Whatever happened to the Fuel Cell?

In November of 2001 British Telecomunications published a white paper prepared by two futurists - Ian Pearson and Ian Neild. It's a bit hard to find online now, but there's an html version on ariska.org and the original PDF here. I came across it while running one of my custom google searches across my identity archives.

The two Ians are still in business, but I hope they're a bit more cautious these days. Their 2001 forecasts were a bit ... aggressive. The ones they got right were mostly prosaic - mostly gene sequencing, basic demographics, and internet growth.  They missed the rise of China and were oddly too optimistic about mobile internet access.

Otherwise they were way off. In particular, they were absurdly optimistic about the rise of the AI. It's interesting to look at how far off. For example:

Chat show hosted by robot  2003 
Confessions to AI priest   2004 
AI teachers in school      2004 
Computers that write most of their own software  2005 
Domestic appliances with personality and talking head interface 2007 
AI students 2007 
Highest earning celebrity is synthetic 2010 
AI houses which react to occupants 2010 
25 % of TV celebrities synthetic 2010 
Computer agents start being thought of as colleagues instead of 
tools 2013 
Direct electronic pleasure production 2010 
Online surgeries dominate first line medical care 2010 
Orgasm by email 2010 
Quiz shows screen for implant technologies 2010 
Artificial senses, sensors directly stimulating nerves 2012 
Some implants seen as status symbols 2012...

It's a long list. I kept it because in 2001 it was fun but preposterous. I like to think it was prepared at the local pub with a dartboard and a stack of science fiction novels; I hope British Telecomm published it to confuse their enemies. (It makes my own list of failed predictions seems absurdly prescient. Maybe BT should be paying me.)

One of their big misses is, however, interesting for other reasons ...

... Home fuel cell based 7kW generator 2001...

I remember fuel cells. It wasn't only that we were supposed to have them in our homes. They were supposed to power our hydrogen cars; pop magazines had major articles about Canada's BC Based fuel cell industry. Toshiba was a year away, once upon a time, from methanol fuel cells for laptops.

Obviously, none of that happened. Instead fuel cells are showing up in data centers -- and that's supposed to be news.

So why did the Fuel Cell future fail? Ben Wiens, who worked at that BC based fuel cell company, has a good technical description...

A few years ago it looked like micro fuel cells would soon be powering many portable electronic products. But this has not come to pass. One issue is that batteries have become much more powerful, and electronic devices smaller. Also, it has been hard to fit the fuel cell into the same thin profile of the battery. Another issue is that there is a problem with certain fuels being transported by passengers on aircraft. There are still some technical issues to be solved. The present price of fuel cells is higher than batteries. In my opinion the reason why micro fuel cells haven't penetrated the market however has nothing to do with the above factors....

... Fuel cells produce electricity. This is not the desired form of energy for transportation. The electricity must be converted into mechanical power using an electric motor. The Otto or Diesel cycle produces the required mechanical power directly. This gives them an advantage compared to fuel cell powered automobiles.

Presently Otto and Diesel cycle engines seem to be able to comply with extremely stringent pollution regulations, are inexpensive to produce, produce reasonable fuel economy, and use readily available liquid fuels. Fuel cell vehicles have a much greater chance of being accepted however in the future when fuel prices are higher and liquid fossil fuels are in short supply. However fuel cell vehicles will then be competing with electric vehicles which will be cheaper to operate but have problems with recharging...

Wiens article is the best I can find. Which brings up the real point of this post. Why hasn't there been more journalism on what happened to the fuel cell? Doesn't a failed revolution deserve a bit of an obituary? The rise and fall the Fuel Cell, and associated (extreme) hype and post-collapse silence, would make a great cautionary tale. Reading Wiens' summary, it seems as though a few wee issues in thermodynamics and hydrogen production were overlooked. Isn't it worth understanding why these things were missed? Aren't their lessons there that would serve us well now, as the rationalists among us consider our carbon-constrained energy options?

Journalists, where are you?

Escape from North Korea's Camp 14

Life in the empire of the Kims:

How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp | Books | The Guardian

... The South Korean government estimates there are about 154,000 prisoners in North Korea's labour camps, while the US state department puts the number as high as 200,000. The biggest is 31 miles long and 25 miles wide, an area larger than the city of Los Angeles. Numbers 15 and 18 have re-education zones where detainees receive remedial instruction in the teachings of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, and are sometimes released. The remaining camps are "complete control districts" where "irredeemables" are worked to death...

