| Wednesday,
December 10, 2009 Private Health Care in
the UK
If you go private, the NHS washes their hands of you.
This is changing, but very gradually. See <http://tinyurl.com/5vodq8>.
-- Harry Erwin, PhD,
Program Leader, MSc Information Systems Security, University of Sunderland.
============
A corollary to the Iron Law of Bureaucracy
You may be reading about the events going on in Canada
where the three opposition parties are now (six weeks after a general
election) trying to form a government to replace the minority Conservative
one.
Why?
Because the PM, Stephen Harper, proposed that the
Canadian state not continue to fund Canadaian political parties.
At my blog
http://www.di2.nu/200812/02c.htm
I have now coined "Harper's law" which is almost certainly related to, if
nor a direct corollary of the Iron Law:
Never get between a politician and his source of
funding
Share & Enjoy
Francis
============
A psychiatrist's wife says
Are almost half of college-age students mentally
ill?
O-oo-oo can I answer this one??!!!
YES!
Good grief. We sent our oldest child away to a small
Catholic college in NJ. Living in the dorm was like living on a psych ward.
One student cut herself five times before the college finally asked her to
leave!?
My own community college students carry so much
baggage with them I feel more like a counselor than a prof. They are
emotional wrecks. Today's kids have had so much done for them that they have
few coping skills except for drugs and alcohol.
The laissez-faire attitude of boomer parents is coming
home to haunt the nation. And, the unfortunate trickle down effect means the
next generation won't be much better.
Mrs. Ed
============
Hyperion reactor
Jerry P:
The Hyperion uses liquid metal for heat transfer.
While this is pipes, it can be a problem as it will likely be sodium and/or
potassium (NaK) or maybe even lead. In any case there is adequate danger
from liquid metals (Na) or (K) coming into contact with water. While they
don't attack steel piping to any great degree, the piping must be carefully
manufactured and careless handling of the reactors can be dangerous from
those materials. Lead of course would be an environmental hazard if it was
not carefully handled. As you are making fissile material in the reactor, it
is a good candidate for a dirty bomb; radioactive blanket on a conventional
explosive. I don't know the potential for making Pu but that may be
possible.
CBS
==
Hi Jerry,
From the process descriptions and curricula vitae of
the folks involved, these would seem to be variant SNAP (Systems Nuclear
Auxiliary Power) reactors - originally designed for spacecraft.
Runs on 10% enriched uranium (vs 5% for conventional
light water or 20% for 'weapons grade') loaded with hydrogen as a moderator
and sealed. Overheat sealed reactor, hydrogen migrates out of uranium,
reaction wanes. Reactor cools, hydrogen migrates back into uranium, reaction
waxes. Unseal and hydrogen escapes out, reaction stops. Liquid sodium for
heat transfer from reactor to thermoelectric elements.
Chris Meredith Product Engineer Creation Technologies
==========
Schooling Past and Present
Jerry,
It is sad to see the current state of education in the
good old U S of A. It might be worthwhile to take a look at the past when
schools actually educated and how it was done.
In Los Angeles off Vermont North of the Hollywood
Freeway there is a street called Normal Avenue. It is interesting to learn
how this name came about.
In the last half of the 19th Century and the early
years of the 20th Century there was a citadel of higher education called a
Normal School, so called because it offered the Normal Curriculum. This was
a two year course of study that prepared the student to be a teacher. Such a
school was located on or near the site of the current Los Angeles City
College. Consequently, a street named Normal Avenue. A century or so ago two
years of higher education was deemed sufficient to teach grade school or
high school. Of course, there were no remedial English or Math courses
offered or needed. In those days High School Graduates were proficient in
English, Reading, Mathematics and had a good basic knowledge of History and
the Sciences.
In 1916 my Mother, at the age of 17 with little more
than a High School Education, was teaching 5th grade in Marion Ohio.
Misbehavior in class was not tolerated and teachers were authorized to apply
mild corporal punishment such as a ruler across the miscreant's knuckles.
Students that had not learned their lessons were held back until they had
mastered the required material. In fact, one of my Mother's students was
only a year younger than she.
How we have allowed our educational system to plunge
into its current state is not a mystery and how to fix it is widely known,
Discipline is one of the keys to learning. Disruptive
students MUST be removed from regular class rooms so that the remaining
students can learn and Teachers can teach.
Students need to be grouped by demonstrated ability so
that those on the right side of the curve can advance faster and those on
the left side can be given the extra attention that is needed to ensure a
good outcome.
