Cars

 We bought a used Subaru Impreza in October, I think, because our '97 Toyota was falling apart and would have cost more to repair that it was worth. The Impreza is an '18, so much more modern than our other car, an '07 Honda Fit.

This car, which we named Prudence, has proximity sensors on all sides and a backup camera. It has seat warmers, which I haven't used deliberately but might if it gets cold enough. It has coordination between the cruise control and proximity sensors, so I can set the cruise control to go 60 mph and when the vehicle in front of me is going slower than that, the car adjusts speed to maintain a safe distance. I just have to keep us in our lane.

I spend some of my time while driving Prudence watching the average gas mileage reading. There is a menu of parameters you can have up on the screen, but I mostly keep it on average gas mileage, which is calculated for the current "trip" which means tank of gas, since I reset the trip indicator when I fill the tank. I haven't used it for anything else. I don't know why I enjoy that as much as I do, but I see how the numbers vary quickly at first, and start rather low, but once I get a trip to work and back done, the changes slow down. Still, on today's second trip to work, the gas mileage dropped from 32.3 to 29.8 before I got to the highway. Then it went up until I exited near work, and dropped only a couple of tenths from the peak of 33.1. I'm making up these numbers, because the actual values don't matter, but the size of the changes is pretty close.

The mileage drop was greater when I got to the car to drive home today because my mask strap got caught on my hearing aid, which flipped off my ear and disappeared. I thought if had fallen between the seat and the middle ridge where the transmission is, which is a tight groove I have trouble reaching into and can't see anything in. I looked down, tried the flashlight function on my phone, reached around trying to feel for it, and then finally noticed it was on the floor in front of the passenger seat. But since I had started the engine as I removed my mask, well, for those two minutes or so, my gas mileage rate was zero.

Prudence recovered most of the lost value, and got back to 33 mpg by the time I got home.

I think it is really the cruise control feature that makes it easier for me to maintain my chosen speed of 60 mph or less, and not seeing the gas mileage. When the car is controlling the speed, distractions like up-tempo music have no effect, as they do when I am driving myself. But the gas mileage display keeps me smug about my choice and helps to reinforce the decision. Sometimes I like technology.

Bad Screens

 There was an article in the New York Times this weekend about some genetic screening tests that have a high rate of false positives. I worked through the math in my head to some extent, and I'm not surprised at the results. I'm more surprised that anyone is using these screening tests because the results don't seem very helpful.

The issue is that we now know that some fetal cells end up in the maternal system during pregnancy. It's not a lot of cells, but technology to find and analyze nucleic acids is very sensitive, so someone came up the with idea of taking a blood sample from the mother and using things like PCR and antisense tagging to check for presence or absence of chromosomes or bits of chromosomes in fetal cells or fragments of nucleic acids found in the maternal blood sample.

I guess this works great for identifying Down's syndrome in a pregnancy. There are some false positives, but few false negatives, and the true positive rate is high enough that most people think the method is useful and successful for early detection.

Other conditions caused by chromosomal abnormalities, though, don't have the same success rate, partly just because the conditions are much less common. If the number of false positives for there conditions is the same as for Down's syndrome, but the true positives are much less frequent, then the probability of a positive test result being accurate drops dramatically. So some of the tests the article discussed had false positives in 80-90% of positive test results. It's just math.

So I guess one could ask, how useful is the test if a positive result in wrong 90% of the time? How valuable is a diagnosis of such conditions compared to the distress caused by the false positive results? I would think the doctors ordering such tests and the providers, should be telling the patients about these statistics before carrying out the test, and maybe should have a standard follow-up protocol for every positive test result. But if further testing is the consequence of any positive test, is there really a point to the test? Or is there something that can narrow the field, a way to identify increased risk for a rare condition? My guess is that many patients getting such results have a limited understanding of the statistics and what they mean, and may not have much understanding of the conditions, either.

