Links

I've been terribly swamped with work the last week, and when I wasn't working, I was loudly defending gun rights. Subsequently, the lack of actual content on this site has been lacking. Here's some links to make it up to you, dear readers.

This is a great technology.

Telemedicine is the future, especially when the phone in your pocket is a fully-functional computer.

Google's Ingress game would be a lot more fun with this.

A great read about bionics and neural interfaces.

I know I promised a statistical comparison of engineering unemployment rates and the unemployment rates of all college graduates, but I'm having a time trying to dig up reasonably well-cited data for engineering. Everything I've found so far is either annual rates (too vague) or anecdotal (low quality) so I haven't quite put the finishing touches on it. But I will say this: engineering degrees are no guarantee of employment.

Happy Christmas!


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Guns, Damned Guns, and Statistics

I started digging up statistics. For the following graph, I used data from the FBI and CDC's Vital Statistics Report. All numbers represent 2011. 2012 data is not yet fully available obviously.

Figure 1. Number of Americans Killed in 2011 By Major Cause

You'll notice that cigarettes cause 44,300 deaths for every one person killed by an assault weapon. Will the President announce a "cigarette control task force"?

And then this:

Figure 2. Gun-related deaths in 2011.

For "mass murderers" I am using the Mother Jones definition of "any homicide event that has 4 or more victims, not including the shooter." In which case in 2011 there were five: Tuscon, Yuma, Copley Township, Grand Rapids, and Carson City with a total of 30 non-shooter deaths. In all five cases, handguns were used. In only one case (Tuscon), high-capacity clips were used.

I feel it is worth at least quickly pointing out that for every person murdered by a gun, there are about 2 suicides. Most people are surprised by this, but the anti-gun side of the argument prefers to just lump the two groups together into a large pool of "deaths by gun."

I won't really add any more comments, I think these statistics speak for themselves. I'm just trying to make a point here: if we write sweeping, knee-jerk legislation due to a single statistical outlying event that tugs at our heartstrings...we will almost certainly regret it.


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One Last Thing About Guns

For $10, these and many other deaths from guns could be completely prevented. It's called a "gun lock" and it completely neutralizes a gun. Many guns come with them for free.

People are talking about guns with RFID, guns with biometrics, gun bans, gun regulations...and on and on but I haven't heard one person mention that if Adam Lanza's mom had put a gun lock on her AR...not one of those kids would be dead.


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Whom Shall We Blame?

Since the finger-pointing is in full effect, here's why I think this issue is a teensy bit complicated.

So back in 1996 then-nobody Barack Obama urged a statewide ban on assault weapons in Illinois. Then, in 2004 while debating Alan Keyes he argued President Bush erred to not renew the assault weapons ban. Then in 2008 while running for President he suggested that reinstating the assault weapons ban was extremely important.
Then he got elected. And when actually could reinstate the assault weapons ban...he deferred. I don't care whether you are pro-ban or anti-ban. The man spent 13 years arguing for an assault weapons ban, then when capable of enacting it...he punted. Oh and he also started shipping assault weapons to Mexico.

Meanwhile, the NRA, while seemingly motivated by 2nd Amendment protectionism, occasionally makes some tactical errors. In April they supported a bill that would repeal the need for background checks for individuals wanting to buy a firearm. That was April 2012. Two months later: Aurora movie theater shooting. And back in 2011, the NRA successfully defeated a measure in Connecticut that would have banned high-capacity magazines like the one used in last Friday's shooting.