... One day, Shin joined his mother at work, planting rice. When she fell behind, a guard made her kneel in the hot sun with her arms in the air until she passed out...

.. in June 1989, Shin's teacher, a guard who wore a uniform and a pistol on his hip, sprang a surprise search of the six-year-olds. When it was over, he held five kernels of corn. They all belonged to a slight girl Shin remembers as exceptionally pretty. The teacher ordered the girl to the front of the class and told her to kneel. Swinging his wooden pointer, he struck her on the head again and again. As Shin and his classmates watched in silence, lumps puffed up on her skull, blood leaked from her nose and she toppled over on to the concrete floor. Shin and his classmates carried her home. Later that night, she died...

... Trust among friends was poisoned by constant competition. Trying to win extra food rations, children told guards what their neighbours were eating, wearing and saying...

... On the morning after he betrayed his mother and brother, uniformed men came to the schoolyard for Shin. He was handcuffed, blindfolded and driven in silence to an underground prison...

... chief's lieutenants pulled off Shin's clothes and trussed him up. When they were finished, his body formed a U, his face and feet toward the ceiling, his bare back toward the floor. The chief interrogator shouted more questions. A tub of burning charcoal was dragged beneath Shin, then the winch lowered towards the flames. Crazed with pain and smelling his burning flesh, Shin twisted away. One of the guards grabbed a hook and pierced the boy in the abdomen, holding him over the fire until he lost consciousness....

... Uncle nursed Shin, rubbing salty cabbage soup into his wounds as a disinfectant and massaging Shin's arms and legs so his muscles would not atrophy. "Kid, you have a lot of days to live," Uncle said. "They say the sun shines even on mouse holes."...

... The new teacher sometimes sneaked food to Shin. He also assigned him less arduous work and stopped the bullying. Shin put on some weight. The burns healed. Why the new teacher made the effort, Shin never knew...

... In the summer of 2004, while he was carrying one of these cast-iron machines, it slipped and broke beyond repair. Sewing machines were considered more valuable than prisoners: the chief foreman grabbed Shin's right hand and hacked off his middle finger just above the first knuckle...

... In December 2004, Shin began thinking about escape. Park's spirit, his dignity and his incendiary information gave Shin a way to dream about the future. He suddenly understood where he was and what he was missing. Camp 14 was no longer home; it was a cage. And Shin now had a well-travelled friend to help him get out...

... Without hesitation, Shin crawled over his friend's body. He was nearly through when his legs slipped off Park's torso and came into contact with the wire....

... Shallow and frozen, the river here was about a hundred yards wide. He began to walk. Halfway across, he broke through and icy water soaked his shoes. He crawled the rest of the way to China.

Within two years, he was in South Korea. Within four, he was living in southern California, an ambassador for Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), an American human rights group.

His name is now Shin Dong-hyuk. His overall physical health is excellent. His body, though, is a roadmap of the hardships of growing up in a labour camp that the North Korean government insists does not exist. Stunted by malnutrition, he is short and slight – 5ft 6in and about 120lb (8.5 stone). His arms are bowed from childhood labour. His lower back and buttocks are covered with scars. His ankles are disfigured by shackles. His right middle finger is missing. His shins are mutilated by burns from the fence that failed to keep him inside Camp 14.

I don't generally think that Hell is a good idea, but it is tempting to make an exception for the Kims.

North Korea is China's great shame. In a just world, for the sin of North Korea alone, China's leaders would join Dick Cheney in prison.

See also:

• You too can visit North Korea 1/2010
• The harshness of mortal life - hidden refugees from North Korea 3/2005
• North Korea 2/2011

Toothpaste

As I scrape rubbery solids from the nozzle of my Colgate toothpaste I remember that the meme of daily toothpaste use was one of the great achievements of early 20th century advertising.

That ought to make anyone nervous.

So what does that rubbery gunk to my gums [1]? Who tests toothpaste anyway?

Not the FDA ...