Teachers need to spend less time being taught HOW to
teach and more time learning WHAT to teach. The "Educators" are in charge of
the requirements for a teaching credential and have by and large ended up
producing hordes of people with teaching credentials and nothing to teach. A
Ed.D. should disqualify the holder from holding ANY gainful employment. (To
find out what Robert Heinlein though of the Ed.D. degree, read "The Number
of the Beast."
Our Colleges and Universities should be required to
reject any prospective student that needs and remedial course. These student
should be directed to Junior Colleges.
Those who believe in permissiveness and apologia have
gotten us into our current pickle and it is time to stop listening to them.
Public School funding is an important part of the
Education picture and deserves some attention.
The farther away the funding is from the school
district the less effective it will be. Federal and State funding of public
schools leads, by and large, to two results:
1. More government interference in local school
affairs.
2. An increase in administrative staff to ensure
that the school district gets its "fair share" of the funding.
Neither of these leads to better education for the
students.
How do we fix our educational system?
Establish standards for behavior and level of learning
required for promotion and adhere to them.
Group students by ability where possible. Allow those
student who can to get ahead.
Return both financial and curriculum control to the
local community.
Change teacher certification requirements to reduce
the number of required Education courses and increase the number of courses
in the subject matter to be taught.
Provide objective teacher rating criteria and base pay
on merit.
Bob Holmes
I'm still working on my review essay of Murray's
latest book, but his simple truths are self-evident:
Abilities vary, and schools can't change that.
Half the children are Below Average.
Too many go to college and seek "education." This
helps neither students nor institutions.
Our future -- America's future -- future
prosperity or poverty for all of us -- depends on how we educate the
academically gifted.
We all know all of this; I suspect there is not
one intelligent person in the nation who doesn't know this; but we all act
as if it were not true, and unbridled egalitarianism is scientifically
justified, and anyone who says different is racist and deserves being
ostracized if not jailed for thoughtcrime. And the result of our pretended
beliefs in nonsense is No Child Left Behind, which insures that No Child
Gets Ahead and thus assures the failure of the fourth point; we allow
those with wealth to try their own ways of educating their children, thus
making the elite hereditary.
I would add a fifth simple truth: there is a
range from below average to above average (not including the academically
gifted) whose productivity is determined by skills and training with a
leavening of education; and the education of that group is as important as
the education of the academically gifted -- and we are falling farther and
farther behind in their education, again because of myths that no one
believes but our masters pretend to believe, and the bureaucracies shout
out to shut down any attempts at reform.
This is not the place for my essay, but it will
incorporate the above. We are being done in by myths.
==
ref pushing students towards engineering and
manufacturing majors
Jerry,
I have watched with great interest your suggestions,
and those of your readers, to push college students away from studies in
accounting, finance, Womyn’s Studies, Gender Studies, etc., and towards
majors dealing with engineering, manufacturing, medicine, nursing, and such.
I have also seen comments regarding student loans, student work, and related
matters.
While interesting, the issue is at least 20 years
late. And it pushes too many of my buttons to ignore. May I introduce some
anecdotal evidence? Personal, in this case.
I worked my way through college, as some of your
readers have recommended. Part-time student, full-time employee, totally
self-supporting throughout. Studying engineering with a focus on
manufacturing. Graduated 16 years ago, owing no one. The results? Success?
Comfortable living? Sense of accomplishment? Well …..
The manufacturing company I worked for originally,
after I had just started my studies, closed its doors a year after I
started. Some of the people had been there for more than 20 years.
The second one, my home for more than 6 years, was a
division of one of the Big 3, is now part of the spun-off components
operation, and what little is left in the US is mostly invisible and dying.
They once employed thousands in that town, but it is down to a few hundred
and is on a death watch.
The third, once a major player in its field, downsized
in a big way as I was about to graduate and is now on its 3rd or 4th owner
since I left, and barely alive. I was there 18 months; others had been there
for 20 years or more.
The fourth, once the most admired corporation in
America, was sold off by the descendants of the founders, underwent
extensive ''rationalization'' to suit the green eye-shade types with MBA’s,
and now exists mostly now as a label on a box of product produced in China
or Mexico. I was there for more than 6 years having moved across state lines
to take the position.
The fifth was a Tier 1 to a major American
manufacturing corporation with products in most American homes. Which
corporation is busily relocating to Mexico and the sad remains of the plant
that formerly housed me is closing, as are most of the other Tier 1 and Tier
2 suppliers. My co-workers from my 5 years there are kicked to the curb like
trash. That was another move across state lines.
The sixth closed the plant I was based in, and most of
what is left elsewhere is now in Mexico as ‘more efficient’, after I’d been
there less than six months and had moved across state lines to get there.
