The Ultimate Stoner Retirement: US Medicaid's Debt-fueled Opium Dens

 Over the last few decades our society has seen a significant rise in prescription rates for opioid pain killers.

Six years ago when I broke my wrist I witnessed this first hand when doctors refused to treat me without administering these drugs.  The first instance was when they reset my broken wrist.  I was required to accept a 1mg (the absolute minimum) of morphine before they pulled my wrist to reset it.  Note that the pain of the injection was greater than the pain of the reset.

Clearly 1mg of morphine for a 200 lb adult male isn't going to make a damn bit of difference as far as pain is concerned - which the the doctor all but admitted - but it seems that this drug was a hospital policy dictated prerequisite before a reset.

Ultimately the wrist was operated on.  In the recovery room I woke to find an IV with a syringe hanging out of it.  The cheerful nurse said "let me give you your pain killers!"  I replied I did not want any but she proceeded to begin injecting me with the requisite Fentanyl anyway.

"Stop!" I demanded.

She looked shocked "We don't want you to be in any pain...?"

I told her I didn't mind the pain because that's how I would know I was getting better.

She stopped injecting the Fentanyl after about half was gone.

An hour or two later my son showed up to take me home.  "Take your pain killer before you go." the nurse admonished. 

"No thanks." I replied.

"Then you can't leave."

"Huh?"

"It's policy - you're not allowed to leave without a pain killer."

I relented and left.

A few days later I was at the surgeons for a checkup.  After he left the room a cheerful girl appeared.

"Here's your prescription for pain killers," she said.  She handed me a prescription for 60 potent opioid pain killers.

I never took one.

At each of several more visits over a few months they handed out these prescriptions like candy.

Since my experience opioid prescriptions in the US have risen about 27% between 2007 and last year. 

The increase of 32.4% among the elderly leading the way (see above chart).

In my case the use of these drugs was totally unnecessary yet in total they prescribed some 120 oxycodone (the stronger of the common hydrocodone doses).

While the nurse's excuse of "we don't want you to feel pain" was well meaning the truth is far worse.  (See the original Journal  Sentinel article here and here as well as this). 

As a nation are we really in this much pain?

No, of course not.

Instead the drug companies (big pharma) have created the ultimate stoner Nirvana: opioid-fueled retirement homes where you can sit staring at the wall or sleeping in your plate all day long on a government Medicaid-fueled high paid for by US government debt.

In the case of the elderly we need look no farther for the cause than the American Geriatric Society:

This group has a panel of ten (10) experts on use of opioid pain killers in the elderly - a panel recommending new more extensive uses of these pain killers for everyday uses.

Surprise of surprises!

At least least six according to the Journal Sentinal have or work for in some capacity companies that sell these products.

A conflict of interest - plain and simple.

Yet we as a society accept this.

In my case the lack of pain killers helped me with rehabbing my wrist which today is very close to 100%.  Had a gone the pain killer route I might be an addict, or never worked my hand because it hurt too much, or worse...

My mother is 82.  Her neighbor is today a drug addict at 86.

The neighbor, once on these pills, is completely unable to function and falls asleep in her food.  The state sends someone into her apartment each day to "help her."  Prior to her involvement with these pills the neighbor was at least functional.

And this is a common problem today.  Little wonder given that the equivalent of 69 tons of these opioid pain killers are prescribed each year (average doses are measured in milligrams).

I guess the over 55 home is the ideal stoner retirement destination when coupled with routine trips to the "pain clinic."

Yet 15,000 people a year are killed by these products.

The baby boomer stoners and their drug company paid doctors have created the ultimate retirement destination - the modern opium den.

Music, work, driving, and Power-Take-Offs

I found an interesting article here on music and working.

Basically it would seem that there is little correlation between listening to music and working "better" or more efficiently...  It seems that music, at least music with words in a language you can understand or hip-hop music, actually servers to make you "less focused" on work. 

If you have strong feelings about the music - good or bad - you tend to concentrate less on work as well.  Music you don't care much about either way is less distracting.

Most of these observations revolve around the use of headphones in the office - a recent technological development - at least compared to the 40,000 year old ivory flutes pictured right (from Ars Technica).

Music, religion and writing seem to me to be what separates man from the animals (chimpanzees have been shown to be tool users so tools are out in that regard).  So it would seem that music and man have a long history together - one that modern office environments don't share.

I personally like music while I work but I am careful about what kinds of work I allow music to invade and why.

Many years ago I used to go out for nightly jogs - this was in the days of the "Walkman."  Many joggers were out and about with headphones or "earphones" (no ear buds at this time).  I always wondered about this.

Music makes it easy to be distracted while exercising - but distraction while running along a busy road?

I first observed this during the mid 1980's.  We lived in a town where the "main drag" was a four lane road with a nice, well tended grass median in the middle and a big park along one side.  You'd often see the joggers going along with their "walkmen" on.

Personally I've always found it hard enough after jogging a few miles on a hot day to deal with a heavy traffic crossing without distractions let alone with one like music.

I notice similar things today with driving - kids driving with headphones on (or earbuds in).

The driving instructor in my high school always made it very clear that driving with distractions put you at fault in an accident.

But today its common to see this.  (Supposedly "hands free" phones are legal with "approved" earbuds).  But still cell phone driving (and texting) are known to be as dangerous if not more so than "drunk" driving.

Again, I've always found that this kind of noise easily leads to distraction.  You have several senses that you should be using to drive: sight, sound, touch, smell.

Sight is the most obvious - but what about the rest?

Touch is important, for example, in detecting vibrations, i.e., a tire has blown out and the steering wheel shakes, or you're off the edge of the road in the gravel or on the newer rumble strips, or you're hydroplaning out of control.

Smell matters if something mechanical goes wrong: the engine over heats, that sort of thing.

And then there's sound: hearing the rumble strip, hearing the horn blaring as you cut through an intersection without looking distracted by your music or girlfriend, not hearing the semi pulling up too close behind you, not hearing the little kids screaming and laughing behind the parked cars.

I think that for driving sound and touch are at least 40% of the information your mind picks up - sight being at least 55% or more.  Of that 40% sound is, I think at least 50%, so over all 20% of the information entering your brain is sound as it relates to driving.

Headphones and earbuds eliminate that (loud music too if its so loud you can't hear the things you should).

Earbuds and headphones are even worse when operating heaving machinery.

I have a large brush hog - basically a single-blade lawn mower you attach to a tractor that can cut through 2 1/2" saplings and trees.  It connects to the tractor via a Power Take Off (PTO) which is a rotating shaft about four feet long that spins at 540 revolutions per minute - a twenty some horse power diesel engine supply sufficient torque that if you get a hand caught in it either you're going to spin around with the shaft or your hand is coming off.

Sound and touch are critical, I think, when running this type of equipment because they are, in my experience, where the first sign of trouble often appears.  PTO problems, for example, are often preceded by unusual sounds or vibrations.

With earbuds and/or headphones on you'll miss these.

All in all music, like alcohol, should be enjoyed responsibly, especially when the use of power equipment by your or others, involved.

In most states driving with headphones on, for example, is some sort of crime (save for "state approved" hands-free devices for cell phones).

I've had a farm tractor for about 14 years at this point and I would have to say that sound has saved me from a potentially serious injury a couple of times.

I don't plan on having music on my tractor any time soon...

Fukushima, Tuna, and Poison Ivy

Last year I posted a map similar to the one at the top of this post.  Not that I thought the Fukushima fallout cloud was actually going to hit the US but just to point out what some people were thinking.

I also wrote "Radiation and Seafood - Inconvenient Truth about 'Clean Energy'" around the same time.

Today the WSJ reports in this article that Tuna laden with cesium-137, as I predicted, are now being caught and sold here in the US.  Though the amount is low (well below US limits) its still there.

Accompanying the article was this map:

Notice anything similar?

Interestingly the tuna seem to have followed the same path as the predicted radiation cloud (which failed to show up).

According to the article marine ecologist Daniel Madigan at Stanford University, who led the study team, said "The tuna packaged it [cesium-137] up and brought it across the world's largest ocean... We were definitely surprised to see it at all and even more surprised to see it in every one we measured."

A surprise that the radiation spread into the wildlife in the sea?

