The Passing of an Age

The MIT Coop, bookstore and overall "stuff" location, is closing to be replaced by a megalith office building occupied by Google. So says MIT Tech:

The MIT COOP will close its Kendall Square location Feb. 25 and relocate to a temporary location at 80 Broadway. The building it currently occupies at 325 Main Street will be demolished and replaced with a new commercial building.

This is an interesting change. They already closed the Harvard Medical Coop a few years back but this is I believe more important.

In the old days, say 1960s or so, one could go into the book store and examine a multiplicity of books, getting ideas from within the pages. It was more open than the library and of course there was no Amazon. I recall hundreds of new ideas collected from the rambling. The physical book said a great deal, it conveyed the attention and competence of the author, it created a nexus to other ideas, and it frequently went home with me. Most of which I still retain, and even use.

Now replacing a bookstore with a Goggle office complex say a great deal about our new world. There was no Google filtering our thoughts. There is now. One must use Google say to find out what is there. They track and share our every thought, monetize out daily needs and wants, and displace the watering holes of our minds with vapid office space.

So farewell to what has lasted for thousands of years, the market for ideas, and welcome to the new world of thought control.

Told You So

A few years back when Google announced its fiber business I noted that they knew nothing about it and the people that were running it in my opinion also had little understanding. Today I see that they are slowly abandoning thier efforts, leaving Louisville.

ArsTechnica notes:

Google Fiber will turn off its network in Louisville, Kentucky and exit the city after a series of fiber installation failures left cables exposed in the roads. Google Fiber's customers in Louisville will have to switch ISPs and will get their final two months of Google Fiber service for free to help make up for the disruption. Google Fiber went live in Louisville late in 2017, just a few months after construction began. The quick turnaround happened because Google Fiber used a shallow trenching strategy that is quicker than traditional underground fiber deployment and doesn't require digging giant holes. Instead of a foot-wide trench, a micro-trench is generally about an inch wide and four inches deep. In Louisville, Google Fiber reportedly was burying cables in "nano-trenches" that were just two inches deep. But Louisville residents soon found exposed cables, .... "When you're walking around the neighborhood, [the lines are] popping up out of the road all over the place," resident Larry Coomes said at the time. "People are tripping over it."

 As noted, the infrastructure business is dramatically different that software. I have been in both, and infrastructure requires experience and mistakes are costly to recover from. Clearly this team would not have been chosen by General Groves in the 1940s. Can't say we didn't warn them.

New Jersey and Taxes

New Jersey with it new all left wing politicians sees that they can now tax everything, yes everything. The latest recommendation is the water we drink. We pay for it but they now want to tax it, for our benefit! Has a politician ever done anything for our benefit.

As NJ.com notes:

Critics of New Jersey's high taxes say residents have to pony up for everything but the kitchen sink. 
Well, the kitchen sink could soon be added to that. A state lawmaker is proposing a tax on tap water to revamp New Jersey's aging pipelines. State Sen. Bob Smith, D-Middlesex, says water pipelines across the state are old, they're decaying, they pose a serious health risk and the issue is getting worse. "There is a big problem and it is a problem that affects your health, your kid's health and your grandchildren's health," Smith said.  He introduced legislation that would impose a 10-cent tax on every 1,000 gallons consumed, which Smith estimates would cost the average New Jersey household about $32 a year and would net the state about $150 million annually.

Now facts are important. Let me lay out a few.

1. More than a million homes are served by American Water which has responsibility for the systems they manage. Thus they can upgrade their systems and do so with increased fees with no middle man.

2. Upgrading systems is not that difficult if you do so smartly. One can sheath PVC piping in old pipes and have the inside coated with a lipase so a nano surface impedes biofilm growth. This is not that costly and reduces the need for major construction.

3. Any and all government taxes seem to get lost, never ending up where they are supposed to. Especially in New Jersey! Oftentimes it appears in the pockets of the politicians.

4. Tows independently manage water in more than half of the NJ towns. They can issue bonds if they need an upgrade and thus users pay for use. Why then have the state do this? Reason, they get to keep the money and spend it wastefully as is their wont! Towns are still left holding the bag.

This is just another example of why people are starting to leave New Jersey. Thanks Trenton! 

Look Up!

When I was young, my sister required special shoes to go to Catholic School, and my mother tasked me with the charge to go from Staten Island to Manhattan to a store in the Empire State Building. Now I knew it was on 34th Street but not exactly where. So on the bus, to the ferry, to the subway, and now at 34th Street. Now I was lost. In those days one did not ask for directions, it would expose you as a foreigner. So what did I do, called mother.

Now my mother was not the kind and caring millennial helicopter mom. I would not have been stuck on 34th and Broadway with no GPS or the like, not even a map. I was I believe about twelve. So I did call mother. Her curt reply was simple: "Look Up!"

Oh yes, there it was, I got my bearings and completed my task.

Now to the new socialists of the world who want to denude the billionaires I say "Look Up"around Manhattan and and see the names: Rockefeller, Sloan, Kettering, Weill, Gerstner, Vagelos, Millstein, and the list goes on. These are the wealthy that contributed to the health care system these folks bemoan. They accept patients from anywhere, from any means, because of the wealthy. So I say "Look Up" as you go past these hospitals that take care of you, your family, your fellow workers, your Supreme Court Justices.

