Opponents of science aren't as smart as they think they are

Probably one of the least surprising studies ever:

People with the greatest opposition to the scientific consensus tend to have the lowest levels of objective science knowledge but the highest levels of self-rated knowledge, according to new research published in Science Advances. The findings are in line with the Dunning-Kruger effect, a well-documented phenomenon in which people who are lacking in skills or knowledge tend to overestimate their abilities.

“I am interested in the public’s understanding of science because it is hugely important for societal and environmental wellbeing,” said study author Nick Light, an assistant professor of marketing at Portland State University. “When people act in ways that go against good science, people get sick, lose their homes, lose money, are displaced, or even die (as is the case with COVID, natural disasters, etc.). The better we can understand why people hold attitudes that run counter to scientific consensus, the better scientists or policymakers can design interventions to help people.”

Two initial studies tested almost 3,250 people on their support or opposition to scientific concepts such as climate change, vaccines, or evolution. They were then asked to self-evaluate their level of understanding of these topics. Finally, they were given a questionnaire to assess their actual scientific knowledge of the topics in question.

Light and his research team found that people who were more opposed to the scientific consensus on their given topic were more likely to claim to have a “thorough understanding” of it. But those who were more opposed to the scientific consensus tended to score worse on the test of objective science knowledge.

“Scientists are constantly debating the best ways to explain the world around us,” Light told PsyPost. “Sometimes, however, the evidence is so strong or consistent that most of them agree on something. That’s what we call scientific consensus. In this paper we find that the people who have attitudes that are more extremely against the scientific consensus think they know the most about the scientific issues, but actually know the least.”

The research team also conducted studies focused specifically on the COVID-19 vaccine: 

In a fourth study, which included 501 participants, the researchers examined whether knowledge overconfidence was related to the willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The study was conducted in July 2020, before a vaccine was publicly available. The participants were asked their willingness to receive a vaccination in the future and then rated their understanding of how a COVID-19 vaccine would work.

The participants then completed a 23-question test of scientific knowledge, which included six items about COVID-19, such as “True or false? COVID-19 is a kind of bacteria” and “True or false? COVID-19 can be transmitted through houseflies.”

Light and his colleagues found that participants who were more opposed to receiving a vaccine tended to report having a greater understanding of how a COVID-19 vaccine would work, but their general knowledge of science and COVID-19 tended to be worse.

Websites such as sorryantivaxxer.com and the r/HermanCainAward Subreddit are full of stories of people who felt they were smarter than the countless scientific and medical professionals who developed and promoted the COVID-19 vaccines and refused to "get jabbed." Their stories generally end with their death due to COVID-related complications. Were it not for their hubris, they might still be here today.

The study's authors note that "given that the most extreme opponents of the scientific consensus tend to be those who are most overconfident in their knowledge, fact-based educational interventions are less likely to be effective for this audience." This, in turn, has serious practical implications for scientists and policymakers alike, because it is difficult to overcome the Dunning-Kruger Effect with standard educational campaigns or appeals to reason. 

Which should come as no surprise to anyone who ever tried to argue about science with somebody on the internet.

Sint Maarten / Saint Martin

Of course it would take me until the end of the year to finish writing a post about a trip I took back in July...

Anyway, last summer's visit to Sint Maarten / Saint Martin - the island is divided between The Netherlands and France, hence the two names - was a "family" affair in that myself, Corinne, Kirby, my mom, my brother and his wife all made the trip. Dad was originally supposed to go, too, but it was only after mom had made the reservation at the timeshare that he realized his passport had expired, and due to significant backlogs in passport processing he was unable to get a new one before the trip. (It was probably for the best, given his mobility issues; he would have had trouble with a lot of the excursions we ended up making.)

This was technically not my first trip to Sint Maarten; it was a port of call on our 2015 Eastern Caribbean cruise and we took a shore excursion to Maho Beach, which is arguably Sint Maarten's most famous tourist attraction, to watch planes land. However, I really didn't spend any time on the island itself, meeting its people or eating its food, until this trip.

While Sint Maarten is technically a semi-autonomous "constituent country" of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, it is culturally Anglo-Caribbean. Saint Martin, on the other hand, is an integral part of France (although English is spoken as much as French and dollars are accepted as readily as Euros). The cars (including my rental) even have standard French plates! This meant that this vacation technically represented my first trip to France, as well.

Neither side if the island is doing particularly well right now; on top of the effect that the pandemic is having on this island's tourist-dependent economy, there are still the lingering effects from Hurricane Irma, which devastated the island in 2017.

Here are some photos of the trip:

The pool area of our timeshare, with Dawn Beach in the distance. Although everything appears fine, if you take a close look at the building to the right you'll see some patches in the walls. It was damaged by Hurricane Irma and is still being repaired. As we traveled around the island we came across innumerable buildings that are still in disrepair, four years after Irma made landfall.  

The courthouse in Philipsburg, which is the capital of (Dutch) Sint Maarten.

Kirby pretends to ignite a (replica) cannon of the Dutch West Indies Company in Philipsburg. The company held the island's trade monopoly during the Dutch colonial era.

An (almost) empty beach in Philipsburg.

Pandemic and Irma in a nutshell: repairs are being made to the jetty in the foreground, while several cruise ships idled by COVID-19's shutdown of the cruise industry, including the Royal Caribbean Rhapsody of the Seas that we sailed on during our trip to Greece a few years ago, are docked at the cruise terminal in the background.

Fort St. Louis overlooks Marigot, the capital of the French side of the island. The fort was originally built in 1789.

A typical Street scene in Marigot, with stores and boutiques and cars with French plates. Driving on this island was an adventure. The roads were narrow and winding, with no left turn bays (which meant a lot of time stopped in traffic while somebody in front of you waited to turn) in . Most major intersections were roundabouts (which I personally don't mind); I only came across one traffic signal on the entire island. Finding parking could also be difficult at times.

Looking down at Marigot from Fort Saint Louis. Before the pandemic, a ferry ran between Marigot and the British island of Anguilla, which would have made for a fun day excursion. Alas...

Kirby poses with the Tricolore atop Fort Saint Louis.

Another (mostly) empty beach. This is Kim Sha beach in Simpson Bay, west of Philipsburg.

The sun sets over Simpson Bay.

Long Beach in Baie Longue. We stopped here on a catamaran excursion, which visited several beaches and snorkeling spots along the southern end of the island.

A view from the catamaran of some of the homes and resorts on Pelican Key, on the Dutch side of the island. 

A cluster of restaurants on Orient Bay, on the French side of the island. We did most of our dining on the French side of the island. The food was excellent! 

Princess Juliana Airport was heavily damaged by Hurricane Irma, and several years later only makeshift repairs have been completed. It was also extremely crowded. 

