[conspire] Numbers racket

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):

> about 4.2 in our model, which we sort of knew before it got here.  Eh -
> it is a very fugable number.

Deirdre and I were trying to figure out what you meant to say when you
wrote 'fugable'.  I'll admit I'm not certain.  (Please note that I'm
not mocking your typos; I really sometimes have parsing problems, and
this is one such occasion.)

> I refuse to be locked im my little NYC apartment for a year and a
> half because of Matilda.

You absolutely have my sympathy, as on other occasions when we've
discussed this and you've said 'I refuse to live like this', etc.  
It's got to be hellish being stuck in a cramped situation like that, and 
by comparison the Moen household has nothing to complain about.

At the same time, I have to wonder what statements like 'I refuse to
live like this' and the other quoted above mean in _operational_ terms.
What I mean is, if *I* say 'I refuse to [X]', then I'll either imply or 
elaborate on what I will be insisting will occur instead of [X].  
Because otherwise I'd just be speaking rhetoric without a realistic
plan.

Given that you 'refuse' [sundry things for very understandable reasons],
are you willing to elaborate and state how you intend to proceed, and
how that's going to work?

Again, I'm not trying to mock in any way.  If what you meant was merely
that you don't _like_ being stuck in your little Brooklyn apartment and
are venting frustration, fair enough.  But if you were trying to
communicate what your plans are, I'll confess that I'm not clear on what
you said.

On the _third_ hand, it's possible that expressions like 'I refuse to
live like this' are intended to motivate everyone you hear to adopt the
same opinion, and that you imagine that you are successfully lobbying
others.  In which case, I'll ask you to please not use Conspire as a
public petition site.  Places like http://change.org/ are available if
you want to wave that sort of rhetoric around.


> The best weapon we have to fight this is a srong economy and a huge
> investement in vaccinations, and we are failing at both.

I'm sure you are familiar with the constraints that make quick public
deployment of new vaccines not a reality -- because we've spoken about
some of the obstacles by telephone.  No informed party I'm aware of
seems to think it's feasible to shorten the usual deployment time
-much-, without risking a lot bigger problems.

For the rest, presumably, you're fully aware that getting back to a
'strong economy' is fraught with pitfalls, such that, if done in a
half-assical ideology-driven way, just results in _truly_ destroying the
economy in a far worse fashion within 1-2 months, when vast amounts of
society start getting overwhelmed with mass-illness and mass-deaths. 

Before you succumb to the urge to argue with that, let's just agree to
suspend that discussion, and observe whether the state of Georgia turns
itself into a disease-ridden charnel house by June.

(I'm definitely _not_ interested in arguing that.  Let's wait, and see.)