Difficult to believe that the US Republican Party is STILL in denial

This is fascinating. Over six months after the last US election, a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken on May 7-19 2021 has, found that 53% of Republicans still believe that Donald Trump is actually the "true" president of the USA. 

That's almost a quarter of the voting population. Perhaps even more bizarrely, 3% of Democrats believe that too! Fully 61% of Republicans persist in the belief that the election was somehow "stolen" from Trump. This, mark you, after endless failed Republican legal challenges to the election results, and repeated confirmations that Biden in fact won by some 7 million votes and by 74 electoral college votes.

In the face of this kind of magical thinking, it is hard to know what to think about American politics. If so many people can willfully disbelieve the facts before their eyes, based purely on partisan opinions, how can politicians continue to strive for democratic progress and the welfare of the common man? How can they even care about these people? I know that we are still talking about a minority of the populace, but it's such a large minority that surely it must make politicians think twice about even wanting to continue.

Kudo - a singular kudos?

I came across today for the first time the word "kudo" as a singular noun: the context was that a book "deserves every kudo it's received so far".

I was a bit nonplussed, assuming it was just a simple error, even though it appeared in the literature section of the Globe and Mail. But, notwithstanding, I looked it up, and it turns out that it is a word (sort of), and it does merit its own dictionary entry. But mainly it is just an error. 

"Kudos" is a singular noun, in use in English since the 19th century, derived from the Greek singular noun kýdos, meaning praise or renown. It became more commonly used in the 1920s, mainly in journalistic circles, and is still most often encountered there.

Although the -os ending is common in Greek singular nouns, -s is usually a plural ending in English, so some people thought that there must be a singular noun "kudo" as well as the plural "kudos" (with the sense of one accolade among many accolades). This is clearly incorrect, but it came to be accepted - although far from universally - as an example of a linguistic phenomenon called "back formation".

Back formation (or back derivation) is the source of words like "edit" (from "editor"), "escalate" (from "escalator"), "pea" (from "pease"), "burgle" (from "burglar"), "diagnose" (from "diagnosis"), "enthuse" (from "enthusiasm"), "surveil" (from "surveillance"), "sculpt" (from "sculptor"), "orate" (from "orator"), "hawk" (from "hawker"), etc. Although firmly established in the modern English lexicon, many of these were also established out of ignorance and error, which is the worst possible reason for the adoption of a new word. I am not against the evolution of the language, but I would much prefer that it evolve for positive, constructive reasons rather than as a result of officially-sanctioned mistakes.

As for "kudo", I am not going to be adopting it any time soon, and I hope that the journalism profession eschews it too. Dictionary.com notes that, "Some usage guides warn against using them" (i.e. presumably both words).

Breaking up tent camps in city parks can be the right thing to do

Toronto Police and city staff are in the process of clearing out various homeless tent camps throughout the city (as is also happening in Vancouver, Montreal, and other cities). Maybe I should be outraged, but I'm really not.

Homeless advocates and poverty activists are speaking out, as they do, about callousness, cruelty and inhumanity (oh, and systemic racism, just for good measure). But living in a tent or one of those weird little box homes in a city park is not a good solution. Not only does it effectively leave the parks out of bounds for other users (at a time when other leisure activities and opportunities are still severely curtailed) and leads to gross littering and degradation of shared public spaces, but it can be downright dangerous and unsanitary for the campers, especially where toilet and shower facilities are not available. There have already been several fires, sometimes leading to severe injury or even loss of life. And, at the risk of sounding twee, it's just illegal, and laws are there for a reason.

The police operation has not been a callous and aggressive show of force; bodies are not being dragged away willy-nilly. It has been a patient, polite and respectful process, prefaced by an offer of safer housing in a shelter or hotel. Over half of the camp residents in Trinity Bellwoods Park, for example, have accepted the offers of alternative accommodation. Yes, there have been some instances of face-offs, mainly with the demonstrating poverty activists and their hangers-on, but these have generally been handled sensitively and well.

Toronto (and other cities) has put a lot of money into improving conditions in homeless shelters since the pandemic hit, and many new affordable and supported housing units have been added to the city's stock. Pandemic infection controls have been extended, and testing facilities stepped up. Vaccinations are now the rule not the exception. Sure, shelters are not ideal, but they are not as poor an option as they once were. A housing worker is being assigned by the City to each tent resident who is moved ou from the parks; no-one is being turfed out onto the streets and left to fend for themselves (unless they choose to do that, as I suppose some will always do).

So, call me callous and heartless. Call me a middle-class élite who just wants his middle-class parks back. But I still believe that, on balance, moving people out of these makeshift camps is the right thing to do.

Gypsy moths - one man's unfortunate legacy

Southern Ontario (and some parts of southern Quebec) is going through another gypsy moth infestation at the moment. This happens every decade or so (the last few occurred in 1985, 1991 and 2002). The current outbreak started in 2019 and this year is looking like it will break records again, like last year.

Although it is not an event comparable to the periodic cicada infestation going on just south of here, it is still a very noticeable phenomenon: park paths are covered in squishy and squished caterpillars (and their feces), and many trees have been denuded by the voracious caterpillars, mainly oak, birch, poplar, willow and maple. Oak trees in particular have difficulty regenerating so much foliage, and many may die as a result. Last year, a record-breaking 580,000 hectares (about the size of Prince Edward Island, if that helps) of trees were stripped bare, and many of them did not survive. A similar area of devastation is expected this year: this is not a paltry event.

Gypsy moths (or "LDD moths" among the more politically correct, after the Latin name Lymantria dispar dispar) are an invasive species originally from Europe and Asia. They were introduced into North America by a single individual, the amateur entomologist Étienne Trouvelot, in the 1860s. He brought them into the Boston area to see if they would be appropriate for American silk production (they weren't), from where they escaped, and have been spreading in increasing numbers ever since.

