Root Causes

I listened to a podcast recently (can't find the reference, sorry) that had as its premise the idea that being greatful was a cause of happiness, rather than a result.  Counting your blessings and being appreciative were not always the result of experiencing something that made you happy, but a path towards happiness.


On the other hand, there was a guest host on Savage Lovecast 8/26/14, Mary Martone who made the following comment:
The largest indicator of whether a relationship will be successful is not if you're angry with somebody or not if you don't trust somebody, but if you have disgust for your partner, or if you have distain for them in some way.  You need to make sure that someone that you commit to for the long run is someone you can look at with some kind of love in your heart and respect for the rest of your life.  Disgust can be transferred, if you are disgusted about your partner's sexual interests, you might express disgust about their eating habits, for example.


It's amazing how much complexity there is in just figuring out what's going on in this life.

Blocked

[Originally written 12/11/12 and published after noticing it was just a draft]

Listening to Freakonomics (and reading the book) has reinforced an idea of mine.  They often talk about the fact that a real analysis of some situation or system in society gives us answers that we don't like to hear.  They site examples and raise questions like, "is college worth it?" and "did the legalization of abortion lower crime?"  Things that may be reasonable and true, but that people repel away from.

Society is built on a lot of erroneous assumptions that we are more comfortable with than the truth.

I see a lot of problems that have solutions that are Soloman's baby solutions.  If you'd just be willing to cut the baby in half, you could solve the problem, but no one would be happy and no one is willing to do it.  The difference is that some of the solutions I can come up with are not going to sacrifice any babies.

Take abortion, for example.  The problem is that some people find abortion to be equal to murder and feel that it should never be allowed.  While you would have a hard time finding anyone that would tell you that abortion is a great thing, you have a lot of women each year that choose to do it as a way to prevent other problems.  While there are probably some that do it because they were not wise with birth control, and this is the whoops method of birth control, that's pretty hard to defend.  Many do it because they are not ready and feel they would not make a good parent, and trying to raise a child would limit their ability to get an education and place themselves firmly in the middle class.  Other's should not even consider bringing life into the world, as they are completely irresponsible or addicted to drugs.

My thought is that in an ideal world, there wouldn't be a need for abortions, but there also would not be any unwanted children brought into the world.  We talk about human rights, and I believe one of the most elusive human rights should be that each child should know that their parents really wanted them to come into the world.  This follows one of my other theories that one of our primary problems is that there are just too damned many people to begin with, so saying life is precious clearly is not how we're treating it.  Life is common.  We should treat it like it's more precious, and we should make it more rare, rather than more common.

My solution to the abortion divide is that we put children on birth control as soon as they are able to conceive.  Once they are 18, married or in a stable relationship, and financially secure (or in a position to expect to be financially secure), then they can be taken off birth control.  And I don't just mean women, I mean men, too.  My fantasy solution would solve another large problem, solving a lack of male control over procreative decisions.  This imbalance must be responsible for a portion of the divorce rate for men who are pressured into having families that they do not want.  The default should be that you're not able to have children until everyone involved is ready and agrees.  Then you could plan for the timing make it happen without undue complications or unwanted circumstance.

If you follow the consequences of this line of thinking, it solves a whole host of problems, not the least of which is teen pregnancy and children having babies.

Enacting a public policy that makes birth control mandatory for all pubescent teens under the age of majority will never happen.  The problem is that everyone feels their position has to be respected and because of this, no compromise is possible.  The "do nothing" option is the default.  I'm not saying that solutions such as these do not have problems inherent in them or will not need to be administrated fairly and subject to modification or exception in some cases.  I'm saying that you have to be careful doing these things, and you have to state up front what your intent is, and then you have to monitor the unintended consequences and adjust your approach along the way.  But over all, you have to make some decisions and put some policies in place that will seem strange at first, but solve the problem in the long run.  Good solutions will take into consideration objections from each end of the political spectrum, and find answers that address most concerns while moving society forward.

I do believe a world in which every person is brought up knowing they were planned for, had high hopes pinned on, and were loved before and after they were conceived would be a much nicer place to live.

The Value of an Individual: A Thought Experiment

I hate politically divisive subjects.  I hate the thought that people pick sides, stop thinking about the subject critically, and actively resist any information or argument that does not already support their position.  I find it more interesting to be able to disagree with someone, and yet exchange points of view and discuss the subject.

I hate all the debate about health care.  Is it a right or a privilege?  If you can't afford it, should you do without it?  If you provide it to people that can't afford it, how does society afford it?  What do you do about end of life care, where costs usually explode in the last months of a person's life?  If there is a concensus that a person is terminally ill, and no matter what you do they will still only life a short time, do we (assuming society has anything to say about it since they are paying the bills, or assuming an insurance company has anything to say about it because they too are paying the bills) still throw an extreme amount of effort at someone just to try to be doing something?

Well, I have a mixture of opinions, confusion, and ambivalence about these questions myself, but it's not really important what I think (to anyone but me - which is my point: who cares what I think).

I was pondering immortality (or near immortality).  As a counterpoint to overpopulation.  I believe our current medical studies will provide treatments that will reverse general aging in humans before much longer.  I crafted this thought experiment in my mind after listening to some opinions about three weeks ago, and today a Dan Carlin Common Sense Podcast came out that pondered a similar question and reminded me about my thoughts.  His point was to ask what happens when a human accumulates 500 years worth of experience, how does that change them?

My point was looking at how we would manage immortality treatments.  I'm assuming that this would be a one time procedure (possibly not a valid assumption, as it could be something that required maintenance) and that it would be expensive.

