Spot On!

 The NY Times has a compelling article on clinical trials. They are costly, slow, bureaucratic. But the most recent twist is that with "personal medicine" they no longer work.

Here  is the issues. Classic clinical trials assumed the same therapeutic was give or not to a group of patients. The evaluation was then with or without and did it work and was it better than the previous treatment. Simple, yes?

But as the article noted:

A few converging forces make this bottleneck more consequential than ever. The first force is scientific progress itself. Science is creating treatments that the regulatory system was not designed to handle. The most striking case is that of personalized medicine: Thanks to technological advances in recent decades, we can now sequence a patient’s tumor to find out its specific vulnerabilities, and increasingly we can tailor therapies to the needs of specific individuals.

The problem is that the therapeutic is fundamentally different for each patient since we are examining the genes in the tumor cells. There are two basic approaches. One is the recent one treating melanoma as we have discussed previously using the immune system. The other is a antibody drug conjugate approach as we proposed for prostate cancer. Each therapeutic is different and designed specifically for the patients malignancy, cell by cell. Apparently one has gotten through the quagmire of FDA approval. Will others?

The article is broad and compelling, The US is often the slowest to get through as well as the costliness. Hopefully there will be a focus on improving personalized treatments. But the politics of the FDA and HHS may be the worst problem in the process and many lives may be lost as a consequence. 

Was the Medieval Period That Bad?

 In a recent post by Victor Davis Hanson, the author notes:

 Remember, the medieval period was roughly that area in time after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, roughly AD 500 to around AD 1300 to 1400, the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. In medievalism, we often talk about primitivism after the destruction of the classical world during the Dark Ages, the early medieval period, and it’s characterized by epidemics, bubonic plague, typhus, typhoid, smallpox, terrible sanitation in urban centers. They had forgotten the Roman use of sewage and aqueducts. There were open borders. National states popped up that couldn’t defend themselves, so you saw castles and walls pop up all over the European countryside in a way you had not during the Roman period. In cities, they were walled, towns even, and the gates closed at dusk to prevent gratuitous crime. But at the same time that this was happening, you had some of the greatest works of literature in the Western world. You had Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” Dante’s “Inferno,” St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa Theologica.” And if you look at the architectural expertise and scientific knowledge of architecture, it was progressing at a geometric rate when you look at the huge cathedrals at Seville or Cologne. ...

Now let’s switch to the modern period. All of us now can call anywhere in the world in seconds on our iPhones. Anything you want to know, past, present, future, you can just get on a cheap computer and ask an artificial intelligence program from the many free platforms. You can watch movies, you can watch entertainment on satellites. Anything you want is at your fingertips. The nation itself is exploring space. We’re getting close to conquering cancer. I can attest to that. Computers allow you to write without even speaking. You can, unfortunately, compose a whole term paper or a book with AI. You can make a movie with AI. Yet at the same time that’s happening, look at what’s going on in Berkeley here in California or Los Angeles. We’re seeing outbreaks of medieval diseases that we thought had been conquered years ago, given our sophisticated knowledge of sewage and water treatment. We had a typhus breakout in Los Angeles. We had leptospirosis, a rat disease, in Berkeley. 

Now to correct Hanson I note:

1. The Dark Ages most likely were from the fall of Rome, say 400 AD to 1000 AD, The key players were the Merovingians from the east. However the Irish had universities, were fluent in Latin and Greek. The Muslims had from mid 600s occupies the Near East as well as all of North Africa. Such places as Alexandria were willing to accept Muslim rule because it was a better Tax situation than the Byzantine rulers! Think New Amsterdam and the English, lower taxed became New York, and the USA was the result of tea tax of the Brits. See a thread there?

2. The Middle Ages is a creation of the Renaissance.  It was a very idiosyncratic period. The Italian city states were the creation of individual rule and the rejection of royalty inherited. Marcellus of Padua and William of Ockham in about 1340 created individualism, namely the rights of individuals and equality of them.

3. The plague of 1348 was better handled than COVID. The mortality rate was near 50% whereas COVID was less than 0.7%. Yet COVID lasted longer tan the plague of 1348! We had a Fauci, they did not! Think Jesuits versus Franciscans (inside joke).

 4. Now Aquinas, Dante, and Chaucer are benchmarks. Aquinas was in Latin, Dante in Italian, and Chaucer. Aquinas focused on God, Dante on bad rulers, and Chaucer on common folk. This is 1250 to 1400!  The world had changed. If one looks at these three one see a dramatic progression. It is a movement in society. Needless to say, a mere 40 years later (1440) with the printing press, all changes. People could not get access to Aristotle, Chaucer, Plato, Dante et al. 

