Where Does Evil Reside?

Charles Gregory

Charles Gregory is a fella who believes something interesting: "Evil resides in the heart of the individual, not in material objects."

Gregory is a newly elected state representative in Georgia who has proposed a number of changes to Georgia law that would remove restrictions on guns.

What's more troubling than any of this is that people like Voxx Ford in this article, a writer at the Atlantic, think that Gregory's statement above is wrong.

Now he doesn't come out directly and say this is wrong - but he spends a good part of the article lambasting Gregory for what amounts to this belief.

He implies Gregory is a gun-loving kook for believing this.

At the end article Voxx calls for "crippling guns" to prevent further violence.

Interesting.

The implication is that guns are somehow like Sauron's ring in "The Lord of the Rings."

Evil materials that have been somehow magically infused with power by an evil being.

Gregory, on the other hand, sees guns as "material objects."

Now, scientifically speaking it seems pretty clear that there are not a lot of magical elements in the world today like Sauron's ring.

I am unaware of any type of inanimate object doing anything on its own.

(Of course there are things that really have no purpose but evil, e.g., sarin nerve gas, but they are few.  Even atomic weapons, as Bruce Willis will tell you, can be used to deflect asteroids that would otherwise smash into earth and destroy it.)

But even sarin gas, last used to my knowledge in Tokyo, Japan, required Shoko Asahara to actually organize and carry out the attack.  In the case of Asahara I suppose Voxx Ford could argue that the "sarin made him do it" or, perhaps the religion he developed, Aum Shinrikyo, or even the bible made this all possible.

But that only works if you believe we live in Middle Earth as I suppose Voxx Ford must.

War, killing, in-human treatment, and so on have been around since the dawn of human history.

Alexander the Great, for example, had no guns what-so-ever but still managed to conquer much of his known world.

I know that I don't live in Middle Earth and it seems that policies based on the fantasy that we do live there, where things like Sauron's ring have power in and of themselves, is simply nonsense.

Other claim guns have "no purpose" than to kill people.

Guns were invented primarily for killing of all sorts - game and people.

My guess is that in the early history of this country we survived only because we could hunt with guns.

Even countries like the UK exempt things like hunting rifles from "gun bans" because they have another, actual purpose.

I think that the fantasy here is believing in nonsense and not fact.

People kill other people and have since the dawn of humanity.

With rocks, sticks, guns, atomic weapons, airplanes, etc. etc. etc.

The problem is a human one, not one with "material objects."

Recovering Large Parallels VMs from OS X Time Machine

I've had a large-scale OS X Time Machine backup system running for a while.

Recently I accidentally logged off (rather than shut down) a Parallels VM for which I hand not written down the password, er, well, I wrote down the password but not what it was for.

So I figured I'd restore the Time Machine backup for the .pvm file (Parallels Virtual Machine) from the day before (I hadn't used it for several weeks) and I figured I'd be OK.

The first issue is that Time Machine takes about 30 to 40 minutes to restore a 25Gb virtual machine.

Unfortunately during that time the machine is basically running flat out in some kernel process so that you can do virtually nothing else.  This can be further aggravated by having Carbonite (which I also use) and/or Time Machine running backups.

Its best to turn these two off before starting anything like this.

Once the file is fully restored to disk by Time Machine I figured I'd just double click it and have it work.

Boy, was I wrong...

The first problem you will encounter (I am on Lion 10.7.5 running Parallels 7.0.15107 Revision 796624; September 3, 2012) is a dialog that tells you either the virtual machine is corrupt (The virtual machine cannot be used because its files are corrupted) to which you can only reply OK or one that tells you about reusing or creating a new MAC address for the restored copy.

If you see the corruption dialog OK it and then quite Parallels.

Apparently you have to move the file from one directory to another (I moved it to the Desktop).

This should get you past the corruption dialog - though I cannot find any reason for this.

Next you need to restart the VM.

This time you should get the MAC reuse dialog.

You have two choices.  Choosing the "Use Existing" path means nothing but failure.  Somehow Parallels remembers which VM uses which MAC address and they CANNOT be shared.

Choosing "Create New" should just make the VM believe that everything is the same save for the MAC address (if you have code or apps using the previous MAC address they will break).

However, after this things should be OK.

I fooled around for this for quite a while to make sure that it worked reliably (being upset that Time Machine backup did not work out-of-the-box).

The only real thing you need out of the .pvm file is the .HDD file buried inside the .pvm (its down two levels).  

You can use the "Parallels Mounter.app" to do this.

I cannot find it on my disk but it shows up when you use the "Secondary Click" option on the track pad to open up the "Open With..." dialog.

The disk mounter doesn't say anything at all if the disk is okay - no message appears and at best a brief progress bar flashes on the screen.   However, if you look on the Finder panel you'll see the drives a mounted Mac drives.

You can use this to move files on and off the Parallels drives.

Regulating Guns or Prescription Drugs: Which will Save More Children?

Yet another area where our "modern society" falls down in support of children is drug addiction.

Each day in 2009, the last year with statistics for this (see this), some thirty five (35) or so infants were born addicted to an opiate.  That's 13,000 addicted infants a year that we know about (many more are probably born to mothers who simply take the children home without the hospital ever noticing a problem).

There is no check for this condition and these infants are detected only if the present problematic symptoms to the hospital staff.

It seems to me very likely that these children will not have a good chance later in life because there will be a propensity to use these drugs again (many child Parigoric and codeine "victims" today report that opiate pain killers such as Vicodin and OxyContin offer similar effects as those these medications gave them in their childhood).

If you read about the effects of these drugs on infants as well as the effects of the drugs they use to wean them off of the pain killers (methadone,  clonidine, and phenobarbital) you'd really have to wonder about our society and our medical system.

After all many of these mothers no doubt take part in "free needle" programs.

Opiate pain killers for children were available without prescription and over the counte at pharmacies through the end of the 1960's.

However, most were not used for infants.

But today pregnant mom's use of "little helpers" like Vicodin and OxyContin virtually assure that the infant will be thoroughly addicted at birth.

From figures in the article linked above probably three quarters of all children born on these drugs are born into poverty and Medicaid (you and I) pay what I estimate to be at least a billion dollars a year for their care.

Note that the number of these children increased at a rate of about three-fold from 2000 to 2009.

You might ask what's being done about this.

Unfortunately you'd discover that the answer is basically "absolutely nothing" - save for actually treating the infant if its discovered to have a problem.

If you drove drunk to the hospital to have the child the police might be involved.

Not so in these cases.

I have to wonder why...?

Yet the drum for "gun reform," as an example, beats on after Sandy Hook.

Aren't these drugs have a similar effect on our children?  Sure, the children don't die immediately, but for the rest of their lives they will suffer the consequences of the actions of their adult parents.

Today's drug model is the result of the 1960's "if it feels good do it" model of thinking, er, well, not thinking.

