The Importance of Theory

This piece, Theory, and Why It's Time Psychology Got One on the Notes From Two Scientific Psychologists blog got my attention in three areas.

First, it is (sadly) a thorough and succinct statement of everything that my original field is struggling with. We don't have a baseline theory, and without one we can only argue from different viewpoints.

In my working field, W. Edwards Deming famously said (or is famously misquoted as saying?) "Without theory, there can be no experience." What me means (I think) is that unless you have a thorough baseline, you can only observe and react. No experience, no learning can be gained because learning and experience result from something in discord with what we believe. No belief, no discord, no experience, no learning.

The third area is that this article is a really good primer on what "science" is all about, and how the scientific method actually works to structure our advance of knowledge.

Without that thinking, you couldn't be reading this at all, unless I had handed you a clay tablet with the words scratched on it. All of our technology is built on the structured accumulation of knowledge. Without a baseline of theory, everything is as "right" as everything else. And that is the problem today - the attack on science we see in the media, from both the left and right wings of the political spectrum, is built on that fundamental premise.

Ideas = Things

For those of you who don't know what this is, let me explain. The image is a 3D model of the lower receiver of an AR-15 rifle.

In the USA, a firearm generally has one critical part that is considered the controlled item. This is the part that is, legally, a "gun." It has the serial number on it. All of the other parts are just that - parts, and are available to pretty much anyone.

If you have that controlled part, then you can buy the rest and build your firearm.

For the AR-15 rifle, that controlled part is the lower receiver. It is the part that hold the magazine, and contains the trigger and fire control parts. The upper receiver holds the barrel and pins to the lower receiver. You can order a complete upper receiver with a simple internet search and a credit card. You an buy one cash-and-carry from a retail store. The same goes for the parts and bits that go into the lower receiver.

One unique aspect of the AR-15 design is that the lower receiver actually doesn't have to deal with a lot of stress. It just holds things together. Though it is usually made of aluminum, there are commercially available ones made of tough composite plastics.

What makes this particular 3D model significant is that it appears on the "Thingiverse" site where people exchange such files for use on their 3D printers. Combine that with the fact that 3D printers are rapidly coming down in price, and today anyone who can afford a computer and is willing to hack a bit to get something working can have a 3D printer. While this design might be a little challenging for the home-units, it won't be for long.

It has always been legal in the USA for an individual to construct a firearm for personal use. A license is needed to transfer that a firearm that you made to another person, but not to make one. There are (onerous) restrictions against making full-auto weapons, silencers, and a few other things. In general, though, you can legally build pretty much anything you can purchase across the counter at a sporting goods store.

This hasn't been a real issue because making things like this is generally difficult, and requires specialized tools and skill. At least it did.

With 3D printing technology, you download the file, and press "Print."

The line has been crossed between possessing mere information and being able to easily turn that information into "things."

While an AR-15 with a lower receiver made from extruded ABS plastic is not likely to be as rugged as one machined from an aluminum forging, I have no doubt that it could be made to work.

In the Soviet Union, photocopiers and printing presses were dangerous things. They had to be licensed, registered, and were heavily regulated. Somehow, ideas spread anyway.

Now the same level of technology can make things, not just spread ideas.

hmmmm...

P.S. - the difference between an AR-15 lower receiver and its selective-fire military cousin is a slightly different internal geometry and another hole.

Government and Medical Fraud

Randi's challenge to homeopathy is simple. Prove your claims.
I have no issues with that at all.

Randi believes that it should be illegal for pharmacological retailers to sell these products, or at least illegal to sell them without some kind of information that states they are ineffective.

He implies that he believes that government should do more to regulate this industry.

Make no mistake, I believe that anyone making claims that homeopathic "medicine" works is lying. This stuff is some of the purest water you can get.

The question for me is "What is the government's role in regulating nothing?"

If I said "Drink this bottle of water and it will cure cancer" would you believe me?
You are stupid if you do.

New Bible draws critics of gender-neutral language

The NIV Bible is used by many of the largest Protestant faiths. The translation comes from an independent group of biblical scholars that has been meeting yearly since 1965 to discuss advances in biblical scholarship and changes in English usage.

OK - this makes sense. The bible is an old text, originally written in a variety of now dead languages. People who are concerned about translating it ought to be reviewing their work now and then.

But then it gets - well - hilarious interesting.

You see, the new translation is trying to accommodate the fact that the original language had gender-neutral pronouns. English does not. The convention in English, for centuries, has been to use male pronouns as the default when gender is neutral or unspecified. As our society has grown, though, that convention has become awkward.

OK - no big deal, right?
Well actually, apparently it is.
You see there are evangelicals who, well:

"Evangelicals believe in the verbal plenary inspiration of scripture. We believe every word is inspired by God, not just the broad thought," he said.

So if the original text reads "brothers" — even if that word in the original language is known to mean "brothers and sisters" (such as the Hebrew "achim" or Spanish word "hermanos") — many evangelicals believe the English translation should read "brothers."

So, if I am understanding this correctly, because the English language does not include a gender-neutral pronoun, then their god "inspired" the use of the English convention of a gender specific pronoun and now that pronoun has taken on special meaning and defined gender roles with god.

And what defines "the original language?" We are back to English? And modern English at that. Are the original Latin, Ancient Greek, or earlier translations not "original language?"

