Game Changers: "Hover Bikes" and Satellites

There are some interesting stories around concerning "hover bikes."

Basically ducted fan-style motorcycles.

Who knows if these are true or simply hoaxes but for me it seems like a logical place to do regarding transportation.

Most impressive is this video from Areoflex:

There is a link at Wired discussing it.

There is an Australian guy developing one as well in this article.

Now the claim on the Australian version is that a 4-cycle 1100 cc engine does all the heavy lifting - which is not much of an engine in the grand scheme of transportation world wide.

Supposedly the Czech's are building one as well:

More information on this is available here and here.

So is all this a hoax like the birdman video I posted a while back?  Its hard to tell...

But certainly there seems to be nothing impossible or wrong about this - provided the engine is capable enough power-wise and the fans efficient enough.

Like the Segway the idea has merit if it actually works.

So what's the market?

Its hard to say.  In order for a "consumer" to use this kind of device it would have to be stable no matter what.

No one would want this if a semi drove by and blew you off the bridge...

Similarly it would be easy to flip one of these over.

But at least some of these issues would be easily resolved with technology of various sorts.

For that matter - it would be easy to build a pilot-less robotic drone-type device - then by-by UPS, Fedex and USPS delivery man.  No more tires, no more payroll, vastly lower costs all around.

One the other hand it eliminates the need for ground contact via tires - thus eliminating the need for an entire industry.

Certainly it seems reasonable that within a few years this kind of technology could see the light of day in an "industrial" kind of setting, i.e., where no consumers are involved - law enforcement, interdiction, that sort of thing.

However, once at least one working version is out there I see a huge market - replacing the "smart car" for one.

Given a choice between a hove bike and smart car I'd go with the hover bike any day.

A game changer for sure if its real...

Another game changer I see is the effect of wired internet on DirecTV.

I've had DirecTV for many years and even used their satellite internet services before cable wires showed up in my rural neighborhood.

Its an excellent product - but its expensive.

HBO, at least in Nordic countries, is going Netflix (see this).

For that matter so is DirecTV - they now offer various "downloadable" programs.

Mostly this "downloading" and "Netflix" stuff sucks in my mind but its so cheap how can you hold out?

Satellite and cable become the new "Bell Telephone" delivering connectivity between two points - you and some giant server center full of "content."

You subscribe to "services" for cheap and view what you want when you want it.

DirecTV has one advantage in this model for home use in that the download aspect is very fast and doesn't require wires (though it does require a dish).

The "direct connect" model for HBO is how I see it going - HBO is going to be just "out there" and how you get it will be up to you - satellite, wire, wireless.

This will happen to ShowTime and all the rest as well.

Progress?

I doubt it - more like race to the bottom squeezing out all the middlemen between the disk with the movie file on it and you.

Let's hope a big solar flare doesn't come by anytime soon. 

If one does DVD's will become golden more valuable than gold.

TSA Body Scanners: A Billion Dollar Boondoggle

Do I feel safer knowing these machines are checking in passengers"

Score another victory for the good old Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

After spending billions on "body scanners' Wired reports that the current generation (only two years old) of scanners is on the way out as DHS taps the Pentagon and DARPA to create a new design.

I wrote "Dogma of Stupid: TSA Body Scanners" back in March of this year.

I described how a kid figured out that you could put something on your side in such a way as the color of the "thing" matched the background of the scan and viola - you were through the scanner with something bad.

(The TSA said all this anti-body scanner stuff was nonsense at the time - but now that we know they are looking for alternatives I guess it probably wasn't....)

I want to say each scanner costs over a million dollars and there are 700 of them currently deployed.  So with all the training, installation, overhead, etc., involved we probably talking about pitching one billion USD of technology down the crapper because the TSA screwed up.

Of course this is only a 1/000th of a trillion USD - but its hard not to imagine that there aren't a lot more stupid, silly or useless government programs like this - hundreds of not thousands.

The former Israel Airport security chief I quoted in my original post agrees that these things are junk and claims he could easily walk right through with enough explosives to "take down a 747."

So why do we have these and many other US government boondoggles?

One reason is that there is no "intellectual check" on what people who specify and buy these types of technologies do.

Long ago in the Pentagon they realized that you needed something like DARPA to help figure out what to do technologically at a small scale before you spent tens or hundreds of billions at a large scale on a total failure.  So they do small-scale experiments to prove concepts.

Here is where I think something like crowd-sourcing would be a good idea.

Don't let people submit crowd source designs - instead put professionally submitted designs out for critique via crowd source.

Do the same for the initial idea, e.g., body scanners, as well.  People will be happy to find flaws - after all it will be their grandmother that dies if they don't.

Let people have at the concept.  If someone can hack around it their ego will likely allow them to crow about it.

(I am sure you could develop statistical models to analyze the results as well to help ensure no one is trying to pull a fast one on the analysis side.)

Give the guy who finds the biggest flaw $10,000 USD as a prize.

So $10,000 USD versus $1 billion USD.

Seems like a smarter model for me.

(But no, some bureaucratic idiot might feel bad that his vaunted idea using technology from his brother-in-law's company...)

The reason this is not done, I am sure, is because there are many big-ego types at DHS who want to control this and think that they can keep the techy secrets out of the hands of evil foreigners.

But obviously this is nonsense as the original post I wrote shows.  Some kid with a bright idea and $20 for sewing equipment beats a billion dollar security system.

There are many ways create secure airports - but giving one individual or committee billions of dollars to spend unchecked by free global technical analysis is just stupid

So what about the bad guys?

Won't they benefit from this in some way?

I think that, if you are careful about how and what you crowd source, no.

Its not a secret that airports are looking for weapons on people's bodies.

And there is a clear body of at least Israeli evidence that all you have to do is know who to question to stop terrorists.

So US air carriers, in response, come up with the "Self Service" airline check in (see this WSJ article).

Okay - so body scanners are a failure.

Israeli's have a 100% success rate when they look people in the eye and question them.  (And no, I don't think this is unconstitutional because its WAR.  When the goal is indiscriminate killing of innocent women and children its a war situation - not a domestic Constitutional one.  Yes I know the ACLU would like the Constitution to apply to those attacking the US as well as to US citizens but that's another blog entry...)

SO what do WE do?

Eliminate the human element entirely to save money.

Now even happy Airline Check-in Host Bob won't have the chance to call the TSA to say that Achmed just paid cash for a one-way ticket, looked away every time he spoke to him and checked no luggage.

But don't worry - the airline and TSA will be saving a few bucks.

This is what's known as a "false economy."

Penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Driving forty miles to save $.02 USD per gallon on a ten gallon fill-up.

Apparently no one realizes that more people will fly if the security measures are more effective and less invasive.

Agile Educational Failure

I have recently written a number of popular posts on the Agile programming model mostly decrying it as nonsense.

Today I came across this article on parents and teaching children mathematics.  The US is, of course, falling behind many third world countries in mathematics.

I wrote "I Hate Algebra" last year.  In this post I talk about Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman's take on teaching mathematics.

In light of all this I recently had a chance to observe some grandchildren who, by the teachers, were claimed to be lacking educationally.  Not surprisingly it seems that children do quite well with basic concepts outside the class room.  Yet when placed in a "classic" educational model their progress seems to stall or fail.

So then I started to wonder: Does the lack of mathematical ability affect programming?

Over the years of have apprenticed a number of programmers.  To me "apprenticing" means that they learn how to make a living at it, either as a job on their own or as someone a customer will pay to support doing tasks.

Competent programming involves all sorts of complex mathematics: virtually all of it well beyond what you might get in highschool.  Virtually every one of my "apprentices" thought they were "bad" in math - failures.  Yet with experience they became effective programmers and were able to grasp all sorts of complex mathematical ideas: statistics, performance comparison, efficient design, and so on.