It seems that some care should be taken in making recommendations about such screening tests, and some deep discussion about clinical value is needed. Does widespread screening for very rare conditions help anyone? I mean besides the companies doing the screening tests. From the point of view of value to society, how do we balance the increased knowledge gained from the screening with the dramatically increased stress for those who get a false positive result, and have to worry over whether it is real or not until they get a more reliable result, along with the stress of worrying over complications from the more reliable by higher risk testing to determine if the first result is true or false? We should, I guess, add in the value to all the people who get true negative results that their babies don't have these rather serious conditions, but before the screening, hardly anyone worried over those conditions anyway because they are rare.

It doesn't seem like any easy question to me. Maybe we need to introduce Artificial Intelligence or an Expert System, or something, to helps with such decisions. I hear those are pretty good.

A Calm Beginning

 I looked at the website that reports the global satellite temperature data every month. I wasn't sure there would be an update yet, as it is 2 January, the day after New Year's Day, and a weekend day, but the new data were posted. December 2021 was 0.21 degrees C above the thirty year average the site is now comparing to. That is up from November, which was 0.08. 2021 as a year came in at 0.134, placing it 8th in the list of warmest years. Six of the seven that were warmer have been since 2010. The exception is 1998, which still comes in as the third warmest year, and is the basis of quite a number of people claiming that there has been no global warming since then, even though 2016 and then 2020 were warmer in the satellite data.

Last I looked, 2021 was expected to finish as maybe the sixth warmest year in other data sets. NOAA and Copernicus and the Japan Meteorological Agency all use data from surface level thermometers, looking not just at air temperature but ground and water at the surface as well, so their numbers are a little different. All these global temperature data sets show increasing temperatures over time. The satellite data have a linear regression slope of 0.14 degrees per decade, which is up over the last ten years or so from 0.12 degrees per decade. I don't know if that change is statistically significant. But the slope is, and is steeper than the longer data sets, which go back to the late 1800's. That could suggest that global warming is accelerating, which I understand some models predict. Or it could just be a difference in data due to source and local effects.

The new data are not a surprise. I expect 2022 will continue along the same general trend as the last few years. It is probably significant that December had an increased anomaly compared to November despite the La Nina conditions. I think 2021 is in the top two years for La Nina years, but not certain, and don't feel the need to check as I have no readership. Maybe the algorithms will correct me if I'm wrong.

Just Watching

 I am tempted to make predictions about the year we have just begun, but I think I will not. I know some things that will happen this year. There will be an national election with updated congressional districts, and I expect I will follow the campaigns to some extent and I will vote, but I don't plan to predict the outcome, at least not for some time.

In 2020 some acquaintances suggested I "put my money where my mouth is" when I predicted that Trump would lose his re-election bid. I did. I put money in an online election market, buying contracts for Trump to lose. I made a few hundred dollars, more than doubling my money. That was an easy bet.

The 2022 election seems less predictable to me at this point. Republicans are optimistic because President Biden isn't particularly popular and the sitting president's party usually loses seats in Congress in the midterm elections, so history is on their side. Their primary worry, according to some reports, is Trump, who is still making noise and attacking everyone he thinks doesn't love him enough. And there are those investigations to consider. If enough is learned about Trump's illegal actions, and those of his supporters, support for Trump supporters may decrease.

There are other factors that could matter. Covid is still a problem, and now people are turning their anger and frustration toward President Biden for not solving all those problems since he is president so everything bad is his fault. I know that the general thinking of the American public isn't quite that simplistic and unrealistic, by sadly it is a close enough approximation to have meaning and use in making predictions. But that could change, and things could move more toward normal with regard to public health. And the economy could change. And Congress might get a little more work done. If any or all of those things happen by April, Democrats have a better chance of maintaining majorities in Congress.

The Senate map is close, according to those who handicap such things. The House is too unsettled, with many states still working on redistricting plans, and some plans apparently being challenged in the courts, like in Ohio. I think it would be nice if the courts held that the redistricting plan in Ohio is illegal, considering it makes a mockery of the referendum supporting less partisan redistricting here, but I have little faith in the process. I expect I will end up in a gerrymandered district again and my unqualified nobody of a representative will win re-election. He may start competing with Jim Jordan for Ohio's Most Famous Ass in Congress, but I hope not. For now, that is my only prediction for the 2022 election.

I expect we will hear a few stories about the Webb Space Telescope. I expect temperature trends for average global temperature will continue on their current path. I expect extreme weather events will occur and will spark some discussion of the role of global warming. I expect the Winter Olympics will take place, and that most planned sports events for leagues around the world will take place, and that some of the winners will be surprises and some less so. General trends in human activity don't often change quickly. 2020 was an anomaly.

I think I will try to focus on events closer to me than on global trends and national politics this year. I like my life, so that seems like it will be more fun.

Happy New Year!

Details

 Today is the last day of the year. We use a number system, calling it 2021. It is based on a solar year and dates back some time, with adjustments over the centuries as needed because the day/night cycle and the orbit don't really come out in even numbers. Generally the adjustments are small, though every four years a day is added because the orbit is not 365 days, but closer to 365.25. It's not exactly that, either, so other adjustments are built in, but rare enough that most people won't experience them. Smaller adjustments are made in public time as the actual time of our planetary rotation is not 24 hours, but off a little. The exact moment for some phenomena can be observed and recorded, but how many seconds are really in a day? A day is very slightly longer than 24 hours, which adds up to a second every year and a half or so, and over the longer term, the rotation has slowed by a bit over a millisecond per century. These variations are known by science and adjustments are made. People know about Leap Year, the years with an extra day. Leap seconds are added to the clock at the end of June or December as needed, but without much notice or fuss by the general public.

Most of us don't need to follow all this detail. Adjustments of a second in public time has no effect on when you sit down for lunch or join your next Zoom meeting, though if those adjustments weren't made, eventually the shifts in time would become large enough to be noticeable. Systems are in place to take care of them so business and life can go on uninterrupted and with confidence that the trains will not crash due to time differences across jurisdictions.

This is one clear illustration of the details of existence that we don't bother with most of the time. Such details are everywhere. Sometimes they are much more important, and unexpected variations can have very serious consequences. Like GM's exploding batteries. The science seemed to work. The engineering probably required some adjustment because electronics doesn't always work quantitatively according to the design specs for each piece. And most of the batteries seem to function well enough. But some overheat and explode. That is something that will probably get fixed, eventually. Maybe not. Maybe the Chevy Bolt will cease to exist and serve as a cautionary tale for the whole electric vehicle industry. We want consistency and accuracy, but we don't consider how truly complex our world is, instead using the simplified version that allows us to get on with life without asking too many detailed questions. Reality is beyond our comprehension.

Most people don't understand viruses. All the changing recommendations from public health officials during this pandemic have caused confusion and distrust in the public, including among health care professionals, who know some about health care but not enough, apparently, to follow the changes of science in real time. Living with constant uncertainty is a part of the human condition, but being reminded of that so much lately is wearing. The basic recommendations have not changed much. We know the general rules of how respiratory viruses spread and what actions help to decrease the risk of infection. But we want exact numbers for those risks. We want to know how many days or hours a person who tests positive is still capable of spreading the virus. But there is no exact number of days or hours. It will vary across the population according to too many variables to list, most of which have never been studied because they involve interaction of the complexities of human physiology at levels we don't understand, or so I expect. I'm not familiar with the data on which the decrease in isolation time recommended by the CDC is based. First exposure meant a 14 day isolation. Then 10 day. Now 5 day. Only applicable if the patient has no symptoms. Does the patient recognize all relevant symptoms?  I wouldn't bet my life on it. And I want to protect my life.

In my case, I'm not very social by nature so social distancing and staying home are not burdens. I may live under pandemic rules by choice from now on. The heavier burden is watching so many people fight against useful recommendations out of fear and ignorance, and know there is nothing I can do to make that change. Another one of those details that science has revealed: people who oppose vaccination will not change their minds based on data and truth. That is an uncomfortable details about the human condition.

You're Getting Warmer

 Sometime each month I check on the data for the previous month to follow the trends in global warming data. Okay, I check the first week of the month to see what the satellite data reported from UAH say, then later to see what everyone else says. October was warm in the satellite data, 0.37 degree anomaly, up from 0.21 in September, with the linear regression unchanged at 0.14 degrees per decade. I find the comments on that site amusing because most who participate are convinced that there is no global warming and that any day now the temperature trend will reverse itself and prove that the climate alarmists were wrong all along. They don't address the rising linear regression (It has climbed by 0.02 in the last decade or so.)

Other data sources aren't out with numbers for October yet, but I say a site in my search about year-to-date average, so I clicked to see what it was. It was from January 2021, so there was no year-to-date data, just the number for January compared to all past Januarys, but there were lines for the rest of the years. I looked in the site to try to find something to click to get the most recent data, since we are well past January for this year. I couldn't find anything and there was no search function.

I tried a new search on my browser, using Google, and searching year to date average global temperature, and only got the same January site. I clicked on the September report from NOAA, and tried year-to-date there, because the graph I looked at used their data. I got nothing useful; it had no way I could find to reach the graph.

Finally, I went back to the January graph, looked at the details in the url, and changed a number in it that ended in 01 to 09. That worked, and I saw that 2021 is currently the sixth warmest year to date through September, and trending upward, so it might cross up to fifth or fourth, unless the La Nina drops the temperatures in November and December, as some ar.)e predicting.

I don't understand why the algorithms couldn't find the graph for me on the search. Doesn't NOAA want people to see the more recent graphs? Does Google's search algorithm get so bogged down with one site it can't find something that is clearly a better match (I put in September 2021 in my year-to-date search.)? Maybe the algorithms suffer from the same weaknesses as the general population of America; they don't know much, don't care at all, and can't be bothered with any kind of change once they have settled on something. I find it frustrating that no matter how carefully I tailor my searches, I don't find what I'm after even though I know it's out there. Maybe I need some training in how to better manipulate these lame algorithms that are supposed to be superintelligent and about to take over the world.

Congress passed an infrastructure bill. Not a big enough one, but it is a step. I expect Biden's approval will go up a point or two. Maybe it will lead to more success, which would be nice.

Predicted Outcome

 Ohio had two congressional districts with special elections this week. The results were predictable, and predicted, even by me. Gerrymandering won and representative democracy lost.

In my district, a Republican candidate with no government experience and no apparent qualifications won easily against a serving Democrat from the state legislature. The seat was vacated by our previous representative so he could become president of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. He had held office in the state legislature before running for Congress, which he lost in his first campaign, but won a rematch in 2010, when Democrats were so disillusioned by the failure of the Obama Administration to solve all the world's problems in a few weeks, they didn't bother to vote. That gave Republicans complete control of the state legislature and also Congress on a national level. So Republican gerrymandered our district, which used to be somewhat competitive to a guaranteed win for Republicans.

So it seems I will have a useless and incompetent representative, at least until after next year's election. My guess is that gerrymandering will win again and I will still be in a Republican district. That saddens me because I believe, at least somewhat, in the democratic republican form of government.

I can't say how bad a representative I have now. I doubt he will be a worse embarrassment to Ohio than Jim Jordan, but he might. I think he was an energy company lobbyist, so he will probably oppose action on global warming, along with the rest of his party, despite decades of data and actual changes causing a great deal of harm in the world, which will continue to get worse as the warming continues, even if we take action. The best we can do is limit the severity of the damage. It is too late to prevent a lot of warming and damage because we haven't already taken the action the science suggested we should.

In the other election, a democrat who was in local government ran against a radio personality who has run for office before and always lost. The Republican didn't respond to media inquiries about her position on issues. She seems sadly typical of current Republican candidates; uninformed and uninterested in making the world better.

In Virginia, the Republican candidate for governor won based on a campaign of fear mongering and lies, stirring up racial resentment. I guess he and his party have nothing else to offer. It is a sad state of affairs.