Toothpaste - American Dental Association - ADA.org: "

... the U.S. Food and Drug Administration insists that manufacturers of fluoride-containing toothpaste meet certain requirements for the product’s active ingredients, product indications, claims and other qualifications. However, the FDA does not test toothpastes to verify compliance. The ADA conducts extensive laboratory tests on toothpastes to determine whether they meet specific criteria for safety and effectiveness. The ADA determines the product’s fluoride content, how it is released and its effectiveness on tooth enamel...

"Certain requirements" and "specific criteria" are weasel words, but "does not test" is pretty clear.

So the ADA, which makes money from its "seal of approval" [2], is the only group that tests toothpaste, and they really only look at Fluoride content. The indexed literature doesn't seem any better, all I could find were poor quality studies of fluoride content.

Perhaps that's good enough. Maybe the ADA is more virtuous than, say, the AMA. Maybe we shouldn't pay too much attention to what we've learned about the marketing and utility of FDA tested medical products over the past sixty years. Maybe we should trust the libertarian world of toothpaste regulation and the goodness of manufacturers.

Or, more likely, most toothpaste, fluoride aside, is at best harmless. Probably quite a bit of it is mildly harmful; or good for whiteness but bad for plaque. If I were running the NIH, I'd fund some high quality randomized toothpaste trials.

For now I'm going to switch to a simpler brand with an easier to clean nozzle.

[1] Forget X, R and PG. We need a rating for posts that reveal too much of what lies ahead. There is no need for under 35 to know that for most of one's life gum-teeth borders are more important than teeth color.
[2] Has that seal ever been denied anyone willing to pay for it?

iCloud, iOS, and identity: The end of app sharing

I don't think we'll actually get to DRM RetinaLock (retinal enhancements enforce video DRM), but we are pretty much at the "Palladium" future I'd written about 8 years ago.

That's what I concluded after migrating a friend's iTunes and iOS content, and navigating the chaotic intersection of Digital Rights Management (FairPlay), identity management, ownership identity, and Cloud vs. multi-device iTunes vs. multi-user OS X. Not to mention the MobileMe vs. iCloud migration.

Really, has anyone figured this out? I mean, I think I'm pretty good at this stuff, but we're talking combinatorial explosion here. Different rules for email, calendar, music, video, apps, across multiple identifies and platforms -- with no way to merge or reconcile multiple identities...

Apple IDs and iCloud

... Enter the Apple ID you want to use for iCloud in Apple () menu > System Preferences > iCloud. Enter the Apple ID you want to use for store purchases (including iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match) in iTunes > iTunes Store... [1]

... You cannot merge two or more Apple IDs into a single one...

... You can switch the Apple ID you use for store purchases at any time. However, you can only change the account you use for any iTunes in the Cloud features once every 90 days...

and (emphases mine)

iTunes Store: Associating a device or computer to your Apple ID

... Your Apple ID can have up to 10 devices and computers (combined) associated with it. Each computer must also be authorized using the same Apple ID. Once a device or computer is associated with your Apple ID, you cannot associate that device or computer with another Apple ID for 90 days...

... : Removing a device from your Apple ID does not override the 90 day timer. The timer must complete 90 days from the day the device was associated before it can be associated to another Apple ID....

Only a post-singular AI could truly visualize all the options here.

It's fairly clear, however, where Apple wants us to go.

Today my family's five devices sync to one iTunes instance. Each devices has the same AppleID for store purchases, but different MobileMe identities. The family can share movies, apps, music and so on. [2] Mail and Calendars for each device go to the Cloud.

The future is quite different. There will be no more iTunes, no more shared media libraries, no more shared app libraries. Each iOS device will be associated with a single identity for both purchasing and iCloud services. (Though a child's identity may be associated with a parent's credit card, or purchases will be iTunes credit only.) OS X will become only a way to access Cloud media, and that access will be tied to identity as well.

My sympathy for piracy grows.

- fn -

[1] In reality, when I reviewed my friend's devices, it was not possible to set a different Apple ID for iCloud.
[2] Heaven knows what the licensing says we can do. Only some older music is DRMd.

