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This is really cool but can you explain how it works? Does this mean that one Arab out of 5 uses cocaine? That seems unlikely...

I did it on no money and it has more data than data.gov.

http://www.laboratoryofthestates.com/idltsb.html

Oh, no, that was about immigration degrading bond ratings...

How about this?

http://www.laboratoryofthestates.com/imbamcoa.html

Oh, yeah, that's the ticket! Didn't you get the satire in that article? Let me spell it out for your: It is bigoted to hypothesize that immigration might have negative effects. Now, some may argue that since I predicted the ecological correlation between immigration from India and autism rates that this vindicates me from charges of prejudice. However, we all know those individuals who would so-argue are bigots, hence their argument is invalid and the original hypothesis simply bigotry regardless of the truth of the matter!

Only a BIGOT could have failed to get the joke! Are you such a bigot?

http://www.laboratoryofthestates.com/idltsb.html

Oh, no, that was about immigration degrading bond ratings...

How about this?

http://www.laboratoryofthestates.com/imbamcoa.html

Oh, yeah, that's the ticket! Didn't you get the satire in that article? Let me spell it out for your: It is bigoted to hypothesize that immigration might have negative effects. Now, some may argue that since I predicted the ecological correlation between immigration from India and autism rates that this vindicates me from charges of prejudice. However, we all know those individuals who would so-argue are bigots, hence their argument is invalid and the original hypothesis simply bigotry regardless of the truth of the matter!

Only a BIGOT could have failed to get the joke! Are you such a bigot?

1. An open proxy system which I've described elsewhere as The Electoral Corruption Killer.
2. The Hutter Prize for Lossless Compression of Human Knowledge.

The proxy system didn't seem to appeal to people in sufficient numbers to make any impact on the electoral system. If widely adopted it would form the affinity groups in a public manner which would allow them to seek independence in conjunction with other groups that were disenfranchised. It might also put enough pressure on the political system to represent the interests of the people, although I don't hold out as much hope there.

The Hutter Prize basically depends on the largess of the wealthy (including corporations) which, as it turns out, isn't forthcoming. What the Hutter Prize would do in theory is solve the knowledge problem -- which would allow an objective metric of epistemological merit to be affixed to a given description of the world. This is the sort of thing you need if you are going to "argue" with a theocracy since theocracies insist on "dialog" rather than experimentation. It has the essential weakness of any theory-intensive approach to the problem of knowledge.

Shortly thereafter, a site called Nation Master cropped up, with a bit flashier and simpler user interface, but focused on CIA World Fact Book data, rather than the States of the US. (The same folks later did State Master using similar UI technology.)

Finally, Google tested Gapminder with an even spiffier and simpler UI -- again focusing on by Nation correlations.

Aside from the usual complaints about "The Ecological Fallacy" (a fallacy that cuts both ways BTW) there are two big pitfalls for this stuff:

1. Dealing with missing data.
2. Estimating statistical significance.

What I did about missing data was simply eliminate any data points where data was missing from one or both of the variables being correlated. This reduces the sample size, hence statistical significance, but it bypasses arguments over what sort of missing data should be used. The Netflix Prize is coming up with really good algorithms to compute missing data efficiently and accurately so maybe there is hope for something more effective here.

Statistical significance is more difficult to deal with. Usually one must look at tables for statistical significance of correlations under the assumption that the variables each follow a normal distribution. Unfortunately, many variables follow polynomial (like squared) or exponential distributions, so you have to do things like take the sqrt or log of one or both of the variables to try to normalize them. However, when you are looking for correlations, sometimes it its the relationship that is polynomial or exponential -- in which case you can apply sqrt or log to get the maximum correlation coefficient at the sacrifice of normality of one or both of the variables. Unfortunately, there is no simple arithmetic formula for calculating the significance level of a correlation given a non-normal distribution -- you can't just plug in the skewness, kurtosis, etc. as well as sample size and correlation coefficient, and get out a valid statistical significance. Therefore it is hard to make good statements about many very important correlations without watering them down to meaninglessness.

Also, a complaint about the "simple" user interfaces:

Some of the worst reporting from news media comes when they refuse to report statistics in terms remotely related to anything meaningful -- for example you will frequently hear statements to the effect that "California has the most orange trees in the nation." or some such. Such statistics are nonsense for the purposes of correlation studies since the size of the ecology (California state) is all you are really measuring with such statements. You have to divide by the population or divide by the total GDP or something to rationalize the ecology against other ecologies.

In Laboratory of the States, I did this with all my variables but I also left the raw variables around and allowed people to do arithmetic on them -- like dividing them -- to get their own rational comparisons if for some reason my choices were not adequate. This problem isn't as bad with Gapminder as it is with Nation Master and State Master -- but Gapm

I wasn't able to get quantitative data on the geography of CCD but I was able to get a map of states reporting CCD has occurred there. So I ran these correlations at the level of state ecologies:

42 with log(YugoslavianPercapita1990)
42 with -log(PrisonerDeathsPerInCustody1983)
41 with -log(PrisonerDeathsMalePerInCustody1983)
41 with -IrishPercapita1990
37 with SwissPercapita1990
36 with log(CostOfLivingRank2000)
36 with sqrt(DanishPercapita1990)
35 with log(FoodInsecureWithHungerPercentage3YearAverageSt arting2000)
35 with log(HungerPercentage3YearAverageStarting2000)
35 with log(NorwegianPercentOfWhites)
34 with log(FinnishPercapita1990)
34 with -DefenseExpendituresPercapita1997
33 with log(NorwegianPercapita1990)
33 with log(AirTrafficPercapita1999)
32 with log(DutchPercapita1990)
32 with sqrt(AirTrafficScheduledPercapita1999)
31 with log(MalesPer100Females2000)
30 with log(InjectedIllegalDrugUsingPercentHighSchoolFemal es2001)
30 with log(CostOfLivingTransportation2000)
30 with log(AdultMalesPer100AdultFemales2000)
30 with SwedishPercapita1990
30 with -French_CanadianPercapita1990
30 with AustrianPercapita1990
29 with PrisonerDeathsFemalePerInCustody1998
29 with -log(PrisonerDeathsFemalePerInCustody1994)
28 with -FrenchPercapita1990
28 with log(AirTrafficNonScheduledMailTonsPercapita1999)
28 with -log(PrisonerDeathsFemalePerInCustody1995)
28 with log(WhiteYearsSchooling2000)
28 with -IllegalSteroidUsingPercentHighSchoolMales2001
27 with log(Other_groupsPercapita1990)
27 with -HateCrimeEstimatedPercapita2000
27 with AgeUnder18Percentage2000
27 with log(ImmigrantsMexicoPercapita1998)
27 with -MethamphetamineUsingPercentHighSchoolMales2001
26 with WelshPercapita1990
26 with sqrt(AirTrafficScheduledMailTonsPercapita1999)
26 with log(AirTrafficPassengersPercapita1999)
26 with sqrt(AirTrafficMailTonsPercapita1999)
26 with -log(Age44To64Percentage2000)
25 with log(AirTrafficNonScheduledFreightTonsPercapita1999 )
25 with -log(AlcoholAbstainersPercentage1988)
25 with -log(MedianAge2000)
25 with -sqrt(United_States_or_AmericanPercapita1990)
25 with log(FoodInsecureWithOrWithoutHungerPercentage3Year AverageStarting2000)
25 with log(CostOfLivingHealthCare2000)

Check out the rank ordered list of bi-variate ecological correlations with autism (ecology at the State level):

Maximum by-State bivariate corelations with autism percapita 2000.

