The population un-bomb

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, demographics, sociology

Disaster sells. When Paul and Anne Ehrlich published The Population Bomb just over 45 years ago they predicted imminent disaster if population continued to increase. I read that book then, and others by either Ehrlich since, and picked up the feeling that they knew they were overstating their case, but felt they had to because otherwise nobody would listen. I don't know if many really were listening, but in fact fertility has fallen in America, and even more in most of Europe. Consider these two figures, from a report by Mark Mather:

Mr. Mather's thesis is the effect of a falling economy on fertility. The data can be interpreted a number of ways, however. For example, the 1960-80 period saw a great increase in American females entering and graduating from universities, chemical birth control (actually conception prevention) was introduced in the mid-60s, and abortion was legalized in 1973; also, the pre-1930 fertility decrease began about 1921, long prior to the great market crash. A careful look at the right third of the upper graph reveals that fertility has been below 2.1 births per woman, considered the replacement level, since 1970. The second chart shows ethnic data. As of the 2010 estimate (that's what the asterisk means) only Hispanics have remained above 2.1 bpw.

On a side note, I have yet to see a good explanation why 2.1 rather than 2.0 is "replacement rate". It is usually said that this accounts for the 5% who do not reproduce, but the figure already includes them in the calculation. I surmise, without formal proof, that the 2.1 figure is related to economic estimates that a small population increase results in the stablest economy, and this has somehow been laundered of this association and been promoted instead as "replacement", when it is actually replacement plus 5%. Spread that 5% over a typical 30-year fertility period, and you get an annual population increase of just over 0.15%. Yet American population is currently growing at 0.7% yearly. World population growth is 1.14%.

The Ehrlich's were right that unfettered population growth is a problem. They were wrong about the timing, but the key element is compounded growth. At its most basic, we need to realize that any rate of growth above zero, carried on long enough, will exceed any criterion you might set. For example, if world population were to continue growing at 1.14% yearly until 2100 (another 86 years), the total growth factor is 1.0114⁸⁶ or 2.65. Today's population, estimated to be 7,156,000,000, would become 18,969,000,000. Nearly 19 billion. The US might fare a little better (unless a few billions decide to relocate here): 1.0070⁸⁶ is "only" 1.82; in 2100 its population could become 571,400,000.

One last point before getting to the book on hand. What if we slow down population growth, say by a factor of 10? That just defers the inevitable, assuming any growth at all. A simple calculation shows that there will still be 19 billion folks on earth at some point, but in 860 years rather than 86. And go the other way. Could Earth support a trillion of us? Posit a 0.1% growth rate: the factor needed is 139.74. Working the math backwards (it requires using logarithms) yields a mere 4,942 years.

Now here is someone who must hope that the planet could support an unbounded number, perhaps trillions or more. Jonathan V. Last has issued What to Expect When No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster. He shows from history that every time a nation has experienced declining population it has fallen. He calls The Population Bomb "one of the most spectacularly foolish books ever published" (p. 7), primarily for historical reasons.

The book provides a fascinating survey of all the factors behind the current trend toward one-child and no-child families, though I hesitate to call a couple who marry with the expectation to remain childless a 'family'. It stretches the definition. Then again, from a Christian perspective, if they want to stay together, marriage is better than shacking up. Note that this lifestyle is only possible—barring medical reasons for infertility—since effective contraception was developed about two generations ago.

One big factor in the West is the rise of hedonism and "positive self esteem" as values in themselves. If you value your pleasure above all else and feel so good about yourself that you lack nothing, in a personal sense, then why have a child? Raising a child costs lots of money, swallows up your time, and induces you to forgo nearly all pleasures. That is, if you are not the kind of monster who refuses to change even a little bit to accommodate the new arrival(s). It may also, under most governmental systems, induce you to marry in case you hadn't already, because of the substantial benefits that accrue to married couples and parents.

However, there are certain benefits to marriage and child-raising, besides those that governments can provide. I have had occasion to counsel young married folks who are having problems. The chief problem is communication (men don't talk and women don't listen – stereotypes that are too true to be funny). I always make sure they know that by marrying they have each entered into a lifelong negotiation. It is impossible for any two people to agree or have the same opinion about absolutely everything. At least in America, if one partner is the "My way or the highway" sort of negotiator, that one will soon be single again. Learning to collaborate and do some horse-trading is a huge factor in what we call maturity.

Then, when children come along, a new set of growth opportunities arises. If you had no self control before, you'll soon learn some, or your child will be short-lived. And you learn the joys of filling a little head full of mush with your own values, hobbies and mannerisms. I remember with the fondness only time can bring, the late nights of carrying a cranky baby in the "colic hold" that soothed him, but only if carried on for long enough. The dogged experimenting with method after method of inducing a 1-year-old who could climb out of his crib to stay put; I finally settled on putting him in and just sitting there to watch.  He would watch back, and gradually his little eyes would droop closed and he'd tip over, fast asleep. This led to some talk, then to story time and later to precious times of reading to each other. I wouldn't give that up for ten centuries of "living the single high life".

But it seems the better educated a population becomes, fewer and fewer are those who are willing to have and raise children. Learning is a more effective method of birth control than a boatload of condoms and a trainload of pills or IUD's. I happen to think this is a good thing, but I'll get more into that anon.

Apparently, in all of history, only one nation has rebounded from a long-term falling population: Georgia in Eastern Europe. The secret of their success is the beloved patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Ilia II. He announced in 2007 that he would "personally baptize any child born to parents who already had two or more children" (p. 159). Births increased 20% the following year and continued to surge. America has no Patriarch. We're too fractious for that.

In the end, Jon Last tries his best not to sound like a doomsayer. He wants to remain optimistic. He has suggestions, tailored to the American situation, that he hopes would improve things—that is, raise the fertility rate.

1. Social Security "distorts the 'market value' of children and forces fertility rates down" (p. 162). He passes along a suggestion by Phillip Longman to dramatically reduce the SSI tax the more children a family has, until the last one reaches age 18. (I suggest the subsequent increase be phased in to avoid sticker shock when the last kid leaves home!) He also briefly surveys related suggestions by others.
2. College costs make anxious parents more anxious, and strongly deter many from childbearing. The system is out of whack. What about eliminating the need for college, for many jobs. Is it really useful for an employer to require a BA degree when what you really want is to know of someone is bright and has good work habits? Yeah, the degree sort of proves that (not always!), but so would admittance testing. IQ tests by employers were banned in 1971 on the grounds of racial discrimination, but schools use them (SAT and ACT are IQ tests). So companies foist off the job on the schools, but students then have to go into debt to the tune of $30,000-$100,000 and get "the sheepskin". A few wise companies just want to know if an 18-year-old was offered admission to a good school. The author proposes a federal degree-granting body that certifies any student who passes certain tests. I guess you could spend a year or so watching and studying using Khan Academy videos, for example, and pass a bunch of tests. You know, I like that idea, even if I loathe the notion of yet another federal agency.
3. "The Dirt Gap" reflects the much greater cost of real estate wherever the jobs are. When people go to a workplace they either must live close by, or commute. I endured 9 years of a 40-mile commute each way. Luckily I can read in a moving vehicle, so I pooled with others and used those 1.5 to 2 hours daily (when I wasn't the driver) more productively as a result. I remember living in Los Angeles. For one job, I rode my bicycle, because I could get there quicker: 9 miles in 20 minutes versus 30 minutes by car. During rush hour in major cities, even the freeways average 10 mph (16 kph). Years ago I could trot along about that fast, on foot! One solution is a huge increase in telecommuting. Any job that primarily uses computer skills can be done anywhere on the planet with high-speed Internet service. The last several years before I retired, half my colleagues were in Gurgaon, India. We didn't need much face-to-face, but we video conferenced every couple of weeks. 7AM here was 6PM there, and those guys would work a late day for the purpose, while we stateside folks started early that day (I usually began close to 6AM anyway).
4. Immigration…we just think the "illegals" are a problem. Though there is a lot of variation, immigrants and their children tend to be harder working and more innovative than "people who have always lived there" (that is, four or more generations). American has been lucky to assimilate most immigrants within a generation or two. And I learned long ago that moving to a new place just within my own country is a great boost to well-being. There is some kind of value to being the kind of person who can "up sticks and go". A close relative greatly hindered his career because he allowed his wife to persuade him to stay within driving distance of her parents.
5. Church. It is falling out of favor with the liberal elite. Yet it is strange: people in America attend church at rates much higher than in any other Western country, and at the same time, our demographics and economy are healthier. The author's concluding paragraph of this section is telling:

"…there are many perfectly good reasons to have a baby (curiosity, vanity and naïveté all come to mind.) But at the end of the day, there's only one good reason to go through the trouble a second time: Because you believe, in some sense, that God wants you to."

