MIT Demands: Sounds Familiar

 In The Tech there is a great discussion of the demands the Government is placing upon MIT for funding. Simply stated they ask

1. Admission etc predicated solely upon academic performance.

As we had discussed before this makes eminent sense.  No essays, no pictures, no "save the world" interns. Just grades. 

2. Eliminate Campus organizations that create a hostile environment

In my days, SDS was a player seeking to destroy the campus. Campus organizations frankly should be few and far between. The amateur radio club may make sense, the amateur railroad club, etc. 

3. Free tuition if endowment greater than $2 million per student, except for students from "wealthy" families

I never paid tuition, through my PhD.  Scholarships, fellowships, teaching fellowships. All performance based and for the most part Government financed.

4. Freeze tuition rates for five years

This is sticky. First the rates are obscene. But they are artifacts not real. 

 Now 1 above is fine and I have noted this. 2 above may be a bit sticky since I never belonged to such an organization and back in the day SDS for example was not a Campus supported on.

Number 3 is a bit of a push, schools have gotten themselves in this mess with their crazy tuition support rules and over priced tuition.

4 may make sense since it is bloated as is. 

What is Priority Mail?

 Priority Mail is in my opinion and my experience a scam. It is nothing more than a fancy envelope, a tracking number, a high price and a letter that gets no where or worse to the wrong place! Not once did they ever deliver as they promised, not one single time! Many were lost, mis-delivered, delayed etc.

If we are closing down the Government I suggest the USPS first. Let Amazon deliver mail. They seem to get 90%+ of my packages on time. Next day even. Try that at the USPS. 

1066 Redux

 

 England has gone through multiple "invasions". Initially the Celts and to some degree the Picts inhabited the island. Then came the Saxons. the Germanic invaders, and to some degree the Anglo tribes. Also from time to time Viking invaders. Then in 1066 William the Bastard and his clan crossed over from Normandy and battled in Hastings. Welcome to the Normans. Needless to say the Norman invasion has had lasting effects for almost 1,000 years, until now.

The Guardian notes;

 Keir Starmer has attacked Reform UK’s plan to deport thousands of people already legally living in the UK as “racist” and “immoral”, as he said that Labour had a generational struggle ahead with the populist right. The prime minister, in Liverpool for his party conference, said he did not think that Nigel Farage’s party was trying to appeal to racists, and that he understood people tempted to vote for Reform were frustrated and wanted change. But he said the rightwing party’s proposal to entirely abolish the main route for immigrants to gain British citizenship could “tear this country apart”.

 What then is it to be English? It was a religion for a while, a King or Queen, a history, etc. But these are going through massive changes.

One sees the same in Ireland, a massive change to a socialist Government with similar open borders. The Irish spent almost 800 years to be free from English domination only to possible see the influx dominate the new culture. 

But the habit of calling one's adversary violence inciting epithets  seems to be de regeur. 

The Normans had their own ways to do things. This small band of invaders in short order took over a nation, changed the laws,  overthrew the leadership and dominated for a thousand years. Perhaps the end is truly near.

The Incompetence of the USPS

 Again and again I have had to deal with the USPS incompetence. Welcome to the Government employee work ethic. To compound it I sent a Priority mail letter to Atlanta, the worst of the worst USPS sites. After a week it has arrived at Atlanta, NY, a small town near the Finger Lakes and no where near Georgia. Soon the letter will be lost!

Perhaps closing down the Government is a good idea, permanently! Amazon seems to get things done, they can do the mail! 

Fortunately General Sherman had a better sense of direction! 

AI, Medicare and Denial

 

 The boys in DC have selected NJ as one of six states to trial an AI based pre-approval for Medicare payments. They plan to use AI companies. The NYT states:

The A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections. The government said the A.I. screening tool would focus narrowly on about a dozen procedures, which it has determined to be costly and of little to no benefit to patients. Those procedures include devices for incontinence control, cervical fusion, certain steroid injections for pain management, select nerve stimulators and the diagnosis and treatment of impotence. Abe Sutton, the director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, said that the government would not review emergency services or hospital stays.

Specifically they intend to review:

 

• Facet joint procedures for back pain

• Nerve and muscle tests (electrodiagnostic testing)

• TENS units and similar electrical stimulation devices

• Hyperbaric oxygen therapy

• Spinal cord stimulators

• Deep brain stimulation (commonly for Parkinson’s)

• Sacral neuromodulation (for urinary conditions)

• Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR)

• Arthroscopic knee cleaning or debridement

• Vertebroplasty/kyphoplasty for spine fractures

• Epidural steroid injections

• Non-emergency ambulance transport

• Botox injections for medical issues

• Negative pressure wound therapy pumps

• Hernia repairs

• Lumbar spinal fusion

• Skin graft substitutes for chronic wounds

 As my readers know I am a doubter in AI at this stage. Thus the application to millions of Medicare recipients is in my opinion grossly negligent. One should try at a lower level, not 15% of the US as a first bite. This is similar to the massive COVID vaccine program, just failing to test and just dumping on hundreds of millions.

One must ask who these "AI" companies are. What are their bona fides? Since we have no definition of what AI is it is likely that they will just be some friendly folks with the current Administration.  We should know these companies in detail. What is their technology, what is the basis for their decisions, what have they accomplished before? One suspects this will all be hidden behind some curtain of proprietary nonsense.

The test should be small, transparent and Congress should have a say as well as the Medicare recipients.

But alas, no one in DC gives a phenning! 

 

Swarming, Drones, and Warfare

 About 20+ years ago I wrote a paper on swarming warfare. As noted such warfare was characterized by:

Swarming has been characterized by Arqilla and Ronfelt as follows:

1. Autonomous or semi-autonomous units engaging in convergent assault on a common target

2. Amorphous but coordinated way to strike from all directions

3. “sustainable pulsing” of force or fire

4. Many small, dispersed, inter-netted maneuver units

5. Integrated surveillance, sensors, C4I for “topsight”

6. Stand-off and close-in capabilities

7. Attacks designed to disrupt cohesion of adversary

 Now with the use of drones and sophisticated netted multimedia communications one obtains a significant advance in this technique. 

DoD, now called War, should have been addressing this issue in detail. The PRC sure has been. Consider this as an attack by yellow jackets, before one knows it the swarm has in a coordinated manner attacked the poor victim.  

This is a new paradigm in warfare. Low costs attack platforms and counter persons destruction. Does the Russian forces have this? Not yet but the PRC may use this as a training opportunity. Beware!

One strategy for attack is the use of low yield neutron devices. A 5kT device can be tucked in a small drone, and such a device destroys living matter but leaves structures unharmed. It also can be readily accessed after deployment. This was a 1980s proposed strategy. However then there were no drones. Now the cost of deployment is low and the success ratio very high. Such a strategy can clear an enemy force in hours and allow re-entry the next day. Thus one asks; what is a counter-force strategy?