The Hunger Games - Link's to Modern Music's Past

There aren't a lot of female electronic music composers from the 1970's (Walter/Wendy Carlos of "Switched on Bach" fame comes to mind, but that was originally recorded in the 1960's).  One I had not heard of previous was Laurie Spiegel who composed the track "Sediment" in the 1970's.

"Sediment" is part of the sound scape in the popular movie Hunger Games.

The sounds of "Sediment" were produced with an ElectroComp 200 and reel-to-reel tape decks. 

During the early 1970's I amassed a collection of synthesizer brochures from the likes of Moog, ElectroComp, and many others.  You could write letters to companies you found the addresses of in magazine articles requesting this.  Sadly the cost of actually purchasing this equipment was beyond my means, much less the reel-to-reel tape recorders required to do serious work.

Ms. Spiegel worked in a five-room tenement with a single 15A fuse.  The energy required by the refrigerator detuned the oscillators so she had to unplug it while working on her music.

"Sediment" can be heard in the YouTube clip below:



Here is an interview with Laurie from 1984.




Speaking of the 1960's we have Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame attempting to resurrect rocket boosters and F-1 rocket motors from the Apollo moon launches (see his Bezos Expiditions website).

Like me Bezos was apparently inspired by the 1960's efforts of man to do more with himself than sit around watching reruns of Gilligan's Island.  In the 1960's there was, at least in my mind, an effort by human's in general to look beyond themselves, i.e., reaching the moon.

I remember in the early 1970's looking at the writings of Bob Moog (of synthesizer fame) in the Electrical Engineering Library at the University of Wisconsin Madison (I was probably about 14 or 15 at the time).  In those days his synthesizers were a novelty and he published their schematics in various EE journals of the day (such as ElectroNotes which began publishing in 1972).

I still remember finding the old, green leather bound journal archives and his articles.

His electronic music circuits are remarkably simple - so simple that you could Xerox the pages out of the journal, take them home, and breadboard them on your own - which I attempted to do.

I did not live in Madison at the time but I was fortunate enough to be there for other reasons over the summer.  During my spare time I sought out the library on my own and spent many happy hours digging through its electronic music archives.

Today it seems we only look inward and we tend de-inspire ourselves to focus on "group thinking."

For me this is a tragic shift away from a time when everyone was inspired to literally be all they could be.  I suppose this was still the pre-Orwellian 1984 state of the world.

The interview's with Laurie Spiegel above are almost thirty years old (and date from around 1984) but clearly they show the way to today's iPad/iPhone and computer-based software synthesis and audio recording.

They show how pioneering her efforts were in electronic music and music in general.

Finally a performance by Laurie Spiegel.

 

Dogma of Stupid: Public Health and Unintended Consequences

As a kid growing up in the 1960's smoking was a big issue in many ways.

For one, it took up time on TV and radio - cigarette jingles where everywhere: "To A Smoker, It's a Kent" and that sort of thing.  But as the sixties came to a close so did the public advertising of tobacco products.  At the same time vast campaigns appeared to warn of the dangers of smoking.

From these humble beginnings today's anti-smoking juggernaut of "class action" cases at the local, state and national levels grew.

Today anti-smoking is a multi-billion dollar industry in the USA.  It has effective reduced the overall smoking rate from around 42% in 1960 to around 19% today.

But that's not all its done in my opinion.  Today we see comments like this in the WSJ: "While tobacco use has plummeted since the 1960s, obesity rates have soared" and "'The gains made by reducing tobacco use over the past few decades are at least partially being offset now by obesity,' said Susan Mayne, professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and associate director of the Yale Cancer Center."  (Underline mine.)

Obesity is now making up for the "savings" of health problems and deaths caused by reducing tobacco.  How nice.

All I can say is what did they expect?

Human life is a game where everyone, save one or two, dies.

That's an effective 100% mortality rate so it not like any fewer people will die.

They will just die of something else.

Something not guaranteed to be any cheaper, simpler or less expensive.

Now one of the ideas behind tobacco was that it offers a "soothing effect" to those that use it.  Nicotine itself, as you may or may not know, does not cause cancer (see "Nicotine, Nazi's and Magical Thinking").  Its the "burning" that emits the thousands of carcinogens that cause problems.

Nicotine itself (found in many common foods like potatoes) provides many people with one form or other of mental health benefits.

Take away these benefits and many people seek some form of "replacement."

Here in the USA that's often food.

Even as a child I recall those who were trying to "quit smoking" - the major side effect was always "weight gain" - even in the early 1970's.

While the "anti-smoking" bandwagon seems like a good one it would seem that no on really thought through where the bandwagon was headed.  People just "piled" on because they hated those "nasty, dirty smokers."  After all who wants to go to a bar or public place where smokers are present?  Its smells.  They're dirty.  You know all the rest.

Only problem is that the bandwagon is now rolling off the edge of the obesity cliff.

With more related cancers, among all the other problems.

Since the wise and wonderful "anti-smoking" wizards never thought about the consequences of their actions it would seem that we are now in a worse pickle with obesity rates (see this handy CDC web page indicating obesity at thirty plus percent for the US population in some states).

People, it would seem, need always need a vice.

And when you take one away they find ways to replace it with another.

In this case food.

And as I have written here its mostly bad food.  Oils engineered by companies like Monsanto, high fructose corn syrup, colorful boxes and cans full of high sugar, high fat junk food.

So as the "big food" juggernaut rolls out to replace "tobacco" as the evil of all health there's yet another ironic twist.

Over the last decade or so the rise of obesity has pushed big pharma bandwagons into the "anti-cholesterol" direction.  After all - its not the food we're eating that's bad - nope.  Its what's in the food that must be bad (after all - eating food to replace those tobacco cravings and to replace the mental tobacco solace is a good thing, right? so we have to make the food less dangerous so we can eat more).

Human taste buds favor salt and grease.  So initially fast junk foods started out with lots of that.  But as the obesity problems grew people though "oh my, we better take those nasty things out of the junk foods so people will keep eating them..."

Bzzzt!  Wrong!

People are eating too much food in the first place.

(I suppose if they had cigarettes they'd at least be eating less...)

So the magical solution is to make the foods have less calories instead of diminishing the quantities  eaten (that would make people cranky and reduce profits so we can't have that...).  So now the foods contain less nutrition so we eat more (our bodies are not used to this - we eat more because out body tells us to because as it processes the last batch it discovers that what it thought was in the food was not there...)

More finely processed crap like sugar and wheat to clog our bowels and cause colorectal cancer.

Better yet we'll create an extra villain called "cholesterol" to blame all this on.  Never mind that without cholesterol (or maybe, better yet...) people are documented to become, well, dumber.  To acquire dementia.

So now people can stuff their faces with tons of junk food, but because its all "low fat" it will make them fat a little more slowly and dumber faster.

My guess is that obesity will soon reach the epidemic levels (maybe 40%) that smoking was once at - as well as bringing along all the negative consequences.

Now certainly there are other factors involved in the obesity epidemic - but that just makes the picture worse.  Now there's both smoking and obesity: 20% of the US smoking and 30% obese.

I wonder how much overlap there is?

Of course, no one takes into account illegal drugs in all this - particularly marijuana.  In fact, according to many web sites marijuana never causes any health problems...

Maybe we should all start smoking that next.

The problem with all this manipulation of public health is that "unforeseen consequences" are not the problem of those creating policies.

(Sadly, they are the problem of you and I who must live with the result.)

Yet every week in the local Walmart SuperCenter I am stupefied by the unbelievable acres of junk food in the aisles.  Color, wondrous boxes of low fat, bad health placation for the masses.

All I can say is "look before you leap..."

What if we had simply let people figure out on their own smoking was bad?

Dogma of Stupid: The US Education System

Everyday I come across evidence of the cost of the crumbling US educational system - most often in the corporate world.  (A system to which we are all now in debt to for roughly one trillion (with a "T") USD.)

