China Down 7.5% at the Start

There seems to be a total collapse in China. This was not fully expected but the ripples will be significant. Remember the China Sovereign Fund holds several trillion US Debt. This will be a very very bumpy week!

Why Windows 10 is Like a California Ham Sandwich

Now a few years ago I wrote about my saga of getting a ham on rye sandwich in California. Some how in California no one listens to the customers, they all want to add something. I noticed Panera also acts that way but not as bad as California. You ask for a "ham on rye" and they ask if you want sprouts or onions, peppers or tomatoes, "you want chips or fries".

All I wanted was ham on rye! I then did the Jack Nicholson thing; hold the tomatoes, hold the peppers, hold the fries!

Then I found someone who had experience. He said; "You from New York?" "Yeah!" then he said: "Two pieces of rye with ham in between, nothing else, yeas!" I answered, "got it!"

Now W10 is like a California sandwich. Instead of getting the computer you get their graphics, their placements, their way of doing things which when you try do not work.

Why not try like  ham on rye. Let me decide what to add, lay out the condiments. Don't force me to figure out how to scrape off the avocado stuff, I hate avocados. I also hate mayonnaise on ham! I like mustard and I want to put on my own amount!

So W10 comes as Seattle would like you to consume it. I guess that is also why I hate Starbucks. Try and get a small regular black coffee!

Making Windows 10 Look Like XP

Microsoft is not very user friendly. Really not friendly. Well welcome to Windows 10. Just got a pad to use and it comes with 10. Now Dell makes a fantastic product. Then on to W10.

First thing I do is get rid of all the junk that some marketing guru, a true oxymoron for Microsoft, wants me to have. Change screen to classic blue and layout the files folders like my other 7 machines. That way no visual dissonance.

Then go to start and get rid of all the junk. Tons of junk, none of which I will ever use!

Then make a Recovery stub. No wait, it seems that no one has been able to do this yet. You have to Google this since Microsoft tells you they have too many questions and yours is not important.

But, there is a back door, a Windows 7 restore to a 1TB disk. Got that done.

Then try and get Bluetooth working! It connects, then drops, and then, well I have no idea what then. To see how bad Microsoft is one need look no further than the "Support" pages. The Company in my opinion must really despise its customers. The poor customer had the same issues I did. Now bluetooth is really simple. I have it in my car, my GPS, dozens of other computers. But for Microsoft, taking a simple need and turning it into massive neuro surgery in the dark is common place!

Then there is your WiFi. For various reasons it drops you, sending you to Airplane mode. This happens randomly.

Yes, it can be made to look and almost act like XP. But given a clean install and the mess so far I could see no rational human upgrading from W7 to W10! Why upgrade to a system which the users have not shaken down yet. Yes, that is Microsoft. Thank God Google still works, but I suspect they will also soon be going the way of Seattle. Pity.

Obesity and Genes; Redux

There seems to be a continuing search for the genes which "cause" obesity. To reiterate, independent of any gene;

Input - Output = Net Accumulation

Thus eat too much means you get fat. Of course the problem with the above is; how does one measure input and output. The classic manner is in food and Kcal. Thus:

3500 Kcal = 1 pound

That is for every 3500 Kcal one consumes above a Basal Metabolism burn rate one gains a pound.

However not all food is equal and not all people burn calories at the same rate. Thus perhaps there is a genetic factor on burn rates. That does not negate the above argument.

Into this fray is a new article in NEJM. They state:

Our results point to a pathway for adipocyte thermogenesis regulation involving ARID5B, rs1421085, IRX3, and IRX5, which, when manipulated, had pronounced pro-obesity and anti-obesity effects.

 This is 3 genes and a single SNV. But we must always ask; what is the cause? Again it appears that with these genes fat cells burn at a lower rate. Thus if a normal person, whatever that means, can deal with 1800 Kcal per day and not gain weight then a gene encumbered person may only burn 1200 Kcal per day and eating the same amount will thus gain weight. So eat less! The cause of obesity is consumption. If one has a lower set point then eat less.

Now in the MIT write up of this article the authors state:

But there may now be a new approach to prevent and even cure obesity, thanks to a study led by researchers at MIT and Harvard Medical School and published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. By analyzing the cellular circuitry underlying the strongest genetic association with obesity, the researchers have unveiled a new pathway that controls human metabolism by prompting our adipocytes, or fat cells, to store fat or burn it away. “Obesity has traditionally been seen as the result of an imbalance between the amount of food we eat and how much we exercise, but this view ignores the contribution of genetics to each individual’s metabolism,” says senior author Manolis Kellis, a professor of computer science and a member of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and of the Broad Institute.

