Odd Things...

Copyright Andrew Boyd

As a musician I see a lot of, er, odd things now and then... 

"Can I photograph your hands?" things like that.

But last night I saw the oddest so far. 

We're playing - in the middle of a set - and a guy walks in.  Older guy, neatly dressed in a kind of "letter jacket" and jeans.  He's staring at us.  Not unusual because sometimes musicians come in and do that - checking out the scene or music.  But he kind of runs around the bar pausing here and there like an bee buzzing from flower to flower.

So he buzzes around for a couple of minutes... 

Laying in front of us on a chair was a song book of music that one of the players (not playing at the time - its an open mic as well) had brought along.  Not our music (the one's playing) - but this other guy's stuff. 

It has nothing to do with us or what we are playing.

So the guy comes up to the band and starts rummaging through this other guy's song book right in front of a guy singing.

No asking, just rummaging.

Flipping through the pages.

What's he thinking?  Are playing this stuff?

I'm not even sure what's in the books - mostly old country songs I guess - that's what the book's owner sings.

Now normal people come up from time to time and speak to us as we play - "Can you play X?" - that sort of thing.

But not like this.

Then he goes off with a beer and hides behind the people in the bar.

By the time the set is over he is gone.

Right up there with "Can I photograph your hands...?"

Your "Rights" Diminish in 2011...

As 2011 winds to a close its rather interesting to see what's happened to your "rights" under the current administration.  (Note that I mention the administration only because it was advertised to be better than the last one.)

Protect IP Act was moved through the Senate - Allows the government to seize web sites and accounts related to "dedicated to infringing activities."  For example, little Suzy running a music sharing BitTorrent.

The Patriot Act was extended allow more magic FISA court orders for "roving wiretaps," for Lone Wolf warrants, and a "business record" provision allowing the government to seize virtually any of your records: health, library, etc.   All without your knowledge.

The administration does not think you have privacy in "public places" and has worked toward this in 2011.

It has also worked hard with Hollywood on passing laws that allow it to force ISP to shutdown internet services to various types of "intellectual property infringers."

It has also extended the governments powers for seizing web domains.

Then there is support for SOPA and COICA.

The bottom line is that as this proceeds your "right to privacy" as it relates to your location (via a cell phone), your email, your internet service, etc. are all going to "support" monitoring by the government.  If something "naughty" is going on you'll have no rights and you'll lose whatever the government chooses to seize.

The good news is that "copyright trolls" were dealt a serious blow - but they are private.

Now none of this is new.  Most of it was invented elsewhere and elsewhen.

But the bottom line is now the juggernaut of taking away your "freedom" has extended to include, for example, those in Hollywood.

As technology advances this will only get worse, too.

There will be more knowledge about you and what you are doing and hence more to "take" in the name of public safety.

Its easy to imagine, for example, that once there is the notion that you, a criminal, using a cell phone for something illegal, for example infringing Hollywood content, then they can take more - for example "what" you did with the cellphone - who you called, where you went, what you did on web sites, and so on.

My question is why is this acceptable?

No "Occupy" attention to your dwindling rights.

No concern at all...

All the while these same laws are no doubt being used against those that protest because they can be without the knowledge of the "Occupiers."

No, the delta for your infringement of your rights has taken a decidedly large uptick this year.

Happy New Year.

I wonder what 2012 will bring in this department?

Does Randomness Exist?

The original random.org random number source (radio).

In reading the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman I came upon a section related to "random numbers."

This set my mind to thinking - what is a "random number?"

Does such a thing really exist?

I started to do some research.  Among the information I found was a site called random.org.

This site provides random numbers based on some sort of atmospheric "noise."  Originally the site was basically an audio sampler listening to "static" on a radio.  The audio static was the "random" source of the numbers.  Basically the computer running the site sampled the audio data periodically to determine a value.  Since the static is supposedly random the numbers created by sampling the audio static and the result of converting those audio values to numbers is also supposedly random.

Kahneman talks a bit about this given the example of the sex of children born in a given hospital over time.  Something along these lines (B = Boy, G = Girl):

BBBBBB

BGGBBG

GGGGGG

So, in the book, he discusses the difference between true randomness and what people, who, after looking at the BB/GG list, think is random.  The point being that any sequence of B/G is random because each birth is unique and independent of the others.

So BBBBBB is just as random as BGGBBG in the context of hospital births.

But Kahneman's point is that your mind does not perceive these to be the same in terms of randomness: BGGBBG is always considered "more random" at first glance by your mind.

But this is an interesting point and relates to a post I did a while back called "Through the Keyhole."

Basically the notion of BGGBBG and BBBBBB or GGGGGG being equally random depends on the context in which you consider them - looking at them on screen or paper alone - them being equally random seems silly - yet offering an explanation of what they are makes it appear reasonable.

Given a set of things like the BB/GG's there are various mathematical processes to test for "randomness" - but they can only work given they are used within the proper context.

So this, in my mind, begs the question of whether anything is or truly can be random or whether instead "random" is simply an expression of the size of the keyhole you are looking through.  Looking at what I am not sure though.

Or, in other words, there can't be anything random, just things that we don't as yet understand the pattern of because we don't understand the true context.

Similarly in quantum physics - are quantum effects, like radioactive decay (used by other random number sites), really random or is the keyhole we observe them through simply to narrow?

Kahneman talks about how the mind can quickly discern randomness visually.  For example, from the random.org site a bitmap showing random numbers might look like this:

Your eye finds no pattern (unless you stare a long time at it...).

They compare this to a pseudo-random number generated image done using a built-in Windows-based random number generator (from the same link):

 

Here you see a pattern because the "random numbers" are really generated via a mathematical technique that makes numbers look random at a finer scale.  Certainly there is a subset of this image which , when compared to a subset of the other image, would seem equally random - at least to human eyes and perhaps mathematically.

The question in my mind is does the random.org atmospheric noise-based image above become part of a pattern if you "zoom out" just as the second image does?

I don't know that anyone can answer this - but certainly its possible because while the atmospheric noise might seem random that's no guarantee that it really is.

All this makes me wonder if science is focused on the wrong things.

Certain behaviors, like true randomness, depends I think solely on your context.

What's acceptably random for one in one context may and does not work for another.

And given that our minds work the way that they do - its very easy to become biased and not realize this fact.

Tiger Mom (Strength, not Weakness)

I have been following the "Tiger Mom" stories for almost a year.  This is about Amy Chua - a mother that expects a little more than most today.  (See my first post on Amy here.)  Basically the philosophy is something like this:

- No sleepovers, parties, camp, TV, computer games, getting less than an A.

- Insulting and/or belittling their kids when they deserve it.

- Use what by today's Western standards would be considered abusive physical or verbal coercion.

- Expecting their child to excel.

Now a year later I found this video (though its from the spring of this year) I posted on Christmas in "Children: Assume Strength." Amy also has a book - which I have not read - which has generated a lot of controversy as well.

The video is interesting because you get to listen to the oldest daughter offer her perspective on being raised in this way.

Would the oldest daughter raise her child this way: "yes, with some minor changes."

Recently the WSJ published a follow up article to the one I mentioned in my first post.

Now what's not be reported about this and what I find most interesting is this comment about her "tiger parenting" (from the article): "... [ it ] assumes strength, not weakness, in children ..."