I could go around and around the room, pointing fingers at everyone. But eventually, once I went around the room long enough...I'd be pointing at you.
We live in a violent, violent culture. The highest-selling video game of all time, Call of Duty: Black Ops, is a celebration of the art of killing. Of the top ten highest grossing games of all time, three are military shooters, and one is "Grand Theft Auto 4" which is a game in which breaking the law is the purpose. Our most popular sport is a bloody, injury-prone, concussion-inducing grudge match so violent that most humans can only play it for 5 or less years. Many athletes are driven literally insane by it. Our national interest in regulating weapons is at an all-time low. Currently popular television shows include Dexter, where the protagonist is a serial killer; Breaking Bad, a show about drug dealing; Sons of Anarchy, a show about a lawless group of motorcyclists, fifty million "crime dramas" that typically have a murder in the first two minutes of the show, and a bevy of other violence-centric programming.
The top 10 movies for 2011 included The Avengers, where superheroes battle aliens and most of New York City is destroyed; The Dark Knight Rises, where once again most of New York is destroyed; The Hunger Games, where children ages 12-18 are forced to murder each other, and Skyfall, where James Bond kills no less than 20 people, the antagonist is stabbed in the back with a knife, and a man is eaten alive by a large lizard.
Look. Violence is part of American culture. It just is. We grow up shooting Nerf guns at each other. We play laser tag. We play paintball. We quote movies like Dirty Harry (the scene before he shoots the bad guy at point blank range, obviously) or Scarface (the scene where he snorts a lethal dose of Coke and then goes on a wild shooting rampage and is violently killed, obviously).

The question is: do you try to legislate around this culture? Do you try to change it? People point to the efficacy of gun laws in Australia (but we are not Australians). People point to the low rate of gun murder in the EU and their gun bans (but we are not the French). America is different. Just ask plucky ex-Brit Andrew Sullivan, who says:

Gun violence is one of those things that an immigrant is first amazed by in America. The second thing a non-American is shocked by is the sheer passion of those who own and use guns in this country.

I've come to accept that I am going to witness a debate I find almost absurd in a mind shaped first of all by British culture. I understand the constitutional resonance of an armed citizenry vis-vis its potentially abusive government. And I can also see why this makes America different.

 That's just it: we are Americans. We are violent. Take away the guns and we are still violent Americans. Change us into less violent creatures? That's much harder. Systemic change always is. 

So really there's three options: 1) forcible removal of what the majority of Americans see as an explicit freedom, 2) gradual, difficult cultural change into a more peaceful society, or 3) acknowledg that in America's violent, free culture there will occasionally be psychopaths who get their hands on weapons and perpetrate violent acts and that we as a society are choosing to accept those occasional tragic deaths in exchange for what we consider sacred.


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There's Still No Good Alternative To Hard Work

I read with some mirth this article by Dan Lyons reporting on the retraction of Series A financing in Silicon Valley to software and app startups:

PandoDaily is reporting on the “Series A crunch” in which companies that have raised seed funding now are discovering (presumably to their utter amazement) that actual venture capitalists aren’t as stupid as the angels who gave them their first bag of cash, and, given the opportunity to invest in their pointless companies, the VCs have decided to politely decline. Thus, now we are facing a “nuclear winter" (!) where thousands of companies will go out of business.

There's a deeper issue here and I'll just cut right to it: STEM careers are not an economic silver bullet. More importantly, they never have been and they probably never will be. While it is empirically true that STEM careers are on average higher-paying technical professions that are less likely to get obsoleted by robots in the near future, there isn't a limitless supply of open jobs for STEM majors when they get their diploma. And despite what is popularly claimed, there aren't hordes of employers desperately seeking STEM hires.

The simple truth is that grouping any and all college majors related to STEM into one category complicates the picture more than it should. And that the term itself, "STEM" unnecessarily invites vague definitions of what types of careers and college majors qualify as STEM. Fortunately, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs office keeps a list of applicable job categories. And while it's popular for us to think of "nerds in lab coats" when we hear "STEM" it includes things like "business statistics" and "wildlife biology."

In any case, let's get back on topic. The President, Congress, and even private industry (see: Bill Gates) have all touted STEM careers as the penicillin for our ailing economy. Further, they continuously argue at a near panic that India and China are graduating engineers/scientists/job stealers at an alarming rate. And yet, the actual numbers suggest this is patently false.