A common problem I see is how advanced the concept of "I don't want to take responsibility" has become.  When companies want to make a decision about whether to do something or not the actual something is no longer important.

For example: At company I am familiar with an employee created an extremely advance database optimization - on the order of fifty times faster than what was currently being done for a particular problem space.  Virtually all their customers could make use of this optimization and it eliminated a number of extraneous elements in their over all product.  It also required the use of a single, simple third party element to replace these other elements and cost roughly the same.

The impact of this optimization was huge and would save the company and its customers untold hours of misery, delay and problems.

The solution was finished, i.e., the employee developed, installed, tested with customer data, and so on.  So this was not a speculation - it actually performed some fifty or more times faster.

Yet the enhancement languished because no one could imagine taking on the responsibility of actually changing what they were doing...

So, in effect, a customer that really loved the database and purchased a large number of the products could effectively put this company out of business if their work involved uses of the product where the optimization was not installed.  What I mean by this is that if there product were slow but successful customers would not be able to purchase enough capacity to really make use of the product: this would force the customers into other solutions and leave the company in question without a customer.

Effectively this is a scalability issue, er, rather a lack of scalability.

Yet this fact does not override everyone's fear of changing a bad product for the better.

What I see is the creation of a "hive mind" that operates bureaucratically.  Everyone thinks the same way because thinking on your own makes you stand out and seem different than everyone else.  And we all know from our University days that this is a bad thing.

A symptoms of this "hive mind" is a strange way of vocal inflection when the speaker makes a statement that they are unsure of.  You've probably hear this:

Normally one would ask a question about something that they don't understand:

"How does the boofaroon factor affect the output of framitz module?"

But in bureau-speak this is turned into a statement with an inflection on the last word or too (inflect (raise the pitch of your voice) on the italicized words)

"The boofaroon factor affects the output of the framitz module."

This inflection tells you the speaker is unsure of what they are saying but, rather than ask a question and admit ignorance instead they convert the question to a statement and inflect the last few words.

Based on experience I can only assume that this new speech pattern is the result of education.

Another element of this "responsibility" issue is the "white wash" technique.  This is typically found during a meeting where something very complex is being discussed.  For example, the complex elements of a realtime computer-controlled manufacturing line: computers, software, hardware gizmos all having to work together in unison for long periods of time.

Because of the short attention spans and lack of interest in developing deep understanding of problem spaces what you find is that the "leader" will hone in on one element of the problem - very typically a specific symptom - and worry only about that.

This is accomplished by "white washing" over important or critical information that the "leader" doesn't understand or cannot figure out.

A typical example of this would be the following:

"When the engine RPM reaches X the steering starts to get "jumpy" and vibrate and the vehicle becomes unsafe."

The classic engineering model (used from the pyramids on) is to develop an understanding of underlying cause of the vibrations and to develop a solution built on that understanding: sort through the data and other factors until there is a proven understanding of the problem and only then build a solution that addresses that issue.

Not today.

Instead the solution model is more like this: Its "too hard" to figure out what this vibration is but we know its bad.  We could limit the RPM so that the problem never happens.  (White washing over everything but the most obvious symptom.)

You might hear this in a meeting on the topic:

"We can limit the RPM X - Y so that we don't have the vibration."

(The italicized words are inflected to indicate the speaker has no idea if this is right or wrong in terms of addressing the problem.)

In this case "too hard" typically means digging into complex issues that require real homework to master, or require reviewing lots of old data to see why the problem didn't show up before, that sort of thing.

Things that in the busy corporate world take away from developing meeting notes, filling out reports, and trying to find open calendar dates between six or more people in order to schedule calls and meetings.

Never mind that what might in fact be the problem are bad engine mounts - something truly dangerous.

The thinking is that if no one knows the actual cause of the steering problem no one can be blamed for it and that the obvious symptom was addressed.

These problems stem from today's educational system.  This system does not support the advancement of critical thinking (the skill of solving problems on your own).  Hence the resulting kiddies turned out into the corporate world are not equipped to solve problems.

So strategies like the ones above take over for actually solving real problems.

A classic example of these kinds of thought processes are exposed in the movie "Fight Club" - particularly the Ed Norton character and his interactions at work explaining that things like bad motor mounts are only a problem if they cause more accidents than the "norm" (while in the background a family burns in a car).

Facebook: Satan's Tool?

A while back I wrote "Can Your Social Presence Get You Hired?"  Remarkably this post was extremely popular though I am not sure why.

Recently a couple of events have made me wonder more about this in general...

There have been a number of people posting and writing lately about how employers are asking people for their Facebook passwords as part of their job interview.  As I wrote yesterday about Angela Wesselman, Nev, and the movie Catfish there are any number of good reasons for employers to want to understand more about what you are willing to say and do on-line.

For example, if you are willing to fabricate an extensive network of friends by stealing identities of others will you be an honest cashier?

Or if you are willing to lie about yourself (your appearance, your abilities, your social status) will you make a good law enforcement officer?

Or if you are busy posting about the TV show "Weeds" and are in support of medical marijuana would you make a great candidate for that pilot or school bus driver job?

I think these are all good questions to consider when hiring someone.

Now Facebook has a policy that sharing your password is not allowed - which from their perspective I suppose makes sense because if you do share your password and you Facebook account is corrupted you are more than likely to claim its Facebooks's falult rather than your own or the person you shared your password with (why? because Facebook has more money and money flows from fault).

Now, in the larger context, I've been thinking about the impact of social networking and sharing a la Facebook on our culture and our societies future.

So let's look at this: http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

Dr. Roy Spencer is a former NASA scientist, climatologist and PhD.  He doesn't like global warming and he publishes data about this (and at least some of the sources of his data).

Now what I don't understand is, that given the public is funding much of climate research, why science is not sharing their data with "the rest of us" in this regard.  For example, with Climategate a few years ago hackers stole data on global temperatures.  Why?

Why isn't all the source data material, equations, formulas, and all the rest public?

We are paying for it after all.

Any why aren't the calculations, adjustments, and other fiddling about with the data open as well?  For example, if we think that earth-based temperatures taken are now too close to cities so we make an adjustment - why can't I see that data and the adjustment?  And what about that sea captain data from back in the 1800's - where's that?  Why can't I see that as well?

It would seem to me that sharing of objective data - numbers collected, for example, by satellite is a good thing (and apparently NASA does this with its temperature satellite data).

Why can't we, as it were, "follow the trail" from raw data through each step and adjustment to the final prediction of doom and/or bliss?

Why can't there be a Global FACEBOOK of CLIMATE.  An equivalent to Facebook but containing all the collective scientific knowledge and data about climate.  Who's doing what with the data, formula's, equations, adjustments, programs to produce charts and graphs, everything.

These seem like reasonable questions, don't they?  But its not how this works.

And the reason is simple.

Like the social emotion of "sharing" there is a counter-balancing human emotion: vanity.

Vanity says its my data, its my conclusion, its my work - I don't care who paid for it its mine.

I am not the first to make this point.  As an example for some time there has been an "Open Access" movement to eliminate the current model of expensive scientific journals.  Many peer-reviewed journals cost thousands or tens of thousands of USD per year making access to them possible only through well-funded University libraries.

But for many years now people have been questioning this.  Why should public money on research be bound up in what are effectively elitist journals inaccessible to those paying for them?  (See this NY Times article.)

This type of scientific publishing is a multi-billion dollar market.

And if you consider all the public money spent on academic research the amount is larger still.

Add in the trillion or so USD tied up in student loans (a portion of which fund the eduction of these researchers) and you have an enormous elitist club that takes our money and converts it into inaccessible results that dictate our lives.

But Facebook, I think, is not really about "sharing."

