Texas Jeff

Just a guess -- Fauci and Birx told him that yelling blows the corona off the mic -- they're now masked up somewhere in the White House laughing their asses off.

here's what I think I know, but I'm not an expert: It's the first manned launch for this platform, which I think is the first new launch platform since the Space Shuttle in 1982. This gives us the ability to send people to space from our own soil, something we lost when the shuttle was retired. Before this, they flew similar equipment on the Crew Dragon Demo-1 flight, but it travelled unmanned to the space station. Then they had another test flight to prove the emergency escape systems would work. The important step for this flight, named Crew Dragon Demo-2, is to add a two-person crew. There is another flight planned for August called USCV-1, similar mission to this flight except with a full four person crew instead of a two-person crew. After these first flights, there will be more to ferry people to and from the ISS. Boeing is also developing a capsule similar to SpaceX's Dragon for similar missions. The long term plan is to return to the Moon, relearn what we knew how to accomplish circa 1973, and eventually plan a trip to Mars.

C-SPAN2 is showing it. Channel 226 on Spectrum in Austin.

rt.live now has Texas leading the nation. According to them, our R number has risen from 0.83 on April 5th to 1.09 now and we are #1! Texas is one of only five states over 1.0.

Notice that she's standing in the back and not seated in the press area. She's not part of the normal press coverage, she is just standing behind them so that she can be called on to offer up the friendly question of the day. Then the question gets answered with prepared stuff and the press secretary exits stage left.

Forget it, he’s rolling...

Some elementary schools in Austin are around 200 kids in a school built for maybe 600. For example, on the east side you have Sanchez (268 kids) and Metz (212 kids) being combined. Right now all of the kids are at Metz while they build a new Sanchez Elementary from the ground up. Sanchez and Metz are about seven blocks apart. After they build the new school, all of the kids will end up at Sanchez with room to spare. Metz will close, saving maintenance cost on the building. Zavala Elementary, which is four blocks from Metz, will remain open. Class sizes K-4 are limited to 22 or fewer kids, so class sizes will not go up until the 5th grade.

I was referring to the original plan, which was much more of a re-org. I think maybe 12 schools were involved but I can't remember. There was push back and the list was cut down to just four schools. There was a lot of push back against that change. It is really hard to close a school. BTW, I totally support the modernization efforts and I will vote for bonds to support improving Austin ISD schools. They need a lot of work and in many cases, a do-over. There is an issue of under enrolled schools and a lack of efficiency in keeping a building open with low enrollment, especially when it is old and expensive to maintain.

The majority of losses are in the eco-dis population, to charters and suburbs. Austin ISD's student population is becoming smaller but wealthier. Not as wealthy as the western suburbs, but it is changing. Declining enrollment could be managed by school consolidation into modernized schools, but they tried that last fall and backed off after the public complained. Right now they have too many buildings that are too old and it's politically difficult to change. Frisco ISD operates about 70 schools for about 60,000 students. Austin ISD operates 129 schools for about 81,000 students.

The United States, with 4.2% of the population, now has more cases than the bottom 206 countries on the list combined, representing 85.8% of the world's population. Team USA has completed 11.1 million tests compared with the bottom 206 countries' combined 23.9 million tests. That may mean there are more unfound cases in the smaller countries, but we are still way in the lead.

I'm going with "Red Dawn", with really really tiny Soviet invaders. Kids are at school, invasion happens, no more school ... they flee to the woods. They are OK but the adults are being rounded up and they don't look so good. Hopefully not everyone dies in the end.

