Savoonga Alaska, a portrait in the Washington Post

Savoonga has a zip code of 99769. You can see a map here and a picture here. Population 640, of which 2% are "Irish" (12 or so).

I once spent two months on the northern tip of Newfoundland -- St. Anthony. That felt remote, but compared to Savoonga it was the height of urban living.

The Washington Post has a story on life in Savoonga. It's fascinating reading. The journalists traveled out as a bit of a comic lark, but they returned a bit changed.

... AT THE SMALL AIRPORT IN NOME, we had seen posters warning that it is a serious crime to be caught smuggling alcoholic beverages of any kind to St. Lawrence Island, which is home to Savoonga and Gambell, its sister village 40 miles away. The island is dry and has been for some time, part of a desperate effort to control a problem that has gotten painfully out of hand.

Savoongans are only a few generations removed from a near-Stone Age existence. Details from the distant past are murky, but in the late 1870s much of the population of the island was wiped out in a holocaust of complex origins thought to involve illness, climate changes and behavioral factors. What is indisputable is that the commercial whalers of that era brought some modern ways to the island, along with disease and alcohol. Genetically, in both cases, the natives had no defenses...

...Out there in the enveloping whiteness, it had been possible to lose yourself, fishing with Eskimos in the Bering Sea the way it has been done since the age of the igloo. There was no village, there were no dead kids, no fog of denial, no generation in agony, literally bored out of its mind. There were no soul-wrenching choices between survival of self and survival of a culture. There was just an exhilarating ritual, as old as a civilization, irreducible, unencumbered by a sense of guilt, not subject to misunderstanding or misinterpretation through cultural chauvinism. It was clear and it was clean. It was possible to comprehend the joy of surviving by your skills and savvy on the bounty of the Earth alone, in defiance of whatever hell nature and fate throw at you. And it was possible to understand why, lost in that moment, you could want to live that way forever.

Thank you Mr. Hilleman - for saving our children

Economist.com Obituary: Maurice Hilleman, pioneer of preventive medicine, died on April 11th, aged 85

You've heard a lot about Michael Jackson. You've never heard of Maurice Hilleman. Funny, eh?

The Economist chose Maurice Hilleman for their obituary this week. They did the same thing for Pope John-Paul II, but Mr. Hilleman did much more for humanity than the Pope. Miles City, Montana doesn't have much to brag about -- seems they ought to find the money for a monument somewhere ...

Apr 21st 2005

A STORY that Maurice Hilleman liked to tell to illustrate his work as a developer of vaccines concerned his daughter Jeryl Lynn. In 1963 at the age of five she caught mumps, a highly infectious disease of childhood that is usually benign but can be a killer. Mr Hilleman used swabs to collect the mumps virus growing in her throat, and preserved it in a jar of beef broth. He produced a form of the virus that was too weak to cause disease but strong enough to trigger the body's natural defences and make the person immune. The weakened strain, named after Jeryl Lynn, has become the standard vaccine to prevent mumps. The disease is now rare, at least in rich countries.

Identifying the problem, collecting data, finding a solution: Mr Hilleman developed some 40 vaccines, among them for measles, hepatitis A and B, chickenpox, meningitis and pneumonia. He developed the one-shot vaccine that can prevent several diseases, such as MMR (measles, mumps and rubella)...

... Mr Hilleman's greatest contribution to a healthy world may have been his work on the safe mass production of vaccines that can be stored ready for use against the pandemics that since antiquity have regularly swept across continents, such as the 1918 flu outbreak that killed more than 20m people. In 1957, when flu swept through Hong Kong, Mr Hilleman identified the virus as a new form to which people had no natural immunity and passed on his findings to vaccine-makers. When the virus reached the United States a few months later 40m doses of vaccine were ready to limit its damage. Mr Hilleman established that the flu virus is constantly mutating, making it difficult to provide a reliable vaccine...

...Miles City sounds primitive rather than simple. It had been a frontier town and the older inhabitants still told stories of Indian battles. Young Hilleman was poor. His mother and twin sister had died during his birth and he and his seven surviving siblings had been brought up on a farm by relations. At the age of 18 he was working in a shop.

