Excellent discussion of randomness in everyday life

Leonard Mlodinow shows more than a touch of wisdom in this interview about randomness in every day life: What Are The Odds?.

Once upon a time I thought I could predict my future. I gave up that idea a long time ago. There are too many wild cards, too many unexpected opportunities.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the good parts of the show.

Another Cheney fan rediscovers waterboarding really is torture

Now if only we could persuade Limbaugh and Cheney to take the treatment (emphases mine)…

Mancow Waterboarded, Admits It's Torture | NBC Chicago

… WLS radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller decided to subject himself to … waterboarding live on his show.

… "I want to find out if it's torture," Mancow told his listeners Friday morning, adding that he hoped his on-air test would help prove that waterboarding did not, in fact, constitute torture.

.. With a Chicago Fire Department paramedic on hand,  Mancow was placed on a 7-foot long table, his legs were elevated, and his feet were tied up.  

Turns out the stunt wasn't so funny. Witnesses said Muller thrashed on the table, and even instantly threw the toy cow he was holding as his emergency tool to signify when he wanted the experiment to stop.  He only lasted 6 or 7 seconds.

"It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke,"Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child.  "It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back...It was instantaneous...and I don't want to say this: absolutely torture."

"I wanted to prove it wasn't torture," Mancow said.  "They cut off our heads, we put water on their face...I got voted to do this but I really thought 'I'm going to laugh this off.' "

Last year, Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens endured the same experiment -- and came to a similar conclusion. The conservative writer said he found the treatment terrifying, and was haunted by it for months afterward.

"Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture," Hitchens concluded in the article.

One the one hand, Mancow is a complete idiot*. How could he have failed to do even a trivial amount of research?

On the other hand, as a human being, he’s an improvement over Cheney, Limbaugh, Rumsfeld and the like. He at least has a sense of honor.

* In the modern sense of the word, as in someone who’s cognitively intact but voluntarily makes astoundingly bad choices.

Google needs to add permalinks to their social link generated feed page

Google generates a web view of the blog posts I share in Google reader.

That's great, but they're missing a killer feature.

I can link link to the page, but I can't create a link to a specific comment/reference pair on the page, such as this comment of mine

... (link) Fallows, who really knows better, slowly falls upon the nub of the matter.

There are a lot of good-enough amateur writers and thinkers in the world.

No, not usually as good as a professional journalist, but pretty darned good.

That's always been true, but over the past 17 years the cost of entry to the world of publishing has fallen by a factor of ... about 10,000.

Damned, that's disruptive.

Journalism needs to refocus on core strengths and value. The old equation doesn't work.

Oh, and newsprint is dead, dead, dead.

Google needs to add an inline permalink to the generated page, so we can reference a Google-generated feed-share with all associated notes and comments.

IBM should buy Bloglines and roll it into Lotus Connections

I was once a Bloglines customer, but Google Reader surpassed them years ago. Bloglines didn’t have the money to compete; their inability to produce a good mobile product in 2008 was the last straw for me.

Happily, they’re still around. I can’t see how they survive though.

There is a better future. In my corporate life I’ve been confounded by the lack of a decent, shareable, web-based feed reader for inside-the-firewall Sharepoint and other blogs. There aren’t even any decent Windows desktop feed readers left (though I’ve not tried the astoundingly horrible Outlook 2007 reader with SP2).

IBM wants to compete in this subscription/collaboration world with Lotus Connections, but their current web reader component is less than ideal.

Bingo.

IBM acquires or licenses Bloglines and funds Active Directory integration to support Sharepoint feed integration.

Win-win.

Dementia is normal - and what that means

In a post-industrial age of low birth rates the greatest economic challenge for wealthy nations is acquired cognitive disability -- better known as dementia.

So we ought to think clearly about dementia. It doesn't help that my generation of physicians were taught to think of dementia as an "abnormal" disease like the flu, rather than an all-but-inevitable consequence of aging.

A recent popular review, which was ironically intended to be inspiring, underscores how "normal" (typical) dementia is (emphases mine) ...

BRAIN POWER: At the Bridge Table, Clues to a Lucid Old Age

By BENEDICT CAREY

... In recent years scientists have become intensely interested in what could be called a super memory club — the fewer than one in 200 of us who ... have lived past 90 without a trace of dementia....

... Laguna Woods, a sprawling retirement community of 20,000 south of Los Angeles, is at the center of the world’s largest decades-long study of health and mental acuity in the elderly. Begun by University of Southern California researchers in 1981 and called the 90+ Study, it has included more than 14,000 people aged 65 and older, and more than 1,000 aged 90 or older.

... researchers have also demonstrated that the percentage of people with dementia after 90 does not plateau or taper off, as some experts had suspected. It continues to increase, so that for the one in 600 people who make it to 95, nearly 40 percent of the men and 60 percent of the women qualify for a diagnosis of dementia.

... it is precisely that ability to form new memories of the day, the present, that usually goes first in dementia cases, studies in Laguna Woods and elsewhere have found.

The very old who live among their peers know this intimately, and have developed their own expertise, their own laboratory. They diagnose each other, based on careful observation....

...Here at Laguna Woods, many residents make such delicate calculations in one place: the bridge table.

Contract bridge requires a strong memory. It involves four players, paired off, and each player must read his or her partner’s strategy by closely following what is played. Good players remember every card played and its significance for the team. Forget a card, or fall behind, and it can cost the team — and the social connection — dearly.

“When a partner starts to slip, you can’t trust them,” said Julie Davis, 89, a regular player living in Laguna Woods. “That’s what it comes down to. It’s terrible to say it that way, and worse to watch it happen. But other players get very annoyed. You can’t help yourself.”

... Later, the partner stares uncertainly at the cards on the table. “Is that ——”

“We played that trick already,” Ms. Cummins says. “You’re a trick behind.”

Most regular players at Laguna Woods know of at least one player who, embarrassed by lapses, bowed out of the regular game. “A friend of mine, a very good player, when she thought she couldn’t keep up, she automatically dropped out,” Ms. Cummins said. “That’s usually what happens.”

Yet it is part of the tragedy of dementia that, in many cases, the condition quickly robs people of self-awareness. They will not voluntarily abandon the one thing that, perhaps more than any other, defines their daily existence...

... In studies of the very old, researchers in California, New York, Boston and elsewhere have found clues to that good fortune. For instance, Dr. Kawas’s group has found that some people who are lucid until the end of a very long life have brains that appear riddled with Alzheimer’s disease. In a study released last month, the researchers report that many of them carry a gene variant called APOE2, which may help them maintain mental sharpness.

Dr. Nir Barzilai of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine has found that lucid Ashkenazi Jewish centenarians are three times more likely to carry a gene called CETP, which appears to increase the size and amount of so-called good cholesterol particles, than peers who succumbed to dementia...

Imagine how hellish that bridge table can be. Every game, a test. Show weakness, slip, and death is your fate. First social death, then the grave. It makes professional baseball look like ... child's play.

I'd bet a good amount that the "protective" "social" effect of playing bridge is bull poop. This is all about a survivor-effect correlation. Only the genetically gifted slow agers can play. On the other hand, I doubt that even the best of those bridge players could handle a modern knowledge worker job -- they are good for their age, but they are not immortal.

So if we (mostly) set aside wistful hopes of some kind of mental activity that protects against normal, all-but-inevitable, age related dementia, what do we have left to learn from these and similar studies?

We know it helps to be born clever, but that only gives your airplane more fuel -- it doesn't by itself slow the normal process of brain mush. Many brilliant thinkers with, at their peak, one in a million minds, are relatively disabled by their 70s - though still better off than most of us.

We can't do much with the brains we're born with, but we do have animal model evidence, and less definitive human evidence (because we don't randomly experiment then autopsy humans), that physical exercise is protective against normal dementia. Seems bizarre to me, but it holds up. On the other hand, head injury accelerates dementia, so don't make your exercise football, contact hockey, boxing, or horse jumping.

Exercise and head whacks aside, this is all about genes and medicines. It's about identifying those whose brains hold up longer, then figuring out the trick of it, then looking for a medicine that will help the average person. It's slow, hard work, but success is worth trillions in economic growth and a significant reduction in human suffering. By that metric, we're grossly underfunding this research. The potential payoff is enormous compared to say, cancer research. (I've been pointing this out, incidentally, for at least twenty years. It's not hard to do the math.)

Barring any breakthroughs, however, we boomers need to get real about our future. We expect we're going to have to keep working to 70 or beyond, but you can't cheat mother nature. Dementia is the end-point of a disabling process that starts, for most of us, when we're about 25. We'll be working, but we'll be doing more grocery bagging than particle physics.

Maybe we should think about how to make the less cognitive life more appealing. Maybe we ought to think about how society supports those with cognitive disabilities at all ages ...

The GOP's new message: we are a nation of cowards

Gail Collins said it well today.

The GOP's meme of the day is that we're a nation of cowards; we cannot tolerate evildoers living within massive prisons anywhere near our homes. Instead we should leave then near, say, Cuban homes. Or, better yet, kill 'em all without trial.

We are still a sick nation, but the GOP is sicker than the rest of us.

Get a freakin' grip America! Show some spine for a change.

It must be a sad thing to have to give allegiance to the modern GOP. If their idea of "reform" is Newt Gingrich then the party should be euthanized. America needs a new alternative to the Dems.

Obama vs. Cheney is as simple as Good vs. Evil

I really am a shades of gray guy.

Sometimes, though, the shades are pretty extreme.

The Obama vs. Cheney speeches are about as simple as good vs. evil.

No, Cheney's not (yet) a mass murderer. He does, however, want America to travel a road well worn by evil regimes. He champions an evil cause.

No, Obama is far from a saint. He does, however, call on America to remember its nobility.

It's rare to have such a clear choice.

Obama stands firm on closing Guantanamo |World news | guardian.co.uk

Barack Obama today laid out a broad case for closing the Guantánamo Bay prison and banning the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that have been condemned as torture – while accusing his opponents of wanting to scare Americans to win political battles.

In a grand hall at the US national archives, standing directly in front of original copies of the US constitution and declaration of independence, Obama said the current legal and political battles in Washington over the fate of the 240 prisoners there stemmed not from his decision to close the facility, but from George Bush's move seven years ago to open it...

... , Dick Cheney gave a rebuttal at a conservative Washington think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. The former vice-president defended many of the Bush administration policies Obama is now unraveling, and mentioned either "September 11" or "9/11" 25 times.

Cheney said Saddam Hussein had "known ties" to terrorists, an apparent rehashing of the widely discredited Bush administration effort to link the Iraqi dictator to the September 11 2001 hijackers.

... Obama today said that indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay and the prison's harsh interrogation methods had undermined the rule of law, alienated America from the rest of the world, served as a rallying cry and recruiting symbol for terrorists, risked the lives of American troops by making it less likely enemy combatants would surrender, and increased the likelihood American prisoners of war would be mistreated. The camp's existence discouraged US allies from cooperating in the fight against international terrorism, he said.

"There is also no question that Guantánamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world," he said. "Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al-Qaida that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law."

Calling Guantánamo "a mess, a misguided experiment", he condemned the re-emergence of bitter political fighting over the prison and the future of its 240 inmates.

"We will be ill-served by some of the fear-mongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue," he said. "Listening to the recent debate, I've heard words that are calculated to scare people rather than educate them; words that have more to do with politics than protecting our country."

... He acknowledged that a number of Guantánamo prisoners could not be prosecuted yet posed a clear threat to the US: those who had trained at al-Qaida camps, commanded Taliban troops, pledged loyalty to Osama bin Laden and sworn to kill Americans.

"These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States," he said.

He pledged to construct a new legal framework to deal with those prisoners, saying that if they warranted long-term detention the decision should be made not by the president alone but with congressional and judicial oversight...

One day your children may ask, did you stand with evil or with good.

Now is the time you will determine your answer.

Microsoft ads wound Apple. You know my number Apple …

From a few personal anecdotes, I think the ad agency that created the “laptop hunters” ads deserves its bonuses …

CHART OF THE DAY: Microsoft's 'Laptop Hunters' Ads Are Hurting Apple (MSFT, AAPL)

… Microsoft's (MSFT) "Laptop Hunters" ad campaign focuses on the price difference between Windows PCs and expensive Apple (AAPL) Macs. The commercials have raised consumers' perception of Microsoft's "value" -- and have hurt Apple…

So, Apple.

Are you ready to talk yet?

Yeah, it’s me. One of the geeks you forgot about. You know, your volunteer evangelists. Yeah, we’re still around. It’s just that you haven’t done anything for us for a while.

Take me (why not?). iPhoto has had the same lethal movie export bug for at least 3 years, but Apple doesn’t care. iPhoto Library import? Apple doesn’t care. Aperture metadata on albums? Nope, doesn’t care. Support for open file formats in iWork? Nope.

Then there’s MobileMe.

Oh, and iChat abandonware and Apple’s multi-faceted serial calendaring and contacts screw-ups.

Yes, I know. Only geeks care about this stuff.

Thing is, maybe Apple needs their geeks to praise ‘em. When value perceptions can fall this quickly, Apple’s support is weaker than it seems.

Pay attention Apple. Fix my problems, and maybe I’ll say something nice about you.

Memories of the Chevette

I'm not a car guy. Not at all. Even so, this is worth reading...

Sunday Times: Honda Insight Review

... The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit...

A dog on a ham slicer?! Yech.

