Short items (#3)
Last week I mentioned Randy Pausch was an Unitarian Universalist. This made me visit briefly the Wikipedia page for this movement, and out of pure curiosity I also peeked at the homepage of the Unitarian church in Dublin (which may just be part of the Unitarian movement, and not the UU one, beware!). Anyway, it has a a reverend, which left me realizing that, whilst I can’t really say whether I’ll ever set foot in a church weekly again, at the moment I can’t really conceive ever going back but to an unconventional one where the speaker would be, each week, a different member of the community, and not an appointed reverend.
Throughout the history of Medicine, barbaric methods have been used to cure some illnesses. Bloodletting and electroshock come to mind. In the current times, we’re thankfully past such practices, and the reasonable thing to do is to pity those who had to live back then, when science did not know any better. I’m hopeful one day the people of the future will look back at chemotherapy and radiotherapy in the same way we look at bloodletting and electroshock today.
During this VAC from Debian, my amule package was NMUed by the Security Team. I must ashamedly confess that my first reaction was not very positive, for I was annoyed that the procedures hadn’t been really followed (it was not an RC bug and no advance notice of the NMU had been given). Anyway, whether it was right or wrong is not the point: the story goes that I pulled myself together, slapped self a bit, and decided to send a “Thanks!” e-mail instead, which was very much in order. It’s so magical how a couple hours ater sending it, I really felt grateful and no longer annoyed. The thing I learnt is not to despair when desired traits don’t come naturally, for they can become true just by trying.
Recently I obtained a copy of the latest album by Corazón, Nuevo futuro. Not having the time to listen to it at home, I transferred it to my iPod, an (old-generation) iPod Shuffle, and hence without a screen. I had read this review of the album that, among other things, said a track named «Vestir santos» was probably the album’s finest. So, when listening to the album in the street, I was hoping I would manage to deduce which track «Vestir santos» was, out of its lyrics. Unfortunately I wasn’t smart enough to deduce it, but when I got home I had the opportunity to get surprised by the fact that track #4, which had become my favourite after a couple listens in the iPod, happened to be «Vestir santos».