Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C), reassured the public that America was prepared to fend off coronavirus. But being privy to decidedly non-public briefings, he knew otherwise, and sold off $1.5m in stocks before the markets crashed.

Soon after he offered public assurances that the government was ready to battle the coronavirus, the powerful chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, sold off a significant percentage of his stocks, unloading between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 33 separate transactions.

As the head of the intelligence committee, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, has access to the government’s most highly classified information about threats to America’s security. His committee was receiving daily coronavirus briefings around this time, according to a Reuters story.

It's remarkable how many pundits and public figures are making plausibly-deniable references to having Burr dealt with. The constitution endures, but civility is toast. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/republican-senator-dumped-1-5.html

photo by Julian Mark

Restaurants and boutiques in San Francisco's Mission District -- a vibrant neighborhood at the heart of the City's struggle with gentrification and inequality -- are boarding up their windows apparently in fear of riots or robberies. The businesses are closed until at least April 7 due to the “shelter in place” mandate. From Julian Mark's story in Mission Local:

“We actually don’t want to do it,” said Dylan MacNiven, the owner of West of Pecos. “I don’t think it’s good for the public to see this, but now that everyone else has done it, we’re going to be the only one on the street without it.”

MacNiven was in the process of placing the final boards on his windows on Thursday afternoon, and he said the bar and restaurant was hesitant — but then a multitude of surrounding businesses had done the same[....]

“We’re doing it so we can sleep at night,” said Needles and Pens owner Breezy Culbertson.

Culbertson said she will be out $300 to board the windows. Just one of their front windows would cost $2,000 to replace. “It’s a bummer because it feels like it is bad for morale,” said a man named Scott who was helping Culbertson install the boards.

"Apocalypse Chic: Valencia Street businesses board up their windows" (Mission Local, thanks Tim Daly!)

“We’re doing it so we can sleep at night,” said Needles and Pens owner Breezy Culbertson.https://t.co/4h4XXViseD

 Mission Local (@MLNow) March 20, 2020

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/san-francisco-lockdown-missio.html

The Q outfitted a bicycle with invisible wheels. It's a simple idea (while probably tricky to get right) with a rather wonderful effect.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/this-bicycle-has-invisible-whe.html

It’s the celebrity coronavirus edition in this week’s tabloids.

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/coronavirus-is-the-new-black.html

The great Al Jaffee turned 99 last week. He's been contributing to MAD for 64 years and is famous for his hidden-image-within-an-image MAD Fold-Ins on the inside back cover of the magazine. Happy belated birthday, Al! (Back in 2011, when Al was just a kid, Ruben Bolling and I interviewed him on my podcast, Gweek.)

A couple of weeks ago I visited my parents and found a bunch of my old books and comic books in the attic. I found my copy of MAD's Al Jaffee Spews Out Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, which I bought when I was 10 or 11 years old. I was surprised to see that I had filled in some snappy answers of my own to stupid questions.

"No, it's last year's hard-t0-melt snow."

"No, I'm inspecting the quality of my pillow."

[My 11-year-old self drew a blank for this one.]

"No, but are you interested in buying some lizard coffins?"

What are your snappy answers to these stupid questions? Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/happy-99th-birthday-to-mad-car.html

A group of celebrities, including Gal Gadot, Will Ferrell, Mark Ruffalo, James Marsden, Lynda Carter, Jamie Dornan, and Amy Adams, posted a video of each of them, in their isolation, signing lines from John Lennon's "Imagine." The attempted message was that we're all in this together, we will get through this, but the Twitter response was immediate and brutal.

It was the line "imagine no possessions" that triggered the most vitriol. People seeing this tweet who are currently out of work and understandably nervous about it barked that they don't have to imagine it. Others shot back with sentiments like: We don't need you singing to us. How about you spending a million or two to buy ventilators and masks and donate them them to hospitals? One person posted the pay that each actor gets per film.

“We are in this together, we will get through it together.”

Gal Gadot just posted a video of her and other artists (who are also quarantined because of the COVID-19) singing Imagine by John Lennon on Instagram. pic.twitter.com/fRV6GhAF92

 best of gal (@bestofgaI) March 19, 2020

It's wonderful that everyone is at least trying to do the right thing in this very scary and trying time, but man was this ever an epic fail.

