I posted on December 26th that my XO computer that I purchased on November 12th and opened on Christmas Day did not work. I posted on December 27th that the manual and response to my email did not help, and that a phone call did not result in anything but a promise to call back.
I sat by the telephone for a whole day, waiting for a call which never came.
I found one suggestion online that there may be a bad connection to the mother board since there is neither a sound nor a screen response when the computer is turned on -- only the green light that the power is on. I found one place that said one could open the box without voiding the warranty since the idea is that kids will feel free to learn about the machine. I found another place where the instructions said that opening the box would void the warranty, so I have not opened the box.
I am now convinced I need to invoke the warranty. In order to return the computer for repair or replacement, I need to obtain a Return Merchandise Authorization. In order to do so, I needed to call the number given.
I called many times yesterday, getting a response each time that there were no lines available. I finally got a recorded message telling me to wait for an operator. I waited so long that my phone battery went out, and hung up.
I called this evening, New Years Eve, after 7:00 pm, and got through to an operator after about five minutes. It took 15 minutes for him to take my information. He then told me that he could not issue a Return Merchandise Authorization, as that could only be done by a supervisor. He said that they are very busy. He put on the form he filled out that I should be contacted as soon as possible, and told me it would be two to four days.
I don't know how teachers in developing countries are supposed to deal with this system, much less the young children who are to get these computers.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Inside Iraq
Inside Iraq is a blog updated by Iraqi journalists working for McClatchy Newspapers. The journalists are based in Baghdad and outlying provinces. The blog presents firsthand accounts of their experiences. Their complete names are withheld from the postings for security purposes.
I continue to make the point on this blog that what people say (or write) should be taken as evidence, not fact. If you are interested in getting evidence, then it is important to get different views from different people. These Iraqi journalists, working in English for an American newspaper chain, at least can go into the neighborhoods and talk with people. I find their observations interesting, albeit depressing.
I continue to make the point on this blog that what people say (or write) should be taken as evidence, not fact. If you are interested in getting evidence, then it is important to get different views from different people. These Iraqi journalists, working in English for an American newspaper chain, at least can go into the neighborhoods and talk with people. I find their observations interesting, albeit depressing.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
"Is America Falling Off the Flat Earth?"
Norman R. Augustine, Chair of the Rising Above the Gathering Storm Committee of the National Academies, has produced this short book, arguing that the United States should improve STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) instruction and that the government should strongly support fundamental research, if the United States is to continue to innovate strongly to maintain its competitiveness in an increasingly globalized economy.
Hyperpowers
There is a good interview of Amy Chua by Cullen Murphy on Book TV's After Words. Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, has written a book titled Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance - and Why They Fall. The book looks at a sequence of historical powers that transcended the power experiences of their contemporaries -- Ancient Persia, Rome, the Mongol Empire, the Dutch trading empire, the British Empire, and the United States.
In each case the central power had dominant economic and political power, and in each case the empire spanned huge areas. Thinking about it, one obvious element of Chua's hyperpowers is a communication infrastructure that spans the empire size geographical area. I think that in each case the empire involves an economic system that worked, usually improving economic performance by allowing local groups to exploit comparative advantages through wider trade than was possible without the imperial guarantee of the trade routes.
Chua points out that the earlier empires were made possible when a tribal group expanded its military power by enlisting other ethnic groups into its military; only by doing so could an early empire recruit enough troops to take and hold a large geographic area. She suggests that the later empires are far more mercantile on balance, although clearly each had a military capacity to protect its lines of communication and trade.
Chua's main point seems to be that hyperempires must have the tolerance necessary to accept the human resources from other peoples that it needs to expand its power, and to allow the people with those resources to live and succeed in the imperial society. She suggests that the historical societies fell when the "glue" needed to hold the loyalty of their subjects failed, and when they lost that crucial tolerance. She emphasized the exceptional success of the United States in integrating immigrants into its civic culture and institutions, which form the glue of our society.
I wonder whether her analysis might expand to the Islamic world that extended from Spain to India based on the glue of Islam rather than on an imperial political power? Would it extend to the Inca empire that was exceptional for its time and place in extent and influence?
I was impressed by the question of how the United States, with its shared ethos of self determination by other peoples, can provide the glue needed to maintain the global economic empire it has established. She is, I believe, correct in maintaining that American success must continue to be built on the tolerance necessary for us to recruit our needed human resources worldwide. She pointed out that the most long-lived empire in history, the Roman, managed to establish a system in which leaders all over that empire felt the success of the empire was important for their own security and welfare. The question is how can the United States create conditions so that leaders all over the globe comparably feel that the continued success of the United States is important to their own security and welfare?
Chua says, and I agree, that the United States has not been very successful in creating that situation. I might suggest that in the period immediately after World War II, there was a very wide spread feeling that the Pax Americana was important, and that the United States was leading in the recreation of a world economy that would "lift all boats". We have wasted much of that prestige in the last half century.
I am not so sure that the maintenance of imperial power is in itself a critical objective. The Dutch and English seem to be living pretty good lives in humane societies even after their global imperial power has wained. Perhaps the more appropriate objective for an empire is to help establish the conditions so that people will be better off after the imperial power is shared than they are currently. Power should be valued for the ability it provides to achieve other goals rather than as a goal in and for itself.
Chua is. I think, correct in stating that the United States must forgo the glue of offering citizenship in this country that was so successfully used by the Romans in binding aristocrats and soldiers from all over the empire to the Roman center. Adhering to self-determination requires that people remain citizens of their own countries.
In the last century the United States has lead in the creation of regional and global institutions -- United Nations, Bretton Woods System, the World Trade Organization, NATO, NAFTA, etc. that serve as glue for an international system making trade and economic cooperation possible and guarantee the limitation of wars and violence needed for the system to work.
Indeed, I wonder whether one of the most common factors in the success of the hyperpowers was not the ability to create new institutions that responded to the evolving needs of the expanding political and economic systems.
It might be that as the 20th century was the American Century, the 21st century will be the century of the community of nations. In any case, I don't see an alternative that I like to maintaining a system that allows Europe and North America to coexist as comparable global economic powers, that allows Asia to join as a third comparable global economic power, and that provides the stability for continued economic progress.
In each case the central power had dominant economic and political power, and in each case the empire spanned huge areas. Thinking about it, one obvious element of Chua's hyperpowers is a communication infrastructure that spans the empire size geographical area. I think that in each case the empire involves an economic system that worked, usually improving economic performance by allowing local groups to exploit comparative advantages through wider trade than was possible without the imperial guarantee of the trade routes.
Chua points out that the earlier empires were made possible when a tribal group expanded its military power by enlisting other ethnic groups into its military; only by doing so could an early empire recruit enough troops to take and hold a large geographic area. She suggests that the later empires are far more mercantile on balance, although clearly each had a military capacity to protect its lines of communication and trade.
Chua's main point seems to be that hyperempires must have the tolerance necessary to accept the human resources from other peoples that it needs to expand its power, and to allow the people with those resources to live and succeed in the imperial society. She suggests that the historical societies fell when the "glue" needed to hold the loyalty of their subjects failed, and when they lost that crucial tolerance. She emphasized the exceptional success of the United States in integrating immigrants into its civic culture and institutions, which form the glue of our society.
I wonder whether her analysis might expand to the Islamic world that extended from Spain to India based on the glue of Islam rather than on an imperial political power? Would it extend to the Inca empire that was exceptional for its time and place in extent and influence?
I was impressed by the question of how the United States, with its shared ethos of self determination by other peoples, can provide the glue needed to maintain the global economic empire it has established. She is, I believe, correct in maintaining that American success must continue to be built on the tolerance necessary for us to recruit our needed human resources worldwide. She pointed out that the most long-lived empire in history, the Roman, managed to establish a system in which leaders all over that empire felt the success of the empire was important for their own security and welfare. The question is how can the United States create conditions so that leaders all over the globe comparably feel that the continued success of the United States is important to their own security and welfare?
Chua says, and I agree, that the United States has not been very successful in creating that situation. I might suggest that in the period immediately after World War II, there was a very wide spread feeling that the Pax Americana was important, and that the United States was leading in the recreation of a world economy that would "lift all boats". We have wasted much of that prestige in the last half century.
I am not so sure that the maintenance of imperial power is in itself a critical objective. The Dutch and English seem to be living pretty good lives in humane societies even after their global imperial power has wained. Perhaps the more appropriate objective for an empire is to help establish the conditions so that people will be better off after the imperial power is shared than they are currently. Power should be valued for the ability it provides to achieve other goals rather than as a goal in and for itself.
Chua is. I think, correct in stating that the United States must forgo the glue of offering citizenship in this country that was so successfully used by the Romans in binding aristocrats and soldiers from all over the empire to the Roman center. Adhering to self-determination requires that people remain citizens of their own countries.
In the last century the United States has lead in the creation of regional and global institutions -- United Nations, Bretton Woods System, the World Trade Organization, NATO, NAFTA, etc. that serve as glue for an international system making trade and economic cooperation possible and guarantee the limitation of wars and violence needed for the system to work.
Indeed, I wonder whether one of the most common factors in the success of the hyperpowers was not the ability to create new institutions that responded to the evolving needs of the expanding political and economic systems.
It might be that as the 20th century was the American Century, the 21st century will be the century of the community of nations. In any case, I don't see an alternative that I like to maintaining a system that allows Europe and North America to coexist as comparable global economic powers, that allows Asia to join as a third comparable global economic power, and that provides the stability for continued economic progress.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
AT Resources
Journey to Forever, an NGO, provides two sets of links to resources on appropriate technology:
Friday, December 28, 2007
Microfinancing
Back in the 1980's I was on a team doing an evaluation of AT International. I was impressed by a couple of the projects that they funded. In one, a group in India funded solar powered kiosks that were set up as tea shops. In the other, a non-governmental organization in Colombia created a factory for manufacturing pre-fab houses for the poor. When the effort succeeded in Bogota, they started setting up comparable factories in other Colombian cities.
Grameen Phone in Bangladesh provides cell phones to women in villages, who in turn provide the service for a fee of allowing other villagers to make phone calls.
All of these, if you think about it are like the franchise operations that have been made famous in the United States by McDonalds and other franchise chains. They provide a business package to a local entrepreneur that enables that person or organization to set up in business providing a useful service to his community. In all of these cases, the franchising serves as a means for the dissemination of a useful technology -- the solar kiosk, the factory for manufacturing prefab houses, and the cell phone. (Indeed, McDonalds also provides a technological package to its franchisees, and indeed uses innovative technology in areas such as site location analysis.)
I would suggest that franchising is itself an innovation when it is applied in developing nations to the dissemination of an appropriate technology.
Franchising solves a couple of problems simultaneously. On the one hand, it enables entrepreneurs to start businesses that they could not start without help. The Franchiser supplies the franchisee with the technology, but also with a business model, with technical and managerial assistance, and sometimes with financing and material inputs. On the other hand, the payments from the franchisee to the franchiser pay the costs of the services provided. Thus the business model of the franchiser substitutes for a "community foundation" model in which the agent seeks donations from others, while making donations to the local individuals. Financing is always a problem, especially when seeking donations. Moreover, franchising requires that the franchises earn a surplus to pay the franchise cost. Thus a franchiser will not be successful unless it provides a package that would be valued by the franchisee. Do gooders all too often provide things which the giver values more than the recipient.
Grameen Phone in Bangladesh provides cell phones to women in villages, who in turn provide the service for a fee of allowing other villagers to make phone calls.
All of these, if you think about it are like the franchise operations that have been made famous in the United States by McDonalds and other franchise chains. They provide a business package to a local entrepreneur that enables that person or organization to set up in business providing a useful service to his community. In all of these cases, the franchising serves as a means for the dissemination of a useful technology -- the solar kiosk, the factory for manufacturing prefab houses, and the cell phone. (Indeed, McDonalds also provides a technological package to its franchisees, and indeed uses innovative technology in areas such as site location analysis.)
I would suggest that franchising is itself an innovation when it is applied in developing nations to the dissemination of an appropriate technology.
Franchising solves a couple of problems simultaneously. On the one hand, it enables entrepreneurs to start businesses that they could not start without help. The Franchiser supplies the franchisee with the technology, but also with a business model, with technical and managerial assistance, and sometimes with financing and material inputs. On the other hand, the payments from the franchisee to the franchiser pay the costs of the services provided. Thus the business model of the franchiser substitutes for a "community foundation" model in which the agent seeks donations from others, while making donations to the local individuals. Financing is always a problem, especially when seeking donations. Moreover, franchising requires that the franchises earn a surplus to pay the franchise cost. Thus a franchiser will not be successful unless it provides a package that would be valued by the franchisee. Do gooders all too often provide things which the giver values more than the recipient.
- The Stanford Social Innovation Review has an article on the HealthStore Foundation which uses a franchising model to distribute antimalarials in Kenya.
- David Stoker runs a blog titled microfinancing.
- People Planet Profit provides an article titled: Microfranchising the Next Big Thing
Microfranchises as a Solution to Global Poverty
by Kirk Magleby
by Kirk Magleby
"Governance of Innovation Systems, Vol. 2: Case Studies in Innovation Policy"
Summary: "This book presents case studies of governance of innovation policy in Australia, Austria, Belgium (Flanders), Finland, Greece, Ireland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden. It reviews the ongoing changes in these countries with a focus on providing an analysis of governance challenges, institutional changes and policy learning practices. It provides fresh insight into the emerging third-generation of innovation policy and how governments are striving to make innovation policy more coherent.This volume represents analytical work on governance structures and processes in the participating countries, where major efforts have been made to study in depth the challenges to current governance practices. These case studies, carried out in the context of the OECD MONIT (Monitoring and Implementing National Innovation Policies) Project, have as their focus important developments taking place in each country and focus on a variety of issues, reflecting what is at stake in a given country and what can provide valuable lessons for others."
While the report is for sale, the Executive Summary can be downloaded for free. There are also links from the page to Volumes 1 and 3.
OECD.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Field Guide of Appropriate Technology
The Field Guide of Appropriate Technology edited by Barrett Hazeltine and Christopher Bull is available online from Google Books. The book is an all-in-one "hands-on guide" for nontechnical and technical people working in less developed communities. It has been developed and designed with a prestigious team of authors, each of whom has worked extensively in developing societies throughout the world. The book was published by Academic Press in 2002.
The Appropriate Technology Library (DVD Edition)
The DVD edition of the Appropriate Technology Library contains 1050 books plus the complete Appropriate Technology Sourcebook on four DVDs.It is available from Village Earth, but costs $495.00. Still, for an organization interested in development, or for a library in serving a developing country community, the books are available for less than $0.50 each -- not a bad price if you need them all.
The Appropriate Technology Sourcebook
The Complete Appropriate Technology Sourcebook
By
Ken Darrow and Mike Saxenian
By
Ken Darrow and Mike Saxenian
The Appropriate Technology Sourcebook reviews 1,150 books on appropriate technology. The compendium went through many editions in paper form, and is now available online.
Village Earth has provided a great service making this available.
Village Earth has provided a great service making this available.
The Nayudamma Technology Bank
The Nayudamma Technology Bank provides easy access and information to technologies supported by IDRC — technologies from the South for the South. This collection, which provides contact names for all the technologies described, is a way of sharing and updating information on technological advancements for international development. The technology bank has been named in honour of the late Dr Yelavarthy Nayudamma, a man who dedicated his life to demonstrating how science and technology can and should be used for human benefit. Dr. Nayudamma, who joined the IDRC Board of Governors in 1981, lost his life in the tragic Air India disaster in 1985.
E squared -- The PBS series
e² is an ongoing PBS series that chronicles efforts in many countries to solve pressing ecological challenges. From energy consumption to design efficiency, policy to industry, the series documents the innovators whose work is reducing humans' impact on the environment. Interviews with experts, policymakers and pioneers across a variety of disciplines offer a firsthand account of the complex environmental challenges that we face, as well as the possibility that pragmatic solutions are within reach.
I just saw an episode that featured Mohamed Yunus' and Grameen efforts in small energy systems in Bangladesh.
I just saw an episode that featured Mohamed Yunus' and Grameen efforts in small energy systems in Bangladesh.
Eldis: Agriculture: Technology and Innovation
Eldis, the UK's developing information portal devotes a portion of its Resource Guide on agriculture to technology and innovation.
Click here to go to the Eldis facet on technology and innovation in agriculture.
Click here to go to the Eldis facet on technology and innovation in agriculture.
Practical Action's Technical Briefs
These are introductory factsheets and basic practical information written in response to the demand for information on a broad range of appropriate technologies. They can be downloaded free of charge from this site.
Still More Appropriate Technology Sites
- ATTRA - National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (USA)
- Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology
- Appropriate Technology Association, Thailand
- Technology and Action for Rural Advancement (TARA)
- The Development Alternatives Group (India)
- The Lemelson Foundation Invention for Sustainable Development Program
- The African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) (Kenya)
- Prolinnova (promoting local innovation in ecologically-oriented agriculture and natural resource management)
- Sustainable Technology (blog)
- Sustainable Design Update (blog)
- APPROTECH Asia
- APACE-VFEG (Australia)
- The Development Technologies Unit of the School of Engineering at the University of Warwick
- German Appropriate Technology and Ecoefficiency Program
- International Center for Appropriate and Sustainable Technology (USA)
- SIFAT (Technology) (USA)
- Appropriate Rural Technology Institute, Pune, India
- SEDL: Assistive Technology for Students with Learning Disabilities
- SEEDS: Sarvodaya Economic Enterprise Development Service (Sri Lanka)
Experience with One Laptop Per Child
As I wrote yesterday, the XO computer I bought from One Laptop per Child does not work. I opened it two days ago, turned it on, and the only thing that happened was that a green light went on indicating that the computer was on, and a yellow light went on indicating that the battery was charging. The screen stayed blank. Eventually the yellow light changed to green, indicating that the battery had charged, but nothing else changed. I tried rebooting, to no avail.
It took some time to fire up another computer and find the supporting documentation for the XO on the web. (The touching faith of the XO designers that it would be good for kids to figure out how to work the machine without instructions was becoming more and more annoying.) No help.
On Christmas day I got a negative response from the telephone help desk, not surprising on that holiday. Then I emailed to the help people, and several hours got a suggestion that I reboot the machine (quorws from the online instructions). I dutifully did so, with the same negative results. Yesterday morning I called the help desk and after about 15 minutes on hold got an operator who took may name, address and phone number and said someone would get back to me. I also sent another email message to the help desk. No response to this time.
More later.
It took some time to fire up another computer and find the supporting documentation for the XO on the web. (The touching faith of the XO designers that it would be good for kids to figure out how to work the machine without instructions was becoming more and more annoying.) No help.
On Christmas day I got a negative response from the telephone help desk, not surprising on that holiday. Then I emailed to the help people, and several hours got a suggestion that I reboot the machine (quorws from the online instructions). I dutifully did so, with the same negative results. Yesterday morning I called the help desk and after about 15 minutes on hold got an operator who took may name, address and phone number and said someone would get back to me. I also sent another email message to the help desk. No response to this time.
More later.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
The Internet in 2008
The Economist makes three predictions for the new year: 1. Surfing will slow (as cyberspace become more crowded with traffic with higher bit rates from more people and many more machines and devices); 2. Surfing will detach (as spectrum freed by digital broadcasting is auctioned to providers of Internet services for wireless connectivity); and 3. Surfing—and everything else computer-related—will open (as the open commons movement gains support and impact). December 23rd 2007, Economist.com.
More about Appropriate Technology
- Wikipedia entry on Appropriate Technology.
- Journey to Forever
- Tools for Self Reliance
- FutureWorld Eco Technology Centre (Australia)
- El Centro Integrado de Technologia Appropriada (CITA)
- CESTA- Salvadoran Centre for Appropriate Technology
- Appropedia - The Appropriate Technology Wiki
- Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG)
- Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas (ATTRA)
- blueEnergy (Central America)
- Centre for Appropriate Technology (Australia)
- Engineers in Technical, Humanitarian Opportunities of Service-learning (ETHOS), University of Dayton School of Engineering
- Engineers for a Sustainable World
- KickStart (formerly ApproTec, Kenya)
- The ReSource Institute for Low Entropy Systems (RILES)
- Village Earth
- Asia Regional Cookstove Program (ARECOP)
- EU Water Initiative (EUWI)
- Information Gateway for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (REEGLE)
- Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21)
- Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP)
Some Organizations Promoting Appropriate Technologies
The most famous of these organizations is probably Practical Action - Intermediate Technology Development Group. It was founded in 1966 by E. F. Schumacher, the author of Small is Beautiful, which is considered the founding text of the AI movement.Practical Action is a charity registered in the United Kingdom which works directly in four regions of the developing world – Latin America, East Africa, Southern Africa and South Asia, with particular concentration on Peru, Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.SRISTI (Society for research and initiatives for sustainable technologies and institutions)
In these countries, Practical Action works with poor communities to develop appropriate technologies in food production, agroprocessing, energy, transport, water and sanitation, shelter and disaster mitigation.
Lessons from Practical Action's grassroots experience are spread through consultancy services, publishing activities, education, advocacy and campaigns, and through an international technical enquiries service.
SRISTI, which means creation, was born in 1993 essentially to support the activities of the Honey Bee Network to respect, recognize and reward the creativity at grassroots. Based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, SRISTI (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies) is a registered charitable organization that is devoted to empowering the knowledge rich-economically poor people by adding value in their contemporary creativity as well as traditional knowledge. It has helped establish GIAN, NIF, MVIF and AASTIIK.The Enterprise Group/VITA is a U.S.
non-governmental organization, which is some four decades old. Founded as Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), years ago it ditched its files of technological information and today describes itself as workingto combat poverty by helping small producers and other entrepreneurs build sustainable businesses that create jobs and increase productivity, market opportunities and incomes. EWV achieves this by expanding access to appropriate technologies, technical assistance, knowledge and finance.The Program of Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) "is an international, nonprofit organization that creates sustainable, culturally relevant solutions, enabling communities worldwide to break longstanding cycles of poor health." In collaboration with diverse public- and private-sector partners, we it seeks to "provide appropriate health technologies and vital strategies that change the way people think and act."
Engineers Without Borders - USA (EWB-USA) "is a non-profit humanitarian organization established to partner with developing communities worldwide in order to improve their quality of life. This partnership involves the implementation of sustainable engineering projects, while involving and training internationally responsible engineers and engineering students."
Telecoms sans Frontiers is an international NGO that speciaiizes in telecommunications technology, and is especially involved in providing communications infrastructure in emergency situations.
ACCION International is a four decade old non-governmental organization focusin on the social innovation of microfinance. It also has a program of technical assistance which includes advice on hardware and software for the microfinance industry, While the microfinance organizations that use this technology are themselves often quite large and sophisticated, the ACCION International technology enables them to provide microfinance services to the poor in developing nations in a more affordable manner, and is in fact tailored to the interface between the poor and the financial institutions that serve the poor.
The U.S. National Center for Appropriate Technology focuses on agricultural, rural and energy sustainable technologies, emphasizing the needs of the U.S. agricultural communities that it targets through its national and regional centers.
The Appropriate Technology Institute of Equip. I don't personally know this organization, which works with Christian missionaries to promote appropriate technology innovations in developing countries in conjunction with their missionary efforts. The website suggests that it has a number of good programs in water, health and other technologies.