I imagined a debate about this treatment.  Assuming that it would be in great demand, and assuming that some form of governmental regulation or oversight of the procedure would be enacted, how would this work?  Who merits the treatment?  From a simplistic point of view, I was thinking in terms of a simple cash balance sheet.  Who is contributing to society and who is taking from society.  This debate comes up from time to time when people are discussing taxes, unemployment, and welfare.  I have heard the opinion that we should limit people who are a net drain on the economy or the government taxation versus benefits equation.  From a simple cost control and regulation of the benefits of health care, would the same question be applied to immortality treatments.

Think about it from a practical standpoint.  If you had to limit this in some way, if this was not something that was possible to provide to everyone, how would you determine who you provided it to?  What if some prominent party or person was rallying to prevent the "takers" from being immortal and thus permanent takers, a permanent drain on society?  What if simple planetary survival dictated that this was necessary?  As a side note, would it be reasonable to require that those that requested and were granted immortality would also have to give up any future procreation?  Would this be another separation point, a class of people who would live and die limited lifespans, but would procreate?  They would continue to mix genes and promote our evolution, so there would be some value to have a separation, the price of making a family being eventual death.

But let's say that the notion that one had to be a net contributor took hold and was determined to be a requirement.  Can you imagine how that would work?  How would you determine net worth to society?  How would you determine who was a drain?  Some might suggest just looking at a tax return, but if you used wealth as the only dividing line, wouldn't that be a recipe for a world with an increasing number of people incapable of doing ordinary labor?

How do you measure the intangibles?  Stephen Hawking would not be someone you would want to keep around forever from a standpoint of his physical contributions, but what would a few hundred years of life extension do to his ability to discover new things?  What about love?  What about people with no commercial or capitalistic success that are nevertheless loved more intensely than many are?  You have to admit that many people have a higher emotional value to society, like Nelson Mandela, for example.  Or Mother Teresa.  How would you value them?

Who gets to be immortal?  How would you answer that question?  What other answers that other people may come up with would be offensive to you?

What would you require of people who opted to be immortal?  Would you limit their wealth, because compound interest is often heralded as the vehicle to wealth, and if you live forever, does your wealth just keep increasing without limit?  Would they have a retirement age?  If you didn't, you'd have a perpetual social security drain on the system, far beyond the amount the individual ever put into the system.  What if your price for immortality was that you could never rest, relax, slow down, take it easy?  What if retirement had to be sacrificed to justify immortality?

I think in reality, as a practical matter, people would not want to live forever.  I think some would try for it, but I believe that rather than accumulating more and more experience and becoming uber-wise, they might tend to get burned out and tired of learning and working.  Many would become depressed and decide they were tired of life.  If life wasn't always threatening to be withdrawn from you, would you tend to cling to it less tightly?  Would dangerous pursuits be more attractive at some point?  Sky diving or climbing mountains would suddenly seem more attractive, or perhaps something truly dangerous like shark wrestling.

Are we even equipped to handle an extremely long life time?  Would we tend to go insane from cumulative stress or pain?  Perhaps it wouldn't be immortality, but just doubling or tripling your life span.  Would that change all the calculations?  Could materialism be lessened by immortality?  Could it be that the pursuit of experiences, achievements, or accomplishments would start to be more important than things?  Of course, if you lived long enough, your things would be rotting and breaking down and would need replacement.

I don't know my answers to any of these questions, because each answer I've proposed to myself has good and bad points to it.  I don't know if immortality would be a good thing or a terrible thing.

I do know that I would want to try it myself.  I would want to see where we are going with this life, with our global society, with the planet we inhabit.  I want to see flying cars, free energy, a restored environment, space colonization, ocean colonization, and a possible collective intelligence.  I assume that if humans were going to live a long time, they'd take better care of the planet, themselves, and each other.

Oh, and I assume immortality doesn't mean you live forever in the body of a 100 year old with failing physical and mental capabilities.  If you can't be in reasonably good health, there's no point to the whole exercise.  I'm not sure about pets.  Do you want your dog to live forever with you?

We're of an age.  This question may actually have to be addressed in my lifetime.

Folding Proteins

I recently heard a podcast about folding proteins.  It was an interview of a company that thinks their scientists have figured out a therapy to refold misfolded proteins in an animal's body.  Protein folding is a complex subject I won't try to pretend that I understand well.  What I do understand is fascinating.  I've been studying starch lately, and I know that when you heat starch up to a high enough temperature, it denatures, which means that the way it is folded becomes unraveled.  This is why your jello pudding goes from liquid to a gel.  DNA does this complex dance when cells divide, where it unwraps itself and rewraps itself back into a double helix that is wound around itself in a complex pattern.  I liken the close up view of a strand folding to the way a stream sometimes meanders in a valley, looping back on itself.

There are two other instances of protein folding that I know about.  One is prion based diseases like Mad Cow Disease and its human form, Creutzfeldt–Jakob's disease (also known as Chronic Wasting Disease in deer).  I once heard that the prion acts a little bit like a virus, except that it's not even RNA, it's just a protein, but its misfolded shape spreads once it's in a new host, and the misfolded proteins damage the functionality of the brain.  I don't think that is an accurate scientific description, and I'm not certain that the disease is even understood in that much detail at this time, but that's an approximation of some descriptions I've heard in the past, and I was impressed with the knowledge that the good protein and the bad protein are the same combinations of atoms in the same order, in effect the same molecular description, but just folded into a different shape, and therefore not chemically equal.  I find this to be fascinating.  It makes biology seem like a miracle when you consider that everything must work perfectly in order to work at all.  I guess it's not that surprising that shape matters, if you consider anything else you were going to make, just throwing the ingredients together in a pile means nothing, they have to be assembled into the right structure.  You couldn't just throw bricks and mortar together hap hazardously and expect to make a house.

