If you "saw the spark in these kids eyes extinguished" why not move to somewhere less affluent (cheaper) to live if you have to so you can make homeschooling work? Why pay so much taxes for "good" schools that are really just fancy prisons? http://www.thewaronkids.com/ And often lead to a lifetime in fancy prisons? http://disciplinedminds.com/
See also: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm "Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there."
But if homeschooling absolutely can't work for you, see also AERO, the Alternative Education Resource Organization for lots of other possibilities that don't kill off creativity so much: http://www.educationrevolution.org/
(From a parent in a family that has given up a bunch of material stuff to homeschool and hopefully keep that spark alive...)
Forgot: http://disciplinedminds.com/ """ 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. """
Thanks for the comments. I would agree with you that there is no upper limit as to what people would do -- the real issue is how they do it and what social arrangement surround that. For example, when someone plants a Redwood tree seed, how much work are they really doing to produce a huge tree? The tree grows on its own if the conditions are right (granted, it might be more likely to grow with some occasional tending). Our technology as it incorporates robotics and AI will be more like that -- so we'll see things like self-replicating space habitats that can duplicate themselves from asteroidal ore and sunlight, same like a Redwood, but the total human intervention required may be minimal (relative to the total outcome in terms of providing living space for millions of humans -- so such a project might preoccupy thousands of people, but with their output amplified so much by technology that the total human labor is a trivial percentage). Our scarcity economics may work OK when humans face the dilemma of work hard as a wage slave or slowly starve, but that economic logic breaks down when the choice is work hard as a slave for someone else for a little bit more or work for yourself and your friends and family and still have a good life. Some people will still choose wage slavery perhaps (ambitious people? stupid ones? addicted ones? desperate ones? materialistic ones? etc.), but I'd suggest more and more people would not and would look for more joyful ways to spend their time. So, we need alternative social arrangements as robotics becomes more and more capable (like this video shows).
There are exceptions even now though. A lot of people at Microsoft or Google were or are millionaires (thorough stock appreciation) and do not have to "work" to have a modest lifestyle; so you would be right to point to examples of that, where people work because they want to change the world somehow (or to have a more profligate use of resources). Human social dynamics, as James P. Hogan suggests, leaves most young people adapted to want to show off somehow to attract a good mate, and showing off materially has been long ingrained in our culture (including buying trophy wives for older guys, or the whole "cougar" thing now in the other direction).
Still, I'd suggest, the dynamics of how society is arranged (and what relationships women prefer and why) would change somewhat if essentially everyone in the society felt like a millionaire through something like a basic income or other fundamental change, as I wrote here:
"Basic income from a millionaire's perspective?" http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html "Essentially, with a break in the link between having a job and having a right to consume at a moderate level, workplaces could be organized however they wanted. And potential employees would just vote with their feet about where they wanted to work to make the most money, have the most fun during the day, or do the most good for society as they saw it. While it is true that many unpleasant jobs would no longer find low wage workers to do them, for those jobs, either wages would go up, or they would be automated or redesigned out of existence, for example, like with some towns that have garbage trucks with robot arms to pick up curbside standard garbage cans. So, overall, most of the jobs that remained would be ones that people
"If you are the sort of knowledge worker who can program robots, your labor is not in competition with the abilities of this robot."
And what about any relatives or friends or neighbors or citizens I might care about? And besides, what if in the next twenty years this research leads to more general AIs, especially as computing costs continue to drop? Also, you are ignoring that even if some human abilities remain of value for a time, technology is an amplifier, so soon one programmer will be able to do the work of two, or three, or hundreds. Besides, how much do such robots need to be programmed? People may develop some general learning algorithms, but the such systems can learn within restricted domains on their own, and with millions of networked robots, the entire network will learn pretty fast. I know of that happening in other areas of technology, like speech recognition and character recognition (I used to contract at IBM Research around the time of some of this changeover from hand coded recognizers to careful training in limited areas to broad statistical inferencing). So, your point misses the big picture of what is happening, IMHO.
On economics, what makes you so sure there is not upper limit on work to do? Really, how many cars does a person need? How big a house? How much fatter should people be? How much more junk do they need in their lives? The most enlightened people on the planet often tend to be the ones who are reducing their needs to a minimum. There already is a backlash against consumerism, for several reasons. And beyond that, 3D printers and robots will be able to produce so much, that there just will not be too much work anyway, even if people consume a lot. A related discussion I participated in on limited demand:
"[p2p-research] Fwd: More on the Supply and Demand Curve" http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-July/003545.html
Mainstream economics is built on at least two key assumptions. One is that demand will rise faster than production efficiency (otherwise there would be permanent layoffs if demand rose more slowly than efficiency increases, and if efficiency increases stop, then prices drop towards zero through highly competitive capitalist competition in a free market and the economy freezes up, which is why economist are so obsessed with economic growth, since otherwise their equations blow up with divide-by-zero errors, etc.). The other is that the products of smart machines and/or voluntary social networks will never approach in quantity and quality that of what paid labor can produce. Environmentalism and other movements like Voluntary Simplicity, as well as common sense about human psychology and Maslow's hierarchy of needs, show the first assumption is breaking down (as people become more affluent, they tend to become more interested in self-actualizing by making and doing more things on their own). This video shows the second assumption is breaking down, since robots are getting much better. Essentially, you are repeating the dogma of the theology of mainstream economics. I'd suggest that dogma is rapidly becoming more and more questionable (if it ever was accurate as opposed to a self-fulfilling prophecy of artificial scarcity).
The main problem is that people, saying essentially what you are saying, are IMHO sticking their heads in the sand about what is a huge social transformation. Unfortunately, in the USA, often technologists have propertarian-libertarian economics, and it is hard for US technologists to admit that propertarian-libertarianism does not work very well when most human labor has little value and when a few can monopolize vast resources they charge rent for as the rich-get-richer. And when, say, we have massive unemployment (as we do in the USA), something unpredicted by almost all mainstream economists a couple years ago, people just shrug their shoulders, say economies are my
For possibilities on restructuring our economy to deal with the decining valued of human labor from similiar innovations, starting from Marshall Brain's ideas and including many other people's suggestions, see this section of a knol I organized on moving beyond the jobless recovery resulting from structural unemployment (due to automation, robotics, better design, voluntary social networks, and limited demand due to "reduce, reuse, recycle" and the law of diminishing returns etc.): http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives
Believers in mainstream economic theology saw fit to delete most of that content from Wikipedia in part on the grounds that Marshall Brain's and other people's points on the declining value of most human labor is just "speculation" and science fiction. Our scarcity-based economics is more and more out-of-sync with our social and technical realities of potential abundance, but it is apparently heresy to talk about it, and the most people will usually do is talk about ways to make "artificial scarcity" to keep the system working via "business as usual".
