Friday, December 30, 2011

2012

I have nothing to say about what's going to happen in 2012. But other people aren't so shy! Predictions abound, and they aren't all for the end of the world. From around the 'Net:

Five medical advances:

  • Closer to vaccine for cancers.
  • Advance in malaria vaccine.
  • EPA's mercury limits will prevent 11k deaths.
  • Cheaper medicine!
  • Easier to choose medical insurance.

European Union crisis:

  • 30-40% chance of euro (currency) breaking up.
  • 20% of economists predict end of eurozone.
  • Recession of 2012. 

American Sports:

  • Mark Cuban will not get a baseball team.
  • London Olympics will pull 5.5 million viewers.
  • Danica Patrick will breathe new life into Nascar.
  • Time Warner and the NFL will get the NFL channel up.
  • Hockey contracts will be hard-fought, but the players will take to the ice.

From a San Bernadino psychic:

  • Unemployment falls to 9.5 percent in the US.
  • Prince William and Kate will have a baby boy.
  • Tsunami in Hawaii. 
  • Wildfires in Canada.
  • Gold $2000 per ounce; oil $130 a barrel.

(All predictions subject to the caveat that they may not be fulfilled if the world ends in 2012.)

On a more personal note, I wish everyone a warm and wonderful Year-Change and the best 2012 they can have. Someone phone American Samoa and find out how 2012 looks so far.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Like Rats from...?

Things that make you go hmmm. OK things that make me go hmmm then. The New York Times Company. What's up?

November 7 - Martin Nisenholtz retired. Martin Nisenholtz is one of the most important people you probably never heard of. He was the Chief of Digital Operations for the New York Times Company, a company which has made it clear it intends to take newspapers digital. Yes it was all very nice, with proper recognition for the contributions Nisenoltz made to the company. (He oversaw the institution of the pay-gate for the Times that allowed it to begin collecting effectively for online access.) And yes Mr. Nisenholtz probably now has enough money to not need to work for the rest of his life if he's reasonable in his spending. But the guy's only 56. And he left without a replacement in place, which is unusual for a planned retirement.

Fast forward, December 16 - Janet Robinson retired. Another of the most important people you never heard of, Robinson was the CEO of New York Times Company since 2008. After just three years, and at the tender age of 61, likewise leaving without a replacement in place, Robinson is retiring. Granted, Robinson saw the stock price fall from the mid-30's to less than $8 per share, but if she's out because she did a terrible job then it seems odd that the company is retaining her as a consultant for a one-year fee of $4.5 million.

And today - The Times Company announced the sale of 16 local papers to Halifax Media Holdings. Don't bother trying to figure out who they are. I did and it gave me a headache. Halifax is operated by Michael Redding, Jackson Farrow, Noel Strauss, and the Rupert & Phillips Company. The Rupert & Phillips Company is operated by Michael Redding, Jackson Farrow, Noel Strauss, Halifax Media Holdings, and Halifax Media Acquisition. Halifax Media Acquisition, in turn, is operated by Michael Redding, Jackson Farrow, Noel Strauss, and Rupert & Phillips Company. See now, that right there is proof that corporations are not people: People can't be their own boss's boss.

Anyway... Eyes staying tuned to the New York Times Company. If the Head of Housekeeping retires at 50 with no replacement, everyone left standing should run. Just sayin'.


Saturday, December 24, 2011

Peace

Don't look for current news about peace. It's depressing.

Top story: Peace Corp is scaling back its presence in Central America because it's too dangerous for the volunteers. Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are ravaged by lawlessness. Peace Corp is withdrawing from Honduras and scaling back in El Salvador and Guatemala. Drug cartels have all but overpowered the governments in Central America in order to control the region. Why? Cocaine is produced in South America and consumed in North America. Central America is the highway for delivery to the US. Where have we seen violence explode over the protection of illegal drug production and delivery channels before? Oh yeah, the US. Prohibition. Anyway....