Amy relates her actions to the the parents of children of the "pioneers"...
 And I think that, upon reflection, I was also raised with the same model.

I was expected to be self reliant, to be able to handle situations, to be able handle failure and the consequences when I failed, and I was expected to excel.

Now, in the video, Amy Chua makes a very important point: she never expects her child to excel at what she (as mom) wants the child to do, i.e., play the piano - instead she expects that, what ever the child chooses to pursue, the child must expect to excel at their choice.

Today you so often hear how little Jr. must go to college to become whatever.  Almost without fail the choice is, of course, not little Jr.'s but instead some form of the parents "fantasy" lived out through the child.

When I was a kid things were far, far different - social progress, even amongst cousins, close relataives and family - required work: you had to act like a grown up.  Older cousins and relatives laughed at you (belittling, insulting, abusive) when you behaved in a foolish or stupid manner.  So, to be treated like a grown up, i.e., receive privileges and "perks of adulthood" you had to move forward - excel.

This made you "grow up" - you didn't want to be treated like a child - none of my peers did.

Time wasting TV, computer games and parties didn't really exist when I was a child.

Sure there were a few shows on in the morning but no one watched TV before school.  There were also a few in the afternoon - reruns of Gun Smoke and things like that.  Not that appealing.  There were no parties either - you sat home in your room entertaining yourself.

One of the consequences of this was you had to learn to "entertain yourself."  That is, read, build a model airplane, play with toys or dolls, ride your bike, whatever.  No adult sat with you and made sure your day was "fun".

The point of childhood at this time was "growing up."

Today, which I think that so many find Amy's comments and book so troubling, is that there is no more "growing up" - at least not as I see it.

As I wrote, for example, yesterday about Google in their interview technique: child-like.

People today act far more like children than they did in the past: no one can "wait" for anything anymore, everyone has to have what they want "now,"  everyone runs out and buys the cheapest imitation of something they can find.

As a child I was admonished to "save my money" and to "buy something made with quality."

The ultimate sin was to buy some cheap foreign "junk" and to have it break in front of your friends - you were considered stupid and foolish.

Children today are considered "weak and fragile" by adults - unable to take care of business - yet one hundred years ago children were born, particularly in rural America, into very difficult circumstances.  You had to be tough - to get enough food, to do what you were interested in, to survive.

Instead I think today's adults are instead "weak and fragile."  They cannot expect anything from their kids - that would be too "stressful."  They are busy with their lives so they make the kids feel like successes, not because they are successes, but because it makes them, the parents, feel better because they are weak.

Adults became soft as the 60's "me" generation grew into adulthood.

Its not clear exactly why.

I suppose that breaking away from traditional family structures to "find yourself" didn't require as much effort it did to "grow up".

Less self control, less discipline.

More about "them" - less about their "child."

Parent's like Amy, and those who raise me, were selfless in many ways.  Not by "giving" us, the children what we wanted, but by taking on the difficulty of not giving in to our childish ways.  This required an adult.  It was not easy.

And this is were the 60's "me" mentality is an utter failure.

It elevates the "childish ways" to adulthood and to an art form: "it's all about me..."

To me this is a tragedy.

I think Amy is right.

Only time will tell.

Google - Bias in Hiring

Daniel Kahneman

I have been reading a book called "Thinking, Fast and Slow" - a book by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman.  If you are interested in how you and other people think in terms of preconceptions and biases then I highly recommend this book.

Now I am writing today not about this book per se but about what this book says about how we bias out thinking out in the real world.  So here is an example, from the book as described in this NY Times book review, called "the linda problem."

Participants in the experiment were told about an imaginary young woman named Linda, who is single, outspoken and very bright, and who, as a student, was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice. The participants were then asked which was more probable: 

(1) Linda is a bank teller. 

(2) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement. 

The overwhelming response was that (2) was more probable; in other words, that given the background information furnished, “feminist bank teller” was more likely than “bank teller.”

The only problem with this is that set of feminist bank tellers in choice 2 is a subset of of choice 1 making it more probably than choice 2.

So to me what's interesting here is that the experiment appeals to specific aspects of people's biases.

Now, with this in mind, I was reading this WSJ article about hiring at Google.

Basically this article describes how Google interviews job candidates with tricky puzzle questions.  For example, according the linked article, one question asked by Google (as described by applicants in  post-interview discussions) is "You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and thrown into a blender. Your mass is reduced so that your density is the same as usual. The blades start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?"

Now, as an employer and as someone who, in a job interview context, was asked similar kinds of questions I am intrigued by the relationship between "the linda experiment" and this interview model and what it says about the interviewing company.

Basically, at least superficially, the idea of behind these kinds of questions is to use them to judge how you will react to situation.  Are you "brainstorming," are you stymied, how well do you think on your feet, how well do you listen, and so on.

Google is not the only company to use these questions and, based on the article at least, the entire concept is being adopted by other companies as well.

But, after reading Kahneman's work, one starts to wonder what sort of biases might be involved in this sort of interviewing process.

For one I see that, at least in the mind of Google, the world is a small, simple place.  Everyone understands a blender - whirling blades of death and destruction.  You, the shrunken human, maintain your humanity and density in a smaller form.

Kind of like a story you might tell a small grandchild.

Google is interested in how you would "react" to this.

But I am not a small child taken into a magical (how I shrank) and dangerous (whirling blades of death and destruction) world.

If I magically shrank to the size of a nickle why can't I magically stop the blender?

There really isn't even the logical or probability-based aspects of the "linda experiment" here - just a bias toward a make-believe world where problems are disconnected from reality.

(Does that mean solutions have to be too - no, apparently not.  SO even if you're in this magical spot why must you use rational thought to escape it??)

So in my business, which touches many large companies across the face of the earth in may countries, expressing business or technical thoughts like this would make my customers frightened.  If my customer had a problem would they expect child-like wonderment about it?

Magical solutions?

Being a geezer I don't like a world run by "child-like intellects" - that's my bias.

I am a grown-up - child-like solutions are known to me not to work - so actually its not a bias.  I have tried wishing problems away - but it doesn't work.

Now let's look at Google's former boss - Eric Schmidt.  A while back Congress wanted to know if Google's searches favored Google's products.  (See this article.)

A simple premise and question.

If you offer "free searches" are they biased, i.e., if there is product A from some other company and product B from Google - does Google try and present product B (one which Google stand's to benefit from) ahead of product A?

Everyone uses Google and Congress is trying to understand if Google is dealing itself an advantage under the table.

Schmidt's response was "…the question of whether we “favor” our “products and services” is based on an inaccurate premise. These universal search results are our search service — they are not some separate “Google content” that can be “favored.”

From my perspective a "child-like argument" - no, no we don't offer video on YouTube - we just offer "Search Results."

Really?

To me this is reminiscent of the interview question - "child-like."

Except like a small child trying to lie his way out of his hand obviously in the cook jar, e.g., how could I be reaching for a cookie - the jar is empty - he tell's mom...

But mom doesn't buy it.

From what I read about Google over the years the entire place has this quality - toys for the adult employees to play with, and so on.

I wonder how it is they make adult decisions if their model of the world and interview bias is "child like?"

To be sure technical advances are often made by those who look at problems from a different perspective.  But I am not sure that a "make believe" ability is a good criteria for hiring.