Fortunately all of them could at least add and subtract when they started - but that was about it.

Fractions?  Forget it...

Yet today they use these concepts without even realizing that they are:

"How much disk is free?"

"75 percent"

So though they were "math failures" in the academic world in the real world they are not.

When I learned to program the idea was more closely tied directly to mathematics.  Books such as "The Art of Programming" by Donald Knuth (1962) were rife with complex mathematical formulas showing how algorithm A was faster than algorithm B.  This was rough going coming from a highschool where all you could learn in mathematics was trigonometry as a senior.

So while I was not a complete math failure I did struggle in college - I failed dropped calculus the first time and it took a while to become comfortable with all those concepts.

Eventually I got as far as Advanced Calculus.

Over the years since then (which was the late 1970's) I have come to realize that much of the mathematics that you use in your daily life (if you use them at all) are intuitive.  Its only the formalistic written forms that people struggle with.

Back to the grandchildren...

It seems that today those that teach mathematics are not mathematicians - particularly in elementary, middle and high school.

In fact I would say that mostly they are mathematically dysfunctional.

Now their bosses realize this and, rather than pay someone who really understands it to teach it, they create formulaic teaching aid (and I mean "teaching aids" for the teachers) so that these mathematically inept folks can teach children mindless algorithm's to accomplish the obvious.

(Watch the Feynman video in "I Hate Algebra.")

So any child with an alert mind (at least more alert than the teachers mathematically) is quickly stymied with boredom.  To the point in some cases where children actually mock the teachers.

"Okay class, we are teaching rounding today.  Let's round to the nearest ten.  Andrew, pick a number between one and a hundred."

Andrew: "Ninety"

"Ah, Andrew, let's try another number."

Andrew: "Twenty"

"Okay class, let's try rounding to the nearest five.  Jr, pick a number..."

Jr: "Fifteen"

Worse, those that are successful in this model go on to college.  And in college today they are present the same model.

So the best and the brightest are actually not.

So when they land in the world of business where someone is trying to get something done programmatically they literally don't know what to do.  They have no "model" to work in.

So they have to guess.

Which is intellectually what Agile programming is.

Guessing at what's wanted - creating a prototype - and iterating.

(BTW, I wonder what Agile does with things that take a long time to do just to build the basic framework...?)

So I am saying that the whole concept of "Agile Programming" is derived from a body of individuals that are evolutionarily selected in the educational system for a lack of true mathematical understanding.

(In today's school world even more so than in the past bright children are simply bored into dropping out...)

So Agile Programming is symptomatic of a failed mathematical (and scientific) educational model.

Which means that our leadership in these areas of IT is in jeopardy as well.

The rest of the world does not pretend that everyone has equal ability in all areas.  Even the old Soviet Union understood that some children had more talent in some areas than others.

And they used the true ability of their countries elite in those disciplines to help those children along.

Not US.

That wouldn't be "fair."

So we drag everyone down to the (math warning) Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) - basically treating the most gifted as if they are a true math incompetent.  (And there's nothing wrong with being incompetent at math because its likely you're simply good at other things.  In my life I've found that there virtually everyone has some sort of unique skill that they can use to make a living.  The problem is often that they are told they are stupid or a failure rather than being encouraged in an area where they can excel.)

Most of those in my generation who are skilled in these areas of mathematics and programming are nearing retirement - our knowledge will be lost and the next generation will have to relearn what we have done.

In the mean time the results of Agile programming are everywhere.  So pervasive is this that my eighty two year old mother complains:

"Why is the phone system so stupid?"

"Why does my new iron not make steam when I fill it with water and set the knob to steam?"

"Why can't I just make a phone call on my cell phone?"

Agile product development, Agile big pharma, Agile everything.

A total and, for the most part, complete failure.

Perhaps this is the advent of Agile Failure...?

The second point on the image above is most telling: "Working Software over comprehensive documentation."

If you don't have a comprehensive idea of what you are doing how do you know the software is working?

This takes you right back to US grade school.

Teach the kid a process designed to make the teachers job of teaching math easy and the kid learns nothing about doing the "hard work."

Patent Battles and the Future

Apple and Samsung Phones

I find it interesting that, in the wake of Apple's court victory over Samsung, that mighty Google is considered a potential next target.

The target would be the Android operating system, or at least any "infringing" Android software that stepped into Apple territory.

Oracle already tried this (see "Google's Waterloo,  US Patent 6,061,520" I wrote in May).  I thought it would be Google's downfall as it was a straightforward case of copying.  And while the court agreed the damages were set to zero - so in the end I was wrong.


So to me Apple would have a tough, up-hill battle.


Another point: Google does not sell Android software.  It gives it away free.


So it will be hard for Apple to directly claim that Google's software is damaging Apple's business.


Today's Samsung phones don't even have the features Apple sued over so the industry is still very nimble when reacting to patent law.

So in the end I think that things will shake out for a while more and then it will be over.

Kodak, for example, with its supposedly valuable trove of patents, was passed by both Google and Apple.  So they must feel that a weakened Kodak won't be able to mount an offense against either of them with regard to its imaging patent portfolio.

At the end of the day you have to believe that the market for "smart phones" is bounded by a couple of things:  3G/4G data access, basic consumer finances, the replacement of home PC's and cable with phones and Netflix, things like that.

So as the phone industry expands it now starts to eat away at the basic infrastructure that built it - home internet and home computers.

Why have an expensive home computer when your phone does everything it does?

There is a good argument for this today - especially with tablet computers.  As more Zynga games move to tablets home computers will simply die off in most cases as obsolete.

Similarly for internet access.

The only reason for most homes to have it is that it provides an easy access to Netflix or DirecTV download services.

Broadband cable is still expensive - about $70 USD per month for the minimum package where I live.

Its not hard to imagine that eventually this will be taken over by some form of wireless.

But here I don't see it happening right away.

There's a lot of bandwidth in a cable signal.  A lot more than packet-switched cellphone towers are likely to be able to deliver any time soon.

Plus wireless phone bandwidth is still expensive.

So this will change, but more slowly, at least in rural areas.

In cities where someone, like Google, can install free Wifi this will be a game changer.  Cable will simply go away.

Why pay for it at $70 or more USD per month when you can have Netflix for $8 USD (at least according to the advertising beaver).

Phones are the next home computers and all these patent wars are just part of the paradigm shift.

Just like anything else - black and white TV to color, simple razors to blade razors, and so on.

Smart phones are the current "Big Thing" - but the next "big thing" is out there - lurking in the bushes - waiting for Apple's time to be over.

What it is no one knows...

Pair Programming: Failure at Twice the Average Rate

From Wikipedia: Pair Programming

I came upon an interesting article on "paired programming" (WSJ).

Its described in the article as "two people sharing one desk and computer."

Now I can imagine why someone might think this is a good idea.  One of the two is lost in some way - perhaps s/he has poor communications skills, is young, less experienced on a given project, etc.

Pairing this person up with someone more experienced would bring them up to speed faster.

Ars Technica also has a recent article on a similar topic (see this): managing a developer with poor communication skills. Maybe paired programming would be a solution?

Let's look a bit below the surface here before we adopt foolish solutions like "paired programming."

What's wrong with little Johnny and his skills as a programmer?  Why does he need some sort of boost in the first place?

To understand this you have to understand what the notion programming is really about - which to some degree takes us back to my article on Agile Programming.

At its most basic level programming is the art of writing down a series of statements in some language that causes the computer to perform a specific task.

Let's for the moment assume this is happening naively and in a vacuum, i.e., no other programmers around.

To do this a programmer must understand quite a number of things:

- The computer language s/he is using to do the job.