Now imagine that you took this money and sent it to the Government, the most inefficient entity known to man and woman. You would have ear marks for chicken museums in Oklahoma, corn fritter studies in Iowa, and the good Lord knows what else. Instead the money went directly to build and sustain institutions that cure cancers and save lives.

So the new socialists and the rest of you, "Look Up"! My grandmother was a Socialist, a real socialist, not spending time getting laughs but devoting her time to caring for TB patients as they attempted to deal with that deadly disease. So to the new socialists and their ilk, "Look Up" and see what has gone before. The signs of what those fortunate enough to give back are right in front of your face!

Fake News?

Just what is "Fake News"? Let me take a ride down memory lane. Some sixty or seventy years ago in New York one had dozens of newspapers. Ride a subway and everyone's face was in a newspaper, oftentimes a different one. They came in dozens of languages. There was the Irish Echo, the Daily Worker, the Post, News, Times, Herald Tribune, Journal American, Telegram and the list goes on. Each and every one told a different story, often about the same news item. Each reflected a political viewpoint, and the spin their placed on stories and intensified the belief set of their readers.

Was this Fake News? Was there a real true story out there? The NY Times was famous for its support of the Soviet regime and they actually presented distorted, albeit favorable, tales of the success of Stalin. It was only later one found out his brutal tactics.

So again, was this Fake News.

In the Internet world one can access hundreds of different sites. In a single day I can read the Guardian, Breitbart, the NY Times, the WSJ, the Washington Post, the Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post, China Daily, RT and Sputnik, Le Monde, and dozens more. Each tells their audience what they feel they want to tell. Each has its own bent on Fake News. Would I ever use Facebook or Twitter, never! Why not go to the source, why waste any time on someone collecting the "real" new for me and allowing their point of view to be expressed.

News is propaganda in today's world, and frankly it has always been so. Propaganda is the telling of a story to reflect the interests and intents of the story teller. The NY Times hates Trump, so every above the fold story is anti Trump, true or not. Are they worth reading, sometimes, but with a grain of salt. Then Breitbart tells tales that are often exaggerated but can be independently verified. Do they have a propagandist's bent as well. It seems obvious that they do. Now China Daily gives us a view, albeit also a propagandist's one, of China. RT and Sputnik are surprisingly propagandists, but they lack the heavy handed approach of the old Pravda.

Thus if one seeks to understand what is happening one examines as many sources as possible and then make a decision. Unfortunately the existence of the social media platforms are superb tools for the propagandists, lazy people rely upon what is fed to them. It is akin to network television. 

So again I would ask; what is Fake News? Simply it is any single source of information wherein the user relies solely upon the opinion of the aggregator of gatekeeper. Thus a Facebook or Google. If one wants to avoid Fake News, then one must read all the Fake News first hand and then make up their own minds. In reality, all new has an element of the "Fake". Thus caveat emptor.

Medicare for All?

We seem to be in a continuous political fray with health care at the center. The current call is Medicare for All, whatever that means, which if one takes Sanders et al at face value it is free health care no matter. Now CMS has given data for 2017. They note:

U.S. health care spending increased 3.9 percent to reach $3.5 trillion, or $10,739 per person in 2017. Health care spending growth in 2017 was similar to average growth from 2008 to 2013, which preceded the faster growth experienced during the 2014-15 period that was marked by insurance coverage expansion and high rates of growth in retail prescription drug spending. The overall share of gross domestic product (GDP) related to health care spending was 17.9 percent in 2017, similar to that in 2016 (18.0 percent).

Thus making a reasonable assumption we are looking at $12,000 per person, sick or well, in 2020. Where is that to come from? Mainly because many of these people, more than half, make no money at all. One cannot get blood from a stone. Also if one takes the Marxists at their word it will come from the ultra rich, that class of people whose funds currently support entrepreneurial growth via their investments, and just think what will happen there.

This is another invention coming what are allegedly economists, Boston University educated economists one surmises. Details count, and as we have seen over the last fifty years those details have meant the death of many proposals.

Now there is another interesting fact, those damn facts. You see in the US specialist training is supported by Medicare, that Medicare that we all pay for and hopefully get when we reach a certain age. Thus urologists, immunologists, cardiologists etc are trained with medicare money, our contributions. Medical students are not. Also there are more medical schools opening training MDs but since the specialist resident schools are limited by Medicare in number, many of these MDs will fall in the market with no further training, no internists, no oncologists.

Four years of medical school and a year of internship can make a great physician assistant, but it takes a great deal more in today's complex world if one expects competent health care. Your local GP can go just so far, especially if they are dealing with dozens of patients a day.

So we are seeing a perfect storm occurring. Those who can afford the best care will be able to buy it, the rest will suffer the problems of national health care. Thus in the UK and Canada it may easily take 6 months to get an MRI. If you have a resectable tumor when examined by the time you get the MRI, and worse to the surgery, you might as well skip that and buy your urn!