Here is the rub:

Before the new translation even hit stores, it drew opposition from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, an organization that believes women should submit to their husbands in the home and only men can hold some leadership roles in the church.

The council decided it would not endorse the new version because the changes alter "the theological direction and meaning of the text," according to a statement

Huh. So I guess these gender roles are only applicable to gods whose primary language is English, not Spanish or Hebrew, or for that matter Aramaic (which was likely the language spoken by Jesus, or at least the people in that time).

I guess that would mean that this god inspires different gender roles depending on the language being translated. That seems pretty complicated to me. Actually, I think a better word is "hypocritical."

Happy Pi Day (3.14)

Although Pi has been calculated to one trillion digits, this approximation of the number pi:


3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971


is adequate to calculate the circumference of a circle the size of the known universe to an accuracy of +/- less than the width of a hydrogen atom.

High Handed Hypocrisy

Gingrich would like to remind everybody that that marriage is between one man and one woman whom you abandon riddled with cancer on her hospital bed while you fuck the shit out of your mistress whom you later marry and cheat on with a third woman while screaming with Godly moral outrage about the infidelities of the president.

From http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2011/02/thrice-married-serial-adulterer-obama.html

Hold whatever view you want.
Then live by it.
But do not use the power of government to enforce your views upon others.

jeesh

Has Anyone Else Read Crichton's "Terminal Man?"

Trying brain pacemakers to zap psychiatric disease

WASHINGTON – Call them brain pacemakers, tiny implants that hold promise for fighting tough psychiatric diseases — if scientists can figure out just where in all that gray matter to put them.

Deep brain stimulation, or DBS, has proved a powerful way to block the tremors of Parkinson's disease. Blocking mental illness isn't nearly as easy a task.

But a push is on to expand research into how well these brain stimulators tackle the most severe cases of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette's syndrome — to know best how to use them before too many doctors and patients clamor to try.

Michael Crichton was a visionary science fiction author whose message was "be careful what you mess with."

I am not in any way saying this research is dangerous, but I am pretty impressed by the man's vision in a book written decades ago.

Then again, there is a team in Russia working on cloning a Woolly Mammoth. Maybe not from DNA extracted from a mosquito, but still...

We live in interesting times where we can catch up with science fiction in our lifetimes.

Stupid Criminals - REALLY Stupid

Maybe I can get this one up before Leno talks about it.

Say 'cheese': Thief breaks into surveillance camera store

Is it even possible for someone to be this stupid?

I mean really?

Prosecuted for Bad Taste

For sure, I would never hire this guy. He is clearly lacking any kind of judgment.

http://hypervocal.com/news/2011/youtube-musician-evan-emory-faces-20-years-in-prison-for-clever-editing/

But being crass, tasteless, and offensive is not, or at least should not be, illegal.
It certainly should not be a felony.

Yet here we have a prosecutor with, what, nothing better to do than make up ways to charge people who offend him with crimes, going after this guy.

His crime?
Singing a sexually explicit song and putting it up on YouTube.
So what? you ask?
The "so what" is his choice of editing.
Although he was singing alone with his camera, he edited the video as though he were singing to a bunch of little kids.

So now he is being charged with "manufacturing child sexually abusive material."

That law, as absurd as it is, was intended to criminalize making computer-generated graphics of sex acts with kids. Now we see what happens when vague, well-intended statutes get into the hands of people whose agendas go beyond the original intent.

Likely the prosecution will be found unconstitutional, hopefully the law itself will be as well. But this kind of malicious prosecution casts a chill on free expression that is vital for our society to function.

You may laugh at this guy's situation, but consider this:
The definition of "terrorist" is far more vague, as is "terrorist activities."
When do we reach the point when civil disobedience, which in previous times was at most a misdemeanor "disturbing the peace" charge becomes "domestic terrorism?"

We are on a slippery slope of criminalizing things that "people don't like" or worse, that "the government doesn't like" and I, for one, don't like where it is headed.

Ham Handed Foreign Policy

US starts Farsi Twitter account aimed at Iranians

Good gosh, WHY?

Why do we feel the need to meddle in these things?

As long as the USA can be painted as inciting unrest, the governments of these countries will have an easy means of vilifying the movement.

The people of these countries are perfectly capable of overthrowing their governments without any help or interference from anyone else. In fact, that is the only way it works.

Want to know how it is done?

There is a primer on the subject here:

From Dictatorship to Democracy

Read it, then let's discuss why the USA stirring the pot is a bad idea.

Les's End the NCAA Charade of "Amateur Athletes"

Former NCAA player's suit threatens Hollywood

This headline on Yahoo! News is more hype than fact.

Court cases typically are settled with the narrowest possible precedent. 

But there are a couple of interesting issues here that aren't being explored well.

One is the complete duplicity of the NCAA.

NCAA sports is a multi-billion dollar business.

Everyone makes lots of money.

Coaches, sponsors, promoters, the schools, the media.

Thousands of people are employed and made decent incomes.

The professional sports leagues, especially the NFL and the NBA, get a free farm system.

Everyone gets something, that is, except the talent.

What do they get?

IF they were recruited, they get a scholarship to maintain the illusion of the "student athlete" while devoting most of their emotional energy toward athletics rather than academics.

They get a lottery ticket for making it as a pro.