See also:

• Apple IDs and iCloud
• iTunes Store: Associating a device or computer to your Apple ID
• Apple Scrambles To Merge Apple IDs To Stave Off iCloud Sync Mess | Epicenter | Wired.com 9/2011 -- they didn't manage the merge but there's a transitional role where the Apple ID and the MobileMe ID can live together for MobileMe users and perhaps even into iCloud. I'm going very slowly with my family's iCloud migration.
• Gordon's Notes: The sharing challenge: access, topic and identity. Why G+ fails. 11/2011 - a different sort of sharing problem
• Gordon's Tech: The multi-iPhone family - two approaches 7/2010 - the good old days.
• Gordon's Tech: Apple's identity and account system is screwed up. Again. 10/2008 - the .mac to .me transition stunk

Update:

More on the peculiar 90 day limit here. It seems to pertain to 'downloading past purchases' or iTunes Match. It applies to the entire computer rather than a user account. What a friggin' mess.

Update 2: More thoughts as I replay this post

• I wonder if the 90 day limit will eventually be a standard for transferring ownership of digital purchases. I can't find any information on how that duration was established.
• I suspect in a few years there will be a lot of digital material in the family repository that only I will be able to use. Ownership transfer would be "nice". Hacking FairPlay is more likely (eventually 2012 FairPlay should be pretty hackable).
• With Apple's new regime there are significant advantages to combining Apple hardware with Google and Amazon products. After all, they can't fit into Apple's model. In the new world we can't share our iBooks, but everyone can share Kindle books. A shared Apple identity may prevent use of iCloud, but it won't prevent use of gCloud.
• Curiously, this may mean the return of family night at the movies! Instead of sharing across multiple devices, we'll be back to sharing on a single device with a large screen.

What is Iran really afraid of?

Saddam Hussein, we are told, knew that his weapons of mass destruction were no longer effective. He might not have understood how completely historical they were, but he knew Iraq could pass a weapons inspection.

So why did he decline inspection, and give Bush the leverage he needed to launch a terrible war?

We are told he feared Iran. He was afraid that if Iran knew his WMDs were only a bluff, they'd destroy him.

Now we are told that Iran is working towards a nuclear WMD -- though it's not clear they've committed to building one.

Nuclear weapons are not usually considered useful offensive weapons. They are strategic deterrents. That's why India and Pakistan and Israel have them; they all face credible threats of significant military power.

So what is Iran so afraid of that they want a major strategic deterrent? [1]

iran - Google Maps

Clearly, it's not Israel they're afraid of. That's good for stirring up the electoral base, but Israel is not going to invade Iran. They may attack Iran's nuclear facilities, but that's not a reason to build nuclear weapons. Of course Israel is in a constant state of low-grade terrorist combat with Iranian proxies, but then so is Iraq, the US, Saudi Arabia and... really ... a lot of nations.

Historically Iran has feared Iraq. But Iraq is Shia now, and years from being ready to invade anyone.

Saudi Arabia - sure, but Saudi is on the verge of collapse. No invasion or military threat there. Turkey? I don't think so. And so it goes around the borders. Turkmenistan, Afghanistan ... no real threats there. Certainly nothing that would suggest a WMD strategic deterrent.

The US? No.

What's left? Pakistan? Well, Pakistan is Sunni dominated, and the leadership is at least as crazy as Iran's, and they have a WMD ... Still, relations are supposed to be good.

So what's Iran afraid of?

[1] Iran's leadership is unbalanced even by the standards of tyranny, and Iranians are no less crazy than Americans, but I think the reality is somewhere between Gwynne Dyer and Jeffery Goldberg. In other words, nasty, vicious, half-barking leadership, but not suicidal.

Teacher rankings - relearning the lessons of adverse selection

William Johnson is one of those teachers we prize, the best of the best, teachers who choose to work with difficult children.

Unsurprisingly, his students don't perform as well as the average class, so he's officially a ‘Bad’ Teacher (NYTimes.com). He's a conscientious person, so of course he feels lousy. Other special education teachers simply move to less challenging environments.

It's sad. We've had decades of experience with these things in healthcare. The key concept is "adverse selection". Two simple health are examples show how this works.

Imagine I'm a health care system and I'm paid a flat rate for each patient I care for. In this case, the commercial thing to do is to recruit healthy patients. Instead of investing in phone service, invest in a high class web portal that sick elderly patients will avoid. Instead of investing in a diabetes clinic, offer services for the worried well like acupuncture, homeopathy, massage services and the like. Let the expensive patients go down the road. You'll get great ratings, full payment, and bear low costs.

