In order to begin formulating plans for a hopeful return to normalcy, I realized it was important for me to understand how all of the measures we’ve all become accustomed to discussing related to one another: physical distancing, PPE, antibody testing, herd immunity, and so on. This short video is my attempt at explaining all of these concepts to myself as a layperson. Think of it as Epidemiology for Dummies :-).
The Context As a child, one of the topics I frequently pondered and discussed with my parents was the scale of the universe. I became accustomed to the line of reasoning with which we’ve all become familiar: if the universe is finite, what’s outside that limit? Like many, I’ve never felt completely comfortable with that…
This is the first in a series of brief posts about facts I find interesting and/or surprising. The intent is to keep these posts brief but to provide links to detailed references for those interested in researching the topic further. Prior to the 19th century, estimates for the age of the earth and, indeed, the…
It’s hard to review any financial or technology-related media outlet these days without being bombarded by references to BitCoin, the digital currency that seems to have taken the world by storm over the past 6-12 months. BitCoin poses a pretty substantial challenge to business people: it requires sufficient understanding of computer science to appreciate its…
As hard as it is for me to believe, I first started using computers in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Like most technologists my age, I’ve seen some cyclical trends (e.g., the back-and-forth from server-heavy computing to client-heavy computing) but, more importantly, I’ve witnessed some long-term trends over the past few decades that seem…
As a “software guy,” perhaps the most common technology question I’ve been asked by friends over the past couple of years is: “so, what exactly is this ‘cloud’ stuff anyway?” While I could provide a very technically-detailed answer that would appease my colleagues, I thought I’d provide a more straightforward answer that a layperson would…
We all have friends who are stalwart opponents of getting involved in social media. Some have been able to achieve the impossible: having absolutely no presence on any social network. Others have seemingly arbitrarily picked one network over others and declared that singular network the only one they’ll ever touch. While I might understand being…
Against the Herd 