The Economist 1986-2006. RIP.

I gave up on the Economist this year. I signed up in residency; it was fabulous back then. Smart, cool, analytic. It weakened in the early 90s, then it took a sudden dive around 1996. Maybe it had something to do with the color photos.

The year 2000 issue was a marvel, and there have been other moments of brilliance, but the US coverage has been generally abysmal. In retrospect when a "Liberal" (19th century version) magazine piled on Clinton for an extramarital affair the end was nigh. They even endorsed Bush the first time, though, mercifully, not the 2nd time. Over the past 8 years Lexington column came to read like a slighly less sloshed version of the WSJ OpEd page, and even their astounding African correspondents couldn't offset the craven and brainless US coverage.

Even now, when I've at last ended my subscription, it's still probably, on balance, better than the competition. It's just that I remember when it was truly great. The slow grinding decline in quality (even as revenues have risen!) has been demoralizing. Really, I might have held on -- but they made the writer of 'Lexington' their Editor. That was a foul blow.

I will miss it, but coincidentally to my departure they've put a lot more of the magazine online, and they've just added a blog. The blog is very good. So I'll read the online version, and the Atlantic and Scientific American, and I'll see if they can manage a recovery. I doubt it however, they've made tons of money since they became stupid.

Update: alas, I should have read a bit more of the blog. It's dumb. I just happened to catch a couple of good posts by chance. Scratch that one, their downward spiral just sped up a bit.

LiON batteries: don't leave them fully charged

A SciAm review of LiON batteries mentions that leaving them fully charged shortens their lifespan:

... batteries degrade, but lithium-ion cells erode faster when highly charged and warm; an average notebook battery kept at full charge at 25 degrees Celsius will irreversibly lose about 20 percent of its capacity a year...

So it's better to let them cycle completely before recharging. Leaving the device continuously plugged in (like our Nano) will shorten its lifespan.

TBL on why blogs are wonderful and the net is NOT all junk and danger

A day ago I read a very odd BBC article about a new initiative that Tim Berners-Lee was leading. The article claimed TBL (father of the web) was warning of the disastrous and anti-democratic perils of the unrestricted web.

Huh?! I didn't bother noting the article because it didn't fit with anything I knew about TBL. Either the great man had become demented or the journalist was cracked (hint, it was the latter).

Happily, TBL replied. Since he has a blog he can point out that both the Guardian and the BBC were utterly wrongheaded. TBL doesn't buy the garbage about 'blogs are junk' because, oddly enough, he understands how links work.

It works because reputable writers make links to things they consider reputable sources. So readers, when they find something distasteful or unreliable, don't just hit the back button once, they hit it twice. They remember not to follow links again through the page which took them there. One's chosen starting page, and a nurtured set of bookmarks, are the entrance points, then, to a selected subweb of information which one is generally inclined to trust and find valuable.

A great example of course is the blogging world. Blogs provide a gently evolving network of pointers of interest. As do FOAF files. I've always thought that FOAF could be extended to provide a trust infrastructure for (e.g.) spam filtering and OpenID-style single sign-on and its good to see things happening in that space.

TBL loves blogs. He is not demented. The Guardian and the BBC need a time-out.

The Yellow Dog barks: it wouldn't matter if they ran Mother Teresa

In the row ahead of me a declared lifelong Republican was explaining to his seatmate why he voted (by mail) for the Democratic slate. "We need a change".

That's what it's about. It doesn't matter if a GOP candidate is a cross between Mother Teresa and Albert Einstein and the Dem is an obnoxious idiot -- vote the Dem. Bush did not act alone. He had the full collusion of a political organization that's as corrupt and decadent as any American political party in living memory. The GOP needs an internal purge, and that won't happen while they hold complete control of power. True Republicans know this. I can even, barely, imagine Gingrich voting Libertarian this election.