There are some good sites for information on appropriate technologies. These include:
CTA:
The New Zealand Digital Library which has a large number of digital documents online, including the Humanity Development Library which includes a large collection of materials on appropriate technologies. I especially recommend the monographs from the National Academy of Scienes Board on Science and Technology for International Development (BOSTID). These are somewhat dated, but contain a large amount of information on underexploited technologies of potential economic value to developing nations.an ACP-EU institution working in the field of information for development. We operate under the ACP-EU Cotonou Agreement and our headquarters are in The Netherlands.
When it was set up, in 1984, CTA was given the challenging task of improving the flow of information among stakeholders in agricultural and rural development in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.
The World Agricultural Information Center of FAO (WAICENT): provides access to information on agriculture, forestry, fisheries, sustainable rural development, economics, food and nutrition. The FAO WAICENT Portal provides tools for navigating and accessing thaat information. The FAO Web site is a comprehensive source of agricultural information, having approximately 500 000 web pages, over 100 databases, and thousands of documents.
The Human Info NGO. This Belgian NGO has developed a number of information bases on development topics, including the Humanity Development Library mentioned above. They are available on CD-ROM for a modest fee (to cover shipping and handling).
Appropriate Technology
This posting is to introduce a new label, "Appropriate Technology". The label will be applied to postings on technologies that are available to poor people in developin nations, but underutilized, and which can help to improve their lives. I tried to think of a better label, one that captured the idea of a simple technology that could be used and maintained in poor communities, helping in some way to improve the lives of the community members. I finally decided that in honor of the Appropriate Technology movement of the past, I would use that term for the label.
Development takes place when people find a better way of doing things. Sometimes -- perhaps often -- that involves a capital investment, or at least a risk that the new approach will not work as well as expected, or indeed as well as that which it replaces. I will use the term for social innovations as well as for the hardware and software innovations that are more commonly described with the AI label.
Appropriate Technology is thus a technology that can be applied by or for a local community where the investment can be afforded. It is useful to consider the investment in cost-benefit terms. Not only should the cost be affordable, and withing the capacity of the community to finance (different ideas, thank goodness for microfinancing programs, which are helping to bridge the gap between affordable and financable) but the benefits should exceed the cost by a sufficient margin to make the investment attractive. Usually this means that the innovation must be durable, and thus that the technology must be locally operated and maintained. It seems obvious that a technology that has a very desirable benefit to cost ratio in one place need not be equally attractive in all places. Thus the technologies labeled "Appropriate Technologies" will be candidates for consideration for local adaptation.
Appropriate technologies can be simple, as are many pumps and tools. They may be quite sophisticated, such as appropriate vaccines or electronics. Thus the transistor radio was a hugely successful technological innovation for the poor when it was introduced, bringing information and entertainment in an affordable form to billions of people; yet the transistor radio was based on decades of research in solid state physics.
Often the appropriate technology will not be applied without the technological system in which it functions being in place and operational. The green revolution seeds did not work in places where there did not exist the system to produce local varieties tailored to local conditions, nor where irrigation systems were not developed, nor where the markets did not exist to distribute the seeds nor the chemical inputs that they required, nor for that matter where there were not credit sources to allow farmers to finance the investment in the improved inputs, markets for the expanded farm product, or advice on how to utilize the seeds and how to protect the crops against diseases and pests.
Here are a couple of appropriate technologies:
Development takes place when people find a better way of doing things. Sometimes -- perhaps often -- that involves a capital investment, or at least a risk that the new approach will not work as well as expected, or indeed as well as that which it replaces. I will use the term for social innovations as well as for the hardware and software innovations that are more commonly described with the AI label.
Appropriate Technology is thus a technology that can be applied by or for a local community where the investment can be afforded. It is useful to consider the investment in cost-benefit terms. Not only should the cost be affordable, and withing the capacity of the community to finance (different ideas, thank goodness for microfinancing programs, which are helping to bridge the gap between affordable and financable) but the benefits should exceed the cost by a sufficient margin to make the investment attractive. Usually this means that the innovation must be durable, and thus that the technology must be locally operated and maintained. It seems obvious that a technology that has a very desirable benefit to cost ratio in one place need not be equally attractive in all places. Thus the technologies labeled "Appropriate Technologies" will be candidates for consideration for local adaptation.
Appropriate technologies can be simple, as are many pumps and tools. They may be quite sophisticated, such as appropriate vaccines or electronics. Thus the transistor radio was a hugely successful technological innovation for the poor when it was introduced, bringing information and entertainment in an affordable form to billions of people; yet the transistor radio was based on decades of research in solid state physics.
Often the appropriate technology will not be applied without the technological system in which it functions being in place and operational. The green revolution seeds did not work in places where there did not exist the system to produce local varieties tailored to local conditions, nor where irrigation systems were not developed, nor where the markets did not exist to distribute the seeds nor the chemical inputs that they required, nor for that matter where there were not credit sources to allow farmers to finance the investment in the improved inputs, markets for the expanded farm product, or advice on how to utilize the seeds and how to protect the crops against diseases and pests.
Here are a couple of appropriate technologies:
- The Lifestraw portable water filter: This is a simple device that can be used by an individual to filter water to make it safe to drink. It should be more cost-efficient than boiling the water, and better than using chemical additives to the water.
- The Playpump: A water pump that draws its energy from children playing on a carosusel.
Experience with Kindle
Amazon's Kindle is a wireless reading device. I bought one of the first, and it arrived nicely boxed in a white box similar I suppose to a book set. It is a convenient size, smaller I suppose than a typical trade paperback book. There is a decent manual and I found it relatively easy to figure out. I had ordered a book online, and it arrived quickly and painlessly. I have sub-normal visual acuity, and found the text enlargement feature easy to use and very helpful. The format is good, and I am enjoying my first book. The online market for added materials is also useful and easy to use. The wireless connection seems to work well.
So far, this is really a nice addition to my life. I am looking forward to having my library online rather than in the bookcases littering my house.
So far, this is really a nice addition to my life. I am looking forward to having my library online rather than in the bookcases littering my house.
Experience with One Laptop Per Child
I joined the buy one-donate one program of One Laptop Per Child on November 12. It took more than a month for my machine to arrive. I didn't open it until yesterday. It didn't work. Turning it on, there was a little green light that showed it was on, and nothing else.
The instruction manual that comes with the machine is useless if the machine does not work. It does have information on a link to the Internet, which does have information. How a kid with a computer that doesn't work is expected to access the internet manual is not clear to me.
I tried calling, and got a fairly useless message. I sent an email to the help desk, and got a suggestion a few hours later that I reboot the machine, which I did for the nth time, and got the same nothing. The message suggested that I call the help desk, or send another email asking for help.
I called the help desk and this time, after waiting for about ten minutes, got an operator who asked me for my confirmation number, which I never could find. She however, did find my information using my name and address. She then told me that someone would email me or call me shortly.
More information later.
The instruction manual that comes with the machine is useless if the machine does not work. It does have information on a link to the Internet, which does have information. How a kid with a computer that doesn't work is expected to access the internet manual is not clear to me.
I tried calling, and got a fairly useless message. I sent an email to the help desk, and got a suggestion a few hours later that I reboot the machine, which I did for the nth time, and got the same nothing. The message suggested that I call the help desk, or send another email asking for help.
I called the help desk and this time, after waiting for about ten minutes, got an operator who asked me for my confirmation number, which I never could find. She however, did find my information using my name and address. She then told me that someone would email me or call me shortly.
More information later.
US Casts Sole Vote Against UN Budget
The United Nations General Assembly approved a two-year U.N. budget of $4.17 billion on Saturday by a vote of 142 to 1, with the United States casting the only "no" vote. The U.S. opposed the budget because it funded a follow-up to a follow-up to the 2001 World Conference Against Racism. Forty-nine countries did not have delegates in the chamber for the vote.
Where Does All the Computer Power Go?
The human genome has some 3.1647 billion base pairs. While human genomes are 99.9 percent identical from one person to another, there are still three million places where nucleotides differ from person to person. There are some 30,000 genes. However, non-gene portions of the DNA affect the way the genes are expressed in the cells. (Moreover, during the life of the cell, chemical changes accumulate which also affect the way the genes are expressed.) Craig Vanter says that some 45 percent of his genes are heterozygous, having different alleles for the same gene. There are a few individual genomes that have been sequenced completely, but the plans are to sequence the DNA for 10,000 people in the next decade. There is a prize on offer for the first person (group) to develop technology that can sequence an individual's DNA for $1000. The era of individualized medicine, in which treatment will be matched with an individual's genes, will probably come in the next decade or two. Then there will be many times as many genomes available for study.
There are maybe three pounds of microorganisms in the average human being, and their behavior affects their human hosts (and vice-versa). There is now a program to sequence the genomes of these organisms, to create the larger genome of the collection of the human and its related microorganisms. That genome will be a couple of orders of magnitude larger than the genome of the individual human. One assumes that it will be subject to more diversity.
There are at least 1000 diseases now classified in the International Classification of Diseases. We can think of diseases as the result of the function of the genes, or of the interaction of organisms with different genomes. Thus an infectious disease is the result of the response of the human, and his associated organisms, to the infecting ageny, each determined by its genome and its history.
And of course we are interested in not only the interrelationship of genes and disease, but of development and of all of the traits of interest to people.
The Celera human genome project established a benchmark in the use of computer power.
The understanding of the relationship of the genome to disease will involve statistical analysis of the health histories and individual genomes of tens or hundreds of thousands of people. It is expected that few if any conditions will be explained by a single gene. Even eye color is a complex phenomenon under control of different genes. So think about the computer power that will be used in the coming generation to clarify the genetic basis of disease and behavior.
There are maybe three pounds of microorganisms in the average human being, and their behavior affects their human hosts (and vice-versa). There is now a program to sequence the genomes of these organisms, to create the larger genome of the collection of the human and its related microorganisms. That genome will be a couple of orders of magnitude larger than the genome of the individual human. One assumes that it will be subject to more diversity.
There are at least 1000 diseases now classified in the International Classification of Diseases. We can think of diseases as the result of the function of the genes, or of the interaction of organisms with different genomes. Thus an infectious disease is the result of the response of the human, and his associated organisms, to the infecting ageny, each determined by its genome and its history.
And of course we are interested in not only the interrelationship of genes and disease, but of development and of all of the traits of interest to people.
The Celera human genome project established a benchmark in the use of computer power.
Upon the establishment of the genome project at Celera in 1998, the company purchased and connected 700 CPUs and 70 terabites of hard drive space. This computing system was established to run the initial test of their algorithm code, which was used to sequence the genome of the Drosophilla fruit fly with a 13-fold coverage of the genome successfully in 1999. The most surprising thing about this approach was that it succeeded in coding the algorithm and sequencing the 120 Megabase pair genome of the fruit fly to that extent of completeness in just 11 months. Myers (Gene Myers, a professor of Computer Science at Berkeley) then modified the process so that the Whole Genome Shotgun Sequencing process would make a 5-fold coverage of the human genome, as he believed it would be adequate to provide a complete sequence of the human genome. In addition, Venter purchased 4 supercomputers referred to as the GeneMatcher from a company called Parcel Inc. Parcel Inc, a company that typically produces computers for government agencies such as the NSA, created this machine specifically for matching character strings, such as putting together sequences of DNA like a puzzle. It was composed of 7000 processors arranged to perform over 1000 times faster than any Pentium computer. With this new technology, on September 8, 1999, Celera began its sequencing of the human genome using this approach, and completed the first assembly of the whole human genome in June 17, 2000, only 9 months after the project began.
The understanding of the relationship of the genome to disease will involve statistical analysis of the health histories and individual genomes of tens or hundreds of thousands of people. It is expected that few if any conditions will be explained by a single gene. Even eye color is a complex phenomenon under control of different genes. So think about the computer power that will be used in the coming generation to clarify the genetic basis of disease and behavior.
Monday, December 24, 2007
American Scientists Visit Iran
Science magazine this week reports on the visit by an American delegation, led by Norm Neureiter of the AAAS, to Iran. Neureiter recalls a reception that few would have predicted: When Nobel laureate Joseph H. Taylor of Princeton spoke at Sharif University of Technology, students jammed the hall and treated him like a celebrity. Former President Mohammad Khatami had a cordial visit with the Americans. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to arrange a meeting, but Putin's visit made that impossible. And the Iranian news media covered the tour extensively.Comment: Congratulations to Neureiter and the delegation for taking a politive step.
"It was phenomenally favorable, from the first day," Neureiter said in an interview. "It's amazing how popular Americans are in Iran. Intuitively, you would think it would be just the opposite."
The October visit offered clear proof that the science communities of the two countries share a reservoir of common interest and good will that could support a more constructive overall relationship, he said. This month's U.S. intelligence conclusion that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is a "remarkable development," he added, "but there are still many issues of contention between the U.S. and Iran. What we are proposing is greater engagement at the people level despite the political problems."
The reception does not surprise me. Scientists all over the world often have more in common with scientists from other countries than with politicians in their own country. Iran and Iranians clearly value science, and the scientific community could have been (and was) expected to welcome a visit of a team of distinguished scientists as helping to overcome their own isolation and gain them a useful visibility.
Iran is no more homogeneous than any other country. While there are reactionary people who feel their theocracy is incompatible with modernization, there are others who strongly support modernization and especially the potential for science and technology to make the lives of Iranians better.
As in so many countries in the past, scientific cooperation and exchanges may keep Iranian-American channels of communication open while the political channels are clogged. JAD
From the editorial in this week's Science
Donald Kennedy editorializes in this week's Science:
But on the breakdown side, continual denial by the Bush Administration added to its long history of failing to mitigate the emission of greenhouse gases.
A specimen case of the Administration's reluctance to acknowledge climate change was added just recently when Julie Gerberding, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was asked to present congressional testimony on the potential impacts of climate change on public health. It is surely no secret that heat spells are a health hazard, or that drought and excess rainfall can influence human susceptibility to pathogen-borne disease--just the kind of thing Congress wanted to know. Gerberding's testimony was reviewed at the White House and soon made to disappear: Virtually all of what she said about climate change--six pages of it--was blacked out of the document filed with the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (seehttp://alt.coxnewsweb.com/ajc/pdf/gerberding.pdf). There's an odd behind-the-scenes story here, involving two offices that report to the president. The Office of Science and Technology Policy raised questions about particular statements and made suggestions, but then the Office of Management and Budget, apparently unwilling to work on the suggestions, simply eliminated every section about which questions had been raised. It's worth a look just to understand what these people don't want you to know.
Terror Management Theory.
Source: "Reminders of Mortality Bring Out the Charitable Side" by Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, December 24, 2007.
I quote:
Again, as I have posted in the past, answers to questions are simply answers to questions, to be taken as data in trying to find out what a person thinks. JAD
I quote:
The theory suggests that when people face explicit dangers, they usually respond rationally -- they get out of the path of a hurtling car, for example. But when terrors are on the fringes of awareness, as was the case with the Colorado pedestrians and the funeral home, people respond with defenses that are primarily psychological. One of these psychological defenses is to seek connections to things larger than ourselves -- to values and ties that will outlive our physical existence.Comment: It has long been understood that you can influence the way a person answers a question by the things you say to a person before asking the question. The psychological "set" that is created affects the response. The Terror Management Theory, in which people asked questions where they could see a funeral home answered differently than people a few blocks away without that stimulus, seems to be an other example of the same psychological phenomenon. but one in which the cue need not be verbal or even consciously noted by the person interviewed.
"Reminders of mortality bolster our sense that we are valuable parts of a meaningful world, and one way we do that is by being good people and helpful, by doing charitable things," Greenberg said. "This is why rich people who get rich by pretty ruthless methods often become philanthropists later in life. We want to feel like we are moral and spiritual beings who can transcend just being mortal creatures -- and feeling moral sustains that feeling."
Again, as I have posted in the past, answers to questions are simply answers to questions, to be taken as data in trying to find out what a person thinks. JAD
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Brain Boosting Drugs
"Professor's little helper" by Barbara Sahakian & Sharon Morein-Zamir1, Nature 450, 1157-1159 (20 December 2007)
The use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by both ill and healthy individuals raises ethical questions that should not be ignored, argue Barbara Sahakian and Sharon Morein-Zamir......
How would you react if you knew your colleagues — or your students — were taking cognitive enhancers?
In academia, we know that a number of our scientific colleagues in the United States and the United Kingdom already use modafinil to counteract the effects of jetlag, to enhance productivity or mental energy, or to deal with demanding and important intellectual challenges (see Figure 1). Modafinil and other drugs are available online, but their non-prescription and long-term use has not been monitored in healthy individuals.
The Chronicle of Higher Education's blog has comments on the article.
Background Briefing: Genetic Interventions and the Ethics of Enhancement of Human Beings
Comment: I recently posted on genetic variation and the enhancement of aspects of physical performance by artificial means. Now we see a debate on the ethics of enhancement of mental performance by drugs. Again, there is an issue of risks, many of which are uncertain since they are related to long term use of relatively new drugs versus putative benefits. I guess we also have the difference between important and unimportant uses of the drug -- enhancing sports performance versus keeping alert while driving in an emergency situation for examples. But somehow I find intelligence amplification more acceptable than strength amplification, at least for academics and professionals. JAD
Background Briefing: Genetic Interventions and the Ethics of Enhancement of Human Beings
We will soon be emotional about machines!
Two from today's Washington Post:
"Programmed for Love: If advances in artificial intelligence continue, your next lover may have an on/off switch." The Washington Post, December 23, 2007. (Review of LOVE AND SEX WITH ROBOTS:
The Evolution Of Human-Robot Relationships by David Levy)
Bob Textor years ago talked about tempocentrism, recognizing that values change with time, and that people in the future will judge technologies differently than we do. Emotional responses to machines may be a major difference in values! JAD
"Programmed for Love: If advances in artificial intelligence continue, your next lover may have an on/off switch." The Washington Post, December 23, 2007. (Review of LOVE AND SEX WITH ROBOTS:
The Evolution Of Human-Robot Relationships by David Levy)
Here's a prediction that'll make you squirm: In the future, people will fall in love with robots. Robots will not be cold, predictable machines, but actual lovers -- precocious, sexy, and remarkably humanlike in appearance. Humans will even marry robots in certain obliging jurisdictions. Now send the kids into the other room while we mention the obvious, bizarre implication: Someday, people will have sex with robots."A Dinosaur With a Future?" by Mike Musgrove, December 23, 2007.
Pleo, (a toy computer controlled dinosaur) sold for $350 by California start-up Ugobe, has been the subject of fascination in the geek community ever since it made a preview appearance at the prestigious Demo technology conference in 2006.Comment: It will be interesting to see how psychologists trying to figure out how human emotions work, computer scientists seeking to figure out how to make machines more user friendly, and entrepreneurs seeking money develop emotional robots. The Asians will probably lead hear.
Pleo has two built-in microphones for hearing, a camera for detecting motion and sensors under his skin to tell him when you're petting him. In his belly are a USB port and an SD card slot, in case you want to load him up with the latest software posted online by his creators or by other Pleo enthusiasts and programmers.
Bob Textor years ago talked about tempocentrism, recognizing that values change with time, and that people in the future will judge technologies differently than we do. Emotional responses to machines may be a major difference in values! JAD
More on the Revolutionary War
The other day I posted some thoughts on 1776, the book by David McCullough. Today the Washington Post has an opinion piece by Joseph Ellis, a professor at Mt. Holyoke, suggesting that the question of what our founding fathers would do today (in Iraq) was pretty meaningless, since they would not understand the question, and are centuries dead so we can't ask it of them. He substitutes the question of what studying them leads him to believe about the present situation. Good point!
He also says:
However, I think Ellis' extrapolation to Iraq may be wrong on one point. The English could not hold the colonies by force because they could not afford to do so, and were they seriously to have tried the French would probably have "eaten their lunch". The United States will not hold Iraq by force because our governmental process will not choose to do so. In part, the difference is one between a colonial power and an anti-colonial power. On the other hand, it is also due to the fact that the citizens, voters, and power structure of this country don't care enough about Iraq to spend the money and lives that it would take to do so, and the public would eventually be sickened by the television coverage of the violence needed to hold captive an foreign people.
Still, the Ellis' basic point is important. It is very difficult and expensive to hold subject a people who don't want to be controlled at a distance of thousands of miles. JAD
He also says:
Washington eventually realized -- and it took him three years to have this epiphany -- that the only way he could lose the Revolutionary War was to try to win it. The British army and navy could win all the major battles, and with a few exceptions they did; but they faced the intractable problem of trying to establish control over a vast continent whose population resented and resisted military occupation. As the old counterinsurgency mantra goes, Washington won by not losing, and the British lost by not winning. Our dilemma in Iraq is analogous to the British dilemma in North America -- and is likely to yield the same outcome.Comment: Well said. Of course, with a couple of centuries more experience, it is easier for us to see the nature of anti-colonial insurgency, so the few years it took for Washington to realize the nature of the war he was fighting should not be held against him.
However, I think Ellis' extrapolation to Iraq may be wrong on one point. The English could not hold the colonies by force because they could not afford to do so, and were they seriously to have tried the French would probably have "eaten their lunch". The United States will not hold Iraq by force because our governmental process will not choose to do so. In part, the difference is one between a colonial power and an anti-colonial power. On the other hand, it is also due to the fact that the citizens, voters, and power structure of this country don't care enough about Iraq to spend the money and lives that it would take to do so, and the public would eventually be sickened by the television coverage of the violence needed to hold captive an foreign people.
Still, the Ellis' basic point is important. It is very difficult and expensive to hold subject a people who don't want to be controlled at a distance of thousands of miles. JAD
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Differences in attributes: so what?
Pygmies are people of groups whose adults average 150 centimeters (4 foot 11 inches) or less in hight. In addition to three such groups living in central Africa, there are several other tribal groups living in other continents with such short heights. It is thought that these groups have developed to have such short heights because their body size confers some evolutionary advantage in the environment in which they live, and perhaps in the way that they have lived for many generations.
The Nilotic peoples of Sudan such as the Dinka have been described as the tallest in the world, with the males in some communities having average heights of 1.9 m (6 ft 3 in) and females at 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in). It is thought that these groups also have developed such tall heights because their body height confers some evolutionary advantage in the environments in which they live, and perhaps in the way these people have lived for many generations.
Of course, the two groups have very different aptitudes in an artificial environment, such as that of the professional basketball court.
Over the past twenty thousand years or so, humans have migrated from Africa to live in many different environments all over the world. The number of people has grown very greatly. Thus over these thousands of generations of Diaspora there have been many opportunities for genetic variation to arise and many many environments for them to prove valuable.
We know that there are lots of variations among human populations in addition to the height differences between pymies and Nilotic peoples. We can see differences in skin color, eye color and hair color. We know that Europeans and bantus can digest milk as adults better than can most other peoples. We know that some groups in malarial endemic areas have genetic traits that help individuals survive malaria. All of these seem to have evolved by providing people with some evolutionary advantage, and all of these may have some disadvantages in situations other than those in which they evolved.
None of this seems very controversial. Indeed, I think the proper response is "so what?" Different people have different aptitudes. Sometimes these aptitudes have a genetic basis. Sometimes there are greater frequencies of certain aptitudes in some population groups than in others. Big deal.