Certainly I don't use it that way - I post these blog entries there so people will read them and, hopefully, click on ads or call me for business.

And my guess is that most people posting for their own vanity treat it the same way.

So its really about greed - or, more accurately - for the promotion of one's self: vanity.

If we were truly social then all the Global Warming data would be freely accessible.

But that's not human nature.

Vanity is pride and pride is, by many, considered to be the root of all sin.

Good to know that 78% of all parents think its okay for their children under the Facebook age limit of 13 to use Facebook anyway.

In fact, according to CNN, then help them lie to get on.

Wolf's Reality Test: Crockumentaries and the Fall of Civilization

Nev photoshoping his supposed internet girl... (from Catfish)

Over the last few months I have crossed paths with a few other "crockumentaries" like the "bird man" video.  One was called "I'm Still Here" - a fake documentary on the supposed decline of the actor Joaquin Phoenix.  The other "Catfish" - a weird story about a couple of New York film makers chronicling a younger brother's interaction with a woman on Facebook.

Today I think we live in a society where this kind of faux reality is becoming more and more the standard fare.

When you think about it these videos are not different than commercial video promoting botox to women, or the group of men sitting around singing about Viagra and their erectile dysfunction.  Both, for the most part, are fictions created for the viewer.  Fictions that you need the products.  Fictions that the product will make you like the people in the videos.

In the past things like movies were expensive to make requiring directors, paid actors, and the like.

Creating faux reality was a corporate endeavor - if I wanted you to buy my hair color I had to make sure of several things when creating a TV commercial: you had to see an image you wanted to be part of, it had to seem "real" to the viewer, and so on.  This required scripts, makeup, sets, and other expensive things in order to make the illusion seem realistic.

But today's "crockumentaries" don't require these things.  I can buy an HD video recorder at Walmart for $200 USD.  I can buy a cheap PC video editing tool for a few hundred more dollars.  I can make a movie.

But there's more.  Even this is out of the reach of people like Angela Wesselman, the woman covered by Catfish.  Anglea starts out (supposedly) by sending a painting her daughter "Abby" supposedly made of a photo in a New York newspaper to the paper.  The paper prints the photo (without fact checking).  Nev - the protagonist in Catfish picks up on this and starts a Facebook dialog with "Angela" the supposed mother of "Abby" - the girl who made the painting.

"Anglea" creates a vast faux Facebook profile - stealing images of others to create a family network including a 19-something year old daughter who is supposedly falling in love with Nev.

Anglea creates this world with a couple of cell phones and what look like a bunch of phony gmail accounts.

Now whether or not the sequence of events in "Catfish" is real or the movie itself is a "crockumentary" is hard to tell (you can see her appearance on "ABC News" from 2010 here).  Of course she seems genuinely sorry for what she did who knows - maybe its all an act as well.

What's fascinating here I think are two things:  First is why someone like Angela (or anyone else including the birdman creator) would do this.

In the case of Angela - presuming again the facts presented - it was a miserable life taking care of a husband or boyfriends severely disabled sons (one of whom has since passed away).  This is depicted in the movie.  So apparently Angela turns to Facebook fantasy to fulfill her emotional needs.

Once, as she says, she "crosses the line" of making up one lie the rest seem to simply multiply on their own.  And though she repeated and genuinely (at least apparently) apologizes (on both ABC News and in the movie) one has to wonder how genuine it really is.

Today, as I said, creating fantasy is cheap and easy.  Its an easy tool to distract yourself.

No wonder employers are asking people to give up their Facebook passwords as a condition of being hired.

Secondly, what does this say about us and our ability to control and govern ourselves as a society and people.

I think it says that as time and technology progress peoples ability to connect with reality diminishes.

Take, for example, a set of articles at the WSJ about whether the sexual revolution has been good for women.  Opposing points are presented: one pro and one con.  (This same can also be said for the climate change debate - and it even involves movies.)

It would seem that both cannot be true.

Yet there are vast associated "systems of belief" that go with each opinion - diametrically opposed - and all "fact based."

Clearly faux reality must be at work here as well.

Today I think people define themselves first with a made-up reality based on simple emotion: I'm a "I hate guns" person.  Something like that.

Then they sift through objective reality and create a subjective-reality-based world for themselves based on these feelings.  Paste together bits and pieces of other peoples material to make themselves into what they are.  Which is fine so long as none of the bits comes unraveled - like Angela Wesselman posting a song she supposedly wrote for Nev on her Facebook - which begins Nev's journey of discovery about Angela.  (Nev's Googling turns up the true singer and writer.)

And while you might argue that's the case with the blog I write (though I provide extensive links to back up my points my impression is that view or few check them)  I still think there a few anchors in reality one can cling to...

I guess I could call these the "Wolf's Reality Test" (one point for each):

A) Does your career and life (including your personal beliefs) happen in real time out in the open, i.e., not edited on film or video, for all to see?

B) Does the "you" you present publicly or privately at any time via any form of media or in person match the "you" defined in #A?

C) Do you actively disengage from situations creating a false perception of yourself?

D) Do you never claim ownership of things you did not not create?

If you score four out of four then you are probably grounded in reality - otherwise I'll be looking for your video on Youtube.

As for employers and Facebook - who can blame them.

I myself have been duped by a variety of employees over the years - and my guess is that if I really applied my own "reality test" to these employees I'd be much better off today.

In closing its interesting to point out that there are legal aspects to this as well.  In the Catfish video the song Angela posts as her own for Nev (the turning point of the movie) is the intellectual property of the writer and publisher.  If Catfish were a true documentary then the songs appearance in the movie is "fair use" and no royalty is owed for its appearance.

On the other hand, if the movie is a true "crockumentary" then the song's use requires a royalty (the matter is still being fought in the courts).

While living a life according to "Wolf's Reality Test" might seem dull and boring I can assure you its not...

Birdman Video a Fake

Camera Shake Analysis of Birdman Video from Wired

I wrote a couple of days ago about Jorn Smeets the flying bird man in "Prometheus and Human Bird Flight."

Turns out it was a hoax (see Dutch video on this page).

The guy, Floris Kaayk, claims to have spent eight months creating the fake video - so I guess we should believe him...  (so you believe someone who has already once deliberately mislead you?)

At Wired.com the resident physics expert Rhett Allain did a very detailed analysis of the flying video (described here, chart at right).  This involved estimating speed, analyzing camera shake, and so on.

No obvious fakery was discovered.

The hoaxer claims to have made and won awards for other similar videos.  One on a fake disease Metalosis Maligna (which is believable up until about 2:30).



So I was taken in along by birdman with everyone else.

I still think that someone will figure this out someday - but obviously it won't be Smeets.

More interesting is why someone would spend eight months creating a fake video like this.

I suppose for generating a huge number of youtube hits or a lot of interest on Dutch television.

Certainly there are numerous humor outlets like the "Onion" that creates a variety of parody news casts.

One thing I don't understand is the idea of creating something as complex and detailed as this video was for essentially no purpose.  The Metalosis video is much more like a classic parody for a couple of reasons.

For one thing the video clearly goes off the rails on believability around 2:30.  Classic humor in that up to that point it focuses on reality: implants and disease.  I, for example, have an implant, and would be interested in dormant bacteria and their effects on it.

But the images of the implant growing out of control and taking over the body are clearly ludicrous.  So you are taken in by the plausibility of the basic assumption of the video only to led into the weeds as the preposterous aspect of what's later shown.  The birdman video is somewhat different than this.

Certainly its possible to do what's shown.  Since the backpack containing the "powered out-riggers" is never shown or discussed it leaves open the possibility its real.

I, for example, could go off to some horrific slum and create a video showing hopeless, destitute children being miraculously transformed into better circumstances through some means that was not clear.  Poor starving little Suzy is now living in LA, has lots of friends and video games.

Would this video be "funny?"