The plant manager, my boss, was unemployed for a year, and I fed my family
from a succession of low-level jobs while sending resumes everywhere.
The seventh is barely hanging on after several rounds
of RIF’s, one of which included me and the person who hired me, after only a
year and after I had, again, moved across state lines.
The eighth .... but need I go on?
You want engineering and manufacturing in this
country? So do I, more than you can imagine. But in the last 16 years I have
moved my family across state lines multiple times, not willingly or chasing
career advancement, but out of brutal necessity. I like manufacturing and
engineering, and am well-regarded by those I have worked with. But I have
grown weary of going through plant closings, outsourcing, ‘right-sizing’,
rounds of management fads, and being lectured by beancounters who could not
locate their rectums with both hands and a flashlight
In my networking across the country, I have found that
my story is by no means unique. Meanwhile, I was just lectured by an
executive recruiter (a.k.a “headhunter”) about my too-frequent job changes.
Had I the option to do it over, I might have become a
‘snivel servant’ and paid my dues to AFSCME or their co-thieves. At least I
wouldn’t have had to uproot my family and careen across the company like
vagabonds, always to be strangers in town.
There are good people in this country, people who have
worked hard and been real contributors and have added value to the
organization, people I have been proud to know and to work with. Some of
them are working at Wal-Mart now, or are working for temp agencies, or are
‘’independent consultants’’ living in roach motels as they take on various
temporary projects trying to feed a family 500 miles away. Some have tried
the ‘headhunter’ route. While, generally, the finance wonks and beancounters
have holed up in their McMansions and are living off the golden parachutes
and the other rewards accumulated as a result of gutting their companies.
The hollowing-out of American manufacturing has some real human casualties
and I have been at Ground Zero for some of it. It is not a theoretical
matter for me.
Question for the house: what is the point of cranking
out more graduates in fields that require a lot of real effort and lead to
Wal-Mart jobs?
Sign me,
Not Too Bitter
Actually I didn't say that. I don't give people
career advice. I had said it would be better for the nation to have
engineers than "social scientists." Depending on the individual it may or
may not be better for the engineer or the social scientist.
When one plans one's own career, it is well to
take account of what the actual situation is, as well as one's actual
desires. What is best for individuals, given the fundamental mismanagement
of our education system and economy, is not necessarily what is best for
the social order or the nation -- and not all those who select high tech
careers should do so. It depends on a bunch of stuff including luck and
one's predictive abilities.
What I have said is that the education of the
best and brightest is crucial to our future. I have also said that far too
many are enrolled in "education" which is learning how to learn by
manipulating abstract symbols, as opposed to learning marketable skills.
In general, the most financially successful people in the nation deal with
abstract concepts; but that hardly means that there is no future for the
highly skilled with properly training. A professor may make less money
than a master plumber, and the plumber may have better work hours.
The American education system looks, from the
outside, like a bad parody of resource allocation. Most education
counselors don't look very far ahead, and often urge students into
specialties already nearly saturated -- at one time the US was awash with
petroleum engineers. At another time we had more nuclear engineers than we
could employ. In both cases the reason for unemployment was political: we
weren't building refineries, drilling for oil, or building nuclear power
plants.
One major reason for the loss of manufacturing
jobs in the nation is again politics: it's not as if we weren't warned.
You may recall Ross Perot's "Giant Sucking Sound", which would indicate
jobs being exported to Mexico; what Perot didn't realize is that there
would be a second Giant Sucking Sound as the jobs were sucked out of both
Mexico and the United States to China. We have built an economy dependent
in large part on opening containers of stuff from China, and devising ever
more complex ways to get China to loan us the money to pay for those
containers of stuff.
It is certainly true that the top layer of
finance wonks and beancounters got out of Wall Street rich. Should we be
sorry you were not one of them? It is also true that many others envy your
friends who have a job with Wal-Mart -- and who are among the defaulters
on loans on those MacMansions.
As I said in
my
most recent column, it's very difficult to predict where the economy
will go, particularly when we have moved farther and farther from a
regulated market economy and closer to a command economy. We know that a
command economy never works.
In India for a very long time the proper way to
insure one's career stability was to get a job with the bureaucracy. The
government almost never lays off people, and does not have to persuade the
people to buy its services. They are given no choice. Clearly if one has
the minimum academic ability the surest way to have a reliable job is to
learn how to take civil service examinations, determine which part of the
government you want to work in, and have at it.
