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Related to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-sector_hypothesis

People went from 90% agriculture workers to about 2% agriculutre workers over the past two hundred years in the USA. Of the current agriculutral production, 75% of the effort goes to meat production which is not strictly needed and in general is harming people's health, and otherwise people eat too much of the wrong foods and are obese (see Dr. Fuhrman). Why is agriculture still not using 90% of the labor force? Automation and limited demand.

Compulsory schools were created to keep kids off the street and train them to be soldiers and factory workers. Working hours went down from 12 hours 6 days a week to 8 hours five days a week, and only for adults. Child labor was outlawed. So, much of the working force was freed.

In 1950, about 30% of the workforce was in manufacturing. Now it is more like aroung 12%, and the same amount of stuff is still produced (plus some is imported from China). Why? Increasing automation, better design, and limited demand. Many people are drowning in junk that clutters their homes and lives.

Granted, in the USA, women have gone into the work force and there are other confounding factors.

What happens when services go the same way through robotics and other automation, better design, voluntary social networks, and limited demand?
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/

Consider also that unlike food and some basic goods, most services are optional.

It turns out even most medical care is probably harmful and unneccesary, compared to just eating better and getting adequate vitamin D.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

The entire economy is poised to implode.
http://idlenest.freehostia.com/mirror/www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://idlenest.freehostia.com/mirror/www.whywork.org/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=channel
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html
http://www.bluezones.com/
http://books.google.com/books?id=hM_JDjq6V-kC
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/depression.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

See also my comment here on how it's all about our social paradigm:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1883960&cid=34448172

Yes, S-curves are common in nature. Although we are stil facing discontinuities in our economics. By me on that:
    http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
    http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0061.html
    http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.html

Roy Amara first said Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara
"We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."

I sent Ray Kurzweil some emails on why he gets evolution wrong and why uploaded minds will be eaten by digital pirahna (someone else put up copies):
    http://heybryan.org/fernhout/

Another key point is here by me:
    http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/1f6bb622cafc8c29?hl=en
"Is the Singularity like Harry Potter's "Mirror of Erised"? ("Erised" is "Desire" spelled backwards.) What would we see in the mirror if we are a financially successful capitalist (hint, hint)? Does capitalist ideology dominate "mainstream" singularity thinking? What is the danger of seeing capitalism and competing over scarce resources as the way to build the future of abundance? Or could we see cooperation, or at least, balance, as a better way forward to a world that works for everyone, and where the capacity to collectively create, monitor, and respond outweighs the individual or collective ability to destroy and harm? "

There is a low-tech way to prevent cancer, heart disease, and many other illnesses now, and that is to be sure to get enough vitamin D and to eat lots of vegetables and fruits.
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
Although it is true that it has taken modern science and technology to prove why that works and to communicate that finding. Kurzweil is probably taking too many potions for his health, sadly. He should check out Dr. Fuhrman's January retreat in Princeotn, NJ on health.

With all that said, I still have a lof respect for Ray Kurzweil's accomplishments and predictions and his efforts to help humanity with technology. I just think some of his pedictions show some of the limts of his perspective based on who he has been, which is true for any of us.

I'd second this; from: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
"We predict that treatment with physiological doses of vitamin D3 (between 4,000–10,000 IU/day from all sources, including sun, food and supplements) along with periodic monitoring of blood calcidiol and calcium levels will become routine. [Zittermann A. Vitamin D in preventive medicine: are we ignoring the evidence? Br J of Nutr. 2003;89:552–572. Holick M. Vitamin D: A Millennium Perspective. J Cell Biochem. 2003;88:296–307.] Research indicates it will help several vitamin D deficiency-associated diseases such as: autism, autoimmune illness, cancer, chronic pain, depression, diabetes, heart disease, hyperparathyroidism, hypertension, influenza, myopathy (neuromuscular disorders), and osteoporosis.
    At this time, we advise even healthy people (those without the diseases of vitamin D deficiency) to seek a knowledgeable physician and have your 25(OH)D level measured. If your levels are below 50 ng/mL you need enough sun, artificial light, oral vitamin D3 supplements, or some combination of the three, to maintain your 25(OH)D levels between 50–80 ng/mL year-round.
How Much Vitamin D?
    If you refuse to see a physician, or can't find a knowledgeable one, purchase the 1000 IU/day vitamin D3 cholecalciferol pills that are available over-the-counter in North America or a 5,000 IU capsule. Take an average of 5,000 IU a day, year-round, if you have some sun exposure. If you have little, or no, sun exposure you will need to take at least 5,000 IU per day. How much more depends on your latitude of residence, skin pigmentation, and body weight. Generally speaking, the further you live away from the equator, the darker your skin, and/or the more you weigh, the more you will have to take to maintain healthy blood levels.
    For example, Dr. Cannell lives at latitude 32 degrees, weighs 220 pounds, and has fair skin. In the late fall and winter he takes 5,000 IU per day. In the early fall and spring he takes 2,000 IU per day. In the summer he regularly sunbathes for a few minutes most days and thus takes no vitamin D on those days in the summer. The only way you can know how much you vitamin D you need to take is by repeatedly getting your blood tested—known as a 25(OH)D test—and seeing what you need to do to keep your level around 50 ng/mL."

Another site with somewhat lower recommendations:
    http://www.grassrootshealth.net/

Eating a lot of vegetables and fruits can help too, as can other good lifestyle things like exercise and sleeping well and thinking positive, having friends, having a sense of humor, communing periodically with nature and the inifinite, and so on. Example on food, related to Dr. Joel Fuhrman:
    http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

I saw a British video about obesity where they took an obese woman who claimed to have tried every diet and to have a slow metabolism, and they actually tested her in a hospital with a special test for that (respiration rate), and she had an average metabolism.

As Dr. Joel Fuhrman says inhis book "Eat To Live", tryng to control portion size breaks down eventually because no one can deny themselves foods they crave forever.

What works, reliably, is to switch ot a diet emphasizing vegetables fruits, and beans, where your stomach fills up with only 200 to 400 caloires of nutrient-dense plant matter, as opposed to, say, 3500 calories to fill your stomach with essentially phytonutrient-deficient cheese.

You may also need specific supplements, like vitamin D and DHA and B12 and some others.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

See Dr. Fuhrmans' presentation:
    "Nutrient Density is the Key to Good health "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZGgeGHU1Bs

Or also:
    "Eat For Health"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw

Such a diet can cure most Type 2 diabetes too in a few weeks:
"Dr. Fuhrman Cures Diabetes - But Drug Companies Object "
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46_GInjBeQU

And he is not the only one who says that:
http://www.rawfor30days.com/

And Herbet Shelton said it decades ago.

