Known and Unknown...

An Epidemic of Ignorance

Michael Shermer, WSJ

"Humans are pattern-seeking primates whose brains evolved to look for and find meaningful patterns in the noise and chaos of nature. When we connect A to B, this process is called learning. Sometimes A really is connected to B, and sometimes it is not. The only reliable way to know for sure is via the scientific method...

...One of the most nefarious anecdotal patterns in recent years has been a seeming connection between autism and vaccines...


...almost no medical researchers in the field agreed with Dr. Wakefield's findings and that health officials in the U.K. immediately denounced his recommendations...


...Dr. Wakefield's research is quite possibly one of the weakest studies ever published in the history of science. Just this week, a thorough study of the data by the British Medical Journal concluded that it was nothing less than an "elaborate fraud"—a conclusion supported by Mr. Mnookin's own debunking. As he carefully documents, autism existed long before the MMR vaccine was introduced, and hundreds of millions of children have received the MMR vaccine without developing any negative side effects whatsoever (let alone autism)...


...Dr. Wakefield received more than £400,000 to provide support for publicly funded lawsuits against the drug companies that make the vaccines...

...Rates of unvaccinated children in New York and Connecticut, for example, doubled between 2005 and 2010. In New Jersey, they rose by 800%...



...Mumps and measles are on the comeback trail, and if this medical mass hysteria is not checked soon we could face a terrible resurgence in these deadly diseases, which killed hundreds of millions of people before the invention of vaccines..."



[Bias warning:  I like Donald Rumsfeld...big fan.  Doesn't mean I agree with everything he does, did or believes, but I have great respect for him]

...Yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld was all over the place getting interviewed about his new book, Known and Unknown.  EVERY INTERVIEW I heard, from both the people on the Left, and from the Right, asked, "in hindsight....blah, blah, blah, blah." 

When you start your question (and your entire premise) off with 'in hindsight...' you should think twice about what comes next.  In hindsight, should we have stopped Hitler sooner?  In hindsight, should we have stopped Stalin too?  In hindsight, should we have dropped the atomic bombs...sooner?

[ This being said, I fall guilty to the same.  Slightly off subject - Am I the only one who meets people, and forms first impressions - that are totally off base?  Most of the time, usually with 'officials', people of high office, rank or position - I later think 'that guy was a clown.' In hindsight, I should have done X, and said Y.  ...and then I do it again, "nice to meet you (wow, you have lots of experience, you look very professional, you must be smarter than me...)" ]

NPR asked Rumsfeld if the "$3.1 trillion spent on the Iraq war was worth it?"  Really? Where did that money go?  Where did that money come from?  How much went to pay the salaries and benefits of United States military personnel, how much went to pay United States companies (yes, I know, the 'military industrial complex') for their products?  How much went to pay airlines and shipping companies to get stuff over there? Did we make bombs and bullets out of that paper money, and it burnt up - and now we are trillions poorer?

The wealth of a nation is not determined by how much paper money it has.  It is not determined by how much gold it has (ie in Fort Knox).  If it was, any country could just print more money and become rich.  And who really knows how much gold is in Fort Knox anyway?  The wealth of a nation is determined by the amount of goods and services it produces, and how much work it generates. 

If the idiots at NPR knew this, would they thank people like Rumsfeld?  They are certainly oblivious to Obama's spending - or thankful for it.

..."Former President Obama, in hindsight, was your proposed budget in early February 2011 a 'stick in the eye' of common sense, did you not see the 'writing on the wall'?" 

Why wait for hindsight?

(Rumsfeld is donating all profits from the book to Veterans groups. And just like Dick Cheney, he is advocating for the release of documents so people can judge for themselves on the 'facts' as we 'knew' them.)

So Far So Good...

Democrats are in charge = "We're going to reconsider the Fairness Doctrine"

Republicans in charge =  "We are going to respect the First Amendment to the Constitution"


Mike Pence says Free Political Speech

What works...

I was listening to a liberal today.  He was making alot of sense.  Oh, he was talking about his move towards the right.

People on the right, conservatives, feel strong about their principles.  But, people on the left claim the same.  There are so many hypocrites on the left.  Oh, yah, I guess there's a lot on the right too.  Conservatives believe in a system that works.  Capitalism.  The free market.  Liberals...

One of the reasons we have the president we have - is because the way we choose them.  Our 'elections.'  Can you imagine casting your vote because of what you heard on a TV comercial, or because of a sign on a street corner?  Then why do they spend so much money on that stuff?  Unfortunately, because it works.

Why not have real debates?  Why don't we force them to answer the questions?  It doesn't matter the candidate, the party, when they are asked questions and they don't answer (which is alot of the time) - they should be asked again, the same question.  Mr. Telepromter would squirm, just like he did when talking to Joe the Plumber.  So would alot of candidates on the right - though I would suspect NOT a good chunk of those that were just elected to the House.

I think if the Republican party was smart (and I am not convinced that it is), they would put up a unified front and force a system of debate.  We would lose the Sharron Angle's and Christine O'Donnell's...but didn't we already lose them?  On second thought, this would work better as a Tea Party theme. 

What would you have asked candidate Obama?

