University Unions

Harvard has just seen the creation of unions for their Grad students as well as post-Docs. However this does not seem to be a universally accepted event. As the Crimson notes:

Some graduate students at Harvard Medical School say they feel wary of Harvard's newly formed union, with at least a few in Longwood—the location of the Medical School campus—expressing a desire to be excluded from the bargaining unit. Fifty-six percent of eligible student assistants voted on April 18 and 19 to authorize Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Automobile Workers to collectively bargain with Harvard on their behalf. National Labor Relations Board officials certified the tally on April 20, counting 1,931 ballots in favor of unionization and 1,523 against. Exit polling conducted by The Crimson suggested medical students were significantly less likely to vote in favor of unionization than were students attending other University schools. 

I would argue that the union issue is the millennial effect. Unions assume that everyone is equal, get the same pay, benefits, and that their employer is abusive and some form of oppressor.

Some fifty or sixty years ago to get a PhD at MIT and Harvard as well one competed. It was truly a zero sum game. There were so many slots, about a tenth of what there is today, and you had to be better than anyone around you. Your thesis had better be the best, your other work better, you had to be accepted by your Committee, you had to publish, and you better not waste time on such pursuits as family and fun. Then came the late sixties and the beginning of the end.

Careers are based all too often on achievement, success, doing better than others, namely excelling. One goes to Harvard, one assumes, to excel, not to become another molecule in a mass of identical molecules. You are not a telephone company union employee, doing the minimal amount as agreed to by the Union. One assumes to exceed everything. If not, then why would one hire you?

If a Union organizer at Harvard Grad Schools tries to get hired, perhaps an employer would look twice, do they want an over-achiever or a rabble inciter bringing every employee to the least common denominator?

More Evidence

As we just noted, obesity can be a major driver for cancer. Moreover obesity, even just being over weight, can be the driver for Type 2 Diabetes. That in turn drives kidney, heart, and nerve/eye failure. Unlike smoking and lung cancer, where the patient generally dies in six to nine months, Type 2 Diabetes is chronic costing billions.

In the UK, the NHS hands out pills. The solution is quite simple. Lose weight, stop junk food. Better yet, tax obesity, file your tax return and get weighed. Imagine what that would do for some Presidents! But that is another tale.

In the US, according to the NY Times, we send them to a class. We seem to have classes for everything; Diversity, Harassment, Quality, Ethics, etc. The Trainers get billions and we are then left with sick fat folks spending billions on Big Pharma pills.

As the Times notes:

There are about 1.5 million Americans newly diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes each year, a disease typically associated with excess weight and a sedentary lifestyle. Diabetes self-management programs teach patients how to monitor their blood sugars, what to eat and the importance of exercise as strategies to delay or avoid the disease’s serious complications....Diabetes is among the costliest of medical conditions. The American Diabetes Association estimates that average medical expenditures for those with diabetes diagnoses are 2.3 times higher than those without...One of the most expensive — a 7½-hour diabetes self-management group course that included two-hour individual sessions with a dietitian and a diabetes educator — cost $1,700 in Washington state....

You do not need a course. You need a physician to call it for what it is, not a disease, but the patient's problem, they eat too much! Perhaps we should start weighing and taxing based on BMI.

Fat and Cancer

Over the past twenty plus years it has become more clear that obesity has a strong causative effect on the development of cancers. There is a multiplicity of reasons for this some of which are reasonably well documented while others are just logical connections. The path often follows the path: obesity, type 2 Diabetes, cancer. The first two steps can last for a long period while once the cancer starts it can be more aggressive than other non-obesity driven forms.

Countries as diverse as England and Ghana are suffering from mass obesity. Food, especially processed food is readily available and becoming quite inexpensive.

