It has been 26 days since “C-day,” the day when the Texas governor began ordering the reopening of public places and businesses. It began on May 1 with the reopening of retail workplaces at 25% capacity (but not bars, salons, etc. – office workplaces). Seven days later, salons and similar […]
It is one day since the Texas Governor allowed businesses to reopen at 25% capacity. It is one day since the national stay-at-home recommendation was ended. Families gather in athletic fields, in tight groups. People don’t move off the sidewalk when I pass. I have to swing way out into […]
Friday (tomorrow) is the day that Texas’s Governor allows all businesses to reopen, but only if they cap their in-house customers at 25% of capacity for their facility. So where is my county, Collin County, right now? Anticipating this “momentous” day of continuing to re-open businesses in Texas, Collin County […]
(updated 4/26/2020 with demographic and testing data) Maybe it’s because Texas, as a state, sent signals that it was “okay” to behave like we used to. Maybe it’s because the President lied to the nation over, and over, and over again about the reality of COVID-19. Maybe it’s because people […]
As I wrote several days ago, Zoom has become highly unstable on my desktop computer. I’ve tried everything, including switching from the KDE desktop environment to the XFWM one; switching off compositing; using all different versions of the NVIDIA drivers; swapping other NVIDIA cards into the system; different kinds of […]
Awoke a few days ago to find a line of cat toys stretching from the master bedroom into the foyer of the house. The cats have started communicating by toy. This means something. 🙂
Until there is a vaccine, or enough testing and tracking capability to ensure new cases are spotted quickly and isolated, this is no time for Collin County to quit its effective social distancing protocols. The doubling time for COVID-19 cases now is 25 days; before social distancing went into effect, […]
Like many institutions, I’m using a video conferencing client whose name rhymes with “Vroom” in order to conduct classes. Things were going great for the first 2 weeks. Last Friday, things took a serious turn. It all started with a long-standing problem on my home desktop machine. I run Ubuntu […]
In 1970, Hall, Lind, and Ristenen (Univ. of Colorado at Boulder) published a paper in the American Journal of Physics (AJP, vol. 38, No. 10) on “A Simplified Muon Lifetime Experiment for the Instructional Laboratory.” Basically, it articulates precisely the experiment at the heart of a similar instrument at SMU. […]
One of my daily activities in the last 20 days (or so) has been to scoop up the COVID-19 case and death data for my county from the Texas Department of Health’s (DSHS) information center [1]. I’m not an epidemiologist; I’m a physicist. I’m not trying to make predictions; I’m […]
I love surprises. I love them more when I know about them but get to share in surprising someone else. It was a real win when I was asked if it was okay for SMU President, Gerald Turner, to drop in on my digital classroom to chat with students. The […]
Scenes from Collin County, TX. Sidewalk chalked with Biblical messages, presumably ahead of Easter. “Spread hope, not Coronavirus” one implores. The sidewalk runs in front of the park. It’s a city park. A sign is staked into the ground nearby, indicating the park is closed by order of the city. […]