Now imagine you're a primary care physician. You're being rated on patient satisfaction and on good outcomes for diabetes care. The smart thing to do is get rid of all the difficult patients who don't have phones, perhaps don't have homes, probably have bigger immediate problems than their blood sugar. Instead improve the office parking, setup office hours that fit patients who are employed but not those looking for work, etc. It's not hard to do, and soon your patient panel looks great and feels happy.

We don't know how to manage adverse selection, though there are lots of workarounds and modifiers. The RomneyCare Mandate is a prime example of an adverse selection modifier - and we know how popular that is.

These teacher ratings will produce the same behavior in teachers that they've produced everywhere else. The smart teachers and schools will get rid of the "loser" students, and, after a few years and a lot of waste and sorrow, we'll realize we're repeating history as farce.

Maybe a few blog posts like this will shorten the cycle. I have to hope ...

Why quality collapsed in the bubble years: Akerlof and the last good toaster

Six years ago, I mourned for the demise of the last good toaster. I could find lots of cheap toasters, but they didn't last long.

It wasn't just toasters. Between about 1999 and 2009 the quality of a lot of goods seemed to collapse -- even as consumer prices fell. I wrote cranky posts about the "occult inflation of shrinking quality", but I seemed to be a chorus of one. It wasn't just toasters that disappointed, we couldn't buy a decent DVD/VCR or pencil sharpener or window unit air conditioner. Similar quality problems emerged with drywall and heparin [1] and, notoriously, just about every computer manufacturer on earth save one.

For us it felt like a market failure. We were willing to pay more money for higher quality, but there didn't seem to be a relationship between price and quality. Brands like SONY and Panasonic didn't mean much any more.

A few brands kept their reputation. Canon and Nikon held on, and a phone maker led by a difficult genius made a reliable battery charger and eventually became the world's most valued corporation.

I wonder if it was Apple's example that changed the picture. Because reading John Roberts [3], it seems we fell into Akerlof's quality trap (emphases mine) ...

... Trade may break down almost completely (Akerlof, 1970). If eliminating the asymmetry of information is not possible, then buyers will refuse to pay more than the expected value of goods, averaged across the different quality levels they expect to be offered. Then the best quality goods may not be offered at all, because they command only a middling price that does not reflect their true value. Consequently the distribution of qualities that are actually offered is worse than what is potentially available. Since the selection of products on offer is not representative of the underlying distribution of quality, but is instead an adverse selection, buyers will rationally lower their willingness to pay even further. Then, even more potential sellers of relatively high-quality items may no longer be willing to sell at the lower price. The overall result may be that nothing but very low quality items are available -- only lemons are on offer -- and markets fail to exist for high-quality products, although buyers are anxious to have such goods and would willingly pay enough for them to compensate the sellers if they were sure to get what they paid for. [3]

In a world where quality seemed to be unobtainable at any price, Apple offered relatively higher quality [4] products at a relatively higher price. I think they broke the cycle [5]. It probably helped that after the debt/real estate bubble burst consumers paid more attention to the costs of unreliable goods.

It's quite a story - a textbook illustration of research that earned Askerlof a share of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics. So why haven't we read about this from anyone but a crankish blogger? Where are the economists?

[1] The investigation continues incidentally - More Suppliers Linked to Heparin Contamination - WSJ.com.
[2] I've been told that it's now very hard to buy a reliable dish washer 
[3] Roberts, J. The Modern Firm. Oxford University Press 2004. p 82-83
[4] Apple, with a few exceptions, doesn't make very high quality products. Their software is notoriously buggy, and they made generations of laptops with flaky hinges. Compared to the competition though, they were sterling. 
[5] The cycle-breaking alone brought them success, but the mind-blowing innovation of the iPhone and iPad took them to the top.

Update: Shortly after posting this, I discovered that in 2007 I made the same connection to asymmetric information theory that Roberts detailed in his text. Maybe I should have been an economist.

Apple's FairPlay DRM, subscriptions, and the cost of MLB At Bat

Last year I bought MLB.com's At Bat for something like $10 or $15. Then it was an "App". That meant, based on Apple's FairPlay DRM, I could install it on multiple devices as long as each device was synchronized to an iTunes instance that was associated with my App Store/iTunes ID (and credit card). In our home that can be up to five devices, though in practice only my son used it.