Recently my grandchildren were going to make s'mores on the little fire grill we had set up on our deck.  As the time for s'mores approached they realized they had no sticks for roasting marshmellows.  "Go collected some" the adults said.  So off into the small wooded area near the deck they went.  A sword fight erupted leaving a mess of sticks and leaves all over the year.  Finally enough sticks were collected and the s'more production begain.

The next day I awoke to puffy eyes and what looked like a bug bit on my wrist.  I did not think too much of it and later, after work, mowed the grass and picked up all the sticks and leaves the kids had left in the yard.

Over the next few days I came to realize that the kiddies had collected up a vast collection of poison-ivy-tainted sticks.  About 60% of the family is immune (either too young - kids under about six rarely have rashes from it - or simply immune, like Mrs. Wolf).  Only because Emma Weylin's children also had poison ivy did I piece together what happened.

This was the worst case I've ever had, the afflicted areas measured in square feet and covering all the parts of the body you don't want poison ivy on - ever.  Normally I am extremely careful about poison ivy - we have quite a bit and I have to deal with it on a routine basis while maintaining the property - and I never get it any more due to my fastidious precautions.

On the night we had the s'mores I had just taken a shower before the event.  I worked outside the next day before finally, too late, taking a shower the next evening.  The poison ivy urushiol (the oil that causes the itching) had more than enough time to spread and get on to clothes, pets, equipment, etc.

The point of this is simple.

I've had at least a decade of experience with poison ivy - from brush-hog blades to shoes to weed-wackers and lawn equipment.  I have a routine that I follow to ensure that everything is cleaned up and I don't get a rash.

But this time the kiddies acted as the "outlier."

Finding a means outside the normal course of precautions to cause the worst poison ivy, at least from my perspective, disaster ever.  And even then only two of them got it - no one else on the adult end did save me.

So me and my normal poison ivy precautions are like the nuclear power industry - confident in its safety record.

And the kids are like the tsunami - an outlier that changes the game that no on saw coming.

There was literally no way for me to foresee this disaster.  The small stand of trees where the sticks were acquired are not an area any goes into - I mow around it and never noticed the poison ivy there - of course there was no need to because you can't really walk there (at least an adult cannot).

There was no immediate reaction, unlike say having the kids stir up a hornet nest.  It takes the poison ivy time to cause its damage.

And, once unleashed, there was little to be done about it.

Fortunately I was able to use Zanfel to eliminate the worst of the problems around my face, eyelids and neck early on - but even then I spent a week looking like Mike Tyson's punching bag.  Beyond that the poison ivy merrily spread from arm to leg to arm and back doing its damage in only the way poison ivy can.

I think that my poison ivy experience is a lesson in the folly of men when dealing with the unexpected.

I think it also parallels closely the Fukushima incident in many interesting ways.

The only question is this: are the tainted tuna the entire problem or only the tip of the iceberg?

Wolfram and a New Kind of "Climate" Science

I found another interesting article on "climate science" at Ars Technica today written by one of the same authors that I wrote about in "AnthroBioBlame: A New Kind of Sience." a while back (I think the intellectual pun on Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" was lost on the authors).

I think that a little background on Wolfram and his "New Kind of Science" is in order first off.

Wolfram is a physicist and mathematician.  About ten years ago he released a book on what he termed as literally "a new kind of science."  His main thesis in the book is "computation irreducibility."

Computational irreducibility means that there are systems in the nature, the world, and the universe for which the only mathematical description possible of that system is the system itself (see this chapter).  The book also covers cellular automata and other examples related to how he discovered this principle.

Now Wolfram's conclusions are by no means "accepted science" yet until there is some plausible argument against this thesis one must believe that it may not be possible to reduce certain complex systems to predictable mathematics.

Wolfram's book points to what I see as the largest and most fundamental flaw in "climate science" - basically the notion that simple human "climate models" have any predictive nature whatsoever, i.e., that the system of climate on our planet is computationally irreducible.

What does this mean?

It means that while we can run around taking as many measurements as we like of the climate process on earth the only way to know what the climate is going to do in the future is to watch it evolve into its future state.

There is no amount of predictive computational horsepower to do otherwise.

One must conclude this after reading Wolfram's book.

Secondly climate is an "open system."

This means that you cannot simply measure the temperature of things and make a prediction.

Why not?

Because things like asteroids and volcano's, which are not normally part of the climate, pop up periodically and introduce new and unforeseeable consequences.

An example of what Wolfram's book says to me is summed up in the image at the top of the article.  I have seen many like it over the years - some with smaller time scales, some with differing temperature and C02 scales - but similar layouts none-the-less.

The image implies that somehow someone somewhere was able to create an accurate and reliable "global temperature/CO2" plot over the history of the earth.  Here is another one commonly shown:

Now clearly during the last 400,000 years there hasn't been consistent temperature monitoring of the planet (nor for the 600 million as the other chart shows).  This data is extracted from indirect measurements - for example Antarctic ice cores - or from what are often government-funded "educated" guesses.

(Now, depending on your perspective we're either headed for CO2 armageddon or warming up from a prior disastrous global temperature plummet.)

So while these may be the levels shown indirectly we have no real way of knowing what the causes and effects were.

Were there outside influences?  Where there geological influenced?  No one can say.

Third "climate science" itself is not actually science in the sense that the "scientific method" is followed.  There no, at least to my knowledge, theory of climate which predicts future behavior based on some past data and a model.

I suspect that this is true for exactly the reasons Wolfram writes about - its simply not computationally possible.

So while climate scientists can say what they like about man's affect on climate no one can be sure if its true because we don't have a fundamental understanding of climate in the first place.

Now when I say "not a science" I am talking about those making bold predictions about future consequences based on "climate science."

Certainly there is much value to having satellites and weather prediction and  so forth going on - it certainly adds to our base of knowledge.

But there is no hard data on the past, only guesswork and inference.

Its the certainty of the conclusions that I find troubling.

I don't expect that "climate scientists" will agree with my thesis here.  Primarily because things like Wolfram's book do not fall under the purview of the kind of things they study.

But Wolfram's ideas are along the lines of others who have made other interesting discoveries about the tools of science, e.g., Kurt Gödel.

Now at a secondary level we can run around worry about the short term future, i.e., as it says in the Ars Technica article.  For example the discussion that satellites "imaged the Greenland ice sheet—again, not because of some sort of bias, but because the sheet is very big and very significant."

This is another flaw in the climate science "chicken little model."  The Greenland ice sheet is significant to climate science because, if it all melted, the ocean levels would presumable rise (by presumably I man assuming that all the water goes into the ocean and not, for example, into the air as water vapor).  Yet some how these conclusions of what to study is not bias.

Antarctica is significant too in that regard, but so are many other things: asteroids, volcanoes, and so forth.

The bottom line for humanity is that the future is unpredictable - most likely because of outside factors and computational irreducibility.

"Climate science" says that "we might be killing ourselves so we need to do X."

But where is the research to support X as a safer alternative? 

Maybe X will be worse than the present...

How does anyone actually know and how can they actually know it?

And finally, another measurement of the quality of science is can the hypothesis and theories be used to make accurate predictions, i.e., scale up.

If you are reading this on a computer screen then you are relying on hard science and engineering.  Climate science is not yet at that point so even if we did understand it what could we do with that knowledge?

Some have discussed, for example, deploying large solar reflectors to "shield" the earth from the sun in order to cool it.

Interestingly though, you never see these sorts of solutions accompanied by any sort of hard evidence or mathematics that will make the consequences predictable.

Google, Siri, and Mind Control

Google v Oracle

Sadly it looks like Google has beaten Oracle at the patent game.

There are some interesting comments here on the case.  The jury foreman Greg Thompson said "Some of us had an underlying feeling that Google had done something that wasn't right" and on Google's reliance on a Sun blog about the Google efforts: "We felt like it wasn't a good business practice to rely on a blog."

Quoting from the arstechnica article Thompson "suggest[s] there was a general sense among some jurors that Oracle's intellectual property claims might not be in the public's best interest."

Ultimately all the jurors obviously felt that Google hadn't done anything wrong.

I find the last comment interesting - Oracle's intellectual property claim "might not be in the public's best interest."  I suspect that this was not one of the charges given the jury by the judge - deciding on the public's "best interest."