The following lines each contain the following items:

1) Correlation coefficient.
2) A function applied to adjust a State's percapita autism.
        () means no function applied.
        sqrt() means the square root was taken.
        log() means the natural logarithm was taken.
3) The bivariate formula predicting the previously adjusted autism rate.
4) r1 is the correlation of the first variable alone with autism.
5) r2 is the correlation of the second variable alone with autism.

To generate a scattergram and see the raw data:

See http://laboratoryofthestates.com/cgi-bin/correlate .cgi [laboratory...states.com]

then enter "AutismPercapita2000SansOregonAndMass" for the vertical
and the formula given below for the horizontal.

-----------------

0.600310870050065 () sqrt(FinnishPercapita1990*ImmigrantsIndiaPercapita 1998) bettering r1=0.416806570345255 and r2=0.429065274233648
0.599979036637678 sqrt() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP1999*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0415403559840862 and r2=0.428994227300325
0.599618721521368 log() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP1999*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.032753948828485 and r2=0.433268832849086
0.594501164716388 sqrt() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP2000*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0386533075155627 and r2=0.428994227300325
0.593739683661006 log() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP2000*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0293946227549309 and r2=0.433268832849086
0.590410355019427 () sqrt(FinnishPercapita1990/UFOReportsPercapitaPerSq uareMilePerYear1941to1996) bettering r1=0.416806570345255 and r2=-0.245662040082846
0.589344939529547 () (FinnishPercapita1990*ImmigrantsIndiaPercapita1998 ) bettering r1=0.473217563942744 and r2=0.3948977437946
0.588776855937162 () log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP1999*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0504680681454933 and r2=0.41596504785053
0.586104765698104 () sqrt(FinnishPercapita1990*H1BWithJobsPercapita1997 ) bettering r1=0.416806570345255 and r2=0.322376040851882 ... etc.

Check out the rank ordered list of bi-variate ecological correlations with autism (ecology at the State level):

Maximum by-State bivariate corelations with autism percapita 2000.

The following lines each contain the following items:

1) Correlation coefficient.
2) A function applied to adjust a State's percapita autism.
        () means no function applied.
        sqrt() means the square root was taken.
        log() means the natural logarithm was taken.
3) The bivariate formula predicting the previously adjusted autism rate.
4) r1 is the correlation of the first variable alone with autism.
5) r2 is the correlation of the second variable alone with autism.

To generate a scattergram and see the raw data:

See http://laboratoryofthestates.com/cgi-bin/correlate .cgi [laboratory...states.com]

then enter "AutismPercapita2000SansOregonAndMass" for the vertical
and the formula given below for the horizontal.

-----------------

0.600310870050065 () sqrt(FinnishPercapita1990*ImmigrantsIndiaPercapita 1998) bettering r1=0.416806570345255 and r2=0.429065274233648
0.599979036637678 sqrt() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP1999*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0415403559840862 and r2=0.428994227300325
0.599618721521368 log() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP1999*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.032753948828485 and r2=0.433268832849086
0.594501164716388 sqrt() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP2000*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0386533075155627 and r2=0.428994227300325
0.593739683661006 log() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP2000*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0293946227549309 and r2=0.433268832849086
0.590410355019427 () sqrt(FinnishPercapita1990/UFOReportsPercapitaPerSq uareMilePerYear1941to1996) bettering r1=0.416806570345255 and r2=-0.245662040082846
0.589344939529547 () (FinnishPercapita1990*ImmigrantsIndiaPercapita1998 ) bettering r1=0.473217563942744 and r2=0.3948977437946
0.588776855937162 () log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP1999*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0504680681454933 and r2=0.41596504785053
0.586104765698104 () sqrt(FinnishPercapita1990*H1BWithJobsPercapita1997 ) bettering r1=0.416806570345255 and r2=0.322376040851882 ... etc.

Check out the rank ordered list of bi-variate ecological correlations with autism (ecology at the State level):

Maximum by-State bivariate corelations with autism percapita 2000.

The following lines each contain the following items:

1) Correlation coefficient.
2) A function applied to adjust a State's percapita autism.
    () means no function applied.
    sqrt() means the square root was taken.
    log() means the natural logarithm was taken.
3) The bivariate formula predicting the previously adjusted autism rate.
4) r1 is the correlation of the first variable alone with autism.
5) r2 is the correlation of the second variable alone with autism.

To generate a scattergram and see the raw data:

See http://laboratoryofthestates.com/cgi-bin/correlate .cgi

then enter "AutismPercapita2000SansOregonAndMass" for the vertical
and the formula given below for the horizontal.

-----------------

0.600310870050065 () sqrt(FinnishPercapita1990*ImmigrantsIndiaPercapita 1998) bettering r1=0.416806570345255 and r2=0.429065274233648
0.599979036637678 sqrt() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP1999*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0415403559840862 and r2=0.428994227300325
0.599618721521368 log() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP1999*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.032753948828485 and r2=0.433268832849086
0.594501164716388 sqrt() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP2000*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0386533075155627 and r2=0.428994227300325
0.593739683661006 log() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP2000*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0293946227549309 and r2=0.433268832849086
0.590410355019427 () sqrt(FinnishPercapita1990/UFOReportsPercapitaPerSq uareMilePerYear1941to1996) bettering r1=0.416806570345255 and r2=-0.245662040082846
0.589344939529547 () (FinnishPercapita1990*ImmigrantsIndiaPercapita1998 ) bettering r1=0.473217563942744 and r2=0.3948977437946
0.588776855937162 () log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP1999*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0504680681454933 and r2=0.41596504785053
0.586104765698104 () sqrt(FinnishPercapita1990*H1BWithJobsPercapita1997 ) bettering r1=0.416806570345255 and r2=0.322376040851882 ... etc.

Check out the rank ordered list of bi-variate ecological correlations with autism (ecology at the State level):

Maximum by-State bivariate corelations with autism percapita 2000.

The following lines each contain the following items:

1) Correlation coefficient.
2) A function applied to adjust a State's percapita autism.
    () means no function applied.
    sqrt() means the square root was taken.
    log() means the natural logarithm was taken.
3) The bivariate formula predicting the previously adjusted autism rate.
4) r1 is the correlation of the first variable alone with autism.
5) r2 is the correlation of the second variable alone with autism.

