An article published last month in the scientific journal Nature suggested that the pandemic has accelerated the aging process, not only for the millions who have contracted the virus, but also for those affected by the upheaval and isolation of remote life. …
Others have noted wrinkled skin, graying hair, creaky joints and a chronic blah feeling described by the psychologist Adam Grant as “languishing.”
For many people who have had Covid-19, the arduous recovery has left them feeling “older than they are,” said Alicia Arbaje, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. For others, there is an impression of being thrown off course. …
The demonstrations shaking the Canada’s capital began as a protest against the mandatory vaccination of truck drivers crossing the U.S.-Canada border. They have morphed into a battle cry against pandemic restrictions as a whole, and the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. …
… Police and analysts say the protests, which have galvanized thousands of demonstrators in Ottawa, Quebec City, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver, among other places, have no single leader, but encompass an assortment of people, many of them on the political right.
A key organizer of the “Freedom Convoy” that arrived in Ottawa last week is Tamara Lich, who was previously secretary of the relatively new Maverick Party, a right-of-center group that was started to promote the separation of Canada’s three western Prairie Provinces from the rest of the country.
Ms. Lich, a former fitness instructor who has sung and played guitar in an Alberta band called Blind Monday, played a leading role in organizing a GoFundMe campaign that raised about 10 million Canadian dollars, about $7.8 million, for the cause. But the online service has turned over only about 1 million dollars of that. After consulting the police, the company closed the campaign and is refunding the rest of the money to donors, citing “violence and other unlawful activity” during the demonstrations.
Ms. Lich has called for the federal government to strike down pandemic restrictions in Canada, such as provincial vaccine mandates and rules requiring masks. But Canada has a federal system in which provincial governments have considerable constitutional power, including over health care regulations.
“Our departure will be based on the prime minister doing what is right, ending all mandates and restrictions on our freedoms,” Ms. Lich said at a news conference in Ottawa last week, during which she did not take questions. “We will continue our protest until we see a clear plan for their elimination.”
Another main organizer of the truck convoy is a group calling itself Canada Unity, which has published a “memorandum of understanding” calling on Canada’s appointed senators and Canada’s Governor General (the representative of Queen Elizabeth II in Canada’s constitutional monarchy) to abolish all Covid-19 related restrictions and to allow all unvaccinated workers whose employment was terminated because of vaccine mandates to get their jobs back.
Members of the far-right People’s Party of Canada are also well represented among the protesters in Ottawa. The party has no seats in the federal Parliament. Its leader, Maxime Bernier, has denounced vaccine mandates and has previously railed against immigration and multiculturalism. …
Hours after a court ordered demonstrators to stop blocking access to the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario, protesters were still there late Friday night, but in lesser numbers. Police officers were standing by but had made no move to clear the area of demonstrators.
The injunction from Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz of the Ontario Superior Court was meant to open a way for traffic to move freely across the bridge, which carries roughly a third of U.S.-Canada trade, and which has been blocked for days by protesters. …
The Canadian police moved in on Saturday morning to clear protesters at an economically vital bridge in Windsor, Ontario, that connects Canada and the United States, and by midday had shepherded most of the pedestrians onto other streets. About a dozen pickup trucks remained, blocking the flow of traffic across the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit, an important conduit for the supply chains of the global automobile industry.
A group of police officers wearing heavy jackets but not wielding shields or other riot gear stood in a line, cautiously and progressively edging closer to the protesters. Officers told protesters that they risked arrest if they failed to clear the area.
They were reinforced by a second group of officers in military garb. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national broadcaster, showed what appeared to be an armored personnel carrier at the scene. The officers were from the Windsor Police Service as well as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada’s national police force.
More than a dozen pickup trucks and cars still blocked the bridge around midday, with vehicles revving their engines. …
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Mask wearing during the pandemic has cast modest Muslim style in a new light.
By Alia Khan
Ms. Khan is the founder and chairwoman of the Islamic Fashion and Design Council.
Dec. 7, 2021
This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.
Turning Point: Masking restrictions around the world began to loosen as more people were vaccinated against Covid-19.