While we enjoyed the trip, this is the last time I am going to travel internationally until the Coronavirus pandemic is over.* It was a real hassle, and knowing what I know now (articles like this one would have helped me, had I found them ahead of time) I probably wouldn't have done it. The hoops we had to jump through - getting a COVID test within 72 hours of travel, filling out a form on Sint Maarten's website and waiting to receive authorization to travel, purchasing mandatory "COVID insurance” on that same website, printing everything out so that test results and travel authorizations could be verified both in Miami (where we flew out from) and at Princess Juliana, checking our temperature every morning and reporting it to Sint Maarten health authorities via a special website for tourists - were considerable, and a failure at any point would have doomed the trip. 

We also had to get tested in order to return to the United States, which our timeshare did, for $100 per person, utilizing a "doctor" using an in-home rapid test that miraculously showed everybody as being COVID-negative in a matter of minutes. American Airlines accepted the negative test document he gave all of us when we checked in to fly back home, but the process was shady as hell.

Finally, two personal notes about future travel plans:

• First, I am not going to take my son on any more trips unless he has his own room with his own bed. His (oftentimes tiresome) teenage surliness aside, it really wasn't fair for him to have to sleep on the pull-out sofa in the living room, next to the kitchen where people woke up early to eat breakfast and talk. It interrupted his sleep and made him grouchy.

• Second, I am going to try to stick to a minimum of two weeks for vacation. This isn't always easy and calls for me to plan and reserve my vacation time carefully, but one-week vacations are simply too short. You don't feel like you've had any "time off." (To be sure, we did spend a couple of days visiting some of Corinne's friends in Florida before we flew on to Sint Maarten, so this vacation ended up being about a week and a half long. It still felt too short.)

Here's to hoping that there is a light at the end of the tunnel that is the current pandemic, and that everybody can have wonderful vacations in 2022. 

Happy New Year!

*Exclusively domestic travel for family vacations also makes sense, given my father's aforementioned mobility issues. When you travel domestically, you can expect most facilities - airports, hotels, museums, etc. - to abide by ADA regulations. Traveling internationally, you can't always expect such accommodations.

The bus driver shortage crisis

Given my profession, I have been well aware of the operator labor problems public transportation agencies are currently facing. Transit consultant Jarrett Walker believes it's a genuine emergency:

I know we’re having a lot of emergencies and it’s hard to keep track, but many US transit agencies are looking at devastating service cuts due to a shortage of bus drivers.  Drivers are quitting or retiring early much faster than agencies can replace them.  One friend told me their agency is losing 10 drivers for every one they hire.

Here in Portland, TriMet is cutting 9% of its service, bigger even than the cuts in the Great Recession.  I’m seeing similar cuts all over the US.

Can you blame the bus drivers?  The job was always hard, and now it’s more dangerous in two ways: People breathe on drivers a lot, not always masked, and the mental health epidemic is showing up in more rudeness and bad behavior.  Worst of all, some US cities are seeing a rise in assaults on drivers.

Meanwhile, there’s been huge growth in delivery jobs, some of which pay decently and don’t involve dealing with people.

I'm seeing this problem locally as well. Local agencies like METRO are struggling to keep their heads above water because they're having trouble finding drivers; as a public agency, it's simply hard for them to compete against the wages and benefits that private delivery companies like Amazon and UPS are currently offering. This means that METRO is unable to add back the service that they had to cut at the beginning of the pandemic as much as they would like. This in turn effects everyone who uses transit - whether it be suburban workers who are beginning to return to the office or "essential" workers who, even during the height of the pandemic, relied on public transportation to get around - because buses come less frequently, are overcrowded, or don't operate at times of day (i.e. late evenings) when people need them. 

Transit faces an uncertain future as it is, with people still wary of being in close quarters on buses and trains and more people working from home. But it's still a critical part of our urban infrastructure that needs to be adequately staffed in order to be effective (and no, driverless buses are not "coming to the rescue" anytime soon). 

Walker has a couple of suggestions for transit riders and concerned citizens alike:

What can you do?  Advocate for funding, but also:

• Be kind to your bus driver. If you have a moment, watch them in action.  Notice how hard their job is, and how much they have to deal with.  Thank them.
• Be kind to your transit agency management.  It’s a terrible moment for them.  They’re as horrified as you are by having to cut service.  (You can be kind to them and still be mad at them for some things. But be sure that what you’re mad about is really their fault.  The driver shortage isn’t.)

This advice may sound simplistic, but it’s actually practical.  Kindness is a powerful form of activism.  A lot of it can add up to big change.

Amsterdam's reprieve from overtourism

 Frida Ghitis reflects upon an Amsterdam transformed by the pandemic:

There's an unfamiliar seriousness in the air. The city that routinely drew millions of visitors, some looking for high art, many simply wanting to smoke pot, has grown a bit quieter. The people, it appears to me, have become friendlier. The city seems more grounded -- and lovelier than ever.

My last pre-pandemic visit was in 2019. Amsterdamers were exasperated, then, drowning in a flood of tourists. That year, an unbelievable 21 million people visited what is a relatively small city of less than 900,000 people.

Some tourists have returned, but the raucous crowds that made it impossible to hold your path for more than a few seconds on a sliver of sidewalk are nowhere in sight. The sidewalk cafes are still full when it's not raining. They have more tables outside. The city is still lively. But you hear almost only Dutch, another noticeable change.

The narrow, cobble-stoned streets are still buzzing with bicycles, but the riders are almost all Dutch. Gone are the swarms of tourists in yellow or red-painted rental bikes, pedaling uneasily and stopping suddenly, disruptively, for snapshot of one of the distinctive 17th century Dutch houses lining the old canals.

One of the (few) positives of the COVID-19 pandemic is that "overtouristed" destinations such as Venice, Dubrovnik, Barcelona and Amsterdam were given a respite from the hordes of visitors and the negative effects they bring: the crowds, the garbage, the kitschy souvenir shops, the vacation rentals pushing out longtime residents. This pause in tourist activity has given these cities time to consider what they want their tourist economy to look like going forward:

While much of the travel industry has spent the last year focused on how to recover from the pandemic as quickly as possible, some of the world’s most tourism-dependent economies are reveling in the emptiness and pushing back on attempts to return to the status quo.

In response, many destinations are using the respite to advance tourism management rather than tourism marketing plans, with an emphasis on more local input and control.

The challenges are steep. And the efforts, in many cases, precede Covid-19. 

But the global travel shutdown over the past year provided a silver lining of sorts for the overtourism problems that were hitting crisis levels in popular hot spots just before the pandemic was declared in March.

“The opportunity right now is that it’s like we’ve had an escape valve,” said Jonathon Day, an associate professor in Purdue’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. “We were above or right at capacity in some of our destinations. … Now, we’ve got a moment to say, is the system working?”

If the movements are successful, experts say, they will reshape the tourism experience by focusing on attracting higher-quality tourism that is more interested in and sensitive to local culture and sustainability while bolstering local businesses and enhancing the visitor experience.

