http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science "The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine (Marcia Angell)."
"In the UK back in the late 1800s/early 1900s I believe that trains often used to drop off carriages as they passed stations so the people going to that station would roll into it and stop while the rest of the train carried on. So it's not such a new idea."
I was just thinking this, inspired by the article. Train cars could be self-driving. People getting on at a station would enter a car that accelerated in front of the train and joined it at the head. They would then walk back to the car for the station they were going to. People leaving the train at the next station would be in the car at the tail which would drop off at the station.
So, you would not need separate circular tracks like in the article.
got going with 11085 page views so far: http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery "This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism "Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a personality and ideological variable studied in political, social, and personality psychology. It is defined by three attitudinal and behavioral clusters which correlate together:[1][2]
1. Authoritarian submission -- a high degree of submissiveness to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
2. Authoritarian aggression -- a general aggressiveness directed against deviants, outgroups, and other people that are perceived to be targets according to established authorities.
3. Conventionalism -- a high degree of adherence to the traditions and social norms that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities, and a belief that others in one's society should also be required to adhere to these norms.[3]"
One difference is that the "handouts" usually are structured with all kinds of preconditions and all kinds of paperwork to prove eligibility. So, you can get Medicaid, but you have to prove you are destitute. You can get education, but only in schools (which comes with a lot of other baggage, see John Taylor Gatto). You also lose things like welfare if you work (so, a disincentive for personal growth).
Another difference is that the jobs are obviously not there, otherwise we in the USA would not have such high unemployment -- which is likely to get much higher as automation progresses. Working for pay may not even be an option for more and more people.
The current system of disability-or-needs-based payments also creates a huge divide and moral problem. If you got a basic income right now, you could always depend on it in your planning, plus you could work for more. If you don't get a basic income, just the tax bills to pay for one that someone else gets (the elderly, the disabled, the unemployed, the lazy) then you will probably resent it as being unfair -- a benefit not accessible to you. You won't feel you have the option to say, OK, I'm going to quit my job and go back to school, or raise a kid, or volunteer in a literacy program, or whatever without then feeling like you are now morally inferior somehow because now you are on "welfare" or "food stamps" or whatever.
We can't adequately judge the value of much work to society by how much the market pays for it. A basic income helps adjust for that. Is it a "handout" when a person (for free) is raising a next generation of a society (taxpayers and workers) and needs resources to do that well? Or when someone needs time to volunteer in a neighborhood watch program?
How much money is currently distributed per capita per month in the USA related to social security, unemployment insurance, welfare, and compulsory schooling? The figure might surprise you if you add it up. It's on the order of more than US$600 per month.
A basic income has no preconditions for working. I agree the issue of illegal immigration complicates things, but ultimately, this will become a global thing.
As for how much a basic income should be, it is basic, so people could work for more. We can just take one quarter or one half of the GDP through taxes or rent of government assets or the creation of money and redistribute it. $1000 per month per person (plus health care, so Social Security and Medicare for all) or 1/4 the GDP is probably just enough to get by. $2000 per month, or one half the current US GDP would certainly be quite liveable.
Do you pay for the air you breath? Do you pay to use the alphabet? Do you pay for your genetic code? Then indeed a lot of the world does work this way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit "Douglas disagreed with classical economists who divided the factors of production into only land, labour and capital. While Douglas did not deny these factors in production, he believed the âoecultural inheritance of societyâ was the primary factor. Cultural inheritance is defined as the knowledge, technique and processes that have been handed down to us incrementally from the origins of civilization. Consequently, mankind does not have to keep âoereinventing the wheelâ. âoeWe are merely the administrators of that cultural inheritance, and to that extent the cultural inheritance is the property of all of us, without exception.â[5] Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx claimed that labour creates all value. While Douglas did not deny that all costs are ultimately due to labour charges of some sort (past or present), he denied that the present labour of the world creates all wealth"
Do you think the Alaska Permanent fund is evil? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund "The Alaska Permanent Fund sets aside a certain share of oil revenues to continue benefiting current and all future generations of Alaskans.... Though the payouts have varied from the smallest ($331.29 per person in 1984) and the largest ($3,269.00 per person in 2008 when a one-time $1,200 Alaska Resource Rebate was added to the dividend amount),[4] they usually vary between $600 and $1,500 ($900 and $1,800 when adjusted for 2005 dollars)...."
Or do you think it was a good idea including when Sarah Palin expanded it as governor?