I've been thinking about the social aspects of advanced robotics on and off for a quarter century since I spent a year hanging out in Hans Moravec's Mobile Robot Lab (and Red Whittaker's FRL) around 1985 (when Hans was working on the book "Mind Children"). I applied to Willow Garage a couple months ago to get these robots to pick up toys, sort LEGO, etc. (be nice to have them do food prep, too, for improved human health) but they were not interested.:-( Though I was looking for something where I could work from home on the East Coast, so that may have been part of it, since what (human) homeschooling family guy can afford to buy a house with room for a human child near Stanford?:-) I'm also not blaming them, since they probably have their pick of applicants, and I have not worked professionally with robots in two decades, and I have spent a lot of the past decade doing stay-at-home Dad stuff. I'm not sure *I'd* even hire me at this point to do anything technical.:-) Still, with the Stanford area being as pricey as it is, Willow Garage is probably mostly left with rich people or young people building these mind children, which is why you see this video of a robot fetching a beer and not, say, putting away toys, preparing a nutritious soup for the family from whole foods, or being a good playmate for a human child (like Robbie in Asimov's story about a robot nanny and playmate). I can hope that those sorts of things will come sooner rather than later.
Working with a PR2 might have been a lot of fun, but in any case I had also hoped applying might get the people (and maybe eventually robots:-) at Willow Garage to at least read my writings like the above about socio-economic apsects of this work. Creating technology like this without at the same time promoting social change as outlined above (to a gift economy, a basic income, local subsistence, and/or a resource-based economy) is otherwise just asking for massive social unrest and suffering, like Marshall Brain talks about in his short story "Manna". Willow Garage is getting everything else right (like a FOSS focus and as in this video obvious technical excellence) -- except it may be missing talking about that economic transition big picture part needed to make robots like this a blessing and not a curse. So, in that sense, Willow Garage may dangerously lack a coherent vision (even if it makes amazing technology)? I don't know -- they may be clued in and not talking about it, but is does not seem to be reflected on the web site, with nothing directly relevant for these searches: http://www.google.co
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...
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.
Thanks for trying it. I appreciate any frank feedback. I agree it could be improved (we did make the source available under the GPL -- there is a lot under the hood, like the various models). We ran out of funds to continue it and had to take jobs at IBM to pay back money we had borrowed for living expenses to develop it (and that killed any momentum we had on it). As two middle class people, my wife and I poured more than six person years of our time into that to try to help kids have some better educational tools (back when people were still questioning why there were few non-violent simulations out there or stuff girls might like or even organic agriculture or environmentalism). There is a lot more to that program for teenagers and adults when you get into it (too much, really), and remember, this was written about fifteen years ago. I could do way better now. It was mainly just too ambitious -- it does all sorts of scientific-related things moving through three levels of increasing abstract representation (direct manipulation, inspecting, graphing). It's much more a simulator (microworld, see Papert) than a game (there is no score etc..)
PlantStudio is another program that came out of that approach, that also should run under Wine, and is a step forward in interface (for the time), and many people have liked, though again it is dated. http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/ Downloadable here: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/download_new.html Between the two, PlantStudio, which uses the same basic algorithms but with a simpler interface focused on just one thing, generated much more excitement (but we were unable to follow it up much as we were busy working at IBM). Examples of user comments from back then: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/userssay.htm "An excellent example of educational expertise.... It is an excellent adjunct for general modeling, especially in the creation of scenes."
So, we were learning. But it got cut off because, back then, it was hard to get any funders to see the value of educational computer simulations (especially ones that were open source). That's what's great about NASA finally putting money into these sorts of things.
I have Java ports of both those partially complete (don't know if they will ever be finished, because, as you suggest, the GUI could be improved, which makes a straight port kind of pointless, but means more work to redesign it).
That game is something I wish I had worked on. My wife and I built a garden simulator in the 1990s, in part because it was a step to a space simulator, because in space you would still have to grow your own food if you wanted to "live off the land". We even have one extra backdrop set in an O'Neill habitat. I talked with someone at NASA about related ideas a decade ago, but NASA seemed more conservative then in some ways (with most resources tied up in the shuttle). Given the NASA game was written with tax dollars, I wonder, does NASA make its source available under a FOSS license? We did that with our garden simulator. http://gardenwithinsight.com/ Maybe NASA is hiring?:-) It would be great to work on the next version. I want to see a simulation game out of NASA about self-replicating space habitats (that duplicate themsleves from sunlight and asteroidal ores) and which covers some other post-scarcity issues. It's too bad when I graduated from college in the 1980s NASA pretty much had a hiring freeze.
http://www.vivoweb.org/ "The national network of scientists will facilitate the discovery of researchers and collaborators across the country. Institutions will participate in the network by installing VIVO, or by providing semantic web-compliant data to the network."
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. """
Our economics no longer matched our technics (if it ever did). I outline four alternatives (basic income, gift economy, subsistence, resource-based planning) here: http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives """ Whether or not mainstream economics ideas can pull us out of the Great Recession and a jobless recovery, in the long term, the problems posed by increasing automation and environmental concerns suggest that some form of heterodox economics will be adopted in the long term to avoid deeper recessions with more permanent job losses. There are at least four major alternative forms of social change that we might see in the future to deal with these issues of increasing joblessness in the face of abundance produced through high technology. These correspond roughly to the alternatives being suggested at the time of Keynes' General Theory in the 1930s, and which lost out to it in the USA, of communism, technocracy, social credit, and a Gandhian swadeshi movement. In modern terms, these might be considered a gift economy, a resource-based economy, a basic income, and communitarianism (or localism). These will be discussed in the next four sections in relation to jobs. Given exponentially increasing technological capacity in AI/robotics and computing/communications and materials/design, each of these approaches are really just different paths to a common converging point of abundance for all, where people only work on things they want to do on a primarily voluntary basis in the context of a sustainable and resilient society. But how we get there depends on what path we take. These paths are not mutually exclusive. To some extent, our society is exploring all of them at once right now in various ways, and has been for a long time.
