How MIT Has Changed ... Better or Worse

 During WW II MIT managed the Rad Labs, designing and implementing radar systems to protect US forces across the globe. Following that the technology developed led to the explosion of technology that became silicon valley as we know it.

Now MIT has entered the new world.  They note:

Part of ... postdoctoral research involves complementing her computational abilities by acquiring and improving her skills in biochemistry and cell biology, and tissue mechanics and engineering. Her current work on how clitoral anatomy relates to sexual function, especially after gynecological surgery, explores a topic that has seen little research, ... says, adding that her work could improve postoperative sexual function outcomes.

Yes, you read it right. No linger information theory, systems design, genetic structure, cancer research, but, well you can read it. Forty years ago a few MIT coeds published a Sex Survey, in "Thursday", a campus wide news sheet. It exploded with the Administration. Women rating male performance. But the above is now a fully funded research program. 

I wonder where MIT is going next. After its President being a Barbie aficionado, and doing nothing about the rampant antisemitism on campus, well one can just wonder.

AI Redux

 As usual, some one else is opining on AI, this time an MIT economist. As noted in the NY times:

David Autor seems an unlikely A.I. optimist. The labor economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is best known for his in-depth studies showing how much technology and trade have eroded the incomes of millions of American workers over the years. But Mr. Autor is now making the case that the new wave of technology — generative artificial intelligence, which can produce hyper-realistic images and video and convincingly imitate humans’ voices and writing — could reverse that trend. “A.I., if used well, can assist with restoring the middle-skill, middle-class heart of the U.S. labor market that has been hollowed out by automation and globalization,” Mr. Autor wrote in a paper that Noema Magazine published in February. Mr. Autor’s stance on A.I. looks like a stunning conversion for a longtime expert on technology’s work force casualties. But he said the facts had changed and so had his thinking. Modern A.I., Mr. Autor said, is a fundamentally different technology, opening the door to new possibilities. It can, he continued, change the economics of high-stakes decision-making so more people can take on some of the work that is now the province of elite, and expensive, experts like doctors, lawyers, software engineers and college professors. And if more people, including those without college degrees, can do more valuable work, they should be paid more, lifting more workers into the middle class.

 The advantage of being over eighty is that I have a memory of times distant. I am now more productive than I was sixty years ago. Why? Simply:

1. Word processing and spreadsheets. I can now create documents the way I think. Layer after layer, assembling like a puzzle, looking for the missing pieces and putting them together. I do not need a typist, no secretary. Wish I had an editor, but I do not rely upon AI ever doing that. Editors must not change the intent. I once had an editor who wanted co-authorship, for doing nothing, just inserting his thoughts. As for spreadsheets, in the old days they were massive sheets of numbers and calculators. Hours wasted, rigid thinking.

2. Search engines let me get what I want. I get to choose and seek out the best that reflects my intent. They are primary pieces of work. Perhaps with AI they will all be reflective of GIGO stuff! But now at least I can get some original work short of fraud.

3. Smart phones. I hate Apps, like to text and make calls if necessary. Real time access globally. Apps are what I see the walkers staring at when I cycle by.

4. Zoom, the initial attempt at multimedia. Kind of works, but still like human contact. Not easy any longer in NYC, likely to get assaulted of killed, retro to the Dinkins Days. Not easy at MIT since the gated the campus. Lots of equity but no access. That was then end of my donations.

5. Online books. I now buy the hardcover to get the online version. Rarely use the hardcover, easy to search the online. Hardcovers are great backdrops for Zoom calls.

Now I fear that AI will not add to this. 

As to doctors and lawyers, not really. Osler was famous for "if all else fails listen to the patient". AI is not really a good human listener, especially for symptoms and things that need understanding. As for lawyers, this is really game playing. One step to beat out a previous step. Lawyers often make a lot up on the fly.

On the convergence of law and medicine, I asked a few Docs who were praising AI in medicine, who do I sue when a patient is harmed. The response was "I guess I get sued" In fact liability for AI use is negligible. Lawyers will have a field day. Now consider AI and FDA approval. FDA may approve an AI engine as a medical device. But minutes after the approval the "device" just gathered more information, does it then make the device unapproved? This will be a field day for litigators. There is no law, no precedence.

AI, Just How Far?

 The Crimson has an interesting piece on AI and Medical Imaging. They note:

Harvard Medical School researchers and affiliates have discovered that the use of artificial intelligence in radiology is not universally beneficial, contrary to existing research. The study — released last Tuesday by researchers at MIT, Stanford, and the Rajpurkar Lab of Harvard Medical School — was a re-analysis of a previous study by the same researchers. Published in Nature, it centered on a high-performing AI model and studied its effectiveness in diagnosing patients based on chest X-rays. Pranav Rajpurkar, a Harvard Medical School professor who co-authored the study, emphasized the need for a more detailed understanding of AI in medicine. “While previous studies have shown the potential for AI to improve overall diagnostic accuracy, there was limited understanding of the individual-level impact on clinicians and what factors influence the effectiveness of AI assistance for each radiologist,” he wrote in an emailed statement. The study found that AI use in radiology “did not uniformly improve diagnostic accuracy, and could even hurt performance for some cases,” according to Kathy Yu, a researcher who was a member of the Rajpurkar Lab when the study was conducted.

 This is not at all surprising. When I first started to learn radiology one went through steps. Say one is looking at the lung. Start at the periphery, any fluids, compressions, nodules, then work in to see heart mediastinumn vasculature. Is there honeycombing, nodules etc. Namely there was a methodology developed over years of reading images.

In the days of pattern recognition, images were approached in a similar structured manner. However with AI one uses learning sets and then "trusts in the kindness of strangers" with some neural network. 

Thus one is hardly surprised.

GPS, Not So Much

 The NY Times has a piece of the vulnerability of GPS satellites. I have a long term involvement with GPS. In the 70s I taught a GPS course at GW University, for many sessions. I testified to Sen Kennedy's Committee, who feared Soviet advantage to missile attacks. But more importantly I designed the second backup navigation  system for Apollo, using a sextant and equipment for WW II fire control systems. Never thought it would be used until Apollo 13!

If GPS fails we always have maps and sextants. I still have my grandfathers. Plan Bs are critical. We always must avoid single thread systems. Maps are just fine. I still have a few in my cars. GPS and Garmin may not send me the best way, just their way. My sextant can always tell me where I am, just need a clock. I have a wind up watch! 

We have the problem of abandoning the past for the best of the present. Sometimes the present has problems. Always have a Plan B!!!!!

