Thursday, October 27, 2005
We could be worse. We could be chimps.
The more we learn about chimps (BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Chimps fall down on friendship), the less "appealing" they seem. Violent, murderous, xenophobic, misogynistic, sadistic -- our closest living siblings make us seem relatively decent.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Visiting the first church of scientology and Hubbard's offices
When I was a youngling wandering southern california eons ago, one of my hobbies was visiting cults. From old photographs I can see I had a rather innocent and even vulnerable looking face, and cultists were always keen to recruit me. I found them quite fascinating, and over time I became familiar with the "marks" (troubled and lost youth typically), the true believers ("marks" who've joined up) and the handlers (those one level above the believers). I even met a few of the "operators" -- those who are in the cult for power or perks, not for belief. The latter were quite good at spotting my true nature, and would quickly turf me back to the street (my face was misleading).
Nowadays, 25 years later, I fear I no longer have a face that appeals to cultists. Fortunately a friend of mine, no younger than I, still does. So it came that he and I enjoyed a tour of the very first church of Scientology in Washington DC (1701 20th Street NW), and then took a unique guided tour of the unmarked building that was Scientology's first headquarters, around the block at 1812 19th Street Nw, Washington, DC 20009. This latter building is not marked in any way. I believe it is usually visited by Scientologists, but for some reason we were invited. Our hosts were gracious and personable, though I suspect that one of them (quite senior in the church) suspected my true nature. We did not deceive them and admitted to being physicians, but we were very quick to (honestly) state that we were not psychiatrists. In Scientology's doctrine psychiatrists are the closest thing to Satan, and while our guests might tolerate heretics Satan himself would be too much. It probably helped that both of us now work in health care software companies and no longer see patients.
My friend did tell an earlier younger host that we had, of course, often treated patietns with psychiatric medications, but fortunately she appeared not to hear.
So it is that I read of Hubbard's life, or at least the sanctified version thereof. It was a fascinating life. A brilliant, romantic, and precocious youth, a restless wanderer and adventurer, a college drop-out who churned out reams of pulp fiction (science fiction, adventure fiction, even romances -- all under varied pseudonyms). I could see many of the books in his offices and scan some of his 1950s writings (which were more direct and clear than his later writing). [Update 3/06: Alas, it's a life more fictional than I'd thought. Did Hubbard know what was fact and what was imagination? See more below.]
I think I could also tell when he developed whatI'd guess was his schizophrenia-like disorder, his unusual thinking patterns [1] about about age 20 -- a very typical age of onset.
There were many fascinating aspects of the tour. Despite the name of the church, there were no science texts in Hubbard's collection -- nothing on biology, geology, medicine, physics, astronomy, chemistry, electricity, etc. He evidently read history, a bit of philosophy, science fiction and mystical stories -- but not science. Most curiously he had a copy of one of Freud's popular books on psychoanalysis; not marked with any bloody ink and mixed in with his other texts. Nowhere was there mention or reference to any women in his life other than his mother.
There's a remarkable series of 'e-machines', and a fascinating letter mentioning that the first e-machine was the descendant of 40 preceding years of research in psychogalvanometry (there are no Google links to that term, and only a handful of obscure links to the 'psychogalvanometer'. I am amazed there's not more on what was apparently a fad from 1910 to 1950).
Reading the books and literature a few themes emerge, which I think capture the flavor of Hubbard's mind. First and foremost there's his well known hatred of psychiatrists. He refers to the German (psychology), the Viennese (psychoanalysis) and the Russian (psychiatry - most foul). The intensity of his hatred may have some delusional qualities, but he lived in the era of Soviet dissidents imprisoned in psych facilities, frontal lobotomies, etc. The connection he made between the Soviets and psychiatry is particularly interesting.
