iTunes U - the Singularity is behind us

Despite my IOT habit, I've only today rediscovered iTunes U in iTunes 9...

This still brings tears to my eyes. As I (incorrectly - Bill Gates Sr only did the foreword) wrote in 2006 about an early casualty of tech churn ...

The quiet demise of the CD

... I remember reading the book written by Bill Gate's father (yes, his father) called 'The New Papyrus'. It was all about the how the data CD would revolutionize the world. This was before the net became public. I was amazed by the CD back then, and I wrote a letter to a Canadian development organization on how it could dramatically change the delivery of knowledge to what was then called the 'third world'...

iTunes U, Aaronson’s MIT lectures on theoretical computer science, MIT OpenCourseWare, OpenAccess journals and the BBC’s In Our Time are now freely available to a good portion of the world. Even in poor nations, they are likely accessible in many universities.

I beat on Apple and Google all the time, but, really, the iPhone and iTunes U would stun a geek of 1986. We entropics do not appreciate how far we have traveled.

Gawande and NEJM cost of care roundtable

I really hope my man Obama (apologies for the familiarity, but I'll never again see a President I like so much) gets his health care bill.

At best, however, it will only be the start of the journey. We haven't even begun to talk seriously about health care costs, and about getting the best possible care that we can afford to provide every American.

We'd be better off if the GOP weren't a smoldering wreck of a party; even the best government is no substitute for well managed markets. (Obviously the problem with unmanaged health care markets is the ice floe.)

Heck, even 16 years ago we had far more intelligent discussions about health care costs and systems than we're having now. Maybe we're getting senile, or maybe we're seeing the side-effects of relative media impoverishment.

Still, even among the senile, there are often moments of relatively clarity. The inimitable Gawande, mutant time traveler extraordinaire, is at it again in a NEJM roundtable discussion.

Briefly, Gawande and his fellow gurus are with me. We need to deal with costs, but Americans are completely unable to even begin an intelligent discussion -- and the Gaia-infected GOP is too devoted to ending human civilization to make any kind of contribution.

So we do coverage now, and hope we come up with a way to slow the progression of Alzheimer's Disease. That would both lower health care costs and contribute to a more intelligent discussion in 2014.

Fear the Cloud - Blogger's unfixed 5000 post limit

Today I discovered that several hundred early posts in this blog were no longer searchable or editable. I'm not the only victim of this hole in the Cloud ...

Gordon's Tech: Blogger is broken - the undocumented 5000 post limit

Blogger has an undocumented 5,000 post limit. At least one of my blogs is well past that limit. Using the blogger dashboard I am unable to search for, view, or edit about 400 posts written in 2003 and 2004.

The bug was recognized in July 22nd 2009. At that time Google was 'working on a fix'.

It's almost October, so they may not be working terribly hard...

Blogger is not a first tier Google product like Search or Maps, but it's no side-project to be casually forgotten. So what conclusion should we draw from an unfixed bug like this one?

Fear the Cloud. (See also - Gmail outages)

Update: This bug led me to review my July and August 2003 posts. In those days this was primarily a tech notes blog, but by Sept I was putting that material into a blog that later became tech.kateva.org. I scanned a mix of old tech posts and the kind of material found now in notes.kateva.org.

I'm still annoyed at Google's sullenly unfixed bug, but I did enjoy reviewing the old material. I back-linked from some newer posts to 2003 versions of the same thing ...

Gift exchanges and lawn mower tips

I am fond of gift trades.

Gregies small engine repair is about a mile from my home. It's been there for about 40 years. The owner has candy for kids and treats for dogs.

When the owner repaired my mower two years ago, he told me it was pretty crummy. Even so he didn't want me to throw it out. I think for him engines are personal.

When I got tired of my lousy mower I went to him for a new one. I was too late though, winter is coming and he's done restocking mowers. He told me where to buy a new one.

Before I left, I gave him my old mower. It would cost me money to dispose of, and he wanted it. I didn't ask for money.

In return he gave me advice. He taught me how to adjust the strike plate in my old push mower, and now, for the first time I can remember, it seems to work. He told me to not to use my new mower on steep ground for more than about 20-30 seconds, because in a modern 4 cylinder engine the oil won't circulate well enough. [1]

He also, indirectly, explained why push mowers really can't really come back [2].

I appreciate these gift exchanges. They are one reason I rarely sell used items -- I prefer to give them away.

[1] In older 2 cylinder models the oil is mixed with gas, they don't have this weakness. There's more Free Advice on his web site. Good luck finding methanol-free gas in Minnesota.

[2] The blades must be periodically sharpened, and it is slow, tedious work. In a world where labor is costly they're too expensive to maintain. Push mowers can only really return if the sharpening problem is solved. (Significant money may await those who solve the sharpening problem.)

Beware the traps of the Software World

I remember the World before I walked in Software.

So I know Something that is True and Important (STI). Those who were born to Software know it in their bones, but they don't know to speak it. Only we between worlds can tell these terrible secrets.

Gather close dear reader; I would have done well to understand this some years ago.

The STI is that that the Software World is kin to the Badlands of South Dakota.

When you Walk in Software you walk among mazes and valleys and cliffs. Promising paths end in sharp drops and hard walls.

Developers build things that seem right, until you walk off the end of the metaphor. The problem is more than bugs and complexity, it is something innate to imagination made digital.

In the physical world, we don't use spend months using a drill, then discover that everything we've build with it must be abandoned. In the world of Software tools, that can happen. We can use software to store knowledge and meaning, then lose all the knowledge when the software stops working without replacement.

In the physical world it may be impossible to find a good toaster, but it's easy to figure out that a new toaster is no good. In the Software world you can invest months in learning a new tool before you find the fatal flaw. Five years ago I though Apple would enable merging of iPhoto Libraries (sorry, six years ago), but their marketing team decided that was an Aperture feature, not an iPhoto feature. [1]

In the physical world, it doesn't take five years to realize that your car isn't very good.

Perhaps, to a creature of Software, the physical world would seem tricksy. For a creature that's evolved to dirt and blood, however, the Software World is more treacherous -- even if it doesn't rip limbs off as well as a chainsaw might.

In the world of Software, explorers pay a high price. We Pioneers need to be far more careful about what tools and solutions we use, and we need find new ways to navigate this space.

We must train Scouts and Pioneers who will return from the badlands to warn all of the horrors of Sharepoint and Microsoft Word ...

[1] Yes, I know about the heroic 3rd party merge efforts of iPhoto Library Manager.

Health care reform – the reality problem

The problem, at long last, is becoming hard to avoid.

If everyone buys insurance, then our current health care system can provide “Lexus” care for a cost of about $13-15K for a family of 3-4 persons.

That’s the kind of care that my family enjoys. It’s not bad, really.

The problem, of course, is that Americans expect a bill more like $6-8K/year. We can’t do that in America. If we were to deliver health services at this price point, they’d be “Manhattan subway” services. An excellent form of transportation, but loud, smelly and lacking plush carpets.

So we have a reality problem.

Update 9/16/09: Economix has a relevant post. The $13-15K number turns out match a Kaiser study.

The roots of Klan 2.0 and 912 – A justified fear of change

The Klan, as I recall, had two major incarnations. The first was as a successful terrorist movement following the American Civil War. Klan 2.0, in the 1920s, was a reaction to the extraordinary cultural transitions of the early 20th century.

I’ve speculated that the birthers, baggers and deathers are also reacting to an increasingly incomprehensible world. Turns out the Senate minority leader might agree with me ..

Maureen Dowd - Rapping Joe’s Knuckles - NYTimes.com

… as the minority leader, John Boehner, put it, are “scared to death that the country that they grew up in is not going to be the country that their kids and grandkids grew up in”…

I say might because I can’t find Dowd’s version of Boehner’s words anywhere else. Boehner’s quote appears with intriguingly different wording in a GOP blog:

"...when I talk to people at these rallies, it was pretty clear these people are scared to death," Boehner said. "And they’re scared to death about the future for their kids and their grandkids and the facts that the American dream may not be alive for their kids and grandkids."

and in a CQ Politics transcript

“George, when I talk to people at these rallies, it was pretty clear people are scared to death. And they’re scared to death about the future for their kids and their grandkids, and the facts that the American dream may not be alive for their kids and grandkids. That’s what really scares them.”

So what did Boehner really say? Both, one, or neither? Anyone know?

The common thread, at the least, is fear. These middle class white men fear that (their) America is changing, and that their male children face a bleak future.

They are right to be afraid. Testosterone is no longer helpful in the vast majority of well paying corporate jobs or in advanced education. The advantages of melanin depletion are still strong, but this recessive trait will continue its secular decline. Corporate employment requires a level of disruptive interpersonal tolerance that is difficult for this group. Globalized competition is eliminating employment options for all but the genetically gifted – and this group is not gifted.

They are wrong, of course, to think that they can stop this change. Or at least, to think they can stop it without turning American in a 21st century version of 1960s India – isolated, impoverished and frozen in time.

