Ramble #71

Hi Team,

Welcome to the latest edition of Ramble, a compilation of what I have been pondering, learning and enjoying for the past month or so.

Now, grab a beverage and let’s begin.

via GIPHY

What I am Reading:

• How Do You Fight a Horse-Sized Duck?: And Other Perplexing Puzzles from the Toughest Interviews in the World (William Poundstone)

This was a fun read about something I had never really come across: intense, lateral thinking-style job interview questions. Like how to fight a horse-sized duck? Or why don't animals have wheels? It takes a different style of thinking to answer questions that don't necessarily have right answers.

• New science lobby group claims NSW reopening will crash ICUs - Liam Mannix - The Sydney Morning Herald - 3 mins
• Freedom, interrupted: Will the liberties we lost to COVID be regained? - Chip Le Grand - The Age - 13 mins

"There is no law that explicitly protects our right to grieve, just as there are no statutory provisions for taking your kids to a playground or visiting your mum for a cup of tea."

• Ivermectin: How false science created a Covid 'miracle' drug - By Rachel Schraer & Jack Goodman - BBC - 8 mins

"Major problems included:

- The same patient data being used multiple times for supposedly different people - Evidence that selection of patients for test groups was not random - Numbers unlikely to occur naturally - Percentages calculated incorrectly - Local health bodies unaware of the studies"

• The Pandemic Speaks - Andrew Nikiforuk - The Tyee - 12 mins

"Unlike you, nature respects my purpose-driven existence.

You should know that I haunted the streets of Athens with measles. I watched Pericles die. I destabilized Rome and the Song dynasty. I humbled the Pharaohs, and killed peasants in the 14th century like hail on wheat. I wept with satisfaction during the siege of Tenochtitlan as my smallpox outdid itself. I dogged Napolean’s shivering armies with typhus. I violated England’s working classes with the blue death, cholera. I killed essential workers on the Panama Canal with yellow fever. I visited the trenches of the First World War with influenza. You’ve carried on with your great and complex ambitions, and I have laid them low. Need I go on with tales of Ebola, HIV and SARS?

I am an eternal force of history, and, let’s be honest, you are not. Memento mori."

What I am Watching:

Fear Street Trilogy (Netflix) - Part One: 1991; Part Two: 1978; Part Three: 1666

This was great for at lest these reasons:

• Huge 'Stranger Things' vibes. Which is a very good thing.
• Also, like 'Stranger Things', the music is rad (1994 stuff, 1978 rock).
• It is an excellent example of movies passing the Bechdel Test - where there are at least two women (the leads, this case), who talk to each other, about something other than a man.
• It's a trilogy! So it can be binged at leisure.

What I am Listening to:

"Welcome to the Internet" (Bo Burnham)

Should be 'required reading' before internet access...

What I am Thinking:

Thinking, or more like looking back at this pandemic that seems to never end:

But vaccines will set us free, I suppose:

With a fairly promising timeline:

But this is not all so rosy. With our various State and Federal plans to 'Open Up' once we reach some sort of vaccination threshold, we will watch as COVID becomes a disease of the unvaccinated. The recent published New South Wales COVID Surveillance Summary is fairly damning:

While our American cousins, who have variously 'Opened Up' and 'Let it Rip' to varying degrees, have started this experiment for us. The CDC duly keeps track of this and, expectedly:

Anyway, get your vaccines.

Recently in History:

September 6, 1991 - The USSR sort of just stopped existing.

September 12, 1683 - Vienna is saved after two months of siege when the attacking Ottoman army was routed by a European relief force.

September 21, 1792 - The French Monarchy is abolished.

September 27, 1672 - The British Royal African Company is granted the monopoly on the African slave trade to supply labour to the Americas.

October 5, 2000 - Slobodan Milosevic is forced from power after he failed to acknowledge the results of the election for President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

October 18, 1931 - Thomas Edison dies.

A Quote:

On Change:

"To Change One's Life:

1. Start Immediately
2. Do it flamboyantly
3. No exceptions"

- William James

On Happiness:

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."

- OScar Wilde

Closing Thoughts:

Thank you once again for reading along with me.

If you found something you liked, let me know.

If you think I can do something a little smoother, please let me know.

Talk soon.

Luke.