To generate a scattergram and see the raw data:

See http://laboratoryofthestates.com/cgi-bin/correlate .cgi

then enter "AutismPercapita2000SansOregonAndMass" for the vertical
and the formula given below for the horizontal.

-----------------

0.600310870050065 () sqrt(FinnishPercapita1990*ImmigrantsIndiaPercapita 1998) bettering r1=0.416806570345255 and r2=0.429065274233648
0.599979036637678 sqrt() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP1999*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0415403559840862 and r2=0.428994227300325
0.599618721521368 log() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP1999*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.032753948828485 and r2=0.433268832849086
0.594501164716388 sqrt() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP2000*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0386533075155627 and r2=0.428994227300325
0.593739683661006 log() log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP2000*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0293946227549309 and r2=0.433268832849086
0.590410355019427 () sqrt(FinnishPercapita1990/UFOReportsPercapitaPerSq uareMilePerYear1941to1996) bettering r1=0.416806570345255 and r2=-0.245662040082846
0.589344939529547 () (FinnishPercapita1990*ImmigrantsIndiaPercapita1998 ) bettering r1=0.473217563942744 and r2=0.3948977437946
0.588776855937162 () log(GSPIndustriesPerGSP1999*ImmigrantsNonWesternPe rcapita1998) bettering r1=0.0504680681454933 and r2=0.41596504785053
0.586104765698104 () sqrt(FinnishPercapita1990*H1BWithJobsPercapita1997 ) bettering r1=0.416806570345255 and r2=0.322376040851882 ... etc.

Already, a preliminary ecological correlation, with by-State aggregation, shows a significant probability that IT guest workers from India are strongly associated with the epidemic of autism. If the by-county ecological correlation turns out to be higher I wonder if Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy will be paying damages to all those programmers I know whose first born sons can't even talk and are a serious disability for their younger siblings as well as the communities that must support their costly remedial education and treatment.

Of the thousands of 2-variable combinations involving biologically relevant variables, the combination with the highest Pearson correlation with autism (60%) rates was the one I predicted based on my experiences observing children developing autism in Silicon Valley:

Finns Percapita * Immigrants from India Percapita

(Please note that "autism spectrum disorders" is a poorly standardized diagnostic category whose reproducibility may be little better than 60%. Even if one identified the specific pathogenic agent causing autism, to which a specific set of genes were susceptible, and were able to test the entire population, it is quite plausible that present diagnostic standards would be little better than 60% at predicting who would have those factors and who wouldn't.)

Furthermore, both of these demographies, alone have a Pearson correlation of only 42%(+-1%) which is again what one would expect if the conjunction of two variables were required for the etiology of autism.

See this link.

(Oregon and Massachusetts are excluded as data points due to their being the States with the highest and lowest autism percapita rates respectively. Failing to exclude these datapoints creates the impression that the best correlation is with nonWestern immigration to industrial regions, rather than immigration from India per se to regions of Finnish ancestry.)

Adding economic data there was only one combination of variables that exceeded this and it did so by just 1% (r=61%). It is weakly supportive of the "refrigerator mother" hypothesis. It is not strongly supportive due to the fact that while working parents percapita was one of the 2 variables, the other variable was public education expenditure per student which had, by itself, a Pearson correlation of 54% whereas working parents percapita was only 25% -- indicating the vast majority of the variance in autism rates was explained by public education expenditure per student rather than working parents. There are a number of possible explanations for why public education expenditure per student would be correlated with autism percapita, among them the most obvious being simply that a high cost of education is associated with autism spectrum disorders.

See this link.

MMR vaccination rates show virtually zero correspondence with autism rates. When viewed in combinations with other demographic variables, it came in combinations far from the top -- far enough from the top that it is plausible that such correlations are due to chance or due solely to the other variable.

Mercury has also been hypothesized as a factor in autism, however data from the Environmental Protection Agency on percapita water-way mercury pollution by State fails to show a significant correlation with autism.

Of the thousands of 2-variable combinations involving biologically relevant variables, the combination with the highest Pearson correlation with autism (60%) rates was the one I predicted based on my experiences observing children developing autism in Silicon Valley:

Finns Percapita * Immigrants from India Percapita

(Please note that "autism spectrum disorders" is a poorly standardized diagnostic category whose reproducibility may be little better than 60%. Even if one identified the specific pathogenic agent causing autism, to which a specific set of genes were susceptible, and were able to test the entire population, it is quite plausible that present diagnostic standards would be little better than 60% at predicting who would have those factors and who wouldn't.)

Furthermore, both of these demographies, alone have a Pearson correlation of only 42%(+-1%) which is again what one would expect if the conjunction of two variables were required for the etiology of autism.

See this link.

(Oregon and Massachusetts are excluded as data points due to their being the States with the highest and lowest autism percapita rates respectively. Failing to exclude these datapoints creates the impression that the best correlation is with nonWestern immigration to industrial regions, rather than immigration from India per se to regions of Finnish ancestry.)

Adding economic data there was only one combination of variables that exceeded this and it did so by just 1% (r=61%). It is weakly supportive of the "refrigerator mother" hypothesis. It is not strongly supportive due to the fact that while working parents percapita was one of the 2 variables, the other variable was public education expenditure per student which had, by itself, a Pearson correlation of 54% whereas working parents percapita was only 25% -- indicating the vast majority of the variance in autism rates was explained by public education expenditure per student rather than working parents. There are a number of possible explanations for why public education expenditure per student would be correlated with autism percapita, among them the most obvious being simply that a high cost of education is associated with autism spectrum disorders.

See this link.

MMR vaccination rates show virtually zero correspondence with autism rates. When viewed in combinations with other demographic variables, it came in combinations far from the top -- far enough from the top that it is plausible that such correlations are due to chance or due solely to the other variable.

Mercury has also been hypothesized as a factor in autism, however data from the Environmental Protection Agency on percapita water-way mercury pollution by State fails to show a significant correlation with autism.

Of the thousands of 2-variable combinations involving biologically relevant variables, the combination with the highest Pearson correlation with autism (60%) rates was the one I predicted based on my experiences observing children developing autism in Silicon Valley:

Finns Percapita * Immigrants from India Percapita

(Please note that "autism spectrum disorders" is a poorly standardized diagnostic category whose reproducibility may be little better than 60%. Even if one identified the specific pathogenic agent causing autism, to which a specific set of genes were susceptible, and were able to test the entire population, it is quite plausible that present diagnostic standards would be little better than 60% at predicting who would have those factors and who wouldn't.)

Furthermore, both of these demographies, alone have a Pearson correlation of only 42%(+-1%) which is again what one would expect if the conjunction of two variables were required for the etiology of autism.

See this link.

(Oregon and Massachusetts are excluded as data points due to their being the States with the highest and lowest autism percapita rates respectively. Failing to exclude these datapoints creates the impression that the best correlation is with nonWestern immigration to industrial regions, rather than immigration from India per se to regions of Finnish ancestry.)

