Too Much Sun Screen: The Dogma of Stupid

I came across an interesting article in the WSJ claiming basically that everyone should be wearing sun screen every day.  The article screams "DANGER" because the incidence rate has increased eight-fold for young women since 1970 or so (no statistics were offered).

The best information I could find goes back to 1999 from this CDC web site.

You can see that for white people (top green line) the rates has been increasing slowly and steadily for about ten years.  I could not find evidence on the site for what was reported earlier than this.

Interestingly skin cancer seems to be a phenomena significant only to white people - other races are impacted but a very low rates (other statistics here from the American Melanoma foundation).

Now if the sun were the problem I would imagine that skin cancer would be commonly reported the further south that you go.  So, for this CDC site, I grabbed this image:

This is rather counter-intuitive at first glance.  Most of the heavier rates (darker colors, rate per 100,000 people) are in the pacific northwest, north and far northeast of the US.   There are some higher rates on the US east coast as well.  But in the states where I would think it would be highest, e.g., Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, New Mexico - the incidence rate is the lowest.

Now Arizona gets far more sun than Minnesota does - yet there is more skin cancer the farther north you go (at least in some directions).

So what about death rates from skin cancer?

I took this image from the same CDC site (I modified the colors so that the redder the state the higher the skin cancer death rate):

Here one sees some unexpected results: not all the states with the highest incidence rates have the highest death rates - South Dakota, with one of the lowest incidence rates has one of the highest death rates and Minnesota, with one of the highest incidence rates has one of the lowest death rates.

Further, one imagines that in Texas and New Mexico you would see higher rates - but both of these southern states along with Louisiana and Mississippi have low incidence and low death rates.

To me these charts do not scream "Wear Sun Screen 100% of the Time."

The supposition is that both UVA and UVB rays from the sun penetrate the skin and trigger cancerous growths which develop into skin cancer.

Now, buried in the American Melanoma foundation link is an interesting fact: skin cancer on women's torso's ages 15-29 is the fastest increasing incidence rate among all demographics.

How odd.

One imagines that if the sun were causing this problem it would be common in all southern states.  But its not...

On the other hand, one would expect that for women using tanning beds, especially in northern climates where there isn't much sun exposure, too much tanning might be the cause of skin cancer.  And give that young female torso's are where the rates are increasing the fastest one has to believe that tanning beds are much more likely the problem.

So what about all this slathering of high SPF crap on your skin?

Well, there are two problems there:

First, you skin is a big source of vitamin D.  It creates this vitamin D from sunlight.  Without sunlight and other sources of vitamin D you can become deficient.

Slathering high SPF sunscreen all over kids before they go outside denies them vitamin D production - especially in their critical early years.

Some, such as this article, don't believe this to be an issue.  I think it probably is, at least for small children who do not get enough vitamin D from other sources.

Second, one has to wonder what is in sunscreen.

Here there is less direct concrete evidence but people are at least questioning the basic idea of slathering unknown chemicals daily on themselves.

To block UV (A or B) sun screens are using chemicals like titanium dioxide or "nano particles."

Titanium dioxide has been around for decades (its the white stuff on the lifeguard's nose at the beach).  But today's sunscreens bring this chemical into contact with the entire body.  And these particles are small and can enter the blood stream through the skin.

Similarly with "nano particles" (finely ground zinc or titanium dioxide or other chemicals).  No one really knows if they can penetrate your skin or what they will do to you if they do (see this).

I think the dogma of stupid rules this area of health care.  To me the facts are clear:

1) If you are white skin cancer is a fact of life - be aware of your body and what you skin is doing.

2) Stay out of tanning beds and don't lay burning in the sun.

3) Occasional use of "old fashion" sunscreen is probably okay, e.g., at the beach for a vacation, and to prevent serious burns.

4) Do go out in the sun for a walk or other regular exercise to ensure you get enough vitamin D.

As far as any science is concerned - one thing that has entered our lives since the 1970's has been tanning and tanning salons.  Yet I can find no statistics on them.

I wonder if they have anything to do with the increased incidence of cancer on young female torsos...

Dogma of Stupid: LSD to treat Alcoholism

So I was under the foolish assumption that education was about learning - learning being the process where you conduct activity, make mistakes, use those mistakes as feedback to correct behavior and/or assumptions, and, in the end, discover something new.
Wikipedia says "Learning is acquiring new, or modifying existing, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information."