The other protein folding disease I have heard about is Alzheimer's Disease.  Again, this may not be the correct understanding of the situation as it is now understood, and the scientific community will no doubt understand the biochemistry and mechanics of this disease much better some day than is understood right now.  From what I understand, there are amyloid plaques present in Alzheimer's victims that were thought to be related to misfolding proteins (I may be confusing this with tau protein tangles - I'm not researching this column, just writing it from memory).  One theory is that once the misfolded form is present in the brain that it spreads and disrupts the healthy function of the brain.

The company I started to explain about above is saying that they have come up with a way to refold proteins.  They claim that the body makes misfolded proteins all the time, and in most cases, the body recognizes the error and holds the proteins aside until it can break them back down into their building blocks and recycle them or dispose of them.  If they can perfect and target this therapy, there are many other diseases and conditions that could be treated.  It's really cool technology.

But the trivial reason I sat down to write this post is a bit different that folded proteins.

I was recently travelling, and one of the people at our meeting during the day begged off going to dinner because he said that he thought that his diverticulitis was acting up.  My understanding is that this means that there is a pocket in the intestines that forms a little closed off sack and gets something irritating in it, which then causes the intestinal wall to swell and further trap a portion of material.  This can cause breakdown of the intestine wall and subject that closed off portion to an infection.  This is why you should eat a diet high in fiber, kids.  Gotta keep things moving along and scoured out clean.

Anyway, I got very sick after going to dinner that night.  This started a gastrointestinal ordeal that lasted 5 days.  Did I eat something bad?  Did I have a shellfish allergy that I did not know about?  Did I catch some bug that was going around?  The guy I talked with that day was sick, maybe not with a chronic condition, but with something infectious.  Then I did something truly stupid on the way home.  While at the airport, I got a bag of Skittles.  I suspect that candies that have chemical thickeners in them could create partial blockages, creating a painful situation similar to Diverticulitis.  I had previously vowed to stay away from such foods, but unfortunately, had forgotten my vow and had not maintained healthy habits right at a time when I was already in distress.  So while feeling absolutely terrible for a few days, I spent a lot of time wondering if I needed to go see a doctor or if this was something that would resolve with a little time.  I read a lot of reports on the Mayo Clinic's site and wondered if it was possible that I had ingested some Salmonella (how could that be, and yet I was still somewhat functional - doesn't that stuff kill you?).  I wondered about the status or structure of my cilia lining my intestines.  You can really damage them, and within a few days, they will grow back.  I pondered celiac disease, and how that allergy can also damage cilia.

Then it all cleared up and I got better.  I was still thinking about it today, and I pondered the way the intestines loop around the abdominal cavity, packing such a long organ into such a tight space.  I was wondering how hard it is to have it get twisted or kinked and why it doesn't happen more often.  If you're out of shape with extra weight, it stands to reason that you're probably smashing or pinching your intestines, so why doesn't being morbidly obese tend to kill you?  How does being in shape help with the layout and routing of the intestine in the abdomen?  Does the routing change over time?  If you could trace out the path the way a kid traces a maze on a page, would it be different today that it was when you were little?  Would a group of 10 people each have different routing of their intestines, or would most people tend to have an identical route?

And then I put the two subjects together and wondered about how similar the folding of proteins is to the folding of intestines.  Is this a macro example of the same kind of phenomena?  How much do we really know about the shape of proteins' folds?  There is a website that crowdsources examination of protein folding possibilities, I've heard about it and done similar websites like Zooniverse, but I've never looked at it.

This just proves that you have a lot of time to think about shit when you're sick.

The Army of the Future

Last night I had an epic dream.  I call the dreams that are massive and have a strong impact "epic" because that's kind of what they feel like.  Like they are in all caps or bold or something.  They are usually characterized by a memorable and bigger than life feel while they are going on, and they tend to last so that you remember them when they wake up.  They also make you think.

In this one, I was an older recruit for the Army.  I remembered my own real-life history in the dream, remembered the physical training and weapons training from my own era of the mid-eighties.  This was very different.

I remember looking around and wondering how these young people were going to handle it, they didn't seem very tough.  However, I quickly found out that I was the one being outmatched.  There were some similar issues, the whole BS of having to be in perfect uniform and the relentless scheduling that drives you nuts.

What was different was that this was an information based force.  These guys had electronics on everything.  they were controlling miniature and large sized drones and sucking in logistical and tactical information all while communicating constantly with peers and superiors.  I remember thinking, "what the hell is going on?"

It was my first distinct feeling of being too old to get it.  We've often heard people opine that the youth of today are better trained for combat in some ways because they spend so much time playing video games.  This was a twist on that theory.  In this version, these people were good at this form of combat because they were always plugged into their i-phones and social media.  The skill set was that you had to be able to constantly juggle all the input while keeping each individual thread as a distinct data stream.  I wasn't completely out of my depth, I could track a lot of what was going on, but I was totally distracted. 

One odd element to the dream was a strange representation of the uniforms they were wearing.  There was some kind of virtual screen each person was watching, so they looked like they were all watching their own computer screens.  At the same time, you could see other people's screens.  When I looked at other people's uniforms, and my own, for that matter, it was strangely pixelated.  There were little elements in it that looked like computer chips. But instead of being plugged into a fixed point on a circuit board, these chips were crawling all over you like ants or spiders, plugging into different parts of the uniform, then getting up and moving to another.  It was like those videos of the guys that smear themselves in honey and the bees swarm all over them, only it was in green/black/brown camouflage and they were little rectangular chips.

I woke up fascinated by the dream, and even had a strange experience of being able to close my eyes and plunge back into the dream a couple of times.  When I woke up, it still felt like the dream was going on.  It was as if it was in my active memory, but slowing down to a stop.  I felt like the dream was interrupted, we were going to go on a mission once we got our skills down, and I found myself looking forward to it.