It has occurred to me that culture, including material culture, has a huge impact on the traits we value. In the past, physical strength was a valuable attribute, but the machine age has reduced the advantage of being big and strong, I remember early in my working career, the ability to produce clean, neat paper products was highly valued in secretaries and draftsmen, but the personal computer makes these abilities largely irrelevant. Memory was highly valued in societies where people could not easily look things up, but seems to be less valued now. Analytic abilities seem to be becoming more valued as we move into the knowledge economy. Still, it may be helpful to realize that the values our societies attribute to different abilities change, so that we don't take any such value too seriously.
Somehow that brings me to sports. The doping scandals are big news. As far as I am concerned, the big problem is that kids are taking drugs that will have long lasting effects without being mature enough to judge the risks and benefits. I do see that sport depends on an even playing field, and there is a real problem when some people get an advantage in the sport by cheating -- doing something which is against the rules. (I must say that I don't really understand the pleasure that baseball fans get from studying statistics of baseball, and comparing the records of players from different times, so their insistence that the conditions of the game remain the same seem a little peculiar to me.)
I have heard a couple of people ask whether Tiger Woods' laser surgery is different than the use of steroids to build muscular strength. Somehow there does seem to be a difference: the laser surgery is safe and a common procedure to bring vision up to normal, while the steroids are less common, more dangerous, and intended to bring people to an exceptional state.
I don't know where I am going here. I guess it is to suggest that society not provide huge rewards for people who do relatively artificial things well, and that we not reward people for developing abnormal abilities in dangerous ways, so that our kids will not be led into dangerous behaviors.
The Nilotic peoples of Sudan such as the Dinka have been described as the tallest in the world, with the males in some communities having average heights of 1.9 m (6 ft 3 in) and females at 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in). It is thought that these groups also have developed such tall heights because their body height confers some evolutionary advantage in the environments in which they live, and perhaps in the way these people have lived for many generations.
Of course, the two groups have very different aptitudes in an artificial environment, such as that of the professional basketball court.
Over the past twenty thousand years or so, humans have migrated from Africa to live in many different environments all over the world. The number of people has grown very greatly. Thus over these thousands of generations of Diaspora there have been many opportunities for genetic variation to arise and many many environments for them to prove valuable.
We know that there are lots of variations among human populations in addition to the height differences between pymies and Nilotic peoples. We can see differences in skin color, eye color and hair color. We know that Europeans and bantus can digest milk as adults better than can most other peoples. We know that some groups in malarial endemic areas have genetic traits that help individuals survive malaria. All of these seem to have evolved by providing people with some evolutionary advantage, and all of these may have some disadvantages in situations other than those in which they evolved.
None of this seems very controversial. Indeed, I think the proper response is "so what?" Different people have different aptitudes. Sometimes these aptitudes have a genetic basis. Sometimes there are greater frequencies of certain aptitudes in some population groups than in others. Big deal.
It has occurred to me that culture, including material culture, has a huge impact on the traits we value. In the past, physical strength was a valuable attribute, but the machine age has reduced the advantage of being big and strong, I remember early in my working career, the ability to produce clean, neat paper products was highly valued in secretaries and draftsmen, but the personal computer makes these abilities largely irrelevant. Memory was highly valued in societies where people could not easily look things up, but seems to be less valued now. Analytic abilities seem to be becoming more valued as we move into the knowledge economy. Still, it may be helpful to realize that the values our societies attribute to different abilities change, so that we don't take any such value too seriously.
Somehow that brings me to sports. The doping scandals are big news. As far as I am concerned, the big problem is that kids are taking drugs that will have long lasting effects without being mature enough to judge the risks and benefits. I do see that sport depends on an even playing field, and there is a real problem when some people get an advantage in the sport by cheating -- doing something which is against the rules. (I must say that I don't really understand the pleasure that baseball fans get from studying statistics of baseball, and comparing the records of players from different times, so their insistence that the conditions of the game remain the same seem a little peculiar to me.)
I have heard a couple of people ask whether Tiger Woods' laser surgery is different than the use of steroids to build muscular strength. Somehow there does seem to be a difference: the laser surgery is safe and a common procedure to bring vision up to normal, while the steroids are less common, more dangerous, and intended to bring people to an exceptional state.
I don't know where I am going here. I guess it is to suggest that society not provide huge rewards for people who do relatively artificial things well, and that we not reward people for developing abnormal abilities in dangerous ways, so that our kids will not be led into dangerous behaviors.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Thoughts on Reading 1776
I just finished reading the book 1776 by David McCullough and discussing it within a book club. The book follows events in the American revolutionary war during the title year, including debates in the British Parliament and resolutions in the Congressional Congress, but mostly the military affairs. Thus the book follows the troops through the siege of Boston by the Americans, the siege of New York by the British, and the subsequent events of the year in New Jersey.The book is short, interesting and easy to read.
I have not thought much about the revolutionary war since I became an adult, and it is really quite difficult to look back at that time as it must have been, rather than as the antecedent to what has happened since. But that was what I tried to do with this reading and discussion.
The 13 colonies were very thinly populated. Fewer people lived in the entire region than now live in the greater Washington metropolitan area (in which I now live). The cities, what we now would think of as relatively small towns, were few and far between -- Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore. Most people lived in the country, and most were involved in agriculture. People on the average lived better in the colonies than in Europe, but we would see most of them as very poor. Washington and other plantation owners, the very rich of their time, were very few indeed. Americans were almost universally unschooled or very poorly schooled, living in a world of sparse and slow communication.
Of course, the 13 colonies were not a country. Indeed, independence was so controversial that a third of the population left rather than live in the new confederacy. The colonies had very different economic and social structures, with slavery in the south and not in the north. The religious differences that had resulted in the founding of the different colonies must still have held sway over the colonies to a degree which we can barely understand. The people knew that being governed by people far away was decidedly uncomfortable, and did not trust each other to govern them well. Indeed, even among the few who really sought independence from England there was no agreement on how the colonies should be governed.
For the English, facing war in Europe, sending troops and a part of the navy thousands of miles away to fight the colonists must have been a huge burden. The French support of the rebels contributed to the bankruptcy of the French government, which in turn contributed to the later French revolution.
The rebels usually had no uniforms, and were armed with a variety of weapons, but largely lacked heavy weapons (canons). There was no system of tax collections in the colonies that could support an army adequately, and indeed no government that could manage such an effort. There were few experienced military leaders, especially at the level of leading even the small armies of the time.
The leaders who started the war could not have understood that they were beginning a multi-year effort that would result in one percent of the population being killed. Indeed, the British apparently initially thought that they would fight one or two major battles, take one or two colonial capitals and the rebels would capitulate. Of course, this was the first war of independence, and neither side had models that they could draw upon to understand what was at stake or how to conduct the war successfully.
In fact there were few battles in 1776, and the war was one of maneuver. The battles didn't kill many people, and those who were killed were more often killed by bayonet than by musket. The guns were inaccurate, and could only be fired slowly, especially by poorly trained troops. On the other hand, health conditions were terrible, and large portions of the army were to sick to fight when they were needed. The conditions under which rebel prisoners were kept (the soldiers, not the officers) were much more lethal than the battles. I wonder whether Washington and his generals understood that they could decimate the enemy merely by keeping them in the field year after year in those execrable hygienic conditions, while the rebel forces could be renewed with militias serving short tours of duty.
I was struck by how badly the British handled the insurgency. They outraged not only the colonists but also a significant British constituency by hiring foreign mercenaries to fight against people considered British citizens. They destroyed a lot of Boston during the siege, and cholera and other disease were epidemic in the city under their rule. A quarter of New York burned down soon after they took the city, and the troops were not mobilized to fight the fires. They laid waste to the countryside in the New Jersey campaign, raping and pillaging as they went. They could not send enough troops to hold and control all the land that they took, nor could they protect their shipping from the privateers chartered by the rebels.
The Declaration of Independence seems to have been a masterstroke of policy. Prior to the Declaration, there had been the possibility of a reconciliation with an amnesty for most rebels. The Declaration was a statement that (at least the for the rebel leaders) reconciliation was not possible. Indeed, the effort to forge enough popular support to maintain the rebellion and man the army must have been the key to the success of the revolution. (Of course there was also the problem of raising the resources to support the revolution).
Washington is a fascinating figure. Martha burned his correspondence after his death, and he maintained a distance from his subordinates as commander of the army (and later as the president) so perhaps it is not surprising that his figure is opaque after centuries. He clearly was not equipped by training nor experience to win battles against the professional British and German troops. He was personally brave, and he was there, fighting on and on for year after year. He apparently vascillated often, but prudently avoided battle again and again in order to preserve and protect his weak army. Perhaps he realized that if the rebellion could be preserved long enough, it could gain support from the continent of Europe, and the English would get tired of the drain on their military and their purses. But his willingness to abandon power, and return to civilian life is especially difficult to understand, at least given the lust for power of our current leaders. Washington was apparently motivated by a sense of civic responsibility, and a belief in democracy! How fortunate the nation was in his choice as leader of the revolutionary forces and later as the first president.
In looking back, it is almost equally hard to see how the rebellion could have succeeded, or how the English could have suppressed it even had they better understood the nature of insurgency.
Why I am Supporting Donna Edwards Against Al Wynn
Al Wynn could be worse. He votes with the Democrats more than 98% of the time, and shows up for 19 out of 20 votes. He lost my vote, however, when he defected on Net Neutrality, and he was badly wrong on the Iraq war when it started. As disastrous as the war has been, his failure to understand the importance of the Internet in the future of America may be the more worrying of the two votes.He is charged by Free State Politics with ineffective support of requests from constituents. His effectiveness rankings in the Congress are bad:
2007 ranked 91
2006 ranked 410
2005 ranked 373
The improvement in 2007 is presumably due to the Democrats being more effective in general, and his increasing seriority. However, while his seniority goes back to 1992, he is ranked less effective than relative newcomer Chris van Hollen. He holds no important leadership roles in the Democratic party in the Congress in spite of 15 years there. The Congressional Black Caucus Monitor rates him as an "underachiever".
Open Left writes:
Al Wynn's contributor list should give you a great list of the defenders of the status quo. Right-wing insiders include Walmart, AT&T, US Chamber of Commerce, Sallie Mae, Nuclear Energy Institute, National Restaurant Association, First Edison, Bellsouth, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, Bechtel, NFIB, and even Republican Billy Tauzin, the guy who wrote the prescription drug benefit and then accepted a job lobbying for the health industry. (He does also get contributions from Democrats.)So we have a not very effective Congressman, with some really bad votes behind him, who is indebted to a bunch of big organizations. I think we can do better.
Donna Edwards is a young, vigorous lawyer. She has taken leave from her job as
Executive Director of the Arca Foundation to run for Congress, but while there she led the Foundation to focus significantly on "Media and Democracy", and thus would bring expertise and interests to the Congress that are much needed as we continue in the Information Revolution. Her environmentalist credentials have gained her the support of the Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, The League of Conservation Voters, and Friends of the Earth. Again we need environmental activists in the Congress to help the United States overcome the Bush legacy and take a leadership role in international environmental affairs.Donna Edwards clearly shares the fundamental Democratic values of concern for the little guy and recognition of the need for government to serve the people (little "d" democracy); she too will be a dependable vote for the Democratic Party in the House. However, she will also be a vigorous Representative, who can be expected to quickly gain leadership positions, and who will provide intellectual leadership in two critical areas:
- How the United States changes in response to the Information Revolution while protecting our core values, and
- How the United States can lead the world again in protecting the environment.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Accountability
Source: The EconomistThe UN Development Program ranks first, and the Asian Development Bank and Christian Aid tie for second in this ranking of international organizations by the One World Trust. "The study ranks 30 global organizations, including companies as well as inter-governmental organizations and voluntary groups and charities, according to an index based on criteria such as transparency and participation. It finds that voluntary groups and charities are more willing to involve outsiders in decision-making, whereas companies are more responsive to external criticism. Organizations such as development banks are more likely to disclose the findings of reviews into their policies."
Remittances
Source: The Economist"Total global remittances from workers to their families will reach $318 billion in 2007, up from $170 billion in 2002. Most of the money goes to developing countries, which will receive $240 billion this year—more than double the value of foreign aid. The three countries getting the most are India, China and Mexico, which together account for nearly a third of remittances to the developing world. However, Mexico has been affected by the economic slowdown in the United States and its previous rapid growth of inflows slowed to a trickle this year. The largest recipient region is Latin America and the Caribbean, but since 2002 transfers to Europe and Central Asia have increased the fastest."
Comment: I recently noted that, according to the OECD, official development assistance from the OECD members is over $100 billion. But when aid from other countries and the private sector are added in the total is about $180 billion, or three-quarters of remittances to developing nations. In spite of the clarification, the remittances do dwarf foreign aid.
However, the remittances are even more unevenly distributed than the foreign aid, and the remittances flowing to the least developed nations are much less than they need. JAD
India's IT Challenge
Source: "Information technology in India: Gravity's pull," The Economist, December 13th 2007.
"Is India's computer-services industry heading for a fall?" India's IT businesses has boasted annual growth rates of nearly 30% in the past ten years, with revenues now nearing $50 billion, about 5.4% of India's GDP. The industry directly employs 1.6 million people, and of course generates indirect employment for millions more.
India's IT firms have grown due to their ability to marshal huge local workforces to supply high-quality services. Their export of IT services have of course been greatly facilitated by the improvement of the international telecommunications infrastructure and the Internet.
Indian IT now may face a host of threats. The rupee has gained against the dollar in recent months; since its low in mid-2006 it has gained 16%. There are three additional categories of threats:
"Is India's computer-services industry heading for a fall?" India's IT businesses has boasted annual growth rates of nearly 30% in the past ten years, with revenues now nearing $50 billion, about 5.4% of India's GDP. The industry directly employs 1.6 million people, and of course generates indirect employment for millions more.
India's IT firms have grown due to their ability to marshal huge local workforces to supply high-quality services. Their export of IT services have of course been greatly facilitated by the improvement of the international telecommunications infrastructure and the Internet.
Indian IT now may face a host of threats. The rupee has gained against the dollar in recent months; since its low in mid-2006 it has gained 16%. There are three additional categories of threats:
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India's general development problems:. clogged and insufficient infrastructure; tax breaks that subsidize the industry, some of which expire in 2009; a growing talent shortage.
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Emerging competition. IT industries are emerging in other parts of the world, such as Central Europe; foreign IT firms have been beefing up their Indian subsidiaries. (In 2002 the six biggest—including Accenture, IBM and HP—had fewer than 10,000 employees in total in the country. Their combined Indian workforce now exceeds 150,000.)
Future threats. A slowdown in IT spending looms as America's economy weakens; many of the services Indian firms now provide will eventually be automated; few Indian firms are set up to provide the new solutions that are increasingly demanded by foreign firms.
ICP Results Announced
The International Comparison Program (ICP) of the World Bank recently released data showing the world economy produced goods and services worth almost $55 trillion in 2005. Almost 40 percent of the world’s output came from developing economies.
Major findings
Major findings
- Twelve economies account for more than two-thirds of the world’s output. Seven of them are high-income economies (United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and, Spain), and five are developing or transitional economies (China, India, Russia, Brazil, and Mexico). The five largest developing economies account for more than 20 percent of global output and over 27 percent of the world expenditures for investment purposes.
- China participated in the survey program for the first time ever and India for the first time since 1985. These results are more statistically reliable estimates of the size and price levels of both economies.The new, improved methods rank China as the world’s second largest economy with almost 10 percent of world GDP and India follows as the fifth largest with over 4 percent of the world total.
- Overall, the 2005 benchmark results show that the size of the world economy measured in PPP terms is smaller than previous estimates. The Asian and African non oil exporting economies are one-third and one-fourth smaller, respectively. However, Asia still accounts for over 20 percent of the world’s output. Estimates of China’s GDP are 40 percent below the results of previous measures.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Oppose Media Consolidation
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and his two fellow GOP commissioners approved new rules that will unleash a flood of media consolidation across America. The rules will further consolidate local media markets -- taking away independent voices in cities already woefully short on local news and investigative journalism.
In 2003, the FCC tried to do the same thing, but millions of people demanded that Congress reject the FCC's rules. And they did. It's time to do it again.
Stop Big Media's campaign is trying to get 100,000 people to get Congress to reverse the FCC's rules right now.
The Human Development Report 2007-2008
The new Human Development Report ranks the United States as 12th among the nations of the world in terms of an index that includes education and health as well as income. I find that unacceptable.
The United States ranks well below Iceland, Norway, Australia, Canada and Ireland largely because we leave so large a portion of our population out of the advantages enjoyed by the affluent. There is no excuse for leaving so many Americans so poorly served by our health and education services, or so poor compared to our wealth as a nation.
The United States ranks well below Iceland, Norway, Australia, Canada and Ireland largely because we leave so large a portion of our population out of the advantages enjoyed by the affluent. There is no excuse for leaving so many Americans so poorly served by our health and education services, or so poor compared to our wealth as a nation.
Two Issues on Communications: The Bush Administration in the Wrong on Both
Martin expounding"FCC's Contested Cross-Ownership Rule Set for Vote"
By Frank Ahrens, The Washington Post, December 18, 2007
Kevin Martin, the Chair of the FCC, a Republican appointed by the Bush administration, seems ready to give big media still more control of our urban media channels. Apparently the other two Republicans appointed by the Bush administration will join him in ignoring the objections of the Senate to the ruling and more importantly to the lack of consultation that the FCC has allowed in its deliberations on the ruling. "Martin's action is backed by the White House, which over the weekend successfully headed off a House Democratic attempt to deny the FCC money to implement the new rule, according to a number of sources.""Telecom Immunity Issue Derails Spy Law Overhaul: Reid Pulls Legislation, Citing Insufficient Time Before Recess"
By Jonathan Weisman and Paul Kane, The Washington Post, December 18, 2007The Bush administration and Republican allies in the Congress are supporting legislation to grant immunity to telecom companies retroactively from infringements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The protection would apply in case they help the administration to illegally conduct surveillance on American citizens. I suppose that it the administration has lead people or corporations to inadvertently break the law, the remedy is a pardon, not to change the law retroactively. Two hundred years of American tradition and effort have gone into protecting our individual liberty from government invasion of our privacy.Comment: New information and communication technologies make possible unimagined infringements of our liberty. Changes that are coming with the Information Revolution threaten our democratic processes. It is critically important that at this time we protect our democracy and our liberty.
It seems ironic that the Bush administration which has sought to impose freedom and democracy on other peoples in Iraq and Afghanistan appears to willing to diminish those rights at home! JAD
Monday, December 17, 2007
The World Health Organization on the Health Effects of Climate Change
Source: "Climate change and human health - risks and responses," WHO, 2003Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, has made the health effects of climate change the theme for WHO this year. Last week she made a major address on the topic. I quote extensively:
At the start of this century, a group of British journalists ran a competition for the best fictitious story that might depict what lies ahead during this century. Here is one of the winners: “Heads of state, meeting today on the tropical island of Switzerland, have reached consensus. Predictions of global warming have no foundation in science.”
My, how things have changed. The power of scientific research has triumphed. The verdict is in. Climate change is real. Human activities are a prime cause. The consequences are already being felt in ways that can be measured. Humanity will suffer, for some decades to come, for past sins in the way we have inhabited this planet.
As the climate scientists tell us, even if greenhouse gas emissions were to stop today, the consequences will be felt throughout this century. In the language of the scientists, human activities have committed this planet to climate change. The emphasis now is on the ability of our human species to adapt to changes that have become inevitable.
The warming of the planet will be gradual, but the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events – intense storms, heat waves, droughts, and floods – will be abrupt and the consequences will be acutely felt.
The health sector must add its voice – loud and clear – to the growing concern. Just as we fought so long to secure a high profile for health on the development agenda, we must now fight to place health issues at the centre of the climate agenda. We have compelling reasons for doing so. Climate change will affect, in profoundly adverse ways, some of the most fundamental determinants of health: food, air, water.
This is the reality that concerns me the most. Developing countries will be the first and hardest hit. Subsistence agriculture will suffer the most. Areas with weak health infrastructures will be the least able to cope.
Imagine the impact on health in areas where the food supply is already precarious, rural areas are populated with subsistence farmers and the capacity to cope with any emergency is already fragile.
Imagine the situation in cities, when water scarcity combines with heat stress and air pollution. We already have good evidence linking such conditions to increased deaths from respiratory and cardiovascular disease, especially in the elderly.
As the scientists tell us, the nature of climate change during this century is likely to go beyond human experience. But public health has abundant experience as a basis for interpreting the health consequences and understanding their impact. Public health has decades of experience in dealing with problems that will be made bigger and broader by climate change.
Ladies and gentlemen,
When I announced to my staff that I had selected climate change as the theme for next year’s World Health Day, I described climate change as the defining issue for public health during this century.
Let me take this statement one step further today. I have given my impressions about the public health landscape of today, the difficult challenges we face, but also the many reasons for unprecedented optimism.
I believe that climate change will ride across this landscape as the fifth horseman. It will increase the power of the four horsemen that rule over war, famine, pestilence, and death – those ancient adversaries that have affected health and human progress since the beginning of recorded history. Research already has a great deal to say about the impact of climate change on famine and pestilence.
Let us consider famine, hunger, food security, and malnutrition. In many parts of the world, the severe adverse effects of climate change – one could say, the catastrophic effects – are not expected to be felt until around the middle of this century or even later.
Not so for Africa. According to the latest projections, Africa will be severely affected as early as 2020. This is just a dozen years away. By that date, increased water stress is expected to affect from 75 million to 250 million Africans. A dozen years from now, crop yields in some countries are expected to drop by 50%.
Imagine the impact on food security and malnutrition. In many African countries, agriculture remains the principal economic activity, and agricultural products are the principal source of export trade. Vast rural populations survive, hand-to-mouth, on subsistence farming. There is no surplus. There is no coping capacity. Yes, as I said, these are catastrophic effects.
Concerning pestilence, abundant evidence links the distribution and behaviour of infectious diseases to climate and weather. As the scientists say, climate defines the geographical distribution of infectious diseases. Weather influences the timing and severity of epidemics.
Diseases transmitted by mosquitoes are particularly sensitive to variations in climate. Warmth accelerates the biting rate of mosquitoes and speeds up maturation of the parasites they carry. Sub-Saharan Africa is already home to the most severe form of malaria and the most efficient mosquito species. What will happen if rising temperatures accelerate the lifecycle of the malaria parasite? What if malaria spreads to new areas?
NIH funded the landmark study that demonstrated a link between climate variability and increased malaria epidemics in the highlands of East Africa. We all know about the explosive epidemic potential of malaria when this disease reaches non-immune populations. Though we are making progress, we are still not able, right now, to achieve adequate population coverage with preventive interventions in areas of stable malaria transmission.
The landmark publication on microbial threats, issued in 1992 by the Institute of Medicine, opened the eyes of the world to the growing menace of emerging diseases. It also showed how changes in the way humanity inhabits this planet have created abundant opportunities for microbes to exploit.
It is easy to see how climate change will increase these opportunities in significant ways. When we consider the effects of climate change on emerging diseases, we are looking at disruptions to intricately balanced ecological systems that reached equilibrium following centuries of evolution. Nature gives us every reason to believe that disruption of this delicate equilibrium will have profound consequences.
Consider the emergence of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in the south-west of this country in 1993. The appearance of that disease has been linked to a 10-fold increase in the mouse population, which followed an unusual weather event that killed off species that prey on mice. We see what can happen when weather disrupts an intricate ecosystem.