Let's focus, for instance, on my home ground of engineering. If there was a shortage of engineers, then one or both of two things would happen:  the average salary would go up (finite supply + high demand = higher price) and/or the available supply would go down (i.e. low unemployment). Yet, neither of these are occurring. The average salary for engineers has not increased much in the last ten years, barely keeping up with inflation. And while unemployment for engineers is low, it's not zero. Nor is it really even that much lower than the average unemployment rate across all career fields. The unemployment rate for electrical engineers in 2010, for example, was 5.4%. This is twice the estimated unemployment rate during "full employment."The national average unemployment rate for anyone with a bachelor's degree at that time was 5.1%, and no one is talking about this.

Meanwhile, the evidence mounts that a glut of technically-savvy people doesn't guarantee an economic boom:

Here’s some stunning, Earth-shattering news: You know all those hundreds of incredibly stupid startups that have been raising seed money in Silicon Valley despite the fact that the people running those startups have no experience doing anything, ever, and have no idea at all how to generate revenue (let alone profit) with their lousy ideas, because, in fact, there is no way to make money with their lousy ideas, because in fact their ideas are lousy?   

What really offends is that smart young people have been conned into thinking that starting a company is akin to buying a lottery ticket or rolling dice at Las Vegas -- the odds are long but you never know, you might get lucky and strike it rich. So make something up, throw it out there, and see what happens. "Spray and pray," it's called.

There's two more things I want to say about this.
First, STEM careers are a good choice for the right people. If you have a curious mind, are a hard worker, like solving problems, like math and science, etc etc. Then by all means go into STEM fields. But let's not pretend like a market flush with STEM graduates will guarantee American Dominance nor should we act like its the ticket to a flush economy. We have a pretty good crop of STEM graduates right now, we did before the recession, and we did before that, too.

Second, there will never be a substitute for good, honest, hard work. Why are we pretending there is a STEM graduate shortage that doesn't exist while there IS a shortage of skilled laborers. Our culture pushes this idea that "everyone should have the chance to go to college" but the truth is maybe 30% of people actually should. Not to offend the other 70% of you, but you'd end up dropping out anyway. Or you'd get a degree you'd never use (and student loan debt galore). Or you'd get a job because of your degree and you'd hate that job.
Whatever the case may be, our culture completely marginalizes skilled non-collegiate labor. High school guidance counseling is entirely focused on helping students find the right college. Students with a C-average are routinely pressured into college.
Meanwhile, a machinist that can run a 3-axis mill can pull in $60,000 a year, easy. That's a decent paycheck for anyone, regardless of how many sheets of paper you have framed on your wall.
But we've got this cultural idea that a guy running a mill is a sub-human. But any mechanical engineer worth his salt will tell you that a good machinist is worth every dime.

Look, I could go on and on about this. And I'm not trying to downplay the opportunities STEM graduates have. I just want people to understand that the kid with an IQ of 103 might make a really good HVAC technician, and he'd make $50k doing it, and he might be really happy. But conscripting every kid with an iota of scientific interest into going into STEM majors in college is a huge mistake on the front end and the back end.


Stay tuned for part 2 of this topic, in which I chart the unemployment rate of engineers against the unemployment rate of "anyone with at least a bachelor's degree." I think you'll be surprised what we find.
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Vaporware In It's Purest Form

So a "small British company" claims to have built a jet engine that is going to make jet engines look like propellor engines [relevant]. All they need is $400 million to build a bigger prototype.

Once in a while, we hear about these sorts of scenarios. A good example was Bussard's Polywell Fusion Reactor, which promises unlimited, clean, terrorist-proof, electrical power generation at low cost. They had a small prototype and just needed one Godzillion dollars to build a bigger prototype and move towards commercialization.

Yours truly is a big fan of breakthrough tech. In my lifetime, I'm hopeful I'll get to upload my brain to a computer. I'm hoping powered exoskeletons become a commodity. I'm hoping driverless cars become the only legal kind. I'm hoping a cheap injection of nanobots will cure anyone's cancer. I'm hoping that neural interfaces allow us to access the internet directly from our brains. I'm hoping widespread deployment of breakthrough solar energy along Earth's equator makes electricity free, robust and ubiquitous.

But...

