You Can Always Count on Gravity

Evidence-based Medicine sounds like a good thing, until you realize that sometimes collecting the data required causes more problems than it solves. These guys took this argument to an extreme:

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials

Conclusions As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.

Weakest Link

I thought I had posted this photo a long time ago, but I can’t find it now, so here it is again. (It came up on Fairly Oddparents this morning).

I first saw this on Bruce Scheier’s security weblog.

(As it turns out, I had uploaded it to Gallery, but still never linked it here. Must have been distracted. Damned kids, get off my lawn! :-)

Quote

Daddy: “Why is ‘bealzebub’ written on our whiteboard?”

The Girl: “I don’t know. Does it have his phone number?”

(I never did find out…)

Disbelief

In reference to several recent movies, including Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:

“Suspension of disbelief does not mean ‘by the neck, until dead’”

(lifted from Tanya’s weblog comments…)

Camping Weekend

We just returned from our annual gang weekend at The Pinery. We left Thursday and came back Monday this time, because the kids’ school schedule made that easy.

The forecast was for rain rain rain all weekend, but it didn’t turn out that way! We arrived and set up in the rain, of course, but Friday was absolutely gorgeous all day. Saturday morning we woke up to rain, but we had our giant pancake breakfast anyway, and by the time everyone was sitting around stuffed the sun came out. We were scared off the beach around 4PM by a line of thunderstorms, but most of them missed us. There was a severe weather warning for Sunday night, but again, that missed us to the south. The worst weather we had was probably the major hailstorm we hit just as we passed through Kitchener on the way home!

Shoulder Update

My orthopaedic surgeon is very happy with my shoulder; he thinks the joint has stiffened up nicely, and is unlikely to suffer stability problems. In his words, stiff is good; stiffness can be stretched out with physiotherapy, but looseness only gets fixed with his knives…

I have reasonably good mobility. There are certain directions I can’t move the shoulder, but since those are the “dangerous” directions, it’s all good. He says I’m unlikely to redislocate, at least in the short term, because I can’t actually move the joint into any of the stressful positions likely to cause a second dislocation. (I’m paraphrasing here).

More Identity Management

more news that’s finally public (the announcement was probably delayed because of the EDS leak :-):

HP and Novell Announce Migration Program for HP Identity Management Customers

As part of an agreement between the companies, HP and Novell will jointly offer migration services, HP will resell Novell identity and security management solutions and Novell will license HP Identity Center technology.

Earlier this year, HP announced it will focus its investment in identity management products on existing customers rather than selling the products to new customers. To ensure that they continue to have access to exemplary identity management solutions, existing HP customers can take advantage of this program and migrate to Novell’s industry-leading offerings. Customers who choose not to migrate will continue to be supported by HP.

Oh look, a weblog!

So last Wednesday I fell down stupidly and either subluxated or dislocated my right shoulder. I spent just over a week with my right arm in an immobilizer, after which the doc said “take it off”. I’m allowed to do a lot of things, but no “arm above the shoulder” movement and no “external rotation”. The shoulder is a little sore, especially when I first wake up in the morning, but otherwise I can do stuff again!

Old News

It seems the “news” has finally leaked out to the general public:

• http://identityblog.burtongroup.com/bgidps/2008/03/hps-identity-re.html
• http://stage.vambenepe.com/archives/171
• http://blogs.sun.com/IdentityCrisis/entry/hp_is_withdrawing_from_identity

I’m not allowed to say much in public, so I’ll link to these stories without comment.

Traffic Vapour Lock

vapour lock isn’t really the right term, but I can’t think of a better fluid-dynamics term right now.

In the sudden torrential snowfall this afternoon, I got stuck south of an intersection for about 20 minutes, unable to move. The traffic lights were synchronized, which works for normal traffic flow, but with the snow everyone was going slowly. The net result was that:

• when the light was red to me, there was space north of the intersection for cars, but that space was quickly filled by people turning from the cross street.
• by the time the light was green to me, there was no space left on the north side of the intersection. In fact, there was no space in the intersection, because the turning traffic was consistently filling the intersection. So I was stuck, along with everyone else.

I finally gave up, turned around, drove all the way around the block, and came at the intersection again from the cross street :). After which I encountered another roadblock; York Mills eastbound was closed at Don Mills, because cars could not make it up the hill.

Episode One

Episode One of Shadow Unit is up. In case you were actually thinking of getting work done today…

Afi Top 50 Sf Movies

SCI-FI Wire announced today that AFI has picked a “Top 50” list of science fiction movies. I’ve taken their list and bolded the ones I’ve seen. I have -18- 16 movies to see to catch up!

• A.I. Artificial Intelligence
• Alien
• Altered States
• The Andromeda Strain
• Back to the Future
• The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
• Blade Runner
• Children of Men
• A Clockwork Orange
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Cocoon
• Contact
• The Day the Earth Stood Still
• Destination Moon
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
• Escape From New York
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Fantastic Voyage
• The Fly (1986)
• Forbidden Planet
• Frankenstein (1931)
• The Incredible Shrinking Man
• Independence Day
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
• The Invisible Man (1933)
• It Came From Outer Space
• Jurassic Park
• Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
• The Matrix
• Men in Black
• Minority Report
• Planet of the Apes (1968)
• Repo Man
• RoboCop
• Rollerball (1975)
• Silent Running (one of my favourites)
• Soylent Green
• Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Wars: Episode IV–A New Hope
• Starman
• The Stepford Wives (1975)
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day
• Them!
• The Thing From Another World
• The Time Machine (1960)
• Total Recall
• Tron
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• The War of the Worlds (1953)
• Westworld

Update 2024: I’ve seen three more.

419 Spam

after a long drought, I added another country to my 419 spam list: Iran!

It'll Be Lonely

The entire development team here in Toronto has been “WFRed”, HP’s fancy term for “your job no longer exists, thanks for playing”. (To be fair, HP’s process is actually quite generous; they offer everyone lots of time to try to find another job inside HP, resume services, interview skills training, and so on).

I’ve been asked to stay on, because my job has always been customer facing, and they need someone with that experience to help with the transition. I’ve always joked that I’d be the last one let go; I didn’t actually believe it though! Anyway, for a lot of different reasons, I’ve decided to accept. So while everyone else is out looking for work now, I’ll be looking for work in November.

Wright House

I found wright house, a site that has a long list of so-called Steven Wright jokes. The difference? They’ve annotated the list; they mark jokes as authentic, or else name the comedian who actually said them.

“what’s another word for synonym”?

Extras

The very nice wildlife guy replaced the shingles that blew off my roof in this week’s windstorm, and refused to take a tip afterwards; he said he needed the practice :).

So if y’all need wildlife extracted, I continue to highly recommend AAA Wildlife. They’re friendly and knowledgeable and professional!