The concept of "consequences" was lost on that generation.  "If it feels good do it" really doesn't get into what your actions might do for someone else, i.e., leave them a mess to clean up while you're feeling good.

There also is no responsibility model.

Today medical practitioners dole out opiate pills like candy - no checking if they are required and using them so that you don't "feel pain."

Yet for many things, particularly surgery or injuries, pain is actually a good thing.

It tells your body about what's wrong and helps to prevent you from making things worse.  (I guess that's why the medical establishment want's to eliminate it.)

Humans are very poor at relating results over a long period of time.

When the US Congress was created in the 1770's a two year term for a representative meant that spent about 5% of your 36 year long life serving your country.

I argue this is a significant portion of someone's life at that time.

Today its perhaps half of that at 2.5% of your life.

Consider that kids today spend 32 hours (see this post) a week in front of a TV.  As adults that 19% of their life.

And let's not consider smartphones, twitter and Facebook.

So those making decisions for our well being probably spend more time in front of the TV than they do working on the future of our country.

And that's just TV time.

In the 1770's there was, I think, a lot more focus the "big picture" of what was right and wrong, of what was responsible and irresponsible.

Today this is lost.

And these children are a symptom of that.

In Each Case A Child Dies...

I have been following with difficulty the various news and US leadership skawnking about "Sandy Hook."

However, there is so much "noise" and posturing I thought it best to work backward from the consequences and look at the causes.

At the end of a long set of roads we have a single, horrific consequence.

A dead child.

More specifically, a number of dead children.

Now in 2007, from which the statistics below were taken, there were some 82 million children 19 or under in the US.

Of this 82 million 54 thousand or so died.

Some 36 thousand of "natural causes" - basically disease.

Some 11 thousand of "unintentional injury."

Some 3,300 from homicide.

Some 1,600 from suicide.

There there is abortion.

Some 1.2 million per year (about 1 in 100 children conceived).

Perhaps 18,000 or so late term abortions each year (post 21 weeks).

Perhaps 5,000 post 24 weeks.

Of these 5,000 perhaps 1,000 (see chart from here above right) would survive.

So by the "right" of Roe v. Wade at least some 1,000 children die under protection of the law - legally and without question by any authority.

This death rate is clearly supported (as indicated for a lack of support on a ban, see this) by the current Administration (see this video from 2003):

So here we have a legal activity - late term abortion - clearly killing children that would otherwise live.

And the decision, according to the Administration, is clearly in the hands of those responsible for the child.

Clearly taking the life of children is supported by law in the US.

At least some of the time.

And merely suggesting that this right be eliminated invokes rancor from its supporters.

And the law stands.

Yet these same people believe that somehow "guns" should be banned or limited.

Because of violence to children.

As if late term abortion is not violence to children.

"Guns" are legal and are constitutional protected.

Just like Roe v. Wade.

What's wrong with society today is that it works forward from "policy" positions for people who are concerned about personal or political or social agendas.

I am for this or that "right."

Yet there is still a body count as a consequence.

A body count of children.

Neither guns nor abortions kill more children than automobiles.

But, they say, automobiles are not "designed" to kill people, like guns.

Yet abortion clinics (as well as the tools they use) are designed to do exactly and no one is suggesting they be banned.  (How is the set of tools used in a late-term abortion different than a gun?)

This mistake here is to believe in the "agenda" over its "consequences."

Both can and do kill.

Abortion, on the other hand, is an "allowed" means to terminate a child's life.

I think that if its wrong to kill a child then its wrong no matter how it was done.

Society, in point of fact, has made a large effort over centuries to reduce the infant mortality rate in this country - not as well as other countries - but at least an effort was made.

However, it will never be zero - there will always be accidents, suicides, and so on.

But what can we do about the deliberate deaths of children?

Nothing if the reason is a sacred cow of some form or other.

One should note that today the misuse of a gun is a crime - a gun by itself does nothing.  Only when a human misuses it does it become so...

The body count is easily hidden by the agenda.

If children dying is a societal problem then we must look across the board for causes and address them.

Not selectively at particular cases that fulfill specific agendas.

For Conspiracy Theory Fans... (Aurora, CO)

From the movie "The Dark Knight Rises" (taken from this YouTube clip) -

You see "Aurora" -

Now for the conspiracy theory:

Mass Murder: A Rising Tide - But What is the Cause?

Red shows increase in "massacres"

David Kopel, author of the Law School Textbook "Firearms Law and the Second Amendment" (Aspen, 2012) has some interesting comments on youth and unusual violence in the WSJ recently.

Basically gun-related murder has been declining (for a variety of reasons including better medical triage of victims) over the last few decades in all categories but one.

Mass murder.

As is shown on the chart at the left and according to the article "In the 1980s, there were 18. In the 1990s, there were 54. In the 2000s, there were 87."

A slow and significant increase year to year.

The chart plots this against video game sales in units sold.

Of course, this chart does not show causation but rather correlation.  More video games sold implying more mass murders.

But any number of other societal "ills" that have been on the increase, including government debt, could have been used as well.

Kopel claims that media such as cable TV violence plays a roll.

Kopel also points out some interesting things:

First. "The media rarely mention the mass murders that were thwarted by armed citizens at the Shoney's Restaurant in Anniston, Ala. (1991), the high school in Pearl, Miss. (1997), the middle-school dance in Edinboro, Penn. (1998), and the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo. (2007), among others." (I linked to the Endinboro incident, the rest are easy to Google.)

I don't live that far from Edinboro and I had not hear of this until writing this article.

Second.  Gun crime has been over all steadily decreasing even in the face of the availability of assault rifles, 30-round clips and other "dangers" forms of firearms and accessories.

And finally and most interesting is this (which was also true in Sandy Hook): "At the Clackamas Mall in Oregon last week, an active shooter murdered two people and then saw that a shopper, who had a handgun carry permit, had drawn a gun and was aiming at him. The murderer's next shot was to kill himself."

These people are not fearless criminals, or people out with a blood vendetta, they are cowards.

Cowards taking the cowards way out.

In Clackamas the shoot had a large number of rounds and intended to kill many more people than he did.

But when faced with a challenge he shot himself.

Apparently this was true in Sandy Hook as well.

 In Colorado the shooter was apprehended unharmed.  Another sign of simply "giving up."

Why?

Why do you do this and then suddenly stop?

I think the answer is simple.

Its what happens in video games.

First, in any shooting video game when you are overwhelmed by "bad guys" you die only to be reborn a few seconds later with another life.

Second, there are no consequences to the violence you might do while alive in the game because when you are reborn to your new life the scenario usually starts (mostly) over.

Third, there is never any "harm" done to your person.  The screen will turn red with fake blood, the controller will shake in your hand, but nothing bad happens to you.

Fourth many people enter a kind of "fugue state" when they play games - especially in final "battles" at the end of various challenges.  The players are psychologically dissociated from their surroundings, i.e., don't respond to input from outside the game.