Also high on the list: Peace talks with the Taliban have come to a halt. The deal on the table was that the Taliban renounces terrorism and formally severs links with terrorist groups, they get to establish themselves as a political party and they receive five Guatanamo prisoners they are responsible for keeping under house arrest. Afghan President Karzai balked at the deal and talks are off. The US just doesn't pick puppet politicians the way they used to. (Tongue in cheek there; it's a complicated situation and there isn't going to be any "good" end in Afghanistan. It defeated Alexander the Great. It's an extremely complex society for which there are no simple solutions.) Peace talks are off, that's the short version.

Nicest bit of news I found: The head of Southern Sudan's (read: militarized opposition party) National Democratic Front acknowledged the Africa Peace Prize award to Southern Sudan's President Kiir. For those not following along, [source, source, source] Sudan experienced a prolonged civil war between the primarily but not exclusively Arab, Islamic north and the primarily but not exclusively black, Christian & Animist south. This ended in 2005 with the recognition by the government of Southern Sudan as an independent state. In 2011, Jimmy Carter was present as an observer when both parts of Sudan voted to allow Southern Sudan to formally secede.

President Kiir formed the first formal, completely independent government in August 2011. Kiir is chairman of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement. In 2010 he offered amnesty to all rebels against the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS). That "primarily but not exclusively" bit proved problematic as the government of the newly formed country came together. Kiir has so far been able, though, to embrace governance with 20+ interested political and social organizations getting a voice. The National Democratic Front is a para-military and political organization that won't rule out re-shaping the society by force if needed, but so far has been able to work with Kiir, especially since 2010. It's a feat that deserves a Peace award. Kudos.

In a discussion with a friend yesterday, I suggested that the US look around and see what the US is the best at in the world, and keep that. And look around and see what other countries are doing better, and adopt that, in order to "fix" the US. The ability to take seriously and work with multiple points of view is one of the things the US doesn't do particularly well. American society tends to see things in black and white, as illustrated by my friend responding with, "Fix the US? Like Sharia? Is that better?" Which is odd because we'd been talking about Western Europe, not about any Islamic countries. But it illustrates the mindset that paralyzes politics in the US: "Yes it's terrible that the US has an infant mortality rate double that of other first-world countries, but it can't be fixed because the only alternative is a communist state. Is that what you want?" Those are not the exact words of any of my American friends, but an accurate composite of the statements of many of them. How did that idea get instilled in Americans, that you can't embrace any part of any non-American system currently working in the rest of the world because that means the total destruction of all that is American? My parents had that idea as well, so it's nothing that can be blamed on any current political players.

And so I wish for my American friends Peace, beginning with the recognition that the following statement is true: There are more alternatives in the world than broken or totalitarianism.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

And yours?

No it's not New Year's. It's not even Christmas yet, although Hanukkah started yesterday. However, I came across this video from the good people at JibJab and it got me to thinking: Wow 2011 was a helluva year! These are the lyrics from the video:
2011 was hairy,
A year unlike any we've seen.
There were Schweddy Balls from Ben and Jerry,
And a warlock assassin named Sheen. (Winning.) 
Lohan, Strauss-Kahn,
Rick Romney, Rick Perry, and Cain.
Big trials, love child,
2011 Bye-Bye. 
The S&P blew up our rating,
The job market stayed in a slump. (A slump.)
The debt ceiling kept us debating,
While Weiner just Tweeted his junk. 
Tax more, class war,
I nearly got hit with a pie.
Health threats, Greek debts,
2011 Bye-Bye. 
The whole Arab world was rebelling,
So long Moamar Khadafi,
While soldiers were asking and telling,
We told the whole world we're not gay. 
We finally took out Bin-laden,
Japan had one helluva year. (A year.)
There were riots in Britain, (how rotten)
The Rapture! Not yet but it's near. (Next year.) 
Got hitched, got ditched,
Got knocked up, went bankrupt,
We un-subscribed.
Hair spray, Friday,
2011 Bye-Bye. 
There were Occupy Wall Street protesters,
And folks who will surely be missed,
Falling satellites panicked investors,
There's just way too much stuff to list. 
Leaks, crimes, new signs,
Loose lions and tigers and bears,
Let's cheer the New Year,
2011, you're ending, thank heaven,
2011 Bye-Bye.
I got laid off from a job I'd had for 10 years, my junk mail let me know that I'm at "that time" in my life when my life insurance rates are going up, I got involved with political protest, moved to Holland from California, started a new business, my son turned 25, I took up swimming twice a week and bicycling every day. It's definitely been a year.

