Odd Lots

[jeff_duntemann]

• Wow. The magazine that gave us "The Case for Killing Granny" is now saying that our public health officials have overcounted COVID-19 deaths by counting any person dying with COVID-19 as dying of it--including suicides and, sheesh, car accident victims. This has been known for some time, but I give the otherwise dopey Newsweek credit for admitting that government isn't always right.
• More on how we count COVID-19 deaths: Johns Hopkins published a paper suggesting that we are overcounting COVID deaths and undercounting deaths from other causes like heart disease. By misclassifying deaths as from COVID, we undercount deaths from other causes. The authors of the paper suggest that this means COVID-19's impact on US deaths is far less than commonly stated. Johns Hopkins has predictably deleted the article, but there's an archived copy on The Wayback Machine. Well worth a read--and possibly worth saving the original Johns Hopkins article to local disk in case threats of legal action force Wayback to take their copy down.
• A new paper posits that UVB in sunlight stimulates the production of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) in the skin, especially cathelicidin (LL-37). LL-37 has several roles, but it has been shown to inhibit the action of the influenza virus in humans. AMP action involves Vitamin D, but the D3 found in OTC supplements does not appear to work with it. My serum D3 tested toward the top of the recommended level several months ago, but it's hard to know how much of that was produced in my skin in this (outrageously) sunny place, and how much came to me in pills.
• David Prowse, who played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars movies, died yesterday, at 85. He was 6'6" and was given the choice of playing either Vader or Chewbacca. He chose Vader because "you always remember the bad guy." (Well, true. But nobody's going to forget Chewie, either.) Click through to it: The photo of gentle giant Prowse with six little girls in a UK safety program is priceless.
• Somebody did a test on the startup time required for programs written in various languages, including nearly all of the ones I'm familiar with. (At least those that weren't Xerox in-house experiments.) FreePascal 3.0.2 and 3.0.4 beat all the others, hands down, not even close. I don't know enough about compiler internals to tell how one gets that kind of startup performance, but you sure as hell do not get it with C# or Java.
• I should add that if you're on Twitter and work in Pascal, you must follow @SciPasTips.
• Bummer: The Arecibo radio telescope will be scrapped. Stuff is breaking in the basic structure of the mechanism that just can't be swapped in without rebuilding practically the whole thing. That reflector comprises eighteen acres. It's been in operation for 57 years. Wait! I have an idea! Let's build an even bigger one...in space! (Yes, I'm pretty sure Heinlein thought of it first.)
• As far as I'm concerned, this kid wins the Best Halloween Costume Award not only for 2020, but for the rest of time.