Adding economic data there was only one combination of variables that exceeded this and it did so by just 1% (r=61%). It is weakly supportive of the "refrigerator mother" hypothesis. It is not strongly supportive due to the fact that while working parents percapita was one of the 2 variables, the other variable was public education expenditure per student which had, by itself, a Pearson correlation of 54% whereas working parents percapita was only 25% -- indicating the vast majority of the variance in autism rates was explained by public education expenditure per student rather than working parents. There are a number of possible explanations for why public education expenditure per student would be correlated with autism percapita, among them the most obvious being simply that a high cost of education is associated with autism spectrum disorders.

See this link.

MMR vaccination rates show virtually zero correspondence with autism rates. When viewed in combinations with other demographic variables, it came in combinations far from the top -- far enough from the top that it is plausible that such correlations are due to chance or due solely to the other variable.

Mercury has also been hypothesized as a factor in autism, however data from the Environmental Protection Agency on percapita water-way mercury pollution by State fails to show a significant correlation with autism.

Of the thousands of 2-variable combinations involving biologically relevant variables, the combination with the highest Pearson correlation with autism (60%) rates was the one I predicted based on my experiences observing children developing autism in Silicon Valley:

Finns Percapita * Immigrants from India Percapita

(Please note that "autism spectrum disorders" is a poorly standardized diagnostic category whose reproducibility may be little better than 60%. Even if one identified the specific pathogenic agent causing autism, to which a specific set of genes were susceptible, and were able to test the entire population, it is quite plausible that present diagnostic standards would be little better than 60% at predicting who would have those factors and who wouldn't.)

Furthermore, both of these demographies, alone have a Pearson correlation of only 42%(+-1%) which is again what one would expect if the conjunction of two variables were required for the etiology of autism.

See this link.

(Oregon and Massachusetts are excluded as data points due to their being the States with the highest and lowest autism percapita rates respectively. Failing to exclude these datapoints creates the impression that the best correlation is with nonWestern immigration to industrial regions, rather than immigration from India per se to regions of Finnish ancestry.)

Adding economic data there was only one combination of variables that exceeded this and it did so by just 1% (r=61%). It is weakly supportive of the "refrigerator mother" hypothesis. It is not strongly supportive due to the fact that while working parents percapita was one of the 2 variables, the other variable was public education expenditure per student which had, by itself, a Pearson correlation of 54% whereas working parents percapita was only 25% -- indicating the vast majority of the variance in autism rates was explained by public education expenditure per student rather than working parents. There are a number of possible explanations for why public education expenditure per student would be correlated with autism percapita, among them the most obvious being simply that a high cost of education is associated with autism spectrum disorders.

See this link.

MMR vaccination rates show virtually zero correspondence with autism rates. When viewed in combinations with other demographic variables, it came in combinations far from the top -- far enough from the top that it is plausible that such correlations are due to chance or due solely to the other variable.

Mercury has also been hypothesized as a factor in autism, however data from the Environmental Protection Agency on percapita water-way mercury pollution by State fails to show a significant correlation with autism.

Of the thousands of 2-variable combinations involving biologically relevant variables, the combination with the highest Pearson correlation with autism (60%) rates was the one I predicted based on my experiences observing children developing autism in Silicon Valley:

Finns Percapita * Immigrants from India Percapita

(Please note that "autism spectrum disorders" is a poorly standardized diagnostic category whose reproducibility may be little better than 60%. Even if one identified the specific pathogenic agent causing autism, to which a specific set of genes were susceptible, and were able to test the entire population, it is quite plausible that present diagnostic standards would be little better than 60% at predicting who would have those factors and who wouldn't.)

Furthermore, both of these demographies, alone have a Pearson correlation of only 42%(+-1%) which is again what one would expect if the conjunction of two variables were required for the etiology of autism.

See this link.

(Oregon and Massachusetts are excluded as data points due to their being the States with the highest and lowest autism percapita rates respectively. Failing to exclude these datapoints creates the impression that the best correlation is with nonWestern immigration to industrial regions, rather than immigration from India per se to regions of Finnish ancestry.)

Adding economic data there was only one combination of variables that exceeded this and it did so by just 1% (r=61%). It is weakly supportive of the "refrigerator mother" hypothesis. It is not strongly supportive due to the fact that while working parents percapita was one of the 2 variables, the other variable was public education expenditure per student which had, by itself, a Pearson correlation of 54% whereas working parents percapita was only 25% -- indicating the vast majority of the variance in autism rates was explained by public education expenditure per student rather than working parents. There are a number of possible explanations for why public education expenditure per student would be correlated with autism percapita, among them the most obvious being simply that a high cost of education is associated with autism spectrum disorders.

See this link.

MMR vaccination rates show virtually zero correspondence with autism rates. When viewed in combinations with other demographic variables, it came in combinations far from the top -- far enough from the top that it is plausible that such correlations are due to chance or due solely to the other variable.

Mercury has also been hypothesized as a factor in autism, however data from the Environmental Protection Agency on percapita water-way mercury pollution by State fails to show a significant correlation with autism.

Now it might make sense that there was a somewhat different distribution for the two contests but be real... this demands an explanation.

Under TECK, constituents contact their local office and, with call-back or in-person authentication, vote for bills and/or proxy their votes for bills before congress or state legislatures. Their representative is elected on the Open Proxy Party's political platform which has one plank: Their representative will vote the way the constituents say via their open proxies.

TECK is the seed technology for what is to become the US third-party that succeeds in dramatically decentralizing, reducing and changing politics for the better:

The Open Proxy Party.

The Open Proxy Party's honesty is assured in the most obvious manner imaginable: everyone can see how everyone is voting at any point in time. The current votes and proxies are published on a web page generated by an open-source computer program. Currently this program consists of around 120 lines of Perl code (not counting preformatted text like this) to tally and present the proxies for the public.

Electoral corruption is an opportunity for Open Proxy candidates to win against incumbents. Electoral corruption has alienated the vast majority of the voters from the political process. With foreign labor displacing hundreds of thousands of middle aged technical workers in the United States, who have now redispersed to lower-cost-of-living districts, there is a pool of potential candidates who are more than capable of operating the TECK websites, more than motivated to clean up the electoral process and more than available to work for the modest salaries paid to representatives in State legislatures. Moreover, the majority of voters are more than ready for a reform of the political process.

Installation

Just for the heck of it you might have a campaign kick-off party and invite all the un/der-employed computer people you can find to join the fun of doing the TECK installation. An under-employed live band with pot-luck can't hurt either and will keep expenses down.