What's 2011 been like for you?


Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Just Wining?

You can say a lot of things about French people, but you can't argue the fact that they do know their wine. So much so that a bunch of them looked back through 700 years of harvest dates for the pinot noir grape and noticed something. The article is a whole lot of words, pretty much summed up in the graph at the bottom of page 246.

In short: The warmer a winter is, the earlier the pinot noir grapes are ripe. The Catholic church being what it is, the monks in Bordeaux kept records of the harvest date every year since forever. The mathy-type science people in France analyzed the data from 1676 to 2004.

Math-hater's summary of the next paragraph: The winter temperatures in Bordeaux have gone up and down regularly since 1676 until 1988, when they should have started heading down but instead kept going up until the end of the data in 2004, ending up three times higher than usual in terms of difference from normal.

Slightly longer version: A glance at the graph shows that there have regularly been years with warm winters leading to very early harvest dates, alternating with cold winters leading to late harvest dates. The really early harvest dates have occurred as a spike, pretty regularly every 40 years or so. To smooth out the curve, the scientists graphed the 11-year running average harvest date: the harvest date average for the previous 11 years each year. This resulted in a surprisingly regular curve. It's nearly a sine curve with a period (valley to valley) that begins around 20 years and gradually increases to 40 years. The curve stays almost exclusively within +/- 5 days until 1988, when the curve doesn't head back down as expected, but continues upwards to a peak of around +15 in 2003.

Math-lover's version: Go see the graph.

The evidence mounts. The worst polluters see it as someone else's problem, a hopeless situation, or a problem that will be headed off by the end of the world, depending on your/their perspectives.

I get to be Tina Turner. Dibs! Called it. All we want is life beyond Thunderdome.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Stop! Police!

USA Today reports that 1 in 3 young people in the US will be arrested before the age of 23.

Wow.

First effect: Constricting job pools. Constricting job choices.

I worked for many years for an agency in social services that I saw "gentrified" over time for the sake of insurance premiums. If I'm feeling resentful of the process, it comes to mind as the agency choosing to use a standard of "no arrest record, no exceptions" for the sake of a lower premium. If I'm feeling more generous, I have to admit that it's likely that the difference in insurance premium between the agency choosing that strategy and the agency choosing to go with the Department of Social Services standard was probably a make-or-break difference, financially.

That doesn't excuse the situation. The effects of being removed from family and neighborhood are intense enough for a child whose family has fallen apart, being simultaneously separated from his or her own culture is a double injury.

How is this a cultural issue? Cities call it "gang management." Step 1: Arrest every young man in the inner city. Arrest them for loitering if necessary; arrest them for jaywalking. This is to establish a record of the person in the police database. This alone will not follow the person forever. If it remains the only arrest on the person's record, it will probably disappear at 18. However. If that person gets into a fight, punches someone for insulting his sister, or has a lapse in judgment as so many young people do, the first thing the Judge looks at is whether or not the person already has an arrest record. Often as not, the paper arrest magnifies the mistakes of youth.

Time was, when young people tipped cows, got into fights, did a little vandalism, took the police chief's car for a joyride--the police drove you home to your parents and that was the end of it. If you stole something from the store, you did a few hours of chores, and that was the end of it. How many judges today kept their noses clean all the time as kids? I'd bet a very, very few (and those are probably a little nuts, cuz let's face it, it's not normal).

Does criminalization of youth mean that only people with super-clean noses will be able to have certain jobs in the future? No. If it did, I would complain less.

It means only people with super-clean noses who got them by any means available will be able to have those jobs. People from the smallest towns and the richest families will be the only ones standing.

Another effect: Normalization of arrest.

OK I admit it, I was never arrested as a kid. (And no, I'm not even remotely normal.) I lived in the country in the middle of absolutely no where; there was no "legal" trouble to get into, really. There was more than one time the police would have been in my home if we'd had neighbors one wall away. But we didn't. And when I was a little older, I was afraid of the police and getting arrested. So much so that it kept me more or less in line until I was even older and my brain finished developing. I didn't know anyone (that I knew of) who had been arrested. Not even for political protest. It was a very sheltered upbringing. The whole idea was so foreign to me that it was too terrifying to contemplate.