Perhaps you can rent my sextant and borrow my Bowditch. Worked for centuries.

Bridges and Harbors

 I grew up on Staten Island, only ferries to New York, before the Verrazzano. My grandfather was the Harbor Master during WW II so I got to know a lot of folks at the time. One of my lifeguard buddies was dating Justine Moran of the tugboat family so I got to see a lot of tugs. My uncle was a NY Fire Department Deputy Chief and in charge os such things as safety of the Verrazzano bridge, for fire and explosion reasons. As a lifeguard I watched summer by summer as the bridge was built, across the Narrows into the busiest shipping harbor in the US.

It was during the peak of the cold war and fear that a bomb would shut the harbor if it his the bridge. So the design was to insure that if it were hit it would not collapse and block the Narrows, but under great tension would swing back on State Island and Brooklyn. Needless to say a few folks in the way would be eliminated. Cold War thinking. 

One need look at the two bridges, the Verrazzano and the one in Baltimore. One bomb proof, albeit possibly slaughtering a few folks, and the second looking like a down scale Lionel train bridge. OK, I have to reveal I took some Civil Engineering courses and thus know a bit about bridges. The Baltimore one was a disaster from step one. 

Hopefully its replacement is more like the one in NYC, with perhaps a cold war view of life.

MIT Needs a Cleansing

 The NY Times presents a compelling article about MIT and its current management gross negligence. The legal papers filed are also compelling. This was not the MIT I spent years affiliated with. The Augean Stables need cleansing and perhaps this is the first step. The Times notes:

There is no excuse for hypocrisy. There is no excuse for harassment. It seems clear that M.I.T., Harvard and other campuses have failed to uphold their moral and legal responsibilities. Now it falls upon the engine of American justice to impose its consequences and to prove — to this generation and the ones that follow — that this truly is a government “which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

MIT just announced a Vice President for DEI. Yet Jews get persecuted for their presence. One should read the complaint, it is terrifying, and a shame on the grossly defective Administration. 

This Patrol Thing is Out of Hand

 The NY Times reports:

Shortly after Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Wednesday that hundreds of National Guard soldiers would be deployed to patrol the New York City subway system and check riders’ bags, her office made an adjustment: Soldiers searching bags would not carry long guns. The change, which was first reported by The Daily News, was ordered by Ms. Hochul on Wednesday for implementation on Thursday, according to a spokesman for the governor. Ms. Hochul issued a directive that National Guard members would be prohibited from carrying long guns at bag-check stations, he said. Soldiers not working at the stations would presumably be allowed to carry them.

They are NOT long guns, they are continuous fire M-16!  You know like the AR-15s they want to ban, but continuous fire rifles. It is amazing how this thing has been sanitized by the Press. This is worse than a Mussolini takeover, except by police who look more terrifying. A recent photo of a person returning from a pickle match, I gather having a beer bottle was being detailed by two chubby and short bearded slovenly NYPDs at the subway. What were they missing while they detailed this person. Got the picture just in case. 

I remember Mayor Daly in 1968 in Chicago. This Fall we may very see much worse. 

BTW, a long gun could be an M-1 or even an M-14, although M-14s can do rapid fire.

The NYC Subway

 Well, I did it, took the subway. From Penn Station thru Times Square and up to 72nd Street and return.

Guess what, not a single cop, soldier, M-16. 

 

Lots of people, no security, none, not even a glimpse! So what happened? The Buffalo Gnome got scared of the backlash? 

But wait. What was everywhere were the "immigrants" or "illegals" carrying babies on their backs holding large plastic trays filled with candy at every stairwell. Just try to figure out the economics of that trade. Also would you buy something to eat from a person from God knows where in a urine stained subway stop? If so then COVID should not have scared you! The baby on the back thing was interesting.

So is NYC safe? As long as you do not eat strange foods, stay well back from the train, make no eye contact, and avoid the police, then I guess it is as safe as Mogadishu.

Russia was Friendlier

 

I ran a company in Russia for several years. Not the most friendly to legal rights, so one is always careful. Now along comes the New York Gov sending troops to the subway. I have to go tomorrow and anticipate a possible search and seizure. The Gov and her Praetorian guards invoke their powers to search and seize law abiding citizens while leaving the one performing illegal acts free to continue. Moscow was much more friendly, as long as you did not debate the Vlad! 

The NY Times noted:

Just 24 hours after Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed the National Guard and the State Police in the New York City subway to quell fears of crime, the unusual show of force drew intense criticism on Thursday from various corners, some unexpected. On the left, Jumaane N. Williams, the city’s public advocate, warned that Ms. Hochul’s plan would “criminalize the public on public transit.” Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, a democratic socialist from Brooklyn, said it was a “ham-fisted and authoritarian response” that “validates G.O.P. propaganda about urban lawlessness in an election year.” Centrists fretted that the deployment of troops carrying long guns — beamed across the country by Fox News and other cable outlets — would actually make New Yorkers and would-be tourists feel less safe, not more.

Indeed, less safe from the National Guard.  Think Kent State. Checking everyone's personal effects by untrained Guardsmen is incredible. Yes, that is me with my father on his first day on the NYC PD. Between him and his father they spent 60 years on the job. I learned how to identify suspects starting at the age of seven. Look at shoes, hair, clothes, hands, etc. Worked well with my former KGB partners. But I truly doubt these weapon carrying troops have any idea. Discharge an M-16 in the Times Square Station and you kill 50-60 people in seconds. The Gov has created a situation of imminent danger.

The Inferno

The NY Times notes, as above, the  expansion of police presence. The problem is clear from the above photo from the Times, the police just clump together totally disregarding the people. In addition one often sees a police office and wonders who this bearded creature is. Grooming and presence is 99% of the battle. It demands respect. Shabby dress and hirsute presentation does not.

As the NY Post notes:

Nearly 1,000 New York National Guardsmen, state police and MTA cops are being deployed to carry out bag checks in the Big Apple’s crime-ridden subway system, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday. The additional forces – made up of 750 guardsmen and 250 law enforcement officers — will work alongside the NYPD to patrol “the city’s busiest transit stations” amid a recent surge in underground violence, Hochul said. “These brazen heinous attacks on our subway system will not be tolerated,” Hochul said as she announced a five-point plan to crackdown on the city’s burgeoning underground crime wave.

 I am back into NYC this week but I suspect these 1,000 new faces will just hang in small groups glued to their smart phones. Going from Penn Station to Times Square and then to the East side is akin to trying a northbound trip on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1968 flying a US Flag!  