Undesirable tourist activity has been a long-running issue for Amsterdam; I blogged about a planned crackdown on marijuana- and prostitution-related tourism over a decade ago. Ghitis notes that the residents of the city are focused on combatting many of the same tourist-related negatives today:

This was a good destination for my first international trip in nearly 18 months. Pre-pandemic Amsterdam might have been a shock to the system. I'm not the only one who likes it like this. The residents of the city have been complaining for years that their quality of life was declining because of overtourism. Authorities are trying to see what they can salvage from one of the few good outcomes of the crisis. They want to restrict arrivals, keep tourists away from cannabis "coffee shops," and prevent them from overrunning the Wallen, the centuries' old neighborhood that is also home to Amsterdam's famed red light district.

Eventually, the pandemic will end and tourists will return. This new, more serious Amsterdam will become another one of the memories of this strange time. For now, walking along the iconic canals, recognizing the quiet, and seeing how much has changed, how even the people seem a little different, is part of what traveling is all about, a heightened sense of awareness, the unmistakable feeling of being alive, and the knowledge that the world is calling out with more places to visit. I can hardly wait! (And I have already made reservations.)

I'd like to make a (responsibly-planned) return trip to Amsterdam sometime in the future as well. But for now, I'm glad that residents are getting a chance to enjoy some relative peace in their own city.

Thoughts on the Tokyo Olympics

They were delayed a year, they were played in the sweltering heat, there were no fans in the stands, they were the most expensive on record, and its organizing body is still hopelessly corrupt. The 2021 2020 Summer Olympics, which ended a week ago, probably shouldn't have happened at all. But happen they did, and I have a handful of thoughts: 

We're (Just Barely) Number One: The United States "won" the 2020 Olympics, by earning the most gold medals (39) as well as the most medials overall (113). The United States has won the most number of gold medals in six out of the last seven Olympic Games, and the most medals overall for the seventh summer Games in a row. 

However, Team USA only barely edged out China for the most golds; the Chinese team, which had been leading in the gold count until the final weekend of the games, came in second with 38 golds (and 88 medals overall). Rounding out the top five in the gold medal count were host nation Japan, Great Britain, and the Russian Olympic Committee (which I'll say more about in a moment).

Fun fact: the Chronicle claims that, if Houston were its own country, it would have finished 20th in the medal count.

Welcome to the Club: Athletes from Bermuda, the Philippines and Qatar won their countries' first-ever gold medals, while Burkina Faso, San Marino and Turkmenistan won their first medals ever. San Marino is, in fact, the first European microstate ever to win a medal at the summer Games (Liechtenstein has won medals at the Winter Olympics). 

Given its small size, San Marino also ended the Olympics with the most medals per-capita: one for every 11 thousand inhabitants (the United States, by comparison, won one medal per 2.9 million people). 

On the other end of the medals-per-capita list is India. Even though Indian athletes had their most successful appearance in the Olympics ever, the seven medals they won represented a ratio of one medal per 197 million people.

Cheaters do win, if you're Russia: After Russia's blatant state-sponsored doping scandal, the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency decided to "ban" Russia from the Olympics. Russian athletes could still compete, however, as long as they called themselves the "Russian Olympic Committee," competed under a special flag, and played something other than the Russian national anthem at medal ceremonies:

At the medal ceremony here, the Russian national anthem was replaced by “Piano Concerto No. 1” by Tchaikovsky, the Russian composer. The flag raised was not the Russian flag, but one featuring waves of an Olympic torch … but using the Russian colors of blue, red and white.

No Russian flags are allowed at any venue (or the Opening or Closing Ceremony), but they can be hung about the Olympic Village. So there’s that. Not that it matters. The Russians designed their uniforms to mimic the beloved Trikolor.

“If the flag is not allowed, we ourselves will be the flag,” Rugby captain Alena Tiron told the Russian state news agency RIA Novostu.

In Russia, the Olympics gold medal you.

“We know which country we stand for,” Tiron said.

Everyone does. A country that is adept at embedding spies in the highest level of governments around the globe doesn’t even have to try to be sneaky over here.

These so-called "neutral athletes" - over 330 of them, in all - finished with 20 gold medals (and 71 overall). What a joke. 

The head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart, had some choice words to say about this charade:

"Unfortunately, we’ve seen this horror film already – where the Russian state-sponsored doping programme walks free and Russia wins while the IOC and WADA leaders attempt to pull the wool over the world’s eyes by claiming Russia is ‘banned.’," said Tygart.

"All can now see this ‘ban’ once again for the farce that it is.

"It is barely a ‘rebrand’ and will do nothing to stop the corruption in Russia and likely will embolden others willing to win by any means.

"It’s a doomed system that allows, as it has here, one nation to make a mockery of the Games by their thirst for medals over values."

Russia is also "banned" from the 2022 Winter Olympics, but Russian athletes will be there, too. Vladimir Putin has to be laughing his ass off.

I would have punched that horse, too: the modern pentathlon is one of the weirdest sports of the Olympics. Okay, so maybe not as weird as artistic swimming or race walking, but a competition consisting of five very disparate disciplines - fencing, swimming, show jumping, pistol shooting, and cross-country running - is, well, pretty wacky. According to Wikipedia, this sport is "patterned on events representing the skills needed by cavalry behind enemy lines." Okay, but it's still somewhat ridiculous, especially since cavalry isn't really a thing in warfare anymore.

Anyway, there was controversy during the women's modern pentathlon when a frustrated German coach appeared to strike an uncooperative horse during the show jumping portion of the competition:

The International Modern Pentathlon Union (UIPM), the sport's governing body, announced Saturday it was giving a black card to Kim Raisner, dismissing her from the remainder of the Games, after reviewing video footage from a Friday event.

The footage "showed Ms Raisner appearing to strike the horse Saint Boy, ridden by Annika Schleu (GER), with her fist," the group said in a statement. That violated UIPM competition rules, they said.

The light punch came after Schleu, who was heading into the show jumping round with a commanding lead, was trying to get Saint Boy to respond to her commands. But the horse was obstinate.

Schleu, who was visibly in tears because she couldn't get her horse to cooperate, scored zero points in the show jumping segment and fell to 31st place by competition's end. 

This brings up another weird aspect of the modern pentathlon: unlike other equestrian events at the Olympics, the horses do not "belong" to the riders. Rather, horses are randomly assigned to competitors twenty minutes before the show jumping competition, giving athletes a very short time to "bond" with the animals. This would appear to create an element of luck that is completely outside the competitor's control: if somebody ends up with a wayward horse that refuses to jump, then their dreams of winning a medal are sunk through no fault of their own. This apparently happened to several competitors - not just Schleu - during the women's modern pentathlon.

The agency that oversees this weird-ass sport is reviewing the event and considering changes for 2024. Perhaps they should consider doing away with horses entirely, and replace show jumping with a skill relevant to a 21st century soldier, like rock climbing or mountain biking.

(Full disclosure: I'm not the world's biggest fan of horses. They've always creeped me out, for some reason.)