As the author demonstrates, history shows that reducing population means trouble. But I think the reason is different than he states. Our economic system is designed for a growing population. Growing companies cannot cope with shrinking customer bases, and there is not a single executive in all the countries on Earth who has been trained to guide a company properly when the market for its widgets gradually and steadily decreases. This phenomenon needs study. I must agree in part with Paul Ehrlich that unbounded population growth cannot be sustained. At some point, population must decrease, or nature will, quite impersonally, force it to decrease in numerous unpleasant ways. I am of the opinion that 7+ billion is already too many, particularly so if we have the heart to wish them all a standard of living that is something above subsistence poverty.

Let's consider Costa Rica, a constitutional republic with a GDP per person of about $13,000. That is pretty good for South and Central America. It is about 1/4 of the figure for the U.S. About 80% of Earthlings live on less. To raise them all to this level would require more than doubling global GDP; perhaps tripling it (purchasing power parity calculations are notoriously difficult and error-prone). Either way, there isn't enough planet to do so. My estimate is that grinding poverty cannot be eliminated until the population is about half what it is at present. Thus I must disagree with Mr. Last. Growing the population might be good under the current economic system, but we won't be able to afford the current economic system very much longer.

A new economic system must be devised, one that allows persons and companies to survive and even thrive as population resettles itself to a level that Earth can sustain for the very long term. I would hope this author and others would bend their considerable skills to determining the key factors that make our economies collapse when population takes even the smallest of downturns, and to inventing a new kind of economics for an Earth in a steady state, and during the population reduction that leads to it.

Getting ahead - a Tiger's manual

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, sociology, cultural evolution

This is not a Bible study, but I will begin with a few items from the Bible:

Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when he said to me, “Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children.” —Deuteronomy 4:10

These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. —Deut. 6: 6-9

When Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel, he said to them, “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day, so that you may command your children to obey carefully all the words of this law. They are not just idle words for you—they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.” —Deut. 32:45-47

In these passages, among several others in Deuteronomy, we see that the LORD God commanded his people to universal literacy. I have always taken it to be a foundation of the success of Jews in any country with sufficient freedom for them to live in comparative peace. From what has arisen so much antisemitism over the years and centuries? All to frequently, from envy.

In the far East, in many countries we find anti-Chinese sentiment (Malaysia and Indonesia come to mind) and even official discrimination against "overseas Chinese". Also due in large part to envy. Ethnic Chinese seem to wind up owning everything and running all the best businesses.

With that as a world context, now we can take a look at America, where both the Jews and Chinese (and most Asians in general) are doing quite well. You'll find a partial explanation for this differential success in Amy Chua's book of a few years ago, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. But now with co-author Jed Rubenfeld we find a more comprehensive study of the phenomenon, in The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America. Let us not forget that Ms Chua is a law professor at Yale, as is Mt. Rubenfeld. (I suppose the possession of a JD degree and a professorship entitles them to the title Dr., but we never call lawyers "Doctor", do we?)

As in all good business writing, the authors do not keep us waiting for their conclusions. They state their theses at the outset, then defend and elaborate them. Note first that they write primarily about groups, not individuals. The "Triple Package" consists of three values that have become practically anathema in modern America:

1. Superiority – the acculturated feeling that your group is superior to most or all other groups. The Jews are God's Chosen, and have been for 3,500 years. Now the Mormons are taking over that designation, in their own minds at least. The Chinese have the longest cultural history (and didn't die away like the Egyptians). The Puritans who founded American prosperity 400 years ago had the biggest "My God is better than your god" complex in history. But the success of American Lebanese, and American Nigerians, comes not from religious roots, but cultural.
2. Insecurity – Tiger Mothers (whether Chinese or Jewish or whatever) foster this by a "never quite good enough" mentality, the "guilt syndrome" that is fodder for multitudes of Jewish comedians. Companies also foster this by slogans such as "Continuous Improvement" and by the dreaded yearly progress review. It is even more the undercurrent of though among persecuted minorities, except a few, such as American Indians, who've been more slyly persecuted into "learned helplessness."
3. Impulse Control – also known as self control; it is the ability to defer gratification in pursuit of a future goal. Not only do religious groups promote self control, even asceticism at times, but businesses also. In business, it can be more subtle. Many companies seem to allow considerable freedom, but it is a kind of intelligence test. Those who fail it find promotions forever out of reach, or may be pushed out. Not for nothing does the Bible say, "When you eat with a king put a knife to your throat." Those who succeed profit at the expense of those with less self control, as is seen most starkly in the illegal drug trade: the upper echelons don't use the drugs.

The central three chapters of the book discuss each trait in detail, with examples from a number of groups. There are also counterexamples, such as the Amish. They excel in impulse control, but promote humility rather than superiority, and also promote a feeling of security both in the community and in God's favor. They don't care for the material success that motivates the rest of America, but in many ways, and by their own standards, they are succeeding very well indeed. I suspect the average Amish elder sleeps better at night than most titans of American industry. Thus I suspect they also fit the model, on their own terms. They have the hope of God's eternal blessing, and do not expect any others to reap it, and they are a somewhat persecuted minority, who have had to defend their practices and particularly their anti-military-service stance frequently.

In an overview chapter, the authors specifically set aside Education as a part of the package. It is easy to see why, as the nation is full of educated fools. But I'd argue that love of literacy, if not schooling, is a requisite. A genius who grew up without learning to read well is not likely to succeed nearly as well as a well-read person of somewhat lesser gifts. Getting educated, whether schooled or self-taught, is a hallmark of self control.

The authors also discuss the pathology of the over-driven. If all your life you could never be good enough, then when you earn your millions, you may not enjoy them much. In one segment of Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor limned a man and his son. The man was coach of a town baseball team. He was incapable of giving praise. One day, the oldest son performed some spectacular play on the field. Then he walked over and stood in front of his father, just looking at him. The old man didn't even look at him. After about a minute, the son walked off and was not seen again. So we are left with the question, what price success? No answer, but I suspect the Amish might have one, in their laconic way.

The book's title mentions not just rise, but also fall. There is the proverb, "It is three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves." The English who built this country are now disparaged as "Anglos" by strengthening minority groups such as certain Latino groups. The Jews may even have reached their zenith and are moving to the background. We'll see if the Chinese and other Asians carry on for another decade, or longer, but they also will inevitably lose their edge.

The aim of the book emerges in the last chapter. America itself began as a Triple Package culture, and succeeded incredibly, for two centuries. This was initially a general phenomenon. Then the unprecedented freedom of the American system allowed group after group to enter and prosper, even as formerly prominent groups declined. Thus America as a whole continued to boom.

This is still going on, as we see in the growing success of Asians, for example. But other groups have begun to fade. Had such a book been written a century ago, much would have been said about the success of the English, still strong and riding high on Puritan prosperity. Not so much today. I recently saw a special about the space program, and noted the predominance of Italian names among the astronauts, who were mostly in their 40s and 50s. The prior generation had been Armstrong, Shepard and Glenn, and the next, now in their 20s and 30s, tend to be almost anything except English, or even Euro-American.

Well, the pendulum swings, both ways. The overly prim Victorian period was followed by the permissive Roaring Twenties, then the Depression and the "good life" years that followed WW2, during which frugality was the rule…until another permissive swing that began in the late 1960s. This latter swing has about run its course. Can there fail to be a backlash against the incredible problems which have emerged after 2008? President Obama is not to blame for them all, but will get the blame in many people's minds, particularly during the 2016 election cycle. And, I believe many Americans who still value "American exceptionalism", a sense that one could always do better, and are willing to study more and save more and borrow less or not at all, will prevail. Will the post-Millennial generation be more like Victorians, or more like the Flappers? Time will tell, and America's prominence, or lack thereof, will follow.

The largest commonplace book

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, compendia, miscellanies

This post's title refers not to the book but to its source. Do you know what a commonplace book is? The term first appeared in print about 1750, and is still in use, but is primarily found in historical diaries. Starting during the Enlightenment in Europe, nearly every literate person (usually male) had a book of blank pages that he carried with him. When reading, he would copy into the book any interesting or clever or apt item. I've read references to their use in the biographies of Newton, Franklin and Faraday, among others. Keeping a commonplace book is a particularly effective means of self-education, and was the only education Michael Faraday had – and he became the premier scientist of his day. (This blog serves as one part of my own commonplace book)

John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, and James Harkin took up the practice years ago, and brought it into the modern era by putting everything into a computer database. Their compendium, accessible at qi.com, is enormous, by their own report, but they don't say just how big. They host a show in Britain called Quite Interesting, where their factoids are used in a variety of ways. Now they have a book, 1,227 Quite Interesting Facts to Blow Your Socks Off.

The rationale for selecting 1,227 items seems to derive from the first in the book:

Asteroid

1,227

is called Geranium

Well, why not? It is one of the more fetching names to have been bestowed on an asteroid.

At the QI website, you can get background information to verify the items, which are as condensed as the writers could make them and still be meaningful and intelligible. As I read, I picked 7 that I'll comment on, for various reasons. From p. 53:

Fidel Castro

estimated that he saved

ten working days a year

by not bothering to shave.