What this lawsuit is about, in reality, is that the talent who makes all of this profit possible gets nothing. The defendants are making it a 1st amendment issue because, frankly, it is the only way they have a chance of winning. But it isn't a first amendment issue.

Let's end the charade about "amateur athletics" being somehow more pure. The idea of "amateur status" actually originated in Victorian England as a means for the rich guys to exclude more talented, but "professional" athletes from their games. Those "professionals" couldn't afford to play for free, so a class system was established to demean their "professional" status as somehow mercenary.

The Olympics have gotten over it. Professional athletes routinely compete, because they want to attract the very best competitors.

Here is an idea. As radical as it sounds.

Pay them. 

Create a fund, as a percentage of gate, licensing and other revenue, that is equally distributed to the players. Don't put it in escrow or anything, just give them the money.

Idea #2 -

Play then school. Let's acknowledge that this is an entertainment industry. Let the athlete opt to play for his period of eligibility and then be eligible to get x years of scholarship at any NCAA school later. That is a win for everyone. If the player gets drafted, he can pursue that career, but he has something to fall back on if he is injured or cut. Some players might not pursue the  scholarship. And by making the scholarship eligible for any NCAA school, a more mature person can make more mature decisions about what he wants to pursue.

Simply put, if we treated the players fairly, this issue would have never come up. That is all Keller wants.

Google Law

New York Times reporter David Segal broke a story about how J.C. Penny had managed to rise to the top of Google searches for just about anything they sell.

Within days, hours actually, of informing Google of these results, Penny's place in these searches dropped from #1 to #70 or so.

J.C. Penny, of course, denies having anything to do with the scheme to plant tens of thousands of links in link-farm sites, but they did fire their search optimization consultants.

What is interesting to me, though, is how Mr. Segal uses the word "illegal" when describing search optimization strategies that violate Google's policies.

As pervasive as they are, Google is a private company. They may make whatever policies they choose about their search algorithms. They may publish guidelines of things they consider to be acceptable and unacceptable ways to raise your results. And they may sanction transgressions in any way they choose, so long as those sanctions to not run afoul of real laws.

But nothing you do, or do not do, to manipulate your Google search results is "illegal." There are no laws against it - except perhaps undisclosed collusion as the E.U. regulators are alleging.

Google's policies, though, are not laws. They do not carry the force of law. Let's stop using the term "illegal" to describe things that other people simply do not like.

Chief Marketing Officer of Wikileaks

This post on Gizmodo is an excerpt from a new book bring published this week, Inside Wikileaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website.


Based on the excerpt, I stand by my opinion that Assange is, most of all, a narcissist, and perhaps even crossing the clinical threshold.

On numerous occasions, Julian accused the Icelandic police of keeping him under surveillance. He also informed our-no, sorry, his-Twitter followers that two operatives from the Ameri­can State Department had followed him onto a plane while he was en route to a conference in Oslo. Our hotel, too, had been watched, Julian trumpeted, and unmarked cars had tailed us. He loved these stories because they assured him of a rapt audience. Once, he terrified a woman he was spending the night with so much with his secret-agent stories that she fled and was too scared to return to her own apartment. Julian stayed behind and made himself comfortable.

These actions, and others cited in the article, are those of someone who has constructed a world around him, a world where he is the center of everything.

This will be entertaining to watch.

Jules Verne - Happy Birthday

Author C. Clark is famous for saying "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." By pushing the envelope so far ahead of current engineering, the author actually lowers the threshold for suspension of belief.

Verne took much more risk. He was writing in Victorian times. The pact of technological advancement was just approaching a level where it could be noticed in the course of a working lifetime. His vision was clearly anchored in Victorian engineering, and he was extrapolating that into a near-term future. It was fantastic, but at the same time, it was not presented as magic. It was presented as "we will be able to do this some day, and in that day people will be pretty much the same as they are now." All in all, I'd say he got more right than wrong.

So, a nod to Jules Verne on his 183rd birthday.

The Risk of Atheism

As an atheist, I am sometimes asked what proof I have that there is no supernatural being or, for that matter, that The Force does not exist.

Of course I have no proof, and none can be offered since non-existence of something cannot be proven. I can only say "there is no evidence."

In doing so, I am opening myself up to the possibility that I am wrong. But this is what science is about. If scientifically compelling evidence is offered up, and my hypothesis cannot stand up to that evidence, I will gladly alter it.

With this stand, I am assuming all of the risks. Only I can be proven wrong.

Consider the opposite stand.

"There is a supernatural being."

Because this position is impossible to refute, it is the easiest one to adopt. There is no way to prove this statement to be wrong. It is not even a "stand" in my mind, because it requires no risk, no effort, no curiosity, only a blind acceptance of what others have said.

Of course we have to laugh sometimes, so I present Rowen Atkinson's "Warm Reception."

I guess my special moment would be at around 2:15.

Enron

Son of Jeffrey Skilling found dead

This is breaking news, so nobody knows the cause of death yet, just that some prescription medications were found by his bed.

But extrapolating, even to an accidental overdose, this tragedy continues to ruin lives.

Still, Enron was nothing more than the run-up to the crash of 09. The same behavior that took down Enron is what took down the entire global economy. 

We have, at some point, passed from an era of looking at what is right and wrong to looking at what is illegal, and assuming everything else is OK.