NBC's coverage still sucked: I've written about this so many times since 1996 that I really don't have anything new to say about it. So I'll hand off to The Guardian, which describes the coverage of the Tokyo Olympics as "televisual vomit:"

Viewers have been able to see everything at any given moment (provided you have the Peacock streaming service) while understanding fundamentally nothing about what’s going on. NBC has never met a night of swimming finals that didn’t need to be spliced up with bizarre human interest segments on Caeleb Dressel’s first ride through the Florida wetlands on an airboat, or a routine on the double bars that couldn’t be improved by a quick jump to an ad break and some random highlights of Denmark and Indonesia in the badminton. We all want to know who the athletes are, of course, if only at a superficial level; and since the whole Olympics is so overwhelming, with so much going on at once, some measure of discombobulation from the host broadcaster is always understandable. But when we switch on the Olympics, I think it’s fair to say that most of us want to witness elite athletes perform spectacular feats with their bodies, not hear a series of driving stories about how they handle their daily commute.

NBC’s programming choices have been consistently bizarre, even more so when you consider that whole chunks of the schedule in Tokyo – for swimming above all, but also in the athletics – were specifically rejigged to cater to the American TV audience, and at several points it’s been unclear to all but the most obsessive Olympics watchers whether what’s on TV at night in the US is live or a replay. On Sunday morning, the women’s triple-jump world record had just been broken, a thrilling men’s high jump had ended in shared gold and the starting gun for the men’s 100m – the biggest race at the Olympics – had just been fired. NBC was showing a replay of the equestrian eventing final. The point, of course, is to funnel viewers to watch the repeat in primetime. Which may have worked at Tokyo 1964 when you could avoid the result for 12 hours. But which viewer with even a passing interest in sport for Tokyo 2020 won’t already have seen the result on the internet or used a VPN to watch it on the BBC or CBC?

Time, The Los Angeles Times and TechDirt are similarly critical of the coverage, while Vulture suggests that the oftentimes-confusing array of coverage - NBC presented coverage of the Games across its broadcast network, multiple cable channels, and its Peacock streaming platform - was simply a case of viewers getting what they've always wanted:

Some of the complaining about figuring out “how” to watch the Olympics on the NBC platforms is a classic case of “be careful what you wish for.” After all, for years the rap on NBC’s coverage was that the network offered almost nothing but prepackaged, and often pretaped, extended highlights shows. Audiences would have to wait until prime time to see events which finished up hours earlier; sports fans who wanted deep coverage of less high-profile events were often out of luck. The fact that NBC now pretty much lets anyone with a cable login watch every event live, in real time, is a massive improvement over the status quo of a decade or two ago. And it’s certainly a lot better than it was back in the 20th century, when NBC — and previous Olympics hosts CBS and ABC — treated the Olympics as a prime-time soap opera, serving up only the story lines it felt would appeal to a broad audience (thank you, Roone Arledge). NBC still does this with its main coverage, of course, but audiences now have more choice than ever before.

The Tokyo Games ended up having the lowest viewership of any Olympics NBC has broadcast since they first picked up the Games in 1988. NBC, of course, had a litany of excuses ready to explain away their poor ratings - Coronavirus, the time difference, difficulties encountered by the athletes they overhyped the most (Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka) - and tried to put a positive spin on its viewership:

NBC says its coverage of the Games boosted everything from podcasts to broadcast programs such as the Today show and NBC Nightly News. 

But the days when the Olympics were appointment television for most TV viewers seem to be ending. The pressing question for NBC — which has spent billions for rights to air the Games until at least 2032 — is how to handle a media world where the hours of coverage are increasing while audience numbers are heading in the opposite direction.

I dunno, maybe try to make your coverage (and the ability of viewers to navigate it) suck less? Maybe present the Olympics as an actual sporting event, rather than a primetime reality TV show? Maybe fire Mark Lazarus, who is apparently the guy most responsible for this claptrap? I'm not holding my breath.

All Jazeera reviews the highs and lows of the just-completed Games, while the Daily Beast explores some of Tokyo's weirder moments and ESPN waxes sentimental on what the games are all about. And if the Tokyo Games left you yearning for more, don't fret: the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing are only six months away!

The great Topo Chico shortage of 2021

Forget toilet paper, lumber, microchips and everything else that has been or is in short supply due to the pandemic. This is the real crisis:

Texans, a distressing drink shortage is plaguing our great state, well, the nation actually. Topo Chico, a beverage many here in the Lone Star State hold near and dear to our hearts is being swept off shelves faster than the company can restock it. Stated bluntly, we’re experiencing a nationwide Topo Chico shortage , and, we might add, in the middle of a scorching summer.

A spokesperson for Topo Chico told KPRC 2 that the company’s experiencing a temporary shortage due to “extremely strong consumer demand and a shortage of raw materials,” adding that the company’s stock of Topo Chico “is temporarily tight across the country.”

“We’re working hard and implementing contingency plans to keep the products people love on shelves during this temporary shortage,” the company told KPRC 2.

Some news stories have indicated that the shortage is due to a lack of glass, but I've noticed that the 16-ounce plastic bottles of the Mexican sparkling water have also been difficult to find. They haven't been on the shelves at H.E.B. in a few weeks, nor have the pallets of plastic bottles (which I regularly buy) been available at Costco lately. For whatever the reason, Topo Chico (in any form) is simply hard do come by right now.

In many ways, this is my worst fear: has Topo Chico finally become "so popular that demand overwhelms the amount of water that the plant in Monterrey is able to produce, and the drink becomes increasingly expensive and hard to find," as I wrote a few years ago?

Texas Monthly's Emily McCullar, on the other hand, suggests that "maybe we should take advantage of this forced break between Texans and our Topo" to try other, Texas-produced mineral waters: 

These days, there are approximately one trillion sparkling water brands that you can get from H-E-B, Target, Brookshire Brothers, Lowe’s, and everywhere else. Sure, when Topo Chico was coming up, the only other brand widely available was LaCroix, which has tiny gentle bubbles and goes flat in half an hour, so Topo was obviously king. But now we have Austin-based companies like Rambler, which has a refreshingly potent carbonation, and Waterloo, which is killing it in the “flavor essence” game (I personally ride hard for Black Cherry, which tastes like a not-sugary Hi-C). Big Swig is out here getting wild with prickly pear, pickle juice, and jalepeño flavors; and you can always count on Richard’s Rainwater to cool you off in a pinch. Don’t even get me started on H-E-B, which has not only its own line of flavored canned waters but also the glass-bottled 1877 Mineral Water, which is just as good as Topo Chico, if not better. 

This is simply wrong. H-E-B's 1877 product is okay, but it's not nearly as carbonated as Topo Chico, and I certainly don't think it tastes any better. As for flavored waters, I'm not a fan in general. While I will keep an eye out for Rambler, I simply haven't found a sparkling water that comes close to Topo Chico in terms of flavor and feel. If that makes me a mineral water snob, so be it.

Here's to hoping that the folks at Topo Chico (as well as their overlords at Coca-Cola) find a way to address the shortage soon. Football season is just a few weeks away; I shudder to think about having to tailgate without a cold Topo in hand.

Rhapsody in idle

Three years ago, Corinne, myself and my parents were enjoying a Mediterranean cruise from Venice to Croatia and Greece aboard Royal Caribbean's Rhapsody of the Seas.

As of last week, the same vessel sits idle (along with at least two other Royal Caribbean ships) at the dock in Philipsburg, Sint Maarten: a victim of the COVID-19 pandemic's devastating effect on the cruise industry.

I'll have more about my recent trip to Saint Martin (including why I am never again traveling internationally during a pandemic) soon. 

Former banker is Ecuador's next president

This was a bit of a surprise:

A conservative businessman has unexpectedly won Ecuador’s presidential election as voters rejected the leftist movement started by the former president Rafael Correa more than a decade ago.

Preliminary results showed that Guillermo Lasso took 52% of the vote in the runoff following a campaign that pitted free-market economics against the social welfare plans of Andrés Arauz, an economist.

“We will work together from now on for true change,” Lasso wrote on Twitter. “Today we woke up in peace and with the certainty that better days are coming for everyone.”

This outcome is surprising because Lasso barely even made it into the second round of voting. He carried only two of Ecuador's 24 provinces in the first round of voting and edged out third-place finisher Yaku Peréz of the left-indigenous Pachakitik party by only 0.36%. Lasso surged in the second round of voting, held two Sundays ago, to win 18 provinces and the presidency.

Ecuador's incumbent President, Lenin Moreno, did not seek re-election.

Lasso's election represents a significant shift from the leftist administrations that have governed the small yet beautiful Andean nation over the past fourteen years, and may have been a function of voters' dissatisfaction over the excesses of those administrations as well as the way the country has handled the COVID-19 pandemic. Foreign Policy's Will Freeman explains: 

More than just a competition between two candidates, the polarizing election became a referendum on Ecuador’s recent past. Arauz ran as the handpicked successor of the populist former leader (Rafael) Correa and promised to return Ecuador to the era of Correa’s “Citizens’ Revolution”: a period from 2007 to 2017 marked by high growth and the emergence of a new middle class, but also by repression and censorship of Correa’s civil society critics.

The vote shows that nearly four years after Correa left office, distrust of his brand of authoritarian populism still runs deep among a broad cross-section of the population. Even as the COVID-19 pandemic twice pushed Ecuador’s health system to the brink of collapse and plunged 3.2 million additional Ecuadorians into poverty, a plurality of voters preferred an untested alternative over a return to the past.

However, Lasso faces a formidable task in negotiating Ecuador's political divisions and governing effectively: 

Disillusion with democratic institutions is running high, and Lasso will take office as an isolated president with a weak mandate, given the balance of parties in the recently elected legislature. The top three left-wing parties and coalitions hold almost 70 percent of the seats. That means he will face a much bigger challenge in governing than in winning a plurality of votes: He will need to convince his opponents that even when they lose, it’s still worth playing by democratic rules of the game.

This is important to note, because the "democratic rules of the game" have not been historically well-followed in Ecuador.  Since the 1940s, the country has enjoyed only three relatively short periods of democratic stability, where presidents were allowed to serve out their terms (unless they died in mysterious plane crashes) and the transfer of power between elected governments was peaceful: 1948 to 1961, 1979 to 1997, and 2007 to the present (the country's most recent presidential ouster occurring in 2005). 

(Lasso) will find scarce legislative support in Ecuador’s newly elected National Assembly, where his Creating Opportunities party and its ally, the Social Christian Party, control just a fifth of the seats. Even among parties on the left, there is much division. The largest legislative bloc is formed by Arauz’s Union for Hope coalition, which remains loyal to Correa’s vision of active state intervention in the economy and staunchly opposed to Lasso’s slate of market reforms. The next two biggest left-wing parties in the legislature—the Pachakutik party, which is committed to environmentalism and Indigenous people’s rights, and the Democratic Left—are in talks to form a united front. The coalition plans to oppose privatization of state enterprises, reform of the Central Bank, and new extractive projects that could cause environmental harm. Pachakutik and the Democratic Left remain bitter toward Correa, who put hundreds of Indigenous leaders and environmentalists on trial during his time in office.

Freeman suggests that Lasso's best course of action may be to work with this center-left front in forming policy, thereby keeping his opposition fractured and Correa's loyalists in the National Assembly at bay.  

However, if Lasso attempts to go it alone or proves unwilling to make substantial policy concessions, he could quickly make friends out of enemies, and all three left-wing parties could find common ground in opposing him in the National Assembly or, more ominously, in the streets. In this worst-case scenario, Ecuador could come full circle to the presidential ousters and economic chaos that plagued the 1990s—an outcome all sides have a stake in avoiding.

The presidential inauguration will be held in Quito on May 24th.

Getting in the vaccine line

It's March, meaning that we're coming up on the one-year anniversary of the Coronavirus pandemic and related social distancing measures that have completely upended our daily lives. Fortunately, with the vaccine rollout now well underway, there is hopefully a light at the end of the tunnel.

My parents got their second shot of the Moderna vaccine last weekend (they were supposed to get it two and a half weeks ago, but there was a delay due to the freeze). That they are now both fully immunized comes as a great relief to me, as COVID could very well be fatal to them were they to catch it (and I'm thankful that they've managed to avoid it for an entire year). 

Corinne's mother, likewise, is due for her second shot in a couple of weeks.

Earlier this evening, working on a tip from one of her co-workers, Corinne found and made vaccine appointments for both her and myself. The appointments are for two weeks from now, and they're down in Brazoria County, but we don't care. We've found our shots! 

(This, incidentally, is the only time being obese will ever be a health benefit for me.)

And not a moment too soon. Thanks to Governor Abbott's stupid and reckless decision today to reopen the state "100 percent" and stop mandating mask use, Texas is likely to see a significant spike in COVID cases - and deaths - in the coming weeks. 

But hey, anything to get people to stop being angry at you about the state's power grid completely collapsing a couple of weeks ago, right, Guv?

More cancelations for UH football

For the third weekend in a row, the Cougars will not be playing football. Their game against SMU, which was rescheduled from two weeks ago, has been canceled once again:

Houston's upcoming game with SMU has been postponed for a second time because of COVID-19 issues, sources told ESPN on Wednesday.

The game, which was originally to be played on Nov. 21, was postponed to Dec. 5 when COVID-19 issues within Houston's program caused the game to be delayed. This time, it's COVID-19 issues within SMU's program that are preventing the game from being played.

SMU didn't have any positive tests on the team, but contact tracing knocked out entire position groups with more than 20 players sidelined, a source said.

It's unclear at this point whether the game can be made up.

Houston has a game scheduled with Memphis on Dec. 12 (which was originally postponed from Sept. 18) and is tentatively set to play Tulsa on Dec. 19, only if Tulsa is not a participant in the American Athletic Conference championship game. Should Tulsa play in the league title game, it would be possible for Houston and SMU to meet on Dec. 19.