Sadly, like a fearful dog, they are biting the hand of the man most likely to help them – the community organizer turned President. Their fear, and their limited understanding, has turned them into pawns of fame seekers and power seekers alike.

Managing the irrational, yet entirely correct, fears of the baggers and the 912 Project is a great challenge for American politics. If we can’t figure out a way to ease their fears, we may yet live through the equivalent of Klan 3.0.

At least I’m old enough to have enjoyed the golden ‘90s! The 21st century has been tough for America, and it’s not going to get better soon.

Update 9/19/09: Frank Rich has an editorial with a related but distinct perspective.

Jimmy Carter

I do like Jimmy Carter. Whatever he was as President, he's been an awesome post-President ...

War Room - Salon.com

... I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man,' Carter told NBC News' Brian Williams. 'I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that share the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans. And that racism inclination still exists. And I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of the belief of many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply....

Climate change deniers: fame is its own reward

George Monbiot challenged a professional climate change denier, Australian geologist Ian Plimer, to answer ten written questions about Plimer's recent book.

Plimer promised to respond, then chickened out.

He didn't have the courage of his own con.

Which brings us to the fuel for Plimer and Beck alike ...

This professor of denial can't even answer his own questions on climate change| George Monbiot

... There is nothing unusual about Professor Plimer. Most of the prominent climate change deniers who are not employed solely by the fossil fuel industry have a similar profile: men whose professional careers are about to end or have ended already. Attacking climate science looks like a guaranteed formula for achieving the public recognition they have either lost or never possessed. Such people will keep emerging for as long as the media are credulous enough to take them seriously...

Indeed, they'll even take comments from a 3rd tier blog like this one. Fame is a wonderful drug.

Tech churn: The Franklin Planner and Google Calendar

In the too brief glory days of the Palm, between the Palm III and the Vx, my wife used a Palm III and the Palm Desktop.

Then Palm added color and died.

I fought on to the bloody end, but Emily was wiser. She returned to the Franklin Planners we’d started using in 1994, when life got too messy for Letts of London.

Alas, we live now in the tech churn days of regency – when the old is gone and the young are unready. Change unwanted is upon us and the change we want is not yet ready.

Franklin’s business market has fallen to the BlackBerry and Exchange Server, and their home market is tempted by cheaper solutions, and – painfully – iPhones. Their web site is decrepit, their offerings increasingly disorganized. They appear to be going the way of the wrist watch.

So goes the aged, but the replacements are unready. We’re not going to run Exchange Server at home, and Apple’s calendaring products are, to put it diplomatically, hideous failures. Google’s alternatives are the best of the lot, by which I mean they are barely acceptable if you’re an uber-geek.

Which I am, so we have a solution. In two weeks Emily’s cursed BlackBerry Pearl contract concludes, she’ll get my iPhone 3G, and I’ll get the new contract 3GS*. She’ll likely complement her gCal/Calendar.app pair with a wall calendar and a wire bound notebook.

The Franklin Planner will move into history, but I bet she’ll miss it – especially when Google-Apple wars blow our calendaring out of the water.

Tech churn means that it will be ten years before it’s all somewhat seamless again.

* Yes, I get my new phone off her contract and she gets my aging 3G. Sorry. In the words of Sméagol … “My preciousssss”. [1]

Update 9/26/09: I lied. Emily, you see, reads my blog. She got the new phone in a lovely black blue case, and she was quite delighted. After playing with the fully prepped and loaded 3GS for a few minutes she went into deep future shock. She has a new appreciation for Apple's Satanic genius.

Pooping prions - this is more than interesting

Stanley Prusiner won his Nobel prize in 1997 at age 55 for discovering that protein malformation could be contagious. He called the twisted proteins that could catalyze like malformations prions.

Turns out he's still at work ...

Study Gives Insight Into Spread of Chronic Wasting Disease - NYTimes.com

... Researchers are reporting that they have solved a longstanding mystery about the rapid spread of a fatal brain infection in deer, elk and moose in the Midwest and West.

The infectious agent, which leads to chronic wasting disease, is spread in the feces of infected animals long before they become ill, according to a study published online Wednesday by the journal Nature. The agent is retained in the soil, where it, along with plants, is eaten by other animals, which then become infected.

The finding explains the extremely high rates of transmission among deer, said the study’s lead author, Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner, director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco.

First identified in deer in Colorado in 1967, the disease is now found throughout 14 states and 2 Canadian provinces. It leads to emaciation, staggering and death.

Unlike other animals, Dr. Prusiner said, deer give off the infectious agent, a form of protein called a prion, from lymph tissue in their intestinal linings up to a year before they develop the disease. By contrast, cattle that develop a related disease, mad cow, do not easily shed prions into the environment but accumulate them in their brains and spinal tissues.

There is no evidence to date that humans who hunt, kill and eat deer have developed chronic wasting disease. Nor does the prion that causes it pass naturally to other animal species in the wild....

... In captive herds, up to 90 percent of animals develop the disease, Dr. Prusiner said. In wild herds, a third of animals can be infected...

... prions tended to bind to clay in soil and to persist indefinitely. When deer graze on infected dirt, prions that are tightly bound to clay will persist for long periods in their intestinal regions. So there is no chance chronic wasting disease will be eradicated, he said. Outside the laboratory, nothing can inactivate prions bound to soil. They are also impervious to radiation.

So what's the chance that this is the only instance of fecal-oral Prion disease in all of history?

Right. This is probably as common as dirt.

We're going to be learning a lot more about fecal-oral prion disorders in all animals, including humans. We'll also learn how organisms adapt to an indestructible infectious "agent".

This is a big discovery.

Global finance and parasites

A year after the crash, Wall Street banks are little changed - but bigger. Reform has failed, and though Obama is trying few expect him to succeed.

Kudos to those veterans who predicted nothing would be fixed.

I don't blame Obama. Between the Great Recession, Health insurance reform, North Korea, Peak Oil, global warming, Pakistan, the Bush legacy of torture, corruption and the dismantling of government, Africa and Klan 2.0, the man has a few things on his mind.

In the absence of Presidential authority bank reform is a long shot. This gang can buy a Senator for pin money and a Congressman for loose change [1].

As they say in DC, "If you want a friend, get a dog. If you want justice, give up."

This time the US government can't help us. What's a small investor to do?

Personally, I want to read a book called "Investing in a Crooked Market", but I haven't found it yet. So, what the heck, I'll speculate that ...

1. Without real reform we can expect that banks will continue to pick investor's pockets -- including the pockets of their own shareholders.
2. There'll be a mega-Recession every 7 to 10 years and we'll read more about 19th century "cycles".
3. Traditional "value investing" will become a chump's game.
4. Investors will look to well regulated markets in Europe and Canada, forsaking London and the United States.

There's probably some way to make money playing this crooked game but it has nothing to do with creating value. It's about cold blooded application of the Greater Fool principle in a bubble economy.

In the longer run, I wonder if we can think of these corrupt banks as a form of overly successful parasite on the current model of corporate finance. Biological parasites weaken their hosts, and these Finance parasites will have the same effect. They'll reduce the competitive advantage of stocks over other forms of corporate finance.

In time a new way to fund corporations will emerge as an alternative to the traditional publicly traded company. The old stock market will die off, and new parasites will emerge to start the cycle all over again ...

Update: When I wrote this post I created a new tag to group my Great Recession posts. Along the way I came across a 2004 speech by Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach. I'd say he came out of this looking rather clever.

Update 9/15/09: Consider regulatory oversight. Regulatory agencies breed lobbyists. Lobbyists breed campaign donations and post-political wealth. Therefore Senators want regulatory agencies. The more agencies, the more "regulatory arbitrage"-- opportunities to game the agencies. So banks and other regulated for profit corporations also want more regulatory agencies.

Since both politicians and finance corporations want more regulatory agencies we get more of them every year. Reform seems impossible. (NPR 9/15/09)

Update 9/15/09b: Chris Mealy, in comments, points to a reference (pdf) on using a Proxy Exchange to mitigate some of the problems of corporate non-governance.

Surprise - physicians are big Obama supporters

Physicians are big "ObamaCare" supporters.

Surprise. Not.

Poll Finds Most Doctors Support Public Option : NPR

... a new survey finds some surprising results: A large majority of doctors say there should be a public option.

When polled, "nearly three-quarters of physicians supported some form of a public option, either alone or in combination with private insurance options," says Dr. Salomeh Keyhani. She and Dr. Alex Federman, both internists and researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, conducted a random survey, by mail and by phone, of 2,130 doctors. They surveyed them from June right up to early September.

Most doctors — 63 percent — say they favor giving patients a choice that would include both public and private insurance. That's the position of President Obama and of many congressional Democrats. In addition, another 10 percent of doctors say they favor a public option only; they'd like to see a single-payer health care system. Together, the two groups add up to 73 percent...

This is only "surprising" if you think the AMA, which more or less supports insurance reform, represents physicians.

In reality the AMA represents surgeons and proceduralists. These specialists may well lose income with health insurance reform, so it's impressive that the AMA is not marching with the 9/12 neo-Klan. Even many physicians who've most benefitted from the crazed economics of American healthcare know it's broken.