"Everything is permitted, except that which is explicitly forbidden."

As free as that sounds, freedom comes with responsibilities. Among those responsibilities is to grasp the idea that if everything that is "legal" is "right" then the laws eventually drift toward the opposite:

"Everything is forbidden, except that which is explicitly permitted."

Ironically, the U.S. Constitution was written this way for the government's powers. That is the whole concept of enumerated powers. It was an acknowledgment that government power tends to accumulate over time (which has been the case anyway, even if slowed somewhat by constitutional restrictions).

I wish I had a solution. Perhaps I am too idealistic.

Yes, this wandered off the original topic.

I'm like that.

Does Social Media Destroy Marriages?

After writing Reflections I rolled through my post list and remembered this incomplete draft I had started:

Talk about burying the lead.

Granted, any London tabloid, like The Daily Mail, is far less concerned with presenting an accurate story than it is in selling the newspapers. But then even stories in Pravda have (had?) a grain of truth running through them.

Here is the headline:

The marriage killer: One in five American divorces now involve Facebook

A staggering 80 per cent of divorce lawyers have also reported a spike in the number of cases that use social media for evidence of cheating.

So what we have is that divorce lawyers are using Facebook as evidence of cheating, not that Facebook is causing it.

See the difference?

What we really have is a platform for people to escape their daily lives and create an "if only" fantasy world, and live in it. They re-connect with old flames, share a few flirty chats, and think they have a relationship.

Jealous spouse discovers this, goes nuts, and we have a divorce.

Which begs the question - how strong was the relationship to begin with?

One of the interesting (to me) things this brings up is that one of the first signs that an abusive relationship is forming is social isolation. The abuser attempts to gain control over who the victim can associate with, communicate with, in order to make the victim dependent on the abuser for a basic human need for connection. The victim will gladly accept abusive, hurtful connection as the only alternative to no connection at at all.

While I can gladly stand on "being right" for all of that, and take special delight in the link back to social isolation in abuse, I think I have to stand corrected a bit. Yes - these relationships are often constructed in fantasy, but what I have come to realize is just how easy it is for someone to slip down this hole without even realizing it until the emotional damage is done.

Does this make the players any less responsible? Of course not. And my question still stands - "How strong was the relationship to begin with?" But an online or virtual relationship, I have come to realize, can seem to overcome the limits of a real world one.

The feeling of attachment can be just as strong, or stronger. But in a real-world relationship we pick up on cues that contradict that feeling of attachment. We must actively seek to confirm or refute this evidence, and can only do it by taking more emotional risk.

But online those negative cues are nearly absent in the limited bandwidth. Subtle might not work here, and sometimes bluntly direct doesn't work either. This means no need to take so much emotional risk before building a belief that the connection is deeper.

Fantasy is a powerful thing. And what we have here is an emotional affair, not with anyone real, but with a partially fictional character that is constructed around the live interaction.

The only way out of this is to grasp reality and to accept the emotional risk of rejection in the real world - a far more dangerous place to play.

Reflections on the Thin Blue Wire

Now and then life presents a learning opportunity.
Sometimes it is subtle.

When that occurs, I often seek someone out to debrief myself.

My purpose in doing this is that, in reconstructing the events, I see more detail, and sharpen my own skills for spotting cues I may have missed.

The other reason I do it is that these things often leave feeling a little vulnerable, and I am seeking out a connection.

This isn't about debriefing something, it is about that connection.

Connection is an interesting thing. We humans depend on it. We are driven to seek out emotional connection with others. Those drives are primal.

It does not truly happen unless we are open and vulnerable to rejection. The vulnerability is offered up, anxiety builds, and when that vulnerability is embraced and accepted, there is a flush of relief and peace. This happens over and over, as the people go deeper.

At the point where one person or the other stops offering up vulnerability, the relationship freezes in place. It may be OK, but it gets no deeper. If one or the other seeks a deeper connection she or he will offer up vulnerability. If it is rebuffed, then that anxiety builds but is not released. Yet this anxiety seeks release. This is the point when people begin contemplating seeking that release elsewhere. They may establish many shallow connections, or pseudo connections to try to fill the void, to gain that flush that comes from the embrace of acceptance.

We evolved when connections were established face to face. We can see, hear, touch, sense the other person in all of the nuances of communication that operate well below our awareness.

Now fast forward to the present day. We were never equipped to establish and maintain those connections over a thin blue wire. Yet, I feel something. I translate that feeling into a stream of language, and my fingers follow, completing and breaking electrical circuits. Those impulses are encoded, and sent over that little blue wire, and the words I am thinking to express what I am feeling appear on a screen to be taken in by the eyes of another human being.

At the other end, those words are taken in, interpreted and invoke feeling in that other person. It is an incredible process.

As sterile as this is, emotions are created and exchanged over these little strands of copper. Such is not so much the power of the network, as the power of the human capacity for connection.

Or is it?

When I feel a connection in this way, what is real, and what am I filling in? What is actually coming over the blue wire, and what actually is created within me, from my own experiences and imagination? 

Connections that feel or seem amazingly deep can be established this way. Why?
My theory here is that the distance, the abstraction, makes it far easier to offer up vulnerability because the rejection doesn't hurt as much. Deeper vulnerability is offered because there is less downside. When it is accepted, though, the relief of embrace is just as strong. Simply put, there is a higher return on the emotional risk.