 Well frankly the CSAIL reference is wrong. It does not relate to exercise bu cell burn rates. We always knew that. We further know that some people's cells burn at different rates and that obese people burn at a lower rate. The classic case is the Southwest Indian Tribes who most likely after generations have adapted to low caloric input due to the nature of their environment and thus have a lower conserving burn rate. We see this in many immigrants from countries where food was no readily available. The Irish and many Hispanics have a similar characteristic. (Also some early epigenetic studies demonstrated inheritable traits from WW II starvation in the Low Countries).They can maintain lower weight by not eating our high calorie foods. Don't blame the genes, in fact the genes have adapted to the harsh limited food environment which may be beneficial.

The NEJM article concludes:

Last, we found that direct manipulation of the ARID5B–rs1421085–IRX3/IRX5 regulatory axis in primary cell cultures of adipocytes from patients reversed the signatures of obesity. This indicates that in addition to changes in physical activity and nutrition, manipulation of mitochondrial thermogenesis offers a potential third pathway for shifting between energy storage and expenditure in a brain-independent and tissue-autonomous way in humans. In summary, our work elucidates a mechanistic basis for the strongest genetic association with obesity. Our results indicate that the SNV rs1421085 underlies the genetic association between the FTO locus and obesity. The SNV disrupts an evolutionarily conserved motif for the ARID5B repressor, which leads to loss of binding, derepression of a potent preadipocyte superenhancer, and activation of downstream targets IRX3 and IRX5 during early differentiation of mesenchymal progenitors into adipocyte subtypes. This results in a cell-autonomous shift from white adipocyte browning to lipid-storage gene expression programs and to repression of basal mitochondrial respiration, a decrease in thermogenesis in response to stimulus, and an increase in adipocyte size. Manipulation of the uncovered pathway, including knockdown or overexpression of the upstream regulator ARID5B, genome editing of the predicted causal variant rs1421085, and knockdown or overexpression of target genes IRX3 and IRX5, had a significant effect on obesity phenotypes.

Now the last things we need is a new medication to control genetic pathways when the answer is just lower food consumption. That is free!

As an aside I found that the paper relied on murine samples. In addition they state:

To translate the results of genomewide association studies into mechanistic insights, we combined public resources (epigenomic annotations, chromosome conformation, and regulatory motif conservation), targeted experiments for risk and nonrisk haplotypes (enhancer tiling, gene expression, and cellular profiling), and directed perturbations in human primary cells and mouse models (regulator–target knockdown and overexpression and CRISPR–Cas9 genome editing). 

 Let's just hope we don't do CRISPR Cas9 editing on humans for obesity! Just a concern.

Oh and by the way, there is a very effective tool already in use. It is called the Scale. Cheap, lots of them around, and it provides a set point feedback loop. You get on it once a day and if it gets higher you stop eating, if it gets too low, then see a Doc!

And yes, one last thing, the MIT Stata Center where CSAIL is located has a "food court" I used to frequent, albeit carefully. The food there is carb rich, and more than likely will be the cause of later obesity issues. So one must always examine their own sand box, and not blame the genes for everything!

Iran, the French Revolution and Manchuria

In 1967 Noam Chomsky wrote a piece for Liberation entitled On the Backgrounds of the Pacific War.  This was what would become classic Chomsky. In my opinion is is excellent Sophistry, having a conclusion and fitting the facts to support the conclusion. Lawyers do it all the time and even some historians do so. Simply stated Chomsky rewrote his view of Japan' taking of China as driven by US Foreign Policy and then went on to link it to Viet Nam. It was my first time reading a powerful piece on the Viet Nam War. It too me almost 30 years to come back and understand it, and fifty years almost to counter it. I was then a strong supporter of Chomsky, even seeing his way as the only way. It took those 50 years of seeing the world up close to understand it.

Then there is the Kennan Telegram. Kennan saw Russia up close, as a diplomat. It would take me to the late 70s to see the Soviets up close in treaty negotiations and then from the mid 90s to mod 2000s to have them as business partners. The one thing I saw even in the 70s was that we and the Russians at core have the same values, our children. I recall talking with some Russians and we went to our children, we both wanted them to see a future, we both saw nuclear weapons as devastating. The RISOP scenarios I recalled lead to the elimination of not only humanity but nature. Kennan saw a middle way, that of delimiting Soviet reach, containment.

Now on the one hand we have the Chomsky view of seeing the US as the source of all international upheaval and the Kennan view of Soviet imperialism, a view which the US had to deal with, and was not the cause.

Now we have Iran, Persia to those of us who have long memories. Persia has for almost 3000 years tried to gain territory to the West, Xerxes, Darius, and the list goes on. Today they are not as strong, except through the power of a nuclear weapon. Do it leaders share the love of their children that we and the Russians do? That may be the only question worth asking. Nuclear weapons are not sending a plane into the World Trade Center. A nuclear event is devastating.

Now along comes some "expert" in The Syndicate to tells us what we should believe. He states:

Forget the French Revolution as a model: the so-called Thermidorian Reaction, when moderates ended Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, was an exception to the pattern of modern revolutions. The typical pattern during our living memory is that the hardliners come after the moderates. In the Soviet Union, for example, it was hardliners after World War II who strove to export Marxist-Leninist revolution, condemning the world to decades of cold war.

Somehow Revolutions are not all the same. Many have studied the French Revolution and the rise of a Robespierre is a complex issue. The generalization the author makes in my opinion is totally without merit.

The author continues:

Worse was to follow for those hoping for better US-Iran relations. First, there was Bush’s “axis of evil” speech in 2002. Then, in February 2005, just as the hardline Ahmadinejad was about to begin his first term as president, Bush formally rejected a nuclear deal that had been painstakingly negotiated by Rouhani (then Khamenei’s representative in Iran’s Supreme National Security Council) and signed in late 2004 by France, Germany, and Britain. As Iran scanned the strategic horizon, it seemed obvious that the US had invaded Iraq because Saddam did not have any weapons of mass destruction. This made Ahmadinejad’s insistence on Iran’s nuclear “rights” popular with the Iranian masses and the middle class alike.

Enough already with the Bush bashing. It is a poor Chomsky like way to blame others for Iran's actions. Even the Soviets did not chant "death to America". Should we take such chants seriously? If one would in my opinion follow Chomsky we must ask ourselves "what have WE done to make them do this?". If were were to follow Kennan we would seek "containment". 

The author concludes:

For Iran, what counts now is no longer ideology but national interest and realpolitik. That is why it finds itself currently backing the opponents of revolutionary Islam: Bashar al-Assad against the Islamists in Syria and the Houthis against al-Qaeda in Yemen. And it is why it finds itself not only signing a nuclear accord with the Great Satan but also tacitly cooperating with it against the Islamic State, their common enemy. Now that the revolution is over, cooperation in other areas is likely to become equally appealing.

 The conclusions in my opinion lacks any touch of reality. Iran backs the Syrian regime for religious reasons. It does so for the other mentioned enemies. There is no realpolitik. There is a collection of funds and sellers of arms, Russia and China. 

Thus how should the US react. Again I would go back to Kennan. We can bemoan whatever Chomskieque actions taken but that will not control the future. What will and only will is a strong policy of containment. There is an inevitability of them attaining nuclear weapons, a clear and present danger to humanity. Yet Pakistan and India are in the same club. The US strategic nuclear policy covers only China and Russia. We somehow neglect Pakistan and India. We must add all three to this containment strategy and pray that they like the Russians value their children.

Text Books, Tuition and Harvard

In an interesting post Mankiw has a bit on the ratio of text book prices to annual tuition. Now there is quite a bit of apples and oranges here. But it is worth the study.

1. Text books have expanded in complexity and useless fill in the last 150+ years. For example I gave my granddaughter an 1880 algebra book, she is going into 7th grade and completing that course. You see algebra has not changed a great deal. In fact current texts contain more confusing extraneous materials that a good old 1880 version is just fine. I used an 1895 Geometry one for grandsons and that was sufficient. And yes they all cost less than $5.00.

2. The production of text books, on the printer's side have dropped dramatically. The promotion costs have expanded. Getting someone to use the latest version of Calculus, and yes Macroeconomics, just pushes up the price, and the cost falls on sales not production. Nothing is new in Calculus, at least for the past 100 years. So get an old book for a couple of dollars and you are set.

3. Tuition reflects a lost more over head now than 150 years ago. Just think, there was no Title IX, and all the other mandated Government stuff. Text books did not do that.

4. Production efficiency in pedagogy seems to have been negative, less teaching student-hours and more other stuff.

It is a worthwhile observation but worthy of a great deal more insight.