The unremarked scandal: Bush and the Smallpox program

Opinion - StatesmanJournal.com: "Final results of a smallpox vaccine study by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University show America's preparedness for a smallpox outbreak may be greater than initially thought.

The research shows 90 percent of those vaccinated 25 to 75 years ago maintain a substantial level of immunity. In addition, repeated vaccinations do not result in a higher level of disease protection."

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This is very good news. Even those of us who were not immunized (Canadians & Europeans age <47) will benefit from a protective environment of resistant people. This data would change the Bush administrations smallpox prevention program -- if that program had not already sunk without a trace ... or much remark.

Of all the different ploys the Bush administration played prior to the invasion of Iraq, the Smallpox ploy was the most vile -- or the most incompetent. I'm not sure which explanation is worse.

Given what was "known" at that time about smallpox susceptibility, and given what the Bush administration leaked and implied about the probability of bioterrorism, there was ample justification for a national program of immunization. The outlines of that program, framed by the CDC based on the Bush administration's risk estimates, matched the grim rhetoric of the administration.

Except the administration didn't follow through on that rhetoric. Immunization rates were low, but the President said nothing. Physicians expressed very serious concerns about disability benefits in the event of vaccine injury, life insurance coverage for vaccine fatalities, etc. etc. None of these concerns were truly addressed.

So what was really going on? Did the Bush administration not believe their own estimates? In that case, they bear a terrible responsibility for the vaccine complications that did occur. Did they believe their innuendoes? Then they were terribly incompent - because they didn't correct a failing program.

A scandal either way. But one that has passed without remark. Instead the Bush administration must deal with the "16 words" scandal. That one is quite trivial, and it must be a relief for Rove to deal only with that.

Liberalism is for sissies

How to Talk About Israel

From a NYT Magazine article:

What Henry Jackson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu and George W. Bush have in common is that they enabled bookish men to feel tough, beautifully, enviably tough. Too much can be made of the connection between the Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss and officials in the current Pentagon, but one aspect of Strauss appears to have rubbed off on them. Born in Germany, Strauss was a liberal rationalist in his youth. He had hoped, he said, that anti-Semitism would end with Jewish assimilation in a liberal democracy. The Nazis taught him otherwise. By the 1920's he began to regard liberals as weaklings, powerless to stop the violent mob. If one thing ties neoconservatives, Likudniks, and post-cold-war hawks together, it is the conviction that liberalism is strictly for sissies."

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This article is allegedly about anti-semitism and the assumptions of current political dialog, but some of the most interesting parts are about the Manichaean worldview of Christian evangelicals and neoconservatives. There is also a parallel theme about youthful conversions, as in the definition of a neoconservative: a liberal who's been mugged.

The link between liberalism and sissie-hood (and effiminacy) is one of the great rhetorical triumphs of the Republican party. Rumsfeld is a master of it; but he uses it so often that one wonders if it will eventually lose its potency. Such weapons are best held in reserve.

Web Index for Journalists: NYT Guide to the Net

CyberTimes Navigator

The NYT has long had a web guide for NYT journalists. They've recently updated it; it's an interesting perspective. I'll add this to my creaky old Family Physician index page.

Choosing NiMH batteries and rechargers: a great review

Digital Imaging Accessories Review: The Great Battery Shootout

This is really a great article, it took me a while to find it though. I was looking for a NiMH AA charger and batteries for my SONY travel speakers -- this article covers the ground like nowhere else.

I ended up buying a Lightning Pack 4000N. They have a super reputation for tech support, a lifetime warrantee, a great web site, lots of details. For about $40 I got 12 batteries and the ultrathin portable intelligent recharger. This should pay for itself between the speakers and other devices, and it feels less wasteful than dumping all those alkaline batteries.

NiMH batteries and the problem with Google

MIT.EDU article on NiMH batteries

I wanted to learn more about rechargeable AA sized batteries. I tried standard google. All I got was reams of vendors. Usenet (Google Groups) was better. Best of all was a google search limited to .EDU sites. That's how I got the above reference, which is excellent.

There's tons of stuff like this out there. Problem is, Google can't find it. People complain about blogs taking up Google's top rankings, but usually the blogs provide interesting information. The much bigger problem is commercial sites. They're pushing reference material off the index.

Google needs a way to identify commercial sites, and a way to EXCLUDE them from searches. Problem is, they're Google's revenue stream. This fundamental conflict of interest will weaken internet search until someone comes up with a revenue stream aligned with the interests of the consumers. (Best of all would be if #!$#! internet users were willing to PAY for search services. I would, but there's only a dozen of us.)

