Advice on Ivermectin

I've seen a lot of talk about the anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin recently.  Specifically, about people taking veterinary formulations instead of those approved for human use.  Generally, these are folks who either have active cases of COVID-19 or, a small percentage of the time, folks who are worried about catching it, but don't want to get vaccinated.

So I did a little digging around, and lo and behold, Ivermectin isn't some drug no one has ever heard of.  Heck, the guy whose research team discovered it won a Nobel Prize, for discovering Ivermectin!  Here's his Nobel speech:

Wikipedia notes that it's on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, is FDA-approved as an anti-parasitic, and was prescribed more than 100,000 times in the US in 2018.  And it's effective against a lot of different illnesses, most of which Americans will be lucky to never encounter unless they visit tropical developing countries.

So it's generally well-regarded, but medical studies to see if it's effective against COVID-19 have had less persuasive results than, for example, studies to see if the anti-despressant Fluvoxamine is effective against COVID-19.  Nevertheless, folks who are wary of the COVID-19 vaccines out there are willing to give it a shot, even in forms that are clearly not intended for human use.

The FDA recently tweeted "You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously y'all. Stop it."  I would suggest listening to the FDA.

What many people may not realize is that in late October of 2020, while we were all distracted by pre-election presidential antics during a pandemic, the FDA quietly granted over-the-counter approval to an Ivermectin formulation designed for human use, which had previously required a prescription.  Arbor Pharmaceuticals "Sklice" is an 0.5% Ivermectin formulation that is applied to the head and hair, and it can be expected to be every bit as effective against COVID-19 as veterinary formulations taken internally.*

So please, if you must use Ivermectin, use a product approved for human use, and follow the instructions on the packaging, just like you would with any other over-the-counter medication.  There's no point making yourself sick in an attempt to become, or stay, healthy.

Good luck!

Proposal: Use the SF-86 to Vet Candidates

After some recent media stories about the health (or not) of our President's finances, I have seen a few commentators suggest that a President having hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign debt is a national security risk.  The idea is that huge amounts of debt make someone more vulnerable to:

1. Blackmail ("We know you have this debt and will tell everyone, unless you do what we want.")
2. Extortion ("We lent you lots of money, now you have to do what we want.")
3. Influence Operations ("We'll help you with this debt, if you do what we want.")

Obviously, blackmail only works if the debt is not already publicly known, which highlights the importance of candidates for high office making financial information public, through financial disclosure statements and the release of tax returns.  Our President hasn't been very good at that part, which is bad for optics since it makes it look like someone could influence him, but he can easily correct that at any time by releasing appropriate information.

Less obviously, what amounts to a "huge" debt depends on one's assets.  If you're making on-time payments on all your debt and have plenty of money left over, it's much harder to influence you financially.  So if someone owes $1.1 billion, but without that debt is worth $3.6 billion – and I've seen reporting indicating this is the case for our President – they could probably discharge the debt if they so chose.  They might just have to sell a golf course or house or two.

People who don't understand this last point have been writing that "With those finances, the President couldn't even get the clearance to work as a White House cook!"  Although I may have just put a bit of a wet blanket on their frenzy, I do think political parties need to do a much better job of vetting their candidates, and the way the government and military already vet rank-and-file employees is perfectly applicable.

That way, of course, is Standard Form 86, from the federal Office of Personnel Management.  It is, as its name implies, a form.  A standard one.  A rather... long one.  The PDF runs 136 pages, and only three pages are instructions!  

The good news: You don't need to print, complete and submit pages that don't apply to you at all.  Many people only submit 50 pages.  And a good portion of the form is stuff you'd provide for any job, like education, past employment, and references.

The bad news: If you need more space than is provided, you print, complete and submit additional copies of some pages.  I know an investigator who was dismayed to discover an applicant had been particularly thorough (and had led an interesting life), resulting in over 500 pages to review.

Obviously, this is not the "background check" you have to pass to be a cashier at Target.  This is a background check for people who will – or at least might – have access to information that is at the very least sensitive to national security and things like that.