For the past ten plus years it has just become a crime ridden place, with police clearly ignoring the situation. Thus one wonders what 1,000 more eyes looking at smart phone screens will accomplish. 

So say a prayers for my safety, that may be the only way to move cross town. Oh yes, one could walk, but that is equally risky between the assaults and massive clouds of formerly illegal substances. 

Dante, you would have had fun with this place!

Disinformation

 A while back I wrote a piece asking What is AI? But the core problem is that junk in then junk out. See Google's latest piece of junk, Gemini. But as I noted, if the AI system can go out on its own a scour up information and then develop an unbiased rating metric, a real step up, independent of its creators, then perhaps we obtain a reliable AI system. Otherwise we have a next step disinformation system! Never trust humans, especially big ego Silicon Valley types. They believe that they know more than the rest of humanity but in my experience they are just pampered creatures oftentimes not worth the name human.

Thus my recommendation is stay away from this AI systems which are merely mouths for the Silicon Valley elite.

Everyone Gets a Prize

 Back in the early 60s at MIT undergraduates often had little time for social events and to my best recall the only "prize" one gets is at graduation and a diploma. Now I note that MIT News almost daily has students getting some prize or other. They note:

Elected by the Burchard Committee from a large pool of impressive applicants, all students chosen for the program have demonstrated excellence and engagement in the humanistic fields, but can major in science, design, and engineering fields as well as the humanities, arts, and social sciences. In the course of this calendar year, the Burchard Scholars will attend seminar dinners with members of the SHASS faculty, during which they will have the chance to engage with the faculty and one another. The program is designed to both broaden horizons for promising students and provide scholars the chance to engage in friendly but challenging discussions in which to hone skills for expressing, critiquing, and debating ideas with peers and mentors.

"Prizes" like this seem to be a common occurrence. There seems to be a common thread here of engaging with faculty and one another. Back in the Middle Ages of this process one got to engage via class performance and one on one contact. No "organized" prize awards. It seems that there is some need to have awards en masse. It is becoming like Hollywood, awards every week or so, making everyone "happy". How about just a little work, less awards.

Star Wars?

 

For those of us who remember the Star Wars program in the 80s, this was a plan to place satellites capable of neutralizing missiles and enemy satellites before they came down on the US. Its very announcement was an element leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now forty years later Russia is again trying to launch satellites armed with nuclear weapons. 

I remember in the 70s when I was seconded to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, ACDA, we met with the Soviets in Kirkland AFB to discuss technical issues of the treaty. My job was communications with seismic monitors. My Russian was limited but after a few vodkas and walking about I spoke with the Soviet representatives, likely KGB and others, and we both understood what a 50 MT weapon could do, not to mention hundreds. There would be nothing left except the proverbial cockroaches.

So have the Russians forgotten and has the Defense Department been spending too much time on tactical issues and none on strategic. To paraphrase a movie character, Forest Gump, "stupid is as stupid does".

What Gender Bias?

Nature has a piece alleging gender bias, namely institutions show via text and image a bias towards men, especially white men. They note:

Each year, people spend less time reading and more time viewing images, which are proliferating online. Images from platforms such as Google and Wikipedia are downloaded by millions every day, and millions more are interacting through social media, such as Instagram and TikTok, that primarily consist of exchanging visual content. In parallel, news agencies and digital advertisers are increasingly capturing attention online through the use of images, which people process more quickly, implicitly and memorably than text. Here we show that the rise of images online significantly exacerbates gender bias, both in its statistical prevalence and its psychological impact. We examine the gender associations of 3,495 social categories (such as ‘nurse’ or ‘banker’) in more than one million images from Google, Wikipedia and Internet Movie Database (IMDb), and in billions of words from these platforms. We find that gender bias is consistently more prevalent in images than text for both female- and male-typed categories. We also show that the documented underrepresentation of women online is substantially worse in images than in text, public opinion and US census data. Finally, we conducted a nationally representative, preregistered experiment that shows that googling for images rather than textual descriptions of occupations amplifies gender bias in participants’ beliefs. Addressing the societal effect of this large-scale shift towards visual communication will be essential for developing a fair and inclusive future for the internet.

Now if one then looks at MIT News it is near impossible to find this effect.  The Institute management is all female, mixed race. 

Harvard is somewhat akin but frankly much less so. It will be interesting in the long run to see how this plays out. The MIT course noted above is described as:

The course, known as CLICK for short, stands for "Connecting as is, Listening first, Investigating without Judgment, Communicating kindness, and Keeping in touch." CLICK was taught for the first time at MIT in winter 2023 and focuses on emotional intelligence and social connections. During the 50-minute sessions, students work in small groups and learn valuable tips to help them navigate life — especially being on campus for the first time. Students also learn how to decompress with yoga. CLICK also helps students examine the places they go during the week and the people they interact with, then provides “recipes” for easy conversation starters along with a blend of open-ended reflections on how to show up authentically and with compassion. Conversely, they offer advice on backing out of an unwanted conversation graciously.

Yes, this is a real MIT course and it is being promoted on the MIT News site. My, have things changed!

Employment 20 Years

 Back in 2005 I started to examine certain employment numbers to try to understand the changing economy. I thought  it would be worth a review. So here goes:

First s core business vs Government. Core saw a large drop in the Plague period but has recovered. Government not so much but continues to grow.

The following is core by sector. Transportation has grown as has non durable.

The following are per PoP numbers by sector. Ed and Health are dramatically increasing. This is workers not just dollars. Surprisingly Government has dropped.

The following is a graph of percent total by year by segment. Note that health and professional have grown but many old core have dropped.Especially manufacturing.

AI and Health Care

 Kaiser Health News reports on the move by the Senate to regulate AI in Health Care.

The Senate Finance Committee contemplated the future yesterday: artificial intelligence and its potential applications to health care. And it turns out the future looks an awful lot like the past and present: Democrats want regulations. And the industry wants money. He expressed outrage at the results of 2019 research led by Ziad Obermeyer, a University of California at Berkeley associate professor, who found that one commercial algorithm recommended less health care for Black patients based on historical cost data. “How does such a flawed system make its way into general use?” Wyden said. “Nobody’s watching. No guardrails. No guardrails to protect the patients from flawed algorithms and AI systems.”  It’s unclear whether this algorithm is still being marketed, Obermeyer testified later. The hearing marked Congress’s latest attempt to wrap its head around the newest AI systems, which can mimic some forms of human reasoning to make predictions and calculations, or generate text and images that look deceptively human-created. Wyden touted his “Algorithmic Accountability Act,” a bill intended to force companies to assess their own products and require the Federal Trade Commission to collect and report data on AI systems. But Republicans indicated that they don’t want to move quickly on the emerging technology. 