In any case I predicted that Google would fail and I was wrong.  I doubt Oracle will be able to do much on appeal but you never know.

Siri - Stealing your IP?

I found this link at "Technology Review" about iPhone's Siri.  If you work for IBM and bring you iPhone to work Siri won't come along - IBM's blocked the Siri function.

The reason is that when you ask Siri a question Apple's "EULA" clearly states that arbitrary information from your phone will be sent to Apple North Carolina data center for processing so that Sire might respond correctly.  IBM is rightly concerned that this could include all sorts of their intellectual property (emails, calendars, meeting notes, etc.)

I foresee that in the not-to-distant future Siri will be on the witness stand in court cases because of this - testifying that a spouse was asking where their lover was, for example.  Similarly asking Siri preposterous questions might get you into trouble as well because there is no recorded context.  For example, teenagers joking about killing someone and asking Siri for comments for fun could be turned into something far more serious in court.

Mind Control

There have been a number of recent news articles on researchers building "mind control" devices.

Both stories like this about a iPhone mind controller for games as well as this about wheelchair controls for paraplegics.

For the last few years there have been a number of companies selling various sorts of mind "controllers" for games and general use.  Most appear to work by measuring brain activity: busy thoughts, quiet moments, and so on and don't really resolve down to things like objects or actions, e.g., pick up the block and move it from A to B.

But this limitation is being overcome as well.  This post from last year describes monkeys using mind control to select specific objects and manipulate them.

Racist on Racist Violence: A New Twist on an Old Idea...

I found a remarkable article under the headline "Anti-Supremacists Tied to Restaurant Beatings" (written by Joe Barrett of the WSJ).

The article begins: "Authorities in a Chicago suburb are trying to identify as many as 13 of the 18 people linked to an anti-racist organization who allegedly burst into a restaurant Saturday and beat with batons and hammers a group of diners they believed to be white supremacists."

Hate crime law, see this for more details, typically has language like this from HR 1913:

Adopts the definition of "hate crime" as set forth in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (i.e., a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person...

So here we have "anti-white-supremacists" physically attacking "white supremacists."  The fact that "white" is used to define the victims involved means the attacks were racially motivated.

Is this a hate crime?

Surely the beatings in and of themselves constitute crimes.  And while one can view these attacks through the lens of "hate crimes" its seems to me that, fundamentally, these are also simple everyday crimes, e.g., felony assault, conspiracy, and so on.

Bursting into a restaurant with a dozen of your like-minded friends with hammers and clubs to employ a beat down on people you don't like is a crime any way you look at it.  Clearly in this case it would have to be premeditated as well (otherwise how would they all know to show up at the same time?)

One imagines seeing this, er, well, one doesn't have to imagine, on the Soprano's, for example.

Aren't both the victims and the criminals in this case racists?

There is a significant danger here of "irony poisoning." 

One always envisions "racists" as jack-booted, shaven-headed thugs armed with black jacks beating on poor defenseless members of some hated group (be it by race, sexual persuasion, etc.) for no reason other than they dislike the color of their victim's skin or sexual persuasion.

Yet here are those who supposedly despise racism (and presumably the actions of those who practice it) acting exactly as those they presume to despise.

One also imagines, since there was no reported "return fire," that the diners were in fact "defenseless" - at least at the time of the attack.

My mother and grandfather occasionally told stories of the mafia in the small Midwestern town where they lived that were quite similar (this was during the time of Prohibition).

So this kind of human behavior is not new.

The Constitution affords racists and anti-racists alike the freedom of speech and thought.

Hate crime legislation targets those taking specific actions to harm others based on race.

Hate crime legislation also, by its very nature, separates and identifies implicitly those who would be viewed as practitioners of such hateful acts as separate from society, i.e., as a minority in a society which as a whole does not engage in such acts.

So now we have anti-racists using this distinction to violently target and attack presumed members of this new hate-crime-law defined minority demonstrating that hate crime laws in fact create new "minorities" which can be targeted by new types of hate crimes.

Its almost as if society is losing site of what a crime is and turning more and more toward the "thought" that was involved in the crime.

Sadly, like most modern things, no one has thought through the consequences of "hate crime" law (see this).  For example, am I targeting women if I mug them because I think they are women or because I think that they will put up less of a fight?

Until seeing this particularly article I had never imagined a scenario where "anti-racists" would violently and premeditatedly attack defenseless "racists."

Perhaps if the government prosecuted crime in general more effectively none of this would be necessary: crimes like premeditated beating of anyone would be crimes plain and simple.

Will government need to pass new laws to prevent "racist on racist" violence?

I hope not.

If you want crime to stop, racially motivated crime or otherwise, there has to be justice.

A slap on the wrist and probation because the jails are full and prosecutors overworked merely adds to the problem.

Sadly, there also needs to be a better sense of morality.

In this case the "anti-racists" seem to lack the concept of morality, i.e., their intended victims share the fact with the racists intended victims that they are both victims - victims of crime.

If "anti-racists" don't see their actions are hypocritical or wrong our society has taken a very wrong turn.

Private Rockets

A while back I wrote about the Copenhagen Suborbital TM65 rocket engine (see "Rocket Science 101").  Today there is an article at Wired showing the first test-firing of the TM65:



I find it interesting that Copenhagen, along with Elon Musk and SpaceX are taking over for NASA in many ways.  This morning, for example, SpaceX launched the first commercial rocket intended to dock the the international space station.

SpaceX and its Falcon rockets were viewed as a "toys" until very recently (still perhaps by some).  SpaceX is only about ten years old and privately funded.   Congress and NASA have had reservations about whether or not private companies could take the place of NASA in terms getting materials to and from the space station.

SpaceX is showing that the US can still lead in the area of space exploration.

The Falcon 9 rocket was partially funded by NASA and Elon Musk indicates that the cost was about $300 million USD (NASA figures at its "cost plus" rates the price to be $3.6 billion USD - a detailed discussion on this is here.)  The fuel cost to space for a Falcon 9 is approximately $200,000 USD.

SpaceX plans to be able to build a new Falcon 9 every six weeks at peak production.

Here is video of today's Falcon 9 launch:

Suicide: More Common than Murder

While researching the post for Daniel Everett and the Piraha I came across an interesting statistic:

Suicide out numbers homicide in the US about five to three, i.e., for every three homicides there are five suicides.

This would appear to be true over the last several decades - even, as during the late 1970's and earl 1990's the rates of murder were peaking in absolute terms.

Suicide is basically a male-dominated activity - with teen and elderly men taking their own lives at a ratio of about five time that of women.

Suicide is also a crime, just like homicide.

Homicides per week tend to spike opposite of murders: Homicide tends to occur on weekends, suicide on Mondays.

African-American's are about half as likely to commit suicide as whites.  So populations with high densities of African-Americans, e.g., Washington D.C., Maryland and Louisiana, tend to have lower than average suicide rates due to their high African-American populations.

Suicide tends to peak in the inner Mountain West of the US - almost a suicide belt.

For young people 10-24 suicide is the third leading cause of death.

Yet you never hear anything about these kinds of statistics in the news...

What's most fascinating is that in terms of causes of death, as I wrote in "The Risk of the Cure," suicide is right up there with auto accidents and drug-related deaths.

Think of the resources the country spends to stop drug deaths and crime (and, of course, reduce the murder rate).

Yet no where near this amount of resource is spent on suicide.

Now at suicide.org we find many reasons for depression, one of the triggers for suicide (along with other forms of untreated mental illness such as bipolar disorder):

• The death of a loved one.


• A divorce, separation, or breakup of a relationship.


• Losing custody of children, or feeling that a child custody decision is not fair.


• A serious loss, such as a loss of a job, house, or money.


• A serious illness.


• A terminal illness.


• A serious accident.


• Chronic physical pain.


• Intense emotional pain.


• Loss of hope.
• Being victimized (domestic violence, rape, assault, etc).


• A loved one being victimized (child murder, child molestation, kidnapping, murder, rape, assault, etc.).


• Physical abuse.


• Verbal abuse.


• Sexual abuse.


• Unresolved abuse (of any kind) from the past.


• Feeling "trapped" in a situation perceived as negative.


• Feeling that things will never "get better."


• Feeling helpless.


• Serious legal problems, such as criminal prosecution or incarceration.


