Points hard to come by as Knicks put the clamps on Pistons, who shoot 38 percent in loss - Pistons.com

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FAST BREAKDOWN

Three quick observations from Sunday night’s 109-90 loss to the New York Knicks at Little Caesars Arena

NOT ENOUGH FIREPOWER – The Knicks brought the NBA’s No. 3 defense to town and the Pistons responded with their lowest-scoring second quarter (17) and first half (37) of the season. It wasn’t all the Knicks’ doing. The Pistons shot 31 percent in that first half and hit just 4 of 15 from the 3-point arc. It got better but not by much after that. And New York, which shot just 37 percent itself in the first half, got rolling more emphatically than the Pistons in the third quarter when they scored 35 points and extended their lead to 24 at one point. The only Pistons starter to make more than half of his shots was Mason Plumlee, who only took five shots. The other four starters shot 13 of 45. In a Jan. 10 loss to Utah, the Pistons scored 86 points and shot 33 percent, their worst numbers of the season in both categories. The Jazz rank one spot ahead of the Knicks in defense at No. 2. Julius Randle, a first-time All-Star selection, led the Knicks with 25 points, eight rebounds and six assists and hit 10 of 18 shots. Jerami Grant led the Pistons with 21 points and eight rebounds, but was 2 of 9 from the 3-point arc and 7 of 19 overall.

TRADE PARTNERS – Three weeks after being traded for one another – the Pistons also picked up Charlotte’s 2021 second-round pick in the deal – Dennis Smith Jr. and Derrick Rose faced off, each performing well for their new teams and both elevated to the starting lineup by injury. Smith had a tough shooting night – he had plenty of company – and finished 3 of 11 for seven points plus four assists and seven rebounds. Rose, who played 38 minutes in New York’s win Saturday over Indiana, finished with 14 points and five assists. Rose’s scoring is down a little with the Knicks though his efficiency has improved. He’s averaging 12.3 points and 4.9 assists in 24 minutes a game for the Knicks after averaging 14.2 points and 4.2 assists in 23 minutes for the Pistons. Rose is shooting less (10.6 shots a game) with the Knicks than he did in Detroit (12.3) but shooting better with New York, especially from the 3-point line (.421 vs. .333) – and, true to form, he hit 2 of3 triples against the Pistons. Smith appeared in only three games for the Knicks due to a quad injury that knocked him from the rotation. In nine games with the Pistons prior to Sunday, he’d averaged 7.9 points and 3.2 assists in 18.6 minutes a game, though in four starts he’s averaged 12.0 points and 4.0 assists in 21.6 minutes with more steals (six) than turnovers (five).

TRADE PARTNERS II – The matchup of Dennis Smith Jr. and Derrick Rose wasn’t the only one featuring players traded for each other. The Pistons gave Svi Mykhailiuk the start at shooting guard over Wayne Ellington – his only other start this season came last week at Orlando when Ellington got the night off – and that had him guarding and being guarded by Reggie Bullock. The Pistons sent Bullock to the Los Angeles Lakers two years ago at the trade deadline for Mykhailiuk and a 2021 second-round pick. Mykhailiuk has had trouble sustaining any kind of momentum this season, his 3-point percentage remaining stuck at .326. Mykhailiuk went 2 of 18 from the 3-point arc in the season’s first three games, but appeared to find his stroke after that, making multiple 3-pointers in his next six games and seven of eight. But Mykhailiuk, remarkably, has not made multiple 3-pointers in consecutive games since then – a streak of 25 games. He was scoreless in 20 minutes, missing all three of his shots, all from the 3-point line. Ellington, shooting .434 from three for the season, hit 52.2 percent of his triples in January but entered Sunday’s last game of February making 21.1 percent from the 3-point arc. He hit 4 of 6 from the 3-point arc in a 15-point performance, the first time since January that Ellington made more than two triples in a game.

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March 01, 2021 at 10:28AM
https://www.nba.com/pistons/features/points-hard-come-knicks-put-clamps-pistons-who-shoot-38-percent-loss

Points hard to come by as Knicks put the clamps on Pistons, who shoot 38 percent in loss - Pistons.com

https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

Slovakia to tighten anti-COVID measures, hard lockdown looms - Reuters

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By Reuters Staff

2 Min Read

FILE PHOTO: A healthcare worker tests a sample at a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing site during nationwide testing, in Trencin, Slovakia October 31, 2020. REUTERS/Radovan Stoklasa

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Slovak government will tighten anti-epidemic measures from March 3, including stricter limits on people’s movement, as the country struggles with the resurgent coronavirus.

The government of Prime Minister Igor Matovic released details of the new measures after several days of debates with experts as the country has ranked among the world’s worst-hit by the recent wave of COVID-19 cases.

As of Wednesday, people will be allowed to travel from 8:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. only to work or to see a doctor, while all currently valid exceptions from the limits on movement will be effective only between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. People who can work from home should do so.

As of March 8, more effective respirators of FFP 2 grade will be required for people in shops or on public transport.

Pre-schooling and the lower grades at elementary schools will be open only for children of parents whose work cannot be done from home.

If the tougher restrictions do not curb infections by March 21, the government will prepare even stricter limits on movement, including closure of companies and borders, local media reported.

As of Sunday, the country of 5.5 million reported 308,083 COVID infection cases and 7,189 deaths.

Reporting by Robert Muller; Editing by Daniel Wallis

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March 01, 2021 at 05:29AM
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-slovakia/slovakia-to-tighten-anti-covid-measures-hard-lockdown-looms-idUSKCN2AS0QS?il=0

Slovakia to tighten anti-COVID measures, hard lockdown looms - Reuters

https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

China Appears to Warn India: Push Too Hard and the Lights Could Go Out - The New York Times

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As border skirmishing increased last year, malware began to flow into the Indian electric grid, a new study shows, and a blackout hit Mumbai. It now looks like a warning.

WASHINGTON — Early last summer, Chinese and Indian troops clashed in a surprise border battle in the remote Galwan Valley, bashing each other to death with rocks and clubs.

Four months later and more than 1,500 miles away in Mumbai, India, trains shut down and the stock market closed as the power went out in a city of 20 million people. Hospitals had to switch to emergency generators to keep ventilators running amid a coronavirus outbreak that was among India’s worst.

Now, a new study lends weight to the idea that those two events may well have been connected — as part of a broad Chinese cybercampaign against India’s power grid, timed to send a message that if India pressed its claims too hard, the lights could go out across the country.

The study shows that as the battles raged in the Himalayas, taking at least two dozen lives, Chinese malware was flowing into the control systems that manage electric supply across India, along with a high-voltage transmission substation and a coal-fired power plant.