Throughout his life he revisits themes that have, to someone who's cared for schizophrenic patients, a familiar feeling. He believed that Niacin was a good treatment for substance abuse and radiation poisoning, apparently because it induced facial flushing that he connected with sauna-induced vasodilation. His early books focus on radiation exposure, cellular memory (single-celled organisms 'learn' and pass their learning on to their descendants), and multiple lives. There's some suggestion of an antipathy to Christianity but a sympathy for Buddism; yet the newer Scientology churches display a modified Christian cross.
I was most interested in his use of language, and in his concerns about the meaning of words (shades of his science fiction colleague AE Van Vogt, who later signed up with scientology). His use of 'flub' for "error" is characteristic. He seemed very bothered by words having multiple meanings, and preferred that a word have only a single precise meaning. A children's book on learning makes a somewhat odd transition from a general discussion on learning styles to an perseverant discussion of the dangers of words that could be misunderstood. His concern with the meaning of words, and with the power of words to cause physical harm or effects, has a magical and tortured quality. It is ironic in a man who was a stupendously prolific writer and typist (90 words a minute!).
It is a fascinating tour of an increasingly powerful church (or cult -- a nascent religion). I can believe they easily have 300,000 members, and if each contributes $5,000/year (courses and contributions) that's a tax-exempt cash flow of $1.5 billion/year. Enough money to buy many US senators and politicians. Impressive!
It will be very interesting to see how Scientology evolves.
Update 10/27:
[1] The more I thought about Hubbard's mental status, the less ready I am to give him a label as "simple" as "schitzophreniform disorder". Given his extraordinary bursts of productivity, I could as easily and as amateurishly "label" him as "mania with delusional components". There is clearly something odd about his fixed beliefs and obsessions, and particularly his themes of struggles with the "unconscious" and his focus on words and their slippery meanings. I get the impression of someone fighting to master a mind coming apart, and ending in some odd truce that worked quite well the rest of his life.
I'm not confident, however, that even a professional psychiatrist would know quite how to categorize Hubbard in our current ill-defined taxonomies of psychiatric disorders. It would be very interesting to know more about Hubbard's family history, and whether any particular disorders were prevalent in his parents, cousins, etc.
As my friend noted, the relationship between the delusional disorders, religiosity, and the propensity to create religions is complex, interesting, and intensely controversial.
Update 3/2/06: Rolling Stone has a wonderful story on Scientology. It adds a bit of detail to his biography (note- I went to Caltech):
Update 5/14/07: While tagging my scientology posts I came across this unpublished 2005 reference to a CT article on L Ron's creative biography. It reminded of Kim Jong-il's equally momentous list of achievements. I suspect the resemblance is not coincidental.
Nowadays, 25 years later, I fear I no longer have a face that appeals to cultists. Fortunately a friend of mine, no younger than I, still does. So it came that he and I enjoyed a tour of the very first church of Scientology in Washington DC (1701 20th Street NW), and then took a unique guided tour of the unmarked building that was Scientology's first headquarters, around the block at 1812 19th Street Nw, Washington, DC 20009. This latter building is not marked in any way. I believe it is usually visited by Scientologists, but for some reason we were invited. Our hosts were gracious and personable, though I suspect that one of them (quite senior in the church) suspected my true nature. We did not deceive them and admitted to being physicians, but we were very quick to (honestly) state that we were not psychiatrists. In Scientology's doctrine psychiatrists are the closest thing to Satan, and while our guests might tolerate heretics Satan himself would be too much. It probably helped that both of us now work in health care software companies and no longer see patients.
My friend did tell an earlier younger host that we had, of course, often treated patietns with psychiatric medications, but fortunately she appeared not to hear.
So it is that I read of Hubbard's life, or at least the sanctified version thereof. It was a fascinating life. A brilliant, romantic, and precocious youth, a restless wanderer and adventurer, a college drop-out who churned out reams of pulp fiction (science fiction, adventure fiction, even romances -- all under varied pseudonyms). I could see many of the books in his offices and scan some of his 1950s writings (which were more direct and clear than his later writing). [Update 3/06: Alas, it's a life more fictional than I'd thought. Did Hubbard know what was fact and what was imagination? See more below.]