Most medical intervention in industrialized countries is unneeded and just covers up the symptoms of malnutrition (not lack of calories, but lack of phytonutrients and fiber). There are of course some other lifestyle issues (smoking, stess, lack of sleep, lack of exercise) as well as exposure to human-made toxins, so diet is not everything. But diet is still a really big thing for preventing (or in some cases, treating) chronic disease like much heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer, obesity, rheumatoid arthritis, and others.

The problem is, there is very little profit in telling people to eat more vegetables, get enough vitamin D, exercise more, and so on. The money is in things like (totally unneeded in most cases it turns out) heart operations like angioplasty for conditions more safely and more effectively treated with dietary changes.

Another part of the puzzle:
http://www.healthpromoting.com/the-pleasure-trap

So you are right to suggest the possibility there is a broad social problem, with profits to be had in harming people or endlessly treating them, but little profits to be had in prevention or cure. With more grassroots information, hopefully we can move past this medical problem of US malnutrition and free up a lot of resources and create a lot of positive energy to then address other unmet social needs.

At any weight, there is no doubt some variation in metabolism based on genetics, activity level, and gut bacteria. With that said, I doubt the difference is huge.

You can't tell what those people are eating at other times.

Also, vitamin D deficiency may be linked to obesity, so that is another variable:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

Dr. Joel Fuhmran goes into detail to a proven approach to weight loss and increasing health by eating more vegetables and fruits:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw

Thinking about what he says, I'd suggest the person eating the salad is puttng a lot of dressing on it and adding lots of hidden calories that way.

...if you work so much indoors: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

Adequate vitamin D may help prevent the flu, too.

Vitamin D is needed by the immune system: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7379094/Vitamin-D-triggers-and-arms-the-immune-system.html
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--NqqB2nhBE

And whole foods (especially vegetables, fruits, and legumes) help you have a disease resistant body:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm

Though a good mental attitude, exercise, infrastructure, good sleep, thankfulness, meditating on the great mystery, etc. can help with general wellness, too.
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/important-sleep-habits

You may just have had an advantage from natural talent and experience? Or maybe you just eat a better diet or exercise more than others?
    http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

You can see another post I made for links about alternative education.
    http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1847578&cid=34081206

But basically, most young children tend to learn best through interactions with people, nature, exposure to a waide variety of experiences including music and stories, and basic things like playing with sand, water, and blocks. It is on those sorts of things that more advanced thinking is built. Trying to put the cart before the horse may lead to less success, not more. It has been hypothesized that the reason many kids are doing worse in math and science and criticial thinking is that those sorts of general early experiences have been curtailed in favor of early academics focusing on things like early print literacy or early drill of math concepts. So, you might want to research this more, including reading stuff by John Holt (a mathematical person who also studied alternative education).
    http://holtgws.com/

With that said, there are things you can do, like pointing out things. I've pointed out examples of recursion to my kid from a young age (like trucks carrying trucks). And math has been a daily thing by pointing out examples of it in our daily life, including when working with LEGOs. But that is not the same as "lessons" in any kind of formal sense.

A good open-ended site for young kids to learn through play as an example:
    http://www.poissonrouge.com/

I agree with you that programming is a good way to approach math. As people talked about on the Python edusig list, "math" can really just be seen as a subset of computation and programming in general (at least within the bounds of whatever most schools teach).

I can also wonder if getting kids indoors more at an early age has made them vitamin D deficient which has led to some learning difficulties? So, even if you use computers with a kid a lot, make sure that everyone is getting enough vitamin D.
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
"Research indicates it will help several vitamin D deficiency-associated diseases such as: autism, autoimmune illness, cancer, chronic pain, depression, diabetes, heart disease, hyperparathyroidism, hypertension, influenza, myopathy (neuromuscular disorders), and osteoporosis. ..."

One problem with all this technology is it keeps us indoor more and so we become vitamin D deficient...

My comment on another article: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1692444&cid=32644166

Basically, many researchers keep looking for a magic bullet they can patent, but overlook the basics they can't patent (like vegetables&fruits&legumes, exercise, sleep, meditation, humor, friendships, dogs, a clean environment, good work, peace of mind, etc.)

Examples:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi111.html
    http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
    http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
    http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
    http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
 

It says somewhere on the CIA public website (or used to) essentially that if you are applying for a job there, you should not tell anyone. I guess, the first rule of the CIA is no one works there, except Valery Plame. :-) But the CIA suggests that in part for the reasons you imply, as it can presumably make people a target (although it also would complicated covert things). Of course, who is not a target in some way in this world? Things become an issue of "risk management", like so much in life. It's unfortunate that the US has such an organization that mixes up sensemaking, spying, and covert operations. I think a "COIA" (Central Open Intelligence Agency?) that just worked in public would be much more effective for US security. :-) Maybe to complement the "Department of Peace" Dennis Kucinich and others have worked towards? :-) Although various different agencies and parts of agencies all do part of that task, but there may be poor integration of all that. And, of course, nothing is going to work right as long as our economic religion is so messed up (and a top priority has to be rethinking economics for the 21st century so it stops being primarily a faith-based dogmatic religion that denies it is a religion. :-) Related:
"The Market as God"
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99mar/marketgod.htm

As to me and my funding, under our current socioeconomic paradigm, I'm right now mostly one step above Kryten as a toilet-scrubbing homeschooling stay-at-home Dad, supported by a wife doing data-analysis consulting for "civilian" corporations these days, where my hobbies include developing FOSS software, writing long essays like this that hardly anyone reads, taking care of three elderly chickens, and taking part in a global "Blessed Unrest" http://www.blessedunrest.com/ towards saving a world that, way more often than not, is uninterested in being saved from its own internal contradictions and ironies. A world going mad from simple things like vitamin D deficiency and not eating enough vegetables, fruits, and legumes:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/mentalIllness.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

Best job I ever had. :-)

But if the CIA came along and offered me a big grant to do publicly available FOSS Intelligence software and related content, would I ask my wife to do even more of the homeschooling and chicken care than she does already, or maybe even hire a multilingual tutor for some of the time and/or buy a toilet scrubbing robot? Probably. :-) How's that for ethics? :-) Would I rather such work was funded some other way? Sure. We tried a bit and failed with the NSF and NASA:
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/nsfprop.htm
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

Maybe we did not try hard enough perhaps... I have to admire these Concord people for their success and doing stuff mostly the right way (at least, as right as you can be if focused mostly on the needs of compulsory schools):
http://www.concord.org/

Politics and FOSS can make strange bedfellows. A few years ago there was a slashdot story on someone doing FOSS who lost a military-related contract after he said he took military money because it meant one less cruise missile or something. But he was right in a way. Imagine what some FOSS developers could do with the time otherwise made available by the money tied up in just one Tomahawk cruise missile (US$6

There is no doubt a genetic component to cancer but you can't jump from there to the kind of social processes you are implyimg without considering a lot of issues (including how our genes related to compassion towards each other may let us survive as a collective when individually we would all die).