At 1 in 3 young people being arrested, that's simply gone. Every city youth knows people who have been arrested. No big deal; it's just part of life. What then is the deterrent for youthful indiscretions?

Gone.

Sadly, I don't have any packaged answers. The US has fallen into a vicious cycle of incarceration trumping education which leads to further incarceration. In California, as in most states, roughly 5x as much is budgeted for Education as for Corrections, yet these two seem to be inextricably linked.

Answers? Anyone? (Preferred answers do not include the assumption that people who do relatively well in this mess deserve it. They might. But statistical probability has more impact overall than individual character. It's easy to get lost in individual examples that don't explain how to fix the overall problem.)

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Breaking News

We're coming to you live with this breaking news: There is no news.

Each day I start my writing process by going to my favorite search engine, Google, and entering "News" and then setting the search parameter to the last 24 hours. This is rarely where I actually find the topic for what I end up writing about, but it's where I begin each day. Usually something that shows up on the first couple of pages leads me to something else that leads me to something else and it's around the fifth something else that the topic of the day usually appears.

Apparently many people use the "News" and last 24 hours or last hour or last whatever search parameters, because the sites devoted to news have developed the practice of posting an ad for themselves as news whenever they haven't posted any actual news for a while. This isn't terribly problematic to the searcher, because it's very easy to see the difference between the actual new story posted and the self-ad.

The self ad reads as: "X hours/minutes ago - [Insert site name] brings you breaking news/top stories/inside scoops/multimedia/all the latest coverage/naked pictures of the President's dog/current affairs/video analysis/etc. from [insert country name] and around the world..."

This morning the first actual story appeared as item number 41: Oooooooo they got me. The clever editors of Viet Nam News posted what looked like a story as their self-ad. (Clicking on the link doesn't take you to the story that begins under the link, just to the first page of the site. Filler posting!)

Item number 50. Fox News. They really need to change the name of their company. Anyway, they posted this:
In exchange for a two-month tax cut, the Senate on Saturday approved a permanent increase in fees attached to mortgages backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).
The idea behind the fee is to encourage more homeowners to get into the private market, as opposed to seeking loans backed by troubled entities like Fannie and Freddie.
Now what actually begins to intrigue me as I read this article is the pattern of attribution.

The remarks included come from "a senior Senate Democratic aide." It's noted that the bill's memo to Republican members pointed out that the bill "had bi-partisan support" and noted that it was an item on the list of suggestions that the President gave to the Super Committee. To use Fox's terminology, that's "code" for, "Don't worry, we're going to blame the Democrats." The bill passed 89-10.

And the article closes with this:
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that while the tax cut lasts two months, it will take 10 years for the associated fee hike to drum up an estimated $35.7 billion and replenish the lost revenue. That rhetorical tactic is common on Capitol Hill -- lawmakers frequently say bills are "paid for" when in fact it takes a decade for that to be the case.
Fair enough. So what about this article is tugging at the corners of my brain?

I remember now. The Democratic Senate proposed extending the payroll tax and paying for it by a combination of mortgage fees and a millionaire's tax. They couldn't get the Republicans to agree on the millionaire's tax, so they reduced the term of the tax cut from one year to two months to balance the bill and passed it as a temporary solution.

The Republican House Bill HR 3630 proposes extending the payroll tax, imposing almost identical mortgage fees, pushing through the Keystone Pipeline, lifting pollution-abatement requirements from plants that boil mercury (releasing toxins that kill 8k people a year), and raising the rates on flood insurance.

Since the mortgage fee proposed by both parties is virtually identical, the balance is: Millionaire's tax versus raising rates on flood insurance plus throwing away thousands of American lives forever in exchange for a few hundred permanent jobs.

Yeah, that's what tugged at me about it.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Too Big for Survival?