I think I could also tell when he developed what
There were many fascinating aspects of the tour. Despite the name of the church, there were no science texts in Hubbard's collection -- nothing on biology, geology, medicine, physics, astronomy, chemistry, electricity, etc. He evidently read history, a bit of philosophy, science fiction and mystical stories -- but not science. Most curiously he had a copy of one of Freud's popular books on psychoanalysis; not marked with any bloody ink and mixed in with his other texts. Nowhere was there mention or reference to any women in his life other than his mother.
There's a remarkable series of 'e-machines', and a fascinating letter mentioning that the first e-machine was the descendant of 40 preceding years of research in psychogalvanometry (there are no Google links to that term, and only a handful of obscure links to the 'psychogalvanometer'. I am amazed there's not more on what was apparently a fad from 1910 to 1950).
Reading the books and literature a few themes emerge, which I think capture the flavor of Hubbard's mind. First and foremost there's his well known hatred of psychiatrists. He refers to the German (psychology), the Viennese (psychoanalysis) and the Russian (psychiatry - most foul). The intensity of his hatred may have some delusional qualities, but he lived in the era of Soviet dissidents imprisoned in psych facilities, frontal lobotomies, etc. The connection he made between the Soviets and psychiatry is particularly interesting.
Throughout his life he revisits themes that have, to someone who's cared for schizophrenic patients, a familiar feeling. He believed that Niacin was a good treatment for substance abuse and radiation poisoning, apparently because it induced facial flushing that he connected with sauna-induced vasodilation. His early books focus on radiation exposure, cellular memory (single-celled organisms 'learn' and pass their learning on to their descendants), and multiple lives. There's some suggestion of an antipathy to Christianity but a sympathy for Buddism; yet the newer Scientology churches display a modified Christian cross.
I was most interested in his use of language, and in his concerns about the meaning of words (shades of his science fiction colleague AE Van Vogt, who later signed up with scientology). His use of 'flub' for "error" is characteristic. He seemed very bothered by words having multiple meanings, and preferred that a word have only a single precise meaning. A children's book on learning makes a somewhat odd transition from a general discussion on learning styles to an perseverant discussion of the dangers of words that could be misunderstood. His concern with the meaning of words, and with the power of words to cause physical harm or effects, has a magical and tortured quality. It is ironic in a man who was a stupendously prolific writer and typist (90 words a minute!).
It is a fascinating tour of an increasingly powerful church (or cult -- a nascent religion). I can believe they easily have 300,000 members, and if each contributes $5,000/year (courses and contributions) that's a tax-exempt cash flow of $1.5 billion/year. Enough money to buy many US senators and politicians. Impressive!
It will be very interesting to see how Scientology evolves.
Update 10/27:
[1] The more I thought about Hubbard's mental status, the less ready I am to give him a label as "simple" as "schitzophreniform disorder". Given his extraordinary bursts of productivity, I could as easily and as amateurishly "label" him as "mania with delusional components". There is clearly something odd about his fixed beliefs and obsessions, and particularly his themes of struggles with the "unconscious" and his focus on words and their slippery meanings. I get the impression of someone fighting to master a mind coming apart, and ending in some odd truce that worked quite well the rest of his life.
I'm not confident, however, that even a professional psychiatrist would know quite how to categorize Hubbard in our current ill-defined taxonomies of psychiatric disorders. It would be very interesting to know more about Hubbard's family history, and whether any particular disorders were prevalent in his parents, cousins, etc.
As my friend noted, the relationship between the delusional disorders, religiosity, and the propensity to create religions is complex, interesting, and intensely controversial.
