Alexa is Not Your Friend

Have you purchased an Echo or Google Home and started interacting with your digital overlord?  Has Alexa charmed you into thinking that your life will be so much easier with her steady hand on the helm?

One of my favorite old black and white movies is Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 with Julie Christie and Oskar Werner (from the book, which is also excellent, by Ray Bradbury).  The movie takes place in a futuristic, dystopian, mind-control society.  Books are illegal and burned.  The temperature required to burn paper is 451 degrees Fahrenheit, hence the name of the movie.  But the really creepy aspect of this movie is the wall-size television screen in everyone’s home that provides entertainment and also monitors the inhabitants and controls their lives with soothing, but firm instructions.

I have this feeling that Alexa and all her sisters in form and function are a trojan horse, the first step on our way to a Fahrenheit 451 society.  We already have massive TVs in our houses and they will be wall size soon enough.  How many waking hours do we while away in front of these monstrosities, binge-watching Netflix series or shouting out our pathetic exuberance at some sporting event while our bodies and minds waste away.

Alexa will be happy to free us up from tedious tasks like thinking or researching or getting up out of our seats or bed.  Want something to eat?  Let Alexa order it for you – no need to run to the store or work in the kitchen.  Need to know something?  Ask Alexa and she will tell you the answer.  You will probably forget it by the next day because you didn’t really make any real effort to learn it, but so what?  Is it too hot or cold?  Alexa will fix that so that you don’t have to go to the trouble of actually manipulating the thermostat.  In fact, pretty soon you will not even know there is such a thing as a thermostat, or even what temperature is.  You will just be very, very comfortable.

GUNS!

Another school shooting, another 17 people dead.  The question that never gets addressed or answered is this:  Why does the U.S. have so many of these shootings and other developed nations do not?

Let’s see, what is different about the U.S.?  Is it the fact that we have too much violence on TV, video games and movies?  No, other nations have that too.  Is it that we have a wide variety of ethnic groups, religions and races?  No, other countries have very diverse populations as well.  Is it that we have fallen out of favor with God because we are less religious and don’t pray in our schools anymore?  Well, no, actually we are more religious than every other developed nation.

So what could it possibly be?  Is this really a difficult puzzle to solve?

Hardly!  There is a simple answer that sits staring us in the face:  GUNS!

We are awash in guns.  Our culture celebrates and obsesses on guns like no other.  One might even say we worship guns.  There are more guns in the U.S. than all of the other developed nations combined – over 300 million by most estimates.  The rest of the developed world is incredulous over our stubborn embrace of gun mania and we are a laughing stock for our vain refusal to see the obvious.

We spend trillions of dollars protecting ourselves against terrorists.  Yet the number of people killed in non-terrorist attacks by guns dwarfs the number who die at the hands of terrorists – an annual average of over 11,000 versus 31.  More people died between 1960 and today from firearms in the U.S. than have died in all of our wars from the War of Independence to Iraq (1.4 million versus 1.2 million – politifact)!

Both the United Kingdom and Australia took aggressive steps after mass killings to eliminate all assault weapons and strictly control gun ownership.  Those programs have been a great success.  The rate of gun deaths in the U.S. is over 30 times the rate in the U.K. and neither the U.K. nor Australia has had another domestic mass killing since these programs were implemented.

Our politicians are either cowards or brainwashed puppets of the NRA.  The idea put forth by many that we need MORE guns in the hands of so-called ‘good guys’ is an absurd fallacy that is an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

When automobiles began killing large numbers of people in the 20’s, laws were enacted that required registration, annual inspections and licensing.  The rate of automobile deaths today is a small fraction of what it was before these measures were taken.  It defies comprehension that we do not have at least this much control over guns.

Some will say that the genie is out of the bottle on guns in the U.S., that there are already too many to control.  After World War II, there were an incredible number of guns in Europe.  A large cleanup effort was made to eliminate guns except for hunting or target shooting in most European countries.  Europeans who own guns must comply with many regulations and must become certified in their use.

The only effective way for the U.S. to combat the horrific litany of mass shootings is to take radical steps to eliminate assault weapons and large magazines, and tightly control gun ownership.  There should be heavy fines and even jail sentences for those caught with a weapon that is not registered and every gun owner should be required to have their weapons in a locked cabinet when they are not in use.

Until we are willing to concede that the U.S. is no longer a wild frontier or the wild west we will continue to lose our citizens in senseless, heinous shootings.  It is time to grow up.

Our Military Obsession

The U.S. has nurtured a dangerous obsession with military might since the end of World War  II.  I say this as a former military officer who is proud of my service and proud of the service of my many close relatives who have had careers in the military.  Here is a simple fact. The U.S. spends more on its military each year than the next eight (8) countries combined!!  Here are the numbers for 2016 (the two numbers are total budget in billions of dollars and percent of GDP):

USA	611.2	3.3
China	215.7	1.9
Russia	69.2	5.3
Saudi Arabia	63.7	10
India	55.9	2.5
France	55.7	2.3
United Kingdom	48.3	1.9
Japan	46.1	1
Germany	41.1	1.2
South Korea	36.8	2.7

Note that Russia spends one ninth of the amount that the U.S. spends!!  And what in the world is Saudi Arabia doing spending 10% of its GDP on its military!  The absurdities in these numbers abound.

In a speech on the eve of his departure from the Presidency, Dwight Eisenhower, a career military man, warned of the potential dangers of a ‘military industrial complex’:

“A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.

This speech came at a time when the cold war was in full bloom and a perceived arms race with the Soviet Union was dramatically increasing our military budget.  The so-called ‘missile gap’, a myth that the Soviets had superior numbers and capabilities in nuclear missiles, along with other paranoid fantasies about the spread of international communism, led to a veritable frenzy of military spending amidst dark predictions about the future.

The cold war ended in the late 90’s.  It is generally believed that we bankrupted the Soviet system through the arms race and that Ronald Reagan cleverly brought the USSR to its knees.  I think history will show that Mikhail Gorbachev was the real architect of the dramatic dismantling of the Soviet system and its stranglehold on Eastern Europe, a belief that is already almost universally embraced by Western Europeans.

However, the burden of the arms race was certainly a major factor in the evolution of the USSR.  How proud we should be of that accomplishment is open to debate. Had we recognized the legitimate concern that the USSR had for its defense and sovereignty after centuries of outside threats and incursion (the Nazi double cross being the most recent and devastating), and taken a more measured approach to engagement, then perhaps the Soviet Union could have evolved over time into a more stable and more democratic nation with less economic distress and less military angst.  Today’s autocratic Russia is hardly a testament to the success of our cold war strategy.

The role of our military in the last 30 years is also fraught with contradictions and massively expensive missteps.  Our 17-year-and-counting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may well go down as one of the worst mistakes in human history.  The cost in lives, limbs and opportunity are difficult to comprehend or catalog.  And our own losses pale in comparison to the woes that we have visited upon the nations that we have chosen to ‘rescue’.  Other than the occasional seductive successes of our Hollywood archetypal special forces, every military adventure we have undertaken has settled into a quagmire of unsolicited nation building and mass destruction.

I do not blame the soldiers and sailors.  The vast majority are good people who are performing a job to the best of their abilities, often under very challenging circumstances.  I don’t blame the generals and admirals either, to the extent that they are honest advocates for their profession and do not perjure themselves to prejudice our civilian decision makers.  I do blame our politicians for a lack of vision and imagination.  Reliance on military might and adventurism as our primary means to negotiate the troubled waters of the modern global community is a lazy and dangerous mistake.  The unintended consequences of our military follies will provide fodder for historical bemusement for years to come. If only we had learned from our many foolhardy forays.

It is time for the U.S. to see military power as a defensive, rarely used alternative to other forms of diplomacy and positioning.  The notion of the ‘indispensable nation’, a concept that Madeline Albright used to justify the use of military force by the U.S. as the guarantor of global peace, has proven to be a sophistic delusion.  Our use of force has not guaranteed peace, but rather ensured endless war.  We should not squander our treasure on more missiles or more warships, but rather invest it at home and abroad to support more stable and economically viable nations with functioning, honest political systems.  If we are truly the ‘exceptional’ Americans, then let’s do something exceptional!

Presidential History - Some Comfort Can Be Taken

In my moments of despair over the current political climate and the Trump presidency, I have found it helpful to pore over the history of our republic and its tenuous grip on political stability.  In particular, the history of presidential politics and the ragtag assortment of characters who ascended to the highest office gives me some optimism for our odds of surviving the current inhabitant.

Here are some statistics:  We have had 45 presidents.  Seven died in office – four by assassination and three by illness.  Poor William Henry Harrison only lasted a month before he expired!  Five of our presidents were not elected at all, but ended up in office after either a death or a resignation and didn’t generate enough enthusiasm to be elected for an additional term.

Most of our 15 two term presidents were at the two ends of our presidential history – five of the first seven presidents were two term, and four of the last five.  There was a period from 1837 (end of Jackson’s terms) to 1912 (75 years!!) where only two presidents, Lincoln and Grant, were elected twice to office.  We all know what happened to Lincoln, and Grant’s presidency was so marred by scandal that it has become a symbol of corrupt government.

That 75 year period is characterized by three major themes – (1) conflict over slavery and the civil war, (2) reconstruction, and (3) the gilded age with its associated corruption and avarice.  It is no wonder that every president was sent packing after a single term in those turbulent times, which comprise a third of our history!

Many of our presidents ended up as nominees by the slimmest of margins in back room shenanigans that make Trump’s election almost look respectable.  These men, with a few notable exceptions, were by and large not impressive characters.  And the vitriol of the political processes that placed them in office rival the worst of our current partisanship.

Even during the golden age of our founders – Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe – the sniping and slander of the political process was astonishing.  Duels were fought and reputations destroyed as men sought to defame and discredit one another over often very abstract differences in political philosophy.  Jefferson and Adams didn’t speak to one another for decades.  Burr and Hamilton dueled and neither fared well (Hamilton died from the duel and Burr was disgraced and spent the rest of his life in rather strange escapades).

Donald Trump is not the first misfit to sit in the oval office, though he might be at the very top in terms of the extent of his idiosyncrasies and paranoia.  Will he destroy the republic?  I believe it is doubtful.  We have had worse overall circumstances than the ones we face now.  We can survive a term of Donald Trump. even if it does make our skin crawl!

The Ends and the Means

When I speak these days to Trump supporters, I often hear the concession that ‘yes, Trump is a horrible braggart, and yes, he is terribly thin-skinned and confrontational, and yes, I wish he would tweet a little less, and yes, he is a philanderer and sexual predator (but so was Bill Clinton!), and yes, he has a multitude of character flaws’.  And then comes the ‘but’ – ‘But it may be that this country needs someone like Trump to fix the big problems it has’.

Other than a modest percentage of true believers, the support for Trump seems to be of the ‘ends justify the means’ variety.  I picture a nation of ‘cringing’ conservatives, aghast and embarrassed at what they have put into the white house and yet still doubling down on their full-throated support for his initiatives.

I recall Dave Barry once writing in a humor column that Republicans would elect an axe murderer if he promised to cut taxes.  Very prescient!  I don’t believe that Trump is necessarily evil in the sense that a serial killer is evil.  But I do believe he is a classic example of a leader who is so consumed by vanity and power that he no longer has any empathy for other points of view and that he will use his power ruthlessly in pursuit of his goals, which in the end are mainly about assuaging his profound insecurity.

At the heart of the Trump phenomenon lies one of the great questions of civilization – do the ends justify the means?  For conservatives, does the ‘end’ (various rollbacks of liberal policies, tax cuts, a bellicose foreign policy - no more apologizing, i.e. no more empathy!) justify the ‘means’ (Trump’s legitimation of the basest human traits in leadership and diplomacy, alienation of large segments of the U.S. and world populations, his astonishing lack of civility).  Human societies have always wrestled with this quandary.

I confronted this dilemma when I worked for Habitat for Humanity International in its early phases (1986-1988).  I had come in to set up their computer systems but soon found myself running their fundraising and publicity departments as well.  The primary means of obtaining funds for HFH’s work was through direct mail.  Habitat had recently been fortunate to have Jimmy Carter join its board and become a strong advocate of its work.  He had agreed to lend his name to fundraising letters for the work. 

The direct mail firm we used did an aggressive campaign of ‘acquisition’ letters to large mailing lists.  These mailings cost hundreds of thousand of dollars and were a substantial part of the funds we had for operation each year.  However, from an accounting point of view, we could amortize the cost of the mailings over the ‘lifetime’ of the donors, which could be estimated at 5 years or more.  Thus, our % of fundraising costs in terms of our overall budget that appeared on our annual report allowed us to be graded well by various watchdog agencies for charitable organizations.

Many of our employees and volunteers were deeply disillusioned by these mailings, which had all the typical slick marketing characteristics.  The fact that we were spending incredible amounts of money to obtain donors seemed antithetical to the values of HFH and the people who supported it.  Habitat was still a very small organization with a strong sense of family. It seemed a betrayal of the uniquely simple, non-commercial message of Habitat.

However, direct mail was how Millard Fuller, Habitat’s founder, had made his millions before he gave them all away and started HFH.  Millard was passionate about the mission of Habitat and if millions of Jimmy Carter direct mail pieces could accelerate the growth dramatically, then there was no question we would embrace it.  So, rather than allow Habitat’s growth to occur more slowly and organically, we drove ahead with massive mailings.

