Greetings once again from 53.5° north latitude. This was the first week of several where most of the population is working from home or otherwise isolated. My parents haven't talk to anyone in over two weeks now; our entire family spends nearly the entire day in our house; businesses are either offering curbside pickup or are completely shut down. It is hard to believe it has only been a week, and that the week before that was the real start of the preparation. Our family seems to be handling the close proximity and change of schedule well so far, but there are several weeks of this to come. Economy and COVID: As I mentioned last week, the economy is reeling from the shutdown stores and businesses and the hits to the global supply chain. Of particular interest to Albertans, whose economic well-being is nearly inseparable from the oil and gas sector, the price of oil continues to fall. Take a look at the next two graphics, and see if you can tell the difference between a barrel of Western Canadian Select crude and a Starbucks Iced Cocoa Macchiato. Now I've never tasted either but I assume the Starbucks drink is more appealing to the palate. But even more disturbing that the thought of drinking crude oil, at least in terms of the Alberta economy, is that on Friday the Starbucks Macchiato cost more than a barrel of crude oil from our province. The impact to Alberta cannot be overstated. Common wisdom is that conventional oil in Alberta costs about $40 per barrel to produce. The provincial budget for 2020 forecast oil to be at around $58 per barrel. A fifty dollar differential is the difference between having social programs that the government is looking to radically overhaul and not having any social programs at all.. We have already seen calls from US President Trump to "restart" the US economy, citing concerns that America “cannot” let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” I am certain that there are grave economic concerns in the US, but I doubt that the combined impact of COVID and low oil prices has a bigger impact in any jurisdiction in the US than it does in Alberta. So far, Alberta politicians have not called for economic considerations to take precedence over public health considerations. So far. ![]() New Beers: With that news, I am impressed that I only had one new beer this week. I have posted about Collective Arts previously and I contend that they are one of the best breweries in Canada. It was with this pedigree in mind that earlier this week I tried their Lunch Money American Blond. A handsome looking beer in a beautiful can, so everything started out well. Unfortunately, this beer doesn't stack up with the rest of the Collective Arts lineup and was pretty generic stuff. It wasn't poorly done, but didn't have much to keep me interested. (3.0 / 5) On a different note, I received the "Here's To You (Level 5)" badge from Untappd, signifying five years of logging my beers on that site. In those five years, I have logged 645 unique beers or an average of one new beer every 2.84 days. Since my first post on this site one year ago, I have logged 111 new beers or an average of one every 3.35 days. My beer consumption is going down, and at this rate, I'll never meet my personal quest of drinking one of every beer in the world. New Words:
Very little reading this week, so only a single new word. lenticular [lenˈtikyələr] ADJECTIVE
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And what a week it was.
Greetings from 53.5° north latitude. We are still in the throes of winter with temperatures well below normal, and with lots of snow and ice on the ground. Most years that would be enough to qualify for making a bad week, but of course this year is different. We have now finished our first week after shit-got-real, with school closures, store closures, transit service decreases, and more.
There is definitely an impact to us locally, with 226 confirmed cases in Alberta and one death. The measures we are taking will hopefully limit the spread at best and at worst will flatten the curve so that our healthcare system can get through the presumed massive numbers of people who will require hospitalization.
What we of course want to prevent is the absolute terror of the situation in Italy. As I planned this week's entry over the past few days, I wrote myself a note that said: "Italy on track to have more COVID deaths than China." That milestone was passed on Friday and now two days later, Italy has greatly surpassed China. Looking back at what I posted last week, there have been 45 deaths in China in the last week, but a staggering 3,016 deaths in Italy. To put that into perspective, there have been almost as many people die in Italy IN THE LAST WEEK than have died in China since the start of this outbreak.
As has been reported in multiple media [1, 2], Italy is a well-developed country with excellent hospitals and healthcare, but the massive volumes are crushing the system. The virus is undoubtedly deadly but the compound effects of a crippled healthcare system are even more frightening. Measures being taken here in Alberta to ensure there is capacity in the hospitals include postponing elective and scheduled surgeries and opening drive-through assessment centers, The steps we take now can hopefully shield us from what Italy is experiencing and what China experienced.