Update 3/2/06: Rolling Stone has a wonderful story on Scientology. It adds a bit of detail to his biography (note- I went to Caltech):
Wow. I bet JPL doesn't put that bit in their official history.... After the war, Hubbard made his way to Pasadena, California, a scientific boomtown of the 1940s, where he met John Whiteside Parsons, a society figure and a founder of CalTech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A sci-fi buff, Parsons was also a follower of the English occultist Aleister Crowley. Parsons befriended Hubbard and invited him to move onto his estate. In one of the stranger chapters in Hubbard's life, recorded in detail by several biographers, the soon-to-be founder of Dianetics became Parsons' assistant -- helping him with a variety of black-magic and sex rituals, including one in which Parsons attempted to conjure a literal "whore of Babalon [sic]," with Hubbard serving as apprentice.
Charming and charismatic, Hubbard succeeded in wooing away Parsons' mistress, Sara Northrup, whom he would later marry. Soon afterward, he fell out with Parsons over a business venture...
Update 5/14/07: While tagging my scientology posts I came across this unpublished 2005 reference to a CT article on L Ron's creative biography. It reminded of Kim Jong-il's equally momentous list of achievements. I suspect the resemblance is not coincidental.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Summary of the Scowcroft interview
Apparently when you're 80 years old, you feel free to be blunt at certain times. DeLong quotes another blogger with many excerpts of a very long rant from a senior old-guard Republican.
Don't donate your used PC -- it's not worth anything
I once went to some effort to recondition and setup a used PC for a family that didn't have one. Even as I set it up, I knew this was dumb. They couldn't afford a network connection, they didn't have a printer and couldn't afford a new one, and they didn't have the background or resources to maintain the high quality computer I gave them. Since they couldn't affort to pay to dispose of it, I was just creating more toxic waste. (I'd said I'd come get it ... but that was dumb too.)
As in the twin cities, so to in Africa. Even if all those donated PCs were in terrific shape, most of them would soon be worthless. PCs are annoying resource intensive life sucking leaches that cost far too much to maintain and keep healthy. And here I'm speaking of a Mac. Wintel macchines are far worse.
Stop donating computer hardware. It's a waste. Spend the time and effort lobbying for decreased tariffs and support increased trade. Support acts that can decrease poverty. Donate to CARE.ORG. Donate high quality t-shirts. Just don't send computer gear.
As in the twin cities, so to in Africa. Even if all those donated PCs were in terrific shape, most of them would soon be worthless. PCs are annoying resource intensive life sucking leaches that cost far too much to maintain and keep healthy. And here I'm speaking of a Mac. Wintel macchines are far worse.
Stop donating computer hardware. It's a waste. Spend the time and effort lobbying for decreased tariffs and support increased trade. Support acts that can decrease poverty. Donate to CARE.ORG. Donate high quality t-shirts. Just don't send computer gear.
Digital Rights Management and the DMCA shall make criminals of us all
By providing half a solution, then stopping, Apple leads a reasonably honest soul to the twilight zone: Gordon's Tech: Controlling Apple AirTunes with SlimServer, or how I was turned to the Darkseid. Beware, if you walk the 'media server' road you too will be led to the rebel alliance ...
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Leon Kass: presidential advisor on the forgotten place of women
Leon Kass is Bush's bioethics advisor. DeLong and Kieran Healy quote Kass's philosophy of the woman's place. Really, he says, it all went wrong when the Pill was developed ...
This is the president's advisor. These guys are a parody of themselves. At this rate I'll soon be expecting Bush to find a way to stay on after his term runs out ...
This is the president's advisor. These guys are a parody of themselves. At this rate I'll soon be expecting Bush to find a way to stay on after his term runs out ...