A recent note in NEJM by Abate-Shen, details the connection between fat and prostate cancer. This is a compelling presentation of data and well worth following. She notes:

Although most prostate cancers are relatively indolent and therefore not life-threatening, highly aggressive and metastatic disease develops in a subgroup of patients, and obesity has been associated with increased aggressiveness of prostate cancer. Chen et al. analyzed two key tumor-suppressor genes, PTEN and PML, that protect against prostate cancer. Tumor-suppressor genes promote cell functions that prevent cancer; therefore, their loss is often associated with accelerated development of cancer phenotypes. The loss of both PTEN and PML often occurs in the most aggressive forms of prostate cancer. Chen et al. investigated the functional consequences of the loss of PTEN and PML using mice that had been engineered to be deficient in these genes. They found that in mice deficient in Pten in the prostate, locally invasive prostate cancer developed, whereas in 30% of mice lacking both Pten and Pml, prostate cancer that metastasized to lymph nodes developed. These findings were interpreted to indicate that these genes work together to suppress a more aggressive prostate cancer phenotype. ...They found that among the top genes and biologic pathways affected were those involved in lipid production, a finding that suggests an association between fat production by the prostate cancer cells and an aggressive phenotype. In fact, they showed that the tumors that developed in the mice after the loss of Pten and Pml had high levels of key lipids in their cells. They also found evidence that increased lipid production is triggered by activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway, which is frequently deregulated in prostate cancer. These findings led the investigators to consider whether fat may provide a cell-intrinsic signal to promote aggressive subtypes of prostate cancer by activating MAPK signaling. To test this idea, they fed the tumor-prone mice a high-fat diet and investigated whether more prevalent or more aggressive prostate cancer developed in these mice. The high-fat diet mimicked the effect of the loss of tumor-suppressor genes; in particular, the “obese” ... mice had a greater tendency toward the development of metastases, which occurred not only in lymph nodes but also in soft tissues such as the lung. Leveraging these findings, the authors then investigated whether fatostatin, a small-molecule inhibitor that targets a key regulator of fat production, could prevent metastasis. Indeed, the mice that were given fatostatin had less tumor growth and a lower incidence of metastasis than the control mice. Overall, these findings suggest that reducing levels of fat in prostate cells may improve outcomes of prostate cancer.

 Yes, fat is a driver, and a powerful one. Just think, many diseases could readily be prevented by just shutting one's mouth!

Marx and the Millennials

Le Monde has an interesting piece on Marx and American Millennials. They note:

Quant à Bernie Sanders, comme le rappelle Jeffrey Isaac, « il ne préconise pas l’abolition de la propriété privée dans les moyens de production, ni l’expropriation des grandes fortunes. Il préconise le démantèlement des grandes banques, la mise en place d’impôts sur le revenu plus progressifs et le subventionnement public des soins de santé et de l’éducation – des choses pour la plupart assez courantes en Europe ». La jeunesse américaine n’est donc probablement pas en train de préparer la révolution, même si Seth Ackerman, de Jacobin, observe malicieusement : « Nos lecteurs et ceux qui se tournent vers le socialisme sont des jeunes gens éduqués, souvent très endettés, qui perdent toutes leurs illusions en arrivant sur le marché du travail. Or Lénine a bien insisté sur l’importance d’une avant-garde éclairée – et précarisée – dans le processus révolutionnaire. »

Marx basically see the world through mid 19th century mercantilism. However so do many Neo-Progressives. However Marx saw the proletariat as compared to the Neo-Progressives who see the "elect" making the decisions for redistribution.

Le Monde does often have great insight especially on American youth. This is worth following. BTW Vox also has an interesting piece as well. As the author notes:

Marx used the labour theory of value to demonstrate that the exploitation of workers is a necessary condition for profits (Yoshihara 2017). The normative term 'exploitation' is justified by the claim that profit arises from a system of domination in which the wealthy, as owners of capital goods, direct the activities and limit the choices of employees (Vrousalis 2013). Domination in this sense could be sustained by an autocratic state acting on behalf of a capitalist class, or through the exercise of market power made possible by limited competition in goodsmarkets. But Marx chose to study a more challenging question: how could the domination of labour by capital take place in a private, perfectly competitive, economy governed by a liberal state? His answer was based on what seems a strikingly modern principal–agent representation of the employer–employee relationship, arising from a conflict of interest over the amount of labour effort performed that could be resolved in an enforceable contract.  Marx stressed that the employer purchases the worker's time on the labour market, not the worker's work. The employee’s supply of effort to the production process is not secured by contract but was rather an “extraction” that “only by misuse could ... have been called any kind of exchange at all” (Marx 1939).