For a young man who felt that life must have more to offer than selling goods to cowboys and their girlfriends, there were two glimpses of a more interesting world. One was his homemade radio, which could just pick up talk and music programmes broadcast from distant Chicago. The other was the local public library, where he found a copy of Darwin's “On the Origin of Species”, which had avoided the censorship of the town's fundamentalist church.

Now that's one heck of a life.

Obesity increases dementia risk: Winner of stupid medical article of the month

BBC NEWS | Health | Obesity increases dementia risk

I have a bad feeling this news story actually reflects the article. I think it's extraordinarily unlikely that obesity causes dementia; it will be very, very hard to extract a dementia/obesity relationship from obesity/IQ/wealth and IQ/dementia relationships. I'd be astounded if the authors were able to control for an obesity/IQ correlation.

Tiger and parental control software

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > From Apple, a Tiger to Put in Your Mac

On the other hand, some of the most groundbreaking new Tiger features are barely mentioned in Apple's marketing. For example, the new parental controls let you, the wise authority figure, specify which e-mail correspondents, chat buddies, Web sites and even programs are O.K. for your children.

Apple lists 200 Tiger features, and leaves this one out?! Absolutely weird.

This features by itself is worth $60 to me. It covers more than half the cost of Tiger (educational or Amazon special). Sheesh.

BTW, if you want Tiger, and wouldn't mind a new machine, consider buying a Mac Mini. Compared to a month ago, it's like buying a quality machine for $350 or so.

iLemon?

iMac G5 (Part 8)

Macintouch has been collecting reports of hardware failures with the ambitious iMac. The motherboards are failing (possibly due to a manufacturing defect in the capacitors), the monitor is failing (though this may be comparable to the industry LCD display failure rate) and the power supplies are failing.

Apple's customer support has ranged from average to mediocre to abysmal.

Apple has not made any statement nor has it issued a recall.

The iMac is an ambitious device. It combines a notoriously "hot" CPU (the iMac G5s are nowhere near as energy efficient as comparable Intel CPUs) with a "quiet" design and an integrated display in a compact space. That's a lot to get working. It may be a failed design.

Unless Apple does something special (recall, acknowledgement of problems and description of solutions) I would not buy a current model G5 iMac. The Mac Mini looks like a very good device (though some have analog output problems) and the new G5 towers look promising (they are very big). I would buy either -- except I want the G5 and I don't want a large tower. So, for people like me, waiting is the order of the day.

Neutrino speculations

The New York Times > Science > Tiny, Plentiful and Really Hard to Catch

Another open question is whether neutrinos play a role in the imbalance of matter and antimatter. If the early universe had contained equal amounts of the both, everything would have been annihilated, leaving nothing behind to form stars and galaxies.

Among quarks, which form protons and neutrons, physicists have observed a subtle matter-antimatter imbalance, called CP violation, in the behavior of particles known as mesons. "That CP violation is completely inadequate to explain the universe that we see," Dr. Kayser said.

So physicists suspect that there must be CP violation elsewhere and that the oddity of neutrinos suggest they could be a source. That, in turn, leads to speculation of yet more new types of neutrinos - very heavy ones that existed only in the very early universe - and the decay of those heavy neutrinos created the preponderance of matter.

Then come even wilder ideas - that neutrinos play a role in the mysterious dark energy that is pushing the universe apart or that neutrinos could be used for interstellar communication.

Interstellar communication? A future SETI project no doubt.

The article describes the Soudan mine neutrino detector. We took the mine tour once with 4 yo and a 2 yo. Our 4 yo was acting up so we missed the pre-trip orientation. We went out with our group expecting a sedate ride in a mine train -- as in our previous mine tour experience. They stuffed us in a metal box, turned out the lights, and dropped us into the earth. You'd be surprised how quiet children can be when their survival instinct kicks in.

Not to mention the bats, the background radiation, and the little trick with the the jackhammers in the dark (no sunlight at the bottom of the earth). Yes, I really recommend the mine tour. Tell 'em I sent you.

Open Source Culture: From Flickr to Wikipedia to ... errr ... Faughnan's Notes

Open Source Culture | MetaFilter

Will a mass of 'good enough' (and free) content overwhelm the 'very good'? Good set of links.

Apple's iMac problem -- bad news all around

TidBITS: iMac G5: Up In Smoke

Apple has two problems with their iMacs - unreliable power supplies and capacitor failures. Both are described in detail by an experienced Mac journalist who had to replace his iMac. The worse news is that the iMac's automated diagnostics came up with the wrong answer -- and Apple's customer services is now pretty darned awful.