Colonel Wilkerson on the cabal running American foreign policy
Colonel Wilkerson is a military academic who followed Colin Powel into government. He lectures here on US foreign policy (ft.com). He rambles a bit. He liked George Bush I and accepted the Clintonians with grudging respect. He acknowledges must US presidents are far from brilliant. Then he gets down to the brassy tacks (emphases mine):
And you’re talking about the potential for, I think, real dangerous times if we don’t get our act together. Now, let me get a little more specific. This is where I’m sure the journalists will get their pens out. Almost everyone since the ’47 act, with the exception, I think, of Eisenhower, has in some way or another, perterbated, flummoxed, twisted, drew evolutionary trends with, whatever, the national security decision-making process....
... The complexity of crises that confront governments today is just unprecedented. Let me say that again.
The complexity of the crises that confront governments today are just unprecedented. At the same time, especially in America, but I submit to you that in Japan, in China and in a number of other countries soon to be probably the European Union, it’s just as bad, if not in some ways worse.
The complexity of governing is unprecedented. You simply cannot deal with all the challenges that government has to deal with, meet all the demands that government has to meet in the modern age, in the 21st century, without admitting that it is hugely complex. That doesn’t mean you have to add a Department of Homeland Security with 70,000 disparate entities thrown under somebody in order to handle them. But it does mean that your bureaucracy has got to be staffed with good people and they’ve got to work together and they’ve got to work under leadership they trust and leadership that, on basic issues, they agree with.
And that if they don’t agree, they can dissent and dissent and dissent. And if their dissent is such that they feel so passionate about it, they can resign and know why they’re resigning. That is not the case today. And when I say that is not the case today, I stop on 26 January 2005.
I don’t know what the case is today. I wish I did. But the case that I saw for 4 plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations, [inaudible], changes to the national security [inaudible] process. What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense and [inaudible] on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.
And then when the bureaucracy was presented with those decisions and carried them out, it was presented in such a disjointed incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn’t know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out.
Read George Packer’s book The Assassin’s [inaudible] if you haven’t already. George Packer, a New Yorker, reporter for The New Yorker, has got it right. I just finished it and I usually put marginalia in a book but, let me tell you, I had to get extra pages to write on.
And I wish, I wish I had been able to help George Packer write that book. In some places I could have given him a hell of a lot more specifics than he’s got. But if you want to read how the Cheney Rumsfeld cabal flummoxed the process, read that book. And, of course, there are other names in there, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas [jf - Feith], whom most of you probably know Tommy Frank said was stupidest blankety blank man in the world. He was. Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.
And yet, and yet, after the Secretary of State agrees to a $400 billion department, rather than a $30 billion department, having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere. That’s not making excuses for the State Department.
That’s telling you how decisions were made and telling you how things got accomplished. Read George’s book...
...They’ve [jf - defense contractors] got every Congressman, every Senator, they got it covered. Now, it’s not to say that they aren’t smart businessmen. They are, and women. They are. But it’s something we should be looking at, something we should be looking at. So you’ve got this collegiality there between the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President. And then you’ve got a President who is not versed in international relations. And not too much interested in them either.
Why is cell phone software so bad?
Pogue asks why is cell phone software so bad?
I've been through a few cell phones, and I agree the internal software is generally quite poor. My recollection has been that Nokia did
pretty well and Samsung quite poorly. My Palm (Rest in peace) based Samsung i500 is perhaps the most infuriating -- because it comes so
close to being right, but falls painfully short.
There are some fundamentally hard problems in designing this kind of software, but the biggest issue is that the utility and elegance of the software is not a factor in consumer buying decisions. Indeed good software may have a perverse effect of making a customer so content with their phone they are reluctant to buy a new one!
As long as consumers don't buy based on the usability of their cell phone, money spent on better and more elegant software is money down the drain. Nokia has never gotten credit for the elegant usability of many of their older phones.
So who should we blame? We have met the enemy ... and he is us.
Problems With Cellular Phone Software Design - New York TimesI wrote him:
“I recently read your article about the ‘iTunes phone,’ the Motorola ROKR. You say that it uses the same operating system as the popular RAZR phone, but I do not know exactly what you mean when you state that the Motorola Razr's software design is ‘not, ahem, as universally adored as its physical design.’ If you have a moment to spare, I would appreciate some elaboration about the specifics of your observation.”
