the tindog coffeehouse

The recent outbreak of swine flu cases in Mexico and the U.S. probably warrants aggressive action — mostly preventative measures — but just how bad is the outbreak really?

The World Health Organization recently raised its pandemic alert level to Phase 4, which sounds pretty scary. What’s Phase 5, where everybody’s faces melt off like in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”? Because, you know, that would suck. Even the word “pandemic” sounds terrifying, as if we’re living during the height of the Bubonic Plague.

But according to the latest numbers at the CDC, there have only been 64 confirmed cases of swine flu so far in the U.S. and only one death: a toddler from Brownsville who recently visited Mexico. Is that a lot? Doesn’t seem like it. I mean, how many deaths are there annually from the regular flu?

Stephen Hume of the Vancouver Sun puts it in perspective, comparing today’s swine flu outbreak to the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918 — one of the worst pandemics in recent history:

It’s estimated that about 28 per cent of Canadians and Americans contracted the Spanish flu. Worldwide, an estimated 2.5 per cent of the sick died of complications, which made the pandemic one of the most lethal flu outbreaks in recorded history. Certainly it was one that imprinted itself upon human consciousness for several generations.

But there’s another way to look at those statistics. You might observe, for example, that they mean that even during the worst ravages of the 1918 flu, 97.5 per cent of those infected survived and recovered. Or that 72 per cent of the population — even in the absence of the sophisticated public health planning and infrastructure that Canada and the U.S. have since built — was not infected during the pandemic.

So, even if we had a repeat of the 1918 flu, the chances were seven out of 10 that you wouldn’t catch it and if you did, the odds were better than nine out of 10 that you’d survive.

That was during the worst pandemic of the modern era and one which occurred in the days before the instantaneous communications of radio, television and the Web enabled quick public health responses.

My guess is, the biggest cost of our current flu outbreak will not be in terms of how many people contract the illness or die from it, but rather the economic consequences of closing schools and businesses and restricting travel. And even then, I’m guessing those costs will be minimal.

Source.

There’s a spot on eastbound I-635 in north Dallas where the outer edge of the right-hand lanes dips suddenly, causing the shoulder to be slightly higher. If you happen to hit the spot with your right front tire, it can easily cause you to lose control of your car, especially if you hit it at 50 or 60 miles an hour.

I’ve made that mistake a few times on my way to work, and even though I’ve never fully lost control, it’s certainly scared the crap out of me.

It’s a dangerous spot, a defect so small and minor that it’s almost completely unnoticeable but significant enough to cause a major wreck for anyone caught by surprise. But here’s the thing: While it would be so easy to patch it up, road crews chose instead to simply mark it with a warning sign:

UNEVEN LANES

How many times do we do the same thing in our own lives? We carry around a small but dangerous defect in our ourselves. Maybe it’s in our choices, maybe our attitude, maybe it’s the words we use. It’s barely noticeable — if it’s noticeable at all — but it has the capacity to cause significant damage to ourselves and the people around us. We’ll go so far as to acknowledge the problem, but ultimately we’re unwilling to do what it takes to actually fix it.

The apostle Paul points out in Galatians 2:16 that no one can ever be made right just by trying to do the right things; it’s only by placing our faith in Jesus Christ that all of our holes, dips, and defects can be fully mended.

What areas of my life are in need of repair today?  What needs to be repaired in yours?

It’s weird how social networks like Facebook and Twitter can mess with your mind. You sign up for a Facebook account because, quite frankly, everyone else is doing it. Then along comes Twitter because, well, why not. It’s all innocent fun at first, but at some point it becomes less about the quality of the connections being made through the sites and more about the quantity. How many Facebook friends do I have? How many people are following me on Twitter? How many hits is my blog getting, and how can I generate more comments?

Who cares?

I’m rarely on Facebook anymore. I thought it was because of all the ridiculous surveys and other nonsense that clutter up the news feed, but I’ve come to realize it’s actually because most of the “noise” is coming from a handful of Facebook friends that I’m really not that interested in. It’s not that they’re bad people, it’s just that I don’t really interact with them any more, and inevitably these are also the same people that update their Facebook status 20 times a day and feel the need to comment on everything. So I made a decision yesterday to unfriend several of them.

Ironically, at the same time I was cutting my digital ties on Facebook, I was losing 9 followers on Twitter. Most of them were people or organizations that I had no association with anyway, but one was a person I communicated with fairly regularly.

Immediately, I began trying to figure out what I had said to drive this person away. Had I offended them in some way? What had I done wrong? The pangs of rejection hit me hard for a few minutes. And then I realized the irony.

I had just let 8 or 9 people go on one social network as 9 people were letting me go on another. When I unfriended my Facebook friends, it wasn’t personal at all — none of them had hurt me or offended me in any way. I just wasn’t finding value in their Facebook updates. In all likelihood, the people who stopped following me on Twitter felt the same way about my tweets: for whatever reason I wasn’t adding value to their lives.

Author Anne Jackson recently wrote on her blog about following “conversations” on Twitter rather than following people:

Overall, unless you have a real strategy behind Twittering, by following a ton of people, you’re not networking. You’re only following a lot of noise. Sure, you may occasionally find a nugget to chew on, but a lot of other well-deserving Tweets will fall through the cracks and be buried in the chaos of the masses. …

If you truly want Twitter to be an effective social networking tool, strategize *somehow* (it doesn’t have to look like mine) or clean house.  If you want it to be a flood of noise, keep hitting the Follow button and let the Tweets roll on by.

As social media takes on a greater role in our lives, we need to stop thinking in terms of quantity. Simply having more Twitter followers or blog readers or whatever doesn’t mean you’re a better person. Your self worth shouldn’t be determined by Google Analytics. In fact, “more” can be worse because it dilutes the value of the connections you really care about.

I hope that if you’re reading this, you do find some value in it. I hope that if you follow me on Twitter or if we’re Facebook friends, that I’m not just producing a lot of noise in your life. But if I am, then by all means let me go. I won’t take it personally.

Previously:
How to play the game of ‘Blog-Facebook-Twitter’

Once the great Squirrel Uprising has come to its inevitable conclusion, I have a feeling we humans will all be made to worship this solar-powered glowing squirrel god.

It may be blasphemous, but at least it comes with a two-year warranty.

Previously:
Squirrel Uprising 2: The Revenge
Squirrel Uprising: Rise of the black ‘super squirrel’
Squirrel Uprising: Snobby French squirrels
Squirrel Uprising: The latest updates

The perfect theme song for Tax Day: Plumb’s “I Have Nothing”:

Naked I showed up here
With nothing to my name
Pure and crazy, blameless
Baby I’m ashamed

And naked I will leave here
With nothing left to say
My pockets full of empty
And now I’m not to blame

I have nothing (I don’t want it)
I have nothing (I don’t need it)
I have nothing (You can have it)
I have nothing, nothing, nothing

So catch me when I’m falling
Into strange, elusive state
And kick me when I’m stingy
Take everything away

‘Cause yesterday is gone now
And tomorrow isn’t sure
Today is all I’m given
And what I have is yours

‘Cause I have nothing (I don’t want it)
I have nothing (I don’t need it)
I have nothing (You can have it)
I have nothing, nothing, nothing

Oh why do I put so much time
In things I leave behind
That were never mine?

Oh why?

I have nothing (I don’t want it)
I have nothing (I don’t need it)
I have nothing (You can have it)
I have nothing, nothing, nothing

Previously:
Casualties of the American dream
Who owns you?

On Saturday I got my new computer built. It’s always a little nerve-wracking, hoping that after spending hours getting everything meticulously assembled that it actually works. There’s nothing like the relief of pressing the power button and hearing the single beep from the BIOS, a signal that, yes, it’s able to boot up.

Below: The cabling isn’t the prettiest, but it looks better in person. As you can see, I love zip-ties. They’re better than duct tape.

Below: Now to see if it boots up. The blue lights from the front fans are a really nice touch. With the front cover closed, the light is pretty subtle. I thought about adding another lighted fan in the back, but I think in this case, less is probably more.

Below: The finished product. I love the case.

Below: Windows Vista installed. Running the 32-bit version now, but I’ll probably upgrade to 64-bit with Windows 7.

Below: The main limitation to the system currently is the onboard graphics, which are decent but not spectacular. I opted not to add a separate video card for now to stay (mostly) on budget, but I’ll probably add one later. For now, the onboard Intel graphics meet my needs.

Previously:
Time for a new computer

From Matt at The Church of No People:

When Jesus died, his friends thought that was it. A great teacher, a great miracle worker was dead. They had been convinced he was the next big thing. Now they were sure he was was not. He would go down in history as a great man who had been unjustly executed. Perhaps history would not remember him at all.

And then Jesus added something to his resume.

It was only after his earthly life was over that Jesus’ very purpose in life became known. That is something that no one else has ever done – achieved their purpose only in death. No one talks about the death of someone at their funeral – we celebrate their life! Because their death is not who they are, or what they accomplished or what they meant to us.

But that’s exactly what we talk about with Jesus. His life wasn’t about teaching, or healing people, or performing miracles. Even before he was born, his purpose in life was to go straight to the cross. And then he could achieve what he was sent to do.

A new report by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (written in part by supply-side economics guru Arthur Laffer) has concluded that instead of stimulating the economy and creating jobs, the massive increases in federal spending will actually hinder private sector job growth and could cost the state of Texas anywhere from 131,400 to 171,900 jobs.