1. Set up a website for your future office. This website must be able to run Perl CGI scripts that require as much as a CPU second on a modern processor and 100M of RAM. This website will be used only for publishing the current votes and proxies -- not for data entry.
2. Copy the CGI script to the CGI directory of your website.
3. Obtain a dedicated computer system with an amount of RAM at least equal to 32M plus 1K for each voter in your district. This system will be used only for data-entry.
4. Copy the CGI script(s) to the CGI directory of your data-entry system.
5. Make the database writable for the data-entry system: To do so, in the CGI directory where it is installed, execute the shell command: 'touch proxy_writable'
6. The CGI directory must be writable by the web server because the database is automatically created and stored there.
7. Start entering votes and proxies for the attendees of the party, just to demonstrate how it works. (It is recommended that voter-ids be 10-digit phone numbers so they correspond to their call-back numbers.)

You may want to send your guests home with a campaign statement along the following lines:

"82% of the public opposed expansion of the H-1b visa

Under TECK, constituents contact their local office and, with call-back or in-person authentication, vote for bills and/or proxy their votes for bills before congress or state legislatures. Their representative is elected on the Open Proxy Party's political platform which has one plank: Their representative will vote the way the constituents say via their open proxies.

TECK is the seed technology for what is to become the US third-party that succeeds in dramatically decentralizing, reducing and changing politics for the better:

The Open Proxy Party.

The Open Proxy Party's honesty is assured in the most obvious manner imaginable: everyone can see how everyone is voting at any point in time. The current votes and proxies are published on a web page generated by an open-source computer program. Currently this program consists of around 120 lines of Perl code (not counting preformatted text like this) to tally and present the proxies for the public.

Electoral corruption is an opportunity for Open Proxy candidates to win against incumbents. Electoral corruption has alienated the vast majority of the voters from the political process. With foreign labor displacing hundreds of thousands of middle aged technical workers in the United States, who have now redispersed to lower-cost-of-living districts, there is a pool of potential candidates who are more than capable of operating the TECK websites, more than motivated to clean up the electoral process and more than available to work for the modest salaries paid to representatives in State legislatures. Moreover, the majority of voters are more than ready for a reform of the political process.

Installation

Just for the heck of it you might have a campaign kick-off party and invite all the un/der-employed computer people you can find to join the fun of doing the TECK installation. An under-employed live band with pot-luck can't hurt either and will keep expenses down.

1. Set up a website for your future office. This website must be able to run Perl CGI scripts that require as much as a CPU second on a modern processor and 100M of RAM. This website will be used only for publishing the current votes and proxies -- not for data entry.
2. Copy the CGI script to the CGI directory of your website.
3. Obtain a dedicated computer system with an amount of RAM at least equal to 32M plus 1K for each voter in your district. This system will be used only for data-entry.
4. Copy the CGI script(s) to the CGI directory of your data-entry system.
5. Make the database writable for the data-entry system: To do so, in the CGI directory where it is installed, execute the shell command: 'touch proxy_writable'
6. The CGI directory must be writable by the web server because the database is automatically created and stored there.
7. Start entering votes and proxies for the attendees of the party, just to demonstrate how it works. (It is recommended that voter-ids be 10-digit phone numbers so they correspond to their call-back numbers.)

You may want to send your guests home with a campaign statement along the following lines:

"82% of the public opposed expansion of the H-1b visa

Under TECK, constituents contact their local office and, with call-back or in-person authentication, vote for bills and/or proxy their votes for bills before congress or state legislatures. Their representative is elected on the Open Proxy Party's political platform which has one plank: Their representative will vote the way the constituents say via their open proxies.

TECK is the seed technology for what is to become the US third-party that succeeds in dramatically decentralizing, reducing and changing politics for the better:

The Open Proxy Party.

The Open Proxy Party's honesty is assured in the most obvious manner imaginable: everyone can see how everyone is voting at any point in time. The current votes and proxies are published on a web page generated by an open-source computer program. Currently this program consists of around 120 lines of Perl code (not counting preformatted text like this) to tally and present the proxies for the public.

Electoral corruption is an opportunity for Open Proxy candidates to win against incumbents. Electoral corruption has alienated the vast majority of the voters from the political process. With foreign labor displacing hundreds of thousands of middle aged technical workers in the United States, who have now redispersed to lower-cost-of-living districts, there is a pool of potential candidates who are more than capable of operating the TECK websites, more than motivated to clean up the electoral process and more than available to work for the modest salaries paid to representatives in State legislatures. Moreover, the majority of voters are more than ready for a reform of the political process.

Installation

Just for the heck of it you might have a campaign kick-off party and invite all the un/der-employed computer people you can find to join the fun of doing the TECK installation. An under-employed live band with pot-luck can't hurt either and will keep expenses down.

1. Set up a website for your future office. This website must be able to run Perl CGI scripts that require as much as a CPU second on a modern processor and 100M of RAM. This website will be used only for publishing the current votes and proxies -- not for data entry.
2. Copy the CGI script to the CGI directory of your website.
3. Obtain a dedicated computer system with an amount of RAM at least equal to 32M plus 1K for each voter in your district. This system will be used only for data-entry.
4. Copy the CGI script(s) to the CGI directory of your data-entry system.
5. Make the database writable for the data-entry system: To do so, in the CGI directory where it is installed, execute the shell command: 'touch proxy_writable'
6. The CGI directory must be writable by the web server because the database is automatically created and stored there.
7. Start entering votes and proxies for the attendees of the party, just to demonstrate how it works. (It is recommended that voter-ids be 10-digit phone numbers so they correspond to their call-back numbers.)

You may want to send your guests home with a campaign statement along the following lines:

"82% of the public opposed expansion of the H-1b visa

I've done some modeling of the autism epidemic at the state level and found that the most promising explanation is some interaction between recent immigrants from India and people of Finnish ancestry.

When you look at the scatter plot it is quite graphic with a correlation of 60% at 49 degrees of freedom for a very high statistical significance (p Indeed, you can take hundreds of biologically relevant variables, including vaccination rates and mercury pollution (which are hypothesized to be possible causes of the autism epidemic) and combine them any way you like and you still can't find a better explanation than that something is being imported from India to which genotypes indigenous to Finland are particularly susceptible.

This doesn't mean close down the Indian restaurants tommorrow, but what it does mean is that some research money should be allocated to find out if this correlation holds at the county spatiotemporal level.

I've done some modeling of the autism epidemic at the state level and found that the most promising explanation is some interaction between recent immigrants from India and people of Finnish ancestry.

When you look at the scatter plot it is quite graphic with a correlation of 60% at 49 degrees of freedom for a very high statistical significance (p Indeed, you can take hundreds of biologically relevant variables, including vaccination rates and mercury pollution (which are hypothesized to be possible causes of the autism epidemic) and combine them any way you like and you still can't find a better explanation than that something is being imported from India to which genotypes indigenous to Finland are particularly susceptible.

This doesn't mean close down the Indian restaurants tommorrow, but what it does mean is that some research money should be allocated to find out if this correlation holds at the county spatiotemporal level.

Why is it that this ruling by a New York court reminds me that New York has the highest rate of HIV infection?

The Russian Mafia is already encrypting their email anyway.

For example, why don't they compare 8th grade Minnesota students against Czech students I wonder?