Maybe, but more likely maybe not.

How would I feel finding out that the little children were not helped.

Such a project might show off my video/film making skill...
Similarly the Wright brothers could have gone to Kitty Hawk and made a fake flying video (or in those days I suppose a fake flying "newspaper story."  Since others at the time were also interested in flight the story might be believed like the birdman story - its certainly plausible.
But would it be funny?

I suppose I am too pragmatic (maybe because I am a geezer) to see the humor in it.

Personally I would rather spend the eight months actually trying to make the flying machine than make someone believe I am doing it when I am not.

Short of a career as Joseph Gobbels or as a humor writer for TV I am not sure of the point unless he wants a job in University creating unreproducible research results as I described here: "Falsified Medical Studies the Norm."

And this is really my point for this post.

Today's "kiddies" seem to like the idea of creating the "impression" of something rather than the something itself.  Its your fifteen minutes of fame so go for it.

Unreproducible research is a good example as is the birdman video.  Imagine if instead it was some obscure science research for a PhD.  Would someone really check the results?  Would the purveyor go on TV an trumpet his success in creating a parody?

I doubt it.

Would they take their PhD - probably - as the linked article describes.

Very much unlike the Wright brothers.

Violation: Your Privacy, your Body, and the Digital Age

There's an interesting bit of legal conundrum brewing. 

First, let's look at the flap from several months back about the iPhone.

The iPhone was "tracking" where you went (see this).  Apple was placing information about your whereabouts in a file called "consolidated.db."

A large hue and cry erupted though Apple's explanation was that it simply was trying to improve its knowledge of wireless hot spots and other features of the phone and wifi world in order to give better service.

The backlash toward Apple was significant and they caved in: modifying the software on the phones (I recall at the time (say fall of last year) all sorts of "update me now!" iTunes notifications about iOS upgrades.  Apple no longer is planning to support collecting of an iPhone's unique identifier in its programming API - all in the name of privacy.

No doubt to cut off potential lawsuits.

On the other hand, in that same time period, GM (now "Government Motors") notified customers that it planned to sell location data collected by its OnStar service to third parties without the consent of those generating the data (though I imagine that your actual name would be replaced by a GUID).

Now as I see it OnStar's actions are no better or worse than Apple's - they are simply invading your privacy to make our collective lives better.

Yet for some reason there seemed to be far less concern in general about the GM situation.

But as I dropped my truck off for service (a Dodge - not a GM) this morning these other events started to make me wonder who "owns" the data in my truck's little (its old) computer.  Or, for example, in something like my son's former Ford Edge which had a large, complex and fancy computer system full of music, data and other goodies.

My truck and my phone are no different I suspect in that regard.

Yet if I am in an accident, or worse, cause an accident, any telemetry data (speed, state of the motor and transmission, and so on) are fair game for lawyers.

I suppose the same is true about my phone.  If I wreck law enforcement can view it to see what, if anything, I was doing at the time of the wreck - and fine me if I was on the phone - or, worse, use the fact that I was on the phone or texting to make me liable for the accident.

So even with the GM OnStar "opt out" my privacy is still really not my privacy.

But what if Apple did what GM does: in their giant, 50-page iPhone/iTunes "agreement" they said "we're going to track everything you do on your iPhone and, even if you opt out of it, sell the data to third parties..."

I am not sure the iPhone would be so popular...

At the end of the day small, cheap GPS-based computers connected to cheap wifi/cellphone systems are by definition a "loss of privacy."

Certainly an unintended consequence of laws intended to make us "safer" by having phone location-able (see this) is that our privacy is invaded.

But it seems that people care little for their own rights or privacy when the convenience of having movies and video playing on the smart phone while driving...

Small cheap computers with GPS and WiFi are changing how we live and work.  And there are even more weird ideas brewing.  For example, Pirate Bay, a Swedish BitTorrent site known for allowing the "sharing" of Hollywood intellectual property recently posted on a blog about building "flying servers" with small, cheap $35 USD computers so that no one could "raid" their site.

But why stop there?

Why not build flying DOS attack drones?  Take small, battery-powered helicopters with attached $35 computers and swoop down and jam internet services or wifi in an enemies building?  Or hide them in bushes?  Or spy on the Wifi (kind of like war driving...)

What about private Wifi signals that pass through my body?  If they are literally "inside" me why can't I make use of them? 

If someone were to invade my body with a physical object it would be a crime. 

Radio waves from a Wifi or cell device are physical as well - high energy photons.

Why are they allowed to penetrate my person freely? 

Aren't they invading my privacy as well?

And to add insult to injury if someone plays a copywritten Hollywood movie over WiFi and it passes through my body I am not even allowed to watch - even though the WiFi photons are the same (just with more energy) as the photons I would see with my eyes...

There is legal presidence for all this as well.  Two hundred years ago the notion of microbes and DNA were unknown - unseen.  Today they preside over the outcomes of may crimes and legal actions.

Certainly if I were to microwave someone I would be a criminal - because microwaves vibrate water molecules to create heat and heat can injure people.  But what if I transmit wireless data through a person?  I penetrate their body with radio waves or put on those radio waves something offensive?

What if I don't want your WiFi radio or content penetrating my person?

Even if they don't cause cancer why is this allowed?

Just because I cannot see these waves does not excuse you - and they affect my physical body as well.

I watched a TV program recently where a the information from a magnetic compass was converted to a vibrating body pack.  A volunteer wore the pack for several weeks during which it created sensations on his skin related to compass directions.  Subliminally he always received information about what direction he was "pointed" or how far he was moving.

After the "training period" the pack was removed.

The volunteer was blindfolded and lead around a course.  Without the previous "training" people led around the course were unable to reproduce where they had be led.

However, supposedly because the volunteer was "trained" to sense the magnetic field of the earth (just like birds and other animals), he was able to reproduce the course.

So just because we don't realize these signals are passing through us does not mean that we could not detect them or their effects if we tried...

Prometheus and Human Bird Flight

Modern Robotic Strength Enhancement

First an important follow up:

A while back I wrote about Prometheus in "Insane Medical Patents."  Prometheus Laboratories wanted to patent certain notions of testing for disease such that in order to discover your child had a disease you'd be required (directly or indirectly) to use patented technology - of course filling the coffers of big pharma in the process.

I said this was total BS.

Fortunately for all of us the US Supreme Court agrees unanimously (see this WSJ article).  Wisely they indicated that patenting a natural process - such as extracting DNA from blood for a test - was " [a] well-understood, routine, conventional activity already engaged in by the scientific community."

You can plan on big pharma punishing us by not providing research or drugs for little Johnny's obscure cancer claiming that without these sorts of patents there's no money in it.

In general the US Supreme Court has wisely shown distaste for patents involving measurement of "natural processes" - genes, protein levels, and so on claiming as above that these tests are "obvious."

Human-powerd Bird Flight

Another important event recently (January 20th, 2012) in the Netherlands - Jarno Smeets, using his homemade bird wings - took to the air for the first time:



His wings are semi-powered in that the flapping motion is not human powered.  Instead motors amplify the strength and motion of his arms to give his body the strength to fly.   His concept was to use the concept of robotic prosthetics used to aid amputees to build arm amplifiers - basically the wings follow the motion of his arms and amplify it.

Smeets calculated that a human weighing 80kg needs about 2,000 Watts of power to fly.  Since human arms and pectoral muscles can only support 100W of power out-rigger motors supply the rest of the needed power.

There is some technical background in this video:



Smeets' blog and website is available here which covers this project from its inception.

Modern technology such as extremely light weight fabrics (each wing in the video weighs only 37 oz), high powered batteries, and other lightweight materials make Smeets' project practical - very similar to the Wright brothers first flights.

In 1903 the Wright brothers took advantage of the then-new gasoline engine technology to create enough power to get their flying machine off the ground.