 The problem is, as we have noted, there is no agreed to definition of "AI". As as usual Congress is not the least bit concerned about regulating something they are totally ignorant of. After-all let the Chevron precedent allow the bureaucrats take of as they so choose. How can one regulate something that is undefined? Each purported AI technique is vastly different starting with the training sets.

What is Science?

 In a recent article in the journal Science, the authors promote the idea that science as we know it is too limited and it must include the ideas of indigenous people as a key part. They note:

Conflict has grown around Indigenous knowledge in education policy. There has been growing acceptance of the value of Indigenous knowledge for promoting ecological resilience, transformational approaches in stewardship, and cultural renewal within global fora such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, despite increasing acceptance at a strategic high level in science-informed policy, there is often a lack of wider acceptance, application, and policy protections of Indigenous knowledge transmission in more local settings, including opposition by some scientists. We argue that Indigenous knowledge can complement and enhance science teachings, benefitting students and society in a time of considerable global challenges. We do not argue that Indigenous knowledge should usurp the role of, or be called, science. But to step from “not science” to “therefore not as (or at all) valuable and worthy of learning” is a non sequitur, based on personal values and not a scientifically defensible position.

 

They continue:

 

 Similarly, we argue that teaching Indigenous knowledge alongside science should not seek to usurp science (in the way that, for example, creationism seeks to undermine evolutionary theory because they are incompatible with one another), but rather it “provokes science, and can act as a mirror for science to see itself more clearly, reflected in a philosophically different form of knowledge”  A parallel understanding of science and Indigenous knowledge systems would be complementary, emphasizing their similarities and cultural differences; the separation versus connection of empirical and philosophical subjects would be one example of those differences. Another example specific to Aotearoa–New Zealand would be that Te Ao Māori (Māori worldview) uses an intergenerational lens inclusive of the observer that gives cultural integrity to questions and generated outcomes, whereas the scientific method strives to be disconnected from that which it observes.

 

 This article makes no sense. Western science has evolved as a fact based construct, that uses a set of physical and mental tools which are subject to verification. The "constructs" the authors propose are cultural and cultural without verification. I admit that many medications are based upon time honored constructs from botanical areas but they have evolved with a firmer bases of their functions leading to improved medications. Such is not the case here. Their dismissal of creationism as non indigenous seems a bit far fetched. If a society accepts certain rituals such as healing by some stones then why not creationism. I am a firm Darwinian, one has to be when one hybridizes plants, but at the same time I am a firm believer in the basis of Western Science. Apparently these folks want us to accept any far fetched idea except those they do not agree with. It seems to be consistent with may of our current society.

And Who Paid for This?

 NEJM presents an interesting case. It is also in a NEJM video. It is about leptospirosis, a bacterial infection having crossed the Rio Grande. They note:

When the patient was discharged 6 weeks after his initial presentation, the urine volumes were normal and the creatinine level remained elevated at 2.3 mg per deciliter (203.3 μmol per liter). One month later, in clinic, he appeared healthy. He had mild normocytic anemia but the results of other laboratory studies were normal, including the rest of the complete blood count and tests of kidney and liver function.

Yes, the patient was hospitalized for six weeks, 42 days. Now typical hospital costs are well above $25,000 per day at MGH so we are looking at a $1 million plus bill. 

My question: who pays for this? Just a thought.

Vulnerable Cables

 

The BBC notes:

Yemen's legitimate, UN-recognised government in Aden has warned that the Houthis, who seized much of Yemen in 2014, are now threatening to sabotage the crucial undersea communication cables, including internet lines, which run under the Red Sea - connecting Asia to Europe.The warning came after a channel linked to the Houthis on the Telegram messaging app posted a map showing undersea cable routes in the Red Sea.Could the Houthis sabotage these lines? They almost certainly would if they could.The group has reportedly claimed that they have easily accessed maps showing the confluence of undersea communications cables running past their coastline, as they pass through the Bab al-Mandab Strait which, at its narrowest, is just 20 miles (32km) wide.

 (See Maps)

Yes, this is a real problem. However, Russia has facilities across the Arctic that connect St Petersburg to Nahodka. That being the case the West would be at the mercy of Russia for Eastbound traffic. Pacific Westbound would still function but India would be in trouble. Again see above Maps reference.

 

By the way, all it requires is a fishing trawler, an anchor, a map and GPS. Cheap and it is game over!

An Interesting Observation

 In Nature there is an interesting note regarding how to deal with cancers. Simply stated:

1. We know that cancers are driven by genetic pathways that have become aberrant

2. We know that cancers can be attacked by the immune system with the help of certain targeted therapies using antibodies such as those attacking PD-1, CTLA4, HER2 etc

3. We know that these above two factors are often organ independent

4. Thus instead of dealing with organ specific cancer treatment we should be focusing on genetic specific cancer treatment.

This means that a priori we should sequence the cancer cells independent of organ and start from there. We have spent centuries dealing with organ first and it is about time to deal with genes first. I have posted a recent Note regarding cancer vaccines. After reading the Nature piece I noted that my suggestions and observations in the Note follow just such a shift in paradigm.

As Nature notes:

This attachment to classifying cancer — and addressing it — on the basis of the organ in which it originated is stalling progress in multiple ways. First, it runs counter to the scientific understanding now emerging. The past two decades of cancer research, which have been dominated by efforts to characterize tumours at the cellular and molecular level, have shown that some of the molecular events driving their evolution are shared across different ‘types’ of cancer. Mutations in the tumour suppressor gene TP53, for example, are a feature of most types of cancer, as defined by the organ in which the cancer originated. What’s more, most cancer types can be subdivided into different molecular subgroups. Some lung cancers have mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene, some have mutations in the MET gene, others have translocations involving the ALK gene, and so on. Second — as already described — classifying cancer according to the organ in which it originated is making it harder for patients to obtain the drugs that could help them. In fact, when it comes to regulators approving the use of treatments, molecular-based classifications are likely to become ever more important as more drugs are developed using advanced biotechnologies.

I strongly believe that this trend, an actual paradigm shift, focuses on the problem not the organ. Thus metastasis no longer would exist since it is nothing more than an extension of the aberrant gene expressions..Focusing on the aberrant genes we then focus on the whole body and not an organ at a time. This is the expression of what is today's reality.