The flow of malware was pieced together by Recorded Future, a Somerville, Mass., company that studies the use of the internet by state actors. It found that most of the malware was never activated. And because Recorded Future could not get inside India’s power systems, it could not examine the details of the code itself, which was placed in strategic power-distribution systems across the country. While it has notified Indian authorities, so far they are not reporting what they have found.

Stuart Solomon, Recorded Future’s chief operating officer, said that the Chinese state-sponsored group, which the firm named Red Echo, “has been seen to systematically utilize advanced cyberintrusion techniques to quietly gain a foothold in nearly a dozen critical nodes across the Indian power generation and transmission infrastructure.”

The discovery raises the question about whether an outage that struck on Oct. 13 in Mumbai, one of the country’s busiest business hubs, was meant as a message from Beijing about what might happen if India pushed its border claims too vigorously.

News reports at the time quoted Indian officials as saying that the cause was a Chinese-origin cyberattack on a nearby electricity load-management center. Authorities began a formal investigation, which is due to report in the coming weeks. Since then, Indian officials have gone silent about the Chinese code, whether it set off the Mumbai blackout and the evidence provided to them by Recorded Future that many elements of the nation’s electric grid were the target of a sophisticated Chinese hacking effort.

It is possible the Indians are still searching for the code. But acknowledging its insertion, one former Indian diplomat noted, could complicate the diplomacy in recent days between China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, and his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in an effort to ease the border tensions.

The investigators who wrote the Recorded Future study, which is set to be published on Monday, said that “the alleged link between the outage and the discovery of the unspecified malware” in the system “remains unsubstantiated.” But they noted that “additional evidence suggested the coordinated targeting of the Indian load dispatch centers,” which balance the electrical demands across regions of the country.

The discovery is the latest example of how the conspicuous placement of malware in an adversary’s electric grid or other critical infrastructure has become the newest form of both aggression and deterrence — a warning that if things are pushed too far, millions could suffer.

“I think the signaling is being done” by China to indicate “that we can and we have the capability to do this in times of a crisis,” said retired Lt. Gen. D.S. Hooda, a cyberexpert who oversaw India’s borders with Pakistan and China. “It’s like sending a warning to India that this capability exists with us.”

Both India and China maintain medium-size nuclear arsenals, which have traditionally been seen as the ultimate deterrent. But neither side believes that the other would risk a nuclear exchange in response to bloody disputes over the Line of Actual Control, an ill-defined border demarcation where long-running disputes have escalated into deadly conflicts by increasingly nationalistic governments.

Cyberattacks give them another option — less devastating than a nuclear attack, but capable of giving a country a strategic and psychological edge. Russia was a pioneer in using this technique when it turned the power off twice in Ukraine several years ago.

And the United States has engaged in similar signaling. After the Department of Homeland Security announced publicly that the American power grid was littered with code inserted by Russian hackers, the United States put code into Russia’s grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin.

Now the Biden administration is promising that within weeks it will respond to another intrusion — it will not yet call it an attack — from Russia, one that penetrated at least nine government agencies and more than 100 corporations.

So far, the evidence suggests that the SolarWinds hack, named for the company that made network-management software that was hijacked to insert the code, was chiefly about stealing information. But it also created the capability for far more destructive attacks — and among the companies that downloaded the Russian code were several American utilities. They maintain that the incursions were managed, and that there was no risk to their operations.

Until recent years, China’s focus had been on information theft. But Beijing has been increasingly active in placing code into infrastructure systems, knowing that when it is discovered, the fear of an attack can be as powerful a tool as an attack itself.

In the Indian case, Recorded Future sent its findings to India’s Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-In, a kind of investigative and early-warning agency most nations maintain to keep track of threats to critical infrastructure. Twice the center has acknowledged receipt of the information, but said nothing about whether it, too, found the code in the electric grid.

Repeated efforts by The New York Times to seek comment from the center and several of its officials over the past two weeks yielded no response.

The Chinese government, which did not respond to questions about the code in the Indian grid, could argue that India started the cyberaggression. In India, a patchwork of state-backed hackers were caught using coronavirus-themed phishing emails to target Chinese organizations in Wuhan last February. A Chinese security company, 360 Security Technology, accused state-backed Indian hackers of targeting hospitals and medical research organizations with phishing emails, in an espionage campaign.

Four months later, as tensions rose between the two countries on the border, Chinese hackers unleashed a swarm of 40,300 hacking attempts on India’s technology and banking infrastructure in just five days. Some of the incursions were so-called denial-of-service attacks that knocked these systems offline; others were phishing attacks, according to the police in the Indian state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai.

By December, security experts at the Cyber Peace Foundation, an Indian nonprofit that follows hacking efforts, reported a new wave of Chinese attacks, in which hackers sent phishing emails to Indians related to the Indian holidays in October and November. Researchers tied the attacks to domains registered in China’s Guangdong and Henan Provinces, to an organization called Fang Xiao Qing. The aim, the foundation said, was to obtain a beachhead in Indians’ devices, possibly for future attacks.

“One of the intentions seems to be power projection,” said Vineet Kumar, the president of the Cyber Peace Foundation.

The foundation has also documented a surge of malware directed at India’s power sector, from petroleum refineries to a nuclear power plant, since last year. Because it is impossible for the foundation or Recorded Future to examine the code, it is unclear whether they are looking at the same attacks, but the timing is the same.

Yet except for the Mumbai blackout, the attacks have not disrupted the provision of energy, officials said.

And even there, officials have gone quiet after initially determining that the code was most likely Chinese. Yashasvi Yadav, a police official in charge of Maharashtra’s cyberintelligence unit, said authorities found “suspicious activity” that suggested the intervention of a state actor.

But Mr. Yadav declined to elaborate, saying the investigation’s full report would be released in early March. Nitin Raut, a state government minister quoted in local reports in November blaming sabotage for the Mumbai outage, did not respond to questions about the blackout.

Military experts in India have renewed calls for the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to replace the Chinese-made hardware for India’s power sector and its critical rail system.

“The issue is we still haven’t been able to get rid of our dependence on foreign hardware and foreign software,” General Hooda said.

Indian government authorities have said a review is underway of India’s information technology contracts, including with Chinese companies. But the reality is that ripping out existing infrastructure is expensive and difficult.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and Emily Schmall from New Delhi. Nicole Perlroth contributed reporting.

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March 01, 2021 at 06:45AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/28/us/politics/china-india-hacking-electricity.html

China Appears to Warn India: Push Too Hard and the Lights Could Go Out - The New York Times

https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

7 New Hard Seltzers Hitting The Market - Forbes

Slovakia to tighten anti-COVID measures, hard lockdown looms - Reuters

hard.indah.link

By Reuters Staff

2 Min Read

FILE PHOTO: A healthcare worker tests a sample at a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing site during nationwide testing, in Trencin, Slovakia October 31, 2020. REUTERS/Radovan Stoklasa

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Slovak government will tighten anti-epidemic measures from March 3, including stricter limits on people’s movement, as the country struggles with the resurgent coronavirus.