5. As for brutality, it was less roaming gangs, although the French had the jacquerie which was a mob of oppressed commoners, the real butchers of humanity were the English, the Black Prince, son of Edward III. He butchered men, women and children, and did so with the approval of Avignon! The butchering was done not the immigrants but the enshrined!

I think Hanson is a smart and prolific fellow, but to understand the Dark and Middle Ages one must spend time understanding the people and events, I have written on bother periods and suggest perhaps a look at the 14th century, despite the plague, it was prolific and led to the Renaissance. 

Oh yes, and the Roman water system. They relied heavily on lead pipes and thus the consequences from massive lead poisoning. I have noted that earlier.

Is This what we pay billions for?

 

NASA seems to have been converted into a clown college. It feels that the above have become a necessary part of displaying the results of their missions. As one who worked on Apollo in the 60s, the team involved were all professionals. Pity for the change.

Bayeux and the Brits

 There was an interesting view of the Tapestry in the Guardian by a Brit. He notes:

 In both the borders and central strip, the Bayeux tapestry always set its action in a wider world, and even, when it shows the comet, a larger cosmos. As the armoured elite go to war, peasants plough and sow the fields. They are portrayed in distracting, vibrant detail and this workaday scene as the battle approaches is pointed and poignant: whoever wins, whoever rules England, country people will still work the soil. That same sudden cutaway from the rulers’ perspective happens when a woman and her child watch the Normans set their house on fire. But what you can see here, close to the stitches in such good light, is that one of the men torching the house also seems sad and conflicted. It’s that honesty that makes this not just a fascinating medieval relic but a universal depiction of the madness that is war. If the violence is stunningly real, so are its consequences. The dead bodies pile up in mounds as Saxon after Saxon falls. King Harold didn’t really get killed by an arrow in his eye we are told, but seeing the tapestry so close, it sure looks like it. Anyway, his royal body just joins the rest. In the final scenes, the peasants, the churls, get their revenge. Little shabby figures pull the mailed hauberks off dead knights, leaving them naked. It’s a final flourish of the precocious artistic brilliance of these 11th-century artists and craftspeople. Naked bodies emerge from their armour, pale and oddly beautiful – the complete ones, at least – as these medieval geniuses show they can depict, through embroidery, incredibly gentle, intimate nudes whose dead flesh fills the battlefield with pathos. It ends there. But, although there’s a lost later section, this anticlimax looks perfect to me. By then, I had been drained by this epic in all its tragedy and comedy. Bodies and body parts. That’s where the war talk was headed all along.

 The writer fails to comment on the Latin prose. I recall when I saw it in France that it was quite readable, aqnd despite the art work the commentary was over powering. 

Now English brutality has no beginning or end. Consider the brutal and barbaric acts of the Black Prince, son of Edward III. He and his men butchered thousands of French women and Children until a good case of poor pork took him away!

The Irish and Indianans recall the more recent English butchery of the past century. 

Frankly this is a rather sophomoric writing failing in its historical context as well as the ignorance of the simple 11th century Latin text. 

New Jersey Data Centers

 Quietly but with massive force New Jersey now has 116 Data Centers in 34 cities. 

 Secaucus 24,  Piscataway 15, Newark 13, Clifton 8, North Bergen 5, Franklin Township 4, Weehawken Township 4, Weehawken 3, Jersey City 3 Piscataway Township 3, Edison 3, Hackensack 3. Totowa 2, Hanove 2, Carlstadt 2, Carteret 2, Matawan 2, Vineland 2, South Brunswick Township 1, Hightstown 1, Parsippany-Troy Hills 1, Union City 1, Bridgewater Township 1. Trenton 1, Wall Township 1, Franklin 1, Jefferson 1, Merchantville 1, Sea Girt 1, Newark 1, Ridgefield 1, West New York 1, Orange1, Jackson 1 

Now our wonderful, just a joke, Governor notes:

 

Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed legislation Thursday requiring data centers to report their water and energy use to state energy regulators every six months, touting it as a highlight of her plan to “hold data centers accountable.” Sherrill, a Democrat who pledged months ago to seek limits on data center construction, said during a bill signing ceremony in South Brunswick that she will not “let these developers operate in the shadows.” “New Jerseyans deserve to know how much water and electricity the data centers coming into their community will use. Data center companies often treat their usage statistics like a trade secret,” she said. Data center critics have said their mammoth power needs are behind rising electric rates. Sherrill pledged during her campaign for governor last year to freeze those rates for New Jerseyans. The law requires operators to disclose total energy consumption, energy used for cooling and IT equipment, peak daily water use, water sources, and backup power supplies to the state Board of Public Utilities twice a year. Bill sponsor Sen. Teresa Ruiz said the reporting requirement should be “the start of an ongoing public record” rather than a one-time disclosure. That data would be summarized for public release, but a provision of the law limits how much of that information could be released to the public under the state Open Public Records Act.