• Feeling "taken advantage of."


• Inability to deal with a perceived "humiliating" situation.


• Inability to deal with a perceived "failure."


• Alcohol abuse.


• Drug abuse.


• A feeling of not being accepted by family, friends, or society.


• A horrible disappointment.


• Feeling like one has not lived up to his or her high expectations or those of another.


• Bullying. (Adults, as well as children, can be bullied.)


• Low self-esteem.

Now its interesting to me that many of these depression triggers (italicized by me) can be the result, in young people particularly, of a bad environment - one with abuse, helplessness, drugs, failed expectations and so on.

Recently I watched a documentary called "The War on Kids."  If you have children I strongly urge you to take the time to watch this.  (For views on this film that oppose mine as outlined below go here.)

One of the key points the movie makes is how various policies used to make the school "secure" in fact create the exact environmental issues I outline above: feelings of hopelessness, failure, abuse and so on.

(Now my children are all adults today - the youngest is 28 - and it was fairly obvious to Mrs. Wolf and myself twenty years ago that things were going the "wrong direction" in schools.)

As an example in the movie they describe the notion of "lock down" when something or someone unknown enters the school (creation of a feeling of "helplessness" or being "trapped").

"Lock down" - isn't that a prison term? 

But the kids didn't do anything wrong?

And as a parent how would you feel if there was a known threat in the school, the school was "locked down" and you were prevented access to your child?

Now, to be fair, children's lives today have other problems that involve items on the list above as well, e.g., higher divorce rates.

But the kids spend seven or eight hours a day in a school environment nine months a year.

And unfortunately modern schools look far more like prisons than schools: high security, lock downs, no recourse from bodily and personal searches, zero tolerance for carrying ibuprofen in your purse, prevention from using the restroom, things like this.

They ask: "would these policies work in an adult workplace?"  Would you tolerate being told when you can and cannot use the restroom?  Yet your 18 year old (or 8 year old) in school is told exactly this.

One statistic presented in the movie was that of all the "weapons" charges in a given year among all the US schools 97% did not involve a weapon.  Instead they involved instances of children (often as young as eight) drawing pictures of guns, using objects as guns, talking about guns or knives and so on - all of these often resulting in expulsion due to "zero tolerance" policies.

The documentary points out that, unlike a prison, school not only restrains your physical activity it also tells you what to think: very, very Orwellian.

And because these are children (legally minors) they have no legal recourse when searched, or told what they can or cannot say or draw.

I guess the point for me was this:

I wonder if the high rates of US suicides in kids have anything to do with how they are treated by society and our schools?

Take All My Marbles and Go Home...

Alexis Tsipras

We can behold the consequences of the wonder of modern morality in the actions of Alexis Tsipras - the head of the Coalition of the Radical Left.

As you may or may not know the country of Greece is effectively in default on its financial obligations to the rest of the world.  It owes banks and countries countless billions.  As a country its tax process is corrupt, its heavy with pension and other social welfare-style obligations, and its industry is stagnant.

It has countless loan obligations to other EU members both sovereign and corporate it has already defaulted on.

In the past several years Greece has been urged to "clean house."  Slash public pensions, cut social welfare, and increase tax revenues.  The house cleaning would probably take a decade and create significant hardship for the citizens of Greece in terms of reduced pensions, higher taxes, and the consequences of less governmental graft.

Over the last few years the "responsible" leaders of Greece have urge the country to move toward reconciling its obligations with its creditors.

But for a variety of reasons, among them the style of government Greece has, this has be difficult.  Greece operates as a parliamentary republic with elected coalitions of parties that must together form a majority in order to run the government.

Over the last few years Greece's government has been in turmoil over its debt problems - ostensibly because no party wants to "given in" and cause the destruction of the current debt-funded Greek way of life.  So coalitions have been difficult and progress on resolving the problem limited.

Now hear comes Mr. Tsipras.  He is head of a small party.  But, fortunately or unfortunately, his party forms the tipping point for the next coalition government and is a position to guide Greece's future.

So what does Mr. Tsipras say that people like so well?

Mr. Tsipras told the WSJ: "Our first choice is to convince our European partners that, in their own interest, financing must not be stopped, but if they [ Greece's creditors ] proceed with unilateral action on their side, in other words they cut off our funding, then we will be forced to stop paying our creditors, to go to a suspension in payments to our creditors."

Greece owes about $250 billion Euros to its creditors - which is about twice (I think) the size of its economy.

By defaulting Tsipras is threatening the financial markets around the world - the reason is that the countries and banks (mostly in Europe) that hold Greek debt probably would not survive such a default.  In turn, other countries and banks, such as those in the US, would not survive, say France, defaulting on its obligations in order to make up for Greeks default.

So Greece is basically saying it will not take responsibility for its prior actions with regard to running up the debt unless it gets "favored treatment."  This much like a petulant child threatening to call the local Children's Services on its parents unless its parents give in to its demands to have more cookies.

This is very similar to what happened in Wisconsin a little over a year ago.  Wisconsin, the state, through a variety of public union collective bargaining laws, had become ensnared in a Greek-like scenario whereby the public unions would be able to drive up the states debt uncontrollably and beyond the state governments ability to repay.

The governor, Walker, sought to create a solution by reducing the power of the collection bargaining units, which he succeeded in doing.  The result of which are that the state residents are already seeing reductions in their taxes.  Unfortunately for Walker he must now face a recall vote over the issue.

Both Wisconsin and Greece, along with most other US states, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and countless other sovereign nations, have wound up in financial scenarios where the benefit of the unions and state employees has come to outweigh the state or countries ability to pay.

Now lets think about this.  Joe works for the state of Wisconsin for 35 years - coming out of high school.  He works on the road crew for the state highways.  He is in a union and has decent health and other benefits.

[The following is an example amalgamated from a number of states and situations.] At 53 Joe retires from the state taking a pension of, say 80% of his salary.  Typically union rules say that its 80% of your last year of salary, so Joe arranges a lot of over time and clears $100K USD his last year - leaving Joe with an $80K pension.

Joe, at 53, is bored so, when the state outsources a portion of the road maintenance Joe gets another job (doing what he did for the state) making $60K USD a year (including benefits and a pension).  (This, in one form or another, is called "double dipping.")

In Greece things are not really any different - perhaps instead of a second job the Greek citizen is evading all taxes because his relative works for the government.

Different details - same outcome.

The government cannot afford to pay.

Unfortunately for non-government employees the public union "collective bargaining laws" are arranged so that road services (where Joe worked) offered to the public are cut in times of financial crisis in order to fund the pension Joe receives.

So the state has two laws: one to give Joe a pension and one to maintain the roads.  Sadly the road maintenance law is second in priority to the pension funding.

Now in the last few decades there has been a run up in terms of government employees around the world.  After all, government benefits and pensions are secured by law (and have the highest priority apparently over all the other laws) so why not through your lot in there.  As long as you show up and do your job you're set for life.

The problem with all of this is

1) Governments, no matter how large, have limited revenue sources and there are no limits on the number of public employees.

2) Most government pensions are underfunded because the assume unrealistic returns on investment.

3) Government leaders turn over perhaps ten times over the course of the time an employee pays into the pension system and there is no personal responsibility for someone setting up a pension thirty years ago that cannot today be funded.

All in all a recipe for disaster.

Greece is now the proverbial straw that is threatening to break the camel's back.

If it does so the effects will ripple throughout Europe first, damaging its financial system, and, as that occurs, damaging our own.

Here in the US we are weak - though we don't owe as much percentage-wise directly as Greece our total sovereign unfunded liabilities (cumulative Social Security, Medicare, and so on) are actually a much larger liability than those of Greece.

Further, our creditors such as Japan and China (each into US for about a trillion or so USD) depend on our business for their growth.  This creates a problem in that if we default they have no recourse, i.e., they cannot simply seize our assets because doing so would take down their economies.

So in effect we have a very large, world wide, government run "check kiting" scheme.

Each government, in order to fund liabilities it cannot manage, borrows money from the other governments with a wink and a nod.  So long as the world economy expands and tax revenue expands and no one sees that the liabilities are growing out of control.

Only when the tax revenues cease to expand does the underlying liability problem become apparent - sort of like how all the "check kiter's" get caught - someone accidentally fails to make a deposit to keep the scheme running.

