization and 912 students (34%) voting against, according to results announced by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Elections were held on April 4–5 in Walker Memorial’s Morss Hall. The MIT Graduate Student Union (GSU), the primary campaign organizers behind the path to unionization, also announced the win on Twitter. They noted that the “historic victory for student-workers at MIT” was by a “landslide margin” and officially renamed themselves as “MIT GSU-UE.” The GSU attached a photo of their first meeting four years ago where “a dozen students in an MIT classroom” were “discussing the needs of graduate workers.” 

Read carefully the last quoted words. You are now "workers", not students, not researchers, not whatever! You are now both watched by the Dean Commissars and controlled by the Committee of Soviets! You have lost your individuality, a construct dating back to 1328 and William of Ockham and personified in the founding of the United States. 

One should remember the phrase: "workers of the world unite". Well a union for MIT Grad students has created a common group of workers. Beware, you will reap what you have sown.

"What we’ve got here is failure to communicate"

 Back in the per-Divestiture days, say mid 1970s, the Bell System has copper wires and black telephones. The wire supported up to 4 KHz of bandwidth and the repeaters were of the highest quality as were the speakers and microphones on the boat anchor phones. Voice quality was a sine qua non. You could whisper on the phone and the other person could hear unabated.

Along came several new "inventions". The first was speech compression. Namely we were using digital for signal;ling especially on the new cellular networks and we wanted to consume as little capacity as possible. Thus we lost the 4KHz analog to 1.6 Kbps compressed voice, I called it Donald Duck in a can. 

Second along came IP, Internet Protocol, namely we used that for networking and ultimately for direct communications to the end user. IP is great for data but not so great for voice. You see packets traverse at different times and speed. Donald Duck starts to stumble.

Third, the small cell/mobile hone ad horrible microphones and speakers. In addition people would walk and hold them at a distance. In addition Customer Service people had these otherworldly headsets and microphones. mumbling across a compressed IP network.

Now we have to have a conversation where every other word is "what did you say?" or worse, the other person just rambles on incoherently.

So try this in a service where you add a language barrier. You see those codex compression devices were made for standard American English, no Brooklyn English and not Dominican Spanish. 

Thus finally we have speech recognition, a true misnomer. Not only is the speech not recognized but even if recognized the system is not prepared to deal with the answer the caller provides.

I guess the old copper stuff was really good!

Oh yes, then finally add the mask thing!

Inflation!

 Just a note for folks out there. My cable bill just went up 15% per annum! Altice, one of the most incompetent cable companies, in my opinion and my experience, has been upping the bills and reducing the service since they took over from Dolans. In addition as a shareholder I lost 50%+ of share value. They seem to keep ahead of inflation while delivering negative shareholder value. Pity, guess that is what happens when out of country folks control the key infrastructure element.

Diabetes: Crisis or Cause?

 The NY Times notes:

After older people and nursing home residents, no group perhaps has been harder hit by the pandemic than people with diabetes. Experts hope policymakers will take notice, and finally get serious about tackling the nation’s diabetes crisis.

 Type 2 diabetes is a disease most often self induced by obesity. It is akin to cirrhosis of the liver, induced by the excess consumption of alcohol. Obese and morbidly obese people initiate the processes which result in Type 2 diabetes. If such a person would get their BMI below 23 then the T2D goes away. No medicine, no hospital, no costs! Now there are certain cases where the pancreas just does not produce enough insulin no matter what but they are far and few between.

The person seen in the article is morbidly obese and self induced. He had a choice, cut down the calories and get well or continue as he was an just eventually die, after a long and costly illness. 

We examined this phenomenon almost fifteen years ago as new health care plans were being introduced. Yet in the period obesity has exploded. The Government cannot fix this. It is an individual's decision to become and remain obese and thus enter into a T2D state with all the negatives that accompany it.

The Times continues:

But many advancements have been unevenly distributed. The uninsured cannot afford the latest glucose monitoring or insulin delivery devices, and in economically disadvantaged communities with low digital literacy, experts say that doctors are less likely to offer new technologies and treatments to Black and Hispanic patients, even when they are covered by insurance.

The uninsured need look no further than the mirror or even better their waistline.  As we had an anti smoking campaign which over 50 years worked we need an anti obesity campaign. As we had rotting humans resulting from smoking we need the same for obese and morbidly obese people. The cure is free, stop eating so much, get the weight off.