The questions abound.  Did the end – Habitat’s meteoric growth – justify the means – the use of fundraising techniques that sparked a loss of innocence and the change in character of Habitat?  Would Habitat have changed anyway?  Is such change inevitable in any successful endeavor?  If more people received houses because of these mailings wasn’t it worth it?  Or perhaps the preservation of Habitat’s unique character was more important and more impactful than being able to build more houses.

Using questionable means to achieve an end cannot always be easily evaluated at the time of the decision.  Was the use of the atomic bomb on Japan a good decision?  In the emotional extremes of WWII it was readily accepted. War is a time when these types of ends-versus-means decisions – the calculus of the so-called greater good – are made over and over again.  Were the allies right (apart from the more basic question of morality . . . ) to massively bomb civilian targets in Germany and Japan to ‘break the will’ of the people?  Should we torture people and deny them all civil and legal rights in the name of anti-terrorism?  Doesn’t each new concession to more horrible ‘means’, even if the ‘end’ is a noble goal, create a downward spiral of precedent and example that is bound to wreak future havoc and horror?

And so here we are with President Trump.  The man cannot let a day go by without ridiculing or threatening someone via Twitter, or bragging shamelessly about his so-called accomplishments (methinks thou doth protest too much Donald!).   Even if he is successful in accomplishing certain goals for the Republican party, will anyone be happy with the long term consequences of his presidency?  Will civility have been dealt a death blow?  Will childish antics become the norm among politicians and businesspeople?  Will children grow up embracing the kind of nonsense that is his modus operandi and see themselves justified in all types of anti-social behavior?

There are many examples of how one can become numb to horrible things, inured to bad behavior, jaded by idiotic acts.  The biggest danger of Donald Trump is not his policies, as repugnant as they may be, but rather the possibility that we may in the end lose our sense of outrage and allow him to undermine our code of ethics and morality.  No, my dear Republican friends, the ends do not justify the means!

In Praise of Physicians and Scientists

As 2018 draws to a close, I want to make a strong statement about the tireless and often under-appreciated efforts of physicians and scientists.  It is a sad truth in our society that we love to be cynical and suspicious about motivations.  Sometimes this cynicism is warranted, but it is often a herd instinct that has no real foundation in fact or evidence.

Many of our brightest citizens pursue careers in medicine and science.  In doing so, they typically work longer hours, and in the case of scientists, receive lower compensation, than other professionals.  I would add engineers to this description, but since I am an engineer, it would be somewhat self-serving!  So I will simply reference a previous blog on this topic: http://rvgeiger.blogspot.com/2014/11/thoughts-on-panic-over-engineering-and.html .

Science, and medicine in particular, have advanced dramatically in the last two hundred years. They have brought us out of darkness, given us incredible mobility, freed us from many forms of drudgery and physical discomfort, developed untold numbers of new materials and products, and improved our health and longevity in dramatic fashion.  They have also unleashed terrible destruction in the form of weapons and have wrought changes on our society that sometimes seem unsettling and alienating.

It is fashionable to complain about physicians; to enumerate situations where diagnoses have been mistaken or where medical knowledge is incomplete; to conjure up an image of the revolving door doctor’s office, where little time is spent with each patient and the bills seem out of proportion to the services rendered.

To be sure, the cost and delivery of medical services is far from a perfect system.  And there are certainly some physicians who are compensated more generously than a truly equitable system would prescribe.  But the fact is that medicine has benefited human society incredibly and we owe much of the enduring joy of living to the herculean efforts of the medical community.

Many people who indulge in wholesale criticism of modern medicine tout the results from natural or homeopathic medicine, chiropractic, Eastern medical traditions such as Ayurveda, Chinese and others.  No doubt these have something to offer – we are far from knowing everything about health and the human body – but many of these traditions were around for the last several thousand years and didn’t result in a general advancement of human health.

One merely needs to recall a few of the horrors of 18th century life to understand the miraculous impact of allopathic medical progress in the last two hundred years: 

• ·         Child birth was practically Russian roulette – one percent of women giving birth died in the act.  If you had 10 children, you had a 1 in 10 chance of dying by one of those births.  Today the percentage is one hundredth of that, and the few deaths that occur would generally be preventable if medical coverage were more universal.
• ·         The chance of a child dying before its 5^th birthday were generally 1 in 5, or 20%.  Today, the rate is 2-3 in 1000, which is about 0.2%.  Most of those are in impoverished populations who don’t receive good medical care.
• ·         The overall life expectancy was about 38 years.  That is somewhat deceptive, because if you made it to 10 years old, that life expectancy jumped to 58.  Still, it is dramatically shorter than the current 80 years in most of the developed world.
• ·         Epidemics raged throughout Europe and the rest of the world in previous centuries.  Today epidemics are very rare and most of the diseases that were incredibly deadly in the past (plague, smallpox, polio, typhoid fever, cholera, etc.) have been either completely eliminated or dramatically curtailed.

In more recent times, the progress made in the reduction of cardiovascular disease (which, by the way, is one of the primary reasons for the increasing global longevity) and the treatment of cancer is truly remarkable.  Also, the life expectancy for many chronic diseases such as diabetes, cystic fibrosis and others is much higher in recent years.

These wonderful improvements are a combination of medical care, sanitation, pharmaceutical discoveries, and many other contributing factors.  But the basis for all of this progress is medical science and the scientific method.

The scientific method insists on a rigorous approach to attaining knowledge.  It does not take a few anecdotal results and draw conclusions.  How many of us have cited the case of a friend or acquaintance who had success from some unusual therapy and implied that this is ‘evidence’ of its efficacy?  True science does not rush to a result.  It insists on numerous trials and experimentation with unyielding objectivity and rigor.  It can be frustratingly slow and tedious, but it is the only way to arrive at a conclusion that will yield predictable results and successes.

A couple hundred years ago, death from illness was all around us.  No one grew up without experiencing the pain of losing a close friend or relative from an early death.  Today, most of us have had the joy of sharing life with family and friends with very rare intrusions of grief from a sickness or death.  We have a long line of physicians and scientists to thank.

Diet and Eating

In this season of eating and over-eating, I find myself once again amused by all of the self-help offerings on dieting and eating healthy.  As a somewhat analytical person, I find it difficult to give much credence to most of the advice. 

Many people say that diet is a simple matter of intake versus metabolic work.  If you consume X calories and the work that your body does is less than X, then you will gain weight.  If the work is more than X you will lose weight.  I have seen these types of calculations done based on the amount of exercise one does each day.  I don't buy it!

As an engineer, I think in terms of conservation of mass and energy.  Food is mass, but it is also stored energy.  Food and drink are consumed.  A certain part of this food and drink is excreted, either as urine or feces.  The amount of this excretion can vary dramatically from day to day or over longer periods.  Moreover, the amount of energy that is extracted from our food as it goes through our digestive tract may be up or down regulated based on the body's needs. The energy content of this excretion would be important in any calculation of net energy or caloric gains/losses.  Has anyone measured this?

The body also converts part of the food and drink into energy.  The energy used by the body might be characterized as typical daily metabolism and work (which may vary considerably or may be fairly consistent – does anyone really know?) as well as extra work that may be associated with exercise, stress, climate conditions and other external phenomena.

Some of the consumed food and drink may be converted to other forms of stored energy and deposited somewhere in the body.  And conversely, some of the stored energy in the body may be converted into energy to accomplish the work of the body. The control functions for these mechanisms are probably poorly understood, yet they are essential to a full understanding of the process.

Thus, there are many parameters in the diet equation – intake, excretion, exercise rates, various forms of metabolism and their rates, conversion rates and efficiencies, etc.  These parameters may vary dramatically from person to person and from week to week.   

Some of these parameters may be affected by the body’s desire to maintain an equilibrium state.  For example, I have been on several cruises where I have eaten massive quantities of rich foods.  Doing a basic energy equation of the type promoted by many diet experts would indicate that I should be gaining weight rapidly during the 10 days or so of that cruise. 

But my experience is that I gain no weight at all!  I do notice that my excretion seems to be at a markedly increased level, if I may be so indiscreet!  Can it be that my body is trying to maintain its current ‘form’?  I have no doubt that if I were to continue that type of culinary indulgence I would soon begin to gain weight, but I am not eager to run that experiment!

I suspect that the body has a certain inertia in terms of its weight and size.  As evidenced by the challenges facing dieters, it appears that the body fights change even when it is not in an ideally healthy state.  The good news is that this helps us avoid ballooning every time we go through a rough patch with food, but  the bad news is that if you are fat it may be more daunting to convince your body to stay trim even when you are successfully cutting your calories.  But in the end, if you eat less calories than you burn (assuming you can calculate these amounts correctly!), the law of conservation of energy will eventually favor your discipline with a good result!