Worthwhile Uses for Science?

I probably don't have any business or justification for making such judgments (but hey, has that stopped the Rush Limbaughs of the world?), but I sometimes wonder whether some of the uses to which we put our science and research talent are truly worthwhile, in the grand scheme of things. That is, whether these efforts might be put to better use. A couple of examples:

To make household products work better: Well, I guess that making products work better to get the stains out of our clothes is a good thing. Probably preparations and machines that get our houses clean with less work are a good thing, too.

To remove calories from our food (and even our pets' food): I can't say this is a waste when Americans' overweight and obesity problem is serious and leads to diseases like diabetes; but it seems kind of a shame when you consider that there are millions of people in the world who are starving and desperately crave the calories we are trying hard to discard.

Cosmetic science, etc.: For example, new and better products to remove wrinkles from women's faces. Well, women would hate me if I said this is unnecessary or a waste of talent, but I think it is at best a borderline case. And that could lead to a whole other subject--why our society considers it more important for women to devote a lot of effort to looking good. Is that sexism? But men have been catching up in that regard, and there are far more men's grooming products on store shelves than there were a few years ago.

I just noticed that the dental floss I bought the other day says "Improved Flavor." Definitely important, a real contribution to improved quality of life.

Making our electronic toys continually better: Well, for me it's hard to believe that our smart phones need to get smarter every day, nor (as a non-video gamer) that we constantly need new and better games.

Update, October 5, 2011:
Here is a quote from an online article dealing with a proposed trade deal that would preserve the intellectual rights of "Big Pharma" (the big drug companies) but might have the bad effect of making drugs for AIDS more expensive and less available to poor people in the countries involved, such as Vietnam:

Much of the research pharmaceutical companies do conduct is simply not relevant to public health concerns, with money pouring into projects for hair loss, for instance, while funding for diseases that primarily afflict the poor, like tuberculosis, stays in perpetual short supply.

"The drug companies would say it generates research, but the evidence is very questionable, because much of the research is not directed at important diseases," says Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz (HuffPost Politics, Oct. 5, 2011).

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

I Truly Feel for Japan

I feel so sorry for Japan. If you were writing a disaster novel, or the screenplay for one of those disaster movies, and you didn't care that you were just piling up disasters and didn’t worry about straining credibility—then you couldn't make up a more dire scenario than what has actually happened to Japan, with an earthquake, tsunami, and then meltdown of nuclear reactors.

Plus, some Japanese are old enough to have memories of World War II and the suffering that was wrought upon the people of Japan in that war: not just the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also—much less well known to the rest of the world—the fire-bombing of Tokyo, which leveled half the city, killed a disputed number of people (usually estimated at over 100,000, more than the direct death toll from the Hiroshima atomic bomb attacks, though I find different casualty estimates for the numbers of atomic bomb casualties, as well as for the Tokyo casualties), and left a million people homeless. Remember, it's not the everyday people who start a war, but it is they who suffer from it.

And, Japan has suffered other terrible earthquakes, including the Tokyo earthquake of 1923 and a more recent one in Kobe.

Not to mention that the survivors of the nuclear attacks in 1945 remember the terrible suffering and sickness and death from the effects of radiation rather than the direct bomb blasts. People were dying from radiation exposure for decades afterward. And now again—amidst the death and destruction from the quake and the tsunami, the Japanese now again must worry about the health effects of radiation exposure.

It's tempting to segue into some discussion of nuclear power, its pros and cons. One might say, simplistically, that it was very foolish to build nuclear plants in an earthquake-prone country. But remember that, first, Japan has few other energy resources. I understand that in California there are nuclear plants sitting right atop the San Andreas Fault. Also, right here in Illinois, we have many nuclear power plants that could be affected by the New Madrid Fault, near the southern tip of Illinois, which caused four of the biggest earthquakes ever in the U.S. So as I write this, I am sitting on almost the same type of hazard that the people of Japan were.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

What Is Ethics, Anyway?

Today I had a painter guy come to my house to give me an estimate on a very small job. This guy is very chatty and at one point got to sounding off on what's wrong with the world. The problem, he says, is that the world is "anti-religion," so you have no ethics anymore.

This is a very widely accepted paradigm: If you have religion, you have ethics. If you have no religion—say, you're an atheist—you have no ethics.

Now, I don't buy either part of this. I believe you can have ethics without religion (I believe that an atheist can be just as moral and ethical as anyone else); and I believe that you can have religion without ethics. But I didn't want to get into a real argument with this guy—and have to "come out" as an atheist—so I just gave him this ready counterexample: The Mafia guy goes to Mass on Sunday and goes on beating up or even killing people the other six days of the week.

And this guy himself wanted to inflate his estimate, which was for a job that insurance was going to pay for, so that I could keep 40 percent and pass the other 60 percent on to him. I said No, I didn't want to pocket anything.

