Show Notes - Week of May 11, 2020

Greetings from 53.5° north latitude where the week that was was worse than the week that was last week. In short, I felt bad at the start of the week, felt worse as the week progressed, and have now been tested for COVID. So yeah, pretty much sucky. I won’t talk about that here because I am trying my hand at a long form diary for my maybe-COVID-journey. 

There were some interesting highlights from this week, a couple new beers (back earlier in the week when I didn’t feel quite so bad), and a list of interesting words. Upward and onward!\

First up were two interesting experiences in online media consumption. Early in the week, I watched both an opera from The Met and a concert from The National. The Met streamed “Werther”, and The National released footage of a concert from last August on YouTube. To be able to watch both of those on the same day was quite remarkable. The National will continue to be one of my favourite bands so they will get money from me from albums and (hopefully one day!) concerts, but I will have to think about sending some money to The Met to support their choice to stream from their archives..

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No, I didn’t actually watch them at the same time. But I could have!

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In the category of self-promotion, I was part of a webinar with three other security executives and a current Board-level moderator. Thanks to Securonix for inviting me to speak at the session which covered general info and cyber security areas, but also highlighted a few healthcare-specific topics as well.

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If you are so inclined, it is available on-demand here, and here is my little behind-the-scenes look at how I set up my recording area. It was difficult to get the camera set up properly, and I am constantly struggling with how the image width changes between video conferencing tools. Skype for Business barely showed any of the bookcase behind me, but BrightTalk showed all the way out the door. I have another session on May 29, so I have a bit of time to make improvements.

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One more note before we move on to the beers and words. In early- and then mid-April I mentioned a reading group pulled together by Adam Greenfield. This week we read Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”, which was more of an essay than a book so I won’t count it in this year’s reading list. Manifesto was thought-provoking and much easier to read than most of what we have delved into, but was still pretty dense. This was our last meeting of our reading group unfortunately, but I am definitely happy for the experience.

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New Beers:
Early in the week when I felt decent, I tried a couple new beers. The first was the Tyskie Gronie lager out of Poland. Decent. Did the trick but nothing more than that. Then again, if that’s all you ask and you get what you ask for, then that’s a win in my book. (3.25 / 5) The other beer was another from Postmark. I tried out their Juicy Pale Ale a couple weeks ago, and was quite happy with it. This time it was their Westerly IPA which started out great. Nice citrus and hops but a disturbing amount of sediment. The sediment knocked the rating down a peg or two. (3.25 / 5)

New Words:
A handful of new words this week, largely from the reading and discussion in Greenfield’s reading group, and I am pretty sure one is a repeat. 

theodicy
[THēˈädəsē]
NOUN

  1. the vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil.


bower
[ˈbou(ə)r]
NOUN

  1. a pleasant shady place under trees or climbing plants in a garden or wood.\

VERB (literary)

  1. shade or enclose (a place or person).


speculum
[ˈspəkyələm]
NOUN

  1. medicine
    a metal or plastic instrument that is used to dilate an orifice or canal in the body to allow inspection.
  2. ornithology
    a bright patch of plumage on the wings of certain birds, especially a strip of metallic sheen on the secondary flight feathers of many ducks.
  3. a mirror or reflector of glass or metal, especially (formerly) a metallic mirror in a reflecting telescope.


circumlocution
[ˌsərkəmˌləˈkyo͞oSH(ə)n]
NOUN

  1. the use of many words where fewer would do, especially in a deliberate attempt to be vague or evasive.


semiotics
[ˌsemēˈädiks]
NOUN

  1. the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.


teleological
[ˈˌtelēəˈläjəkəl]
ADJECTIVE

  1. philosophy
    relating to or involving the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise.


telos
[ˈteläs]
NOUN (literary)

  1. an ultimate object or aim.