The beastly gas pump

I went to a gas station in Fort Wayne yesterday. My normal pattern is to fill up the tank until the pump trips that the tank is full.

A photograph of a gas pump showing $10.24 and 4.096 gallons.I saw that the pump stopped at $16.66. Since I notice interesting numbers, I saw the 666 in the middle of it, which is a number mentioned in the book of Revelations in the Bible.

It took me a second to decide whether I should leave it there. (with the fantasy that the next person would see it and get uncomfortable.) That’s crazy in couple of ways. The most obvious is that the next person probably wouldn’t even notice.

However, I didn’t want to upset anyone, so I dispensed a little more gas to change the number.

I put a tweet up asking whether you would be uncomfortable to see $6.66 and whether you would enjoy not changing it.

I think I could find more useful things to occupy my time.

*The* candidate litmus test

People talk about litmus tests for candidates. Do they vote the right way on abortion? The right way on the LGBTQ rights? The right way on immigration?

An example of a litmus test showing both blue and red reactions In chemistry, a litmus test is a chemical reaction on a strip of paper that turns red in an acid and and blue in a alkali.

I guess the use of litmus tests is unexpectedly appropriate to American politics. States are marked as red and blue, just like the litmus test.

The litmus tests that ask questions about abortion, LBGTQ rights, and immigration are emotionally charged. People get passionate about them. They can violently disagree and not be willing to listen to the other side. Heaven help us if you bring them up at Thanksgiving dinner.

I have a much simpler litmus test. It’s not complicated. It isn’t based on emotion and passion. It’s something you can discuss at the dinner table without getting indigestion.

Test to ask a candidate: Would I hire you as a crossing guard in my neighborhood?

Very simple, very to the point and something that gets right to the heart of life… what is best for our kids? The kids are the ones who have no say in the matter and are the most affected by who we vote for in November.

Can you trust a candidate with your kids when you’re not around? Choose well!

Original image: Kitchen Science 27. By Lenore Edman [Image license]
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How the U. S. health system could catch up to Nigeria

In 2014, Nigeria had 19 cases of Ebola. They marshaled their resources to trace contacts and quickly fought back a deadly, contagious disease. [1]

With the tool of contact tracing, Nigeria won their Ebola battle. They used experience that was already in place to fight back Ebola. Nigeria’s health system had eradicated polio and it stopped Ebola too. This is a lesson that health systems can have flexible responses and fight different kinds of epidemic.

Contact tracing is an important activity that needs community support. Effective contact tracing also requires planning. If no one knows how it works, they can’t react quickly. We should develop epidemic response teams. They need experience so that they can be vigilant and fight any new disease.

An parallel to epidemic response teams are the tornado sirens in the Midwest. The sirens are regularly tested and people know what they mean. Epidemics are a natural disaster equivalent to tornadoes. When people know the steps to prevent an epidemic, they will be willing to aid the process instead of fight it. Communities’ experience with epidemic responses will help overcome individual’s lack of trust.

To let the health reaction teams do their best, it would be prudent to have the systems already functioning. With test runs and vigilance, our reaction to any epidemic disease can be rapid and effective. Each disease is different. The model for combating measles and the mumps are similar, but they are not identical to the one needed for Zika. Creativity and experience are a must.

The testing of the system does not need to be theoretical. We already have periodic small epidemics that can test epidemic response teams. Measles is one example because outbreaks happen randomly when the disease is imported [2]. Another real-life example is the mumps. Outbreaks periodically happens on college campuses. One is happening now in Indiana and our reaction should be more effective. HIV & AIDS are an ongoing test. AIDS doesn’t spread as rapidly as measles or the mumps, but the same tools can help.

Existing vaccinations help prevent epidemics. The U. S. is backward in this area because of our attitudes on freedom. Those attitudes aren’t compatible with what the country needs to prevent unnecessary deaths.

The CDC reports another barrier for an epidemic response is financial. Epidemic response teams need discretionary funds and the authority to release those funds immediately. Any delay will worsen an epidemic. Epidemic responses teams need their funding allocated before the epidemic starts. The budgets for disease tracing and other tools need to be flexible. [3, p. 11]

Support for thorough contact tracing is critical. We need teams trained and ready for an epidemic. Their services should be used automatically when a potential epidemic is detected. We need to develop public experience and education on the steps that will defeat an epidemic. We need extensive use of vaccinations when they are available. Finally, money is needed for a rapid response. This economic support can allow the other components react decisively.

With these components, the U.S. health system will be able to easily defeat any currently unknown epidemic or bio-terrorism and surpass Nigeria’s Ebola success. We could have more confidence in our health system and in its ability to protect us.
—
[1] “Nigeria is now free of Ebola virus transmission.” http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/ebola/20-october-2014/en/. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
[2] “Measles: Cases and Outbreaks.” http://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
[3] “Emergency Guideline: Implementation and management of contact tracing for Ebola virus disease.” http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/185258/1/WHO_EVD_Guidance_Contact_15.1_eng.pdf. Retrieved June 7, 2016.

[edit 2016-06-10: clarified last paragraph]

The Privatization of Prisons

Free enterprise and competition make some government functions more efficient and less expensive. However, there is a subtle downside to this and private prisons are the most pernicious example.

The problem is that once a private company controls government functions, their incentive is to increase profits. For private prisons, an easy way to increase profits is to increase the number of prisoners that they hold with longer sentences and less judicial discretion.

They will lobby for legislation that helps them out. They support an attitude that jail sentences should increase, regardless of the wisdom of judges and juries. High minimum sentence guidelines and the demonization of certain crimes are in their best interest. They need to influence the public debate.

With those incentives, the hidden victims are the families and communities. The criminals are easy to attack. “Let’s get tough on crime” can be a mantra that the prison industry chants. However, they need to be creative to keep their stockholder’s bottom line in focus. Lobbying at the state and federal level are an inexpensive tool for that.

Without changes, the insane level of imprisonment in our country is only going to worsen. There’s much less incentive for education and rehabilitation of the prisoners. That would harm the private prison’s bottom line. A revolving door on their prisons is what they really want.

Putting the jails and prisons in the hands of private enterprise might save money in the short term, but it revokes the ability of the public to influence the criminal justice system.

Individuals don’t have the ability to compete with a wealthy prison lobby. They may not even be aware that the lobbyists hidden agenda is in play.

It is easy for politicians to support tougher crime policies and more and more difficult for them to influence these circumstances that they are ultimately responsible for.

The untouchables at the top and the untouchables at the bottom

The untouchables at the top have forgotten how lucky they are. They live at the top of a house of cards that is held up by millions of the untouchables at the bottom.

The untouchables at the bottom include the disabled, disadvantaged and discarded.

The wealthy untouchables at the top are the beneficiaries of luck and the roll of a dice but they take credit for their success as their own deserving.

The untouchables at the top have money, and thus power. They become untouchable by using their power to pay for legislation that increases their altitude. They escape justice on the basis of their wealth and connections.

In the old caste society, the untouchables were a class of rejected people. They had no way to improve their situation.

In our new caste society, if you’re disabled or disadvantaged, you are accused of being lazy. With a single roll of a dice, you suddenly became someone who does not matter–you can’t hold up those at the top of the house anymore.

The disadvantaged work hard. They have dreams and ideas and hopes, but the cards are stacked against them. While they fell where they are by fickle fate, in the new caste society, genius and hard work won’t pick them back up.

The discarded are in worse shape. If you’re homeless or mentally ill, you embarrass the rich. They legislate you out of the field of vision. You break through their smug self-importance, so you shouldn’t be here. In some cities, being homeless or mentally ill is a capital offense executed by police who are sworn to protect them.

They moral bankruptcy of the wealthy keeps their bank accounts full, but they won’t share their bread and fishes with the men and women waiting for the waters of the pool to stir.

The millions locked away have no voice and no recourse. People who have been in prison have 2 1/2 strikes against them. They’ll be punished after their punishment. Don’t work here. Don’t live there. Stay away. If you’re young and not-white, you already have a half a strike for being born.

Being rich is not a matter of deserving. If you would analyze fairly, you would see that hundreds of others, just as deserving, are not standing next to you because of dumb luck.

Those who are disdainful of the current young are forgetting who will be caring for them in 25 years. The resentments are not getting any smaller and a house of cards falls very fast.

ISIS and Radicalization

It would be easy to find people willing to condemn ISIS as evil. They would also prosecute people who are beginning to be radicalized to prevent them from supporting the terrorist organization.

However, that quick leap to judgement is not helpful in eliminating terrorism. Once you label an organization as evil, you can get lazy.

By focusing on the evil of ISIS, you don’t need to understand them. In addition to defeating them militarily, we need to combat the political themes they promote. Without understanding why ISIS is attractive to some people, we can’t deny them the thought-virus that they spread.

I never see the grievances and concepts that nourish the ISIS movement. The public message is that they’re evil and that’s all we need to know. We want to prevent radicalization, but don’t try to understand the process as it develops.

When the news reports someone as being radicalized, we can get lazy again. We don’t have to understand what they believe or how they arrived there. We don’t have to see the reasons that they embraced violence and hatred–there’s no reason to see that because we’ve already cast them out. But that’s too late in the process to make a difference.

David Talbot in “Fighting ISIS Online” (MIT Technology Review. Nov. 1, 2015. v. 118, no. 6) describes that contacts from friends and peers can help the propaganda create new recruits. But he also describes that friends and peers can be persuasive in pushing back. It can take a small intervention to be beneficial. The article describes how one-on-one contact was able to reverse a transformation that the FBI was watching from a distance, yet impotent to change.

Working with friends to help them see a different perspective doesn’t let you release sexy rhetoric about our war with ISIS. However, it does help combat the organization one person at a time.