I think the idea of "prosthetic wings," however, is quite different from the various hang gliders, flying suits and other glider technologies available today.  Smeets used Wii controllers to capture the motion of his arms and transfer that data to the outrigger motors for his wings.

"Strength Amplification Suits" (like the one pictured above) have been around in magazines like Popular Mechanics since at least the 1950's.  However building practical versions required technologies that were not available at the time (as mentioned above).

Smeets focuses on this technology only for his wings - which is good because it eliminates a lot of other issues in terms of design.

I think having Wii controllers is excellent as well because the "intelligence" in the flapping system uses the Wii data as guidance; say as opposed to a mechanical linkage directly between his arms and the wings.  This allows an intelligent flight controller to prevent random arm motions from creating aerodynamic instabilities that could case a crash.

While you might thing this is just a cute "demo" remember how far the Wright's first flights were from plane flying even ten years later.

Smeets technology shows the way to get into the air from virtually anywhere.  Once there, like most large birds, human flight would be about riding thermals and gliding rather than expending energy to flap your way somewhere.

As technology improves batteries and materials more advanced flight will be possible.

Vaccinating our way to Poor Health

Antibiotic Resistance: From Todar's Online Textbook of Bacteriology

In the early 1970's in high school biology we learned the difference between viruses and bacteria.  Bacteria were larger than viruses, easier to grow, at least in a high school biology context.

A key element of this had to do with antibiotics like penicillin.  Antibiotics impeded the growth of bacteria but not viruses so no amount of antibiotics would affect a viral infection.  At the time penicillin was still standard fare for bacterial infections - but it was not dispensed lightly.

As a child I had a number of "strep throat" infections.  Each time my mother dutifully took me to the doctor where a "throat culture" was taken to ensure I actually had a strep throat.  Only after such a determination was made scientifically, i.e., someone somewhere I supposed cultured and identified the strep bacteria from the swab they took of my throat, was penicillin dispensed to treat the problem.

By the time I took high school biology my bouts of strep had passed.

During the 1980's when my own children were small the dispensing of penicillin changed dramatically.

With four children its was not often during the winter when someone wasn't sick.  Mrs. Wolf and I quickly learned to identify various types of infections, e.g., ear problems, throat problems, and so on.  So trips to the doctor typically occurred only when we were in new territory, i.e., a fever too high, rubbing ears (ear infection), and so on.

As time went by it became clear that the dispensing of antibiotics had taken on an entirely new form: willy-nilly mass distribution.

I distinctly remember one visit where the doctor inspected one of our children who was running a high fever.

"It's a viral infection," he pronounced, "here's a prescription for amoxicillin."

But, Mrs. Wolf and I protested, that won't help a viral infection.

The doctor eyed us with suspicion.

Most parents demand antibiotics, he offered, they insist on them.

From that point on, even to us as lay people outside the medical field, it was clear that something was wrong with the medical system.

It was around this time that stories about antibiotics "wearing out" for fighting infections started to appear in various parenting magazines.  (In those days there was no internet and magazines were about the only means you had to discover the latest thinking on things like this.)

Stories also emerged that in other countries, like India, the dispensing of antibiotics required no prescription at all.

It became "common knowledge" that the doctors were "over dispensing" antibiotics - apparently at the demands of parents.

The penicillin of my day became the amoxicillin of my children.  Today antibiotics are dispensed in Z-packs or worse.  Something in my day or even my children's day reserved for things like TB.

Antibiotics were discovered accidentally.  I heard an interview with the wife of the discoverer on the radio.  Apparently somehow some mold penetrated some bacteria-infected plates the researcher had set aside for some reason only to later discover that the bacteria would not grow where the mold was present.

The discovery languished as a curiosity for many years until technology was developed to isolate and extract the elements of the mold that were impeding the bacteria's growth.

Unfortunately, just like stories such as "Pandora's Box" describe, the consequences of using the newly discovered magic wand are often overlooked - at least until the end of the story when the unpleasant unpleasant or even deadly results become all too apparent.

Medical science in the 1950's, 60's and early 70's was suspicious of antibiotics and rightly assumed that they should only be used when some test determined their use appropriate.  According to this, as an example, within eight to twelve years after introduction in "wide spread use" bacteria develop resistance.

No doubt the demands of parents in the 1970's and 80's pushed the dispensing model into new territory.

One thing I find interesting is that today dentists still happily (and effectively) use, for example, amoxicillin for fighting dental infection.  One imagines that its use is not as "wide spread" or that the bacteria infecting your dental work are "more susceptible" to the use of antibiotics.

But as with all modern "magic" there is a downside that comes back to bite us (just as in "Pandora's Box). 

In this case its things like drug resistant TB - a disease on the rise across the world - and something antibiotics can no longer control.

But that's not the worst of it.

Many diseases, like polio, can be controlled with vaccinations.  And polio, at least in the US, was wiped out by a vaccination program.

Unfortunately vaccinations, like antibiotics, have their own "tail" which is coming back around to bite us all.

For example, there is the "autism" debate - many people believe that too many vaccines cause "autism."  There is also widespread belief that vaccines contain too much mercury and that they may be the root cause of the widespread outbreak of "peanut allergies" seen today.

So what will be done to control TB in the future?

According to the CDC 95% of a "herd" (humans or otherwise) must be vaccinated in order to prevent the spread of disease.

But today, in many parts of the country, vaccine usage is down to 80% or less, at least according to this and this.  And this means that regardless of vaccinations disease will spread.

Today there are vaccines for many diseases that, as a child, were routine: mumps, chicken pox, measles.  And while we have dramatically reduced these problems I fear we have created a raft of new, more serious ones to replace them.

Measles were common during my childhood.  Though I did not have them most of my friends in grade school did.  Yet today we consider 222 cases for the entire year of 2010 as an "outbreak."

Is this good or bad if the hundreds of millions of vaccines used to prevent the measles cause other, more serious problems?

Certain there can be side effects from measles.

But apparently there are side effects from vaccines as well.

But, most interesting, there are 750 cases of death by lightning strikes in the US each year. 

Far, far more than the 222 cases of measles - and more deadly too.

Yet there is no CDC-equivalent installing lightening arresting technology on golf courses or the roofs of houses to prevent such deaths...

I wonder why?

Could it be that the livelihood people make from "big government/pharma" outweighs the "problems" caused by the solution to what is not really a big problem in the first place?

As a child of the 50's and 60's I recall having a small number of vaccinations for important things: smallpox, polio, and so on.

Today most children must receive at least 36 vaccinations before reaching six.

Updates: Diet, MegaUpload, Fukushima

MegaUpload - New Zealand's high court has ruled the seizure order used to capture Mr. Dotcom's assets "null and void."

Apparently the prosecutors, when applying for the original seizure order in January, made a number of mistakes and applied for the wrong type of seizure order (one that did not all Mr. Dotcom or Megaupload the chance to mount a defense).

Justice Judith Potter said that prosecutors "reapplied" for a new, correct order and added to it items seized.

The question now is whether or not the "procedural error" will result in Mr. Dotcom's assets being returned.

More interesting still is, that according to this at TorrentFreak: “Guess what – we found a large number of Mega accounts from US Government officials including the Department of Justice and the US Senate.”

“I hope we will soon have permission to give them and the rest of our users access to their files,” Mr. Dotcom told TorrentFreak.

So here is the US government, the puppet of Hollywood's copyright lawyers, themselves using MegaUpload to store what, backups of Department of Justice hard drives?  Mr. Dotcom and MegaUpload subpoenas? Porn (we know they watch the the SEC)?  Sort of like the police raiding the police chief's favorite brothel...

But we all know better - its not the government - its just the people that work there...

