Time Magazine: The Truth about SARS.  "It's deadly, infectious and not going away."

We know it is deadly, and we know it is infectious.  What seems controversial is the idea that it is not going away.  History is definitely on the side of the pessimists; no such disease has ever been defeated by quarantine alone.  Until there is a successful treatment regime and some sort of vaccine to keep it from spreading, it is going to spread.

Consider the parallels to AIDS, a viral infection like SARS.  AIDS is not airborne, it requires fluid contact between people for transmission.  SARS is airborne.  AIDS has a slow incubation period.  SARS appears to have a fast incubation period.  If untreated AIDS generally results in death, although there are exceptions.  SARS appears at least as fatal as AIDS, although it is too early to be certain.  Despite medicine's best efforts over the last thirty years, including development of a successful treatment regime, AIDS is still growing and remains a leading cause of death, especially in Africa.  It would appears that AIDS will not really be slowed until a vaccine is developed.  AIDS has resisted development of a vaccine by mutating rapidly; SARS has already demonstrated a similar capability.  Unless there is a breakthrough and a SARS vaccine is developed more quickly than one for AIDS, doesn't it seem like SARS is going to follow the same trajectory as AIDS, only faster?

Steven Den Beste posted a fascinating article about blogrolling.  He notes the dilution that occurs when people have really long blogrolls...  (and interestingly calls it an "inverse network effect".)  Similar to this discussion on Pierre Omidyar's site about BlogShares, which models the "value" of a blog by its inbound links, and then divides this value among its outbound links.

Steven also draws a distinction between 'linkers' (bloggers who's posts are centered around links to other blogs, like Glenn Reynolds) and 'thinkers' (bloggers who write articles with original content themselves, like Steven himself).  I must admit I spent much more time linking than thinking...

Jamie Zaworsky says CSS is BS.  The post is interesting and so is the comment thread which follows it.  I'm not as anti-CSS as he is, but I must ask - what's wrong with tables?  They do seem to work...

Here's an interesting post by Rob Howard; he reports on a product review meeting attended by Bill Gates.  "I thought it was going to be more overview and less detail, but instead what it reminded me of was a feature team meeting."

After 19 seasons, John Stockton is retiring.  I guess he was a lot of people's favorite player; he was one of mine.  He always seemed like an underdog, even though he was probably the most talented point guard ever to play.  A small white guy in a league of big black guys, he used quickness, court sense, and anticipation instead of sheer athleticism to dominate games.  Like Magic Johnson, another of my favorites, he made his teammates better and was always looking for someone to setup with a pass, but if you left him open he'd burn you with a jumper, especially with the game on the line.  I rooted against the Jazz more often than for them - most of the time when I watched a Jazz game they were playing the Lakers - but I respected John and the league will miss him.  And to prove his feel for the game, he's retiring at the right time...

Finally - check out bardcode - Shakespeare in bar code.  Some people obviously have too much time...