I suspect the new iMacs will be safe to buy, but I wouldn't touch any of the existing models. Shame on Apple for following the stonewall strategy; shame that it usually works.

Building a police state, one day at a time

Salon.com | A "volunteer" police state

A group of non-Bush supporters are prevented from joining a Bush social security event by "secret service agents" -- apparently because of a "no blood for oil" bumper sticker. The event turns out to have been publicly funded. The agents may, or may not, have been officially 'secret service'.

This was standard operating procedure during Bush campaign events. There must never be any critics near Bush.

It's not surprising, but for the sake of historians it's good to document these things.

Identify theft: a summary of recent cases

ID theft is inescapable | Channel Register

A fairly good summary of recent identity theft related crimes. The deluge is coming. Ahh well, it's our fault for electing dolts to govern us.

Since government isn't going to help us, we need some kind of a Libertarian solution. I wish I could think of one.

Great awakenings: Number Four in 2015?

Second Great Awakening - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One popular theory on great awakenings is that they occur during times of profound transformation. They're a kind of counter-revolution, though the 2nd GA was thought to have mutated so as to eventually support rather than oppose the transformations of the 1830s.

The 1830s were shockingly turbulent times. Across the US the Euro invasion was in full force, with new lands being overrun daily. Communities were very transient, growing and vanishing with a speed seen only in China today. Clerics went from 30 year tenures to a mere 4 year visit. The industrial revolution was gearing up; steam engines, agricultural transformation, the cotton gin, new weapons. Darwin was doing his basic research (though he'd not yet published). The American economy was going through boom and bust.

So it's easy, in retrospect, to see why religious ecstacy swept through various regions, leaving behind burned out zones of exhausted spirituality. It took about 30 years for the 2nd GA to run its course -- smack into the civil war.

So are we in a 4th GA? That's the great question. Perhaps our times are not yet turbulent enough; but it is likely they will get there. Given our current burst of fundamentalism, and given the rough waters ahead, I think a 4th GA is quite likely in the next two decades. Perhaps it's time to resign oneself to President Frist ...

A thoughtful discussion of millenial American fundamentalism

NewDonkey.com: The Tribulations of "Revelations"

There's too much dense thinking here to excerpt. This is simply a very thoughtful and nuanced discussion of early 21st century American fundamentalist millenialism. His thesis is that the movement has been coopted by a peculiar secular agenda. I'm not sure the two are so distinct; the concept of God's blessing being fundamentally material is older than the Book of Job and not all areligious.

You too have Alzheimer's Process

Entrez PubMed: Search related to stress and mild cognitive impairment

Middle-aged? Had trouble remembering the name of that troublesome Senator? Oh yes ... Frist.

Sound familiar? Of course it's worse when you're low on sleep, stressed, etc. Really, it's quite normal. Your friends and colleagues, with a few remarkable exceptions, are similarly afflicted. Exceptionally productive individuals, with great contributions ahead of them, have trouble with distraction and focus in middle-age. They'll use date books, calendars, task lists and more -- things they didn't used to need. Use Google to find missing words and to remind one of things. Avoid learning new confusing and complex software. Lose track of documents (full text search is handy). Put the umbrella on the door handle, put the car keys on the item that must not be left behind.

Adaptations.

It doesn't help, of course, that middle-aged life can be exceedingly full. Complex family needs, complex parental obligations, complex finances, lots of stress, increasing responsibility at work as one nears the Peter Principal (what's that word, ahh, this one will do) asymptote, a brain overloaded with memory, experience, associations.

Understandable. Normal. Typical. So you can stop reading now. (The following is slightly speculative. I find it oddly reassuring, but most won't.)

You should stop reading because, when you pin an Alzheimer's specialist or researcher into a dark corner, and beat them with a rubber hose (actually, a beer works too), they'll confess that it's probably Alzheimers (omit the apostraphe, it's a pain). Not the disease really, because a disease suggests something exceptional or atypical. This process is universal and lifelong, starting probably in the teenage years. What we call Alzheimer's "Disease" is probably "normal" aging of the brain. Just as we know aging rates vary with stress (telomeres shorten with stress) and genetics, so too does brain aging likely vary with stress, injury (concussion especially) and various unidentified environmental impacts.