It would be really cool if a metasearch site found a way to run google searches, strip out the commercial content, and display the results ...

Juvenile stupidity has a higher cost ...

Authorities arrest Minnesota teen in Internet attack: "... Tom Heffelfinger, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, said the case will be turned over to a grand jury to decide whether more charges will be filed. If convicted of the one count already filed, Parson could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine."

I suspect this is a young nerd with more recklessness than sense or skill. He did not create the Blaster worm, he merely altered it and then distributed it in a way that pointed directly to him. I have a great deal of sympathy for his family.

There's more to this than meets the eye. Ever since Robert Morris (who is very skilled but shared the same teenage male recklessness as Parson) created the first worm, there's been a new level of consequence to testosterone induced male teenage stupidity. Instead of local consequences (wrecked cars), there can be global consequences (wrecked businesses).

It's the same technologically mediated expansion of consequences that has made 21st century terrorists far deadlier than 20th century variants.

So what happens in 20 years when a bio-hacking adolescent playfully creates a new organism that wipes out most of humanity?

Same behaviors, different consequences. The male frontal lobes are not fully matured to age 30. Once upon a time that was not such an enormous handicap.

Answers? I'd like to redesign humanity, but failing that I think we should get used to "Total Information Awareness" -- and we'll look back fondly at an era of freedom that future generations will be unable to imagine.

Microsoft may have gone a step too far when crushing Burst.com

I, Cringely | The Pulpit: Stupid Microsoft Tricks
Why the Richest Company on Earth Feels it Needs to Cheat."

In my short memory Microsoft has gotten away with a lot of sharp business moves. This time they may have gone too far. As usual, it's not the actual practices but the cover-up that may get the attention.

... When Burst's lawyers put the messages in order by date and time, they claim to have noticed a peculiar phenomenon. There were literally no messages from approximately one week before until about a month after all seven meetings between the two companies. This meant that either Microsoft completely suspended its corporate e-mail culture for an aggregate period of 35 weeks, or there were messages that had been sent and received at Microsoft, but not divulged to Burst.

....It is too bad there were no backup copies of the erased messages. One would think a company like Microsoft would be more careful. Then one of the Burst lawyers pointed out testimony from a hearing in the Sun v. Microsoft antitrust case where Microsoft representatives said all e-mails were backed-up on more than 100,000 tapes that are held off-site. Surely the lawyers representing Microsoft weren't aware of this because if they had been, they wouldn't have said there was no back-up.

This will be interesting.

iTunes and iPod tips

Macworld: iTunes 3.0.1: "Navigate to the folder that contains the tunes on the networked volume and click the Choose button in the Add to Library window."

Some good tips. A few others:

1. iPod only displays the first few characters of song titles, so make them meaningful (esp. for classical and opera).
2. Use the custom genre unless you want Opera treated as classical.
3. The Genre hierarchy is: Genre:ARTIST:ALBUM:Song. Not very useful for classical music or opera where the COMPOSER is of primary interest. So consider #4. When classical music spans CDs, consider giving all the CDs the same album name.
4. Consider creating a smart playlist by composer for classical music and opera only rather than enabling "composer" in the top iPod menu (it's disabled by default).

Where is Raed: Salam Pax has his home searched

Where is Raed?

Oddly enough, given my interests and his blogging fame, I've only been reading his articles in The Guardian, and I don't catch all of them. I'll add this to my regular news page. For all the news I read on Iraq, this feels like the most insightful and convincing resource I've seen.

As an aside he mentions that that Iraqis expect the US forces to exit within the year; they pray for a UN force but fear civil war. Sounds about right, very unfortunately.

Mozilla Firebird: A Safari alternative?

Mozilla Firebird

Safari 1.0 was great, but we're past due for 1.1. Safari has odd crashing problems that Apple seems to be struggling to debug -- though doing a "reset" seems to have improved them for me. Worst of all is that copying text from Safari is badly broken -- it copies a variation of the source HTML.

Since Apple seems to be having issues with updating Safari, a lot of folks are getting interested in Firebird again. I'm going to give it a try. Maybe Camino might be resurrected as well ...

iVolume: set iTunes volume adjust slider

iVolume: "With iVolume you can bring all your iTunes songs to the same loudness... results of iVolume are much better than those of the built-in 'Sound Check' function in iTunes.... iVolume does not change any data of your audio files, so there is no loss in quality. iVolume simply adjusts the 'Volume Adjustment' slider that you can find in the information dialog of iTunes for every song."