Is capitalism the best system of government?  Why?

Name three principles you believe in that support capitalism.  Name three principles you believe your opponent holds that will hurt our economy and why.  (It's the economy stupid, character doesn't matter).

"The Founders' desire to establish a stable, prosperous business climate led to their dissatisfaction with the ineffective government under the Articles of Confederation and animated their inention to write a strong, new federal Constitution in 1787.  Not surprisingly, the resulting document emphasized their commercial concerns:  when laying out the powers of the new Congress, they addressed all the first eight provisions of Article 1, section 8 to the economic system ("power to lay and collect taxes," "to establish...uniform laws on teh subject of bankruptcies," "to coin money," and so forth) before finally covering such matters as setting up courts and raising an army."
 - Michael Medved in The 10 Big Lies About America

Pay Attention...

I watched a great show last night on technology vs learning.  It was looking at colleges today, and how they are adapting (or not adapting) to changes in technology.  It was scary how stupid the young adults sounded.  I don't know what conclusions the program came to...because I was switching between that and a show on MSNBC about the drug cartel violence in Mexico...and an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation.

...anyway, part of the program was dedicated to how we are less likely to sit down, undistracted and read long texts.  Immediately I agreed, and thought this was a bad thing.  They showed students at M.I.T. and Stanford, who didn't seem to write well, mostly because they could not focus for more than a paragraph.  They text, listen to music, and twit (tweet?), etc. in the middle of studying.  Most of them defended it saying they were 'multi-taskers'...but most fail simple divided attention tests.

One of the professors said it was not 'healthy' for learning, to be able to google something in the middle of reading.  That it was some how more beneficial to wonder about something, until you had the chance to go research it. 

...are you still paying attention?

Then they posed an interesting question.  Is this important?  That upset me.  Of course it is!  I think.  They brought up the fact that before the printing press (they said 'written language') when humans used oral histories, and story telling, we had better memories, better attention spans...but far less knowledge. 

I read books.  I read long articles on the internet, sometimes.  But also...I google everything and anything.  I don't read newspapers, never have.  They are too shallow, to dumbed down.  But if an article on the internet goes more than a couple pages...or I see that the slide bar on the right side of the screen has barely moved as I have scrolled down.  I move on.

When I blog, I like to keep it short.  I like to summarize...and other than a spell check, I rarely edit or re-write.  Most of the blogs I read, are short and to the point. I've seen blogs out there, with 1000 word paragraphs.  I hope its cathartic for the writer, because I don't think anybody is coming back to read the next post... 

When I read other people's blogs, most of them anyway, I google two or three things in their posts.  But a blog is not a book, its a log.  All that being said.  I have about a dozen half-read books in my room.  Good books too.  I want to finish them, but if I'm not in the mood...I'll just blog...

Just thinking out loud...on the keyboard...whatever!




Government: No Electronic Flaws in Toyotas

Did anybody else see this coming.  Just like I thought, there was a small problem, the media blew it up, and everybody jumped on the lawsuit bandwagon. 

House Unexpectedly Defeats Patriot Act Extension

Democrats vote against what the Democrat President wants.  Newly elected Republicans also vote no.  I believe for the same reason.  It is political - but in a sense...because both types of no votes are because they don't completely understand what they are voting on.  They probably haven't read it.  They are voting on the "PATRIOT ACT". 


We all agree, government must be kept in check.  Privacy vs Security is a valid issue.  However, the balance is HEAVILY on the side of privacy.  Take the much guarded "library records."  To request the historical records of what somebody checked out at the library:
 
1) You need a target that still goes to the library.
2) You need an investigator who thinks #1, and himself considers the library
3) You need a target who has never heard of the Patriot Act
4) You need a supervisor for the investigator to agree and sign off
5) You need a lawyer (not the prosecutor) for the investigator to sign off
6) The investigator knows that there is a review committee and inspection team that will be looking at this request in hindsight, maybe years after the investigator found nothing...and can still ding the investigation
 
Libraries are government run.  We are talking about a government agent's access to these government records.  It looks like we are properly balanced to the liberties of the individual...
 
...are you still reading?

Justice Anywhere...

"...one of the most hopeful aspects of the current conservative revival is its reclamation of the American constitutionalist tradition. That tradition is anchored even beyond the Constitution, of course, in the Declaration of Independence. And that document, let’s not forget, proclaims that, “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.”


An American conservatism that looks back to 1776 cannot turn its back on the Egyptian people. We should wish them well—and we should work to help them achieve as good an outcome as possible..."

Bill Kristol - Stand for Freedom

Warning...

...from 1788.  Thomas Jefferson writing about the ratification of the Constitution, and his concerns:

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground...Our jealousy is only put to sleep by the unlimited confidence we all repose in the person to whom we all look as our president.  After him inferiour characters may perhaps succeed, and awaken us to the danger which his merit has led us into.  For the present, however, the general adoption is to be prayed for, and I wait with great anxiety for the news..."

It is clear he was concerned, as were many, with limiting the power given to the Federal Government, and specifically to the President.  His fear appears to have been assuaged by the leader that was George Washington.



Inferiour character matters...

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