The Millennial

The Millennial is now a well known entity, differing from previous versions of Homo sapiens. We have the old Homo sapeiens normalis, and now the Homo sapiens millennalis. How is this new proto-species developing.

They seem to have the same DNA but we may have the first clear example of nature versus nurture in action. This is brilliantly displayed in a brief article in JAMA.

The author remarks on three areas:

Theme 1. As Needed vs Scheduled Engagement. Millennials have grown up with virtually instant communication and information dissemination. Such engagement facilitates quick decision making and expands collaboration networks. Millennials expect accessibility, fast responses, rapid turnaround, and frequent short meetings to ensure clear direction. Senior mentors often balance administrative, clinical, and academic demands with greater structure and less ad hoc availability. Combined, this leads to frustration and stress for both parties....

Theme 2. Flat vs Pyramidal Infrastructure. Millennials embrace collaboration and cognitive diversity more readily than prior generations.³ In some aspects of academic medicine, these attributes will serve them well. For example, team science, multidisciplinary care, and collective leadership are welcomed by millennials who embrace groupthink, in contrast to their senior counterparts. However, flattening social and hierarchical gaps may also lead to conflict. Millennials do not necessarily embrace the siloed communication typical of traditional academic departments. Removing these barriers can cause frustration among older physicians accustomed to hierarchical communication channels and younger physicians who desire broad access to all stakeholders...

Theme 3. Purpose vs Process. For millennials, purpose is paramount. Millennials may derive greater satisfaction from results and implementation over the traditional, well-worn metrics of academic success. Such goals often include strategies that include developing intellectual property, commercialization of products, or launching a health care start-up.

 Millennials are just plain spoiled and have no manners. They also believe they have the right answer to everything and that past experiences count for naught. They truly believe that their opinion often based upon nothing counts equally to the opinion of one skilled in the area of discussion.

So what does this portend. A more level society? Hardly. The millennial culture may be setting itself up for a massive collapse. History counts but it must be the history based on facts, often the hardest part of history. It does not fit the fictional history of the current batch of instructors who have created these millennials.

The JAMA article treats this new species rather kindly. That is how the evolved. Reality may make them extinct.

I am reminded of the discussion in Cassirer on Locke (see Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, Princeton U Press, 2009, p 17) where he discusses Locke and reason, the blend of sensation and reflection, namely facts and logic if you will. Millennials have the habit of positing an answer, without factual basis. Such as, "The Pre-money valuation is $5 million." When asked why, the answer is "Because". Because why?  This is the major failing of this sub-species. The basis of a statement is lacking, everyone's opinion is of equal weight, and experience not only does not count but it obscures the truth, whatever that may be. It is as if we are going backwards, to before the Scholastics, where dicta from on high is all that counts.

Yield Curve

The above is the yield curve data as of yesterday. It is truly flattening. Short term rises and long term drops. Greater short term uncertainty and poorer long term prospects.

Just look at the above. We have a much lower spread and an exploding short term rate. Remember that the Interest of Federal debt where 75% is short term, or $3 trillion short term, also explodes as short term rates increase. With the then lowered long term growth prospects and the increased short term costs this is bleak!

The Old Telcos

The two old Telcos, Verizon and AT&T, seems to have mangled their core business model. Let's start with AT&T. Like Verizon it has a great wireless footprint. It is an operating company, namely, it was SBC after all, knows how to lay wires, connect them, install wireless equipment and the like. Now they want Time-Warner content. Their argument is that Time-Warner seems to be dying amidst the growth of Netflix, Amazon and the like, and that AT&T can somehow magically via its bucket truck mentality revitalize this dying entity. The Government using Antitrust laws, something which I became proficient in some 25+ years ago battling against the abuses of the new Telecom Act which just allowed recombination. In reality the Government may be helping AT&T from destroying itself. If indeed the new players can destroy Time Warner's old business model, then why buy it!