If sovereign nations cannot meet their obligations and take responsibility for their actions what's next?

Lone Wolf Philosophy - (part IV) - Outliers

Another philosophical problem I see with a lot of what today's science does (not all but a lot) is to focus on the "core" data rather than the outliers.

The plot right shows a line that roughly matches the points which surround it.  The outliers (in this case a radio comedy group) fall off to the right.

So in a mathematical sense we say that given the data, i.e., the points, there is some function f(x) that draws the line we see (where x is a set of points perhaps or perhaps not including the outliers).

Now typically the line follows the "core" data and the outliers are off to one side or the other.

The question, I think, is this - which is more important?  The "core" data which is described by f(x) or the outliers?

Now of course to some degree it depends on your interest - if I care about the quality of f(x) then I may only be concerned that it matches the "core" data (in this case the points running diagonally).

But what about the outliers?  Maybe I don't care or maybe they are critical.

Now statistics as a field is concerned with the significance of the data, e.g., are the outliers significant mathematically.  This is fine so long as you understand that significant outliers may mean that your theory or hypothesis or your mathematics are wrong or have significant errors.

But what I see today, particularly in many areas of science, is rather than think about the reason behind the outliers the thinking is to follow along with the "core data."  As an example I wrote about Danial Everett and the Piraha.  Chomsky's theory's are, if you will, the main "points" of data.  Everett has perhaps found an outlier that is significant.

The question is why does science seem to always rally around the core data?

(A good example, beside other things I write about here, are the Nobel prize winners Dr Marshall and Dr Warren who discovered stomach ulcers were caused by H. pylori.  They had to go the extreme of infecting themselves and curing themselves before other doctors would believe them.)

So I have spent a number of years thinking about outliers and why I think when you study something they are perhaps the most important thing.

The reason is is that they represent, essentially, what your f(x) does not represent, i.e., you missing knowledge.

As far as I can tell there isn't a science of "missing knowledge" - yet there should be.  Statistics tells us about the significance of the outlying data in a mathematical sense.  But what about the meaning of the outliers.  (This is the "meaningfulness" I wrote about in part I.)

So let's imagine we have a game of checkers that occurs on a table.

Above the game we have a very large piece of cardboard through which a square the size of one square on the underlying game board is visible.  So all we can see is what is in that one square at any point in time.

Now the world champion at checkers is a computer because the game is fully vetted mathematically, i.e., the best you can do with the computer is fixed by mathematical rules, e.g., who starts first, you must never make a mistake, etc.

So we watch a game of checkers through the single hole.

What do we see: either an empty square, a red or black piece, or a red or black king.

As time (t) advances we see changes: t = 1 - empty, t = 2 - red, t = 3 - empty, ...

Now I ask is this enough information to deduce the game of checkers?

I think the answer here is no.  A single square's visibility is not enough.

And obviously a cardboard with a cutout that shows the whole board provides 100% understanding of the moves and games and would allow us to deduce the rules of the game from the observations.

But what about cutout's that show less than 100% - is there a point at which we can deduce the entire game?

I think, for example, that a centered cutout that's smaller than the board by exactly one square all the way around is sufficient - provided we know the underlying board is bounded.

But what if we don't know the board is bounded or if the board is a closed loop in that it wraps around on top and bottom (so you could move off the right and appear on the left, or off the top and appear on the bottom)?

In that case I don't think we could differentiate.

And what about the other cases?

Say four squares worth of holes?  Or four randomly placed holes?

Since checkers is a closed, bounded mathematical system what can we tell by such observations?

What this says is that we can take all the information that we know about the system and we can construct a decision tree representing the observations.  At each node in the tree we can say what are the inputs, what is the state, and what are the possible new states, e.g., a Turing machine.

If all the leaves of the tree are deterministic, i.e., they can only take on a value from a certain set even if we do not know which value from the set that is, then we know any outliers must work toward filling in the gaps, e.g., eliminating elements from the set of things we are not sure about.  In the sense of programming we have the logic but are missing the data.

On the other hand, if the tree is not deterministic, i.e., we get to a point where we don't have a set of possible values known or unknown, then our knowledge about the system can never be complete with the data we have.  Again, in the sense of programming we are missing source files containing the instructions for the computer (and perhaps data as well).

Now in this later case what can we really say about our system?

My concern about modern science is that there is a tendency to assume that, even in the later case, the non-deterministic tree is assumed to be deterministic for the sake of having something to publishing.

Now why do I think this is so important?

For one thing imagine all the software and computers in the world - billions and billions of computers (cell phones, servers, iClouds, S3, and so on).

Yet there is no "science of debugging" (which is what I am describing above).

There is no theory of debugging, and, as far as I know, not even a hypothesis about what one might be.

This is like much of medical science or climate science.

So if we have no theory of debugging software (which I argue is equivalent to making observations about the operation of Turing machines with the intent on filing in missing information about their data or programming) how can we do it about open systems?

Now human's are pretty good at debugging and fixing things - even complex software or hardware (mechanical or computer) systems.  I am good at this and I am able to use heuristics to do the job.  But for closed systems like a computers program with known input and output it should be possible, at least in some cases, to compute the fix.

What I am also arguing is, that for non-closed systems, e.g., a human body or the climate of a planet, I think its possible to prove that its impossible to compute a fix.  The reason is that even for small, relatively simple closed, bounded systems (the checkers through the single square) it cannot be done.

So why isn't there a science for this?

And without a science for this how can we be so certain when we know we are missing key components of the determinism tree?

To me this is the "meaningfulness" measurement.

Lone Wolf Philosophy - (part III) - The Declining Return in the Investment in Education

To the right you'll see a chart I linked from SmartMoney.com.

It says that in 2012 the estimated debt for a graduate student leaving (graduating) school is around $43,524 USD.

With some 831,645 estimated graduates this amounts to about $36 billion USD.

We can estimate from this website and this site that there are about 17,565,000 undergraduates enrolled in college carrying an average of about $18,625 USD by the time they graduate.  So if only 60% graduate that means debt is piling on (as of 2009 for these statistics) at about $190 billion a year.

To be blunt these numbers are staggering.

First of all, based on experience with four children 19-25 year olds are not the sharpest when it comes to managing money.  So while they are the ones piling on the debt directly there are more than likely ill equipped to deal with the consequences.

Now, let's think about the philosophy of all this relative to my claims about higher education and academic research.

If you look at who's going to be writing and publishing papers in academic circles its going to be graduate students and professors.  Now to become a professor one must have been a graduate student and undergraduate somewhere.

So combining these numbers we can estimate something on the order of $61,000 USD of debt upon achieving a PhD ($43K + $18K).

This is all for someone without earning their first real paycheck with their education.

Now in the "real world" people will do a lot of crime for $61,000.  Rob banks, steal cars, embezzle money from places they work, run up drug debt, you name it.  A junkie might burn through heroin at the rate of about $10,000 USD per year, for example.

So my first question here is doesn't this debt put an "ethical strain" on these students and graduates?

Obviously you need to make a lot of money to repay this kind of debt - as I have written before $600 USD or more per month in student loan payments - many paying up to $1,000 or more a month.

Given this and the associated "publish or perish" model for associate professors without tenure doesn't it seem likely that beyond basic personal morality there is little to prevent "fudging" of data and results in order to "keep up" with the publish or perish lifestyle?

Now given that if you don't publish your PhD or Master's in a discipline outside the interest of normal business areas, English, climate science, ethnic studies, isn't going to get you a job that covers the "monthly nut" of your loan payment - let alone a reasonable lifestyle.

It seems like you must succeed at publishing or face certain financial disaster.

To me this situation creates a very unpleasant ethical problem: I give you substantial money to acquire an education.  You become indebted to me.  And in turn you promise to use your education in the future to pay down your debt.

But what if the industry you graduate in is overstaffed in four or six years when you graduate?

Or the economy is bad?

What if you simply chose a career without much of a future to earn money, like academics?

The second thing this chart above shows is that the price of education in terms of debt is dropping rapidly.

From 2002 to 2012 it would appear that education's cost at the graduate level increased may 15%.

Yet the number of graduate students would appear to have almost doubled.

So for the same amount of debt ten years ago about half the number of students graduated as do today.