Thus instead of an Oncology book contents being:

1. Nervous System

2. Respiratory

3. Head and Neck

4. Genitourinary

5. Digestive

etc where the subsets are often the gene targets. Instead it would be:

1. PD-1, PDL-1

2. mTOR

3. JAK

4. HER2

5. etc

Then the subsets of each would then be the organ.  

This flips the view 90 degrees if you will, and it demands genetic profiling initially on all suspected lesions from the initial target lesion. It would turn Oncology on its head. Possibly make it a great deal more effective. Surgery would most likely not be affected but treatment would be.

PsyOps?

 

I returned to MIT in the Spring of 2005 to assist several PdD students and a PostDoc. I was on campus about 2 days a week and we conducted research, field trips, and some entrepreneurial investigations. I remained there until 2012 when some VP of Administration who I never knew took a disliking to me for reasons unknown. But that is another story. But weekly I would have dinners with my students and a colleague who would add some insight from their successful careers. One was Ed Habib, a phenomenal engineer and visionary, having been in WW II Navy and having been the architect and implementer of many key NASA satellites.

 

 A second one of our "guests" was Dr David Margulies, a physician and entrepreneur, showing my students that research and professional excellence can excel in the commercial world as well. These dinners were a means to expand their worlds, rather than just the ofttimes closed MIT environment. Namely, human contact and communications was critical.

Then in 2005, some of my students had discovered Facebook from Harvard. It was just then migrating to MIT. They insisted I join in. So I did. The BBC now recounts the 20th anniversary of Facebook, and it is worth the read. They note:

Other social networks, such as MySpace, existed before Facebook - but Mark Zuckerberg's site instantly took off when it launched in 2004, proving just how rapidly an online site of this kind could take hold.In less than a year it had one million users, and within four years it had overtaken MySpace - fuelled by innovations such as the ability to "tag" people in photos.Taking a digital camera on a night out, then tagging your friends in dozens of pictures was a staple of teenage life in the late noughties. The constantly changing activity feed was also a big draw for early users.By 2012, Facebook had surpassed one billion users a month and, aside from a brief blip at the end of 2021 - when daily active users dropped for the first time - the platform has continued to grow.By expanding into less connected countries and offering free internet, the company has maintained and increased the number of Facebook users. At the end of 2023, Facebook reported it had 2.11 billion daily users.Admittedly, Facebook is less popular than it used to be with young people. Nonetheless, it remains the most popular social network in the world, and has ushered in a new era of social activity online. 

Now after just a few weeks of use of Facebook, I realized that Facebook was a fantastic psychological profiling system. Back in the 60s we always were trying to profile Soviet targets. It was generally done at a distance. Now with Facebook, one could get a fantastic psy-profile.

 Yet after a few weeks it became clear that not only did they get a profile they could use that to influence the user. Perfect PsyOps!  I told my students but to no avail, it had become an addiction. Now with an abundance of these tools, foreign adversaries view their own platforms can influence the mentally vulnerable, also known as most under 35! 

Free Speech is a cornerstone of our Democracy, but PsyOps controlled by an adversary is not.

A National Health System

 The UK has the NHS. In dealing with cancers, time is of the essence in many types. But as Cancer Research UK notes:

Cancer services across the UK are struggling to meet demand for cancer diagnosis and treatment, resulting in patients experiencing some of the worst waits on record.  With more people being referred for suspected cancer than ever before, and the number of new cancer cases per year in the UK rising, it is essential that services have the necessary investment in diagnostic equipment and the NHS workforce. In England, currently only around 54% of cancers with a known stage are diagnosed early (stages 1 and 2), and we are not on track to meet NHS England’s ambition for 75% of cancers to be diagnosed early by 2028. Screening can help prevent cancers developing as well as detect cancers at an early stage, and it is estimated that in the UK over 5,000 lives are saved by the cancer screening programmes each year.  However, screening participation varies across population groups, and in recent years there has been an overall decline in the uptake of breast and cervical screening.  We need to take action to tackle barriers to participation and to ensure everyone eligible who wants to take up the offer of cancer screening can do so. 

Namely in Northern Ireland, the occupied territory, only 40% get to see a cancer specialist in 60 days. In the US, a woman with breast cancer will get next day service. That is the difference between life and a horrible death.

Four Years Ago

 Four years ago I read the NEJM article stating:

In December 2019, a cluster of patients with pneumonia of unknown cause was linked to a seafood wholesale market in Wuhan, China. A previously unknown betacoronavirus was discovered through the use of unbiased sequencing in samples from patients with pneumonia. Human airway epithelial cells were used to isolate a novel coronavirus, named 2019-nCoV, which formed a clade within the subgenus sarbecovirus, Orthocoronavirinae subfamily. Different from both MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV, 2019-nCoV is the seventh member of the family of coronaviruses that infect humans. Enhanced surveillance and further investigation are ongoing. (Funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China and the National Major Project for Control and Prevention of Infectious Disease in China.) emerging and reemerging pathogens are global challenges for public health. broadly among humans, other mammals, and birds and that cause respira 1 Coronaviruses are enveloped RNA viruses that are distributedtory, enteric, hepatic, and neurologic diseases.2,3 Six coronavirus species are known to cause human disease.4 Four viruses — 229E, OC43, NL63, and HKU1 — are prevalent and typically cause common cold symptoms in immunocompetent individuals.4 The two other strains — severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) — are zoonotic in origin and have been linked to sometimes fatal illness.5 SARS-CoV was
the causal agent of the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreaks in 2002 and 2003 in Guangdong Province, China.6-8 MERS-CoV was the pathogen responsible for severe respiratory disease outbreaks in 2012 in the Middle East.9  Given the high prevalence and wide distribution of coronaviruses, the large genetic diversity and frequent recombination of their genomes, and increasing human–animal interface activities, novel coronaviruses are likely to emerge periodically in humans owing to frequent cross-species infections and occasional spillover events.

 At that point I knew the proverbial would hit the fan. Also based upon experience and in my opinion it was likely this report would have been highly filtered. 

And to paraphrase an HIV term, "The Band played on"

Horse Shoes and other things

 Certain people seem to demand that what they do is essential and even if no one wants it anymore then we should all chip in an pay for it. Consist the horse manure collectors in New York City. Now we really did not need them for well over a hundred years an no one demand the "Government" fund their ongoing efforts. Frankly it would make traffic worse and one would guess Congestion Pricing would not apply to them.

