How To Convince People To Do The Right Thing To Avoid COVID-19 - COVID-19 The Video Game

From The Atlantic:

 "Now the virus has spread to almost every country, infecting at least 446,000 people whom we know about, and many more whom we do not. It has crashed economies and broken health-care systems, filled hospitals and emptied public spaces."

Now reimagine this as a video game with thousands of players online together.  Their goal is to avoid getting infected, keep their grandparents alive, keep hospitals from having to turn people away.

How many rounds would it take for them to figure out they have to self-isolate and wash their hands?

Wouldn't it be better if they could figure this out in a video game instead of real life?

Let's imagine another version of the game, aimed at policy makers.  How many rounds would they have to play to figure out how to keep the virus from spreading.  And how NOT slowing it down will affect the economy and the health care system?

Was there money in the stimulus package for gaming companies?


I'd note also that the use of war metaphors for every crisis tells us more about who we are than it helps solve problems.   This is a natural disaster.  Like with a hurricane we have to avoid the fury of the storm.  We have to avoid hosting the virus.  Going to war with nature is the source of the biggest human problems in the world today - climate change, ocean acidification, species loss, industrial waste caused illnesses, economic disparities, etc.  Finding a sustainable balance within nature is NOT war.

This Corona Virus game is about whether people can cooperate to save themselves and each other from harm and death.

John Oliver Challenges Coal Mogul To a Duel, Mogul Accepts

I was going to use a poker metaphor for this, but a reddit discussion suggested the terms I was going to use - call and raise - are problematic.

A fellow Alaskan blogger posted a youtube video the other day of John Oliver calling out a West Virginia coal king Bob Murray on a number of issues.  I thought it was brilliant the way he has mastered a technique of using humor and visuals (in the Jon Steward model) to take complex issues and explain them simply, without losing the complexity.  In this case it involved

• Trump's hypocrisy about promising and claiming new coal jobs
• Murray's hypocrisy over his concern about coal miner safety
• The first amendment 

In the piece, Oliver tells us that HBO got a cease and desist order telling them to not air the segment and that Murray has sued other media, including the New York Times over something they wrote.  It all sounds very Trumpish (It will be interesting how that word will eventually be defined when it enters the Oxford dictionary).

Today we learn that the threatened law suit has been filed in West Virginia  circuit court.

Here's the offending segment.  Judge for yourself.



HBO and Time Warner have deep pockets, but it is troubling when the very rich use libel and defamation law suit threats to shut down media that criticize them.

I've been threatened twice over posts here. One post about the Alaska International Film Festival which has nothing to do with Alaska except the pictures on its website and a post office forwarding service with an Alaska address earned me a threatening letter from their attorney.  The other got me an email that threatened a law suit.

The first was a bit scary as I had to consider the costs of potential lawsuits as a price of blogging.  While I was adamant about not taking down the post, I did have some difficult days calculating what standing by my post might cost me.   I was lucky to have access to a great attorney who ended the threat with one letter, but others who were threatened by them pulled their posts.   These threats are a real danger to free speech.   Gawker was put out of business by a lawsuit.

Murray seems a lot like Trump in that he can't handle any criticism.  John Oliver does come on very strong, but I'm confident - especially since he knew a lawsuit was likely - that he can document all his claims.

Let's see how far this lawsuit gets.  In this case, the defendants have the resources to fight.  In fact, John Oliver says in the segment that he knows such a suit is coming.  My concern is for smaller media, including individual bloggers, who can be much more easily shut down by the threat of a lawsuit.

NOTE:  I've been listening and reading the news lately with an eye to the percent of articles/segments that focus on conflict.  It's clear that conflict is the bread and butter of news.  Even NPR calls their news articles 'stories.'  At last April's Alaska Press Club conference here, NPR reporter Kirk Siegler  talked about how to create a good story and he identified tension as the second factor after a strong character.

But the constant focus on conflict (or tension) leads to a distorted perception of the degree of conflict in human life compared to the cooperation.  News shows will report the car accidents each day, but not the millions of drivers who used their turn indicators, slowed down to let someone in their lane, and did all the other cooperative activities necessary for freeway drivers to negotiate their way to their destinations.  We all hear daily things like "Two people were shot to death today in a robbery."  But how many times have you heard a newscaster say, "6170 people died today of heart attacks." 

