Electric bikes

 The latest trend in our suburbs is the young males (about 12-17) riding electric bikes. Now males 18-35 are the worst and most deadly drivers on the road. I had one total my car a few years back sending my grandchildren to the ED. In NJ unfortunately as a "NO Fault" state, short of vehicular homicide the Insurance company decides amongst themselves and the driver harmed is left empty handed while the at fault driver get a free pass to just go at it again.

But at least cars have licensed drivers with insurance in a registered vehicle, almost always. But the bicycles do 25+ mph and are silent, electric not gas. So they come up behind a pedestrian and zip through sidewalk crowds. The Police seem grossly clueless. After-all they are minors, so until someone is killed, or worse a group slaughtered, nothing will be done. 

There is no Constitutional Amendment that enables reckless pre-teens and teens  to mow down pedestrians. 

I first saw this in DC a decade ago, but now in the suburbs parents spend $1,000 on a deadly weapon and give it to their child. Wait till the Courts catch up with this one!  

The Problem with AI

 AI systems are electricity hogs. They use massive amounts continuously 24 by 7. Then they get to buy this power off the same grid that small businesses and residences do. The net result is they get massive subsidies by effectively taxing the little folk! The Utility Commissions facilitate this.

The solution is simple. Make them pay massively more per unit or demand they construct their own power systems. Prevent them from abusing the consumers. 

Personally, from my experience, much AI is just a flim flam act that is supposed to benefit society when in fact it may be inherently a destructive mechanism. 

Vaccines

 The current conflicts over vaccines in my opinion were a direct result as to how the Government handled the pandemic. The thesis of the Government leaders was that mRNA vaccine was a sine qua non, it worked, prevented getting the virus and prevented the spread. Unfortunately that was based upon literally no clinical evidence,

mRNA vaccines were new, elegant and did have a modicum of effectiveness. Namely they may have reduced persons getting "infected", qua getting sick. It may not have stopped people from getting infected and being a carrier, I cannot find any trials demonstrating that. It did not stop transmission. Frankly we still do not really understand the transmission path. My guess it by aerosols and into the tear ducts. But that is at best an educated guess. Yes, there was no time for clinical trials but frankly the CDC should have been collecting data and making it publicly available, There is a mass of people who could be examining it.

Instead, one relied at best on shaky State data. In New Jersey for example the head of Dept Health was a politically connected RN. It was never clear to me that this individual had a modicum of confidence.

The major problem was the Government stating things which frankly were far from provable. Vaccines did not stop infection nor did they stop transmission. Once the public started to discover this there was a gross collapse of confidence. The CDC was never on top of the issue. 

Vaccines play a major role in health care. I had my small pox vaccine in 1944, and suspect it may very well still be effective. I had Polio vaccines, Rabies, Yellow Fever, and the list goes on. Flu vaccines are good for at most 6 months, COVID likewise. Neither is fool proof. They are mitigators. Polio and Small Pox seem to be effective and long lasting. 

But it is essential that the public be informed even if is a limited amount and that must be stated. Telling the people and absolute when their own eyes show otherwise destroys trust. No trust and you get what we see today.  

Medical Research

 Medical Research has been highly productive over the past fifty years. Much focus has been on cancers, and rightly so, since these diseases are often brutal as well as highly costly to deal with. Yet there are many other diseases that debilitate and are costly, namely those due to what is termed sterile inflammation. An example is osteoarthritis, the breakdown of bone joints inflicting pain and loss of function. In many of these disorders the solution is at best the "grin and bear it" approach.

Now research has found linkages between cancers and sterile inflammations, and as we learn more we see we often know less. The current assault on medical research seems to be highly counter intuitive. In fact it may set us back generations. However a factor in this process often is the researchers themselves. Their work may be highly laudable but the generational sense of entitlement should be mollified. Funding is often done in a closed cadre of associates which breeds a sense of being a protected class. 

I suspect much of the current attack on the research community is as much an attack on attitudes as it is an intent to reduce Government expenditures.  

AI vs The Reference Librarian

 In an old movie with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn called the Desk Set, Hepburn plays a 1940ish Reference Librarian. Namely some one in the company asked a question and she and her team came up with the answer. Segue to 1970s at MIT. We had Reference Librarians. They were well educated and specialists. Thus if I had a question about some progress in the nascent field on DNA, just about twenty years old by then, I would meet the Reference Librarian and we would have an interrogatory and some brief time later, days usually, I would be gotten back by them and would have my answers and a details list of reference back up. 

My interactions were in a dialog form and my backup was both a list of references and hard copies of the most important ones. No computers, good interrogatories  and detailed results.

The Librarian did not generate anything new, just collected and summarized the data available. 

So what is AI? A computerized Reference Librarian who consumes massive amount of electricity for which the consumer is bearing the costs. My old Reference Librarian consumer de minimis electricity. Also she was quite pleasant and thorough. 

So what is AI?  

Hiroshima vs Manilla

 

Manilla, late 1944, after US landed and took over. Most of the damage was caused by Japanese. This is what the US was looking for if they tried to invade Japan a year later. It was often worse than Dresden. Just an observation.