I remember being in a similar interview related to some complex, high performance imaging I had worked on.  Two things stand out in my mind from this.

First, they wanted me to solve some sort of stupid puzzle questions in the interview.  I am not good at puzzles and puzzles don't reflect the real world which is far, far more complex.  To me, at least, puzzle questions test your ability to solve puzzles, not solve real problems.

(I am biased too, I have made a living for many decades doing what I do - putting children through college, etc.  So, at least in my mind, not operating with a "child-like" perspective seems to work.  And, by the way, I am still able to create fantastically original products - but for this I was motivated not by child-like fantasy but instead by children needing food...)

Secondly they wanted me to describe to them techniques I had developed to solve the problems they were interested in.

Sure, I'll tell you how to solve your problems and you won't need to hire me.

Except your bias toward looking at things in a simple, puzzle-like fashion will keep you from really understanding what the issues are.

I guess the bottom line is if you build a business on "child like" thinking you should expect mommy (Congress) to show up and slap your wrist when you are naughty...

Children: Assume Strength

Every parent or parent-to-be should watch this:

From the WSJ for Christmas Day: Author Amy Chua, and her husband, law professor and novelist Jed Rubenfeld, shared their thoughts about raising successful children, live at the New York Public Library.

Food for Thought...

This came to me through Facebook.

Its interesting food for thought.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from all of us at the Lone Wolf!









Hopefully no one will feel inadequate after watching this...

Droning about GPS

Like water, most people I know find GPS ubiquitous, available everywhere all the time.  More troubling, of course, is that people have come to rely on GPS as if its water.  Who doesn't have a GPS in their car (me)?

What's really hard for me to understand is why anyone who's not involved in a business or personal situation that requires driving constantly to new places would want one.  I find them annoying and often wrong.  If you're a "soccer mom" its hard to imagine really needing one... does the soccer field move every day?  Airplanes have them as well - why?  Hopefully the pilot of your average commercial airliner knows where he is going...

(Personally my strategy is to always plot my path on some mapping site, often Google, before I travel to somewhere new.  I can use it to not only survey the area around the destination but, with the street view feature, see what landmarks I might need.  I also use my iPhone mapping app.  But the bottom line is to always know where I am going before I leave.)

There are also problems with GPS systems.  They can be jammed (purposefully or by accident), they can be wrong, and they can be spoofed.

Jamming is fairly easy.  GPS operates at 1.57542 GHz (L1 signal) and 1.2276 GHz (L2 signal) - so anything disrupting these frequencies will jam it.  Some commercial systems, for example the proposed LightSquared 4G terrestrial-satellite-based service, supposedly disrupts GPS for aviation. 

Secondly, most civilian applications of GPS require a corresponding map that the GPS signals create a correlation with, i.e., the GPS signal places you somewhere on the surface of the earth - the mapping software takes that position and shows you a street, for example.

The maps can be wrong.  And because the typical car GPS is giving you directions verbally in real time a mistake in the map can cause you to be directed into something bad - a wall, over a cliff, into on coming traffic, etc.

Then there is spoofing.

The idea behind spoofing is to provide a GPS receive a "fake" GPS satellite signal that tells the receiver that it is located somewhere where its not.

The basic L1/L2 satellite signals are coming in from space and are relatively weak so, for example, an aircraft flying over a receiver could send out stronger signals with different information that would overpower the satellite GPS signals.

The GPS receiver would not be able to tell the difference (as they do not rely on signal strength - only signal timing and content).

According to this Information Week article this is what was used by Iran to capture a US drone.

This is something that apparently the US military has known about as a potential problem for many years and various GPS issues are known to be potential counter-threats to US interests.  (See this 2003 paper and this UK news article.)

(Gee, let's build a multi-billion dollar system for the military and then give away access to everyone so it can be circumvented - only let's do this after we build our entire military infrastructure around it.  Don't believe me, see this from msnbc.com.)

Now this should not be happening - and in particular no Iranians should be spoofing the GPS.

The reason, because when GPS was first envisioned and created and run, it had heavy encryption.

The L1/L2 satellite signals from space were encoded so that no one could duplicate them without the proper key.  Thus military systems needing GPS could rely on the encrypted signals which enemies could not forge.  Somewhere along the line this was either removed or relaxed - or, worse yet - the idiots building the US drones didn't use it.

I cannot tell which is the case with the captured Iranian drone.

One would sincerely hope that military drones used encrypted GPS signals.

But if the reports are true it was not...  its hard to say what the truth is here.  There is all sorts of stuff flying around the internet related to it (see this, and this, and video below).



There are other possibilities.

For example, depending the the speed of the drone it could simply be snatched out of the air with some sort of fast helicopter and a trapping device (net, cables, something).

I think that part of the problem is that the US is very arrogant about their technology, and, when folks like those in Iran figure it out, they pretend they didn't.

So I smell cover-up at some level.  Whether the drone self-destructed failed or it was simply a bad design or whether the GPS was spoofed or whether the RSA encrypted military GPS was hacked.

There seems to be some belief that because the Iranians are not like us they are stupid.

This is a dangerous assumption.

The capture of the drone should be a wake-up call...

The Future of Music

Hatsune Miku - Virtual Singing Star

In my lifetime its hard to believe where music and audio have gone.

I was born in the late 1950's.  At that time music was recorded directly from human performances - often on acetate disks or single track, mono tape systems.  There were no computers, multi-tracks, or other devices.

People fell in love with the sounds of voices: Elvis, Sinatra, and so on.

But today all of this is different and, no doubt, will change more rapidly than anyone can imagine.

For one, there is now something called Vocaloid2 - created by Yamaha.  Vocaloid2 is a system for creating artificial singing.  It can be loaded with special sounds created by a singer to create a full singing voice.  This was developed around 2004 but really wasn't up to the job until recently.

Vocaloid2 is even rumored to support the extraction of these syllable.  The voice of a Japanese singer, Hitoshi Ueki who died in 2007, was recently used to create a Vocaloid2 library.

Today the Vocaloid site boasts links to Vocaloid3 (see this).

Below is a Vocaloid2 English version of "Amazing Grace" - note that the song is sung with a Japanese accent. 



This singer does not exist.

And while certainly not an Americal Idol-ready performance its hard to imagine that this won't find its way into music, like commercials, very, very soon where production cost is an overriding concern.

Here's another Japanese anime star "Hatsune Miku" - who is not real - singing a song on YouTube:



Again, she's not real, but she has lots of fans - some who do not believe she is not real.

I can still recall "Who Framed Rodger Rabbit" which was a modern mix of real and animated characters.  This was the forerunner of much of the virtual movie effects you see today (and sadly, the original Disney technology for this such as seen in "Mary Poppins" is rarely remembered today).

Very soon plug-ins for music software will allow producers to create singing voices that will sell in the commercial market.

There will be no longer be a need for singers.

Virtually all other instruments are synthetic today - guitars, drums, string sections, pianos - so why not singers.

Recently I was reading several threads on various music forums.  Many "professional musicians" claiming that they are being squeezed out of the business in various ways:  ASCAP/BMI requiring local bars to pay fees which ultimately mean the bar stops having live music, various pay issues related to "union scale" work, newcomers "undercutting" established acts, and so on.