Just as stories of murders far outnumber stories of other kinds of deaths, stories of conflict hugely outweigh stories of cooperation.  And in both cases people's perceptions are grossly distorted so they think of terrorists as a far bigger threat than they really are compared to other causes of death, and to think that conflict is far more common than cooperation.  

So when I post a story like this one that does focus on conflict, I ask myself what are the reasons that this story is worth posting.  Here's what I think is important in this story:

• Oliver's skill in presenting the facts of a complex story in a way that retains the complexity yet is compelling to viewers.  He doesn't dumb it down, he raises the level of his viewers.  It's a model to study and emulate, though without the insults.
• The danger to free speech from very wealthy people who don't like to be criticized.  This threat of lawsuits is very real - particularly for smaller scale journalists than those at HBO.  It's a consequence of the great divide between the very rich - for whom $10 million is pocket change - and the rest of us.  

Obama's Press Conference Message: E PLURIBUS UNUM

Listening to Obama now in his press conference, I think there is one message that he is trying to send:  E PLURIBUS UNUM.  "Out of Many One."

It underlies his answers - which are focused on American values, on things like smooth transition, on following procedures, on minimizing Trump's outrageousness.  "The president still is in transition mode.. . There's a whole different attitude and vibe when you're not in power as when you're in power. . . We have to wait and see how they operate when they are fully briefed on the issues, have their hands on the levers, and have to make decisions."

But lest people miss the message, just look at the camera view of the president at the conference.

Screenshot from White House feed of Obama press conference Dec 16, 2016

Look carefully at the lower right corner of the image.  It's the presidential flag.  E PLURIBUS UNUM fits neatly into the corner of the image.  There is no way that was an accident.  Look at the presidential flag and think about how it has to be folded so that E PLURIBUS UNUM folds so perfectly into the corner of the image.  You'll also notice that much more of the presidential flag is in the image than the American flag.

Image from flagandbanner

As an amateur photographer and blogger, I know that I don't capture that kind of image accidentally.

And if you listen to his comments, he tells us over and over again, in his words and in his tone, that we have to improve the public discourse, that we have to stand together as Americans or foreign nations will exploit our disarray.  We are the strongest nation and that we are the only enemy who can defeat us.


The subtext is the old Pogo message.

Image from here

Officials Shoot Oregon Protestor - What Does The Video Mean?

Officials shot one of the Oregon protesters at a road block.  They've released the video.  Lots of thoughts go through my head. 

Once more, why aren't officers trained in non-lethal restraint and capture? A shooting and a death should be the very last resort.   Cops who kill should be thought of as failing to do their jobs.  But they need better training.   I think of Asian martial arts masters whose training is for self-defense, and who use their control of their bodies to disarm their enemies. But a gun is so much easier. No years of training of the body and the mind.  Just pull a trigger.

I can't help but think - well, white guys get shot too.  But that's not the answer.  No one should get shot except in the most extreme circumstances.  I think the approach to wait things out was good.  Let the cold and the boredom take down the protesters.   The buildings are high priority places, particularly in the winter.  But then, why this?  Where's Zorro with his whip when we need him?  Where are all the Kung Fu masters?

I think of how people watching this who have no sympathy for the protesters, DO have sympathy for other protesters, and vice versa.

I think, in the future, others who see this will think:  if they're just going to die anyway, why not crash into the vehicles and take some cops with them, rather than swerve off into the snow?   Or maybe he thought he'd get around them.   This does counter the report that he was on his knees with his hands held high, but it still doesn't look good.

OK, these are all things that go through my head as I watch the video.  Maybe it only means that a cop, in a high adrenalin situation panicked and pulled the trigger.





The bigger issues are why Americans are angry and divided.  They involve the income disparity in the US.  College grads facing graduation with huge debts that cut down their options.  They need to get a job and pay off the debts.   They have less room to fail.  Of course, that's a luxury that Americans have had - second, third, and fourth chances - that other people around the world don't have. Many don't even have first chances.  