Do we really need to get from Tokyo to New York in 4 hours? How many business transactions require intercontinental commutes that cannot be as easily accomplished via video conferencing and/or email? And were we to invest hundreds of millions on a prototype, then assuredly billions of dollars on actual aircraft that utilized this hypersonic engine...how much would tickets have to cost to recoup the development costs as well as return a profit to the investors? While they develop a really fast, really expensive 4-hour intercontinential flight, elsewhere fiber optic lines, satellites and increased data integrity allow better-than-ever teleconferencing. If it cost...say $5,000 a ticket to take this hypersonic flight, how much video-conferencing equipment could be bought in lieu?

And in the meantime: what other projects could take that $400 million investment and dramatically increase the quality of life for human beings? I realize that I sound a bit Young Idealistic when I ask this. But the (as an anecdotal) truth is my company has 24 medical device projects in our development pipeline that could help with diseases ranging from heart valve failure to autism to infant scoliosis and cancer. With $400 million I am 100% sure I could have all 24 devices on the market in the next five years and then return $380 million back to the investors unspent (not to mention the massive profits they'd realize from the 24 devices).
An engineer I know at another company in town is leading an effort to build a groundbreaking device that should make brain aneurysms a thing of the past, but needs $12 million in venture capital to get the device through clinical trials.

Or the venture capitalists could spend $400 million on a hypersonic aircraft prototype.


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Apex Predator Predation

So it's a tragedy if African Lions are being massively depopulated, and "there has to be a political commitment to protect wildlife," but trust me, no one in Kansas is super eager to return roving packs of wolves and a sizable population of cougars to our area. Lions are an apex predator. So are humans. One per area is a pretty safe bet.

"But there should be lions in Africa - for tourism," one might counter-argue. Fine. Then (for tourism) there should be wild packs of wolves on the Plains, widespread black bears east of the Mississippi, Grizzlies from Montana to New Mexico, etc etc. Show after show portrays the depopulation of elephants, rhinos, and their ilk as some sort of colossal tragedy that must be corrected by a concerted, international effort. Where is the rush to restore America's bison herd? Where is the "political commitment" to restore the Atlantic cod population? Where are we asking Americans to build higher fences around their cattle pastures so that the wolves can roam free?

In the United States...in fact in most of the First World...if you want to see wild animals and engage in tourism of that sort, then you go to the zoo. We've adopted the cultural understanding that wild apex predators are not a good thing for stable economies. And while I appreciate that "traveling to Africa to see lions" is a commodity some are willing to pay (an extremely large sum of money) for, it is not for us wealthy Westerners to decide the actions of the indigenous population of West Africa. If the march of human progress in their country includes increasing agriculture, then with them we will lament the gradual taming of the landscape and the loss of wild populations as a result. But that was what we did here in America 200 years ago, and we claim that as our proud cultural heritage.

The truth here is that there is a double-standard. It's pretty obvious. We want Africa to stay Africa. We don't want the deadly predators to be wiped out. We don't want people to ambitiously build more farms and eventually towns and eventually power stations and eventually cities and eventually high-rise offices where they design a better future for themselves and engage the global economy. That's our job. Their job is to support our tourists. And occasionally get eaten by a lion.


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Gun Control (IL)Logic

Jason Whitlock suggests that guns are to blame for Jevon Belcher's murder/suicide Saturday morning:

Our current gun culture simply ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead. 

In the coming days, Belcher’s actions will be analyzed through the lens of concussions and head injuries. Who knows? Maybe brain damage triggered his violent overreaction to a fight with his girlfriend. What I believe is, if he didn’t possess/own a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.

Because as former-NFL player OJ Simpson can tell you, it's impossible to kill your wife/girlfriend/ex with a knife. And former NFL-player Antonio Bryant definitely didn't get arrested in September for strangling his ex-girlfriend. And former NFL-player Larry Johnson didn't get arrested in October for strangling a woman.
And it's simply impossible to commit suicide without a gun, as this wikipedia article on "suicide methods" shows.

Anyway, back to reality. Studies in Australia showed that decreased gun ownership does indeed decrease the rate of gun-inflicted suicide, meanwhile other types of suicide like hanging go up. FBI data indicates that present-day America, with its relaxed gun laws and "gun culture" is actually at its safest level since 1968.


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