These virtual singers require no pay at all and will work tirelessly for free forever.

Hatsune Miku doesn't care how hard she works.

She's just anime.

According to this Wired article soon this technology will allow Elvis and Sinatra to do a duo of a song written after both of their deaths.

No doubt fans will love it.

Sure it will be creepy... but hey, its Elvis and Frank!

Another article (here) shows how "hits" in the UK are being analyzed by computer to determine what makes them a hit.  Using this type of knowledge Hatsune Miku's creators will be able to make her songs more like "hits."

The article also describes MRI-based scans of children that show how their brains react to potential hits in an identifiable way - according to the article the children's "...ventral striatum — the brain’s reward region — was predictive of a song’s future sales."

Gives new meaning to the exploitation of children.

The future of music is technology because no one will want to drive to a bar and listen to live music - the risk will be too great:

- Pulled over for a DUI.

- You might not hear the song you want.

- You might get cold or wet.

Instead you can stay home with your 52" 3D LED TV and some nice hash or liquor and watch virtual singers do exactly what you like.

These singing voices will make their way into games as well so not only can you get these singers to sing songs you like but to perform them as you see fit.

I can see the PS/4 "Rock Band" version of this now autotuning your voice and changing it so that you can sing duets with yourself or sing like Elvis.

Turn the knob - now you're Sinatra - now you're Tom Petty - now you're Patsy Cline...  (Small syllables of peoples voices are potentially not copyrightable as long as their lengths are short or they come from the public domain.)

Is that Elvis?

Is it so close no one can tell?

Elvis never sang that song...  it can't be copyright infringement.

Pretty scary... huh?

Death by Retirement (Updated)

Update from the original personal blog post from a year ago...

The other day I came upon an article in the WSJ about retiring (2011 article here).

From the article:

"Don't let the rally in the stock and bond markets fool you. Many Americans are still hurtling towards a retirement disaster. Few realize it. Even many of those running the big pension funds don't know.

That's the conclusion of John West and Rob Arnott at Research Affiliates, an investment management firm, in Newport Beach, Calif. In their latest report, "Hope Is Not A Strategy," they have some numbers to back it up.

"I worry a lot about people reaching their golden years and discovering, 'Oh, I should've saved more,' and 'Oh, I don't qualify for Social Security any more because it's means tested'," says Mr. Arnott, a widely respected market strategist. "We're headed for a retirement train wreck," he adds, "and it's going to get really ugly over the next 15 years."

Remember, there's something like a $55 trillion (with a "T") unfunded set of liabilities (a years worth of global GDP) - Social Security, Medicaid, etc. to be paid for.  My guess is that bill will be coming due during my retirement.
 
Its certain to be a financial train wreck...

Do I have savings - sure.  But what will the landscape in retirement be for me in say, 15 or 20 years (I'm 53 [54 in 2011]) factoring in the bigger financial picture?

The answer is it will A) not be like today, B) not offer much I am interested in, C) no amount of reasonable planning will protect me from societies great rush to catastrophic failure. 

That's right - not offer much I am interested in.  There's a way to post comments over there [ on the original article ].  I wrote this:

- Never retire and work at something that makes you happy.

- Accept that you will eventually die and don't waste time and money on keeping yourself alive in a state worse than death.

- Change your lifestyle to require less.

- Take better care of yourself by changing your life style.

Yes indeed.  Anyone who believes in all the statistics of the financial world must also see this statistic: retirement = death.  (Do your own research, start by Googling "retirement death").  Personally I think how long you live has a lot to do with how you perceive your "value" relative to the world.  If your life's value is your work and you stop working - surprise - you have nothing to live for.  Statistics bear this out.

The second big, and I mean really big problem, for the elderly is the disaster of modern medicine.  I have written here about this before.  This is going to get a lot worse and probably will never get better.  My rule of thumb is this, past about 60 if you go into a hospital for anything serious you will die or end up in a nursing home within a year.

Its bad enough doctors prescribe medicine willy-nilly based on what the big Pharma sales "skirt" tells them to do.  But once you're in the hospital your doomed - because - just like with heroin - you get "addicted" to the process.

How do you stay out?  By doing research and learning that 99% of modern medicine is about making money for someone else from your misfortune.  Pills prescribed for things you can fix by changing your behavior.  More pills to avert the side effects of the pill you don't need.  More pills to fix the side effects of those pills.  On and on until you die.  (See my previous post on "Does My Medication Really Work".)

And yes, you will die.  Get over it.  Everyone is going to die.  The only question is "Do I want to die in the hospital or nursing home hooked up tubes, tanks, pumps, and fluids?"  Do I want the "plug pulled"?  Do I want to be "Left to die by people I don't know?"  Modern society has created ridiculous expectations for living forever.  Try valuing your life on accomplishments and goodness instead - had kids and raised them right, had a good business and made money fairly with no regrets, treated the spouse right, learned to forgive...  Don't have much of this?  Its not too late to change.

Before I was born society handled the elderly much differently than today.  Grandma died in the back room taken care of by the family.  Today grandma is trundled off to the nursing home after a broken hip where she's abused by stupid, careless 30-somethings that hate their job.  If she complains out come the OC-80's until things are fine.

You can prevent this type of death - my wife is working on this - by properly training the family about what's important.  As important as any retirement account is the investment you make in keeping your family intact and educated on life - from end to end.  Teaching the value of having grandma around to help teach and direct the kiddies - both grandma's own kiddies as well as the grandchildren.

Modern feminism has destroyed this part of our lives.  Women dealt with this part of life until about 50-60 years ago when it was ceded to modern technology.  Re-assess where you are.  Go to a nursing home or hospital and see what's in store for you.

The modern educational system turns out, for the most part, modern idiots.  They are clueless about education, nutrition, and life. You want to have proper nutrition.

Most modern people are malnourished.  I write about this a lot.  You want to stay out of the hospital and nursing home?  Get your nutrition right.  Exercise and learn to keep moving.  Most elderly sit around all day - surprise - blood clots form, etc.  They eat crap and its killing them. Remain active and eat right.

The goal of the "end of life" game is to remain yourself as long as you can.  I don't want to live if I am not me anymore.  Modern medicine wants to take this from you so the doctor can get $22.00 US for an office visit to prescribe a drug you don't need and you can be an OC-80 zombie.

And what about stuff?  Do you need all that?  Is life a game where the person who dies with the most toys wins?  No.  I hate to say it but life as you age is not like that nonsense they show on the TV commercial - the perfect house, grandpa and grandma, fit and trim, sun shining, flying around the world to spoil grandkids.  Life intervenes and the last thing you want is a lot of stuff (cars, houses, crap) that you have to worry about and manage.  Its just a burden.  Am I advocating living in a box under the bridge - no.  But stuff = aggravation.  Greedy kiddies wanting it and the related stress.  You get the idea.

While all this may seem like the Borg - resistance is not futile.

Do your own research. Learn.  Grow.  Stop expecting nanny government to save you.

What's really ironic to me is that all the sixties hippy radical types that went on into public service, who promote universal health care, and all the rest are so dumb about what this system is doing to them.

Technology is not the answer - particularly in medicine.

Thinking for yourself is - using modern technology to make the right decisions is what needs to go on - not having some government flunky controlling your morphine drip.