==
A question about one of your forecasts in Byte
Greetings,
Some time in the 1980s, in one of your pieces in Byte,
you made a startling forecast that I consider one of the most prescient
predictions of recent decades: You asserted that by 2000 almost anyone,
almost anywhere in the world, would be able to find the answer to almost any
question.
I found your prediction audacious and enormously
appealing, so it is one of the few statements by anyone from that era that I
can recall clearly. I'm a sort-of-retired academic, born in the same year as
you. I'm just starting my own blog, "Rethinking Medical Education." I'm
still at the design, development and testing phase, so it hasn't been
announced to my colleagues yet. If you want to see the current version, just
to help you decide to take my request seriously, you can visit it at: <http://RethinkMedEd.org>
I'm now writing a post about the changing world of
medical journal publication and the future of medical information. In that
piece I want to credit you with your impressive forecast about the future
availability of information. Might you be able to recall the year in which
you first wrote that declaration? If it is easy, I'd love to have the exact
quote and even a link to where you might have referenced that forecast
yourself.
I hope to hear from you.
Many thanks and best wishes,
- Hill
-- Hilliard Jason, MD, EdD
The year when I published that observation was
1981. I came to the conclusion a bit earlier. This was in the days when
"having an at-sign in your name" was a bit of esoterica, but the ARPAnet
was working; in my case at 300 Baud.
==
Buy Nuclear
<http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters
/081129/business/cbusiness_us_
column_canada_markets>
David March
==
China's six-to-one advantage over the US,
Jerry
Spengler has a look at China's commitment to classical
music, and why it may be important:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JL02Ad01.html
"It must be a conspiracy. Chinese parents are selling
plasma-screen TVs to America, and saving their wages to buy their kids
pianos - making American kids stupider and Chinese kids smarter. Watch out,
Americans - a generation from now, your kid is going to fetch coffee for a
Chinese boss. That is a bit of an exaggeration, of course - some of the
bosses will be Indian."
Ed
That giant sucking sound... Of course Americans
save nothing.
=================
Electronista | Amazon Kindle sold out well into 2009
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/11/28/amazon.kindle.sold.out/
Words fail me.
Francis Hamit
They sell better than Amazon predicted...
=============
Jerry
Beijing is displaying grand plan on Taiwan:
http://www.nj.com/news/times/regional
/index.ssf?/base/news-15/1228021508
9560.xml&coll=5
I think someone in Beijing has been reading your
"cultural weapons of mass destruction" comments.
Ed
You think?
===========
pursuit of green
Jerry,
Just a reminder (as John Ringo noted in The Last
Centurion) that there is more that government can do that just mess with gas
prices to increase food prices in their "green" revolution:
Food to fuel (but we already know about that)
Gasoline/diesel costs to farm both the food to eat and
the food for fuel (one reason net efficiency of corn-produced ethanol is
only about 10% net gain based on energy cost to produce)
Cost of fertilizer and pesticides (not only does it
take a lot of petroleum-derived energy to produce fertilizer and both energy
and feed stock to produce pesticides, the use of both is itself a 'greenie"
no-no to be phased out; but without fertilizer and pesticides production
yields are cut at least 65%. That's food rationing territory even without
food to fuel -- and I mean food rationing at the 1200 calorie per day level.
(Yeah, a lot of me might benefit from short bouts of 1200 calories a day --
but for the rest of our lives?)
Don't forget that it using even c. 1900 agriculture it
takes 19 farmers to feed themselves and one non-farmer. While there are
aspects of modern agriculture (high-yield hydroponics and other sustainable
small farm techniques) that might improve the ratio by a factor of two or
even three, at this point we're using one experienced farmer to feed19
people. This means at least 18 of every 20 people in the cities and suburbs
moving back onto the farm and doing by hand what farmers have now been doing
with tractors and derived equipment for three to four generations. On 1200
calories per day doing a job that traditionally took 3000 or more.
That might be a bit disruptive to society. And
wouldn't "bankrupting coal" have just downright synergistic effects?
J.
==
The Future of Coal
http://www.tampaelectric.com/news/powerstation/polk/
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/dec/clean-coal-technology
http://fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/gasification/gasificationpion
eer.html
If you take Obama's statement in full context:
“I voted against the Clear Skies Bill. In fact, I
was the deciding vote -- despite the fact that I’m a coal state and that
half my state thought that I had thoroughly betrayed them. Because I think
clean air is critical and global warming is critical.
“But this notion of no coal, I think, is an
illusion. Because the fact of the matter is, is that right now we are
getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a
coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out
how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how
can we sequester that carbon and capture it. If we can’t, then we’re gonna
still be working on alternatives.
“But ... let me sort of describe my overall policy.