I have to take issue with this definition because its not so clear on what "acquiring" involves.

My guess, based on this WSJ article, is that in today's world "acquiring" involves mostly "being told what to think."

Now I wonder how that works for riding a bicycle?  Don't you have to work at it in order to learn how to balance and steer?  Same with a car - I know of no "driver's ed" where you are simply "told" how to drive.

But at least in science there seems to be little room for anything but the "standard dogma."

To wit, in Tennessee, according to the linked article new legislation would "allow teachers to question "the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses" of theories "including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."

Imagine - a law stating that you don't have to spout the traditional dogma - whatever that might be...

So what's the point of my comment on this?

Well, for one thing, at least in my opinion, when no one questions standard dogma you get science like this: "LSD May Help Alcoholics Stay Off Booze."  (And yes, its "acid" from the 1960's we are talking about...)

According to these "scientists" LSD is "...  safe and nonaddictive, although it could carry acute psychiatric adverse events such as anxiety and confusion."

For me its hard to imagine trading an alcohol addiction for dependence in some for or other on LSD - a substance which does not always bring out the best in people.

Here's a nice example of what an LSD dose does to someone from the 1950's (when LSD was a "legal" substance).

Now having spent many hours in bars playing music I am used to conversations with heavy drinkers - especially after a long night out.  I really don't see much of a difference between the effects of LSD in this movie and those bar conversations.  The women's reaction to LSD appears to match common side effects of LSD - disorientation, strange visualizations, and so on (the classic "Timothy Leary" symptoms).

But this woman and her LSD trip are not what I am concerned. about:  "Modern science" says LSD is "safe and nonaddictive" for alcoholism treatment?

Would you want this woman under the influence of LSD driving your child's school bus?  A car?  Performing medical tests on you?

I doubt it.

So what's wrong with these "researchers" suggesting that this is better than alcoholism?

My belief is that the "researchers" were the product of modern dogma-based education where things like "alcoholism is bad" and "smoking is bad" are beaten into children's heads like drum beats for 12 or more years.

The problem with this drum beat is that it offers no model to think about what the real problem is or what a reasonable solution might be.  No one in their right mind would simply trade one addiction problem for another.

How about spending some time learning about addictive personalities.

How about understanding what's driving the person to drink the first place?

How about thinking what little Jr. will do when the local "LSD" shop opens up down the road from the school.

But that's not what these researchers think about.

No big picture thinking.

And little wonder because they were not taught to think for themselves.

No questioning.  No free thinking.  No reasoning out solutions to hard problems.

All because "education" is delivered as a nice, thought-out-in-advance package of pablum for ready consumption by untrained and unthinking fools.

And worse, evil Republicans have to pass a law to simply allow a discussion of opposing scientific view.

As they say in England this is barking mad.

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).

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...

Dogma of Stupid: TSA Body Scanners

We've all been told by the TSA how wonderful and safe these new devices are.

But, according to this video demonstration, this is perhaps not true:




(If you're too busy to watch where a $1 billion USD of your money went I will be glad to explain.  The TSA scanners show an image of your body against a black background.  You've probably seen the images - a sort of ghostly naked person sanding, arms up, in front of a black background image.  What this means is, if you conceal metal against the side of your body it becomes part of the black background.

The guy in this video convincingly demonstrates this at several airports.  He sews a pocket onto the side of his shirt and walks through the security systems in two airports.)

First off, even without first testing this myself I can see how it would easily work.  My guess is that disguising things inside your body or wrapping them with material that had the same molecular makeup as body fat might work too - concealing a dangerous item is something that's "white" to match the ghostly images.

Personally I've had only one experience with these machines a few years ago so I don't really know much about them nor had I thought about them much until I saw the video above.

The fellow in the video, Jonathan Corbett, is not alone in his assessment of this technology.

For example, Rafi Sela, the former chief of security at the Israel Airport Authority concurs. “I don't know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines,” Sela commented. “I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747. That's why we haven't put them in our airport.”

Mr. Sela told the Canadian House of Commons Transportation committee “You are reacting to incidents instead of being one step ahead of them.”

So what does our TSA here in the US say about all of this?

