While you're distracted...

"As much of his government battles the coronavirus outbreak, President Trump is pushing ahead with major reversals of environmental regulations, including a restriction on scientific research that some doctors worry would complicate future pandemic controls.

"Federal employees across multiple agencies said the administration was racing to complete a half-dozen significant rollbacks over the coming month. They include a measure to weaken automobile fuel efficiency standards, which one person familiar with the plans said would be issued as early as next week.

"Other efforts include loosening controls on toxic ash from coal plants, relaxing restrictions on mercury emissions and weakening the consideration of climate change in environmental reviews for most infrastructure projects."

An oil-covered bird in Goleta, Calif., after a spill there in 2015. Credit...Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The rest of the story:
Coronavirus Doesn’t Slow Trump’s Regulatory Rollbacks by Lisa Friedman (The New York Times)

“The most valuable sense of humor is the kind that enables a person to see instantly what it isn't safe to laugh at.” -- Donald Rumsfeld

Many of you frequent flyers will recall that for a time TSA had signs and loudspeakers prohibiting humor attacks at security checkpoints. “You are reminded that any inappropriate remarks or jokes concerning security may result in your arrest,” warned one loudspeaker message in Dallas last fall. It's ironic that a sign at Burbank's Bob Hope Airport should say, "No jokes."

This came to mind because of the announcement this week by the U.S. Secret Service that it has issued an RFP for software that can detect sarcasm. Since we are decades from producing a computer with a sense of humor, it's likely the service will have to make do with a program that sorts through a giant database of pre-screened tweets and emails looking for tells: wannabe terrorists would do well to get in the habit now of putting smiley faces and LOLs in all their social media posts.

The fact that no one can be absolutely certain the Secret Service itself isn't kidding is evidence of how difficult a task deciphering snide remarks will be. The safest thing is probably to assume that, like TSA, the service is deficient in the skill set needed to detect and catalog gradations of wit, and to try to help them out with some practical alternatives. I started to suggest that, instead of wasting resources developing software that will never be operational, the service ask working comics to apply their expertise to the problem, until I remembered that the functionaries interviewing prospective government humor analysts would be the same ones who can't see the whimsy in an airport sign prohibiting jokes; they'd just end up with a government facility full of Dennis Millers.

More effective might be a change in staffing practices: the service should immediately stop hiring seminary dropouts and returning Mormon missionaries and limit their recruiting to inner city Jews, blacks, Irish and Italians.

This is a serious problem needing serious attention. We certainly don't want anyone arrested at a fund-raising dinner or a Fourth of July picnic for asking the agent groping him, "Do you want me to do you now?," let alone for bringing up his fling with Hitler's mother.

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.” -- William James

And then there are the mice

Years of research is going down the drain because readings can't be made in timely fashion. And if you don't approve of lab research involving animals in the first place, this is doubly senseless. "The government shutdown is likely to mean an early death for thousands of mice used in research on diseases such as diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer's. Federal research centers including the National Institutes of Health will have to kill some mice to avoid overcrowding, researchers say. Others will die because it is impossible to maintain certain lines of genetically altered mice without constant monitoring by scientists. And most federal scientists have been banned from their own labs since Oct. 1." -- NPR