Molly Ivins provides one list:

WorkingForChange-Keeping our eyes on the ball

... May I remind you what this election is about? Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, unprecedented presidential powers, unmatched incompetence, unparalleled corruption, unwarranted eavesdropping, Katrina, Enron, Halliburton, global warming, Cheney's secret energy task force, record oil company profits, $3 gasoline, FEMA, the Supreme Court, Diebold, Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004, Terri Schiavo, stem cell research, golden parachutes, shrunken pensions, unavailable and expensive health care, habeas corpus, no weapons of mass destruction, sacrificed soldiers and Iraqi civilians, wasted billions, Taliban resurgence, expiration of the assault weapons ban, North Korea, Iran, intelligent design, swift boat hit squads, and on and on.

This election is about that, but much more -- it's about honor, dignity and comity in this country. It's about the Constitution, which gives us this great nation. Bush ran on a pledge of 'restoring honor and integrity' to the White House. Instead, he brought us Tom DeLay, Roy Blunt, Katherine Harris, John Doolittle, Jerry Lewis, Richard Pombo, Mark Foley, Dennis Hastert, David Safavian, Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, Karl Rove and an illegal and immoral war in Iraq...

I don't agree with all of Molly's list (mine would be more like Blumenthal's or Krugman's), but even 1/10th of this indictment is more than enough reason to vote for a Yellow Dog over a Republican. If you're a Republican and swore a blood oath to never vote for a Dem, try the Libertarians.

The roots of the anti-gay marriage movement

Quebec, my home nation/province, has a logical approach to state-approved marriage. It is a legal process run by the state. The blessings of a church, cult, coven, commune, tribe, union, club or other entity are optional.

The domains are distinct. The cult may approve polygamy and the state approve gay marriage, and each may disagree with the other. The state, mercifully, is far more powerful than the cult.

It is worth pointing out that Quebec was, until about 30 years ago, a true theocratic state -- somewhat like Iran. There was nothing in North America* the US and Canada like Quebec in 1950. Things changed quickly.

In the US marriage is a mess. One root of the gay marriage wars is a battle between state and religion about relative roles and power. That's a big and ancient battle, and the growing number of areligious and non-christian voters suggests how this will turn out.

The other root is of a personal nature:

Another GOP Sex Scandal - Yahoo! News

... Haggard, like his fellow Christian soldier James Dobson, also happens to be a leading opponent of gay marriage and an ardent critic of an amendment on the Colorado ballot November 7 that would give same-sex couples equal rights under the law and a supporter of another amendment that would prohibit gay marriage in the state. He's called gay marriage a 'sin' and 'devastating for the children of our nation.'

It's a routine that's won Haggard praise since as far back as 1993. 'During services at the New Life church,' the New York Times reported back then, 'Pastor Ted Haggard warns against the evils of homosexuality and adultery. His followers respond with exuberant clapping and shouts of 'Amen!' and 'That's right!''

In 2004, he led the push with Dobson and other religious right leaders for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Haggard's accuser, male escort Mike Jones, decided to finally speak up because 'I felt like I had to take a stand, and I cannot sit back anymore and hear [what] to me is an anti-gay message.'

Ted Haggard, like so many other homophobes, appears to have been battling his own personal "demon", namely homophilia. He's not the first to translate self-loathing into other-hatred. I wonder what the numbers are. My guess is that self-loathing, and in particular fear of one's own homophilia, is predominant among the virulent male opponents to gay marriage. Not every opponent mind you, mostly the ones who froth at the mouth.

* I caught this mistake myself. The land mass of NA currently includes, of course, the nations of the US, Canada, Mexico and a couple of French islands. Mexico in 1950 may have been like Quebec in 1950, I don't know much Mexican history.

Tangram: TIA by any other name

No surprise:

Schneier on Security: Total Information Awareness Is Back

None of us thought that meant the end of TIA, only that it would turn into a classified program and be renamed. Well, the program is now called Tangram, and it is classified...

Cool name. If I didn't have unlimited trust in the goodness of our Glorious Leaders I'd be worried ...

Aug 2008: Resveratrol increases cancer risk?

