41 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2023
    1. We should only write on one side of these papers so that in searching through them, we do not have to take out a paper in order to read it. This doubles the space, but not entirely (since we would not write on both sides of all the slips). This consideration is not unimportant as the arrangement of boxes can, after some decades, become so large that it cannot be easily be used from one’s chair. In order to counteract this tendency, I recommend taking normal paper and not card stock.
  2. Dec 2022
    1. Perrow argued that “normal accidents” were nearly inevitable in a complex, tightly coupled system. To resist such an outcome, systems designers needed to have backups and redundancy, safety checks and maintenance.
    2. One interesting concept in organizational sociology is “normal accidents theory.” Studying Three Mile Island, Charles Perrow created a 2x2 grid
  3. Oct 2022
  4. Aug 2022
  5. Apr 2022
    1. Another Angry Woman. (2022, January 1). A reminder that sometimes “living with it” means taking some mitigations, forever, e.g. How in order to live with cholera we make sure our water doesn’t have shit in it by building infrastructure to make sure our water doesn’t have shit in it. [Tweet]. @stavvers. https://twitter.com/stavvers/status/1477362596097536018

    1. Lawrence Gostin. (2022, January 1). History shows most pandemics last 2-3 years. Covid-19 has been a wily foe #NewYear2022 should see the pandemic’s end in highly vaccinated nations. Strive mightily to access vaccines everywhere But Covid-19 will remain endemic everywhere. The new normal means living with the virus [Tweet]. @LawrenceGostin. https://twitter.com/LawrenceGostin/status/1477087584459370507

  6. Mar 2022
  7. Oct 2021
  8. Mar 2021
  9. Nov 2020
  10. Aug 2020
  11. Jun 2020
  12. May 2020
  13. Apr 2020
    1. The appeal of the first of these options is that it has a clear rationale and an end-point when the virus has passed and life can return to normal.

      But what is "normal"?

  14. Mar 2020
  15. Dec 2019
  16. Nov 2017
    1. The most common eye finding in congenital toxoplasmosis is the presence of chorioretinal scars, reported in 79% of patients. These scars may occur anywhere in the retina but with a higher incidence in the macula.

      Ocular findings in Congenital Toxoplasomsis:

      • 79% patients have chorioretinal scars *Scar may involve macula with significant decrease in visual acuity
      • scar may involve periheral area with decreased acuity by dragging of macula

      Normal Retina

      Chorioretinal scar in congenital toxoplasmosis

      Other posterior ocular complications include:

      • retinal attachment and active chorioretinitis in 10%
      • Optic atrophy in 20%
      • Other findings may include: cataracts, microphtalmia, microcornea, nystagmus.
  17. May 2017
    1. Canol Pipeline
      Designed during the first months of World War II, the Canol Pipeline brought oil from Norman Wells near the Mackenzie River to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Once the oil was refined, it would be sent to Alaska via pipeline to ensure that the Japanese navy could not intercept any transport. The oil deposits at Norman Wells were discovered by the explorer Alexander Mackenzie during the 18th century. In January of 1942, Lieutenant General Brehon Somervell, commanding general of the Army Service Forces, ordered James H. Graham, former dean of engineering at the University of Kentucky, to investigate the possibility of harvesting oil from Norman Wells. On April 29, 1942, General Somervell immediately approved the recommendation of Dean Graham to implement a pipeline from Norman Wells to Whitehorse (O'Brien, 1970). The construction began in 1942 and was completed in 1944 by the United States Army. A road was also constructed alongside the Canol pipeline during this time. In 1945, soon after the completion of the Canol Pipeline, the volume of crude oil that was able to be transported compared to the cost of operating the pipeline could not be justified. The Canol Pipeline was shut down and abandoned in 1945 (Wilson, 1991). 
      

      References

      O'Brien, C. F. (1970). The Canol Project: A Study in Emergency Military Planning. The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 101-108.

      Wilson, W. H. (1991). Review: A Walk on teh Canol Road: Exploring the First Major Northern Pipeline. The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 114.

  18. Mar 2017
    1. bedetermined

      In some ways this feels a little too close to the saying "there is no normal." Conversely, because of my interests in disabilities studies, this gets a little too close to the belief that "we are all disabled." How closely does this proposal align with those (verging on banal) mottos?

  19. Jan 2017
    1. An anomaly is thus a mere difference in degree for which the norm will serve as metric.

      Normal is a powerful, potent, and potentially pernicious black box. And it is frequently a black box deployed against rhetoric.

    2. In his view, the ‘normal’ is the state that institutes the ‘norm,’ and the ‘normative’ as such is a prototypical condition

      Canguilhem also, in Knowledge of Life, notes that humans are unique in their ability to shelter and compensate for the anormal in their society. This further lessens the impact of natural selection in determining the normal and emphasizes how normativity is constructed by the norm.

      Canguilhem's basis for this is also pretty interesting. Medicine is the one science that has "good" and "bad" as measurements. He defines health as "a capacity to tolerate variations in norms...The measure of health is a certain capacity to overcome organic crises and to establish a new physiological order, different from the old" ("The Normal and the Pathological" loc 2627)

  20. Jun 2016
  21. screen.oxfordjournals.org screen.oxfordjournals.org
    1. a scientific programme, the founding act is on an equal footingI with its future transformations: it is merely one among the manymodifications that it makes possible. This interdependence cantake several forms. In the future development of a science, thefounding act may appear as little more than a single instance of amore general phenomenon that has been discovered. It might bequestioned, in retrospect, for being too intuitive or empirical andsubmitted to the rigours of new theoretical operations in order tosituate it in a formal domain. Finally, it might be thought a hastygeneralization whose validity should be restricted. In other words,the founding act of a science can always be rechannelled through' the machinery of transformations it has instituted.

      Paradigm shifts are part of the science that follows (i.e. are filled in by normal science, in Kuhn's terms).

    2. The distinctive contribution of these authors is that they pro-duced not only their own work, but the possibility and the rulesof formation of other texts. In this sense, their role differs entirelyfrom that of a novelist, for example, who is basically never morethan the author of his own text. Freud is not simply the author ofThe Interpretation of Dreams or of Wit and its Relation to theUnconscious and Marx is not simply the author of the CommunistManifesto or Capital: they both established the endless possibilityof discourse. Obviously, an easy objection can be made. The authorof a novel may be responsible for more than his own text; if heacquires some 'importance' in the literary world, his influence canhave significant ramifications. To take a very simple example, onecould say that Ann Radcliffe did not simply write The Mysteriesof Udolpho and a few other novels, but also made possible theappearance of Gothic Romances at the beginning of the nine-teenth century. To this extent, her function as an author exceedsthe limits of her work. However, this objection can be answeredby the fact that the possibilities disclosed by the initiators of dis-cursive practices (using the examples of Marx and Freud, whomI believe to be the first and the most important) are significantlydifferent from those suggested by novelists. The novels of AnnRadcliffe put into circulation a certain number of resemblances andanalogies patterned on her work - various characteristic signs,figures, relationships, and structures that could be integrated intoother books. In short, to say that Ann Radcliffe created the GothicRomance means that there are certain elements common to herworks and to the nineteenth-century Gothic romance: the heroineruined by her own innocence, the secret fortress that functions as

      Really useful passage to compare to Kuhn. This is basically an argument about paradigm shifters and normal science as applied to literature.