Now to Verizon. The bought Yahoo and AOL. Neither were or are winners. Now they are reorganizing but not really. As RECODE notes:

Guru will run day to day operations of our member (consumer) and B2B businesses and will serve as a member of our global executive team helping to set company culture and strategy. Guru will also be an important part of the Verizon work that is helping both Oath and Verizon build out the future of global services and revenue. As more of my time is spread across strategic Oath opportunities and Verizon, I will be leading our global strategy, global executive team, and corporate operations. Guru will be leading our global operating teams including:

• Engineering & Tech Platforms including DMSComms
• Data and Research & Marketing
• Media Brands, Content Factory, and Media Products & MarketingSearch Partnerships
• Ad Platforms
• Global Sales & Customer Operations, & Ad Strategy, and & B2B Marketing
• Membership 

 Yes folks that is his name. I will leave it there. But fundamentally the core of Verizon as that of AT&T is the wireless franchises. Wireless is key to survival. There is limited competition, growth and margins are guaranteed. So why get into a business you neither understand nor are competent at especially when competitors are dominating the market. And your entry was the purchase of two losers.

In my experience and in my opinion, based on watching these folks up close, somehow reality gets blurred. They all too often get enamored with the glitz and get clobbered with reality. Remember folks, you are just a telephone company, it is in your DNA. You drive bucket trucks, climb poles, and string wires. You are not media moguls.

AI, Cyber Threats and Networks

Nature has an editorial regarding the threats which they fear will come from AI. They note:

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to revolutionize this activity. Attacks and responses will become faster, more precise and more disruptive. Threats will be dealt with in hours, not days or weeks. AI is already being used to verify code and identify bugs and vulnerabilities. For example, in April 2017, the software firm DarkTrace in Cambridge, UK, launched Antigena, which uses machine learning to spot abnormal behaviour on an IT network, shut down communications to that part of the system and issue an alert. The value of AI in cybersecurity was $1 billion in 2016 and is predicted to reach $18 billion by 2023. By the end of this decade, many countries plan to deploy AI for national cyberdefence; for example, the United States has been evaluating the use of autonomous defence systems and is expected to issue a report on its strategy next month. AI makes deterrence possible because attacks can be punished. Algorithms can identify the source and neutralize it without having to identify the actor behind it. Currently, countries hesitate to push back because they are unsure who is responsible, given that campaigns may be waged through third-party computers and often use common software. 

The problem is not  primarily the threats it is the fundamental architecture and the users.

First, the architecture uses the Internet. The Internet is a "public toilet". Anyone can use it and you have no idea what you may be exposed to. It was designed that way, as an open network with no security. It is why DoD abandoned the Internet in the late 1980s and went back to its own secure private networks.

Second, workers at companies are all too social. Send them an email and they open it, and then they set loose an attack from an attachment. They look at videos, many of which contain threats. It is estimated that over 90% of the network penetrations are facilitated by employees!

Thus we have a two prong attack strategy; a grossly insecure network and a collection of employees who have no idea what they are doing.

As for AI, after 40+ years of looking at it, I still do not know just what it is other that possibly an adaptive IF, THEN, ELSE set of statements. You can call it whatever you like, neural nets, adaptive processing etc but it still falls back on the primitive three statements.

Thus if one wants a secure network, do not use the Internet. I know it is expensive, but security is that.

Neo Progressives Again

Progressives, like Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson, set the path for the current batch of neo-progressives. As we have noted previously, the progressives, old and new, fundamentally believe in a strong government controlled by a small elite class of people who alone know how to eliminate the "evils" of society as perceived by them. This clan also views any who oppose them as evil incarnate, although they totally reject any religious connotations.

Standing against this clan seeking to mold and control our lives is a small batch o0f individualists. Individualism sprang forth in the fourteenth century as a result of the battles with the Avignon Papacy. The reality struck many who fought that apostate organ that people were not subjects but citizens, that Christians were not the subjects of the Pope but members of a religion wherein salvation was an individual achievement, not something handed down by the Pope and his minions. Regrettably the introduction of Calvinism and Luther which reintroduced the concept of the "chosen" via some form of Augustinian pre-destination, via the construct of "grace", obliterated the initial attempts to promulgate individualism. In a sense these 16^th century religious constructs were the basis for progressive ideas of having a select mandate for the many.