The government of Prime Minister Igor Matovic released details of the new measures after several days of debates with experts as the country has ranked among the world’s worst-hit by the recent wave of COVID-19 cases.

As of Wednesday, people will be allowed to travel from 8:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. only to work or to see a doctor, while all currently valid exceptions from the limits on movement will be effective only between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. People who can work from home should do so.

As of March 8, more effective respirators of FFP 2 grade will be required for people in shops or on public transport.

Pre-schooling and the lower grades at elementary schools will be open only for children of parents whose work cannot be done from home.

If the tougher restrictions do not curb infections by March 21, the government will prepare even stricter limits on movement, including closure of companies and borders, local media reported.

As of Sunday, the country of 5.5 million reported 308,083 COVID infection cases and 7,189 deaths.

Reporting by Robert Muller; Editing by Daniel Wallis

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March 01, 2021 at 05:29AM
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-slovakia/slovakia-to-tighten-anti-covid-measures-hard-lockdown-looms-idUSKCN2AS0QS

Slovakia to tighten anti-COVID measures, hard lockdown looms - Reuters

https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

One Hard-to-Believe Trading Fact - The Motley Fool

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In the Robinhood era, it may be hard for some investors to believe that making a trade used to be extremely expensive. Transaction costs like bid/ask spreads and commissions used to be a lot higher. You could be starting out more than 2% in the hole the second your trade was executed.

The drop in commissions and trading costs was a tough pill for the brokerage industry to swallow, but the big exchanges like Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE) and Nasdaq (NASDAQ:NDAQ) have benefited from increased trading volumes. The increase in trading volume over time is so large that historical charts are done on a logarithmic scale. This is an instance where a change in an industry hurts one group (in this case, the stock brokers) but can actually help another group make more money (the stock exchanges). 

Image source: Getty Images.

New Deal regulation wasn't great for investors

Limited competition in financial services was a key part of New Deal regulation. In order to prevent failures, the government acted to prevent "ruinous competition." This applied not only to brokers, but banks as well.

People who regularly receive AARP solicitations in the mail will remember when banks would offer a free toaster to open up a savings account. This was how banks competed with one another. The interest rate they could pay on a savings account was limited by law. Since everyone paid the same rates, and kept the same hours, customers would have few choices, and go with the bank that had the most local branches. This was the state of affairs until banking deregulation in the 1970s.

For brokerage firms, commissions were fixed. Every broker was required by law to charge the same price to everyone: $49 per trade, no matter the size of the transaction. The small investor who was buying 100 shares of a $25 stock paid the same price as the local pension fund that was buying 10,000 shares at a clip.

In addition, the investor would pay the bid/ask spread, which was always an eighth (or $0.125 per share). If an investor bought 100 shares of a stock at $25 per share, the trade would cost $49, plus the $0.125 bid/ask spread, or another $12.50. The total cost of the trade was $61.50, or 2.5%. The stock would have to trade up to $25 5/8 in order for the investor to not show a loss (and this ignores the exit costs). 

May Day meant the cozy state of affairs was over

On May 1, 1975 (known in the industry as May Day), stock trading commissions were deregulated, which meant brokers could charge whatever they wanted. Predictably, commissions began falling like a stone. Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW) was the first discount broker, offering cut-rate service along with a cut-rate platform. As commissions fell, hundreds of smaller brokerages went out of business. Commissions continued to fall throughout the 1970s and 1980s. 

Even in the mid 1990s, commissions were still sizable. I remember as a trader at a hedge fund paying $0.06 per share to trade a stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange, using a full-service investment bank, and paying $0.04 per share to the smaller boutique firms. If I wanted a dirt cheap trade, I would give the order to a floor broker (called a "two-dollar broker"), which charged $0.02 per share.

This was about to get completely upended when electronic trading was introduced. It was like a bomb going off in the brokerage community. 

Electronic trading was the final step

The first big electronic trading platform was Instinet, which allowed institutions to trade anonymously, transact directly with one another, and bypass the big investment-banking trading desks. Commissions were also much cheaper on Instinet, and big institutions fell in love with it.

At the same time, smaller electronic brokers were starting, including E*Trade, now part of Morgan Stanley, and Ameritrade (now known as TD Ameritrade and owned by Charles Schwab). As technology got better, the floor broker and the specialist became smaller and smaller participants in the market.

Today, institutions pay maybe a quarter of a penny per share to trade, and retail investors can trade for free on apps like Robinhood. And bid/ask spreads? They are now fractions of a penny. That same investor buying 100 shares of a $25 stock would pay maybe a $0.001 bid/ask spread and no commission, so the investor is paying a dime. In other words, transaction costs have fallen by 99.8% since May Day in the mid 1970s. This is not great news for the big brokers, but it has been great news for the stock exchanges like Intercontinental Exchange and Nasdaq.

This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the “official” recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. We’re motley! Questioning an investing thesis -- even one of our own -- helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.

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February 28, 2021 at 10:17PM
https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/02/28/x-hard-to-believe-topic-facts-due-feb-26/

One Hard-to-Believe Trading Fact - The Motley Fool

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Broncos eligible to be forced into 'Hard Knocks' this summer - Broncos Wire

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By Jon Heath | February 28, 2021 5:00 am

NFL teams can use three stipulations to opt-out of the running for Hard Knocks, the league’s HBO show that follows a team (or two teams) through training cmap. Those stipulations are (1) having a new head coach, (2) reaching the playoffs within the last two years and (3) appearing on the show within the last 10 seasons.

The Denver Broncos do not have a new coach, they haven’t reached the playoffs since 2015 and they have never been featured on Hard Knocks, although NFL Films has approached them in the past. That means the Broncos are eligible to be forced into Hard Knocks this summer.

In addition to the Broncos, the Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Carolina Panthers and Arizona Cardinals are also eligible to be forced into the show. Other teams are allowed to volunteer for Hard Knocks and the Jacksonville Jaguars have shown a willingness to feature on the show in past years.

NFL.com’s Dan Hanzus has predicted the Jags will be featured this year and that seems like a safe bet. Jacksonville will have plenty of storylines to follow with new coach Urban Meyer and presumed No. 1 overall pick Trevor Lawrence drawing plenty of attention this offseason.

Broncos Buzz, Hard Knocks, HBO, Jacksonville Jaguars, NFL Films, NFL Offseason, Offseason, Broncos Buzz

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February 28, 2021 at 07:09PM
https://broncoswire.usatoday.com/2021/02/28/what-nfl-team-will-be-on-hard-knocks-2021/

Broncos eligible to be forced into 'Hard Knocks' this summer - Broncos Wire

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Biden wants to reopen schools. Here's why that's so hard to do - CNN

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Biden has pledged to reopen most schools for in-person instruction by May, but some experts fear the revised guidance published by his administration could make it harder for some schools to do so -- even by next fall.

Unlike other countries, the US leaves school control at the local level, and the challenges to providing in-person instruction are not the same everywhere, making it nearly impossible to create effective federal and even state-level guidance as the pandemic wears on.

Some buildings don't have enough space to spread students out, while others don't have adequate ventilation systems. In some places, school authorities face strong opposition from powerful teachers' unions.

The result has been a patchwork of in-person, hybrid and all-virtual instruction. Elementary school students in New York City, for example, returned to school for a few days a week in the fall, and the city brought middle school students back this week. After a bruising fight with the teachers' union, Chicago brought pre-K and special education students back into the classroom in mid-February, and elementary school and middle schools students will start returning in March. In San Francisco, no public school students have had in-person instruction since March, prompting the city to sue its own school district.

Districts that have returned kids to buildings have shown that it's possible to bring students back without devastating outbreaks. In fact, there's mounting evidence that Covid transmission in schools is low, even when there's a high rate of infection in the community.

Here are some of the pain points slowing down the process.

Specifics in new CDC guidance create new headaches

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released highly-anticipated guidelines for reopening schools earlier this month, revising the recommendations made last summer under the Trump administration. The agency can't force schools to reopen but instead offers guideposts to help them do so safely.

But there's been little movement by all-virtual districts since then.

Instead, the Philadelphia School District didn't bring back pre-k through second-grade students last week as planned. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has yet to strike a deal with legislators and school groups after suggesting an agreement was imminent earlier in the month.

"Guidelines based on well documented studies would hopefully have led to some meaningful school openings," said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco.

The CDC advises districts to implement five key mitigation strategies -- masking, physical distancing, hand washing, cleaning and improving ventilation, and contact tracing and quarantine -- and to assess the level of Covid spread in the community, phasing in learning modes accordingly. It also says that testing and vaccinating teachers can provide an additional layer of protection.

Experts say the revised guidance is clearer than what was released last summer, but warn that giving more specificity can paradoxically create barriers to reopening.

Gandhi said she is particularly disappointed that the guidance emphasized a tie to community incidence and that it specified keeping six feet of distance -- which many districts don't have the space to do.

"In a way, being more clear can create specifics that may not fit everyone's parameters and justify closures," she said.

Dr. Lee Savio Beers, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, agreed that there is some confusion about whether desks need to be six feet apart and over the tie to community transmission.

But she noted that the guidance also goes on to say that all schools have the option of providing in-person learning "at any level of community transmission."

"The new guidance reinforces our recommendation that with proper mitigation measures, schools can safely reopen even in areas of high transmission," Beers said.

The guidelines aren't completely preventing reopening. The West Virginia Board of Education passed a motion this week that requires schools to provide five days of in-person instruction to grades pre-K to 8 by March 3 -- regardless of the rate of transmission in the community. High schools can continue to provide a hybrid model of instruction if the infection rate is high since older students may be more likely to transmit the virus.

Space is limited

Keeping desks six feet apart could be the biggest hurdle in bringing students back full-time. Many schools simply don't have the space. Some schools in Colorado, Maine and Texas have experimented with moving classes outdoors.

"I don't think schools that were closed this past fall are going to reopen next fall. This is 100% about distancing. Community spread should be down by then, but the distancing problem will still be there," said Karen Vaites, a New York mom and literacy advocate who is helping organize the parent-led movement Open Schools across the country.

Epidemiologist Tracy Hoeg was also surprised to see the CDC recommend six feet of distancing and to tie reopening to community spread. She's the senior author of a widely cited study of 17 Wisconsin schools that reopened for in-person learning in the fall.

The study found few instances of in-school transmission among students and staff members -- even when the percentage of people testing positive in the community was as high as 40%. While masking was required, the K-8 students were mostly between three to six feet apart.

Only seven of the 191 Covid cases reported were transmitted in school. There were not cases transmitted between a student and a teacher.

"I would have said three to six feet apart is sufficient for K-8 students, according to our data," Hoeg said.

"I don't think it's smart to say reopening should be based on community transmission rates. It's like we're backpedaling," she added.

The Wisconsin study is not the only one that found schools were safe when K-8 students were kept three feet apart. A North Carolina study had similar results. The World Health Organization recommends a distance of one meter, or just over three feet.

In Ohio, where there have also been school reopening success stories, the state also recommends keeping at least three feet between desks, though six feet is ideal.

Showdowns with teachers' unions

Some state and city leaders are clashing with union leaders, who argue that teachers want to return to school as long as it's safe. They're calling for improvements to ventilation systems, ramped up Covid testing, accommodations for high-risk teachers and vaccine prioritization before returning to the classroom -- and the funding necessary to make those adjustments. A bill making its way through Congress and backed by Biden would provide $130 billion to K-12 schools.

In New Jersey, the Montclair district canceled restarting in-person learning in January when the teachers' union cited safety concerns. The district is now suing the union. The city of San Francisco has also sued the school district there for failing to come up with a reopening plan.

In Chicago, negotiations over a reopening plan were particularly fraught as teachers argued the schools are underfunded to begin with. After weeks of talks, the teachers' union accepted an agreement to reopen earlier this month, bringing pre-k and special education students back into the classroom last week. Elementary school and middle schools students will start returning in March.

Teachers aren't always prioritized for the vaccine

In some places, including Los Angeles, union leaders say they don't want schools to reopen before their staff is entirely vaccinated.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has said vaccines don't need to be a requirement, but that teachers should be prioritized.

Some or all of teachers in 28 states and Washington, DC, are eligible for the vaccines. There are 22 states where teachers are still not eligible to receive the vaccine as a specific group, although some educators might fall into the current age group that state is vaccinating.

About 82% of educators had not been vaccinated at the start of February, according to a survey conducted by the National Education Association, the largest teachers' union in the country.

Biden's muddled messaging

Biden came into office pledging to open most schools during his first 100 days, an ambitious goal from the start. The federal government can't mandate schools to reopen and it's unclear exactly how the administration will evaluate success.

Earlier this month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden was committed "to ensuring schools are open five days a week" -- once the proper safety measures are in place. Two days earlier she suggested that "teaching at least one day a week in the majority of schools by day 100" might be enough to meet the goal.

About 26% of K-12 students are attending schools with a hybrid schedule, according to the private data tracking company Burbio. In those situations, students may attend some days in-person, but classes rotate so that students can remain socially distant in the classroom. A California South Bay area district, for example, is considering bringing students back into the classroom for just one hour a week to start.

Districts often move to all-virtual instruction when there are too many cases reported, though the number of cases that requires a shut down greatly varies by district. When cases spiked over the holidays, about 55% of students' schools were virtual-only, according to Burbio.

As of February 21, about 31% of K-12 students were attending all-virtual schools. Nearly 43% were enrolled in schools that are open every day for in-person instruction.

CNN's Elizabeth Stuart, Kristina Sgueglia, and Meridith Edwards contributed reporting.

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February 28, 2021 at 09:01PM
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/28/politics/why-school-reopening-is-so-hard/index.html

Biden wants to reopen schools. Here's why that's so hard to do - CNN

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Black History Month: Hard Bargain Neighborhood - Williamson Source

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photo from McLemore House Facebook

If you live in Franklin, you’ve probably heard some reference to Hard Bargain, or the Hard Bargain neighborhood. This historic neighborhood adjoins Mt. Hope Cemetery on the south and sandwiched between 5th Avenue and 11th Avenue, bisected by Glass Street and Green Street, and Johnson Alley.

Hard Bargain is a traditionally African American community in Franklin, that developed on land bought by a former slave from his former master after the Civil War.

County records of the land show that the 15 acres that comprise the neighborhood was owned by Judge Perkins, who sold the parcel to W.S. McLemore in 1866. Harvey McLemore- W.S.’s slave- was emancipated after the Civil War.

After emancipation, Harvey McLemore worked on Carnton Plantation and other farms around Franklin in order to save money, wrote Rick Warwick, Williamson County Historian.

Working hard and saving his money, as per the advice of his former master, proved key to his success. In 1880, he bought four lots, totaling 15 acres, from W.S. McLemore, and built a home.

“He farmed it for about ten years and then he decided to subdivide it and sell off plots to other freed slaves,” said Brant Bousquet, Hard Bargain Association Executive Director. “So then, slowly people built houses, or just bought the land until they could afford to build, and then it became this little community of emancipated slaves. It was a very strong community of families, and people raised their children together. There were craftsmen, bricklayers, stonemasons, and domestics who worked and cleaned homes, blacksmiths, farming people, and a whole wide variety of folks in the community.”

The house that Harvey McLemore built, with his wife, Milly Abernathy, and their daughter, Mary, still stands- as the McLemore House- and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

As for the name Hard Bargain- colloquially the story goes that McLemore coined it after striking such a “hard bargain” with his former master for the property.

Warwick, however, recently found records showing its name may predate McLemore’s purchase.

The name goes back to Judge Perkin’s difficult time negotiating the sale price with Joel Parrish, brother-in-law of Abram Maury, who was the brother-in-law to Franklin’s founder and built a house on the hill overlooking the town, Warwick wrote.

“The Hard Bargain subdivision plat was registered on March 1, 1873, by Judge W.S. McLemore, a.k.a. Colonel W.S. McLemore 4th Tennessee Cavalry, CSA, which included 22 lots on 15 acres,” Warwick wrote.

“I will say that the African-American view of the name is that it came from Harvey McLemore’s dealings to buy the land,” Bousquet said.

Whatever the truth, the current and past residents take pride in the name, and the tale.

Today, 130 households comprise the Hard Bargain Neighborhood and the Hard Bargain Association strives to preserve the Hard Bargain neighborhood by rehabbing existing homes, building quality affordable housing, and enriching the lives of our neighbors.

“Everybody who lives here is proud of the name and proud of the neighborhood,” said Bousquet. With good reason. Many notable landmarks are- and people lived- in Hard Bargain.

Landmarks include, the black cemetery founded in 1884, the Franklin Primitive Baptist Church, founded in 1865, a Masonic Lodge organized in 1874, and other places no longer extant. A nightclub called La Paloma was located near where Sonic currently sits.

“It was basically like a night club, that mainly black patrons went to,” What was neat about it was that a lot of the major black entertainers came to Nashville to perform they would come either the night before or the night after to perform at La Paloma.”

Also, notable is the American Legion.

“When the African American men went off to fight in World War II, they fought side by side with whites, but when they came home it was too segregated Franklin. So the African American vets started their own American Legion,” Bousquet said.

Notable residents include Harry Marsh, Franklin’s last horse-driven cab driver; Lou Sharpe, Franklin’s fortune teller, Professor Willis Claiborne, a pioneer educator and Reverend William Scruggs, a local contractor, civil rights activist and the first black man to run for mayor of Franklin, in 1972.

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February 28, 2021 at 06:00PM
https://williamsonsource.com/black-history-month-the-hard-bargain-neighborhood/

Black History Month: Hard Bargain Neighborhood - Williamson Source

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Black Entrepreneurs: 'Hard Work Pays off No Matter Where' - U.S. News & World Report

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February 28, 2021 at 03:16PM
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Black Entrepreneurs: 'Hard Work Pays off No Matter Where' - U.S. News & World Report

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Perez looking to give Mercedes ‘a hard time’ in 2021 after first Red Bull test - Formula 1

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New Red Bull signing Sergio Perez says that he’s hopeful that he and team mate Max Verstappen can combine to give Mercedes “a hard time” in 2021, following his first outing in the team’s RB16B challenger at Silverstone.

2021 marks the first time since 2018 that Red Bull will start the season with a line-up of drivers with more than 30 Grand Prix starts each, following difficult stints at the squad for both Pierre Gasly in 2019 – the Frenchman now back at AlphaTauri for 2021 – and Alex Albon in 2019 and 2020, with the Thai driver now Red Bull’s development driver, as well as reserve for both the team and AlphaTauri.

READ MORE: An extensively re-engineered car? Here's our rapid reaction to the new Red Bull RB16B

But with Perez – a veteran of 191 Grand Prix starts, and with one victory to his name – having driven the 2021 Red Bull RB16B in a shakedown test at Silverstone earlier this week, the Mexican was clear about his targets for the season ahead.

“I think the goal is to win,” he said. “There’s obviously a process to this. We have to get on top and hopefully the car is good enough for that, but we have to wait and see. Mercedes have had a good advantage over the team in the last few years, so hopefully this season we’re able to close the gap and give them a hard time.

Red Bull 2021 launch: The five key questions

“Max is a great talent and I can’t really wait to start working together with him,” Perez added of his new team mate. “You can see that he’s so natural in his talent and technically he’s very strong as well, so we’re just looking forward to getting the car up there and to start fighting to get as many points as possible for the team.”

READ MORE: Red Bull give little away ahead of title tilt – 5 takeaways from their secretive 2021 launch

Verstappen spent much of 2020 fighting solo with the two Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, as team mate Albon struggled to consistently get on the pace of the Dutchman – a factor which limited Red Bull’s ability to exert any sort of strategical advantage over Mercedes, and left Red Bull 254 points shy of the Silver Arrows’ total in the constructors’ fight.

Verstappen frequently had to fight the Mercedes on his own

But with Verstappen now partnered with a more experienced driver than either of his two previous team mates, he too was hopeful that Perez’s proven points-scoring ability would allow Red Bull to launch a serious title bid against Mercedes this season.

READ MORE: Verstappen ‘realistic’ about 2021 title chances as he hopes to make life more difficult for Mercedes

“Sergio’s been in F1 now a while,” said Verstappen, speaking after his own run in the RB16B, “so I think he’s proven that he’s a good points scorer, and I hope that as a team, we can make it difficult for Mercedes, especially, because I think they still are the favourites. So I just hope as a team, and together with Sergio, we can score a lot of points.”

Verstappen and Perez will next be out on track at the Bahrain International Circuit on March 12-14, as pre-season testing commences ahead of the 2021 season opening Bahrain Grand Prix on March 28.

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February 28, 2021 at 07:46AM
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Perez looking to give Mercedes ‘a hard time’ in 2021 after first Red Bull test - Formula 1

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Broncos Among 5 Teams That Qualify for HBO's 'Hard Knocks' - Sports Illustrated

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The Denver Broncos have not been enjoyable to watch for the majority of the past five seasons. Any team would likely have a hangover after having a quarterback of Peyton Manning's caliber ride off into the sunset. 

Still, how consistently poor the Broncos teams have been since winning Super Bowl 50 can test the patience of any fan. Honestly, at this point, I would say it’s okay to be 'bad and fun.' It’s slightly better to be 'good but boring.' But the Broncos over the last five years have been both bad and boring.

While the Broncos have been a tough sell over the last few seasons, things could turn around quickly. Sure, Denver is tied for the second-longest playoff drought in football at five years (the Jets sit atop with 10 straight years of no playoffs), the Broncos do not feel like a team both hopeless and hapless. 

The good news is, the offensive core is budding with young talent at wide receiver, tight end, and along the offensive line, which likely means better days are in store for those long-suffering in Broncos Country. Perhaps even better, the young ascending group of offensive players could mean the Broncos could be fun to watch once again.

The Broncos have a number of intriguing storylines, but they are not exactly the sexiest team — being in Patrick Mahomes’ shadow with erratic quarterback play of their own, a hot-seat head coach, and a year-after-year bad offense and holes across the defense. It’s riveting stuff for fans of the team, but apparently not the most interesting to the league at large.

NFL.com’s Around the NFL writer Dan Hanzus recently listed the Broncos as the last of five possible candidates to appear on this season’s iteration of HBO's Hard Knocks. A team landing on Hard Knocks comes with a set of three criteria including 1.) No first season head coaches, 2.) No playoff berths the last two seasons, and 3.) Has not appeared on the show in the last decade. 

Based on these parameters, the Broncos are one of five teams including the Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Carolina Panthers, and Arizona Cardinals to qualify. While being ranked last among these other teams, Hanzus still makes a case for why the 2021 Broncos could be intriguing for HBO’s hit football reality series:

Here's another team that could become more compelling based on how the events of the next few months play out. We have name brands on both sides of the ball, a curmudgeonly coach in Vic Fangio who could make for good #socialcontent and, of course, John Elway -- who's no longer the GM but still casts a long shadow over the organization in his top executive role. Incumbent starter Drew Lock might (or should) have competition for his job come training camp -- QB battles are naturally fertile soil for Hard Knocks. We had the Broncos all the way up at No. 2 in this same exercise a year ago -- it'd be no shame if they were the choice in 2021.

What happens next for the Broncos? Don't miss out on any news and analysis! Take a second and sign up for our free newsletter and get breaking Broncos news delivered to your inbox daily!

Despite being last on his list, Hanzus makes a good case for the Broncos to be this year’s focus of Hard Knocks. Ironically, no one would likely be more against this than head coach Vic Fangio, who would call the show a distraction and nonsense outside the scope of the game. The more grumpy, old-dad vibes Fangio can give, the more relatable and endearing he seems to become. #Socialcontent indeed.

Perhaps most intriguing, and something Hanzus hints at, is that the Broncos could become more compelling based on how the events of the next few months play out. The only thing that really moves the needle from a generally compelling story for the Broncos? A splash move at the quarterback position.

If the Broncos end up selecting a young rookie quarterback in the 2021 NFL draft such as BYU's Zach Wilson, North Dakota State's Trey Lance, or Ohio State's Justin Fields, no doubt the team would become more intriguing to the NFL fan at large. However, that’s probably not exactly who Hanzus was hinting towards.

If Denver's make the splash move and trade for Deshaun Watson, a top-5 at just 25 years of age in an unprecedented move in NFL history, then the Broncos not only become must-watch TV for the first time since 2015, but the dynamics surrounding Watson-to-Denver and the pomp and circumstance surrounding that could boost Hard Knocks to new levels.

Will Denver get chosen to be featured on HBO’s series? There are other candidates in bigger markets that likely have a bit more pizzazz, but still, Denver is a possibility. Even without a splash at quarterback, the storylines from the series could be compelling. 

But with a flashy young rookie quarterback or a massive trade for Watson? Outside of the actual games on Sundays, nothing could compare to must-watch television for football fans next season.

---

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February 28, 2021 at 12:21PM
https://www.si.com/nfl/broncos/news/denver-broncos-among-5-teams-that-qualify-for-hbos-hard-knocks

Broncos Among 5 Teams That Qualify for HBO's 'Hard Knocks' - Sports Illustrated

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What Can Cause A Hard Landing? - Simple Flying

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We have all experienced a heavy bump on landing, often unexpectedly. Rather than being due to pilot error, or damaging to the aircraft, these are usually planned and made on purpose. This article takes a quick look at what causes hard landings and why we normally shouldn’t worry about them.

Landing aircraft. Photo: Grant Wickes via Flickr

Hard landing due to descent rate

The simple reason for an aircraft making a ‘hard landing’ (often referred to by pilots as a ‘firm’ or ‘positive’ landing rather than ‘hard’) is the descent rate towards the runway. Normal descent rate at landing for most aircraft is around two to three feet per second, but aircraft can land safely at a faster rate than this, and often do.

The faster the rate at landing, the ‘harder’ the landing. Boeing, for example, quote a maximum descent rate of ten feet per second for the 737 and comment that flights crews often report a hard landing when exceeding four feet per second.

An Easyjet A320 flares during landing. Photo: Adrian Pingstone via Wikimedia

A hard landing can, of course, be due simply to pilot error, descending too quickly and/or not flaring sufficiently. Or there can be mechanical issues with the aircraft – such as happened recently with a Singapore Airlines A380 aircraft flying into Delhi.

This does happen, but often such a landing is intentional for one of several possible reasons:

Often better to land quickly – shorter runways and busy airports

During landing, descent rate is often slowed and the aircraft will ‘float’ or ‘flare’ at the final stage, as the nose is pulled up. If you watch smaller aircraft landing they will usually do this.

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However, heavier aircraft often float less, if at all, and instead land at a higher rate of descent. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, ‘floating’ before touchdown will increase the use of the runway. It’s often safer to land quicker, leaving more runway for braking or any problems that arise during landing.

Secondly, getting the aircraft down quickly will minimize the utilization of the runway. It will land quicker, but also be able to exit the runway earlier. This is of high importance at busy airports with continuous landings.

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Runway usage at busy airports, such as London Heathrow, is an important consideration. Photo: Mike McBey via Flickr

Safer in wet conditions

Weather affects landing conditions. If the runway is wet, slippery or icy then it is normal to make a firmer landing. This will lessen the chance of skidding or hydroplaning and spin the tires quicker.

Landing harder in the wet breaks through the water faster and safer. Photo: Getty Images

In foggy, or even dark, conditions this is an issue too. It can be harder to judge distances visually and again a firmer landing can be safer.

Wind or turbulence on landing

Wind direction and gusts can have a big effect on aircraft during the final stages of landing. In some cases, a harder than expected landing can be due to changing wind gusts during landing. It may be better to land quickly than risk an overrun.

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Runway design may cause a hard landing

There are times as well when runway design can force a harder landing. A short runway makes a fast landing, with no / minimal floating important. London City airport, for example, has a runway only 1,300 meters long, so landing early and having the maximum distance to stop is important. Reagan National Airport (DCA) has a similarly short landing runway.

With its relatively short runway, landings at London City airport are often quite hard. Photo: James Petts via Flickr

There are other runways too which slope upwards or downwards, such as at Naples, Italy. This can make any flaring during landing difficult, and aircraft will usually land hard.

Exceeding limits – it does happen

So, there are many reasons why a landing can be harder than passengers were perhaps expecting. The important thing to remember though is that this is usually nothing to worry about. Even landings which feel very rough are normally well within aircraft operating limits. And in most cases, the hard landing is intentional from the pilots, rather than any form of error or mistake.

If a landing is overly hard – and possibly reaches aircraft limits – it will necessitate a full inspection. This has happened recently with a new British Airways Airbus A350 aircraft flying into Tel Aviv. And also with a Lufthansa 747 flying from Frankfurt to Philadelphia.

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February 28, 2021 at 11:31AM
https://simpleflying.com/hard-landings/

What Can Cause A Hard Landing? - Simple Flying

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Young Gophers learning the hard way - Grand Forks Herald

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Smith, an ESPN five-star recruit from Columbus, Ohio, is averaging 4.3 points and 1.7 assists per game. Though the 5-foot-8 guard isn’t lighting up the stat sheet, she is playing 27.1 minutes a game as a true freshman.

That’s more indicative of how she is helping the Gophers (8-11 overall, 7-10 Big Ten), whose scheduled 1:30 p.m. tip on Sunday was canceled Saturday because of COVID-19 concerns in the Minnesota program.

Smith also is averaging 4.3 rebounds and only 1.2 turnovers. It’s clear she knows what she’s doing.

“That’s why she stays on the floor; she’s very solid in everything she does,” coach Lindsay Whalen said. “She’s a great example for the rest of the freshman group.”

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Minnesota won’t play in the NCAA tournament unless it wins the season-ending conference tournament March 9-13 in Indianapolis — highly unlikely. But the Gophers have recovered from a rough start to win six of their past 10 games.

And they’re doing it with a roster composed primarily of sophomores and freshmen. In last Wednesday night’s 73-63 victory over visiting Nebraska, arguably the Gophers’ best game of the season, six of Minnesota’s nine-player rotation were undersclasswomen.

That’s a good sign for a team in any season, but could be even better this year because the NCAA is allowing players to apply for an eligibility waiver for all players this season, which has been disrupted on and off the court by the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 500,000 Americans.

The Gophers have had only one game postponed this season but the program was shut down for parts of November, disrupting critical practice time for all players.

The good news is Minnesota’s young players are learning on the job with the possibility of losing a season of eligibility.

“That’s why we brought Katie in,” Whalen said.

That would be Katie Borowicz, a freshman point guard from Roseau who joined the Gophers a semester early. She crammed an extra three classes into her fall schedule in high school, 10 in all, and joined the team in time for a Jan. 6 game in Iowa City.

Borowicz didn’t play in that game, but four days later played 15 minutes in a 69-60 loss at Penn State. Without summer drills or fall practice. Her previous game was in the Minnesota high school state tournament last March before it was canceled by the pandemic.

Talk about a crash course.

The transition for Borowicz has been less about basketball — “I’ve been playing basketball my whole life,” she said — than it is about facing bigger, faster opponents. It’s been an adjustment for the 5-foot-6 guard.

Borowicz is averaging 3.3 points and 1.3 rebounds in 12 games, but those numbers don’t tell the whole story. She has shown considerable range from beyond the arc (she is 13 for 36 from 3-point range) and has 24 assists against 15 turnovers.

“In high school I was double- and triple-teamed, but the players weren’t nearly as good — not even close,” she said. “Pretty much in high school, if I had an open shot and I had about a two-inch window, I was putting that puppy up.”

Defenders’ longer arms change jump shots, and make driving for layups considerably more difficult. That wasn’t an issue for Borowicz in high school. “It’s obviously different against 6-4 forwards,” she said.

Ditto for Smith, who ran the show for Columbus Afrocentric, leading the team to two high school state championships as a sophomore and junior before last year’s tournament was canceled.

But on top of that, Smith is learning a new job. She might have handled the ball a lot in high school, but she often was setting herself up for offense. “I was more of a slasher,” she said. Now, she’s learning to get her teammates involved.

“In high school, it was easier to transition to wing from point guard,” she said. “Here, it’s about being the person who sets up the plays, directing people, being demanding and controlling the ball, learning a lot of different sets and when to call them against certain defenses.”

Her progression has been impressive. With starting point guard Jasmine Powell sidelined by an ankle injury, Smith started against the Cornhuskers and played a game-high 39 minutes. She finished with five points, five rebounds, three assists and two steals.

She also was charged with containing Nebraska guard Sam Haiby for much of the game. Haiby scored 21 points, but seven were from the free-throw line and she was 6 for 16 shooting from the field.

Borowicz and freshman Caroline Strande, a 5-11 guard from Racine, Wis., took turns filling in at the point and finished with an efficient 17 combined minutes, 2 for 3 shooting from the field for five points, five rebounds, five assists and no turnovers.

Sophomores Sara Scalia, Kadi Sissoko and Klarke Sconiers combined for 35 points, 15 rebounds, nine assists and five of the Gophers’ seven turnovers. Senior Gadiva Hubbard scored a team-high 14 points, but even she could be back next season. So could graduate student Laura Bagwell Katalinich, one of the team’s best shooters (42 percent).

“That’s something that we’ve talked about quite a few times this season,” Whalen said. “Ultimately, we’ll talk after the season and make the decision then, go from there.”

Regardless, it’s the young players who will dictate the direction of Whalen’s program. This likely will be Whalen’s first losing season in three years directing her alma mater, but the current roster is the best indication of the personnel she’s recruiting. Freshmen post players Grace Cumming and Erin Hedman have played a combined 14 games, including long stints late in a 94-62 loss at first-place Maryland. Freshman forward Justice Ross has been sidelined by injury.

The season hasn’t been perfect, but the play of the underclass indicates better things are coming. They’re learning on the fly, getting better, and in some sense playing with house money.

Minnesota is 0-9 against the Big Ten’s top seven teams this season, but they’re 7-2 against everyone else.

“That’s why we still feel so strongly about the foundation of our team,” Whalen said. “All these players are gaining a ton of experience in live action in the Big Ten, not just in practice but in game situations, to be able to get better and work.

“There’s no question that part of this is working for today, but it’s also building for your future and your foundation with the circumstances we’ve been given.”

“We’re really young,” Smith said, “but at the same time we’re really learning from our mistakes as we grow as a team. I really feel we’re going to be great when we’re the best team we can be. We’ll be unstoppable.”

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February 28, 2021 at 03:00AM
https://www.grandforksherald.com/sports/basketball/6908922-Young-Gophers-learning-the-hard-way

Young Gophers learning the hard way - Grand Forks Herald

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In 'The Committed,' Viet Thanh Nguyen Returns To The Story Of 'The Sympathizer' - NPR

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Viet Thanh Nguyen's new novel, The Committed, is set in 1980s Paris, but it opens on a small boat in the open seas — crammed with people escaping their homeland. It's a follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer, which told the story of a communist double agent just after the Vietnam War.

"The Sympathizer and The Committed are novels about history, about politics, about war, about revolutions," Nguyen says. "So they're very serious novels, but at the same time, I wanted to make them entertaining — and also as funny as I could possibly make them — given the context of all the brutality that we're witnessing."

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Interview Highlights

On exploring all sides of a revolution

Looking at a revolution from a distance, I think what we see is that there is a lot of absurdity and hypocrisy as much as there is a lot of sincerity and passion as well. So The Committed really tries to show us all sides of these revolutions, and in particular, it focuses on someone who was a Communist revolutionary in The Sympathizer and then became disabused of that revolution, lost his illusions, but never gave up the dream of revolution itself — that "the committed" were committed to that task. And so in The Committed, the sequel, he continues his quest for a revolution.

On why his narrator doesn't have a name

Well, he's both nameless and has many names all at the same time. In The Sympathizer he was called "the captain." In this book, he goes by a pseudonym, Vo Danh, which, the joke is, means nameless or anonymous in Vietnamese. So his namelessness is a sign of ... he has a lot of problems with his own identity, but also he's an everyman.

On why he set the story in Paris

I was born in Vietnam. My parents were actually living during the time of French colonization. So basically, I'm a colonized person. I have a colonized consciousness that I try to get get rid of. But nevertheless, I love the romantic Paris. ... I love baguettes, all that good stuff.

But I've also seen the other side of Paris, the immigrant side of Paris. And I think I'm fairly aware of some of the problems that the French have had dealing with their colonial past, both in Algeria but particularly in so-called Indochina.

And so I wanted to write a novel about this other Paris, this other France that's wrestling with a parallel set of contradictions that we, in the United States hopefully would recognize from our own history. And I wanted it to be set in a Paris that was not the tourist Paris or the romantic Paris. And so The Committed is a novel about French ideas and French Revolution and French colonialism, but it's also a crime thriller set in these immigrant neighborhoods.

On how he gets drawn into the drug world

When he goes to Paris, he lives in both the high world and the low world. So the high world is his aunt, who is this editor. She hangs out with all the French leftists and French intellectuals. They're ripe for satire, so part of the novel is a satire about the French left. But turns out that these folks like their hashish as much as anybody else. And our narrator, you know, has to get a job. So he hooks up with a ethnic Chinese crime boss and he says, well, what if I try to corner the market here on hashish for the intellectuals? And that's what unfolds, basically.

On his narrator's statement that "nonviolence might detoxify us"

The seduction of anticolonial nationalist revolutions has been based partly on this idea that violence can liberate. You know, the colonized have been subjugated through violence, they've been emasculated through violence, they've lost their independence through violence. And so, through violence, they can reclaim those identities, those nationalisms. And that's been something I've wrestled with my my entire life: Is violence the only way to imagine the act of decolonization and detoxifying ourselves from foreign influences?

So "the sympathizer," the narrator of these two novels, has struggled, too, with this his entire life — in a much more extreme fashion than I am — having been directly subject to violence, having been the perpetrator of violence. So then he has to get to this point where he has to think, can nonviolence be just as powerful and as dangerous and as self-dangerous of a force as violence itself can be?

On whether his narrator is still with him

Oh, yes. I've been with him a long time, and it's hard to leave him. And, you know, I think he is, in many ways, an alter ego. He is me, but much more extreme. Like in my life, I felt like a spy ... like a Vietnamese spying on Americans, like an American spying on Vietnamese. And in these novels, I just amplify that to a much greater and more dramatic and more interesting way through "the sympathizer."

He allows me to say things that I would find it difficult to say in person to other people. ... The things he says are kind of obnoxious or kind of very critical, they might disrupt, you know, a nice casual cocktail party conversation and almost unacademic. And if I were to say many of the same things I say in The Committed, I'd have to, like, have extensive footnotes to prove my point. But in the novel, I can get away with it — I hope. And so, you know, people can read it and be provoked, or be entertained, but they don't need footnotes in order to to get what I'm saying.

Peter Breslow and Melissa Gray produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Beth Novey adapted it for the Web.

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February 27, 2021 at 07:54PM
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/27/971805668/its-hard-to-leave-him-sympathizer-spy-story-continues-in-the-committed

In 'The Committed,' Viet Thanh Nguyen Returns To The Story Of 'The Sympathizer' - NPR

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