This morning I listened to Tim Draper at Stanford Entrepreneurial Leaders. Good talk, especially on DFJ experience with international investments. Near the end, after discussing challenges in Russia and Ukraine, he talks about “competitive governance”. And sadly the US is not competing – to be a desirable place to launch new ventures or businesses. He used the Dr. Seuss “The Bee Watcher” analogy. Draper said at 27 minutes, loosely paraphrasing:

We used to be clearly #1 country to do business in and now #4 and it seems to be dropping. This is one of the reasons (shows Dr. Seuss). The bee works really hard, and the bee-watcher wants to find out how that bee has been so productive, so he sits and watches the bee. But they don’t believe the bee-watcher, so they bring in the bee-watcher-watcher to watch the bee-watcher.  Now, we are the bees. The US used to have about 8% of the economy involved in watching the bee watchers – or 1 bee watcher-watcher for every 12 bees. Now we are at 45% (overhead), about one bee watcher-watcher per bee, and this seems to be a systemic bad trend. See what you can do about that guys…

We don’t know the answer to the question, though society would surely be better off if there were no conspiracy theories. Maggie Koerth-Baker’s NYT Magazine essay looks at some of the research. Typically in psychology the results are fuzzy:

Conspiracy theories also seem to be more compelling to those with low self-worth, especially with regard to their sense of agency in the world at large. Conspiracy theories appear to be a way of reacting to uncertainty and powerlessness.

 She ends with this summary:

(…) Alex Jones, a syndicated radio host, can build fame as a conspiracy peddler; politicians can hint at conspiracies for votes and leverage; but if conspiracy theories are a tool the average person uses to reclaim his sense of agency and access to democracy, it’s an ineffective tool. It can even have dangerous health implications. For example, research has shown that African-Americans who believe AIDS is a weapon loosed on them by the government (remembering the abuses of the Tuskegee experiment) are less likely to practice protected sex. And if you believe that governments or corporations are hiding evidence that vaccines harm children, you’re less likely to have your children vaccinated. The result: pockets of measles and whooping-cough infections and a few deaths in places with low child-vaccination rates.

Psychologists aren’t sure whether powerlessness causes conspiracy theories or vice versa. Either way, the current scientific thinking suggests these beliefs are nothing more than an extreme form of cynicism, a turning away from politics and traditional media — which only perpetuates the problem.

(…) What these new guidelines really mean is use your head when all hell breaks loose. Don’t be distracted by an administrative limit set for conditions when everything is fine, when we have the luxury of setting absurdly-low limits. The only downside of the absurdly-low radiation clean-up levels at a Superfund site is a waste of a lot of money. The downside of applying those same levels to a population going through a disaster is unnecessary pain and suffering, and even death, as we’ve seen at Fukushima ( (Cuttler, 2013 http://db.tt/j5IDYGQX).

That’s why these new guidelines are so important. And correct. It’s the same reasoning that led to the United Nations’ change in attitude last year when they stated that the U.N. “does not recommend multiplying low doses by large numbers of individuals to estimate numbers of radiation-induced health effects within a population exposed to incremental doses at levels equivalent to or below natural background levels” (UNSCEAR 2012; Radiation – No Big Deal).

Both changes at EPA and UNSCEAR result from a real administrative fear that LNT once again made things worse with Fukushima, as it did with Chernobyl. That more people died from the forced evacuation and continued refugee plight than will ever be affected by the radiation.

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Oxford nuclear and medical physicist Wade Allison is the author of Radiation and Reason: The Impact of Science on a Culture of Fear. Recently Prof. Allison wrote an op-ed that explained very succinctly why low levels of radiation are not to be feared; why ionising radiation from nuclear reactors is fundamentally the same as the UV from the sun. 

I recommend this brief essay as a resource for those who have friends and family who are fearful about nuclear energy. With this as background, perhaps the fearful will be better prepared to understand the stories of former anti-nuclear activists who are now campaigning for nuclear power (e.g., Stewart Brand, Mark Lynas). This is the theme of the soon-to-be-released documentary Pandora’s Promise by film maker Robert Stone (also a former anti-nuclear activist). 

Scientists are currently mired in a bogus safety culture that stifles innovation, acts as a brake on economic growth and actually makes the world a more hazardous place. How has this happened?