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This is a $7 shareware app. It sounds very clever. I'm definitely going to give it a try. Volume adjustment on the iPod is a bit of a nuisance and "Sounc Check" has a poor reputation. I want to see if the iPod will honor the iTunes volume adjust setting!

No Republican Child Left Behind

The Kids Left Behind: "Next week the Senate will take up the education budget proposed for next year by the White House and Senate Republicans. From the perspective of those who are pro-children, it's loaded with bad news. Not only does the bill fall far short of the photo-op promises Mr. Bush made to provide funding for programs to improve public education, but it would actually cut $200 million from the president's very own (and relentlessly touted) No Child Left Behind Act."

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So now it's an unfunded mandate. The design of this act, and the manner in which it's executed, seems designed to encourage migration of the wealthy to private schools while shuttering public schools.

Brad DeLong: The IMF Is Unhappy with Bush Fiscal Policies

The IMF Is Unhappy: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal: "IMF is extremely unhappy with the feckless Bush Administration's macroeconomic policies"

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Feckless is a good word. Bush seems to be determined to follow the 20th century path of Argentina. It's not that deficits are bad (war, recession, etc) or that tax cuts are bad; it's the way that Bush creates deficits and tax cuts that most economists think is completely bonkers.

At some point the bond market is going to start downgrading the US government. I can hardly wait.

It is going to be so painful to recover from this -- assuming we change government in two years.

Beauty pays off for male college professors

NYT Science 8/28 - The Hunk Differential:

Being beautiful pays off. Economists have found that men with above-average looks are paid about 5 percent more than those with average appearance, while those who are below average in looks have wages 9 percent below the mean.

But is this because of discrimination or productivity ... research by two economists, Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle, has found that beauty has a substantial payoff across a variety of occupations, even those where it doesn't seem to be inherently valuable....

Recently Mr. Hamermesh, a labor economist at the University of Texas at Austin who has long studied beauty and labor markets, wrote a paper with an undergraduate economics major, Amy Parker, that investigates the effect of beauty on a particular measure of performance: teaching evaluations for college professors ...

According to the economists' statistical analysis, good-looking professors got significantly higher teaching scores. ... good looks were significantly more important for men than women in producing high teaching evaluations. The same effect was found in earlier research relating wages to beauty ...

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There is a correlation between physical beauty and economic success. The journalist in this NYT article assumed this is somehow directly related to beauty. This is probably partly true, but there's a much more interesting possibility.

Physical beauty is thought by many biologists to be a general "quality" marker. It takes a careful mixture of genetic quality, uterine environment, and environment to produce a beautiful adult. Symmetric appearance is a marker for precise execution of genetic programming, unobstructed by errors in reading or expression. A quality uterine environment with a healthy placenta is important too; an indirect market for nutrition and economic prosperity. Beauty requires a postnatal environment free of disease, injury, famine, etc.

So while beauty has some advantages, the correlation between economic success and beauty may be indirect. The true connection to current earnings may be from more prosaic causes: genetic excellence producing both beauty and cognitive capabilities, and economic prosperity producting beauty and social connections, training, income, etc.

In other words, beautiful people make more money because they are just better than the rest of us. (BTW, I am not beautiful).

If this seems to contradict the general impression of beautiful people being less than bright, I suggest viewing the incoming class at Harvard Medical School. Among many qualities, they are almost all physically attractive (indeed Harvard appears to select for physical attractiveness as a marker for "leadership qualities").

Now why this should be more true for men than women .... Ahh, I don't understand that!

PocketDock: iPod adapter for 6 pin firewire connector - Apple's Hardware Extensions

PocketDock: iPod adapter for 6 pin firewire connector

The tiny PocketDock lets you connect the new iPod’s docking port to a standard 6-pin FireWire cable, .. want to connect to another Mac or PC — to exchange files, or maybe just to charge the iPod’s battery...
accessories for the previous-model iPod, such as a car charger, the PocketDock will let you use them with the latest model...starts shipping September 12 for US$18.95

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Apple is the master of proprietary, patented, connectors. It's the hardware equivalent of digital rights management; it provides customer lock-in. Microsoft, a software vendor, is strongly incented to "pervert" (add proprietary extensions) standard software interfaces, Apple, a hardware vendor, is strongly incented to "pervert" (add proprietary extensions) hardware interfaces.

Customers, of course, want open interfaces and open connectors -- but we're not smart enough to insist on them.

I suspect SendStation is challenging Apple to smack them down, and thus demonstrate that their customers are very much locked in. It will be interesting to see what happens!

If they get away with this, they'll sell a ton of these things. I'll buy one of course!