What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade policy in place that
is as aggressive if not more aggressive than anyone out there. I was the
first call for 100 percent auction on the cap and trade system. Which
means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases that was emitted would
be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever
technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants
are being built, they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the
ratcheted-down caps that are imposed every year.
“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant,
they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be
charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That
will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind,
biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing that
I’ve said with respect to coal -- I haven’t been some coal booster. What I
have said is that for us to take coal off the table as an ideological
matter, as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a
clean way, we should pursue it, that I think is the right approach. The
same with respect to nuclear. Right now, we don’t know how to store
nuclear waste wisely and we don’t know how to deal with some of the safety
issues that remain. And so it’s wildly expensive to pursue nuclear energy.
But I tell you what, if we could figure out how to store it safely, then I
think most of us would say that might be a pretty good deal.
“The point is, if we set rigorous standards for the
allowable emissions, then we can allow the market to determine and
technology and entrepreneurs to pursue, what the best approach is to take,
as opposed to us saying at the outset, here are the winners that we’re
picking and maybe we pick wrong and maybe we pick right.”
-maybe you can worry a little less...
The Polk Power plant in the links at the beginning is
basically in my back yard. I pass it frequently in my travels. I've been
told that it burns cheap, high-sulfur coal. The only emissions visible at
the plant are a couple of small steam vent stacks.
The future of coal appears to be bright.
Bruce
My worry is that people take this stuff seriously
as if there were real science at work here. Nothing affects an economy
more than energy prices, and if regulations are such that coal fired
energy is driven to bankruptcy, there is no possibility of competing with
China and India. None. Zero.
==
Bjorn Lomborg and the cost of "solving" global
warming
Bjorn Lomborg gave an entertaining talk on global
warming at a Reason magazine event. Have you seen it? Video (about 30
minutes):
http://reason.com/blog/show/130469.html
Can't wait until Inferno II. Been reading you and
Niven since the 1970s.
Allen from Pennsylvania
============
Unrestrained Capitalism...
http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB122887061388693229.html?
mod=djemEditorialPage
"Surrogate motherhood has been the subject of much
philosophical and political dispute over the years. To summarize briefly, it
is a class-and-gender minefield. When money is exchanged for pregnancy, some
believe, surrogacy comes close to organ-selling, or even baby-selling. It
threatens to commodify not only babies, but women as well, putting their
biological functions up for sale like so many Jimmy Choos. If surrogacy ever
becomes a widely practiced market transaction, it will probably make
pregnancy into just another dirty task for the working class, with wages
driven down and wealthy couples hiring the work out because it's such a
hassle to be pregnant."
"Then there are the photographs, already infamous: Ms.
Kuczynski [the super-rich employer and writer] in a black sleeveless sheath
and stiletto-heel pumps, posing next to the pregnant surrogate in khakis and
a tousled pink flannel shirt. Ms. Kuczynski holding the baby on the lawn of
her Southampton estate, with columns, topiary and servant. The surrogate
sitting, barefoot and alone, on a beat-up porch of her house in
Pennsylvania."
Charles Brumbelow
============
Political Correctness
A worthwhile piece on the hazards of political
correctness and diversity. I think Ms. Ruden has it right:
"The reconciliation of groups is not a magical process
that needs only to get started, as if "you just talk to people and meet them
face to face, and you see how much like you they are." They're probably not
much at all like you, and if you pretend otherwise to move things along, you
dribble a poison into the water that everyone will be drinking."
http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB122688024966831969.html
John Witt
===========
Prof. Erwin and Mr. Daniels
Dr. Pournelle,
Ray Daniels' confusion is understandable, and in fact
Harry Erwin is a little out of date.
The $30,000 per year of life is the figure used by
NICE (officially the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, but widely
known as the National Institute for Cost Effectiveness, or worse variants)
to decide whether it is worth using taxpayer funding for a particular
treatment in a particular case. It leads to some highly emotional headlines
as you can imagine.
The business of people being prevented from buying it
privately is a reference to a bureaucratic rule which prevents National
Health Service patients from "topping up" their treatment privately. The
rule states "you pay for anything, you pay for everything"; clearly for
cancer patients or people with very expensive things like heart problems,
this means you can't "top up", because the cost of the rest of your
treatment is £00's of 000's.
There was an announcement recently that this rule had
been set aside, but experience with this Labour Government suggests that
announcements and actual changes are two very different things - especially
when an election is in prospect.
I give all this tedious detail because the more
Americans understand about socialised healthcare, the less likely you are to
fall for its blandishments.
Don't look in the crystal ball, read the history!
Andrew Duffin
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