These alternatives can be seen as reflecting two major choices. One choice is between emphasizing individualistic control versus emphasizing communal decision making. The other choice is between emphasizing one-for-one exchanges (like with currency or barter) versus emphasizing acting mainly from values. These choices are summarized in the chart below:...................Exchange-based..............Values-based Individualistic....Basic Income................Gift Economy Communal...........Localism/Communitarianism...Resource-based Economy
This chart is not meant to suggest these alternatives are incompatible, since any real community could have aspects of all of them. A community might have taxes for welfare, a LETS system for local currency exchange, much volunteerism, and some central planning for intrinsic security needs for sustainability and resilience. For example, Ithaca, NY would represent a community with all these aspects to some obvious degree. Ithaca is a US community with one of the oldest and largest Local Exchange Trading System system. It also has the standard US income assistance programs of Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (though they are still needs-based and age-based, so not quite a basic income). It has a major university (Cornell) that does long-term strategic central planning for itself and also has an academic department of City and Regional Planning that claims to "provide the tools, techniques, and strategies you will need to design more equitable, vibrant, beautiful, and sustainable places".[97] Ithaca also has some citizens developing and giving away free and open source software, free information, and even free designs for 3D printing technology (Fab@Home). """
The composer is just caught in the middle of this ongoing social change. he could instead, say, be lobbying for a basic income for all so he would not need to charge for his digital works.
An approach towards promoting moderate exercise and good eating by promoting physical infrastructure in our communities: http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
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.
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.
> Why do people smoke? "Most people" do not have the self-discipline > to change their dietary habits after, say, the age of 30.
The book "The Pleasure Trap" talks about that. But the wonder of Joel Fuhrman's "Eat to Live" plan is that after several weeks to get accustomed to it, people may like the new healthier food they are eating better than what they used to. For example, a healthy fruit sorbet can taste as good or better than ice cream, but is generally good for you too. Joel Fuhrman suggests only 3% of people can keep weight off on a "calories counting" diet, but almost everyone can have a healthy weight on a whole foods eating plan as he suggests.
Dr. Andrew Weil also has an "anti-inflammatory" diet which is more whole grain heavy, but I think Joel Fuhrman's eating plan is better; see for Dr. Weil's approach http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART02012/anti-inflammatory-diet "It is becoming increasingly clear that a host of illnesses - including heart disease, many cancers and Alzheimer's disease - are influenced in large part by chronic inflammation. This is a process in which the immune system becomes off balance, and persists unnecessarily in its efforts to repair the body and repel pathogens. The prolonged process results in damage to healthy tissue as well. Stress, lack of exercise, genetic predisposition and other lifestyle factors can all promote inflammation, but poor diet is perhaps the main contributor, and the ideal place to begin addressing inflammation. (Find more details on the mechanics of the inflammation process and the Anti-Inflammatory Food Pyramid.) http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/PAG00361/anti-inflammatory-food-pyramid.html The Anti-Inflammatory Diet is not a diet in the popular sense - it is not intended as a weight-loss program (although people can and do lose weight on it), nor is it an eating plan to stay on for a limited period of time. Rather, it is way of selecting and preparing foods based on scientific knowledge of how they can help your body remain optimally healthy. Along with influencing inflammation, this diet will provide steady energy and ample vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and dietary fiber."
However, Dr. Weil's overall approach is a bit more holistic (like talking about breathing, Yoga, and music, etc.), and so is better in that sense. Dr. Fuhrman seems to tie his dietary recommendations more to the scientific literature though.
> (BTW, you forget moderate exercise as an important component of maintaining health).
Agreed. Joel Fuhrman was also a world-class figure skater, btw, and he says many athletes come to him for advice. And it works both ways -- wanting a better diet gives you more athletic ability (less weight, less join pain, more energy), and wanting more athletic ability may lead you to want a better diet.
> For many genetic diseases, for example, there would be no scientific explanation (other than the placebo effect) for diet to have a role
That may be true (ignoring how the body typically has multiple pathways for many processes), so it's best to qualify any statements as "most". The deadliest diseases of industrialized countries that affect most people in those cultures are things like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, (as well as increasingly chronic immune conditions whether lupus or asthma), and those are for most people generally addressable with dietary approaches (whole foods and fasting) and vitamin D treatments according to some doctors like Dr. Fuhrman or Dr. Cannell (even if not everyone might be helped). But sure, if you have some rare disease cause by a genetic issue with creating a defective enzyme, or if you have been exposed to an unusual environmental toxin or carcinogen, then you may need special treatments. However, for most people, if you have, say, high blood pressure from clogged
Another study: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study "The book examines the relationship between the consumption of animal products and illnesses such as cancers of the breast, prostate, and large bowel, diabetes, coronary heart disease, obesity, autoimmune disease, osteoporosis, degenerative brain disease, and macular degeneration. "The China Study," referred to in the title is the China Project, a "survey of death rates for twelve different kinds of cancer for more than 2,400 counties and 880 million (96%) of their citizens" combined to study the relationship between various mortality rates and several dietary, lifestyle, and environmental characteristics in 65 mostly rural counties in China conducted jointly by Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine over the course of twenty years.... The authors recommend that people eat a whole food, plant-based diet and avoid consuming beef, poultry, eggs, fish, and milk as a means to minimize and/or reverse the development of chronic diseases. The authors also recommend that people take in adequate amounts of sunshine in order to maintain sufficient levels of Vitamin D and consider taking dietary supplements of vitamin B12 in case of complete avoidance of animal products. The authors criticize "low carb" diets (such as the Atkins diet), which include restrictions on the percentage of calories derived from complex carbohydrates."
There are a bunch of studies listed on this page by Dr. Fuhrman, that should be starting points for you: http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/Other.aspx """ I have been utilizing a high antioxidant, acrlyamide-free diet for many years with marked success. Acrylamides are toxic substances produced by baking and frying carbohydrates. The diet-style I recommend for fibromylagia patients is rich in natural plant foods especially organic berries and green vegetables and restricted in animal products and baked grains. Vegetable soups and steamed vegetables are encouraged. Fibromyalgia patients routinely get well, and they get well quickly. Studies in the medical literature support this method of treatment.[ii] Though the researchers do not seem to have the experience and understanding of why what they are doing works, the effects are dramatic..... A significant number of medical investigations have uncovered that, just like other diseases, people develop asthma and allergies for reasons. Asthma and allergies have been linked to nutritional factors:
* Low levels of fresh fruits and flavonoids[iii]
* Fried foods, protein-rich and fat-rich foods of animal origin[iv]
* Low blood levels of fruit and vegetable derived antioxidants[v]
* Dietary fatty acid imbalance--an excess of omega-6 over omega-3 fats[vi]
* Increased intake of high saturated fat foods (meat, cheese and butter)[vii]
* Bread and butter consumption, lower vegetable intake [viii] My experience in working with hundreds of patients attempting to resolve asthma and allergies has been rewarding. The asthmatics graduall
In order to get enough vitamin D from dairy products, you would have to drink gallons of milk every day, because the US RDA was set decades ago for healthy bones, not a healthy brain, healthy heart, healthy weight, healthy immune system, and so on, so it is probably more than ten times too low (and the typical form of supplementation with D2 instead of D3 is also not a great choice). From:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/ "If well adults and adolescents regularly avoid sunlight exposure, research indicates a necessity to supplement with at least 5,000 units (IU) of vitamin D daily. To obtain this amount from milk one would need to consume 50 glasses. With a multivitamin more than 10 tablets would be necessary. Neither is advisable. The skin produces approximately 10,000 IU vitamin D in response 20-30 minutes summer sun exposure--50 times more than the US government's recommendation of 200 IU per day!"
And:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
"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."
People do disagree about the ideal level (that is at the high end).
Another site:
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/ "Overview: 4000 IU/day is recommended for pregnant women as safe and effective in producing a 50% reduction in many comorbidities of pregnancy such as preeclampsia and preterm labor. These results are from a randomized clinical trial done by Drs Carol Wagner and Bruce Hollis of the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Wagner is interviewed here about that trial."
There is a lot of shocking data about vitamin D deficiency in pregnant women, even with links to autism, and it is worst for darker skinned women in northern climates. http://adc.bmj.com/content/92/9/737.1.full """ Rickets is often considered a 19th century disease. However, despite the availability of vitamin D and demonstration of its efficacy in preventing rickets, vitamin D deficiency rickets still exists as a public health problem with significant morbidity in the Middle East1-5 and in many Asian countries,6 7 and has been reported with increasing prevalence in minority groups in North America8-10 and in immigrant populations in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.11 In many countries, there are reports of a high prevalence of subclinical vitamin D deficiency in children and adolescents12 13 and rickets may merely represent the tip of the iceberg.
With more studies, there are reports from many countries of a high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in women of child-bearing age14-20 and during pregnancy21-24 and in nursing mothers,25-27 with likely adverse consequences for women, the fetus and growing infants and children.21 What seemed to be a rare entity has become so common that by the end of 2006 a lot of literature had been published that linked vitamin D deficiency with long-latency diseases, with the implication that vitamin D affects all organ systems, not just calcium and bone.
In addition to rickets and other possible consequences of disturbed calcium homeostasis,12 epidemiological evidence suggests that lack of vitamin D supplements in infancy and early childhood may increase the incidence of type 1 diabetes.28 29 In adults, new evidence30 supports the role of vitamin D in maintaining innate immunity and in the prevention of certain disease states including autoimmune diseases, multiple sclerosis,31 32 systemic lupus erythematosis,33 rheumatoid arthritis,34 some forms of cancer (breast, ovarian, colon)35 and type 2 diabetes.36 37 The questions then are: how did we become so nonchalant about vitamin D to the point that deficiency is a public health issue for many nations,
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...
If you do someday read the previously linked information about the "Pleasure Trap" my Douglas Lisle or "Eat to Live" etc. by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, you would see you that what is recommended is very different from being a "neo-puritanical (pleasure is bad!) health food nut".
As Dr. Fuhrman says, healthy eating can be as pleasurable over the long-term as unhealthy eating (or more, because you know what you are eating is good for you and it tastes great). I would rather have a home-made sorbet from my blender than even the best ice cream from the store -- it tastes better now that I am used to it, and I know it is good for me. A fast can sometimes help with that transition to reset the tastebuds back to normal.
Essentially, most people probably will get less enjoyment from a lifetime of drinking coffee (given various ill effects and periodic withdrawal symptoms, and the "return to baseline") than someone with a lifetime of drinking green smoothies (or other healthful things with some variety, fruity sorbets, fruity ice creams, and so on). The whole point of the article is that there is a return to baseline whatever you do, which is also the point of the "Pleasure Trap".
While you are obviously very knowledgeable about coffee, there is a lot of nuance and subtly in vegetables, fruits, edible beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains than can no longer be appreciated by someone (say, in the USA eating the S.A.D. Diet) who has been trained to prefer an unhealthy amount of salt, refined sugar, and animal fat in their diet. See for example, in the industries own words:
"The Hard Sell on Salt" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/health/30salt.html "Salt also works in tandem with fat and sugar to achieve flavors that grip the consumer and do not let go -- an allure the industry has recognized for decades. "Once a preference is acquired," a top scientist at Frito-Lay wrote in a 1979 internal memorandum, "most people do not change it, but simply obey it." "
Anyway it is your life. Opportunity can only knock. You need to open the door and look into this issue of "the pleasure trap" for yourself if you want. Still, as Dr. Fuhrman said in the stuff I quoted, "One cup of coffee per day is not likely to cause significant risks, but the more you drink over this one cup maximum, the more likely it will interfere with your health." So, enjoy your (organic, fair trade, shade grown, etc.) coffee in moderation.:-)
There is a lot more to enjoy in life than coffee, but sure, we all decide what our priorities are. The biggest issue is more about getting stuck in a "pleasure trap" where we are getting less fun over time being stuck on an addictive treadmill with supernormal stimuli that become the new normal (as the article suggests), so that in the end, coffee is not bringing you more pleasure than a healthy green smoothie might, and is probably bringing you less. See also: http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_Stimuli http://www.greensmoothierevolution.com/
Slashdot Mirror
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
Why aren't you homeschooling/unschooling then?
http://www.holtgws.com/whatisunschoolin.html
If you "saw the spark in these kids eyes extinguished" why not move to somewhere less affluent (cheaper) to live if you have to so you can make homeschooling work? Why pay so much taxes for "good" schools that are really just fancy prisons?
http://www.thewaronkids.com/
And often lead to a lifetime in fancy prisons?
http://disciplinedminds.com/
See also:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there."
But if homeschooling absolutely can't work for you, see also AERO, the Alternative Education Resource Organization for lots of other possibilities that don't kill off creativity so much:
http://www.educationrevolution.org/
(From a parent in a family that has given up a bunch of material stuff to homeschool and hopefully keep that spark alive...)
Forgot: http://disciplinedminds.com/
"""
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.