As an example of that, here are two links to two compassionate people, Dr John Cannell and Dr. Joel Fuhrman, with advice that, used together, may prevent most cancers and even treat a few (by boosting the body's own immune system):
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/cat-cancer.html
Should we honor these two people for those contributions to humanity (including treating any early genetic diseases they might get) or should we just say, "tough luck, bad genes" if they do get sick somehow and let them die right outside of hospitals?
    "Andy Bales- SiCKO: What Has Happened to Health Care?"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC7zI7VXcCA

Besides, you've seen the movie "Gattaca", right? How long before people are designing their DNA? I'm not saying they will do a good job for it, though, and there may be other social and personal consequences too, like shown in that movie. :-( What nature tends to prize is disease resistance and hardiness more than almost anything else, although many people might opt for optimizing some things with unknown consequences. I'm just saying that idea of geen manipulation shows another problematical assumption you are making that the only way genetic material will get passed on is the old-fashioned way.

Memetic/cultural evolution is also happening at the level of "memes", as we see here on slashdot all the time, and quite rapidly, much faster than genetic evolution. But ask yourself, which of the memes you carry around in your head (including the one you just propagated) are more beneficial to your body as well as the communities that body is part of, and which are more parasitic or cancerous? And what does it take to have a healthy mental immune system?

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzXBn5koFbY
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/
http://www.diseaseproof.com/

Check your vitamin D levels too:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

What you describe sound like a very respectable life. :-) Still, no one (including me) can live in this world and not get involved in some bad aspects of it (like, in the case of helping broadcasting stations, the mainstream media was often not doing its job of investigative journalism). Related:
    "What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream"
    http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

Anyway, I hope those first links might help with reversing Type-II diabetes.

BTW, two other boxes of democracy are moving box (to somewhere with better laws) and mail box (writing representatives). :-) So, there are at least six. :-)

Why the ammo box is problematical:
    "Social Movements and Strategic Nonviolence"
    http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html

Anyway, the things they don't teach in school...
    "Educating for a Peaceful World"
    http://www.forums.alliance21.org/d_read/pax/articles/Deutsch.htm

Maybe you were better off to get out sooner?

I've enjoyed this discussion including your most recent comment here; thanks.

At this point, we may continue to disagree about whether the ends justify the means, and whether the ends should be a person with a lot of skills or a person with a lot of self-direction. No doubt, the truth will be somewhere in the middle (some ends justify some means, and people need both skills and some degree of self-direction to have a happy life). I'm indeed glad that you paint a better picture of people in schools very seriously trying to consider substantial reforms (even if I may still think the entire paradigm remains broken).

Although I would add that schools might improve a lot when we accept that not only should adults try to shape kids into civilized creatures, but also adults should let them be shaped back into joyful creatures by (re)learning many things from children. :-) Something I learned from a comedian (Michael Pritchard), from his video "Making the World a Better Place: Commit Random Acts of Comedy and Create Inverse Paranoids":
http://www.humorproject.com/bookstore/2010.php
as he was quoting Kahlil Gibran:
http://www.katsandogz.com/onchildren.html
"""
On Children
by Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
"""

Just something to think about. That video is really great. I got it at a "humor conference" I went to a couple years ago.

A couple factoids, for you to make what you will of:

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/356.speregen/physical_education_and_school_performance
"Despite the wealth of knowledge concerning the benefits of physical education and physical activity, only 8% of elementary schools, 6.4% of middle schools, and 5.8% of high schools provide daily physical education to all of its students (SHPPS, 2000)."

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vitaminDPhysiology.shtml
"Studies show that if you go out in the summer sun in your bathing suit until your skin just begins to turn pink, you make between 10,000 and 50,000 units of cholecalciferol in your skin. Professor Michael Holick of Boston University School of Medicine has studied this extensively and believes a reasonable average of all th

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZGgeGHU1Bs
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
http://books.google.com/books?id=CX8huSU0n8AC
http://www.drfuhrman.com/
http://www.diseaseproof.com/
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html

And this site has some great videos to improve your knife skills for using wicked sharp knives to cut up your veggies:
http://www.kitchenonfire.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RhfAE6McrM

And don't forget your vitamin D, which you almost certainly won't get enough of from food:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

You're right, I see that it was someone else originally wrote:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1779942&cid=33503164
"I have to agree here. I was forced to go the H1B route at my last job to hire an entry level applications engineer."

And then I had misinterpred the first three words of this point you made, as I think a few other people who replied did as well: "From his comment, we wanted anyone with a EE degree, but would have been willing to pay an extra $20k if needed to hire someone with a PhD, rather then the normal rejecting of that candidate for being overqualified/too expensive."

So, that may explain all the replies you think did not read your comments, people interpreting when you wrote "we wanted" not in quotations to mean you were talking about your own company.

So, that first post, mixed with your later items, was what I was mostly responding to, not the internship point. Sorry for the confusion on my end.

Still, I sincerely tried to help as best as I could. And you reject that and call it a rant and a dump. Ask yourself, is that possibly in any way connected to even just internship hiring issues? :-)

Do you not care about vitamin D deficiency, caused in part by too much indoors work, making your workers sicker and less productive?
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/depression.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/mentalIllness.shtml

Do you not care that I even agreed with the difficulty you raise about finding qualified interns and quoted a reputable person in CA you could easily go talk to if you wanted to do something big about the problem finding US citizens who know a lot about math and science? Someone who testified to Congress on this trend as far back as the 1990s?

Still, is declaring something an "internship" itself just another way to save money? Are you really, sincerely, setting up that "internship" just out of the goodness of your heart to help others and give back to the industry? Or is in just another way to get cheap labor? Or in other ways save money on hiring costs (like profiling candidates as to a work ethic or fitting into your company culture before you permanently hire them)?
"Cheap Labor Conservatives Issues Guide"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/16

Anyway, the ironic thing is an entire computer industry trying to automate jobs away to save money is caught up in a sort of either ignorance or denial of what it is doing... Why can not everyone just accept that, and say, as a business person, you want to get the most work for the least money? That's another part of the H1B problem, because it may force otherwise honest people to start skirting the truth in order to justify and then stand by the paperwork that there were no possible US candidates (even if they might cost a lot more or you would have to pay relocation to CA, so hundreds of thousands of dollars up front perhaps to buy someone an equivalent house to a Midwest one).

So, is the H1B program in part just to deal with crazy CA property values? :-) Or similar programs for importing guest workers? A truly free market would say, look if the people in CA can't raise salaries enough to deal with a crazy property market they helped cause, then tech investment dollars should flow to the Des Moines, or Pittsburgh, or Albany, or Raleigh (or abroad) rather than stay in CA where it is too expensive to buy a house... And some of them are... But the H1B system just papers over that fundamental problem. It says, well, we can get someone overall for less by importing an indentured servant for a few years, skimming the cream off of some other country's crop. Anyway, discussing the strengths an

You're right, I see that it was someone else originally wrote:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1779942&cid=33503164
"I have to agree here. I was forced to go the H1B route at my last job to hire an entry level applications engineer."

