• The Good News 2004
• The year is 1904…
• Take the Pledge
• Night of Terror and the Right to Vote
• National ID Card a Bad Idea Says Bruce
• TV Kills
• Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance

The Good News 2004

—America’s kids are all right. Juvenile violent crime (search) has fallen every year – and nearly halved – since 1995. The percentage of high school students who carry weapons to school is at a 10-year low. There were 14 homicides on school campuses in 2002-03, down from 34 10 years earlier. Teen birthrates (search) are at a 20-year low, and high school dropout rates are at a 35-year low.

—America is healthier. Life expectancy in the U.S. (search) is at an all-time high among men and women, black and white. People at every age can expect to live longer than anyone at their age in U.S. history. Heart disease, cardiovascular disease and stroke have fallen dramatically in the last 15 years. Incidence of, and deaths from, cancer have dropped every year since 1990.

—America is cleaner. Concentration levels of every major air pollutant have dropped dramatically since 1970, even as we drive more, consume more, and produce more. According to data analyzed by the Pacific Research Institute (search), U.S. water has been getting steadily cleaner for the last 20 years.

—The world is less violent. In his book, "A History of Force," the historian James L. Payne (search) argues that when you adjust for population increases, over the course of history, the average citizen of the world has grown less likely to die a violent death caused by government, war or his fellow man. War, murder, genocide, sacrificial killing, rioting – all have tapered off over time.

The trend continues even into recent years. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (search), there were just 19 major armed conflicts in 2003, down from 44 in 1995. Existing wars seem to be less violent, too. According to the Human Security Report (search), published by the University of British Columbia, 700,000 people died in battle in 1951. By the 1990s, the number had fallen to 40,000-100,000. In 2002, it was just 15,000. This, as the world’s population increased.

—The world is freer. According to the United Nations, as of 2002, 70 percent of the world’s nations were holding multi-party elections. Fifty-eight percent of the world’s population lived under a fully democratic system of governance. Both of these figures are at their highest points in human history.

The Freedom House (search) think tank gave 89 countries containing 46 percent of the world’s population a ranking of “free” in the 2003 edition of its annual Freedom of the World report (search). Both figures are at their highest in the 30-year history of the survey. Freedom House also reports that countries moving toward more freedom have outpaced countries moving away from freedom by three to one.

—The world is less poor. Yale University’s David Dollar has pointed out that since 1980, the total number of people living on less than $1 per day has actually fallen by 200 million, despite the fact that the world’s population increased by 1.8 billion. It’s the first time in recorded history that that has happened. The UN’s 2004 Human Development Report (search) notes that real per capita incomes in the developing world have more than doubled since 1975. In some provinces in China, incomes are doubling every few months.

—The world is healthier. Between 1960 and 2000, life expectancy in developing countries increased from 46 to 63 years. Mortality rates of children under five are half of what they were forty years ago.

—The world is getting cleaner. Most economists now endorse the concept of a “green ceiling,” (search) which means that although the transition from a developing economy to a developed one requires some environmental exploitation, there is a point at which a country becomes wealthy enough that its citizens will begin to demand environmental protection.

The key is to get each country to that point as quickly as possible. And as noted earlier, that’s exactly what’s happening. The good news is, the “green ceiling” is getting lower every day. Right now, it stands at about $5,000 per capita GDP, but the World Bank (search) reported in 1997 that poor countries begin turning the corner on water pollution, for example, at as low as $500 per capita.

So take heart. As we head into a new year, both the U.S. and the world are growing safer, healthier, and less violent. Most of the world is getting freer. It may not seem like it, given the images we’re seeing on the news, but man on the whole is making himself better.

Radley Balko maintains a Weblog at: www.TheAgitator.com.

The year is 1904…

The year is 1904 . One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes! Here are some of the US statistics for 1904:

The average life expectancy in the US was 47 years.

Only 14% of the homes in the US had a bathtub.

Only 8% of the homes had a telephone.

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11.00

There were only 8,000 cars in the US, and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee each had more people than California.  With only 1.4 million residents, California was the 21st most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average wage in the US was 22 cents an hour.

The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births in the US took place at home.

About 90% of all US physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as “substandard.”

Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

The five leading causes of death in the US were:

1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn’t been admitted to the Union yet.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was 30!

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn’t been invented.

There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.

Two of every 10 adults in the US could not read or write. Only 6% of all Americans had completed high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist,
“Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.”

Eighteen percent of households in the US had at least one full-time servant or domestic.

There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire US.

Take the Pledge

No matter who wins:

I will not proclaim that the president is incompetent for failing to magically resolve some tough geopolitical situation, such as North Korea’s nukes or the Israel/Palestine problem, unless I can propose something with stronger logic to recommend it than the fact that the president isn’t doing it right now.

I will not obsess about trivial details of the president’s demeanor, speech patterns, or long-past personal history.

I will not secretly hope that he fails at important goals so that I can elect someone from the other party four years hence.

I will not pretend that the president’s budget is better, or worse, than it is, which is to say terrible.

I will not attribute magical powers to the president to heal the economy, large-scale social problems, or the growing rift between my boyfriend and myself on the matter of green vegetables. I will neither praise the president for improvement in these situations, nor criticise him for failing to mend them.