For me - death will begin by enslavement to Medicare - so I want to stay as far away as I can.

I've lived a good life I can be proud of.  I certainly don't want to die but when I do I do.  Its certainly a lot less stressful than worrying every minute about my cholesterol level.

I enjoy my life now because I am free.

Are you?

Public Air, Public Drug Use

Rome - Measurable Illegal Drugs in the Air

The prevalence of illegal drugs in our society is breathtaking (not to mention legal drugs).

(Note that in the examples I cite below either the drug or its metabolism by-products are measured.  The later indicates biochemical products produced and excreted by the body that can only be present if the humans involved are consuming said drugs.)

For example (from this), in 96 Oregon cities where the sewers were tested for methamphetamines, all 96 showed traces indicating that the drug was in use in each city.  Ecstacy, in Norway, peaks in the sewers during certain high school breaks during the year.


From this we see documentation of illegal drugs in our public waterways (note that there are also significant concentrations of legal prescription drugs as well).

We also know that almost 90% of the money in the US is contaminated.

These are nothing new and illegal drugs have been found in the environment for years.

Recently illegal drugs have appeared somewhere new: the air we breath.

At Wired, for example, there is a report from the Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research in Rome showing that drugs such as cocaine and marijuana are detectable directly in the atmosphere at certain points in the city of Rome.

So much so that they believe it can be used to estimate usage and plan treatment strategies.

Some studies have also found, for example, correlations between illegal drugs and disease, e.g., cancer or mental disorders.

So the "illegal drug culture" is being visited on you whether you want it or not - literally from all points in your environment - particularly if you live in a big city.

Now legal, but abused, prescription drugs, don't make it into the atmosphere, at least not yet.

But they are prevalent in the water.

So where does this all take us?

Well, based on comments in the Wired article and elsewhere I can easily see a time in the not-too-distant future where some sort of scanner is waved over you and, if you've been naughty, alarms will go off and you'll be off to jail.

The contamination of money is already used in this way by the legal system - but only if it can be isolated to an individual under prosecution.

So drug use is now so common that its detectable from the atmosphere - around the users at the level of a city block, for example.

Imagine the quantities that must be used for this - certainly far more than a couple of bumps at the local dive bar.  One imagines that the concentrations within the clubs, bar and building (including apartment buildings and/or homes) to be much higher - after all no one goes outside to do this - and what's in the atmosphere in town is lower than what's going on at home.

What's outside is literally leaking out of the homes and apartments through open windows and doors.

Imagine the quantity being imported into these areas to create a measurable foot print like this.

These facts would seem to take away any possibility that drugs are merely "harmless" and "don't affect anyone else besides the user."

I guess I will get to use drugs whether I want to or not...

And so will your children.

Doctor (er, wait, SEC), Heal Thyself

I want to write about the SEC investigating Freddy and Fanny as covered in this WSJ article.

But first, let's look at the government's last big, public SEC investigation...

Most will remember the Bernie Madoff scandal: a ponzi scheme involving some $50 billion USD.  While the end result was Madoff's conviction the there is a long and interesting history of the SEC ignoring the Madoff problems (see this at PBS.org).

Most interesting is that, about ten years before Madoff's initial confession to his sons, Frank Casey, a Boston investment guy had heard about Madoff's supposed decades of investing success making 18% a year.  So Casey asks his colleague Harry Markopolos to "reverse engineer" some information Madoff gave on his trading strategies.  After a few hours Markopolos comes back and tells Casey what's being reported by Madoff is impossible and says "Frank, this is a Ponzi scheme."

About a year later Casey submits an 8-page report to the Boston SEC office.

Nothing happens.

Another, longer memo outlining Madoff's Ponzi scheme is submitted to the SEC with Harry Markopolos's conclusions in 2005 reaching the same conclusions.

Nothing happens.

After Madoff's downfall the SEC investigates itself (see this link).  Reading this you'll find this interesting tidbit on page 2 "...including examining the role that former SEC Assistant Director Eric Swanson (Swanson), who eventually married Madoff’s niece, Shana Madoff (Shana), may have played in the examination or other work conducted by the SEC with respect to Madoff or related entities, and whether such role or such relationship in any way affected the manner in which the SEC conducted its regulatory oversight of Madoff and any related entities."  (Underline mine.)

On page 23 we see, after a review of almost two decades of issues with Madoff including an SEC investigation in the early 90's and a series of written and email "tips" that Madoff is running a ponzi scheme, that little is done regarding this information: "During the course of both these examinations, the examination teams discovered suspicious information and evidence and caught Madoff in contradictions and inconsistencies. However, they [ the SEC investigators ] either disregarded these concerns or simply asked Madoff about them. Even when Madoff’s answers were seemingly implausible, the SEC examiners accepted them at face value." (Underline and bold mine.)

Had you mentioned to your neighbor that you made an extra $10,000 USD in the stock market on a "tip from your brother-in-law" no doubt the black helicopters and SWAT teams would be on you in a minute and you'd have a federal criminal record like poor Mr. Lawrence Lewis who I wrote about in this post.

The consequences of the Madoff scandal rendered many widows and orphans destitute.

As for the SEC staff including Madoff's relatives - not so much - slaps on the wrist, a few lost jobs, not much more really... at least with relative to the damage the Ponzi scheme cost everyone else.

So now its Freddy and Fanny's turn.

Let's look at the information available to the SEC prior to 2011.

Here is a video montage of various congressional investigations from around 2004 where the same kind of "red flags" as raised by Frank Casey and Harry Markopolos are broadcast on TV.



While partisan politics is obviously an element here, as perhaps is race, the fact remains that the financial standards for how Freddy and Fanny were conducting their business were lax to the tune of many tens or hundreds of billions of dollars.

Again, no one at the SEC apparently paid any attention to this.

Now, long after the horses are out of the barn, according to the WSJ the SEC brings charges against a couple of Freddy and Fanny execs: "[ the SEC ]... brought civil fraud charges against six former executives at the two firms, including former Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd and former Freddie CEO Richard Syron."

But, we learn from the same article, that "Before the SEC announced the charges, it reached an agreement not to charge Fannie and Freddie."

Interesting, "... reached an agreement not to charge Fannie and Freddie ..."

The government investigating itself.

No charges against itself.

Only the citizens running the agency...

And, according to the article, its unlikely these execs will face criminal charges.

Hmmmm...

Seems like there is a problem here, not only with the SEC, but with the whole notion of one government agency investigating another.

Where's the oversight?

In Congress, another government agency?

(Why in this WSJ article we learn that Congress and Senate members, as well as their staff, are exempt from insider trading laws and that, on average, their stock investments return an "astonishing" 12% per year...)

I doubt we'll see much in the way of an investigation from Congress or the Senate...

Our country is sick.

Its rotted from the inside out and these two stories tell you why.

The government folks investigating other government folks know how important a government pension is (as well as benefits) so you can bet your bottom dollar that no matter how bad things get (perhaps even with murder as in the "Fast and Furious" problems the ATF has) no one is going to be seriously punished.

About the worst it gets is someone loses their job.

Why are there no "Occupiers" out front at the SEC?  After all between the SEC and Freddie and Fannie we're looking at hundreds of billions of mismanaged funds...  Oh, but I guess that since its the government no greed was involved there's no need to protest...

Lions and Tigers and Bears! 