(Now I am not meaning to imply this as any form of excuse but instead as an observation of fact.)

So at least superficially these shooters act almost as if the real world is the "game world."

And someone pointing a gun at them triggers them to kill themselves.

But wait, isn't shooting yourself with a gun exactly the same as someone else shooting you with a gun?

I would think so...

In war people fight bravely until the end, they don't kill  themselves.

But clearly, at least in the mind of these shooters, taking their own life with a gun is different than someone else doing the exact same thing?

Why?

Again, I think it has to do with how they imagine themselves to be in their game "fugue state."

I am in charge of me while I am doing this.  The appearance of someone else is disrupting my fantasy essentially.

A fifth element here is what I will call, but again not excuse, "mental susceptibility to faux reality."

(Most video game makers display warnings about dire consequences to using them, e.g., seizures and other bad mental effects....)

This may be induced or aided by any number psychological drugs to aid in depression, etc. - all or most of which claim "thoughts of suicide" as a side effect on the print outs you receive with them.

People literally (and perhaps with the help of drugs, video games, or just on their own with the help of an illness) imagine their way from where they are into a fantasy world where they are doing things for real.

Of course, shooters like Charles Whitman at the University of Texas in 1966 had no video games.  Nor even our modern culture to blame.

Whitman even left a detailed account of what was happening to him, for example, he wrote "However, lately (I cannot recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts" and "To Whom It May Concern: I have just taken my mother's life. I am very upset over having done it. However, I feel that if there is a heaven she is definitely there now [...] I am truly sorry [...] Let there be no doubt in your mind that I loved this woman with all my heart."

So it seems clear that people like Whitman simply had an irrational urge (he love's his mother yet he kills her) to do these things, and as he writes, he himself does not understand why.

So my thesis is simple.

Video games and modern life with its culture of violence (TV, media, copycatting), lack of close contact, work over family, and so on exacerbate tendencies toward this kind of killing (such as Whitman).

Hence the rising tide of mass murder.

The tendency has always been there but today the societal governors that limited it have been removed, e.g., video games (like sniper games) reenforce this kind (like Whitman's) of thinking.

While guns are convenient tools for someone like a Whitman or Lanza the cause (and therefore the treatment, is societal).

Kopel also points out that today there are fewer beds for the mentally ill than any time since 1850.

And one final point - prior to the 1960's or early 1970's mentally ill people were put into hospitals - not allowed to run loose in society unchecked (today we require mentally ill to "take their meds" - someone who hallucinates for example - how much sense does this make???)

People like Abram Hoffer had discovered (there is also a documentary on his work) that diet could be used to cure mental illness.

So perhaps its as simple as modern society creating an environment where lack of proper nutrition is sending people over the edge.

In any case, and regardless of whether my thoughts make sense or not, there is a rising tide of mass murder (which, by the way, can be accomplished with many other things besides guns).

If we don't do something about the cause no one will ever be safe.

US Medical Care - Far More Deadly than Guns

Liza Long's Michael

The Anarchist Soccer Mom writes "Thinking the Unthinkable" about her son who struggles with perhaps mental illness or perhaps a severe discipline problem.

You have probably seen the on sites like the "Huffington Post" or Facebook under the title "I am Adam Lanza's Mother."

This post, which you should read before proceeding, I think touches only on the tip of the iceberg.

Liza Long, the original author, describes her troubled thirteen year old son.  He does not listen, he threatens violence, he is out of control, he is medicated, he is probably a math or science genius.

The threatens to kill himself and her.

Because he is only thirteen her she probably still has the upper hand, but that will not last.

Eventually he will outgrow her mentally and/or physically and she will lose that The Anarchist Soccer Mom writes "Thinking the Unthinkable" about her son who struggles with perhaps mental illness or perhaps a severe discipline problem.

You have probably seen the on sites like the "Huffington Post" or Facebook under the title "I am Adam Lanza's Mother."

This post, which you should read before proceeding, I think touches only on the tip of the iceberg.

Liza Long, the original author, describes her troubled thirteen year old son.  He does not listen, he threatens violence, he is out of control, he is medicated, he is probably a math or science genius.

The threatens to kill himself and her.

Because he is only thirteen her she probably still has the upper hand, but that will not last.

Eventually he will outgrow her mentally and/or physically and she will lose that control.

Her main point, I think, is that society does not care about her child or his behavior because he has not criminal record.

She wrote: "When I asked my son’s social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. “If he’s back in the system, they’ll create a paper trail,” he said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you’ve got charges.”"

You really have to think about this.

No one wants to or can help this child unless he is labeled a criminal.

Her main point, I think, is that society does not care about her child or his behavior because he has not criminal record.

She wrote: "When I asked my son’s social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. “If he’s back in the system, they’ll create a paper trail,” he said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you’ve got charges.”"

You really have to think about this.

No one wants to or can help this child unless he is labeled a criminal.

This is also true if your child is on drugs, or steals things, or drives around in a car without a license, for example.  If he or she commits no crime as far as the law is concerned then no one cares, except, perhaps for the parents.

Similarly, the schools don't care either.  If your child does not cause the school problem then they don't care.  However, if they do so much as bring an aspirin to school they will be expelled.

Why are things this way?

There are several answers, I think.  None of them good.

Point one. As a child I had many grade school (first through third) friends who regularly used guns for hunting.  They owned guns their parents had given them.  Some drove tractors on the road.

No one caused a problem at the school or at home, no one go shot or run over.

The reason?

These children all had strong discipline at home.  They were always supervised by a parent, often they worked (as did I with them on many occasions).

A great deal was expected of them - intellectually and in terms of self control.

Think about Liza Long.  She does not write of a husband or anyone able to discipline her child.

Her son is smart and able, he knows the rules about "his rights."

He uses this against his own mother.

This child has no discipline or self control.

Children like this did not exist in schools fifty years ago.  It was not allowed by the adults in charge.

Today children like this permeate the school environment, drugged into submission and only a few missing doses away from causing problems.

Point two.  Society had a model that enforced, in one way, significant control over children in terms of behavior.  Children were not left alone because "idle hands were the devils workshop."

Today children have nothing but lots of "alone" time where no one supervises them either because of work or parents in school.

The children are left literally to run wild.

Parents in the olden days watched out for all children.

Misbehaving children received corporal punishment that worked.

Today a parent so much as touches a child roughly and, as Liza Long's child says, "the child knows his rights."

You have to ask yourself what about everyone else's rights to be free from tyrannical tots?

Today, as "Anonymous Mom" says in her guest post, children control their parents in stores.

You even see TV ads where the tikes are instructing their parents in the purchase of cell phone plans - showing the parents as stupid and foolish.

At the same time children were often allowed, in many way, more freedom.

My hunting 7-year old friends, for example.