From the TSA blog we find this: "Imaging technology has been extremely effective in the field and has found things artfully concealed on passengers as large as a gun or nonmetallic weapons, on down to a tiny pill or tiny baggies of drugs. It’s one of the best tools available to detect metallic and non-metallic items, such as… you know… things that go BOOM."

And this: "However, our nation's aviation system is much safer now with the deployment of 600 imaging technology units at 140 airports. It is completely safe and the vast majority use a generic image that completely addresses privacy concerns. Also, keep in mind that is optional. Anybody can opt out of the body scanner for a pat-down."

Hmmm....

No counter claims technically (though they do claim the video is "crude").

Yes we've deployed a lot of these...

Yes, we've found a gun, some big metal things, and some baggies of pills...

Is this the best our government can do?

Apparently...

All because we can't simply observer and interact the people getting on airplanes.  This is how the Israeli's do it.  There are no body scanners, only basic metal detectors and X-ray machines.

Yet the Israeli's are very successful.

Here in the US there would, I suppose, be claims of discrimination.

Yet what are the scanners designed to do?

Discriminate those with weapons and dangerous items from those without.

What if these devices find more men than women with contraband?  Is that illegal?

And, in fact, here in the US we discriminate anyway based on "country of origin" according to this: "Since early January, the United States has in fact introduced new requirements based on passengers’ country of origin or citizenship. Travelers from 14 countries — including Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Syria — are now required to undergo an extra search before boarding planes to America."

Notice the list of countries - many Arab countries...  No doubt many people from these countries "look alike" or "fit a stereotype"...

Duh!

So despite spending a billion dollars on a system some guy with a video camera and some spare time can quickly and easily defeat we profile anyway.

This is what's wrong with us and our country.

We haven't come up with a better solution - we've instead spent money we don't have on a system that requires us to do what we're not supposed to anyway - and we do it anyway.

This is the dogma of stupid - better to pretend to do "the right thing" while actually doing it badly that to simply bite the bullet and deal with reality.

According to the forward article an Arag-Israeli student, Saleh Yaaqubi, described his experience at Ben Gurion airport: “This is the most offensive and humiliating experience I have ever had. I was immediately suspect because I am Arab...”

I feel Mr. Yaaqubi's pain.

I am humiliated by how stupid our TSA is.  Here's some young geek guy effortless passing through the TSA security at multiple airports.

I am humiliated by how the TSA can spend billions on something a guy with a little brains and a sewing machine can defeat so easily.

I find this offensive.  Offensive that we are a second rate security country.

I am offended at having the TSA show screen savers like "My First Cavity Search" - openly exposed to passengers as I wrote about over a year ago.

I wonder if the Israeli security folks at Ben Gurion airport sit around joking about things like that?

I think not...

The Dogma of Stupid: Saving the USPS

Though I don't write much about it any more my roots are in printing and publishing and Lexigraph sells PDF-based products that address large-scale issues with handling PDF files.

Occasionally I still write about this (I also occasionally post in my PDF blog).

Today I want to address the US Post Office.

Certainly we are all familiar with the image to the right - plummeting mail volumes - up to maybe 35 billion pieces this year from its peak.

Recently the US Post Master Patrick Donahoe named 223 mail processing centers that will be closed to save money.  With that drop in mail volume comes a commensurate drop in revenue - $5 billion USD - in the recent fiscal year.

The floors of these processing centers bleed red with ink and the soon-to-be $0.50 stamp won't help much.

Our plucky congressmen are not taking this lying down, nope.  Between their busy schedules of entertaining various gold diggers vying for yet more gold and running up the national debt to epic proportions they are also busy finding ways to keep the idle mail processing centers open.

Why?

So that they themselves "look good" to their constituents.  And while the congressmen have no direct control over the USPS they can still sway the decisions by manipulating things: inciting protests, not voting in necessary postal legislation, and so on.

Basically taking their marbles and going home.

These days in my household the use the USPS has declined to the following:

1) Mailing Mrs. Wolf's Christmas cards (maybe 25 cards per year).

2) Communicating the government agencies (maybe 25 letters per year at the very most - though most agencies, e.g., the IRS, local taxing authorities, are making changes to reduce this further).

3) Mailing forgotten items (a few packages per year) to visiting relatives.

We still receive mail for some bills (a good policy in this electronic age considering we did remarkably well in a recent tax audit - in part thanks to all that hard copy backup), cards from elderly relatives, and tax notifications and bills.