The UN News Center today announced the winners of the 2011 Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development (SEED) Awards. The winners:
  • A company in Gambia that transforms ground nut shells into fuel briquettes.
  • A company in Kenya where women produce aloe-based skin care products.
The awards recognize projects that promote sustainable development as part of a program that "spotlights new locally driven enterprises that have found creative ways to overcome environmental and developmental problems while also creating economic and social opportunities for their communities."

Tia Jackson, on Brandmaker News, has offered a list of 10 sustainable businesses to watch:

  • Wash Cycle Laundry does its laundry pickup and delivery on bikes, uses natural and locally produced detergents, and uses high-efficiency machines.
  • Sseko Designs creates footwear that hires college-bound women to make their sandals as part of program that funds their university educations.
  • Tropical Traders Specialty Foods offers the first certified carbon neutral food in their Royal Hawaiian Honey, and offers Fair Trade honey from Brazil in their Bee Well Honey line.
  • Liberty Bottleworks makes aluminum water bottles entirely from recycled aluminum. They're also the only metal water bottles made in the US.
  • Bennu sells clothing and backpacks made from recycled materials, using recyled packaging, working with certified plants that offset carbon emissions.
  • SunRidge Farms pays employees to bike to and from work, gives employees cloth bags to encourage them not to use plastic ones, and is investing in solar solutions for their facilities.
  • Plywerk uses green techniques for photo mounting and the production of art panels.
  • Andean Collection makes jewelry that engages in fair trade practices and engages in alternative use activities in Ecuador.
  • Thai-Pepper produces teak cutting boards by harvesting the wood from old teak houses.
  • Elizabeta Jewelry works with designers who use recycled or conflict-free diamonds and gemstones.

These are what we call capitalist enterprises; they're not just pipe dreams. It is the position of too many in the United States and other countries that the environment is simply to constricting and expensive to take into serious consideration as a part of doing business.

The US Rep to COP in Durban stated that, "We are making progress toward our target of reducing emissions in the range of 17 percent by 2020 through an array of domestic efforts, including robust new national fuel economy standards that will nearly double our automobile fleet efficiency by 2025 and the more than $90 billion of investments that we have made in clean energy."

Yet Mother Jones reports that a rider has already been inserted into the Interior Department's appropriations bill, section 453, which would prevent the government from either aiding carmakers in meeting those strict new standards or doing anything further to encourage fuel economy.

Why? As Mitt Romney puts it:
The EPA wants to be able to get in and grab more power and basically try and move the whole economy away from oil, gas, coal, nuclear and push it into the renewables. Look, we all like the renewables. But renewables alone are not going to power this economy. And yeah, I would, among other things, I would get the EPA out of its effort to manage carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles and trucks.
Romney's the one who gets criticized in the Republican primaries for being too centrist.

Really? Or perhaps, as stated by Naomi Klein:
I mean, renewable energy, if you compare it with fossil fuels, you know, it's everywhere. That's the point. That's why it is less profitable, because anybody can put a solar panel on their roof and have energy. And that's why there's such momentum against it from corporate America, because they want huge, centralized solutions, because they're way more profitable. Which isn't to say that you can't make a profit, you just can't make a stupid profit.
A thought: Perhaps it's not capitalist enterprises that can't *afford* to go green. Perhaps it's just monstrously large capitalist enterprises that cringe at any impingement on their insatiable need for profit. It was suggested by one of the Republican nominees last week that "when you're too big to fail, you're too big."

Perhaps when you're too big to respect the planet and your fellow human beings, you're too big.




Thursday, December 15, 2011

Checked Banking on Your Smartphone?

Attention Americans! Have a smartphone with AT&T, T-Mobile or Sprint? Change every single password that you have and don't do it on your phone!