As boys my older cousin and I manufactured our own explosives, guns, high voltage tesla coils, rocket cars and bikes, choppers, and arc welders, among other things.

And, while mom might have been wringing her hands while we did it, we were allowed as long as we respected the rules (we were, for example, not allowed to posses or use adult's gun powder as other children were, we had to make our own).

Today we would be in prison along with mom.

Yet these very experiences created for us livelihoods later in life that would feed us and our families for decades.  These experiences led to an interest in chemistry, physics and math.

Today no one supervises children - they are too busy.

So the children are allowed nothing dangerous and have only ultra violent video games and social phone interactions to amuse them.  These interests lead them either no where or down the road that other killers have followed.

The outlets available to children in the past with high IQ and inquisitive minds have been stripped away by society.

Part Three.  Rambunctious boys today are quite simply have their intellects "chemically neutered" like Liza Long's son.

They are given dangerous drugs that cause them to sit quietly and not act out.

These drugs, as is demonstrated by the many violent school problems in the past, also serve to build up dangerous tendencies in these same boys.

Tendencies that are expressed in violence at school.

Long ago society deemed that recess was a "bad thing" and it was banned.

So boys and young men have no outlet for physical release, e..g, running, jumping, playing baseball.

Prisoners are treated better.

Those struggling, like Michael Long, will no doubt discover that in Colorado and Washington State marijuana will settle them, at least for a while.

In Summary:

Liza Long concludes that her son is mentally ill and the state does not wish to treat him unless he is a criminal.

This is partially correct.

In fact, the problem is far worse.

Boyhood is today a crime by and large.

And society at large enforces this via "chemical neutering" and making many activities young males engage in crimes or at least grounds for permanent expulsion from schools.

Today as long as you "behave" in school you are rewarded with not being an outcast.

As a little egg as long as you sit in your little slot in the egg carton and don't cause trouble no one bothers you.

Society has even invented "self esteem" to make you feel good about the loss of control over your life and your despair about being a "neutered failure" a "good thing" - at least as far as the rest of the herd is concerned.

Most billionaires are high school dropouts.

Outliers tend to see what others do not and can often create good or societal advantages from what they see.

But today being an outlier is a crime.

The medications society builds, for profit I might add, do not consider the long term consequences of what they do.

In fact, I wrote just the other day about how the failed treatment for C. diff was in fact killing 14,000 people a year.

But for some reason no on cares about this...?

Society does not want old people around (many old people get C. diff) so no one cares much about these 14,000 deaths.

After all, their are just old people sucking up Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits from future generations.

Guns don't kill as many people per year as C. diff - a disease you can mostly fix with $15 at Walmart.

Society allows these 14,000 deaths due to C. diff for no reason I can see.

Medical errors (preventable medical errors) kill some 195,000 people a year (see this).

Guns murder only some 10,000 or so.

So, for just two things our wonderful society provides - C. diff treatment and preventable medical errors - some 210,000 people are killed each year.

But in our sick society there is no outrage over this.

No president cries when our medical system kills 210,000 people each year.

The problem is our society.

It no longer values life.  Only politics and group membership.

No one stands up for these 210,000 killed each year (this is like 21 Sandy Hooks each day).

So there is no "Facebook" like to go with...

How can we stand by while this carnage goes on and no one even bothers to report about it?

Year ago I wrote how, for example, a simple medical check list can significantly reduce these problems.

Anonymous Mom - School Violence and The "Herd" Socieity

[ From Facebook - reprinted with Permission ]

By "Anonymous Mom"...

I’m so tired of fighting the herd. 

If those people knew or even tried to understand how much I’d love to be able to just put my kids into school for my own sanity some days because of the noise level, or I just don’t want to deal with another question of why is…… 

I love my children, I do, but it is tremendously difficult to have one income I get that.  You know that. You do it too. It’s not about luck. It’s about making sacrifices so your child can grow up.  Just that, grow up.  Growing up right is just an added bonus these days, I guess. Lucky for you that your girls are old enough where you can work some. I don’t begrudge you that, btw, you have more mom time in than I do, so you get the benefit of older children. 

Doing the right things is always going to be more difficult than doing what isn’t right.

I can’t help but wonder how many parents in Newtown were happy on Friday that their baby did inconvenience them by being sick and unable to go to school. 

I don’t think parents love their children any less, I just think they have fucked up priorities.  My sister-in-law's income pays for the house, the cars, all the bills, the groceries and all the other stuff.  Her husband won’t stay home with their three boys because he doesn’t want to do it. He’d rather have a relative help pay for daycare because his paycheck doesn’t cover all of the expense for it. 

WTF? 

He is creating a bill that costs them more money so he can work.  Yep, that’s a bit of gender bending, but there is more to it than that. It’s single mothers and single fathers and the needed double income to sustain a family to “modern” standards. No one wants to hear the truth because they have to stop and think and do something that might be difficult. 

Of course the messenger always gets trampled.

The herd is big and the herd is mean and schools teach children to be one of the herd.  Our kids have what should be rated R lives because of bullying!  That’s fucked up.  Maybe, possibly, I could understand it IF and that’s a big IF, the social pressure was used to make them be better people, but it’s not. It’s about fashion and who’s having sex and who is using what chemical substance, but you can’t even count on a good bully to egg a child into being stronger than s/he could have been without the bully there.

Nope, it’s about making people conform to BAD behavior.  Our generation that is starting to run this country was turned out by the same failing education system that now traps our kids.  Violence in schools is down from the 1990s, BUT, social violence is up and so is school massacres.   Maybe I am a bit warped and think boys having a fist fight in the halls a little more often is better than children dying in an environment that should be safe is better.  I know exactly why our education system is failing.

It’s parents. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made the teachers in the girls’ school whimper and smile at the same time.  They hate that I hold them completely accountable for how they educate my child, but they are also thrilled that a parent is so actively involved in their education.  There are sooooo many different options for child education these days. 

Hardcore homeschooling which I am not brave enough to do yet. Cyber schooling, Co-op schooling.  Charter schools, private schools, and of course public schools.  It is not logical with all of the “family friendly” legislation for business and education options that we cannot privately come-up with a better education solution that can be adopted on a public scale, even if it means going back to one room school houses where 1 teacher teaches their block of students in a private, more secure place. 

We have options and educations to come up with a better way, but it’s inconvenient and hard to make the changes.  Everyone takes the criticism of the system of parents, teachers, faculty and government personally when it’s not personal.  It makes me sick.  And I do feel like it’s our version of the Hunger Games. How many kids can be killed this time to keep our attention focused on gun laws so that we can’t focus on how we are all failing our kids.

No parent is perfect.  It’s just not possible.  Some make better decisions and choices than others, but we should be allowed to stand up and point our fingers (even though it is rather rude to do so) and say MORON when someone is being a moronic parent that puts the rest of our kids at risk.  Peer pressure is not always a bad thing, but we don’t harness the good it can do anymore and only focus on the bad.  It works for adults just as much as it does for children.