No consumer loves DRM, but FairPlay was well named. It struck a Jobsian balance between buyer and seller, like those .99 songs we used to have. It didn't get in my way very often.

It's too badFairPlay doesn't work that way any more. This year MLB.com At Bat 12 is just a shell for a $15 subscription -- and Apple's subscription/In-App purchase policies are an inelegant mess ...

iTunes Store: About In-App Purchases

... Non-replenishable In-App Purchases are items that only require you to purchase them once, and can be transferred to multiple devices authorized with the same iTunes Store account.

• Bonus game levels
• City guide maps

Replenishable In-App Purchases are items that have to be purchased every time and cannot be downloaded again for free.

• Extra health
• Extra experience points

Subscriptions are one-time services that must be purchased again once the subscription period expires. 

• One-month subscriptions
• Location service subscriptions

Auto-Renewing Subscriptions are services that can be purchased with different renewing subscription durations.

• Weekly newspaper subscriptions
• Weekly magazine subscriptions...

... Subscriptions and replenishable In-App Purchase cannot be transferred or synced to another iOS device. Non-replenishable In-App Purchases  and auto-renewing subscriptions can be transferred to another iOS device authorized with your iTunes Store account. For example, if you transfer a game from an iPhone to an iPod touch, only the game levels will sync over, the extra ammo and experience points will not be transferred...

Four different classes of In-App purchase, each with different policies on renewal, transfer, and multiple device use.

So which rule applies to MLB.com's At Bat 2012? Is it a non-replenishable In-App purchase that can be transferred between devices? Or is it Subscription that cannot be transferred? I couldn't tell from the description, but the answer is in a customer review [1] ...

... if you make the in-app purchase it is available on another device ... regardless of whether you make an in-app purchase or not banner ads are still displayed ...

So, for this year at least, the effective cost of MLB At Bat is still $15; it behaves like an In-App Purchase if you pay the $15 up front. On the other hand, I wonder how it behaves if you pay the subscription fee ...

FairPlay was a Jobs-class compromise. Apple's subscription plans are post-Jobs; I hope they'll take a second look at the mess.

[1] This is unrelated to my post, but I have to say it's rude behavior to show ads in a paid app. It's worse than rude really -- banner ads typically include clickable links that break Apple's feeble parental controls.

Gaming Google reviews?

I'm staying at the Hyatt-Regency Hotel for the Strata 2012 conference. It has some good features, but, for a geek, it has a problem. The room wireless connectivity is feeble, and the old wall ethernet port is disabled.

This isn't a demand problem -- the signal is simply very weak in my room. It's a typical big hotel problem; the Courtyard's can manage it but the big guys can't. Still, this is Silicon Valley after all. How can they get away with it? Isn't their Google Maps site full of complaints?

Well, no. Because they don't exist on Google Maps. You can't leave a review. The Hyatt's current location is occupied by a 'closed' site:

Westin-Santa Clara: 5101 Great America Parkway, Santa Clara, California

That facility was presumably refurbished and rebranded to create the current Hyatt-Regency. There's no problem finding the Hotel on Google of course -- even the (supposedly) unpaid listing is #1. It is a bit hard to find on Google Maps however -- if you don't know the address.

So is the hotel's invisibility diabolical scheming to better manage reviews? A happy accident? Free rooms to Google execs? Am I the first geek to ever notice this and lodge a notification with Google's map listing? [1]

It's a minor mystery.

[1] I suspect it's a happy accident and I'm the first person ever to lodge a notification. The greater mystery is how the Hyatt could do a major geek-oriented refurb (outlets built into the bedside table) and blow the wireless.

Update:  Since I'd actually complained in a blog post, my conscience forced me to call the front desk and give them a chance. They fixed the ethernet (disconnected cable, broken port - bet someone else was fighting it) and noted the poor wifi signal.

Americans Elect - another try at GOP 2.0

Unsurprisingly, given the current state of the GOP presidential primary, people who'd prefer to vote GOP are advocating third party equivalents. This endorsement is from a Marketarian venture capitalist ...

A VC: Americans Elect (Fred Wilson)

Yesterday my partner Albert and I sat down with the people behind Americans Elect. For those that don't know, Americans Elect is an online third party movement. In their words, "Pick A President, Not A Party."...