Oh my...

(BTW, the WSJ does a good job of reporting on all of this but a poor one in the editorial department of connecting the all the dots...  I think that the entire financial investigation and investment system of the US government has a serious problem and something should be done about it.)

Mike's Acoustic Open Mic Thursday's

(724) 265-8188
2059 Saxonburg Blvd
Gibsonia, PA 15044

Hosted by "Tex" from Zig Zag

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Warpaint

Found these while searching the local Pittsburgh Open mic listings...

Quantum Physics in Your Philadendron

Chlorophyll in an "antenna" - from Ars Technica

When I was in grade school we used holidays were a good excuse to play a variety of Bell Telephone/AT&T movies from the 1950's: Our Mr. Sun, Hemo the Magnificent, The Strange Case of Cosmic Rays, and others (see this for Our Mr. Sun).  The teachers happily sat at the back of the class doing whatever they did and the kiddies got to watch a movie (or sleep).

I distinctly remember one of these movies (Our Mr. Sun?) talking about photosynthesis.

There was a small plant character of some sort (a cartoon) who represented a plant.  The cartoon talked about what photosynthesis was, what was involved in it: sunlight, CO2, and what it produces: sugars and organic compound.

When the actual reaction happened the character put up a small screen that covered the reaction.  The reason was that no one knew how it worked so, rather than say that, they just made a small joke of it.

Of course this was in the 1960's...  These movies were made in the lat 1950's.

Fast forward to today.

I found this article about how the study of photosynthesis is leading to some very interesting results.

Until fairly recently its been assumed that photosynthesis was a basic chemical process and that no quantum-level elements where involved beyond that.

But over the last several years various experiments have yielded results pointing to "more" within the context of photosynthesis.

Basically there is a bacteriochlorophyll complex, found in green sulfur bacteria, that acts as a kind of antenna to collect light very efficiently for photosynthesis.  This antenna involves something called quantum coherence and allows extremely efficient transmission of energy related to the light involved in the process.

Typically quantum coherence is though of in things like the Bose-Einstein condensate - which is something observed at near-absolute zero temperatures with liquid helium wherein a large number of molecules all act as if they are a single molecule.

Study of photosynthesis has lead, however, to the observation of this same process at the molecular level in plants - obviously at room temperature.

The idea is that photons arriving for photosynthesis can simultaneously explore all the possible paths to the core of the photosynthetic process and, in the quantum sense, "choose" the shortest path.  Much like the two-slit experiment where photon interfere with each other even though they don't arrive at their destination at the same time.

For a long time its been thought that quantum-level actions did not occur in the real world, i.e., at a level observable by humans.

But in fact they can.

One of the things that interests me is the notion of "Quantum Consciousness" as put forth by Rodger Penrose.  David Bohm, another physicist, has written about similar concepts in "Wholeness and the Implicate Order."

Penrose claims that consciousness is not something that can be explained by simple chemical reactions in the brain.

I think that the sort of discovery above about photosynthesis makes the claim's by Penrose more likely.

Why is this important?

Because the involvement of quantum-level actions in photosynthesis and possibly consciousness make it non-deterministic - that is that given the same exact situation in terms of molecules, chemical reactions, and so on a chemical-based brain would make the exact same decision.

A quantum brain might not because the quantum-level of activity is not deterministic.

A quantum brain might be sensitive to quantum-level behavior - like entaglement - where two particles millions of miles apart act as one.

A quantum brain might be sensitive to coherence such that quantum actions of two brains or two parts of the same brain might be synchronized by some coherence mechanism as with photosynthesis.

Interesting food for thought...

Pet Peeve

If you've ever wondered why US federal spending is so out of control let's take a look at this interesting research: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/17/2/10-1070_article.htm.

Here we have a very detailed study on the dangers presented by your pet.

(Recently I talked a bit about death on this blog in "The Risk of the Cure".)

So our CDC, in this report, says:

"In the Netherlands, the pet population is ≈2 million dogs and 3 million cats... The percentage of households with pets increased from 50% in 1999 to 55% in 2005. A recent study indicated that among 159 households with pets, 50% of pet owners interviewed allowed the pet to lick their face; 60% of pets visited the bedroom; 45% of dogs and 62% of cats were allowed on the bed; and 18% and 30% of the dogs and cats, respectively, were allowed to sleep with the owner in bed..."

It goes on to discuss the French (only about 25% have pets there).

The French, the Dutch?  No talk of us here in the good old USA where we're paying for this report.

Next we are treated to a discourse about plague.

That's right, bubonic plague (ring around the rosey and all), and how 9 people died in the western US in 1974.

That's right, 1974...  forty years ago.

(The incident of plague in the USA is about 1 one 30,222,221 according to this - so on average some 11 or 12 people are infected a year.  Infection has a death rate of 50% - 90% if untreated, 15% if treated.  So we would expect about one death per year.)

The article goes on to discuss how some half of the plague survivors slept in the same bed as their dog.

OH MY GOD!!!!

Today most uneducated people understand that plague is transmitted by fleas - not dogs.  Though dogs have been known to transport fleas from time to time.  But fleas infest other mammals as well - like deer, humans, and cats.

So if rover carries around plague-carrying fleas and he sleeps in your bed then well, you might get the plague...

Your chance of being killed by lightening is about 70 times greater than this.

Your chance of being killed by texting or cell phone usage in your car even higher.

The article then goes on to address what might happen if your pet licks your face (actually you have to have a saliva transfer so licking your face or kissing you would be more accurate).  Various bacterial infections and parasites - some very nasty to be sure.

Some of the more notable ones mentioned in the article:

Cat scratch fever, mentioned in the article, infects about 22,000 US children per year though deaths are extremely rare.

Rabies - enough said.

So what's the point of the government telling us about the danger our pets present?

There are hundreds of millions of pets in the USA.

Each year very, very few pets deliberately harm their masters (see this).

Bottom line (according to the article)...

- Don't let small children sleep with pets because they are full of germs and parasites. 

- Wash the children with germ killer if the pet licks them. 

- Keep the pet free of fleas.

Huh?

Even though pets kill far, far US citizens than, say lightning (750 a year) or trichinosis (less than 12), the author apparently needs to whip up fear and worry.

Common sense keeps the dog and cat out of the babies room (at least hopefully and if it doesn't its not the kids fault but the parents - not the pet).

So why is this report being done by the CDC (Center for Disease Control - is my pet a disease)?  What's the point?

Are these remarkable conclusions (common sense) worth the no doubt tens of thousands of dollars to write and publish the report?

Pets are far, far safer than cell phones (cell phone caused traffic deaths number around 3,000 a year currently).

No one is banning cell phones yet (though they are trying - at least while you drive).

Why is the CDC concerned about everyday pet issues?  Sure I can see them caring about a widespread rabies outbreak but they don't - when we had one by my house they were no where to be found.  No one in plastic space suites showed up with trucks carrying dish antennas.  No one with "detectors" going "beep beep beep" to find dangerous things...  No one.

Articles like the one I mention are designed to do one thing.  Scare you into not having a pet or, if you do, slathering your child with antiseptic cleaner all the time - where's the article on the dangers of that?

Why does my government need to scare me about my pet?

I imagine that the death of a pet is far more traumatic than anything a pet might do.

Now you tell me...