- The problem to be solved.

- How the computer language can best be used to represent the problem and solution.

So in a general sense we can formulate a strategy: give the problem to the programmer, make sure he understands it, let him have at it.

But what happens in this simple model when he's "done?"

How does his boss or whoever provided the problem to solve know that he solved it and solved it correctly?

Today this is often accomplished via "unit testing" - some sort of predefined tests based on a description of the problem and the solution.  The tests have precomputed answers so we can simply apply them to the code little Johnny wrote and get a "go/no-go" result.

But think about this.  To write the tests one has to understand the problem better than the coder writing the code because to write a good test you have to think of "end case" scenarios were problems with data could tickle bugs in the written code.

Pretty hard if you haven't really looked at the code.

You have other problems as well - a tester and coder may understand the problem slightly differently in which case either the tests or code may be useless.

So what does "pair programming" add to this mix?

Not much that I can see - except doubling the cost.

The bottom line is that building a piece of software requires that before a single line of code is committed the entire concept of the total application being built must be completely understood.

Now notice I did not say completely "designed" or "specified."

And this is a key point.

If the collective "I" (the programming team) has a true understanding of the task at hand then its possible to create self contained consistent code because not portion of the task is unknown.

For example, if I am a builder adding an addition onto a house I can estimate what's involved but until I look inside the walls and at the roof rafters I am not going to know for sure whether the estimate I supply is good because I don't have a complete picture of what's needed.

What does looking in the walls accomplish - it removes unknowns and makes the entire project understood.

"Understood" does not mean completely specified.  For example, I might need a database with some specific properties - handle a billion 50K records, retrieve elements in less than 2 milliseconds, whatever.

Now I can understand that - but understanding that does not say if that is even possible to do.

So its possible for the "boss" to have supplied a project with is in fact not doable at all - understandable yes, doable no.

If you think of each project a programmer works on as a recursive set of subprojects, i.e., the top level project is to accomplish X.  X has five parts, X.1, X.2, ..., X.5.  Each of these is treated as a project.  Each may be made up of subprojects, and so on, and so on, ...., forever until you get to the bottom.

Now depending on the application there can be understanding at various levels of subprojects, i.e., reusing technology, etc.

Again, you have to work both from the top down - do I have all the understanding that I need.

And from the bottom up - is everything I understand to need doing doable at all?  And, if so, how?  From the bottom looking up you need to see that each thing is doable in a coding sense and technological sense and that, from above, you have 100% of the understanding you need.

Adding people to the mix doesn't in my opinion fix anything - in fact it makes it more expensive and complicated.

And then there is the notion of "preventing internet surfing."

The problem here is this assumes that a "programmer" has a complete list of totally thought out and fully understood things to do and therefore should always be just "writing code."

This is a problem though because it is virtually never the case that this is true.  There are always unknowns: boundary conditions, incorrect test cases, etc.

Sometimes a programmer needs "idle time" to think about this.

So let's take that away... what happens - probably even less gets done.

Without a well thought out and fully understood solution its likely the code will be bad or incorrect.

But if there's no time to think then there's a strong likelihood it will be wrong...

The bottom line here is that there are very few people who know how to effectively run projects and teams and complete software on time so that it works correctly.

Sadly as far as I can see its not taught in school.

So people invent solutions like "paired programming."

Personally I have always believed that the only effect model for managing programming is to promote the most able programmers to managers.  Of course, this requires that the programmer is ready and able to become a manager.

Again this does not happen.  Programmers should be taught that as you age your skill as a programmer is amplified as a manager.

But management requires both aptitude and training - again newly minted programmers from schools don't learn these skills.

Of course, most programmers have some geeky aspects to them.  But that doesn't mean they cannot manage.  It just means that they have to be "brought along" to do so.  But this is hard in a world where everyone changes jobs every year or two for more money.  In fact they are limiting their futures by doing this and hobbling employers with a very stratified development staff.

Like everything else in the country today the programming train is going off the track - if two programmers work well, why not three?

My experience with modern IT is that is basically an ass covering model.  No one wants to address real problems or, in many cases, even admit they exist (no one wants co-workers to "feel bad").  Then they spend endless time on justifying anything they do - to the point of silliness - in one case a company had a very poor product offering - to the point of receiving legal threats from unhappy customers.

Their response.

Diddling around for six months and not solving the problem.

What do they think their customers are doing in the mean time?  (Looking at competing products.)

All this is a consequence of making everything "fair" and "the same."

The emperor is not wearing any clothes...

TNT's "Major Crimes" Norwegian Style

 So I have to say I am impressed with Norwegian justice.  Anders Behring Breivik, an admitted right-wing terrorist who admits killing 77 people and bombing a government building got a whopping twenty one (21) years in prison.  When he gets out he'll be younger than I am today.

The conviction was by a five judge panel (which was unanimous).  He could have been found "insane" but was not in this case.  Had that been the case he would have had his sentence "delayed" until he was "sane."

Now I like some things that go on in Norway - troll hunting for example.



But this sentencing seems a bit light for my taste.

So is this a new trend in the justice systems around the world?

For many years I was a fan of the TNT show "The Closer."  The point of this show was that the "closing" in a given situation was a confession to the police by the murder (at least usually it was a murderer).  The protagonist, Brenda Lee Johnson, pushed the envelope on many occasions to get confessions - not by beating suspects - but by being more clever than they were and manipulating the law to her advantage.

Ultimately she becomes the target of an outside "lawyer" whose job it is to prove she unjustly treated various suspects via a lawsuit against the city.

As the final season of the show closes it morphs into a new show called "Major Crimes."

The idea with this show is that in order to prevent lawsuits like the one Brenda becomes involved with we need to have a team of lawyers and cops on the job when arresting suspects.  The idea is to "save the city money" by getting the suspect to admit their crimes in the presence of a city attorney.  They then go straight to jail without parole or other options they might otherwise end up with had they gone through a trial.

But this new model requires making "deals" to get the suspect turned into a criminal.

The old Brenda shows required the team of detectives to find evidence and close all the loop holes.

The new show has everyone cutting corners in order to get the suspect into the "interview room" with their lawyer so they can be "convinced" to accept a plea bargain.

So rather than having a suspect admit to, say, murder one the new show has them taking a plea bargain maximum on, say, manslaughter.  So instead of life they get eleven years.

Needless to say this does not sit well with the "older" detectives - the murders are getting "off" relative to the respective "proper punishment."

The bureaucrats running the city and police department, on the other hand, like this because its cheap and fast - no trials, no parole, straight to prison.

Now when you kill 77 people one might imagine you'd get life in prison - 77 lives for one life.

I can understand that Norway is not into the death penalty and I have no problem with that.

But to let the guy out after only twenty one years seems rather odd.

Charles Manson got more years and he didn't personally even kill anyone.

This new arrest to interview room to prison model does also kind of seem like a circumvention of the whole idea of a justice system.

So perhaps the "Major Crimes" model (and I know its only a TV show) has already made its way into Norway for Anders Behring Breivik.

Breivik admits what he did and really doesn't seem like the thinks there was a problem with it.

So instead of some reasonable sentence we just get him into the slammer ASAP with a sentence everyone including his lawyer will like.

I doubt, given twenty one years in a Norwegian prison suite (it has three rooms: exercise, sleeping and one for reading and writing), he will change his mind much.

But hey, its a new season...

The only question is "Is this justice?"

US Economic Collapse - Coming Soon to Your Neighborhood

In 1971 Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon disconnected the US dollar from gold.  Previous to that (since the 1940's) the US dollar was linked gold as $35 USD per ounce of gold.

This meant that the amount of gold held by the US limited the amount of dollars the US could create (since the US had a relatively fixed amount of gold).