I think there are a couple of things that melded together from real life that sparked the dream.  I'm turning 50 soon, and I've been thinking more in terms of being on the downward slide of life, where your skills and abilities erode and it becomes harder to keep up.  I was also listening to some programs that had combat zone scenes in them, which was more high tech than it used to be.  I was talking to someone a few days ago about powering equipment that soldiers carry, and this was similar to that.  We've been looking at cyberwarfare as a concern, and that, too has been on my mind.  We also had the Sandy Hook school shooting last week, and part of me was wondering if the spate of shootings these last couple of years had anything to do with young men's total immersion into computer games like halo, and the other first person combat games.  These shootings have a feel a little like that, as if the goal is to rack up a high body count, there's no repercussions for your actions and no morality or permanence to it.  We also had an office Christmas party this weekend, and for the first time, people were zoning out on their phones at dinner.  This trend of people not being there with you is something that I notice, something that I tire of, so it has been on my mind.

However, regardless of the inspiration for the dream, it seems to have a bit of prophecy in it.  I can see a time where controlling and communicating through your computer network would be highly integrated into a battle scenario.  It makes me wonder how much it already is, we just don't know about it.  Special Forces would be the place to flesh those systems out, and keeping a battlefield superiority with those skills would depend in part on keeping them secret until you had a chance to figure them out.

NYC Storm Shield

After Hurricane Sandy, I have seen proposals for a seawall to protect NYC from storm swells. This would be similar to the massive Deltawerken Dutch seawall project. Perhaps a good way to justify such a massive public works project would be to make the seawall a tidal generating station. The flow from the Hudson (as well as the tidal flow) should be enough to generate power across the entire face of the seawall. The generating sections would be locked down and form a wall in the event of a storm, and open and generating power the rest of the time. Making the seawall generate power would offset the cost of construction by providing a way of paying back the initial investment. The project would also allow public funds to be used for a model/pilot plant. The resulting R&D could be used for future tidal power projects, as it would be public knowledge. The project would keep people employed (economic stimulus now) with a lasting long term benefit of power generation. This is all in addition to protecting NYC from Hurricane Sandy-styled storm surges.


I’m not sure how you deal with ship traffic, as these seawalls usually have an opening in the middle that allows the transit of shipping. When that center portion is open, I believe you would have a lessening of power generated across the seawall, as fluid flows tend to follow the path of least resistance. This is a technical issue that could be solved, I’m sure.

Dutch Engineers are world leaders in this technology, so perhaps they would be willing to cooperate with us in the design. They would also benefit by developing the power generating technology, and may employ it in their own seawalls.

Perhaps the structure could also be topped with a motorway, as I understand that the condition of some of the existing NYC bridges is such that they will need to be replaced at some time in the next few decades anyway.

Politically, I believe that technology such as this that benefits so many should be government developed so that it can be freely shared, but that is another issue. I realize the political environment is not conducive to big government projects right now, so perhaps, once constructed, it could be turned over to a utility which would collect the fees from the power generated in order to provide maintenance. Perhaps other locations could be sited to copy the concept, which might find private power companies interested in repeating the project in other estuaries and bays that need tide surge protection.

NYC is such a crown jewel of our country, it is the perfect place to construct such a showcase of engineering. Projects such as this also generate public interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathmatics) disciplines, which furthers our competitiveness, similar to the boost STEM disciplines got from the moon shot.

Hogwash

I listened to some of the local news in Iowa over the Thanksgiving break.

They have a big debate going on over large livestock growing and slaughtering plants in the state.  On one hand, these operations are big and bring a lot of jobs and money to the state.  On the other hand, they create a lot of pollution.  The problem is when you get a huge number in one location, the waste becomes greater than the land can easily absorb or process.  It gets into rivers and streams and the high nitrogen content kills fish and other wildlife.  I'm familiar with the same situation in western Kansas where the cattle operations are so prevalent that they are polluting the soils with excess nitrogen.  The problem there is so big that the nitrogen is showing up in the water table and some small towns that depend on well water are not able to remove it.  In northern Missouri, we have some hog operations that were run so poorly that their waste containment dams broke and flooded the rivers with millions of gallons of hog waste, effectively killing the rivers.

Iowa's problem is similar and it's playing into the politics.  The corporations threaten to move out of the state if they are forced to comply with environmental laws they see as excessive.  The EPA and some citizen groups want the corporate farms to stop polluting.

It seems to me that the solution could come from a big government imposition of a separate entity to deal with the waste.  You figure out what the cost of treating the waste conventionally would be, and then you subsidize the operation to the extent that it becomes less of a burden to the corporation, and you force them to pay into the solution.  You take the solution out of their hands. The state government sets up a facility on the grounds of the corporate operation that will treat the waste.  You bring in State University researchers and managers, and their goal is to develop leading edge technology to convert the waste into a slow release fertilizer and energy.  After startup costs are realized, the energy is supplied back to the feedlot operation, in some equitable arrangement that offsets the cost of setting up the operation.  Perhaps you even give them the ability to take over the operation once it's set up.

The catch is that the Universities develop the technology and they own it and can patent anything they come up with.  However, this is done with the understanding that these are publicly disclosed patents that can be used for a nominal licensing fee to offset the development cost, then expanded and improved upon.  In this way, you use a combination of private and public funds to develop the technological solution to the waste problem in a way that keeps the waste out of the water, extracts usable energy from it, and provides a slow release form of fertilizer that can be used by farmers without putting as much nitrates back into streams and rivers as typical methods now do.  Another added benefit would be if the operation recovered water in a good enough condition that it could be cycled back into the feedlot operation.

The point is that the feedlot corporations don't want to deal with their waste. They are not experts in this field and they have no inclination to want to become experts in it.  However, past models have let them pollute without having to pay the costs to the environment.  This model, rather than forcing them to figure out how to deal with the problem, forces them to pay for some of the solution, and provides them with experts and a possibility of feedback.