But with the development of the United States in the 19^th century as noted by de Tocqueville, individualism returned on the Frontier, with free "associations" between people, as they saw fit, not as mandated by some group of the "select". Yet by the early 20^th century this concept was obliterated by the likes of Croly, Roosevelt and Wilson. A rather strange collection of egos but all believing in their own rights as a member of the "select"

Individualism is s simple construct. It assumes that all people are equal, under the law, and that the sole purpose of the law is to protect the rights of these individuals. The rights protected are those agreed to under a constitution. Individualism is in abject opposition to Rawls and his clan. The government under an individualistic society is prohibited of prohibited from giving one group an advantage over another and in ensuring that a "clan of the select" cannot "rule" any individual.

The ideas of individualism and progressives are in sharp contrast. Unlike Republicans and Democrats, or Liberals and Conservatives, the core concepts are a reflection of who rules, the people or the "select". Burke was a Conservative, one who saw political evolution in a slow and methodical fashion. Paine, his alter-ego if one might suggest, was in some ways a Progressive, in others an Individualist. I have seen the latter Paine's suggestions as Progressive in nature, yet his work in the early Revolution as Individualistic. The latter work reflects his involvement with the French Revolution, and perhaps the progressive bent is reflective of that "progressive movement".

In the NY Times an author states[1]: 

The basic premise of liberal politics, by contrast, is the capacity of government to do good, especially in ameliorating economic ills. Nothing structurally impedes compromise between conservatives, who hold that the accumulated wisdom of tradition is a better guide than the hypercharged rationality of the present, and liberals, because both philosophies exist on a spectrum…..Where liberalism seeks to ameliorate economic ills, progressivism’s goal is to eradicate them. Moynihan recognized this difference between Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which he always supported — as exemplified by his opposition to Clinton-era welfare reform — and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which he sympathetically criticized. The New Deal alleviated poverty by cutting checks, something government does competently even if liberals and conservatives argued over the size of the checks. The Great Society partook more of a progressive effort to remake society by eradicating poverty’s causes. The result, Moynihan wrote, was the diversion of resources from welfare and jobs to “community action” programs that financed political activism….But neither liberalism nor conservatism opposes rationality. Conservatism holds that accumulated tradition is a likelier source of wisdom than the cleverest individual at any one moment. It fears the tyranny of theory that cannot tolerate dissent. Liberalism defends constitutionalism. One of the finest traditions of 20th-century liberalism was the Cold War liberal who stood for social amelioration and against Soviet Communism. This genus — including Moynihan, Senator Henry Jackson and the longtime labor leader Lane Kirkland — was often maligned by progressives.

The author has some interesting points but I believe he totally misses the Individualism construct. The most recent example of Progressive "think" is Obamacare. Namely some small group determined how 20% of the economy should be run. In a sense reminiscent to a Soviet Five Year Plan. Regrettably there is no Individualism flag bearer, unless of course you count all of the people making their own choices.

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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/opinion/moynihan-liberals-progressives-lost.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Where is my Hayes Modem?

Ever since Altice bought Optimum my Internet speeds have dropped an order of magnitude almost. Used to get 2 Mbps up and 15 Mbps down. Now at best I get 500Kbps down! And 300Kbps up! I wonder who these guys are. Price goes up and service drops. And this is NYC metro area! Suggest one looks up Altice, perhaps their goal is to reduce any communications in the US! It looks that way from the service level!

Maybe I can get DSL from Verizon.

Trust and Amazon

I have noticed that Amazon more and more presents third party sales and one can readily get confused as to a Prime delivery and some third party delivery. The third party ones are highly unreliable and lengthy. If you pay for Prime to get two day delivery then you now get to see it is the third party and a week or more for delivery. They try to cancel the order!

Trust means that when I shop at Amazon I get what I have paid for as Prime and what I have expected. However it appears that Amazon in its intent to expand everywhere has abandoned that trust with its customer and off loads to these third parties which I have found to be highly unreliable. The worst ones are Chinese battery sales, selling knock off batteries which will never hold a charge and have falsified labels.

Perhaps Amazon should remedy this. Once trust is lost, it is lost! I shop Staples and Walmart! Someone should tell the boss.

What Reality Does This Reflect?

I enjoy the statements made by academics. They are so detached from any semblance of reality, especially those working on policy issues. Take the carbon tax issue, or Pigou Tax is you are from Harvard. Now some MIT researchers propose a dramatic tax on carbon, however that is measured. Recall that as I have argued it is a highly regressive tax. The Harvard Prof with their limo does not see it whereas the Harvard janitor with their small home and distant commute see the brunt.