More importantly the Federal Reserve was bound to this as well.  So if the US government wanted to borrow dollars it had to have gold above and beyond that which backed the US dollars in circulation at the time.

In the 1940's after the war the gold backed US dollar was set as the reserve currency for the world.   This meant that all countries could peg their currency to the US dollar and exchange their currencies for gold at any time.

By 1971 the US was borrowing money for the Vietnam war.  In addition, countries such as France where interested in swapping currency for gold.  The US had run up trade deficits as well.  The US had been printing "extra" money to compensate which drove the real value of the dollar (and all the currencies tied to it) down.

To address this issue Nixon "temporarily" (though its still in effect today) decoupled gold from the dollar via the Nixon Shock.

This meant that the US could print as many dollars as it liked.

So it did...

This turned the US dollar into a fiat currency.  "Fiat" meaning that instead of an asset, say gold, backing the dollar government regulation and law back it.

How well is government regulation and law working out for us at this point?

And very soon the consequences of this after some forty or so years will, as they say, come home to roost.

Since the time of Nixon there has been steady inflation of US prices - let's say an average of two or three percent each year.

Now, without the US currency tied to anything prices simple creep upward.

So imagine Joe in 1965.  Joe is a carpenter.  His wife Mary has four kids at home.  They get buy on Joe's wages.

Over time Joe's work output - say the amount of doors or shelves he can make in a day - is fixed.  But each year the cost of everything Joe needs for his life goes up 2% or 3%.

So after ten or fifteen years Mary needs to work to make up for the deficit in Joe's ability to earn a living.  (No problem, now the kids are grown...)

But in another ten or fifteen years prices have increased another 25% or 30%.

Now Joe and Mary as grandparents have to help their children and grandchildren.

The reason is simple.  Joe's children's marriages have to support two working people to earn enought to buy what they need because of this inflation.

So savings are depleted to "invest" in the future.

Then houses are mortgaged because another ten or fifteen years go by and now to maintain even a basic standard of living there is simply not enough buying power left.

Today we have some $15 trillion in debt in addition to the vast pool of fiat US dollar currency.

Making the dollars relatively worthless.

While all this is going on the US government has used its gold resources to create a "paper" market for gold.

That is a market where you can buy "shares" in gold - but not own the gold itself.

Only after some forty years of this there is another problem.  Only about 2.5% of the paper shares of gold are backed by actual gold.  (For every 45 "shares" equal to a single gold bar I sell I would normally have to have 45 gold bars.  But in today's world I only need one.)

This means that the value of gold is diluted by some 45 times.

So we have the US Treasury borrowing trillions of dollars from the Federal Reserve Bank with I.O.U. backed by the full "Faith and Credit of the US Government."

But what does that mean?  There's nothing to back it up any longer.

Its not like the borrowed money is being used to buy assets that will appreciate in value, bridges, roads, land, islands, etc. 

Its being spent on big screen TV's and food stamps - basically day-to-day bills.

The bottom line is that the quadruple witching hour is upon US:

1) Gold is "devalued" (whether on purpose - see GATA -  or via greed) by some 45 times leaving bullion banks and governments open to a "run" on gold.

2) Dollars have been inflated to the point where a family simply cannot afford to live without financial help from relatives or the US Government even with no savings and both adults working.

3) The US government, all the states, and most municipal governments haave generated Federal Reserve and other debt equal to the US GDP for which it has no backing assets AND it has another 50 trillion in debt for unfunded future promises (Social Security, etc.) for which it has no resources.

4) The current administration is selling short term US Treasury's (with only a few years to maturity) which makes our ability to finance, manage and control the current debt dependent on low interest rates.

Now no amount of "Obama" taxing is going to fix this problem.

Nor is any sort of "Romney or Ryan" social security fix.

The reason is that the magnitude of the debt and devaluation is simply beyond comprehension.

And the rest of the world has followed the US over the cliff by purchasing US Treasury notes.  These are sold by the US Treasury to "fund" the printing of dollars by the Federal Reserve.  We can borrow a lot of money when the cost of financing is low (under 1%). 

But that will change too...

Fiat currency has a long and sordid history of failure.

In fact I am not aware of any case where things turned out well for a country with a fiat currency going back to Roman times and the Roman dinarius.

Cyber War: "Sharing" Our Way to Destruction

I've been reading about (and have written about) cyber war over the last months.

STUXNET is perhaps the most widely known about cyber weapon targeted at Iranian nuclear centrifuges.   Basically this is a virus that was specifically created to attack the PC-based Siemens controllers attached to the actual centrifuge.  It was supposedly jointly developed by Israel and the US for the express purpose of stopping the Iranian nuclear program.

The virus basically caused the machines to run in a way that would destroy them while reporting on via the PC controller that everything was working normally.

The end result?  Physically damaged and useless machines.

Now let's compare this to what you might call traditional war.  In this case someone (the US or Israel for example) develops some sort of explosive weapon that can destroy the centrifuges.

In this case there may be a lot of collateral damage - civilians killed (though are they civilians if they are building nuclear weapons?), buildings destroyed, infrastructure damaged, etc.

So cyber weapons do damage, just less than conventional weapons.  And while STUXNET was not targeted at human life its certainly plausible that it could infect something that would in the end physically harm a human.

So it seems that cyber war isn't really all that different than "traditional war" - its just a "more focused" attack with less collateral damage.  Kind of like the neutron bomb of the cold war - a device designed to emit a massive amount of radiation to kill rather than simply destroying physical structures.

Yet cyber war seems to be portrayed in press quite matter-of-factly.

I suppose this is in part because the same name, cyber war, is often used to describe the battle between law enforcement and hackers for passwords and private information.

But this is not really war - its more of a cat-and-mouse game between those in corporate IT who are defending data and those on the outside who wish to access it.

Typically no one is "hurt" physically - only their private information and finances are taken or exploited.

But let's think about what will happen with cyber war over time.

Today its focused on strategic infrastructure - Iranian nuclear centrifuges.  Or, I suppose, on pentagon or CIA computers.

Things that are of some vital (or supposed vital) nation interest.

But I don't imagine that foreign cyber warriors will stop there - why should they?

Instead I imagine that some evil foreign agent will write the most popular iPhone game ever.  Except that it will be a Trojan weapon that, on command, will burn up or "brick" the iPhone via some mischievous misuse of the Apple programming standards.

There are probably at least 230 million iPhones in the world.  This represents easily $10 billion USD for each fifty dollars of iPhone value.  Multiply that by a $100 USD internet/cellphone bill and you see that the destruction of massive amounts of iPhones could represent a trillion USD in damages.

And iPhones are just one example of thousand of daily use devices connected to the internet.

There are of course servers, home PC's, routers, wifi's, home entertainment devices of all sorts.

And there are commercial computers of other sorts in trains, planes, and automobiles.

There are financial institutions rife with computer devices that virtually define our culture.

Of course, at least from the perspective of the Middle-East where there is no where near the dependency on an installed base of computers, its a one sided effort.  We cannot attack their installed base of cellphones because they have far fewer.

What does this all mean?

I think that we here in the US are "hanging out" very, very far in the sense of our technological susceptibility to cyber attack.  Western Europe is probably in the same boat as well.

And all our advanced infrastructure is basically "open" to anyone with a PC and a clever mind.

So a trillion dollar "bricking" of all iPhones would be about the same "cost" to US society as a direct nuclear strike on New York City.

In the past to accomplish a direct nuclear stricke (or even in the case of Iran today) billions of dollars of development for missiles, guidance, computers, nuclear production was required over many, many years.  As in the case of Pakistan or India, relatively recent members of the nuclear "club" this was an effort and investment by the entire society within a country.

