Well, Cholera is a water born disease, so I'd the above remark applies more to the engineers and maintenance workers who run our treatment and distribution systems for potable water, as well as sewage systems. This is really the number one public health system that a government takes care of, and when you've got lots of refugees, it's usually one of the things that will start killing people in large numbers, when you don't have clean water.

Garbage collection is important in keeping the population of rats and vermin under control. But while they can serve as disease vectors, they really doesn't compare to the importance of water.

A Canadian truck driver has been fined for smoking in his own truck. His truck is a "workplace" you see, and you're not allowed to smoke at work.

Beware! Definitions have consequences!

I remember a early 1990s (?) story where a national bus company installed a front bumper radar to enforce a safe following distance for their drivers. It would activate the brakes automatically when the driver got too close to the car ahead based on the speed. The problem was other drivers cutting in front of the bus would make the system stomp on the brakes, thus dumping the people in the bus and causing tailgaters to rear end the vehicle.

Needless to say, it was removed pretty quickly...

Mavis Beacon

Like any early age training, make it a game, and Mavis Beacon does. My kids loved it and were proficient typists by the fourth grade. When my son discovered he could enhance an on-line game he enjoyed by writing macros, he was on his way.

National Air Force Museum, Dayton, Ohio. Everything from a Wright Flyer to a Mach 3 XB-70 Valkyre and all in between.

Lovely! This goes along with a recent discovery that the Appendix serves as reservoir for the gastrointestinal system's supply of friendly microbes which help digest our food.

No news yet on earlobes.

Does the inventor of the shovel have a property right to every hole that's ever been dug?

The striped nature of the cloud features is probably because the data was gathered by the DMSP Weather Satellites using their low light detection sensors. These do not take a full-earth view of the world as the sun-synchronous GOES satellites do. DMSP vehicles operate in a lower orbit but a high angle and circular orbit. This brings them near the poles, and they cross the equator at roughly 9AM or 3PM locally to take advantage of the sun angle and shadows on clouds. They scan a wide path beneath them in visible and infrared channels, and have been used for years to do night light intensity mapping, such as for light pollution surveys.

The stripes are the paths from the several vehicles in orbit assembled over time when they passed near the poles.

Your tax dollars at work!

Ah, but you did hit bottom. Your fear of changing was overcome by your fear of NOT changing! Obsession is overwhelmed by compulsion -- the need to make the pain you saw in others go away. In short, your motivations changed for the better! Well done!

The only issues in helping another hit bottom is how hard and how fast. You're not out to ruin them -- they've done that to themselves already. You're out to help them see, as happened to you. And they're not going to like what they see, ever. That's the point.

He's playing the game because it gives him something he can't find or get enough of in Real Life. Behind the keyboard he can be daring, bold, brave, clever, and receive a regular helping of the success, joy, and adulation that come with those things. There are puzzles to solve, people to help (damsels in distress?), buds to hang with, and he can get it all, now.

How can Real Life compete with that? What are those things that make life worth living if the computer is more validating than your regular existence? That's the problem. Real Life becomes a maintenance issue serving to allow time with The Game. Now you are dependent on the game -- You're avoiding the Real Life stuff, The Game has become your buffer, your filter, your shield -- You are addicted. You don't merely need it, you require it. The Game is How you Live.

What now? The Game is dominant, but it's skills don't translate much to Real Life. Trying to deal with Real Life is an embarrassment. It doesn't work the way The Game does -- no reset, second chances, saves, spells -- you can't get and keep the upper hand. The physics don't match, the interactions aren't predictable, and you can't hide behind the keyboard. People see you, not your avatar. How can you live up to that? Why don't they understand? In The Game, they do...

See "Social Phobia" to appreciate how grasping at the one good (they think) thing in one's life can screw up the rest of it.

Negligent Endangerment.

Based on the idea that COBOL is reasonably mature -- which is to say that the various versions and flavors are not going through the language version update of the quarter -- how about an overlay UI in some appropriate flavor (Java/Python/Turbo Pascal/whatever).

Dreamweaver was great because it hid all the Javascript stuff and HTML. It did the grunt work for you. Likewise, the current crop of CMS programs hide the base code by letting the user go straight to functionality. So, how about a COBOL tool that would:

- translate source into equivalent (language of choice) code
- identify loops, variables, constants, and so on.
- etc, etc, to suit.

Do you code directly in assembly or use an editor? It's like that. How deep do you have to go to polish the code enough to get reasonable speeds? If you have to play directly with the stacks, sure... you have to know all the bits and bobs. But if it's just consolidating a swarm of assigned constants into a table and letting them be modifiable, is COBOL really that opaque?

There is always money in a better mousetrap and more effective user/maintainer interface. COBOL could sure use one from the sounds of it!

In 1957/58, scientists worldwide held an International Geophysical Year, during which they collected as much weather info as they could.

Show me the computer model which starts, say, 1 Jan 1958, and correctly forecasts global weather to any degree of accuracy for 1 Jan 2008. If they don't work over 50 years from a known starting point to a known ending point, why believe them implicitly for 100 years?

I don't care how much money and which drugs they would lock me in a room with, I never, never would have come up with a Jamaican beach luau version of "Roxanne."