Also, this guy likes to be paid with a check payable to him personally, rather than to his company name, so that he doesn't have to report the income on his income tax.

How does this square with "ethics"? These two things, are they somehow not ethics? The only explanation that comes to my mind is that this is—to him--just the normal way of doing business, i.e., "business as usual." I'm too tempted to repeat the easy quip that "business ethics" is an oxymoron.

But we have to also recognize a human trait that never ceases to amaze me: the ability to compartmentalize things in one's mind, to keep them separate. Sort of like the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. So we can be righteous on Sundays and sinners the other six days.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Make It, or Buy It? Food, That Is

As a friend of mine recently said, "We're all spoiled--very spoiled." We continually expect more and more convenience from the foods we buy. I've mentioned before that everybody feels so busy these days--working mothers, etc.—so no one feels they have the time to do much cooking. (And worse, look at the lines of cars in the drive-thru of the nearest fast-food place at dinner time: Call Hubby on the cell phone: "Pick up some KFC," or McDonald's, or Pizza Hut for dinner. Not good nutrition; that's one reason why Americans are so fat.)

When bagged salads first came out, I was practically outraged. You're paying up to $10 a pound for lettuce that should cost a fraction of that much—just to be saved the trouble of washing the lettuce and cutting (or tearing) it up. But I have to admit that now I buy it myself, probably 95% of the time. (I only eat organic lettuce, and I can more easily get organic bagged salad. But when I do see organic lettuce and it seems reasonably priced, I buy it and wash it, and save some money!)

Ditto for mashed potatoes. I've never bought the stuff that comes in a little tub in the supermarket. I'd have to agree that peeling potatoes, boiling them and then mashing them takes time and effort, and I've done it very few times in my life. So for potatoes, I'll use the instant, flake kind of mashed potatoes, or—better yet—I might just boil some little red potatoes: you don't even have to peel them. Takes 15 minutes.

You can get almost anything ready made these days, it seems, even things that are very easy to make yourself. Our grandmothers would be amazed, and probably horrified. You can get little pouches of tuna salad (you could just buy tuna and stir in a little mayonnaise, you really don't need much more than that). There are little packages of pasta dishes--just heat and eat. Even ready-made sandwiches in the food store, or peanut butter and crackers. Gad, we're too lazy to spread something on a slice of bread or a cracker!

I can make a lot of things from scratch, like brownies and pancakes—yet I buy a mix instead. (I buy a relatively healthy pancake mix and then doctor it by adding oat bran--adds fiber, cuts the sodium--and cinnamon, or blueberries if they're on hand.) I've never used the pancakes you get in the refrigerator counter or freezer of the supermarket. I buy frozen waffles, but my excuse there is that I don't own a waffle iron.

So I'm guilty, too. But we should all keep in mind that, when and if we have the time, it's better—more nutritious and typically a lot cheaper—if we make something from scratch or even a mix.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Republicans Gutting Consumer Protections

Here is an article from AOL, by Andrew Schneider, which I have slightly abridged:

Hard-fought-for laws and regulations to save lives and the environment will be gutted or eliminated in budget cuts passed by the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives. . . . Public health and environmental experts say . . .that lives will be lost if these cuts are made:

1) The Consumer Product Safety Commission. The commission is scheduled next week to roll out its long-awaited public database on the safety of consumer products. For the first time, it will allow shoppers to quickly determine whether products they own or plan to by are associated with safety hazards or recalls.

But the cuts strip funding for this database and would gut the commission's provision that will require manufacturers to have their products safety tested by an outside firm.

. . . Chairman Inez Tenenbaum says the new database is vital to consumer safety and, barring a government shutdown, it will be launched on March 11. However, money will have to be found to keep the database current.

2) Poison Control Centers. The House budget slashed 93 percent of the money used to operate 57 of the country's poison control centers even though accidental poisoning remains one of the top causes of unintentional death in this country.
. . . .

"Poison centers detect public health threats as they emerge," said Dr. Alvin Bronstein, medical director of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center. "America will lack a key tool in detecting biological, chemical and other developing threats to public health."

3) The Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA could have a third of its funds eliminated by the House. Among other things, the proposed cuts could prevent:

• Protecting the public from ravages of mountaintop mining.
• Allowing the public to review offshore drilling permits.
• Prohibiting oil companies from getting exemptions to the Clean Air Act when drilling in the Arctic.
• Protecting and restoring the Chesapeake Bay.

"This proposal nearly abolishes EPA. It would jeopardize the safety and quality of our air, water and public lands for generations to come," Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, told AOL News.

"If this bill becomes law, and we see a spike in the number of children diagnosed with asthma, brain cancer and other serious health problems, the folks who pushed this plan through should be partially to blame," Cook added.