A cyber attack on financial institutions or cellphones, on the other hand, could be accomplished by a single determined person using nothing more than a decent PC and an internet connection.

In the US our cyber infrastructure has become some convoluted and fraught with "holes" (see this article as an example) that it seems this sort of attack is inevitable.

Stepping back it seems that there is an interesting antithesis here.

In the US at least, we love to "share" on Facebook and through endless cellphone and other apps - pictures, email, life in general.

We foolishly believe that the rest of world is of the same mindset.

I think that yes, they do want to share, but more than likely share something evil in the form of a virus or other problem in order to harm us.

Yet we dance around singing Kumbia in hopes of "world peace" in complete ignorance of this potential for destruction.

As if our very nature for "sharing" is the window through which we will allow the destruction of our way of life...

Agile Healthcare Delivery = Failure

Agile Software - from Wikipedia

A couple of days ago wrote a couple of articles on health.  Basically describing my philosophy on taking care of yourself mentally and physically.  A few people read them - less than a dozen.

I also wrote an article on why I though Agile software development was a stupid idea.

Five times as many people read that article.

I find it interesting that developing software with a silly strategy is more important to people than their health.  I have no idea who is reading this blog and certainly most of the interest from my perspective is in the health side - its a topic I write about frequently.

So lets imagine for a moment that doctors used an Agile Development philosophy in treating patients.

According to Wikipedia the Agile Software Manifesto says "Agile software development is a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. It is a conceptual framework that promotes foreseen interactions throughout the development cycle."

Let me translate this:

Basically from my perspective you start out with your best "guess" when doing something.  You add to it as best you can to make something "workable."  This goes to the client who comments on it.  You take the comments and anything else you've learned is wrong or could be made better and bake them into your next round of development.  Repeat until the outcome is successful.

Or in another context:

"Gee, Jr. that little Lego car is great, let's put some wheels on it..."

Now if you think about this model  its basically the same thing that happens in the medical world when you have a health problem.

Let's say I show up at the ER with some amorphous pain in my gut somewhere.

Provided that triage does not show appendicitis or similar problems you'll probably be sent home with admonishments to "eat right" and do this or that. And always to "check with your regular doctor." (Iteration #1)

So you go to said "regular doctor" and then poke around a bit and say, "Oh its X" were X is some standard catch-all disease like acid reflux.  Take some Nexium come back in a few weeks, blah, blah blah. (Iteration #2)

You come back four weeks later and say "Oh, that helps some but now my mouth is dry from the Nexium."  So you get a script for Biotene or whatever to fix that.  Mean while the Nexium is destroying your immune system (stomach acid is a big part of your immune system).  You make an appointment for four weeks later... (Iteration #3)

Same idea as Agile Software Development.

I don't know what I am doing so I'll take my best stab at it...

Personally I never really understood this idea.

Now it makes sense in some ways when you are creating a design for something.

A while back I decided to write an App for iTunes (described elsewhere in this an other blogs) call MIDIProbe.

The idea of MIDIProbe was to capture MIDI events in a usable way.

Now I could have just "guessed" at what was needed - did my best to capture what MIDI was about.  Baked that into a release and put it out there.

I then could have waited for customers to find bugs and complain.

Then I could have made another "best guess" and started over.

But I didn't.

I spend A LOT of time with the MIDI standards, device that produced MIDI, etc. so that I actually had a compete and full understanding of what it does and how its used in the real world.  I then went back and made sure my design incorporated all the right functionality from the start.

I also carefully worked out what would need to be displayed about the MIDI messages.  Now this is not as simple as it seems but when you work it all out you have an exact set of data for each message and so on.

In the end the only "customer choice" aspect of the application was the display formatting and operation of the UI.

But it seems like most of the world is lazy and doesn't care to work out details like this in advance.

Now software development got into this state from another state - that of "specifications."

The idea of specifications was that someone would "write out" exactly what was to be done, i.e., basically write the software without writing the software.

But when you think about that you'd really need to fully understand everything in order to write a complete specification: otherwise you'd specify things that might be impossible or impractical for some reason, i.e., take too long.

So then you'd spend an aeon writing useless specifications.

Now medical treatment doesn't use specifications but it uses the same "problem solving" iteration model.

Now on the software side the medical model doesn't work either really.  If something doesn't work typically you actually fix it rather than simply fix the symptom.

SO all and all to me this means that we are not using what we have learned in the last fifty years about problem solving wisely.  In fact, I think to some degree we've gone backwards because at least fifty years ago people were studying these issues and trying to improve.

Today we simply accept bogus approaches as gospel and live with the consequences no matter how silly or stupid.

If you write software to a changing specification how will that work - ultimately the code is not dynamic, i.e., if you write it to deal with adding three things and suddenly there are four things the code simply won't keep up if its hard coded for three.

I think that humanity needs to work out some better approaches to problem solving and debugging.

As I have said before no one that I can find studies this.

Yet it underlies everything from our fifteen trillion dollars in debt to our failed space missions.

A New Means of Printing High Resolution Color Images

A colored nanoscale rendition of a standard test image used in image processing experiments – (a) Before the addition of metal in the nanostructures. (b) After addition of the metal layers to the nanostructures and in specific patterns. (c) Refined color detail. Electron micrograph (bottom right) of nanostructures that make up the eye

Last week a remarkable new way to create print was announced.  A nanotechnology for creating images with a resolution of up to 100,000 dpi (dots per inch).  Traditional printing technologies are limited to about 10,000 dpi.

The illustration above is measured in micrometers (1 x 10^-6 meter or one millionth of a meter). 

The new technology is a reflective lithographic-type process.

(The full article is available at Nature Nanotechnology which requires a subscription.)

The concept was developed in Singapore at the A*STAR’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE).  The idea came from stained glass which is given color by adding metal to the molten glass.  The metal adds nanoparticles to the glass which scatter the light to give it color.  This new technology creates a metallic "surface" on the paper using nano-disks.  The disks are encoded for certain colors by size and distance apart.

From phys.org:

"The resolution of printed colour images very much depends on the size and spacing between individual ‘nanodots’ of colour", explained Dr Karthik Kumar, one of the key researchers involved. "The closer the dots are together and because of their small size, the higher the resolution of the image. With the ability to accurately position these extremely small colour dots, we were able to demonstrate the highest theoretical print colour resolution of 100,000 dpi."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-08-full-colour-images-dpi-resolution.html#jCp

"The resolution of printed colour images very much depends on the size and spacing between individual ‘nanodots’ of colour", explained Dr Karthik Kumar, one of the key researchers involved. "The closer the dots are together and because of their small size, the higher the resolution of the image. With the ability to accurately position these extremely small colour dots, we were able to demonstrate the highest theoretical print colour resolution of 100,000 dpi."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-08-full-colour-images-dpi-resolution.html#jCp

"The resolution of printed colour images very much depends on the size and spacing between individual ‘nanodots’ of colour", explained Dr Karthik Kumar, one of the key researchers involved. "The closer the dots are together and because of their small size, the higher the resolution of the image. With the ability to accurately position these extremely small colour dots, we were able to demonstrate the highest theoretical print colour resolution of 100,000 dpi."

“Instead of using different dyes for different colours, we encoded colour information into the size and position of tiny metal disks. These disks then interacted with light through the phenomenon of plasmon resonances,” said Dr Joel Yang, the project leader of the research. “The team built a database of colour that corresponded to a specific nanostructure pattern, size and spacing. These nanostructures were then positioned accordingly. Similar to a child’s ‘colouring-by-numbers’ image, the sizes and positions of these nanostructures defined the ‘numbers’. But instead of sequentially colouring each area with a different ink, an ultrathin and uniform metal film was deposited across the entire image causing the ‘encoded’ colours to appear all at once, almost like magic!” added Dr Joel Yang.