That's likely. You can reckon the figure two ways:

1. A working day is 8 hours. 80 hours is 4,800 minutes. Castro's time to shave is then 4,800/365 = 13.15 minutes.
2. Also possible: 10 full days of 1,440 minutes each. That comes to three times as long, or 39.5 minutes.

Fidel Castro must have been a rather slow shaver, or perhaps he shaved twice a day until he quit doing it. I shave in 5-7 minutes. As I've gotten older, my beard growth has slowed, so I seldom shave more than 3-4 times a week. That comes to about 1,100 minutes yearly, just under 2.3 working days.

By the way, slower beard growth is from reduced testosterone production as I enter my late 60s. Considering the troubles I had in younger days, "low-T" is a blessing! I still produce enough testosterone to keep my head bald (loss of all "T" would allow my hair to grow luxuriantly).

A pair of items from p. 102, that I'll count as one:

Neutrinos are 100,000 times

smaller than electrons,

but there are so many of them

that they may outweigh

all the visible matter in the universe.

If an atom were the size

of the Solar System,

a neutrino would be the size

of a golf ball.

I at first thought that the word "smaller" ought to be "lighter", because the electron is considered to be a point mass with zero radius. But the neutrino has a rest mass no greater than 0.14 eV, while the electron's rest mass is 512,000 eV, or some 3.6 million times greater. So let us suppose size really is meant. Of course, the electron does have to have a nonzero radius. The classical (non-quantum) radius is related to the ratio of its mass and charge, and comes to 2.82 fm (femtometers). However, quantum electrodynamic calculations indicate it can have a radius no greater than about 1/58,000 of this. It requires a quantum law not yet discovered to keep the charge confined to this volume (or less) without either a catastrophic collapse or a catastrophic explosion. At any rate, I found references that place the maximum radius of a neutrino all over the map, from about 3/4 that of the electron to 1/154. Accepting the latter figure, a maximum neutrino radius might be about 0.00000032 fm.

Now, an atom of neutral iron has a radius of 126,000 fm, so the ratio is very near 4x10¹². Picking Neptune's orbit at 4.5 billion km the neutrino's maximum size would be 0.0011 km, or about 1.1 meters. That's about 26 times the size of a golf ball, so the QI reference must be positing a neutrino "size" in a range close to a billionth of a femtometer. Maybe.

This one appeals to the geologist in me (p. 119):

There is no known scientific way

of predicting earthquakes.

The most reliable method is

to count the number of missing cats

in the local paper: if it trebles,

an earthquake is imminent.

This method is pretty good in countries where cats are kept as pets. In more than half the world, cats are eaten, and it is more likely that unrest among elephants or other sensitive domestic creatures is a better measure.

I've seen this with alligators (p. 142):

A hammerhead shark

can be rendered completely immobile

for 15 minutes by turning it over

and tickling its tummy.

A caveat here: The alligator wrestlers I talked to say not to try it with a gator heavier than half your weight, and only if you are exceptionally well muscled. I suspect that goes for the shark also. Adult hammerheads weigh half a ton or more. How do you turn one over???

Sad but true (p. 163):

The US has only 5%

of the world's population,

but almost 25%

of its prison population.

Kinda puts a dent in the whole notion of "Land of the free"…

This is one you can have all kinds of mathematical fun with (p. 212):

Crime, disease, and average

walking speed increase by 15%

as a city doubles in size.

This must refer to measurements of a single city over time. Otherwise, consider cities such as Rapid City, SD (currently, about 70,000) and Chicago (2,700,000+). I sidestepped NYC because one could argue that each borough ought to be treated separately. Those two population points represent about 5.25 doublings. Let's just use 5. The fifth power of 1.15 is very close to 2.0. I can readily believe that crime and disease rates in Chicago might be twice what they are on Rapid City (where I've lived), but walking speed? Even a country mosey is some 2.5 mph or about 4 kph. Is it really possible that Chicagoans zip along the sidewalks at 5 mph / 8 kph? Not hardly. I've been there also, and they don't.

And last, but by no means least (p. 305):

Wars kill more civilians

than soldiers: in a war,

the safest place to be

is usually in the army.

Here, context is everything. Where is the war and which set of civilians are we talking about? A nation's active military force is typically less than 1% of its population. It may be true that the number of civilian deaths is greater than the number of military deaths, in any particular war. But the death rate? Not hardly!! The only major war fought on US soil was the Civil War in the 1860s. Close to half a million civilians died. There were about 200,000 combat deaths of soldiers. Even in this, our bloodiest war in terms of American civilian casualties, it was way, way safer to be a civilian.

That's what I like about a book like this. I suppose I am a rather rare sort, who can get great enjoyment from dictionaries, encyclopediae, and factoid collections such as this one. The material is so thought-provoking! Great job, QI guys! (and all your elves and other helpers)

15 internal revelations

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, essays

My wildcard book this time is Sister Mother Husband Dog by Delia Ephron. I thought the surname looked familiar. Ms Ephron's sister is Nora Ephron, the screenwriter for When Harry Met Sally and a number of other films. Delia Ephron wrote the script for You've God Mail and a number of others, and the sisters collaborated a few times, most notably with the stage play Love, Loss, and What I Wore.

But Delia, in particular, writes books also and this is her latest. She opens with a sweet-sad rumination on the death of her sister Nora two years ago. In the other 14 essays, she does indeed write about her husband and dog, but when it comes to Mother, well, she writes about how hard it is to write about her mother, given that the relationship was so very difficult, and she is shy of speaking too ill of the dead (but found it hard to speak well of her).

For me, her joy at living in Manhattan came through many of the pieces, and nudged me a bit from my loathing for the place. I don't like cities in the first place—a few years in Los Angeles, the city not a suburb thereof, made sure of that—and while I like to visit NYC or LA or Philly or DC on occasion, I am quite happy living in suburban or rural locales, thank you.

She is a particularly apt chaser of linked ideas (I call it "chasing rabbits"). In "Bakeries" she muses on the notion of having it all, and how we can't, no matter how we define "All". This leads her to what "All" might mean, say, to an urban schoolgirl in the Mideast, where avoiding rape or stoning on the way home from school is having it all.

Having opened with an ode to Nora, she closes with "Collaboration", with its core the co-development of Love, Loss, and What I Wore over a span of 13 years, surrounded by a flurry of vignettes about other collaborations, not all with Nora. In all the essays, she is not afraid for us to see a flawed person who has struggled to rise above early errors and current phobias. Her example may help many of us outgrow our useless neuroses.

P.S. All caught up on my reviews. Stitches removed a few days ago, finger still sore, but I can type with all 10 again. Just gotta keep it short for a while yet.

Converting a cancer to a treatable chronic condition

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, medicine, cancer, genetics

In 2001 a new cancer drug, the first genetically-informed, targeted therapy agent, was approved in the US, Gleevec (or Glivec overseas). It was initially created to turn CML, Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, from a certain sentence of death into either a curable condition or one that a patient could live with. The substance has proven useful for several leukemia varieties and four or five other cancer syndromes. It works by deactivating a kinase (an energy transfer protein) that runs wild due to a specific genetic error. To date, it is the only targeted therapy substance that is anywhere near so effective. Patients who can tolerate the side effects (hey, if death is the alternative, I could tolerate a lot!) are not cured, but can live with the cancer for many, many years.

The chain of circumstance that led to Gleevec is exceptionally complex and convoluted, and the story is well told in The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level by Jessica Wapner. The Philadelphia chromosome was first seen in 1959. This refers to a shortened chromosome 22, and later it was found that the missing piece gets moved to the end of chromosome 9. The result is that two genes (or more accurately, protein coding regions) get jammed together and produce a very oversized kinase that ramps up cell energy use and turns it into a malignant cancer. Gleevec plugs the active site of the kinase, effectively silencing it. Cells that contain the mutation soon die.

I did not count, but many, many people were involved during the 42 years from the discovery of the abnormality until a clinical substance was produced and accepted for treatment by the FDA. I got this impression: something like 200 talented people putting together a 100,000 piece puzzle, where they first have to scour the countryside to find the pieces. And during final stages of the clinical trials, about a metric ton of the agent had to be produced to treat hundreds, then thousands, of patients for several months.

It is a good thing that Gleevec is useful for several conditions. The initial market for it was just a few thousand people. It was really hard for the researchers to get company buy-in to test the drug because it seemed they'd never recoup the research costs (say, a quarter billion dollars). As it is, staying alive with CML and its sister conditions costs more than $90,000 per year. This is the epitome of something Lewis Thomas once wrote about, that prevention is dirt cheap, most cures range from kinda cheap to affordable, but chronic care will break the bank.

Ms Wapner writes that the story has more characters than a Russian novel. That may be an understatement. I suspect Gleevec is the low-hanging fruit of genetic therapies, however. It involves a mutation you can see in a light microscope, and a protein that is comparatively easy to plug up. Cancer is proving a very tough, and costly!, nut to crack.

Writing is getting better again

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, collections, magazine writing

In past years I've read the O. Henry Awards collections of "best stories", but this year I couldn't find one. I did find The Best American Magazine Writing 2012, edited by Sid Holt, and that will have to do. The volume features 27 pieces by 19 writers from a broad selection of American literary magazines.