Good question. Just about everyone I know who has a RAZR phone complains about the software design. I’ve asked two of them why they despise it so much.
One person pointed out that you must create separate entries for "Bob cell," "Bob home," etc., which is a pain to scroll through.
Another says that the software actually crashes periodically, which is never a good thing.
I’d be interested in hearing from other people, though, about what they don’t like about the Motorola phone operating system. And other phone makes, too, for that matter!
I've been through a few cell phones, and I agree the internal software is generally quite poor. My recollection has been that Nokia did
pretty well and Samsung quite poorly. My Palm (Rest in peace) based Samsung i500 is perhaps the most infuriating -- because it comes so
close to being right, but falls painfully short.
There are some fundamentally hard problems in designing this kind of software, but the biggest issue is that the utility and elegance of the software is not a factor in consumer buying decisions. Indeed good software may have a perverse effect of making a customer so content with their phone they are reluctant to buy a new one!
As long as consumers don't buy based on the usability of their cell phone, money spent on better and more elegant software is money down the drain. Nokia has never gotten credit for the elegant usability of many of their older phones.
So who should we blame? We have met the enemy ... and he is us.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
What science fiction character am I?
Taking this "personality test" I learn I am ....
Marcus ColeHmm. I think I'm whimpier than that ...
An honest and chivalrous adventurer that pursues just causes, you would sacrifice much to help others.
I am a Ranger. We walk in the dark places no others will enter. We stand on the bridge and no-one may pass. We live for the One, we die for the One.
Marcus is a character in the Babylon 5 universe.
World of hurt - Kashmir
A BBC journalist writes of a week in Balakot, Kashmir. This is one of the most beautiful places on earth, so so I was told long ago. It's beauty comes from the same forces that created this earthquake.
Now, ten days later, I read that the death toll and logistic problems of this disaster may exceed those of the tsunami of years (oh, months?!) past. Earth seems less motherly these days, our reign more tenuous. In a world approaching 8 billion lives any upset will kill tens of thousands. Global climate change alone promises disaster aplenty.
Time to send more money to care.org. I'm going to suggest CARE start selling 'gift certificates' this holiday season; make a donation, get a nice card, give that as a Christmas/holiday gift.
Update: This is what I sent CARE.ORG:
Now, ten days later, I read that the death toll and logistic problems of this disaster may exceed those of the tsunami of years (oh, months?!) past. Earth seems less motherly these days, our reign more tenuous. In a world approaching 8 billion lives any upset will kill tens of thousands. Global climate change alone promises disaster aplenty.
Time to send more money to care.org. I'm going to suggest CARE start selling 'gift certificates' this holiday season; make a donation, get a nice card, give that as a Christmas/holiday gift.
Update: This is what I sent CARE.ORG:
This December I'd like to be able to give CARE gift certificates. Here's how it works.
You add a new feature to your donation area. It's a place to enter a person's name. I make a donation. You mail me a nice certificate with a name on it saying 'A gift to CARE has been made in your name to help ......'.
I give those as gifts.
For greater ease, support multiple certificates. I enter a donation (say $200) and then enter 10 names. I get 10 cards.
Minimum card value is $20.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Net history -- the oldest domain name in the universe
Symbolics.com
In March 1985 the domain name Symbolics.com was assigned to a LIPS hardware/software company. It was the first assigned domain name, preceding even the more famous BBN.COM.
The company is gone, the assets were bought by a gentleman who was likely an employee. The domain name, however, still works.
Net history. Now that this is making the blog rounds his site is going to get pounded ...
In March 1985 the domain name Symbolics.com was assigned to a LIPS hardware/software company. It was the first assigned domain name, preceding even the more famous BBN.COM.
The company is gone, the assets were bought by a gentleman who was likely an employee. The domain name, however, still works.