Yes, Red Wine Holds Answer. Check Dosage is a relatively sober summary of a study claiming a 20% increase in mouse longevity with megadoses of resveratrol - a substance found in Pinot Noir wine. I am reminded, however, of a recent study suggesting a genetic balancing act between cancer risk and aging rate. Humans that age more slowly seem more prone to cancer, humans that age more quickly are less prone. The two groups have about the same lifespan but die of different causes (cancer vs. heart disease perhaps).

So my suspicion would be that resveratrol tips the scales towards slower aging ... but leads to more cancer. Look for the headline in August 2008 ...

Update Jan 31, 2009: It's past August 2008 now, and I was wrong on this one. The academic literature is looking for anti-cancer benefits of resveratrol.

Larry Summers calls for smart populism

Larry Summers, formerly a treasury secretary and more recently of Harvard fame, now writes for the Financial times (emphasis mine):

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Columnists - The global middle cries out for reassurance

... Let us be frank. What the anxious global middle is told often feels like pretty thin gruel. The twin arguments that globalisation is inevitable and protectionism is counterproductive have the great virtue of being correct, but do not provide much consolation for the losers. Nor can they rally support for policies that maintain, let alone promote, international integration.

Economists rightly emphasise that trade, like other forms of progress, makes everyone richer by enabling them to buy goods at lower prices. But this offers small solace to those who fear their jobs will vanish.

Education is central to any economic strategy, but there is a limit to what it can do for workers in their 40s and beyond. Nor can education be a complete answer at a time when skilled computer programmers in India are paid less than $2,000 a month.

John Kenneth Galbraith was right when he observed: “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.” Meeting the needs of the anxious global middle is the economic challenge of our time.

In the US, the political pendulum is swinging left. The best parts of the progressive tradition do not oppose the market system; they improve on the outcomes it naturally produces. That is what we need today.

There are no easy answers. The economic logic of free, globalised, technologically sophisticated capitalism may well be to shift more wealth to the very richest and some of the very poorest in the world, while squeezing people in the middle.

Just as the Federal Housing Administration’s effort to make owner-occupied housing more available after the second world war was a crucial part of the policy approach that permitted the Marshall Plan to go forward, so also our success in advancing international integration will depend on what can be done for the great global middle.

Our response will affect not just the livelihoods of millions of our fellow citizens but also the prospects for continuing global integration, with all the prosperity and stability it has the potential to bring.

Summers is effectively echoing Krugman's call for the "smart populist" -- the heir to Teddy and Franklin. I have no ability to predict how the US electorate will respond. I would not have favored a populist six years ago, but Bush has broken me. If populism is the only other option, bring it on.

PS. Kudos for Summers for pointing out the obvious. Education is not a complete solution -- or even much of a partial solution.

GCH1 and chronic pain

This is not a gene you want your insurance company to know about:

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: New Gene May Help Predict and Treat Chronic Pain:

... The gch1 gene turns up in human pain, too. In a study of surgical disk removal for back pain, those with one copy of a gch1 variant--30 percent of the total--reported less frequent pain after surgery, the group found. Three percent of those studied had two copies of the variant and were at even lower risk for chronic pain. Similarly, in studies of temporary pain, people were less sensitive to pinches, heat and pressure if they possessed one or two copies of the gch1 variant. The protective variant becomes more active when chemically stimulated, suggesting that it kicks in after nerve damage and inflammation, and seems to work by influencing nitric oxide synthesis, the researchers report. 'We really think we've uncovered a completely novel pathway with a novel regulator of pain,' says Woolf, who founded a biotech to find inhibitors of the GCH1 enzyme. About 30 percent of people overall have the variant gene, he notes.

I suspect this won't pan out -- too simple. Even so, it's one bit of genetic information that might be best kept secret.

Why does evolution allow gay and lesbian humans?

Scientific American.com: Most Desirable Mates May Not Sire Prolific Offspring suggests evolutionary paradoxes like gay males may be related to gene-gender competition. A gene that helps one gender compete for mates may be "injurious" (in terms of reproductive output) to offspring of the opposite gender.

The phenomena has been demonstrated in fruit flies, now evolutionary biologists will be looking for examples in other animals, including (of course) humans.