Everyone under the President has to complete this form.  The President has the authority to decide what is and isn't secret, and who can and can't be told what, so in a practical sense, he or she is "above the law" in this regard.  Historically, this has rarely been a problem, because Presidents have mostly been people that the overwhelming majority of Americans think of as at least honorable and trustworthy, despite any political differences.

But in the last fifty years, we have elected Presidents who perhaps might have had a hard time passing this kind of background check.  Richard Nixon owed the IRS more than $400,000 in taxes.  Bill Clinton was impeached after trying to conceal philandering.  Rumors swirled about past drug use by George W. Bush and Barack Obama.   And many people have expressed concerns about things in President Trump's life that they feel make trusting him with all our nation's secrets unwise.

Imagine if political parties actually asked about these things before choosing their nominees – using a form that anyone can freely download from the Internet!  And since the President isn't really subject to the same laws as other federal employees when it comes to national security, it might not even be necessary to put their form through the full investigative process – it could just serve as a handy list of questions that all candidates should have to address as part of their vetting.

Once some years back, I completed one of these forms, for purposes far more mundane than being President.  I think any candidate for President should be able to answer questions that I was able to answer.  Questions governing things like:

• Personal or familial ties to other countries (10.1 et seq)
  
• Connections to foreign nationals (19)
  
• Foreign financial interests (20A.1)
• Foreign real estate interests (20A.3)
• Work for foreign businesses or governments (20B1-2)
• Participation in foreign conferences (20B.5)
• Travel outside the US (20C)
• Police Record (22)
• Drugs (23) and Alcohol (24)
• Financial Records (26)
• Involvement in civil court actions (28)
• Ties to hate groups (29.5)

We could probably all save ourselves a lot of trouble in the future.

Nothing like a Narwhal slushy

Apparently there are people out there who know what narwhals taste like... and think that narwhal is an acceptable flavor for a slushy drink.  From what little I know of narwhals, I would expect this flavor to be halfway between blubbery and bloody, so I didn't try it.

'Struth

Courtesy of Gleason Public Library in Carlisle, Massachusetts: 

Thickly Could've Done Better

 

Lord of the (Dragon)flies?

This summer, dragonflies have seemed to like me more than normal.  They'll land on me, or land near me and climb onto my hand if I offer.  I haven't yet figured out how to use this to my advantage in any way, though.

Agama

I spotted this colorful lizard on the rocks along Lake Victoria in Entebbe.

Sounds about right

I don't want to even think about how many times I've done this myself, or seen others do it.

On the other hand, I could never quite get the hang of this one.  Apparently, however, all the real programmers whose code I had to modify or maintain found it easy.

How to Move

I got a new job 5,000 miles from my old job.  My new employers weren't offering to put me up anywhere while I hunted for an apartment, and although I did some looking around online ahead of time, the housing market was pretty tight, so I pretty much had to get on the ground and start showing up in person to look at apartments, then have my family join me once I found one.

I knew that on day one, I'd be working at an organization's main office, but going forward I'd mostly work at a smaller location.  So I stayed a couple nights at a hotel near the main office, then stayed anywhere from 1-4 nights each at a variety of other locations around the area, including a youth hostel, another hotel, and people's houses or apartments found through AirBNB or CouchSurfing.  As I began to get a feel for the area, I toured a few apartments, and after a couple days of looking, found a good one located between the main office and my usual worksite.  My family flew in and we stayed for a week at another hotel midway between my usual worksite and the apartment, then settled in.

Three weeks, 11 beds...

Lake of Fire

Lava boils and spatters in the lava lake within Halema'uma'u Crater in Kilauea's caldera, in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

Tonight's Crescent

New moon was a couple days ago, so this evening I managed to catch a thin crescent, as seen from atop Maunakea, before it set.

(Canon Rebel T3, 70-300mm IS USM at 300mm, ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/40 second. Desaturated, scaled down a tiny bit and unsharp masked.)

Free things to do on the Big Island

Ah, Hawaii! The mere word conjures images of a chain of unique islands, all with beautiful weather, crystal-clear waters full of colorful tropical fish, world-class beaches, and relaxation galore. On the flip side, visiting Hawaii means a long flight for most people, and although each island has its own attractions, none has a reputation for being particularly cheap to visit!