Let me give you another example of what might be in store. As noted in the November climate report, El-Nino driven bush fires and drought, as well as changes in land use and land cover, have caused extensive alterations in the habitat of bat species that are the natural reservoir of the Nipah virus.
Let us look at the health consequences. The disease emerged in 1999 in Malaysia among pig farmers. Close contact with pigs, the intermediate host, was quickly identified as the risk factor. Then came the first consequence.
The disease was initially misdiagnosed, by a WHO Collaborating Centre, as Japanese encephalitis. This misdiagnosis was caused by the co-infection of a patient with Japanese encephalitis and Nipah virus. The diagnosis led to a hugely expensive, disruptive and useless containment effort directed at mass vaccination and mosquito control.
Pigs and people continued to die. Confidence in the government plummeted. Malaysian scientists isolated the virus and identified Nipah as a new disease. That solved part of the problem.
Altogether 265 cases and 105 deaths occurred, with an overall case fatality rate of 39%. Investigation of the outbreak found no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
Case closed? Not at all. In 2001, the virus resurfaced in India and Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, outbreaks are now recurring annually according to a seasonal pattern. Evidence from these outbreaks indicates that the virus has become more pathogenic for humans.
The case-fatality rate has risen to almost 75%. Contact with pigs is no longer necessary. Human-to-human transmission, also after only casual contact, has been documented. In one case, a rickshaw driver died of the disease after transporting a patient to hospital. Furthermore, transmission within hospital settings is now strongly suspected.
In one outbreak, consumption of fresh date palm juice, contaminated by bat saliva or faeces, has been identified as the vehicle of transmission in several fatal human cases. So from a zoonosis, to human-to-human, to foodborne in a very short time. Fortunately, up to now, outbreaks have occurred in sparsely populated rural areas, thus limiting their size.
Let me make one personal comment on the issue of new diseases. Initial misdiagnosis is the norm when new diseases emerge. They are, by definition, poorly understood. The US initially misdiagnosed the first cases of West Nile fever as St Louis encephalitis. I was in charge of the health department in Hong Kong when SARS emerged.
My life long, I will never forget the agony of uncertainty as Hong Kong scientists worked day and night to determine what was killing our doctors and nurses, what microscopic beast had invaded our hospital system. Then as now and in the future, doctors and nurses are at the frontline when a new disease emerges. Then and in the future, they put their lives at risk.
Let us turn to the impact of climate on war and death. We know that competition for resources, and especially competition for scarce water, has been a so-called “war starter” on many occasions in the historical past.
Some argue that the consequences of climate change may provoke an increasing number of conflicts. I do not know. But I certainly know what conflict and complex emergencies mean for health.
WHO has had offices in Darfur for the past four years. Many attribute the origins of this conflict to severe drought, followed by population movements and fierce competition for resources.
I know another thing, too. Many of the unspeakable atrocities that affect civilians in this conflict occur when women and young girls leave the safety of refugee camps in their desperate search for firewood. In this scorched and barren land, it may take them two days to gather sufficient firewood. Two days at risk of sexual violence and mutilation. This is the utter desperation.
Let us look at death, and let us do so from a public health perspective. Public health looks especially hard at preventable deaths. This is my greatest personal concern. Climate change could vastly increase the current huge imbalance in health outcomes. Climate change can worsen an already unacceptable situation that the Millennium Development Goals were explicitly and intricately designed to address.
Let me remind you. The Millennium Declaration and its Goals are all about fairness. As stated: “Those who suffer or who benefit least deserve help from those who benefit most.” More specifically, the Declaration stresses fairness in a world that is being radically reshaped by the forces of globalization.
As stated: “The central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalization becomes a positive force for all the world’s people. For while globalization offers great opportunities, at present its benefits are very unevenly shared, while its costs are unevenly distributed.”
This is indeed the problem. Globalization creates wealth and this is good. But globalization has no rules that guarantee fair distribution of this wealth. Health and wealth are intricately linked. The consequences of inequity can be measured by the great and growing gaps in health outcomes. I believe that, in matters of health, our world is dangerously out of balance, possibly as never before.
How did things change so fast (in the White House)?
Bill Moyers' show last night reminded me how the an "Iraq team" in the White House created a false impression in the minds of the American public that Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi government were developing weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, and were closely linked with Al Qaeda; indeed, as a result of their campaign to convince the public many Americans believed that Iraq was implicated in 9/11, and that Iraq might supply Al Qaeda with nuclear weapons. If they did not know that much of the data that they were using in that campaign was erroneous, they should have.
I worked on two initiatives in the White House in 1976, one on international health and one on world hunger (which is itself illustrative of the difference between the Carter and the "W" Bush administrations). I also was a member of the interdepartmental team supporting a White House team that created an international science and technology initiative in 1976. Those teams were made up of people who understood the data that they were using very well, and worked very hard to create a fair and accurate presentation of that data. The key working teams were experts in the fields involved, reporting up the line to political appointees (who in turn reported to the president), We knew that the initiatives would have to be sold to the Congress and the public, but there was never any effort to shade the findings. I was involved in writing up the speech announcing one of those initiatives, and in developing a speech for President Carter on the other.
So in 30 years how did the White House staff go from trying to tell the truth to the public and the legislature to whatever it was that the Bush administration did?
I worked on two initiatives in the White House in 1976, one on international health and one on world hunger (which is itself illustrative of the difference between the Carter and the "W" Bush administrations). I also was a member of the interdepartmental team supporting a White House team that created an international science and technology initiative in 1976. Those teams were made up of people who understood the data that they were using very well, and worked very hard to create a fair and accurate presentation of that data. The key working teams were experts in the fields involved, reporting up the line to political appointees (who in turn reported to the president), We knew that the initiatives would have to be sold to the Congress and the public, but there was never any effort to shade the findings. I was involved in writing up the speech announcing one of those initiatives, and in developing a speech for President Carter on the other.
So in 30 years how did the White House staff go from trying to tell the truth to the public and the legislature to whatever it was that the Bush administration did?
States Opting for Comprehensive anti-HIV Campaigns
Source: "Abstinence Programs Face Rejection: More States Opt to Turn Down the Federal Money Attached to That Kind of Sex Ed"
By Rob Stein, The Washington Post, December 16, 2007.
At least 14 states have either notified the federal government that they will no longer be requesting the funds or are not expected to apply, forgoing more than $15 million of the $50 million available. Four states had passed up the funding before this year. "Two other states -- Ohio and Washington -- have applied but stipulated they would use the money for comprehensive sex education, effectively making themselves ineligible, federal officials said." The WP says that this is due to the mounting evidence "that the approach is ineffective".
Comment: It doesn't take much evidence to convince me that sex education and contraceptive use combined with promotion of abstinence will be more effective than abstinence alone.
But the Bush administration's ideological approach to HIV makes it resistant to evidence based policy in anything having to do with human sex and reproduction." JAD
By Rob Stein, The Washington Post, December 16, 2007.
At least 14 states have either notified the federal government that they will no longer be requesting the funds or are not expected to apply, forgoing more than $15 million of the $50 million available. Four states had passed up the funding before this year. "Two other states -- Ohio and Washington -- have applied but stipulated they would use the money for comprehensive sex education, effectively making themselves ineligible, federal officials said." The WP says that this is due to the mounting evidence "that the approach is ineffective".
Comment: It doesn't take much evidence to convince me that sex education and contraceptive use combined with promotion of abstinence will be more effective than abstinence alone.
But the Bush administration's ideological approach to HIV makes it resistant to evidence based policy in anything having to do with human sex and reproduction." JAD
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Trends and Issues in Development Aid
Last month Brookings issued a report on worldwide development assistance. Some highlights:
- Net official development assistance (ODA) from the 22 DAC member countries has increased to over $100 billion over the last two years, with a promise of increases of 30 percent over the next three years.
- Non-DAC bilateral assistance (NDBA) is growing rapidly and amounts to more than $8 billion in ODA and $5 billion annually in CPA.
- Private aid (PrA) from DAC member countries might already contribute between $58-68 billion per year, although aggregate data is sketchy.
- Total aid flows to developing countries therefore currently amount to around $180 billion annually.
- Multilateral aid agencies (around 230) outnumber donors and recipients combined.
- Multilaterals only disburse 12 percent of total aid (offi cial plus private), and about one-quarter of total net CPA.
Immigation Policy
By Amy Chua, The Washington Post Sunday Outlook, December 16, 2007.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Amy Chua, herself an immigrant who now teaches law at Yale, has a very sensible piece in the Washington Post. She is pro-immigration, but calls for a sensible immigration policy to assure that the new immigrants continue to buy into the fundamental values on which the nation has progressed, while bringing the nation needed and valued skills.
I quote some important data from her article:
In the 19th century, the United States would never have become an industrial and agricultural powerhouse without the millions of poor Irish, Polish, Italian and other newcomers who mined coal, laid rail and milled steel. European immigrants led to the United States' winning the race for the atomic bomb. Today, American leadership in the Digital Revolution -- so central to our military and economic preeminence -- owes an enormous debt to immigrant contributions. Andrew Grove (cofounder of Intel), Vinod Khosla (Sun Microsystems) and Sergey Brin (Google) are immigrants. Between 1995 and 2005, 52 percent of Silicon Valley start-ups had one key immigrant founder. And Vikram S. Pundit's appointment to the helm of CitiGroup last Tuesday means that 14 chief executives of Fortune 100 companies are foreign-born.Professor Chua has five suggestions:
The United States is in a fierce global competition to attract the world's best high-tech scientists and engineers -- most of whom are not white Christians. Just this past summer, Microsoft opened a large new software development center in Canada, in part because of the difficulty of obtaining U.S. visas for foreign engineers.
- Revise immigration priorities, giving less weight to family reunification and more to the economically important skills and aptitude that the immigrants bring.
- Make English the official national language. Have serious English language requirements for citizenship.
- Immigrants must embrace the nation's civic virtues. (Professor Chua does not make the point, but I suggest that we could as a nation, working through our civil society organizations, develop a program of integration of immigrants into our civic culture, not only teaching about government, but enrolling kids in the scouts, extending church membership to immigrants, tying them into neighborhood assiciations, etc.)
- Enforce the law. A failure of the law that results in millions of illegal immigrants is not acceptable.
- Make the United States an equal-opportunity immigration magnet. Give the people who will be the best Americans and make the most contribution to America the opportunity to immigrate here, whatever their national origin, gender or ethnicity.
Were we to have a reasonably agreed to set of such core values, then I think we could do a better job of selecting people for immigration who adhere to them. Social and behavioral sciences have advanced a lot since the 19th century, and we could utilize them in the selection of people to whom to give visas and green cards. Economic concerns are important, but they are not the only criterion we should use in for entry into U.S. citizenship.
UK Surpasses US as World Bank Donor
"U.S. Now No. 2 Donor To Fund for Poor Nations"
By Anthony Faiola, The Washington Post, December 15, 2007.
Lead: "Forty-five rich and middle-income nations agreed yesterday to provide a record $25.1 billion to the World Bank for generous-term loans and grants to the world's poorest countries. But for the first time since Dwight D. Eisenhower pushed for the creation of the bank's arm for helping the poorest of nations, the United States will no longer lead its anti-poverty charge." The United Kingdom is the largest donor in this replenishment of the International Development Association. "Overall, the contributions pledged by the 45 nations were up 42 percent from the IDA's previous global fundraising effort, in 2005." U.S. influence in the World Bank will not be reduced since voting power there factors in cumulative donations made over decades.
Tha article also incorrectly states:
The United Kingdom with a GDP of $2.346 trillion pledged $4.3 billion over three years; the United States with a GDP of $13.16 trillion pledged $3.7 billion. The United States is now 21st of 22 wealthy nations in percentage of GDP donated to foreign assistance. It gives only 59 cents per $1,000 of GDP. It gives $22.91 per person in foreign assistance, making it 18th in the list of per capita donors. Many nations are more generous than the United States, the United States is the largest donor only because our large, rich population has so much; a scrooge-like percentage of our GDP is still a whole lot of money.
I am glad to see the United States increase its contributions to IDA. However, I fear that increase is less a sign of the increased generosity, but rather a sign of the failure of the Bush administration's foreign aid initiatives. The Millennium Development Corporation has transferred so little of its allocated resources to developing nations that the Congress is withholding appropriations. The integration of USAID more fully under the State Department, together with other Bush administration actions has drawn criticism not only from Democrats but also from the Republican side of the Senate.
By Anthony Faiola, The Washington Post, December 15, 2007.
Lead: "Forty-five rich and middle-income nations agreed yesterday to provide a record $25.1 billion to the World Bank for generous-term loans and grants to the world's poorest countries. But for the first time since Dwight D. Eisenhower pushed for the creation of the bank's arm for helping the poorest of nations, the United States will no longer lead its anti-poverty charge." The United Kingdom is the largest donor in this replenishment of the International Development Association. "Overall, the contributions pledged by the 45 nations were up 42 percent from the IDA's previous global fundraising effort, in 2005." U.S. influence in the World Bank will not be reduced since voting power there factors in cumulative donations made over decades.
Tha article also incorrectly states:
The United States, which provided $22.7 billion in development assistance last year, remains the world's most generous nation in foreign aid.Is a millionaire who donates a dollar more generous than a beggar who donates his last dime? I don't think so.
The United Kingdom with a GDP of $2.346 trillion pledged $4.3 billion over three years; the United States with a GDP of $13.16 trillion pledged $3.7 billion. The United States is now 21st of 22 wealthy nations in percentage of GDP donated to foreign assistance. It gives only 59 cents per $1,000 of GDP. It gives $22.91 per person in foreign assistance, making it 18th in the list of per capita donors. Many nations are more generous than the United States, the United States is the largest donor only because our large, rich population has so much; a scrooge-like percentage of our GDP is still a whole lot of money.
I am glad to see the United States increase its contributions to IDA. However, I fear that increase is less a sign of the increased generosity, but rather a sign of the failure of the Bush administration's foreign aid initiatives. The Millennium Development Corporation has transferred so little of its allocated resources to developing nations that the Congress is withholding appropriations. The integration of USAID more fully under the State Department, together with other Bush administration actions has drawn criticism not only from Democrats but also from the Republican side of the Senate.
Read the World Bank press release on the Replenishment.
Of course, what is being announced is a pledge, made by the administration. Due to the system of checks and balances in our constitution, the Congress has to appropriate the money to fulfill that pledge. Those appropriations will I suppose come mostly during the term of the next administration: President Bush will not have to figure out where to get the money to fulfill that pledge.
The Better World Campaign reports that (as of September):
The Better World Campaign reports that (as of September):
The U.S. government is by far the largest debtor to the United Nations and is falling further behind in dues payments to the UN and its affiliated agencies......the U.S. began 2007 with $863 million in structural arrears at the United Nations – $200 million more than last year. This is debt that the U.S. has no plans to pay off.
"Is Aid to Africa Doing More Harm Than Good?"
Corey Flintoff, National Public Radio
Six experts on Africa policy recently took on those issues in an Oxford-style debate, part of the National Public Radio series titled "Intelligence Squared U.S." Three experts argue in favor of the proposition stated above, and three argue against. Excerpts of the arguments are presented both in text and in streaming audio.
William Easterly is quoted as saying:
More fundamentally, there are about 800 million people living in the region now. Count those who died in the past 45 years, and call it a billion for a round number. So the donor community has provided $600 over 45 years per person, or $13 per person per year. These people, most living at a poverty level hard for Americans to imagine, have not progressed rapidly with such munificent support! Probably wasted a lot of it on food and medicine, no doubt!
Of course, the foreign aid did not make up for the export income their goods would have earned had they had a fair chance to sell into foreign markets. How much do European nations owe Africa as a result of their colonial exploitation? How much do American nations owe Africa as a result of the kidnapping of Africans into American slavery? How much better off would Africans be now if those things had not happened?
Moreover, the aid that Easterly mentions in so disparaging a way has saved huge numbers of lives with those inexpensive anti-malaria interventions, and the eradication of smallpox, and other public health interventions. It has helped feed a continent by contributing to increased agricultural productivity. What a crock! JAD
Six experts on Africa policy recently took on those issues in an Oxford-style debate, part of the National Public Radio series titled "Intelligence Squared U.S." Three experts argue in favor of the proposition stated above, and three argue against. Excerpts of the arguments are presented both in text and in streaming audio.
William Easterly is quoted as saying:
"...We've already spent, as official donors, $600 billion in aid to Africa over the past 45 years, and after all that, children are still not getting the 12-cent medicines (to fight malaria). So there were still between 1 million and 3 million deaths from malaria last year. So aid would be a great thing if it worked. But the sad tragedy is that — and this is really one of the scandals of our generation — money meant for the most desperate people in the world is simply not reaching them: $600 billion in aid to Africa over the past 45 years, and over that time period there's basically been zero rise in living standards."Comment: What a crock! First, the last decade has been pretty good for Africa, with average growth in the continent of 5.4% and all but one country (Zimbabwe) in Sub-Saharan Africa showing growth. The resource rich countries, with over a quarter of the population of the region have done quite well due to increasing prices for their exploited resources, and almost 40 percent of the population of the region living in resource poor countries have also seen growth averaging over 4 percent per year.
More fundamentally, there are about 800 million people living in the region now. Count those who died in the past 45 years, and call it a billion for a round number. So the donor community has provided $600 over 45 years per person, or $13 per person per year. These people, most living at a poverty level hard for Americans to imagine, have not progressed rapidly with such munificent support! Probably wasted a lot of it on food and medicine, no doubt!
Of course, the foreign aid did not make up for the export income their goods would have earned had they had a fair chance to sell into foreign markets. How much do European nations owe Africa as a result of their colonial exploitation? How much do American nations owe Africa as a result of the kidnapping of Africans into American slavery? How much better off would Africans be now if those things had not happened?
Moreover, the aid that Easterly mentions in so disparaging a way has saved huge numbers of lives with those inexpensive anti-malaria interventions, and the eradication of smallpox, and other public health interventions. It has helped feed a continent by contributing to increased agricultural productivity. What a crock! JAD
Friday, December 14, 2007
Martin Defiant on Media Consolidation Vote
Source: "Defiant FCC chief refuses to delay vote"
Jim Puzzanghera, The Los Angeles Times, December 14, 2007.
"Facing growing criticism of his agenda and tactics, a defiant Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, refused senators' requests Thursday to delay a vote next week on his plan to loosen restrictions on owning a newspaper and broadcast station in the same city.
"Martin endured three hours of aggressive questioning from the Senate Commerce Committee, with members accusing him of rushing to help big media companies at the public's expense."
"Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Kevin J. Martin endured three hours of aggressive questioning from the Senate Commerce Committee, with lawmakers accusing him of rushing to help big media companies at the expense of the public."
Comment: Martin should delay the vote, allowing time for all stakeholders to comment. Rushing the vote helps some interested parties (e.g. the big media firms) by denying the opposition that needs more time to mobilize (e.g. consumer groups) the chance to comment effectively.
The proposal should be defeated. We don't need to give big media firms even more control over the media. JAD
Jim Puzzanghera, The Los Angeles Times, December 14, 2007.
"Facing growing criticism of his agenda and tactics, a defiant Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, refused senators' requests Thursday to delay a vote next week on his plan to loosen restrictions on owning a newspaper and broadcast station in the same city.
"Martin endured three hours of aggressive questioning from the Senate Commerce Committee, with members accusing him of rushing to help big media companies at the public's expense."
"Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Kevin J. Martin endured three hours of aggressive questioning from the Senate Commerce Committee, with lawmakers accusing him of rushing to help big media companies at the expense of the public."Comment: Martin should delay the vote, allowing time for all stakeholders to comment. Rushing the vote helps some interested parties (e.g. the big media firms) by denying the opposition that needs more time to mobilize (e.g. consumer groups) the chance to comment effectively.
The proposal should be defeated. We don't need to give big media firms even more control over the media. JAD
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Capacity Building
I had an exchange with a friend on capacity building, and thought I might share some of the thoughts. We were talking in the context of building scientific capacity of universities in poor countries.
I suppose that the first step in capacity building is making sure there is a physical plant in which research and learning can take place. I am not talking about fancy facilities, but there must be a place where students can be safe and can do their work. In the case of science education, there have to be fairly expensive facilities, such as laboratories. That means also there has to be electricity, refrigeration, and other utilities that allow the laboratories to work and samples and cultures to be maintained. There also has to be a computer and communications infrastructure, and a library that is supplied with appropriate books and journals. But building a plant that the university can not sustain is not going to work.
Certainly, a key step in building capacity is building human capacity of the faculty in those universities. Graduate training for faculty is a must, and it should be done in good universities. I do like the idea of sandwich programs, in which grad students keep an affiliation with their developing country university, and do some of the graduate work, especially the research, in that developing country. And of course there is a place for distance education, and for training in how to teach and how to be effective in a developing country university.
Training a few people from a very weak university that is having real problems, and then returning them to that environment is not likely to do much good. Either those people will be overwhelmed with the problems that they face and be ineffective, or they will leave for a better school, in country or abroad. Or they will leave science -- lots of scientist-cab drivers around the world!
Thus capacity building also involves building the managerial capacity in the institution to keep it running well. It involves setting a national policy framework that allows the university to function well. A university that is doubling in size every two or three years, trying to do so with a severely limited budget, and with a faculty that is short on human resources will not work.
USAID discovered decades ago, that an important part of capacity development was the creation of the linkages needed for the university to be effective. The university has to have linkages with educational policy makers in government, with the sources of financing it requires, with labor markets for the human resources it needs and those it produces, with the sectors of society that must look to the university for knowledge and technology, etc.
For a university to meet expectations in the modern world it must not be an ivory tower that produces new knowledge and new technology, and students trained a curriculum designed in advanced nations. A university should be producing knowledge, educated people, technology and services that are useful and used by their local communities and by their nations. The linkages are critical for this purpose. So too is a relevant, high quality curriculum, and a portfolio of science programs that both meets immediate needs and lays the basis for meeting future national needs.
These days, I suspect, a lot of capacity development is done in facilities where the plant already exists and is more or less adequate, Human resource development will be important, especially in countries that are rapidly expanding university educational opportunities, as so many developing nations are. But the investments in soft areas of organizational capital are extremely important, and remain important in the United States and other developed nations.
I suppose that the first step in capacity building is making sure there is a physical plant in which research and learning can take place. I am not talking about fancy facilities, but there must be a place where students can be safe and can do their work. In the case of science education, there have to be fairly expensive facilities, such as laboratories. That means also there has to be electricity, refrigeration, and other utilities that allow the laboratories to work and samples and cultures to be maintained. There also has to be a computer and communications infrastructure, and a library that is supplied with appropriate books and journals. But building a plant that the university can not sustain is not going to work.
Certainly, a key step in building capacity is building human capacity of the faculty in those universities. Graduate training for faculty is a must, and it should be done in good universities. I do like the idea of sandwich programs, in which grad students keep an affiliation with their developing country university, and do some of the graduate work, especially the research, in that developing country. And of course there is a place for distance education, and for training in how to teach and how to be effective in a developing country university.
Training a few people from a very weak university that is having real problems, and then returning them to that environment is not likely to do much good. Either those people will be overwhelmed with the problems that they face and be ineffective, or they will leave for a better school, in country or abroad. Or they will leave science -- lots of scientist-cab drivers around the world!
Thus capacity building also involves building the managerial capacity in the institution to keep it running well. It involves setting a national policy framework that allows the university to function well. A university that is doubling in size every two or three years, trying to do so with a severely limited budget, and with a faculty that is short on human resources will not work.