BTW, the big thing this coordinated event shows is the internet can either be used to promote liberation or to crack down on dissent in a big way, as I comment on here: http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/2846ca1b6bee64e1 "As I see it, there is a race going on. The race is between two trends. On the one hand, the internet can be used to profile and round up dissenters to the scarcity-based economic status quo (thus legitimate worries about privacy and something like TIA). On the other hand, the internet can be used to change the status quo in various ways (better designs, better science, stronger social networks advocating for things like a basic income, all supported by better structured arguments like with the Genoa II approach) to the point where there is abundance for all and rounding up dissenters to mainstream economics is a non-issue because material abundance is everywhere. So, as Bucky Fuller said, whether is will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end. While I can't guarantee success at the second option of using the internet for abundance for all, I can guarantee that if we do nothing, the first option of using the internet to round up dissenters (or really, anybody who is different, like was done using IBM computers in WWII Germany) will probably prevail. So, I feel the global public really needs access to these sorts of sensemaking tools in an open source way, and the way to use them is not so much to "fight back" as to "transform and/or transcend the system". As Bucky Fuller said, you never change thing by fighting the old paradigm directly; you change things by inventing a new way that makes the old paradigm obsolete."
More alternative ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY "This video presents a simplified education model about socioeconomics and technological change. It discusses five interwoven economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft) and how the balance will shift with cultural changes and technological changes. It suggests that things like a basic income, better planning, improved subsistence, and an expanded gift economy can compensate in part for an exchange economy that is having problems."
Give the money out every month as a "basic income" of $1000 to $2000 a month (Social Security for Medicare for all from birth), and things would settle down soon enough. http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
And the true hidden cost of oil is probably in the same range: http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/oil-price-fantasy-the-true-cost-of-crude/2730 "According to estimates, we spend nearly half of our entire $685 billion defense budget protecting and ensuring the free flow of the approximately 730 million barrels of oil that we import annually from the Persian Gulf. And given the realities created by such terrifically large numbers, this means we spend an additional $469.00 on each of these units in order to bring them safely to market."
Ironically, it may even take more energy to refine oil into gasoline using electricity and heat (from natural gas) than cars get from the gasoline: http://evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
Renewables have been cheaper since the 1970s if you tally the true cost. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power "Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy.[1] In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current. [2]"
He suggests to run progressive candidates in the primaries.
His big picture: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_freshstart.html "The failures of the American left are not in its egalitarian values, but in the means it uses to realize those values. This document suggests the strategies the left could follow in the United States if it took the findings of the social sciences more seriously than it currently does. There are links throughout to other documents on this site that provide greater depth on specific topics, and an annotated bibliography at the end."
The consumer part of the US economy is about ten trillion dollar a year. So clearly consumers have access to enough money to outlobby all other groups combined. They just choose not to do so for some reason.
Why is that? Lack of consensus due to "divide and conquer" strategies by others? Other suggestions?
Humans *need* sunlight, or appropriate supplements. And they need to eat vegetables, lots of them. And they need good fats in their diet. And they need to avoid too many junky additives. And they need exercise, like a treadmill workstation.
By the way, here are some key useful health related links, and these are some of the issues I'd like to use such a system to discuss, refine, rebut, or promote.
Still, as I say here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html "In the end, what I have learned about suicide is that it is ironically a hopeful act and a sign of great faith. It is hope things could get better, and faith that one's actions can make one's world a better place. Anyone even thinking of it has the seeds within themselves for something much more life-affirming. "
From a review: http://infohost.nmt.edu/~shipman/org/hfaw.html "Have fun at work (Engineering Empowerment) It is dangerous, and often fruitless, to try and solve problems without considering the underlying social system. This is the message of William L. Livingston, a mechanical engineer with over 100 patents and decades of industrial experience.... This book discusses chronic patterns of organizational malfunction that I have observed personally many times while working for computer firms (4 years at Hewlett-Packard and 6 years at Tandem, among others). Man is not well-adapted for solving complex problems, he argues. Our brains and bodies and, to a large extent, our social systems evolved for the lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Faced with truly complex problems, our managers generally fall back on instinct. This can produce legendary debacles like the original baggage handling system at Denver International. The book sketches a different social structure that is better equipped to cope with complexity: the Skunkworks. The term comes from a legendary aircraft development shop that produced the U-2 and Blackbird aircraft. In general, a Skunkworks is a small (3--5) team of battle-hardened, generalist engineers equipped with the latest in software tools for simulating the behavior of all the involved systems (mechanical, electrical, software, and social). On a purely practical level, this book is an excellent survival manual for results-oriented engineers who have developed attitude problems about the structural barriers to success in their work environments. Livingston discusses how to evaluate your social structure's potential for success, ways to get working projects out the door in spite of these barriers, and how to tell when you're wasting your time even working there. "
Slashdot Mirror
That "vitamin" should have been "vitamin D".
