There has been a fire burning at the coast of N.C. since June 1st. June-freakin-1. Today however, there was what must have been a major shift in the winds so that the smoke has blown all the way from the coast to l’il ol’ Chapel Hill/Carrboro. The longer the day grew, the worst the smoke.
We are now in a Code Red air quality alert and I am feeling it. I was curious about those winds shifting from the East and John Fleck share with me quite a few links to maps and weather data which only a climate-nerd like John would have (said with the utmost respect, mind you).
My favorite is the NOAA “Fire Hazard Mapping System” image. I guess I didn’t know the NOAA kept such a thing – but its pretty impressive to see the smoke drifts from the current North American fires. Its also interesting to see how many fires are burning too. Amazing.
I spent the morning talking with the folks who have developed the system and all of the paper forms we are trying to replace with ‘lectronics. It was amazingly useful and made me think about what I have to do a bit differently. No reason to go into the details of that here of course.
One thing that really surprised me in the meeting was that I was very directly asked if we would develop our software in open source. They asked because two other systems they have had to deal with are proprietary and they are tired of having to fly in “experts” to fix or change the code. Brilliant. Of course, I proudly said it would be free/open and that we’d also hire a local developer. Smiles all around.
After a lunch at the “Bourbon St. Cafe” (I shit you not) we headed out to a health center about 30 – 40 minutes outside of Kigali. That’s 30 – 40 minutes on a dirt road with giant potholes. If one were to stay in the center of Kigali too long they might assume that Rwanda is a wealthy country and wonder why so many aid agencies are here. Once you drive a few hundred meters past the airport you immediately know the real story. This is a poor country – monetarily, not poor of spirit.
We went to the health center to meet with the “community health workers” who are volunteers from the villages who go door to door to collect health data from the people. They tend to be more than data collectors as the people in the village will come to them when they are ill and ask what they should do (visit the health center, of course!) One thing I learned which really impressed me was that the program allows the villages to “elect” the people who will be going door to door. In this way, the volunteers want to participate because it is a position of honor and the villagers might trust them more. In fact, their peers trust them enough to give them their personal health information. The workers we met did point out that most folks are reluctant to give HIV information though – perhaps we can make the system so that the workers can hand a phone to the people who can more privately enter that information?
I truly enjoyed sitting with these folks despite the three-way translation (Kinyarwandan to French to English for me – ugh). Still, the folks we met were wonderful (including Pascal who is a fellow-fan of Chelsea – Go you Blues!). I want so much now to make the system easy for these three people to use. Its going to be difficult… but doable.
On Friday I am off to Rwanda. Finally. This trip was supposed to happen… um… back in September I think. Then contracts weren’t signed, paperwork got complicated – other work came up. So the trip was rescheduled for the 15th of Feb. But Dave… its the 20th today! Very true. After all the months of postponement, after we scheduled the 15th and booked hotel rooms, we were informed that we have been kicked out of those rooms to make way for Dubya and his enormous entourage (we’re talking thousands of people here). So great, the President has just been in Rwanda and I’ve got to follow up behind him?? Did he piss them off? Did he say anything untoward to their President? Am I going to have to hear about it?
For the curious. I will be starting work on a project in which we will be building a system that allows health workers to collect public health information door to door via cell phone/pda. They collect this data already on paper and we want to take advantage of Rwanda’s very strong mobile phone network to make the process easier and quicker. I’d tell you more if the funders would only approve an announcement (red tape – mumble mumble). Oh, like everything else we do, this will be open source and the Rwanda Ministry of Health’s to own.
To put it very succinctly – internet access going out of Africa is bad. Very bad. Don’t believe all the hype of all the cool new ways of opening up Africa with the Internet. Its not here yet, and won’t be without some major investment. At any rate, I’ll try to post some while I am there but I doubt I’ll have the patience to put any photos up. Hmmm… maybe I will reacquaint myself with text browsers!
Billary is now claiming that Obama doesn’t support universal health care. Of course, this is an untrue statement (we used to call these lies.) This might be more effective if he simply wanted to attack Obama’s approach to funding and support being different from his wife’s (not to mention an approach that might appeal more to conservatives than hers.) Nonetheless, there is this quote that really sticks out:
It would be truly tragic if the Democratic Party walked away from universal health care for the first time in 60 years when we finally got the business community and the medical community in line behind us
The business and medical community is “in line behind us”? You cannot be serious. Does anyone know if he was able to keep a straight face and make that claim?
Incredible – wasn’t Hillary going to “reign” him in?
Update: I found this wonderful comparison on who has more substance on the issues (Billary has been saying Obama is “all talk” too). Worth a look.
A little over three years ago I took this photo of my poor doggie after his ACL repair surgery. Well, he’s now had his left leg done after repeating the blow-out a week ago.
I am very happy to report that not only does he seem to be handling it much better this time (not so glassy-eyed, not crying), but he also wasn’t given an “elizabethan collar” (aka lampshade). He hated that thing. Also, this time his bandage is green – much more appropriate for a boy-doggie… even one who is “fixed”.
So lately I’ve been trying to think about, and write about, that space in which open source software and things like media released under creative commons merge. Well, not merge exactly, but that space they have in common. Obviously the idea of being open is shared but there is more to it than that. Today I’ve come upon Yochai Benkler and Helen Nissenbaum’s article Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue from The Journal of Political Philosophy.
Actually that term… “Commons-based peer production” is it exactly. However, explaining that to people who don’t participate within such a production community might be hard. To give a taste of where my audience lies, its somewhere among music, developers, teachers, and health-care workers. Ouch.
I write this as much to “think outloud” as to plea for any other links or thoughts on that space.
Furthering the comments from my previous post, I found these stats on the Epilepsy Foundation website:
- 49% of Americans believe that an appropriate first aid response to someone having a convulsive seizure is to put a spoon or something else in the person’s mouth to prevent him or her from swallowing or biting the tongue
- 27% of Americans agree that staying out in the cold and wind will cause a cold
- 34% of Americans believe that cracking your knuckles will cause arthritis in later life
- 18% Americans believe that epilepsy is a psychological disorder
Yikes.
I’m guessing that one aspect to the “pry the mouth open” idea comes from CPR training where they make sure people understand that they need to clear the airway. This is true if you are about to give CPR. This is not true if the person is seizing. As to why people still don’t understand that a cold is from a virus… well, that’s just trying to be dumb.
Yesterday I was watching Sevilla play Getafe in the opening round of the Spanish League when Sevilla defender Antonio Puerta collapsed on the pitch, unconscious. Teammates rushed to his side and were trying to pry his mouth open to prevent him from swallowing his tongue. The team doctor slapped his teammates away but then the announcer talked endlessly about people swallowing their tongues. Today, when trying to check on his condition (he’s in intensive care but there are no real details of what’s going on) I kept seeing over and over again that he was in danger of swallowing his tongue.
I am not a doctor, but my wife is. I have double checked with her to assure medical accuracy before making this statement. One cannot swallow their tongue. Got that? It ain’t possible so work on more immediate needs of the unconscious person than trying to pry open their mouths. I am not blaming Puerta’s teammates, we all hope to have equally caring friends and teammates in our lives and kudos to them for noticing how serious the situation was. I do blame the lazy folks who are continuing to repeat this myth though.
OK, One more time. One cannot swallow their tongue.
Get better Antonio – we’re pulling for you!
Update: Sadly Antonio Puerta died this afternoon.