On the other hand, most physicians are not surgeons, and most don't belong to the AMA. Support in this group is probably in the 85% range since reform may be relatively beneficial -- and it will help their patients.

Physicians are just one of Obama's secret weapons. He's keeping them in reserve on the left flank. On the right flank are the nurses ...

Montreal style rent-a-bike coming to Minneapolis?

Looks like Minneapolis is going to introduce the public bikes we saw in Montreal ...

" ... Nonprofit Nice Ride Minnesota plans to inaugurate a $3.7 million system of 1,000 heavy-duty bikes and 80 locking kiosks in and around downtown Minneapolis next May. For an annual fee of $60 or a daily charge of $5, you'll be able to take unlimited free rides of up to half an hour between the computerized locking stations..."

We saw quite a few riders on these Bixi ultra-rugged bikes. In Montreal if you exceed the 30 min ride, the cost is another $5 or so. Beyond that the price rises exponentially; the pricing ensures that riders bike between the locking kiosks and that bikes are moved into circulation when not in use. The sheer mass of these low performance/high reliability bikes makes long trips unfeasible anyway.

I don't know if they'll play as well in Minneapolis. As much as I love the Twins, they're not in Montreal's league for tourist attractions. On the other hand, we do have a marvelous network of bicycle paths.

It's a cool experiment. I'll probably buy a one year pass just to help encourage them.

Update 10/30/09: The NYT has some background. The bikes are "Velib", they cost about $3,500 each, and they originated in Paris. Unfortunately, they've become the target of Parisian sociopathies and have been heavily vandalized. I think they'll do a lot better in the Twin Cities.

Update 6/4/10: Visiting Montreal, I noticed a significant problem with the scheme. They now allow no more than two bikes to be charged on one credit card. So if you have one parent and two children, or two parents and three children, you're out of luck.

Birthers, Deathers and Truthers - the reason behind the madness

Birthers believe Barack Obama's birth certificate was faked. Deathers believe Obama's health care reform bill is Soylent Green in disguise. Truthers believe the 9/11 attack was an inside job, that mines detonated prior to airplane impact.

Millions believe these things. I've been astonished to find that even learned people fall for one or the other -- particularly people raised in cultures where the media makes our flacks look good.

Millions believe in these stories, but they can't for the life of them spin an evidence-based or even rationally empiric argument for their positions.

So should we mock the weak, or, with greater wisdom, accept that Reason is a hard road that few follow?

I would say neither.

I have had the opportunity to observe someone with a quite low IQ be right when I am wrong. True, he cannot usually explain his reasoning - perhaps because he cannot translate the workings of his mind into words. Nonetheless, he's right more often than chance would allow. Sometimes the weak are wrong, but sometimes there's a rightness they cannot express.

So instead of mocking them, I will try to articulate the unexpressed reasoning of the Birthers, Deathers and and Truthers.

The Birther claims are utterly implausible. Yet, how plausible is that the same America that reelected George Bush and Dick Cheney would elect a brilliant champion of Reason with a Black wife, Black children, a Black father and the middle name of Hussein?

Really. Think about it. America?! It's absolutely implausible.

The Birthers are delusional, but perhaps they are reacting to the sheer implausibility of Barack Obama. Myself I tend to suspect the benign intervention of extra-terrestrials.

The Deathers are likewise perversely wrong about the health care reform mission. They are not wrong to worry however. If Obama succeeds, as I think he will, the world of health care will be recast. Nobody knows what all the side-effects and unanticipated consequences will be. The Deathers' are right to be fearful, though they should fear the status quo more.

Lastly, the Truthers. To defend their irrational beliefs, consider my own story.

When the towers fell I was sure that we'd face a long struggle against a brilliant and implacable foe. I forecast mass casualties in America. The falling cost of havoc meant we'd soon face detonation of a truck born black market nuke in an American city. There were so many, many ways for smart people to wreak havoc on a modern industrial nation - a terrible struggle lay ahead.

Except, like a lot of other people, I was wrong. When poor, pitiful, Richard Reid tried to ignite his shoes I began to doubt, and the more we saw, the more al Qaeda seemed to be a conspiracy of the dullard -- especially compared to, say, Hamas.

So how could these medieval drudges have ever been so horribly, terribly successful? It defies Reason that such a convoluted plot should have worked. Nobody has a confident answer -- save the Truthers.

Birthers, Deathers, Truthers -- all of them wrong in what they say and write. Yet, despite the wrongness of their words, their feelings are easy to understand. We live in a profoundly strange and unpredictable world.