The timing of symptomatic manifestations (i.e. disease), from forgetfullness to dementia, is determined by a combination of fundamental reserve (how much does one start with at age 19 [1]), biological brain age, and adaptive techniques. Some people become work disabled in their fifties, a luck few will be able to carry out their routine daily life readily until they've over 100. Most of us will be substantially impaired in our late 70s, and will be work-impaired in our 60s.

So, now that you understand this, (Phew ... I won't get Alzheimer's! I already have it ...) how does should you use knowledge? (I told you not read this far.)

Well, we probably ought to talk about it. Unless we can slow the fundamental aging of the brain (there's hope, actually) we shouldn't expect to raise the retirement age much. As the boomers age, we may also want to consider environmental adaptations in the workplace, such as simpler and more reliable software, better search tools, no instant messaging (sorry young-uns), less email, fewer interruptions, schedule brainless meetings in the afternoon only (when middle-aged brains are sluggish anyway) ...

For the truly tough (life is not for wimps), it might be useful to (I suggest doing this privately) track one's decline and plot out the point when one will have to switch careers or make other accommodations. There's a business opportunity here for a web site that would provide anonymous yearly testing and maintain a projection curve. It will be a while before most of us are ready for this step. Denial is not a bad thing.

Oh, and maybe we'll finally get a useable and reliable PDA -- one made to fulfill Engelbart's dream of the cognitive extender (aka crutch).

Meanwhile, be supportive of Alzheimer's Disease research. It's not just for your parents ...

[1] If the Alzheimer's process is global, but initial reserves are assymetric, then one would expect symptomatic disease to by likewise assymetric. So if one starts with strong visual-spatial reasoning but weak categorical memory, the memory will be the first to go. One would also expect persistent strengths to compensate for focal deficits, just as they do in developing brains.

Orrin Hatch - the arational defender of steroid abuse

The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Muscle Flexing in Congress

By all accounts, Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who is a proven power player in defending his home state's diet supplement industry, managed to keep DHEA on the shelves of nutrition centers. DHEA has been widely banned for Olympic and professional athletics. But an investigative report by The Times detailed the supplement's survival in the marketplace - even though it metabolizes into testosterone products banned under the law.

Senator Hatch defends DHEA as a special case, as an 'anti-aging pill' that deserves to be legal. Capitol Hill negotiators who saw no such virtue complain that Senator Hatch baldly threatened to block the entire steroid control proposal unless DHEA was exempted.

DHEA's Washington lobbyists happen to be the senator's son and a former longtime staff aide to Mr. Hatch. Asked whether he'd been lobbied by his son, Senator Hatch replied, 'Not that I know of.' Actually, the senator is such an aggressive defender of the supplement industry that lobbying him is a redundancy. Lawmakers should look to their bench in embarrassment and reconsider the exemption.

Hatch has been very consistent about this sort of thing for over 20 years. I don't think he's particularly corrupt, he's a simple man with some persistent delusions. Oh, and he has a lot of power. Blame it on Utah.

Update 4/24: After writing this, another angle occurred to me. Orrin Hatch is not a young man. He believes DHEA is an "anti-aging" drug and he believes it is harmless. It is thus rather likely that Hatch uses DHEA himself. Since most quality physicians would consider this a harmful act, Hatch may qualify as a steroid abuser. In particular, he may have become dependent on the mildly euphoric qualities of oral steroids. He's unlikely to approve legislation that may lead to limited access to his drug of choice.

Enlightened hedonism: tsunami donation by tourism

The New York Times > Travel > After the Tsunami, Rebuilding Paradise

Want to help countries recover from a natural disaster? Be a noble hedonist.

...The hardships of the Thai people seemed to be on the minds of visitors who sat in the lounge chairs along the [Puket] beach.

'That's the reason we came now,' said Gordon Brind, 51, who was there in late March on vacation with his family from Britain. 'We were here last year and we decided to come again after the tsunami. Everyone was donating in the U.K. to tsunami funds, and in other countries, too, I'm sure. But the main part of it, really, is that they must have work to live.'

Enlightened hedonism is the best donation. On the other hand, earthquake risk will remain elevated until there's silence for a time (Bayesian analysis). Hmmm.