DemocracyNow.org reports the following (with emphasis added):
The Federal Trade Commission launched the probe following the disclosure smartphones with Carrier IQ software captured every keystroke and text message and sent the data to the user’s cell phone provider. Three of the four major cellular providers — AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint — say they use Carrier IQ software. Apple says its Carrier IQ will be removed in future software updates. Meanwhile, Carrier IQ is also engulfed in another controversy over its suspected ties to law enforcement surveillance. The controversy erupted after the FBI denied a journalist’s Freedom of Information Act request for documents on data analysis that were gathered with Carrier IQ software. The FBI confirmed it has pertinent information, but denied to release it on the grounds it falls under "law enforcement records." The FBI so far has refused to deny whether it is using Carrier IQ for surveillance activities.
That the companies involved would take advantage of such software to spy on their customers is not even remotely surprising. The most valuable information any company can have is information on what you do. They want to know who your friends are (to market to them), where you spend your money (to compete or profit through advertising), what interests you (to offer you products and services you're more likely to be interested in acquiring), etc.

That it was probably legal for them to do so is sadly not surprising either. Fine. I'll admit it. I didn't read the Terms of Service. >.< Don't even think about it, HUMANCENTiPAD. (Sorry for the caps, I didn't make up the name.)

What's even more disturbing is that the FBI then apparently acquired this information from these companies. Thanks to Dubya, the FBI doesn't need to actually collect evidence, make a case against you and get a judge to issue a subpoena in order to obtain documents about you. They just need to write a letter. It's called a "national-security" letter. They just need to say that they need whatever they want to know for the purpose of national security. Even when it's not.

The New York Times reported on April 15, 2007:
In March, a report by the inspector general of the Justice Department described "widespread and serious misuse" of national-security letters after the U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001 significantly expanded the F.B.I.'s authority to issue them: between 2003 and 2005, he concluded, the F.B.I. issued more than 140,000 national-security letters, many involving people with no obvious connections to terrorism.
So here's the $64k question: Are you more disturbed with your private information, passwords, love letters, naked pictures and friends' phone numbers residing in a database of a private computer company where Ricky the pimple-faced freshman works or are you more disturbed having all of it in the hands of the FBI on a whim?

My Dictee Is Better Than Yours

The Prize!
I don't recall ever once a playground taunting contest coming down to, "I can take dictation better than you can."

But then, this is no playground game; this is a life-and-death matter of national pride!

I don't mean me, actually, I mean for the people who participated last night in "Het Groot Dictee der Nederlandse Taal" and the two countries that they represent. The Dictee (The Dictation) is an international contest held annually. The 60 participants are drawn from four pools:

  • 20 Prominent Dutch people
  • 10 Prominent Flanders people
  • 20 Readers of a Dutch newspaper 
  • 10 Readers of a Flanders newspaper
The prominent people are primarily journalists, actors, and politicians.

Small rewind: Netherlands is a country in western Europe that we also call Holland. There are 16.7 million residents, and the primary language is Dutch (Nederlandse Taal = Dutch Language). Neighboring Belgium has three official languages and none of them are English. Dutch is the first language of 59% of the 11 million Belgians, French is the first language of 40%. The third official language is German. Which should give you a really good idea of where Belgium lies, geographically. Its languages are those of its neighbors. In Belgium, though, Dutch is usually called Flemish, and the people who live in the north part of Belgium (called Flanders), where 97% of the population speaks Dutch, are the Flemish. 

Which is to say, this is a fight for national pride between the Dutch and the Flemish. The rules of engagement call for the participants to write down what is being read to them. Accurately.

Yep. That's the whole contest. All 60 participants are in one room. Never mind the details of the scoring or detail-oriented rules, that's the heart of it. 

And on the foundation of this exercise stand bragging rights. The Flemish have won 12 times now. The Dutch have won 11 times. (It was 11 to 10 until last night when a Flemish celeb tied with a Dutch newspaper reader. This was the first tie and the first time a celeb participant actually won, in this case a journalist.) You'd think that's about even except that there are twice as many Dutch participating. There are good reasons for a population isolate to hold more tightly to their language than the parent group. Never mind all that.

What strikes me is whether or not it would be possible to run such a contest in English, and who would win? The potential list of competing countries, in order of number of number of persons with English as their first language (millions of people, from the Wiki):
  • USA (226)
  • UK (58)
  • Canada (18)
  • Australia (15)
  • Ireland (4)
  • Nigeria (4)
  • New Zealand (4)
  • South Africa (4)
  • Philippines (3)
  • Jamaica (3)
I'm making the cut-off 2 million people, cuz that's the number of Flemish people. And cuz if we let the 300,000 Germans who speak English as their first language play, they'd probably win. So they can't play.

