Current Events

Pandemic Diary 2: Use a Password!

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Much of life in the coronavirus lockdown moved to online video conferences about three weeks ago, a fact which is reflected in the NASDAQ share price of one company, Zoom Video Communications, Inc: on March 13, it was $107.47 per share and on March 23 the price was $159.56 per share. (It has since dropped to $121.93 as of today, largely for reasons discussed below.)

There have been video conference web sites, platforms, and applications available for many years, but Zoom is free for a “Basic” plan, simple to navigate on a smartphone or laptop, handled the increase in traffic with ease (“a 535% rise in daily traffic to the Zoom.us download page, according to an analysis from web analytics firm SimilarWeb”), can handle groups in the dozens if not hundreds, and is quite easy to use. College classes have used Zoom as virtual classrooms for years, so when college campuses closed in the pandemic, all unfinished courses moved to finish the semester on the virtual platform.

Zoom allows yoga instructors to continue to conduct sessions, therapists to meet clients, recovery groups to hold as many meetings as they may want to, corporate boards to meet, the quarantined British prime minister to run cabinet meetings, journalists to conduct “in-person” interviews, quarantined families to continue to be families. And it is a free service for the “Basic” package, which allows for forty-minute meetings.

Zoom also promises end-to-end encryption for secure conferences. That last part is not a lie, but it uses the phrase end-to-end in a way that does not mean what the average user of the service might think it means.
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Pandemic Diary 1: Of Jokes and Introverts

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In this era of pandemic concerns, rumors and memes are more easily communicable and travel more quickly than that airborne virus which we must each dodge like Neo in the first Matrix film. Here in my hometown of New Paltz, NY, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases escalated from one to many long before (well, days before) one was confirmed.

(We now have several, and a town whose boundary is within walking distance from my house is my county’s current coronavirus hot spot. Well, yay! us.)

When New York State imposed a stay-at-home quarantine for anyone deemed “not essential” by employers on the night of March 22—two long weeks ago—a variation of a meme about introverts proliferated: “When you find out your normal daily lifestyle is called ‘quarantine'” read one popular meme over a children’s show character’s reaction to something. (Below.)
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Memories of an Iowa Caucus Voter

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The Iowa Caucuses will be held tonight. I was a caucus voter in that state one presidential election, in 2004, so my experience that long-ago January night can perhaps illustrate what we will see unfold.

Certain rules are different this caucus night compared to that one a lifetime ago, but the core principles inside the experience remain the same: 1. A caucus is not a primary, in which one votes with a ballot; it is an hours-long town meeting, and, 2. Caucus night is the climax of a year in which there are more presidential candidates in Iowa than Iowans.

Return with me to 2004, when TV was in black and white, movies cost a nickel, and a Republican president was up for re-election: George W. Bush.

* * * *
In 2004, the Democratic Party, my party, offered a buffet of candidates, many of them U.S. senators. I did not plan to take action or even speak at my caucus, but history forced my hand.
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