Fukushima - According to this WSJ article it turns out, no surprise, that Japan's planning for significant nuclear disaster has fallen far short - not only at the top levels of government but also at the lowest. (The planning in Japan is considered to be advanced in this regard because of their geography and because of the number of nukes in use.)  For one, the various tests used by the government to declare products grown in the various areas around Fukushima do not make consumers feel safe (see this Business Week article).

Even though the government declares that, for example, produce from regions near the plant are safe to consume guess what - no one want's to.  The produce remains on the shelves.

Secondly, as research continues by the government into just how prepared each city and town around nuclear plants is in terms of disaster recovery its been discovered that there is virtually no planning for any significant Fukushima-like disaster.

For example, no notification system to alert people of disaster in a town of 80,000.  The discovery that should everyone get such a notice there are not enough roads to allow everyone to evacuate.

As I wrote in "US Nukes and US Geographic Faults" there is plenty of opportunity for disaster in the US.  And of course we all know that "government planning" has been conducted at all levels of city, state and national government to ensure our safety in case of an earthquake.

Diet and why "Low Cholesterol" is very bad...  - As I have reported here I have dramatically improved my health with a number of changes in my lifestyle - iodine supplements and sinus flushing among them.  But I have also found that cod liver oil has dramatically improved my brain function.  I first wrote about this in 2010 in "Lower Cholesterol = Memory Loss".  This led me on my own Cod Liver Oil adventure of research described in "ADHD & A Spoon Full of Sugar."

After writing the first article I began to think about the fact that it was well documented that low cholesterol diets were making people stupid.  After all, according to many sites like this your brain requires a diverse source of certain types of fats and oils to function correctly.  Yet somehow this is not what people are told on TV or by their doctors.

This is not a new idea.  Back as a kid I recall a number of science fiction stories based on the premise that man was rendered "stupid" by various things - its been too many years to find the stories or authors but I still recall them.  I think that we are living this out today.

The lack of fat in people's diets (and that's only specific good kinds of fat like butter, coconut oil and so forth as described in the link above) is decreasing their mental facilities significantly.

My cod liver journey started about a year and a half ago (December, 2010).  Since then Mrs. Wolf has added coconut oil to our diet as well.  I no longer worry about cholesterol at all.

(Now I don't eat any sort of "processed food" - no chips, crackers, or that sort of thing from a box or bag - as the oils in those are very bad.  Ditto for soybean oil - Monsanto has a virtual lock on this with the genetically modified soybeans and virtually 100% of oil in any commercial product is from those plants.)

So far my research indicates that my ability to focus, multi-task and remember have all dramatically improved.

For example -

- I no longer "forget" where I put things.  This, I thought, was simply a sign of aging - where's my keys, that sort of thing.  No more.

- I don't "forget to do things."  I used to struggle to remember to do routine, repeat things like take the garbage out on a certain day.  I used to struggle to recall things from meeting or to remember to call people.  No more.

- My ability to focus has increased substantially.  I used to "wear out" after a short period when, for example, working on coding projects.  Now I can focus so long I get uncomfortable from not moving.

- Mrs. Wolf claims I am less "autistic" - more gregarious and less sulking and sullen.

- My planning horizon is wider - I can integrate and plan across multiple activities much better than before.  I can do that while I do other things.

- While jogging my thinking is clearer - even under the heavy physical strain of going up hill on the widow maker.

- I dream more vividly.

All this leads me to believe that we are literally choking off our ability to think as a nation and people.  We apply this to our children's diets as well - which I now consider to be the worst form of child abuse.  Literally starving a young child's brain of the nutrients needed for them to grow into intelligent adults.

Iodine plays a role, I think, in prostate health.  In this regard I feel better than I have in many decades.  Yet no one is even researching this as far as I can tell.  My thought: prostate cancer is the result of malnutrition - particularly iodine deficiency.

I don't plan on living forever but now, with my dietary changes, at least I am living far better than I was - and with a much clearer head.

Safety Placards, Amish and Your Religious Freedom

Most of us here in the US are familiar with the first Amendment to the US Constitution (in part):

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..."

In Kentucky there's an interesting case before the Kentucky Supreme court regarding this.  Its about the Swartzentruber Amish.

Months ago Jacob Gingerich, a member of the sect, was pulled over and issued traffic tickets for failing to display the triangular "slow moving vehicle" placard on his buggy.  Members of this sect believe that these emblems represent a flamboyant display of color, which is against their religious beliefs in modesty.  They also believe that the shape of a triangle represents the Holy Trinity - making the placard a religious symbol which the sect has strong beliefs about not displaying on their possessions or person.

After refusing to pay the fines associated with the tickets Mr. Gingerich was jailed.

"I don't have to pay them to prosecute me for my religion," said Mr. Gingerich in an interview according to this article.

The visit to the Kentucky Supreme Court is to determine whether or not the conviction should be overturned.

What's interesting here is how neatly this case boils down much of what's going on with respect to the "nanny state" and freedom. 

The Amish have no specific concern about safety when riding in their buggies - and are not bringing it up as an issue, i.e., its dark and some "English" hit my buggy with his car.  The Amish are also will to display religiously acceptable "slow moving vehicle" elements on their buggies - so its not as if they want nothing to do with "community" or "safety" either.

Nor is it an issue of whether the Amish will be an endangerment to others - though I suppose you could argue a "reckless" individual who drove their car or truck into a buggy might be safer if the placard was displayed on the buggy. (In Pennsylvania if you hit another vehicle from behind its your fault regardless of the circumstances.  But since the Amish have won victories in PA previously in regard this issue one imagines that what you hit from behind or what warnings what you hit from behind displays is irrelevant.)

Nor is it an issue of the Amish being lawless.  Mr. Gingerich recently wrote "It is our religious belief to abide by the law of the land, as long as it does not interfere with our religion..."

What they object to specifically is that the state government of Kentucky requires them to do something for safety that violates their religious beliefs.

The Amish have already won exemptions from displaying the system in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Given victories elsewhere I expect one here for the Amish as well.

And I think that this type of case demonstrates the protection the US Constitution offers anyone of faith against the government "nanny state" and its enforcement of the "greater good."

The law requiring the display of the slow moving vehicle placard is like anything else where people have a choice - whether its vaccinations or road safety.  Certainly the Amish, more than anyone, would be the most aware of the danger not being seen on a highway would raise.

But it seems that their religious beliefs trump at least what the government has deemed to be the solution.

Which to me means that you are free to make unsafe choices so long as hold that these choice are based on religious conviction.

And this is something the government does not like for several reasons.

One is that you are out of their purview - the Amish don't need the government to run their affairs.

Another is that once people see that the government can be defeated in this way more will follow.

And finally government does not grow if there aren't reasons for it to do so - such as saving people for their own stupidity and folly.

But at least in this case as long as your "folly" is based on religious belief the government will have no say...

Which to many is the most "dangerous" thing of all...

Britannica Lost

An original Britannic volume from Wired.

I recently read the the Encyclopedia Britannica was no longer being "printed."

As parents we purchased a copy when our children were small, probably around 1983.  I recall that we had seen a kiosk or person in a mall offering to come and give a pitch on them.  At that time we were avid library users and it seemed like it would be a good thing to have given there were four children to raise.

The salesman showed up and "demoed" the books - nice bindings, fancy "extras" of various sources like so many "custom research" efforts they would do for you, that sort of thing.  The price was probably around $1,500 USD (about $3,500 USD today), i.e., a lot of money.

You purchased them on "credit" in those days with some sort of standard credit "deal" offered by the salesman.

The books themselves were wonderful and lived up to their reputation.  Since this was the early 1980's there was no "equivalent" in the computer world save for "Plato" which was beyond the reach of a person to access outside a University. 

There was no Wikipedea, no Encarta, no PC, no Windows.

The encyclopedias were only a moderate success at home - they were very information-dense and not very suitable for kids.  As adults we used them - but only occasionally.