I'll be watching to see if they're able to tie this into the peculiarity of the 'demographic transition' in which wealthy humans have fewer offspring than less wealthy humans. (Yes, I've read all the old economic explanations. I don't believe them.)

If this mechanism is in place it may contribute, says Pitnick, to maintaining a great deal of variation in the genome, opposing the conformity sexual selection seems to produce.

Curing data libels by poisoning the well

Our alleged sins and misdemeanors are widely available; worse yet, some of the sins are untrue. (Schneier on Security). Banks, airlines, marketers and Homeland Security don't care about the untruths -- as long as they are not too widespread. A few casualties can be ignored.

There is little hope of rescue from government, our rulers are hopelessly corrupt. Is there a way out?

There may be lessons in the techniques of spammers. They are increasingly adept at "poisoning the well"; feeding spam detectors messages that reduce their specificity. The spam detectors begin rejecting too many non-spam messages. The only quick fix is to make the detectors less sensitive, so more spam slips through.

Imagine if a group of mercenary black hats were to insert vast amounts of false data into huge numbers of credit records. If the error rate becomes too high, the information becomes worthless. There are then two options; either the industry gives up on reputation management (unlikely) or they invest in ensuring information is correct and verified. Either option is better than the current situation.

Berners-Lee on the future of HTML

The other day I asked my HINF studens who Tim Berners-Lee is. Nobody knew. I was tempted to fail everybody, but in addition to lacking that power I knew I was simply being an old curmudgeon. The world moves on, and Berners-Lee is an anti-celebrity. Even his blog doesn't identify him, save by the letters "timbl". I guess that's the way he wants it.

Today TBL affirmed what I've read elsewhere -- the XML version of HTML was stillborn.

Reinventing HTML | Decentralized Information Group (DIG) Breadcrumbs

... Some things are clearer with hindsight of several years. It is necessary to evolve HTML incrementally. The attempt to get the world to switch to XML, including quotes around attribute values and slashes in empty tags and namespaces all at once didn't work. The large HTML-generating public did not move, largely because the browsers didn't complain. Some large communities did shift and are enjoying the fruits of well-formed systems, but not all. It is important to maintain HTML incrementally, as well as continuing a transition to well-formed world, and developing more power in that world...

This is gracefully conceding to the inevitable. Guided evolution will be the future ...

Spolsky's guide to interviewing and hiring - version 3

Spolsky has rewritten his hiring guide: The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing (version 3.0) - Joel on Software.

These guides can be somewhat uncomfortable reading for the insecure; I don't feel I'd meet Joel's rigorous standards. On the other hand, allowing for the fact that most of the world is less perfect that Joel's planet, it's a concise and well written reference for your next candidate interview. Even if that candidate wouldn't get hired by Joel.

Family Medicine Notes and Pycnogenol: Is Jacob testing me?

Jacob wrote:

Family Medicine Notes

Pycnogenol for ADHD?
Not clear what's up with this .. here's a placeholder for more review ..

I tried to reply, but his comment system is broken. (Requires TypeKey authentication but doesn't support it ...). So, Jacob, here's the comment:

Uh, Jacob - you are testing to see if I'm reading, right?

This substance has never been screened for toxicity, drug interactions, side-effects, etc. If it actually has enough pharmaceutical activity to rival Ritalin it scares the pants off me. Ritalin is an unreasonably safe medication, almost nothing of like effectiveness is that non-toxic.

Interesting from a drug development perspective.

Terrifying from the viewpoint of an rationalist and ethical clinician.

The Retreat in detail: An emerging plan

A lead editorial in the Guardian lays out, in some detail, the expected retreat from Iraq. UK forces will leave, no matter the conditions, by the end of 2007. It's a reasonable outline, with no guarantee of avoiding civil war or anarchic genocide. The key is to pay for an arab speaking army to help secure Baghdad. That idea has turned up in a few places and seems to be the best possible outcome at this time.

Time to be very nice to Turkey and Egypt ...