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It is important to understand that Italy is not the only country in trouble right now. Reported cases are spiking in Spain and the US as you can see on the image above, and Spain is warning that the "worst is yet to come". There is an extensive lockdown in Spain right now, much more than what we are experiencing.
Even measures as strict as what Spain are instituting might not be enough though. The Washington Post opened the story that image came from with a warning from the World Health Organization saying that "such measures alone are not sufficient" and "that the disease could jump back after movement restrictions are lifted."
And then there is the impact to the economy. All those store closures, and the impact to the global supply chain that Harvard Business Review predicted at the end of February, is killing economies around the world. The Indicator from Planet Money is only talking about COVID-related indicators and stories now, and their episode on Friday was particularly telling. The Indicator is a pretty light economics show, much more so than EconTalk or even Freakonomics so I don't expect major pronouncements or severe warnings on the show. On Friday however, co-host Cardiff Garcia said he was "terrified" of the impact to small business. His economic indicator for Friday's episode was that most small businesses only have 27 days of cash flow. After that, they have to shut down. To prolong their survival past 27 days, they could cut costs but that means more people unemployed, which means less money circulating in the economy, which means less spending, which means more impact to the economy. The question then is to forecast how big the impact will be to the economy of a country. If the analysis from Goldman Sachs is accurate, the US economy is set to shrink by 24%. Think about that. A quarter of the economy of the United States, the largest economy in the world, will be gone. A quarter. I don't have any more words to describe this.
With all of that, with the impact to the entire world and the global economy, we humans still find a way to hate each other instead of pulling together. Some of it is overt, and some of it is more subtle, but none of it is good.
Less problematic if only because of his much smaller presence and influence was Scott Adams' use of the #WuFlu hashtag in his daily podcast updates. To be fair to Adams, he stopped using #WuFlu hashtag a week ago, and he only stopped calling it coronavirus for a few days. but for days he did paint the virus with a particular epithet that could only inflame some people and insult other.
Why come out now after weeks of coverage and call it the "Chinese Virus" or #WuFlu? What is the benefit of tagging this pandemic to a country or a people? I should listen to all of Adams's recent podcasts to see if there is a hint on why the changes were made.
I will leave you with some good news. My friend Tomas highlighted this list of organizations that are doing things to support employees, customers, and people in general, from paying hourly workers even if they are sick, to companies opening up their paywalls to offer content for free. Thanks to Scott Monty for coordinating this work.
New Beers:
I can imagine many of my non-existent readers remotely verbally lambasting my decision to post about the new beers I have had in the past week. The end is nigh, and this yahoo wants to talk about beer?! I get it. My (tongue-in-cheek) personal goal to drink one of every beer in the world is trite and silly, but it was never meant to be anything more than that. I came up with what I thought was a catchy phrase and I've been using it for five years when I talk about beer. That's all it is meant to be, and that was something that was interesting and important to me in the past. And that's why it is so important now. The world is different, but that doesn't mean we have to give up on everything. In fact I would argue that we have to hold on to what we had and still have to anchor us and get us through our isolation, our fear, and our anxiety. Recognizing what we have, being content with who we are and what we have, and living in the moment are some of the greatest goals of philosophers from ancient times to present. It is with that that I unabashedly present to you the new beers I had this week. The first beer was the Prairie Pirate Black IPA from Ribstone Creek Brewery. It was not bad, but had a less texture and taste than I had hoped. I also thought it could have been been hoppier. It was a beautiful looking beer though. (3.25 / 5) The second beer was another Alberta Beer Week collab, this one between Town Square and Sawback out of Red Deer. The Glaze of Glory brown ale was supposed to be full of donut-y flavor, salted caramel, and bacon. I didn't get much of any of those and so was left with just another brown, which is really not a style I like that much. (3.0 / 5). Last up was the Patience Pale Ale from Legend 7. This is the last beer out of a Legend 7 sampler and it unfortunately was my least favorite of the bunch. It was a beer, yes, but wasn't memorable in any way. (3.0 /5)
New Words:
The vocab muscle didn't get much exercise this past week, and I have a vague recollection of having looked up a couple of them in the past. exoteric [ˌeksəˈterik] ADJECTIVE formal
insouciant [inˈso͞osēənt, inˈso͞oSHənt] ADJECTIVE
cornice [ˈkôrnis] NOUN
coterie [ˈkōdərē, ˌkōdəˈrē] NOUN
I took a pause last week mainly to let the impact of coronavirus aka COVID-19 sink in. It is easy to think that there is nothing else to talk about, and that is largely true. However, I am concerned that our new single-minded focus on the urgent will distract us from the important. I wrote the following in early December: The trouble with working incredible hours and having a single-minded focus is that there is no mental capacity for anything beyond the focus of the single-mindedness. My brother-in-law apparently sold his house and moved cities. Vague recollection. A colleague is starting the next round of chemotherapy. Ringing some bells. The new Star Wars movie opens mid-month. Yeah, I think I saw a trailer for that. I wrote that fourteen weeks ago, a couple weeks before the first case of coronavirus was announced. At that time, the single-minded focus was the result of work and a major system deployment. Now a global pandemic is focusing our thoughts to our health and safety, to stockpiling and hunkering down.. ![]() If it is possible to think about this objectively and intellectually, it is really fascinating how COVID-19 is impacting all aspects of our lives, including the mundane and subtle. Think of the new entries into our lexicon as a result of this pandemic, like social distancing. I wonder if 1,000 people in the entire world had spoken that phrase before last month, and just last week, three major media outlets all felt obliged to define it for their readers. Social distancing is too new to make the March 2020 update to the OED, but I suspect that it will be in the June 2020 update. ![]() A quick scan of media is a good way to gauge how much impact any topic has. My podcast feed has been dominated by COVID-19 and what-the-hell-happened-to-the-economy episodes for the last two weeks, and I expect that to continue for the foreseeable future. The data nerd in me is fascinated by good GIS maps and useful data visualizations. The most useful map I have come across for COVID-19 info is the one published by Johns Hopkins University. The combination of geography-based reporting down to the province or state level (for China, US, Canada and Australia) and the day-by-day breakdown of infections is particularly helpful for gaining understanding of how big this really is. But then of course someone has to prey on the chaos and fear, and decides to produce a fake JHU map that downloads malware on to computers. The Hacker News reported on this earlier this week. If you do look for the COVID map, make sure you are going to the official Johns Hopkins site. (You could trust the link I shared above, but your best course of action is to search for it yourself.) In the words of my 12 year-old daughter, "2020 sucks so far." Reading Pile: The "reading" lately has all been almost exclusively podcasts. I won't do a recap on any of the recent episodes because they are all very timely and specific to COVID-19 or the economy and as such have likely very little utility in the future. . As far as actual reading goes, I have fallen terribly behind in my reading clubs for "War and Peace" and "The Count of Monte Cristo". If I don't get back into those two books soon, I fear that I won't be able to get back into a rhythm and catch up with the group. I do have a few books in progress and I hope to get back to them this week. ![]() Last week, I finished a YA novel with my 12 year-old daughter. Book #11 for 2022 was "I, Q: Independence Hall" was a super enjoyable spy novel, full of intrigue and threats of violence, without all of the typical tropey YA garbage about how the adults can't save the world and how the kids are so much smarter than their parents. In the end, the kids are central to the plot - it wouldn't be YA if that wasn't the case - but they aren't invincible and they desperately need the adults to help in certain situations. This is a series with author Roland Smith delivering six novels in six different historically significant settings in the US. I'm not sure if I will read all six by myself, but I will certainly read at least one more with my daughter. New Beers: There were only three new beers in the past fortnight. I am rapidly closing in on my five-year anniversary on Untappd, and in that time have logged 641 unique beers. My pace is for a new beer every 2.84 days, which is down from 2.74 days as noted in my first ever post on this site. The first beer was the Steamworks Pilsner from Steamworks Brewery in Vancover. I found it to be decent but not great, with nice lacing but a bit too much fizz. (3.25 / 5). The next was the Moosehead Grapefruit Radler. It was nice and juicy, and pretty lightweight but that's to be expected in a radler. Good stuff and definitely something to consider for hot summer days. (3.5 / 5) Last up was my second beer from Odd Company. Their Carrot and Blood Orange Sour was good, but definitely not as good as their Mulled Lambrusco that I raved about a couple weeks ago. Still, I think Odd Company is worth looking for based on the first two of their beers that I have tried. (3.25 / 5) New Words:
Not a lot of reading in the past fortnight translates into not a lot of new words. caisson [ˈkāˌsän, ˈkās(ə)n] NOUN
culverin [ˈkəlvərən] NOUN
defile [dəˈfīl, ˈdēˌfīl] NOUN
carabineer car·a·bi·neer | \ ˌker-ə-bə-ˈnir , ˌka-rə- \ (variants: or carabinier) NOUN
caliginous [kəˈlijənəs] ADJECTIVE
Greetings once again from 53.5° north latitude. A few days in San Francisco was a nice change, but I am really finding each trip harder to take. The level of poverty intermingled with the monied and privileged highlights the vast differences between the haves and the havenots. Maybe it is that bad here, or maybe it is just more noticeable there because there is less physical distance between the groups. Or maybe the lack of social supports and safety nets in California and the US more broadly has pushed more and more people into a life of brutal poverty. Beyond the philosophizing instigated by the combination of seeing poverty up close and of participating in a conference with some of the top people in my industry, I was able to finish one book, I tried four new beers, and learned a handful of new words. Let's dive in. Reading Pile: Book #10 for 2020 was Cal Newport's "So Good They Can't Ignore You". This book has the subtitle "Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest For Work You Love". That subtitle contains the most important lesson from the book and is repeated almost ad nauseum throughout the book. Get good at what you do, and give that quality to the world, instead of demanding that the world give you what you want because it matches what you love to do. When put that way, it really highlights how selfish the passion-driven view of life can be if unchecked. ![]() Newport has several other lessons in this book, but they all stem from his personal realization that finding passion prior to finding competence is a recipe for failure, disappointment, and likely even financial ruin. Going the other way, from competence to opportunity and then finally to happiness will take time, which is why the pursuit of passion is so alluring. I can be happy and fulfilled tomorrow, or I can work hard, maybe for years, and then I'll be happy. It isn't surprising that Newport would run into resistance with his theory of happiness because it requires hard work, a lot of time, and the development of an expertise in your vocation. Another point that really impacted me was Newport's focus on deliberate practice. Instead of working on something, really work on it, Push yourself, set ambitious goals, but most of all, focus. Newport argues that those who can focus on their work, art, or skills, are the people that really excel. Practice makes perfect, but deliberate practice will get you to success and ultimately happiness much sooner. New Beers: The first beer was Drake's 1500 Pale Ale. Definitely good with a fair bit of hops, but it was a stereotypical pale ale with not a lot of body or punch beyond that. (3.25 / 5) The second was a collab between two Edmonton breweries, Sea Change and Campio. I have posted about Sea Change a few times on this site, and they produce some solid beers. This was my first Campio though. Campio is the last component of the Albeerta family and that in itself is enough to support Edmonton's newest brewery. The collab in question was the Mandarin Crush Lager, which is another beer that is challenging my dislike for lagers. It is clear that done well, a lager can definitely be worth drinking. This lager in particular had a nice orange aroma but could have used a bit more orange taste. (3.5 / 5) Rounding out the week were smaller samples of two other fruit beers. First was a Grapefruit IPA from 4 Mile Brewing in View Royal, British Columbia. (Where? Here.) Lots of fresh taste with a good pop of hops. Nice stuff. And to round out the week, the Strawberry Fruit Ale from Samuel Smith. Once again, Samuel Smith produced a very good beer. I posted about their Chocolate Stout two weeks ago. This was pretty much the exact opposite of their chocolate stout being a much lighter fruit beer. It had amazing aroma and a very nice taste. A beer that tasted like fruit juice without being syrupy and cloying. Really good stuff. (4.0 / 5) New Words:
Not a lot of new words this week, but the ones I did learn were quite varied. augury [ˈôɡ(y)ərē] NOUN
bier [ˈbir] NOUN
lateen [ləˈtēn, laˈtēn] NOUN
cunctator NOUN(kŭngk-tā′tor)
supernumerary [ˌso͞opərˈn(y)o͞oməˌrerē] ADJECTIVE
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