My parents had purchased a set of "Worldbook" encyclopedias during my childhood.  These were, I think, less "dense" and more accessible to children.  They also had a corresponding and lighter "children's set."

Had we known what was coming with computers I suppose we would not have bothered purchasing anything like this at all...

In any case today everyone trumpets the wonder of Wikipedia.  Unfortunately, Wikipedia, at least to me, is a sad joke as far as being an "encyclopedia."

Why?

There are a couple of reasons.  First off the content is basically dynamic because anyone at any time "blessed" by Wikipedia can make an update.  Who are these people?  Young, liberally-minded folks with too much spare time.

(If you don't believe me just read their profiles which appear whenever Wikipedia needs money.)

They are also susceptible to significant bias.  There are a variety of cases where there are "wars" over how a particular entry should be written or "phrased." Back-and-forth edits over days or weeks changing things from one point of view to another.

Personally Wikipedia is the first place to go when you need something like Madonna's birth date or who was the bass player in Genesis.

Its also good when you know nothing about, for example, the difference between how jai alai is played or pronounced in different parts of the world.

What I find interesting is how quickly one can simply "forget" about books today.  Encyclopedia's existed all throughout my life - at my grandmothers, my parents and my own house.  Today my grandchildren have little interest in books especially since school and virtually everything else is delivered by wireless video.

Wikipedia does not and cannot, for example, cannot capture the physical wonder of something like Richard Feynman's "Lecture's on Physics."  Basic physical laws and the mathematics that model them have been around for a long time and this set of books does well at capturing them.

This is also very hard material - and you need to re-read it quite a bit to really grasp much of what's being said, particularly in the lectures on quantum mechanics.

I also don't want some youngster messing about with the wording Feynman chose making it "more modern."

I think the study of hard subjects "off line" is a lot less distracting as well.  No bouncing women offering discounts on mortgages or weight loss while you're trying to sort our matrices and physics.

Of course I have iPads and Kindle software but, as I have mentioned before, these things mess up indices, tables of contents, and page numbering so that, at least for reference works, using them in that format is a drag.

I also don't like the tiny screens and the constant zooming required to view something like a full magazine page.

To me there was and still is art and value in layout out something complex in such a way as to assist in making it comprehensible.

For example, Feynman's lectures in on very large pages, probably close to 17" diagonally.  There are notes and various other aids in the margins.  I think this helps with the understanding.

I cannot say how often I would like to view things on a dual 17" MacBook Pro "book" (think a 17" inch MacBook Pro with two screens - the second replacing the keyboard).

I think the small screens (and I cannot even imagine reading a book on, for example, an iPhone) take away too much "context."  For reading a novel its okay - but not anything technical.

So what does this all mean?

I think that "our generation" - whatever that is - will be taking from our children millenia of optimization and skill in recording, delivering and documenting history and science with writing.

And while there is nothing wrong with computers as reading devices per se things like the loss of context and the distraction of dancing mortgage girls are actually making the learning harder and/or making the resulting knowledge more "fragmented" in some way.

Wikipedia becomes the "everyman" standard for a low-end, Encarta-like encyclopedia - which makes anyone using it without the context of the past think - wow - this is all there is.  And because of the lack of interest in books there is only "what's available on the internet" and nothing else.

All things considered I think that this "on line" knowledge only servers to "slow down" serious education and knowledge transfer.

Of course superficially it seems like an improvement - easy and quick access for everyone.

But to what exactly? 

A social consensus on jai alai?

Many people today think that if it doesn't come up on Google it simply doesn't exist.

They have forgotten or don't even know about millenia of scholarly works.

Which means that all of man's efforts up to the point of Google will simply fall away as "lost knowledge."  And this is perhaps the most troubling.

I read on producers of music today think of consumers - they listen to thirty seconds of "song" at a time for whatever reason - boredom I suppose.  Now we have "knowledge acquisition" thirty seconds at a time; but for many things this simply doesn't work.

I see this reflected today in business.  Individuals so narrowly focuses that they cannot make useful decisions.

I am not sure if this is progress.

My own feet are in both worlds - books and "internet."  But I am old.

My own children's feet fall firmly in the "internet and video" worlds - even though their youth was steeped in reading.

Jay-Z, Ink, and Random UPS Thoughts...

Jay-Z at SXSW promoting Sync via Wired

At SXSW American Express and Rapper Jay-Z teamed up to promote Sync - a new service from American Express.

The idea is simple enough:

You register your Amex card with the Sync site.

Then you find special hashtags like #AmexWholefoods and tweet them.

Finally, on your next Amex statement you will get a discount presuming you have made a qualifying purchase.

If you go to the Sync link above you will see a whole array of discounts being offered at the lower right of the page: gas, flowers, food, and so on.

Another interesting app in this regard is Jot from Chase and its Ink card.  This is a standard app that, after you make a purchase, receives info from Chase on the purchase so you can categorize the expense.  You can also do things like monitor and control card limits, track other cards in your account, and so on.

Now I'd like to juxtaposition this with another add I heard on TV the other day.

The UPS store offering $0.25 USDper page color copies.

I mention this because, as far as I can see, neither Amex nor Chase charges anything at all for their new services - at least not money - though you certainly give up information about yourself and your purchasing habits.

The $0.25 pages made me think back to my time spent with companies like Xerox.  Huge and expensive devices to produce color printed material.

Now being replaced by legions of iPhones and other smartphones offering much more targeted marketing in real-time.

Its hard to believe that a mere ten years ago or so the concept of personalized print marketing was such a big deal.  Its even harder to believe that that concept has been is being effectively replaced by smartphones.

To me the Amex model is the right one for many reasons as far as "personalized marketing."

For one, it eliminates all the middlemen, e.g., like a Groupon.  Inside the Amex model its easy enough to offer groups discounts and to link them (perhaps by GPS proximity or time) to a group offer.  The merchant literally does nothing beyond setting up the offer - Amex does all the rest.

The Amex model also saves your from an "embarrassment of riches" at the checkout.  Because the service credits your statement your appear to be paying the "regular" price at the checkout - so no one becomes jealous watching you walk out of Best Buy after paying $200 for a 50 inch LCD TV.

One imagines that this could be extended to other business models, i.e., state food-stamp programs.

So the state, wishing to save money, could make a bulk purchasing arrangement with, say, Walmart.  When foodstamp recipients enter the store they can tweet special codes to allow them to purchase items at a discount to both themselves and to the state.

Similarly, someone like Amazon could simply allow you to tweet special codes and have products purchased and shipped directly to you.  The only problem with this would be the accumulation of empty smile boxes or potential sales tax issues.

Given all this some other infrastructure changes need to be made to help this business model along.

For one, UPS and Amazon need to get away from the "box"and "random delivery" model.

Amazon things should come in a reusable shipping container - not a Chinese-made cardboard box.

Secondly deliver on a regular schedule - not randomly.

A Robotic Cheetah

Dogma of Stupid: The US Short Term Debt Fail

Next year's US Economy as seen by the Chinese

I am sure you remember them: "0% Interest for 6 Months!"

They used to arrive in the mail regularly - begging you to convert you credit card debt from your current "high interest" accounts to this great new "teaser" rate.  Of course, after the first six months the interest rate jumped to 21%.  Generally these cards were a lesson in stupid because unless you rolled your debt over again in six months (and made sure not to forget to do it) you'd be caught.

Getting caught seemed easy enough to avoid because there would always be more companies looking for your credit card business.  Until, of course, you discovered that you could be denied for a credit card because you already had to many.

It used to be that those running these deals were simply unscrupulous criminal enterprises disguised as credit card companies.

But today that's no longer true - instead its the US Government - running the deal on US, the US taxpayer.

Here's how it works.

Right now, today, we pay about $225 billion (with a "B") USDannually in interest on a US debut of some $11 trillion (with a "T") USD in US Treasury debt.