Image: Screengrab Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/shut-in-celebrities-sing-ima.html

IEEE Spectrum asked pioneering roboticist Rodney Brooks, co-founder of iRobot and former head of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the eternal engineering question: "What is a robot?" Inspired by computational neuroscientist Warren McCulloch who enjoyed writing sonnets, Brooks responded to the query in iambic pentameter. Here's the beginning:

What Is a Robot? By Rodney Brooks

Shall I compare thee to creatures of God? Thou art more simple and yet more remote. You move about, but still today, a clod, You sense and act but don’t see or emote.

You make fast maps with laser light all spread, Then compare shapes to object libraries, And quickly plan a path, to move ahead, Then roll and touch and grasp so clumsily.

Read the rest: "What Is a Robot? Rodney Brooks Offers an Answer—in Sonnet Form" (IEEE Spectrum)

image: Brooks led development of the COG robot seen in this photo by Rama (CC BY-SA 3.0 FR) Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/what-is-a-robot-pioneerin.html

If you don’t have to drive, why should you? For many, a car or truck is the only feasible way to get from place to place. But if you live in a mostly urban or suburban setting with your job, grocery store and most of your major destinations no more than a few miles away, the cost-effective and eco-friendly way to get there would be to leave the car at home.

It’s a lot more doable than you might think, especially when you consider that the average car trip distance is actually less than six miles.

We’re guessing you don’t want to walk everywhere, so the next best thing is a quick, easy transportation method for short jaunts around town — which brings us right to an option like the Levy Plus Electric Scooter.

The Levy Plus is battery powered with a range of up to 16 miles on a single charge, well within the range to handle most simple round trips to the coffee shop, convenience store, doctor’s office or your friend’s house.

Powered by a 350W motor, you can breeze along anywhere you need to go at around 18mph. When not in use, the Levy Plus is so ultra-portable that you can literally fold it up and stash it in the closet until you need it again.

But in case you’re worried about running out of juice while you’re out in the world, the Levy Plus is one of the only scooters of its kind featuring a removable battery pack. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/this-electric-scooter-is-the-e.html

To help entertain all of us while we hunker down in our domestic anti-viral combat bunkers, Rolling Stone is asking musicians to share performances from their bunkers. They kick off the series with the galactic treasure himself, Brian Wilson.

Image: YouTube Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/let-the-great-brian-wilson-mak.html

While there were certainly more people out than I expected to see … there weren't that many. Which somehow made it even weirder than the Boston Marathon Bombing Lockdown, when at least the shared sense of fear was more palpable. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/i-filmed-my-socially-distant-b.html

With food not always as readily available as it was a few weeks ago, Supercook is a recipe generator that might come in handy. Just check off the food you have in your kitchen and it dishes out a smorgasbord of recipes.

The site lists food by categories, such as Dairy, Vegetables, Fruits, Meats, etc. So I checked off some of the stuff in my fridge -- potatoes, spinach, parsley, mint, and avocados -- and it found 59 recipes. I then added eggs, and the number of recipes jumped to 268.

I haven't tried any of the recipes yet but this could be a good site to bookmark.

Image: By Yoninah - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/with-todays-not-always-avail.html

In December I bought a pair of TaoTronics active noise cancelling bluetooth headphones for my two daughters to use on an 18-hour plane trip. They said they were excellent, and they also used them in the hotel to watch videos, play music, and play games. I tried them myself and was pleasantly surprised by how well they worked. They use them every day, and now that we are all cooped up together in the house, they use them all day.

You can use L5G769UL to get them at a good discount on Amazon. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/these-cheap-noise-canceling-he.html

I saw this tweet yesterday and though it might be a joke, but it's not. Conan O'Brien really is going to host his show remotely starting Monday, March 30. Guests will Skype in to be interviewed and the audience will be stuck-at-home, self-isolating types, like me (and maybe you?). The new episodes will air on TBS, as usual.

The quality of my work will not go down because technically that’s not possible,” said O’Brien.

“Our first priority is the health and well-being of everyone in the Team Coco family, and our second priority is to try and find a way that we can do our jobs safely, from home, and contribute some entertainment for our fans out there who may be hungry for silly distraction,” said Jeff Ross, Executive Producer.

