Texas Jeff

In 1800, every elector got two votes. They were both votes for President. Whoever got the most votes was President, 2nd place got VP and a set of steak knives, 3rd place was you're fired. Very GlenGarry. Jefferson and Burr ran together as Democrat-Republicans against the incumbent Federalists. It was the first election with presidential tickets. All of the Jefferson/Burr electors voted for Jefferson and Burr. The plan was to give Jefferson one more vote, making him president and Burr VP. Somehow the plan did not work and they tied. This threw the election in the House of Representatives, where each state got one vote. They voted again and again but Jefferson kept getting 8 of 16 votes and he needed 9 to win. On the 36th ballot he got 10 and won the election.

Small clarification that may be obvious ... that paper thing is not a receipt, it is your ballot. At least in Travis County, all the voting booth is doing now is presenting your choices on a touchscreen and transferring your choices to paper. Once you get the ballot back with the choices on it, you must put it in the machine at the exit for your vote to be scanned and counted. I voted at the Austin Rec Center near House Park and it was really well run. Everyone got a finger condom to put on before you signed in and a popsicle stick to use on the touchscreen. Looks like Travis County is going for big gyms as voting places rather than small rooms and there were plenty of machines to use to mark your ballot. The average age of the poll worker was down about 50 years. There was no wait and no line to vote.

I think (going off memory) there are a number of east side schools that are around half full, even with 100% attendance ... although I do believe there are probably east side campuses that need more space because of COVID. Some campuses are closed because they are being rebuilt as new schools. Maybe they need to keep the old schools open for a year to use the space. Schools like O'Henry and Austin High already have sizable transfer populations from east side attendance zones, they are not just west Austin kids.

If they do that, it would be a lot cooler if it was a statewide effort. Or just the major metros doing it in sync. I would like to see the science behind a 35 day shutdown rather than 14 day or 21 day or other intervals. For example, what do they expect to happen and can we measure against that to see what does happen, to inform future shutdown decisions. A planned shutdown of a fixed duration seems less disruptive than the reactionary closings and the date-driven reopening we tried before. I give the city council a lot of grief for decisions I don't like, but at least they are trying to turn the dials they have.

I think you're dead on with the house parties. I now know folks that have COVID and the story is often that they went to some social gathering and one person had COVID, now half or most of the people that went to the party have it. I haven't heard any stories, from people I know, that they randomly got it from an unknown source.

Trying to get back on topic, what is the Surly consensus on Texans' behavior during the July 4th holiday? YOLO or be careful out there? What did you see and how did it compare to Memorial Day? I only went to grocery stores, it was a pretty lame holiday weekend. But I saw 100% masks when there and employees manning the door to check for masks.

Fun fact: The first day of the movie is April 6, 1917 ... which is the day that America entered the war.

Sideline Warning Jesus

Some thoughts on the Eyes of Texas: Sinclair wrote a poem before he wrote a song. These lines from the poem: The eyes of Texas are upon you. They’re with you all the way. Were changed to these lines for the song: The eyes of Texas are upon you. You cannot get away. The poem ends with the lines: Vandyke brown, vermillion, sepia, Prussian blue, Ivory black and crimson lac, and eyes of every hue. UT has the original poem on a scrap of paper, complete with hand written edits. Sinclair thought enough of it to keep it and somehow it ended up in the archives. I think, if we jettison the song, it is unlikely that we will ever have something like it that unifies the community. I travelled around the SWC in the 1980s and heard a lot of forgettable alma maters. Before the game, we would play the Eyes of Texas and you could see how many Texas fans were at the game by looking for the horns up. And then, the home announcer would say "please turn to page 46 in your program or direct your view to the scoreboard for the words, and sing along with the band as they play our alma mater". And we would laugh at a school where the alumni did not know the alma mater and they had to put words up on the scoreboard. The home band would play some lame tune and the game would begin. "Oh we love our school it is the best we will always be true to thee". That will likely be us. The players, the larger Black community, and everyone else who was offended have the power to find forgiveness, if they want to, and advocate to change the lyrics to be more inclusive. If they find value in what we have, they have the power to say that what happened was wrong and everyone else has the power to say we are sorry for what happened. We all have the power to be more inclusive every day. But maybe the offense is too much and the song can't be saved. If so, I understand. I hope we can find an inclusive middle ground. Maybe it is there and maybe it is not.