Edwin Chen, federal communications director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told AOL News that the cuts are "nothing less than a brazen and unprecedented assault on public health. This attack on clean air, fresh water, open space and wildlife won't take a nibble out of our deficit, but it will take the teeth out of needed protections.

"Polluters would be allowed to spew mercury into the air we breathe, arsenic into the water we drink, and municipal and agricultural waste into the watersheds that nourish our land."

4) The Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA would receive an 18 percent cut in its spending budget from the House bill, which would result in approximately 8,000 fewer workplace-hazard inspections.

". . .[T]hese drastic budget cuts will result in the deaths of workers in construction sites, refineries, factory floors and on fishing boats deep at sea," [said]Celeste Monforton, a national lecturer and worker safety investigator at George Washington University's School of Public Health. . . .

"Increasing worker safety happens at a glacial pace, and these rash actions will instantly gut much-needed safeguards to keep workers alive," said Monforton, a former top official with the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

5) The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. Neither agency was spared from debilitating cuts, experts say, threatening the safety of he nation's food supply and preventing the agencies from even doing specifically what Congress and the Obama White House had demanded.

Amid cuts to the USDA, inspectors will have more meat and poultry to inspect next year. Obama's budget did not grant additional funds requested to meet White House and congressional demands to assure the safety of meats and monitor foreign-produced food arriving at our ports. Programs for federal meat inspection, international food safety inspection and state food safety inspection were hit hard, for safety experts said.

"We are cutting programs not because we want to, but because we have to," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who then added, "American families have been forced to tighten their belts, and government must do the same."

Food safety advocates say the cuts will endanger the food supply.

. . . .

"The president cuts the resources for meat inspection, even while admitting that USDA inspectors will have an increased amount of meat and poultry to inspect next year. It also fails to give the FDA enough resources to put the newly passed food safety reform bill into effect on schedule," she said.

USDA rules say that meat cannot be released for market without the presence of a USDA inspector.

Without the funding, the agency has no plans to supplement the number of inspectors in these processing plants to meet to higher volume of meat.

This means that the speed of slaughter lines will increase, as will pressure on already overworked inspectors. The obvious result is the likelihood of bad meat and poultry showing up in groceries and butcher shops, said Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch's executive director.

The Republicans say that their views and actions are as they are because they are trying to cut "big government," or "intrusive government," or some such. That's their usual tack. While they do all they can to further the interests of business and wealthy individuals, usually at the expense of the "little guy," they try to sell the American public on their agenda by railing against any expansion of government oversight of business as a harmful and unnecessary expansion of government power. Recent Republican presidents like Reagan have convinced millions of Americans that government is inefficient, intrusive into people's rights and liberties, confiscatory, etc.--all the while increasing certain government powers such as the powers of the Executive Branch and the power of intelligence agencies to abridge Americans' civil liberties by spying on them.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

The Mess in Afghanistan

The United States at least partly has itself to blame for the mess that Afghanistan is in.

First, the United States partly funded the radical Islamic schools where the Taliban learned their extreme brand of Islam.

Second, in 2001 the United States actually funded the Taliban to the tune of $43 million dollars.

Also, the U.S. aided the warlords (later to become known as "The Northern Alliance") when they were fighting the Taliban for control of the country.

Both the warlords and the Taliban have ruled with brutality, for example beating women for not wearing the burqa or even for wearing noisy shoes.

The present government of Hamid Karzai, as has been frequently stated, is corrupt and weak, and has had to be very cozy with those same warlords.

The country has been in a state of civil war for decades. If the U.S. pulls out it will be in a state of civil war. But I have to wonder, how, or to what extent are we helping anything? The U.S. efforts have maimed and killed civilians, even children. To understate, that is no way to win the hearts of the people or to help the country. How much worse off could the country be if we simply pulled out?

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

People I'd Like to See Go Away

1. Sarah Palin. I've said this before. I had the very foolish expectation that, once the 2008 presidential election was over and McCain/Palin lost, we'd hear no more of her.

2. John McCain. He seems quite a bit more conservative now than during the presidential campaign. I have to think he tried, in that campaign, to make us think he's a moderate; and now he is not even trying to do that.

3. Louis Farrakhan.

4. Mel Gibson. In much the same vein I guess I could add Charley Sheen. These wacko celebrities have earned millions of dollars, and they're just not worthwhile human beings. Is there some kind of negative lottery that I can hope they win?

5. Justin Bieber. Maybe he sings well; I frankly don't know. But he's become just one more example of a celebrity whose views and opinions are wrongly thought to be worthwhile. And while I'm at it, all of his fans. Who needs shrieking prepubescent girls?

Stay tuned; I'm sure I can think of a few more.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein