Category: Activities (Page 19 of 34)

Activities are gatherings that occur on a regular schedule, usually weekly, to enjoy a specific pastime.

Golf Oak Hills: September 15, 2020

September 3, 2020 / Webmaster

Our second 2020 outing is at Oak Hills Park, Norwalk, Tuesday,

15 September, starting at 10:00 AM.

To sign up, email Peter Carnes, picarnes@gmail.com.
Provide your handicap to facilitate pairing.

Tee times will be announced once registration is complete.

Fee is estimated to be $50 (includes cart) payable when you arrive.

Members of Oak Hills pay a discounted price.

Confirmation and coordination will be via email during the week prior to play.

For directions to Oak Hills, go to. https://www.oakhillsgc.com/contact/directions-a-map

Golf Sterling Farms, Aug 25, 2020

July 28, 2020 / Webmaster

Gents,

We have some times reserved for a golf outing at Sterling Farms. The date is Tuesday 25 August at 11am. Cost will be $51 with a cart (single occupant). Before fully securing this reservation, I want to get a sense for the number of you who are likely to play.

If you are interested, please respond to me directly: picarnes@gmail.com. This is just an indication for planning purposes. Once we reach a critical mass, I will contact you again with an official invitation.

Peter Carnes

Current Affairs: Income Inequality, Sept 17, 2020, 11:00

July 27, 2020 / Webmaster

Your Host: Bob Baker

Discussion Leader: David Mace

Our current affairs group will talk about income inequality in America and what we should do about it.

Pew Survey – CA Sep 2020

The Black-White Wage Gap Is as Big as It Was in 1950

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/opinion/sunday/race-wage-gap.html?referringSource=articleShare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

Racism’s Hidden Toll

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/11/opinion/us-coronavirus-black-mortality.html?referringSource=articleShare

How does income inequality affect our lives

Video recording of the discussion: https://youtu.be/8x4ej7hyeA4

Book Club: THE GREAT INFLUENZA,
THE EPIC STORY OF THE DEADLIEST PLAGUE IN HISTORY
BY JOHN M. BARRY
Sept 9, 2020

July 3, 2020 / Webmaster

Sept 9, 2020, 12:00

THE GREAT INFLUENZA
THE EPIC STORY OF THE DEADLIEST PLAGUE IN HISTORY
BY JOHN M. BARRY

A keen recounting of the 1918–20 pandemic.

This deadly global flu outbreak has gotten hazy in the public memory, and its origins and character were unclear from the beginning, writes popular historian Barry (Rising Tide, 1997, etc.). But influenza tore apart the world’s social fabric for two long years, and it would be a mistake to forget its lessons. (It also tore apart the American medical establishment—but that was for the good.) With the same terrorizing flair of Richard Preston’s Hot Zone, the author follows the disease in the way he might shadow a mugger, presenting us with the vivid aftereffects as if from Weegee’s camera: “Influenza killed more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century; it killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years.” But Barry is not interested simply in hugely disturbing numbers. He charts how the pandemic brought a measure of scientific maturity to the medical world and profiles such important personalities as Paul Lewis and William Henry Welch, institutions like Johns Hopkins, the Rockefeller Institute, and the Red Cross. He covers with an easy touch the evolution in our understanding of viral disease and the strides that have been made to counter its effects, such as vaccines. He watches the flu spread until there aren’t enough coffins to house the bodies, and he watches as the military fails to alert the general public because the brass feared it would hurt wartime morale. Influenza appears to have spread like a prairie fire from a military base in Kansas throughout the world, thanks to WWI troop deployment and the disease’s highly contagious nature. There was nowhere to hide, Barry chillingly explains: “It now seemed as if there had never been life before the epidemic. The disease informed every action of every person.” Emerging viruses, including new strains of flu, will likely visit us again.

Majestic, spellbinding treatment of a mass killer.

From Charles Salmans:

There are several recent interviews on YouTube of John Barry, author of The Great Influenza, the book we are next discussing. I have watched two of these in full.

I thought the better one was this podcast on MSNBC. It’s 46 minutes. One annoying thing: 7 ads you have to skip past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtJvXCZeNVo

Barry was also interviewed for 55 minutes on the Great Courses link (see below). In my opinion the interviewer is not as good, but at the 12 minute mark she asks about the similarities and differences between the 1918 flu and Covid.

In short, Barry says that the 1918 flu was a lot more lethal than what we are seeing today, but Covid 19 is a lot more contagious because you can be unaware you are a carrier. Covid 19 is stealthy.

1) In 1918 you got sick and it was obvious. In many cases people were dead within a day of showing symptoms, and sometimes in as little as 4 hours. As those of you have read the book know, it contains horrifying descriptions of people severely ill, bleeding from the eyes and ears, turning so blue their race was indeterminate.

2) Today people who are sick carry the transmittable virus for a longer period, up to 14 days, and may be asymptomatic. It is taking a much longer time for Covid 19 to move through a community, making lockdowns longer and harder to contain. In 1918 a wave swept through a community in six to ten weeks and then was gone.

What is similar:

1) Importance of informing the public and being honest. Using the war and patriotism as an excuse, there was a lot of disinformation and denial in 1918. There continues to be denial today from the White House and some Governors. Today if we can achieve vigorous testing and contact tracing, we can control Covid 19, but we seem still to struggle with as effective a response as in some other countries.

2) In 1918 they recognized the importance of social distancing, just as we do now. In that regard, at least so far, that’s the most effective means of disease control. So nothing has changed in 100 years!

Here’s the interview in which John Barry compares the 1918 pandemic to Covid 19 (12 minutes into this 55 minute interview).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtjD1lUNC6w

From Bert:

A Warning for the United States From the Author of ‘The Great Influenza

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/opinion/coronavirus-economy.html?referringSource=articleShare

Video of the discussion: https://youtu.be/KWeThH_yStQ

Current Affairs: “Covid-19/ Status and Decisions to be Made”, Aug 27, 2020, 11:00

June 26, 2020 / Webmaster

Host: Bob Baker

Discussion Leader: Charles Salmans

Main topics are:

Covid infection and death rates
Latest data and possibility of “waves” this fall and next year, as in 1918

Tradeoff between economy and quarantines
Unemployment rates and issues of income replacement
Especially hard hit — hospitality and travel, small business
K-12 Schools, colleges and universities
Only the Federal government can print money; constraints on state and local budgets
Nations (and states) that have tightened after loosening (Australia, New Zealand, California, Florida)

Challenge of testing and contract tracing

Vaccine timetable
Vaccines under development
Challenge of final approvals
Manufacturing challenge to meet worldwide demand
Vaccine roll-out and priorities?
– Health care workers
– Elderly/Nursing Homes
– Other priority job categories (Police/fire, Food industry workers, Teachers)

Articles:
Covid treatment

The COvid Storm from WSJ

Covid Discussion Links Aug 2020 copy

Wall Street Journal: Lockdowns punish the economy. Months into the Covid-19 pandemic, evidence points to ways to slow the spread of the coronavirus at much lower economic cost.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-lockdowns-economy-pandemic-recession-business-shutdown-sweden-coronavirus-11598281419?st=gq8fqbf9erwckxs&reflink=article_gmail_share

New York Times: “Why are US Cases Falling? Restrictions are Working.” Charts on nationwide cases, on four states where cases have declined from their peak (Florida, Arizona, Louisiana and South Carolina), and “Where the US falls among the 10 countries with the worst outbreaks.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/24/us/coronavirus-cases-decreasing.html?searchResultPosition=1

Effective reproduction rate: https://rt.live/

Current Affairs: Nuclear Power in the US, July 16, 2020, 11:00

June 26, 2020 / Webmaster

Host: Bob Baker

Discussion Leader: Mark Nunan

Discussion slides: NUCLEAR_ENERGY_FUTURE_FOR_USA

Current Affairs: Art Baron on Innovation, June 18, 2020, 11:00

June 10, 2020 / Webmaster

Host: Charlie Goodyear

Discussion Leader: Art Baron

DISCUSSION OUTLINE ON INNOVATION

Current Affairs, June 18, 2020

AGENDA:

The Science of Innovation
The Digital Age . . . a Multi-Decade Transformation
Winners and Losers . . . Lessons Learned . . . Market Considerations
COVID . . . a Present Day Catalyst
Potential Future Industry Disruptions

=====================================================================

The Science of Innovation

Innovation: The process of translating an idea or invention into a product, service, or business model that creates value for which customers will pay.

Peter Drucker: “The Discipline of Innovation” HBR, August 2002 https://hbr.org/2002/08/the-discipline-of-innovation Areas of Opportunity: Unexpected Occurrences, Incongruities, Process Needs, Industry & Market Changes, Demographic Changes, Changes in Perception, New Knowledge

Clayton Christensen: theory of “disruptive innovation”, first introduced in his 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma. Key insights: S-curve, market-creating innovations drive growth, (vs sustaining or efficiency innovations), innovations often come from outside the established incumbents.

Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Steve Jobs: “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them.

“Inspiring Innovation”, HBR August 2002 https://hbr.org/2002/08/inspiring-innovation

Other Key Enablers: Simplicity, Focus, Diversity, Cross-discipline, Innovation Culture, Risk Acceptance . . . overcoming resistance to change

The Digital Age . . . a Multi-Decade Transformation

Dramatic transformation fueled by, (among other things), Moore’s Law, Metcalfe’s Law
“The Consumerization of IT”

○ Increasingly, employees had more capabilities at home than at work

○ Trickle down from consumer market to enterprise market, (much like prior generation trickle down from Military and NASA to private sector)

Adoption rates of digital products accelerating virally. Many digital products have near zero marginal cost.

○ Time to reach 50 million users

■ Automobiles, 62 years

■ Telephone, 50 years

■ Credit Card, 28 years

■ Mobile Phones, 12 years

■ Facebook, 3 years

■ PokemonGo, 19 days

Brand new product categories, e.g. Streaming content, Smart phones, Virtual Assistants, AI, Social Media
Increasingly Mobile First as the Innovation platform
New Business Models are Transforming Industries

○ SaaS, Cloud . . . new players, e.g. SalesForce.com, Workday

○ Sharing Economy . . . Uber, Lyft, Airbnb

Crisis driven change and leadership, e.g. Estonia, cyberattacks, 2007

Winners and Losers . . . Lessons Learned . . . Market Considerations

Top valued companies as of 3/31/20: Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook.

○ Leadership with brand new product & services categories

Why did Microsoft miss the Internet in the mid-90’s, but recover and thrive, while Digital Equipment missed the microcomputer in the 80’s and didn’t
Blackberry vs iPhone . . . dynamics in the marketplace
Industry evolution:. Visacalc and the PC, then Lotus 123, and then Microsoft Excel
Early internet successes, (AOL and Yahoo), superseded by newer ones, (Google and Facebook).

○ As consumers became more proficient with the Internet, the access advantages of AOL and Yahoo gave way to the continuous innovation of companies like Google and Facebook.

Xerox Parc, (GUI and Mouse), vs Apple
A 19th Century Example: Steel industry leadership shift from U.K. to U.S. with Carnegie Steel’s adoption of Bessemer Steel Process.
Fast Company: The World’s Most Innovative Companies, 2020 and 2019

https://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2020

https://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2019

COVID . . . a Present Day Catalyst

Medical: Vaccines, Therapies, Ventilators, PPE,…
Telehealth: technology available for years, but limited adoption due to business model, (insurance, provider fees) —> current urgency now driving coverage and deployment. Many post-COVID benefits.
Online services

○ Collaboration and Work from Home

■ Zoom Video, simplicity vs competition, 20 million to 200m users, fierce competition: Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Facebook, Apple,…

■ Consumer apps, e.g. Caribu

○ eCommerce Delivery, e.g. Amazon, Walmart

○ Food delivery services, Restaurant services, Supermarket delivery, Instacart

○ Location services enabling individual tracking, social distancing compliance, temperatures, etc.

○ Behavior change, e.g. increase in digital banking across populations, Gucci, reducing runway fashion shows

Potential Future Industry Disruptions

Healthcare
Education, new cost dynamics, pathway for greater equality and opportunity
CyberSecurity
Food Supply, risks, (global hunger, climate change, drought, income security), reduce waste, (e.g. Apeel Sciences), new sources, (e.g. Beyond Meat, milk substitutes), new processes, (e.g. precision agriculture, restaurants delivery, kits, home cooking)
Environment, Efficiency, Energy Transition, Pollution, Advanced Manufacturing, Circular Economy, Hydrogen, EVs
Social/News Trust and Accountability, beginning to see some take action, (Twitter, Zoom), but others resist. Much more is needed given the harmful power of digital media.
Resilience, Markets, Supply Chain, Transportation, Financial Systems, Global/Deglobalization Balance, . . . .