Probably because they'd find out things that are politically incorrect.

This is true not simply because of weapons of mass destruction and their proliferation -- but because of pandemics such as AIDS.

Packet switching protocols, such as IP, were originally developed to allow decentralization of critical communication infrastructure during the cold war. It's just incredibly stupid to not only continue to shove people into cities but to make a vision of the future based on "cities without borders".

Basically I just look at the weekly box office for each movie divided by the number of screens squared and that tells me how much acceleration the market is placing on the distribution channels for the movies.

It works pretty well. Playing the Hollywood Stock Exchange with this metric does a pretty good job of detecting bargains.

First to fall away is control of the flow of ideas. That flow has been bottlenecked by the recentralization of control of mass media in the 20th century leading to a new form of theocracy.

The events following this release of theocratic control over thought occur with a great deal of interrelationship including all manner of "amateur":

• religions (protestantism)
• governments (the US Constitution)
• exploration (the Dutch East India company, for example, was far less about theocracy and governmental control than was the financing of the early Spanish expeditions to central and South America)

Liberalism in its original form from the Reformation and Enlightenment, meant human experimentation (e.g.: "laboratory of the States") but experimentation requires experimental controls. Therefore the prime cause for concern was not that there be agreement between parties but that disagreeing parties find ways to separate from one another to form experimental groups, allowing control groups to preserve older ways. The Age of Exploration was therefore consequent to the Enlightenment.

In the present instance we can take a not too emotional issue such as cloning as a probable "heresy" over which such issues are arising. (There are other, far more motional issues such as homosexual marriage, racial separatism, pedophillia, infanticide, etc. that we can address similarly.) There are attempts in the UN to ban cloning globally under protocols similar to bans on nuclear weaponry. Like most other social experiments people are conducting or wish to conduct, the various entities are proposing that they have world-wide jurisdiction. The conflict isn't over the technologies but over the social experiments allowed or disallowed.

This is a legitimate concern as the globe becomes smaller due to transport and communications technologies. Preemptive controls will increasingly impose on all aspects of life for security's sake. Liberty will dissipate just as it has been with the increase of all forms of centralized control. Soon there will be no more experiments in social forms save those dictated by the sort of individuals attracted to the centers of power, hence the only legacy of humanity will be the destruction of the planet.

The solution is to make the globe bigger and leave earth to the true control groups.

Humanity must find ways of dispersing life to lifeless environments, there to take up residence and leave the earth to the true conservatives -- perhaps limited to hunting and gathering with stone-age technology. Anything else would continue the destruction of vital control groups, not just hunter-gatherers but entire species such as great apes, while depriving humanity of the liberty to conduct its experiments.

The real question of legitimate use of central power isn't over whether to allow this or that experiment but whether the central power is doing everything in its power to disperse life.

By this criterion there is not a single legitimate central point of power in the world, but the worst offenders of all are those nations of European diaspora who are destroying their pioneering heritage with supposed "liberal" policies that dictate universal open borders, "diversity" via EEOC regulations down to the granularity of small mom and pop businesses, by subjecting such an enormous proportion of a family's income political redistribution that all are forced to focus their energies on politics rather than pioneering. All of these things are dictating the social experiments that are politically correct for those pioneering populations and are endangering not just those populations, but life itself as technological civilization is bottled up in an increasingly dangerous pressure-cooker.

Something that is worth noting here:
Until 1875, immigration policy was largely handled by the states. Exclusive transfer of immigration policy to the federal government was part of the gradual expansion of federal powers that I expect you would oppose.

Recent US immigration policy is an extreme example of corporate welfare of the type you oppose. Literally companies and the affluent are using immigration policy to further concentrate wealth in their hands.

You can cry "correlation doesn't imply causation" all you want but you have to measure something or you are preaching theocracy -- not economic theory.

So what else might we measure? How about the "success" of companies that most heavily lobbied for and used guest workers like Sun Corporation?

Again, how many coincidences like that do you need before your cries of "racism", "xenophobia", "protectionism", "loser", just sound like so much religious cant?

Here are figures on the correlation between H-1b presence and cost of housing. What is more interesting is the correlation between H-1b workers and concentrations of high income individuals. I don't have a state by state breakdown of loss of IT jobs by state yet-I would be interested in anyone who can provide those figures.

I think that for most folks what we need is better means of helping them get the data together that they want to look at. One guy did this at an interesting site.
The other thing is that folks need a better way of handling relations and statistical functions. Right now, you need to learn a _lot_ to do stuff that shouldn't be that hard. Its almost like folks wanted to make sure that any project of this nature would need a DBA _and_ a script developer(or team) _and_ a statistician to get work done. That really shouldn't be the case.

The only problem is, it is written in C so you may not like it. ;)

PS: Why won't Topcoder allow any dynamically typed languages? The least they could do is allow Jython -- it runs right on the JVM so they would hardly have to lift a finger to allow it. This conspicuous absence of dynamically typed languages just maybe excluding the greatest programmers according to Paul Grahams's "Python Paradox". Why not find out whether dynamically typed languages really are all they're cracked up to be by guys like Paul Graham by making Topcoder a really fair contest that includes at least one dynamically typed language?

Looking at the picture of Prof. George Church -- the aforementioned Harvard geneticist, one is struck by the resemblance with the guy Terry Gilliam cast as the "environmentalist" genetic engineer synthesized a pathogen to kill all humans in The Twelve Monkeys.

George Church is probably one of the least likely geneticists to hop on a world-wide jet tour to deliver a misanthropic virus he's synthesized.

The problem with all this isn't so much the creation of new, deadly pandemics -- nature does a good enough job of that. The real problem is the way amplification of international transport has been behind almost every major pandemic from the Plague which followed on the heels of the Mongol Empire's wide stretch -- to the pandemic of the first World War.

Globalization has already given us the AIDS epidemic and the SARS scare. It may have given us autism's recent explosive growth and a lot more we don't even know about.

No one is being held liable for this increased risk imposed on an unaware population -- this despite the fact even identifiable corporations have externalized the costs of their risk-taking on the public and walked away with higher corporate profits as a result. Not even Ralph Nader has guts to touch this.

Basically the selection of demographic variables here is not at random -- there are more demographic variables for those dimensions of society that are seen as phenomena that are manifestly important to explain.

For instance, it may be that an optimal coordinate system for these data would include all incarceration rate statistics in the same principle component, which would wash out the concern over incarceration rates vs other "random" variables (that's a pun for statistics nerds) that are involved in other principle components, such as median age, Norwegian Americans as a percent of whites, etc.

Another principle component that has "too many correlations" is income levels, which has percapita variables for each, of many, income groups.

Again, if we're really concerned about something we tend to scrutinize it more and have more measurements of its various manifestations. That's why averaging the coefficients of determination works in the laboratory of the States measurement of dominant United States Influences.