"""
Babies are born knowing how to learn; people only need to relearn that if it has been stomped out of them, as is done through most conventional compulsory schooling. This is not to disgree that college can also be an effective filter for businesses to use to obtain compliant workers who know certain basic skills and who also are unlikely to seriously challenge authority. Related links:
http://ilabs.washington.edu/news/scientist_in_the_crib.html
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm
http://www.educationrevolution.org/
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
http://www.holtgws.com/whatisunschoolin.html
Thanks for the comments. I would agree with you that there is no upper limit as to what people would do -- the real issue is how they do it and what social arrangement surround that. For example, when someone plants a Redwood tree seed, how much work are they really doing to produce a huge tree? The tree grows on its own if the conditions are right (granted, it might be more likely to grow with some occasional tending). Our technology as it incorporates robotics and AI will be more like that -- so we'll see things like self-replicating space habitats that can duplicate themselves from asteroidal ore and sunlight, same like a Redwood, but the total human intervention required may be minimal (relative to the total outcome in terms of providing living space for millions of humans -- so such a project might preoccupy thousands of people, but with their output amplified so much by technology that the total human labor is a trivial percentage). Our scarcity economics may work OK when humans face the dilemma of work hard as a wage slave or slowly starve, but that economic logic breaks down when the choice is work hard as a slave for someone else for a little bit more or work for yourself and your friends and family and still have a good life. Some people will still choose wage slavery perhaps (ambitious people? stupid ones? addicted ones? desperate ones? materialistic ones? etc.), but I'd suggest more and more people would not and would look for more joyful ways to spend their time. So, we need alternative social arrangements as robotics becomes more and more capable (like this video shows).
There are exceptions even now though. A lot of people at Microsoft or Google were or are millionaires (thorough stock appreciation) and do not have to "work" to have a modest lifestyle; so you would be right to point to examples of that, where people work because they want to change the world somehow (or to have a more profligate use of resources). Human social dynamics, as James P. Hogan suggests, leaves most young people adapted to want to show off somehow to attract a good mate, and showing off materially has been long ingrained in our culture (including buying trophy wives for older guys, or the whole "cougar" thing now in the other direction).
Of course, "men" are already under the gun in our society:
"The End of Men"
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/
As are families:
"The Two-Income Trap"
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap
Robotics just add to other ongoing social trends...
Still, I'd suggest, the dynamics of how society is arranged (and what relationships women prefer and why) would change somewhat if essentially everyone in the society felt like a millionaire through something like a basic income or other fundamental change, as I wrote here:
"Basic income from a millionaire's perspective?"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html
"Essentially, with a break in the link between having a job and having a right to consume at a moderate level, workplaces could be organized however they wanted. And potential employees would just vote with their feet about where they wanted to work to make the most money, have the most fun during the day, or do the most good for society as they saw it. While it is true that many unpleasant jobs would no longer find low wage workers to do them, for those jobs, either wages would go up, or they would be automated or redesigned out of existence, for example, like with some towns that have garbage trucks with robot arms to pick up curbside standard garbage cans. So, overall, most of the jobs that remained would be ones that people
"If you are the sort of knowledge worker who can program robots, your labor is not in competition with the abilities of this robot."
And what about any relatives or friends or neighbors or citizens I might care about? And besides, what if in the next twenty years this research leads to more general AIs, especially as computing costs continue to drop? Also, you are ignoring that even if some human abilities remain of value for a time, technology is an amplifier, so soon one programmer will be able to do the work of two, or three, or hundreds. Besides, how much do such robots need to be programmed? People may develop some general learning algorithms, but the such systems can learn within restricted domains on their own, and with millions of networked robots, the entire network will learn pretty fast. I know of that happening in other areas of technology, like speech recognition and character recognition (I used to contract at IBM Research around the time of some of this changeover from hand coded recognizers to careful training in limited areas to broad statistical inferencing). So, your point misses the big picture of what is happening, IMHO.
On economics, what makes you so sure there is not upper limit on work to do? Really, how many cars does a person need? How big a house? How much fatter should people be? How much more junk do they need in their lives? The most enlightened people on the planet often tend to be the ones who are reducing their needs to a minimum. There already is a backlash against consumerism, for several reasons. And beyond that, 3D printers and robots will be able to produce so much, that there just will not be too much work anyway, even if people consume a lot. A related discussion I participated in on limited demand:
"[p2p-research] Fwd: More on the Supply and Demand Curve"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-July/003545.html
Mainstream economics is built on at least two key assumptions. One is that demand will rise faster than production efficiency (otherwise there would be permanent layoffs if demand rose more slowly than efficiency increases, and if efficiency increases stop, then prices drop towards zero through highly competitive capitalist competition in a free market and the economy freezes up, which is why economist are so obsessed with economic growth, since otherwise their equations blow up with divide-by-zero errors, etc.). The other is that the products of smart machines and/or voluntary social networks will never approach in quantity and quality that of what paid labor can produce. Environmentalism and other movements like Voluntary Simplicity, as well as common sense about human psychology and Maslow's hierarchy of needs, show the first assumption is breaking down (as people become more affluent, they tend to become more interested in self-actualizing by making and doing more things on their own). This video shows the second assumption is breaking down, since robots are getting much better. Essentially, you are repeating the dogma of the theology of mainstream economics. I'd suggest that dogma is rapidly becoming more and more questionable (if it ever was accurate as opposed to a self-fulfilling prophecy of artificial scarcity).
The main problem is that people, saying essentially what you are saying, are IMHO sticking their heads in the sand about what is a huge social transformation. Unfortunately, in the USA, often technologists have propertarian-libertarian economics, and it is hard for US technologists to admit that propertarian-libertarianism does not work very well when most human labor has little value and when a few can monopolize vast resources they charge rent for as the rich-get-richer. And when, say, we have massive unemployment (as we do in the USA), something unpredicted by almost all mainstream economists a couple years ago, people just shrug their shoulders, say economies are my
For possibilities on restructuring our economy to deal with the decining valued of human labor from similiar innovations, starting from Marshall Brain's ideas and including many other people's suggestions, see this section of a knol I organized on moving beyond the jobless recovery resulting from structural unemployment (due to automation, robotics, better design, voluntary social networks, and limited demand due to "reduce, reuse, recycle" and the law of diminishing returns etc.): http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives
Believers in mainstream economic theology saw fit to delete most of that content from Wikipedia in part on the grounds that Marshall Brain's and other people's points on the declining value of most human labor is just "speculation" and science fiction. Our scarcity-based economics is more and more out-of-sync with our social and technical realities of potential abundance, but it is apparently heresy to talk about it, and the most people will usually do is talk about ways to make "artificial scarcity" to keep the system working via "business as usual".