I'm convinced that once the university scientists get ahold of this environment, you might find other technologies spinning off of it.  It gives graduate and undergraduate students some real world experience and provides a revenue stream for the university.

Sometimes the solutions is a combination of government, academia, and industry.

47 Percenters are actually 99 percenters

In the wake of their 2012 Election defeat, Republicans and conservative commentators were saying that Americans had selfishly voted their own economic self interest and that this was proof that the nation had suddenly changed into lazy people that just wanted to be given stuff. 

They claim that the election was stolen because a slim majority of voters are getting handouts from the government, while everyone else is working hard to create businesses and jobs.

It's a great story, but it's completely inaccurate.

Unforturnately, the rich vote Republican because they are keeping their taxes down and paying the big corporations subsidies, or giving them huge tax breaks. Alternately, they are proposing removing (or not enforcing) regulations on big companies.  This would tend to unburden corporations from a lot of additional effort in complying with regulations, and would tend to make corporations more profitable.  Some of those regulations are there to insure that corporations play fair and don't trash the environment, so throwing out the regulations would no doubt allow for some abuse of smaller businesses, workers, and the environment.  I'm all for some regulations being eased, we have some ridiculous laws in this country.  I wish they would pass laws removing the laws and regulations from the books rather than gutting them without review or through inaction.

My point is that you could accuse any side of an election of voting because the government was going to "give them stuff".  That's the unfortunate side effect of democracy.  Politicians certainly have learned it well.  Each election cycle is full of people being promised goodies by the government.

The biggest and best example of a government program that people on the right are in love with is our defense industry.  There are plenty of non-military people out there without defense jobs or defense contracts that support this.  Many people that genuinely believe that our military capability either keeps us safe or keeps bad people of countries in the world from doing bad things.  However, just as Republican President and WWII war hero Dwight Eisenhower warned, you don't want to build a defense industry that is so powerful that it becomes the tail that wags the dog (government).  People see defense as a jobs and pro-growth industry.  What people forget is that in order to justify a big defense industry, you have to actually use your military.  This means that there are ideologues out there that will push for conflicts given the slightest provacation in order to justify all the time and money spent on military power.  The problem with jumping into a fight at the slightest provacation is that after a while people realize that you are scary and dangerous and they arm themselves in order to protect themselves against you.  I can totally understand why Iran would want nuclear weapons.  It's the only way they could operate exactly as they want without fear of retalliation.  Think about Pakistan.  My guess is that we probably would have invaded them by now if it had not been for their nukes.  Where does this end?  If you look back on lots of wars in history, the best most recent one being WWI, you'll see that a situation where all sides are convinced that a war will come usually results in just such a war.  People spend a lot of time and money getting ready, and then some inevitable trigger occurs and the war kicks off to a grand start!  Hooray!  We'll kick there ass now!  However, the resulting war inevitably eats up a lot of lives, destroys a lot of property and environment, and then takes years for both sides to recover from.

War is stupid.  Defense spending is a waste.  Can you imagine any politician getting elected if he stood up and said such a thing?

I don't think the average voter cheers on war and wants massive military build-ups.  I think the average voter is swayed by a lot of public discource that makes it impossible to say otherwise.

Many people tell themselves that they are voting for a person because they trust them to run the country in the right way.  What they don't consider is that the "right way" has certain advantages to themselves.  Imagine people being told the truth, that we're going to have to pay more taxes and take less from government programs if we hope to get not just the deficit, but the debt under control.  Otherwise, it's like saying you are going to either diet or exercise, but you can't be bothered to do both.  You may make some marginal gains by hacking away at only one side of the problem, but you can't be expected to make dramatic results unless you attack both sides.

So before you level your accusations at the cursed other side about their selfish motives, please try to explain how your own motives are not so selfish.  If you are a Republican, are you willing to pay some more in taxes to get rid of the deficit?  If you are a Democrat, are you willing to control government programs that expand each year automatically without any restraint or controls?  We're like one of those Siamese Twins with one body and two heads.  One side wants to diet and the other wants to exercise, but it doesn't matter because the other side is blocking the body from doing both.  We're doomed if we can't realize we're all in this together and be motivated to work harder for less until the problem is fixed.

Debt Crisis

Here's another partially written post saved from 8/7/11 that I am just now getting around to writing:

A friend related to me the gist of an Atlantic Monthly article that told about how the debt was deliberately manufactured by GOP actions (see August 2011 article).

In 2011, the Republicans shifted their tactics and began to hammer the subject of the deficit.  The main reason they wanted it handled then was because they wanted to use it as a issue to help them defeat Obama.

I often think of the psychological term Projection when I watch the Republicans.  You have to watch what they say when they criticize their opponents, because that's a big clue as to what they do and what their plans are themselves. It seemed to me that they really did want the country to fail in order to get in power.  Enough Republicans came out and stated that this was their goal, that it's easy to project that motive onto the entire party.  After all, when parties vote as solid blocs, it's difficult to convince the public that anyone within the party is actually weighing the merits of any particular course of action to determine what's best.  They are simply adding their weight and voice to the issue.  It's bloc strategy (or block strategy, more like it).

On the other hand, Democrats are just as guilty in doing nothing when they are in the minority to slow down rampant spending, or going into expensive wars.   You saw no evidence of principles or personal courage in the years following 9/11, just a dejected and cowed mass of snivelling cowards with no voice and nothing better to offer.

The rest of the article talked about how bad the jobs situation was and forecasted a double dip recession.  While this was not true, the jobs situation did not get worse, but it did not improve.  Fears of what was going to happen still made stocks drop.

Then we had the downgraded credit "crisis".  The GOP said they would allow this to happen if we failed to control deficit.  The real reason we had to downgrade the credit rating is a lack of confidence in the ability of the US government to put together a budget and govern rationally.  Gridlock and political posturing is worse than bad decisions.

