Post Processing: 2020 Hindsight

-
Lamp Post
When I posted 2020 And The Year of the Rat, it was a twofer of optimism, welcoming both the 2020 New Year and the Chinese New Year. With the year nearly half over, much of the optimism has been drained, and we find ourselves in a pandemic.

The second half of the year could be worse. Dr. Rick Bright warns that without a consistent and coordinated plan to contain Covid-19, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history.

Regarding The Hidden Costs of Efficiency, the NYT examines How the World's Richest Country Ran Out of a 75-cent Face Mask. Farhad Manjoo recounts what we learned the hard way, that just in time supply chains ... are built to optimize efficiency, not resiliency.

When we eventually emerge from this pandemic, will we take this, and the many related lessons, to heart?

Edit 06/10/2020 - "The second half of the year could be worse." It got worse. R.I.P. George Floyd.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bookshelf: UNIX A History and a Memoir

-
Image
  A man page will give you, in black and white, specific information about UNIX. Brian Kernighan's new book adds color and depth about UNIX you won't find anywhere else. I'm not a gray beard (yet), but I imagine they would plow through the book knowingly, but at the same time, learn a few things. Those new to UNIX -- recent college grads or those experimenting with Raspberry Pi -- would be better off starting with Chapter 8 which describes more relatable events and the descendants of UNIX, including Minux and Linux. It's when they start to ask questions like "Where does UNIX come from?" and "Why is Gamora grep?" that they should start from the beginning: Bell Labs, 1969. Kernighan opens with a birds-eye-view of Murray Hill New Jersey, zooms in on the buildings, the offices, the significance of Center 1127, and offers a brief look at some of the key players there. As I progressed through the book, the two factors that made UNIX not just possible, bu
Read more

Bookshelf Classic: The C Programming Language

-
Image
My first job had me programming in Microsoft BASIC for the IBM PC (DOS).  BASIC worked well enough, but its limitations were clear.  The language was interpreted and therefore slow.  More importantly, it wasn't a modern structured language, and instead, relied on line numbers and the GOTO statement.  Anyone who has read Dijkstra knew  GOTO was a bad thing . Having learned a structured language in college ( PL/I ), using BASIC felt unnatural.  When a C compiler became available for the PC, I saw a chance to improve and modernize our software.  The problem was selling the idea -- a problem made harder because I wasn't fluent in C. "It would be a staffing problem.  Not many people know C, but we can find a lot of programmers who know BASIC," noted one manager. The argument was strong as my knowledge of C was weak.  But I knew that C, by design, was a small language and thus easy to learn.  "It has about 30 keywords," I proffered to another manager. U
Read more

Connections

-
Image
Opening a drawer in my hotel room in Toronto, I found this.  I worship at the altar of tech, but I imagine the reaction between two priests might go like this: Mormon Priest:  "At least we're wireless!" Catholic Priest: "And from the very beginning too!"
Read more