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GRAFFITI -- May 18, 2009 thru May 24, 2009>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message. |
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May 18, 2009
2209 - The day went well, but the work I'm doing right now isn't going so nicely. I think there are bandwidth issues for me with RHN. I've got three boxes to update tonight. One's done. The second is pulling a bunch of packages down. I must have updated it last just before the last big package push. The third ... that's at the DR site, and it's still just trying to pull headers. The good news is that I've got it all running in Screen. If nothing else helps me, I can just disconnect and walk away, knowing that the updates will be done sometime, and that I can do the reboots at another time.
Now, some random thoughts on the effects of modern health care, and an analogy to forestry management techniques of the past 100 years.
One of the things we've apparently "learned" over the last couple of decades is that our prior policies for forest management, which involved fighting fires aggressively every time, were misguided. The downside of fighting every fire aggressively is that you leave more unburnt fuel laying about to be added to the next go-round. That leads to megafires that we just can't fight. We do learn hard lessons about where not to build houses (not if you can't afford to lose the house and its contents). Oh, yeah, but we still build there. So now, where possible, we try to let fires burn, and guide the fires away from houses. Fire has been a part of Nature's cycle of renewal for eons.
Disease has been part of Nature's cycle of renewal for ages, too. Ever since we humans learned what was really going on, that things unseen by the naked eye could make us ill or cause our death, we've been aggressively fighting those battles. In some cases, we appear to have won the game, dramatically. Think of polio. But we do a number of things that, while in the best interests of individuals, are likely not in the best intrests of the species.
We help keep alive people with formerly fatal genetic defects, like hemophilia. The people and their genes live to reproduce, to spread their non-survival-oriented characteristics. Additionally, we fight all sorts of diseases with assorted antibiotics and other chemotherapies. I was thinking "we train the bugs", but in fact we don't. We provide an artificial evolutionary stimulus for many different diseases, making them more lethal and resistant to our efforts. Starts to sound like our former forestry management policies, eh?
I don't think one can start letting sick people die for the benefit of the species, without being branded as evil in one way or another. But I think our disease management policies will end us far sooner than any climate change scenario can. If you haven't yet, get and read a copy of George Stewart's Earth Abides. And if the wee bugs don't get us, there's still a big rock with our names on, in shiny letters.
Oh, and don't keep your house too clean. I firmly believe that the trend towards fanatically clean living environments has greatly increased our tendency towards allergies of all kinds. Without a properly challenged immune system during the very important infancy and early childhood years, we end up with systems that can't tolerate substances that weren't a problem a generation or two ago.
Do your kids a favor. Let them be dirty from time to time. Let them get sick and get over it on their own without the help of modern medicine. You'll make a stronger offspring, and have fewer medical bills to boot. NOTE - I am *not* a doctor, and you can follow my advice at your own risk or that of your kids. I'm told that I'm a heartless bastard, and maybe that's true. I personally don't have kids, but to the best of my ability, I personally follow the advice that I gave. Remember, hospitals are where sick people go to die. Of course, in a great many cases, they save lives. At what cost?
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May 19, 2009
2121 - Whew. Just finished getting Jerry's mailbag formatted and up onto the 'tubes. Between work and supper, we headed over to Crofton, and visited a new used bookstore called Reread. Oddly in this day and age, no website at all. But good prices on books, all in Good or better condition. I picked up three handfulls, yay. Since one of my goals for the Memorial Day weekend is to relax as much as possible, books are a wonderful solution. Now, it's time to start preparing for the remote work I have to do on a couple of production systems tonight. Ciao!
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May 20, 2009
No Post...
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May 21, 2009
2122 - Whoops. There may have been a posting window last night, but ... it escaped me. Sorry 'bout that. Go watch this, instead: It's the rising galactic center over a star party. Time lapse, all night. Link here..
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May 22, 2009
0655 - Good morning. I'm off for a couple of days. Marcia isn't, since she's still in her first year with $JOB. We're not headed to North Carolina for even a shortened trip, since we've got to get ready for my sister and her brood to come visit, starting next week. But I think a bit of relax time would just be stellar, so I'm going to do some of that, too. No promises to post in the next few days, but I'll backpost onto Sunday as usual, if I take that deep a break.
Twitterati - they aren't so much celebrities, as friends I haven't met yet.
That phrase was part of a comment I made on the Daynotes backchannel about Twitter. Twitter has utility for me in a number of ways. First, my "entertainment" preferences are a bit, errrr, eclectic. I'm more likely to be watching MIT OpenCourseware than anything on television. When I do watch the boob tube, it's likely to be DIY, or Food Network, or something else instructive and potentially useful to me. So I follow entities on Twitter that appeal to my strange sense of the world. Some techies like Tim O'Reilly, Doc Searls, Leo LaPorte, and Mitch Kapor, who are tied into the industries that I find interesting. I've actually met some of them, they're also way-bright folks, and provide pointers to readings and viewpoints that I won't come across on my own. That they disagree with me on some fundamental social and political values also benefits me, since I'm much better served on a diet of critical thought and opposition than just reading that with which I agree.
I follow some friends and family, makes it easy to keep up with distant folks. I follow NASA (duh, because I'm a space nut) and ISC SANS (because I need to, it's my job). And I follow a few folks who might be referred to as celebrities. But then, I follow them because they're interesting, possibly quirky, distinctly human and down-to-earth. That's why I said that I don't regard people like Felicia Day, Nathan Fillion, Stephen Fry, or Wil Wheaton so much as celebrities, as think of them as friends that I haven't met yet. There are more out there, I'm sure. Kevin Pollak might even be one. Or Chris Walken, though there's a bit of confusion for me there.
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May 23, 2009
No post - surprise travel advisory......
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May 24, 2009
No post - surprise travel advisory.......
But, even on travel, it's been requested that I back-post the week's fallen warriors on each Sunday, as that's where the readership around here looks for it. So, here y'all go. On this Sunday before Memorial Day, I want to direct your special attention to the following men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Remember, today, tomorrow, and every day, the lives and deaths of the men and women who give their lives for our country. Our condolences to the families and units of the fallen.
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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
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