And then I had misinterpred the first three words of this point you made, as I think a few other people who replied did as well: "From his comment, we wanted anyone with a EE degree, but would have been willing to pay an extra $20k if needed to hire someone with a PhD, rather then the normal rejecting of that candidate for being overqualified/too expensive."

So, that may explain all the replies you think did not read your comments, people interpreting when you wrote "we wanted" not in quotations to mean you were talking about your own company.

So, that first post, mixed with your later items, was what I was mostly responding to, not the internship point. Sorry for the confusion on my end.

Still, I sincerely tried to help as best as I could. And you reject that and call it a rant and a dump. Ask yourself, is that possibly in any way connected to even just internship hiring issues? :-)

Do you not care about vitamin D deficiency, caused in part by too much indoors work, making your workers sicker and less productive?
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/depression.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/mentalIllness.shtml

Do you not care that I even agreed with the difficulty you raise about finding qualified interns and quoted a reputable person in CA you could easily go talk to if you wanted to do something big about the problem finding US citizens who know a lot about math and science? Someone who testified to Congress on this trend as far back as the 1990s?

Still, is declaring something an "internship" itself just another way to save money? Are you really, sincerely, setting up that "internship" just out of the goodness of your heart to help others and give back to the industry? Or is in just another way to get cheap labor? Or in other ways save money on hiring costs (like profiling candidates as to a work ethic or fitting into your company culture before you permanently hire them)?
"Cheap Labor Conservatives Issues Guide"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/16

Anyway, the ironic thing is an entire computer industry trying to automate jobs away to save money is caught up in a sort of either ignorance or denial of what it is doing... Why can not everyone just accept that, and say, as a business person, you want to get the most work for the least money? That's another part of the H1B problem, because it may force otherwise honest people to start skirting the truth in order to justify and then stand by the paperwork that there were no possible US candidates (even if they might cost a lot more or you would have to pay relocation to CA, so hundreds of thousands of dollars up front perhaps to buy someone an equivalent house to a Midwest one).

So, is the H1B program in part just to deal with crazy CA property values? :-) Or similar programs for importing guest workers? A truly free market would say, look if the people in CA can't raise salaries enough to deal with a crazy property market they helped cause, then tech investment dollars should flow to the Des Moines, or Pittsburgh, or Albany, or Raleigh (or abroad) rather than stay in CA where it is too expensive to buy a house... And some of them are... But the H1B system just papers over that fundamental problem. It says, well, we can get someone overall for less by importing an indentured servant for a few years, skimming the cream off of some other country's crop. Anyway, discussing the strengths an

Did you think about paying relocation for someone from, say, the midwest to come to CA? (Yes, I know with the price of CA homes that would have been really expensive, to pay the difference on an equivalent house in a walkable community.) Did you consider paying a lot more, like double? Did you consider just hiring someone with more experience (also for more money)? Did you consider investing in training someone? Did you consider relocating your company to a place with a lower cost of living. Apparently not, and probably why, because it costs more.

So, basically, you took the (perceived) cheaper route. Now, as a business person, than makes sense. Even globally it may make sense (to help other countries bootstrap themselves up in high technology). And sure, maybe all your perceived competitors are doing the same, so you feel compelled to follow suit, even if you did not want to. But, from the perspective of the near-term prosperity of the USA, what our legislators did to support you in doing that is extremely problematical (to use nice words. :-)

When a run down house in a town in CA costs US$400K, then US$80K a year is essentially poverty wages. Kids out of college are getting US$50K to start. Why is it that someone with a grad degree is then only give a bit more? Also, programmers can range 1000X in terms of productivity (some programmers are even negative in their contributions), so the entire notion of tying pay to performance is very broken in the field.

Anyway, with your focus on money and "resources", for another perspective, you might want to consider rethinking how you motivate people in your company. Some pointers to get you started:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/6819187b74f4b7db
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/fa4459793c6b7ed3
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/04fbdf60ad463dbb

Or you can look at how SAS does things to be rated as the #1 place to work in corporate America (although they are not open source, which is the biggest perk for most good software developers over convenient concierge-type services).

Anyway, if local people don't want to work for your company, you might ask why? Has it gotten a bad reputation somehow (long hours, stressful arguments)? Or is it an outstanding place to work that has suffered from a lack of a good reputation getting spread around? Etc. Why is not word of mouth bringing you in more qualified people than you have slots for?

In any case, you'll get more out of your "resources" if you tell everyone to get their vitamin D levels checked (as vitamin D deficiency is an occupational hazard of indoors work):
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

And if you want to understand the social dynamics behind the truth of some of what you say (that indeed most kids coming out of US schools are effectively illiterate in math and science), go talk to Dr. David Goodstein at Caltech (previously the vice-Provost):
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"I would like to propose a different and more illuminating metaphor for American science education. It is more like a mining and sorting operation, designed to cast aside most of the mass of common human debris, but at the same time to discover and rescue diamonds in the rough, that are capable of being cleaned and cut and polished into glittering gems, just like us, the existing scientists. It takes only a little reflection to see how much more this model accounts for than the pipeline does. It accounts for exponential growth, since it takes scientists to identify prospective scientists. It acc

At least everyone in Cuba have access to medical care.
    http://www.hr676.org/

On your points:

"Go to work,"
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html

"send your kids to school."
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
http://www.holtgws.com/

"Follow fashion,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-consumerism
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

"act normal."
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_the.html
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

"Walk on the pavements,"
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about (shows how unusual that is)

"watch T.V."
http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/
http://www.tvturnoff.org/
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

"Save for your old age,"
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html

"obey the law."
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

"Repeat after me: I am free."
http://www.amctv.com/videos/the-prisoner-1960s-video/
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

Any more? :-)

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/researchObesity.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Though food plays a big part, too:
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/researchObesity.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Though food plays a big part, too:
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/mentalIllness.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/mentalIllness.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

Are you posting from work? :-)

Not safe for work in a political sense:
    http://whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

Also, on rethinking economics related to jobs:
    http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

Also, vitamin D deficiency is an oocupational hazard of indoor IT workers. You may want to start taking 5000 IU Vitamin D3 daily and get your blood tested regularly, as recommended here:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

And get your coworkers to get tested for vitamin D deficiency too, before OSHA gets on your case. :-)

I'll agree that the best way to get vitamin D is moderate sun exposure, however, in our society practically no one can accomplish this. Lifequards are about the only profession where people dress and behave like our ancestors as far as sun exposure, a lifestyle for which the human body is adapted.

See:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vitaminDPhysiology.shtml
"Studies show that if you go out in the summer sun in your bathing suit until your skin just begins to turn pink, you make between 10,000 and 50,000 units of cholecalciferol in your skin. Professor Michael Holick of Boston University School of Medicine has studied this extensively and believes a reasonable average of all the studies is 20,000 units. That means a few minutes in the summer sun produces 100 times more vitamin D than the government says you need! As discussed in other pages, this is the single most important fact about vitamin D. The skin does another amazing thing with cholecalciferol. It prevents vitamin D toxicity. Once you make about 20,000 units, the same ultraviolet light that created cholecalciferol begins to degrade it. The more you make, the more destroyed. So a steady state is reached that prevents the skin from making too much cholecalciferol. This is why no one has ever been reported to develop vitamin D toxicity from the sun, though it is possible when taking vitamin D orally."

See also:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vitaminDToxicity.shtml
"Is vitamin D toxic? Not if we take the same amount nature intended when we go out in the sun. Vieth R. Vitamin D supplementation, 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentration, and safety. Am J Clin Nutr. 1999;69:842-56. Vieth attempted to dispel unwarranted fears in medical community of physiological doses of vitamin D in 1999 with his exhaustive and well-written review. His conclusions: fear of vitamin D toxicity is unwarranted, and such unwarranted fear, bordering on hysteria, is rampant in the medical profession. [Vieth R, Chan PC, MacFarlane GD. Efficacy and safety of vitamin D3 intake exceeding the lowest observed adverse effect level. Am J Clin Nutr. 2001 Feb;73(2):288-94.]"

As is suggested on that site, the worries about vitamin D toxicity are essentially like worries about drowning by someone dying of dehydration in the desert. Sure, it can happen, but it's not the urgent problem. But with a rising autism epidemic, worries about influenza, lots of cancer, and so on, pretty much everyone in the USA desperately needs a lot more vitamin D.

Also, vitamin D3 (the recommended form) may have less issues than the vitamin D2 variant.

Essentially, can you point to even one case where a child has died from vitamin D toxicity, in the way there are endless cases for children who died from toxicity from ingesting iron pills or over the counter pain killers?

And in the rare cases in the literature where people got to much vitamin D (like from a manufacturing error), the symptoms went away with discontinuing the high doses. You would be hard put to find a safer vitamin, in that sense. With that said, sure, any pill you take has risks (including manufacturing errors, tampering, and so on). And no one out there is suggesting taking more than 5000 IU D3 daily for an adult without a regular blood test (and it looks like 10,000 IU D3 daily is a reasonable safe limit, not the 2000 IU long since suggested, which as you can see from above, is just one tenth of what your body will make normally).

For example, from that article, it is suggested 40,000 IU D3 a day in *infants* will result in toxicity in one to for months. An infant weights one tenth of what an adult weight (or less). They cite 50,000 IU D3 for several months in an adult to produce toxicity. No one recommends that kind of levels. (Although people may recommend 50,000 IU D3 for a day or so if you are coming down with influenza...)

So, anywa

I'll agree that the best way to get vitamin D is moderate sun exposure, however, in our society practically no one can accomplish this. Lifequards are about the only profession where people dress and behave like our ancestors as far as sun exposure, a lifestyle for which the human body is adapted.

See:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vitaminDPhysiology.shtml
"Studies show that if you go out in the summer sun in your bathing suit until your skin just begins to turn pink, you make between 10,000 and 50,000 units of cholecalciferol in your skin. Professor Michael Holick of Boston University School of Medicine has studied this extensively and believes a reasonable average of all the studies is 20,000 units. That means a few minutes in the summer sun produces 100 times more vitamin D than the government says you need! As discussed in other pages, this is the single most important fact about vitamin D. The skin does another amazing thing with cholecalciferol. It prevents vitamin D toxicity. Once you make about 20,000 units, the same ultraviolet light that created cholecalciferol begins to degrade it. The more you make, the more destroyed. So a steady state is reached that prevents the skin from making too much cholecalciferol. This is why no one has ever been reported to develop vitamin D toxicity from the sun, though it is possible when taking vitamin D orally."

See also:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vitaminDToxicity.shtml
"Is vitamin D toxic? Not if we take the same amount nature intended when we go out in the sun. Vieth R. Vitamin D supplementation, 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentration, and safety. Am J Clin Nutr. 1999;69:842-56. Vieth attempted to dispel unwarranted fears in medical community of physiological doses of vitamin D in 1999 with his exhaustive and well-written review. His conclusions: fear of vitamin D toxicity is unwarranted, and such unwarranted fear, bordering on hysteria, is rampant in the medical profession. [Vieth R, Chan PC, MacFarlane GD. Efficacy and safety of vitamin D3 intake exceeding the lowest observed adverse effect level. Am J Clin Nutr. 2001 Feb;73(2):288-94.]"

As is suggested on that site, the worries about vitamin D toxicity are essentially like worries about drowning by someone dying of dehydration in the desert. Sure, it can happen, but it's not the urgent problem. But with a rising autism epidemic, worries about influenza, lots of cancer, and so on, pretty much everyone in the USA desperately needs a lot more vitamin D.

Also, vitamin D3 (the recommended form) may have less issues than the vitamin D2 variant.

Essentially, can you point to even one case where a child has died from vitamin D toxicity, in the way there are endless cases for children who died from toxicity from ingesting iron pills or over the counter pain killers?

And in the rare cases in the literature where people got to much vitamin D (like from a manufacturing error), the symptoms went away with discontinuing the high doses. You would be hard put to find a safer vitamin, in that sense. With that said, sure, any pill you take has risks (including manufacturing errors, tampering, and so on). And no one out there is suggesting taking more than 5000 IU D3 daily for an adult without a regular blood test (and it looks like 10,000 IU D3 daily is a reasonable safe limit, not the 2000 IU long since suggested, which as you can see from above, is just one tenth of what your body will make normally).

For example, from that article, it is suggested 40,000 IU D3 a day in *infants* will result in toxicity in one to for months. An infant weights one tenth of what an adult weight (or less). They cite 50,000 IU D3 for several months in an adult to produce toxicity. No one recommends that kind of levels. (Although people may recommend 50,000 IU D3 for a day or so if you are coming down with influenza...)

So, anywa

Anyone who works indoors and late at night is at risk: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

People with adequate vitamin D and good nutrition are much less likely to catch respiratory infections or to under or over respond to them.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/science/research/vitamin-d-and-influenza.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

Anyway, I'm sorry to hear the news, because I so much enjoyed his shows.

From Albert Einstein on Science and Religion:
    http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
    But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly."

Jack Horkheimer, in his own unique and quirky way, was one of those "powerful personalities", one who helped showed me the beauty of the universe in a way that made sense intellectually as well as aesthetically and emotionally. I'll try to "Keep Looking Up", and I hope you are on to better things, Jack. :-)

Anyone who works indoors and late at night is at risk: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

People with adequate vitamin D and good nutrition are much less likely to catch respiratory infections or to under or over respond to them.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/science/research/vitamin-d-and-influenza.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

Anyway, I'm sorry to hear the news, because I so much enjoyed his shows.

