Let each and every bad guy know he’s never safe

Today I’ve been dry-eyed. No tears from me over the deaths of two men in Sudan last Tuesday. Their car was hit by a missile [1]. It’s unclear if the missile was an air-to-ground [2] or ground-to-ground one [3]. Arab news sources reported one of the men was a senior Hamas arms smuggler [4]. DEBKAfile said the smuggler was organizing a shipment of mustard gas and nerve gas bought by Hamas and Hizbollah, with Iran’s help, from Libyan rebels who’d looted Gaddafi’s stockpiles [5]. This account’s credible. Likely even. Whether the strike’s morally defensible, or even legal, bothers me not. Israel does what she has to do. Because for her it’s backs-to-the-wall stuff. But if it was an air-to-ground fired from an unmanned aerial vehicle [UAV], I marvel at the strike’s technology. While it describes slightly different hardware, this gizmodo article provides some insight [6] Likely the car was ‘painted’ by a laser beam – possibly from a satellite – and the UAV's missile homed in on that ‘paint’. Whether the strike was from the air or the ground, as I’ve written: He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword [7]. So let each and every bad guy know he’s never safe. Amen.

Critical Mass comes to Daylesford

Critical Mass. It’s a bicycling event, typically held on the last Friday of every month in over 300 cities around the world [1]. CM originated in 1992 in San Francisco aiming to show that SanFran wasn’t bike and cyclist friendly. Cyclists gather at a regular place and time – usually during the afternoon rush hour. They then ride as a bunch, i.e. a mass, to a destination, or back to the starting point. If it happens to delay people in vehicles powered by infernal combustion engines, so be it. CM’s been called a dis-organisation. Also an organised coincidence. It’s a touch anarchic. It’s not a race. It’s a mix of fun and serious activism. Me? I’ve only ever ridden in Melbourne’s CM [2]. And that was back in the middle and late 1990s. But it sure felt good: edgy, cheeky, powerful. For an hour a month, it makes cyclists feel respectable, and respected, road users. CM’s Australian website lists 13 Australian CM locations [3]. Guess what? Tomorrow’s the last Friday in September. And it’s the day when CM comes to Daylesford [4]. The details are on the poster (click to enlarge). The initiator? Darling Meg. Of course. She says it’s to increase bike awareness in Daylesford. And she’s been ‘busting to do it– just waiting for the warmer weather’. Also that she looks forward to riding with me; and may this be the first CM of many. Amen to both. Good on you, darling Meg. And good on you, CM.

I'm not letting go

This is Farmdoc’s Blog post 821. I can’t tell which of the previous 820 posts is the most important. Or the best written. Or the most interesting. But I do know the one that defines me best is post 243 [1]. For it tells the pivotal story of my life: That I met Sweetheart Vivienne when she was 13 years old and I was 14. That it was love at first sight; or at most second. That we married when she was 19 and I was 20. That when I found the woman for me I grabbed her with both hands. And that 40+ years later I’m not letting go. Because she’s a good woman. The best. And I’m the luckiest man.

Set against that backdrop, I summarily devoured this article in last Wednesday’s Age [2]. It’s title, ‘Pros and Cons of marrying (or dating) young’, is self-explanatory. Sweetheart Vivienne and I were kids when we married. Well short of maturity. Though I didn’t consider it at the time, we could have grown apart. But, happily, we grew together. The Age piece sets out the pros and cons pretty well. I don’t need validation, but I found it validating. And I beamed when I read the penultimate sentence: ‘That if you truly find someone special, why delay it?’ It’s just another way of saying, as I wrote in post 243, ‘when you find a good woman you must grab her with both hands and never let go’. Amen.

farmdoc's blog post number 550

I wrote here that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. This was true last 7 June. And it’s just as true today. For example hospital performance. It needs to be managed; for it needs to be maximised. So it needs to be measured. Way back when, a bright person thought waiting list length would be the way to go. The shorter the list, the better the performance. And vice versa. In theory, yes. But things are never as simple as they seem. Especially when a hospital’s reputation, and its bonus funding, is judged by its waiting list length. So this report, of a Melbourne hospital’s inaccurate waiting list, is no surprise. As this article says, whether the inaccuracy was deliberate or due to rubbery guidelines is unclear. And it’s immaterial. The end result is ‘garbage in, garbage out’. The paper ends thus: The challenges in finding reliable measures of health system performance are not unique to waiting lists. In every area of the health care system, problems result when data used to assess access, quality of care and safety are not based on appropriate measurements. The cornerstones of epidemiologically sound data are validity and reproducibility. The identification of measures able to produce valid, reproducible data is essential for credible assessment of health system performance and to drive long-term improvements. Amen to that. Sure, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. But there’s measurement – and measurement.

farmdoc's blog post number 491

I’m a pessimist. Yep. A cup-half-empty man. It’s just the way I’m built. I reckon. But in relation to the conflict between the Islamic nations and Israel, it’d be difficult to be anything else but a pessimist. It all seems so very entrenched and intractable. But just when it seems hopeless, a ray of hope shines. Last Wednesday Sweetheart Vivienne sent me this link. As the article says: ‘A joint Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian biofuel project will alleviate thousands of tons of organic agricultural waste and produce one million barrels of biofuel’. The project’s brokered by three peace foundations – the Peres Center for Peace, the Wittenberg Center for Global Ethics and the Amman Center for Peace and Development. It’ll help the environment, create jobs, and reduce oil imports. But much more importantly, it’s a joint project that’ll only work if all the parties co-operate. And if – no, when – it works, its impact will be felt far and wide by individual farmers, agricultural cooperatives, regional organizations, and ultimately the Israeli and Jordanian and Palestinian populations. As the article’s ending says: ‘So there will be a new source of energy: One that comprises layers of peace, trust, understanding, environmental and financial gain. Imagine how your car could run on that’. It reminds me of two sayings: ‘It’s always darkest before the dawn’ and ‘From little things big things grow’. Amen.