Now an MIT report tries to rephrase the problem. They state:

“By taxing carbon,” Caron says, “we will collect a lot of money that can be used to supplant other taxes that we like less. Why tax something that we like?” And, he adds, by using just a small portion of that revenue — less than 10 percent — it’s possible “to compensate the lower-income people and neutralize the regressivity.”

I doubt if any of these folks ever spent a femto second in the Halls of Power in DC. This "wise" suggestion would be opposed by so many forces it is unthinkable than anything would be accomplished. One wonders what entity funded this work and where these folks will end up. Pity.

Jefferson, Democrats, and 125 Years Ago

I have the tendency of rummaging through old book stores. I picked up a biography of Jefferson written at the end of the 19th century. I thought it would be worth the while to share the Preface. This is from Life Of  Thomas Jefferson. Third President Of The United States, by James Parton, Houghton, Mifflin And Company. (Boston, 1892)

Nor ought we to be impatient with those who assert that both America and Jefferson were wrong, since we cannot yet claim for either a final and indubitable triumph. In France the politics with which he was in the warmest sympathy resulted in organized massacre and fell Bonaparte; and the party which he led in the United States issued, at the South, in armed rebellion, and, in some portions of the North, in the Rule of the Thief. We must face these facts, and understand their meaning. They no more prove that Jefferson and Madison, Lafayette and Paine, were wrong, than the Inquisition and the religious wars prove that the maxims of Jesus are false. They are only illustrations of the familiar fact, that the progress of truth and justice is slow and very difficult. They show that no country is ripe for equal rights until a majority of its inhabitants are so far sharers in its better civilization, that their votes can be obtained by arguments addressed to the understanding.

We must now accept it as an axiom, that universal suffrage, where one-third of the voters cannot read the language of the country they inhabit, tends to place the scoundrel class at the summit of affairs. We see that it has done so in France, in the Southern States, in New York, and in Philadelphia.

But such virtue is there in the Jeffersonian methods, that, even in those places, we find them our best resource. In New York, a mass meeting and its Committee of Seventy, in two years, suppressed the worst of the public stealing. In the South, the freedman rages for the spelling-book. In Pennsylvania, the reign of the scoundrel draws to an end ; and it is everywhere evident, that nothing is farther from the intention of the American people than to submit to lawless or lawful spoliation.

It is even possible that the party which Jefferson founded — such vitality did he breathe into it—may again, instructed by defeat and purified in the furnace of affliction, deliver the country from the evils which perplex and threaten it, employing the only expedient that will ever long succeed in a free country, the expedient of being right. Jefferson’s principles will do this, if his party does not. A government simple, inexpensive, and strong, that shall protect all rights, including those of posterity, and let all interests protect themselves, assuming no functions except those which the Constitution distinctly assigns it, — these are the principles which Jefferson restored in 1801, and to which the future of the country can be safely trusted.

Parton was well respected in his time but just a reminder, the voters he reminds his reader about were the Irish, Italians, African Americans, and many others often detested by what he refers to as Democrats, the followers of Jefferson. History is all too often defined by the writers and popularizer.

The Pope and Fake News

Just a brief observation regarding CNN and their episodes on the Papacy. Two blatant errors. First Avignon was not in France at the time. That was a key issue then and someone should have fact checked it. There is this thing called the Internet and they have this thing called Wikipedia... You get my point.

Second, some alleged theologian said that Luther was the only person to have opposed the Pope and survive. Duh! Ever heard of Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, and a few dozen others! They were two hundred years earlier!

Overall in my opinion, being somewhat aware of the papacy in the seventh and 14th centuries, CNN managed to create a story which is a prime example of fake news, if not just sloppy.

Next time try and get some people who know something folks!

Amazon and the USPS

Trying to figure out just how Amazon and the USPS work together is like trying to understand the details of the old KGB, or worse. As best as I can ascertain:

1. Amazon, if it is something they allege to deal with, has a warehouse with the product at location A.

2. Amazon then packages the product P at A and sends it out on some third party transport it transports V1 to a regional location say B. Here in New Jersey B is I believe in Avenel.