I will not point out all the bad news, or all the good news, while hoping no one notices the other sort.

I will ruthlessly make fun of the president’s verbal tics, extravagent promises, and useless programmes.

I will not use my one semester of Psych 101 to make speculative diagnoses of mental disease or defect in the president.

I will assume, until proven otherwise, that the president, like most politicians, is making stupid laws because he wants to appease key interest groups (a.k.a. The American People), not because He Is Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil.

I will not write long, stupid posts on how the man I voted for, and his party, are wonderful people--intelligent, sensitive, and well-informed--while the other party, and its voters, are a bunch of moronic thugs who want only to Destroy a Once Great Nation. Nor will I deliver such rants in person.

Night of Terror and the Right to Vote

The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of “obstructing sidewalk traffic.”

They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold Her cell mate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the “Night of Terror” on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory. Some women won’t vote this year because--why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn’t matter? It’s raining?

There recently was a screening of HBO’s new movie “Iron Jawed Angels.” It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women’s history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. “One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,” she said. “What would those women think of the way I use--or don’t use--my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.” The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her “all over again.”

HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn’t our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn’t make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: “Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity”. [via email from a friend]

National ID Card a Bad Idea Says Bruce

Good article on national ID card issues from Bruce Schneier at http://www.schneier.com/essay-034.html ; if you were on the fence or arguing FOR a national ID card, the whole article is worth a read. Here is a short quote:

It doesn’t really matter how well an ID card works when used by the hundreds of millions of honest people that would carry it. What matters is how the system might fail when used by someone intent on subverting that system: how it fails naturally, how it can be made to fail, and how failures might be exploited.

The first problem is the card itself. No matter how unforgeable we make it, it will be forged. And even worse, people will get legitimate cards in fraudulent names.

Two of the 9/11 terrorists had valid Virginia driver’s licenses in fake names. And even if we could guarantee that everyone who issued national ID cards couldn’t be bribed, initial cardholder identity would be determined by other identity documents ... all of which would be easier to forge.

TV Kills

From Adam Curry [ http://www.blognewsnetwork.com/members/0000001/2004/04/06.html#a5496 ]:

I remember as a kid the stories that circulated around television usage. Of course the kid next door was doing poorly at school, his brain was rotting away because he watched too much tv! I think I recall another one about it causing cancer, which was probably too big a concept for me in 1970, when I was a wee lad of 6 years.

The stories are back, only this time a bit more plausable: “TV can cause the developing mind to experience unnatural levels of stimulation.”

The BBC health watch has more on the study.

Don’t forget going blind from sitting too close to the TV....  Indeed, any activity we engage in heavily affects the mind. Meditate for 20 minutes twice a day and your mind will be different even a year later, regardless of age. Those who garden and fish will have different neurological tendencies than those who passively watch TV. With TV we are watching events unfold. There is a stimulation that is inherently non-creative. The creation was done for us. We “entrain” with the creativity of others in order to be entertained. This is done in a way that stimulates attention, yet it also gets us used to the idea that dramatic events and “scene changes” will occur regularly. Contrast that with life in general and the classroom in particular. It just isn’t stiumlating in the same way!

An interesting question for me is the issue of retention for things learned on TV. Our kids do a lot of learning through the computer, participating in classes through Stanford’s EPGY and http://www.k12.com. Retention there seems to be strong. However, for “educational” shows on TV, and certainly for retention of what happened in shows and movies, the level of retention is not there. The lack of interactivity and engagement reduces the effectiveness of television as a learning tool. One thing that may help is if we have specific goals around a show or TV seminar. For example, I am taking DVD learning on EFT. There is an open-book test that goes along with it for certification. The combination of TV-based learning with a specific outcome of knowledge does help make it more effective and retained (for me).

Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance

[ From http://www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/ ]

The future is bright, according to a report co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Commerce (DOC). You can find the 405-page report in PDF format at the link above, but you can read individual sections too. Ed Frauenheim, from CNET News.com, wrote an article about this report under the title When brains meet computer brawn.”

Here are some quotes.

Titled “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive Science,” the report calls for more research into the intersection of these fields. The payoff, the authors claim, isn’t just better bodies and more effective minds.

In the overview, the editors argue that a host of advances can be achieved in the next 20 years alone. Among these are wearable sensors that send health alerts, much more useful robots, invulnerable data networks, and direct broadband interfaces between our minds and machines.

The report thinks big when it comes to peering beyond the next two decades to the rest of the 21st century. Taking visionaries such as Ray Kurzweil seriously, it imagines robots so advanced they may deserve political rights, building surfaces that automatically change shape and color to adjust to the weather, and the prospect of personality uploads that make death itself ambiguous.
Not everyone is likely to sign up for this techno-utopia, however. Some people are skeptical about technology’s capabilities and cast doubt on proposals such as capturing consciousness through computers or linking neurons with nanocircuitry.

One of these skeptical minds is likely to be Bill Joy, from Sun Microsystems. Do you remember the article he wrote for Wired 8.04 in April 2000. The title was “Why the future doesn’t need us.” Two years ago, he was saying that “our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.”

You can read this article at [ http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html ].

Sources: NSF/DOC Report, June 2002; Ed Frauenheim, CNET News.com, August 5, 2002; Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems, in Wired Magazine #8.04, April 2000