The caterpillars are brown-grey and hairy with blue and red dots, up to 6cm long, but usually much less than that. The adult male moths are pale brown and boring, while females are white and boring (and flightless). They can't survive winter temperatures of below -20°C, hence their concentration in balmy southern Ontario, but, with climate change, their range is expected to extend northwards. They particularly like a warm winter followed by a dry spring, like this year (a wet spring encourages the growth of a fungus that kills them).

So, what can be done about them? They can be killed by a bacterial spray, and some municipalities do employ this, but this also kills many beneficial and native caterpillars, so most jurisdictions (and Ontario Parks) are loath to go down that route. Some "high value" trees, particularly the more susceptible oaks, can be treated individually. But the preferred treatment is the more labour-intensive one of manually scraping or vacuuming off the eggs. You can also tie a band of burlap around a tree trunk around chest height; the caterpillars like to hide under it, where they can relatively easily be scraped off and disposed of.

But most scientists are of the opinion that, in the scheme of things, they are not that destructive, and we will probably just have to learn to live with them.

COVID Delta variant disguises itself as an innocent cold

Studies from the UK show that the symptoms of the Delta (Indian) variant of COVID-19 can be quite different from what we've been used to looking for thus far. As the Delta variant becomes the dominant strain across most of the world, this could be an important factor, and I haven't seen much press coverage of it, at least not here in Canada.

The most common symptoms of the Delta variant are headaches, a sore throat, and a runny nose, making it seem for all the world like a regular cold, and leading many people to just shrug it off and ignore it when they should be getting themselves tested and self-isolating. Indeed, some British medical advisers are suggesting that ignorance of this change in symptomology may be one of the main reasons that the Delta variant is spreading so rapidly.

After headache, sore throat and runny nose, the next most common symptoms are fever and cough (which were once the main lay-person identifiers for the virus). Loss of smell, once a definitive COVID symptom, doesn't even make the top ten of Delta variant symptoms.

School houses back in the Dark Ages

We have been watching further series of The Last Kingdom on Netflix (see this earlier entry for some of the early English history surrounding the series), and it has put me in mind of the school "houses" we had for intramural competitions in my junior school, back in the Dark Ages of the 1960s.

There were Romans (red), Saxons (green), Danes (blue) and Normans (yellow). Interestingly, no Celts, which were arguably the "original" inhabitants of the British Isles. I was in Roman house, and we always used to win most things at that time, at least as I remember it. I remember getting shiny, sticky-backed red stars on my report card, and the occasional black square for naughty things (ah, those were the days!).

For what it's worth, at my senior school (grammar then, later, comprehensive), the houses were named for some of the great old families of that area of Derbyshire, an idea that somehow seems almost inconceivable today: Glossop (red), Barker (green), Taylor (blue) and Cockerton (yellow). Glossop always used to win most things, at least in the sporting arena; I, however, was in Taylor, which used to lose most things.

A strange idea, houses. I wonder if they still exist today? Certainly not at my daughter's Canadian school, but there does seem something quintessentially English about it all.

Iran's election a cynical exercise in chicanery

Iran's "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khameini is old and sick (apparently suffering from cancer). But this has not stopped him from attempting to consolidate his ultraconservative theocratic legacy by ensuring the "election" of his pet presidential candidate, Ebrahim Raisi.

Raisi takes over from the relatively reform-minded (but fettered and largely ineffectual) President Hassan Rouhani. Raisi has long been a Khameini groupie and, as long-time head of Iran's judiciary, has presided over violent crackdowns on anti-government protests which left thousands dead (Amnesty International has called for him to be tried for crimes against humanity, and he is already under US sanctions). He is widely touted as Khameini's likely successor as Supreme Leader.

But Khameini made sure that the hardline cleric Raisi was elected by disqualifying other presidential candidates from the election, leaving him as effectively the only game in town. Not surprisingly, then, voter turnout was an all-time low of 48% (less than 30% in more cosmopolitan Tehran), compared to around 73% in the last two elections. And even then a significant percentage submitted blank and void ballots in protest, enough to raise "Void" to second place behind Raisi.

So, this is most definitely not the voice of the people speaking. This is a fixed and fraudulent exercise in electoral cynicism that will leave Iran in the geo-political wilderness for some years to come.

Vaccine lotteries make no sense to me

I have been reading for some time now about various sweeteners and incentives that several US states (and even a Canadian province) have been instituting, purportedly to overcome vaccine hesitancy and encourage more people to get themselves vaccinated in the pursuit of herd immunity. Free booze, free trips, free baseball tickets, free cash, free guns (in West Virginia, go figure!) and, perhaps most commonly, free lottery tickets. 

It always seemed a rather ridiculous ploy to me, and it left me, at best, nonplussed. But, I figured, it was harmless enough, wasn't it? Setting aside the ethics of rewarding people for doing what is already the right thing to do, what had never occurred to me was that the lotteries, for example, were extended to people who were ALREADY vaccinated, i.e. the majority that had already done the right thing. 

I understand that the idea is that some people will get the vaccine just so they too can participate in the lottery, thereby increasing the vaccination rates by, well, some undefined little bit. As for free beers and free spliffs, the same but much less so. $5 of free beer is hardly going to overcome the ingrained attitudes of a firm anti-vaxxer, and probably not even the scruples of a fence-sitter

My assumption had always been that vaccine lotteries were being offered to people who were NOT vaccinated but would agree to do so in order to participate. That at least would make some logical sense. The current ploys are just a waste of millions of dollars that could better be spent targeting, educating and persuading laggards, providing transportation, etc.