Or to put it another way is the education $50K worth of debt bought in 2002 as good as what $50K worth of debt buys today given that twice the number of graduate students would appear to be graduating.

Or are the institutions of higher learning simply doing less per student in order to make money?

Taken in the context of "science" and our future as a nation and people I think these statistics are very troubling indeed.

My thesis on this is

1) It would appear that the value of a "higher education" in the last ten years in terms of debt was cut in half.

2) This debt creates an ethical nightmare for students ill-equipped to deal with its consequences.

3) The consequences of #1 and #2 are diminishing the quality of education in this country and with it the quality of medicine, science and life in general.

If the value of an investment dropped in half over a decade why would more people invest?

So we've placed our children into a "declining investment" which will hobble them financially and ethically for decades to come.

We've told them they need this "investment" in order to succeed in life, yet at the same time its value is plummeting.

We've place an enormous ethical strain on those in academia to "afford" this debt by "publishing."  Yet outside academia we see that the accuracy of these publications is becoming more and more questionable.

Academia fights back hard when the value of its activities are questioned, to wit the firing of blogger Naomi Schaefer Riley for questioning the academic value of a black studies program in a post.

"In science when you lose the ability to question things science becomes religion." - From my last post.

Aren't then, by this, academic institutions really becoming expensive religious institutions where dogma is dispensed and believed without question?

Aren't academics becoming the pharisees of old-school religion?

Has debt become the price of penance in this new religion?

Fall To Earth - an Update

It's been a little over six month's since Fall To Earth, my new CD, was released.

Over the last few months a number of international fans have been purchasing songs on iTunes and CD Baby. 

I am honestly quite surprised by this as I haven't done a whole lot to market it though I am glad people are enjoying the music.

I have spend a few dollars (maybe a third of what it cost to make) on Jango promoting the CD by having songs played in rotation on various on-line radio stations they offer.  When its not pay-to-play the songs do periodically come up in the stations rotation.

Please take some time to check it out.

Jango offers free listening though after a bit you are badgered to "sign up."  Otherwise search for "Fall To Earth" on iTunes or use the links at the left of the blog.

Recursion, Grammar, and Science becoming Religion

A Pirahã village in the jungle of Brazil.

I watched a show on the Smithsonian (or Documentary) Channel the other day called "The Grammar of Happiness."

The premise is related to my past two posts about my philosophy in an oblique way - its also interesting in it own right.

The story documents a man named Daniel Everett.  Everett ends up being a missionary in central Brazil, South America for much of his life living with a people called the Pirahã. 

This is a tribe that lives in a few villages off of a remote (four day boat trip) river.  Everett arrives as a missionary and stays there with his family for many years over a couple of decades.

Two things happen during this time.

One is that Everett learns their language and comes to understand that these people live only in the present.  They have no numbers, cannot count, focus only on truth.  Everett is seduced by the simplicity of this and becomes an atheist in response.

The second thing is Everett learns quite a bit about their language and ends up writing a paper.  The paper describes the language as one without "recursion" (more on this below).  Linguistically recursion works along these lines: I have a sentence "Joe eats chicken."  Recursion is the principle whereby I can always take a sentence and make it part of a larger sentence, i.e., "Mary said Joe eats chicken."  Recursion is unlimited because I can always extend the sentence further: "Frank said Mary said Joe eats chicken."

(There is a readable set of slides from MIT's TedLab available here.)

The story of the Piraha changes at this point.

Everett's paper tick's off Noam Chomsky.  Chomsky is an MIT professor of linguistics and ostensibly leads the field in this area.  Chomsky and others have proposed that "recursion" is a necessary component of human language.

Everett's paper flies in the face of this and Everett begins to receive hate mail.  He is also called a racist.  All by Chomsky supporters.

This "academic debate" filters back to Brazil and Everett's visa's to study the Pirahã are revoked.

During this point in the film Everett ends up in the University of Brazil giving a talk on this.  Because many of the linguists in the world are Chomsky-ites the lecture is poorly attended.

However, they interview a couple of Brazilian linguistic professors and one, a woman, says something along these lines about the Everett/Chomsky recursion "debate:"

"In science when you lose the ability to question things science becomes religion."

The meaning here is, of course, that the "Chomsky" supporters are suppressing the questioning of Chomsky's work through harsh personal attacks designed to debilitate the attacker (as opposed to attack the arguments Everett uses).

Another group, the TedLab at MIT, takes on this debate.  The convert some 1,500 recorded Pirahã statements recorded by Everett and others into a computer code representing the grammar of the spoken language.

They then use computer program to attempt to generate a recursive grammar for those statements.

The computer fails to find such a grammar.  (This does not prove Everett's right, however.)

(As a side note: recursion is also applies to computer languages and computer architectures.  Some computer architectures, e.g., the IBM 360 did not natively support recursive constructs - typically via a stack.  Yet these computers can still be programmed to perform recursive operations.


To me the question here is not whether the Pirahã's language has recursion.  It does not have to for them to function.  But at the same time one wonders if their minds process recursion.  For example, if the Pirahã lived truly "only in the moment" could they interrupt their hunting trip to help an injured companion, i.e., stop hunting, help the companion, and continue hunting?


My guess is that mentally recursion is required for human thought, but not human language.)

In any case the paraphrased quote "In science when you lose the ability to question things science becomes religion"  was the kicker of this whole thing.

In the end the Brazilan government, while blocking Everett's access over the course of a few years, enters the jungle where the Pirahã live and install TV, running water, toilets, and so on.

One imagines this will have impact on their culture and language and probably change their way of life forever.

The larger point here is that Everett is battling dogma.  In this case the dogma of Chomsky and his "recursion" theories.

Who's right?  I don't know.

But what's more troubling is the personal attacks on Everett.

I use this as an illustration of why ethics and morality are so important in science.

Is Everett lying about the information captured on his trips to the jungle?

Are Chomsky's supports seeking to harm Everett in order to protect their status and funding?

Of course, given there is no concrete "theory of language" or "theory of the mind" here all this is merely arguing over supposition and observations.

Lone Wolf Philosophy... (part II)

The last post talked about the model I use to think about science and the direction it headed in this country and around the world.

There are a few "side aspects" that my thoughts lead to which I would like to discuss here.

First off is the concept of "morality" as it applies to science.  (The term "science" here refers to all academic and publicly funded research as well.)

My first thought is that it must apply and in an absolute sense.  So that researcher A and researcher B are guaranteed that each will follow the same concepts and actions with regard to the integrity of some study S.

Suppose that S is related to some form of compensation that A receives.  Can we trust A?  A may trust himself to do a good job but what if while performing his actions vis a vi S he decides to make an adjustment to the data to ensure his next compensation check?

Perhaps B is compensated by A's benefactor's competitor.  So B fudges his results opposite of A.  Where does that leave us?

Similarly what about a study conducted in a country were bribes, for example, are an accepted means of doing business.  Should a study from that country be comparable to one from a country were bribes are not accepted?

Of course I am merely touching the surface with these examples but I think you get the point:  If everyone's moral compass is not pointing in the same direction the results of their "science" must be suspect and, at a minimum, cannot be "comparable."

The reasoning is simple and direct: Science is a human endeavor that involves humans making choices and using moral integrity in terms of bias, competence, and so forth. 

If a human motivations cannot be trusted then their science cannot be trusted.

This also involves the notion of what I call a "public money public results."

Today much of science is funded by public money: grants, NSF, and so on.

My question is why isn't the public entitled to the work product of the activities these funds are used for?

In the commercial software world (and at least in the state I live in) if I hire you to do work for (in this sense I mean work as develop ideas or research) for me then we both own the results of the work equally.

Why doesn't the public own an interest in the research it funds?

Further, why are results of research conducted with public funds published in journals which require the public to pay to access the results?  (Fortunately things are starting to move in this direction already - see this as an example.)

Scientific publishing is a multi-billion dollar industry - one in part funded by US tax payers.

Again why is this not an open process?

It would seem that if all publicly funded research were open, i.e., accessible on the internet for example, I think that there would be more scrutiny.

So today we have closed publicly funded research where results are not available to the public without significant cost (a "paper" might typically cost about $32 USD to download if you are not a subscriber to a journal).