So... what can you do for free in Hawaii, using the Big Island (where I live) as an example? Here are a few ideas. Be aware that the island is almost as big as Connecticut, and while the bus system is currently free, the coverage and schedule aren't very good yet - so you will need a motor vehicle if you want to travel long distances, and in some cases, 4-wheel-drive is a must.

Note: This list is very much a work in progress! I've got a lot more to add, but decided to start off with ten things - I'm figuring more like fifty or a hundred - yes, really! - when I'm done. I'm going to put a list of things I've already thought of down at the bottom, too... If you have any comments, corrections, suggestions... lemme know, okay?

1. Go to the beach! And then to another, and another, and another... there are dozens of beaches around the island, from top-rated white sand beaches on the west side to volcanic black sand on the east side, and even green sand. You can swim, snorkel, SCUBA, body-board, surf... or just lie around and get a tan. Hawaii law requires public access to shorelines, so there are a lot of beaches to choose from!
   
2. Visit a waterfall, or two, or three... Rainbow Falls is located right on the edge of Hilo town, between downtown and the hospital. A bit upstream from it, Pe'epe'e Falls is in the Boiling Pots area of Wailuku River State Park. Less than fifteen miles up the Hamakua Coast is the town of Honomu, and above it, Akaka Falls State Park, with a paved walking loop to views of cascading Kahuna Falls and the park's namesake Akaka Falls, which plummets over 400 feet in a single drop.
   
3. Have a walk or a picnic in Lili'uokalani Gardens, on the shores of Hilo Bay near the hotels in Hilo. This 30-acre Japanese water garden is the largest of its kind outside Japan! Its ponds are connected to the ocean, and serve as nurseries for tropical fish species. Pathways wind past Japanese stone lantern sculptures and a variety of trees and bushes.
   
4. See dance exhibitions at the "Olympics of Hula," the Merrie Monarch Festival. The most prestigious hula competition in the world is held each spring in Hilo, and tickets are hard to find (although quite inexpensive)... but one night near the start of the festival is set aside for exhibitions of hula by halau (schools) from around the world, with free admission! A music festival on Coconut Island, dance events at Hilo hotels, and the festival-ending Merrie Monarch Royal Parade are also free.
   
5. Tour the world's top astronomical observatory complex on Mauna Kea, the tallest mountain in the Pacific. You'll need that four-wheel-drive vehicle for this one, and there are a few rules: you must be at least 16, not be pregnant, not have a history of heart or lung problems, and not have been SCUBA diving in the last 24 hours. On a Saturday or Sunday, drive to the Visitor Information Station at the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy, located 9,000 feet up Mauna Kea, off Saddle Road. You'll need to be there by 1 PM, so leave Hilo by Noon, or Kona by 11:30. Mauna Kea rangers and volunteer tour guides (who include observatory staff and astronomy students from the University) lead a four-wheel-drive caravan to the top of the mountain, where the tour goes into one of the biggest observatories. You'll also learn about the cultural, historical, religious and ecological significance of the mountain, all its observatories, and some of the latest discoveries. The tour ends around 4:30 and you can stay on the summit for a high-altitude sunset before returning to the 9,000 foot level for an evening of stargazing through high-end amateur telescopes.
   
6. Watch a triathlon. We've got many of them year-round, with the best-known being the Ironman Triathlon Championships, held each October between Kailua-Kona and the small town of Hawi in Kohala. Racers from all over the world (including, in 2005, at least one nun, and an 80-year-old!) swim 2.4 miles in the ocean off Kailua, then bicycle to Hawi and back (that's 112 miles), then run a full marathon. Bring a lawn chair, a sun umbrella, and your vocal cords, and cheer the racers on at any point along the route. There are also shorter triathlons throughout the year - and a longer one, the Ultraman World Championships in November, in which athletes take three days to do a complete lap of the island. Day one features a 6.2 mile ocean swim and 90-mile bike ride; day two a 171.4 mile ride, and day three a 52.4 mile double marathon. Feeling tired yet?
   
7. Triathlons too overwhelming? Simplify things a little by watching a single-sport race. There's the Big Island International Marathon in March, which follows old roads through rainforests and small towns, then runs along the bay and ocean, ending in Hilo. There are the Volcano Wilderness Runs in July, including a marathon across terrain including fields of hardened lava. There's a run from Hilo to Volcano, a bicycle race from Hilo up Mauna Kea, swims, canoe races... you name it.
   
8. Witness "Shakespeare in the Rain." Actually, it's called "Shakespeare in the Park" - free performances of a different Shakespeare play each summer in Kalakaua Park, located in downtown Hilo between the Post Office and the East Hawaii Cultural Center - but since Hilo gets more rain than any other city in the country, it's picked up a bit of a nickname. Some performances actually finish without any rain.
   
9. Visit Laupahoehoe Point. 25 miles north of Hilo is the town of Laupahoehoe. Just north of the "horseshoe curve" around the river valley on the north side of town, a road winds down to Laupahoehoe Point, where a school was devastated by the 1946 tsunami. The rocky beach here is also one of the best places to look for Cowry shells; a few different species can be found.
   
10. Take the Scenic Route! The modern highway along the Hamakua Coast between Hilo and Honoka'a actually follows an old railroad right-of-way. In the old days, the "highway" was a narrow, winding road which passed through rainforests and plantation towns, over stone arch bridges and past waterfalls. There are plenty of opportunities to turn off the highway for anywhere from a mile to five miles at a time - take Wainaku Avenue on the outskirts of Hilo, then turn into the Alae subdivision and follow the road past Honoli'i Surf Beach, through the rainforest to Pauka'a, come back out to the highway, turn off before Papaikou and pass through that town, cross the highway and go through the rainforest and along Onomea Bay to Pepe'ekeo. That's about ten miles, and you spent less than one mile actually on the highway. There are also scenic loops near Hakalau, Laupahoehoe, and Honoka'a.
    
11. Learn about macadamia nuts, and eat a few, at the Mauna Loa factory.  Located between Hilo and Kea'au, off Highway 11 just south of the Panaewa Rainforest Zoo, this factory is surrounded by a 250,000-tree orchard.  A self-guided tour runs along the outside of the factory, with large windows providing views of sorting, packing and chocolate-coating portions of the asssembly lines.  The visitor center and gift shop has free samples of various products, and naturally quite a lot more available for sale.
    
12. Look for endangered, endemic forest birds in the "Bird Park" located on Mauna Loa Road, just south of Volcano off Highway 11.
    
13. Soak in a hot pond at Ahalanui Beach Park, a few miles south of Kapoho along Highway 137, the "red road." This park features a large rock-walled tidal pool, geothermally heated to a nice warm temperature. Good for swimming laps without ever getting cold.
    
14. See lava tree molds, left behind when lava flows through forests, cooling and hardening where it touches trees, then receding elsewhere. Lava Tree State Park, on Highway 132 between Pahoa and Kapoho, has plenty, as do some areas of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

More: Check out the only zoo in the US that's in a rainforest. Visit the tsunami memorial. See exhibits in Wailoa Center. See Kamehameha the Great's birthplace, heiau, stones by Hilo library, and statues. Learn about the NW Hawaiian Islands at Moku Papapa. Go whale-watching (without going on a boat).  And Big Island Candies. And maybe even Volcano Winery. Watch the sun rise on the east side. Watch the sun set on the west side. Check out Painted Churches. Drive the Red Road. See Waipio Valley. Or Pololu Valley. See huge trees in Kalopa State Forest. Try a sample of a new fruit at a farmer's market. Smell some flowers. Eat free fruit along the road. Pick a wild flower. Go spelunking in Kaumana Cave. Visit the Anuenue Playground in Waimea - the big wooden one. Find the Captain Cook Monument. Go for a hike. Find the Douglas Monument. Watch Fireworks. Check out Wood Valley. Go to the southernmost point in the US. Take in some free concerts. Find famous people's names along Banyan Drive. Turtle Independence Day? Jump in the Ice Pond. Ride Hele-On. Tour NELHA? Visit the East Hawaii Cultural Center. See a Bonsai Repository. Lapakahi State Historical Park.

And in the "almost but not quite free" category... cheap second-run movies at the Kress Cinema in downtown Hilo!

Four Beams on Galactic Center

The Keck II, Gemini North, Keck I and Subaru telescopes propagate their lasers toward the galactic center.

 

Phrases one doesn't use growing up in New Jersey

"Sweaty from harvesting bananas on a sweltering September afternoon."

New T-Shirt

This just arrived from halfway around the world.  It'll be interesting to see by how much the "huh?" responses from people who don't get the reference outnumber the "ooh, where can I get one of those?" responses from those who do.

 

The Unboxing Experience : Evil Husband Edition

My wife is a fan of James Bond movies, in much the same way that Warren Buffett is getting by okay, Van Gogh liked to paint a bit, or Linus Torvalds is a geek.  Prefixes like "rabid" or "über-" come to mind.  This fall marked the 50th anniversary of the Bond franchise, and a "Bond 50" boxed set was released on Blu-ray.  There was a brief burst of media about this, coinciding with the theatrical release of Skyfall, and then it was pretty much forgotten... except, of course, by those of us who are married to hardcore Bond fans who had birthdays coming up.

Of course, it wasn't cheap, and when I found a local store that had it, the words "limited availability" featured prominently.  I bought the one they had on the shelf, a few weeks before Christmas, and hid it away.  Then I got to thinking... my wife is sneaky and likes to play tricks on me, but I grew up in a tricky family.  Obviously, the gift needed to be disguised somehow. Fortunately, we had boxes of various sizes sitting around, waiting to be taken to the recycling center, as well as several days' newspapers.  I decided to give her an "unboxing experience" - but one not nearly as shiny and elegant as you find when you buy the latest iThingy.

Thus a fairly large, heavy package sat next to the Christmas tree for about four days, until shortly after midnight on my wife's birthday - she insisted on staying up late the night before and opening her presents in the middle of the night.  She made it through the "normal" things - cards and money from family, some clothes from my parents, perfume and lotion from me - and then tackled the big, mysterious box... 

...which unfortunately was neatly wrapped in a couple different layers of paper.  (Newspaper underneath keeps sneaky people like her from trying to read through the wrapping paper.)

It turned out to be a box from a sewing and embroidery machine - which she already had. I'd taped it securely shut (of course).  Upon opening it, she discovered a couple old phone books near the top (for weight, naturally; I told you I come from a tricky family) and beneath them, cushioned in crumpled newspapers, another box, also neatly double-wrapped.  At this point, she thought I'd had my fun... She was wrong.

This one turned out to be from a Crock Pot slow-cooker - which, again, we already had. It, in turn, contained another box - this one only wrapped once in newspaper, since I was running low on decorative paper.

This one was a box from baby wipes - which wouldn't be a good birthday present for my wife, even if we were close to running out, and we weren't. Fortunately, this box contained yet another gift-wrapped box, in a different style of paper.

Finally, she said - progress!  Better yet, it was a shoebox - she loves shoes. Unfortunately, it was a shoebox from my old shoes, definitely too large for her and of entirely the wrong style. And it was taped on every side, naturally.

It did, however, contain another neatly wrapped package - and by now, things were getting small enough that there couldn't be too many more layers to this Russian nesting doll of a present.  This was, at last, "Bond 50" - shown below for scale, next to the packaging she had to open to get to it.

The end result was, of course, worth it, since she got a surprise gift that she loves.

It was worth it for me as well - I got a lot of laughs, and photos of the whole process. ;)
But oh, yes, she has vowed to get revenge on me for this... I'd better watch my back!

Lake Waiau

I took this photo of Lake Waiau, located in a cinder cone on Mauna Kea. The lake is 13,020 feet up - 8th highest lake in the US, 37th in the world. Grass and small plants are sometimes found around it, but the rest of the mountain is very dry, and few plants are found beyond 11,000 feet above sea level.

In the summer of 2012, dry weather caused the lake to be much smaller and shallower than in years past; it's easy to tell in this photo how much larger it used to be.

Coloring Time 2

 Monday, around 70-75 first-grade students became the first people to try out the new coloring pages I've been creating.  Some rather... interesting alternate color schemes for the observatory emerged.

Tuesday and Thursday, another 120 or so first, second and third-grade students will get their hands on the coloring pages.  I look forward to seeing what they do.

Coloring Time

As a child, I did my fair share of coloring, first with crayons and later with colored pencils and ink markers.  Unlike at least one friend (shout-out to Eva of Dawn and Dark Ivory fame), I didn't grow up to be an artist, so I haven't done that sort of thing in quite some time.

Instead, I wound up with careers in other fields, and in one of them, I've lately gotten to the point where I occasionally get to visit schools and talk to kids about what I do, how it relates to things they're studying, and all that.  And so, I've developed an interest once again in coloring pages - but this time, from the side of creating them!

Conveniently, I take a lot of photos of things that make interesting subjects for coloring pages.  Inconveniently, I don't have a light table and parchment paper, which I'd instinctively want to use to trace the outlines of things in a photo to create a coloring page.  I do, however, have Photoshop.  But knowing how to use Photoshop to process photos is one thing, and knowing how to use it to create a coloring page from a photo is quite another thing altogether.

I was well aware of the various filters available in Photoshop for this sort of thing.  I could "Find Edges."  Or, I could create "Glowing Edges."  Or I could "Trace Contours," or "Emboss."  So many choices!  A tutorial video online suggested instead creating a greyscale image, duplicating the layer, setting the top layer to "color dodge," doing a gaussian blur, and adjusting the blur ratio.  I tried it, but found it to be a rather complicated manual way of arriving, more or less, at "Find Edges."

Then I ran across a page suggesting the "Photocopy" filter, with its sliders for "Darkness" and "Detail."  Aha!  Photocopiers, I could handle.  (Fax machines, less so.)  I gave this a shot, then went in with a white "pen" to tidy up the image, followed by a black "pen" to strengthen some of the lines - steps which have to be done after using this filter - and in an acceptably short amount of time, actually had something I can give schoolchildren to color.  Hooray!  Here's a scaled-down version of the first coloring page I've ever created.

The Subaru Telescope and its adaptive-optics laser.

I intend for this to be just the first of several, perhaps even "many," such pages, now that I've found a practical and reasonably quick way of creating them.

Aloha, cousin?

With apologies to Stitch, of course...

If you're on Geni.com, and have enough of a family tree entered, sooner or later someone in your family tree is going to turn out to be in other people's family trees as well.  This tends to start happening a few generations back, and occur more and more as you go further back.  Geni calls the interconnected tree-of-trees the "World Family Tree."

For example, actress Liv Tyler and I are both about 10 generations descended from Joseph Morse (1671-1745), which makes us 9th cousins.  One has to go back a couple generations earlier than Joseph, though, to find the ancestor we have in common with noted 19th-century "coder" Samuel Finley Breese Morse - he's descended from one of Joseph's cousins.

There are plenty of other more distant relations to be found out there.  Like many people, I'm distantly related to plenty of recent US presidents, and to various and sundry European royals in the old days.  None of this gets me anything, of course.

Anyway, I'm curious.  I already know who my cousins are, and at least most of my cousins once removed, cousins twice removed, and second cousins.  I'm sure they're far outnumbered by my third cousins, fourth cousins, and so on.

So here's my question: will anyone read this who turns out to be more distant than a second cousin, but less distant than Liv Tyler?  A third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth cousin?

Here's my Geni profile - well, there's a lot more to it than that, but it's not all visible to the public.

If you're on Geni and are a pro or plus member, I believe it will tell you whether it thinks we're related.  If you're a basic member, it won't tell you, but it will tell me (as a Pro member) if you give me the URL for your Geni profile so I can search.  Of course, it'll be more likely to work if you've entered a bunch of your ancestry!

Oh, and sorry, the "World Family Tree" is not the same concept as Yggdrasil the "World Tree," for those who might be wondering.