I've got a rising high school junior, so I'm focused on the high school experience. I give teachers a pass on the past spring because they were thrown into it. However now that we've had some time to prep I expect more this fall. Specifically, I would like them to provide direct instruction via zoom for at least part of each classroom period, meaning some kind of lecture, class discussion or some direct interaction and guidance. A lot of teachers in the spring just provided video links and offered office hours. Some videos are OK, like links to math videos to back up what a teacher presented in class. But videos need to supplement learning and not be the primary source of learning. The kids need to have an assigned time to show up for "class" and have some interaction with a teacher and fellow students. After direct instruction, I would like teachers to provide some kind of assignment or activity for the kids to do. Some reading or a problem set or something that can be graded. Give the kids something to accomplish ... at least one thing to do per class per week. And I would like the teachers to grade at least some of the work and provide the kids with feedback. Lots of work today is graded for completion without much feedback, which means some kids turn in poor work and just get a checkmark if something was submitted, even if that something is completely wrong. The kids need to know if they are on track or not on track to master the material. Many high school kids have four classes per day, two before lunch and two after in a long-format "block". I am not asking teachers to keep the kids in a zoom session all morning and all afternoon, but maybe two hours in the morning (one per class), and two more in the afternoon would be enough. That is a four-hour school day. The rest of the time could be used for assignments. Many of these kids have had their extracurriculars put on hold, which sucks socially, but they have more time now for the core subjects than they ever have. I recognize that these are tough times to teach, but school in the spring was not much. It needs to be more rigorous. Some class-time instruction, some homework, and some feedback would be good for now, but it needs to be more than it was.

No they have not and yes they would need a state app. Apple provided sample code for the app and Google provided a sample server, just had to wire it all together. Texas said not so fast my friend....

I assume those are the numbers for Travis County ... if not I apologize. They line up pretty close with the Travis County data. Look at the numbers for the Asian population. They represent 7.2% of the Travis County population yet in your table they represent about 1.1% of all cases. Travis County's website shows the Asian population at around 2% of all cases so far. Mask wearing in the Asian population is more acceptable and a normal way of dealing with outbreaks. I would expect that this population has been wearing masks here in Travis County more than the general public. And their numbers are lower. I am sure there are other factors at play. That is good news. It is some evidence that if we all wear masks, we can dramatically reduce our case counts.

For those of you discussing segregation, there's a map that shows racial identity in America, along with density, by plotting one dot for every person. Here's what it looked like for the 2010 census: https://demographics.virginia.edu/DotMap/index.html

If you check out healthweather.us, they are showing that this outbreak may be centered right now around Austin/San Antonio, the hill country, and areas going south down to the border and coast. Those areas of Texas are showing higher temperatures than the rest of the state. DFW and Houston show elevated temps but not as bad as central and south Texas. Texas as a whole is "hotter" than the surrounding states, indicating more illness.

Me too, they are a nation of rule followers... however... Cases from yesterday among various Texas counties and the Federal Republic of Germany: Travis: 636 Dallas: 570 Bexar: 495 Hidalgo: 402 Tarrant: 393 Friggin' all of Germany: 371 El Paso: 284 Nueces: 188 Williamson: 169 Hays: 117 Harris: 113 They don't have the COVID. BTW, Friggin' all of Italy put up 126 cases yesterday. Still more than Hays, but better than WilCo.

A valid argument there are currently small states, I acknowledge that. I just don't want more of them. Vermont and New Hampshire could be combined and I would be fine with that. I wonder what the maximum ratio of big state population to small state population was in 1789. Was any ratio as high as some of the ones we have today?

