Asking the Question is Half the Right Answer

If you start talking to me about the future, you'll quickly realize that John Connor, despite being fictitious, is one of my personal heroes. Of course, anyone who saves humanity from an offending outside force, be it machine, alien, demon, or zombie, should be universally well-respected. As human beings, we're happy to destroy one another, but theoretically take great offense to some other form of being trying to fill that role. We really are one big family.

Why John Connor? Well, as much as I appreciate all the other fictional heroes out there that have saved humanity, I'm quite certain that the Terminator doomsday scenario comes closest to reality, and may in fact be far too prophetically accurate for comfort. Thus, we can learn more from John Connor and repeated viewings of the Terminator franchise than from just about any other medium that portrays humanity's struggle for survival. Update your Netflix queue accordingly.

My trepidations about the coalescence of developing artificial intelligence and the ubiquity of the internet aside (i.e. a technological singularity), as a global society we have been hurtling into the future with technology developing at a truly exponential rate, as Ray Kurzwell demonstrates aptly in a recent TED presentation. One of the more glaring results of the ongoing technological progress in which we find ourselves immersed is the overabundance of information that anyone with an internet connection should be well aware of. With a few strokes of a keypad we're able to find the answer to almost any routine question we could conjure. It sure beats going to the library to pour through the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

This information overload has spawned the new field of data visualization. Faced with enormous amounts of data that cannot realistically be read and understood in the traditional sense, there has been an increasing effort to convert this data into charts, graphs, interactive displays, and supergraphics that will allow users to comprehend the significance of the information being synthesized, compressed, and displayed. As we continue to amass more and more information, the manner in which we convey this data will continually evolve in such a way that considers technological capability, human psychology, and artistic appeal.

The implications for our society's growing data obsession are innumerable and unpredictable. It may one day bring world peace or may instead convert humanity into an enslaved race of human-machine hybrids, much like the Borg, who's to know? Nevertheless, it is obvious that this trend has and will continue to shape how we think. The traditional process of discovery where one asks a question and then must engage in the work of finding the answer has been turned on its head.

Collectively, we have the data to answer an overwhelming amount of questions, and while our methods of harvesting this data are in their infancy, they will no doubt progress at the typical exponential pace of technology. Where we are sorely lacking is in our ability to ask the right questions.

Without asking the right questions we cannot put our plethora of information to work. Information for the sake of information is not only useless, its obnoxious. In the context of public health, something I think about from time to time, disease rates, lab results, and health outcomes are meaningless until that data is put to use improving population health. Questions provide the framework for making information work for us. Without asking the right questions we might as well be building a brick house on quicksand.

So the question remains: is "what are the right questions?" the right question to ask?

The Broad Street Pump: Now Serving Beer!

Yes, that's right, the Broad Street Pump is back in action for the first time since 1854... only this time rather than serving up cholera-tainted water, it will be spewing forth amateur brew concocted in west Berkeley. With the help of my esteemed colleagues, brewmasters Rob and Paul, I am formally announcing the informal creation of not one, but two, lines of homebrew - straight from our over-sized storage closet.... Red Star Brewing and Constitution Beer Works



Why create two different brands of beer simultaneously? Because we're clever businessmen, that's why. With the political climate in this country being what it is, there's no better to way to make a profit than by blatantly marketing to the ardent supporters of the liberal left and the conservative right. No self-respecting tea-partier wants to be caught dead drinking the same brew as some deadbeat, Muslim-sympathizing socialist; and why should the educated elite have to suffer the same swill as those creationist simpletons?

No, if this country is going to be properly divided the lines must be drawn. The time for common ground and putting our differences aside is over. We can no longer share the same simple pleasures; they must be branded and marketed in a diametrically opposed fashion. We here at Red Star Brewing and Constitution Beer Works are happy to provide this long-overdue service to a nation of individuals that have too often been forced to commiserate with their polar opposites over the same delicious adult beverage. Enough is enough.

So tape off your half of the room you share with that yokel freshman, show your neighbor how easily his Prius can be destroyed by an F-350, and crack open a fresh beer far, far away from anyone who disagrees with you about anything.

Found: One Slightly-Used Blog

We all lose things. I lose pens and lighters like its my job. I'm used to losing things, searching frantically for them for about 3 minutes, giving up, and having them return to me weeks later. I recently found a lost item while putting on a rarely-worn pair of shoes and noticing that it was, in fact, preventing my toes from reaching their destination. Moral of the story: check your shoes.

Despite being a pro at losing and recovery process, I was worried for most of this summer. For the first time I actually lost an intangible item, though I suppose if you want to count thoughts, ideas, and focus in that category then I lose intangibles all the time. I happened to misplace by blog back in June, shortly after my most recent (and utterly lame) post. My blogging had declined as last semester wore on and I'm fairly certain that my blog had simply set out to find greener pastures. At first I was hurt; I thought I had been a good provider for my blog... feeding it text, adding pictures, and providing it with ample visitors (albeit, all from my IP address). Apparently I was wrong.

I have, however, been given a second chance. My blog has come back to me and we're ready to give it another shot. I have an entire summer (and even some of last spring) to make up for.

At the moment The Woolsey Street Digest has been in a bit of an identity crisis: I no longer live on Woolsey Street. Should I have seen this coming? Probably. So what to do? Change the name but keep the same URL? Get a new blog altogether? Not change a thing? These are the life-altering decisions that I've been contemplating. I've chosen to take the incremental approach: New name, same address. I wouldn't want to confuse my readership that now numbers in the 0.005's... a migration might be in store later on.

So what's with the new name? The Broad Street Pump refers to the cholera outbreak that occurred in London in 1854. The outbreak was eventually controlled when John Snow removed the handle of the Broad Street water pump, which he had identified as the source of outbreak via its contaminated water. Along with the significant fact that Snow was the first to link cholera with contaminated water, the case study is also one of the more seminal pieces of epidemiologic investigation, and an inspiration to public health nerds such as myself.

I aspire to no such greatness with this blog. It will remain a cesspit filled with my scattered thoughts, half-hearted ambitions, and occasional ill-informed rants. Some things will never change.