The irony of a downgraded credit rating is that this would most likely increase interest rates and that would most likely benefit the banks that got bailed out in the crisis that created this mess.

Societal Diet

I was thinking about people when they are going on a diet.  This is typically necessary when you've been in the habit for a long time of binge eating whatever you wanted without constraints.  The act of cutting back would come with immediate consequences.  Your high calorie fueled body would have to calm down and accept lower energy content. You would have to convince yourself to not answer to the screaming voice inside of your head that is saying "NEED MORE SUGAR!" and make due with what you really need, which is much less than you want.

This is exactly like society, which needs to be saying it needs less energy, not always screaming for more.  It's about as possible and likely as going on a diet.  There is too much resistance on a societal level to make these changes voluntarily without some kind of threat or price explosion.  It may not be impossible to do, but it's very difficult.

Excess energy in a single human body turns to fat. I wonder if there is an analogy in this in society as a whole?  Have we grown fat with our energy consumption?  In some ways, cheap and easy energy allowed us to bulk up our economies with high industrial output.  Has there been a downside that makes us less reluctant to get out and work hard or less able to exert effort because of the extra weight we carry in having grown into the shape we are now in.  We rely on not just the energy we consume, but the way we generated it.  We might have a hard time transitioning to new forms.

During World War II we had lean production, and ran a lean country with no extravagant energy use. Like the way that an individual soldier is in shape, we as a country were in shape and producing more equipment than any point in our history.

It seems we will be able to dodge the bullet and put off the day of accountability for a few more years.  I heard a report from the new North Dakota oil fields.  It was a jobs story, detailing the incredible amount of oilfield work available and the difficulty finding enough people to fill the jobs. It also outlined the extent of what was found in the oil fields.  It said we will be producing more energy in the form of oil and natural gas just 3 years from now, than the national increase in energy demand requires.

This makes us fat in the head.  Rather than spending the time and money developing the next forms of energy, sustainable forms that will not have a looming end point at some time in the future, we get lazy sucking out the last dregs of our old way of powering ourselves.

I have a co-worker that is fond of saying that American needs a crisis before it takes action.  Imagine if we treated our person health that way.  If we waited until we had a heart attack before we started going to the gym, would that not be too late?  You'll never get into good shape if you let yourself go for so long that you harm your health.  It seems to me that this is what we are doing with our planet and its environment.  You need to work toward sustainable energy in order to map out a sustainable long term future.  We don't want to have a planetary heart attack before we start going on an energy diet.  By then, it's too late.

Short Sighted

I've often thought that short sightedness is going to kill us. We are in an era when few branches of government get much respect from the public.  When you look at polling data with historically low approval ratings of congress, and presidential ratings pretty low, too, I think it reflects on the fact that people are asking what's wrong with out Government.

Our government is dysfunctional and seems to be unable to work toward solving any of our current problems.  I am convinced that one of the big problems is that Government has evolved to be an extremely short sighted institution. With elections every two years, we are in perpetual campaign mode.  With election promises divorced from any kind of accountability, we have no way of insuring that politicians will do what they say they will do.  When coming out on top in the barroom brawl that is supposed to pass as political debate is the only goal, because to lose any verbal exchange in the news cycle is seen as a way to lose an election, is there any doubt why our politicians can't even seem to tell the truth in their political speeches?

Elections have become competitions, like a football game.  The electorate divides up and decides which party they are going to vote for, and it doesn't matter how bad their team's sportsmanship is, they will still be blind to the virtues of the other party, or the faults of their own party.  It's like watching a die hard fan get mad at the referee, but only when the call hurts his team.  Few sports fans will say, "that's a bad call" if it helps their team, and few electoral partisans will call members of their own party when they are put their foot in their mouth or do something that adds nothing to help the country.

I get particularly frustrated when I hear the Republicans try to bash the Democrats over the issue of personal responsibility.  As long as we can wage two wars while giving out big tax breaks, nobody should be lecturing the other party about responsibility.  Imagine how long the Iraq War would have lasted depended on voluntary War Bonds in able to finance it.  Yet, we were perfectly willing to put it on the national credit card.

Our corporations don't seem to be any better at being responsible, either.  They're perfectly willing to give CEOs enormous bonuses, whether the company is doing well or not, but they are not willing to give anything for research and development, which is the only way most companies can hope to survive in the long run.  Corporations have devolved to the point where they would rather make good quarterly profits at the expense of their future well-being.

We talk about personal responsibility, yet we are collectively unwilling to do anything for the environment, short term or long term.  It's irresponsible to neglect the impact our actions have on our environment when damaging the environment will hurt us all in the long run, as well as making it more difficult to run profitable businesses.

We shouldn't have to lurch into a crisis in order to think about the long term consequences of our actions, and we shouldn't have to have a gun to our head to make good decisions.  We shouldn't be thinking about our children's lives, we should be thinking about our great great grandchildren's lives, or the life of the planet and our species in 200, 500, or 1000 years from now.  What will those people think when they look back on us now.  Will they praise or curse the decisions we make and the actions we take today?  It's pretty clear to me what those distant descendants will be thinking if we keep behaving the way we do now.

Maturation Gap

Almost a year ago I had a discussion with a friend.

We agreed that people are sexually mature way earlier than emotionally or intellectually mature and that culturally we do not recognize a person as mature until long after they become sexual beings. There is a 6 to 8 year gap between coming of age and being recognized as coming of age.  It is as if our evolution has been lopsided, we still mature physically earlier than we are able to cope with society.

Our discussion started because many conservatives had recently stated that they did not want young women to get the HPV vaccine.  This vaccine could prevent cervical cancer and save millions of women's lives.  Many people don't want to think of their children as sexual, and because they deny this simple fact of nature, they endanger their children, as well as making it much more difficult to raise them. By the same token, when a person opposes abortion but also denies their children's sexuality, they often prevent them from getting birth control.  They create a situation where then increase the chances of having a child having to face the decision of whether or not to have an abortion.