I've been thinking about the social aspects of advanced robotics on and off for a quarter century since I spent a year hanging out in Hans Moravec's Mobile Robot Lab (and Red Whittaker's FRL) around 1985 (when Hans was working on the book "Mind Children"). I applied to Willow Garage a couple months ago to get these robots to pick up toys, sort LEGO, etc. (be nice to have them do food prep, too, for improved human health) but they were not interested. :-( Though I was looking for something where I could work from home on the East Coast, so that may have been part of it, since what (human) homeschooling family guy can afford to buy a house with room for a human child near Stanford? :-) I'm also not blaming them, since they probably have their pick of applicants, and I have not worked professionally with robots in two decades, and I have spent a lot of the past decade doing stay-at-home Dad stuff. I'm not sure *I'd* even hire me at this point to do anything technical. :-) Still, with the Stanford area being as pricey as it is, Willow Garage is probably mostly left with rich people or young people building these mind children, which is why you see this video of a robot fetching a beer and not, say, putting away toys, preparing a nutritious soup for the family from whole foods, or being a good playmate for a human child (like Robbie in Asimov's story about a robot nanny and playmate). I can hope that those sorts of things will come sooner rather than later.
Working with a PR2 might have been a lot of fun, but in any case I had also hoped applying might get the people (and maybe eventually robots :-) at Willow Garage to at least read my writings like the above about socio-economic apsects of this work. Creating technology like this without at the same time promoting social change as outlined above (to a gift economy, a basic income, local subsistence, and/or a resource-based economy) is otherwise just asking for massive social unrest and suffering, like Marshall Brain talks about in his short story "Manna". Willow Garage is getting everything else right (like a FOSS focus and as in this video obvious technical excellence) -- except it may be missing talking about that economic transition big picture part needed to make robots like this a blessing and not a curse. So, in that sense, Willow Garage may dangerously lack a coherent vision (even if it makes amazing technology)? I don't know -- they may be clued in and not talking about it, but is does not seem to be reflected on the web site, with nothing directly relevant for these searches:
http://www.google.co
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.
Thanks for trying it. I appreciate any frank feedback. I agree it could be improved (we did make the source available under the GPL -- there is a lot under the hood, like the various models). We ran out of funds to continue it and had to take jobs at IBM to pay back money we had borrowed for living expenses to develop it (and that killed any momentum we had on it). As two middle class people, my wife and I poured more than six person years of our time into that to try to help kids have some better educational tools (back when people were still questioning why there were few non-violent simulations out there or stuff girls might like or even organic agriculture or environmentalism). There is a lot more to that program for teenagers and adults when you get into it (too much, really), and remember, this was written about fifteen years ago. I could do way better now. It was mainly just too ambitious -- it does all sorts of scientific-related things moving through three levels of increasing abstract representation (direct manipulation, inspecting, graphing). It's much more a simulator (microworld, see Papert) than a game (there is no score etc..)
PlantStudio is another program that came out of that approach, that also should run under Wine, and is a step forward in interface (for the time), and many people have liked, though again it is dated.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/
Downloadable here:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/download_new.html
Between the two, PlantStudio, which uses the same basic algorithms but with a simpler interface focused on just one thing, generated much more excitement (but we were unable to follow it up much as we were busy working at IBM). Examples of user comments from back then:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/userssay.htm
"An excellent example of educational expertise.... It is an excellent adjunct for general modeling, especially in the creation of scenes."
So, we were learning. But it got cut off because, back then, it was hard to get any funders to see the value of educational computer simulations (especially ones that were open source). That's what's great about NASA finally putting money into these sorts of things.
I have Java ports of both those partially complete (don't know if they will ever be finished, because, as you suggest, the GUI could be improved, which makes a straight port kind of pointless, but means more work to redesign it).
By the way, on good parenting and education without too much "grounding" or "bribes" or very much forcing kids to learn stuff they don't want to study right then: :-)
http://www.holtgws.com/whatisunschoolin.html
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
I wonder if it was a "disciplined mind" http://www.disciplined-minds.com/ who marked that comment down? :-)
That game is something I wish I had worked on. My wife and I built a garden simulator in the 1990s, in part because it was a step to a space simulator, because in space you would still have to grow your own food if you wanted to "live off the land". We even have one extra backdrop set in an O'Neill habitat. I talked with someone at NASA about related ideas a decade ago, but NASA seemed more conservative then in some ways (with most resources tied up in the shuttle). Given the NASA game was written with tax dollars, I wonder, does NASA make its source available under a FOSS license? We did that with our garden simulator. http://gardenwithinsight.com/ Maybe NASA is hiring? :-) It would be great to work on the next version. I want to see a simulation game out of NASA about self-replicating space habitats (that duplicate themsleves from sunlight and asteroidal ores) and which covers some other post-scarcity issues. It's too bad when I graduated from college in the 1980s NASA pretty much had a hiring freeze.
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing
"We bring free and open source software development methodology to the physical world."
I help moderate that list, which ranges over a variety of related topics. There are many other related places you can look at or ask questions at, too; some other links to get started which are often more shelter-related:
http://www.inhabitat.com/
http://www.os-house.org/english/os-house/home
http://ostatic.com/blog/open-source-house-launches-design-competition
Other general resources:
http://makezine.com/
http://www.appropedia.org/
http://www.vivoweb.org/ "The national network of scientists will facilitate the discovery of researchers and collaborators across the country. Institutions will participate in the network by installing VIVO, or by providing semantic web-compliant data to the network."
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/
Our economics no longer matched our technics (if it ever did). I outline four alternatives (basic income, gift economy, subsistence, resource-based planning) here: http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives
"""
Whether or not mainstream economics ideas can pull us out of the Great Recession and a jobless recovery, in the long term, the problems posed by increasing automation and environmental concerns suggest that some form of heterodox economics will be adopted in the long term to avoid deeper recessions with more permanent job losses. There are at least four major alternative forms of social change that we might see in the future to deal with these issues of increasing joblessness in the face of abundance produced through high technology. These correspond roughly to the alternatives being suggested at the time of Keynes' General Theory in the 1930s, and which lost out to it in the USA, of communism, technocracy, social credit, and a Gandhian swadeshi movement. In modern terms, these might be considered a gift economy, a resource-based economy, a basic income, and communitarianism (or localism). These will be discussed in the next four sections in relation to jobs. Given exponentially increasing technological capacity in AI/robotics and computing/communications and materials/design, each of these approaches are really just different paths to a common converging point of abundance for all, where people only work on things they want to do on a primarily voluntary basis in the context of a sustainable and resilient society. But how we get there depends on what path we take. These paths are not mutually exclusive. To some extent, our society is exploring all of them at once right now in various ways, and has been for a long time.