Crazy idea ... maybe there is a reasonably moderate path to walk so long as cases start to drop and keep dropping. Somewhere between mask-free rave mode and staying in your bathroom covered in hand sanitizer. Right now, cases in Texas are not dropping (which is bad) but the number of positive test results is low (around 5%, which is good). rt.live has our R number at 0.84 (good, less than 1, a path to no disease) but epiforcasts.io has it at 1.2 (moderately bad, a path to a big problem). The truth is probably in the middle somewhere. We have a problem and it it is likely slowly growing. Some projections show it slowing down in the future but right now the numbers are still going in the wrong direction. We are on a slowly rising plateau looking at two futures, one where cases slowly drop and one where they rise until they are out of control. You, my fellow Texan, can help make the problem go away. Spread out, wear a mask when appropriate, and wash your hands. You don't have to, but if you do it will help. Stay home if you feel sick and especially if you know you have come in contact with someone who has it. Not forever, but for a little while. Ask your neighbor how they are doing. They might be sad, lonely or just need someone to run to the store. A five minute chat across a front yard might cheer them up. Every little thing you do reduces the chance that one person will infect another person, which reduces the size of the problem. It keeps that R number just a little bit lower which makes the problem go away faster. Doctors and nurses have less emergency work to do in a less risky environment and can work more on the other problems we have. You'll never know if you saved the life of a kid or a grandma, but maybe you did. I see a risk in our polarized society that we will start choosing extreme paths on one side or the other, regardless of the data, based on which leaders we like. And that we will be too critical of each other for being on the other side. I would instead ask you to do what you are willing to do and watch those case numbers. If they are not dropping, consider doing more until they are.

I'm more interested in the logistics of the process than the political side, although you probably can't keep politics out of this for long. Sorry if it goes CR but that was not my intent. We have a run-off election coming up that will be lightly attended. It's a chance to try to adapt to current conditions without large voting numbers. Hopefully our election officials will learn from the experience.

What the heck will voting look like in November? I hope we all agree that everyone eligible to vote should have a chance to vote safely, even if we disagree with their vote. How do we make that happen? I see lots of people in line during presidential elections who appear to not have voted since the last presidential election. They frequently appear to have forgotten what to do. This is going to be tough this time in Travis County because the equipment is different, and tough for Texas in general because straight ticket voting is no longer an option. Everyone is going to have to learn to use the new stuff and everyone is going to have to figure out that they can't just vote R or D, they have to vote for each office. Should we have polling places at open air arenas rather than libraries? Maybe DKR becomes a super site for voting, or the convention center, or the concourse at the Palmer Events Center. Maybe school gyms or parking garages might be good locations? The back room at the local library with a mile long line spilling out the front seems ill-advised. Who is going to work at these polling places? The normal 80 year old women who love to do this stuff will be in a bunker, so we are going to have to find younger folks to do the job. Travis County has moved to a paper ballot system. They give you a blank paper ballot and you put it in a machine and vote, then you turn in your paper ballot to register your vote. It would be great if there was some way to generate the piece of paper before the election. If we could do that, then they could check your ID at the polls and let you turn in your piece of paper, which would speed up the lines. How hard would it be to double the early voting period? After the runoffs, I'll be ready to vote. Why can't I turn in my work early to spread out voting over more time? I hope our local election officials are thinking about this but I welcome your thoughts...

Not if it's Crossfit. Ted is not down for Crossfit.

I've avoided the delivery services because I think there are other people who need delivery more than me right now and it looks like there are not enough slots to go around. I can go during non-peak times, I have an exact list of what to buy and I know my stores pretty well, so I can get in and out fast with minimal interaction. I've seen many pro shoppers in the store trying to go get someone else's list and they are all over the store looking for items. I'm not complaining about that, but I know that I can do a faster job than a pro could for my list and so the overall burden to the system is less if I do it myself.

IHME just updated their model and added a few new features: All of US: https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america Just Texas: https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/texas They are now estimating total infections vs reported infections and also showing social distancing and testing numbers.

Man that second shot is totally the Millennium Falcon ... headed for Earth a long time ago from a galaxy far far away

Dude's complain-tweeting about reporters receiving "Noble prizes" when I think he means "Nobel prizes" and I think he also means "Pulitzer prizes"

Pro tip: The lines at Central Market on north Lamar seem to be shorter later in the day. Not sure if this holds true for other stores or not.

"The Death of Stalin" is now on Netflix, if you missed it. It's a dark comedy about ... the death of Stalin.

Carrollton/Farmers Branch ISD names most of their schools after obscure former administrators so that when you tell people what high school you went to, no one has ever heard of your school. Almost everyone I know who stayed around Carrollton moved to Frisco, home of about forty 5A schools.

It goes. Sometimes it doesn't go...

Ha ha, but I'm not that Jeff. I might be able to kick a wind-aided extra point.

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