Which reminds me of the time I rented a Chevette. The Wikipedia article doesn't do justice to the 1975 model. It was made in America when GM made incredibly lousy cars, far lousier than anything sold today, and it was a desperate flail at a mileage target.

I remember merging onto a highway on a hill and watching a truck grow large behind me as the Chevette's lawnmower engine screamed in agony.

Maybe Honda can rethink this one?

Relativity as a consequence of quantum entanglement

Useful at parties ...

Relativity as a Consequence of Quantum Entanglement: A Quantum Logic Gate Space Model for the Universe

Everything in the Universe is assumed to be compromised of pure reversible quantum Toffoli gates, including empty space itself...

Obama's retreat strengthens calls for a Truth Commission

Scanning the NYT this evening, it's not hard to see a consensus emerging. Even those who weren't in favor of an American Truth Commission, like Dowd, have come around.

Obama's retreat on the photos and the tribunals shows this is too tough a problem for him to lead on alone. We do need an investigative committee. We need to know what Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their scummy minions did.

The state of wilderness tracking

I've a personal interest in the state of wilderness tracking and communications. It's much less advanced than many imagine.

The Economist tells us that's going to change soon...

...The first generation of phone satellites are coming to the end of their natural life...

A second generation of satellites, which are about to be launched by Globalstar atop trusty old Soyuz rockets from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, will whisk data around the planet at a far more respectable speed of 250 kilobits a second.

By later next year, when Globalstar has all 24 of its new satellites in orbit, high-quality voice and 3G data transmission will be possible from anywhere on the planet, except for polar latitudes. In making broadband available more or less anywhere anytime, Globalstar reckons it is six years ahead of the competition.

Your correspondent almost cannot wait. Globalstar already sells a tempting little $170 device called SPOT, which can send your GPS location to friends and family, along with a preprogrammed message and a link to Google Maps that lets them track your progress...

This was the vision of the 1994 McCaw-Gates Teledesic (often mis-spelled teledisc) project; that project was to provide worldwide internet coverage and initially involved 840 satellites.

Regional airlines, emergent fraud and enlightenment 2.0

When Salon's Patrick Smith says there's a cultural problem with the regional airline industry, I take his word for it ...

Ask the pilot | Patrick Smith | Salon Technology

... In the end, this is a terrible black mark for the regional airline industry, and it is liable to become a litigation nightmare for Colgan, the airplane manufacturer, and other parties as well.

Though, to some extent, the regionals had it coming. Traveling aboard regional aircraft remains extraordinarily safe, and I am not disparaging the thousands of professional, fully competent pilots out there who fly them for a living. Further, there is no need or reason for the public to be fearful or apprehensive about flying on a regional aircraft. Nevertheless, as highlighted here a few weeks ago, there is something dysfunctional in the cultures at these companies. There will be a lot of focus on pilot training in the weeks and months ahead, and good for that -- but the problem runs deeper. Between the lousy pay, the high-stress working conditions and the often hostile management under which regional pilots work ... all of this, on some level, is a potential risk to safety. And it needs to change.

I don't think this class of problem is unique to the regional airlines. I think it's one aspect of a culture of emergent fraud that's grown up in America over the past twenty to thirty years.

This morning I can't find a recent article I read on the gap between how people think they'll behave in ethically challenging circumstances and how they really do behave (much worse, as you might guess), but we do have lots of examples of how physicians are much more corruptible than they imagine. Astoundingly, even most politicians think they're not particularly corrupted by their donors. In the right economic and cultural climate fraud is as inevitable as the sunset.

Fraud will always be with us. Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists speculate that "fraud wars" drove the evolution of sentience. Fraud made us human, but life on a small, crowded, high tech planet means we have to beat it back to the low end of the historic range. That's a core part of the enlightenment 2.0 agenda.

Cheney/Bush and the GOP were fertilizers for fraud and deception. We're only starting to recover. The Colgan story will be soon forgotten, but it's a small marker of a much bigger problem.

Good news from India

Certainly Congress must be imperfect, but the alternatives worried most rationalists.

So this is good news.

BBC NEWS | South Asia | India opts for the middle path

.... It is a vote against ideological, language, caste and class extremism. It is the victory of the middle vote,' says historian Ramachandra Guha.

The vote was to some extent (how much I don't know) also a vote on India's current relationship with the United States. I wonder if Obama made that easier, especially for India's 140 million Muslims.

I ask Wolfram|Alpha …

I ask Wolfram|Alpha ..

Are you Skynet?

It replies



Not exactly a denial.

Update 5/16/09: I tried a real question - "What is the Muslim population of India?" and it didn't know. Google "knew". Rough start.