Add to that the natural human response to fill in details from fantasy, and a rich world is constructed in which great depths of vulnerability are offered up, exchanged, and accepted. Each person is building that fantasy, and because the bandwidth is so narrow, no evidence is ever presented to refute it.

Think about how rich relationships are built in a purely virtual fantasy online world where there is no pretense of anything being real.Yet the feelings are still there - intimate connection between fictional characters that are nothing like the people who created them. It is no wonder people get sucked into these worlds - the "hit" on primal parts of the brain is stronger than heroin.

Now what happens when a person who has reached the depth limit in a personal relationship wants more?
Where is the easiest place to get it?
That thin blue wire beckons.

I can't say for sure, but I think recently I was at the other end of that blue wire.
Time for Sam to look in the mirror.

Really Cool Phone Interface Concept

This thenextweb post titled "Coolest Concept Phone From China - Ever" is certainly right about the title.
Even if this product never comes to fruition, it shows something we (in the USA for sure) need to sit up and take notice about.

Anyone who thinks that the Chinese are going to be satisfied as the offshore manufacturers of western designed products needs to understand this - that isn't going to happen. The common U.S. arrogance that somehow we retain a monopoly in innovation - where the hell did that come from in the first place - needs to come down a notch or two.



Remember the line from "Back to the Future" - "All of the really good stuff comes from Japan."
It is going to be China soon, unless we start re-energizing our attitudes about innovation and industry. And that means taking math, science, engineering, and the industrial arts seriously... very seriously.

Sadly, in a world where the main debates in education are about whether we teach solid science at all, and the private schools are largely the ones who don't, we have some huge hurdles to overcome first.

Ni hao ma?

Locking You Out of Your Own Stuff

Let's say that you own an automobile. It is beyond the warranty period. There is a problem with the car, so you take it to the dealer to have it repaired.

When you get the car back from the dealer, it is fixed, but you discover they have also locked the hood so you can no longer access the engine. In fact, nobody can access the engine except them.

How would you feel about that?

Well that is exactly what Apple is doing if they repair your iPhone.

Of course you can always find, or make, the special screwdriver you need, but that isn't the point.

Here is the point.

A manufacturer has every right to design their stuff to be tamper resistant, and sell it that way. I am agreeing to the design specifications when I choose to buy the product. If I don't like what they do, I can always buy something else, or sit on the sidelines of the market. I've got no problem with whatever kind of fasteners Apple wants to put into a new iPhone.

BUT once I buy the product, it is mine.
If they modify the product in a way I do not agree to, especially one which diminishes its utility to me, I do have a problem with that.

Of course there isn't a helluva a lot I can do about it except this -

Apple today is the very monolithic IBM they railed against in the famous Superbowl commercial that launched the Mac. For the very reason that people bought Apple products then, I choose not to buy them now. For the same reason, I avoid (when I can) Microsoft products. That isn't as easy, but my desktop computer runs Ubuntu Linux, and the only Microsoft product associated with it is a mouse that I bought at Boeing Surplus Sales for $3 about 10 years ago.

We fortunately live in a world where we have some choices. We should work to preserve them. No product is a must have.

Benjamin Franklin: First U.S. Geek

Benjamin Franklin is 305 years old today. He had a long life, even by today's standards, 84 years, a truly exceptional age in his time.

He was a diplomat, philosopher, scientist, inventor, a maker long before the term was popularized by Cory Doctorow. If there had been hackerspaces in the 18th century, Franklin's home would have been one of them, that is if he settled in one place long enough.

This piece of Gizmodo summarizes a few of his inventions and hacks. Franklin may have been one of the last true polymaths who could learn significant knowledge about just about everything. A systems thinker.

I wonder what he would make of today's world, especially what the USA has become. Though I am certain he would be impressed, I am less sure he would be entirely pleased.

He is one of two figures (who are actual people) to appear on U.S. paper currency who was never President of the United States. Who is the other?

Steve Jobs Taking Medical Leave of Absence

Steve Jobs has announced he is taking (another) medical leave of absence from Apple.

Team,

At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple's day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.

I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.

Steve

Of course I don't think it is really possible to underestimate the impact that Steve Jobs has had on our modern society. And I wish him a speedy and full recovery.

If not now, then sooner or later, Apple is going to have to confront the reality of a future without Steve Jobs. The company's weakness is that Jobs is the "inspired leader with many minions" style of leadership, and companies that lose these types of leaders tend to do poorly in the transition.

If Apple can continue to run the creative engine at the same pace, then I will gladly be proven wrong about this, and Jobs will have managed to get processes into place that continuously develop people's capabilities to contribute and solve problems "the Apple way." Time will tell.

Government and Marriage

This editorial on CNN.com, titled Why the Marriage Gap Is Bad for America raises some interesting issues.At its core, though, there is a fallacy of logic. The author equates "marriage" with "stable family." Then she invokes government intervention into the institution as a solution to the problem. I disagree on both counts.

Back in the days of cave painting and sleeping on bearskins, women were considered property. When possession was transferred from her father's family to her chosen mate's (in exchange for consideration), there was a ceremony marking the occasion.

Upon that transfer, the male could now have sex with this woman, as she now belonged to him. In many cases, little or none of this was her choice.