Never mind how to work out the rules such as what dictionary to use (the Dictee uses the Netherlands variation for some words and the Flanders variation for others), I just really want to see this group of people sit down together and have a conversation and conclude that they all speak the same language. 
Would the US college student newspaper entrant please, for the fifth time, put away your iPad? There is no spell check in Dictation, dammit.
Yes, Mr. Speaker of the US House of Representatives, you do have to sit next to the Prime Minister of Australia. Her socialism will not get on you like "cooties." Please stop saying that.
No, British actress, we specifically said we would be using the American variant of "deflection." There's no x in it. Americans reserve the X for showing breasts on TV.
*gets popcorn*



Wednesday, December 14, 2011

The Vaccccciiiiiiiines - It's the Vaccines!

Dr. Mercola wants us to know that the US is killing our children by forcing too many vaccines on them. From Mercola's page:
"In 1960, America ranked 12th in infant mortality among all nations of the world. In 2005, we had fallen to number 30. Today in America, there are more premature babies than ever before and more full term babies die before their first birthday than in most European countries.
"Doctors give American babies 26 doses of vaccines before age one, which is twice as many vaccinations as babies in Sweden and Japan get. Is it really just a "coincidence" that the infant mortality rate is twice as high in America compared to Sweden and Japan, where half as many vaccinations are given to very young babies?" [boldface added]

Well that there is what I call one damn fine question!

Assuming for Dr. Mercola's sake that those were reverse rankings, and that the US in 1960 had the 12th lowest infant mortality rate, where does the US stand today? Where do other countries stand? And what's their public policy on vaccination? What country should we look to as an example of how to do it right? Sweden? Japan? And what do they do?

Today, according the CIA (the Central Intelligence Agency of the US may be many things, but it's a great source of statistics), the US ranks #49 on lowest infant mortality rates at 6.06 deaths per 1000 live births in 2011. Sweden (2.74) ranks fourth and Japan (2.78) ranks fifth. Monaco (1.79), Singapore (2.32) and Bermuda (2.47) have the top 3 spots. Hmmm.

Population Density
Maybe those countries at the top are lightly populated so people have tons of space there to sneeze without accidentally sneezing on a baby. To the Wiki! Monaco is the most densely population country in the world. It contains 33k people living in two square kilometers. *scratches Monaco off the list of real countries* That is not a country! That's not even a decent city. It's a ding-dang village with a crown. I don't even need to worry about insulting them here cuz there aren't even enough Monaco-type people to have a riot! (And if they did want to have a riot, they have no space to do it in, so nanananana.) Bermuda, also densely populated... 65k people! That's the size of the town I'm living in! And it's not a big town! *mutters* And it's not a proper country, since the Wiki-ers italicized it as a dependency.

Singapore. Yayy it's a real country with 5 million people. Not super-big, but they do have their own Ministry of Health, Health Promotion Board, and traffic jams. At least they're big enough for traffic jams. Population density is the second highest in the world at 7,148 people per square kilometer.

Sweden has all of 21 people per sq km, Japan has 337, the US has 32. Slackers.

All of which is to say it's not population density killing the babies. So maybe it is the vaccines.

Ahh 1960
The US ranking 12th (lowest) in the world for infant mortality in 1960 is cited by the CDC (Table 25 in Health, United States, 2007). In 1960, the US was indeed ranked 12th in the world for low infant mortality, behind Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, Czech Republic, Australia, Finland, Switzerland, Denmark, England & Wales, New Zealand, and Belgium. So the fact that the US continues to lag behind "most European countries" isn't much of a shocker. Those European countries listed had and continue to have comprehensive health care for all residents.

What did those rankings look like in numbers? From Sweden and the US, per 1000 live births: 16.6 and 26.0, respectively. Singapore had 34.8 deaths of infants per 1000 live births in 1960.

The good old days? Hardly.

What Changed
While the US and the world in general have made big strides in lowering infant mortality rates (compare the US at #12 with 26.0 vs the US at #49 with 6.06), a key statistic may be one that Dr. Mercola may have accidentally included, "Today in America, there are more premature babies than ever before." I'm guessing it's not excessive vaccinations of infants affecting the gestation of babies in the US.