Now along comes some privileged Atlantic reporter who states:

Some have called for direct and muscular government intervention. Policy proposals include tax credits for publications that hire reporters and for advertisers that place ads in those publications, as well as increased government spending on public-service ads. A potentially more powerful mechanism: a law compelling Google and Facebook to compensate publishers for the news content the tech companies display on their platforms. Publishers around the world have lined up in support of a law enacted in Australia in 2021 known as the News Media Bargaining Code. The law creates a framework for publishers to negotiate payments from tech giants. Thus far in Australia, the law has resulted in more than $140 million a year in payments, according to the former government official who implemented the bargaining code—a tiny fraction of the $424 billion that Google’s and Facebook’s parent companies collected in revenues last year, but real money to Aussie media companies. The law’s apparent success in supporting journalism has spurred similar proposals in Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Indonesia, Brazil, Switzerland, and South Africa. California might pass a state-level bargaining code this year. In 2023, Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar and Republican Senator John Kennedy introduced a federal version. The tech giants themselves, unsurprisingly, have balked; Facebook has blocked news in Canada rather than paying publishers there. Still, even the threat of bargaining codes can nudge tech companies into negotiations that lead to meaningful payments to publishers, according to Anya Schiffrin, who has studied global media incentives as the director of the technology, media, and communications program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “I’m a huge believer in bargaining codes,” she told me. But, she predicted, the Klobuchar-Kennedy bill, despite its long list of bipartisan co-sponsors, is unlikely to become law anytime soon. “The Senate seems to have other things to do,” she said. Among those who wish Congress would act is Soon-Shiong, who responded to criticism from Democratic lawmakers by urging them to pass a law to support news organizations. “I’d like to put the question to them,” he wrote, according to the Times’ own coverage. “What can they do to help preserve a free and robust press, one that is instrumental in upholding our democracy?”

In a free market if no one wants your product you either change or go out of business. No more horses not more horse shoes. But there is now a class of people who firmly believe they are on high and demand we pay even though no one wants them.

A Modest Academic Proposal

 There is significant outcries against the DEI etc overhead at US universities. At some universities this type of overhead competes with total faculty. So how to solve it without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Simple:

1. Fund research directly with no overhead. Fund faculty, researchers, students if they work.

2. Do not fund overhead. MIT and others have 90% + overhead. It is this slush fund that supports DEI etc.

3. If they still want to do this stuff let them fund it out of endowment funds donated by alumni.

4. But alumni can do what I have done, give the money directly to the researcher for their own fund and not a penny goes to overhead.

This was if the alumni want to support the overhead, let them, but also they have the option for direct funding via faculty discretionary funds, no overheat etc.

Dumb and Dumber

 The NY Times reports why the US military were killed. They state:

Air defenses failed to stop an attack on a U.S. military outpost in Jordan on Sunday that killed three American soldiers at least in part because the hostile drone approached its target at the same time an American drone was returning to the base, two U.S. officials said on Monday. The return of the American surveillance drone to the remote resupply base caused some confusion over whether the incoming drone was friendly or not, and air defenses were not immediately engaged, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss preliminary findings into a major contributing factor to the incident. Two other drones that attacked other locations nearby in southeast Syria were shot down, they added.

 For almost a century we have had IFF, Identification Friend or Foe. One would have expected this in our most advanced systems, but alas like so many software systems today they are designed in my opinion by arrogant and ignorant morons. Pity!

More Nonsense

 MIT News has an article which in my experience is nonsense. 

An MIT study finds the brains of children who grow up in less affluent households are less responsive to rewarding experiences. MIT neuroscientists have found that the brain’s sensitivity to rewarding experiences — a critical factor in motivation and attention — can be shaped by socioeconomic conditions. In a study of 12 to 14-year-olds whose socioeconomic status (SES) varied widely, the researchers found that children from lower SES backgrounds showed less sensitivity to reward than those from more affluent backgrounds.

In reality and in my experience, the old MIT was  the bastion of opportunity for those from lower incomes. Those who created their own opportunity. MIT was not a Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, it was pure meritocracy. If you studied like crazy for the SATs and got 1500 or higher, if you got a New York Regents Scholarship, high grades on State Regents exams, despite having no money and less than supportive parents and environments, it was an escape, one where you never wrote an essay bemoaning your life! 

Yes we had a few Prep school kids, one that I remember, but for the most part they were Bronx HS Science and Stuyvesant. They were kids from low income homes, individual achievers. This write up is in my experience utter nonsense, unless of course you dig a bit deeper as to what types of people the writers are speaking of.

Kind of Fishy?

 The Chevron ruling of the Supreme Court has in my opinion over the decades been one of the worst. Simply stated, Chevron says if Congress passes a law and it is not well written then the Administrative agency responsible for its administration can interpret the law as it sees fit no matter what. In effect it establishes an independent Governmental body composed solely on bureaucrats whose person opinions control what happens.

The latest is the herring case where the Government Administrators demand that fishing vessels have monitors and that the vessel must pay the monitors salary. As Turley notes:

The cases today concern federal requirements that commercial fishermen pay for at-sea monitors. Herring fishermen in New Jersey and Rhode Island are challenging the law in a case with a long list of amicus filings on both sides from groups, politicians, and businesses. The fishermen say that the monitors could put them out of business, costing up to 20 percent of their annual revenues in a business that is already marginal for profits. They argue that the government wants monitors (which they do not necessarily oppose) but lacked the funds. The decision was made to shift the costs to the fishermen and then citing Chevron to curtail judicial review.

 Chevron was always a problem. Congress can be sloppy and then let the uncontrolled bureaucrats make the decisions and having the taxpayers pay the costs of these often politically divergent acts. Hopefully Chevron is overturned. In my opinion and my experience this is worse than Roe.

From Whence Do They Come?

 The USNI newsletter notes:

U.S. fighter aircraft shot down an anti-ship cruise missile the Houthis fired toward USS Laboon (DDG-58), U.S. Central Command announced Sunday night. Central Command’s release did not specify the aircraft that shot down the missile or the military branch. The fighter aircraft shot down the missile off the coast of Al-Hudaydah, according to the release. There were no reports of damage or injury following the strike. The attack on Laboon comes after two days of strikes by the U.S. and the United Kingdom on Houthi targets in Yemen. During the strikes, which involved a number of warships and aircraft, the U.S. and U.K. hit sites that included radar systems, production facilities and munition depots, USNI News previously reported.

Now one may ask; where do these state of the art anti-ship cruise missiles come from. Sanaa in Yemen was a key stop on the trade routes from Aden on to Rome. It also was the source of incense used by Rome when burning bodies. Today Sanaa is a stronghold of the local terrorist clans. 