Some sort of ANOVA, with a "cost" weight assigned to each variable, would be ideal here but such weightings would have to be quite subjective anyway and are probably best estimated by the meta statistics of the statistics gathering process itself, which has to do with how concerned people are with various measures. That is accomplished by the employed method of averaging squared correlation coefficients (coefficients of determination) between all measured variables.

Basically the selection of demographic variables here is not at random -- there are more demographic variables for those dimensions of society that are seen as phenomena that are manifestly important to explain.

For instance, it may be that an optimal coordinate system for these data would include all incarceration rate statistics in the same principle component, which would wash out the concern over incarceration rates vs other "random" variables (that's a pun for statistics nerds) that are involved in other principle components, such as median age, Norwegian Americans as a percent of whites, etc.

Another principle component that has "too many correlations" is income levels, which has percapita variables for each, of many, income groups.

Again, if we're really concerned about something we tend to scrutinize it more and have more measurements of its various manifestations. That's why averaging the coefficients of determination works in the laboratory of the States measurement of dominant United States Influences.

Some sort of ANOVA, with a "cost" weight assigned to each variable, would be ideal here but such weightings would have to be quite subjective anyway and are probably best estimated by the meta statistics of the statistics gathering process itself, which has to do with how concerned people are with various measures. That is accomplished by the employed method of averaging squared correlation coefficients (coefficients of determination) between all measured variables.

Russian Americans and Jewish Americans are the top 2 nations represented in the dominant influences on the United States if you take "influence" to mean the variance that can be explained in other demographic variables by one demographic variable.

The interesting thing from the fraud standpoint is that the top demographic influence is HIV positive tests per capita.

If you want to track how distribution channels sacrifice profits to distort culture, a good way of approximating it is to track the weekly box office divided by the number of screens squared. This is sort of like the "acceleration" a movie is placing on the distribution channels. Although the previously-linked site is updated only when the weekly numbers are available, the daily numbers as of today (June 27) show "Fahrenheit 9/11" with a metric of $8,200,000/(868 theaters)^2 or 10.9 whereas the next highest daily gross ("White Chicks") comes in at 0.9 -- a factor of ten lower.

The national demography with the highest risk of autism are Finnish Americans. Oregon was #1 in autism for the year 2000. Fortunately, his children are past the age where they are likely to develop autism.

The national demography with the highest risk of autism are Finnish Americans. Oregon was #1 in autism for the year 2000. Fortunately, his children are past the age where they are likely to develop autism.

India's inherently lower cost clan/cast social structure (something the West dispenses with as "nepotism" at best and "racism" at worst) is how they are winning economically. The west's monetization of even its women's years of fertility in the work place (resulting in the lower fertility rates here) has imposed inherently higher costs of life itself. The only question is whether the West has anything left after deracinating its peoples, substituting money for blood. I think it still has the edge on innovation simply because the process of selective breeding against inventive subpopulations has not had its full negative effects. Software has to be innovative everytime you sit down to solve a problem with it. Unless you are just translating a program (and even there to some extent) the only way someone gets to solve a software problem is if you either didn't really solve it or if someone is stupid enough not to profit from your having solved. But in application of invention in an unchanging environment, such as the human body, all you need is the ability to follow rules to some extent.

Now the dangers of this approach to medicine are subtle and profound. The most obvious subtle danger is that as you shift resources away from the original populations that invented the technologies, it is unlikely you'll have the same rate of innovation. This is bad but at least you don't necessarily regress. What is worse is the fact that different human ecologies have different and sometime incompatible approaches to life. The fact that people are unaware of these approaches, and their incompatiblity is what may have caused the autism epidemic and left Indians in a position where they cannot be trusted to fix the problems they bring with them to the West.

click

Maybe they're wherever the profits from the dot-con companies went.

First, and foremost, it is the result of a tax structure that penalizes economic activity while unburdening asset concentrations -- the very things that governments protect and should therefore tax. This creates "market failures" in technology development capitalization that government then tries to solve with socialist development programs... adding futher to the tax burden on economic activity without sharing that burden with the asset concentrations protected by government from force and fraud (due to war and/or crime). This technosocialist "solution" to the asset concentration welfare system is surely the most idiotic idea ever to infect civilization.

Whenever government gets involved in technology development, as opposed to basic (unpatentable) research, it creates a monster that finds private innovation threatening. Governments failed to foresee this poisonous incentive when the post-Manhattan-project mania for government "big science" programs took off.

The one area of space development that took off and became profitable, communications satellites, is the one area of space development that Congress, at the dawn of the space age, barred government from competing with private interests. Unfortunately, the NASA act didn't bar government from competing in space transportation. Also equally unfortunately government wasn't kept out of energy development or aeronautical technology development.

Here's an excerpt from the afore-linked net asset taxation whitepaper:

CURRENT ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AND RISK INVERSION

A fundamental problem with our economy at present is what might be called "risk inversion" where households with high net worth disproportionately invest in low risk instruments while households with low net worth find their savings unwisely invested at high risk by deregulated but relatively unskilled financial institutions.

New technologies and job-creating enterprises find it difficult to obtain capital because they are caught in the horns of a dilemma: The wealthy, who have the business experience needed to manage the risks of a new enterprise, have given their money to government or corporate bureaucracies to manage while small savers find their savings accounts squandered in speculative investments by institutions which are, in reality, qualified to do little more than purchase Treasury paper, which is what they should, in fact, be doing.

Even more perverse, the government finds itself stepping away from its traditional low-risk investments in mature infrastructure in order to perform functions for which it is particularly ill-suited, such as technical innovation, while private sector businesses retreat from the very technical risk it is most suited to manage.

The government then finds itself bailing out the failed investments of insured, but deregulated, financial institutions, thus creating even more government debt which is purchased by those most qualified to capitalize business enterprise.

The current hue and cry for saving the "middle class" arises from the failure of our deregulated financial institutions to focus on their original purpose, which was the creation of affordable home ownership. Instead, they speculated in the creation of large amounts of theoretically profitable commercial real estate as young families were being crushed under the weight of sky- rocketing home mortgages and declining real wages.

The "middle class" it is currently in vogue to worry about are those people, primarily people born in the 1950's (middle to late baby boomers), whose family stability and household net worth suffered greatly as a result of these housing shortages combined with lowering real incomes.

You are obviously an adherent of the latter form of irrational prejudice.

One way to encourage reindustrialization adequate to the task of lowered population and higher resource efficiency might be to allow people threatened by imported disease to sue the globalist companies importing the cheap labor.

My GI generation father lives with some life-threatening conditions, and does he have some stories to tell since he moved from Iowa to the border with Mexico!

I rarely see the man anymore, however, so the change is hardly gradual and is quite palpable.