From Albert Einstein on Science and Religion:
    http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
    But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly."

Jack Horkheimer, in his own unique and quirky way, was one of those "powerful personalities", one who helped showed me the beauty of the universe in a way that made sense intellectually as well as aesthetically and emotionally. I'll try to "Keep Looking Up", and I hope you are on to better things, Jack. :-)

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/autism-information.shtml
"It is plausible that vitamin D deficiency is a major contributing factor to the onset and progression of autism. Though only still a theory, first put forth by Vitamin D Council Executive Director Dr. John Cannell, the idea of a major role for vitamin D in the etiology of autism is gaining momentum. From Harvard scientists to Swedish research teams, more and more scientists are examining the possible link between vitamin D deficiency and autism in the hopes that Cannell's theory will hold up against scientific scrutiny -- what would herald the discovery of a simple, natural solution to an increasingly-common, and very tragic, condition. ... Quick info: To lower risk of autism, Dr. Cannell recommends at least 5,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day for pregnant women. For autistic children, Dr. Cannell recommends at least 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 per every 25 pounds of body weight per day, with frequent [blood test] monitoring of 25(OH)D, targeting 100 ng/mL (250 nmol/L)."

"Besides Wi-Fi signals, could there possibly be any other logical explanation for kids having more symptoms of illness on school days than at home on weekends or in the summer?"
Vitamin D deficiency could help explain this.
Treatment details: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Why the US RDA is ten times too low: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vitaminDPhysiology.shtml
Vitamin D deficiency also may contribute to autism: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/autism-information.shtml
Basically, between long school days, more TV and video games at home, driving instead of walking, fears of the outdoors and stranger abductions, and dermatologists saying to fear the sun (but not suggesting adequate vitamin D supplements as essentially malpractice), most kids are vitamin D deficient. Vitamin D is involved in the regulation of thousands of genes. Delete a big chunk of your genome and see how you feel. :-(

"Besides Wi-Fi signals, could there possibly be any other logical explanation for kids having more symptoms of illness on school days than at home on weekends or in the summer?"
Vitamin D deficiency could help explain this.
Treatment details: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Why the US RDA is ten times too low: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vitaminDPhysiology.shtml
Vitamin D deficiency also may contribute to autism: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/autism-information.shtml
Basically, between long school days, more TV and video games at home, driving instead of walking, fears of the outdoors and stranger abductions, and dermatologists saying to fear the sun (but not suggesting adequate vitamin D supplements as essentially malpractice), most kids are vitamin D deficient. Vitamin D is involved in the regulation of thousands of genes. Delete a big chunk of your genome and see how you feel. :-(

"Besides Wi-Fi signals, could there possibly be any other logical explanation for kids having more symptoms of illness on school days than at home on weekends or in the summer?"
Vitamin D deficiency could help explain this.
Treatment details: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Why the US RDA is ten times too low: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vitaminDPhysiology.shtml
Vitamin D deficiency also may contribute to autism: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/autism-information.shtml
Basically, between long school days, more TV and video games at home, driving instead of walking, fears of the outdoors and stranger abductions, and dermatologists saying to fear the sun (but not suggesting adequate vitamin D supplements as essentially malpractice), most kids are vitamin D deficient. Vitamin D is involved in the regulation of thousands of genes. Delete a big chunk of your genome and see how you feel. :-(

Something I wrote on that begins: http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html
"Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations. "

I sent a longer version to the Markle Foundation in 2001, two years before this open partnership on Alzheimer's started:
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html
Maybe it helped? :-)

By the way, adequate vitamin D and eating organic whole foods heavy on vegetables, fruits, and beans (with a few selected supplements like B12 and DHA) may help delay Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia greatly; see:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/cat-alzheimers-disease.html

So, the answers are out there even without people cooperating to make some magic bullet. The cooperation through basic publications and the hard work of a few key people like Dr. John Cannell and Dr. Joel Fuhrman putting together such information has made huge difference. Now if just more people would pay attention to these findings -- but unfortunately there is not much profit in emphasizing getting mdoerate sunlight exposure (or taking cheap supplements) and eating right, so that is another part of the partadigm problem of a for-profit health care and R&D system.

Moderate exercise and some other things can help too (see Dr. Andrew Weil for the bigger picture of the holistic side fo health, though his nutrition advice is not quite as good as the above links) but again, there is not the huge profits in that as, say, doing triple bypasses.

On your second citation, even by your own statistics, if 30% of health outcomes was from "genes" and "access to health care", 70% of health outcomes would come from something other than genes and access to sick care.

But, when you think about it, "genes" don't act alone in most cases (excepting a very few rare conditions). Genes interact with the environment and your history of behavior. That also includes nutrition.

For example, here is an African-American health care researcher suggesting vitamin D deficiency has had a big impact on the health of people in the USA with darker skins:
http://curtisduncan.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-michelle-obama-is-more-likely-to.html
Some other related research:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/the-black-community.shtml
This is not to argue against social and economic reforms (we need lots IMHO), just to demonstrate how nutrition or outdoor exercise or choice of clothing and so on can have a big effect on your health from even just this one factor, as health emerges from an interaction of genes and environment in the context of our personal choices (and what we know about how their consequences) -- in this case, the CDC has been doing a terrible job for decades at informing people about the connection between vitamin D deficiency and ill-health, or even studying the issue.

Lifestyle choices for anybody that include whether you smoke, how promiscuous you are, how much you exercise, what drugs you use, your connection to nature, how much you drink alcohol, how much you sleep, what sort of job you decide to take or train for, what sort of friends you cultivate, what community you choose to live in, your spiritual practices (including meditation), whether you laugh a lot, what sort of media you watch and how often, as well as what you eat (including whether it is organic), remain dominant factors in how long you live. Still, sure, how polluted your environment is makes a big difference too, but in almost all cases, not as big, and people often still make choices that relate to that as well (like where to live). And, how well your body handles a more toxic environment is also effected to a big degree by nutrition (how well your body can deal with heavy metals or how good it is as preventing cancer).

If the CDC really cared about your health, they would have raised the US RDA for vitamin D by a factor of ten a long time ago.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

I don't see how that CDC page backs up your point. Glancing at that page, how do they quantify "small"? The world "small" isn't even on that page. The major killers in our society are heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and some consequences of obesity, and almost all of those preventable (or for cancer, greatly delayable) by excellent nutrition (which links to behavior, since you control what you put in your mouth). Even Alzheimer's and other dementia is probably greatly reduced by good nutrition. Statistics:
"10 Leading Causes of Death in the U.S., 2004"
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005110.html

Dr. Fuhrman, for example, has built an eating plan that works to reduce lots of disease, based on thousands of scientific studies that say nutrition is a very significant aspect of health:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw

BlueZones, as another example, is one approach to building healthier communities that had an immediate significant (one year) reduction of heart disease and mental illness (including by creating parks and promoting healthy nutrition at local restaurants):

On your second citation, even by your own statistics, if 30% of health outcomes was from "genes" and "access to health care", 70% of health outcomes would come from something other than genes and access to sick care.