Which is scarier?  The government or your pet...

Pandas: Neurological Damage from Strep

Pandas, or Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal, is a strange new twist to humanity's old enemy Strep.  What we call call "strep" today is an infection by the streptococcal bacteria.  There are various classifications of strep (see the link) and the most common is the "strep throat."

Before antibiotics strep was often the precursor to rheumatic fever and scarlet fever - once the strep infection took hold it spread and could cause a variety of damage to the heart, joints, and other parts of the body.  Death was always a significant possibility with these ailments.

Penicillin became prevalent in the treatment of strep in the 1950's and 60's.  As a child I had a number of "strep throat" episodes.  This usually involved diagnoses at home via "white bumps" on your tonsils by mom.  Then a trip to the doctor to get a "swab test" where a cotton swab was whipped over your tonsils and sent off to a lab.  Finally you received a prescription for, at least in my case, penicillin.

With my own children this model was accelerated (1980's and early 1990's).  Often doctors would simply prescribe amoxicillin for any child who even remotely complained of a sore throat or ear ache.

Today my grandchildren are bombarded with antibiotics (often much more potent than penicillin and amoxicillin) almost weekly it seems.

I have written about what I think about this process in "Antibiotics - Scourge on Humanity."

So what about Pandas?

Basically, the short form is this: Pandas is thought to be a low-level strep infection that triggers neurological problems like tics and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

A typical "Pandas" story is found here.  Basically a "normal" child suddenly and inexplicably goes "wacky" - tics, OCD, mood swings, depression, all sorts of "mental health" problems.  The solution, after much struggle by health practitioners to diagnose it, is typically long-term antibiotics to treat strep.  These children typically have a some sort of history with strep.  The remarkable thing is that the antibiotics fix the neurological problems very quickly - antibiotics typically do not treat neurological disorders in any way.

So the thinking is that the strep is causing some sort of damage to the brain.

There are many interesting points about this.

First off, this is a relatively new disorder - only identified in the medical literature during the last 15 years or so.  The first cases were children who were thought initially to have Tourette's Syndrome.

Pandas is not a "recognized disease" in that no direct cause/effect relationship has been established - the link to strep is only suspected at this point.  The diagnostic process is complex - see this link.

Secondly, strep has been a scourge of humanity for millenia - yet Pandas has only been known for a very short time.

Third, strep was not previusly associated with neurological problems.

Fourth, OCD can apparently be triggered by strep and such cases cured by antibiotics.

Fifth, it only seems to affect children.

Various theories abound about how strep might be involved in Pandas.

See this at the NIH.

See this at the Australian ADHD site.

But the bottom line is that no one knows.

What i find troubling is that this is something "new"...

Why?

Could it be the result of too many antibiotic prescriptions over the last several decades mutating strep into something new?

Its hard to say...

Treating children for long periods with antibiotics in my mind is a very bad things for several reasons (see my recent post, for example, related to "Fecal Transplants").

There's a good site here for parents who suspect their child suffers from Pandas.

The bottom line is that this is a new and serious problem.

Prior to this I had never heard of bacteria-related medical problems triggering these kinds of neurological problems in children.

Since its new I also have to wonder what role modern "medical science" has played in its creation.

Remarkable Tsunami Video

Remarkable dashboard camera video of the Japanese tsunami...



This guy survived!

No Longer Possible to "Just Stop"...

The insanity of modern life is far, far more dangerous than you might imagine.  There have been some interesting crime-related stories published over at the WSJ.

The first story relates to how many criminals can be removed from active "crime duty."

A book, "Don't Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America," written by David M. Kennedy outlines a program called the "Boston Gun Project" developed in the 1990's.  Basically the idea is that most serious crime is run by some seriously bad individuals.  Take out the bad individuals by bringing down the full weight of the justice system on them and then just tell the rest of the criminals involved to simply "Stop!"

Kind of like the old Nancy Regan "Just Say No!" policy from the 1980's.

Except the Boston Gun Project worked and worked well - at least as long as law enforcement followed through.

The fact that this works is very interesting.  Getting rid of crime by having law enforcement simply tell many of the criminals to stop.

Why does this work?

I think it works because most people - at least those not interested in running large crime syndicates (drug lords, etc.) - probably still have some fear of God left in them - some notion of right and wrong.  And while it may have been easy to fall into the "criminal lifestyle" via peer pressure, outright need, etc. I would imagine that most people would not prefer this to a non-criminal lifestyle.

Who wants to be looking over their shoulder every day?

So, when the big boss goes down I imagine its easy for those who realize that they might be "next" to simply walk away if goaded by law enforcement.

In part this is easy because its clear what "criminal behavior" is to most.  In this case drugs, guns, robbery, and so on.

Which leads to the WSJ second story...

This story describes the life and tribulations of Lawrence Lewis - someone who grew up in Washington DC and who saw all three of his older brothers murdered by the time he was 20.

But Lawrence is not the kind of criminal you might imagine...

No, instead Lawrence worked hard, went to school, and got a job working in DC's sewage treatment department.

Lawrence's path to criminality began when, as an employee of the sewage treatment department, he was forced to make a simple decision: whether to divert sewage, which could potentially back up into a residential building, into a storm drain or simply let it back up into the build.

Lawrence, like virtually anybody else, chose the former and the building was kept free of sewage.

Unfortunately for Lawrence he broke an EPA law related to the Clean Water Act in this process.

And now he has a Federal criminal record.

What to me is most troubling here is that Lawrence is a perfect example of what our society wants someone to do with their life given a bad situation as a child.

Grow up, make good choices, get a job, be a functioning member of society.

But in this case the law is against Lawrence.

Apparently because somehow Lawrence, even as an employee of a municipal sewage treatment facility, was personally guilty of polluting a stream by trying to keep sewage out of someone's home and/or work.

You can read the horrific details of this in the full WSJ article linked above.

So why am I writing about this?

For one, I think that there is a problem with society when a guy doing his non-criminal, everyday job is made into a criminal by the government by preventing destruction of property.

Secondly, the EPA laws that Lawrence broke lack a mens rea component.  That means, unlike say shooting someone, where intent is involved, no intent is required to be guilty.

So if I shoot someone an accidentally kill them its different than shooting someone with the intent of killing someone.  I still might be guilty of something but not of murder.

But EPA law is different.

There is no intent required.  Either you did it or not.  You don't even have to know you did it.

If the EPA can prove it was done then you are guilty.

And we are not talking about a crime here - we are talking about diverting sewage from the basement of a building into a storm drain that might lead into a river.

Now you might argue that polluting one building was better than polluting a whole river but you'd miss the point.

Somebody who is simply doing their job makes a bad decision or a decision based on lack of knowledge.

Now they are a criminal.

How do you stop criminals if they don't know they are criminals...?

This is like ASCAP and other things I have written about.

So what do we tell Lawrence - just "Stop!"???

Stop doing your grungy everyday job because you might be a criminal?

Fecal Transplants (Part II)

Last year I wrote this "Fecal Transplants, er, I mean Bacteriotherapy" on my then "personal blog".

It related to my dog, poor old Mugs.  And no, Mugs wasn't treated with Bacteriotherapy - at least not by me.  Mugs had his intestinal floral killed of by stupid, well-meaning veterinary idiots who over-prescribed antibiotics. 