It's not a matter of the US not improving the survival rate of infants. It's a matter of many other countries in the world doing a much better job at the same task and passing the US up.

Is it the vaccines? From the Mercola quote, "Doctors give American babies 26 doses of vaccines before age one, which is twice as many vaccinations as babies in Sweden and Japan get." The United States' CDC's schedule of vaccinations is here (put in a birth date and it creates a schedule of 20 vaccinations before age 1). Singapore's Health Promotion Board website lists the vaccination schedule used there: 14 vaccinations before age 1, including the flu vaccine. The US schedule includes vaccination for Hib (2 before age 1) and rotavirus (3 before age 1) not listed on the Singapore schedule, accounting for most of the difference. Yet these are not vaccinations pointed to as the killer culprits by Mercola, who focuses on DPT, given by both countries in 3 doses before the age of 1.

What Are They Doing?
Health Care in Singapore. Also informative, List of Countries with Universal Health Care. Singapore in 1960 ranked 21st lowest for infant mortality. Singapore initiated universal health care in 1993. Singapore ranks 2nd now for lowest infant mortality. The 32 countries with universal health care are coincidentally the same countries with the lowest infant mortality rates and highest life expectancies?

I have so many American friends who say, faced with the brutal facts of the American health care-less system, "Yeah, but universal health care doesn't work." Yeah. Except that it does.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

On Crime, DNA, and Kittens

DNA before being brutally hacked
to pieces by a heartless crime lab
ABC News for Australia reports that the court in Holbert (that's the capital of the Australian state of Tasmania) has heard DNA evidence in the case of the decapitation of two kittens and the strangling of a third.

Three men went to the home of a woman whom they suspected of throwing rocks to try to break up their all-night party. So I'm guessing these are neighbors and not just random people messing with each other. The ABC report doesn't clarify.

At any rate, the woman wouldn't let the three men into her house and one of them broke a window of her car, so she called the police. (I'm wondering if she could have done that when the all-night party continued beyond reasonable bounds, leading her to wish to throw rocks.)

When the police arrived at her house they found three dead kittens: one intact, one in two pieces and one missing its head. There is no mention of the head of the third kitten ever being found.

They called in CSI. Well, they called in whatever CSI is called in Tasmania, Australia. They tested for DNA. Now they did this even though it's the testimony of the DNA profiler that it was "unusual" to get a full DNA match from contact. They swabbed the kittens anyway.

Having swabbed the kittens, they performed DNA testing, and got a full match on one of the defendants. The full match, according to the expert witness, would indicate that the kittens were handled with force.

Damning evidence!

Except that the expert witness then also acknowledged that the DNA could have been transferred to the kittens by the defendant leaving DNA on the axe that someone else then used on the kittens.

In other words: Tasmania performed CSI-level investigation on the murder of these kittens in order to incontrovertibly prove absolutely nothing about who actually killed the kittens.

In Tasmania's defense, they can engage in such exercises because Australia in general has an intentional homicide rate of 1.2 per 100,000 population per year (compare to Monaco with 0.0 and Iceland with 0.31, Netherlands with 0.93, the UK with 1.17, the US with 5.0 and El Salvador with 71*). Tasmania has the lowest crime rate of all the Australian states, and with a population of 500,000 the authorities don't get to play CSI all that often.

*Compiled on the Wiki from multiple sources by people who (yayy) have way too much time on their hands. Thank you people with way too much time on your hands.

Daily Wot

Iggy the about me bit. This blog isn't about becoming Dutch! That's the other blog. This blog is born from a link to a particular Reddit post that my beloved son posted and that I read and that made me say, "Wot?"

Having invested a significant number of minutes of my life in the comment thread, jumping back up to the original post and returning to the comment thread, I realized that there is a whole lot of Wot going on on the Web. And I'm missing it!!!

So I figured you might be missing it too and it could be fun for all of us to stop missing out on the major wot-ness that is the world wide web.

So this blog is all about a daily moment of Wot.

Enjoy.