The intense atmosphere, cramped quarters, ever-changing circumstances, and lack of oversight/cross-checking leads to an unknown (but probably high) number of errors by EMTs and paramedics each year. The first steps towards improving treatment include establishing a better reporting and response infrastructure and standardizing medical supplies and doses across hospitals and ambulances so that the same thing in the same dose is the same color and in the same place every single time. Makes sense to me.
Lessig explains the debate over who “owns” the Internet – The entire framing of the debate is insanely stupid (as Lessig explains far more gently) but is more about the EU not trusting the US (who can blame them) than any fundamental problem with the current ICANN governing structure or what is going on with the root (.com, .org, .net, etc.) domains.
A Fark thread about heart surgery for patients in their 80s is actually causing a reasoned debate and not the typical Fark comment threads. Not sure how long the discussion will stay serious, but many of the commenters have personal stories of elderly relatives who did or did not undergo complicated, risky, and expensive procedures. There are no easy answers to problems with the American health care system, but the worst answer of all is the one that politicians are (predictibly) generally choosing to adopt — blanket generalizations, band-aid fixes, not addressing the root issues, and punting the problem to the next set of legislators. These debates need to be had, and we need to think as a society about how we want our health care system to work, because right now, it isn’t. (In particular I’m referring to hospitals, and note that the actual linked article that started the discussion thread is about the Canadian health care system, which has a different — well, in some ways, similar — set of problems.)
What I Do All Day
This is silly. I’ve been sitting here for the past ten minutes trying to start an entry about my job, and haven’t really been getting anywhere. Lots of people are asking me about what I do all day, many of those people probably wouldn’t understand the technical details anyway, and frankly I just am not feeling in a zone right now to write about it. I tell people that if you’re ever writing a blog entry that starts with “I know I haven’t updated in a while,” or “I feel like I need to post something,” you might as well just give up. On this blog I write when I feel like it about whatever feels like it needs to be written about. Plenty of interesting and/or important things happen in my life that I just don’t really have much to say about, and so I don’t, or I have something to say and by the time I’ve gotten to a computer the urge has passed. So it goes.
So my job. I like it. In many ways it is similar to what I did in the Student Union, except completely different. When I came into the Union I had almost no training and very little idea what I was getting into. I had to dive deep without a parachute (mixing metaphors, whatever) and trust that I would be able to figure it all out and stay on my feet (a third metaphor! Head…exploding!) It was kinda like that…all mixed up and jumbled, and complicated, with lots of things happening because thats how they used to happen. The trick was figuring out why things were as they were and what was the way it was for good reasons and what was like that just because no one had bothered to try something better. There was a heck of a lot to do. I started making changes. People got really upset with me. Over time, many of the changes stuck, people realized they were the right ones, and couldn’t imagine going back to things the way they were. A few things didn’t work, many things I never was able to get to.
When I got in to office I was given a huge budget and a lot of responsibility with minimal oversight and second-guessing. I figured out the big purchases that needed to be made and I made them, and they were almost always the right ones. I updated our infrastructure, I consolidated our offerings, I documented like crazy, I brought the web site to life. I turned a lot of things around.
I’m not trying to boast. I made many mistakes. I made many people angry. I did my job, and I think I did it really well, and in the process I discovered things about myself that I never knew, and I realized, in a very abstract way, what I wanted to do with my life. I really liked what I was doing, for various reasons, a major one being that I was bringing order to chaos, and I felt good at it. Another major one was that I was doing what was best for my employers — the students who elected me — whether they realized it or not. I was trying to make Brandeis better in various ways, some small, some large. It was exhausting. It was exhilirating. It was a blast.
Images of Maunsell Army Sea Forts used to defend against aerial bombing during World War II. They look like something out of Myst.
You may have heard about the cruise ship that was attacked by Somali pirates, but did you hear about the non-lethal sonic weapon they used to defend themselves?
To change Wal-Mart, first change America – The company is thriving within the rules set by the US economy and with the direct support of the US consumer base. If Americans really think WalMart is evil, they must act to make change. The article says that there is an easy way to make WalMart change, or to run them out of business — don’t shop there. Easier than complaining, and far more effective. Of course, the same is true of the RIAA, and yet people still continue to buy, buy, buy music. Don’t expect to see a change any time soon, not in America. If any change comes, it will be an ill-conceived legislative “solution.” As a country so wed to the markets and the promise of consumerism, and so happy to take advantage of the low prices around us, even when we know the costs, we sure have a strange way of reacting when faced with the problems we’ve caused. But then, blaming everyone else for your problems isn’t really new. I can at least be contented that I’m doing some very small part to not be a hypocrite by simply choosing to never shop at WalMart. Is that really so hard?