Few teams have been affected by the Coronavirus pandemic as much as the Cougars. The University of Houston didn't play a down of football in September because of COVID-related cancelations, and, as the Chronicle's Joseph Duarte demonstrates, this is their eighth game this season that has been impacted by the pandemic:

HOUSTON 2020 SCHEDULE

Rice - CANCELED
WAZZU - CANCELED
Baylor - CANCELED
UNT - CANCELED
Memphis - RESCHEDULED
TULANE - W 49-31
BYU - L 43-26
Navy - W 27-21
UCF - L 44-21
Cincy - L 38-10
USF - W 56-21
SMU - RESCHEDULED
Tulsa - CANCELED *
SMU - CANCELED
Dec. 12: Memphis TBA

— Joseph Duarte (@Joseph_Duarte) December 2, 2020

Sure, there's still Memphis and maybe Tulsa left to play. But at this point, the question has to be asked: why bother even trying to play any more games at all?

The Coogs have been able to play six times this fall. They've beaten the teams they were supposed to beat, dominating South Florida and securing revenge on Tulane and Navy for last year's losses. But they fell short of what could have been a signature win against BYU and were thoroughly outclassed by Central Florida and Cincinnati. There's ample evidence to indicate that the 2020 University of Houston Cougars are just as mediocre as their 3-3 record indicates. They're not going to compete for a conference title or snag a top 25 ranking this year, and playing another game or two won't change that fact. 

Perhaps the Cougars should treat the 2020 season for what it essentially is - a set of glorified scrimmages - and pack it up for the year. They definitely have things to work on between now and next September, but hopefully they'll be able to make necessary adjustments, bring in some good transfers and recruits (it doesn't hurt that no player is losing any eligibility this season), and start over for a 2021 season that hopefully will not be decimated by a pandemic the way the 2020 season was. 

I've been able to attend all the home games this season, and I've enjoyed myself in spite of the reduced capacities and lack of tailgating. But I'm already done with this season and am looking ahead to 2021. Maybe the Coogs should, as well.

Coronavirus cases rise in Houston once again as COVID fatigue sets in

 Not good, but not completely surprising, either:

Houston-area COVID-19 numbers, which declined significantly in late summer, are creeping up again, a concern given the spike predicted when the weather turns colder and people gather indoors for the holidays.

The increases aren’t near the level being seen in many parts of the state, nation and globe, but the number of new cases and hospitalizations and the positive test rate and disease spread the last three weeks represent a turn for the worse after a period that gave many hope the worst might be over.

“The trends are going in the wrong direction,” said William McKeon, president of the Texas Medical Center. “You hate to see the sacrifices we made and the successes we achieved lost because people let their guard down.”

Dr. Marc Boom, president of Houston Methodist, said, “We’ve definitely turned the wrong corner. The numbers aren’t growing in an out-of-control fashion, but there’s no doubt we’re in a significant growth trend that we need to stop before the holiday season.”

Though experts acknowledged it’s difficult to pinpoint the causes of the uptick, many used the same phrase to describe one big culprit: COVID fatigue. Seven months of staying indoors, unable to resume everyday lives, has left a weary public, many increasingly willing to risk get-togethers, they say. In a daily medical center Zoom call, most of the leaders report they routinely see gatherings of people not wearing masks, said McKeon.

COVID fatigue is absolutely a real thing. Humans, after all, are social animals, and we're all weary of month after month of social distancing measures and other restrictions that are intended to stop the spread of the Coronavirus but are having overwhelmingly negative effects on our lives and livelihoods. We want this to be over. We want to move on.

To be sure, my wife and I are among those who are experiencing COVID fatigue, and it's resulted in our having engaged in behaviors that could be considered risky: having our wedding and going on a honeymoon, attending football games, even dining out at local restaurants on occasion. While we try to be careful - we wear our masks, we maintain social distance, and we obsessively slather on the hand sanitizer  - we know we're still not being nearly as safe as we would be if we remained inside our apartment. And that's the thing: we don't want to be locked in our apartment all the time. We want to live a somewhat-normal life. 

The problem is, the Coronavirus doesn't care what any of us want. All it cares about is finding hosts to infect so that it can replicate. And when COVID fatigue sets in and people begin taking more risks or otherwise become lax in taking precautions, opportunities for the virus to spread increase. 

This already happened earlier this summer, when people emerged from lockdown eager to resume their normal activities and flocked to parties, beaches and bars. This resulted in a surge of COVID cases here in Houston that overwhelmed hospitals. After local elected officials and health experts pleaded with the public to take the threat seriously and implemented new restrictions, the number of cases began to decrease. Now, cases are beginning to increase once again, as this graph from covidactnow.org indicates:

Harris County COVID-19 case trend as of 10/27/2020. Sources: covidactnow.org

To be sure, the increase in cases isn't as bad here in Houston as they are in other parts of the state, nation, or world, but the worst nevertheless may be yet to come: 

The increase comes as experts predict a major U.S. surge expected to begin around Thanksgiving, a spike one expert recently said will produce “the darkest weeks of the entire pandemic.” Houston infectious disease specialist Peter Hotez said “that train is already rolling in the upper Midwest and should arrive in the Northeast in a few weeks.”

Hotez said Houston’s numbers will go up — “I’m pretty confident of that” — but added that North Texas likely will be hit much harder.

The surge is expected because winter will drive people indoors, particularly for the holidays, and because coronaviruses — including this one, according to a recent journal article — survive best in the cold weather.

(Halloween, in fact, is going to be a massive superspreader event: it's on a Saturday, under a full moon, kids will trick-or-treat no matter what authorities decree, and people who choose to go out will get an extra hour to party due to the end of Daylight Saving Time.) 

“We’ve worked hard to bring our numbers down, but we haven’t been able to crush the virus,” said Dr. Eric Boerwinkle, dean of the UTHealth School of Public Health. “When you see numbers creeping up like they are now is when people need to be most vigilant, practice social distance, wear face masks, wash their hands. Now is not the time to let our guard down.”

We're not done with this, nor will we be until a vaccine becomes widely available (and that's many months away). I know it sucks, but be patient and stay safe.

The Texas Medical Center's daily COVID-19 updates are easy to understand and are a useful way to track the local progress of the pandemic.

Football at last: Houston 49, Tulane 31

As it turns out, that revised UH football schedule was obsolete from just about the moment I posted it. The game against Baylor that was arranged in record time was canceled just as suddenly, and the following week's game against North Texas was called off as well (although we'll always have a video of the Spirit of Houston and the Green Brigade virtually coming together to perform Deep in the Heart of Texas to make us feel better). The bottom line is that - through no fault of their own - five games that the Cougars expected to play at one point or another during the month of September were canceled (or in Memphis's case, rescheduled to December). ESPN's Sam Khan, Jr recounts the entire frustrating timeline.

Last Thursday, five weeks after their season was supposed to begin, the Cougars finally got to play some football. 

And, at the beginning of the game, the Cougars certainly looked like a team that hadn't played in five weeks. The Cougars, hosting a Tulane program that already had three games under its belt, fell behind 7-24 early in the second quarter. Two Tulane touchdowns were the direct result of turnovers by UH quarterback Clayton Tune: one was an interception returned for a touchdown, and the other was a sack-and-fumble returned for a touchdown. The Cougars, in fact, would end the evening with five turnovers (although one was a meaningless interception at the end of the first half). 

