Dave Barry Year in Review 2021

Is there anything positive we can say about 2021?

Yes. We can say that it was marginally better than 2020.

Granted, this is not high praise. It’s like saying that somebody is marginally nicer than Hitler. But it’s something.

What was better about 2021? For one thing, people finally emerged from their isolated pandemic cocoons and started connecting with others. Granted, the vast majority of the people who connected with us this year wanted to discuss our car’s extended warranty. But still.

(…)

March: International shipping is seriously disrupted when the Suez Canal is blocked by a massive container ship that became wedged sideways after the pilot attempted to take a shortcut suggested by Waze.
December: In other economic news, investors are alarmed when the Federal Reserve Board issues a formal statement declaring that it has no earthly idea what a “bitcoin” is, and it’s pretty sure nobody else does either.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/12/26/dave-barrys-year-review-2021/

From the internet (2014)

I save interesting sayings that I find on the internet. Here are some from 2014 but which still make me laugh… or learn:

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Metaluna on Ars Technica wrote about a new browser:

The current trend among many companies is to name applications with a pithy, excessively minimalist name that is related to what people do with the program. For example “Word” or “Pages” because people use those apps to write and display words and pages. Or “Numbers” because a spreadsheet is used to crunch and display numbers, etc.

In that spirit, I propose that the new browser be called “Boobs”.

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Lewis’ Law: “The comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.”

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Steampunk: what the past would look like if the future had arrived earlier.

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Derek Lowe writes an occasional blog on chemistry called…

Things I Won’t Work With

…But I have to admit, I’d never thought much about the next analog of hydrogen peroxide. Instead of having two oxygens in there, why not three: HOOOH? Indeed, why not? This is a general principle that can be extended to many other similar situations. Instead of being locked in a self-storage unit with two rabid wolverines, why not three? Instead of having two liters of pyridine poured down your trousers, why not three?

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-peroxide-peroxides

And more:

https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-work-with

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Terry Pratchett quotes:

“The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.” – Equal Rites (1987)

“So much universe, and so little time.” – The Last Hero (2001)

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” – A Hat Full of Sky (2004)

“Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel?” – in a 2008 interview.

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von Braun reportedly said “Late to bed, early to rise, work like hell – and advertise” so underscoring the importance of PR.

Making chips: 20,000,000,000,000 parts

That’s twenty trillion. You have no idea how much goes into making a modern microchip.

Long Answer: If a company wants to make the most advanced chips in the world, they need to purchase an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography tool from ASML, which has a monopoly…
One EUV tool requires:
5,000 suppliers provide 100,000 parts, 3,000 cables, 40,000 bolts and 2 kilometers of hosing. The tool weighs about 180,000 kilograms (200 tonnes), and ships in 40 containers spread over 20 trucks and three cargo planes…. That is just one tool. To make a chip, a factory needs 200+ tools… The mirrors guiding this light are ground so precisely that, if scaled to the size of Germany, they would have no bumps bigger than a millimeter.

https://semiliterate.substack.com/p/why-cant-china-just-reverse-engineer. (Note, “BLUF” at the start means “Bottom Line Up Front.”)

Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

Medicine knows too much; even decades of medical training are insufficient for a doctor to know everything…. Patients are subjected to many interventions, most of which are complex and carry some risk; the average ICU patient requires roughly 178 daily care tasks (having worked as an ICU nurse myself, I believe it!), so even getting it perfect 99% of the time leaves an average of about two medical errors per day.

How do humans deal with this complexity? In other areas, especially the field of aviation, one solution is… checklists. And yet implementing these still has issues…

…Part of the change being introduced was a social one: nurses were responsible for documenting that the doctor had carried out each step, and had a new mandate – and backup from management and hospital administration – to chide doctors who forgot items.

Which, it turned out, made all the difference. In the first ten days of the experiment, the line infection rate went from 11% to zero.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dtmmP4YdJEfK9y4Rc/book-review-the-checklist-manifesto. About 1,500 words.

Treason 2021

The insurrection was not a spontaneous act nor an isolated event. It was a battle in a broader war over the truth and over the future of American democracy.

The story is in three parts:

Before: Red Flags
As Trump propelled his supporters to Washington, law enforcement agencies failed to heed mounting warnings about violence on Jan. 6.
During: Bloodshed
For 187 harrowing minutes, the president watched his supporters attack the Capitol — and resisted pleas to stop them.
After: Contagion
Threats and disinformation spread across the country in the wake of the Capitol siege, shaking the underpinnings of American democracy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2021/jan-6-insurrection-capitol/