Current Affairs. Mike Critelli – Safety of the Electric Grid, May 21, 2020 @ 11:00

April 29, 2020 / Webmaster

Host: Charlie Goodyear.

Speaker Mike Critelli. Bio Critelli, Mike

Outline of the electric grid. OUTLINE OF ELECTRIC POWER GRID

Book Club: The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larsen, June 10, 2020, 12:00

April 9, 2020 / Webmaster

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers a fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally-and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports-some released only recently-Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisers who comprised Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” including his lovestruck private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Frederick Lindemann. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when-in the face of unrelenting horror-Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

Charles Salmans on The Splendid and the Vile

Tom Igoe on The Splendid and the Vile

Book Club: The Russian Job by Douglas Smith, May 13, 2020, noon

January 28, 2020 / Webmaster

THE RUSSIAN JOB by Douglas Smith |

Kirkus Reviews

The hair-raising account of a great humanitarian act in which the United States provided vital assistance to the Soviet Union. Historian and translator Smith (Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs, 2016) reminds readers that World War I and civil war devastated Russian agriculture because the fighting armies lived off the land. By 1920, the Bolsheviks had largely won, but the government continued to forcibly extract grain from the peasants. Then the rains stopped. At first, Lenin “welcomed the famine, since he believed it would destroy the people’s faith in God and the tsar. Revolution, not charity, would save the peasants, he said.” By the summer, faced with mass starvation and violence, he changed his mind. Many philanthropists and international charities responded to pleas for help, but only one organization had the immense resources required: the American Relief Administration, led by Herbert Hoover, who had already impressed the world with his relief of mass starvation in Belgium and northern France during WWI and then again in Europe after the armistice. A successful businessman, Hoover employed the same talents to organize a vast enterprise led by loyal underlings who oversaw the distribution chain, from docks to warehouses to transportation to the soup kitchens. A few Soviet leaders were congenial, but most believed that the ARA was a nefarious capitalist plot. Secret police harassed the Americans and arrested Russian employees but sometimes, unpredictably, helped by cutting through red tape. Local officials were usually grateful. Infrastructure, housing, sanitation, and disease were terrible, far worse than in Europe. In an often agonizing but necessary book, the author includes letters and anecdotes by participants as well as often horrific photographs, all of which tell a grim story. Starving people do not overthrow governments, so it’s unlikely American aid saved the Soviet Union, but it was a magnificent achievement—and Smith adeptly navigates all elements of the story. Except for Hoover biographers, American scholars pay little attention to this episode; it quickly vanished from Russian history. Although the catastrophic Russian famine and American relief efforts are not completely forgotten,
this expert account deserves a large readership.

Current Affairs, Talkin’ Trash, February 20, 2020

January 24, 2020 / Webmaster

8:30am, Lilian Gade Room at the DCA.

Cliff van Voorhees and Carolyn Bayne will discuss the challenges of recycling in Darien.

Introductory slide show.

DMA Recycling

Examples of what should and should not be in single stream recycling:

Click below to see what’s allowed and not allowed in Darien Single Stream. Just because it isn’t listed here, doesn’t mean it can’t be recycled – there are separate areas for paint, lightbulbs, batteries, electronics, tires, appliances, food waste, metal, large plastic, yard waste, mattresses, clothes, corrugated, plastic bags, construction debris, … And the Swap Shop is a way to recycle usable stuff. (Or gain more clutter you don’t really want.) You can also pick up shredded mulch, leaf compost, and sometimes food compost.

2019_Darien_Single_Stream_Recycling_(Full_List)

A tour of City Carting Recycling Center. (hover over picture to stop scrolling)

Commercial Haulers

The haulers separate trash from SSR, even though many people seem to think they do not. I believe they do for two main reasons:

it’s the law and their licenses could be revoked if they are found in violation;
Darien charges haulers to tip MSW but not SSR. Free tipping of SSR is an incentive to separate – and recycle – SSR. We are one of the few remaining municipalities that continues to get paid for SSR, but that could change when our contract is renegotiated.

It’s also worth noting that the haulers are only required to recycle what goes in the blue bin (ie our SSR list); many of the other items we recycle (ie batteries, light bulbs, e-waste, paint, etc.) must be brought to our facility. We ALWAYS recommend that residents who employ a hauler also get a dump sticker so that they can recycle these additional materials; their permits are priced much lower to account for the fact that they are primarily bringing recyclables and not regular household trash. Note that Seniors can get a free permit.

CT’s problem with waste from “Hartford Current:”
https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-ct-outofstate-trash-disposal-20191228-hprk52k2hjbzlj7xz2lztug74q-story.html

Economics and Science of Recycling from “Popular Mechanics” (note date is 2008 before China’s ban on imports):

Problems with Recycling in Asia from the “Financial Times:”
https://www.ft.com/content/360e2524-d71a-11e8-a854-33d6f82e62f8

Micro-plastics and their effects on humans from “The Conversation:”
https://theconversation.com/we-are-guinea-pigs-in-a-worldwide-experiment-on-microplastics-97514

Recycling facts from Recycle Across America:
https://www.recycleacrossamerica.org/recycling-facts

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-world-plastic-waste/?fbclid=IwAR0OkLn4IffTQ-O4dN9ItuQ73fBgdCSoyxg_Fi6v1ZG6Vfy751y3cR-g32g

CT’s Policies from the CT Mirror.
https://ctmirror.org/2020/02/17/is-connecticuts-outdated-recycling-system-in-line-for-an-overhaul/?utm_source=Connecticut+Mirror+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=b6d6010e90-DAILY_BRIEFING_MORNING&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_571d22f8e4-b6d6010e90-68155097

Current Affairs- Business Roundtable: Purpose of a Corporation, March 19, 2020, 11:00 EDT

January 20, 2020 / Webmaster

DMA Current Affairs. The Purpose of the Corporation hosted by Bob Baker

We have licensed audio/video conferencing software and are going to (try to) hold the Current Affairs meeting over the internet.

As always, you should review the material in advance on the website:

https://dariendma.org/current-affairs-business-roundtable-purpose-of-a-corporation-march-19-2020/

You should keep the post open to follow Bob’s opening remarks.

The meeting will start at 11:00 EDT.

We’ve had some issues with connectivity. It could that the company’s capacity is overwhelmed – many, many people are going on-line or it could be idiosyncrasies with a person’s PC. (There is no chance it is the skill of the user.)

For simple dial in use the following numbers from any phone.

United States: +1 (872) 240-3412
Access Code: 132-263-437

For the intrepid you can try joining on-line. The meeting will open about 10:30. We won’t have time to troubleshoot so if there are technical problems, use the dial in number.

Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.
https://www.gotomeet.me/DMAdarien/currentaffairs

New to GoToMeeting? Get the app now and be ready when your first meeting starts: https://global.gotomeeting.com/install/132263437

Business Roundtable—Purpose of a Corporation

Pre- August 2019 Maximize Shareholder Value

Corporate Responsibility per Milton Friedman

1970 essay- Maximize Returns to Shareholder

Friedman’s thesis: Corporations are not to make contributions for

“social causes”, shareholders can choose what to give.

Further- Corporations are to obey all laws and regulations.

If corporations make “contributions”, the directors must

conclude such donations create good will and enhance sales.

Current example: Orvis gives 5% of pretax profits for “environmental

causes”. (Could they give 15%?

Comments from Harvard Law School Forum
Re: Business Roundtable Statement on Corporate Mission

Corporate Directors have a fiduciary duty to act in shareholder interest
Thus, decisions not in shareholder interest are illegal

Actions taken by directors will be presumed to be in shareholder interest or they would not be taken.
Directors must adhere to the law so that new Legislative mandates may promote or presume to benefit other stakeholders, but at a cost to shareholders.

Overall question: To what extent do we desire the government to impose
rules that will decrease business profits in order to strive for other benefits

What does the Business Roundtable expect or hope to change with revised statement of purpose?

Former “purpose”: “Maximize shareholder Value”

New “purpose”: “Act to benefit all stakeholders”

Stakeholders: customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders

Possible intentions:

Change corporate reporting on selective topics?

Motivate investments into areas not directly in shareholder interest?

Motivate shareholder resolutions on new corporate action

Bring about new government rules on business actions

Potential areas of Government mandates: ESG

(Environment, Social, Government)

Action regarding global warming;