A mere five years ago we were paying about $250 billion annually in interest on only $5.5 trillion USD in debt.

That's right - it cost us a little more to cover the interest on on half the total borrowed.

And all the while we're on an epic debt binge (see "Epic Debt Fail" which I wrote a while back).

Our current President, along with Ben Bernanke and the US Congress and Senate, are really clever guys after all.  They've managed to leverage our debt to twice what it was four and a half years ago but pay less!

But are they really all that clever?

Is this really good public policy?

In fact what they've all done is really just started rolling new borrowing into "teaser rate" 0% debt.

This makes the interest rate appear to remain very low despite irresponsibly high levels of borrowing.  After all - if I am paying 5% on my $1,000 in debt and I can borrow another $1,000 for 0% for six months my books show that I am now paying $2.50 on $2,000.

At least as long as the credit card companies Ben Bernanke at the US Federal Reserve keep the rates near zero.

I look like a genius.

At least until someone starts nosing around the fine print or interest rates goes up.

The US government did exactly this - but instead of short term "0%" credit cards to build up debt they simply sold short term US Treasury's at the Fed's low, low 0% rate.  So this worked for long enough for the US government to double its debt to some $11 trillion.

But when interest rates go up the real problem appears.

First of all, there are no more "0%" credit offers to old debt that's maturing has to be rolled over into more expensive debt.

Now we are getting close to this point because right now several things are happening.

One - the Chinese are bailing out of US debt.  Why?  Because, though they may be evil communists they are not stupid, at least with their money.

Two - foolish investors are offering to pay, that's right "pay," the US Treasury to hold its debt (see this).  While this may seem counter-intuitive its not.  Imagine the alternatives - say investing in Libian bonds, for example.  Higher rate of return but much, much higher risk.  If I don't want risk then I go with US debt...

At least until now.  But what about those pesky Chinese - they're getting out of US debt?

I think they see what's about to happen.

Bernanke can keep debt rates low only so long.  Because low rates attract businesses that borrow money to expand their businesses.  And as businesses expand they hire.  And as they hire the economy heats up.  And as the economy heats up and expands there is more consumption.  So more businesses borrow. And so on, and so on, ...

Interest rates act like a governor to slow down this expansion.  With the current 0% rates the economy will expand out of control and carry prices hire creating inflation.

So at some point interest rates have to go up.

But when they do the US government is hit by the second problem: the cost of this ridiculous amount of debt.

Interest rates at the still remarkably low rate of 5% or 6% will cause old Uncle Sam's annual debt payment to rise to some $600 or more billion dollars annually - more than its obligations to, for example, Medicare.

The Chinese are bailing out because they know that the US cannot sustain its less than stellar credit at higher rates because it simply cannot afford to.

We cannot control out borrowing and soon interest rates will take our ability to support the existing debt out of our hands.

Little wonder the rats are fleeing the sinking ship.

What you see here is the classic example of "living beyond your means."

In personal bankruptcy where a debtor cannot face living the lifestyle he can actually afford running up huge amounts of "0%" debt were common.  Kind of like check kiting but using credit cards - I guess like debt kiting.  You keep rolling debt over to new cards - borrowing extra where ever you can - until there's no more to borrow...

Then off to bankruptcy...  oh wait... There's no bankruptcy court this big...

Oh oh...

Education: Promoting Diversity of Thought by Eliminating It...

When I was high school in the early 1970's I was extensively involved in sports - swimming to be specific.  During the summer months I participated for a number of years in a program run by the University of Wisconsin designed to provide opportunity for younger athletes to train and sometimes compete at a world class level.

During this time I met a lot of peers from around the state and many other people from around the world.

What was interesting is how different we all were - both in terms of athletics as well as what we had been taught in school.

From the training perspective many people I knew came from schools with extensive swimming programs often specializing in specific types events at the state level.  From a personal perspective what was so interesting was how different our school environments were: public schools, private schools, religious schools.  As well as specialization in athletics there was also specialization in academics at various levels.

Swim meets were often all-weekend events so it was pretty typical to have many hours to spend with your friends.  We did a lot of things together, talk, play cards, hung out, often meeting their parents and families.

On thing I discovered is that even as 14 and 15 year old's there was a lot of diverse opinion about things in the world.

Which was why I was so troubled to read this particular WSJ article: "School Standards Weigh Into Climate Change."

"Standards?"

During my time in eighth grade the first "Earth Day" occurred.  We had a gung-ho pro environment science teacher named Mrs. Eberhardt who was really into it: True or False - Putting bricks into your toilet tank will significantly reduce your consumption of water.  ("False - the key was "significant" - while it saved water it did not save much.)

In the spring of 1970 we were charged with "cleaning up" the school property - collecting rubbish to burn, that sort of thing as part of Earth Day..  Burning trash was okay because, at that time, we were all going to die in an "overpopulation disaster" of some sort and CO2 was not considered a pollutant.  On the contrary - it was considered a "natural" waste product.

We also spent a lot of time in class talking about the environment, drugs, all sorts of things.

Not the sort of thing done at other schools I came to learn.  Each friend I had from other parts of the state had a different background - a different perspective - a different way of looking at things...

But today, instead of having a diverse set of perspectives from those graduating from high school, we as a society have a uniform perspective, i.e., everyone has be told to think the same way.

One of the things that diversity does allows people to have different perspectives when attacking a problem.

In the early 1990's I was gripped with the thought that I should spend time at the local high school tutoring kids in the computer classes.

The first thing I learned was that how a problem was "solved" was dictated by the curriculum and not by ingenuity of the students.

How odd, I thought, what would these students do in the real world?  I was employed to find solutions to problems - there was no "book" to consult on how to do it.

If presented with a problem and the only approach in this high school class was basically to ask for guidance from someone in authority - you would not be of much use in the real world if that's what you learned. 

I asked the instructor why this was so...

He told me that this was the same course taught in college and that he had no say over the details, i.e., it had to be done this way.  Otherwise it wouldn't be an "AP" class and the students wouldn't get credit for it.

I thought back to my first experiences in college computer classes in the 1970's.  Here's problem you can barely understand - solve it by tomorrow morning - show you work - the more creative and correct you are the better.  Many times the books contained "advanced" problems that were the basis for active research in the field.

There were not answers for those - let alone right or wrong ones with a prescribed solution.

What a disheartening experience my tutoring efforts were.  Why bother to take the class at all if you can only solve the problem in a particular way.

From my perspective today what's happening is obvious: all the independent though is being taken out of our educational system.

In the name of "standards" of course - after all we can't have Mrs. Eberhardt playing "God Damn the Pusher" in eighth grade science class as means to introduce the problems drugs present to society.  Nor can we have her class burning up all the refuse from around the school property lest it destroy the planet in the name of saving it.

But what does this leave our children?

A legacy of the "egg carton" model.  All the children today are like eggs - if you have bumps or sharp corners that don't let you fit into the carton they are simply "cut off."  If you have interests outside of what's being taught we'll change "dumb down" the content so you only get what we tell you to get.

You only solve the problem the "proper" way.

Little wonder we, as a society, are falling so far behind other countries in math and science.

While Mrs. Eberhardt's approach was novel at the time and I am sure pushed the limits I did not see it as inappropriate.  Drugs killed people we knew or knew of.  Guys in the neighborhood graduated from high school (a mere four years away) and went to Vietnam.  All she was really doing is motivating to think for ourselves...

But today I believe that what I see inside corporations reflects too many years of "standards."

For one thing no one likes to go "outside the lines" for any reason.  Its scary.  Few remember, I suppose, the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes..."

Everyone seems to huddle together in fear of making decisions - I suppose because they are all so used to the egg carton - no one want's to be seen as different.

The saddest irony of all here, is of course, that much of what's been done has been done in the name of diversity - removal of diversity from society for the purpose of promoting diversity.