One Hand Clapping

Having just found that my web site has climbed all the way up to position 9,210,426 on the web, according to Alexa.com, I am going to add a couple of new categories/topics for you not to read about.

The first one is Hummus, in which I will be exploring the literature and researching the methods and ingredients for making the world’s best humms.

The second is Ubuntu Linux Server Administration. In it, I will try to do a Julie and Julia on a number of books on administering, securing, and hack-proofing my server. Unlike Julie, though, I do not put a deadline on finishing the book or testing all the recipes.

So for you lonely readers out there, who somehow stumble unto my blog, you will have a couple more reasons to stay – or go elsewhere – as the case may be.

Rupert Murdoch has been making a lot of noise lately about charging for the right to view content on his web sites. He seems to get quite a bit of publicity from his tirades, which I guess is a good thing for him – after all, he has to make some money to pay for Myspace.

But while the media is discussing whether his scheme to charge for access will work or only hurt his media empire, most of the discussion is missing the point, because they assume we are all strict followers of copyright laws, and if we happen on a bit of news which came from one of Murdoch’s papers we would stop reading it, or immediately write him a check and get a subscription.

If Murdoch was to block completely the Sun (in the UK), the New York Post, and as far as I am concerned the Wall Street Journal, he would be doing the public a favor. Ditto for his TV and Satellite services. But that is beside the point. If we assume that his content is worth paying for, say $100 a year, what is to stop someone in Belize, Isle of Man, or another country where copyright enforcement is a bit lax, from shelling out said $100, then offer them for $1 a year to subscribers? This should be a pretty good business proposition for the pirate, AND for his subscribers, too.

Which is why I doubt pay walls would work. I suspect that even the Wall Street Journal, which is mentioned as a site that ’successfully’ charges for membership, is only prospering because the people who read it don’t really pay for it – they charge it to their employer – banks, hedge funds, etc.

I think that there is a need for new income distribution, which compensates content providers for their expenses and lets them make a profit. Pay walls, however, are not going to work – they will make more money to third party illegal aggregators than to the news media. But that is a subject for another blog.

Recently I found myself in an unexpected situation. One of my Facebook friends became friend with an individual who, in my view, is an intolerant and rude person. I decided I did not want this person to keep track of what I do on Facebook, and so I looked into my options.

The easiest option was to de-friend my original friend. But that would be throwing the baby with the wash water, ban my friend from my profile, and also insult this friend. Besides, who knows how many other mutual friends we have.

The second option, which I am using now, was to limit access to friends only. This solution works – my friends can see my profile, but THEIR friends can not – but is not ideal. It prevents my friends from seeing tags or comments made by other friends on my wall. Since Facebook is all about communication and discovering new friends, this runs counter to its purpose, but I guess it is better than letting undesirable elements access my personal stuff.

The last option, which I may yet explore, is to create groups and set each with different settings. I can give some friends total access, and limit others.

What I would really wish I could do is block access to non-friends. This would be a nice feature, and I hope that Facebook will look into it. Here is how it should work: if one of my friends associates with the wrong crowd, I would click or right-click on their offending friend, select ‘Block’ and voila – the banned person would not be able to view anything associated with my page. Call it asymmetric friendship.

Twitter has such a system – I don’t have to follow people who follow me, and vice versa. I can block people who decide to follow me – especially those who offer me viagra, cheap Rolex watches, or redirect to sex sites. Why doesn’t Facebook adapt such an approach too? It would make it such a better tool for disseminating information – or not.

I recently posted an entry about a new (U.S.) American diner is Pavas, http://www.words2u.net/pmwiki/?n=Restaurants.SneakyPetesDiner and got a comment from a friend on Facebook “Sounds great! I love that real “American food” includes Cuban sandwiches.” By the way, if anyone wonders,  ‘American’ in this article refers to the United States of America, rather than the continent or the indigenous people inhabiting the continent. If this definition is good enough for Almodovar (Los Abrazos Rotos, 22 minutes, 09 seconds), it is good enough for me.