Several of the longer pieces are investigative-journalistic in nature. An example is "The Apostate" by Lawrence Wright. Nearly all the articles are, to various degrees, journalism. I was pleased to see that these articles have very little editorial content or tone, compared to much of today's "journalism" (Editors of newspapers and news journals have mostly ceded editorializing to their writers, and very little true journalism is to be found). Only one piece is fictional, "The Hox River Window" by Karen Russell. As all the best fiction does, it puts you into a place and time, in this instance, the sod-hut culture of the homesteading era.

I had a bit of trepidation embarking on this volume. I have been severely put off by literary writing in the past few decades, finding it either boring or shrill. I hardly read literary journals any more. I suspect most of the writing is still the same, but Mr. Holt and his fellows have gathered examples of writing that makes a fellow glad he read them.

Silent for a reason

kw: personal notes

This will have to be short. I've finished a couple of books, but the reviews will have to wait a bit longer. I was injured a week ago and have been unable to type effectively. Eight sutures near the tip of one finger. I just took out the sutures last evening, so maybe in a few more days I can type without risking a pop-open. To the hundred or so people who have been following along, sorry for the delay and thanks for reading.

This fellow REALLY knows how to chase a rabbit

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, words, wordplay, etymology

Herewith, my own definition:

To chase a rabbit - to follow a series of associations, particularly as they lead in unexpected directions. Particularly applies to rambling discussions.

The above is a pretty good metaphor for a bull session. Bull, of course, being short for bullshit, and both parts of that word have their roots and uses, both together and separate, and so forth. However, The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth (AKA The Inky Fool) is a far deeper chase through brambles and weeds than I am competent to pursue. As the subtitle says, the work is circular, beginning and ending with the question of whether one can turn up a book (you can't).

Looking back, I find that the author could have closed the loop in a number of places. He is one who prefers to keep the rabbit running as long as possible, or at least until a specified word count is achieved. The 113 chapters cover 259 pages, plus another 19 of quizzes and other arcana. I think it most useful to pick 3 spots at random (and an easy cop out):

• p 27 – The phrase we find is letting the cat out of the bag, which actually has to do with someone trying to sell a pig in a poke (sack). You avoid being scammed by peeking inside, and seeing there is no pig, you let the cat out. But this was a side path in a discussion of archery, and the term point blank. No one should be surprised to know that blank in this case derives from blanc, or white in French. White is the color of the bullseye. If you are standing close enough to the target, you can hit the center without aiming high to account for gravity: you point right at it because you are at point blank range. The term bullseye is not followed, but could lead along an interesting path.
• p 58 – This begins a discussion of three names related to "justice", loosely construed, and their relation in particular to capital punishment. The names are Guillotin, Derrick, and Jack Robinson. We find that Thomas Derrick was a thoroughly bad man whose death sentence was commuted on the condition that he become the executioner for the Earl of Essex. The gallows is also called a derrick in his "honor", and the word is now applied to various kinds of lifting structures. Jack Robinson has several variously plausible sources, but the most likely is that Sir John Robinson, constable of the Tower of London, carried out executions with great efficiency, getting them over with so quickly that it was said you couldn't say "Jack Robinson" between the time you were called out and your head rolled. The final part of executions got even quicker when the mild Dr. Guillotin was placed on a commission to reform executions. Having seen a German head-chopping blade, he told his colleagues that if executions had to be done, that machine would do it best. Now even the Germans call it the guillotine.
• p 247 – The word amateur, which means lover, and why love is zero in tennis. If the gentleman who created lawn tennis had had his way, it would be distinguished from hard-court tennis by being called sphairistike, which rhymes with "very sticky". We've been spared, at least in part because tennis players didn't know enough Greek to figure out the pronunciation. But then, love? Because if you do something for love, you'll do it for nothing. I still don't like it (and the entire love-15-30-40 sequence, which makes no numeric sense, because you have to win on an advantage anyway, after winning at least 3 serves).

Now if you can't imagine how the Inky Fool gets from any of these points to the others, do just read the book. Great fun!

Mary's monster also is a product of his times

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, literature, history, biographies, gothic horror

A favorite recreation during the Age of Enlightenment was attending scientific and philosophical lectures and demonstrations. Late in the period, popular fancy shifted towards anatomy and dissections. Then, as Volta and Faraday and others were elucidating the nature of electricity, the experiments of Galvani on dismembered frogs led to a huge interest in using electricity to resuscitate the dead. It wasn't long before dissections were accompanied by electrical demonstrations upon corpses, which temporarily restored certain kinds of activity, and seemed on the verge of restoring life.

The great demand for corpses led to multitudes of "resurrection men", grave robbers who sold corpses to doctors and demonstrators, even as morticians employed by the better-off struggled to invent devices to prevent the extraction of bodies from coffins and mausoleums. It was only in the 1830s, after some such as William Burke and William Hare in Edinborough and John Bishop and Thomas Williams in London were convicted of murdering indigents and prostitutes to feed the trade in corpses, that an Anatomy Act was passed in Parliament, and later in other nations. Under such an atmosphere, and with many stories on such themes already in print, it was simply a matter of time until someone would write the ultimate horror story of obsession, grave robbing, galvanism and scientific hubris.

Also in such an atmosphere, the gloomiest of the gloomy seemed to gather themselves around one Percy Shelley, such that on a stormy night in a poorly-kept inn near Lake Geneva, he and others, including the supremely dissolute Lord Byron and Shelley's mistress Mary Godwin, passed the time by embarking on a challenge to write the best "ghost story". Mary began to write a short story, but then spent a number of weeks writing a book, which after a bit of struggle was published as Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus.

The tenor of the early 1800s and the attitudes and personae of the Shelley/Godwin circle are ably captured in Roseanne Montillo's biography of Mary, The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece. The book is based on epic amounts of research into the lives, not only of the Shelleys and Byron, but everyone associated with them and those who formed the milieu in which they moved, the atmosphere of their minds.

Mary and Shelley married a few months after returning from Geneva to London, after Shelley's wife killed herself. Six years later he died in a boating accident, aged not quite 30. Their association lasted but 8 years. Yet it was a productive period for them both. Percy Bysshe Shelley is still considered the finest lyric poet of the English language. Pity that lyric poetry is about a century out of style; he is nearly unknown today.

I cannot recall anyone mentioned in the book who lived anything like a usual life span, as we consider it today. With child and infant mortality in the 50% range, and adult longevity somewhere in the 50s or less, people seemed to pack more into the years that they had.

If you combine everything from all the films with "Frankenstein" in their title, you'll have less substance than you'd find by reading Mary Shelley's novel. Far, far from the grunting horror of the original film, Mary's creature, produced and vivified by Victor Frankenstein, became literate and well spoken, but he was so badly made (V.F. was no artist!) that he was horrible to look upon. Driven out by all who saw him, his only friend was blind. I, and many of my contemporaries have read Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. I wonder if anyone under about 40 years of age has done so. If you haven't read Frankenstein, read that first. Then come back and read The Lady and Her Monsters. It will mean a great deal more. Oh, and if you don't know why Prometheus is important, at least a nodding acquaintance with Greek mythology is in order.

War from the inside

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, soldiers, war, war stories, memoirs

CJ stands for Crazy Jay, whose civilian name is Dillard Johnson. With the help of James Tarr, he has produced a memoir: Carnivore: A Memoir by One of the Deadliest American Soldiers of All Time. According to an official U.S. Army study titled On Point, his team of about six scored about 3,000 KIA (killed in action) against Iraqi military and paramilitary forces, just in the first weeks of the Iraq war beginning in March, 2003, operation Iraqi Freedom. The facts, corroborated by numerous interviews, emphasize the combination of superior armor and weapons, fighting skill and training, and a lot of great good luck. "Carnivore" is the name Johnson's team gave to their Bradley Fighting Vehicle, a 25-ton mini-tank.

I seldom read war memoirs. Most are simply chest-beating bragging. Somehow, when I saw this book, I couldn't pass it up, and I am glad I read it. War truly is hell, the scenes after battles are truly hellish, and it is amazing that men can enter hell and return with any semblance of sanity. I am not disturbed by reading that about 1/3 of combat veterans have symptoms of PTSD (we used to call it "shell shock"). I am instead astounded that 2/3 of them can return home and get on with their lives, not unscathed, of course, but not disablingly damaged.

Early in the book, Johnson describes getting into Iraq, which was defended by berms along the border with Kuwait. He says you can see them on Google Earth, and indeed you can. The only set of imagery GEarth has is from July 2006, as seen here. This is south of Basrah. For scale, the larger bomb crater is 17.5m across. The yellow line is the border. Note a berm on the Kuwait side also, nearer the road. A third berm, ~350m to the south, is the edge of the UN Peacekeeping Zone prior to 2003. The Iraqi berm has been pierced in many locations, to let through American armor, which at the time consisted primarily of Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. The other two berms also had to be pierced, but not in as many places, as they weren't being defended.

