RUTROW.org » Random

Lest we forget…

scathew — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:06:42 +0000

Where’s the backup?

scathew — Fri, 14 May 2010 20:49:55 +0000

In regards to the ongoing Deepwater Horizon leak off the coast of Louisiana – what I don’t get is why there isn’t (wasn’t) a backup blowout preventer. Sure, they’re expensive, but so is paying off all the parties that BP is likely to be paying off now. All it takes is once – and I’m sure with all the money BP has lost already you could buy a LOT of blowout preventers.

I work in computers and even for the most lousy insignificant low risk application we shove in backup hardware. It honestly is unfathomable to me with something of such high liability that the parent company, much less the government, would leave themselves to a single point of failure like this. This is particularly true when you’re operating at inhuman depths and in seas that are notoriously fickle (moreover with flammable materials).

I really just don’t get it. Backup hardware is a business standard these days. We shouldn’t be saying “it” failed, instead we should be saying “they” failed before we see a disaster of this type.

Campaign for Real Beauty?

scathew — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:18:30 +0000

Dove has sponsored the “Campaign for Real Beauty” which on the face of it is a good thing. Certainly women, young girls, and society needs a redefinition of priority around beauty. And I’ll also skip my skepticism over any ulterior motives here.

However, I wonder if the problem isn’t making kids who aren’t beautiful (or even are) feel beautiful, but rather try to deprecate the importance of beauty at all. You see in their ads they’ve got these kids (many of which are frankly not exactly ugly) saying “I am beautiful”, the point being that they’re brainwashing themselves that they’re beautiful even when maybe they aren’t. They are, “beautiful inside”.

Well yes of course they are, however the point is we’re still focusing on that damn word. They still need to be “beautiful”.

So, maybe the answer isn’t to self delude ourselves about our beauty, and thus associated value, but rather to say, “It doesn’t matter if I’m beautiful – I have worth regardless.”

This is one of the thing that annoys me about many Hollywood movies. You have this “worthless” character and they redeem themselves by finding their talent, their purpose, their “inner” or “outer” beauty.

Well, maybe the better message, the better lesson, is that it doesn’t matter if you’re pretty, you’re talented, you have a “purpose”. Even the most miserable, untalented, ugly of us have worth and value and you don’t have to do a damn thing to gain that.

So while I applaud the thought, I think the it’s potentially misdirected. Forget beauty – everyone has worth even if they are an ugly schmuck like me.