As far as I know there are no Raytheon or Lockheed factories there, no high tech firms, no universities etc. Thus, from whence do these weapons come? Perhaps addressing the source would be helpful.

BTW, the market for incense has dropped significantly in the last two thousand years.

X-15 to X-59

 NASA and Lockheed unveiled the new supersonic X-59. My first work was on the X-15 tracking atmospheric aerosols. The X-59 is a "quiet" supersonic. As NASA notes:

NASA and Lockheed Martin formally debuted the agency’s X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft Friday. Using this one-of-a-kind experimental airplane, NASA aims to gather data that could revolutionize air travel, paving the way for a new generation of commercial aircraft that can travel faster than the speed of sound. “This is a major accomplishment made possible only through the hard work and ingenuity from NASA and the entire X-59 team,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. “In just a few short years we’ve gone from an ambitious concept to reality. NASA’s X-59 will help change the way we travel, bringing us closer together in much less time.”

 Interesting how time changes, kind of. I flew the Concorde two times, even then it was a bit out of date. But it made a tremendous difference getting to Europe.

Teaching

 I have had the good fortune to have taught at multiple institutions. What I recall most was that to be effective a good professor needs to make a connection with the students, they must become one with the material being taught. That means I had to have eye contact with each student, I had to see if they were missing something.

I recalled from my High School days I took college chemistry on television via a program called Continental Classroom. Midway through the course they introduced the concept of a mole. I could only think of pigmented skin lesions. One I kind of got it I could not figure out what experiments would demonstrate it. It took me fifty years to come back to Einstein and Brownian motion, despite having written about it I never realized Einstein's paper allowed for the calculation of Avogadro's number. You see in 1959 one could not ask the TV professor and he obviously could not see me.

The NY Times discusses AI as a means to instruct. They note:

Sal Khan, the chief executive of Khan Academy, gave a rousing TED Talk last spring in which he predicted that A.I. chatbots would soon revolutionize education. “We’re at the cusp of using A.I. for probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen,” Mr. Khan, whose nonprofit education group has provided online lessons for millions of students, declared. “And the way we’re going to do that is by giving every student on the planet an artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor.”

Nonsense. We have tried this for a decade with online courses.  The AI bot cannot see the student, cannot see the eyes showing lapses in understanding. The AI bot treats each student the same, when in reality they are all different.

This nonsensical proposal will just homogenize incompetence rather than provoke brilliance.

The Intern

 I can now see the importance of a Union in Colleges. The Intern. This is an unpaid laborer, a student perhaps, who is providing a valuable service such as grading exams, tutoring students, do research work, editing papers, etc. They are told that this unpaid labor will benefit them in the long run. In actuality the institution benefits and no one ever remembers the indentured servitude. The very need of a union. Remember Harvard now pays PhD students $50,000 per year and God knows what that means per hour.

When I was an undergrad, Junior and Senior years I was a Lab instructor and paid. As a Grad student I was an Instructor, paid and no tuition. In today's world, this invention of "the intern" is merely a way for the institution to get free labor. "Workers of the world arise!"

Urban Planners, Architects, and Nonsense

 The NY Times has an article as to how best to house 1 million more people. The author states:

New York City doesn’t have enough homes. The average New Yorker now spends 34 percent of pre-tax income on rent, up from just 20 percent in 1965. There are many reasons homes in the city are so expensive, but at the root of it all, even after the pandemic, is supply and demand: Insufficient housing in our desirable city means more competition — and therefore sky-high prices — for the few new homes that trickle onto the market. Some New Yorkers harbor fantasies that instead of building more, we can meet our housing needs through more rent control, against the advice of most economists, or by banning pieds-à-terre or by converting all vacant office towers into residential buildings, despite the expense and complexity. Given the enormity of the crisis, such measures would all be drops in the bucket, leading many to worry that if we were to actually build the hundreds of thousands of homes New Yorkers need, we would end up transforming the city into an unrecognizable forest of skyscrapers.

The structures the author promotes look like prisons. Have we not learned anything from the mass problems of "public housing". Try going into one. Crime, filth, decay, etc. There is in my opinion and my experience a single public housing system that works. It infects the city with a blight.

Yes, NY is expensive. We all pay the price. The new tax on driving into Manhattan is just an example. It forces people out of New York. At least those people legally here and working.  I grew up on Staten Island. Two busses, a ferry, then the subway was a daily occurrence. Two hours commute each way. 

Now in New Jersey, it is 45 minutes to NYC and then pray you can survive a subway ride to some short distance. 

Perhaps an economic solution is best, just let the prices increase and drive the residents to wherever they can exist. Building more prison like structures will do nothing more than enhance the criminal underbelly of the city.

NYC and Common Carriage Law

 Jonathan Turley makes an interesting observation regarding the bussing of illegals to NYC. I believe that there is another more salient dimension to this claim by NY regarding the transport of indigent illegals. Namely common carrier law! As Turley notes:

New York City Major Eric Adams announced on Thursday that he is suing bus companies for over $700 million for busing undocumented persons to the state. This is truly a thing to behold. It is a frivolous lawsuit based on an absurd law motivated by raw hypocrisy. In the meantime, the Biden Administration has been flying migrants to outside the city but no lawsuit is expected. New York City politicians have long heralded their status as a sanctuary city. Yet, it is now taking various methods to prevent migrants from seeking sanctuary by threatening anyone who brings them to the city. The lawsuit will rely on New York Social Services Law § 149, which requires that “[a]ny person who knowingly brings, or causes to be brought, a needy person from out of state into this state for the purpose of making him a public charge…shall be obligated to convey such person out of state or support him at his own expense.”

 The bus is a common carrier. It carries people from one place to another regardless. As such if a bus happens to carry a bank robber from A to B they are held harmless for that person robbing the bank. The whole information industry is based upon some form of common carriage. Common carrier law has been around since Queen Elizabeth I. We here in the US inherited it and it initially applied to ships and land based physical carriage. The carrier is immune from what the entity does which it carries. Otherwise commerce would come to a halt. The English recognized this and common carrier laws allowed England to dominate world trade.

But New York City and State are run by the same folks that instituted the tea tax that led to the Boston Party of past fame. They tax anything, dead or alive. Recently they sue anything dead or alive, if they do not like it. 

It will be interesting to see what this does.

Swearing

 The Guardian has a piece that at this time of year I find amusing. The writer notes:

Swearing has become more widely acceptable over the past two decades because it is increasingly used for other purposes than to insult people, linguistics experts have said. “F..k” and “s..t”, the two most commonly used swearwords in the UK, are frequently used to emphasise a point in conversation or to build social bonds, rather than with the specific intent to cause offence, according to academic researchers.