These alternatives can be seen as reflecting two major choices. One choice is between emphasizing individualistic control versus emphasizing communal decision making. The other choice is between emphasizing one-for-one exchanges (like with currency or barter) versus emphasizing acting mainly from values. These choices are summarized in the chart below: ...................Exchange-based..............Values-based
Individualistic....Basic Income................Gift Economy
Communal...........Localism/Communitarianism...Resource-based Economy
This chart is not meant to suggest these alternatives are incompatible, since any real community could have aspects of all of them. A community might have taxes for welfare, a LETS system for local currency exchange, much volunteerism, and some central planning for intrinsic security needs for sustainability and resilience. For example, Ithaca, NY would represent a community with all these aspects to some obvious degree. Ithaca is a US community with one of the oldest and largest Local Exchange Trading System system. It also has the standard US income assistance programs of Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (though they are still needs-based and age-based, so not quite a basic income). It has a major university (Cornell) that does long-term strategic central planning for itself and also has an academic department of City and Regional Planning that claims to "provide the tools, techniques, and strategies you will need to design more equitable, vibrant, beautiful, and sustainable places".[97] Ithaca also has some citizens developing and giving away free and open source software, free information, and even free designs for 3D printing technology (Fab@Home).
"""
The composer is just caught in the middle of this ongoing social change. he could instead, say, be lobbying for a basic income for all so he would not need to charge for his digital works.
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.
> Why do people smoke? "Most people" do not have the self-discipline
> to change their dietary habits after, say, the age of 30.
The book "The Pleasure Trap" talks about that. But the wonder of Joel Fuhrman's "Eat to Live" plan is that after several weeks to get accustomed to it, people may like the new healthier food they are eating better than what they used to. For example, a healthy fruit sorbet can taste as good or better than ice cream, but is generally good for you too. Joel Fuhrman suggests only 3% of people can keep weight off on a "calories counting" diet, but almost everyone can have a healthy weight on a whole foods eating plan as he suggests.
Dr. Andrew Weil also has an "anti-inflammatory" diet which is more whole grain heavy, but I think Joel Fuhrman's eating plan is better; see for Dr. Weil's approach
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART02012/anti-inflammatory-diet
"It is becoming increasingly clear that a host of illnesses - including heart disease, many cancers and Alzheimer's disease - are influenced in large part by chronic inflammation. This is a process in which the immune system becomes off balance, and persists unnecessarily in its efforts to repair the body and repel pathogens. The prolonged process results in damage to healthy tissue as well. Stress, lack of exercise, genetic predisposition and other lifestyle factors can all promote inflammation, but poor diet is perhaps the main contributor, and the ideal place to begin addressing inflammation. (Find more details on the mechanics of the inflammation process and the Anti-Inflammatory Food Pyramid.)
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/PAG00361/anti-inflammatory-food-pyramid.html
The Anti-Inflammatory Diet is not a diet in the popular sense - it is not intended as a weight-loss program (although people can and do lose weight on it), nor is it an eating plan to stay on for a limited period of time. Rather, it is way of selecting and preparing foods based on scientific knowledge of how they can help your body remain optimally healthy. Along with influencing inflammation, this diet will provide steady energy and ample vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and dietary fiber."
However, Dr. Weil's overall approach is a bit more holistic (like talking about breathing, Yoga, and music, etc.), and so is better in that sense. Dr. Fuhrman seems to tie his dietary recommendations more to the scientific literature though.
> (BTW, you forget moderate exercise as an important component of maintaining health).
Agreed. Joel Fuhrman was also a world-class figure skater, btw, and he says many athletes come to him for advice. And it works both ways -- wanting a better diet gives you more athletic ability (less weight, less join pain, more energy), and wanting more athletic ability may lead you to want a better diet.
> For many genetic diseases, for example, there would be no scientific explanation (other than the placebo effect) for diet to have a role
That may be true (ignoring how the body typically has multiple pathways for many processes), so it's best to qualify any statements as "most". The deadliest diseases of industrialized countries that affect most people in those cultures are things like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, (as well as increasingly chronic immune conditions whether lupus or asthma), and those are for most people generally addressable with dietary approaches (whole foods and fasting) and vitamin D treatments according to some doctors like Dr. Fuhrman or Dr. Cannell (even if not everyone might be helped). But sure, if you have some rare disease cause by a genetic issue with creating a defective enzyme, or if you have been exposed to an unusual environmental toxin or carcinogen, then you may need special treatments. However, for most people, if you have, say, high blood pressure from clogged
Another study: ... The authors recommend that people eat a whole food, plant-based diet and avoid consuming beef, poultry, eggs, fish, and milk as a means to minimize and/or reverse the development of chronic diseases. The authors also recommend that people take in adequate amounts of sunshine in order to maintain sufficient levels of Vitamin D and consider taking dietary supplements of vitamin B12 in case of complete avoidance of animal products. The authors criticize "low carb" diets (such as the Atkins diet), which include restrictions on the percentage of calories derived from complex carbohydrates."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study
"The book examines the relationship between the consumption of animal products and illnesses such as cancers of the breast, prostate, and large bowel, diabetes, coronary heart disease, obesity, autoimmune disease, osteoporosis, degenerative brain disease, and macular degeneration. "The China Study," referred to in the title is the China Project, a "survey of death rates for twelve different kinds of cancer for more than 2,400 counties and 880 million (96%) of their citizens" combined to study the relationship between various mortality rates and several dietary, lifestyle, and environmental characteristics in 65 mostly rural counties in China conducted jointly by Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine over the course of twenty years.
This book by Dr. Joel Fuhrman has lots of references to studies in it (it's much more than a weight loss book):
"Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss"
http://books.google.com/books?id=CX8huSU0n8AC
http://books.google.com/books?id=CX8huSU0n8AC&q=study
There are a bunch of studies listed on this page by Dr. Fuhrman, that should be starting points for you: ....
http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/Other.aspx
"""
I have been utilizing a high antioxidant, acrlyamide-free diet for many years with marked success. Acrylamides are toxic substances produced by baking and frying carbohydrates. The diet-style I recommend for fibromylagia patients is rich in natural plant foods especially organic berries and green vegetables and restricted in animal products and baked grains. Vegetable soups and steamed vegetables are encouraged. Fibromyalgia patients routinely get well, and they get well quickly. Studies in the medical literature support this method of treatment.[ii] Though the researchers do not seem to have the experience and understanding of why what they are doing works, the effects are dramatic.