That got me thinking, ‘what is American food, anyway?’ About the only thing that I can think of across the places I have lived in, is Apple Pie, which, quite frankly, is not distinctly American. They have those in France, Germany, England, and many other places.

How does one judge a national food? By volume? Uniqueness? Prevalence? Would McDonald’s billions of hamburgers sold make it the quintessential American food? I hope not. Is the doughnut it? Breakfast cereal? Soft serve ice cream? Sneakers bar?

As I recall, in New York City, Pastrami on Rye and corned beef sandwiches were it. In New Jersey, it was Pizza (served by a guy named Vinnie or Tony), or macaroni and meatballs at the local diners. In Florida, it was ropa vieja, Peruvian grilled chicken with rice and black beans, Cuban sandwiches (ham and cheese in a baguette, heated and pressed) and of course hamburger and fries. In La. it was chicory coffee, beignettes, and everything fried and stuffed into a huge roll with mayo (poboy is looking more and more like the Michelin guy, and I mean the tires, not the guide). In the Midwest it is steak, bar-b-q anything, with red banes, potato salad and coal slow (phonetic spelling). California has its avocado salad, organic food, and new age cooking. Ohio had its Cincinnati Chili and Polish Sausages. Can’t think of anything else right now, but I am sure there is more.

To sum it all up, I still am not sure what American food is, exactly. Can you help? Put a comment with your suggestion of American food, and maybe tell a bit more about your background – how you are connected (or not) to the US of A, and where you got your perspective.

P.S. Messages have to be approved, as I get lots of (rather clever) spam, so it may take a day or two to make it. Also, if you enter Latin-American or Central/North/South American dishes, mention the country the cuisine is associated with.

Times are tough, unemployment is high, and everyone expects that the Health Plan will inject billions of dollars into the economy. Health care jobs are one of few growth categories in the last years, from hospitals to home care.

This week, the New York Times on-line had 3 articles, in the education section, about career change, all with some advice on health care jobs: Choosing a Program to Improve Your Future , For Outsiders, Opening Doors to Health Care, and How to Bear the Tuition Burden Without a Paycheck. They are worth reading, but I think that health care is the next career bubble, and probably economic bubble as well.

Health care is a  service, which has the advantages that it can not, for most part, be outsourced to India or China. This makes health care jobs more secure than, say, manufacturing or programming.

But, with the exception of medical research, health care does not produce anything – it is the equivalent of yard work or flipping hamburgers. It will not improve the deficit, or our international competitiveness. So while it is nice to create all these jobs, without also finding an income source to pay for them, salaries will have to go down with time. And if every laid off employee switches to health care jobs, they won’t be too high to begin with. As for the business of medical care, again, without finding a source of funding, the long term focus will have to be on cost cutting and ‘efficiency’, which leads to a really nasty work environment.

Universities are in the business of enrolling students. While it is nice if these students get jobs when they graduate, this is really not the universities’ problem if they do not. I would suggest that one follows the advice of ‘let the buyer beware’ before spending too much on such a career, and look deep within oneself to make sure this is really a career worth pursuing. And as for investing, my bet is that the industry valuation will baloon in in the coming years, with medical data management and treatment assessment going along, but then decline when the funding runs out and the reality sinks in – if we all serve burgers to one another, we are no better off than cooking our own.

After a hiatus of over a year, this blog is coming back to life.

I stopped blogging as I was too lazy to update the software manually, and, for security reasons, did not wish to run an out-of-date application. It did not help either that I document on my wiki most of what I do.

But recently I had discovered the wonders of using Subversion to easily update both  PmWiki and WordPress, and realized  that a single line command (using Linux,of course, if you are using Windows I am sure it will be much more complicated) can update a software package.  My versions are now both current (by the way, PmWiki’s upgrade instructions are better).

In the meantime, I toyed with using PmWiki as a blog, but I think WP is a better choice, working straight out of the box, and for now I intend to stick with it.

Now to the hard part – generating content…

See y’all soon!