Speaking of a "silly distraction":

screengrab via Conan/Twitter Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/conan-obrien-to-host-his-sho.html

YouTuber Mark Rober got some powder with the delightful name Glo Germ, which glows when exposed to ultraviolet light. He then went to a 3rd grade classroom and put some of the powder on the hand of the teacher (the students were not told about the experiment). The teacher shook the hands of three kids. During recess Rober put more powder on the hands of a 3rd grader who agreed to allow it. Then at lunch he shined his UV flashlight on the kids and the the classroom. The dust was all over the place. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/use-glo-germ-powder-to-demonst.html

Hand Mirror is a free one-click camera check. If you are about to join a Zoom or other video meeting, just click the icon on your menu bar and take a look at your beautiful face. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/hand-mirror-mac-menu-bar-app.html

In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin posited that animal lineages with more species should also have more sub-species, or "varieties" in Darwin's terminology. Now, nearly 140 years after Darwin's death, Laura van Holstein, a PhD student in Biological Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, and her colleagues have proven Darwin right. According to a University of Cambridge report, "her research could now be used to predict which species conservationists should focus on protecting to stop them becoming endangered or extinct":

A species is a group of animals that can interbreed freely amongst themselves. Some species contain subspecies – populations within a species that differ from each other by having different physical traits and their own breeding ranges. Northern giraffes have three subspecies that usually live in different locations to each other and red foxes have the most subspecies – 45 known varieties – spread all over the world. Humans have no subspecies.

van Holstein said: “We are standing on the shoulders of giants... My research investigating the relationship between species and the variety of subspecies proves that sub-species play a critical role in long-term evolutionary dynamics and in future evolution of species. And they always have, which is what Darwin suspected when he was defining what a species actually was.”

van Holstein’s research also proved that evolution happens differently in land mammals (terrestrial) and sea mammals and bats (non-terrestrial)­ because of differences in their habitats and differences in their ability to roam freely.

Here is the scientific paper: "Terrestrial habitats decouple the relationship between species and subspecies diversification in mammals" (The Royal Society)

image credit: Nordin 'Cati'c, University of Cambridge news release Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/grad-student-proves-one-of-dar.html

On Feb. 27 while Trump was telling the public, "It's going to disappear. One day, it's like a miracle. It will disappear," U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was telling a small coterie of his rich constituents in a private meeting that the world was about to get slammed by something "akin to the 1918 pandemic":

"There's one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history," he said, according to a secret recording of the remarks obtained by NPR. "It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic."

...

But despite his longtime interest in biohazard threats, his expertise on the subject, and his role as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr did not warn the public of the government actions he thought might become necessary, as he did at the luncheon on Feb. 27.

Everyone who was at that meeting should be investigated by the SEC for potential insider trading.

Image: By United States Congress - http://www.burr.senate.gov/about/biography, Public Domain, Link. Modified. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/in-secret-meeting-3-weeks-ago.html

Genius.

This is a “social distancing machine.”

How I’m staying safe at work

Salutations, IMGURian @AllTheCoolKidsPeeTheirPants.

[via] Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/social-distancing-machine.html

To make it less conspicious as society descends into chaos, I decided to paint my entire house matte black, including the roof, windows and nearby foliage. The job completed, I was left with the old dilemma of how to store the leftover paint. Thankfully, these tactical paint cans [Amazon] are inexpensive, stealthy and perfect for the job.

100% recyclable and tolerant of up to 165°, they're ready for everday-carrying multiple gallons of latex, alkyd or solvent-based paint and primer. Best of all, they're cast from food-grade polypropylene, ensuring that my paint is safe to drink at all times. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/tactical-paint-cans.html

Can farts spread disease? That's the question Mental Floss poses, and after having looked at a small bit of science, their conclusion: "If you're wearing pants, you should be fine." Actually, even if you are butt naked you should be fine, unless, perhaps, you're within five centimeters of another human.

Searching for an answer, Mental Floss dug up a 2014 Discovery article that describes an experiment that involved farts in petri dishes. As described by science author Karl Kruszelnicki on Discovery:

“I contacted Luke Tennent, a microbiologist in Canberra, and together we devised an experiment. He asked a colleague to break wind directly onto two Petri dishes from a distance of 5 centimetres, first fully clothed, then with his trousers down. Then he observed what happened. Overnight, the second Petri dish sprouted visible lumps of two types of bacteria that are usually found only in the gut and on the skin. But the flatus which had passed through clothing caused no bacteria to sprout, which suggests that clothing acts as a filter.

Our deduction is that the enteric zone in the second Petri dish was caused by the flatus itself, and the splatter ring around that was caused by the sheer velocity of the fart, which blew skin bacteria from the cheeks and blasted it onto the dish. It seems, therefore, that flatus can cause infection if the emitter is naked, but not if he or she is clothed..."

Cut to 2020 and the coronavirus, and Mental Floss says: "Earlier this year, a Beijing district office for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced that pants should be an effective barrier against farts that might carry the novel coronavirus. Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/can-a-fart-give-you-coronaviru.html