We’re all pressured into looking the other way unless it’s something the authorities can be called into handle.

God bless my youngest, she’s only 9 right now and can get away with telling a parent they are letting their child behave like fool. 

Usually in the form of (really loudly) “Mama, why are they letting their kid behave like that?” 

So innocent and yet so effective. Both of us get compliments on how well behaved and how mature our children are.  Why?  Because we parent them. I don’t get why this is such a difficult concept to understand. 

My sister has her boys up at 6AM every morning.  They are out the door by 7, she doesn’t see them again until 6 and boys go to bed at 8.  On Saturday she leaves them with the husband’s’s family (the one with the 12-year-old in counseling for violence in day care) to run errands, and then on Sunday she and her husband sit obsessively focused on their phones while expecting the other children to watch hers so she can get a much needed break from having to run around all week and work 40-60 hours depending on the week.

I can’t think most of America is much different than that.  She IS mainstream America down to her little toes. She lives it and breathes it and loves it and thinks she’s being a good parents only seeing her kids three hours of the day. 

WTF? 

Couple that with high stakes testing. 

Poor discipline in schools, because you know, my little angle would NEVER do anything wrong.  ::SNORT::

They are children. 

They do most things wrong until they are taught to be better. 

No moral values (I don’t think all morals should be taught in school, but you know, the basics, don’t steal, don’t hit, be fair, blah, blah, blah) there are universal morals everyone can agree on, even Christians and Atheists. Don’t kill your fellow student. Don’t prey on the weak. 

We can all agree these are wonderful things to be taught, but dear God, there is hell to pay if a school tries to enforce it.  Too much emphasis on shitty self-esteem when a good dose of learning how to gain self-respect would be better.  All kids are good at something. Help them find their talents and build on those. Not everyone needs every course taught in school to be well rounded.  They need to be focused into doing jobs they are talented at.  Schools USED to be that way, but now it’s all focus on getting into college where a growing percentage of those kids in college will not find a job that is able to pay off the loan for their education.  It was never like that before, but here we are now hailing education like it’s some kind of inanimate savior. It’s not. Knowledge is a tool to have a better life, nothing more.

I know, I am ranting again, but everything in our country is so fucked up and it’s because of a faulty education system which includes EVERYTHING. Kids learn from EVERYTHING.  ADD and ADHD are a joke.  I’d be bouncing off the walls too if I only got 1 half hour break during 8 hours of school time. 

I can’t focus worth shit on something I don’t enjoy. 

We over medicate and over educate our kids to the point it’s all just useless.

Yes, SOME kids need to be medicated. Some people need a shit ton of education for the field they want to be in, but I’d settle for the cashier at the grocery store to be able to do basic math when handing me change in case the power goes out and she had to figure it out without a computer telling her what the change is.  My own child’s issues have taught me SO much about how, why, and who is failing our kids.  It’s appalling how many things slip through at the smallest level, and it’s just devastating when something heinous hits the news about more children dead.

Yes, there will always be guns.

There will always be bad people. 

People are always going to die in mass murders.

It is a part of life and is something children need to learn about and how to handle, and how to cope with, but they should not go to school fearful they won’t come home alive. But we accept this. 

How can we expect the next generation to be better than us when we allow them to be traumatized like this?  Hell, when we allow us adults to be traumatized by this. 

Armed security firms at schools is a HORRIBLE idea. 

Sooner or later it will be get “education camps” out of something like that and the state really will own our children. 

I attended a school with armed guards, police presence, security cameras, having to go through metal detectors and being frisked by guards if the suspected you MIGHT have something you shouldn’t have.

All privacy is gone. 

Lockers can be searched at the will of the school without any kind of warrant. 

Schools already have the power to keep your children from you if they are in a state of emergency.

It only gets worse and the best way to fight that is to lawfully remove yourself and your children from the situation. 

My youngest gets in trouble for talking (IMing) her friends in class.

Their lives are normal.

They just don’t go to a public school. 

There should be no stigma attached to that, but there is.

Like somehow all homeschooling parents live in a one room shack up in the mountains with their rifles ever at the ready just in case one of them tries to get us. 

No. 

I had an adult tell me that she has more adult conversation with my kids than she does with most adults. 

They are polite, helpful, kind, caring, well behave, well-educated and well socialized people. It can be done, if you are willing to make the tradeoffs. 

Too few people are willing to do it because it’s not convenient for their life plan.

It just pisses me off.  My girls probably would be in school  if I’d have never attended the high school I attended. 

I’d probably have less strong opinions on what to do about the problem with our education system, but I did go to a school where there was gun violence and I also saw the weapons kids got passed the security. 

The next step is to literally have schools like a prison, only, prisoners get more time outside during the day and have the freedom to use the toilet when they need to use it. We don’t need more security, we need more parents to push back against the herd until it starts running in a better direction.  Too bad it’s easier for them to adopt the bad aspects of society than it is for them to adopt the harder, better ones.
 

More Obese Children than Starving Children in the World

According to this link more children in the world today are obese than hungry?

What does this mean?

It means very simply that the food we are feeding children is bad.

The site also reports that "... since 1970 men and women worldwide have gained slightly more than ten years of life expectancy overall, but they spend more years living with injury and illness."

So what is modern society, world wide, doing to our children?

It would appear to be abusing them by over feeding them or, more likely, feeding them bad food.

I have written a lot in this and the personal blog about the SAD (Standard American Diet) state of nutrition in the country.

Its shit.

We sell processed food that's either nutritionally deficient or full of things that are bad for your body.

To wit: Bromided Vegetable Oil (BVO).

A flame retardant or something along those lines.

Now found in Gatorade according to this NY Times story.

From the link: "Brominated vegetable oil contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, used in things like upholstered furniture and children’s products. Research has found brominate flame retardants building up in the body and breast milk, and animal and some human studies have linked them to neurological impairment, reduced fertility, changes in thyroid hormones and puberty at an earlier age."

Interesting.

How do we justify this as a society?

Little wonder our kids are unhealthy and fat.

Like a school shooting does the BVO do the harm or the idiots putting into the Gatorade?

Its found in more than just Gatorade.  According to the NY Times its also found in: "Mountain Dew, also made by PepsiCo; Powerade, Fanta Orange and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group."

One imagines that at some level there is a "company meeting" where Bob the accountant gets up and says "Gee, we could make $.001/botttle/can of X if we switch from X to VBO."

One also imagines that the other folks in the meeting, many with small kids or in fact drinking this stuff themselves say, "Sure, why not..."

Probably some guy or girl pipes up in the back and says "hey, a, isn't this banned in Europe and on the FDA soon-to-be-bad list?"

Then someone's cell phone goes off: little Johnny needs to be picked up from school.

An alert pops up on someone's laptop: "Meeting in 5 mins..."

A quick show of hands and in goes the BVO.