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/cancer/
Vitamin D may help prevent autism too, if pregnant and nursing women (and young children) take the right amount.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/neurological-conditions/autism/
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine (Marcia Angell)."
Some cancer (as well as much other chronic Western disease) can be prevented and sometimes treated with vitamin and eating more vegetables and other run-of-the-mill things:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
But there is not much profit in telling people that...
So, who really are the frauds and/or dunces here?
"In the UK back in the late 1800s/early 1900s I believe that trains often used to drop off carriages as they passed stations so the people going to that station would roll into it and stop while the rest of the train carried on. So it's not such a new idea."
I was just thinking this, inspired by the article. Train cars could be self-driving. People getting on at a station would enter a car that accelerated in front of the train and joined it at the head. They would then walk back to the car for the station they were going to. People leaving the train at the next station would be in the car at the tail which would drop off at the station.
So, you would not need separate circular tracks like in the article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
Rather than build robots to guard prisons, why not just get the robots to do the boring work outside instead of imprisoning people for not wanting to do the work (and stealing, selling drugs, etc. for money)?
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
We need "A Newer Way Of Thinking":
http://anwot.org/
Where this may all be leading, Marshall Brain's "Manna":
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Why not just have a "basic income" instead, funded by a tax on robotic factories?
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-26/solar-may-be-cheaper-than-fossil-power-in-five-years-ge-says.html
Is that why Google has stopped work on the solar power tower design with heliostats?
Well said.
got going with 11085 page views so far: http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism
"Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a personality and ideological variable studied in political, social, and personality psychology. It is defined by three attitudinal and behavioral clusters which correlate together:[1][2]
1. Authoritarian submission -- a high degree of submissiveness to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
2. Authoritarian aggression -- a general aggressiveness directed against deviants, outgroups, and other people that are perceived to be targets according to established authorities.
3. Conventionalism -- a high degree of adherence to the traditions and social norms that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities, and a belief that others in one's society should also be required to adhere to these norms.[3]"
One difference is that the "handouts" usually are structured with all kinds of preconditions and all kinds of paperwork to prove eligibility. So, you can get Medicaid, but you have to prove you are destitute. You can get education, but only in schools (which comes with a lot of other baggage, see John Taylor Gatto). You also lose things like welfare if you work (so, a disincentive for personal growth).
Another difference is that the jobs are obviously not there, otherwise we in the USA would not have such high unemployment -- which is likely to get much higher as automation progresses. Working for pay may not even be an option for more and more people.
The current system of disability-or-needs-based payments also creates a huge divide and moral problem. If you got a basic income right now, you could always depend on it in your planning, plus you could work for more. If you don't get a basic income, just the tax bills to pay for one that someone else gets (the elderly, the disabled, the unemployed, the lazy) then you will probably resent it as being unfair -- a benefit not accessible to you. You won't feel you have the option to say, OK, I'm going to quit my job and go back to school, or raise a kid, or volunteer in a literacy program, or whatever without then feeling like you are now morally inferior somehow because now you are on "welfare" or "food stamps" or whatever.
We can't adequately judge the value of much work to society by how much the market pays for it. A basic income helps adjust for that. Is it a "handout" when a person (for free) is raising a next generation of a society (taxpayers and workers) and needs resources to do that well? Or when someone needs time to volunteer in a neighborhood watch program?
Thus:
"Main German Government Party considers Basic Income as alternative to social welfare"
http://www.socialjustice.ie/content/main-german-government-party-considers-basic-income-alternative-social-welfare
Have you thought about this for yourself first?
How much money is currently distributed per capita per month in the USA related to social security, unemployment insurance, welfare, and compulsory schooling? The figure might surprise you if you add it up. It's on the order of more than US$600 per month.
A basic income has no preconditions for working. I agree the issue of illegal immigration complicates things, but ultimately, this will become a global thing.
On motivation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
As for how much a basic income should be, it is basic, so people could work for more. We can just take one quarter or one half of the GDP through taxes or rent of government assets or the creation of money and redistribute it. $1000 per month per person (plus health care, so Social Security and Medicare for all) or 1/4 the GDP is probably just enough to get by. $2000 per month, or one half the current US GDP would certainly be quite liveable.
