F@H: Just DU it for Judy

[Mabus]

Judy Showalter that is.

5 July 2005

Governor’s Column:
A Kansas Profile in Courage

The following is a column by Governor Kathleen Sebelius:

Last week, as the Legislature wrestled with its special session mandate to fund our public schools, Kansans got to witness the courage of one determined Kansas lawmaker. Representative Judy Showalter, from Winfield, had missed the entire 2005 legislative session, as she battled cancer. But when the Kansas House of Representatives finally voted on a school finance plan, Representative Showalter wanted to be there.

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Judy Showalter’s individual courage was on display for the entire day, as she waited, well into the evening, for a school finance bill to come to a vote. Warmed by blankets, she looked on and hoped for a chance to make a difference.

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It would have been a fitting capstone to Representative Showalter’s decades of public service if she could have voted one more time on behalf of children and schools across the state. But that never happened, as the Speaker and House Republicans continued to bottle up a responsible plan to fund Kansas schools.

But that does not diminish in any way Judy Showalter’s great determination, humanity, and courage, as she sought to do her duty. She remains an inspiration to us all, and we should honor her commitment by making one of our own – that all Kansas children go to the best possible schools.

Governor Sebelius calls Judy Showalter an inspiration and I can't think of a better word to describe her. Gov. Sebelius asks that we honor Judy by making a commitment to Kansas children by providing them the best possible schools and education we can. But there is even more that we can do. We can fold for the future. I would like to ask each of my fellow Kansan DU'ers to do something for Judy by participating in the Folding@Home (F@H) project and researching diseases like the ones that took this dedicated Democratic representative from us.

Judy died of cancer and the F@H project is doing research on cancer. F@H is also researching Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's and a whole host of other diseases and you can help by simply downloading the software and letting it run in the background while you work on your computer.

Confused? How can a program on your home computer help research things like cancer, Alzheimer's and other diseases? It's easy. As fellow DU'er conjur explains it:

Folding@Home is one of many active Distributed Computing projects. DC projects utilize your PC's idle time to process work units for the project. The most famous DC project is probably the SETI@Home project (mentioned in the movie Contact). Folding@Home's purpose is to help scientists determine how proteins fold under various conditions in an effort to help cure diseases (cancer, alzheimer's, etc.) This is a very worthwhile project and one certainly worthy of leaving your PC on 24/7.

Some may be concerned about leaving a PC on 24/7 and the costs involved. A newer PC running a full load will use about the same amount of electricity as two lamps left on 24/7. That is to say, not a lot. Personally, I have a Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop that has been running SETI@Home (and now Folding@Home) 24/7 for over 4 years. I have an HTPC (Home Theater PC) running 24/7 and another (dual-CPU) I keep in my bedroom.

Security-wise, running a DC app (even a non-BOINC app) is very safe. I've not heard of any hacker gaining access to any PC via a corrupted DC app or work unit. Just be sure to download the apps from the site's main page and you should have nothing to worry about." (see DU's current F@H thread for more information: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x514640)

So, please consider joining the DU F@H team by going to the download page and joining over 300 other DU'ers in this worthy endeavor.

Our team number is 48157.

Besides, in addition to doing much needed research, you'll also be helping us to catch and ultimately beat the freepers. They started a F@H team before we did, they have more members and CPUs on their side but we our team is still growing.

Join today. Help us defeat the freepers and do research at the same time. Do it. Just DU it for Democrats like Judy.