Thus, "marriage" was a social sanction for having sex. This is not to say that sex never happened outside of that structure, but there were considerable risks involved. Even in today's primitive societies, the penalties for sex outside of marriage - especially for women - can be draconian.

Fast forward a bit, and religious sanction of this union becomes predominant, but the effect is largely the same.

As western society became more secular, and religion moved out of the role of government, the secular governments moved into the role of "licensing" marriages, and churches were parallel, but not legally binding, authorities.

Until a couple of decades ago, marriage was a contract from which neither party could withdraw unless fault was found in the other. This, too, goes back to a religious tradition. It is nearly unique in law. What other contracts or partnerships exist from which voluntary withdrawal is simply not allowed except through misconduct of the other party? You may have to pay a penalty, but you can always break a lease.

What is the appropriate role of government today?

In most modern societies, marriage provides a structure establishing a legal partnership for obligations, sharing property, and should the need arise, and there is no prior agreement otherwise, a default structure for dissolving that partnership.

It unfortunately is still used to establish whether a loving relationship is "legitimate" and (far worse) whether any children resulting from that relationship are "legitimate," (Fortunately we are getting past that in most places.)

Then there is the "social conservative" angle.
To be clear, a "social conservative" is someone who believes in using threat of government sanction to impose their religious behavioral standards upon others.

To the social conservatives, marriage comes down to a license to have sex. In other words, sex is a sin unless it is sanctioned by an outside enforced agreement of fidelity called a "marriage." This is why they are in such an   uproar over marriages between same-sex couples. Since that form of sex is a sin, government should be forbidding it, not licensing it. The same goes for poly marriages, though those have yet to be brought under attack in the courts. Wait.

Let's get government out of the business of who is having sex with whom altogether.

The institution of "domestic partnership" is all government should apply. And even that should simply be a default structure, which can be altered by mutual agreement of all parties. The agreement is basically a prenup. It defines how property rights are established, obligations for child care, survivor rights, and establishes a relationship of "family" in the eyes of various social institutions who restrict services to family members.

We eliminate "marriage licenses" altogether, and replace them with a simple fee-for-service for recording the document.

Wait a minute - why record anything? I sign, you sign, she signs, we get it notarized, and its good to go. What does government need to do at all? Let's save the tax money for important things.

If a religious couple wants to "get married" they can do it in a church, just like the old days. There is no reason the church can't sanction the agreement. It is just the government doesn't recognize different levels of them.

Just a ramble for thought.

The Voice of the People in the People's Republic

BEIJING – A Chinese court announced Friday it will retry a farmer sentenced to life in prison for evading highway tolls after a massive public outcry over his heavy punishment.

 The back story is here:
China to Retry Farmer Given Life for Evading Tolls

To be clear, this was not simple toll evasion, the accused apparently forged military license plates and otherwise disguised his truck as a military vehicle to dodge some $500,000 in road tolls over a period of time.

Tough it wouldn't be anywhere close to life in prison, neither would it be a ticket or misdomeanor here in the USA.

But this isn't about tolls in China.

This is about the people being heard in the People's Republic.

Note that countries with the word "People's" in their name (or both of the words "democratic" and "republic" and especially countries with all of those words like the DPRK) tend to be none of the above.

China's government is much like a corporate bureaucracy. Officials are essentially promoted on merit and political connections and move up in the ranks, eventually becoming the CEO. The board of directors are a group of senior party officials who make sure everything is cool with their view of what good communism looks like.

The harsh sentence in this case was likely a political message meant to set an example so that others contemplating defrauding the government would think twice. It is meant to demonstrate the power of government to harshly punish fraud against it.

But the people didn't buy it.

Not much opportunity here for "the people" to have anything to say.

But, of course, there are 1,300,000,000 of them, give or take, and sheer weight of numbers has serious implications.

Simply, if significant numbers of them feel the government is no longer serving China, the government has to listen and respond. Failure to do so is going to open the door for social unrest, the greatest threat to a stable government in China ("stable" meaning "staying in power").

Why is this the case? Because there is no mechanism within the current system in China for the people to alter the government's direction or policies.

If the people feel they have no voice, and are discontent enough - the people begin to understand a basic truth of all nations:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Ironically, the government in China lives in fear that the people will realize this is true.

Thus the government has to be responsive to public outcry, indeed, sometimes more responsive than might be prudent. In this case they backed down.

China is starting to see inflation. Bills are rising faster than incomes. They are entering into a trying period, IMO.

Tunisian Government Falls to Protests

Protesters enraged over soaring unemployment and corruption drove Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power Friday after 23 years of iron-fisted rule, an unprecedented popular uprising in a region dominated by strongmen who do not answer to their people.

Governments are interesting things.
Even the most dictatorial ones stand only because enough of the people ascent to their legitimacy.
No government can stand if a critical mass (and much smaller than the majority) of the people decide it is no longer legitimate, and refuse to be governed.

I am sure officials in Beijing are paying attention to this.
They were almost there in 1989, and that fuse still smolders.

Illegal Sex Drives

Even though it wanders through the topics of a dating site, sex, child molesters and pornography, this post is about freedom of beliefs, thoughts and feelings. That must be one of the most basic and fundamental freedoms out there. The Bill of Rights addresses government intrusions into our expression of beliefs, thoughts and feelings, but does not address the freedom to have them in our heads. And why should it? In 1789 it was inconceivable that someone's true beliefs, thoughts and feelings could even be known without external expression, much less regulated.

