AgPerson

Two days ago two major stars of the awesome _Battlestar Galactica_ revealed that this upcoming fourth season of the show will be its last. And then yesterday Exec Prod David Eick denied it. Stop it David! The show needs to end. You’ve had a lot of stories to tell, and you’ve told many of them. And you’ve had tons of filler crap and self-contradictory canon just screwing it all up for fans. Television shows have a limited lifespan (well, except for _Doctor Who_). Much like _Veronica Mars_ needs to do, you need to have the guts to say we’re doing one more season and that’s it, and we’re going to tell all the stories we need to tell and exit gracefully with a bow at the end.

At work I have an awesome 23″ Apple Cinema Display with 1920×1200 resolution. When I’m doing the work I’ve been doing in the last few days, its just not enough space. I have way too many windows open, and I need to see them all!

What I really need, of course, is Spaces, but that’s not coming out until October. Or VirtueDesktops, but its completey unstable.

My God *have you seen Harper’s*? I have, and it is a thing of beauty — every article since the year 1850, a wonderful navigation scheme and site layout, a fabulous building on the (somewhat unrealized) experiment that was their last site redesign. Paul Ford did the work, and his essay on the site launch and what it means to him is something that echoes inside me. I’ve never done a project of that sort of scale, but I know all the feelings he describes.

He says that you do a thing, you pour your life into it, and then you flip a switch, a site goes live, the criticism and knee-jerk reactions come pouring in. Later comes the praise, but never enough to really justify it, then the bug reports and problems, and you have to fix them.

His final words chill me, I don’t know how else to describe it, because I know he speaks truth, and its a bit painful, but then again, its the only possible way it can be:

If you work for a startup you can fool yourself into believing that the reward will be eternal wealth, but I work for a nonprofit, and the reward is: I did a thing, and I doubt I’ll ever do anything like it again. One, two, three: I will never get enough praise; of course I failed; and what I did was not particularly important. The best thing to hope for is that in time and with much more effort the work will become transparent to its users, that it will be taken for granted. That’s life with websites.

I told the nice lady at SuperCuts(tm) that I wanted it “just a little shorter.” And this happened.

Tomorrow at work someone will inevitably say “you got a haircut,” and I’ll inevitably reply, “it happens.” And in a few weeks it’ll be back to normal. It happens.

!>http://farm1.static.flickr.com/168/447156581_09f63933e0_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/pingnews/447156581/ Igor sent me a link to a _Times_ article reported from my home town that discusses pay prisons in California as an alternative to standard prison for people convicted of non-violent crime and wililng to pony up for their stay. It is no picnic, but the advantage is clean cells, the ability to bring an iPod, and in some cases the possiblity of working at your normal job during the day and then returning to prison in the evening.

While I didn’t know about this specific program, it doesn’t entirely surprise me, and is actually sort of neat. California is well known for massively overcrowded jails, (more) unsanitary (than usual) conditions, a prison medical system that is dysfunctional, and a major problem on its hands. Much of this can be traced to our three strikes law, as well as the “war” on some drugs.

Continue reading “Not exactly the Park Plaza”

“From the studios of Minnessota Public Radio in St. Paul, I’m Kai Ryssdal.” Wait a second, what? Oh no, MPR, no you don’t. Don’t you dare fuck up Marketplace. I stood by while you tweaked Weekend America, firing Barbara Bogaev because she refused to relocate, and the program has been worse for it. Now this? A show about world commerce centered out of New York, or Washington, or, ya know, Los Angeles is neat, but *St. Paul*? Come on! I wonder how much of the staff survived the move…

*Edit* (9:07pm): False alarm or shape of things to come?

*Edit 2* (4/30 3:48pm): Thanks, Kai. I am happy and relieved. 🙂 Carry on the good work.

An anecdote from Jason DeParle’s fascinating exploration in the _Times Magazine_ of the plight of Overseas Filipino Workers — those who travel abroad to earn money to give their family back home a better life:

As an Islamic state that bans socializing between unmarried women and men, Saudi Arabia held out few hopes for marriage or kids. Rosalie approached her 30th birthday resigned to a dutiful life alone. She celebrated at a Jeddah restaurant with Filipino friends; one of them, knowing they had a private room, disregarded the gender rules by bringing along her nephew, a construction engineer. The nephew, Christopher Villanueva, took Rosalie for an after-dinner walk, trailing her by a few paces in case the religious police happened by. “I was trembling!” Rosalie said. With both of them living in guarded single-sex dorms, their 18-month courtship occurred largely by cellphone. When they flew home in 2002 to marry, they had never been alone.

Great, great _Times_ article about adolescent health care and how the current medical system fails at treating teenagers. There is pediatric care, geriatric care, and normal adult care, but very little specialization in adolescent care, which has a whole different set of challenges.

The biggest problem, and one I can empathize with completely, is that doctors don’t know how to talk to adolescents. They need to get the parents out of the room, they need to talk about life and lifestyle, family situation, school, behaviors, and give productive, medically-based suggestions that are non-judgemental. They need to treat teenagers like adults and give them the information they need. They need to listen actively to problems and work together to come up with solutions. They need to recognize that adolescene is utterly awkward, that everyone is different, and that we each think our problems are unique and life-defining.

To this day I don’t really know how the medical system is supposed to work for me — who do I call if I have a problem, how much information should I be giving the people at the front desk, how private is it? What does the doctor report about me, what goes in various files, what sorts of things do I need to talk about to make sure I get a good standard of care. Should I ask for more tests? Question why I’m getting them? How do I choose my primary care doctor?

Teenagers need to learn how to become good medical consumers, need to learn about how to make the system work for them, need to know that doctors will be there when they need them. In turn, insurance companies need to provide incentives for adolescent care to be thorough and complete, and for more doctors to become specialized in the field.