Until recently much prosperity flowed from new developments in chemistry and electronics that exploit the outer part of atoms. Only medicine has whole-heartedly engaged with the inner nuclear part. Following the work of Marie Curie the health of people around the world today has improved out of all recognition thanks to radiation and nuclear technology.

Unfortunately many people — politicians, the media, the wider public, even many scientists — believe that this same technology when used in other contexts is dangerous; the reasons for this are historical and cultural without any basis in science. This belief should be challenged and we should examine the evidence, based on simple ideas, personal experience and the published results of nuclear accidents. Otherwise this source of innovation will dry up with significant economic consequences.

Life has evolved to be stable under changing conditions, for example when attacked by moderate exposure to radiation, that is ionising radiation such as ultraviolet in sunshine. As we have all learnt, a little too much and we suffer from sunburn. If repeated too often, we can get skin cancer later on and that can be fatal. Other forms of ionising radiation have a similar effect except that they may penetrate below the skin.

 

Regions of the radiation spectrum [left]

The diagram illustrates how the spectrum of radiation includes visible light (shown as a rainbow), the infrared range on the right, and the ultraviolet on the left merging into the X-rays and gamma rays that we know as types of nuclear radiation. Like other radiation on the right, infrared just heats living tissue and is harmless unless it overheats. However, ionising radiation, shown to the left can result in molecular damage and the creation of oxidants, dangerous chemical fragments similar to those produced in normal metabolism. These break the DNA molecules which control the cells of living tissue. In sunburn skin cells are damaged in large numbers but the DNA is repaired or the cells replaced with new. Cancer develops when faulty DNA repairs escape the vigilance of the immune system. In 2009 there were over 9000 skin cancer deaths in USA, based not on some hypothetical calculation but on actual annual mortality figures.

Nevertheless, some significant exposure of the skin to ultraviolet is important for the production of Vitamin D and the avoidance of Rickets. Sunbathing in moderation is an accepted pleasure in life and people do not take their vacations exclusively by starlight or deep underground, just to avoid the radiation with its small cancer risk. There is no plethora of international committees to discuss this danger – just gentle public education from doctors and pharmacists pressing families to use blocking agents and to restrict their time in the sun at midday. So, everybody learns of the danger without a great ballyhoo and the risks are in the same range as others encountered in life (in USA annual deaths per million population: skin cancer 30, road traffic 110). It may be a matter of life and death for the individual, but, in spite of a fair number of identified deaths every year, nobody would choose to threaten the economy or social health of a whole society on this account.

By contrast, the closely related nuclear radiation from the accident at Fukushima (damaged in the 2011 Japanese tsunami) has killed nobody and the intensities are so low that no case of cancer is likely in the next 50 years. Unlike figures for skin cancer the only estimates of risk come from discredited calculations of a tiny number of deaths that appear only on paper. Yet the authorities have reacted in a way that reduces economic output and increases damage to the environment.

(…) 

Modern scientific experiments establish beyond doubt that moderate doses of radiation do no harm. Biologists have learnt how in a billion years life has evolved defences against such attacks and even benefits from modest stimulation of these defences by low chronic doses.

So why are official attitudes and regulations so dangerously inappropriate? They cause serious social harm and benefit nobody – and by closing nuclear power plants they have caused major damage to the environment and the world economy.

The fear of a nuclear holocaust at the time of the Cold War spawned many committees, national and international, who still offer advice to governments to regulate any exposure to radiation to levels “As Low As Reasonably Achievable”. This is about 1000 times lower than a level that would be “As High As Relatively Safe” — which, after all, is the way that the safety of a bridge or ship might be assessed.

Such safety factors are unaffordable in nuclear technology, as elsewhere, and excessive safety is intimidating. These overlapping committees, should be reduced and should re-dedicate themselves to dispensing explanatory education and improved public trust in science. Only then may the known benefits of nuclear technology (access to clean power, clean water, food preservation, as well as advances in healthcare) be widely accepted and realised. Those countries that first break the mould and start fully exploiting this technology will have a great economic advantage – and they will be safe too. 