USAID discovered decades ago, that an important part of capacity development was the creation of the linkages needed for the university to be effective. The university has to have linkages with educational policy makers in government, with the sources of financing it requires, with labor markets for the human resources it needs and those it produces, with the sectors of society that must look to the university for knowledge and technology, etc.
For a university to meet expectations in the modern world it must not be an ivory tower that produces new knowledge and new technology, and students trained a curriculum designed in advanced nations. A university should be producing knowledge, educated people, technology and services that are useful and used by their local communities and by their nations. The linkages are critical for this purpose. So too is a relevant, high quality curriculum, and a portfolio of science programs that both meets immediate needs and lays the basis for meeting future national needs.
These days, I suspect, a lot of capacity development is done in facilities where the plant already exists and is more or less adequate, Human resource development will be important, especially in countries that are rapidly expanding university educational opportunities, as so many developing nations are. But the investments in soft areas of organizational capital are extremely important, and remain important in the United States and other developed nations.
Where Does All the Computer Power Go?
The Climate Change Prediction Program
CHAMMPions Collaboration
The Climate Change Prediction Program (formerly CHAMMP) program is a U.S. Department of Energy program designed to rapidly advance the science of decade and longer scale climate prediction. A major component of the program links the emerging technologies in High Performance Computing to the development of computationally efficient and numerically accurate climate prediction models. The program involves a joint Federally-funded laboratory and university effort to develop computational methods and simulation capabilities for future atmosphere and ocean general circulation models. These computer programs are form the core of advanced prediction models that can be used to study climate change.
CHAMMPions CollaborationA collaborative project between Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory and the National Center for Atmospheric Research is addressing the use of massively parallel computers for climate modeling. Besides a range of research projects involving numerical methods and parallel algorithms for climate modeling, the NCAR Community Climate Model, CCM2, has been implemented on the Intel Paragon, the Thinking Machines CM-5 and the IBM SP-2. This collaboration is supported by the CHAMMP program of the Department of Energy, Environmental Sciences Division of the Office of Biological and Environmental Research and by the National Science Foundation through a cost sharing agreement with NCAR.
It makes me ashamed of my government
The Washington Post reports today:
Sadly, I find myself believing foreign critics, rather than my own government on this issue.
The Bush administration will be remembered and reviled by history as blocking efforts when they were possible to reduce climate change! JAD
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conceded Wednesday that the United States had succeeded in achieving one of its key objectives at the climate conference here, blocking a proposal that called on industrialized nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020.While Yahoo! News reports:
Having jettisoned the idea of incorporating specific emissions targets in the framework that will guide international climate talks over the next two years, participants were hoping to find other ways to make meaningful progress here in the two-week-long meeting of nearly 190 nations.
The European Union and the United States accused each other on Thursday of blocking a deal to launch negotiations on a new global warming treaty as the clock ran down on U.N. climate talks in Bali.Comment: Certainly China and India will have to do their part in the next century to fight climate change, but the United States as the world's richest nation and biggest source of greenhouse gases should be leading in getting to a global agreement.
The United Nations warned the 190-nation meeting, meant to end on Friday, that continuing deadlock meant there was a risk that the talks would collapse "like a house of cards" and take the momentum out of international efforts to slow warming.
Sadly, I find myself believing foreign critics, rather than my own government on this issue.
The Bush administration will be remembered and reviled by history as blocking efforts when they were possible to reduce climate change! JAD
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Where Does All the Computer Power Go?
The December 8, 2007 edition of The Economist includes its Technology Quarterly. A couple of the articles illustrate the theme of this series on where computer power goes (in the rich, wired countries).
Getting serious
Getting serious
Many of the serious uses of virtual worlds were on show at a conference held in September at Coventry University in England. Aptly, people could also take part in the conference by visiting an online re-creation of the university's Serious Games Institute, where they could chat with other participants and watch presentations. David Wortley, the institute's director, says half those attending did so this way. The focus of the conference was the application of computer-game technologies and virtual environments to real-world business problems.Don't invent, evolve
As its name suggests, evolutionary design borrows its ideas from biology. It takes a basic blueprint and mutates it. As in biology, most mutations are worse than the original. But a few are better, and these are used to create the next generation. Evolutionary design uses a computer program called an evolutionary algorithm, which takes the initial parameters of the design (things such as lengths, areas, volumes, currents and voltages) and treats each like one gene in an organism. Collectively, these genes comprise the product's genome. By randomly mutating these genes and then breeding them with other, similarly mutated genomes, new offspring designs are created. These are subjected to simulated use by a second program. If one particular offspring is shown not to be up to the task, it is discarded. If it is promising, it is selectively bred with other fit offspring to see if the results, when subject to further mutation, can do even better.Reality, only better
The idea of evolutionary algorithms is not new. Until recently, however, their use has been confined to projects such as refining the aerodynamic profiles of car bodies, aircraft fuselages and wings. That is because only large firms have been able to afford the supercomputers needed to mutate and crossbreed large virtual genomes—and then simulate the behaviour of their offspring—for perhaps 20m generations before the perfect design emerges. What has changed, in this field as in so many others, is the availability and cheapness of computing power. According to John Koza of Stanford University, who is one of the pioneers of the field, evolutionary designs that would have taken many months to run on PCs are now feasible in days.
For some things, it turns out, computer graphics can be much more effective when viewed not on screens, but superimposed on the real world. The technique is known as “augmented reality” (AR) or, less frequently, as “augmented vision”, because the real world is augmented with virtual text or graphics. Much AR technology remains in labs, but research funding in both the private and public sectors is increasing, and all kinds of eclectic and ingenious applications are emerging in fields as diverse as medicine, warfare, manufacturing and entertainment. (The article goes on to describe several applications of AR.)Watching as you shop
One of the largest customer-monitoring projects undertaken so far is PRISM (or “Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric”), a collaboration between Nielsen Media, a market-research firm, the In-store Marketing Institute, based in Chicago, and a consortium of consumer-goods manufacturers and retailers including Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart. The project, which completed its first big trial in September, involved the use of sensors at the entrance and exits and in some of the aisles of 160 stores across America. These sensors recorded data on customer-traffic patterns, to which was added further information recorded by human observers. By comparing the resulting data with sales information, it was then possible to gain insight into shoppers' behaviour......
Best Buy, a big American consumer-electronics chain, takes this a step further. It uses Brickstream's BehaviorIQ cameras to collect data on its customers' behaviour patterns and has used this information to divide them into five customer types—young technology enthusiasts, suburban mothers, affluent early adopters, family men and small-business owners—who want different things. Each group is then provided with an area of the shop designed to meet their needs.
European collaboration to support African science
A new initiative aims to enhance scientific research and innovation partnerships between developed nations and Africa by linking research collaboration programmes with the private sector.
The 'Science With Africa' initiative seeks to raise awareness of the need for international research collaboration and facilitate cooperation between researchers, policy-makers and the private sector by creating new networks of communication.
Bali Climate Change Talks
The Bush administration's chief climate negotiator, Harlan L. Watson, has rejected a specific temperature rise or emissions reduction target as a result of the meeting. Al Gore has just accepted a Nobel Prize for his work championing a global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus to reduce climate change. John Kerry traveled roughly 20 hours on commercial flights over the weekend to get to Bali, and was making the same journey back for a series of Senate votes Tuesday; but he met over the weekend with representatives of more than a dozen countries to show that many Americans are serious about doing something.
Americans must elect the Democrats next year. It is the only way we are going to get any action. Elect not only a Democrat for president, but provide him/her with a serious majority in the Congress. The Bush administration and its Republican allies in the Congress have been too successful in blocking progress on environmental (as well as other) issues!
Americans must elect the Democrats next year. It is the only way we are going to get any action. Elect not only a Democrat for president, but provide him/her with a serious majority in the Congress. The Bush administration and its Republican allies in the Congress have been too successful in blocking progress on environmental (as well as other) issues!
A comment on education test results
Reference: "Education: The race is not always to the richest"
The Economist, December 6th 2007.
The latest report from the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment compares the reading, mathematical and scientific progress of 400,000 15-year-olds in the 30 OECD countries and 27 others, covering 87% of the world economy. Its predecessors in 2000 and 2003 focused on reading and maths respectively. This time science took center stage.
The best results from education in the United States seem to come from a few Northeastern states. Thus the Smartest States Awards identifies Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and Maine as the best performing states. Another reference judges the states with the best educational outputs are: Maine, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Iowa and Minnesota. How would Connecticut compare with Finland? How would the schools in the Northeast compare with Scandanavia.
Of course a part of the reason that the United States doesn't do better is that native Americans, blacks and Hispanics don't benefit as much from our educational system as do whites. That fact is demonstrated by dropout rates. I don't know whether that is due to discrimination against the students themselves, or to the low incomes more typical in families in these ethnic groups, or to the cultural legacy of discrimination against these groups in the past, or (more likely) a combination of all these factors.
The article asserts:
The Economist, December 6th 2007.
The latest report from the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment compares the reading, mathematical and scientific progress of 400,000 15-year-olds in the 30 OECD countries and 27 others, covering 87% of the world economy. Its predecessors in 2000 and 2003 focused on reading and maths respectively. This time science took center stage.
At the top are some old stars: Finland as usual did best for all-round excellence, followed by South Korea (which did best in reading) and Hong Kong; Canada and Taiwan were strong but slightly patchier, followed by Australia and Japan. At the bottom, Mexico, still the weakest performer in the OECD, showed gains in maths; Chile did best in Latin America.One of the problems with this kind of comparison is that countries vary greatly in size.
There is bad news for the United States: average performance was poor by world standards. Its schools serve strong students only moderately well, and do downright poorly with the large numbers of weak students. A quarter of 15-year-olds do not even reach basic levels of scientific competence (against an OECD average of a fifth). According to Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's head of education research, Americans are only now realising the scale of the task they face. Some individual states would welcome a separate assessment.
The best results from education in the United States seem to come from a few Northeastern states. Thus the Smartest States Awards identifies Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and Maine as the best performing states. Another reference judges the states with the best educational outputs are: Maine, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Iowa and Minnesota. How would Connecticut compare with Finland? How would the schools in the Northeast compare with Scandanavia.
Of course a part of the reason that the United States doesn't do better is that native Americans, blacks and Hispanics don't benefit as much from our educational system as do whites. That fact is demonstrated by dropout rates. I don't know whether that is due to discrimination against the students themselves, or to the low incomes more typical in families in these ethnic groups, or to the cultural legacy of discrimination against these groups in the past, or (more likely) a combination of all these factors.
The article asserts:
Letting schools run themselves seems to boost a country's position in this high-stakes international tournament: giving school principals the power to control budgets, set incentives and decide whom to hire and how much to pay them. Publishing school results helps, too. More important than either, though, are high-quality teachers: a common factor among all the best performers is that teachers are drawn from the top ranks of graduates.It occurs to me that these factors may depend fundamentally on the importance that the society places on education. A society that values education would seem likely to make careers in education attractive to people, such as by offering good salaries and prestige to teachers and principals. With good, high prestige people, communities can give them freedom to organize their work and do their jobs!
"Food prices: Cheap no more"
The Economist reports: "Rising incomes in Asia and ethanol subsidies in America have put an end to a long era of falling food prices." The article notes:
A lot of these folk are subsistence farmers, but if they have a bad crop (more likely with our climate changes) they will have a hard time buying food. I bet food aid will also go down, as there are smaller surpluses and the cost of food is higher.
Indeed, the increasing cost of food will hit the urban consumer. That in turn is bad news for political stability.
On the other hand, rural incomes may go up, especially for those communities and countries that have made the transition to commerical agriculture. It will be interesting to see the overall effects of high food prices. JAD
In early September the world price of wheat rose to over $400 a tonne, the highest ever recorded. In May it had been around $200. Though in real terms its price is far below the heights it scaled in 1974, it is still twice the average of the past 25 years. Earlier this year the price of maize (corn) exceeded $175 a tonne, again a world record. It has fallen from its peak, as has that of wheat, but at $150 a tonne is still 50% above the average for 2006.Comment: Bad news for the billion people trying to live on less than a dollar a day, or the couple of billion trying to live on between one and two dollars a day!
A lot of these folk are subsistence farmers, but if they have a bad crop (more likely with our climate changes) they will have a hard time buying food. I bet food aid will also go down, as there are smaller surpluses and the cost of food is higher.
Indeed, the increasing cost of food will hit the urban consumer. That in turn is bad news for political stability.
On the other hand, rural incomes may go up, especially for those communities and countries that have made the transition to commerical agriculture. It will be interesting to see the overall effects of high food prices. JAD
From our department of stupid legislation!
Source: "House vote on illegal images sweeps in Wi-Fi, Web sites"
Posted by Declan McCullagh on C/NetNews.com, December 5, 2007.
"The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill saying that anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including "obscene" cartoons and drawings--or face fines of up to $300,000.
"That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user's account be retained for subsequent police inspection.
"Before the House vote, which was a lopsided 409 to 2, Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas) held a press conference on Capitol Hill with John Walsh, the host of America's Most Wanted and Ernie Allen, head of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. ....
"Wednesday's vote caught Internet companies by surprise: the Democratic leadership rushed the SAFE Act to the floor under a procedure that's supposed to be reserved for noncontroversial legislation. It was introduced October 10, but has never received even one hearing or committee vote. In addition, the legislation approved this week has changed substantially since the earlier version and was not available for public review."
Arghh!!!!
Posted by Declan McCullagh on C/NetNews.com, December 5, 2007.
"The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill saying that anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including "obscene" cartoons and drawings--or face fines of up to $300,000.
"That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user's account be retained for subsequent police inspection.
"Before the House vote, which was a lopsided 409 to 2, Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas) held a press conference on Capitol Hill with John Walsh, the host of America's Most Wanted and Ernie Allen, head of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. ....
"Wednesday's vote caught Internet companies by surprise: the Democratic leadership rushed the SAFE Act to the floor under a procedure that's supposed to be reserved for noncontroversial legislation. It was introduced October 10, but has never received even one hearing or committee vote. In addition, the legislation approved this week has changed substantially since the earlier version and was not available for public review."
Arghh!!!!
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
A Call for a Presidential Debate on Science and Technology
Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, a group is calling for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.
AAAS Fellow Wins GE-Science Essay Prize
Matt Stremlau, the author of the Science magazine's grand-prize-winning essay received his B.S. in chemistry from Haverford College. After graduation, he spent 1 year as a Henry Luce Fellow at the National Laboratory for Agrobiotechnology in Beijing, China, before beginning graduate studies at Harvard University. The essay describes Dr. Stremlau's investigation of retroviral restriction in nonhuman primates in Dr. Joe Sodroski's laboratory.
Stremlau currently works in the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator's Office at the State Department as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow. Dr. Stremlau plans to start a postdoctoral fellowship in 2008 and is interested in emerging biotechnologies relevant to the developing world.
Comment: I had the good fortune to work with the AAAS Fellowship programs and with many fellows for more about 15 years. I am glad to see that the new class is living up to the high standards set by earlier fellows. But the important point is that the Fellowship attracts people of Dr. Stremlau's caliber to the foreign assistance program, makes their expertise available to the government, and is often a career changing experience. leading the fellows to a lifelong program of helping people in developing nations. JAD
Where Does All the Computer Power Go?
Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency; public Law 109-431
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ENERGY STAR Program, August 2, 2007. (PDF, 133 pages.)
"The energy used by the nation’s servers and data centers is significant. It is estimated that this sector consumed about 61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006 (1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption) for a total electricity cost of about $4.5 billion. This estimated level of electricity consumption is more than the electricity consumed by the nation’s color televisions and similar to the amount of electricity consumed by approximately 5.8 million average U.S. households (or about five percent of the total U.S. housing stock). Federal servers and data centers alone account for approximately 6 billion kWh (10 percent) of this electricity use, for a total electricity cost of about $450 million annually.
"The energy use of the nation’s servers and data centers in 2006 is estimated to be more than double the electricity that was consumed for this purpose in 2000. One type of server, the volume server, was responsible for the majority (68 percent) of the electricity consumed by IT equipment in data centers in 2006. The energy used by this type of server more than doubled from 2000 to 2006, which was the largest increase among different types of servers. The power and cooling infrastructure that supports IT equipment in data centers also uses significant energy, accounting for 50 percent of the total consumption of data centers. Among the different types of data centers, more than one-third (38 percent) of electricity use is attributable to the nation’s largest (i.e., enterprise-class) and most rapidly growing data centers......
"Under current efficiency trends, national energy consumption by servers and data centers could nearly double again in another five years (i.e., by 2011) to more than 100 billion kWh (Figure ES-1), representing a $7.4 billion annual electricity cost. The peak load on the power grid from these servers and data centers is currently estimated to be approximately 7 gigawatts (GW), equivalent to the output of about 15 baseload power plants. If current trends continue, this demand would rise to 12 GW by 2011, which would require an additional 10 power plants.
"These forecasts indicate that unless energy efficiency is improved beyond current trends, the federal government’s electricity cost for servers and data centers could be nearly $740 million annually by 2011, with a peak load of approximately 1.2 GW."
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ENERGY STAR Program, August 2, 2007. (PDF, 133 pages.)
"The energy used by the nation’s servers and data centers is significant. It is estimated that this sector consumed about 61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006 (1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption) for a total electricity cost of about $4.5 billion. This estimated level of electricity consumption is more than the electricity consumed by the nation’s color televisions and similar to the amount of electricity consumed by approximately 5.8 million average U.S. households (or about five percent of the total U.S. housing stock). Federal servers and data centers alone account for approximately 6 billion kWh (10 percent) of this electricity use, for a total electricity cost of about $450 million annually.
"The energy use of the nation’s servers and data centers in 2006 is estimated to be more than double the electricity that was consumed for this purpose in 2000. One type of server, the volume server, was responsible for the majority (68 percent) of the electricity consumed by IT equipment in data centers in 2006. The energy used by this type of server more than doubled from 2000 to 2006, which was the largest increase among different types of servers. The power and cooling infrastructure that supports IT equipment in data centers also uses significant energy, accounting for 50 percent of the total consumption of data centers. Among the different types of data centers, more than one-third (38 percent) of electricity use is attributable to the nation’s largest (i.e., enterprise-class) and most rapidly growing data centers......
"Under current efficiency trends, national energy consumption by servers and data centers could nearly double again in another five years (i.e., by 2011) to more than 100 billion kWh (Figure ES-1), representing a $7.4 billion annual electricity cost. The peak load on the power grid from these servers and data centers is currently estimated to be approximately 7 gigawatts (GW), equivalent to the output of about 15 baseload power plants. If current trends continue, this demand would rise to 12 GW by 2011, which would require an additional 10 power plants.
"These forecasts indicate that unless energy efficiency is improved beyond current trends, the federal government’s electricity cost for servers and data centers could be nearly $740 million annually by 2011, with a peak load of approximately 1.2 GW."
New disease from an old virus
The Washington Post today reports on outbreaks of a new, virulent and potential lethal strain of a common virus in the United States.
There are 51 known strains of adenovirus, ubiquitous germs that cause many illnesses, including colds, pinkeye, bronchitis, stomach flu and a respiratory infection called boot camp flu that has long plagued soldiers. But adenovirus infections rarely have been life-threatening, especially for healthy young adults.
The new adenovirus is a variant of a strain known as adenovirus 14. First identified in Holland in 1955, it has caused sporadic outbreaks in Europe and Asia. No outbreaks, however, had ever been documented in the Western Hemisphere (before this year).
Comment: We don't always know the agent that is causing epidemics, especially if the disease presents similar symptoms to more common diseases, only localized outbreaks, or the agent is difficult to characterize. So this disease may have been with us in the past, unrecognized. It seems not to be very wide spread now and thus not a major public health threat. Still, it illustrates the potential for new diseases to arise and cause havoc. JAD
Is ethical research possible on the efficacy of interrogation techniques?
Yahoo! News reports today:
So we are presented with a media report, based on interviews with someone we know nothing about, who heard from someone else, that an interrogation technique worked.
There must be a better way to evaluate the efficacy of interrogation techniques than to rely on the subjective impressions of interrogators. Even if an interrogator is honest to himself, and honest to those seeking information on interrogation processes, he would not be a good informant on the efficacy of his interrogation.
A scientific process begins with classification. Are all subjects of interrogation alike, or is there a way to describe subjects that provides information on their responses to interrogation? Are all kinds of information alike, or is there some classification of topics that provides information on their accessibility to different interrogation approaches? What is the most useful classification of interrogators and interrogation techniques for learning about the efficacy of different approaches.
Medicine has been plagued for centuries by the problem of how to separate efficacious treatments from those which are not efficacious. The body has a wonderful array of defenses against disease, and a wonderful capacity to repair itself. People get better with some frequency, no matter what is done to them. How then is the medical profession to figure out which treatments work, and which do not? The double-blind, case-control study has come to be the double standard for pharmaceutical research. Of course, surgery depends on the surgeons knowing what he is doing, so the double blind research approach does not work for the evaluation of surgical techniques. Still, careful statistical analysis is used. It occurs to me that the techniques that have been developed over the last century for the scientific evaluation of psychiatric approaches might provide some clues on how to study interrogation techniques scientifically.
There are, I suppose, interrogation techniques that are the equivalent of medical techniques, in that their intent in wholely beneficial, and harm would only be an unplanned side effect. Some people, I suppose, are helped by an appropriate interrogation that allows them to reveal information, and sometimes that information can be beneficial for society in general. Indeed, from what I read, a lot of interrogation done by intelligence services is of this kind, in which the interrogator takes the time to establish a good relationship with the subject, and indeed helps that subject to reveal the required information (and even to learn about errors in thinking in the past.)
However, our attention is directed to coercive interrogation. The more urgent the need for the information held by the subject, and the more important is that information, the more coercive interrogation techniques that might be justified, supposing that they do in fact work. But how do we find out whether they do work?
And how do we do so ethically? I doubt that we can experiment with informed volunteers, because the circumstances would be so different that the real situation.
I would note that there are descriptive sciences as well as experimental sciences. Science can proceed through theoretically informed observation with statistical analysis of results. Such observation is usually better if done by non-participants.The key to enhancing quality, however, may be subjecting the interpretation of reports from such observations to peer review, the accumulation of bodies of replicated observations, and the social construction of knowledge about interrogation techniques among a network of serious scholars of the subject.
It may well be that the best we can do to improve coercive interrogation techniques, while still maintaining some pretention to ethics, is to have records of interrogations (both more and less coercive) that are believed to be ethical under the circumstances that would be observed and studied by networks of independent scholars who seek to establish a serious scientific understanding of the interrogation process.
Thoughts from others, please.
CIA officials extracted valuable information from a terrorism suspect after he was subjected to waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique that has been condemned as torture, a former CIA interrogator told U.S. new media.The Washington Post reports that John Kiriakou, the source of this story, said he was not present and did not personally observe the waterboarding, but is relying on what was told to him by other CIA staffers who did participate in the waterboarding.
So we are presented with a media report, based on interviews with someone we know nothing about, who heard from someone else, that an interrogation technique worked.
There must be a better way to evaluate the efficacy of interrogation techniques than to rely on the subjective impressions of interrogators. Even if an interrogator is honest to himself, and honest to those seeking information on interrogation processes, he would not be a good informant on the efficacy of his interrogation.