From AsianScientist:

“The resolution of printed color images very much depends on the size and spacing between individual ‘nanodots’ of color,” said lead author Dr. Karthik Kumar.

“The closer the dots are together and because of their small size, the higher the resolution of the image. With the ability to accurately position these extremely small color dots, we were able to demonstrate the highest theoretical print color resolution of 100,000 dpi,” he added.

Humanoid Robot Video

The Lone Wolf Philosophy of Health (Part II)

The Lone Wolf Philosophy of Health (Part II):

So aside from "getting your mind right" what else do you need to be concerned about in a nutritional sense?

Below I have listed a number of general categories and the issues with each.

Iodine - Iodine is a necessary nutrient which probably 95% of the people in the US do not get enough of.  I believe the minimum RDA is way too low.

See these posts: "A Short Iodine Story" and "Wherefore Art Thou, Oh Iodine?" - You can follow the "iodine" tag on the second story to more related stories and posts.

Providine Iodine is the the only 100% effective killer of MRSA.

Suggest to a modern medical practitioner anything about iodine and they will look at you as if you have two heads.

Candida - Most people have problems with yeast and Candida is a common form of yeast that infects all parts of the human body.  Not only is yeast a problem with women who take penicillin but its also common in adults and children of both sexes. 

Yeast in humans are typically controlled by bacteria that consume them.  However, today's medical practices focus on "cleanliness" and "bacteria free" to the point where good bacteria are killed off and leave the yeast to run rampant.

See the post "Antibiotics - A Scourge on Humanity."  Antibiotics kill your internal gut flora (bacteria) which account for a huge percentage of your immune system and control yeast inside you.

The bottom line is typically most humans have out of control yeast problems because of antibiotics and too much cleanliness.

Gut Flora - About 20 pounds of body weight in an average adult is bacteria - mostly in your gut.  There's a lot of research that tells us that gut bacteria are symbiotic with your body in terms of your immune system and your digestion.

Some 80% of your immune system resides in your gut in the form of bacteria.

These bacteria are indiscriminately killed by antibiotics along with whatever else they are supposed to kill.  Further, once destroyed they cannot be "reloaded" into your body without substantial effort (basically taking proper supplements or via a "fecal transplant" - see this "Fecal Transplant, er, I mean Bacteriotherapy.")

Inflammation - Many modern things, including diet, cause inflammation in your digestive tract and arteries.  Heart attacks and plaque buildup are the result of inflammation, not "cholesterol" as you see commonly advertised on TV.

See "Cholesterol, Heart Disease and Magical Thinking."

Cholesterol is a necessary element in the operation of your body and brain.  When you do not have enough of it in your diet you and your brain don't function properly.

See "Lower Cholesterol = Memory Loss."  The point of this post is that lowering your cholesterol by the standard medical means is basically making you stupid and not addressing inflammation in your body.

There are numerous things to be done about this: proper supplementation (I like Cod Liver Oil - see "ADHD and a Spoon Full of Sugar" and Vitamin C) chief among them.

There is a lot of research on this - much of which says that things like "cholesterol lowering" medications are very, very bad for you - Google is your friend here.

See "Death by Conventional Medical Wisdom" and "Obesity - Its What's for Dinner."

Obesity - Modern Americans eat the Standard American Diet (SAD).  Healthy people from other cultures and parts of the world come to the US and they get sick.  This is well documented.

See the post "Live Long and Prosper" where I describe how poor rural Mexican's that come to the US for work end up dying from the diet they eat here and that they are actually better off being poor rural Mexican's health-wise that members of US society.

The food pyramid is basically something developed initially to fatten hogs for market.

Much of the problem here is what we eat and what effect it has on our body.

See "What is Your Colon Transit Time."  Some 90% of all disease are thought to be related to improper functioning of the digestive system.

My personal feeling is that you have to eat mostly fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts and no processed flour, sugar, etc.  You must not eat artificial sweeteners, processed oils, etc.

There is another whole area of this related to the types of oils used in modern America (see "Genetic Engineering - It's What's for Dinner").  Many believe that the use of various cooking oils like canola, corn, vegetable, etc. are a significant part of the health problems today.  You should only be using "good" oils like coconut and olive - and then not "burning" them.

Just try and find a food with oil that does not use genetically modified "Round Up Ready" soybean oil.

Now your diet varies by your individual situation and your genetics as I see it - based on your heritage your body may require more of one thing and less of another for example.

The bottom line is that when you are eating right you will lose weight, become more healthy, and your gastrointestinal function will correct itself.  You will eat more, feel better and your food will digest properly. Once this is all "right" you will reach digestive (or "poo") nirvana and your digestive system will work just like the dogs.

(Note that dogs typically don't suffer the same diseases we do and typically have proper digestive functioning.)

Vitamins - Most people I think need a vitamin supplement.  But often they take the wrong thing or too much of the wrong things.  Without proper vitamins the systems in your body will not work right.

You also have to do research on what the right amounts are.

My belief is that the minimum RDA for vitamin C, as an example, was set as the minimum amount to prevent scurvy.

But is that enough?

I think no.  Just because you don't have visible symptoms of scurvy does not mean you have enough vitamin C.

Gingivitis, for example, is basically a sub-clinical (does not show all the symptoms) case of scurvy.

You can buy all the toothpaste in the world and its not going to fix the problem unless you have a proper dose of vitamin C.

Similarly vitamin D is necessary for proper gastrointestinal function.

Normally its produced in your skin by converting sunlight and cholesterol.  (Take sunlight away due to skin cancer and cholesterol because its "bad" for you and critical nutrients needed to run your digestive system vanish from your body.)

Diabetes - This is a general label for two completely different problems.

Type 1 is a genetic problem where your body does not produce insulin. 

Type 2 - which is prevalent today - is related to the fact that your cells become insulin resistant.

See "Type 2 is Not Diabetes..."

Today doctors can barely tell the difference between the two (see this post).

My view is Type 2 diabetes is caused by SAD and you.  If you change what and how you eat it will go away.  Its an "industrial" disease related to the industrialization of food processing in America.

Medications -  Today medications are provided for virtually any complaint - from physical pain to mental issues.  Most of these are bad and designed to profit the company making them.

Just read the side effects list of any medication your doctor prescribes - they are all bad.

And medications interact.  Take medication A and your eyes dry out.  Take B with A so your eyes dry out and your bowels no longer work.  Take A, B, and C so all three work and your mouth is dry and your are sleepy all the time...

This is no way to live.

Medications in the US medical system treat symptoms - not root causes.

Think about it - if you took a pill and the disease went away where would the money be for the manufacturer of the pill or the doctor.

You want to think about your body as a system that works together.  Like a car if you put cheap gas in you get poor results.  Put cheap food in your mouth and you will see the same.

Medications are not a substitute for eating the right food.

----------

This is a lot of material and a lot of it is scary stuff.

We as American's are killing ourselves with our diet, medical system and lifestyle.  (I am not saying all medicine is "bad" - just that much of it is not designed to solve the problem.)

The good news is that it can be fixed though it takes time to retrain your mind and body.

One hundred years ago these problems did not exist because people at a far more natural diet.  But as the culture became more industrialized so do the preparation of food.  And short cuts were taken.

My advice is to find a Naturapathy Doctor who an advise you on diet. 

I personally found my own path but it took many years - though I learned a lot in the process.

There is more than this to the story but my fingers are tired...d

I have tried to put down enough to at least get people started.  There are many wonderful sites on the internet and I am by no means the only person that thinks this way.

Most of my posts have links to other posts and you can always use Google.

I guess most important of all is deciding that you are unhappy with your current scenario.