A significant number of medical investigations have uncovered that, just like other diseases, people develop asthma and allergies for reasons. Asthma and allergies have been linked to nutritional factors:
* Low levels of fresh fruits and flavonoids[iii]
* Fried foods, protein-rich and fat-rich foods of animal origin[iv]
* Low blood levels of fruit and vegetable derived antioxidants[v]
* Dietary fatty acid imbalance--an excess of omega-6 over omega-3 fats[vi]
* Increased intake of high saturated fat foods (meat, cheese and butter)[vii]
* Bread and butter consumption, lower vegetable intake [viii]
My experience in working with hundreds of patients attempting to resolve asthma and allergies has been rewarding. The asthmatics graduall
In order to get enough vitamin D from dairy products, you would have to drink gallons of milk every day, because the US RDA was set decades ago for healthy bones, not a healthy brain, healthy heart, healthy weight, healthy immune system, and so on, so it is probably more than ten times too low (and the typical form of supplementation with D2 instead of D3 is also not a great choice). From:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/
"If well adults and adolescents regularly avoid sunlight exposure, research indicates a necessity to supplement with at least 5,000 units (IU) of vitamin D daily. To obtain this amount from milk one would need to consume 50 glasses. With a multivitamin more than 10 tablets would be necessary. Neither is advisable. The skin produces approximately 10,000 IU vitamin D in response 20-30 minutes summer sun exposure--50 times more than the US government's recommendation of 200 IU per day!"
And:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
"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."
People do disagree about the ideal level (that is at the high end).
Another site:
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/
"Overview: 4000 IU/day is recommended for pregnant women as safe and effective in producing a 50% reduction in many comorbidities of pregnancy such as preeclampsia and preterm labor. These results are from a randomized clinical trial done by Drs Carol Wagner and Bruce Hollis of the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Wagner is interviewed here about that trial."
There is a lot of shocking data about vitamin D deficiency in pregnant women, even with links to autism, and it is worst for darker skinned women in northern climates.
http://adc.bmj.com/content/92/9/737.1.full
"""
Rickets is often considered a 19th century disease. However, despite the availability of vitamin D and demonstration of its efficacy in preventing rickets, vitamin D deficiency rickets still exists as a public health problem with significant morbidity in the Middle East1-5 and in many Asian countries,6 7 and has been reported with increasing prevalence in minority groups in North America8-10 and in immigrant populations in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.11 In many countries, there are reports of a high prevalence of subclinical vitamin D deficiency in children and adolescents12 13 and rickets may merely represent the tip of the iceberg.
With more studies, there are reports from many countries of a high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in women of child-bearing age14-20 and during pregnancy21-24 and in nursing mothers,25-27 with likely adverse consequences for women, the fetus and growing infants and children.21 What seemed to be a rare entity has become so common that by the end of 2006 a lot of literature had been published that linked vitamin D deficiency with long-latency diseases, with the implication that vitamin D affects all organ systems, not just calcium and bone.
In addition to rickets and other possible consequences of disturbed calcium homeostasis,12 epidemiological evidence suggests that lack of vitamin D supplements in infancy and early childhood may increase the incidence of type 1 diabetes.28 29 In adults, new evidence30 supports the role of vitamin D in maintaining innate immunity and in the prevention of certain disease states including autoimmune diseases, multiple sclerosis,31 32 systemic lupus erythematosis,33 rheumatoid arthritis,34 some forms of cancer (breast, ovarian, colon)35 and type 2 diabetes.36 37 The questions then are: how did we become so nonchalant about vitamin D to the point that deficiency is a public health issue for many nations,
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
If you do someday read the previously linked information about the "Pleasure Trap" my Douglas Lisle or "Eat to Live" etc. by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, you would see you that what is recommended is very different from being a "neo-puritanical (pleasure is bad!) health food nut".
As Dr. Fuhrman says, healthy eating can be as pleasurable over the long-term as unhealthy eating (or more, because you know what you are eating is good for you and it tastes great). I would rather have a home-made sorbet from my blender than even the best ice cream from the store -- it tastes better now that I am used to it, and I know it is good for me. A fast can sometimes help with that transition to reset the tastebuds back to normal.
Essentially, most people probably will get less enjoyment from a lifetime of drinking coffee (given various ill effects and periodic withdrawal symptoms, and the "return to baseline") than someone with a lifetime of drinking green smoothies (or other healthful things with some variety, fruity sorbets, fruity ice creams, and so on). The whole point of the article is that there is a return to baseline whatever you do, which is also the point of the "Pleasure Trap".
While you are obviously very knowledgeable about coffee, there is a lot of nuance and subtly in vegetables, fruits, edible beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains than can no longer be appreciated by someone (say, in the USA eating the S.A.D. Diet) who has been trained to prefer an unhealthy amount of salt, refined sugar, and animal fat in their diet. See for example, in the industries own words:
"The Hard Sell on Salt"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/health/30salt.html
"Salt also works in tandem with fat and sugar to achieve flavors that grip the consumer and do not let go -- an allure the industry has recognized for decades. "Once a preference is acquired," a top scientist at Frito-Lay wrote in a 1979 internal memorandum, "most people do not change it, but simply obey it." "
Anyway it is your life. Opportunity can only knock. You need to open the door and look into this issue of "the pleasure trap" for yourself if you want. Still, as Dr. Fuhrman said in the stuff I quoted, "One cup of coffee per day is not likely to cause significant risks, but the more you drink over this one cup maximum, the more likely it will interfere with your health." So, enjoy your (organic, fair trade, shade grown, etc.) coffee in moderation. :-)
But learning about "The Pleasure Trap" and related issues may help you increase your health and happiness in other areas of your life,
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx (same as above at the authors site, but adds a chart)
as might "Eat to Live":
http://books.google.com/books?id=CX8huSU0n8AC&printsec=frontcover
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/debunking-diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html
Other good references on (mostly) healthier eating and cooking:
http://www.andreabeaman.com/
"Raw Food Made Easy DVD Preview"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo6AdFYIidc
And a great place for learning culinary knife skills (though with a more eclectic cooking style):
http://www.kitchenonfire.com/video.html
Two books on this theme of diminishing returns for addictions to extremes:
"The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force That Undermines Health & Happiness"
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
We can resensitize our taste buds in a few weeks by eating differently, as Joel Fuhrman suggests:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/
And adequate vitamin D can also help end depression that leads us to craving escape and stimulants:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
And we can change our physical infrastructure to be more life-affirming:
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
Or our social infrastructure:
http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Americas-Depression-Epidemic-Community/dp/1933392711
Or our mental infrastructure:
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Nights-Soul-Finding-Through/dp/1592400671
Put that knowledge all together, and put in in practice, and it is help for breaking out of some harmful feedback cycles.
There is a lot more to enjoy in life than coffee, but sure, we all decide what our priorities are. The biggest issue is more about getting stuck in a "pleasure trap" where we are getting less fun over time being stuck on an addictive treadmill with supernormal stimuli that become the new normal (as the article suggests), so that in the end, coffee is not bringing you more pleasure than a healthy green smoothie might, and is probably bringing you less. See also:
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_Stimuli
http://www.greensmoothierevolution.com/