However, as the game progressed the Cougars began to shake off their rust, and scored three unanswered touchdowns to take a 28-24 lead midway through the third quarter. The Green Wave scored on their next possession to retake the lead. Then wide receiver and kick returner Marquez Stevenson did this:

Stevenson's 97-yard kickoff return broke Tulane; they were unable to score any more points, while the Coogs added two more touchdowns to turn what started out as a rusty, mistake-filled game into a much-needed blowout victory. 

Tune ended the evening 20-of-33 passing for 319 yards and two touchdowns; he also had one rushing score but was sacked four times. Stevenson led receivers with five passes for 118 yards and a touchdown; he was also named the conference's Offensive Player of the Week. The Cougar ground game amassed 157 total yards, with Mulbah Car accounting for two of the Coogs' four rushing TDs. The UH offense ended the evening with 476 yards in spite of their five turnovers.

The UH defense, meanwhile, held Tulane to 211 total yards of offense; they sacked Green Wave quarterback Michael Prattt six times and had 12 tackles for loss. However, the defense was unable to force any turnovers of their own.

Corinne and I were the only members of our regular group to attend the game. Organized tailgating was prohibited, COVID-related restrictions limited the crowd to one-fourth of TDECU Stadium's actual capacity of 40,000 (although it was clear that much fewer than ten thousand fans were there for the Thursday night game), and fans in attendance were also encouraged to wear masks when not eating or drinking. That didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves, although Corinne just had to wear her Tulane shirt to the game...

So yeah: the game atmosphere was weird. The game's start was ugly. But the main thing is that the Cougars started their belated season with a win. As somebody who only a few months ago wasn't expecting to see any football at all this fall, I left the stadium pleased.

Next up for the Coogs is a Friday night game against Brigham Young.

Houston sees surge in bicycling

More locals are traveling on two wheels, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic:

Coupled with the effects of a warming planet, Covid-19 has produced little good news this year. Yet the two crises did pave the way for one positive social shift: a bike boom, including in some unlikely places. New data from Strava, the fitness tracking app used by 68 million global users, shows that several U.S. cities saw significant year-over-year growth in both bike trips and cyclists in much of 2020. 

Among the six U.S. cities for which Strava provided data, Houston and Los Angeles, two sprawling metropolises where just .5% and 1% of the respective populations biked to work in pre-pandemic times, stand out. In Houston, the total volume of cycling trips in Houston was 138% higher in May 2020 than in May 2019. In Los Angeles, the jump was 93%. Unlike their peers, these two places also saw cycling increases in April, the first full month of widespread stay-at-home order and economic shutdowns. 

Given that riding a bicycle is a socially-distanced, outdoor activity, it should come as no surprise that  Houstonians tired of being locked into their homes began to hop aboard their bikes. Activity on the Houston BCycle bike share system saw dramatic increases shortly after the pandemic began, and people wanting bicycles of their own wiped out the inventories of places like Academy and Bike Barn. 

Cycling experts on the ground confirmed that the new Strava numbers are consistent with data from local bike-counters and bike-share systems. In Houston, one popular trail has seen a 162% increase in trips from January to August of this year, said Susan Jaworski*, an active transportation planner for the Houston-Galveston Area Council, a consortium of regional cities that helps coordinate bike networks.

“I think it was the pandemic’s stay-home, stay-safe orders, where people who were remote-working had a chance to discover their bikes,” she said. “When congestion disappeared overnight, I think more folks felt comfortable exploring to get fresh air.”

The big question is if automobile-oriented cities such as Houston will be able to keep people on their bikes even after the pandemic ends and regular commuting and exercising activity resumes. Houston has aggressively been trying to expand its investment in bike-friendly infrastructure, but the city's long-standing affinity for the automobile, as well as its harsh summertime climate, remain to be overcome.

Bicycling is a healthy, inexpensive, ecologically-friendly way to travel and recreate. If anything good comes out of this pandemic, it's that more Houstonians discovered this for themselves.

* Full disclosure: Susan Jaworski is a co-worker of mine at H-GAC.

2020 Houston Cougar Football: Revised Schedule and Season Preview

I hesitate to spend too much time writing this, because I'm still skeptical that there's going to be a whole lot of college football this fall in the midst of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. To be sure, the 2020 season is now well underway (Louisiana-Lafayette's upset of #23 Iowa State being my favorite highlight so far), but as players test positive, outbreaks occur on college campuses, and more and more games get canceled, I am still expecting the entire season to grind to a halt at some point.

In fact, with so many schools and conferences not currently playing, with so many individual players opting the season out, and with redshirt and eligibility rules suspended, the 2020 college football season is going to have a humongous asterisk next to it regardless of what happens. Nobody will consider this year's CFP champion or Heisman Trophy winner to be truly "legitimate." While I love college football, I can't help but wonder why programs are even bothering to play.

All that being said: the UH Athletics Department is among those who are bothering to play football this fall; hence, this preview.

The Current Schedule: Throw the old schedule away, as there have been changes. Last week's opener against Rice was officially postponed, but I don't expect it to be rescheduled. The trip to Washington State, likewise, was canceled due to the Pac-12's decision not to play this fall. Houston's game against BYU on Friday October 16 has been moved from Provo to Houston. And yesterday we discovered that the Cougars would be traveling to Baylor, rather than Memphis, for their season opener next weekend. 

So this is the schedule as it looks today; The AP rankings are current as of this morning:

     Sat Sep 18      at Baylor

     Sat Sep 26      North Texas

     Sat Oct 3        (off)

     Thu Oct 8       Tulane

     Fri Oct 16       #21 BYU

     Sat Oct 24      at Navy

     Sat Oct 31      #14 Central Florida

     Sat Nov 7       at #13 Cincinnati

     Sat Nov 14     South Florida

     Sat Nov 21     at SMU

     Sat Nov 28     Tulsa

     Pending:         at #16 Memphis

Looking Back: There was optimism that the Cougars, led by new head coach Dana Holgorsen and dynamic quarterback D'Eriq King, were going to have a successful, division-winning season. However, after enduring a brutal start to the season that included demoralizing losses to Washington State and Tulane, a host of players (including King) decided to redshirt. The Cougars ended the season with a 4-8 record - their worst campaign since 2004 - and King elected to transfer to Miami.

The Big Story for 2020: Playing through a pandemic. It's going to be a whole different football game in 2020, with players quarantined, stadium crowds limited, and schedules changing on a constant basis. I'm still blown away that the Cougars were able to replace next week's Memphis game with Baylor - a team the Cougars haven't played since the end of the Southwest Conference - on six days' notice!

Reasons for Optimism: Something like 35 players redshirted last season. Some of them (like King) left for other schools, but most return. A handful of transfers should be available to play this fall as well. One would therefore expect a team that is deeper and more experienced than last years, and that alone should result in more wins.  