If you like where you are at then more power too you.  But if you feel you're not where you should be then do some research.  There are numerous books, magazines, blogs, etc.

For me I feel about fifteen years younger than I did...

Your best bet is a practitioner that can help you get started.  But don't just take what they say at face value.  If they recommend supplements, for example, Google them to find out what they are and what they do. 

Empower yourself.

The Lone Wolf Philosophy of Health (Part I)

The Lone Wolf Philosophy of Health (Part I):

I was speaking with someone yesterday about health and feeling "good."  The topic came up off the cuff.  I explained that there was a lot I had done over the last many years to get myself into good physical and mental shape.

I thought I would write this down on the blog so that it would all be in one place.

I think the first and most important thing is that I consider my health to be about the "whole me" - not just some pills I take or food I eat, i.e, not just treating a "symptom."  So this includes things like family, stress, job, all of that as well.  Because as humans we are so tightly entwined with others you really have to consider the whole picture I think as well.

You also have to think about whatever burdens you are carrying from the past and how they are affecting you today.

So we start with what's known as the "serenity prayer" (it has lots of other names as well be we will keep this on topic):

"God grant me the wisdom to change the things I can, to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference."  (And yes, it works even for atheists.)

So before you run off and say "I have to do X before Y" or "I can only do Y after Z" as far as getting healthy I say hold on a minute and think about what this prayer is telling you.

What parts of your life really cannot be changed?

We we should all know we cannot change what has already happened.

But do we really have to live with the consequences of that as they are today?  Can we change ourselves today in terms of how we view and interpret the past?

Many times we believe that our lives have to "be" a certain way - I have to work, I have to make X dollars, I have to do this, I have to do that...

All of this drives us to behave a certain way.  But do we really "have" to do this and that?

You have to really think about that behavior as well (you probably have to pay taxes and die but that's about all you really have to do if you think about it).

So I am saying that if you want to be "healthy" you have to put your full life into proper perspective.  You will have to ultimately have healthy relationships (which might, for example, include healthy boundaries to "limit" those relationships to what you can deal with) with family and significant others, you will have to find a job that does not kill you with stress, you will have to learn to effectively deal with problems others have (drugs, health, etc.) which you cannot change.

The reason for this is simple.  If your job is so stressful that its literally killing you with too many hours or overwork or a crappy boss then no amount of "proper eating," for example, is going to fix it.  You will have to fix your job first - not the other way around.

Modern American medicine is only going to treat your symptoms so no US medical doctor is going to help you with any of this either - instead they will say "you're depressed," give you pills, and send you on your way.

You also have to sort out the difference between "can't change" and "unwilling to change."

If you like sky diving with your significant other but find it stressful then you might have to give it up.  If you are unwilling to do that than no amount of exercise, again as an example, will eliminate that stress - you'll actually have to give up sky diving.  If you keep sky diving because you feel you must then it will be very hard to make yourself healthy.

At the same time if your significant other only loves you because you sky with them then perhaps that's something that should change.

It is also my personal belief is that human's were not designed for the "information age" and our minds and brains are not designed to handle the amount of input they receive in today's cellphone-based, TV new flash world.  Literally every second there is input - news on TV, texts, emails, voice mail, calls, video chats, skypes.

From an evolutionary perspective our brains are designed for sitting around on the savannah waiting for the next antelope to kill.  Maybe some flies buzzing, maybe an wiggling child, but not the constant barrage of data high tech data.

And often the data content itself is stressful as well - killings, stavation, war, elections that will determine our very future, endless talking heads telling us what to think and why.

Now sometimes health comes into play too here.  You get a bad report from the doctor so you start to worry.  That compounds the stress, that affects your work, your boss is angry, and so on.

The only advice I have here is you have to realize that the most important thing you have to worry about is you.

Whether you're the primary bread winner or a mom with kids or just a simple housewife you cannot do your job if your head and health are all messed up.  If you're a parent then understand that your kids will be worse off if you die from stress (or make them live with your stress vicariously) than if you simply "pull back the throttle" a bit and change course.

If you cannot do your job, i.e., what's expected of you, then there will be stress.

So you have to take care of yourself first and foremost.

This kind of change does not usually happen over night so don't expect it to.  You may need to plan things differently, organize your life or your time differently, take some time to accept that so-and-so will never help with mom, or whatever it is.

But in any case the first step is to get your mind on the right path with the serenity prayer.

What's next?

Well, two things I think: you need to eat the right kinds of food and you need to be active in the sense of moving around and not sitting all day.

Exercise can temporarily eliminate the symptoms of stress by generating endorphins.  While that's great while its actually happening if mom's sitting at home angry because you didn't iron her sheets exercise isn't going to make her any less angry.

Its only going to help you to deal with the anger.

I am not suggesting running marathons or anything like that.  But walking around, moving around, biking, swimming, anything but sitting (which will soon be classified as a disease if its not already).

Eating right is the most complicated thing in today's world of the Standard American Diet (SAD).

Virtually everything food-wise you buy is adulterated with chemicals, pesticides, plastic, cardboard, ink, dye, filler, fat, crud, etc.

Again, our evolutionary bodies are designed to be sitting around on the savannah eating the last kill or digging up roots or finding berries - not eating Count Chocula from a plastic bag.

There is a vast array of expertise in the world about this issue and how to work around it.

And about the only think you can know for sure is that the SAD is really, really bad for you.

Its probably making your issues with stress worse, your health worse, and so on.

The good news is that its possible to escape the SAD.

There are good nutritionists around to help.  Especially those that look at your blood chemistry and think about your nutrition relative to that.  (Personally I don't like kinesiology, for example, because its based on subjective rather than objective input.)

You need to find a good one that you can work with.  Look for a Naturapathy Physician to help you.

Your diet is bad for sure and it will take time to fix - not days, not weeks, not even months.

You've probably been eating a certain way for many years and your body is used to that.  It will take time to change so don't rush it.

(And of course, modern medical insurance won't pay for this because modern medicine thinks its okay to eat twinkees and big macs all day long...)

The good news is that lots of people are now realizing what's wrong with the SAD and are pushing retailers to sell good food.  We're not there yet but we're trying...

So the keys to getting well are deceptively simple:

1. Live by the serenity prayer.

2. Don't sit around, move around.

3. Learn how to eat good, nutritious food.

You are also going to have to do some of the work yourself in the sense of going on the internet and finding things out about food in particular.

Everyone is different and what works for one person might not work for another.

We are all unique mentally and genetically and "standard" practices, particularly in medicine and nutrition, are not a one-size-fits-all solution.

The internet will allow you to research symptoms and problems.  But it will also try to convince you you have every disease in the book.

So discriminate.

Personally I like to read peoples stories, not advertising by people selling something.

"I'm Paula from X and my son has Y and I went to the doctor and the doctor said Z and ..."

What did Paula do, why did she do it, and so on.  Hopefully Paula is not selling anything and simply talking about what happened to her.

Lean from what she says.

AND NO NOT PANIC.

(Virtually every serious disease known to man has symptoms like "fatigue, can't sleep, and anxious.")

Chances are you are suffering from SAD, stress and lack of exercise and nothing more.

Use regular doctors to eliminate and rule out problems rather than treat symptoms.

And don't expect medical doctors to understand any of what I am writing - especially the part on nutrition (see this post I wrote a while back: "M.D. = No Knowledge of Nutrition").

If you want to you can succeed.

You will be fighting an uphill battle against advertising on TV, doctors, the medical establishment, everything.

Remember - they are all in it for the money and not your health - DO NOT FORGET THIS.

You need to get yourself better so you can do your job in society - whatever that is.

Don't give up.