Sitting in a waiting line with illegals ahead of him for medical service is finally getting to him. Never a racist act nor word from him during his entire life, and now at the end of his life, he's having to think about what he was fighting for when he, before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, left the Quakers, where he could have easily evaded the draft, and volunteered to go fight the Germans. He is probably going to die quite a few years earlier for the want of a small amount of service from Medicare to which he is entitled. He will likely lose these years of life due to the degradation of Medicare by immigration promoted by globalist companies forcing wages for American workers down. He could actually get better care if he were an illegal rather than a WW II vet.

As Paul Craig Roberts reports - Friday, Oct. 3, 2003:

So you think your government looks out for you? Not nearly as much as it does for aliens.

On Sept. 24 Robert Pear reported in the New York Times that the Bush administration has quietly decided to stiff 6 million poor elderly and disabled Americans by denying them Medicare drug benefits. According to the Bush administration, these Americans are already covered under state Medicaid programs.

President Bush should read the newspapers. On Sept. 23 Robert Pear reported in the New York Times that "rising costs prompt states to reduce Medicaid further." It seems that the job loss recovery has forced virtually every state to take action to cut back on Medicaid.

Not to worry. All the 6 million poor and disabled Americans need to do is to acquire Mexican citizenship and recross the border as illegal aliens. Once Americans acquire the status of illegal aliens, their medical care is provided free without even a co-pay.

Can you imagine what things will happen when the boomers, whose economic and therefore reproductive viablity has already been decimated by government policy which is now compounded by immigration-induced age, if not race, discrimination, hit retirement and all that imported labor that was supposed to keep Social Security solvent is voting?

I'll admit I'm angry about this; however, the public health menace facing those on Medicare is a drop in the bucket compared to what is starting to become obvious to even the most dogmatic proponent of globalism:

Globalist companies are using immigration to drive down labor costs at the expense of profound risks to the public health from epidemics.

When SARS turned out not to be the threat so many feared, some thought this might have been due to quick rea

Basically capital has failed to open space as a frontier due to capital welfare in the form of protection of asset concentrations paid for out of taxes on things other than asset concentrations themselves.

The Coalition for Science and Commerce's work on space policy reform and fusion policy reform led to the realization that capitalization of technology required a radical restructuring of the tax code.

The result was a white paper titled "A Net Asset Tax Based On The Net Present Value Calculation and Market Democracy". Essentially the biggest economic problem civilization faces is the fact that those who acquire wealth can buy political favoritism in the form of taxes on everything _but_ wealth itself. This results in everyone paying the cost (in blood and money) of defending the legal rights of asset concentrations that are untenable militarily or morally. Stated another way: Wealth is not income. Its possession isn't protected for free. That's why taxes pay for police and armies and should be based on possession of wealth rather than its transfer (or its creation).

The fact that welfare for capital is an inescapable feature of existing political entities has created the wrong kind of economic heirarchy in the world at the wrong point in history. The insanely zero-sum mentality infecting the leadership of the world, while solar energy streams past the Earth in quantities orders of magnitude over what we could even conceive of using on Earth will be investigated by future historians as the only worth-while subject to understand of this era.

Here are the important excerpts from the aforementioned 1992 white paper:

The government should tax net assets, in excess of levels typically protected under personal bankruptcy, at a rate equal to the rate of interest on the national debt, thereby eliminating other forms of taxation. Creator-owned intellectual property should be exempt.

...With the exception of basic functions of government and the pay down of debt, the government budget should be dispersed to citizens as cash, rather than being spent in government programs or even limited in the form of vouchers. This is "market democracy" in which the citizens and their markets, rather than central planning and politics, influence the selection of goods and services to be capitalized and provided.

...In reality, we are surrounded by "frontiers" in many dimensions. Few have the profound implications of a physical frontier such as the American west or space, but all share in common the attribute that proprietary access to them is restricted by government so as to prevent unproductive hoarding.

In the case of technological frontiers, this problem is solved by limiting the patent claims to 17 years. An inventor can sit on an invention doing nothing with it for up to 17 years, but beyond that time, its use cannot be inhibited by the inventor. In practice, most inventors are so eager to see their invention brought into widespread use, they endanger their own claim. The patented technique is unique among frontier claims in that it's use is not inherently limited -- techniques are not "resources", and in that it is truly the creation of the inventor -- not an emergent phenomenon of civilization and nature.

But in other areas, such as radio frequency and orbital slots, the analogy with frontier "land" is almost perfect.

The NAT, unlike George's land tax, makes it possible for the government to open up all frontiers to private claim and development. Claimants must simply define and register the nature of the property rights that they wish to claim so

The solution therein proposed is to:

The government should tax net assets, in excess of levels typically protected under personal bankruptcy, at a rate equal to the rate of interest on the national debt, thereby eliminating other forms of taxation. Creator-owned intellectual property should be exempt.

I went on to describe market democracy:

With the exception of basic functions of government and the pay down of debt, the government budget should be dispersed to citizens as cash, rather than being spent in government programs or even limited in the form of vouchers. This is "market democracy" in which the citizens and their markets, rather than central planning and politics, influence the selection of goods and services to be capitalized and provided.

As to what humans are good for:

In reality, we are surrounded by "frontiers" in many dimensions. Few have the profound implications of a physical frontier such as the American west or space, but all share in common the attribute that proprietary access to them is restricted by government so as to prevent unproductive hoarding.

In the case of technological frontiers, this problem is solved by limiting the patent claims to 17 years. An inventor can sit on an invention doing nothing with it for up to 17 years, but beyond that time, its use cannot be inhibited by the inventor. In practice, most inventors are so eager to see their invention brought into widespread use, they endanger their own claim. The patented technique is unique among frontier claims in that it's use is not inherently limited -- techniques are not "resources", and in that it is truly the creation of the inventor -- not an emergent phenomenon of civilization and nature.

But in other areas, such as radio frequency and orbital slots, the analogy with frontier "land" is almost perfect.

The NAT, unlike George's land tax, makes it possible for the government to open up all frontiers to private claim and development. Claimants must simply define and register the nature of the property rights that they wish to claim so that others can avoid overlapping claims or negotiate easements.

Naturally, there are many such abstract property rights which are now in use by people, although unclaimed. The principle of first use, like first to invent in patent law, should be the criteria for priority on a claim. "Use" should include not only direct physical utilization, but declaration of intent to use the property right via claim.

NAT liability begins with the date that the claim is protected under law.

Finally, the U. S. Constitution contains a provision for patents of invention and copyright along with a prohibition on patents of nobility. In a very real sense, the "royalties" collected by inventors for their inventions and artists for their creative works are the basis for a new definition of "nobility" upon which the United States culture is founded. In the United States, nobility is in the creative act rather than in the mere possession of land or titles conferred by the authorities. Just as the land of old world nobility was protected from the normal contention of the marketplace, so the "creative spark" of inventors, researchers and creative writers should be protected.

Indeed, given the need for inventors and artists to focus their energies on creative rather than acquisitive disciplines, special protections are far more necessary than they were for the old world nobility, which possessed exceptional acquisitive capabilities. For this reason, patents of invention and copyrights, when possessed by their creators, should be treated as vital posse