Obama and the Laser – stop the stupidity.

Alan Blinder likes Obama’s economic accomplishments, but he concludes they’d be better if (emphases mine) …

… Mr. Obama’s accomplishments in just nine months are palpable and were very much needed. If he seems to have achieved little, it’s partly because he set out to do too much. Too bad he didn’t just “focus like a laser beam on the economy.”

I read the same thing from pundits wishing Obama had been a “laser beam” on Health Care, or Climate Change, or American honor, or Afghanistan (I’m sure there are other recommended targets, but you get the idea).

I know Americans have a memory of about 3 weeks, but this is the so-called punditocracy we’re talking about. Pundits are supposed to have a memory of at least 3 months.

Ok, I see the problem.

Well, for the sake of ventilation, if for no other benefit, let me put this plainly.

Bush, Cheney, Greenspan and the GOP just about trashed America and pushed the world to the edge. They were blunderers at a moment in American history where blundering was particularly dangerous.

Obama inherited a nation in critical care. We’re still there. It’s going to take 10 years to crawl out into a changed world. We aren’t going back to the 1990s, because that path is gone.

Obama can’t “focus like a laser beam”. He’s got to deploy his team on a wide front – holding in some places (economy), strategically retreating in others (climate), pressing the advantage in a few (health care). Obama is not Putin – he has to respond to the chaotic fluctuations of the political environment.

Stuff the laser beams.

The NYT does not like the Taliban

The NYT has recently published at least 3 articles that deliver pretty much the same message …

• Pakistan Attacks Show Tighter Militant Links
• Remembering Afghanistan’s Golden Age (1964 to 1974)*
• Held by the Taliban - A Times Reporter’s Account. A Five-Part Series by David Rohde

The message is that the modern Taliban have become inextricably linked to al Qaeda and Pakistan. There’s a less clear attempt to argue that Afghanistan is not a hopeless case.

I remember a similar NYT consensus in the build up to the invasion of Iraq, when the NYT jumped on the WMB and especially bioweapon bandwagon. In retrospect the Times was being played by their sources.

That’s not to say this consensus is wrong, but we’d be foolish to forget how this game is played.

I’m very glad Obama is doing his strategic review.

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* My recollection is that in the early 80s Afghanistan was a poster child for impending ecological collapse. It’s a very fragile ecosystem, and the rapid development of the 1970s combined with severe oppression of women had led to extreme population growth and environmental degradation. Climate variation may have also played a role. By the late 1980s and early 1990s Afghanistan was in economic and ecological collapse.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any references that agree with my memory!

This is important. If the Afghan agricultural infrastructure is gone, then it has a very long road ahead.

See also Gordon's Notes- Lester Brown, Julian Simon, the UNFPA, Malthus, and, again, the Food.

Simultaneous infections with multiple viruses - why are there so few studies?

For the past several years I’ve wondered about the clinical presentation of patients with multiple simultaneous infections.

The H1N1 outbreaks has brought this to mind again. We assume bad outcomes are the result of some odd combination of immune system and viral mutation, but what about the impacts of co-infection?

I’ve asked academic physicians about this question. I usually get a started look, then a statement that “common wisdom” is that the enhanced immune response to one infection makes a co-infection less likely*.

Turns out, though, that this question was researched 21 years ago ...

Am J Dis Child -- Abstract: Simultaneous Infection With Respiratory Syncytial Virus and Other Respiratory Pathogens, August 1988, Tristram et al. 142 (8): 834

… The presentation and subsequent course of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) bronchiolitis may be atypical and unusually severe when simultaneous infection due to other pathogenic agents is present. During the past two years, nine of the 189 pediatric patients hospitalized with documented RSV infection were found to have the following simultaneous isolates from initial respiratory tract specimens: four adenovirus, four pneumococcus, one cytomegalovirus, and one Pneumocystis carinii. Noted complications attributable to the second pathogen included thrombocytopenia and anemia (cytomegalovirus), hepatitis and disseminated intravascular coagulation (adenovirus), and sepsis and osteomyelitis (pneumococcus). Three of the four patients with RSV and adenovirus died of severe respiratory failure despite mechanical ventilation; two of these patients received ribavirin therapy…

So 21 years ago it was shown that children with co-occurrent viral infections, such as adenovirus and RSV, could have more severe disease progression.

You’d think this study would have been widely cited, but you’d be wrong. A pubmed search on “simultaneous infection virus” returned no strong hits.

I’d love for someone who knows this area to explain why this hasn’t been studied further.

See also: Defining a disease: how often are atypical presentations due to multiple agents? (Feb 2006)

* When smart people say this they immediately get a worried look. In medicine “conventional wisdom” is often shorthand for “something that got into textbooks in the 1960s but, really, on inspection, has never been studied”.