(…) The vast majority of decisions made by “the government” (well over 99%) are made without any input from the President, the President’s immediate staff and advisors, anyone appointed by the President, anyone in Congress or that ultimate reports to Congress, or anyone else remotely impacted by any sort of election.

Does anyone know what “the government” is up to today? Is it a “Good Thing” that it is beyond comprehension?

I'm not confident an alien ultra-intelligence could comprehend what .gov is up to.

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The Georgia Institute of Technology plans to offer a $7,000 online master’s degree to 10,000 new students over the next three years without hiring much more than a handful of new instructors.

Georgia Tech will work with AT&T and Udacity, the 15-month-old Silicon Valley-based company, to offer a new online master’s degree in computer science to students across the world at a sixth of the price of its current degree. The deal, announced Tuesday, is portrayed as a revolutionary attempt by a respected university, an education technology startup and a major corporate employer to drive down costs and expand higher education capacity.

Georgia Tech expects to hire only eight or so new instructors even as it takes its master’s program from 300 students to as many as 10,000 within three years, said Zvi Galil, the dean of computing at Georgia Tech.

…The deal started to come together eight months ago in a meeting between Galil and Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun.

“Sebastian suggested to do a master’s degree for $1,000 and I immediately told him it’s not possible,” Galil said.

(…)

And here's Sebastian:

Today is my opportunity to give back. Ever since Peter Norvig and I launched AI Class, I have been dreaming of putting an entire computer science degree online, and to make access to the material free of charge, so that everyone can become a proficient computer scientist. With Georgia Tech and AT&T, this is my dream come true. If, as a young student, I had the chance to learn from the best professors in the world, my life might have been different. I have been fortunate. Yet so many potential learners are still denied access. Education has become much more exclusive, and getting into a top-10 computer science department, like Georgia Tech's, is still out of reach for all but a chosen few.

I co-founded Udacity to bring the very best of higher education to everyone worldwide. With Georgia Tech, we have a partner whose computer science program is among the best in the world! And equally importantly, with AT&T, we partner with a Fortune-500 company which is relentlessly innovating in the space of digital access to information. This triumvirate of industry and academia is now teaming up to use 21st Century MOOC technology to level the playing field in computer science education. And while the degree rightfully comes with a tuition fee — after all, to achieve the very best in online education we will provide support services — the bare content will be available free of charge, available for anyone eager to learn. We are also launching non-credit certificates at a much reduced price point, to give a path to those who don't care about Georgia Tech credit or degrees, but still want their learning results certified.

I wish I had been born in the 1990s. Back when I was a college student, the Web did not exist. How many young students are there in the world today as eager to learn as I was? Only time will tell how many young people we'll be able to empower to reach for the stars. If you are a student in our program and come across this blog post, please drop me a line at sebastian@udacity.com. If only a single life can be touched with this program, it will be a success!

I think this is a very big deal – hope I'm right!

Update: here's the Georgia Tech site for OMSCS with FAQ and intro videos. From the FAQ:

How is this degree different from residential Georgia Tech MS CS?

The OMS CS will deliver educational content completely through the massive online format. This means it will differ from the residential MS CS in course structure, for example, but will provide an educational experience no less rigorous than the on-campus format.

How is the OMS CS different from other distance-learning and/or online degree programs that have existed for a long time?

The Georgia Tech OMS CS is the first online degree in computer science from a top-tier university that students can obtain exclusively through the massive-online format.

How much does the degree program cost?

We’re not yet ready to announce a specific program cost, but the plan is to offer the Georgia Tech OMS CS for a total cost of under $7,000—a fraction of the cost of Georgia Tech’s on-campus program and even less than that of comparable private universities.

What evidence do you have of market demand for this program?

At present, around 160,000 master’s degrees are bestowed in the United States every year in computer science and related subject disciplines; the worldwide market is almost certainly much larger, perhaps even an order of magnitude larger. We conjecture that the present structure is vastly underserving the market and will conduct market research in the first year to check these estimates and help target our course offerings.

How long does it take to complete and receive a degree?

We anticipate the typical time for students to complete the OMS CS will be about three years, though we will allow for longer enrollments— up to six years—for those students who need greater flexibility.

How does the student workload compare to a residential degree? How many hours a week will students spend on it?

The total workload is the same as the residential program; the weekly or hourly workload depends on how quickly students wish to complete the program.