The schedule is also easier than last year's - there's no stretch of four games in 19 days to start the season this time! - and the most recent changes have worked in UH 's favor. With the Washington State game being canceled and the BYU being moved, The Cougars will only travel outside of Texas twice (three times if the Memphis game is rescheduled) this fall. 

Quarterback Clayton Tune found himself in a tough spot last year, having to take over duties for King five games into the season, and ended the fall with 1,533 yards, 11 TDs and 9 interceptions. With experience, he should be better this season. He also has experienced running backs - Mulbah Carr and Kyle Porter - to hand the ball off to, as well as his prime receiving target from last year, Marquez Stevenson, who is probably the team's best offensive playmaker.

Senior linebacker Grant Stuard, who led the team with 97 tackles last season, heads a defense that is returning a large number of players who - hopefully- learned through adversity last season. Cornerback Damarion Williams was a bright spot in the secondary last year; hopefully he gets some help back there this fall.

Reasons for Pessimism: Just because a team has a bunch of players returning doesn't mean that the team is going to be better, especially if those players contributed to truly atrocious performances on the defense or offensive line last season. Last year's defense allowed 468 yards and 34 points per game, while Ryan Monceaux wonders about an O-line that allowed 95 tackles for loss and 35 sacks last season. While Clayton Tune needs to show improvement, he also needs better protection.

The Cougars had a habit of starting games strong but wilting in the second half last season. That's something that needs to be corrected this fall.

And about that schedule: while it's easier than the one the Coogs played in 2019, it's still tough. Three of Houston's currently-scheduled opponents are ranked, and Baylor is sitting right outside the top 25. The Cougars have to play every team that beat them at home last season on the road this season. 

What the Humans Think: CBS Sports ranks the Cougars 35th (out of 76* FBS teams currently planning to play this fall), and their sportswriters expect the Coogs to finish anywhere between third and eighth in what is now (thanks to UConn's departure) an 11-team AAC. Athlon had the Coogs ranked 70th (out of the full 130 teams) to start the season (they've since re-ranked them to be #45 out of 76*), and sees them as the sixth-best team in the AAC. The conference itself seems to think the same way; its preseason poll placed the Coogs seventh. Pete Fiutak at college Football News foresees a six-win regular season for Houston.

What the Computers Think: As of today, ESPN's FPI gives the Cougars a 50% or greater chance of winning seven out of their currently-scheduled ten games. Massey, on the other hand, currently only gives the Coogs a 50% or greater chance of winning four games. Congrove had the Cougars pegged at #50 (out of 77* teams) to start the season and expected the team to finish the season with a 4-6 record. As of this morning Sagarin puts the Cougars at #66 (out of all 257 Division I football programs); their rating of 69.57 implies a 5-5 record when the ratings of opponents and the home field advantage are taken into account (and a 5-6 record if the Memphis game is rescheduled). 

What I Think: On one hand, I would expect that Dana Holgorsen's Adventures in Redshirting from last fall would pay dividends in the form of a team that is deeper, more experienced and better-conditioned this fall. That would suggest improvement in 2020. On the other hand, we're still talking about a team that has a record of 5-12 over its last 17 games, has one of the worst defenses in the nation over the last two years (#119 in 2018 and #113 in 2019), and is led by a quarterback who had almost as many interceptions as touchdowns last year. "Improvement" might be a relative term.

I foresee a regular season record of 5-5 this fall (5-6 if the Memphis game is rescheduled). While I think the Cougars will be a better team overall, I still don't think they're where they need to be in order to beat anybody other than North Texas, Tulane, South Florida, Tulsa and Navy. 

This projection, of course, assumes that the Cougars play enough games to even make it to five wins before Coronavirus forces the plug to be pulled on the 2020 college football season. Right now, I will treat every game the Cougars actually play this fall as an unexpected and enjoyable gift, win or lose.

*Air Force is scheduled to play only two games this fall, so some sites include the Falcons in their rankings while others don't.

Will Ecuatoriana arise from the dead?

If some Ecuadorean investors have their way, Latin America's most colorful airline will fly again:

The name sounds familiar, but it has nothing to do with one of South America’s best-known carriers, Ecuatoriana de Aviácion, Ecuador’s largest aviation company until it stopped flying in 2006.

An initiative of the country’s entrepreneurs, Ecuatoriana Airlines was registered with the National Civil Aviation Council (CNAC) of the South American country in late August and intends to launch services from the Mariscal Sucre International Airport, in Quito.

According to the application sent to CNAC, the new airline plans to serve the cities of Coca, Cuenca, Esmeraldas, Guayaquil, Loja, Macas, Manta, Quito, Santa Rosa and Tulcán. The fleet of the new Ecuatoriana is not defined, but the company is evaluating the ATR 42-500 and Dash 8-Q200 turboprops and the Airbus A319 and A220 jets and its competitor, the Boeing 737 in the 300, 400 or 500 variants.

Ecuatoriana’s share capital, however, is only $ 16,000, 99% of which belongs to a foreign investor, the Ecuadorian press revealed – the company’s partners are Eduardo Delgado and Ann Martillo.

A few thoughts here: 

• Given my (admittedly three-decades-old) experience with Ecuatoriana, my first thought was "Cool! Now a whole new generation of travelers to Ecuador will get to experience fearing for their lives in heavy turbulence and having their flights summarily canceled."

• The airline's proposed destination list indicates that the new Ecuatoriana will be entirely domestic and, interestingly, will not fly any routes to the Galápagos Islands, even though they are popular with tourists and are financially lucrative. 

• $16,000 in share capital isn't going to buy a lot of airplanes, but that may be a typo. This article (in Spanish) claims that the airline has lined up $15.84 billion in foreign capital and $160 million in domestic capital. 

This filing comes amidst an unsettled civil aviation situation in Ecuador:

The Ecuador market is up for grabs. In May, the Ecuador government put TAME Ecuador, the former State carrier, in liquidation. Two of the other airlines that operate in the country, LATAM and Avianca, started reorganization processes under Chapter 11 in the US. Therefore, there could be a void left by these carriers, and a new airline could develop it in the post-COVID world.

State-run TAME had been struggling for awhile; the Coronavirus pandemic was the 58-year old airline's death knell. This left Ecuador without a true a flag carrier, as Avianca Ecuador and LATAM Ecuador are both subsidiaries of parent airlines based in Colombia and Chile, respectively, and face uncertainty of their own. So it certainly makes sense to set up a new airline - if only on paper for now - to fill the gap left by TAME and to take potentially take advantage of problems at Avianca and LATAM.

Obviously, the new Ecuatoriana won't begin flying anytime soon; even if it were possible to do so, it would be foolish to start operating a new airline in the middle of the pandemic. And, it goes without saying that in order for the new Ecuatoriana to be successful, it will need to be run much better than its infamously unreliable state-owned predecessor.

But if Ecuatoriana 2.0 does ever (literally) get off the ground, they could do worse than to bring back the old color scheme.