Culturally, we have the same kind of gap. You have science advancing knowledge and religion dragging its heels, gripping humanity and trying to prevent enlightenment. Often, those that are on the cutting edge of science will be attacked by the religious and traditionalists. It is difficult to reconcile a part of society that would rather hold on to irrational beliefs than do what is right. This is not something that is new, this has been a constant throughout history.  Science often reveals the truth of the world at their own peril for how this will be taken by the religious authorities.  Today, there are no official religious authorities.  There is no religious rule in this day and age, so it is easy for me to fall into the trap of expecting science to be unconstrained by religion.  Not much time has to pass between incidents that prove that this is not the case.

Stem Cells and Symbiotic Behavior

The July 22, 2011 episode of Science Friday was about putting stem cells in damaged heart muscles to repair them.

After a person has a heart attack, the blood gets cut off to portions of heart and this causes those portions to die and scar tissue to form.  Some scientists are working with a new cure where they inject the patient's own stem cells into the heart to repair it.  The part of the heart that dies and forms scar tissue makes the heart swell up like a balloon and then it can't flex as easily, so it has a hard time pumping.  The stem cells actually start to replace the scar tissue, the heart's shape returns to normal, and the heart becomes healthy again.  They have only just started human trials, so the therapy will probably be available to the general public in a few years.  This will reverse the old way of thinking that heart attack damage was permanent and that someone that survived a heart attack would have a permanently decreased quality of life.

Stem cell research has a lot of promises, and it surprises me how they come to be expressed.  In this case, the stem cells being used are blood stem cells of the patient, being conditioned and transplanted after being harvested.  There is very little research resistance for this type of procedure from the standpoint that you are not introducing something foreign or potentially toxic to the body, so much of the barriers inherent in other drug or transplant therapies are not present here.  They are already studying to see if they can copy this procedure in other organs.  The procedure is extremely simple, and training medical professionals to do it would be simple.

The bulk of the funding came from NIH, so here's another example of big government totally wasting taxpayer's money (not).

The second story I heard was from the same July 22, 2011 episode of  Science Friday was about all the bacteria that are found in and on the human body.  Scientists are just starting to study these bacteria, surveying them and trying to discover what they are for.  They think they are going to find that rather than being something unwanted that has "infected" their human hosts, that many of these bacteria will prove to be beneficial in some way.

It's interesting to consider that we probably co-evolved with many of these species and may even share some genetic traits with them.  We are in symbiosis with many types of bacteria and probably viruses and maybe some parasites, yet we've never really considered this or studied it before.  There is some evidence that wiping out populations of bacteria, either through the use of antibacterial soap when we wash, or through taking antibiotics, may take away some of our protection and make us more susceptible to getting sick.  We may also have more allergies due to living in an environment that is too clean.  Early studies are finding huge numbers of bacteria that have never been cataloged before.  Some scientists are theorizing that the appendix, rather than being this useless vestigial organ that is no longer useful, is actually there to provide a refuge for your healthy bacteria strains.  They think that the body gets exposed to things from time to time that wipe out your healthy bugs (not just modern antibacterial use) and that this provides a refuge to repopulate those bugs after they are wiped out.  The study of all these passengers on our body is another field in its earliest stages and is bound to uncover a lot of discoveries in the coming years.

Arab Spring, Riotous Fall

Recently, a large portion of the Arab world has erupted in protests against America. It seemed to kick off with the bombing and attack of the American Embassy in Libya, where our Ambassador and 3 other Americans were killed.

The protests were supposedly over outrage about a video posted in YouTube by a Christian Coptic Egyptian person living in America. I don't know whether the person was born here of Egyptian parents or moved here, and whether he became naturalized or is not a citizen, so I'm not sure if they are even mad about the actions of a "true American". It doesn't matter, because anyone can post anything they want on YouTube, and if you don't like it, don't watch it.

It seems bizarre that anyone would get mad at a whole country for what one person in that country did or said. What was done may have been in poor taste, but it was not illegal. The protesters seem to be further enraged that the man has not been arrested or put to death by hanging.

I have no sympathy for these enraged protesters. I can appreciate that they have no understanding of our legal system or the rights we enjoy in this country, but even so, I cannot fathom why they want to hold our whole country accountable for an insignificant and poorly produced video. I had to see what it was all about, and couldn't stomach watching it because of the terrible quality of the clip. I can't believe this guy was able to get as many actors as he did to make such a stinking piece of garbage. I can't even get to the content, you have to wade through too much embarrassingly amateur footage to even stick around that long. It's about as painful to watch as a Barney video. Or reality television, for that matter. One report I heard said that most of the people that were protesting had not seen the clip. Perhaps if they had, they would not be so mad at America for harboring someone with such terrible views, but they would be mad at the studio for letting someone waste their money and time producing this crap.

The Muslim world rioted after some Dutch cartoonist wrote a cartoon critical of Islam some years back. I didn't understand that, either. I can't believe anyone can be so thin-skinned about their beliefs. I guarantee that their behavior is not getting them any converts in the world at large for their cause when they can see such lunacy.

When we invaded Afghanistan, I assumed that many people in their country thought that we were overstepping our bounds to invade an entire country for the actions of one man. However, it wasn't that simple, the country had a religious leadership that was harboring and protecting people that wanted to launch attacks on us, so you justify the action with a "rogue nation" argument, that a lot of people can agree with, relate to, and support. It still doesn't stop individuals from getting extremely angry about the occupation when bystanders are also killed in the military strikes against legitimate targets (or when the occasional mistake happens and a wedding party is bombed). I can see why those people would get mad at our actions and think our actions were unjustified. Iraq is just a more egregious example of this kind of thing, a situation where people are legitimately uncomfortable with our presence and incensed when it leads to the killing of innocent lives. In my mind, I was leery of the possibility of our presence being a recruiting tool for the jihadis.