Everyone runs to the next meeting.

Now imagine at the UN where we purchase all the food for starving children.

And the companies, owned by relatives of the UN, vying for contracts based on lowest price.

Bet the same thing happens...

1960s USA Toys Build China's Future

In the late 1950's and 1960's toys for children were far different than they are today.

When I go shopping with Mrs. Wolf to purchase toys for grandchildren I no longer see the staples of toys my generation used: Erector sets, blocks, space ships, building sets, army men, plastic airplane and car models.  (To be sure some small bits of this remain, Lego, some car models, but by and large this has all been replaced.)

You've probably driven over a bridge like this.


As a child I spent a lot of time playing with what are called "panel building sets."

These sets, primarily sold by a company called Kenner in the 1960's offered a variety of interesting kits for building chemical plants, turnpikes and buildings.

Typical at Christmas you would see something like this (images from this site):

A child poring over instructions on how to build a turnpike or a chemical plant.

One of these kits looked like this (from the same site):

You can see the turnpike on the box cover.

Of course there were other kits like such as the "monorail" kit:

As well as the hydro kit:

Each of these kits allowed a child to use their imagination to construct whatever they might imagine.

Today these kinds of toys no longer exist.

However, at least in other cultures the notion of how these toys worked does.

Though I am unable to locate an image the basic idea of these building sets was that things you built were made of upright supports and girders that constructed a basic framework into which roadways, chemical processing tanks or monorails could be installed.

What's interesting is how these ideas are today used in other cultures.

Here the exact same concept is used to build a giant 30 story building in a few hundred hours.

Today's children, however, seem more focused on dolls action figures.

C. Diff Home Solution: A Bucket, Strainer and an Enema Bag

Had you or I invented a disease that's been killing about 14,000 older Americans each year we would be considered the worst of the terrorists ever to walk the face of this earth.

Currently there are two new strains of Clostridium difficile (C. diff) that do exactly this.

This site defines C. diff as "a bacterium that can cause symptoms ranging from diarrhea to life-threatening inflammation of the colon. Illness from C. difficile most commonly affects older adults in hospitals or in long term care facilities and typically occurs after use of antibiotic medications."

C. diff is a naturally (in a small percentage of the population) occurring bacteria that lives in your gut.

In nursing homes and other places that care for older adults C. diff spreads when antibiotics such as clindamycin has been used that wipe out normal gut flora.  This is because C. diff flourishes in your gut when the normal flora are not present.

C. diff, which has always been present in human populations because it occur naturally, wasn't really a problem until the medical profession began to treat it with an antibiotic called fluoroquinolone.  Once treatment began with this at least two unique, mutated strains of C. diff appeared and began to spread - killing thousands of people each year along the way.

According to this NPR article the first virulent strain, FQR1, appears to have been created in Pittsburgh, PA in around 2001.  Pittsburgh is a large, medical hub with a large, university-run medical system.

A second strain, FQR2, appeared in the US and Canada around the same time.

So, quite simply, "big pharma" and fluoroquinolone, when applied in quantity over time to enough people created a killer.

(But no one really cares because this mostly effects only older people and getting rid of them means a smaller fiscal cliff to jump off...)

The real irony here is that C. diff is quite effectively treated with fecal transplants (See this older post I wrote and this CBS News article for details).   What this does is effectively repopulate the gut flora of someone with a C. diff infection with microbes from someone else who has a proper set of gut flora.

I suppose you could do this your self at home with a bucket, strainer and an enema bag if you're handy (I must offer the obligatory statement: I am not recommending this nor suggesting that you try it at home - you must visit a qualified physician for treatment of all disease).  Of course, you'd need someone to donate a sample that had a healthy digestive system - not such an easy find these days I guess...

In any case big medicine doesn't like the idea of this because it basically costs nothing and solves the problem at a rate close to 100% from what I have read.

No one is going to make any money from reselling (literally) someone elses shit.

So how come no one blames the medical establishment for some 200,000 or so deaths over the last twelve or so years?

After all, if the Unibomber were killing that many people someone would bother to take notice.

It turns out that this is allowed because doctors are only practicing medicine.

That's right - they don't have any real responsibility for failure (imagine if they did).

And since things like fluoroquinolone are man-made (synthetic) some empty suit or skirt (professional drug dealer) had to show up at the hospital to push the stuff onto the doctors in the first place.

So as the doctors pick up on this new product (check the walls of their office for posters from the professional drug dealers) it gets adopted quickly (no doubt due to kick backs).  If there are problems the medical review board in the hospital will be careful not to blame anyone.

And if the product mutates the bacteria into a killer of old people, well, er, no one will notice for a long time and life will go on.

Isn't this a great model?

And to think, people wonder why Medicare and Medicaid are so expensive.

(Any collection of older people on Medicare know about this disease, and they rightly fear it.)

Think what it costs to prescribe this and other antibiotics and then what it costs to clean up the mess, as it were, after a bad C. diff infection sets in.  The hospital stays, the specialists, the nursing home care, the sad relatives crying while grandma wastes away and the doctors and specialists just stand around shaking their heads.

Now compare that to the cost of a bucket of shit, a household strainer and an enema bag.

And I made a mistake - C. diff affects some .34% of the estimated 13.7 million kids who received hospital care from 2005 to 2009 had C. diff.

Oops!

Guess I'll have to go before the blogger review board and make a confession...

Asteroid Flies between Earth and Moon

I write quite a bit about "global warming" "climate change."

However, far more dangerous are asteroid fly-bys.

This link to space.com covers a recent one of an asteroid 100m across flying between the earth and moon.  The line in the image on the left is the path of the asteroid 2012 XE54.

This was just recently discovered (as in the last few months or so).

You can see the fly-by here:

http://www.space.com/18850-near-miss-asteroid-flies-closer-than-moon-video.html

Some important points from the space.com article:

- Scientists have discovered about 9,000 near-Earth asteroids to date.

- A million or more such space rocks are thought to exist.

- Its thought that some 4,700 asteroids are 100 m wide and come uncomfortably close to our planet at some point in their orbits.

- Of these 4,700 large asteroids perhaps 30 percent of these large space rocks, which could obliterate an area the size of a state if they slammed into Earth, have been tracked.

- There are even larger asteroids, some 5km across, which would simply wipe out earth life.

Yet we whine and cry about "climate change."

And these large asteroids pass by with alarming frequency; many times we don't even know they are there until they get very close.   There have been several in the last few years according to space.com.

Just one larger asteroid impact would significantly change climate for many years and perhaps wipe out all humanity.

Put apparently there is little government "funding" to study these known-to-exist but not tracked large asteroids.

Despite the bet Bruce Willis movies there would be little hope of humanity deflecting a very large asteroid.  For example, use of high-orbit nuclear weapons for such a purpose would create a large-scale EMP that would destroy much of earth's electrical infrastructure.  (And provide such a device could accurately be delivered and in sufficient time.)
 

