Treat all those who cheat the public like crooked locksmiths

Here is an MSNBC feature on locksmiths who cheat people who call them in emergencies when they are locked out of their homes. This news piece follows a tried and true formula for creating a good memorable story: It vividly exposes an unscrupulous practice, and then turns the camera on the perpetrators as they try to slink away. To tell the complete story, the producers included the fact that there are honest people in the trade (in this case, honest locksmiths); locksmiths can make a living while giving people a fair shake.

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Why, then, don't networks treat all of those who lie, cheat and steal with comparable scrutiny? What I have in mind are Wall Street Banks, telecoms, fossil fuel industries, healthcare insurers, the defense industries and other powerful entities who have purchased Congress and then made certain that industry reform is impossible. These industries have driven out competition and/or figured out how to freely feed out of the public trough. They've been gouging consumers, directly and indirectly, in ways that make the crooked fees charged by locksmiths look like chump change. Consider this recent article by Matt Taibbi, illustrating how big banks are cheating taxpayers. Consider also how Barack Obama's promise of an expanded industry of energy conservation and sustainable energy production would be a centerpiece of his Administration. Though he has done some good things, has also opened up large tracts of Western lands to coal mining and providing much more funding to nuclear and fossil fuel than to green alternatives. This is one of many of Obama's broken promises-- somehow, indefinite warmongering against undefined enemies is somehow much more important that having a sustainable economy back home. And even after "health care reform," people who had health insurance are struggling mightily to pay uncovered medical bills, many of them tipping over into bankruptcy. Payday lenders run rampant across the country. A few months ago, telecoms almost succeeded in destroying what is left of net neutrality. These sorts of thing don't just happen; powerful people are consciously making these terrible decisions, and they (including most of our politicians) are motivated by money, not public service. I fear that one of the main reasons we are cleaning up these industries is that too many Americans are math challenged -- they suffer from innumeracy. And most Americans would flunk a basic test on American civics and history. Foxes run rampant in the American hen house. One would need to spend some serious time thinking about the effects of lack of competition in order to appreciate how much the public is being fleeced, but Americans are highly distracted with TV and other forms of entertainment. Another hurdle is that big media is owned by big companies and serves big industries by selling them commercials. Thus, we don't see constant aggressive journalism illustrating how the public is being ripped off by many (by no means all) big businesses. Don't expect the journalism to get better, especially for the reasons outlined by John Nichols of Free Press. Expect things to get worse, in light of the fact that this week the FCC proposed a new set of rules that would unleash a wave of media consolidation across the country. If the agency's proposal sounds familiar, that’s because it’s nearly identical to rules the FCC proposed during the Bush administration. This proposal is especially scandalous for the reasons stated here. An additional hurdle to getting these stories out is to make them simple and memorable stories, but this is quite a challenge. These industries have successfully complexified themselves--it now takes "experts" (including teams of lawyers) to understand how these industries function. Ordinary people don't have much of a chance of even articulating how and why they are getting ripped off, much less understanding what can be done to fix the problems. Complexity is not an accident--it is a tactic. Consolidating the mass media isn't simply happening--it is a tactic of big business to maintain control, as are recent attempts to give private businesses the power to shut down internet domains without a court order. There is no incentive for the mass media to excoriate those behind any of these proposals. There is little to no incentive for big media to descend on those behind these movements as though they were crooked locksmiths. If only.

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Proof that every American is a criminal

Bad news from Scientific American: We all produce marijuana-like chemicals in our brains. Therefore, all of us need to turn ourselves in and spend time in prison.

[Marijuana] is also something everyone is familiar with, whether they know it or not. Everyone grows a form of the drug, regardless of their political leanings or recreational proclivities. That is because the brain makes its own marijuana, natural compounds called endocannabinoids (after the plant's formal name, Cannabis sativa).
For some serious criticism of the alleged "war on drugs," see this recent post.

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The coming accidental war with Iran

According to Lyric Hughes Hale, the United States is working hard to cultivate a climate of ignorance that will heighten suspicions about Iran and put us on a hair-trigger:

[Author Trita] Parsi faults Obama for allowing the same neoconservatives who brought us the war in Iraq to frame the Iran debate as well, for not creating "a new metric of success in our dealings with Iran." He quotes Albert Einstein: "You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time".
There are alternatives to war with Iran. For instance, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) offers this alternative:
NIAC opposes war with Iran because military conflict would imperil a democratic future for Iran, devastate Iran’s democracy and human rights movement, undermine U.S. national security, and strengthen hardliners in Iran’s government. NIAC supports a policy of persistent strategic engagement with Iran that includes human rights as a core issue and addresses American and regional security concerns.

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A day at the zoo

Yesterday, my daughter and I visited the Saint Louis Zoo. The idea was to have some fun shooting photos of the animals. The day was overcast and cool and many of the animals were active. I shot each of these photos using a Canon S95 pocket camera. Gallery of ten photos below (hit "full size image" for correct aspect ratio). [gallery]

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The frustrating scientific method

I just finished reading an excellent article by Jonah Lehrer of Wired: "Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up." The article focuses on the scientific method. We all know that science makes steady progress as it spins its ideas and conducts experiments, right? Wrong.

Science is a deeply frustrating pursuit. Although the researchers were mostly using established techniques, more than 50 percent of their data was unexpected. (In some labs, the figure exceeded 75 percent.) “The scientists had these elaborate theories about what was supposed to happen,” Dunbar says. “But the results kept contradicting their theories. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to spend a month on a project and then just discard all their data because the data didn’t make sense.” Perhaps they hoped to see a specific protein but it wasn’t there. Or maybe their DNA sample showed the presence of an aberrant gene. The details always changed, but the story remained the same: The scientists were looking for X, but they found Y.
Sometimes, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the entire theory needs to be revamped or discarded, breaking the conceptual continuity. Therefore, the practice of science is often not smooth sailing, contrary to popular conceptions. A good approach to dealing with the uncooperative data is for the scientist to make sure that he or she doesn't work alone:
While the scientific process is typically seen as a lonely pursuit — researchers solve problems by themselves — Dunbar found that most new scientific ideas emerged from lab meetings, those weekly sessions in which people publicly present their data. Interestingly, the most important element of the lab meeting wasn’t the presentation — it was the debate that followed. Dunbar observed that the skeptical (and sometimes heated) questions asked during a group session frequently triggered breakthroughs, as the scientists were forced to reconsider data they’d previously ignored. The new theory was a product of spontaneous conversation, not solitude; a single bracing query was enough to turn scientists into temporary outsiders, able to look anew at their own work.
[caption id="attachment_21014" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image by Nicholas_ at istock (with permission)"][/caption] These comments ring true to me. Once again, skepticism to the rescue, and we need to turn to "outsiders" because we hesitate to murder our own children (this is a phrase I heard in a writing seminar--a reason for a separate editor). It's important to remember, though, that bringing others into the conversation doesn't always work. It has to be the right chemistry, where everyone is geared to the end result and where the criticism of the work needs to be savage though each of the participants nonetheless shows appreciation for each others' hard work. We should strive for the benefits of group endeavors while avoiding groupthink:
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints.

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