Update 11/1/09: If one viral infection really prevented another, one could manage dangerous epidemics by giving everyone a cold.

The paradoxical power of the Snowe effect

In an ideal world, smart, rational Republicans would balance the worst instincts of my team.

These mythical Republicans would know that government has its own flaws, that my team’s backers can be misled by self-interest and constituency politics. They’d remind us that markets can solve optimization problems better than any planner.

Unfortunately, in this world, the GOP is the Party of Torture, Cheney, Palin, Beck and Limbaugh.

Except … for two senators from Maine – Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.

Chance, and the complete abdication of the Party of Beck, has made Olympia Snowe immensely powerful in this particular debate. She has the same impact as would, in better times, 20 sane GOP senators …

Why One Vote Matters in the Senate - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com

… The country, frankly, is fortunate that the one holding the most cards is Olympia Snowe. Few public officials are as honest, principled, independent and smart as she is. The bargains she is striking to enable a bill to pass are almost all aimed at improving the quality of the health reform bill and helping more people to get health insurance coverage and health care. It may be unfortunate that one person, representing a tiny sliver of Americans, has so much power. We could do a lot worse…

Snowe is best known, to my team, as the enemy of the public option that’s favored by two of our top leaders – Reich and Krugman. 

Maybe that’s not all bad. I could believe that while the public option might be a very good theoretical idea, it might also be politically disastrous. Maybe we need to find a 2nd best option, knowing that we’re going to have to revisit health care reform many times in the decades to come.

It’s a sad day for America that the GOP is shattered, but, at least for the moment, we have a reasonable proxy to the mythical GOP we never had. Maine, you rate.

When it's as good as it gets

A lot of the comments on this post of Judith Warner's post imply she's melodramatic...

I Feel It Coming Together - Judith Warner Blog - NYTimes.com

... This is the cruelty of middle age, I find: just when things have gotten good — really, really, consistently good — I have become aware that they will end...

... I now see the passage of time more as a kind of bell curve. Years of ascension, soaring anticipation, followed by a plateau — which is not so bad, really — and then, no way to sugar coat this: a rather precipitous decline.

You are not supposed to think this, much less say it. A decline? Never!

Fifty is the new 30, after all; and 70 is the new 15, and 40 — well, the forties are just so fabulous that they can’t even be considered middle age. Even if they do happen to fall right smack in the middle of what, despite our best efforts, is still a limited human lifespan.

Susan Jacoby, the author of “The Age of American Unreason,” among other books, found herself, a year or so ago, attending a panel at the World Science Festival in New York City called “Ninety is the new Fifty,” and is now writing a book on the “delusion” she says we all have “that age is something that can be defied.”...

Ok, maybe a bit melodramatic - but not entirely. I'm six years older than Ms Warner, and I'm sympathetic.

Yes, there are those who might remember that I felt the pressure of mortality at 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, and so on.

Well, in retrospect, I was damned right every time. Sure, there have been 80 year olds exploring Kashmir -- but there are more 80 year olds that Nature's tortured with a rigor that Dick Cheney might envy. Not to mention the quieter cohort.

My life is good, in many ways the best it's been. Even so, we all have a right to complain. Mortality sucks, 92* years is not nearly enough.

I'm with you Judith! I'll take my mortal life, but I reserve the right to bitch.

* My current projection - but it's not a promise and if we don't get an Alzheimer's breakthrough soon I'd discount the last 10.

The Jackson movie - not my problem

Our family movie (Cloudy with a chance of meatballs ... not bad) was preceded by a preview of a movie featuring a great cultural icon -- Michael Jackson.

Right.

I grew up in the disco era. I've always felt bad about that, though, and I realize this is hard to imagine, I did enjoy the dancing.

Jackson the superstar was after me. My generation is not responsible. It's a Gen X thing.

That makes me feel better.

The NY Times has about 70 blogs

My rough guesstimate is that the NYTimes has about 70 blogs.

This at a time that the classic feed reader is supposed to be defunct.

I already subscribe to about half a dozen (Krugman, Blow, Kristoff, Economix, Freakonomics* and more). I've now added Floyd Norris, Idea of the Day, Judith Warner, Olivia Judson, Stanley Fish and "The Lede".

I used to pay for the NY Times online. I wouldn't mind paying again. I just don't want newspaper.

PS. As long as I'm media topics, I should mention that a formerly great news journal has resurrected their paywall. They offered a $12 subscription of some kind to registered online readers. Alas, I don't want the paper. Oddly enough the feeds appear to still be free, so I continue to follow the remaining good bits of The Economist - Science, Technology, Africa, and, above all, the Obit.