Too Much Information: "What Hath God Wrought!"

Today the "internet," as its called, uses about 1.5% of all electrical power on earth.

That's right, on the entire earth.

More than all the power used to make automobiles.

The "cost" of this power, based on the same site, would be about $8.5 billion USD per year.

Today there are about 2.4 billion internet users.

About one third of the entire planet is "connected."

So we an expect the power consumption to perhaps double in the next several years to 60 nuclear plants worth of "internet."

Of course this does not include cell phone usage, texting, email, and so forth.

What's all this used for?

Its hard to say, but today at least a huge portion in the US is tied up with Netflix-type streaming video; I've seen figures as high as 50%, at least during "peak TV times," of all internet traffic is streaming video.  Of course there is YouTube, Hulu, and all the rest contributing to that as well.

A lot of storage is used for backups, pictures, music, and so forth as well.

When you think about it how many copies of a song really needs to be stored, though?

Take any popular song - each person that downloads or steals or buys it has it on their device.

Perhaps billions of copies of the same 3.5Mb MP3 file.

Then there is the distraction of all this.  According to this article we waste hours each day with Facebook, emails, texts as well as the time to recover from the interruption each represents.

My guess is that most people today who are "connected" actually get much less done.

Back twenty five years ago when I managed a small software development project we had a joke about this.

There was a "boss" who would often run into the office and start babbling about "shouldn't we do this."  More often than not the "this" was something completely off the topic and current focus of the developers.

Over time this became a big joke.

So finally, one day I set out to explain to the "boss" why this was a problem.

He came running into the office waving his arms about something or other completely out of focus relative to what I and the staff were doing.

"Hold on!" I shouted.

I then picked an empty box up off the floor and violently swept the contents of my desktop into the box which I then threw onto the floor.

"There," I said, "now I can focus on you..."

He blinked with surprise.

I said "and when you leave I will dump that box back onto my desk.  It will take me at least a half an hour to sort everything back out and start working again... Now, what is it you want?"

Twenty five years ago this was a joke.

But today all of our 30 billion watts of power spent on the "internet" - more with phones included - is all designed to do what I just described above.

Take your focus and scramble it.

Except today no boss need arrive in your office.

Anyone on the planet can do it.

And as long as your "connected" - particularly with something like a smartphone supporting "notifications" - you can be distracted by the dumbest and must useless nonsense.

In a few years there will be so much internet that no one will get anything done.

Life will become a constant, useless distraction.

And its focus will be extending that distraction to virtually every corner of our lives where its not present already (if there is any for some).

Good and bad information will fly around the planet in seconds wasting peoples time and energy.

In the 1800's Samuel Morse connected Baltimore and Washington DC by a telegraph line.

"What hath God wrought" was the first message transmitted on May 24, 1844 over this line.

Though this was only 160 years ago at the time people did not realize the extent of things like a storm (later on people realized that though it was raining on one end of the telegraph line it might not be on the other - imagine).

But today there is too much information.

Did Britney Spears pass gas?  Did Katy Perry wear red shoes?

Who cares.

But you can bet damn sure that a billion people will know post haste.

And that tens of thousands of work hours will be lost twittering about it.

Historical Climate: We're in a Serious Cold Spell

Here is a relatively old, but well written, discussion of "climate change."

One interesting point from this article is this image:

We can see that since the Jurassic period (the one with the big dinosaurs), where the temperature took one dip, things have been about ten degrees Celsius warmer than today.

In fact, we are today at sort of a historical "low" in terms of temperature.

Lots of other information confirms this general chart.  For example Wikipedia:

Shows a similar geographically recent (10 or so million years) decline in temperature.

So the real question to me is why has, over the last ten million years or so, the temperature dropped so significantly.

The drop cannot be attributed to human's since presumably human's did not exist during the drop.

Our data for these many millenia is I am sure poor - but since climatologists are willing to work with it we must as well when discussing it.

More recently we a more detailed decline in temperature:

We can imagine a sort of middle line of a "running average" temperature through the above data (which is noisy).

What we would see, at least in my mind, is a line which was declining but is now leveling off or perhaps just beginning to rise.

When we look at the millenial chart (top most) we that this makes sense. The global "temperature" has just started to again rise from a typical "low."

And in fact we see articles today, in places like Ars Technica, about how volcanism affects climate and, in fact, confirms recent observations.

Again, and as always, we are left to ask why the climate temperature going "up" at this point is one of major concern.

Clearly we are currently at an millenial climate temperature "minimum."

There is no place to go but up really.

In fact, if you compare the "warm" times with the "cold" times on the top chart we see that, on average, and according to the very same climatologists, the world is much colder than usual historically.

Do we know why it got colder in the last, say, five million years?

The answer is, of course, no.

No climate models exist for this time because we really know very little about it.

So if we don't know why its colder then how can we know why its getting warmer?

Again we see how modern "education" works.

Degrees and science today are about careers and money - not about knowing the difference between what is known versus what can be known and what cannot be known with the data we have.

While climate predictions seem troubling today - they are much less so given are more historic view.

We see that temperature now is in fact far colder than normal.

So we can hope only that it does warm up.

Humans have built their culture in a world where average global temperature is at a low point.

A low point we have no real mechanism to understand or explain.

And as small variations appear with an upward trend we panic.

We panic because we have invested a lot of resources in stupidly believing that the world is a static place - that oceans never rise and fall, etc.

The only certain thing about global "temperature" and climate is that it does change.

Little is known about the historical past - the past astronomical and well as geological past of the earth.

Sure there are Discovery channel specials - but they are simply marketing and speculation.

We have traded pure research for careers and grant money and Andy Warhol fame.

Research is about having the guts to say "we don't know" and about not acting like a "chicken little" without really understanding how or why or if the sky is falling.

More Shooting, Less Death

The graphic at the right (form here) shows something interesting.

Though homicide by gun shot and knife wound is declining in the US it turns out that the number of wounds is actually increasing.

This is because the treatment of wounds, which has improved substantially over the last decade, has become remarkably better.

So is there less violence than before?

No.

It turns out we're just better at fixing up the results.

Modern medicine has learned a lot from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

No longer are fluids given by ambulance teams - more fluid means that the body bleeds more.  Instead platelets and other blood products are provided that cause coaglulation instead.

So what does this mean?

Is our society really better off and less violent?

Probably not.

Instead we are compensating in the medical area.

And, of course, no one who turns up the victim of a gun shot or knife stabbing, has their medical card handy either - so everyone else gets to pay for this mess.

Sort of like little Jr. stealing cookies and, instead of slapping his had, we quietly replace the cookies stolen.

Little wonder Medicaid and trauma-center hospitals are going broke.

And, surprise, surprise, perhaps our society is more violent than we thought.


Of course, its not just gun shots and stabbing.