This little essay was inspired by one of the matching questions on OKCupid. For those who don't know, OKCupid is a free dating site. One of the features is you are presented with the opportunity to answer questions, some presented by the staff, but most created by other users. The questions are all multiple choice. Many of them are designed to split moral or ethical hairs, which isn't a bad idea on a dating site.

And yes, I have a profile there, and yes I have answered a ton of those questions. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out who I am there.  :)

Anyway, one of the more interesting questions is:

"Should possession of computer generated child pornography be illegal? Assume it can be 100% confirmed that no children were involved."

I found that an interesting question to contemplate. My reply sparked an interesting response from another member, and that, in turn, inspired me to think some more and write this post.

Let's start out with why child pornography is illegal in the first place.
The act of producing child porn grievously violates the basic rights of children.
Possession of the product is made illegal in an (probably futile) attempt to reduce demand for the product. I am not convinced that it works, but I can at least understand the logic.

Now, let's go to the person who consumes child porn.
His offence here is fueling demand for an industry that grievously violates the rights of children. We want him to stop doing that, so we make possession illegal in order to increase the risks he must accept to have it. The logic follows (for some) that demand will drop, and some of the incentive for producing child porn will dry up. Some will act to reduce those legal risks. Others, who cannot overpower their sex drives, will not. More about that later.

But if no children are impacted in any way in the production of the product, haven't we accomplished the original intent? If computer generated material, as repugnant and offensive as it is, were available, and substituted for the real thing, would that not reduce the demand? It might even reduce the demand to near zero.

Let me say, again, that the ultimate goal here is to protect the kids from predation.

Even if we were to accept the solution is to immediately lock up all of the predators for life (or, I suppose kill them if you are so inclined), they aren't "predators" unless or until a kid has been victimized, so that solution still requires sacrificing a kid to be the victim.

"But if they like the child pornography, even if it is computer generated, they might be predators, so we should lock them up."

True, but they might not be predators. They might hate their disposition and really try to fight it.
In fact, they might be using this non-kid simulated porn as an outlet for their drives so they are less tempted to hurt kids.

And now we have a moral dilemma. Even if such a law were effective (which it isn't), taking away the product does not change the people who want it. In fact, it would make them harder to identify. Is that what we want?

Remember, the goal is to protect the kids from predation.

Human sexual drives being very complex things, some people (mostly male) are sexually attracted to kids. We do not possess any capability to change that, try as we might.

We find the behavior unacceptable, and even find the drive itself to be repugnant.
But the drive is not going to go away.

IF our primary goal is to protect kids from predation, should we be using everything in society's power to help these people channel that drive in a direction that does not involve actual kids?

Taking away every possible fantasy outlet does NOT reduce the drive. Doing so likely leaves these people with only one possibility, one we do not want to contemplate, and experience has shown that the sex drive overpowers self discipline in many cases. (Remember, this is the same thing that is driving a lot of serial killers...)

Is it illegal to have unacceptable thoughts and feelings if they are never actually acted upon?
If that were the case, who not be guilty of SOME unacceptable thought or feeling at some point?
Is it unacceptable to have literature depicting murder, rape, incest? Or is it just illegal to get turned on by that?

No, it is the act that we are forbidding because it is the act that crosses the line from fantasy to grievously violating the natural rights of another human.

Do we really want to protect kids?
Then what alternatives could we provide as an outlet for these drives?
Think about it.

Viruses in the Genome

Years ago - I wish I could find it - a paper by Brian Kernighan talked about the theory of computer virus code. This was in the very early days. He pointed out that the ultimate point of vulnerability was in the opcode generation code of the compiler. Malicious code embedded there would be difficult to detect except by an examination that very few people could make. Since the compiler is used to create, not only the operating system itself, but future versions of the compiler, this code would be ultimately be embedded in the very genome of the operating system itself.

Now fast forward (or even rewind a few millenia).

This article in Discover Magazine, The Insanity Virus describes viral code that is embedded in our very DNA. How did it get there?

Sixty million years ago, a lemurlike animal—an early ancestor of humans and monkeys—contracted an infection. It may not have made the lemur ill, but the retrovirus spread into the animal’s testes (or perhaps its ovaries), and once there, it struck the jackpot: It slipped inside one of the rare germ line cells that produce sperm and eggs. When the lemur reproduced, that retrovirus rode into the next generation aboard the lucky sperm and then moved on from generation to generation, nestled in the DNA. “It’s a rare, random event,” says Robert Belshaw, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford in England. “Over the last 100 million years, there have been only maybe 50 times when a retrovirus has gotten into our genome and proliferated.”

It seems that Professor Kernighan's thinking was not so original after all. Nature was way ahead of him. This viral code is embedded in the compilers - the cells that produce sperm and eggs - and ensure that the DNA they carry also includes code to embed the sequence into the next generation.

The original article is about how one of these viruses, that we all carry might, under certain circumstances, be the cause or trigger for a wide range of mental illnesses. That is really interesting as well, but not so profound (at least to me) as the idea of infecting the compiler happening in nature.