Mrs. Wolf receives some purchases such as from Amazon via USPS delivery.

There is also a fairly small volume of routine junk mail.

In the USPS glory days we used to receive a laundry basket of mail per week between the house and businesses.  Computer Shoppers, ads, solicitation, and catalogs mostly - which mostly created a significant waste problem.  (Perhaps the USPS could be refitted to mine old landfills for paper to use in eco-friendly energy systems?)

I would bet today that each year we receive roughly a single laundry basket of non-junkmail.

Probably a reduction of some 50 to 1 since the late 90's and early 2000's.

No wonder they are going broke.

Given this model why does congress not act responsibly?

For one the postal unions and employees represent a significant block of voters in many districts and particularly in districts with processing centers.

Closing processing centers equals angry constituents - particularly in rural areas.

And most importantly they don't have the guts to face facts or reality of debt.  If the USPS Postmaster General has had to face up to what's coming why don't they.  Recall that we are again at the borrowing limit of the US government and adding to the burden significantly by not taking action.

One also imagines that there has never been any realistic USPS retirement planning for pensioners in the case where mail volumes decline - so we can expect a significant (tens of billions?) bailout in the future.  (I still fondly recall receiving a misplaced USPS union insurance mailing in the late 1990's telling me that as a USPS employee I could have family medical coverage for $9.99 a week per person while my Blue Cross cost me more than three times that.)

Sadly mail is becoming a thing of the past - like electronic tubes, buggy whips, incandescent light bulbs, horse-draw carriages and all the rest.  Sure people will always spend money to send Christmas cards but the volume will plummet down to that of the 1950's or 40's.

HughesNet satellite internet costs $39.00 for the first three months of service, probably $60.00 there after.  Not surprisingly its roughly the same as basic cable internet.  I used this before we had cable internet in our area - it works well enough compared, say, to dial-up.

I suspect that most internet users today are within the reach of cable or a cell tower and that HughesNet address a small, rural minority that need connectivity but live outside one of these areas.

Which means that communicating with them no longer requires the USPS.

Even the IRS has dropped using the USPS.

So, with any luck the US Congress will ensure that there will be at least 223 spare processing facilities staffed with workers watching TV or simply twiddling their thumbs.

So if a giant solar flare wipes out the US communications infrastructure we will be prepared (oops, all of the electronics in these facilities will be wiped out as well...).

Well, at any rate, these USPS employees will still have jobs and vote...

The Dogma of Stupid: US Infrastructure Security

There has been some recent news "chatter" about the threat to our country'ss infrastructure by the hacker group known as "Anonymous."

You've probably seen them, or at least pictures of them, with the "V for Vendetta" masks on.

About six months ago the US Department of Homeland Security warned us about them: "Several racist, homophobic, hateful, and otherwise maliciously intolerant cyber and physical incidents throughout the past decade have been attributed to Anonymous, though recently, their targets and apparent motivations have evolved to what appears to be a hacktivist agenda."  Again, recently, US General Keith Alexander of the NSA, brought these fears to light (see this).

But this really makes me wonder...

For one thing, STUXNET and it friends, like Duqu, have been around a while and are specifically designed to attack the kind of infrastructure you see in "the real world" - Iranian centrifuges not withstanding.

Unfortunately for all of us Microsoft Windows and its variants (like Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2008 Server) as well as things like the Microsoft web server IIS have very well taken over the world.  There probably are very few businesses left on earth that do not have some form of Windows-based software in use.

Sadly, many large infrastructure-type business, e.g., power plants, waste processing facilities, water treatment plants, and so on, have picked up on Windows systems over the years as well.  Now, in and of themselves the only real danger from these Windows-based systems in a stand-alone environment, i.e, not connected to the internet, is that they might crash - probably an acceptable risk for run-of-the-mill systems in offices. 

For industrial controllers, i.e., software running the power plant or waste water system, again not connected to the internet, the danger is even less.  Typically these commercial systems are well tested and debugged before being put into production.

The real danger here is that, for what ever reason, some moron has decided to connect these systems to the internet.

And this is where the fun begins.  Most computers running industrial equipment have a very specific job to do.  For example, in a waste water system this might involve monitoring pumps, pump speeds, value positions, that sort of thing.  The infrastructure of the plant was designed to work a certain way, i.e., fill tank A, when tank A reaches point X turn on agitator motor C for 10 minutes, open valve D, ...