Violence in the form of hazing and such are spiraling out of control in big universities (see this).

Fueled by alcohol, drugs and testosterone the "freedom" of university life has turned into the freedom to harm yourself and others.

And again, the "cover ups" continue to show that little Jr. is just fine there at "school."

What's interesting is that all of this goes on right under everyone's nose.

No one reports on what hospitals do - just on the number of people that die.

So with fewer dying we're more successful, right?

The bottom line is that people, living packed like sardines into "public housing," big apartment buildings and "dorms" eventually run into problems "getting along" - and violence ensues.

But people flock to cities in droves.

At least they used to - because that's where the jobs were.

But with a bum economy its less easy to tell where the jobs are now - China perhaps?  Soon to be in India?

Cities are becoming black holes of finance and death.

And the occupants apparently don't realize it.

How odd...

An Inconvenient Truth: Today's "Poor" Contribute Far Less

Here are some interesting data and statistics (more and IRS data here):

In the 1950's the top income tax rate was 91% for income over $3.08 million USD and 81% for income over $1.08 million USD.

According to the article: "In 1958, the top 3% of taxpayers earned 14.7% of all adjusted gross income and paid 29.2% of all federal income taxes. In 2010, the top 3% earned 27.2% of adjusted gross income and their share of all federal taxes rose proportionally, to 51%."

Whether we look at the past or today we see that the top earners paid a little less than 1/3 of all US taxes.

More interestingly in 1958 "... according to Internal Revenue Service records, just 236 of the nation's 45.6 million tax filers had any income that was taxed at 81% or higher."

So 236 people out of 45.6 million paid taxes at either of the top two rates, about .0005% of the tax payers.

Then there is this "... approximately 28,600 filers (0.06% of all taxpayers) earned the $93,168 or more needed to face marginal rates as high as 30%. ...  In 2010, 3.9 million taxpayers (2.75% of all taxpayers) were subjected to rates that were 33% or higher."

So over the last five decades as tax rates have decreased the number of "wealthy," at least according to the IRS in that they have to pay 1/3 of their income as taxes, have increased by about 136 times.

So there are more rich people and they still pay in at about the same rate in terms of all taxes paid.

Now let's consider the poor.

In 1958 the bottom two thirds of earners accounted for 41.3% of all adjusted gross income and paid 29% of all federal taxes.

However, by 2010, their share of all adjusted gross income had fallen to 22.5%.

But their share of taxes paid fell to 6.7%.

What accounts for this dramatic difference?

In 1958 the lowest-tier filers making less than $5,000 annually were subject to an effective 20% rax rate.

And finally we see "Today, almost half of all tax filers have no income-tax liability whatsoever and many "taxpayers" actually get a net refund from the government."

So today's "poor" contribute dramatically less to society in terms of income.

In 1958 there were no food stamps, no WIC, no welfare or unemployment as we know it today.  There were far, far fewer in the Social Security and other government systems.

And STILL these "poor" contributed to society.

Their taxes contributed roads (like the interstate system), bridges, tunnels, airports, and all of the modern public infrastructure we still have today.

And the opportunity to move out of the class of "poor" to "rich" increased some 136 times during the intervening decades.

Today the "rich" contribute about as much to society as they have for decades.

And the "poor" contribute far, far less.

So why do today's "poor" contribute less to society?

Clearly they consume a far, far larger portion of societies resources as well - considering the expanse of the programs available to them.

As a nation we have gone into debt in the last decade some $16 trillion USD to help these poor.

Yet they do less, not more.

Isn't "help" supposed to get people going on their own, help them out of a "jam"?

But instead it seems to have had the opposite effect.

Today's "poor" do not contribute to the society.

The "burden" on the rich of paying for the poor has dramatically increase, i.e., the poor, no longer paying for themselves, now must be paid for by others as well.

An interesting question is how is this transition "fair?"

Certainly today's poor, as well as the poor of the past (I grew up poor), had access to things like Interstates, bridges, and so on built by the poor and the rich.

Today these things are paid for only by the rich and still the "poor" use them.

I think that simple facts like this are quite inconvenient in today's "fiscal cliff" debate.

Today there are far, far more members of society contributing far less and, at the same time, taking far more than ever before.

Why do today's poor pale compared to the "poor" of the past?

Because they fail to contribute to anything but today's debt.

In the 1950's the "poor" paid almost one third of all tax revenue.  They lived with perhaps a radio or a small back and white TV.  Most had a car.  Most had a house.  Most had jobs.  Most worked hard.

In my family this usually meant a factory job.

So is this still true today?

In Walmart it is the exception that I see someone like myself paying their own money for their food - most use "ACCESS" cards (food stamps).

Yet they drive big, expensive SUVs and load up on junk food, soda, and snacks.

They are well dressed.

They have cell phones.

The inconvenient truth here is simple.

Today's "poor" simply don't measure up to the "poor" of the past.

Today's poor are "coasting" on the backs of the "poor of the past."

The poor that built the Interstates and bridges.

The rich, on the other hand and according to these statistics, have carried the same burden for the last five decades.  (Yet they do it only with millions more in their ranks.)

The only conclusion you can draw from this IRS data is that its not the rich who are failing to "carry the load" as the current Administration says.

Its today's poor.

They, as a group, have gone from contributing one third of all tax revenue to basically contributing a negative amount.

Why are today's poor less able than those of the past?

They have a better education.

They have better health care.

So those cannot be the reason...

Perhaps its the fact that they don't have to work and pay taxes???

Modern Racism: DNA Testing

Here is a good example of why this kind of medical DNA testing is a joke (this is from the LA Times).

A careful of study of this shows the things that the test tells for sure: Whether you have wet ear wax or not, whether you're a slow coffee metabolizer, and whether your face does or does not flush when drinking alcohol.

All the rest represent some measurement of "risk" - a nonsense figure that doesn't tell you what will (or does) actually happen - just that there is some differing chance as compared to "others."  (See "Cholesterol, Heart Disease, and Magical Thinking.")

Yet today everyone is happy to use this to discriminate between people, for example, by insurance companies.  Certainly race and genetic heritage, for example, can also be detected using this kind of test.

But I imagine that making use of race and genetic heritage would be tantamount to a "hate crime."

So you have to ask yourself why?

Well, for one thing we can see what your race might be (though we cannot know for sure).

And apparently we can see you face flushing if you drink alcohol. 

Perhaps teenagers will test their friends before having them ride along in the car at night while drinking - we don't want the cops to see by our flushed faces we were drinking. 

Perhaps this makes them racists?

Risk means nothing to an individual - it does not say whether or not anything in particular will happen to you.

I might have a risk for some disease but that doesn't mean I will actually get it.

Yet this kind of nonsense is used to promote how wonderful medical testing is (and in this case "big data" which is the same kind of nonsensical data about "all of us").

Yet all it really does is masquerade what is really just racism.

No doubt everyone will rush to embrace this...