But, when you think about it, "genes" don't act alone in most cases (excepting a very few rare conditions). Genes interact with the environment and your history of behavior. That also includes nutrition.

For example, here is an African-American health care researcher suggesting vitamin D deficiency has had a big impact on the health of people in the USA with darker skins:
http://curtisduncan.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-michelle-obama-is-more-likely-to.html
Some other related research:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/the-black-community.shtml
This is not to argue against social and economic reforms (we need lots IMHO), just to demonstrate how nutrition or outdoor exercise or choice of clothing and so on can have a big effect on your health from even just this one factor, as health emerges from an interaction of genes and environment in the context of our personal choices (and what we know about how their consequences) -- in this case, the CDC has been doing a terrible job for decades at informing people about the connection between vitamin D deficiency and ill-health, or even studying the issue.

Lifestyle choices for anybody that include whether you smoke, how promiscuous you are, how much you exercise, what drugs you use, your connection to nature, how much you drink alcohol, how much you sleep, what sort of job you decide to take or train for, what sort of friends you cultivate, what community you choose to live in, your spiritual practices (including meditation), whether you laugh a lot, what sort of media you watch and how often, as well as what you eat (including whether it is organic), remain dominant factors in how long you live. Still, sure, how polluted your environment is makes a big difference too, but in almost all cases, not as big, and people often still make choices that relate to that as well (like where to live). And, how well your body handles a more toxic environment is also effected to a big degree by nutrition (how well your body can deal with heavy metals or how good it is as preventing cancer).

If the CDC really cared about your health, they would have raised the US RDA for vitamin D by a factor of ten a long time ago.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

I don't see how that CDC page backs up your point. Glancing at that page, how do they quantify "small"? The world "small" isn't even on that page. The major killers in our society are heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and some consequences of obesity, and almost all of those preventable (or for cancer, greatly delayable) by excellent nutrition (which links to behavior, since you control what you put in your mouth). Even Alzheimer's and other dementia is probably greatly reduced by good nutrition. Statistics:
"10 Leading Causes of Death in the U.S., 2004"
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005110.html

Dr. Fuhrman, for example, has built an eating plan that works to reduce lots of disease, based on thousands of scientific studies that say nutrition is a very significant aspect of health:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw

BlueZones, as another example, is one approach to building healthier communities that had an immediate significant (one year) reduction of heart disease and mental illness (including by creating parks and promoting healthy nutrition at local restaurants):

"There are plenty of diseases and injuries that could eat that half million in just a fraction of the time it took you to collect it."
Not to disagree with that, but most of those diseases are probably preventable by good nutrition and good lifestyle choices. See:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.drfuhrman.com/

What if you have to choose between eating organic food and having a low stress job you care about with no health insurance vs. working at a stressful job you hate and eating junk because you have no time or energy left over just so you can have health insurance? Because the latter is the treadmill a lot of people are on...

That's a rather materialistic view on "the good life".What happened to the value of singing, dancing, telling stories, eating food you enjoyed, having free time, not having someone bossing you around, time for communion with nature and the infinite, doing comprehensible work you enjoyed doing at your own pace, having time to raise children, and so on? The Sahlins article shows how most hunter/gatherers most of the time had no want for food. Would you trade, say, having time for singing and dancing and friendships for some hot water? You can always put hot rocks in a basket of water if you want hot water. And while you don't have hot water on tap, you also don't have property taxes to pay or dioxin in the food supply to digest.

Also, you've overgeneralized the point. There is a big difference between saying there were a lot of good things about a period in human history and saying *everything* about that period was wonderful or that we should just abandon other aspects of our current lives that we enjoy. But clearly, these game developers are not enjoying their lives. So, something is wrong. Looking to the past helps give us some perspective on that.

By the way, life expectancy after age five in hunter/gatherers may have been comparable to today. It is only in the last 100 years that human skeletons are now as tall as they were 10,000 years in the past (because agriculture was a big step backward nutritionally and culturally):
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6812.html

Some things like sewage treatment are only needed because of high population densities today.

Many people don't have access to medical care, and even when they do, the for-profit medical system harms them compared to simpler approaches (whole foods diet, fasting, sunlight, meditation, good sleep, etc.). Many chronic disease today are caused by eating poorly or not getting enough sunlight (cancer, diabetes, heart disease, mental illness, depression, influenza, autism, etc.)
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
so it is not completely clear how much happier most people are now compared to people 10,000 years ago.

Also people back then did not know what was possible, so someone from now sent back to those times might feel different than people did who grew up then.

And young children in the USA spend more than a decade in prison, so that can't be happy for them compared to back then either:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2445404/the_war_on_kids_a_polemic_against_public.html?cat=9

So, sure, there are some good things about today (the internet overall seems to be a wonderful thing). But there is plenty of bad too, so the equation of how different times stack up is not so simple.

A little bit on what America was like before Columbus (describing Haiti):
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html
"""
"They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." ... The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who

Vitamin D deficiency can lead to depression and mental illness (as well as all sorts of other medical issues including joint pain), and I would expect most game developers working such long hours indoors are suffering from it. Here is how to get treatment for pennies a day using supplements:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

A better diet than chips and diet soda would help too, like Dr. Fuhrman recommends:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
    http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

Related funny video:
    "Code Monkey"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA

If you have modern health issues, please see:
    Dr. Fuhrman on healthy eating (as we almost all eat too much junk):
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
    Dr. Cannell on curing Vitamin D deficiency (as we almost all spend so much time indoors):
        http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

As far as population density, you are right that it can be an issue, but that is what space habitats and ocean habitats are for. :-)
    "Growing a Space Habatit with a Lichen Composite"
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4XFqyKx4BM
    "1st Seastead Design Contest overall winner by András Gyrfi from Hungary"
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCCStJ8a7pg

If we have the technological capacity to change the planet's atmosphere as a geologic force, surely we have the capability to create a few self-replicating space habitats and seasteads?

Anyway, this is not to disagree with your larger points about bad aspects of many hunter/gatherer societies in the past (infant mortality, disease, even wars). Ideally we want the best of both cultures -- an end to "work" and a return to "joy" and "community", along with an end to needless suffering that advanced technology can help prevent as well as a chance at transcendence to whatever the better aspects of technology can, in theory, provide.

Please tell all your collegues that vitamin D deficiency may affect test scores by being connected to depression and schizophrenias as well as ADHD and autism:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-theory-autism.shtml
"[p2p-research] ADHD or lack of Vitamin D? Albany Free School connection?"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005083.html

How about correlating 25(OH)D (vitamin D related) blood levels with test scores?