Do you pay for the air you breath? Do you pay to use the alphabet? Do you pay for your genetic code? Then indeed a lot of the world does work this way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit
"Douglas disagreed with classical economists who divided the factors of production into only land, labour and capital. While Douglas did not deny these factors in production, he believed the âoecultural inheritance of societyâ was the primary factor. Cultural inheritance is defined as the knowledge, technique and processes that have been handed down to us incrementally from the origins of civilization. Consequently, mankind does not have to keep âoereinventing the wheelâ. âoeWe are merely the administrators of that cultural inheritance, and to that extent the cultural inheritance is the property of all of us, without exception.â[5] Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx claimed that labour creates all value. While Douglas did not deny that all costs are ultimately due to labour charges of some sort (past or present), he denied that the present labour of the world creates all wealth"
Do you think the Alaska Permanent fund is evil? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund ... Though the payouts have varied from the smallest ($331.29 per person in 1984) and the largest ($3,269.00 per person in 2008 when a one-time $1,200 Alaska Resource Rebate was added to the dividend amount),[4] they usually vary between $600 and $1,500 ($900 and $1,800 when adjusted for 2005 dollars). ..."
"The Alaska Permanent Fund sets aside a certain share of oil revenues to continue benefiting current and all future generations of Alaskans.
Or do you think it was a good idea including when Sarah Palin expanded it as governor?
BTW, the big thing this coordinated event shows is the internet can either be used to promote liberation or to crack down on dissent in a big way, as I comment on here:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/2846ca1b6bee64e1
"As I see it, there is a race going on. The race is between two trends. On the one hand, the internet can be used to profile and round up dissenters to the scarcity-based economic status quo (thus legitimate worries about privacy and something like TIA). On the other hand, the internet can be used to change the status quo in various ways (better designs, better science, stronger social networks advocating for things like a basic income, all supported by better structured arguments like with the Genoa II approach) to the point where there is abundance for all and rounding up dissenters to mainstream economics is a non-issue because material abundance is everywhere. So, as Bucky Fuller said, whether is will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end. While I can't guarantee success at the second option of using the internet for abundance for all, I can guarantee that if we do nothing, the first option of using the internet to round up dissenters (or really, anybody who is different, like was done using IBM computers in WWII Germany) will probably prevail. So, I feel the global public really needs access to these sorts of sensemaking tools in an open source way, and the way to use them is not so much to "fight back" as to "transform and/or transcend the system". As Bucky Fuller said, you never change thing by fighting the old paradigm directly; you change things by inventing a new way that makes the old paradigm obsolete."
More alternative ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
"This video presents a simplified education model about socioeconomics and technological change. It discusses five interwoven economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft) and how the balance will shift with cultural changes and technological changes. It suggests that things like a basic income, better planning, improved subsistence, and an expanded gift economy can compensate in part for an exchange economy that is having problems."
The text for the presentation is here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/media/FiveInterwovenEconomies.pdf
Prof. Domhoff say win Democratic primaries with egalitarian ideas:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_egalitarians.html
Give the money out every month as a "basic income" of $1000 to $2000 a month (Social Security for Medicare for all from birth), and things would settle down soon enough. http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
Much addiction is just a sign of stress: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
And can be overcome: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
Good communities help with that: http://www.bluezones.com/
Except that the true hidden cost of using coal for electricity "are probably even higher than the studyâ(TM)s worst-case estimate of more than $500 billion a year."
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/tallying-coals-hidden-cost/
And the true hidden cost of oil is probably in the same range:
http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/oil-price-fantasy-the-true-cost-of-crude/2730
"According to estimates, we spend nearly half of our entire $685 billion defense budget protecting and ensuring the free flow of the approximately 730 million barrels of oil that we import annually from the Persian Gulf. And given the realities created by such terrifically large numbers, this means we spend an additional $469.00 on each of these units in order to bring them safely to market."
Ironically, it may even take more energy to refine oil into gasoline using electricity and heat (from natural gas) than cars get from the gasoline:
http://evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
Renewables have been cheaper since the 1970s if you tally the true cost.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
"Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy.[1] In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current. [2]"
using Democratic Egalitarian Clubs: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_egalitarians.html
He suggests to run progressive candidates in the primaries.
His big picture:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_freshstart.html
"The failures of the American left are not in its egalitarian values, but in the means it uses to realize those values. This document suggests the strategies the left could follow in the United States if it took the findings of the social sciences more seriously than it currently does. There are links throughout to other documents on this site that provide greater depth on specific topics, and an annotated bibliography at the end."
