Fits and Starts

I feel like my old snow blower that we resurrected when I was a young teen. My father bought this thing probably in the late 60s,early 70s and it was probably 10 yrs old then. But it was a tank (and a half). You know, my parents divorced when I was young, so once I got old enough, I got the snow blower back from our good friends who were "keeping it" for us. It would always take a while to get the thing going, you'd have to spray starter fluid in it and the whole process was in fits and starts. It would sometimes take probably close to an hour to get the thing cooperative, but once it was going, not even several feet of New England snow would stop the thing.

So the point is, my process now is very much in fits and starts mode. Hopefully, I will get cranking soon!

Try...

I don't know much about Barbara Crafton but thought this was a nice quote by her:

"If we must die, let us die trying, until it makes no sense to try any more. Let us not go knowing we didn't do everything we could. If we fail, let us fail at something and not at nothing. To fail at exactly nothing: that would be the cruelest fate of all."

A Distant Mirror

How long could you look at this view?

Atop the world, the extreme peace, must be intoxicating. .would you just look, and then just say, ok, let's turn around? Would the thoughts of calamity dance through your head as you ponder serenity? or perhaps now that you've seen it all, you can rush back to catch your favorite show, or get in a quick work out at the club....but for once, claiming that you are truly king of the mountain, what would you proclaim?

Six Words

Not Quite What I was Planning is really quite thought provoking and elegant in its simplicity and power. There is an interesting literary heritage to expressing oneself in the tersest terms from Haiku to Hemingway's Six word Story:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

So consider, what would be yours? At four something this morning, I thought:

Dreamed of stars, stayed in Carolina.

In stasis?

Wow, this reminds me of a Star Trek episode where some aliens' life forces was preserved in some technology and they were just waiting for some bodies to come along to live again. I'll have to try to find the actual Star Trek reference. In this culture of instant gratification and the pursuit and attaining of goals, it is hard to fathom hanging out for not quite eternity to live again. It will be a long sleep. I guess it is a good thing, because I need one.

Seems like you can't win...

First I read this article and one would think "Yeah, it's bad, but the problem is mostly limited to Chinese Pharma" but then I read this which shows how truly shocking the state of the pharma industry is. This is like a modern day Upton Sinclair Jungle (read it here). Not that this is an argument for or against, but given the current push toward Universal Health Care, or some semblance of it, I wonder what will happen if prices and thus costs are ever pressed downwards? In the pursuit of cost savings will production be pushed more and more overseas and into factories with qality (sic) processes? The point is not one on Universal Health Care, per se, but that one must consider the system, in toto. Fundamentally, costs at all levels would need to be controlled. but I haven't heard anyone discuss that or how we would maintain or improve quality, while still improving access and costs.