Net history. Now that this is making the blog rounds his site is going to get pounded ...
SIDS is rare now, so it's back to the tummy for babies
When Polio went away, so did parental commitment to polio vaccines. Since vaccination has a free-rider component (if everyone else's child is vaccinated, the risk/benefit ratio for vaccinating one's own child may be inverted) this isn't completely irrational. Of course it doesn't work; too many people accept the free ride and the disease returns.
A similar thing is happening with SIDS (A Quiet Revolt Against the Rules on SIDS - New York Times). Disobedient parents giggle over their naughtiness on web sites, telling stories of babies sleeping on their stomachs. So SIDS will return (but infant heads will be rounder).
Willful denial of risk is dumb, but very human. On the other hand, a calculated assumption of a measured risk of infant death is rational, albeit inhuman. We expose our children to significant risks when we drive them to day care, for example. Anyone with a swimming pool in the backyard, or a gun in the house, or a seat on the back of a bicycle is already exposing their child to risks that dwarf the average child's risk of SIDS. We make many compromises in our mortal lives, rationally trading an increased risk of infant death for a night's sleep is by no means extreme. It's just that we usually don't think that way.
What we really need is the 'holy grail' of preventive medicine -- risk adjustment. We need better ways to assign a "SIDS-risk" to an individual child based on birth history, genetics, health status, parental smoking, etc. Then we can place 'sleep on the stomach' into a risk spectrum. For the healthy full term child of a non-smoker with no family history of SIDS and no current respiratory infections the risk of sleeping on the stomach may be comparable to the risks of driving to day care. That is, non-zero, but comparable to other accepted risks. On the other hand for a preterm infant of a smoking mother with a family history of SIDS and a URI it may be comparable to riding on a bicycle seat in heavy traffic.
Maybe children will one day wear a bracelet that signals their risk-adjusted SIDS probability every evening ...
A similar thing is happening with SIDS (A Quiet Revolt Against the Rules on SIDS - New York Times). Disobedient parents giggle over their naughtiness on web sites, telling stories of babies sleeping on their stomachs. So SIDS will return (but infant heads will be rounder).
Willful denial of risk is dumb, but very human. On the other hand, a calculated assumption of a measured risk of infant death is rational, albeit inhuman. We expose our children to significant risks when we drive them to day care, for example. Anyone with a swimming pool in the backyard, or a gun in the house, or a seat on the back of a bicycle is already exposing their child to risks that dwarf the average child's risk of SIDS. We make many compromises in our mortal lives, rationally trading an increased risk of infant death for a night's sleep is by no means extreme. It's just that we usually don't think that way.
What we really need is the 'holy grail' of preventive medicine -- risk adjustment. We need better ways to assign a "SIDS-risk" to an individual child based on birth history, genetics, health status, parental smoking, etc. Then we can place 'sleep on the stomach' into a risk spectrum. For the healthy full term child of a non-smoker with no family history of SIDS and no current respiratory infections the risk of sleeping on the stomach may be comparable to the risks of driving to day care. That is, non-zero, but comparable to other accepted risks. On the other hand for a preterm infant of a smoking mother with a family history of SIDS and a URI it may be comparable to riding on a bicycle seat in heavy traffic.
Maybe children will one day wear a bracelet that signals their risk-adjusted SIDS probability every evening ...
Andromeda unleashed
I came to this one via a physics blog. Caltech has some gorgeous images of Andromeda from the Spitzer space telescope. Scoll down to the link to 21MB high resolution JPEG.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Astronaut, cosmonaut, yuhangyuan
I need to learn how to pronounce yuhangyuan -- Chinese for "travelers of the universe". Meanwhile, in the US, our government has committed itself to unraveling science.
It's good to know that, even as the US begins its long decline, other nations will carry the torch.
It's good to know that, even as the US begins its long decline, other nations will carry the torch.
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