It took a lot of twinkees or whatever to get into this boat, it will take time to get out

And, as they say, every journey of a 1,000 miles begins with the first step.

(In Part II I will talk about some of the common issues that face all of us in terms of nutrition and health.  Most are here on this blog but I have to dig through them to find the best places to start...)

Modern Software Development: An Agile Failure

SR-71 Assembly @ The Skunk Works (Wikipedia)

Over the last 35 or so years I have seen a lot of strategies for developing software come and go.

When I was in my twenties many of these strategies were encapsulated in books by "famous" authors.  Perhaps what started it all (circa 1975) and turned out to be the most famous was "The Mythical Man Month" by Fred Brooks.

Brooks wrote about his observations at IBM during the creation of OS/360 - the computer operating system for IBM mainframes introduced with the IBM 360 series of computers.

A key observation by Brooks was "adding more programmers to a project that's already late will make it later," i.e., adding man power does not necessarily get things done quicker.  (Those familiar with, for example, roofing find this counter-intuitive.  I have have 20 squares of shingles to install and I have two roofers I can easily add a third roofer and get more done.)  But this is not necessarily so with software.

The reason is that unlike roofing each piece of software to some degree "interacts" with the other.  So imagine shingles not organized as "all the same" but instead as a puzzle.  Now I cannot simply pull any old shingle out of any old package of shingles and nail it in place.  I now have to inspect that shingle, inspect other shingles, inspect the work and placement of already installed shingles, all before putting my piece in place.

In this context adding a person may make it take longer as anyone who has had inept family members work on their jigsaw puzzle will tell you.  Usually someone takes the lead, develops the strategy (perhaps of sorting pieces by the edge type or color), organizes the work, and gets the job done.

Software is actually an even more complex process in that pieces of the puzzle may be unknown in some way - how they will fit in, what exactly they should do, and so on.

Resolving these issues requires communication between the various parties involved.  However, sometimes a party might make an "assumption" about what another party is doing - either explicitly or implicitly (perhaps without even realizing it).  When its time to connect two pieces about which each side has made assumptions we often find the assumptions don't match up and the pieces don't fit.

Over the last 35 years various strategies have been developed to resolve these issues and make software development more "effective."

During the last sixty or seventy years we can look at similar engineer processes, e.g., airplane building.

Airplanes are as large and complex as any software system (the old adage is that no modern airplane ever built was strong enough to lift off the ground carrying its own documentation).  In the 1940's, 50's and 60's airplanes were built largely by hand - with wood frames for bending metal, slide rules to do the calculations, and drafting boards to create blueprints.

By today's standards this seems primitive but these technologies built airplanes like the XB-70, Concorde, SR-71 Blackbird, F-104 Star Fighter, X-15, 747, and many, many others.  Airplanes which in many cases provided advancement and/or features that today's airplanes would be hard pressed to match both in terms of capability as well as time frame from initial concept to flying prototype.

How can this be so today?  Everyone has advanced degrees, computers in their pocket that exceeded the capacity of all the computers on the planet in 1957.

What's wrong?

If we look at software engineering we see the current "model du jour" of software engineering is "Agile Development."  The idea with this is we "iterate" over some model of what the software should do very quickly.  Work a week or two based on some loose specifications and deliver a prototype.  Get some feedback, work a week or two more, deliver another prototype, and so on until the job is complete!

Basically development by committee.

Early modern jet aircraft, as a counter example, were designed by often by a individual who was able to fully envision the task the plane was too address.  By "fully envision" I mean to literally draw out on a few sheets the entire concept and get more or less "right" the first time.  Further, the process to build the plane was tightly controlled by a strong, able leader.  (See this for the rules of the Lockheed Skunk Works.)

These people had all the experience to innately "know" they were designing something that could be built and would fly.  Innate experience that comes from "working your way up the ladder" in a place like the Skunk Works: knowing the right kind of metal existed and would work, understanding stress innately rather than only through some simulation, and so on.

But today we no longer have this kind of strength or depth in knowledge or leadership - particularly in software.

Today specialization is so strong that many programmers never speak to a customer - or have no idea how things will be used - or have no concept of "product life cycle."  So while they may be "highly educated" they know little about what needs to be done.

Often they are more concern with what others will think or feel about the work being done than actually doing the work right.  They are more concerned with their own careers than properly performing the work for the project.

Things like Agile Development simply hide this from the customers view.

Ultimately the real problem is that software engineers are just that - software engineers.  What do they know about, for example, flap controllers on an airplane.  For a software engineer to build a piece of software to do the "right thing" for the flaps on the 747 they have to "know" as much as an aerodynamic engineer.

If they don't and don't take into account complex issues like, for example, stall speed, then the functionality of their software will be deficient.

So in truth the only way to write good software is to actually understand what you are doing in the domain the software will work in, e.g., airplanes, or music, or print, or whatever.

But today certainly no younger people have this depth of skill.  They've only learned one thing at school: writing software.

So now they have to learn about what they are doing in some other field in order to properly create software for that field.

And that's where things are going bad, at least from my perspective.

Modern software "kids" don't understand any sort of "big picture."

And the products they build suffer because of it.

And "strong leaders" are discouraged as well - they stand out and often are at "odds" with the community development concepts - strong leaders have strong ideas about how things should be done.  Typically this involves "vision" - something a committee does not usually have in abundance.

With the explosion of computers in our lives (installed in everything from refrigerators to cars to razors) there is a constant demand for "programmers."  But what's turned out by schools is usually not up to snuff in terms what industry needs.

I think that "Agile Development" is the epitome of this failure.

Hire someone to run your project that knows what they are doing rather than iterate over "guesses" about what should be done.

Often in Agile environments people with actual knowledge of the problem to be solved are viewed as impediments to the Agile process.   This is because actual knowledge may point to a solution that does not fit rapid iteration, e.g., the problem requires complex software to be developed based on something like the laws of physics.  NO amount of iteration will change these laws so you have to bite the bullet and deal with it.

If no one knows enough to run the project then someone will have to learn.

This is yet another massive failure of the US educational system - probably on par with the same failures I have written about in medical research.

We need to wake up and smell the coffee...

X-51A: Your Future at Mach 6

 For several years the Air Force has been working on the X51-A - a hypersonic missile/aircraft capable of flying at mach 6 or around 4,600 miles per hour.

The X-51A has been under development for approximately six years.


So far the testing of this device has been hit-or-miss.  The first one flew 200 seconds.  The second only a few seconds.  The final of the first three ordered will fly today.  Hopefully the third test will be successful.

The X51-A uses a scramjet engine.  This is basically a highly optimized tube with few or no moving parts.  As air enters its accelerated to supersonic speed.  Fuel is injected and ignition takes place.

As you can see from this diagram its an extremely simple device.

Below is a test flight video of the first flight:



 According to this the X-51A is powered by an "SJY61 Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne scramjet engine, which is capable of producing between 400 to 1000 lbs of thrust."

So if you had something like this what could you do with it?

DARPA says that this is the precursor to a mach 20 craft capable of traveling over 15,000 miles per hour.  Since the earth is only 25,000 miles in diameter this means that such a craft can arrive anywhere in the world in less than an hour.


You could make it a cruse missile or attach a manned capsule for trips into space.


One thing that's important to realize is that US Defense programs like this allow the United States to leapfrog other countries in terms of technology.  Rather than building me-too kinds of craft we can actually lead.


I think this comes from the countries focus on science and engineering in the 1960's.


Unlike the social upheavals of the same era the focus on technology was an investment that still pays dividends today for our country.


Sadly I think that this focus is now dying.


Just look at the commercials for technology on TV today - mostly old geezers telling how they were "inspired" years ago to do something.


No young people.


And if there are some, they seem technologically illiterate.