Then these protests and the violence directed at Americans makes me take another look at my views. Any sympathy anyone may have had against an Arab person because we invaded their country has to realize that the fundamentalist Islamic masses have just validated our course of action. If someone saying something they dislike is cause to kill our Ambassador and bomb our Embassies, then they must understand perfectly why we would invade a country because someone killed a bunch of Americans. I should stop feeling guilty that we use a strong arm against anyone in an Arab country, because surely they condone that level of action if mere words justify rioting and attacking a country's embassy.

My emotional reaction to these countries is to want nothing to do with them. I think we should just pull our entire diplomatic missions out and put travel advisories on each of the countries. We should urge Americans to stay out, we're not welcome anyway. I think this should be backed up by cutting off trade. I don't even want to engage with these countries. I realize from a practical standpoint this is not realistic. No one will advocate this kind of reaction, and no trade restrictions will be considered. Many individuals faced with the prospect of travel to any of these cesspools of unrest should think twice about going there. Your life is cheap and you are not welcome. There's plenty of other places in the world that would welcome you and your dollars. Go there instead.

I'm guilty of the same mistake that the Arab protestors are making, which is to generalize from the actions of a few to the motives of the rest. However, they are generalizing from the actions of a single individual who is only exercising his right to free speech. There is no actual harm being done by this speech, and they can simply ignore the film and there will be no effect whatsoever. On the other hand, while the number of protestors compared to the general populace is a small percentage, these are large mobs, and they have killed people for simply being
American. You would not have the option of simply ignoring them, as they have the option of doing with our miserable individual. So while I am extrapolating on the actions of a few and criticizing them for the actions of an individual, my hypocrisy protects individuals from being harmed in a real way, blown up by a mob. We felt the same way about the French Revolution, so it's not even a Muslim or Arab thing, it's a stupid enraged mob thing.

Missouri Amendment 2

I was getting ready to go vote during this summer's second Missouri Primary of 2012 and wanted to know what was going to be on the ballot. This was a really particularly sleepy election. For someone in the political middle, disenchanted by both parties, a primary is a not something that raises much motivation. Even though I complain that most elections give you two bad choices and you have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils, I still don't want to try to influence who is going to be on the ballot.

I looked up the ballot and discovered that there was going to be a state constitutional amendment on the ballot. That's pretty rare. I know that the U.S. Constitution has not added any amendments for a long time and the process to get the constitution amended on the national level is almost impossible when the country is evenly divided on most issues (try to imagine an amendment about guns or gay marriage making it to through congress).

The proposed change was to insure school prayer was a protected right in the state. No one can prosecute anyone that wants to pray in school. It seemed pretty straightforward and completely unnecessary, as this was already guaranteed. No one else in my office knew about the amendment until I told them. My brothers, who I immediately called, both knew about it, but had only just found out about it.

I considered this a really poor choice of elections to put such a supposedly important matter on the ballot. If you are truly up in arms about a subject to the point where you think there needs to be a Constitutional Amendment over it, why do a sneaky stealth move and put it into an almost ignored primary election?

This primary happens to be one that insures that the majority of voters going in would be conservatives and Republicans. Not many Democratic positions were even being contested, but the Republican field was rife with candidates, and many races had far right candidates poised against moderate Republicans. So this field was really heated up.

After the election, the results came in and the amendment passed with about 80% of the vote, an almost unheard of majority. I was disappointed, and still riled about the sneaky way that the measure was put onto the ballot, but I moved on and started to forget about it.

Then I heard one of my science podcasts report that the measure would mean that people that did not want to learn evolution in schools would have the right to refuse to learn it, and that the measure would be challenged.

My first reaction was that this was not what was on the ballot. It said nothing about the conduct of people in classrooms being able to refuse to learn something, it simply said that you couldn't stop someone from praying in school.

I got online to see what the language of the ballot was, and found that it was already taken down from the election board's website. I did find the original Amendment as approved by the General Assembly and read it in full. It did indeed say that anyone that disagreed with any subject in school on religious grounds could not be forced to participate in the curriculum.

That's alarming on two levels. One, the ballot did not even hint about his aspect of the Amendment, and the language of the ballot was both abbreviated and deceptive in that respect. Two, the original article 5 of the state constitution had language in it that already specifically provided for religious freedom, and the ballot language didn't sound that different than the original section. The Amendment was to replace article 5 so most people reading the short ballot description would naturally draw the conclusion that religious freedom in schools was not something that was already a right. The only thing that really changed was the ability to opt out of any education that one deemed against their religion.

It seems to me that there would be no limit to what you could opt out of. The obvious courses would be those including Evolution and Geology, because not only do people not want to be taught something that they feel contradicts Genesis from the Bible, but many people believe the 17th century theologian's accounting of the years in the Bible that puts the age of the earth at about 6,000 years instead of the generally accepted 4.65 billion years. So Geology is, by definition, blasphemy. I can see people opting out of Chemistry because it fails to say that an intelligent creator designed all the elements and molecules. People could probably figure out ways to opt out of English class and Gym class. Once you put a vague exception that allows people to get out of the hard work of learning, they will expend considerable effort in applying that exception to anything and everything they dislike and hope that their feigned religious piety will get them out of it.

We look to the Muslim world and see people in some countries educating their young in Madrases where they read the Koran for 12 hour a day while being beaten and yelled at and we shake our heads at what a shame it is that these people will use their religion to keep their people willfully ignorant. Yet we have plenty of people in this country that will gladly follow that model and hand our youths all the tools they need to avoid opening their minds and learning something true about the world.