Easier to look at 7 day averages and it's not pretty: Today's 7 day average for Travis Co: 322 cases with a 636 on the scorecard for today. 7 days ago: 238 14 days ago: 121 21 days ago: 61 28 days ago: also 61, pretty much flat between 50-60 going back to mid-April Basically up 5x in about three weeks after a really long plateau.

The DC residents should have some ability to vote for representation and similar control over their future that I have. Joining Maryland makes sense to me ... or maybe giving them a rep and allowing them to vote in Maryland's Senate elections, although I can't claim to understand the politics of the area. However, I'm not sure statehood is fair to many of the rest of us. Austin has a million residents and no serious influence in the Senate. Texas citizens have one senator per 14,000,000 people and DC would have one senator per 350,000 people, a ratio of 40:1. Solve the Senate problem and it's a lot more reasonable to me. Without that solution it seems like DC would go from no representation to an outsized influence.

I was a kid during the Carter administration, but I rememberer how the Iranian hostage crisis just took over the news during an election year and whatever Carter tried, it didn't work. Most Americans were not affected day to day, but there were yellow ribbons everywhere supporting the hostages. Ted Koppel had a show after the local news (which became Nightline) with "Day XXX" as the headline and news of the crisis, which after a while wasn't much news at all. At first it was Day 20 and later Day 50 but by the time it was Day 300 it sucked. There was also economic trouble, with high inflation and high interest rates. Times were uncertain. This feels to me like a worse version of those times. Now we are all affected by the shutdown and maybe less than a month away from real sickness and maybe death. A lot of us are out of work, or a paycheck or two away from real trouble. Reagan beat Carter, scared the crap out of the Iranians and the hostage crisis was over. It was a turning point for America; after a year of gloom we had a happy day. The economy turned around by 1983. By 1987 we were all talking about "greed is good" and Wall Street. I'm not glorifying Reagan, he blew up the deficit and got us on track to more and more debt. But he did scare the crap out of Iran, I remember that. But I think Trump is toast, using the 1980 election as a reference. Carter tried and failed to solve his crisis and it took a change in leadership to do that. Trump seems to not be seriously working on solving his crisis; it won't be solved by his administration. America will want to turn the page. Unfortunately Biden can't just scare the crap out of coronavirus.

Sorry if I upset you, I wrote "health care workers" originally and changed it to "health care heroes" because y'all are on the front lines taking risks, trying to save folks and learning how to do it better on the fly. Didn't mean to offend...

Comparing today's Travis County new cases to new cases for today in various European countries: 1. UK: 1221 2. Travis County, Texas: 506 3. Germany: 359 4. Spain: 334 5. Poland: 311 6. Portugal: 292 7. France: 284 8. Italy: 224 Wear a mask people, jeez....

Yesterday in Travis County was the first day over 400 cases, today is the first over 500. Sundays are usually low numbers. The last three Sundays in Travis County: * June 7: 35 cases (this was a pretty low day...) * June 14: 84 cases * June 21: 506 cases Yikes...

Just curious, what effects are you seeing regarding the seasonality of the virus and why do you think that is happening? Mortality does seem to be dropping. Some possible causes I have considered are the higher temps, the higher intensity of sunlight and more hours of sunlight, and behavior patterns in the summer vs in the fall (at the beach vs stuck in school). Hopefully our health care heroes are just getting better at treating this or maybe viral loads aren't as high because of masking/hand washing/distancing. Hopefully the decline in deaths is not seasonal, but I'm interested in thoughts on what might be causing the summer decline in deaths.

SafeGraph's COVID numbers, which track cell phone movement, show a bottom both nationally and in Texas around June 9th. Since then people are staying home a little bit more than before, but the trend is only slightly upward. It is a small effect so far but at least it is trending in a good direction. Hopefully people are getting the message and becoming a bit more cautious. If lower mobility translates to lower cases, we might see a peak in reported cases in Texas maybe 15-22 days (a pure guess) after the bottom in mobility, or somewhere between June 24th and July 1st.