Who can take courses?

All OMS CS courses will be available free of charge for anyone, anywhere in the world. Degree-seeking students will be virtually separated from “open” students to ensure degree program rigor.

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Transgenic crops producing insecticidal proteins derived from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) have proved effective in controlling bollworm and reducing the need for pesticides in cotton crops in China. This study of Bt crop performance at sites across northern China identifies a decrease in aphid pests and a marked increase in the numbers of ladybirds, lacewings and spiders — natural enemies of insect pests — compared with conventional crops. There is also evidence that these predators thrive in neighbouring non-transgenic maize, soyabean and peanut crops. These results suggest that Bt cotton can promote biological control in agricultural ecosystems by decreasing insecticide use and increasing predator populations.

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February 14, 2013
Today I’m doing anesthesia for colonoscopies and upper GI scopes. Nowadays we have three board-certified anesthesiologists doing anesthesia for GI procedures every single day at my institution. I’ll probably do 8 cases today. I will sign into a computer or electronically sign something 32 times. I have to type my user name and password into 3 different systems 24 times. I’m doing essentially the same thing with each case, but each case has to have the same information entered separately. I have to do these things, but my department also pays four full-time masters-level trained nurses to enter patient information and medical histories into the computer system, sometimes transcribed from a different computer system. Ironically, I will also generate about 50 pages of paper, since the computer record has to be printed out. Twice.

No wonder everyone hates electronic medical records (EMR)! I don’t know anything about computers, and I don’t know what systems other hospitals have. I may be dreaming of a world that doesn’t exist or that world is here and I haven’t heard about it. Nevertheless, here’s my wish list for a system that doctors would actually want to use:

1. ELIMINATE THE USER NAMES AND PASSWORDS. You can’t tell me that in this day of retinal scans and hand-held computers that there isn’t a better way to secure data. What if each person had their own iPad that you only have to sign into ONCE a day that automatically signs your charts. If you’re worried about people leaving them sitting around use a retinal scan or fingerprint instant recognition system.

2. ELIMINATE THE PAPER. If you’re going to have full-time people entering data for you, why print it out? It’s on the computer for anyone to access.

3. ALL DATA SYSTEMS MUST BE COMPATIBLE. You can’t have patient data entered in one place that doesn’t automatically import into another place. If my anesthesia record can’t talk to the hospital OMR, I have to RE-TYPE everything in, which is completely ridiculous.

4. EVERYBODY HAS TO USE THE SAME SYSTEM. Everybody, state-wide. Right now, electronic records from a nearby hospital are not available at my hospital, even though the two hospitals are right across the street from each other.

5. DON’T MAKE ME TURN THE PAGE. All the important information about a patient should be on the first page you open when you look up a patient. I shouldn’t have to click six different tabs. Specific to anesthesia, all the relevant data about the patient including what medications they have received during the case should be automatically displayed on the screen when you start a case. Specific to primary care, all the latest labs and data, recent appointments with specialists, current med list and anything else the doctor wants to see commonly should be right on the first screen.

6. DON’T MAKE ME HAVE TO REPEAT MYSELF. If I do eight cases the same way, with the same documentation required for each case, I still have to enter that documentation each time. If I’m seeing 20 patients in primary care clinic and the rules require the same documentation for each person, I shouldn’t have to enter that documentation each time.

7. INVEST IN DEVELOPMENT OF REALLY GOOD VOICE-RECOGNITION SOFTWARE. If I’m sitting across from a patient, I want to look at them and talk to them, not talk to them and look at a computer screen. If my mother didn’t make me take typing in high school, I don’t want to have to spend 3 hours after-hours every evening pecking my conversations with my patients into a computer, or worse, checking boxes electronically.

8. GET RID OF THE WIRES. In this day of wireless, why am I still tripping over monitoring wires and untangling cords? My spin bike at the gym can pick up my heart rate without a wire. Why can’t my anesthesia monitor?

9. IF YOU NEED A TYPIST, HIRE A TYPIST. Every time a new rule or documentation requirement pops up, which in my institution is daily, it is always laid on the nurses to add that to their computer records. Nurses used to be nurses. Now they are data-entry specialists. Their checklist and pre-operative paperwork is longer than mine. And they aren’t doing any diagnosis or treatment.

