This post from May 5, 2000 may be the oldest evidence of my blogging. I am pretty sure that I started blogging in December 1999.
Just discovered that the Internet Archive has scanned copies of the first and third edition of my books.
Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan closed in December 2019. The library collection was donated to the Internet Archive, which digitized it and made it available online.
I am on the injured list! Pulled up with a serious charlie horse in my right calf during a walk yesterday. It feels better today, but slowly loosening up. First time this has happened to me.
Note to self. Don’t make line up changes to your FFB team based on rankings on Sunday morning.
“The founders were well aware of the dangers of populism, demagoguery, and faction. They built a constitutional order designed to force compromise and impede sociopathic behavior. But the institutions they put in place to act as gatekeepers (the Electoral College, the appointed Senate) became obsolete, and the successor gatekeepers (political bosses, smoke-filled rooms, big media) came to seem undemocratic and lost their grip. Today, the road to power for a sociopath or demagogue is comparatively unobstructed. As a result, the fail-safes designed to protect the system when the settings go out of alignment have themselves begun to fail.” (nationalaffairs.com, Rethinking Polarization)
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“‘Extreme partisanship may be literally addictive,’ writes the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Partisans who find ways to rationalize their beliefs get a little hit of dopamine. ‘Like rats that cannot stop pressing a button, partisans may be simply unable to stop believing weird things.'” (nationalaffairs.com, Rethinking Polarization)
Resurfaced with readwise.io
Taken during one of my walks yesterday. Open your eyes, look around, and enjoy every moment.
It’s probably the last t-shirt day outside for the year.
Looks like OSIRIS-REX successfully collected a sample from Bennu yesterday.
Andrew Shell and Dave Winer write about rethinking blogs and streams. I wrote about this a couple of years ago when I discovered Federated Wiki, and I still think blogs are well suited to writing associated to dates whereas wikis are well suited for writing associated to topics. My wiki is a garden that I tend whereas my blog is a stream that I add to and review occasionally.
OSIRIS-REX tagged Bennu, which I assume is now IT. Hopefully Bennu doesn’t tag Earth back.
Watching the broadcast on NASA.TV as a robotic space craft is in process of descending to the surface of an asteroid to gather a sample. It’s a 15 second touch and go occuring on the other side the solar system.
I am tired of receiving spam text messages for the election. The Google Messaging app recognizes them as potential spam and provides me an option to report it as such and block, but I feel like that is just a game of whack-a-mole.
My current work desk setup with the Lenovo Duet and Roam open, ready to take notes. Roam pairs well with ChromeOS.
Love the symmetry of this tree.
It’s the 35th anniversary of Amy Grant’s Unguarded album. I remember playing that cassette over and over during my college years. Oh how the years go by.
Accepting Deaths
COVID-19 is the third highest cause of death in the United States from February to October of 2020. One of the problems we have is how people are viewing these deaths. Rather than viewing them as an “event” caused death, like 9/11, people are viewing as a disease caused death, like heart disease, cancer, and strokes. In this case they are thinking, hundreds of thousands of people die from disease every year and this is the same.
The reason why this matters is that some people who view these deaths as similar to other diseases are more willing to view the 200K+ deaths as acceptable, but what they are not taking in to account is that all of the other diseases on the list have known preventative measures, treatments, and expected impacts, whereas we have none of these for COVID-19. The number of deaths of the other diseases would be higher each year if not for the years and years worth of science to lower the risk.
Further, neither heart disease or cancer, which are the two higher causes of death so far this year, are something in which a health person contracts the disease and can die in a matter of days or even weeks.
The point is that we should all be angry about the number of people who have died from COVID-19, particularly if we claim to place a high value on life. Surely, like all other places around the world, some people would have died no matter what, but nobody should view 200K+ deaths as acceptable and the problem is there is not true end in sight because there is zero leadership in the United States toward anything that resembles a plan.
The closest to what appears to be the plan is to just let the disease run its course. Perhaps another 100+ or more people will die, and too many people are ok with that so long as they can go wherever and do whatever they want to do. Meanwhile other nations in the world took active measures and controlled the very same disease we seem unwilling to fight, and did so for the sake of everyone in their country!
For people who want to put country over seemingly anything else, I don’t know how they can be proud of how we, the United States, is handling this crisis.
My current status page is at frankm.info that I maintain in Little Outliner. I’ve also created an index of the technology that I use that you can access via [tech.frankm.info](tech.frankm.info0..
Google Fit is an obvious candidate for Assistant shortcuts. I use the Goodnight routine and I want it to automatically record when I go to bed. At the least I should be able to tell Assistant that I went to bed at X and woke up at Y.