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The Facebook discussion of my previous blog about the difference between a health care plan and insurance raised the following questions: What should a compassionate society do? Should a compassionate society feed the hungry and house the homeless? Should we provide health care as a human right? Can we do something about ever increasing costs . . . → Read More: On the nature of society One argument put forth by opponents of the recently passed health care legislation is that they object to subsidizing others’ health care. A common counter-argument, often made by intelligent people who should know better, is that you already do that for auto or homeowner’s insurance, and nobody complains about that. The counter-argument does not bear close scrutinty. . . . → Read More: A health care plan is not insurance I work with big files. Really big. Daily, I back up a file that is larger than 200 gigabytes. We have a Thecus N7700 network attached storage (NAS) box that holds about seven terabytes. Every day I copy the latest stuff there and delete some of the older files. It all works fine except for . . . → Read More: Slow file deletion on Thecus N7700 “Ambrosia maple” is what woodworkers call maple that’s been infested by the ambrosia beetle. The beetles colonize a dead or dying tree and bore holes in the wood. A fungus that the beetles carry around on the bottoms of their feet take up residence in the tunnels and begin to feed on the tree’s xylem . . . → Read More: Ambrosia Maple If you’ve had any doubts about the President’s previous commitment to bipartisanship and open government, you can put them to rest. His recent actions make it clear that he will do anything to get some kind of health care bill passed. The latest has Congress trying to resurrect legislation that was passed separately by the . . . → Read More: Ram it through! It’s rare that I’m stumped when I try to find something on Google, but this one beat me. Somebody on the woodcarving forum asked about “dragonwood.” Always curious, I thought I’d look it up. Dragonwood appears to be very commonly used for the trunks and larger branches of artificial (silk) trees. It’s also commonly used . . . → Read More: What is dragonwood? Update on my removable drive troubles. I tried drilling holes in the case (after opening it and removing the drive, of course) on one of those Seagate FreeAgent drives. Getting the thing apart was quite a chore, and I had a fun time making a mess drilling holes in the case. The unit tested fine . . . → Read More: New removable drives According to the Reuters article, Tax soda, pizza to cut obesity, researchers say U.S. researchers estimate that an 18 percent tax on pizza and soda can push down U.S. adults’ calorie intake enough to lower their average weight by 5 pounds (2 kg) per year. I’m not sure what “average” is supposed to mean here. . . . → Read More: Big Brother doesn’t want you eating pizza I still have all 10 fingers, and no major cuts. I’ve been carving a few things here and there, although other things take precedence. I haven’t had a lot of time to work on larger and more complex projects, but I’m sure getting an impressive kennel of little dogs. Cub in a stump is a . . . → Read More: Catching up on the carvings I’ve mentioned before that we use USB external drives for transportation of data from our colocation facility to the office. After struggling to find reliable devices, we finally settled on the Seagate FreeAgent 1TB drives. They’ve served us quite well for over a year now. But recently it’s been taking a very long time to . . . → Read More: More removable drive troubles |
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