I was tickled by a statement about Johnson's sniping activities later in his career (121 kills). He writes, "In war, if you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck." This goes along with my own attitude, that there is no such thing as a fair fight: Don't get into a fight until you can assure you have the advantage. That is just good tactics.

So I'll leave it at that. Read Carnivore for yourself. You'll be glad you did.

Space Opera redivivus

kw: book reviews, science fiction, space opera, space aliens

Stephen King calls Jack McDevitt "The logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke." Kind words indeed, but just a bit inflated. Nobody has yet come close to the more than 400 books written by Asimov, nor the breadth of vision and versatility of Clarke. However, McDevitt's 21 novels are nothing to sneeze at, and I greatly appreciate his fresh insights into alien species.

Starhawk is the 7th of the Academy series, also called the Priscilla Hutchins series after the protagonist. I read (and reviewed) the 6th volume, Cauldron, in 2008, but don't recall Ms Hutchins being particularly prominent.

In the Galaxy of the Academy series, alien life of any kind is rare, and aliens—so far located—bright enough to have language can be counted on one's thumbs and big toes. The brightest alien species is stunningly boring, but a series of a dozen or so "great monuments" shows that the Universe can produce beings of amazing power, but, apparently, less-than-amazing longevity.

In Starhawk the author explores two ideas of alien contact, one with an automated device that tells them they "just missed us", and another with an apparently planet-wide being that is helpful but indifferent: not hostile, but not interested in being visited long-term either.

The core of the action surrounds Ms Hutchins, who eventually earns the nickname Hutch. A newly-licensed starship pilot, she trying to start a career in a shrinking economy (2007-2012 writ large), in an era of increasing pressure to cut back the space program. Hard choices and a few untimely deaths provide coming-of-age experiences for her. Early on, I had a certain fellow pilot pegged as her eventual mate, but McDevitt outwitted me; the pilot dies attempting to divert a terrorist-controlled starship being used as an impact weapon.

The mix of hard science with just enough blue-sky stuff (like FTL) seems just right to me, and makes for compelling reading. It provides a canvas on which the alien contact stories, the exoarchaeology in which McDevitt likes to indulge, can play across the imagination. I wonder if I can find all five of the Academy books I've missed…

The Market is People

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, statistics, physics, stock markets

A financial market behaves like a small collection of quantum particles. This is my conclusion after decades of investing (sometimes lucky, sometimes not), and reading about them, from The Emergence of Probability and The Taming of Chance by Ian Hacking, to The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb and Beat the Market by Ed Thorp and Sheen Kassouf, and now The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable by James Owen Weatherall. The shine isn't quite off Dr. Weatherall's first PhD yet—it is but half a decade—but already he exhibits a breadth of vision that sets him apart. He actually has two doctorates, in physics and in philosophy, so he has the kind of mind I like, not just thinking outside the box, but leaving all the boxes behind.

So why would he be interested in market analysis? For the same reasons a ton of physicists have had already: that is where the money is. Plus it has the un-ignorable allure of a challenge that is almost impossible, yet not quite. Given that many thousands of smart people have been trying to "beat the market" for, oh, half a millennium at least, a few have gotten rich, at least by chance, but rare indeed are those persons or funds who managed to stay ahead of the pack and get rich by actually betting on predictions that panned out, again and again. A physicist-run hedge fund called Renaissance is claimed to be one of them.

The bulk of the book is a history of statistical thought, as it developed over the past few hundred years, frequently in response to the desire to understand price fluctuations in markets for currency, commodities, or stocks and options of various kinds. The tools used for this began with the Normal (AKA Gaussian) distribution, the familiar Bell Curve. All kinds of additive phenomena obey Gaussian statistics, such as average height for men or women of a given ethnicity, or most famously, IQ. A particular Normally distributed population is completely described by a Mean (µ) and a Standard Deviation (σ). The shape is scalable, wider for large σ and narrow for small σ, but is otherwise fixed, so that 68% of the population is found within the range µ-σ to µ+σ, called the 1-sigma range; and the 2-sigma range encompasses 95% of the population. So, for IQ, at least among Euro-Americans, µ is standardized at 100 and σ at 15. Thus the range [70-130] includes 95% of these folks, and 68% are found in [85-115]. Public education was originally aimed at the 1-sigma group, and the rest were left to fend for themselves, until Special Education and Gifted Education movements arose to help out those in the "tails", whether duller or brighter.

Is the Normal distribution a good model of market fluctuations? Not at all. First, we must realize that human perception is involved. A $1 change in a $10 stock feels just as large as a $5 change in a $50 stock, particularly if you have 500 shares of the first one or 100 shares of the other. Both changes are 10% of your $5,000 investment. The chart below shows the day-to-day change of closing price for Coca-Cola common stock, since the beginning of 1986, expressed as a % of the prior day's closing price.

If we sort these numbers and plot them against a "Probability Ordinate", really an inverse Normal ordinate (I use the NORM.S.INV function in Excel 2010), we would get a scatter plot that closely follows a straight line if the distribution were Normal. But here is what we get instead:

If we extend a line tangent to the central part of the distribution, to -4σ or +4σ, it strikes at a 5% change, indicating that variations greater than this ought to be rare indeed (there are 7,101 daily changes plotted here). But what do we see instead? Going back to the original data sheet, I find 42 days on which the stock increased by 5% or more, up to nearly +20%, and 33 days on which it fell 5% or more, to nearly -25%. How'd you like to own a million shares of this stock and have it lose 1/4 of its value on a single day? So early on, the Normal distribution was found wanting.

Normal analysis was based on the concept of a random walk, also called the drunkard's walk. Its additive nature will always result in a distribution of final locations, say after ten staggers, that is Normal. So a different distribution with extra-wide excursions is needed. In an entertaining section, Dr. Weatherall describes a drunken firing squad. They have a target upon a very long wall, but being too drunk to point well, might shoot in any direction at all. Give them lots of ammunition (and hide somewhere until they run out), and the pattern of bullet holes will follow a Cauchy distribution. It looks a little like the Normal distribution, but has a pointier top, and most importantly, "fat tails"; that is, many points that are farther—or much farther—from the middle than a Normal distribution would predict. The distribution above is also fat-tailed, having lots of numbers outside the range we'd expect from a Normal distribution. To test a distribution for Cauchy behavior, plot it against a Tangent function evenly distributed in the range -π/2 to +π/2. For my 7,101 points, the Tangent function ranges from nearly -5,000 to +5,000, so the chart is thus:

The Cauchy distribution is clearly a bit too much, its tails are "too fat", compared to the tails of Coca-Cola daily price fluctuations. This kind of conundrum was tackled by many bright people, from Fischer Black to Benoit Mandelbrot. Mandelbrot probably came closest with fractal analysis, which wasn't wedded to integer exponents. But I got another thought as I read along.

The Normal and Cauchy distributions are related, being examples of Stable distributions. In one formulation, a parameter called α has a value of 2.0 for a Normal distribution, and a value of 1.0 for a Cauchy distribution. The fattest tails possible are at α=0, the Uniform distribution of infinite width. Mandelbrot had used fractal analysis to calculate a distribution with α of 1.7, closer to Normal but still with a fat tail. I realized that the most familiar distribution with at least one long tail is Lognormal, but it is confined to positive only values. Does it have a complex square root, perhaps? I sorted the squares of the KO daily changes and charted them against a Normal ordinate on a logarithmic scale. But there was a problem. On 245 days there was no change in price. Prior to the 1970s stocks were valued in 8ths of a dollar (12.5¢), and in pennies thereafter, though dividend allocations can be calculated to 0.0001¢ increments. Trades are reported to the nearest cent. Anyway, you can't take the logarithm of zero, so in my spreadsheet I used a value a little smaller than the smallest calculated nonzero value for those 245. They form the line at bottom left on this chart:

If trades were made with a continuous range of values, not limited by the minimum value, I would expect the left portion of the chart to be as linear as the rightmost. Quantization errors have artificially depressed the daily motion for about 15% of the trades. In the other charts, the two extreme values, -25% and +20%, seemed like outliers. Here, as the two rightmost data points, they are seen to be at most slightly larger than one might expect.

So, all you quants out there, working out the best formula for calculating risk. Give a little attention to the square root of the Lognormal distribution! Now, back to the book.

A key theme of the book is both the value and the danger of numerical models. A physicist understands that a model is always simplified, and cannot be appropriately used outside its range of application. When the people using models of financial systems, to set option prices and other instruments, are physicists, they will know this and avoid over-extending the model. People without physics education will not. When you have a black box program that seems to work magic, it is easy to use it everywhere (the parable of the man whose only tool was a hammer comes to mind).

There have been several major crashes in the past century, and only the one in 1929 was free of the influence of sophisticated statistical modeling tools. I say "sophisticated" because there were statistical tools in use a century earlier, but they were back-of-the envelope estimates at best. All of the more recent ones show at least traces of "broken model" influence, but the October 1987 crash was an overt "robo-trading" crash. This brings up another principle that physicists, at least, ought to keep in mind: the observer effect.

I am not just talking about Heisenberg Uncertainty. Rather, most observations of physical phenomena disturb the system being measured. I remember my father telling me not to check the air pressure in my bike tires so often, because each measurement caused some air to be lost. Later, working in electronics (in a time when the components were visible and manipulable by hand) I learned how to use a Wheatstone Bridge to measure DC voltage the most accurately, because it uses a counter-voltage to keep from bleeding extra current from the circuit. It is only good for very steady DC, of course. Thermometers change the temperature of the pot roast, but only a tiny bit; still the effect is not zero. But now imagine that you have half a million people whose livelihood depends on knowing the temperature in your pot roast, and they all insist on using their own thermometer. There won't be much left of the roast! THAT's what happened in October 1987.

The use of new tools changes the way markets work. What worked in September 1987 doesn't work today; what worked in 1997 or 2007 doesn't work now, and so forth. This pretty much negates the notion of an efficient market. It can only be efficient under two conditions:

1. The traders have no supercomputers available.
2. All traders are coldly rational.

Fat chance, right?

The "efficient market" works like this: In comparatively quiet times, the asking price of a stock or whatever incorporates all the current knowledge about things that might affect its value in the future. To profit from trading that instrument, you either guess it might be underpriced, because of unknown or little-known information, or you try to learn something nobody else knows. The most common source of such knowledge is cadging or coercing it out of an insider, which happens a lot even though it is illegal. Quantitative analysis attempts to find patterns in price fluctuations that signal a change you can profit from. When someone finds a useful pattern, he or his company will profit from it for a while, until others catch on, then pretty soon everyone can do it, and the market is "efficient" again. So quants' work is a continual arms race. Thus, the tools used to test the market change the market.

But the markets are not that efficient. In the medium term they might be, but the momentary trading picture is much more emotional, and tiny bits of information or rumor disguised as information can sway a trader's estimate of value. If that trader is influential, and others see him (usually male) make a move they didn't contemplate before, some will follow. It can cascade into a large market move, that might last a matter of an hour or less, but might last a day or more, and then there is the potential for quite a swing, either towards a bubble or a crash.

The fragility of any market lies in the tendency for all the quantitative trading firms to use the same models, or models based on the same math, with the same or very similar trigger points. Certain rules instituted after 1987 can calm the flurry to some extent, but the events of 2007 to early 2009 present a case in which the agony was simply drawn out over the space of more than a year, rather than taking place in a month or less.


With the contents of this book under my belt, I ask myself, "What is the ordinary investor to do?" We don't have supercomputers and armies of physics PhD's running sophisticated options evaluation software, trading 10-a-minute on our behalf. Dr. Weatherall doesn't tell us what to do. It isn't his business to do so. He is instead advocating for a kind of financial Manhattan Project to set an appropriate, physics-based replacement for the Consumer Price Index, whose flaws are politically grounded, very much on purpose (Oh, you thought it was objective?). As I said, his PhD's are still shiny and new. His next PhD needs to be in human nature, particularly the nature of the political human.

In the meantime, if you dare to invest in stocks, the advice of Will Rogers is still the best:

1. Buy a stock.
2. When it goes up, sell it.
3. If it isn't going to go up, don't buy it.

Going beyond the gene

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, genetics, epigenetics, twin studies

You meet a pair of identical twins. They seem really, really identical: they may be dressed the same, they have the same mannerisms, hair style, voice and speech pattern, and so forth. Give it time. Over many experiences you'll learn to tell them apart. One has a mole on the cheek the other doesn't have, or they like different bands or kinds of music or subjects at school. The time will come that you wonder why you ever confused them.

They are a lot alike, truly. But why aren't they more identical? Identical twins arise when a single egg, or an embryo at a very early stage, splits in half. The two individuals that are born are thus a clone (did you know "clone" is a collective noun?)—their genetics are identical. Now, in their lifetimes, each will pick up random mutations, and as many as 100 of these will affect their sex cells and be passed on to their offspring. That's two or three heritable mutations per year of life. Such a mutation may explain the mole on one cheek. But some differences that occur cannot be so simply explained. Are they purely due to random environmental differences (this is the nurture hypothesis)?

Tim Spector researches twins. In his book Identically Different: Why We Can Change Our Genes, he discusses many interesting cases that show just how different the members of a twin clone can be, in spite of having "exactly the same genes." I have a quibble about the book's subtitle. In one way, it is quite accurate, but in another it is very misleading. That is, this is a book about epigenetics, and the mechanisms of epigenetics do make changes to genes, and such changes are often heritable. However, the ACGT sequences are not changed, and epigenetic changes are reversible. A more accurate (but clumsier) subtitle would be Why We Can Change Which of Our Genes are Used.

In all the hoopla surrounding the completion of the Human Genome Project a decade ago, it was not mentioned that we knew nothing about why cells differentiated into tissues. Every cell in your body has the same DNA, the same genes. What makes the cells in the cornea of the eye transparent and silent, while muscle cells are dark brownish red and can quickly change shape? The difference is in which portions of DNA, that is, which genes (and, it is quite certain, which sections of "noncoding DNA" that some folks used to call "junk DNA") are actually used and which are not, by that cell. Tissues differentiate by epigenetically silencing many genes.

Two mechanisms make temporary modifications to DNA to prevent or allow certain genes to operate: methylation and histone modification. Look them up for more detail. In short, methylation can happen quickly, as can demethylation. In methylation a number of -CH3 groups are attached to a section of DNA, which jams the DNA-to-RNA copying mechanism so that gene is not expressed (i.e., not used). In demethylation, they are removed and the gene is active again. In histone modification, larger chemical groups get attached to the "spool" proteins that help DNA wind up so it will fit in the cell nucleus. Some modifications slow down the unspooling needed so the gene can be used, or stop it entirely. This is a slower process. But both kinds of modifications can last a long time, and both kinds can affect sex cells and be passed on to offspring. That means that some changes in DNA expression that occur in your lifetime can be inherited by your children.

This means that Larmarck was partly right! He is widely lampooned for having a "wrong" hypothesis for evolution. Yet we find he was not entirely wrong. In one "natural experiment" described in the book, some of the Dutch people were systematically starved during World War II, during a period of a few months. During that time and for some months afterward, babies were born. Babies of starving mothers were small and grew up smaller than ordinary. What is of interest here is, their own children were also smaller. The effect could be traced several generations in some families. Epigenetic changes that occurred during development in the womb affected the size of children and grandchildren, taking 3-4 generations to be reversed.

In areas that two twins are quite ordinary, they are likely to be very similar. In other areas, not so. For example, a number of twins are discussed in which one member is homosexual and the other is not. In some of these cases, the non-gay twin had tried out homo-sex and didn't like it, and remained heterosexual thereafter. The author considers that the tendency to be attracted to one's own sex is under genetic influence, but that a minor epigenetic difference can push a person one way or the other, in how they are going to live as a result. It is well known that in a prison situation about half of male inmates practice homo-sex (not always so willingly), but there is the other half that do not, and apparently put up sufficient resistance when pressed to avoid it altogether. Most of the half who do so practice, never do "on the outside". They prefer female partners, and resort to male partners only when that's all that is available.

Among "identical" twins, then, there is surprising variability. Sometimes they have different eye colors, more frequently they pursue different careers and may seek out different kinds of marriage partners. One may be musical and the other not. In a late chapter, the author discusses an apparent tendency in nature to maximize diversity. It is a kind of hedge against an uncertain future. This is seen in inbred laboratory mice. They have been inbred on purpose, so as to be a near-clone with many members. Yet in any litter, their personalities differ: one is the boldest, another the shyest, and others more or less active or greedy when eating. Natural epigenetic changes seem to assure that as conditions change, one or a few will be better able to take advantage, or to survive.

Now, can we really, on purpose, make epigenetic changes that will affect our children? One way is to make a radical change in your habits of eating and exercise. If you boost your exercise a great deal, your kids may not be a great deal more muscular, but they might find it easier to "get muscles". For more subtle matters, drug companies are very interested in compounds that will promote either methylation or demethylation of target genes that affect the outcome of a disease or birth defect. It may even be possible to modify our alimentary flora (the bacteria that live inside us, some 10 to 100 trillion of them). The internal flora of a slender person differ from those of an obese person. One doctor is experimenting with "fecal transplants" (an enema of the germs from someone else's bowel), which have cured some people of irritable bowel syndrome, and may be able to change how efficiently food is used. That could make a dent in someone's obesity, if their digestion became much less efficient! It is hard to say at this point, though, if this is an epigenetic change, or if having a different internal population just makes things work differently without epigenetics being involved.

The book is a portent of future things. There may one day be ways to tinker with our epigenetics to make us healthier and happier. Just how much of this we want to take advantage of, is anyone's guess. What seems strange or even threatening to this generation will be commonplace to the next.

One-size education does NOT fit all

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, education, contrarian views, sensibility

A tragedy is slowly unfolding in America. It has been going on for two generations, and will not be easily halted. The fiction that college is for everyone is turning "no child left behind" into "most adults left behind." A university education has become the shibboleth of employment, any employment. In some states such as California, the traditional alternatives to college, vo-tech schools and apprenticeship programs, are vanishing or have been done away with entirely. Thus, millions of kids who really aren't suited to classroom education find themselves wasting time "learning" useless things while amassing huge debt.

Prior to about 1960, perhaps 15% went to college and 3/4 of those obtained at least one degree. Today 2/3 of high school graduates begin college immediately, but only about half (55-58%, depending on the source you read) of those actually finish at any time in their life.

The Wikipedia article Higher Education in the US opens with some telling statements:

"In 2006, 19.5% of the adult population had attended college but had no degree, 7.4% held an associate's degree, 17.1% held a bachelor's degree, and 9.9% held a graduate or professional degree."

"The United States Department of Education did a longitudinal survey of 15,000 high school students in 2002 and surveyed them again in 2012 at age 27. The survey found that 84% of the 27-year-olds had some college education but only 34% achieved a bachelor's degree or higher…"

Adding up the figures in the first statement, in 2006 54% of adults had had some college and 34% obtained at least a 2-year degree. The figures increased a little by 2012, where it was found that 34% (of those age 27) had at least a 4-year degree among 84% who had "some college".

The most significant factor in this change? The Higher Education Act of 1965, which established federal loans for college education. Federal loans and subsidized or guaranteed loans, with little accountability by the schools, have produced a generation bearing massive debt and degrees that are largely useless. Most who staged the Occupy protests of the past few years were unemployed degree holders with debts they have no prospect of paying off.

To quote Bill Bennet, "Our current borrowing mess partly stems from the mentality that pursuit of college is valuable at any cost." This from page 163 of Is College Worth It? by Bennett and David Wilezol. These authors show in detail the troubles that have arisen from a flood of federal money to higher education institutions.

Let's take just one figure to set a background. Just over a third of Americans have a college degree, and if you add a few percent with an associate's degree, it approaches 40%. What kind of work is there for the other 60%? Hmmm? The plain conclusion is, that for the majority of Americans, College is NOT worth it! But let us not forget that for some, college IS worth it. The answer to the book's title is a resounding "It depends."

It is commonly stated that a college degree is worth a million dollars. If you compare the lifetime earnings (44 years from age 18-62) of a high school graduate with no college, to those of a college graduate (40 years of earnings), the graduate will earn an extra million, or on average about $25,000 per year. But this average tells only part of the story. Bennett and Wilezol show the results of "bang for the buck" (AKA "return on investment" or ROI) studies for about 1,200 colleges. The top ten are impressive: on average a $2 million lifetime advantage, after subtracting out the tuition cost. But for the bottom ten, it would be better to invest the $50,000 or so in a mutual fund and leave it alone, because the ROI for the school is negative! A student spent the money (or still owes it) but earned no more than someone with no degree, and for 4 fewer years. Even more, the half who start college but don't obtain a degree are in the worst shape: Debt in the $5,000-$50,000 range, and little if any earnings boost.

Very few get into those top-ROI schools such as Harvey Mudd or Princeton. Fortunately, a table in Chapter 3 (pp 109-110) identifies 40 colleges with a total ROI, factoring in tuition loan repayment and graduation rates, in the range of $300,000-$650,000.

The authors discuss at some length the value of being the kind of student who might get into a top school. It is likely that such persons will succeed whether they attend college or not. They also discuss the stigma of "blue collar" work, yet this is still the foundation of the American middle class. The local plumbers, carpenters and electricians charge quite a bit more per hour than I was paid in my high-falutin' professional job! I just had a couple of guys in to install a new appliance. One was the company owner. No college. A self-made millionaire (owns about 20 rental properties in addition to being a remodeling guru). Lots of fun to talk to. Still working because he likes it, but with solid retirement plans, that involve still more real estate somewhere further south.

I mentioned the collapse of vo-tech education. So far as I know, of the dozens of vo-tech schools in California some 40+ years ago, none remain. Nationwide, the number is under half of what it was. The schools teaching skilled trades are struggling to stay afloat, yet hundreds of thousands of jobs that need their graduates are going unfilled because so many kids have been told and told and told that they need college to get ahead, and are made to feel inferior if they'd prefer a trade.

I could get more into cases, but I suspect it would be redundant. Only about 1/4 of Americans benefit financially from going to college. There are others who benefit in other ways, because the acculturation of university study is broadening. But you can learn "liberal studies" at the library, or by joining a "Great Books" reading club. My Dad wrote a humorous piece and sent it to us when he turned 75, "Why I Didn't Go to College"; it closes with, "I was too busy making money." But he does mention his military years. Becoming a Captain in the Army is worth an MA degree any day! And the Army paid for it.

How to decide if college is right for you? If you didn't enjoy classwork in high school, you won't enjoy it at a university. If there is something you like to do, that people might be willing to pay you to do, where can you learn more about it? At college? Well and good, GO. At a trade school? Go there. Online? Do it! But above all, borrow only as a very last resort. It makes little sense to borrow $50,000-$200,000 so early in life, unless you were admitted to a very elite school with a very high ROI.

The last chapter of the book mentions MOOC's, Massive Open Online Courses. They are becoming a force that just might topple the more problem-ridden colleges, and that is a very good thing. They also open up very high level instruction, at very affordable cost or no cost, to everyone. The Stanford professor who first ran such a course has said that he brings Stanford-level instruction to 100 times as many students as could ever be admitted to Stanford. An increasing number of businesses are partnering with MOOC offerings, seeing the great results they bring.

Finally, you ought to know that the authors' viewpoint is conservative, as is mine. We need a dose of conservatism in higher education; rampant liberalism is responsible for the lack of oversight that led to the failures the book outlines. Ronald Reagan said it best: "When your car spins off the road into the ditch on the Left, you need a tow truck firmly on the Right to pull it back to center." Regardless of your politics, read this book, especially if you are a high school student wondering what to do next.

How Niven would remake us

kw: book reviews, science fiction, nanotechnology

The Goliath Stone, by Larry Niven and Matthew Joseph Harrington, has two protagonists, Toby Glyer and William Connors, AKA Mycroft Yellowhorse and a few other aliases. Connors was an employee to Glyer, became his mentor—working for him was part of a very long range scheme—and created, with Glyer's unwitting help, the "nanites" or whatever you might call them, that refashion humanity.

The novel isn't quite high concept, but nearly everything does revolve around all the possible implications of nanotechnology. Niven has always been at his most creative when collaborating with another strong writer, and the bubbling fountain of ideas he and Harrington have produced seems the fruit of many long bull sessions, with nothing left on the cutting room floor.

Two sets of nanites are in play. Firstly, a mission using them was sent to an Earth-grazing asteroid, in part to deflect it, but more to experiment with asteroid mining. No human design is ever perfect, so there is wiggle room for unexpected evolution among the "operators", which have been programmed to link up and take advantage of parallel processing. Hey, this is SciFi, so of course they develop super-high AI. Secondly, nanobots are secretly (even to Glyer) set loose among humans, and begin to remake them in an image chosen by Connors/Yellowhorse. This super-bright fellow is apparently the only fully ethical person existing; would that such a man could be! Ethics takes some strange turns, however. The new "inner population" can detect certain attitudes, and in extreme cases act on them, so for example, when one psychopath launches a weapon his head explodes.

A concept along another dimension, apparently coined by these authors, is a new title, Soylent. While the foodstuff in the movie Soylent Green was named to imply it was derived from soya and lentils, here Soylents are "activists whose reforms always seem to shorten the lifespans of human beings." This sounds like an excellent coinage, and I hope it gets into the popular vocabulary. Congress, for example, consists almost entirely of such persons, regardless which side of the aisle they sit on. I suspect Yellowhorse's nanites would cause lots of head-exploding after certain congressional votes. One can only wish…

 Something that makes a novel by Niven so riveting is the turns of the plot. You know a novel will be complex when a list of dramatis personae numbers more than 40. Yet the prose helps a reader along so you don't get lost. Where I do get lost is in the flurry of literary references and puns used by the protagonists. There are only so many of these an author can unobtrusively explain, so a few took me some thought. The name Yellowhorse is explained, and is a particularly chilling image.

Niven's writing sometimes rattles my cage, or borders on offending me. But the flow of interesting ideas makes it worth reading anyway.

Veritas liberabit

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, journalism

It has been said in several ways; in the instance I know, a good friend was advised, "A real journalist must be prepared to spend time in jail." Baronet Acton said, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." The logical conclusion is that all those in power are corrupt. It is the experience of any who have in any way embarrassed a powerful person that this is totally true. Of course I understand that being opposed or jailed by officialdom is no proof that you are right. But a lifetime spent as a "journalist" while never ruffling the feathers of the powerful is a certain proof of being, as O'Keefe names such people, an "anti-journalist".

Now, suppose you were to make it your business to be a modern Diogenes (he of the lantern, looking for "an honest man" — one who could gaze without flinching). You shed the light of day upon what you find. Maybe you submit your videos, uncut, to YouTube. What will be the result?

Just ask James O'Keefe, founder of Project Veritas. He has a few years of this under his belt, as he describes in Breakthrough: Our Guerilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy. Since he began practice as a citizen journalist (that is, self-funded), he has spent about half the time under house arrest, and odd bits of time jailed here or there.

From the beginning, O'Keefe and his allies have carried out their investigations without breaking any laws, and recording every bit, and posting every bit, which demonstrates that. For example, while testing the ease of committing voter fraud in several states, none of them ever actually took in hand a ballot offered in response to a carefully worded request in the name of a dead person or of a non-citizen who was registered to vote. In most cases, the operative would say, "Wait while I go back to my car for my passport" or "...driver license" or whatever. They were always (always!) assured, "You don't need that. We take your word." This was true even when one of them approached a poll worker in D.C. and asked, "You got a ballot for Eric Holder?" Offered the ballot, he demurred, and left. Amazingly, Holder (you know, the U.S. Attorney General) later said no law had been broken. That punctured the sails of numerous pompous officials who wanted the operative, and O'Keefe, and anyone else they could get their hands on, "prosecuted to the full extent of the law." That is what such folks say when they have been blindsided.

The breakthrough of the title is described in detail in the closing chapters of the book. Project Veritas folks shined the light of truth on the mainstream media, and found them wanting, found them as corrupt as the governmental officials they had been steadfastly refusing to investigate, even as they persistently hounded O'Keefe and his allies, endlessly recounting crimes that had not actually been committed.

You have to read it to believe it.

This may be who we will be

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, futuristics, technology

Yogi Berra said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yet I love to read books of projection when they are well produced. When you get the former CEO of Google together with the head of Google Ideas together, good production is a given. Good prediction? Perhaps.

Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen are big thinkers, they operate on a big stage, and their book The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business is appropriately wide in scope. Their topics are ourselves, our identities—and all that goes with them—, and the world's nations and their fates under galloping scrutiny. I was relieved to read their focus on people and what people do with technology, rather than a gee-whiz screed on the neat-o things technology is doing.

For a privileged few, greater technology yields a closer and closer approach to a Utopia. It is reasonable to expect increasing good for most people. An unknown proportion of humanity will instead suffer even greater repression: 1984 on steroids. It all makes me wonder whether it will remain possible to keep a low profile, when every profile passes through smart pattern-seeking software. And what patterns will it seek? That is up to the writer(s) and the agency.

People wonder why I, a power user of computers since the 1960s, would keep my "dumb" phone—it makes phone calls and texts, and I don't have a data plan—when I have a desktop supercomputer that I built myself. Well, I know better than to think I have a life as private as the norm of the 1990s or earlier. But I do take steps to mitigate the damage, and I'll leave it at that.

These authors repeatedly state that what humanity does with technology is up to them and thus uncertain, for better or for worse. Yet they go into some detail about just how a repressive state can go into total control freak mode, such as by practically giving smart phones to all, but phones that are preloaded with apps that track and surveil the owner. Yet surveillance can work both ways. Fully half the book delves into the consequences of state failure and chances of reconstruction, after making it clear that better communications make revolution easier, but following up on a revolution even harder.

The loud and clear message is that, particularly in a disruption, communication is primary. One might think you need to first get food and water to refugees in a disaster. You do, but how do you know where they are, and how to make sure the supplies go where they ought? Communication. So the authors recommend erecting cell towers in stage one of any rescue or reconstruction effort. Then it occurred to me: Why not make every Red Cross (or whomever) truck a mini-cell tower or satellite hot spot? Use it to "light up" the few square miles around its location with good communications.

Human ingenuity always transcends the vision of an inventor. No technology is fail-safe, and fail-soft is pretty hard to achieve. New uses are always discovered, and new abuses even more so.

The apocryphal Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times" will now apply more than ever.

Am I interesting enough to write about?

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, writing, memoir

First please note that the keyword above is not "memoirs" but "memoir". The title of Beth Kephart's book Handling the Truth: on the Writing of Memoir should make it clear. The book is not a memoir, but contains advice about writing your memoir. Ms Kephart should know, I suppose; she has written five memoirs.

I recall a time that a person of note (at least to him- or herself) would, upon approaching dotage, retreat "to write my memoirs". It was done once, to cap one's life, to grasp the chance to tell one's own story, perhaps in hopes of having the last word. Fat chance if you're at all controversial, but a nice try!

Times have changed. Now the word is singularized, and "a memoir" can limn events and experiences from any period from a few days to all the life one remembers or can reconstruct. Or—and this interests me most—a memoir might deal with certain kinds of experience throughout a life, leaving other sorts of things to be dealt with in another volume. Thus, in "Part 2: Raw Material", the sections on Photos, Loves, Weather, Landscapes, Songs, Colors, Voices, Tastes, Smells, Possessions and First Memories could each form the core of a separate memoir. Although the author intends these to be woven into a single work, an analytical sort such as I am might do better focusing on one aspect at a time. I particularly like the idea I had upon finishing the book last evening, to collect favorite photos from all eras I've lived through (6.5 decades and counting), to form a core of a memoir.

The essence of the author's work, to which she returns again and again, is the nature of truth and how we handle it (thus the title). I think we have all experienced a bull session with siblings or other relatives, or with classmates or colleagues, in which a dispute arose over some event, and everyone had a different take on what happened. Every memory is partial. Our visual-auditory-sensory-memory system is selective. Our brain's storage system is very capacious, but definitely not infinite. Also, each person has a different perspective, a different angle. In an extreme case, two people standing a few feet apart and looking out the front door will see entirely different scenes. If closer together, so they see some of the same things, each will see things the other does not. Our attention, informed by prior experiences and interests, is like that doorway.

From where I sit, I can, by scanning my visual center, read the titles of most of the thousand or so books in this room. With a little more care, I can discern the serifs and other details that distinguish the hundreds of typefaces used. A photograph with enough detail to enable the same would require some 30-50 million pixels. We don't know how the brain encodes a visual memory, but a good (not extreme) quality JPEG image file would be about 8 Mbytes in size. If we were like super high quality (think Omni Theater) video recorders, a few minutes' worth of visual memory would fill the brain. Most of what we see (99.9% or more!) is filtered out. Now that I have looked away, back at the computer screen, I couldn't tell you the order of the books. I have a pretty good idea where the ones are that I use the most, and that is about it.

Even the more, we often conflate memories. If you've been to a certain villa for vacations ten years in a row, and on one occasion your younger brother needed medical attention, can you be very sure, 20-30 years afterward which of the ten years it was? Your brother may know the most accurately, were he old enough to form stable memories (at least 5) at the time. I remember pulling my younger brother out of a swift river when I was 7 and he was 3. He doesn't remember it. And anyway, it might actually have been the next year. Perhaps my father (in his 90s) might remember the year better, if he remembers which years we visited that particular farm.

So when we discuss past events with others who were there, we need to keep an open mind. Planning to put that event in a memoir? Then do your best to collate all the memories, taking advantage of which person has the strongest interest in accurate recall.

This brings to mind a problem students of the Bible have in making a Harmony of the Gospels, something I have also done. It is an attempt to turn the Gospels into a single historical narrative. Events recorded in two or more of the Gospels are sometimes different in detail. For example, Mark may write of a leper or blind man being healed, where Matthew mentions two lepers or two blind men. Even worse, the healing of Bartimaeus is listed before Jesus entered Jericho in Mark, but afterward in Luke. Some use such "conflicts" to denigrate the accuracy of the Bible as a whole. But consider each writer. Matthew was a tax collector. An expert in accurate counting. If he says Two, it was two. Mark (actually Peter, who told the stores Mark wrote down) focused on one, and may have noticed only one of them. Further, Luke was not an eye-witness. He interviewed people some 30 years later, and put down the stories in the best order he could, but in many cases, he could only use the order in which he got them from others. However, Luke was also a physician, so when he says a certain man had dropsy, you can be sure it was dropsy. The word is used only in his Gospel. He probably asked the eye-witness of details regarding the sick man to make his diagnosis.

OK, you have lots of material, and a great interest in generating a memoir. Now what? The shortest sections of the book involve the mechanics and process. Much more important, to exercise empathy and to have a worthwhile goal. Memoir is art, and we are encouraged, "Seek Beauty". You want your reader to be glad to have read it, even if you are writing only for three family members and no others. Actually, especially when writing for a small audience! Will they be offended? Thus the need for empathy.

Most of all, we are urged to read, read, read. Almost a quarter of the book is a long Appendix in which we find short reviews of more than 70 published memoirs, sorted into categories by aim or subject, recognizing that "the subject" is typically one slightly more prominent than two or three others. I may take Ms Kephart's advice, but as an autodidact, I may not. Just as I find "folk art" (art by nonprofessionals) more satisfying than the classics, the efforts of unschooled writers more frequently have great charm and beauty. If I write any memoir(s), the key question is, Why? Maybe some day soon I'll know.