I think this discourages morality with respect to the work because there is less oversight than their might otherwise be.

Without this sort of transparency we see things as I described here in "US Scientific Medical Studies: a 1 in 20 Accuracy Rate?"

Now I have often heard the argument that "character does not matter."  Meaning, of course, that regardless of what you might do in your "personal life" your other actions are somehow separated.

However, an interesting study described here shows that this in fact is not the case: people think differently depending on the context activities are framed in.  In particular people well change their behavior whether the are atheists or non-atheists in a context where religious words are used.

So even the presence or absence of the notion of "religion" in a given context can change the action of people in simple experiments.

It would seem today that there are much stronger reasons than decades ago for researchers to cheat.

Among them academic debt, societal pressure, academic pressure and so on.

At the same time the internet offers people a broader view into research - even if its paid access - than was available before. 

However, this is now a double-edged sword in the sense that this accessibility also makes the discovery of cheating and corruption easier.

The bottom line here is that science and research must be run on some sort of moral ground that is universal so that the resulting science can be trusted.

Scientific research by its very nature requires this in order for scientific results to be consistent.

Lone Wolf Philosophy... (part I)

I have been corresponding with a reader regarding one of my posts.

Its seems clear from the correspondence that I am not making clear what my basic philosophy is in regard to the posts.  The reader suggests that I perceive or attempt to describe science as "conspiracy-driven propaganda" and that I am a "skeptic" of climate change research.

In fact - I am not directly concerned with the later at all and by suggesting that I think there is some sort of scientific conspiracy is sorely missing the point.

What I am questioning is the fundamental fabric of the process of science in today's world.

By process I mean not the basic notion of the scientific method but rather in the sense of of how its practiced today in the 21st century as well as how it got that way.

So let's be clear on the details here.  Things like observations are part of the scientific method.  The method of collection, i.e., whether it done with or without bias, for example, the presentation of the data (rounding errors, etc.) are all process.

The development of the hypothesis is a process as is the process surrounding the creation of any predictions, reasoning, and so on associated with it.

Now ideally we would like to think of the scientific method as something that aims to encapsulate its results in a quanta (or unit) of information about a subject in something like a scientific paper, i.e., here is my data, here is my hypothesis, here are my predictions, results, etc.

Basic, in my mind, to all scientific research is the notion of the validity of each quanta of research.  Since we don't live in an ideal world we expect a certain amount of errors and mistakes in these quanta as they are developed and collected in our overall knowledge base about ourselves and our world.

Now the reason I call them quanta is this:  Each study, whether right or wrong, contributes to the overall knowledge base.  Some represent false branches, some the correct branches, some suggest new branches or draw attention to previously unknown or unexpected results.

Its only over time that an ever growing number of like quanta become data points, if you will, in a larger hypothesis: individual measurements of planet motions lead to elliptical orbits lead to gravity and so on.  Again this is process.

Now in my mind there are some basic, built-in assumptions that are involved in this process:

1) Competence: The "researcher" is able to reliable and accurately collect data, perform calculations, chose correct algorithms, write clearly, not lose or misplace data, and so on.

2) Honesty: The research will not falsify data, alter calculations or results, and so on.

3) Avoid Influence and Bias: The researcher will work hard to remove preconceived notions of specific outcomes and results from their work, i.e., selecting the data to study so that the study reveals what it is the research intends to show.

4) Reproducibility: The work taken as a whole can be taken by someone else and the results, within a certain degree of error, can be reliably reproduced.

Now these four points all involve a very fundamental human element: morality.  Morality, here the distinction between "right" and "wrong" is required to fulfill my built in assumptions.  Without it there is sort of reliability that can be ascribed to the research.
(I am differentiating here between the morality of the researching in being faithful to the scientific method as opposed to, say, the morality of the research which is a different matter.)

You'll also note here I don't have anything related to "consensus."  Consensus is purely an subjective measurement and sciences like anthropology or social sciences don't have a place here.  I think that the rules governing those are far more "squishy" and they lend themselves to the problem outlined below far more easily.

I am going to argue here that without the integrity of these four points on any given scientific endeavor you really have nothing; but that's not to say that there aren't more issues to be concerned with in the overall process:

The first is what I will call "magnitude creep."  To me "magnitude creep" is the "leveraging" of one result into a much larger result without causal linkage.  You might think of this as something like "I studied five dogs and found X therefore all dogs have X" or "we studied five dogs and X did not affect them hence X does not affect dogs."  Its neither dishonest nor a bias yet its a misapplication of research.

Now certainly on the observation side this may make sense: studying a population and making larger conclusions - but my point is that its easy to jump, incorrectly, to far-reaching conclusions.

The second is what I call "the keyhole problem" (see "Through the Keyhole").  The issue here is whether the study and results are consequential with respect to the problem being studied, i.e., does the study provide a meaningful result within the context of the research?

Now let's put all these details aside for the moment and think about this from a different perspective.

If we take all the "scientific studies" over time and assign a value from zero to one to each of my four points above (zero means a total failure of honesty, competence, bias avoidance, and reproducibility, one meaning total success).

Now I am not suggesting here we measure the value of the a given study's results, only the process used to achieve them.  Basically asking is there moral integrity in the process of conducting the research...

We can plot these over time, i.e., as time marches on are we moving toward or away or diagonal to a path along an idealized line running at (1,1,1,1), i.e., total integrity?

So my first observation, the one from which I write many of these articles, is that our scientific "morality vector" is veering off from true and has been so for the last few decades.

Have I actually performed the steps required create such a point plot over time?  No.

Do I think that we as a race of human's and as a society should? Yes.

Its what I see as an observation from perhaps the last decade of anecdotal data points.

My comments regarding all of science I reference in these posts (and I may add often sarcastically) is that our "drift" from a true course is becoming significant.
Now, am I saying every scientist is involved in a conspiracy?  No.

Is there some scientific "conspiracy" in general? No.

But that doesn't mean that what we, as "consumers" if you will of science, do see that things are going off course.

The second sort of "main premise" of my writing is that the lesser elements of "magnitude creep" and "meaningfulness," if plotted similarly, would show that we as the human race are creating science that is less and less in touch with what you might call "right" and "useful."

This is somewhat more difficult to describe given its more subjective nature but let my try an illustrate it with examples:

"Magnitude creep" is best demonstrate by an example of what a failure is.  A good example is Vioxx.  We study a very small number of humans in a trial relative to the full application of the drug.  Magnitude creep allows one to false believe that what is true for the small population will be true for the larger population even though there is no reason to do so and even though the larger population will have a much larger variance in what their bodies will and will not tolerate.

"Meaningfulness" is also best demonstrated by example.  Here we can use "climate change." But the question isn't "is climate change science" meaningful in and of itself.  Instead I argue that picking one form of destruction of humanity over another is foolish without a more meaningful context to tell us how to best use our resources?

Is climate change more important than disease? 

Is resolving disease more important than predicting earthquakes? 

Is hunger more important than climate science?

And so on...

Humanities track record with miracle solutions, e.g., antibiotics, is somewhat questionable for many reasons.

So the bottom line about my posts is this:

A growing body of anecdotal evidence (now appearing even in the non-scientific press) suggests to me (and others) science, through the process with which I measure its quality, i.e., moral and intellectual integrity, is veering significantly and rapidly off course.

Secondly, science as a meaningful and useful tool in assisting humans with their affairs, is failing to deliver - again in the terms with which I am measuring it - and in some cases, e.g., Vioxx as well as many others, even becoming a danger or harmful.

Google's Waterloo? US Patent 6,061,520

Richard Stallman

There have been a lot of tech articles (see this) regarding the Google/Oracle battle over Java and I have covered it here recently.  So far Oracle is ahead - the jury deciding Google infringed Oracle's patents but deadlock on whether it was "fair use" or not.  Not exactly a win, but moving ahead.

Recent events from yesterday, though, seem, at least to me, to point at more serious trouble ahead for Google.

At issue is whether or not Google "stole" Java by making an exact (infringing) copy of it.

The key Google issue with Java for Android would be to create a Java environment that would work with existing Java code.  Otherwise what's the point?  If you create a Java-like environment and then everyone has to change all their Java code somehow it use it you may as well create a new, different environment.

It seems pretty obvious that Google wanted to tap into the existing code-base of Java apps so they opted to go with a straight, standard Java.