3. Then Amazon with transport V2 sends the package P from B to a local post office, LPOn.

4. At LPOn the USPS accepts the package, sorts it to a deliverer, gets it on a truck, and out it goes.

Thus all the USPS does it to add to a delivery unit, USPSDUk, another set of packages which are tracked.

Now how much does it cost the USPS and how much do they get? Good question. Try and do cost accounting on the USPS! Also here we have a marginal cost most likely and not the average costs.

I would love to see someone try this analysis, and to make any definitive statement I would say it is kind of dumb. The marginal costs is close to zero!Think about it.

Graduation and Political Correctness

Back in the Dark Ages when I was awarded my PhD at MIT, it was in the old Gym, on a hot humid June day and the intent was to get through it fast. It after all was 1971 in the midst of the Vietnam War and protests, bombs, and tear gas was common. So the speaker was the Institute President, saying something clearly forgettable, and the PhDs went up, got their hood, and degree and then back and out. Finished, over, then off with the robes, into shorts, and then cook dinner for the parents in the small apartment ready to be emptied.

Now in 2018, nearly 50 years later there is a separate Doctoral Hooding ceremony with its own politically correct speaker at MIT! Yep, as they note:

The speaker selection process engages MIT faculty and doctoral students to identify an alum whose acumen and professional and personal experience will resonate with new PhDs and ScDs as they embark on their careers. ..... chancellor for academic advancement, chairs the Commencement Committee. “It is exciting to collaborate with our students and faculty, who continue to identify alumni from diverse disciplines and personal backgrounds and whose paths exemplify ways to use the MIT doctorate in rewarding pursuits,” he said. .... Born and raised in Vancouver, ... a member of the Tahltan Nation, an Indigenous people located in northwestern British Columbia, Canada. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a journalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and CTV News. While at CTV, she was the original host and co-creator of "First Story," the first news and current affairs series on Indigenous issues to be broadcast nationally in Canada and later syndicated to the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN).

 They have managed to get as many possible identity groups as possible! One must ask:

1. How many chancellors does MIT now have! At what cost?

2. Why a separate Hooding Ceremony, just walk up and get both. It is more efficient.

3. The objective that any new graduate should focus on is getting a job! One that is real and makes a difference. How about that for motivation.

4. What of the poor parents who get dragged into this lecture on correctness. Why not have say a successful grandparent give the talk. Like how to make a real difference.

It is amazing that these event proliferate. Oh well, I guess they can all go out to Facebook or Google.

Fake News

The term “Fake News” has been thrown about of late and I have often wondered what it meant. Coming off writing a book about the 14^th century and the post-Scholastics I had a somewhat reasonable understanding of the Trivium and of the folks from Plato through Ockham. Back then words meant something. So let me give this a try, not that I am anywhere near an Ockham.

First, the issue is one of definitions. You see in law, philosophy, mathematics, and engineering definitions are critical. I have even found in my botanical studies that a definition is a critical element. Namely when describing a flower and one says it is blue; what do you mean by blue? But let us put that discussion to the side for a moment.

Let us start with the term, “news”. Just what is news? I think it is fair to say that news is the presentation of information of current interest which is the result of collecting various facts and presenting them in a coherent manner. Thus if a dog bites a man, we would say what type of dog, who owns the dog, the condition under which the dog managed to get to the man, the man, the name, the location, the time, and the condition of the man and the dog. This would be a minimum. Namely we present the; who, what, when, where, why, and how.

Not having spent a femtosecond on a communications course nor working for a newspaper this I fell would be a good first guess. Namely I am collecting facts, those indisputable things related to this incident, and then presenting them in a coherent manner that constitutes news.

In contrast if I am arguing about say Ireland, and the English occupation for the past almost 900 years I have a different set of facts, historical facts, from a variety of records, and many of these facts may have been slanted for purposes other than portraying what may have actually occurred. As we all know, history is all too often written by the victors, and thus what is handed down may very lack the authenticity one would expect in a “dog bites man” story.

Thus overall then news is the presentation of readily verifiable facts in some coherent manner. Also any third party could readily go out and validate these facts. One could examine the dog, talk to the man, see the bite, talk with the owner and so forth. But we also know that certain events all too often get clouded by reshaping of facts. Take the case of an auto collision. Consider the case of two lanes of traffic merging. One vehicle, say an auto, has commence the merge and is nearly fully in the lane, then behind it is say an eighteen wheeler, which continues unabated towards the merged vehicle, and then collides with the smaller vehicle.