10. TRIPLE BACK-UP THE SYSTEM. Computers crash. Paper doesn’t. There’s got to be a way to make the system rock-solid reliable.

There are a mind-boggling number of rent-seeking interests in the US medical system. I would really like to know the true story of how Google’s effort to offer free EMR was defeated by these interests. Google knows how to build, operate and refine such systems at scale – and FAST. What we have now is a complete mess – which will take decades to rationalize.

The tariff’s are imposed because the Chinese state has been heavily supporting the Chinese solar manufacturers financially. Chinese panels makers have been earning only 2$ for every 3$ in costs, with the Chinese state making up the difference. That is called dumping, and the EU and USA are fully in their right to impose tariffs in order to protect their PV manufacturers, who cannot operate similar structural loss making enterprises as the Chinese have been able to do for years.

I invite criticism of my reply:

I agree with all your facts. I also agree with John Cochrane’s main thesis, but I will try to state John’s observations on “Silly Policy” from a “Who benefits?” perspective.

To promote internal growth China has been subsidizing their solar and wind manufacturers. Hence China is literally delivering a “free lunch” to global solar consumers (which basically means heavily taxpayer subsidized PV projects). By “free lunch” I mean a transfer from China’s savers/taxpayers to e.g., German taxpayers/consumers. I mention China’s savers because the financial repression imposed upon the savers is a central part of the Chinese government funding, direct taxes are relatively small.

The Chinese subsidized solar isn’t fun for a German PV manufacturer – but these companies are only in business because of a transfer from German taxpayers to the company. For a German PV installer the Chinese subsidy is a win – their costs go down a bit (not hugely, because the PV cells are a modest part of the life cycle cost of PV solar). Of course the German taxpayer and consumer win.

So there are mostly winners from the Chinese subsidy, unless you are a Chinese taxpayer/saver. Chinese citizens benefit from more jobs, more village farmers employed in the over-sized solar factories. 

My personal long run view – I don’t think these Chinese PV companies have a future. How long will OECD taxpayers be willing to continue funding a “feel good” energy policy that obviously doesn’t work? 

Today’s update on the “policy that obviously doesn’t work” Cost of German Solar Is Four Times Finnish Nuclear. This is a very instructive analysis of a truly silly energy policy. The true cost is much worse than 4X – see the graphic depicting life cycle costs at the end of the article:

Lastly, if anyone knows of a study demonstrating a solar project that is economically competitive with nuclear without subsidy please comment. By viable I mean all-costs-inclusive life cycle costs.  I’m not aware of any PV projects in the first world that would have been built on purely economic grounds). It’s not easy to obtain objective data on any of the wind/solar projects because they are all intrinsically political – and it is definitely not in the politicians’ interest to publish the facts.

BTW, if you haven’t yet read An Economist Gets Lunch, I can almost guarantee you will find Tyler’s book as engaging as we did. The book has nearly zero intersection with all the other foodie books on the shelf. You will enjoy the reading immensely, and enjoy the eating for the rest of your life. 

Genoa is one of the best food venues in Italy, as is Liguria more generally.  It is also one of the best places in Europe for vegetarian dining.  Maximize the number of tarts and vegetable tarts you eat, skip hotel breakfast and look for small places with morning snacks, preferably baked goods, and treat them as the equal of cooked dishes.  Forget about meat altogether.

1. Antica Sciamadda, 14-16 Via San Giorgio, arrive at the 11:30 opening and keep on buying the tarts and farinata as they are freshly baked and put out on the counter.  There is a vaguely Arabic feel to the dishes, and there is an excellent video of the place here.  There are many excellent ‘sciamadda’ in Genoa and they lie somewhere between a food stall and a very small restaurant, so do not count on them being open for dinner.

2. Trattoria alle Due Torri, Salita del Prione 53, near the Columbus house.  Order pasta and focaccia, this is some of the best spaghetti I’ve had, and the pansotti (ravioli in walnut sauce) is notable.

3. La Rina, superb seafood restaurant, don’t focus on the main courses.

There are relatively few tourists in town, although the most common group — by far — is Russians.  From Bologna, here is a post about flunking out of Gelato University.

(Via Marginal Revolution.)