Please tell all your collegues that vitamin D deficiency may affect test scores by being connected to depression and schizophrenias as well as ADHD and autism:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-theory-autism.shtml
"[p2p-research] ADHD or lack of Vitamin D? Albany Free School connection?"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005083.html

How about correlating 25(OH)D (vitamin D related) blood levels with test scores?

Vitamin D deficiency can also come from no playtime outside, which can cause lots fo health issues (including mental ones). Treatment:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

Your repeatinbg outdated informaton (even if it is also all over the web, sadly). The US RDA for vitamin D is probably somewhere between ten times too low and one hundred times too low, which is where that misinformed calculation came from. For better information, see:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vitaminDPhysiology.shtml
"""
Studies show that if you go out in the summer sun in your bathing suit until your skin just begins to turn pink, you make between 10,000 and 50,000 units of cholecalciferol in your skin. Professor Michael Holick of Boston University School of Medicine has studied this extensively and believes a reasonable average of all the studies is 20,000 units. That means a few minutes in the summer sun produces 100 times more vitamin D than the government says you need! As discussed in other pages, this is the single most important fact about vitamin D.
    The skin does another amazing thing with cholecalciferol. It prevents vitamin D toxicity. Once you make about 20,000 units, the same ultraviolet light that created cholecalciferol begins to degrade it. The more you make, the more destroyed. So a steady state is reached that prevents the skin from making too much cholecalciferol. This is why no one has ever been reported to develop vitamin D toxicity from the sun, though it is possible when taking vitamin D orally.
"""

Darker skins may taked up to ten times longer to reach that level, BTW. Unintentionally, the advice you are repeating may even have caused the autism epidemic (since pregnant women not getting enough vitanmin D has been linked to autism)

So, you are just repeating outdated misinformation, sorry -- and it is misinformation that is literally sickening and killing millions of indoor tech professionals (especially ones who are odler, have darker skins, and live in northern areas) as well as their children. And it is not something I understood myself until faily recently, so don't feel too bad about it. But now you know...

A blood test is ideal to know for sure:
    http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-rda-for-vitamin-d.html

The only reason vitamin D is a wonder drug is that we are all so unnaturally deficient of it given our recent (last 50 years) lifestyle shift to mostly indoors activities and travel in enclosed vehicles. Even people who live in the south may be vitamin D deficient if they cover up most of the time and stay indoors in air conditioning while surfing the web instead of the ocean.

This is a major public health issue and occupational hazard for any indoor worker that is juct becoming better understood (even though 100 years ago people like Herbert Shelton used sunlight as a cure for some diseases). Dermatologists advising people to stay out of the sun (without alos recommending adequate supplements on the order of 5000 IU D3 daily for most people and regular blood testing) have caused vast amounts of health problems even as they do save us from a few skin cancers.

Also useful for good health related to eating patterns: http://www.drfuhrman.com/

With that said, there are some rare health conditions where vitamin D supplementaton may be problematical -- see that first site for more details.

First, check out: http://www.disciplined-minds.com/ "Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System That Shapes Their Lives"
"""
Who are you going to be? That is the question.
    In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
    The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
    Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job.
"""

Some very interesting psychologists; maybe look up some of their students?
    http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Seligman#Positive_psychology

By a practicing psychiatrists on how vitamin D is related to much mental illness:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

By others on the psychological aspect of our society, personal troubles in it, and its infrastructure:
    "Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy" by Bruce E. Levine
        http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
    "Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals" by Thomas Moore
        http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
    "About the AARP/Bluezones Vitality Project"
    http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about

On how improved nutrition will make people healthier and happier:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
And holistic aspects of health and diet too:
    http://www.drweil.com/

Here are some related ideas. Herbert Shelton advocated whole foods, fasting, and sunbathing, and was attacked by the medical community for it almost a century ago. His bio:
    http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.toc.htm
And writings:
    http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.toc.htm

More recent advocates of similar things:

Whole foods (and some fasting):
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/

Whole foods (but maybe too whole grain heavy):
    http://www.drweil.com/

Sunlight (as in curing vitamin D3 deficiency):
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

An approach towards promoting moderate exercise and good eating by promoting physical infrastructure in our communities:
  http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about

Psychological health, to combat depression and promote healthy transformation:
    http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
    http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC

Economic health:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery#Four_long-term_heterodox_alternatives

The big problem is simply that real cures (or preventatives) are inexpensive (sunlight, fasting, whole foods) for most expensive diseases of industrialized countries like cancer, hearth disease, and diabetes. The big profits are just in life long treatments, so no one pushes everyone to eat right, exercise, build community infrastructure, etc. And the medical insurance system is not set up to pay for people to live in healthy places, eat well (perhaps with a personal chef buying organic foods), have a better economic system with less stress for most people, etc.

Related recent discussion I was involved in on Slashdot:
    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1691318&cid=32642764

There are solutions. The biggest problem is, as you imply, social, not technical.

With that said, modern medicine and better sanitation and infrastructure as we now enjoy can treat or prevent a lot of things that were big issues in the past (accidents, infectious diseases). So, there have been improvements. But going forward, we really need to go back to the basics again.

Consider: "Dr. Hardin, from Columbia University, presented evidence that blood levels above 50 ng/mL should help patients with lupus." from:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/2006-may.shtml

Would the right amount of vitamin D have helped in her case? We'll never know... Why were you so fast to say there was no connection between lupus (an autoimmune disorder) and vitamin D deficiency, when vitamin D is involved in the regulation of thousands of genes and also involved in both starting up and shutting down the immune system in a healthy way? Now, this is not something I understood a few years ago either, but people like Herbert Shelton and others essentially said this decades ago but were shouted down by the medical associations...

Anyway, sunburn is bad, agreed. Unfortunately, by advising people to stay out of the sun without suggesting vitamin D supplements as an alternative, dermatologist have probably caused on the order of ten cancers for every melanoma they prevented (and melanomas are generally more easily treatable than internal cancers), let alone probably also caused many cases of influenza, heart disease, autism, lupus, and a bunch of other stuff. It's a class action malpractice suit waiting to happen -- and this poor woman may be just another statistic of medical malpractice by dermatologists as a group (as well meaning as dermatologists may have been). Of course, the dermatologists will probably just blame the US government for setting the RDA for vitamin D an order of magnitude (10x or more) too low...

It's a great debate here, but whether stem cells should be used aside, the person may have had an autoimmune issue just from vitamin D deficiency (common in industrialized countries now that we all spend so much time indoors) or from poor nutrition from eating a standard western diet without enough whole foods like vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. Related links:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
Sometimes we get so focused on fancy cutting edge things that we miss the basics...

To feel better during the day, try Joel Fuhrman's "Eat to Live" plan, as well as adequate vitamin D.
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml