Two items from the Wall St Journal today.
1. They figure it costs $230,000 to raise a child today. That's without allowing for college tuition. Wow! I raised three children, all the way to adulthood. I didn't keep records so I don't know just what I spent, but somehow I don't think it was as bad $230K per child. Hell, I had to pay $160K per child for college educations. We didn't scrimp, we sent two of them to Westtown School, and one to Buckingham Brown and Nicholls, we took 'em skiing, sent 'em to summer camp. Worth every penny, they all turned out fine, and are a great comfort in my old age.
2. A graph showing US spending on pets, going from just under $30 billion back in 2001 to just over $60 billion today. Again Wow! A second graph broke down 2016 pet spending as $16 billion on vet bills, $24 billion on pet food, and $16 billion on pet medicines and stuff. I have a cat, very nice beast, and I feed it the $3.50 a bag cheapo dry cat food rather than the $12 a bag fancy dry cat food. Cat doesn't seem to care.
I have to wonder if either of those numbers is real.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Monday, January 9, 2017
About that Florida Airport shooter
Apparently the lawyers don't charge anyone with murder anymore. The Florida shooter was arranged in court today and charged with a laundry list of obscure crimes that I had never heard of, not not murder. To my way of thinking, shooting five people dead in baggage claim is five counts of murder. Lawyers of course live in their own little world. They didn't charge Dylan Roof with murder either.
And this perp walked into an FBI office in Alaska and said he was hearing voices in his head. Now that's gotta be a tip off to even the dumbest cop that this suspect has a screw loose. So our valiant FBI, instead of dealing with the matter themselves, passes the buck to the local cops, who take the nut case to a mental hospital. Where some shrink, confronted with a real live homicidal maniac who hears voices in his head, decides he is harmless and turns him loose. They ever give him his gun back. I wonder who that highly trained and experienced shrink was. And why the shrink was unable to recognize a homicidal nut case when presented with one. If we learned the name of this shrink, maybe the next time the shrink will commit the nut case rather than turning him loose. It also would be nice to learn the name of the mental hospital involved. There was a serious screwup here and the society would be better off for castigating those derelict in their duty.
And a final observation. If the passengers at Florida have been allowed to carry heat, they would have saved some lives, maybe not all, but enough.
And this perp walked into an FBI office in Alaska and said he was hearing voices in his head. Now that's gotta be a tip off to even the dumbest cop that this suspect has a screw loose. So our valiant FBI, instead of dealing with the matter themselves, passes the buck to the local cops, who take the nut case to a mental hospital. Where some shrink, confronted with a real live homicidal maniac who hears voices in his head, decides he is harmless and turns him loose. They ever give him his gun back. I wonder who that highly trained and experienced shrink was. And why the shrink was unable to recognize a homicidal nut case when presented with one. If we learned the name of this shrink, maybe the next time the shrink will commit the nut case rather than turning him loose. It also would be nice to learn the name of the mental hospital involved. There was a serious screwup here and the society would be better off for castigating those derelict in their duty.
And a final observation. If the passengers at Florida have been allowed to carry heat, they would have saved some lives, maybe not all, but enough.
The paperwork isn't done
So Congressional democrats are saying on TV this morning, regarding the men and women Trump has picked for his administration. And who need "advice and consent" of the Senate.
Of course, the paperwork is never done. Bureaucrats and Congresscritters always invent more paperwork. Was I a democrat, I'd be inventing new paperwork to slow things down and new hoops to jump thru.
Of course, the paperwork is never done. Bureaucrats and Congresscritters always invent more paperwork. Was I a democrat, I'd be inventing new paperwork to slow things down and new hoops to jump thru.
Sunday, January 8, 2017
The reproducibility crisis in science
American scientists pour forth a formidable Niagara of scientific papers every year. Generous federal research money, grants, and the pressure on university professors to publish or perish, help to increase the flow of papers.
Unfortunately, a high percentage of this flood of papers, cannot be reproduced. When other scientists attempt to obtain the same results in their lab, they cannot do it. The results claimed in the paper simply cannot be reproduced by others. In science, if the results cannot be reproduced, they must be considered quackery. Not science but B***S***.
I experienced the reproducibility problem myself some years ago. Working on a new medical device product, I consulted the literature looking for ways to do what we needed to do. I found one, it did what we needed, and I coded it up. And it worked. It's just that it didn't work as well as the author claimed. In fact my realization of the process was exactly 50% low. The author had claimed twice the performance I was able to obtain in our lab. Eventually I telephoned the author to ask him for advice. After a few minutes of conversation, the author somewhat sheepishly admitted that he had left out a factor in his computations, and yes, the algorithm only worked at half the claimed performance. Damn. After wasting a good deal of time, I would have done better using the standard Huffman coding algorithm.
And, just the other day, the Wall St Journal ran an op ed claiming that all the important medical advances have been made by privately funded research at the big drug companies. National Institute of Health funding, although ample, had not produced anything of clinical use.
Somebody ought to do a study of the effectiveness of federally funded research. Go back a lot of years. Tot up the amount of money spent, the number of papers published, and the number of products based on one of the papers that actually made it to market.
Unfortunately, a high percentage of this flood of papers, cannot be reproduced. When other scientists attempt to obtain the same results in their lab, they cannot do it. The results claimed in the paper simply cannot be reproduced by others. In science, if the results cannot be reproduced, they must be considered quackery. Not science but B***S***.
I experienced the reproducibility problem myself some years ago. Working on a new medical device product, I consulted the literature looking for ways to do what we needed to do. I found one, it did what we needed, and I coded it up. And it worked. It's just that it didn't work as well as the author claimed. In fact my realization of the process was exactly 50% low. The author had claimed twice the performance I was able to obtain in our lab. Eventually I telephoned the author to ask him for advice. After a few minutes of conversation, the author somewhat sheepishly admitted that he had left out a factor in his computations, and yes, the algorithm only worked at half the claimed performance. Damn. After wasting a good deal of time, I would have done better using the standard Huffman coding algorithm.
And, just the other day, the Wall St Journal ran an op ed claiming that all the important medical advances have been made by privately funded research at the big drug companies. National Institute of Health funding, although ample, had not produced anything of clinical use.
Somebody ought to do a study of the effectiveness of federally funded research. Go back a lot of years. Tot up the amount of money spent, the number of papers published, and the number of products based on one of the papers that actually made it to market.
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Words of the Weasel Part 50
"Anti-Zionism". Lefties use this word to describe their feelings about Israel. But in the real world, it means the same as antisemitism. Nobody wants to admit to antisemitism in this day and age, so they thunk up a new word that they hope isn't as offensive, while still meaning antisemitism.
Friday, January 6, 2017
Shed a tear for Sears Roebuck
The Wall St Journal reports that Sears is selling its Craftsman brand of tools to Stanley/Black & Decker. And Sears is selling off a bunch of stores, both Kmart and Sears, and borrowing wads of money. Sounds like poor old Sears Roebuck is not long for this world. Too bad. Way back when, (1950's) Sears was the biggest US retailer, with good big stores in every town and every mall. Back in the day, Sears was best known as a hardware store, Craftsman tools and Kenmore kitchen appliances. As a young hot rodder in the the 50's, when I had a 1/2" drive Craftsman socket set and sets of Craftsman wrenches (open end, box end and combination) I was set in the tool department. Craftsman was a good as you could get, with the famous "You break it and we will replace it free" guarantee. In my home shop today, most of my tools, hand and power, are still Craftsman, many of them still running happily and going on 50 years old.
Dunno what happened to Sears to sink it so deep. I suppose a lot of Walmart's and Target's and Lowes' and Home Depot's growth has been at Sears expense. Sears used to sell nothing but house brands, Craftsman,m Diehard, and Kenmore being as well regarded as anything on the market, with J.C. Higgins, Silvertone, Homart, and Dunlap being not so great. Sears used to give a lot of floor space to clothing, but I never remember Sears clothing being all that cool.
Somewhere I suppose there is a business book describing how Sears went down the drain, but I haven't seen it.
Dunno what happened to Sears to sink it so deep. I suppose a lot of Walmart's and Target's and Lowes' and Home Depot's growth has been at Sears expense. Sears used to sell nothing but house brands, Craftsman,m Diehard, and Kenmore being as well regarded as anything on the market, with J.C. Higgins, Silvertone, Homart, and Dunlap being not so great. Sears used to give a lot of floor space to clothing, but I never remember Sears clothing being all that cool.
Somewhere I suppose there is a business book describing how Sears went down the drain, but I haven't seen it.
Thursday, January 5, 2017
Cyber Hacking Congressional Hearing.
It was carried live on Fox News. We had Sen John McCain, Whatshisface Director of National Intelligence and a cast of 1000's. After three hours, nobody had said anything important, or even in real English. They all agreed that we need more cyber security without ever mentioning Windows, the OS with a big "Hack Me" sign taped on its back. Thanks Micro$oft.
And we have Obamacare forcing doctors to computerize patient's medical records so that they can be hacked more easily.
And we have Obamacare forcing doctors to computerize patient's medical records so that they can be hacked more easily.
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