A scientific process begins with classification. Are all subjects of interrogation alike, or is there a way to describe subjects that provides information on their responses to interrogation? Are all kinds of information alike, or is there some classification of topics that provides information on their accessibility to different interrogation approaches? What is the most useful classification of interrogators and interrogation techniques for learning about the efficacy of different approaches.
Medicine has been plagued for centuries by the problem of how to separate efficacious treatments from those which are not efficacious. The body has a wonderful array of defenses against disease, and a wonderful capacity to repair itself. People get better with some frequency, no matter what is done to them. How then is the medical profession to figure out which treatments work, and which do not? The double-blind, case-control study has come to be the double standard for pharmaceutical research. Of course, surgery depends on the surgeons knowing what he is doing, so the double blind research approach does not work for the evaluation of surgical techniques. Still, careful statistical analysis is used. It occurs to me that the techniques that have been developed over the last century for the scientific evaluation of psychiatric approaches might provide some clues on how to study interrogation techniques scientifically.
There are, I suppose, interrogation techniques that are the equivalent of medical techniques, in that their intent in wholely beneficial, and harm would only be an unplanned side effect. Some people, I suppose, are helped by an appropriate interrogation that allows them to reveal information, and sometimes that information can be beneficial for society in general. Indeed, from what I read, a lot of interrogation done by intelligence services is of this kind, in which the interrogator takes the time to establish a good relationship with the subject, and indeed helps that subject to reveal the required information (and even to learn about errors in thinking in the past.)
However, our attention is directed to coercive interrogation. The more urgent the need for the information held by the subject, and the more important is that information, the more coercive interrogation techniques that might be justified, supposing that they do in fact work. But how do we find out whether they do work?
And how do we do so ethically? I doubt that we can experiment with informed volunteers, because the circumstances would be so different that the real situation.
I would note that there are descriptive sciences as well as experimental sciences. Science can proceed through theoretically informed observation with statistical analysis of results. Such observation is usually better if done by non-participants.The key to enhancing quality, however, may be subjecting the interpretation of reports from such observations to peer review, the accumulation of bodies of replicated observations, and the social construction of knowledge about interrogation techniques among a network of serious scholars of the subject.
It may well be that the best we can do to improve coercive interrogation techniques, while still maintaining some pretention to ethics, is to have records of interrogations (both more and less coercive) that are believed to be ethical under the circumstances that would be observed and studied by networks of independent scholars who seek to establish a serious scientific understanding of the interrogation process.
Thoughts from others, please.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
"Strengthening U.S. Strategic Planning"
Aaron L. Friedberg, the former director of policy planning in the Office of Vice President Cheney, has an article in the current issue of The Washington Quarterly (Winter 2007-8, Volume 31, Number 1). In the article, he gives a very nice short description of strategic planning at the highest level of government. He then points out the strategic planning capacity that existed in the Eisenhower administration (with an effective committee of chief agency planners meeting frequently, at the behest of the president) has not existed for decades. He suggests that there are serious bureaucratic, political, and intellectual reasons for this situation. Still, he feels, as I do, that a strong strategic planning capacity supporting the White House decision makers would improve U.S. government performance over what we have seen in recent years. He suggests some alternatives to improve the situation, from a strong interdepartmental planning group, to a planning unit in the National Security Council, to a small strategic planning team in the NSC. I think the article is worth reading.
How to Interpret Correlations: Liberals Dominate University Sciences
Reference: "UNIVERSITY OF PC: As a Republican, I'm on the Fringe," by Robert Maranto, The Washington Post Sunday Outlook, December 9, 2007.
"Daniel Klein of George Mason University and Charlotta Stern of Stockholm University looked at all the reliable published studies of professors' political and ideological attachments. They found that conservatives and libertarians are outnumbered by liberals and Marxists by roughly two to one in economics, more than five to one in political science, and by 20 to one or more in anthropology and sociology.
"In a quantitative analysis of a large-scale student survey, Matthew Woessner of Penn State-Harrisburg and April Kelly-Woessner of Elizabethtown College found strong statistical evidence that talented conservative undergraduates in the humanities, social sciences and sciences are less likely to pursue a PhD than their liberal peers, in part for personal reasons, but also in part because they are offered fewer opportunities to do research with their professors. (Interestingly, this does not hold for highly applied areas such as nursing or computer science.)
"Further, academic job markets seem to discriminate against socially conservative PhDs. Stanley Rothman of Smith College and S. Robert Lichter of George Mason University find strong statistical evidence that these academics must publish more books and articles to get the same jobs as their liberal peers. Among professors who have published a book, 73 percent of Democrats are in high-prestige colleges and universities, compared with only 56 percent of Republicans."
Comment: A correlation can be pure coincidence. On the other hand, correlations are often indications of causality. It can be that A causes B, that B causes A, or that both A and B are caused by some hidden factor, C.
Maranto, a conservative, interprets the preponderance of liberals in the physical and social sciences in universities as an indication that the liberals in the universities are busy recruiting new liberals to join them, and rejecting conservatives.
It is not clear why he rejected the hypothesis that liberals are more likely to seek academic careers than conservatives. Nor why he has not assumed people who are smart and educated enough to be college faculty members in the sciences predominantly are converted to liberal positions. Alternatively, he does not seem to consider that there may be a factor that results both in liberal political and university careers in the physical or natural sciences -- such as a modern outlook and a zest for progress. Could liberals in general write better books, more deserving of recognition by promotion of the authors, than do conservatives?
Of course, I am a Democrat. JAD
"Daniel Klein of George Mason University and Charlotta Stern of Stockholm University looked at all the reliable published studies of professors' political and ideological attachments. They found that conservatives and libertarians are outnumbered by liberals and Marxists by roughly two to one in economics, more than five to one in political science, and by 20 to one or more in anthropology and sociology.
"In a quantitative analysis of a large-scale student survey, Matthew Woessner of Penn State-Harrisburg and April Kelly-Woessner of Elizabethtown College found strong statistical evidence that talented conservative undergraduates in the humanities, social sciences and sciences are less likely to pursue a PhD than their liberal peers, in part for personal reasons, but also in part because they are offered fewer opportunities to do research with their professors. (Interestingly, this does not hold for highly applied areas such as nursing or computer science.)
"Further, academic job markets seem to discriminate against socially conservative PhDs. Stanley Rothman of Smith College and S. Robert Lichter of George Mason University find strong statistical evidence that these academics must publish more books and articles to get the same jobs as their liberal peers. Among professors who have published a book, 73 percent of Democrats are in high-prestige colleges and universities, compared with only 56 percent of Republicans."
Comment: A correlation can be pure coincidence. On the other hand, correlations are often indications of causality. It can be that A causes B, that B causes A, or that both A and B are caused by some hidden factor, C.
Maranto, a conservative, interprets the preponderance of liberals in the physical and social sciences in universities as an indication that the liberals in the universities are busy recruiting new liberals to join them, and rejecting conservatives.
It is not clear why he rejected the hypothesis that liberals are more likely to seek academic careers than conservatives. Nor why he has not assumed people who are smart and educated enough to be college faculty members in the sciences predominantly are converted to liberal positions. Alternatively, he does not seem to consider that there may be a factor that results both in liberal political and university careers in the physical or natural sciences -- such as a modern outlook and a zest for progress. Could liberals in general write better books, more deserving of recognition by promotion of the authors, than do conservatives?
Of course, I am a Democrat. JAD
Click on Thru, Do a Good Deed!
From today's Washington Post:
Like many young Indians, 25-year-old Ankur Shanker dreams of studying abroad. The London School of Economics accepted him this year, but he deferred entry for one reason: He can't afford the cost of graduate school. All told, the bill would come to more than $110,000. But Shanker is determined. On Dec. 1, he began a blog called "Wake Up and Smell the Million Dollar Story," where he plans to write one short story every day for six months. Using AdSense, a free program administered by Google, he displays advertisements on the Web site. The more readers he attracts, the more money he makes when they click on the ads. So far, he has earned just over $100.
Report on the Reform of U.S. Foreign Aid
The Helping to Enhance the Livelihood of People Around the Globe Commission was established by the Bush administration and the Republican Congress in 2004-5. It was established to "develop and deliver actionable proposals to the President, Secretary of State and Congress to enhance and leverage the efficiency and effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance programs to reduce poverty through sustained economic growth and self-sufficiency." The majority of the members of the HELP Commission are Republicans, but a number of Democrats were appointed by the Minority members of the House and Senate.
The Report of the Commission is to be released tomorrow. It will be presented at an afternoon seminar at the Brookings Institution. The report itself will be available on the Commission website starting at 12:00 Eastern Standard Time.
The Washington Post reports that "all 20 members of the HELP Commission agreed that the current foreign affairs structure is inadequate." However, a minority of three Democrats and one Republican dissented from the recommendation State Department and radically reshape its foreign assistance, trade and diplomatic programs to create a super-size international affairs agency to meet overseas challenges. "The dissenters instead urged elevating foreign assistance and international development to a new Cabinet-level agency, according to a copy of the commission's final report.
"Either proposal would be a significant departure for the United States. The proposals are intended to influence the next administration at a time when the debate over the U.S. role overseas has become a central feature of the 2008 presidential campaign."
The Report of the Commission is to be released tomorrow. It will be presented at an afternoon seminar at the Brookings Institution. The report itself will be available on the Commission website starting at 12:00 Eastern Standard Time.
The Washington Post reports that "all 20 members of the HELP Commission agreed that the current foreign affairs structure is inadequate." However, a minority of three Democrats and one Republican dissented from the recommendation State Department and radically reshape its foreign assistance, trade and diplomatic programs to create a super-size international affairs agency to meet overseas challenges. "The dissenters instead urged elevating foreign assistance and international development to a new Cabinet-level agency, according to a copy of the commission's final report.
"Either proposal would be a significant departure for the United States. The proposals are intended to influence the next administration at a time when the debate over the U.S. role overseas has become a central feature of the 2008 presidential campaign."
Computer Service Tax Proposed for Maryland
Do you want to try tocollect taxes from this guy?
Reference: "Computer Services Firms Want Sales Tax Repealed: Affected Businesses Say They Were Caught Off-Guard by Eleventh-Hour Levy" by John Wagner, The Washington Post, December 9, 2007.
The special session of Maryland's General Assembly last month decided to raise about $200 million a year by imposing a six percent sales tax on Maryland consumers of computer services, including custom programming, data processing and hardware maintenance. The tax is set to take effect July 1.
The tax would apply to all, including the individual who calls on Geek Corps to fix his computer and to the business that purchases services here for its intranet; out-of-state providers would also be expected to tax Maryland customers and pay the proceeds to the Maryland government. The tax is to be levied on individuals and companies in Maryland when they pay for the specified computer services.
The tax proposal "is now drawing the ire of business groups, technology associations and computer executives caught flat-footed by its passage three weeks ago.....'Our members are understandably shocked,' said Julie Coons, chief executive of the Tech Council of Maryland, part of a coalition pushing for the tax's repeal when the General Assembly session starts Jan. 9. 'This is essentially taxing Maryland firms for trying to stay competitive in this regional, national and increasingly global economy.'"
The Maryland government has still to publish details on how the tax is to be collected. How will existing contracts for services be treated? Which consumers of services provided by companies located in other states will be required to inform the state government about their purchases?
Nine states now tax computer services, according to legislative analysts. Some others, including Pennsylvania and Florida, attempted to impose the levy but later repealed it after difficulties collecting it. In Connecticut, litigation has arisen over what kind of computer services are subject to the tax.......Comment: This seems like a very bad tax. A lot of computer services are now provided over the telephone and/or the Internet. Many are provided from India or other nations to businesses and individuals in Maryland. Those who obey the law will be at a six percent price disadvantage as compared with those who don't pay the tax.
Opponents of the tax in Maryland point to several potential problems, including hindering the ability of computer services firms to bid on federal contracts. The federal government will be exempt from the tax. But prime contractors in Maryland who use subcontractors will be subject to the tax on that work, which could drive up the overall cost of the contract.
This is a law that will lead businesses and people to buy their computer services from scoff-laws. It will be hard to implement for the state government. And it will militate against the development of high tech businesses which should be the future of this state. JAD
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Monday is Human Rights Day
According to the BBC, in a keynote speech on human rights at the African-European summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the whole European Union "has the same view" of what is happening in Zimbabwe, where Mr Mugabe is accused of economic mismanagement, failure to curb corruption and contempt for democracy. It is amazing how universal man's agreement is on basic human rights. The U.S. lead in the creation of an international bill or rights -- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- and Tuesday is its 60th birthday. I am glad that our European brethren are holding Mugabe to its standard, at least verbally. I hope others guilty of infringing on human rights will soon face similar international criticism.I also hope that the government of the United States of America will also improve on its human rights record! Lets give prisoners rights to be heard, and quit torturing them. Lets let the crack dealers be treated in the same way that the powdered cocaine dealers are treated. Lets get rid of the death penalty. Let us make innocence a suitable grounds to appeal of criminal convictions. Lets treat immigrants as people with rights, even if they are illegal. Lets protect the privacy of our citizens from unwarranted infringement by the government. Lets give all people equal protection of the law, not only formally but protecting minorities from prejudice in the enforcement of the laws.
Hitchens really, really did not like Romney's speech on religion!
"Holy Nonsense: Mitt Romney's windy, worthless speech," By Christopher Hitchens, Slate, December 6, 2007.
Christopher Hitchens, well known for his book published earlier this year titled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, has a great command of the language, and really did not like Romney's speech.
He got me to thinking again. Romney said:
Incidentally, Romney responding to a question, which asked the candidates if they believed every word of the Bible, claimed,
Christopher Hitchens, well known for his book published earlier this year titled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, has a great command of the language, and really did not like Romney's speech.
He got me to thinking again. Romney said:
There are some for whom these commitments are not enough. They would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do. I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers – I will be true to them and to my beliefs.He also said:
Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.On the other hand, the website of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints says:
As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are blessed to be led by living prophets—inspired men called to speak for the Lord, as did Moses, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, Nephi, Mormon, and other prophets of the scriptures. We sustain the President of the Church as prophet, seer, and revelator—the only person on the earth who receives revelation to guide the entire Church. We also sustain the counselors in the First Presidency and the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophets, seers, and revelators.So as I understand it, Romney maintains that he will be true to the faith of his fathers. That faith holds that the authorities of the Mormon church are prophets called to speak for the Lord. But Romney will not accord them any authority in the affairs of the nation, only in church affairs. The Mormon website addresses issues such as abortion, adiction, birth control, chastity, dating and courtship, debt, drugs, education, food storage, gambling, homosexuality, the Internet, justice, media, modesty, movies and television, music, parenting, peace, pornography, sexual morality, suicide, swearing, tatooing, war, and zion. Are we to infer that Romney thinks that none of the churches teachings in these areas overlap with the affairs of the nation.
Incidentally, Romney responding to a question, which asked the candidates if they believed every word of the Bible, claimed,
"I believe the Bible to be the word of God, absolutely."The Mormon website has this to say about the New Testiment:
Writings belonging to the Apostolic age, selected by the Church and regarded as having the same sanctity and authority as the Jewish scriptures.Or more fully in the Eighth Article of the Mormon Faith:
We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.
Does (food) history repeat?
Britannia Bites" by IAN JACK, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, December 9, 2007.This is a review of TASTE: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking, by Kate Colquhoun.
I found this interesting. The review suggests that British food was terrible for a couple of centuries -- nothing new there. The authors identifies some causes. The British economy went from an agricultural one to a manufacturing one. People moved from farms to factories. Food was therefore imported, and the canned foods developed in the 19th century tasted bad. British factory workers were overwhelmed with work outside the home, and forgot how to cook. British cooking, which was simple and based on fresh local ingredients could not evolve fast enough to hide the bad taste of the imported, old and poorly preserved new ingredients.
Things are better now, and food processing technology has made ingredients taste better than in the bad days of canning. The better food that was found in middle and upper class homes in the past can now be found more widely in Britain. New immigrants have brought their cuisine to the British Isles.
I wonder if the peoples with emerging economies are going to go through the same process. Will the Chinese who are leaving their rural homes for factory jobs in the city see the quality of their food decrease? Or will the improved 21st century technology save them from the fate of the 19th century British working class?
Friday, December 07, 2007
"U.S. Teens Trail Peers Around World on Math-Science Test"
Read the article by Maria Glod in The Washington Post, December 5, 2007.
Glod writes:
Glod writes:
The disappointing performance of U.S. teenagers in math and science on an international exam, in scores released yesterday, has sparked calls for improvement in public schools to help the country keep pace in the global economy.
The scores from the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment showed that U.S. 15-year-olds trailed their peers from many industrialized countries. The average science score of U.S. students lagged behind those in 16 of 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group that represents the world's richest countries. The U.S. students were further behind in math, trailing counterparts in 23 countries.
Where Does All the Computer Power Go?
Reference: "The Army's $200 Billion Makeover: March to Modernize Proves Ambitious and Controversial" by Alec Klein, The Washington Post, December 7, 2007
The U.S. Army Future Combat Systems, or FCS, project involves creating a family of 14 weapons, drones, robots, sensors and hybrid-electric combat vehicles connected by a wireless network. The FCS has turned into the most ambitious modernization of the Army since World War II and the most expensive Army weapons program ever, military officials say.
The Army said the overall program will cost $124 billion. That's $162 billion when inflation is factored in. Independent estimates from the office of the Secretary of Defense put the program at between $203 billion and $234 billion. The program is expected to take up about half of the Army's procurement budget in 2015 and stay at about that level over the next decade.
The software development for the FCS is the largest in Defense Department history. In 2003, when the project began, the Army estimated it would need 33.7 million lines of code; it's now 63.8 million.
A new FCS weapon called the Non-Line of Sight Launch System, or NLOS-LS, is basically a box of rockets; these rockets can automatically change direction in midair and hit a moving target about 24 miles away.
The FCS Multifunctional Utility/Logistics and Equipment (MULE) Vehicle is a 2.5-ton Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) that will support dismounted and air assault operations. The MULE has three variants: transport, countermine and the Armed Robotic Vehicle-Assault-Light (ARV-A-L). The Countermine MULE Vehicle (MULE-CM) is to provide the capability to detect, mark and neutralize anti-tank mines by integrating a mine detection mission equipment package. The unmanned robotic ARV-Assault-Light (ARV-A-L) MULE is a mobility platform with an integrated weapons and reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition (RSTA) package to support the dismounted infantry.
An unmanned areal vehicle (UAV). a remote-controlled hovering craft built by Honeywell that weighs 29 pounds, is another of the devices to emerge from Future Combat Systems. The drone, essentially a cylinder on legs, uses a rotary fan to fly like a helicopter and comes with infrared night vision. It is to interact with the network and soldiers to dynamically update routes and target information during combat. It thus is to provide dedicated reconnaissance support and early warning to the smallest echelons of the Brigade Combat Team (BCT) in environments not suited to larger vehicles.
A similarly conceived FCS device is a robot called a Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, or SUGV. Built by iRobot, it weighs less than 30 pounds, runs on rubber tracks and features a long, flexible neck with a camera and sensors perched on top. Soldiers use controllers similar to Microsoft's Xbox to remotely navigate the robots in caves, tunnels and sewers. Some 1200 are already in use in Iraq where they have defused thousands of IEDs.
The program also involves the development of a new combat vehicle with heavy armor to protect soldiers; each is to weigh between 27 and 30 tons. The army has plans for eight vehicles sharing the same armored hull and many of the same integrated systems. The Infantry Carrier Vehicle (ICV) is to effectively employ weapon systems and rapidly maneuver during blackout, day and night operations, inclement weather, and limited visibility periods. Using the ICV, the army squad is to have access to Army and Joint fire delivery systems from external sources to provide extended range, networked responsive precision or volume fires on demand in support of tactical maneuvers. The ICV can move, shoot, communicate, detect threats, and protect crew and critical components under most land-surface environments. Data transfer with other components of the BCT permits constant update of the common operational picture and rapid identification of targets. The ICV features the MK44 30mm cannon as its primary armament plus a 7.62 machine gun.
In the conceptualization of the FCS a team of about 700, including members of the Army, Air Force, Marines, the CIA and civilian scientists, participate in war games over a two year period in a huge simulation center at the U.S. Army War College.
The Army program now involves more than 550 contractors. The Army assembled about 1,000 soldiers, called the Army Evaluation Task Force, or AETF, this summer to test the FCS.
The Army is quickly to field an FCS brigade with eight manned combat vehicles linked with six unmanned vehicles, drones, robots and sensors involving about 50 critical technologies.
The U.S. Army Future Combat Systems, or FCS, project involves creating a family of 14 weapons, drones, robots, sensors and hybrid-electric combat vehicles connected by a wireless network. The FCS has turned into the most ambitious modernization of the Army since World War II and the most expensive Army weapons program ever, military officials say.
The Army said the overall program will cost $124 billion. That's $162 billion when inflation is factored in. Independent estimates from the office of the Secretary of Defense put the program at between $203 billion and $234 billion. The program is expected to take up about half of the Army's procurement budget in 2015 and stay at about that level over the next decade.
The software development for the FCS is the largest in Defense Department history. In 2003, when the project began, the Army estimated it would need 33.7 million lines of code; it's now 63.8 million.A new FCS weapon called the Non-Line of Sight Launch System, or NLOS-LS, is basically a box of rockets; these rockets can automatically change direction in midair and hit a moving target about 24 miles away.
The FCS Multifunctional Utility/Logistics and Equipment (MULE) Vehicle is a 2.5-ton Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) that will support dismounted and air assault operations. The MULE has three variants: transport, countermine and the Armed Robotic Vehicle-Assault-Light (ARV-A-L). The Countermine MULE Vehicle (MULE-CM) is to provide the capability to detect, mark and neutralize anti-tank mines by integrating a mine detection mission equipment package. The unmanned robotic ARV-Assault-Light (ARV-A-L) MULE is a mobility platform with an integrated weapons and reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition (RSTA) package to support the dismounted infantry.
An unmanned areal vehicle (UAV). a remote-controlled hovering craft built by Honeywell that weighs 29 pounds, is another of the devices to emerge from Future Combat Systems. The drone, essentially a cylinder on legs, uses a rotary fan to fly like a helicopter and comes with infrared night vision. It is to interact with the network and soldiers to dynamically update routes and target information during combat. It thus is to provide dedicated reconnaissance support and early warning to the smallest echelons of the Brigade Combat Team (BCT) in environments not suited to larger vehicles.
A similarly conceived FCS device is a robot called a Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, or SUGV. Built by iRobot, it weighs less than 30 pounds, runs on rubber tracks and features a long, flexible neck with a camera and sensors perched on top. Soldiers use controllers similar to Microsoft's Xbox to remotely navigate the robots in caves, tunnels and sewers. Some 1200 are already in use in Iraq where they have defused thousands of IEDs.The program also involves the development of a new combat vehicle with heavy armor to protect soldiers; each is to weigh between 27 and 30 tons. The army has plans for eight vehicles sharing the same armored hull and many of the same integrated systems. The Infantry Carrier Vehicle (ICV) is to effectively employ weapon systems and rapidly maneuver during blackout, day and night operations, inclement weather, and limited visibility periods. Using the ICV, the army squad is to have access to Army and Joint fire delivery systems from external sources to provide extended range, networked responsive precision or volume fires on demand in support of tactical maneuvers. The ICV can move, shoot, communicate, detect threats, and protect crew and critical components under most land-surface environments. Data transfer with other components of the BCT permits constant update of the common operational picture and rapid identification of targets. The ICV features the MK44 30mm cannon as its primary armament plus a 7.62 machine gun.
