semidetached's comments

At my annual mandatory physical yesterday my doctor told me that there's a new shingles vaccine that's around 90% effective as opposed to the 60-70% effectiveness of the previous vaccine. It's a two-shot vaccine as opposed to the single shot for the old one. I turned it down, but will probably ask for it now. I got the previous vaccine a few years ago, and then got shingles a few months later, although it was a fairly mild case and I assume that the vaccination probably had a positive effect on that outcome. The funny thing is that I recognized the incident as shingles, and called for an appointment immediately and informed them of my suspicion. At my appointment two days later the doctor prescribed some anti-viral pills and said they were best started immediately after recognizing the infection. I started laughing, as did he.

The basic problem is that if you're bored you're boring. If you want to be interesting try to be interested.

If you liked Dobson's book then I heartily recommend Zelazny's "Doorways in the Sand", which I've read half a dozen times over the years with equal pleasure.

An expert or a so-called expert?

I stopped watching 24-hour news channels in 1991 when I saw how the Gulf War coverage was turning so many into zombies. By 2010 I had stopped regularly reading a list of news web sites I'd constructed. HN is about the only thing I read regularly online, and I'm getting less regular with that. I watch local news sometimes but only to sneer at the local weatherman who's job here in central Texas could be performed by one of my pugs. If I'm going to starve to death pushing a pleasure lever it ain't gonna be one connected to the infotainment industry.

9. "there is no known way to create any permissionless blockchain that is impervious to malicious nodes without having a trusted-third party"

I had a major crash and burn a year or so into my 40s. According to my post-collapse thereapist this was a really predictable thing among single, male academics, and not all that uncommon amongst other academics entering their 40s as well as non-academics of the same age. The blind rushing forward for the sake of not much more than blindly rushing forward tends to start to get frayed at the edges due to a number of things, not the least of which is the inevitable ravages of age starting to invade your psyche. I got out of the funk via self-administered cognitive therapy. You just have to keep asking yourself questions about why you're anxious, afraid, upset, etc. about various things, find reasonable answers, and keep telling yourself those answers until you've changed how you internalize and react to such things. Staying busy with things you enjoy - i.e. typically NOT work - also helps given how busy hands and attendant busy minds have less time to attack themselves. Such phrases as "don't worry, be happy", "live for the day", "gain the wisdom to know what you can and can't change", etc. have become hoary, cringeworthy cliches, but like all cliches they do contain a kernel of substance. We live in accelerated times where we're in a mad rush to get somewhere, although we typically don't have a really good idea just where. The last stop on the train route is the same for everybody. Those who reach the end are differentiated by how much they enjoyed the ride, and if you're not enjoying the ride you really, really need to ask that mirror why and get some honest answers.

A not unrelated barrel of fun is Holbrook Jackson's "Anatomy of Bibliomania".