From this is looks like about US$4 billion is spent on lobbying per year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States#Lobbying_expenditure_by_sector
The consumer part of the US economy is about ten trillion dollar a year. So clearly consumers have access to enough money to outlobby all other groups combined. They just choose not to do so for some reason.
Why is that? Lack of consensus due to "divide and conquer" strategies by others? Other suggestions?
"My best friend died recently, boom! Was in fine health, didn't have any problems, but found dead at his computer."
Maybe vitamin D deficiency and maybe other nutritional deficiencies? See the end of this page: http://www.changemakers.com/node/113512/comments
Humans *need* sunlight, or appropriate supplements. And they need to eat vegetables, lots of them. And they need good fats in their diet. And they need to avoid too many junky additives. And they need exercise, like a treadmill workstation.
"the truly depressed don't believe that anything or anyone can help them."
Perhaps, but then there is no point to doing anything drastic about it. :-)
Better nutrition can help improve a lot of mental dysfunction.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
Medically supervised fasting sometimes helps, too (the Russians explored that).
I'll copy it here:
By the way, here are some key useful health related links, and these are some of the issues I'd like to use such a system to discuss, refine, rebut, or promote.
On healthy diet:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Revolution-Your-Diet-World/dp/1573244872
http://www.amazon.com/Diet-New-America-John-Robbins/dp/0915811812
Knife and blender skills for eating better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RhfAE6McrM
http://greensmoothierevolution.com/
On medically supervised fasting (both water and juice) and health:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-dr-fuhrman-on-fasting....
http://www.healthpromoting.com/why-water-fasting
http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/
And on getting enough vitamin D (in decreasing levels of recommended supplements):
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d...
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/vitamin_D_recommendations.aspx
On vitamin D and pregnancy:
http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20100504/high-doses-of-vitamin-d-may-cut-...
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/neurological-conditions...
On autism and health care in general:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_...
Understanding about good and bad fats:
http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2011/05/may-9-the-great-fat-deba...
http://nutsci.org/2011/05/04/the-great-fat-debate/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21515108
Mental health:
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/...
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene
Treadmill workstations for computer users (but be sure to get vitamin D being indoors so much):
http://www.engadget.com/2005/06/08/the-treadmill-workstation/
http://www.squidoo.com/wal
http://www.changemakers.com/node/113512/comments
See also: http://psychcentral.com/lib/2010/bipolar-disorder-and-nutrition/
Good luck with it. Everyone has something...
Still, as I say here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
"In the end, what I have learned about suicide is that it is ironically a hopeful act and a sign of great faith. It is hope things could get better, and faith that one's actions can make one's world a better place. Anyone even thinking of it has the seeds within themselves for something much more life-affirming. "
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d/vitamin-d-supplementation/
Presumably it is very common among hard working programmers, and it can lead to immune dysfunctions, depression, and other difficulties.
Other health advice here:
http://www.changemakers.com/node/113512/comments
My heart goes out to his family and friends for his loss.
http://www.amazon.com/Have-Fun-at-Work-Livingston/dp/0937063053
http://www.amazon.com/Friends-High-Places-W-Livingston/dp/0937063061
From a review: ... This book discusses chronic patterns of organizational malfunction that I have observed personally many times while working for computer firms (4 years at Hewlett-Packard and 6 years at Tandem, among others). Man is not well-adapted for solving complex problems, he argues. Our brains and bodies and, to a large extent, our social systems evolved for the lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Faced with truly complex problems, our managers generally fall back on instinct. This can produce legendary debacles like the original baggage handling system at Denver International. The book sketches a different social structure that is better equipped to cope with complexity: the Skunkworks. The term comes from a legendary aircraft development shop that produced the U-2 and Blackbird aircraft. In general, a Skunkworks is a small (3--5) team of battle-hardened, generalist engineers equipped with the latest in software tools for simulating the behavior of all the involved systems (mechanical, electrical, software, and social). On a purely practical level, this book is an excellent survival manual for results-oriented engineers who have developed attitude problems about the structural barriers to success in their work environments. Livingston discusses how to evaluate your social structure's potential for success, ways to get working projects out the door in spite of these barriers, and how to tell when you're wasting your time even working there. "
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~shipman/org/hfaw.html
"Have fun at work (Engineering Empowerment) It is dangerous, and often fruitless, to try and solve problems without considering the underlying social system. This is the message of William L. Livingston, a mechanical engineer with over 100 patents and decades of industrial experience.
The tangential links there are rotted, but try also in general:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010401000446/http://www.thefrontend.org/
http://web.archive.org/web/20010405020550/http://www.cascadepolicy.org/dee_hock.htm