In the conceptualization of the FCS a team of about 700, including members of the Army, Air Force, Marines, the CIA and civilian scientists, participate in war games over a two year period in a huge simulation center at the U.S. Army War College.
The Army program now involves more than 550 contractors. The Army assembled about 1,000 soldiers, called the Army Evaluation Task Force, or AETF, this summer to test the FCS.
The Army is quickly to field an FCS brigade with eight manned combat vehicles linked with six unmanned vehicles, drones, robots and sensors involving about 50 critical technologies.
Mitt Romney's Speech: "Faith In America"
The speech seemed pretty good to me. The New York Times had some serious criticisms in an editorial today. As I read it, the Times was mostly concerned that the Republican primary process made such a speech necessary in the first place.
A few things he said made my silent alarm go off. Why for example did he spend so much time on Islamic terrorism in a speech about religion in America, and if he had to deal with that topic why did he not do so in the context that there had been terrorism in the name of other religions in the past, and all religiously motivated terrorism, like all terrorism. is unacceptable.
Other examples:
How about Kwanza symbols? What do we do about Muslims who find images of any kind inappropriate, and especially images of supernatural beings; do they have rights? Sure, our culture has all sorts of symbols we use at special times, and doing so does little if any harm and makes many people happy. But lets not go overboard.
Do we really want to try to come to understanding with the Islamic world? If so, it that understanding possible with a president who not only believes that the secular Government of the United States was divinely inspired, but who proclaims that belief in a major campaign address on religion in seeking that office?
A few things he said made my silent alarm go off. Why for example did he spend so much time on Islamic terrorism in a speech about religion in America, and if he had to deal with that topic why did he not do so in the context that there had been terrorism in the name of other religions in the past, and all religiously motivated terrorism, like all terrorism. is unacceptable.
Other examples:
Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.This remark is made in the context of remarks that Europeans are less religious than the people of the United States. I hope Romney does not believe they are less free.
Given our grand tradition of religious tolerance and liberty, some wonder whether there are any questions regarding an aspiring candidate's religion that are appropriate. I believe there are.I believe they are not. Of course, one can ask whether a candidate uses information well, makes good decisions, is of good character, or is unduly influenced by others. In some cases one may infer answers to these legitimate concerns by asking questions related to the candidate's religious beliefs, and only in this sense is it legitimate in our democracy to ask about religion.
Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions.Of course, church authorities who are citizens have the same rights as other citizens to influence presidential decisions. Indeed, authorities by the very definition of the term should have more authoritative views on some issues, and thus be more credible in influencing decisions. His denial of this simple fact, in my opinion, detracts from the overall credibility of his speech.
When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God.Really? The highest promise? Are there no possible circumstances in which Romney would resign from office to deal with higher responsibilities to himself, his family, his church, his community or the nation? That seems a pretty glib statement to me.
There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith.I also read about Romney:
The highlights of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's résumé are well known. But there's a fourth point that he does not advertise in his stump speech: 12 years in top leadership positions in the Boston-area Mormon community. For three years, from 1982 to 1985, Mr. Romney served as the bishop, or lay pastor, at his church in Belmont, Mass. After that, he served nine years as "stake" president, overseeing about a dozen Boston-area parishes.It therefore seems to me that Romney is already a spokesman for his faith. (I don't suppose this disconnect will cause him to abandon his candidacy.) More seriously, I don't think a candidate should be asked to defend his faith, but if a candidate is on record for years as an official of his religious or other organizations, it seems to me that that record is fair game in the electoral process.
I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God.That sounds nice, but does Romney really believe that? Does he believe the faith of a megalomaniac in himself draws that person closer to God? How about the faith of a suicidal jihadist bomber? Of the faith of the leaders of the Davidian cult in the Waco massacre, or Jim Jones who lead his cult to mass suicide in Guiana? Perhaps Romney is going for well-sounding platitudes rather than a serious discussion of his beliefs.
We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders – in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places.We should acknowledge the Creator in the teaching of our history? I don't think so. This sounds like Romney is supporting the teaching of creationism as if it were science. Would Romney really be happy with a Jew teaching the role of the Creator in our history (as the Jewish religion understands it) in public schools?
How about Kwanza symbols? What do we do about Muslims who find images of any kind inappropriate, and especially images of supernatural beings; do they have rights? Sure, our culture has all sorts of symbols we use at special times, and doing so does little if any harm and makes many people happy. But lets not go overboard.
We believe that every single human being is a child of God – we are all part of the human family.Who is this "we" white man? Some Americans are atheists, some agnostics, and I suspect that there are some believers who doubt that "every single being is a 'child of God'," whatever that means to Romney. I don't think that the statement is true, and I don't think that such a belief should be a test of commitment to the underlying beliefs of our country.
Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God.Not the atheitsts among us, nor the agnostics. I am not sure that those who believe we should have a theocracy believe that. Indeed, does Romney want as president to tell citizens of other countries that their political systems are less admirable than ours because they are less well endowed by God?
Do we really want to try to come to understanding with the Islamic world? If so, it that understanding possible with a president who not only believes that the secular Government of the United States was divinely inspired, but who proclaims that belief in a major campaign address on religion in seeking that office?
A Bush administration idea that doesn't seem to work
"U.S. Agency’s Slow Pace Endangers Foreign Aid"by CELIA W. DUGGER, The New York Times, December 7, 2007.
"The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a federal agency set up almost four years ago to reinvent foreign aid, has taken far longer to help poor, well-governed countries than its supporters expected or its critics say is reasonable.
"The agency, a rare Bush administration proposal to be enacted with bipartisan support, has spent only $155 million of the $4.8 billion it has approved for ambitious projects in 15 countries in Africa, Central America and other regions.
"And the agency’s slow pace is making it politically vulnerable at budget crunch time. Both the House and the Senate have slashed the Bush administration’s 2008 budget request for the agency, but the Senate has gone a step further, pushing for a change that African leaders say threatens the essence of the agency’s novel approach.
"Eyeing the unspent billions, the Senate has proposed that Congress provide no more than half the money up front for future five-year projects, which typically come with a price tag of $250 million to $700 million. Such projects are now fully financed at the start to make sure countries have the wherewithal to finish what they start."
Comment: Apparently, donor assistance to Africa has gone down in per capita terms, even as most African governments have put in place reforms to improve development administration, and as many African nations have shown good economic growth for a decade. Yet the region is still the poorest in the world, with huge economic and social problems, many the legacy of centuries of exploitation by rich nations.
Those facts make it especially sad that the Millennium Challenge Corporation has been so slow in developing the assistance programs that the people and Congress of the United States have authorized. JAD
A Comment on CIA Videotape of Interrogations
Others, much more knowledgeable than I will discuss the CIA's destruction of the videotapes of interrogations of suspected terrorists in more than sufficient detail. I make one comment.
The New York Times today reports:
One can hope that the CIA is simply keeping the video (and other data) from interrogations in another form, say on a hard disk or DVD rather than a tape. But if the CIA is not recording and keeping records of interrogations, perhaps it should reexamine that policy at least from the aspect of the value of doing so in the production of intelligence.
The New York Times today reports:
In his statement, General Hayden said the tapes were originally made to ensure that agency employees acted in accordance with “established legal and policy guidelines.” He said the agency stopped videotaping interrogations in 2002.BBC News reports:
According to the intelligence agency, the tapes were destroyed to protect the identity of CIA agents and because they no longer had intelligence value.....It seems to me that interrogations should often be monitored by people outside the interrogation room, and with modern video techniques there is no reason that such monitoring should not be done in another city or another country. the monitor might be able to suggest things to the interrogator in real time to improve the interrogation. If you do a video of the interrogation, there seems to be no reason not to keep the visual information. I also suppose that later intelligence analysts would benefit from having videos of interrogations as they try to intrept the credibility and meaning of the testimony obtained in the interrogation. It also seems to me that there can be a lot of information in a video of an interrogation that the interrogators don't immediately recognize. Moreover, I would hope that the intelligence agencies are continuing to work hard to improve the technology that can be used to evaluate the performance and information provided by interrogation subjects (and interrogators); if so, later analysis of interrogation records might well yield additional information from the interrogation. Moreover, as I understand intelligence work, it involves putting together a picture from different sources. Later evidence from other sources may therefore lead analysts to reexamine evidence that they have previously studied, to find new meanings. Video records of interrogations would seem useful for that purpose.
In the internal memo, Gen Hayden told staff that the CIA had begun taping interrogations as an internal check in 2002 and decided to delete the videos because they lacked any "legal or internal reason" to keep them.
One can hope that the CIA is simply keeping the video (and other data) from interrogations in another form, say on a hard disk or DVD rather than a tape. But if the CIA is not recording and keeping records of interrogations, perhaps it should reexamine that policy at least from the aspect of the value of doing so in the production of intelligence.
Maybe we will get rid of polio for good.
"Efforts to Eradicate Polio Receive Much Needed Funds"
By Maureen O'Leary, Science in the Headlines, National Academy of Sciences
"The global campaign to eradicate polio received a $200 million grant this week to help fund the final push to wipe out the disease that mostly strikes children under five. The grant from the Gates Foundation and Rotary International will go largely toward immunization campaigns, surveillance, and public education.
"Polio incidence has been reduced by more than 99 percent worldwide since the eradication effort began in 1988. However, the virus persists in Afghanistan, Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Somalia. Armed conflicts and weak health services in these areas make it difficult to reach the high vaccination levels needed to stop the disease. And poor sanitation and pervasive intestinal viruses diminish the polio vaccine's effectiveness in India."
Comment: Polio was a fearsome disease when I was a kid. Children were crippled for life. People were hospitalized in iron lungs. The development of a polio vaccine was truly worthy of the Nobel Prize. It is an infectious disease, and could come back unless we eradicate it worldwide. The failure of the polio campaign in northern Nigeria a few years ago was attributed to misinformation being disseminated among tribal, Islamic peoples who distrusted both their own government and the international community. The disease was spread from the uninoculated areas in Nigeria by people participating in the Hajj. The places where it continues to exist are basically places where government does not work. Money is important, but governments should also put pressure to see that money is used well where it is needed. There is no acceptable reason to let polio continue to exist, and that knowledge should be conveyed to people, especially influential people everywhere.
Thanks to the Gates Foundation and Rotary International. JAD
By Maureen O'Leary, Science in the Headlines, National Academy of Sciences
"The global campaign to eradicate polio received a $200 million grant this week to help fund the final push to wipe out the disease that mostly strikes children under five. The grant from the Gates Foundation and Rotary International will go largely toward immunization campaigns, surveillance, and public education.
"Polio incidence has been reduced by more than 99 percent worldwide since the eradication effort began in 1988. However, the virus persists in Afghanistan, Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Somalia. Armed conflicts and weak health services in these areas make it difficult to reach the high vaccination levels needed to stop the disease. And poor sanitation and pervasive intestinal viruses diminish the polio vaccine's effectiveness in India."
Comment: Polio was a fearsome disease when I was a kid. Children were crippled for life. People were hospitalized in iron lungs. The development of a polio vaccine was truly worthy of the Nobel Prize. It is an infectious disease, and could come back unless we eradicate it worldwide. The failure of the polio campaign in northern Nigeria a few years ago was attributed to misinformation being disseminated among tribal, Islamic peoples who distrusted both their own government and the international community. The disease was spread from the uninoculated areas in Nigeria by people participating in the Hajj. The places where it continues to exist are basically places where government does not work. Money is important, but governments should also put pressure to see that money is used well where it is needed. There is no acceptable reason to let polio continue to exist, and that knowledge should be conveyed to people, especially influential people everywhere.
Thanks to the Gates Foundation and Rotary International. JAD
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Would a Candidates Religion Affect My Vote?
The question seems to be coming up, especially as Mitt Romney is to speak on religion tonight. I just want to address that quickly from the point of view of this blog -- knowledge and development.
I would worry about the mental stability of someone who said he heard voices of supernormal guidance, or worse thought himself to be devine. Mental instability suggests inability to process information.
I would worry about someone who was a member of a cult. According to Wikipedia:
Religions differ in their demands on the beliefs of their members. Some which require protestations of dogmatic faith from adherents, also have histories that suggest that their dogma is not credible. One might, I suggest, reasonably refrain from voting from an adherent of such a religion on the basis of their possible credulity, and the possibility that it might transfer from the realm of religion to that of statecraft.
I would worry about the mental stability of someone who said he heard voices of supernormal guidance, or worse thought himself to be devine. Mental instability suggests inability to process information.
I would worry about someone who was a member of a cult. According to Wikipedia:
Cult roughly refers to a cohesive social group devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding culture considers outside the mainstream, with a notably positive or negative popular perception.What would concern me would be the possibility that a cult was influencing its members not to think critically or to obtain information from a variety of reliable sources, but rather limiting member thinking to narrow, approved channels.
Religions differ in their demands on the beliefs of their members. Some which require protestations of dogmatic faith from adherents, also have histories that suggest that their dogma is not credible. One might, I suggest, reasonably refrain from voting from an adherent of such a religion on the basis of their possible credulity, and the possibility that it might transfer from the realm of religion to that of statecraft.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
"Into the Eye of the Storm"
Subtitle: "Assessing the Evidence on Science and Engineering Education, Quality, and Workforce Demand"
B. Lindsay Lowell and Harold Salzman, Urban Institute, October 29, 2007.
Abstract: "Recent policy reports claim the United States is falling behind other nations in science and math education and graduating insufficient numbers of scientists and engineers. Review of the evidence and analysis of actual graduation rates and workforce needs does not find support for these claims. U.S. student performance rankings are comparable to other leading nations and colleges graduate far more scientists and engineers than are hired each year. Instead, the evidence suggests targeted education improvements are needed for the lowest performers and demand-side factors may be insufficient to attract qualified college graduates."
SSTI Weekly Digest comments:
As a whole, the numbers of S&E Ph.D. graduates are continuing to escalate, as reported in an InfoBrief recently released by the National Science Foundation (NSF). It states U.S. institutions of higher education awarded 29,854 S&E doctorates in 2006, a 6.7 percent increase over 2005, resulting in a 9.6 percent increase over a 10-year period. Additionally, women attained 8.8 percent of the S&E doctorates in 2006. Non-U.S. citizens received 45.2 percent of Ph.D.s in the S&E fields.Comment: This is rather comforting, indicating we will have scientifically and technologically trained people to fill our jobs, although there may be disjunctions hidden in the figures; a civil engineer is not much use in a biotech lab and a microbiologist can't design a bridge.
The possible excessive supply of Ph.D. students was illustrated in an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education. In “The Real Science Crisis: Bleak Prospects for Young Researchers,” Richard Monastersky reports that the academic job market in science is changing faster than graduate programs can accommodate. For many Ph.D.s in the sciences, professors are having a harder time obtaining grants, and postdocs are struggling to obtain tenure-track jobs. The story cites external data describing how 70 percent of physics Ph.D.s become temporary postdocs today, compared to 42 percent in 2000. Additionally, even though the number of doctorates in biomedicine has nearly doubled in the last two decades, the number of tenured and tenure-track positions have not increased in that same period.
I also think it useful to have significant numbers of S&T trained people in management, government, and other jobs. JAD
"Farewell to Development’s Old Divides"
James Wolfensohn wrote an interesting article available on the Project Syndicate website. The former President of the World Bank wrote:
The fourth tier comprises countries that are lagging behind – the world’s poorest economies, with more than a billion people. They continue to stagnate or decline economically. Mostly located in sub-Saharan Africa, these “Laggards” are largely isolated from the global economy, and they face crucial development challenges.
This emerging four-tier world presents three key challenges.
First, we need to increase our efforts to ensure that the Laggards are no longer left behind. This requires policy changes as well as more generous and more effective aid. If one considers the issue of aid flows, one finds that though development aid rose in 2005 to $107 billion, most of the increase was geared towards “special circumstances,” such as debt forgiveness and for Iraq and Afghanistan. The sad truth is that development aid to Africa has decreased from $49 per person in 1980 to $38 per person in 2005. The true development needs of Laggard countries and other parts of the world are not being met, despite the rhetoric of scaling up aid.
Bush Administration Credibility
"It's Not 1929, but It's the Biggest Mess Since" by Steven Pearlstein, The Washington Post, December 5, 2007.
Pearlstein writes:
We have had the exposure this week that the Bush administration has been creating unwarranted fears about nuclear weapons in Iran. We know that the Bush administration did the same in the run up to the war in Iraq. It has mislead the public about the progress of that war. It mislead teh public about the warnings it had before 9/11. It has mislead the public about the treatment of captives and hostages in Iraq, Guantanamo, and in prisons to which they were sent through extraordinary rendition. It has mislead the public about the surveillance of our citizens and the dismantling of civil liberties, not to mention the politicization of the corps of federal prosecutors and Justice Department. Terrorism alerts are no longer believed, and the administration's effectiveness on the arms control, decommissioning of nuclear weapons, and the control of U.S. borders is inadequate.
Hurricane Katrina was an especially damaging example of Bush overstatement ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!") , and the government response still does not match up with Bush administration rhetoric.
The international development community is convinced that the Bush administration has little credibility in its assistance commitments. While U.S. foreign assistance has increased notably during the administration, it has been politicized, made more supportive of U.S. military interventions, and has promised more than it delivered (in part due to the unwillingness of Congress to allocate the needed resources.)
The scientific community has been up in arms over the bowdlerization of government scientific reports on climate change, endangered species, and other environmental matters. The decision to prevent the use of federal research funds for research on embryonic stem cells was defended using radically incorrect information. The (probably useful) program on avian flu preparation was similarly defended with an inaccurate estimate of the gravity of the threat that disease represented.
I attach a couple of YouTube videos by others saying better than I can that we can not trust this administration's statements. This lesson is again being conveyed to the world, and not only is the credibility of all Americans decreased by association, so too are the risks increased to our foreign policy objectives and to our place in the world.
Pearlstein writes:
What's important to understand is that, contrary to what you heard from President Bush yesterday, this isn't just a mortgage or housing crisis. The financial giants that originated, packaged, rated and insured all those subprime mortgages were the same ones, run by the same executives, with the same fee incentives, using the same financial technologies and risk-management systems, who originated, packaged, rated and insured home-equity loans, commercial real estate loans, credit card loans and loans to finance corporate buyouts.Pearlstein writes that the financial crisis is much worse than most people recognize because, in his opinion, it is not only the subprime mortgage business that is in crisis, but also many other businesses that exploited Collateralized Debt Obligations. I was struck, however, by the fact that a relatively little known financial reporter is more credible on this matter than the President of the United States, but that is undoubtedly true. I don't believe the President when he talks about economic policy. (Indeed, the economic policy imposed on Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority was so bad that it is a major cause of the problems we now face in that country.)
We have had the exposure this week that the Bush administration has been creating unwarranted fears about nuclear weapons in Iran. We know that the Bush administration did the same in the run up to the war in Iraq. It has mislead the public about the progress of that war. It mislead teh public about the warnings it had before 9/11. It has mislead the public about the treatment of captives and hostages in Iraq, Guantanamo, and in prisons to which they were sent through extraordinary rendition. It has mislead the public about the surveillance of our citizens and the dismantling of civil liberties, not to mention the politicization of the corps of federal prosecutors and Justice Department. Terrorism alerts are no longer believed, and the administration's effectiveness on the arms control, decommissioning of nuclear weapons, and the control of U.S. borders is inadequate.
Hurricane Katrina was an especially damaging example of Bush overstatement ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!") , and the government response still does not match up with Bush administration rhetoric.
The international development community is convinced that the Bush administration has little credibility in its assistance commitments. While U.S. foreign assistance has increased notably during the administration, it has been politicized, made more supportive of U.S. military interventions, and has promised more than it delivered (in part due to the unwillingness of Congress to allocate the needed resources.)
The scientific community has been up in arms over the bowdlerization of government scientific reports on climate change, endangered species, and other environmental matters. The decision to prevent the use of federal research funds for research on embryonic stem cells was defended using radically incorrect information. The (probably useful) program on avian flu preparation was similarly defended with an inaccurate estimate of the gravity of the threat that disease represented.
I attach a couple of YouTube videos by others saying better than I can that we can not trust this administration's statements. This lesson is again being conveyed to the world, and not only is the credibility of all Americans decreased by association, so too are the risks increased to our foreign policy objectives and to our place in the world.
Change in Advisors at State
In today's (December 5, 2007) Washington Post, "Good News, Bad News for Evildoers" by Al Kamens:He's BaaackComment: Wolfowitz, who left the World Bank under a cloud of ethics charges related to his live in girl friend's cushy deals with the World Bank and the Department of State, was so unpopular at the Bank that thousands of staffers wore ribbons to symbolize their opposition to his remaining in power there. While he is certainly a foreign policy expert, I wonder whether the State Department staff is not able to guess what his views would be on any of the issues before it.
Who says there are no second chances in life? Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense and World Bank president, may soon be back in service to the American people. Former colleague Mike Isikoff, now at Newsweek, reports that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has offered Wolfowitz, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a job as chairman of the State Department's International Security Advisory Board, and that Wolfowitz has accepted.
Pending completion of background checks, he would be named to replace former senator and foreign policy expert Fred Thompson.
Wolfowitz, a key mover on the Iraq war, will head the 18-member group, which is to advise Rice on disarmament, nuclear proliferation, WMDs and such.
Still, those views are probably more useful than the views of an actor playing a regular repeating role on television. JAD
Disconnect!
Two stories from today's Washington Post (December 5, 2007):
File this under "What were they thinking of in the State Department"! JAD
- "Iraq Urges Refugees To Stay Put: Cabinet Endorses Another Year for U.S.-Led Mission" by Amit R. Paley:
The Iraqi government on Tuesday urged some refugees not to go back to their homes yet, saying the country was unprepared to accommodate their return. "The reality is that we cannot handle a huge influx of people," Abdul Samad al-Sultan, the minister of displacement and migration, said at a news conference to announce a joint plan with the United Nations to help returning Iraqis. "The refugees in some countries, we ask them to wait."
- "Good News, Bad News for Evildoers" by Al Kamens:
The opportunity of a lifetime! The government is paying up to $144,000 for a "business development/tourism" expert to "work with private sector businesses and local governments in fostering business development with a particular focus on tourism and related services." The 13-month job also offers a 35 percent "danger pay" premium and other bonuses because it's based in Baghdad.
File this under "What were they thinking of in the State Department"! JAD
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Think about this one!
"INFLUENZA: Tense Meeting Produces Some Hope for Flu-Sharing Deal"
Martin Enserink, Science 30 November 2007: Vol. 318. no. 5855, p. 1361
"At stake during the Intergovernmental Meeting on Pandemic Influenza Preparedness was the Global Influenza Surveillance Network (GISN), which helps monitor viral evolution and prepare the production of vaccines against seasonal and pandemic flu strains....After 4 days of feverish debate and diplomacy, often stretching late into the night, participants agreed to embark on an overhaul of the system that Indonesia and other developing nations had demanded......Indonesia has for the past year refused to share samples from its human H5N1 influenza victims with the network, saying those viruses are its own property and demanding guarantees that it will get the benefits--such as pandemic vaccines--that sharing can help produce. Other developing countries, such as Egypt, Nigeria, Vietnam, and Thailand, have stopped short of boycotting GISN but sympathize with Indonesia."