Increasing federal spending does not stimulate the economy. Just the opposite: higher government spending crowds out the private economy, diminishing its rate of growth. The driving force of the economy is the incentive to engage in market activities. In both the long and short run, individuals and groups of individuals allocate resources according to the after-tax rate of return. If market activities are profitable, the economy will concentrate on ever-increasing market successes. When the profitability of market activities is reduced, market activity diminishes and welfare enhancing activities cease. …

The ARRA [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] is a significant increase in federal government expenditures at a time when the private sector can least afford to pay for the higher government burden. As a result, the purported “stimulus” plan passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama will actually worsen the economy’s performance.

The report estimates that nationally, the ARRA will increase government expenditures 3.3 percent while reducing real net business output by 2.5 percent.

As for Texas:

The ultimate impact from the ARRA of 2009 on Texas will depend upon how the state manages the increased federal government money. The previous section established the deleterious impact that a high or growing government expenditure wedge has on the private economy’s growth rate. Spending the money on recurring programs will necessitate Texas to increase taxes in the future in order to maintain these programs once the federal government funds run out, locking-in the higher expenditure wedge.

Maintaining the higher government expenditure wedge will reduce the annual average growth rate in the private sector by 0.32% per year. Over a 10-year period, Texas’ economy will be up to 3.22% smaller than it would have been had the extra spending been focused on one-time projects only—rejecting all funds that would ultimate lead to a permanent increase in the government spending burden. In terms of employment, this equates to the approximately 170,000 jobs that will not be created due to the additional government expenditure burden being maintained.

The conclusions of the report appear to back up Governor Perry’s insistence that federal stimulus funds be used for one-time expenses only instead of being incorporated into the budgets of ongoing programs. It also clearly echoes the supply-side arguments made famous by Dr. Laffer: namely that lower tax rates provide greater incentives for innovation and business growth, which in turn creates more private sector jobs.

Previously:
Is it hypocritical for Perry to accept stimulus money?

Two Senate bills, 773 and 778, introduced by Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller and Republican Olympia Snowe would, if passed, give the federal government virtually unrestricted control over the Internet, including private-sector Internet services, applications, and services.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (PDF) gives the president the ability to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any “critical” information network “in the interest of national security.” The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president.

The bill does not only add to the power of the president. It also grants the Secretary of Commerce “access to all relevant data concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.” This means he or she can monitor or access any data on private or public networks without regard to privacy laws. …

Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that granting such power to the Commerce secretary could actually cause networks to be less safe. When one person can access all information on a network, “it makes it more vulnerable to intruders,” Granick says. “You’ve basically established a path for the bad guys to skip down.”

The bill’s scope, she says, is “contrary to what the Constitution promises us.”

I’m all in favor of increasing cybersecurity but clearly not at this cost. The Obama administration already has proved it has no qualms about removing executives from private sector companies, despite having absolutely no constitutional authority to do so. If this bill were to pass as-is, what’s to stop the White House from seizing control of AT&T, Verizon, and other ISPs and dictating what information is allowed and not allowed to pass over their networks? As it stands now, nothing.

And you thought the Bush-era NSA wiretapping was bad.

Previously:
Privacy and free speech in an online world
‘Great Firewall’ coming to Australia. Is the U.S. next?
Stimulus bill includes medical databases for ‘biosurveillance’

Actually the title of this post should be “Way past time for a new computer.”

I’m getting ready to order parts to build a new home computer, and I can’t wait. My current desktop is a Dell Optiplex GX260 which I got for free two years ago from work. It was old back then, but after several parts upgrades, I was able to run Windows Vista on it. But now disk space is running low on the C: drive, and the strain of running Vista on an old Pentium 4 machine is really starting to show.

My wife’s computer, on the other hand, isn’t even faring that well. She inherited her machine from me about four years ago, a Gateway desktop bought in January 2000. Yep, that’s over nine years ago, an eternity in computer years. And now it’s finally pooping out.

So the plan is to build a new machine from scratch for me, then reformat the GX260 for her. OK, so it’s another hand-me-down, but this hand-me-down is like ten times better than what she has now, and with XP on it instead of Vista, it’ll run great. Trust me, I’d love to buy her a brand new machine, but we’re on a tight budget here. (That’s also why I’m building a new machine instead of buying one off the shelf: more bang for the buck.)

Here is a run-down of the components on my shopping list (in case you’re curious):

• Rosewill Conqueror case (pictured right, from Newegg.com)
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz processor
• MSI G41M-FD motherboard with on-board Intel GMA 4500 graphics and gigabit ethernet (Sticking with on-board video for now, although I may add a separate video card later.)
• 4 GB DDR2 RAM (I may upgrade to 8 GB later if I upgrade to 64-bit version of Windows 7.)
• Western Digital Caviar 500 GB SATA hard drive with 32 MB cache (Will probably add a second drive later, but not needed right now.)
• SATA DVD-ROM drive and DVD Lightscribe burner
• 600 Watt power supply
• ASUS V72 CPU fan

I’ll transfer my existing Vista Business and Office 2007 licenses over and will use my existing keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

And of course I’ll update the blog once I get everything in and start assembling it.