William Vambenepe's blog

We IT management geeks are pretty familiar with data at different “meta” levels. For example:

• The content of a configuration record: data
• Who can access that content: metadata
• Who can set access permissions on that content: meta-metadata
• etc…

Trying to keep the layers separated (good luck Savas) is tempting for performance reasons but it’s like trying to shore up an ever-leaking levee in the face of a major storm. Semantic technologies get a lot of power out of the fact that they don’t even try.

I was prompted to write this because I recently learned that it also happens in medicine:

• Hypoparathyroidism: low parathyroid hormone
• Pseudohypoparathyroidism: normal parathyroid hormone levels, but a problem with the parathyroid receptor such that the symptoms are the same as those of hypoparathyroidism
• Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism: normal parathyroid hormone levels and a normal parathyroid receptor, but presents with the same symptoms as pseudohypoparathyroidism (but without the consequences)

Good luck getting your health insurance to cover a pseudo-disease. Don’t even bother calling them about a pseudo-pseudo-disease.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Everything, Off-topic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.