The use of the F word, actually a Germanic derivative but introduce by Edward III in 1353 as "Fornication Under Consent of the King". This was a permission for what was then for Common Law Marriages,  since the Plague of 1348 had demolished religious orders and those capable of performing a legal ceremony. Needless to say the shortening of the word has come down to us as noted. 

In my own case, it was the cold January of 1961 that my father sent me to work at the NY Sanitation Department, if I recall to teach me what work was really like. Perhaps I was a bit rebellious, but I don't recall. So every day I arose at 4 AM, dressed warmly, took two busses to the Sanitation Garage in Port Richmond. There after 4 years of Latin, three of French, one of Greek, a bit of Italian, a summer of Russian, I learned Staten Island speak, Namely the use of the F word as a noun, adjective, verb, adverb, conjunctive, preposition and on an on. One spoke using the F word as every other word. I had become a true Staten Islander, or even a Brooklynite! I could mumble and interject Fs as good as anyone else. Thus I could terrify the worst of my Mafioso friends.

Language is a reflection of class. In England it defines one's class, think King Charles. Most people fail to recognize that. Thus Jersey Shore is a true reflection of some I knew in my youth. As an aside Snooki (actually born in Chili) lives just around the corner from me here in New Jersey. She is listed by Wikipedia as a famous resident beating out two Mafioso heads who are now in the slammer. 

But the question is; what does the use of the F word, as it migrates through society really mean? I still feel the pull of that Sanitation Garage!

MIT, Policies, and Ethics

 The current President of MIT sent out a letter to students, faculty, staff and alumni/ae. She makes four points which are interesting. She notes:

1. Benchmarking and improving student disciplinary processes

MIT’s long-established student disciplinary processes were designed to be fair, proportionate and confidential. Those qualities are vital. However, recent events have spurred some frustration in the community with respect to the timeliness, accountability and transparency of our disciplinary system.

 This is truly a problem of culture. If a speaker is invited to discuss some topic, perhaps opposing the views of some clan established at the Institute, it should be allowed to occur unencumbered unless it incites actions which are material threats to others. It is simple, you do not and cannot shout down speakers. It worked in Germany in the 30s but should not be tolerated at MIT today. The cause is simple, MIT has deliberately changed its culture via its student body and has selected students, and in turn some faculty, who are fundamentally attached to this type of behavior. Proper behavior is like pornography, you know it when you see it. Shouting in someone's face, blocking access to classes or lecture halls, clear threats of violence, well not too hard. Solution, simple, expulsion or termination.

2. A shared understanding of the rights and responsibilities of free expression

In response to a speech controversy in 2021, the faculty approved the MIT Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom in late 2022 as the foundation for a strong campus culture of free expression. In its first year, the statement has been tested publicly several times: last spring with a provocative postering campaign, and in multiple moments this fall.

MIT created this problem by its deliberate change of culture. One should try to examine the student body and what was the basis for admission of the culprits opposing free speech. In the old days, students were just too busy with studies to assemble and oppress others. I was a student and faculty member during the Viet Nam War period. Harvard had protests. MIT had virtually none. Yes we had bomb threats, yes we had SDS attacks, but on a day to day basis it was calm. After all, anyone one of us could be drafted in a femto second!

3. Making sure our DEI programs effectively meet campus needs

We will soon announce a new Vice President for Equity and Inclusion (VPEI). With this new role, we have an important opportunity to reflect on and comprehensively assess the structures and programs intended to support our community and create a welcoming environment.

This is the core problem. MIT was based on excellence. Diversity works in environments wherein commonality of performance is the norm. A factory, Government positions, and the like. In a place like MIT, which is highly selective, the choice of people must be blind to anything but thier performance and moral character. That should be the only factors. The DEI cadre has expanded to hundreds of highly paid individuals overseeing the Institute. The needs of the campus are varied. It needs competent facility mangement, lab safety, and of course students and faculty. In the latter two one seeks excellence.

4. Targeted questions in our campus climate survey

To be effective in fighting antisemitism, Islamophobia and hatred based on national origin or ethnicity on campus, we need a clear understanding of the nature and extent of the problem.

 This is an interesting point. Namely a survey to understand the attitudes of students and perforce faculty. MIT has always been a multicultural community. I had students from China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Israel, various European countries, and I was actively participating in the MITES program seeking minority students to bring into the MIT student body. Many of the MITES students I have remained in touch with for over forty years. All have been quite successful. But the question is; what has MIT done in its selection process of students and faculty to actually CREATE this environment?

In my opinion, the point addressed are germane but one suspects that the results will perforce of the people be just a reinforcement of the culture leading to this collapse. Pity!

A University Student Newspaper

 Over the past few months I was impressed by the fairness and depth of coverage by the Harvard Crimson. The reporting was clear, comprehensive and balanced. I have a nexus to Harvard, not as strong as it had been to MIT, and have the habit of reading The Crimson each day. Unlike Harvard however, MIT has no such Institute wide news reporting. The MIT News is a propaganda sheet which has become the classic example of what to think not how to think. 

I think that the MIT students should/must take the example of Harvard and create a newspaper, website if you will, that is a balanced and truthful non-propaganda sheet for the MIT community. Otherwise the propaganda rag of MIT News will form MIT for the years to come. 

In Loco Parentis Circa 2024

 The MIT President, the sole surviving member of the University Presidents telling Congress their tales of woe, writes a letter to the MIT Community (includes us poor Alumni/Alumnae). Following through on the links one observes several facts.

1. MIT no longer helps students how to think but clearly tells them what to think. 

2. I counted hundreds of staff and faculty involved in overhead work as thought police. The costs of this must be enormous! That is why I have refused to donate another penny! The costs of this Stasi like infrastructure is clearly in the tens of millions a year.

3. There are so many goals and wishful thinking that it is impossible to follow any of them. Clarity is gone, transparency is dissolved into a miasma of proto Marxist speak.

4. MIT was know as an egalitarian institution, wherein ones background, genetic makeup, etc were incidental to your ability to produce. Your work was judged by competent peers and not controlled by policy Commissars. 

5. The current President in my opinion may well lead to the demise of the MIT that many of us knew and admired. 

Having been at this blog for now over fifteen years, I saw the changes in our society but I never anticipated that I would ever see the collapse of so cherished institution. MIT was never a place where you went to become indoctrinated by minions of mind changers. It appears to have become that now.