That is like reporting body counts annually after battles.  There is no demand a priori, just after the fact. And worse it is by the State BPU, an entity almost always aligned with those they regulate! Try and get anything done as a citizen, I have, no such luck.

Just "knowing" well after the fact how much is used is useless! The cow and all the other animals have left the barn. Such an action clearly shows the naive experience of this Governor. 

The Law allegedly states:

 “Data center” means a facility: (1) whose primary services are the storage, management, and processing of digital data; and (2) that is used to house computer and network systems, including associated components such as servers, network equipment and appliances, telecommunications, and data storage systems, systems for monitoring and managing infrastructure performance, Internet-related equipment and services, data communications connections, environmental controls, fire protection systems, and security systems and services.

 No later than six months after the effective date of this section, or, for a data center that has been in operation for at least one year as of the effective date of this section, no later than three months after the effective date of this section, and on a semi-annual basis thereafter, the owner or operator of a data center in the State shall prepare and submit a water and energy usage report to the Board of Public Utilities that contains the following information, at a minimum:

(1) basic information relating to the data center, including: (a) the name of the data center;  (b) the owner or operator of the data center; (c) the address of the data center; and (d) the month and year that the data center commenced operation; (2) information related to energy and water usage at the data center, including: (a) the total energy consumption in kilowatt hours, including the use of electricity, fuels, and other energy sources used for cooling; (b) the name of the electric 1public1 utility serving the data center  and any electric service agreements between the electric 1public1 utility and the data center; (c) all on-site power supplies, including any primary power on site and emergency backup power supply and any permit information such as permit numbers, capacity, tier level, fuel type, total permitted emissions for the data center, and any other relevant information; (d) the total energy consumption of information technology equipment in kilowatt hours measured as the value of the combined annual energy consumption at every uninterruptible power system connected to information technology equipment

This is useless. Totally and completely. The numbers should/must be presented in advance, and reported against projections monthly, made readily available and reviewed, with substantial fines for failure to adhere.  

It is clear from this useless legislation that it is but a sop written most likely by those in the pockets of these people. There is clearly no benefit to the rate payers, the citizens and those who have elected these somewhat useless legislators.

I remind the reader that companies like JCP&L have networks which have been failing every week to ten days. Also as a regulated entity their profit is dominate by a return on investment. The new investment is amortized over the existing rate payers rather than the new Data Center players. We  subscribers must not in any way subsidize these entities. That can only be assured by a priori certitude and a posteriori penalties!

I Guess we are all Dumb

 As the current President has noted regarding Data Centers:

"The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor," Trump on Truth Social. "If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign." And if people "kill the Golden Goose" by successfully resisting AI data centers, "you will only have yourselves to blame," Trump continued, adding "China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can't believe it is happening!"

Frankly, not one is saying to band Data Centers in toto. What people are saying is to think first then act afterward. I know, thinking is hard some times, I have been at it for nine decades, so I have a tad of the experience.

As I noted before, there are issues worth discussing. The statements regarding jobs is fallacious. The jobs are in construction, a passing issue, not in ongoing operation. There will be massive facilities filled with thousands of processors, using lots of electricity. Perhaps some staff to swap failed units, but no more. In fact the more people the greater the risk of human error.  

So what am I to blame for? Thinking? Perhaps, but that is frequently a useful act.  

I still have questions regarding the usefulness of LLM. As I sit here and write this I am also trying to compare several cancer therapeutic options. The driver is the recent paper on T cell attacks on cancer driven by sequencing gene changes in the cancer cell. Asking questions is the most critical stage. One examines the papers, looks at the alternatives, then goes back and repeats the process as the sources of data expand. I am driven by questions, not by just reading what others wrote. That is LLM, not me.

Thus I question the fundamentals. Have the papers flaws, can I find it, have others? 

Data Centers have use, measured use. There is plenty of land, devoid of beneficial human use, that can be employed. But building them in the back yards in Louden County is not for real! 

Or to paraphrase one of my business quotes: "If all else fails, listen to the voter!"