Fred and  his kin assert the usual 'false equivalence' claim that both parties are equally dysfunctional. Sorry, that's not true. Team Obama is a good representative of a reason (data + logic, including evaluation of political realities) based implementation of social compact ("Branch I") values for a multicultural nation. The 2012 Dems are about as healthy as political parties get in an era where voters tolerate widespread corruption.

The problem, of course, is with the GOP. It has fallen into a political death-spiral where its survival depends on tribes that lack a common framework for interpreting reality. Some cleave to particular religious doctrines, others to secular tribal beliefs. The modern GOP is the party of unreason.

Obviously, this is bad. It's bad because the GOP has quite a good chance of taking full control of government. It's bad because a weak GOP will lead the Dems to destroy themsevles - and we'll have no government at all.

We all need need GOP 2.0, a reason based representation of Branch II values, a party that speaks for the powerful, the incorporated, the status quo, the authoritarian impulse and all those wary of change and disruption. Americans Elect is a part of the process of finding GOP 2.0. I wish them luck; we need this process to succeed.

American obesity and the public schools - one anecdote

We have three children in the St Paul MN public school system. It's an urban public school system, but statistically above average.

We don't have that many complaints really. We've had some very good teacher-child combinations and some mediocre ones. Our children's ethnicity, talents, and temperaments cover a wide range; a teacher who does well with one child may do less well with another. Some classrooms are easier to handle, some harder. Sometimes the principal is doing well, sometimes they're looking for another job. Improving quality in education is a lot like improving quality in healthcare -- it's a culture-building process that requires years of patient focus and stable funding. Humans are bad at that sort of thing.

We don't have that many complaints -- but we do have an observation about schools and exercise. As we've all heard ad nauseum, Americans are obese behemoths that will soon sink the continent [1]. Maybe that's what did in Atlantis.

So, since American schools are tasked with everything, one might imagine they'd do things to encourage athletic activity. And our schools do -- in the elementary schools.

After elementary school though, things change. There are only so many fields and rinks and coaches -- and "elite" [2] sports consume them all. American high school sports resemble American society -- the elites do well, the masses not so well. There are no equivalents of the 'fun' or 'club' sports found in most American colleges. Given available budgets and facilities, supporting recreational non-elite exercise would require defunding competitive teams. Think 'Title IX' for the non-athlete.

Defunding competitive sports would not go over well. So, in normal times, this wouldn't be a consideration. After all, America fails miserably at the far more fundamental task of providing textbooks and teachers to all public schools [3].

These are not normal times, however. Obesity really is a serious public health problem, and, for better and for worse, public schools get the assignment -- along with zero-increment financing. Are there any examples of public schools that do this well?

[1] In reality, recent data suggests we're reaching some kind of obesity maximum. Since we're driving less every year obesity might even decrease.
[2] Teams and activities that are competitive at the inter-school level. 
[3] One of America's great failings is that schools are largely funded through local taxation. It's a recipe for lifelong suffering for a large number of Americans, and a colossal waste of national talent.

Strata big data Santa Clara - should be interesting

I'll be in Santa Clara CA next week (2/27-3/2) attending the Making Data Work: Strata 2012 - O'Reilly Conference.

I believe this is the first non-healthcare conference I've ever attended [1], and it will be my first visit to the heart of geekdom. Big data is fashionable these days, and it's always fun to attend fashionable things. Lots of interesting commercial and ethical aspects, since the most profitable use of big data seems to be finding ways to exploit the vulnerable.

It's hard on my family for me to be away that long, so I'd better use the time well. I'm hoping to put out a summary post when I'm done.

[1] In my real life I work in applied clinical informatics in the depths of a large publicly traded corporation -- and before that I was an academic family physician and country doc.

Interesting problems: MobileMe, iCloud, Lions and Google

These are interesting times for our home IT strategy. Recent Apple changes are accelerating the demise of the general purpose computer in ways I'm only beginning to understand.

At our home, for example, we have been using MobileMe to manage Contact synchronization between iOS devices (iPhones w and w/o SIMs) and our four Macs. Each of the Macs has multiple user accounts to serve some subset of our family of five. (I'm omitting the Google Apps aspects to simplify - things are complex enough).

This has to change, MobileMe is going away June 30th 2012. It is being replaced by iCloud. iCloud works with most of our iOS devices, but it requires Lion (Mountain Lion soon) on the Macs.