A sympathetic ear and supportive encouragement can work where the pronouncements of the powerful are failing miserably.

Listening

I’ve learned that when people close to me are skeptical about a task I want to do, listening is a wonderful skill.

I was going to take two classes this summer, but listening showed me that that’s probably not a good idea.

I think it would be cool to build a photographic collection of hubcap designs. One part of the project would photograph the front and back of the car so that I could look up the car’s year. Listening said that that’s probably going to creep some people out, so perhaps it’s not a good idea.

The product of two minds is probably better than one. It only adds up.

The Facebook Experience

I used to have a facebook account, but was very dissatisfied. I wasn’t comfortable with its addictive nature. Also, more often than not, I was self-conscious about adding information that didn’t fit social norms in times of stress.

It seemed that people preferred to submit clever graphics and people could leave the real “them” out. Just put up a facade–all is well. The last straw for me was when they suggested that I might be employed by a fellowship I belong to.

The reason the facebook topic came up with me again is that a course at IUPUI that I was thinking of taking included facebook postings as part of the coursework. I didn’t really want to get an account again. Hence the conflict.

 

Dr. BJ Fogg at Stanford University has studied persuasive technology. He calls it captology. His definition of persuasive is slightly different than the natural one. Persuasive means to cause a desired behavior. It isn’t about the cognitive persuasion to think about an issue a certain way. In his method, you pick a behavior you want to increase, make it easy to do and then prompt the behavior. The behaviors can be tiny such as to click a “Like” button or complex and have you to log in and update your content.

Facebook uses persuasive technology to increase income for the company. The users of facebook need to encourage people to advertise there. “Like” is a simple behavior. It seems to indicate that you’re engaged with a vendor’s products and services. On Veritasium, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag suggests that a “like” may not be what it seems.

The part where I get uncomfortable is that facebook has covert information that it can use to manipulate the interaction. People think of the website interacting solely with them, but with billions of users, facebook knows how people act in aggregate and can notice how to make a change with a tiny impact but is statistically significant. By combining these impacts, they can be manipulative and do it without being detected. They can manipulate the users and they can manipulate the advertisers.

One can’t be naive and think that facebook does things are solely for the benefit of its users. When one starts a post and then erases it, facebook’s software can notice. Since they know when this happens, they can find ways to encourage people add content more freely. They also target what you see to what they know you are more likely to attend to and not what you might value.

They knew that many of my friends belonged to a fellowship, so it was natural to blindly propose, to me who hadn’t listed an employer, that I might be employed in the same place.

With facebook they are capable of knowing more about you than you can imagine. They use that to make their shareholder’s wealthy. When I see an ad on YouTube, I know it is an advertisement. I can ignore it if I want. If you’re being persuaded to participate in advertising without knowing that you are being marketed to, that’s where the facebook experience is letting the smoke and mirrors conceal the real interaction. In “Captology and the Friendly Art of Persuasion” by Lynn Griener (*) comments “Advertisers may, for example, be able to get away with sneaky and intrusive tactics” and that “facebook must play it straight.” However, with huge data resources and insatiable stockholders, facebook’s straight can be pretty crooked.

(*) Greiner, Lynn. “Captology and the Friendly Art of Persuasion,” NetWorker, Fall 2009. doi: 10.1145/1600303.1600306

Flowering trees

It’s really beautiful out in the neighborhood. The fruit trees are covered with beautiful white flowers and the trees are starting to bud.

My sister says that it’s miserable if you have allergies. I’m grateful that I don’t.

One of the coolest websites I’ve found recently is http://hint.fm/wind/ It gives an animated map of wind in the continental U.S. It’s updated every hour and is always interesting. I had always believed that the prevailing wind direction for northeast Indiana was from the west, but the maps don’t seem to agree very often.

Evil Mad Scientist’s link dump for the month http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2016/linkdump-march-2016/ revealed this video showing circuits being deconstructed by a CNC router layer by layer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHqN6CTOdzA

It’s a good day to share the beauty.

A Colorful Sky

I look out my window and see the rain falling. The street is wet and the winds are calm. Recent days have been gloomy, but today is a good day to spend with a friend.

The shadows that come each night are not so frightening that they keep me alone. I see the moon rise and a beautiful constellation expands above me. I have nothing to fear and it is good to be here today.
A man fishing in the ocean waves
The ocean won’t wash me away today. I walk through the town and find new places to go. I’m glad that I am here today. I am glad that the sorrowful days have passed and I have much to look forward to.

Light comes down in a fabric of glistening pearls. Singing birds glow in its beauty and dance on the branches. A squirrel runs by and it is time for the roses to grow.

Although the sky is gray today, I know that I will see it’s colors soon. A blazing sun is fleeing the day and my time alone is near an end.

The land that surrounds me protects me and helps me rest. I will work in the morning and follow my path into tomorrow.

Original image: Each of them is fishing. By Corn Farmer [Image license]