Month: November 2018

Health care workers and computers, Atul Gawande on.

Why Doctors Hate Their Computers

More than ninety per cent of American hospitals have been computerized during the past decade, and more than half of Americans have their health information in the Epic system. Seventy thousand employees of Partners HealthCare—spread across twelve hospitals and hundreds of clinics in New England—were going to have to adopt the new software. I was in the first wave of implementation, along with eighteen thousand other doctors, nurses, pharmacists, lab techs, administrators, and the like.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-hate-their-computersc

Armistice Day

Armistice Day is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o’clock in the morning—the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918.

Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_Day

This is what a world war 1 battlefield in Verdun France looks like today. from interestingasfuck

Watership Down

waterhsip-down

Watership Down is a survival and adventure novel by English author Richard Adams, published by Rex Collings Ltd of London in 1972. Set in southern England, the story features a small group of rabbits. Although they live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language, proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel follows the rabbits as they escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home, encountering perils and temptations along the way.

via Wikipedia

Rabbit in Skyline Park

20181105_160122.jpg

‘El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.’

Watership Down, Richard Adams

Shibboleth – Definition, Example of

A shibboleth is any custom or tradition, particularly a speech pattern, that distinguishes one group of people (an ingroup) from others (outgroups). Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passwords, simple ways of self-identification, signaling loyalty and affinity, maintaining traditional segregation or keeping out perceived threats.

via Wikipedia

The general name for this type of thing is “Shibboleth,” after a city whose name was used that way in the Bible. Shibboleths are interesting to learn about, partly because it’s deep-cover spycraft, and partly because they words used are always whackadoodle nonsense.

In WWII, the Dutch would identify German spies by how they pronounced “Scheveningen,” a district in the Hague. The Germans pronounced the first syllable as something like the English word “chef,” while the Dutch version has a guttural “skhef” sound.

via reddit

Shakespeare’s Two Genres

“Indeed, you might define Shakespeare’s two principal genres in starkly simple terms: In the comedies, people are driven into the countryside where they dress up as other people, come in again, and get married; in the tragedies, they strip off, stay outside, and die.”

How Plays Work, David Edgar