Wasted innovation
MasterCard has something new called “PayPass” that lets you pay for things by “simply” “tapping” your card on the reader rather than scanning it. So they’re adding RFID chips to their cards…great. And you’re saving about half a second because instead of swiping you are tapping. How is this innovation? How about using your neat new technology, to, say keep digital copies of all my receipts and let me access them online? Or, to help slightly with privacy, store them on the card, in a format that I can easily download onto my computer and into programs like Quicken with one “simple” “tap.” Or how about getting rid of the card altogether and letting me use small, rugged, easily transportable keyfob? There is no reason the digital wallet needs to look anything like the traditional non-digital one. MasterCard went for the easy gimmick rather than real innovation. I’m sure there are lots of other great ideas out there for improving the shopping experience and using RFID chips, smart cards, and the like. Why they decided to latch on to this particular one and put it forward as a MasterCard-specific gimmick that is incompatible with everyone else’s systems is completely beyond me.
Boston Wanderings
A few photos from some random wanderings in Boston.
Zaphod’s just this guy, you know?
I was wandering around Boston on Sunday when I suddenly found myself standing in the middle of a huge get out the vote march, ostensibly in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. I say “ostensibly” because — as I expect is the norm at most major rallies — there were representatives from various causes from labor unions to socialists to rabid fans of LaRouche. It was surreal, but the gospel music was nice and it was interesting to see the various people. It was actually sort of sad when the white speakers started getting up and just not doing very well at all at mustering the enthusiasm, power, and outrage that their black counterparts put forth. There was also a big contingent of City Year volunteers who seemed to be participating in the organizing. The other obvious presence was a large group of black men wearing fancy suits. They also looked pretty official/organizer-y, in contrast with the assorted other people in various sorts of dress, like me in my t-shirt and shorts. It was interesting in a purely time-wasting sort of way to think about the logistics of the event and try to understand who really was in charge (if anyone). The serious-looking men in suits I just couldn’t quite figure out.
The other notable aspect of the rally was when I was slowly walking sideways/backwards while observing the crowd. I turned around just in time to stop about five or six feet away from John Kerry, in the flesh. Running into him would have been sort of embarrassing. Based on my brief observations at close range, however, I think I can confirm that he is not, in fact, a robot. He even put on his “trademark” bomber jacket, although there was no motorcyle in sight.
So anyway, that happened.
Heather on Grey’s Anatomy – I pretty much agree with her setiments. Warning — reading this two weeks ago spoiled me for the episode two weeks ago and the one before that, which I hadn’t yet downloaded, but have just watched. Eh, I’m a little behind. TiVo’s going on five years or so and still carrying its weight.
Company develops almost 100% effective HPV vaccine that guards against cervical cancer. Conservative groups oppose it because stopping cancer is best left to education about abstinance. I mean, that’s worked so well with other STDs. And banning sex-ed classes from showing students how to use condoms has lowered the abortion rate, right? Or maybe if we outlaw abortions that will stop unplanned pregnancies? Yeah, all these wonderful theories, only problem is that none of them is true according to every valid scientific study. Ooh, but we can’t be going around using the dirty “S” word, can we. “Science,” humph.
What its like on the ground in Afghanistan – Discussing military tactics for capturing and killing Taliban fighters. An interesting read.
Maureen Dowd wonders about the lasting effects of the women’s lib movement and the plight of the modern day woman: “Maybe we should have known that the story of women’s progress would be more of a zigzag than a superhighway, that the triumph of feminism would last a nanosecond while the backlash lasted 40 years.”
Schools across the country are banishing Halloween celebrations for a variety of reasons, including “political correctness” agitators who think the holiday is unfair to poor students, but mostly, it appears, due to strongly religious parents who object to the “satanic” roots of the holiday and choose to (or threaten to) keep their children home from school.
Danny Hillis has finished work on the second prototype of the Clock of the Long Now. Standing nine feet tall, this functioning clock provides a close approximation of the current plans for the full-size 60 foot version that will eventually reside in a mountain cave in Nevada. Hillis is still exploring many different ideas for how to construct the clock and what types of displays it will contain (how do we map our notion of hours, or centuries?) I plan to make the trek to visit the clock when it is finished, and I expect that the end result will be equally beautiful to this prototype, but very different.
For a commercial for their new Bravia line of LCD televisions Sony dumped a *quarter of a million* rubber bouncy balls onto the streets of hilly San Francisco and filmed the result from 23 different angles. The result, with no computer enhangement, is truly surreal. It seems like ads can be more creative in general in Europe, perhaps because there are fewer of them (at least in the UK, I believe) and perhaps because they can be longer. Watch the ad and view photos on Sony’s site or on Flickr.
Interesting to note that Fitzgerald’s investigation of the Plame leak has so far cost well shy of $1 million, while Ken Starr’s investigation of Whitewater ended up costing at least $40 million. Other interesting tidbits: Libby is *confirmed* to have been one of the leakers (PDF, para. 14), and it is also pretty clear that he *knew* Valerie Wilson was a covert operative. Not sure why the TV news/spin shows can’t figure this stuff out, apparently they don’t know how to read. Also not sure what ever happened to Bush’s promise to fire any leakers.
Meanwhile, Barry Obama publishes his own podcasts and syndicates them through iTunes!