The Windows-based controller, when installed, is programmed to perform these tasks.  It receives inputs from various sensors, it controls various devices, and it does its job.

Normally these systems have no need to work over and use the internet - at least until probably 15 years ago or so.  After all, why would they?

Updates and monitoring where handled with dialup systems - you remember - 1200 baud or 56K baud modems - that worked over phone lines.  These dialups spoke specific "languages" and talked only to specific phone numbers so hacking into them really required a lot of specialized knowledge and access.

But more recently all this has changed.  For many reasons, cost and convenience chief among them, the dogma of stupid drove everyone to connect these systems to the internet.  Now, rather than paying for a special phone line, the remote technician can simply "telnet" in and fix the system.  Diagnostic data can simply flow automatically to remote systems for monitoring.

(This is well documented in the IT world.)

Seems simple enough.

Until Anonymous shows up.

Now Anonymous doesn't have to be very smart to hack these systems - they're probably not really even geniuses.

Why?

Because Microsoft has already done their work for them.

You see, when all these Windows-based systems were connected to the internet all the well-understood flaws of Windows - particularly in an internet environment - where also exposed.

Long ago Bill Gates (remember him?) thought the internet was a "joke."  "Who would use that?" he wondered.

So when working on Windows the whole notion of security was sort of, well, not worried about.  Microsoft, you see, liked code to be efficient, not secure.  Secure was expensive because the software, to be secure, had to do more work and more work means more processing which means the "user experience" is "slow."

So everywhere in Microsoft's code all sorts of shortcuts were taken to ensure things were fast.  No one ever considered the consequences of this (and to be fair this was not an issue at the time).  Billions and billions of lines of code where written.

All of it buggy.

So for the last ten or fifteen years hackers have been figuring out these bugs and exploiting them.  Hacking into remote windows systems is trivial - there are web sites around that provide tools kits and instructions for writing viruses for Windows.

So Anonymous really doesn't have to do any work to be successful, especially at the hardware level.

Above this lots of folks at these various infrastructure businesses (like the local "Water Works") don't worry (or even know) about configuring these controllers for security.  So most passwords are defaults, like "1234."  And once someone figures out one there are probably hundreds more with the same password.

Do you think they patch their systems?  Do they upgrade from old, insecure versions to the latest ones?

Nope - the budget crisis and their pension obligations have left them all cash-strapped - so no patches or updates for many years.

(Of course, there are many, many other types of hacking as well involving WiFi, exploiting humans, etc.)

All of this available on the internet by simply Googling "buffer overflow example code windows."

But the US government doesn't want you to know all this - because then they, the collective "government" - look stupid.  Stupid for installing probably millions of Windows-based systems at every level of infrastructure and hooking them up to the internet.

So instead they work to create a "dogma" about Anonymous - evil racist, homophobic bastards.  No doubt they will come and eat your children.

The truth, of course, is that Anonymous is simply pointing out that the government (and industry) is simply following the dogma of stupid.  Not checking passwords, not securing things, hooking mission-critical systems to the internet, that sort of thing.

Basically the government (and industry) are the ones at fault.  Hooking up known-to-have-lax-security mission critical systems to the internet.

But you'd never get that (or all this) by reading the Homeland Security PDF.

Now ask yourself.

Does the local nuke plant really have that much better security on their software systems?

There's a good reason, I think, that Anonymous chose the "V for Vendetta" masks as their moniker.

The movie is about how the "repressed" everyday "joe" stages a revolt against a controlling, totalitarian and stupid government.  V is the "leader" of this revolt and wears the "V" mask.

All this is old news.

Anonymous are indeed hackers, but they are resting on the shoulders of those who came before them in terms of technology and technique.

They seem to be more "political" than anything else.

Could Anonymous take down the power gird?

You bet...  And they probably wouldn't even break a sweat.  How many old Windows computers in the guise of "industrial controllers" do you think are wound into import elements of the power grid control in the US?  Most significant US power grid failures result from the propagation of one failure - just watch the Discovery Channel for details (I wonder of Anonymous does?).

How many of these controllers probably has the default password of "1234?"

Figure this out and you will see that the probability of attack is basically 100% and only a matter of time.

This is the dogma of stupid.