Illegal = Unregulated

Oleg Volk makes a really interesting point on his blog.
Let's say, for the sake of argument only, that not only was firearm ownership completely illegal, but that nearly all existing guns have been rounded up.

Let's say that making or owning a gun is a serious felony - much like making or owning, say, heroin or crack cocaine.

Still, there are going to be people who, for their own reasons, want guns.

Now we have highly restricted supply, and reduced, but relatively high demand compared to that supply.

What does that do for prices?

Making a STEN gun or something like it is relatively cheap and easy. It is EASIER to make a fully-automatic submachine gun than to make a semi-automatic rifle or a handgun. Much easier. The STEN was mass produced during WWII for less than $10, which would still be less than $100 at regular labor rates today. Any reasonably well equipped metal shop is capable of doing it. In fact, small, portable machine tools are much cheaper and more available today than the every have been. A serious hobbyist can afford them.

Add to that the potential of, say, 3D printing technology for a lot of low stress parts that, in the past were made of metal because there was no viable alternative.

This isn't rocket science. The only critical part, really, is the barrel. And even that isn't difficult.

The suppressor? Even easier.

Think this is a fantasy? Think again - and the AK is much more complicated than a STEN.



Now this does not have to be a quality weapon. It doesn't need a long lifetime. It just as to work for committing whatever crime is on their mind.

My analogy to heroin and cocaine was deliberate. Anything desirable which is "banned" does not go away. It just goes underground. ANYONE who wants to buy hard drugs can get them. Yes, there are risks, but those risks do not deter the trade at all. There is too much money to be made.

In fact, it is those very drug dealers who will be the market for these guns. They have cash, an underground economy, and are skilled at smuggling.

All of that, of course, assumes that the "ban" on guns is effective, and that our borders are sealed against them.

Did I say borders?
Do you REALLY think that the fully automatic M16 rifles being used in Mexico came from gun stores in Arizona? Hardly. They come up from Columbia and other points south.

Of course the U.S. border with Mexico is hermetically sealed. Nothing and no one gets through it without our knowledge.... right?

Oh, wait, where do all of those drugs come from?
Not to mention the population of Mexico?

No, a "total ban" on guns in the USA is not going to create a "gun free" America.

And if someone is going to make an illegal gun that would put them in prison for a very long time if they were caught, why should they restrict, in any way, its capability?

Let me be clear that I fully realize this is an emotional and sensitive subject. People should be able to feel safe. But we are not acting rationally in response to the fear. Think it through. What will happen? And then what? And then what? Rather than knee-jerk reactions like "Just ban all guns" we have to, first, realize and understand our true limitations in dealing with the problem, and second, take the time that we don't make it worse in our zeal to "do something."

The more control we try to impose, the less we have.

Ethics and the Afterlife

I just changed an answer to an OKCupid question.
It was along the lines of whether a belief in the afterlife makes someone a more ethical person.

I had originally answered that it didn't matter.
After thinking about it, though, I think it causes problems, at least in the Christian model.

At least as I understand it, in most Christian sects, as long as someone repents and professes belief prior to death, then everything they did in life is forgiven and, perhaps after a brief period in the penalty box, the deceased's soul spends eternity in a relatively pleasant existence.

Of course, fail to do this, and there are more unpleasant alternatives available. There are lots of cartoons about this.

But the fundamental tenant seems to be that the only thing for which one is never forgiven is failure to believe in the deity.

Think of the number of heinous acts that have been carried out through history in the name of god by someone  confident they will be forgiven later.

Indeed, the Catholic Church made a great deal of money with this scam back in 14th and 15th centuries by selling, for money, "indulgences" that were kind of a carbon offset for sin. (selling carbon offsets is the same thing today, but that is another post)

Kill, main, lie, cheat, steal, screw your neighbor's wife, beat off, think about anything you want - as long as it is all cleared up before you actually croak, you're cool.

Again, at least as I understand it, Islam carries a similar line of thought. It is perfectly OK to murder and grievously injure fellow human beings - even in some cases other Muslims (so long as they are a different sect than you), in the name of god, because only the judgment of the god matters.

Take away belief in the afterlife, and things change.

The only way to get forgiveness is in THIS life. You are judged in life for the life you actually lead.
Actually we all are, by those people around us and the people who we affect as we pass through. What would they say about you, what do they say about you?

Of course all of us have the choice of making these in-life judgments important to us. We choose to consider them, or not. But if I decide I don't like being judged that way, then there is for me only one way to change it. I cannot appeal to any uber-being. I have to deal directly with the people I life with.

Which option causes more pause for thought?
And is it not that pause for thought that, in turn, raises the possibility of an ethical life?

Study Finds U.S. Kids Getting Lots of Radiation

U.S. Kids Getting Lots of Radiation Scans, Study Finds

TUESDAY, Jan. 4 (HealthDay News) -- Exposure to radiation from medical imaging procedures such as X-rays and CT scans has become common among American children, a new study has found, prompting researchers to call for steps to be taken to ensure appropriate use of the tests to protect children.

Increasing use of diagnostic imaging has led to concerns about radiation exposure. Although X-rays emit relatively little radiation, CT scans emit more and may raise the risk for cancer, particularly in children.

Compared with adults, infants and children are at higher risk for tumors because their developing tissues are more sensitive to radiation, the researchers noted.

Click the paragraph to read the entire article.

Just one thought.

How about we start with the airport?