And even those who went into 'sure career' fields, like petroleum engineering, find out that timing is everything.  And it's older folks facing retirement with not much savings.  It's hard working folks who have saved their money who think their success is solely their own doing, who don't see the help they got along the way.  And feel no sympathy for those who didn't have the skills or the will power or the luck to retire financially comfortable.  And maybe they've got money, but the pursuit of that money has left many of their family members wounded.

The reports of white males' life expectancy dropping surely tells us something about the fears behind their bravado.

" Mortality rates were 60% to 76% higher than they would have been if the trends of the 1980s and 1990s had continued in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma."

Six of the seven mentioned are in the top ten most religious states.  And six are the six poorest states in the country (Oklahoma is #13.)

Anger and violence breed anger and violence.  Cooperation and generosity require a basic level of self-confidence and trust.  Yet even the most bitter are willing to give their money or their time to help others.

There are no easy answers.  We need to start talking to each other, stop demonizing each other, find common ground.  We need to stop fomenting hate and giving attention to those who do.

Ramble, ramble, ramble.

One thing that I can only hope might come from this video:  Angry white males watching this might, for even an instant, relate to angry blacks watching their sons shot by police.  Though most of the blacks we've seen killed on video last year were unarmed.

Elephants Cooperate, So Do People, Which Is Why I Couldn't Tell You About This Experiment Six Years Ago

From the new* Scientific American (I can only read the intro without paying):

"At the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, tucked away in the trees near Chiang Mai, a pair of Asian elephants gazes at two bowls of corn on the other side of a net. The corn is attached to a sliding platform, through which researchers have threaded a rope. The rope's ends lie on the elephants' side of the net. If only one elephant pulls an end, the rope slides out of the contraption. To bring the food within trunk's reach, the elephants have to do something only humans and other primates were thought to do: they must cooperate. Working in synchrony, each elephant grabs its end of the rope in its trunk and pulls, drawing the platform and the treats within reach."

photo from my April 2009 post

We met Josh Plotnick, the experimenter, in Chiangmai, in 2008.  We went to visit the elephant conservation center in 2009 where we saw his elephants and the experiment he was doing.  But I could only hint back then.  Here's from my first post on the elephant sanctuary in Lampang then:

"JP is a doctoral student doing his dissertation research here at the center. We met him last year and finally got a chance to go out and visit him in the center. His research is very interesting but I was sworn to silence until his work is published."

Here's a link to the second post on the sanctuary which focused on the hospital and nursery.


*It's hard figuring out online what the date of this Scientific American is.  It says, "

Common Sense And Cooperation - Passengers Push Train, Free Man Who Didn't Mind The Gap

That's my spin on this one.  Others might label this stupidity, but I know we all could be in this guy's position.  Others might call it leadership, or low tech wins.

[Pictures are screenshots from the station video of the incident, reported at Perth News. (It's winter in Australia.)

Screenshot from Perth News Video

The video shows the train come in, people get off, people get on, then this guy drops as his leg somehow slips into the gap.  [The year in Hong Kong put the warning "Mind the Gap" indelibly into my brain.]  A passenger calls the guy in the orange vest over.
Then the orange vest guys seem to be talking to the man.  A guy with a backpack and a cell phone hovers around.  Is he talking to a friend?  Emergency people?  Train people?

Having no audio lets you imagine who these people are and what they are saying to the men in the orange vests.

There's a woman - I think - who pantomimes pushing the train.  She's in the dark grey coat.

Screenshot from Perth News Video

Does she work for the train system?  Is she just a passenger?  We don't know.  But then she walks down to the next exit and then all the passengers come out. 

Screenshot from Perth News Video

And then they line up and start pushing the train until the passenger is free.

Screenshot from Perth News Video

His getting loose is obscured by all the people.  It appears they put him on the train.  When the crowd thins, he's no longer there. One of the passengers quoted in the Perth News post is quoted:

"The train moved on its suspension enough for the man to get out from the sticky situation.

“He was walking so he was reasonably OK,” Mr Taylor said.

“He seemed to be a bit sheepish, because right where he fell was the ‘mind the gap’ writing.”

This is what people CAN do.  And I'm sure it was out of a desire to help the poor guy whose leg was caught and not just because they wanted the train to get started again.  (No, I don't think I'm a cynic, I just try to think of as many possibilities as I can.)  I think most of us would help willingly and it's a relatively small, but impactful minority, that keeps the suicide bombers active in Iraq and the violence in Gaza going.

You can watch the whole video at the Perth News website.

Most People Don't See Government Until It Stops Working: Reality Catching Up With Republicans

When government works, for most people, it's invisible.  We drive on government built roads. We (particularly white men) can mostly do our daily tasks without much fear of crime because of police and the courts.  We get clean water out of the faucet and most food is free of immediate health hazards* because of government food inspections.  We can take weather into account in our planning because of the US weather service.  The list goes on and on.

In most cases, it's only when government stops functioning normally, that we notice it.  Street lights are out and potholes don't get fixed.  The water is dirty or stops running at all.  Crime goes up.  And hundreds of things we take for granted can no longer be relied on.

We are approaching the so called Fiscal Cliff - when the Bush tax cuts and automatic sequestration (budget cuts) take effect at the end of the year if no budget deal is worked out by Congress and the President.

There's already been plenty of attention to the fact that Republicans will lose their fight big time if the Bush tax cuts expire.  Not only will taxes go up for the wealthy (which Obama wants but the Republicans don't), but they will go up for everyone.  And Republicans are likely to bear the blame.

But less noticed is the potential effect of sequestration.  When government stops working is when people will start to realize all the things their taxes pay for.  And that's when the fifty year war against government waged by the Republicans will be exposed to all but the most ideologically blinded.  It's then that people will realize how much benefit we get when people cooperate to do those things they can't do as individuals and which the free market can't provide without government help.  Things like public health, public roads, public parks, public safety, public education, utilities like electricity, water, and sewers, and the list goes on and on.  We've already seen what happens when government doesn't play it's role to monitor financial institutions.

When these government services start to disappear and the private sector can't replace them fairly and humanely, people will begin to understand all the things they get because of the public sector and because we share the expenses for our mutual benefit through various fees and taxes.

I'm not saying it's perfect, not by a long shot.  But neither is the private sector.  That's clear to anyone who has flown on any airline lately or had a $30 late fee plus hefty finance charges added to their credit card bill because it was two days late, or was pressured into a no-down payment home loan only to lose their house down the line. Or has seen the pollution left over by unregulated private corporations.

Obama's win, along with the Democrats picking up seats in both Houses of Congress, plus the approval of same sex marriage by voters in three states, was the first Republican ideological balloon to be burst by the prick of reality.

The result of their "Just Say No" legislative strategy now bringing us close to automatic tax hikes,  not just for the rich, but everyone else as well, is the second balloon to soon burst.

And when people start seeing how much their lives have been enhanced by collective cooperation through government - because  these programs will get cut back or disappear  with automatic budget cuts - the third balloon will burst.  They'll see how much that we take for granted exists because of government.  And then the Republican "Government is the Enemy" balloon will burst.

I realize that for many men, competition is everything, and for some, the personal impact of losing is painful enough that they will sacrifice their family and community to not lose.  And the nature of our electoral politics probably means that those who get elected are more competitive than the average.  But if the Republicans can't swallow their pride and say 'uncle,' they will lose more than the Democrats and we will all wake up in a new world in January. 

But Congress can  pass new laws then to start cleaning up the mess.  And the most politically palatable new laws for the Republicans will be tax cuts for those making less than $250,000 a year.  They couldn't possibly hold up those cuts if those above the threshold are excluded, could they? Will they really do this so then they can say they are cutting taxes rather than raising them now?  Just for ego?

And putting money back into the budget will be more difficult, but if they persist in their government scapegoating, they will be known in the future as the party that destroyed the United States. 


*I understand that there are hazards and hazards and that while the government is monitoring traditional food borne diseases, they are less vigilant of long term chemical hazards in our foods.

I also understand that both parties have good and not so good characters and that neither has a monopoly on rightness or stupidity.  But at the present, in my view, the Democrats' models of the world are much closer to how the world really works and Republican stupidity is in greater supply than Democratic.