Of our four Macs, only two will definitely run Mountain Lion. [1].

Meanwhile, Google's Anakin Skywalker emulation means we want to back away from our dependency on them, which leaves, unfortunately, even more dependency on the Other Devil.

I think, going forward, the transition over the next year is to:

• A server (iMac) and 1-2 laptops
• iPads - eventually one for each child ($$)
• iCloud (yech)

I'm glum, but I don't see how I fight this. The old G5 iMac with the decaying (delaminating?) display may go to anyone interested in a machine that can run MacOS Classic. The Dual USB laptop will stay Snow Leopard and be a kid's homework machine.

[1] Lion is such a mess I've been restricting it to a single device that came with it. It's unlikely that Mountain Lion will work on our Core 2 Duo plastic body MacBook with integrated Intel graphics, though there are rumors that Apple may add some coverage. It appears even Apple is embarrassed by Lion, and may feel the need to bury it rather than let it quickly.

Update 2/25/12: ironically, one reaction to Apple's Snow Leopard/MobileMe/MacBook triple termination is to turn to the other agent of the DarkSeid - Google. i used Spanning Sync ($25/year) with some success for several years to sync Address Book to Google. We already use Google Apps Calendar for our family including our iPhone calendars. So one solution is to go Google across all our Macs, even on Mountain Lion.

A GOP blog I can read

It hurts me to read blogs or editorials written by 2012 Republicans. Oddly enough people like Santorum don't bother me as much as the Romneys and Douthats and Friedmans [1].

Santorum doesn't cause me intellectual pain because he's logically consistent. His God has told him that Man should have Dominion over the earth, so environmental objections are the work of Satan and most Christians are thus Satan's pawns. Since his God promised no more Floods, Global Warming can't happen. He's an internally consistent Capitalochristian fundamentalist. Yes, he's crazy, but that alone doesn't bother me. Besides, he makes Romney mad, so he serves a social purpose.

Nothing here I haven't said before of course -- except recently a I found a Republican blog I can read.

Well, at least the author ran on the GOP ticket when I voted for him in 1994 (first and last time I voted that ticket). Now, however, Arne Carlson's blogger profile doesn't mention the R or G words. He probably voted for Obama last time. (The state GOP hated him in 1994 and hates him even more now.)

So maybe he's not much of a Republican by post-Reagan standards. Go back to President Ford though, and he'd have been northern GOP [2]. If America is to have a health democracy with a  reality-based GOP 2.0, he might be mainstream GOP again.

For now Arne is my token GOP voice - whatever they may call him

[1] Friedman isn't technically a Republican - yet. Given the flavor of his reasoning though, he's more than half-way there.
[2] Excepting sociosexual issues. Progress is funny. In the 1970s even Romney's current reactionary statements on Gay and Civil Rights would be unspeakably progressive, and Romney would be almost a mainstream feminist.

See also:

• Greece, America and GOP 2.0 11/2011
• Roots of the irrational in American politics: pre-dementia and religion 7/2011
• GOP 2.0: What rational climate change politics might look like 12/2011
• UnReason: The Republican War on Reason 2/2011
• Why it hurts to read the right 9/2010

GOP jumps off bridge on birth control

At this point, I wonder if a significant number of establishment Republicans in Congress are going to covertly vote for Obama:

How The GOP Went Back To The 1950s In Just One Day | TPM2012 

...  women being told by Republicans that they’re not qualified to talk about their own sexual health, are dressed like “whores” and probably need birth control because they’re so slutty. And this is just in one day... 

... Another Republican operative defended her party for fighting the fight on contraception access, which she said was an important pushback on White House overreach and electoral winner in states with heavy Catholic populations. But she said the “optics” of the Issa hearing were “probably bad.” And she wasn’t thrilled with the image of Republicans that the likes of Santorum and Friess were presenting. 

“Some will see it as reinforcing the impression a lot of people have of Rick Santorum as the candidate straight out of the 1950’s. I bet it gets played up that way,” she said. “I think most of us know you can keep your knees together and still, um, do it.”..

It will be interesting to watch recalculations over the next few months. If Israel decides Obama is going to have a second term, their policies will shift. GOP Senators, who still expect to be in the majority, may want to start doing deals with the President.