The fears of the GOP base - last defenders of America

A Dem consulting group has tried to capture the worldview of the GOP base by focusing on samples of Georgia GOP voters. They're not that far from my own thoughts on the rise of Klan 2.0, but the consultants take their subjects relative lack of explicit racism at face value. Amateurs! These guys need to do some Anthro 101 course work.

Even so, I think it's a useful portrait. We're looking at tens of millions of euro-Americans who are both terrified and completely disconnected from reality. These are the Palin people Peggy Noonan dog whistles to. Obama needs to manage their fears, to walk them back from the edge. They'll never vote for a rationalist, but we don't want them panicking.

Welcome to the Beckians ...

Democracy Corps: Republican Base Voters Living In Another World | TPMDC

... "They believe Obama is ruthlessly advancing a 'secret agenda' to bankrupt the United States and dramatically expand government control to an extent nothing short of socialism," the analysis said." While these voters are disdainful of a Republican Party they view to have failed in its mission, they overwhelmingly view a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of this country's founding principles and are committed to seeing the president fail."

The analysis argues that Obama's unpopularity among conservative Republicans is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from liberal Democratic ire against George W. Bush -- that the GOP is more heavily conservative than the Democrats are heavily liberal, and that the hatred of Obama is more intense than Dem hatred of Bush was...

... The voters in these focus groups saw Obama as being deliberately out to destroy the American economy in order to undermine personal freedoms, and that the speed of his agenda was a part of this strategy...

... Conservatives see themselves as an oppressed minority, holding on to knowledge that isn't represented in the wider media and culture: "Conservative Republicans passionately believe that they represent a group of people who have been targeted by a popular culture and set of liberal elites - embodied in the liberal mainstream media - that mock their values and are actively working to advance the downfall of the things that matter most to them in their lives - their faith, their families, their country, and their freedom."

So who are the protectors of this knowledge, the sources of information they trust. Obviously, Rush Limbaugh is widely admired -- but at the same time, he's seen as being overly abrasive at times.

The real unblemished champion, the one they most identify with on a personal level, is Glenn Beck: "Two aspects of the discussion on Beck among conservative Republicans were particularly noteworthy. One was a common fear among the women for his personal safety, a belief that his willingness to stand up to powerful liberal interests was putting his life, as well as the lives of those working with him, in danger. Of course, his willingness to face this danger head on only adds to his legend."

And the base sees themselves as an emerging, growing movement -- manifested in the Tea Parties -- that will restore the country to its proper roots, but that is dismissed by the media ...
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See also:

• Palin, Noonan, and the fears of euro America
• The roots of Klan 2.0 and 912 – A justified fear of change

Planning for the collapse of Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs is prospering using the strategies that gave us the Great Recession.

I suppose they would say that they know how to use these innovations safely. Their rivals were simply too dull, too weak, to use such powerful tools.

If Goldman is lucky their leaders will rule like kings. If they are unlucky their leaders will rule like barons -- and we'll be picking up the pieces.

If we still can.

If I were running the Treasury I'd be setting up a plan to respond to the collapse of Goldman Sachs.

Just in case.

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My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

The evolutionary wonder of reading – hints from intracranial electrophysiology

I don’t know why creationists get hung up with the Platypus or the retina. I think it’s much more interesting that humans can read, despite it only being around for a few hundred years. For example …

Rare Procedure Pinpoints the Location, Speed and Sequence of the Brain's Language Processes: Scientific American

As part of preparation for their [epilepsy] surgery, three adults had electrodes implanted in Broca's area and anterior temporal cortex to allow doctors to pinpoint which areas of the brain would be best to remove. During the procedure, known as intracranial electrophysiology, researchers asked the patients to silently sound-out words they saw on a screen and to fill in the missing verb in the proper tense or the proper form of a missing noun. Meanwhile, the researchers were recording the local electric field potentials from the wired areas of subjects' brains to the nearest millisecond—and millimeter.

After studying the readouts, the researchers found that in these normally reading adults, word identification, grammar and pronunciation all activated parts of Broca's area—and in a very neatly defined sequence. Like clockwork, it took about 200 milliseconds to identify a word, 320 milliseconds for grammatical composition and 450 milliseconds for phonological encoding…

… Previous studies had shown that the brain takes about 600 milliseconds to form vocal speech. So the speed with which each of these processes occurred was not as big of a surprise to Sahin and his colleagues as the fact that these three distinct tasks were done separately, in a tightly timed sequence, and within millimeters of each other in the brain…

… The electrical readouts … help to dispel the theory that another part of the brain, Wernicke's area, is primarily responsible for reading and hearing language. Their data show that, in fact, Broca's area also activated during the reading and identification phases. These findings, "indicate that the role of Broca's area…should be characterized in more general terms," Hagoort and Levelt wrote…

Everyone wants to see this study repeated in persons with reading disorders, but this kind of opportunity is rare. We all owe thanks to these patients who helped out with this study while awaiting some pretty scary surgery.

See also:

• Hyperlexia: an explanation of why we can read? – 2004
• Reading and hand signals (2009)
• Be the Best You can Be- Understanding why reading is hard (Oct 2009)

Google reader micro-blogging and changes to Gordon Notes

Twitter is the most famous form of micro-blogging, but it doesn't fit into my memory management strategy and it doesn't help me communicate. So I don't do Twitter.

I do, however, love Google Reader. Many of the smaller blog posts I used to do are now iPhone authored comments on Google Reader articles I've shared and annotated.

So if you read this blog, you might like the Google Reader shared item stream. I've added a link to my GR share/annotation feed to my blogger template -- so it should show below each post.

 

For more of the tech details, hop over to Gordon’s Tech.

 

(Note: The first version of this post was removed due to apparent Google bugs with my shared item feed. These seem to have remitted for the moment, so I’m restoring the post)

 

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My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Jim Carrey - enemy of the enlightenment

A recent NYT article about a non-rational attack on H1N1 immunization mentioned this group is now active against immunization, because of a faith-based belief that autism arises from immunization ...

Science-Based Medicine - Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, and “Green Our Vaccines”: Anti-vaccine, not “pro-safe vaccine”

...“Green Our Vaccines” rally, led by the celebrity couple Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey and organized and funded by Talk About Curing Autism (TACA), Generation Rescue (upon whose board McCarthy now sits)...

Carrey joins Oprah in the class of people who combine non-rational and harmful beliefs with the power of wealth and celebrity.

Anyone know of a rogues gallery of these enemies of enlightenment 2.0? We need an annual award ceremony where these sad fools receive appropriate recognition. Maybe SEFORA could launch one? Brad, you're good at this sort of thing ...

The epidemiology of suicide – human only?

Olivia Judson claims no other animal commits suicide. I wonder about cetaceans …

A Long, Melancholy Roar - Olivia Judson Blog - NYTimes.com

… Suicide rates have risen dramatically over the past 50 years. Worldwide, deaths from suicide now outnumber deaths from war and homicide together: the World Health Organization estimates that each year around one million people — predominantly men — kill themselves. The true number is probably higher, because for many countries there is no data. In some countries, suicide is now among the top ten causes of death. For the young, worldwide, it’s in the top five.

A huge effort has rightly been devoted to trying to understand the particular causes of suicide in different places — unemployment, drug addiction, relationship breakdown, intelligence, predisposing genes, what your mother ate while you were in the womb and so on.

But here’s another way to look at it. No other animal does this. Chimpanzees don’t hang themselves from trees, slit their wrists, set themselves alight, or otherwise destroy themselves. Suicide is an essentially human behavior. And it has reached unprecedented levels, especially among the young.

I’m not sure what this means. But it has made me think. We live in a way that no other animal has ever lived: our lifestyle is unprecedented in the history of the planet. Often, we like to congratulate ourselves on the cities we have built, the gadgets we can buy, the rockets we send to the moon. But perhaps we should not be so proud. Something about the way we live means that, for many of us, life comes to seem unbearable, a long, melancholy ache of despair.

Bite the apple, know despair.

I think of the human brain as a great pile of frantic evolutionary hacks, barely holding together at the best of times, a million years from getting sorted out. It’s a matter/antimatter drive bolted on to a goat cart. So it’s not surprising that it breaks in all kinds of ways.

The more surprising assertion is that rates are rising. I wonder first if that’s really true – historic data must be very hard to find. I also suspect that many suicide prone persons would die young in times of high external mortality, and that we’d expect suicide rates to rise as a population lives longer (suicide is much more common in the elderly).

One might speculate about growing awareness of the bleak realities of the material universe and suicide rates but I honestly don’t see any connection. Few people are as fond of bleak realities as I am.

How politics works ..

Yesterday was about employees perspective on PAC donations.

Today is about how to purchase a 21st century American Senator.

Scott Adams is on a roll.

(Click to go to the readable original)

Worse than 1981

I don’t remember the 1981-82 recession. I’d finished college, and I was off on a grand adventure (thank you Thomas J Watson).  I returned and started medical school.

Whatever that recession was like, this one is considerably worse …

Along With Layoffs, Recession’s Cost Can Be Seen in Pay Cuts - NYTimes.com

… The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not track pay cuts, but it suggests they are reflected in the steep decline of another statistic: total weekly pay for production workers, pilots among them, representing 80 percent of the work force. That index has fallen for nine consecutive months, an unprecedented string over the 44 years the bureau has calculated weekly pay, capturing the large number of people out of work, those working fewer hours and those whose wages have been cut. The old record was a two-month decline, during the 1981-1982 recession…