We fixed Mugs digestive system with some probiotics.

But this started me to thinking...

(Gross Warning - the following is not suitable to be read while eating...)

Bacteriotherapy should be the "wonder treatment" of the 2010's for a couple of reasons.

First off, most people do no realize the importance of the bacteria that live in their guts.  Most adults have about 20 to 25 pounds of bacteria in their bodies - maybe a quarter to an eighth of their body weight.  Recent studies have shown that these bacteria are as varied as we are and that each person has unique bacterial elements to their gut flora.

We cannot live without these bacteria. 

They are symbiotic with our digestive system in that we cannot digest our food without them.

Unfortunately, antibiotics, which do not distinguish between "good" and "bad" bacteria kill off the good bacteria while killing off the bad (see "Antibiotics - Scourge on Humanity").  Like firing a shot gun into a crowd of people when we know someone in the crowd in a criminal - the blast kills off people indiscriminately - hopefully killing the bad.

Not exactly a good idea.

Good thing this is all governed by "medical science" and a "benevolent government."

Antibiotics were invented before people had any real understanding of how the human digestive system worked - particularly with respect to their bacterial components.  Then they over-prescribed them to the point of total lunacy.

Secondly, once you've damaged the good bacteria in your gut, things like Clostridium difficile, or C. diff can enter and take over.  This is basically "chronic diarrhea" (and possibly a route or stop along the way to far more serious bowel diseases).

Doctors, being stupid (actually insane may be more accurate - repeatedly performing the same activity over and over and expecting a different outcome), simply apply stronger and stronger antibiotics trying to kill the C. diff without concern for what else these treatments might do to your body.  Instead these compounds simply destroy more and more of the healthy bacteria and leave only the most antibiotic-resistant C. diff to reproduce.

So modern medicine is working hard at all levels to kill off your digestive bacteria. 

These articles (in Wired and Scientific American) paint the picture of the future of medicine as it relates to all this.

Doctors working hard to kill you with antibiotics.

Fortunately, a fecal transplant (transplanting the bacterial flora from a healthy person into someone who's intestinal flora have been destroyed) as a very high success rate (above 80% or more).  The details of how this is accomplished are available elsewhere.  These bacteria are designed to live in your gut and that's what they want to do.

Fecal transplants in humans date back to at least 1958 and are commonly used by vets.

All this also makes you wonder why fido might eat poop on occasion. 

Maybe he knows something about his digestive system we don't.

There are some problems with this treatment reaching main-stream medicine.

First and foremost, the FDA, NIH, and other government agencies who oversee our "healthcare" do not recognize feces as a medical "product" that can be used to treat people and so these treatments are only available from doctors whose bosses will "look the other way." 

The regulations only allow specific compounds to be medical treatments. 

Sadly feces do not qualify being a natural product.  Though I suppose, like vitamins, feces is a "natural" or organic product.

Next, because medicine assumes that symptoms must be "treated" rather than asking why things are broken in the first place it cannot deal with the model that your ill health is caused by their medications.  Hence there is resistance to this kind of therapy.  (See the history of treatment of ulcers as an example - though just killing off bacteria with antibiotics is not a good idea...)

In any case I believe that there are many people I personally know who suffer from a variety of digestive misery.

No one asks if they've had (or are having) lots of antibiotics as a cause.

No one asks if their digestive system has been "broken."

No one thinks to do anything but "treat the symptoms."

Since nothing about a fecal transplant is "patentable" no medical giant or big pharma is interested in working on this sort of treatment - there's only good health in it - not money.

Fortunately this is not rocket science and as I wrote in "Why is Science Professional" folks who face certain death (for example as the woman in the linked Wired article did) will probably figure out how to do this on their own (its a natural product and well, the equipment to perform this type of procedure is available in any drug store).

So we've created a society that makes poop a horrific evil - with hand santizers and endless childhood classes in "hand washing".

All in the hope of making a quick buck off of it.

Yet living as I do with many animals one learns that poop is simply part of life.  Its not like some of the better of us don't do it...

Personally I think this knowledge and treatment is something that would probably benefit millions of people.

No one wonders why animals don't suffer from all the problems people do - after all the live in the same environment - so maybe our problems are not environmental but in fact caused by us.

Patently Insane Medical Patents

Patenting your right to medical privacy?

How would you like to find out that the notion of measuring some aspect of your child's bodily function via a blood test as it relates to a disease or illness in the child in order to provide a specific treatment that could heal or cure the child was "patented" and hence could not be used by you or your doctor?

Sound far fetched?

Its not - the US Supreme court is hearing arguments on this very issue.

Basically the question here is that should the US patent system be allowed to support this kind of patent?

I say no...

No matter what you do the mental decision by a human being to correlate the results of some testing process with a decisions for a treatment for a patient is not something that should be covered by a patentable process.  Ever.

I am backed in my feelings by, among many, many others, the Mayo Clinic (see this PDF) and the ACLU (see this PDF).

The idea of the patent is basically 1) apply some drug, 2) monitor the results of the drug, and 3) apply some other drug based on the result of #1 and #2.

How is this unique, novel, or interesting.

The drugs involved are not being considered for the patent.

Only the idea of steps #1..#3 above.

If the Supreme Court allows this type of patent than simply substitute anything you like into these steps and viola - you have something patentable.

By simple substitution now we can 1) apply a tweak to the fuel injectors on your car, 2) monitor the result, 3) recommend a fuel additive.

Bingo - a patentable process - one that the patent police can use to come to your door and make you pay.

Think this is far fetched?

Its not - its already happening.

In "Genetic Engineering - It's What's for Dinner" I wrote about how Monsanto enforces its patents on genetic soybean engineering of folks whose farms are adjacent to those that use Monsanto's patented soybeans.  The birds and bees spread the genetically engineered soybean pollen to these adjacent farms and create a liability for these farms - because they are now using Monsanto's patented genetics.

Now these folks didn't ask for this to happen - it just did.

This is also just like I wrote about with "ASCAP..."  Liability is created for someone by acts they have no control over - like singing an "ASCAP" song at their place of business.

So now this will penetrate the confidentiality of the "doctor/patient relationship."

For patented processes the "owner," of the technology, Prometheus in this case, will have the right to burst into your medical examination room to determine whether the doctor is infringing its patents as he creates a treatment strategy for your disease.

Just like Monsanto.

Just like ASCAP.

Why are we, as a nation, doing this to ourselves?

The patent system is broken.

It started with software patents.

Mostly these did not impact the "average joe"...  Though I did read that the average cell phone today involves 200,000 patents.

More BS because most of these patents are BS patenting things that already exist as I've written about extensively before (see my thoughts by following the "Google Patents" thread on this blog starting with this...)

The US Patent Office is broken in that no one can have enough knowledge about the world to correctly ascertain whether some idea is new and unique or not.  The patent office originally required you supply a working model of your patent, i.e., a "thing" that demonstrated the patent.  If you didn't do that no patent.  But that all changed when the Patent Office began allowing "software patents."

So now we have mental actions by doctors subject to patents.

And there are, of course, two sides to this.

While you might consider Prometheus Labs a "big, evil corporation" remember that grandma's pension might own some Prometheus stock.  So wiping out their interests might force grandma to move into your house in order to survive...

(Another write-up here...)