Hence the copying of the Java interfaces.  I can see why a jury might deadlock on this.

More interesting (and a tip of the hat to Oracle's lawyers) is the details of yesterday - in particular the '520 patent (US Patent 6,061,520).

Now Oracle took pains to interview Andy Rubin about whether or not his team looked at Sun's (now Oracle's) patent portfolio while developing the Dalvik Java for Android.  Repeatedly Rubin said no and, at one point, Rubin said "I personally am not responsible for legal reviews of the Android system."

As a geek I have to believe that Rubin would be well aware of patent issues with software - especially software that was targeted to millions or billions of users over the course of a decade.

Next up, though, was the '520 patent.  Now I have written here a great deal about what nonsense most of these patents are - basically rehashing past discoveries and then claiming new ownership (see my post "Googling for Motorola" from a while back).

But '520 is a bit different.

It addresses something you'd normally find out after something like Java was in the field for a while.  Basically it involves noticing that when loading a class you would be repeatedly executing code that would create some static initializations associated with the class, say zeroing out memory, initializing a table, things like that (at least his is my reading of the claims).

This would be, in large Java implementations, something that would stand out.

The '520 patent develops an optimization for this by basically "play" executing the initialization code to see what it would do to memory and then replacing the execution steps to initialize the memory with a copy of the pre-initialized memory.  This makes the start-up time for a class shorter where there are involved static initializations.

So the question now is does the Google Dalvik violate '520, i.e., does it contain a implementation of this specialized initialization code.

If it does, and since this code is not part of the public API's and is also patent protected, Google may have a serious problem on their hands.

Let's go back to Rubin for a moment.

As long as I can remember software patents were a serious part of the business - the earliest known software patent and some detailed history is here.

Subsequently there was a dramatic effort by the GNU folks and Richard Stallman to create a "free unix" (see this).  Now UNIX in its earliest form was a product of Bell Laboratories and covered by license and copyright.

Stallman set out to create a free version and, though he decried software patents, was careful to ensure that all the GNU work was done so as not to violate any copyright or patent claims.  One would think that work like Stallman's would be both legendary to someone like Rubin as well as a clear marker for how to go about something like Google was attempting.  (Later Linux would subsume much of Stallman's efforts.)

Google, in their arrogance I suppose, figured that clearing these sorts of technical hurdles was not important.   Clearly it was not important to Rubin.  (I have to believe that most people in his position would not have said "that wasn't my job".  Long before I became interested in blogging this sort of thing (Stallman, GNU, Linux, etc.) was common knowledge in the industry - as was Stallman's efforts to remain clear of all lawsuits and patent claims.

But again we see Google's culture getting in the way: "we know best" seems to be the motto - regardless of actual facts or ownership.

I have to believe that this cultural nature is in part one based on academia and related to the various posts and links I have created showing that the modern educational system is failing us.

Not properly referencing the "prior art" really does seem to fit in with "US Scientific Medical Studies: a 1 in 20 Accuracy Rate." 

Why worry about the past when you can simply create you own future?

This arrogance has been and will continue to be Google' Achille's Heel (hmmm, the Google spell checker doesn't know that word Achille's).

I predict that if Oracle can show Google's Dalvik contains an infringing implementation of '520 or any of the other patents I listed in my post above they will win and win big.  There's no way for Google to explain away how those implementations would be present save of simply stealing Sun now Oracle's code.

Low Cholesterol = Youngsters Craving Food

The epidemic of obesity is looming larger in our collective lives.  So large, in fact, that "experts" are calling for "an intense push by schools, employers, doctors and others" to reverse it (see this WSJ article).

Obesity today I think is caused by some factors that are not so obvious.

One, I think, is the fascination our culture has with nutritional "fakes."  Margarine, for example.  Touted for years as a "better than butter" alternative.  This "better than the real thing" concept has really taken off over the last decades and now our lives are filled with "better alternatives."

Most of them eliminating fat entirely and replacing it with faux fat containing no cholesterol.

The question I am asking today is does eliminating fat from a diet really have the intended effect?

First off, what's the "intended effect?"

Today cholesterol is the "jack the ripper" of nutrition.  No one wants it.  Its evil, its bad and its coming for your children.  So food companies have taken this idea to the extreme and eliminated all cholesterol from many food products.

The "intended effect" being, of course, to save you from consuming cholesterol.

But there are unintended effects: memory loss among them (see this in Scientific American).

I believe that there are other, unintended consequences of the "no cholesterol" policies you find in food these days.

One is that children's bodies know they need cholesterol.  Yet young mothers, their heads filled with "cholesterol is jack the ripper" thinking don't believe it so they deprive their children of it.   No whole milk, no fat cookies and deserts and snacks, and on and on.

Unfortunately the children's bodies are not put off by this and instead their bodies believe that they are merely living in a "cholesterol poor" area and need to compensate by eating more food - particularly food their brains tell them will have more cholesterol: chips, snacks, etc. that trigger responses in their brains.

So the idea is that as you take necessary nutrients out of the available sources of food for children (and adults for that matter) their bodies compensate by overeating in areas where they percieve the missing nutrition will be replaced.

Now I argue that, particularly in children, cholesterol is a necessary nutrient - your brain being the largest collection of cholesterol in your body.

In my own life I have been experimenting with this notion.

Over the last many years I have always been very hungry - hungrier than I thought I should be - but I never really new why.

About a year ago Mrs. Wolf and I began a food journey that tries to eliminate most "man made" things from our shopping cart: if it comes in a box don't buy it basically.  This means that we make things like bread, for example, rather than buy it when we can.  We also make butter, jam, and all sorts of other things.  We grow food in the garden as well.  We cook without salt for the most part.

This also includes consumption of a lot more natural cholesterol in various foods.

Now I have noticed that over the last year my "hunger" has diminished significantly. 

I find that a meal is more satisfying and that I need to eat less.

I also find that I have lost weight - slowly over time - not all at once.

So my theory here is that all these wonderful low calorie, low fat, low this, low that foods are actually having the opposite effect.

They are triggering the body to respond as if its eating something like celery - something that takes more energy to digest than the food contains.

So the bodies craves more food.

I think this is a particular problem with children.

In fact, one of my own children thought that allow their child ice cream was tantamount to poisoning them.

The second problem which I think goes hand-in-hand with the "cholesterol" problem is that most of us in the USA are malnourished.  In particular short of iodine, cholesterol sources like "cod liver oil" and vitamins like C and D.

Without enough of the right vitamins (and the right amounts) we cannot process the food we do eat correctly - so we have build ups of bad things in our bodies: cholesterol, fat and so on.

So even eating the right foods you can still be malnourished if you don't have the necessary vitamins to process the digested result.

Over all I have found that my consumption of food is diminishing to a more reasonable level and the food I eat seems to be far more satisfying.  Now that I eat a diet much higher in cholesterol and take what my research has told me are the right vitamins in the right amounts I am no longer "hungry."  And I think this is my body telling me its getting better nutrition than it was.

I can do more - I can work longer - easily up to 12 hours a day now at 55 - more than I could at 45.  I am less tired.  I have more energy over all.  More focus and mental clarity.

(Exercise is important too, or rather "activity" in general.  I do spend a part of the day sitting on my ass but the rest of the time I am busy.  Of course this is all anecdotal evidence based on me by research conducted by me - your mileage will vary...)

So my guess is that, if I am right, no amount of government, school or employer activity is going to fix this because the problem does not have a single source.

Schools will cut even more fat from children's diets trigger them to hunt further and more actively for replacements.

And without the proper level of vitamins even if they had the right food they could not digest it effectively.

So I think this "intervention" by big everything is doomed to complete failure.

And again I blame the educational system - especially here in the US - because its beholden to the agricultural industries and lobbies. 

No one studies anything but what they can get funding for and no one is going to get funding to study this because it goes against big agriculture and the FDA.

Of course, I might fall over dead tomorrow from all this.

But in the mean time I have my brain back - my energy and all the rest.

I am not sure I'd want to live like I did ten years ago for another forty years - in a mental fog, low energy, etc.

As a nation our "big pharma/big government/big science" infrastructure has failed us.

Its failing our children.

Not until we wake up and get a handle on the real problem will things change.