Now along comes a State Police Officer, say one from New York, who appears annoyed at having his coffee break interrupted. He then decides based upon what he thinks the truth to be and creates another “reality” based upon which driver he is most annoyed with. How does truth and news get produced from this process? Poorly, one would say, but all too often the arbiter of the events, in this case the State Trooper, becomes the teller of “fact” based not upon reality but upon a personal bias. Take this simple example, a true one, and put a minority in the middle and we can see why all too often we have what has been called “police violence”.

But back to the news. The vehicle incident above cannot be cleanly reconstructed since it lacks independent verification. It is a he said and she said type of presentation. The case of the dog is man’s leg and dog’s teeth marks and the dog does not get the chance to comment!

Thus when we speak of news we are speaking of a truly limited set of truth statements. Typically we report what someone said. To get close to the truth we must note who that someone was and good news reporting then also demands a corroboration by some independent third party. Note this does not exist with our dog nor with our two party incident. In fact the two party incident can be further clouded by the introduction of an erstwhile law enforcement entity.

Thus when we examine the news, or alleged news, we see every day, very little is truly news. Anonymous sources do not count. We could never verify them. We have no idea whether they are trustworthy, have some axe to grind or whatever. Thus any reporting with some anonymous source must be rejected out of hand. Second is corroboration by a third part is also demanded. This we nearly never see in any presentation.

This leaves us with a good definition of news but a paucity of it available.

Now to Fake News. Consider its opposite, Un-Fake News or if you will True News. Now based upon our argument above, if it is news, perforce of what news must be to be news, it must be true. It thus means that there can be no such entity as Fake News, other than as an entity which is non-news. Sorry for the logic, but humans spent two millennia developing it to have it lost by our recent generation. Thus we say Fake News is a term defined as not-news or non-news. Namely it does not meet one or more elements of what we would demand for news per se.

Now on to the more difficult question. We stipulate that news to be news must report on facts, namely the truth, what really happened. “A dog named Spot bit a man named John Jones on the left leg at 12 Main Street at 3 PM on March 28. The dog was owned by Joe Smith.” Now is there more to say, yes if and only if it is both true and proximately relevant. But we can validate each element in the presented reporting. I can speak with each person and most likely I can see the dog somewhere, if it is still alive.

Back to Fake News. If one asserts that a person collaborated with some foreign entity, then we must establish; who, the when, the where, the why, and be able to demonstrate with some trustworthy collaboration of a reliable third party or parties that such has occurred.  Otherwise it is speculation. One needs specifics to be news, otherwise it is at best gossip and worst defamation. The Inquisitional methods of seeing if a witch floats or not no longer apply. We are not dealing with demonic acts, or hopefully not, and as such we must utilize the rules of acceptable logic.

Thus we come down to two elements; truth and trust. News must be truthful and the presenter of the new then must be trustworthy. Trust takes time to earn it is lost in an instant. The presentation of what one would expect from the news is then from a trustworthy agent. If at any time that trust is in question then the existence of the transmittal of news disappears. Trust entails the ability to divest oneself somewhat from the facts being transmitted. If perhaps one is a part of the news, more than just an observer, then one may have been invested in the telling of the news in a less than unbiased manner, it then become less news and more just opinion. The mixing of news with opinion has been the downfall of many erstwhile news organizations, they become opinion generators at best.

Thus it is incumbent upon those who see themselves purveyors of news to deal in truth and to be trustworthy. Mixing of opinion, agenda, and the like distorts from this goal. When as a youth and I listened to Radio Moscow, I knew it to be propaganda, even without Joe McCarthy. Yet today many of our youth have no way to ascertain fact from opinion, opinion from fiction, fiction from defamation.

Happy Easter

John 20, 1-18

The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.
² Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.
³ Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre.
⁴ So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre.
⁵ And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in.
⁶ Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie,
⁷ And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.
⁸ Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.
⁹ For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.
¹⁰ Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.
¹¹ But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre,
¹² And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.
¹³ And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.
And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.
¹⁵ Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.
¹⁶ Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.
¹⁷ Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
¹⁸ Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her.