No Compelling Content

Of course, unless you heard the speaker this might not make perfect sense. For my IS&T 1048 class.

Speaker: Seth S, Temple University.

1. What are the main parts of this person’s job?

Seth Shestak, an employee of Temple University (I missed his title) has responsibilities in maintaing network security for the university’s large LAN (5600 beds = >5600 ethernet jacks for dormitories alone), which includes two class B networks (that is a lot of IPs). Over the course of his job, Seth has tasks in traffic analysis, end-user security, forensics, and helps develop network security policies for the university.

2. Why is this important to the student of Information Science and Technology?

As a perspective-builder, I’ve came to the realization that while systems design, especially for planning a network is an involved job with specialized skills, that much of the work happens post-installation. The changing needs of a business/institution (like the university) mean that not only does infrastructure, but policy and processes pertaining to the use of the infrastructure needs to evolve as well.

Since Temple basically has a leper colony’s worth of infected computers plugged into it every semester on move-in day, the need for a specialized process of setting up the end-users had to be established in 2004. This was because of the evolving threat of malware, which used to be spread from internet to computer, now having the ability to infest an entire LAN without having to go through the web. The web threat was also seen as growing/worsening in regards to drive-by downloads not even needing a careless action of the user.(URL shortening services are increasingly seeing complaints in making DBDs easier, too)

3. How was this talk applicable to your studies and future plans?

I think that it’d be more important to have skills in network administration than in systems design when it comes to the amount of jobs available, simply because of the nature of the work. Although there is a lot of overlap, knowing that security is paramount means I can take classes that are more in line with developing the skills for a comprehensive security policy would be helpful. Also, having a sample policy available as part of my portfolio would make me a better candidate who just took the Cisco test and forgot half of it by the next morning.

Seeing as Georgian-era medical literature isn’t exactly my wheelhouse, I’d be unable to provide much in the way of a decent review; however, seeing as this is a text for my Mosiac/IH class I’d be remiss to not summarize the key terms and themes in the text.

A few key terms before we start:

varialiation – Intentional exposure to a disease, usually a “tamer” strain, but the same. This was done in Jenner’s time (mid 18th century) with smallpox infections that were seen as more survivable. After Jenner’s work, in the 19th century, Parliament outlawed the practice.

vaccination – Using an (sometimes partially) inactive or similar disease (of less virulence) to train the immune system to prevent future symptoms occuring from an disease. The root of the term, vacca-, means cow in Latin.

inoculation – The process of exposure, either via varialiation, or the less-deadly vaccination.

In a nutshell:

The text describes Jenner testing his theory of smallpox exposure using varialation, or intentional exposure, to a variety of men, women, and children. Jenner also tries to trace the roots of the smallpox from an infection suffered from horses’ joints (called “the grease”); The roots of the disease aren’t from horses. Jenner shows after a large amount of infections of cowpox and then exposing these people to smallpox that none of his patients become infected with the dreaded disease.

In horrifically-reductionist terms: cowpox and smallpox are similar enough that after infection of the first, the body’s immune system is prepared to protect a person against the other. This is because of the specialized nature of what is called “killer T” cells.

Smallpox has over 200 proteins, versus less than 10 for measles, for instance. Thanks Paul Offit!

Themes:

• Jenner’s ethics. Did he break the hippocratic oath? Some subjects were his own children, and his earlier believers.
• Man’s place in the animal kingdom. Since man is at the top of the animal kingdom, is he sullying himself by using cow matter inside his body? (somehow hamburgers didn’t count)
• Would Jenny McCarthy say that cowpox called her son’s demonic possession if she was born some 300 years earlier?

External Sources:

Jenner on Wikipedia.

Complete Text.

Looking at this quote, I see the powers of possibility, and a lot about specific neuroses that you and I may be suffering RIGHT NOW.

I feel like I have permission to refer to the quote-ee by first name, we know a lot about her; because she tells us a lot about herself in defining possible selves. The human mind, in my opinion, has the incredible imagination to take any one of the myriad ways a person can be and see what life would look like with any of those facets were turned up “to 11″ as Spinal Tap would say. As an example, I pretty much have an itinerary of what I’d do in an average day if I became homeless RIGHT NOW. While it’d be a bummer to be a bum, nobody’s not going to say it’s not in the back of the back of your mind. I think being divorced by American consumer society (by having nowhere to put your stuff while you go and get more stuff, to paraphrase the late George Carlin), confined to public spaces, (which, I may add, without cost are few and far between) is considered to be a “worse case scenario” by many people. Carol called it being a bag lady. Maybe that has a lot to do with why we as a society treat the homeless like we do.

By the way, I feel like there is a disconnect between the quote and the questions. The questions are leaning towards some sort of “character traits/flaws” introspection, while I feel like the quote has more to do with outcomes versus self-image.

Another way to look at this would be, of course, the disconnect between self-image and real life. Which means that right now, really close to you, maybe even in your skull RIGHT NOW there exists an AWESOME GAP. Perhaps you (or I!) are much cooler than our collective egos gives us credit for.

(I blogged the last prompt, too, but i forgot to post it on time. Instead, I posted it on my personal blog.)

There was a journey I made in the middle of August, in 2004. It was a trip I made quite a few times in that earlier couple of years. Roughly 190 miles separates the bucolic vistas and monoculture of Bradford County and the well, un-bucolic and varied North Philadelphia. This trip, unique for a couple of reasons – it was in the middle of the week, I wasn’t driving, and I was riding in the cab of a pickup truck with a grizzled contractor with everything I owned on God’s green earth in the back.

I was moving, without having any idea what I’d do when I get there.

Turns out, I’d do a lot of nothing: electricity took about a week. Thankfully, I knew a neighbor through my girlfriend who let me charge my laptop and phone while I chased down many a dead-end job. I ended up taking one of those jobs, and the gradual rise out of poverty was quite the journey indeed, and one I’m still on today, depending on your view.

The simple act of making a decision, regardless of the fact it was an ill-advised one, and sticking through it has been character-building, to be charitable. The personal growth angle, of course is one that one sees in many “journeys.”