These past two years saw most people’s lives turned upside down by Covid-19, and our lives at home and work are still undergoing one of the most radical shifts we’ve seen in generations. How we dress — and how our dress both reflects our values and affects the economy — has also begun to change, as we continue to mask up and tend toward a more protected lifestyle.
Interestingly, this metamorphosis sparked by a pandemic was always the norm for those who live an Islamic lifestyle, sometimes referred to as the “modest lifestyle.” Muslims, who have a collective spending power of about $2 trillion, are taught to embrace modesty with elegance as a form of dignified living. Now that covering for protection has become standard practice for many people, I believe it highlights the benefits that Islamic fashion has always offered, while helping to destigmatize and eliminate it as an excuse to judge those of us who wear it. I also believe this overlap will push Islamic fashion to become a bigger global player in defining style for years to come.
*[A bit of irony not lost on me from the start of the pandemic.]
Stephen Thaler says artificial intelligence deserves credit in patent filings. Most countries are rejecting the idea — for now.
Can a machine invent something? Or is the true inventor the person who programmed the machine?
Stephen Thaler, an American scientist who came up with an artificial intelligence system named DABUS — which stands for “device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience” — is probing these questions in courts around the world with patent applications listing DABUS as a key player.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office doesn’t agree with this approach. It has ruled that a person or people need to be listed as the inventor. Both the UK’s Intellectual Property Office and the European Patent Office have taken a similar view.
But South Africa has granted a patent to Thaler that acknowledges his AI system as the inventor. A judge in Australia took a similar view, although the government is challenging that decision in court.
AI already is widely used in scientific research. Systems that hunt for patterns and make predictions are proving useful in the design of new materials and medical treatments, for example. DABUS designed two patentable things, according to Thaler. One is a food and beverage container whose unique shape allows multiple such containers to fit together more tightly when being transported. The second is a beacon for attracting attention in emergencies that flashes in a particularly insistent way.
Thaler says he’s been interested for decades in the question of whether machines can be creative, and he’s sure the answer is yes. “My overall objective is to demonstrate that [machines] in general, and DABUS in particular, qualify as minds,” he says.
But the legal frameworks for patents were written with humans in mind. Modern intellectual property law has its roots in the Renaissance. The first patent is generally considered to be the one granted in 1421 to architect and engineer Filippo Brunelleschi, who also designed the dome of Florence’s cathedral, for a boat called Il Badalone (the Monster). Il Badalone was conceived to transport 100 tons of Carrara marble upriver from Pisa to Florence. (It sank on its maiden voyage.) …
Federal Reserve officials are pushing back on the idea that central bankers might raise interest rates in between meetings and made it clear that while they are poised to begin lifting rates in March, the initial increase may be smaller than what investors have begun to expect.
Markets began to bet on a double-size rate increase — half a percentage point — after January inflation data came in surprisingly high last week. Those expectations grew after the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis president, James Bullard, suggested that the Fed might need to respond decisively with a large increase or even an inter-meeting move, something the central bank typically reserves for emergencies. …
Mr. Bullard seemed to walk back his comments slightly on Monday, acknowledging during a CNBC interview that he is just one policy official and that Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, will lead on deciding how quickly to pull back support. He reiterated that he would like to see a rapid pace of increases, taking rates to about 1 percent by July — but he did not repeat that an increase in between meetings might be a good idea, and instead said that the Fed needs to react to data in an “organized” way.
“Our credibility is on the line here,” said Mr. Bullard, who votes on policy this year. Regional Fed presidents rotate in and out of four voting seats; the New York Fed president and Fed governors in Washington have a constant vote.
Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said that the Fed needed to get moving, but its approach ought to be “measured.”
The Canadian authorities appeared to be making inroads Sunday to end the large-scale protests that have roiled the nation for weeks, arresting demonstrators who had blocked a critical border bridge to Detroit, and suggesting they had negotiated a deal with the truckers who have occupied the downtown core of Ottawa, the capital, for weeks.
By Sunday night, the police in Windsor, Ontario, said they had arrested several people and towed a pair of pickup trucks that had been parked in an intersection leading to the Ambassador Bridge. The bridge reopened late Sunday, just before midnight.
“Today, our national economic crisis at the Ambassador Bridge came to an end,” the mayor of Windsor, Drew Dilkens, said on Sunday. “Border crossings will reopen when it is safe to do so and I defer to police and border agencies to make that determination. …
The protest at the bridge was one of several that has unsettled a country unaccustomed to widespread demonstrations.
In the capital, a pair of letters released by Jim Watson, the mayor of Ottawa, and Tamara Lich, a protest organizer, suggested that the truckers, whose grievances with a vaccine mandate kicked off the demonstrations, had agreed to a deal in which the truckers would move their vehicles from residential neighborhoods.
The truckers have for weeks kept their vehicles parked in Ottawa, including near Parliament, snarling traffic and disrupting businesses.
“The truckers here in Ottawa have always been about peaceful protest,” Ms. Lich, the protest organizer, wrote. “Many of the citizens and businesses in Ottawa have been cheering us on but we are also disturbing others. That was never our intent.”
The truckers’ occupation of Ottawa sparked a movement, drawing protesters of many stripes who flocked to the convoy in a party-like atmosphere. Over time, the protests spread across Ontario and the country.
Donald J. Trump’s longtime accounting firm cut ties with him and his family business last week, saying it could no longer stand behind a decade of annual financial statements it prepared for the Trump Organization, court documents show.
The decision, which was disclosed to the company in a Feb. 9 letter from the accounting firm, comes amid criminal and civil investigations into whether Mr. Trump illegally inflated the value of his assets. The firm, Mazars USA, compiled the financial statements based on information the former president and his company provided.
The letter instructed the Trump Organization to essentially retract the documents, known as statements of financial condition, from 2011 to 2020. In the letter, Mazars noted that the firm had not “as a whole” found material discrepancies between the information the Trump Organization provided and the actual value of Mr. Trump’s assets. But given what it called “the totality of circumstances” — including Mazars’ own investigation — the letter directed the Trump Organization to notify anyone who received the statements that they should no longer rely on them. …
Scientists suggest that the pandemic has sped the aging process
NY Times – Feb 10
How Covid-19_Might Age Us (PDF)
Nature – January 19
Trumpers in Canada, and their truck blockade…
Who are the protesters and what do they want?
NY Times – Feb 7
Police face off with remaining trucks blocking bridge
NY Times – Feb 12
Turning Points: Guest Essay
The Courtesy of Covering Up
Mask wearing during the pandemic has cast modest Muslim style in a new light.
By Alia Khan
Ms. Khan is the founder and chairwoman of the Islamic Fashion and Design Council.
Dec. 7, 2021
This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.
Turning Point: Masking restrictions around the world began to loosen as more people were vaccinated against Covid-19.
These past two years saw most people’s lives turned upside down by Covid-19, and our lives at home and work are still undergoing one of the most radical shifts we’ve seen in generations. How we dress — and how our dress both reflects our values and affects the economy — has also begun to change, as we continue to mask up and tend toward a more protected lifestyle.
Interestingly, this metamorphosis sparked by a pandemic was always the norm for those who live an Islamic lifestyle, sometimes referred to as the “modest lifestyle.” Muslims, who have a collective spending power of about $2 trillion, are taught to embrace modesty with elegance as a form of dignified living. Now that covering for protection has become standard practice for many people, I believe it highlights the benefits that Islamic fashion has always offered, while helping to destigmatize and eliminate it as an excuse to judge those of us who wear it. I also believe this overlap will push Islamic fashion to become a bigger global player in defining style for years to come.
*[A bit of irony not lost on me from the start of the pandemic.]
An inventor that isn’t human
Boston Globe – Feb 9
Federal Reserve officials call for a measured response to inflation
NY Times – Feb 14
Canadian authorities push to end protests and reopen a key US border bridge
NY Times – Feb 14
Accounting Firm Cuts Ties With Trump and Retracts Financial Statements
NY Times – Feb 14