Comment: Certainly Indonesia and other countries should share data on flu, including data on the genetics of the flu strains that are occurring in their populations. Certainly the countries that have the ability to develop and but flu vaccines and drugs should share them with poor countries that do not have that capacity. The question is whether poor countries, that for good reason distrust the willingness of rich countries to share vaccines and drugs with the needy, should withhold their data until credible guarantees are provided by the rich countries. Why do the rich countries resist giving those guarantees? JAD
Martin Enserink, Science 30 November 2007: Vol. 318. no. 5855, p. 1361
"At stake during the Intergovernmental Meeting on Pandemic Influenza Preparedness was the Global Influenza Surveillance Network (GISN), which helps monitor viral evolution and prepare the production of vaccines against seasonal and pandemic flu strains....After 4 days of feverish debate and diplomacy, often stretching late into the night, participants agreed to embark on an overhaul of the system that Indonesia and other developing nations had demanded......Indonesia has for the past year refused to share samples from its human H5N1 influenza victims with the network, saying those viruses are its own property and demanding guarantees that it will get the benefits--such as pandemic vaccines--that sharing can help produce. Other developing countries, such as Egypt, Nigeria, Vietnam, and Thailand, have stopped short of boycotting GISN but sympathize with Indonesia."
Comment: Certainly Indonesia and other countries should share data on flu, including data on the genetics of the flu strains that are occurring in their populations. Certainly the countries that have the ability to develop and but flu vaccines and drugs should share them with poor countries that do not have that capacity. The question is whether poor countries, that for good reason distrust the willingness of rich countries to share vaccines and drugs with the needy, should withhold their data until credible guarantees are provided by the rich countries. Why do the rich countries resist giving those guarantees? JAD
Useful editorial in Science
"The Quality of Public Dialogue"
Kathy Sykes, Science 30 November 2007: Vol. 318. no. 5855, p. 1349
The editorial concludes:
Kathy Sykes, Science 30 November 2007: Vol. 318. no. 5855, p. 1349
The editorial concludes:
As with any successful dialogue, the parties involved need to rise to the occasion. If governments are to make wise science-policy decisions--national and global--and are seriously open to public views, then they must engage the public at the right time, based on good practice. And if the public take the time to think, discuss, and become informed about issues, their observations can help science to better serve society.
Check out my interview on eGov monitor
I discovered this interview published on eGov monitor. It misses on my affiliation. I am a Vice President and member of the Board of Directors of Americans for UNESCO, as well as an editor for ICT for Development of the Development Gateway.
Monday, December 03, 2007
How Bad Can Climate Change Be?
Read "Great Flood Forced Farmers West" in The Washington Post, December 3, 2007.Over 8,000 years ago the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered most of what are now Canada and the United States, collapsed. The flood of water into the oceans raised their level by 4.5 feet. The higher level of the Mediterranean breached a dam at what is now the Bosporus Strait, flooding 28,000 square miles over a few decades. When the waters rose, perhaps 100,000 people in southeast Europe -- who already practiced early farming -- migrated west across Europe, disseminating their culture widely.
Where Does All the Computer Power Go?
Read "Faster Computers Accelerate Pace of Discovery" by Christopher Lee, The Washington Post, December 3, 2007.
The first "petascale" supercomputer, capable of 1,000 trillion calculations per second, should be in operation next year. That is about twice as powerful as the most powerful computer today.
More to the point, an exascale machine will make possible work on commercial aircraft design and other industrial products that are simply impossible to do economically now. Only countries that can afford such machines will be in the field of developing those aircraft and other products requiring complex computation.
Thus there will be a digital divide in petascale machines in the near future, and one in exascale machines in a decade or so, and those divides will mean a divide in commercial innovation capacity between have and have-not countries. JAD
The first "petascale" supercomputer, capable of 1,000 trillion calculations per second, should be in operation next year. That is about twice as powerful as the most powerful computer today.
Attached to the article is a video describing Roadrunner, a 1.5 petaflop machine being built now that incoporates broadband modules with the processors, and which is described as offering great visualization tools for the users to interpret the results of experiments done with the high-performance computer.The computing muscle of the new petascale machines will be akin to that of more than 100,000 desktop computers combined, experts say. A computation that would take a lifetime for a home PC and that can be completed in about five hours on today's supercomputers will be doable in as little as two hours.
Even before a petascale computer is a reality, scientists are anticipating the next big milestone, the exascale machine -- a thousand times more powerful still, and capable of 1 million trillion calculations per second. But they'll have to wait. That one isn't expected until about 2018.Roadrunner and its cousins will make possible dramatically improved computer simulations that will shed new light on climate change, geology, drug development, dark matter and other secrets of the universe, as well as other fields in which direct experimental observation is time-consuming, costly, dangerous or impossible.
computer climate models can now simulate atmospheric and oceanic conditions and, crucially, how changes in each affect the other, experts said. Now the worry is not that computing power is inadequate but that the aging of NASA's weather satellites will lead to a shortage of input data before long, Seager and others said.Comment: Those who discuss the digital divide often focus on personal computers and connections to the Internet. If a petaflop computer is equivalent to hundreds of thousands of PCs, then an exascale machine would have the power of hundreds of millions of today's PCs. The digital divide should consider not only the number of machines, but overall computer power.
Petascale computers also will make it possible to predict, say, the effect of an earthquake on every building in downtown Los Angeles, experts said. Current models cannot yield predictions for areas smaller than a square mile or two. The increased detail could help shape building codes and be a valuable tool in evacuation planning and disaster preparedness......
Still another is the modeling of the bird flu virus and how t might evolve to become more communicable and lethal -- knowledge that could help scientists develop a vaccine in time to use it and to inform public health planning. Petascale computers are also expected to lead to more potent models for Wall Street to calculate risk and predict the fate of financial instruments, as well as more advanced digital prototypes of automobiles and jet aircraft, further reducing the need for physical mock-ups.....Today's supercomputers rely not only on better "compute nodes" (made up of faster chips and more memory), but also on scientists' ability to "gang" hundreds of thousands of those nodes together in a single machine and to devise better ways of having them communicate with one another and divide up the work of complex problem solving.
"If you ran today's code on yesterday's computers, they would be much faster," said Raymond Bair, director of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility at the Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. "People have figured out how to solve the problems faster."
More to the point, an exascale machine will make possible work on commercial aircraft design and other industrial products that are simply impossible to do economically now. Only countries that can afford such machines will be in the field of developing those aircraft and other products requiring complex computation.
Thus there will be a digital divide in petascale machines in the near future, and one in exascale machines in a decade or so, and those divides will mean a divide in commercial innovation capacity between have and have-not countries. JAD
"Iraq: The Hidden Human Costs"
I just read this very significant book review by Michael Massing (the New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 20 · December 20, 2007). Reviewing two books that deal with the invasion of Iraq, the review does a pretty good job of conveying how brutal such a battle is, and how many civilians were killed by the invaders. It makes the point that Americans who were not there do not appreciate the cost to the Iraqis of the invasion. It also suggests the psychological costs to the soldiers who were there.
The initial attacks on occupied towns with irregular resistance fighters were brutal, and the volunteers in the service became inured to the violence they were using and indeed intensified it as the threats they faced increased in importance in their minds.
From the point of view of this blog, focusing as it does on knowledge, the following paragraphs from the review are especially salient:
I wonder whether we can begin to understand the hidden human costs from books written by an American soldier and an American reporter. Surely they saw human costs that were hidden from those of us at home.
But, as I understand it, the excess mortality in Iraq since the war is not primarily due to people killed in action by American troops. Think about the human cost of a child who doesn't get enough food for a couple of years, who is too often sick due to the living conditions he/she faces with his/her family, and who dies ultimately for lack of medical care that once would have saved him/her. Who measures that human cost?
Or think of the millions of Iraqis who are living in other countries as refugees. The girls who have been forced into prostitution, the kids who have been denied schooling, the adults who can't find decent jobs. How often are they sick? What is the "excess" morbidity and mortality among these people? Who counts the human costs?
How about the other countries that are suffering economic problems as a result of the war in Iraq? These are poor countries, and any loss of economic growth in them results in real losses in their poorest population - losses that may well be measured in hunger, illness and even death. These are truely hidden costs.
I think if Americans really understood and appreciated the costs of the war in Iraq, they would act differently!
The initial attacks on occupied towns with irregular resistance fighters were brutal, and the volunteers in the service became inured to the violence they were using and indeed intensified it as the threats they faced increased in importance in their minds.
From the point of view of this blog, focusing as it does on knowledge, the following paragraphs from the review are especially salient:
As probing and aggressive as the reporting from Iraq has been, it is subject to many filters. There are, for example, "family viewing" standards that make it difficult for journalists to write frankly about such sensitive aspects of military life as the profane language soldiers often use. It's also hard for journalists to get an accurate sense of what soldiers really think. Through embedding, reporters have enjoyed remarkable physical access to the troops, but learning about their true feelings is far more difficult, all the more so since soldiers who speak out too freely can be prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Finally, there are limitations imposed by the political climate in which the press works. Images that seem too graphic or unsettling can cause an uproar. When, for instance, The New York Times in January 2007 ran a photo of a US soldier lying mortally wounded on the ground, the paper was angrily accused of showing disrespect for the troops. More generally, the conduct of US soldiers in the field remains a highly sensitive subject. News organizations that show soldiers in a bad light run the risk of being labeled anti-American, unpatriotic, or—worst of all—"against the troops." In July, for instance, when The New Republic ran a column by a private that recounted several instances of bad behavior by US soldiers, he and the magazine were viciously attacked by conservative bloggers. Most Americans simply do not want to know too much about the acts being carried out in their name, and this serves as a powerful deterrent to editors and producers.
I wonder whether we can begin to understand the hidden human costs from books written by an American soldier and an American reporter. Surely they saw human costs that were hidden from those of us at home.
But, as I understand it, the excess mortality in Iraq since the war is not primarily due to people killed in action by American troops. Think about the human cost of a child who doesn't get enough food for a couple of years, who is too often sick due to the living conditions he/she faces with his/her family, and who dies ultimately for lack of medical care that once would have saved him/her. Who measures that human cost?
Or think of the millions of Iraqis who are living in other countries as refugees. The girls who have been forced into prostitution, the kids who have been denied schooling, the adults who can't find decent jobs. How often are they sick? What is the "excess" morbidity and mortality among these people? Who counts the human costs?
How about the other countries that are suffering economic problems as a result of the war in Iraq? These are poor countries, and any loss of economic growth in them results in real losses in their poorest population - losses that may well be measured in hunger, illness and even death. These are truely hidden costs.
I think if Americans really understood and appreciated the costs of the war in Iraq, they would act differently!
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Internet Indicators
Reference: "Web metrics: Many ways to skin a cat"
The Economist, November 29th 2007
The article discusses the use of "hits", "visitors" and "time on page" as indicators of Internet use. All have been used by those buying Internet advertising.
The Economist, November 29th 2007
The article discusses the use of "hits", "visitors" and "time on page" as indicators of Internet use. All have been used by those buying Internet advertising.
As websites, and especially those using AJAX, become more interactive, advertisers are therefore interested in other measures. “Duration” and “time spent”, for instance, suggest how long one or more people were interacting with a page, which in turn hints at how “engaged”, or alert, they were. Using these criteria, social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace (part of Fox Interactive Media in the chart) suddenly look attractive.Years ago as a member of an NAS panel I coauthored Internet Counts, a report of the National Academy of Sciences. Since that time I have thought a fair amount about indicators. It seems to be that the basic issue is the cost and benefits from information. A lot of information about website use is very cheap to obtain, and some that would be most beneficial is hard and expensive to obtain. You would like to know which dollar of advertising pays the most in sales, and none of the indicators I know of give that information. Still, I bet that the guys who do media analysis can do a pretty good job at directing spending on media research, and media on spending on advertising.
U.S. Politicians Seem Not to Understand ICT
Reference: "Don't Know Their Yahoo From Their YouTube"
By Garrett M. Graff, The Washington Post, December 2, 2007
Lead: "In Wednesday's CNN/YouTube debate, Sen. John McCain let slip a fairly stunning admission. The Arizona Republican assured viewers that he wouldn't need to lean on his vice president, George W. Bush-style, for national security expertise, but might 'rely on a vice president' for help on less important issues such as 'information technology, which is the future of this nation's economy.'"
U.S. Senator Ted Stevens referred to the Internet as a "series of tubes" on June 26th, 2006.
I suggest that the problem is that these big-wig politicians are too insulated from everyday life. They probably get their information from briefings from staffers, rather than from personal experience. That means they don't have a feel for how important the Internet has become in everyday life. But it is probably also symptomatic of lack of touch with the everyday life of Americans, a worrisome element in a government 'of the people, by the people, and for the people"! JAD
By Garrett M. Graff, The Washington Post, December 2, 2007
Lead: "In Wednesday's CNN/YouTube debate, Sen. John McCain let slip a fairly stunning admission. The Arizona Republican assured viewers that he wouldn't need to lean on his vice president, George W. Bush-style, for national security expertise, but might 'rely on a vice president' for help on less important issues such as 'information technology, which is the future of this nation's economy.'"
U.S. Senator Ted Stevens referred to the Internet as a "series of tubes" on June 26th, 2006.
President Bush's similarly addled descriptions of the Web (he has referred to "the Google") have been pure gold for "Saturday Night Live." AfterComment: As a 70 year old blogger, I am rather skeptical about the suggestion that our politicians don't know about the Internet because they are too old. I know about YouTube and MySpace, and I am older than most of the guys in question.Bush alluded during a 2004 presidential debate to rumors "on the, uh, Internets" about an Iraq war draft, Will Forte (who impersonates the president on the show) gleefully played Bush saying, "I think the problem here may be more of a question of getting rid of the bad Internets and keeping the good Internets. You know, 'cause I think we can all agree, there're just too many Internets.".....
Answering a campaign-trail question earlier this year, Mitt Romney, the former entrepreneur whose high-tech background should make him the best-informed candidate, didn't seem to know the difference between the video-sharing Web site YouTube (then the fourth most popular site in the world, according to Alexa.com) and MySpace, the social networking site (then ranked sixth).....
According to the Senate historian, the Senate is the oldest it has ever been, with an average age of 62 during the 110th Congress. Most of the leaders of Senate committees had already graduated from college by the time TVs became widespread in American homes in the 1950s. As the United States advances into the information age, it can't afford to have its leaders' base of knowledge be rooted in the industrial era.
last week's CNN/YouTube debate almost didn'thappen, because the bulk of the GOP candidates didn't want to participate. The first debate, scheduled for September, was scuttled, and it took intense online protests by Republican activists to cajole the two front-runners, Romney and Rudy Giuliani, to show up. It's telling that the only two candidates who agreed to the original debate were McCain (that gaffe aside) and Ron Paul, whose maverick, straight-talking presidential campaigns have benefited enormously from online energy and fundraising.
I suggest that the problem is that these big-wig politicians are too insulated from everyday life. They probably get their information from briefings from staffers, rather than from personal experience. That means they don't have a feel for how important the Internet has become in everyday life. But it is probably also symptomatic of lack of touch with the everyday life of Americans, a worrisome element in a government 'of the people, by the people, and for the people"! JAD
Another bad science decision from the Bush administration
A photo of the AMS DetectorReference: "The Device NASA Is Leaving Behind: Launch Renews Attention on Grounded Project"
By Marc Kaufman, The Washington Post, December 2, 2007
NASA has decided to back out of plans to deploy a $1.5 billion device -- one that many scientists contend would produce far more significant knowledge than the manned space missions approved by the Bush administration. The administration has decided to limit space shuttle flights, and to allocate room on the scheduled flights to other apparatus. The instrument would detect and measure cosmic rays in a new way. It took 500 physicists from around the world 12 years to build. Martin Zell, head of research operations for the European Space Agency, said the device would if deployed "be the most visible, perhaps the most exciting, experiment on the station."
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS)
would look for evidence of how the universe formed. It would search in particular for evidence of the existence and workings of dark matter and antimatter, which theorists have concluded must exist but have never been identified or measured.Comment: While some might see the junking of this important scientific instrument and the work it would allow to be a fall out of the huge spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, I see it more as an indication of the lack of concern for science, and understanding of the long run importance of results of fundamental research. JAD
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The science is considered innovative and important -- a major Department of Energy scientific review recently concluded that it "may well make some fundamental discoveries." But the fate of the instrument also has significant implications for international cooperation in space.
"The credibility of the United States is at stake here, because NASA made a commitment to bring Columbus and AMS to the space station," said Samuel C.C. Ting, a Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who conceived the project in 1994 and drew in collaborators from 60 institutes in 16 nations to build and fund it. "After all this work, it would be a terrible blow if the instrument cannot be used."
"5 Myths About the Bomb and Us"
"5 Myths About the Bomb and Us"
By Jeffrey Lewis, The Washington Post, December 2, 2007.
Do you know the following things?
By Jeffrey Lewis, The Washington Post, December 2, 2007.
Do you know the following things?
- According to administration statements, the United States in 2012 will still have 5,000-6,000 nuclear weapons, with about a third of those remaining on Cold War levels of alert.
- The administration plans to deploy 2,200 strategic warheads on alert in 2012.
- In October, an Army unit experienced "an unexplained and accidental launch" of a Patriot missile-defense interceptor during training.
- On Aug. 30 six nuclear weapons were accidentally flown from North Dakota to Louisiana illustrating that safeguards, even for handling nuclear weapons, can and do fail.
- Russia keeps several thousand tactical nuclear weapons in the field.
- "The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) requires each party to provide the other side with information about its strategic forces, open some facilities to inspection and refrain from interfering with satellites and other means of verifying compliance. The Bush administration has complained that the verification process requires "cumbersome" paperwork. But the inconvenience of complying with START would be dwarfed by the task of collecting the information about Russia's arsenal without active Russian cooperation."
Thoughts on Calculating Risks
Atomic weapons were used only in World War II, and only by the United States. But we know that there was a very close approach to nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis, and apparently there was another close approach in the Reagan years when the Soviet Union mistook a U.S. military exercise for a cover for a sneak attack. It occurs to me that in calculating risks we should consider not only the actual events, but also the events that were narrowly averted. How then can we weight actual events as compared to nearly averted events?
Not all nuclear attacks are equivalent. A nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States with tens of thousands of high-yield weapons would not be the same as a terrorist attack with a single low yield weapon. Both would be unthinkable. How does one weigh the risks of various levels of unthinkable consequences?
The appropriate understanding of nuclear risks is obviously important, and the inappropriate understanding is clearly visible in the run up to the Iraq war. We now are witnessing a lot of public concern on the possibility of Iran gaining nuclear weapons, and (in my opinion) relatively little concern for the nuclear weapons already in the hands of governments in Pakistan, India and China. The story of Russia withdrawing from the conventional arms treaty got space inside my local newspaper, not on the front page.
Flu pandemics also come to mind. There is a global epidemic of flu every year, and millions of people are affected with hundreds of thousands of deaths. Every decade or so a new flu variety replaces the old one, and a more virulent epidemic or pandemic occurs. A few to many million people die. We know of the Spanish flu that started during World War I, when 50 to 100 million people died, in a much less populated and less densely populated world than we have today. How do we calculate the risk of the next epidemic? Of the next pandemic?
Again, the Ford administration made a major initiative to prevent a swine flu epidemic that never occurred, and the current Bush administration has made an important initiative to combat an avian flu epidemic that has not occurred (yet). In both occasions there were short term political benefits obtained by predicting a risk, and being shown to be acting vigorously to respond to that risk.
The popular perception of risk depends on the availability of knowledge of the nature of the risk. Availability involves whether we have scientific knowledge of the magnitude of the risk, or whether the risk is unknown. Thus, the risk of the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been unknowable in part because the statistics have been weak on the incidence and prevalence of the disease, but also because of the impossibility of predicting when vaccines and other preventive measures would be available and how effective they would be, and of predicting when treatments would be developed, how effective they would be, and how resistance would develop.
There is also a known "availability bias" in human decision making. If people can not easily and quickly remember an example of the kind of event of concern, they tend not to give it high priority. People are more concerned about airline crashes than about auto accidents, although the latter cause many more deaths; indeed, the risk per mile traveled by automobile are much higher than those per mile in a commercial aircraft. But we read about and see on television any airliner crash anywhere in the world, but automobile accidents are too common to merit much coverage (unless they involve famous people or other special circumstances).
How do we overcome the availability bias for risks of infrequent but very serious events? How do we get an appropriate public response to politicians who pander to our fears or who focus on the wrong risks? One step in the right direction would be to improve education, teaching kids about risk analysis. Another would be for the media to do a better job. For every news story about an airliner crash, there should be equally riveting coverage of an alternative risk that would be more important to the average reader of viewer -- say the risk of carcinogens or obesity.
Not all nuclear attacks are equivalent. A nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States with tens of thousands of high-yield weapons would not be the same as a terrorist attack with a single low yield weapon. Both would be unthinkable. How does one weigh the risks of various levels of unthinkable consequences?
The appropriate understanding of nuclear risks is obviously important, and the inappropriate understanding is clearly visible in the run up to the Iraq war. We now are witnessing a lot of public concern on the possibility of Iran gaining nuclear weapons, and (in my opinion) relatively little concern for the nuclear weapons already in the hands of governments in Pakistan, India and China. The story of Russia withdrawing from the conventional arms treaty got space inside my local newspaper, not on the front page.
Flu pandemics also come to mind. There is a global epidemic of flu every year, and millions of people are affected with hundreds of thousands of deaths. Every decade or so a new flu variety replaces the old one, and a more virulent epidemic or pandemic occurs. A few to many million people die. We know of the Spanish flu that started during World War I, when 50 to 100 million people died, in a much less populated and less densely populated world than we have today. How do we calculate the risk of the next epidemic? Of the next pandemic?
Again, the Ford administration made a major initiative to prevent a swine flu epidemic that never occurred, and the current Bush administration has made an important initiative to combat an avian flu epidemic that has not occurred (yet). In both occasions there were short term political benefits obtained by predicting a risk, and being shown to be acting vigorously to respond to that risk.
The popular perception of risk depends on the availability of knowledge of the nature of the risk. Availability involves whether we have scientific knowledge of the magnitude of the risk, or whether the risk is unknown. Thus, the risk of the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been unknowable in part because the statistics have been weak on the incidence and prevalence of the disease, but also because of the impossibility of predicting when vaccines and other preventive measures would be available and how effective they would be, and of predicting when treatments would be developed, how effective they would be, and how resistance would develop.
There is also a known "availability bias" in human decision making. If people can not easily and quickly remember an example of the kind of event of concern, they tend not to give it high priority. People are more concerned about airline crashes than about auto accidents, although the latter cause many more deaths; indeed, the risk per mile traveled by automobile are much higher than those per mile in a commercial aircraft. But we read about and see on television any airliner crash anywhere in the world, but automobile accidents are too common to merit much coverage (unless they involve famous people or other special circumstances).
How do we overcome the availability bias for risks of infrequent but very serious events? How do we get an appropriate public response to politicians who pander to our fears or who focus on the wrong risks? One step in the right direction would be to improve education, teaching kids about risk analysis. Another would be for the media to do a better job. For every news story about an airliner crash, there should be equally riveting coverage of an alternative risk that would be more important to the average reader of viewer -- say the risk of carcinogens or obesity.
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