Author: Christopher Burg

North and South Korea May Bury the Hatchet

Although the Korean War “ended,” North and South Korea never declared an end to the war, which means that the war has now been going for 68 years. Fortunately, there are signs, albeit minor ones, that that could soon change:

North and South Korean officials are discussing an end to the military conflict that has existed between the two nations for the last 68 years, Bloomberg News reports.

An unnamed South Korean official told a local newspaper that a direct line between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un could be established by the end of the week and that the two leaders may release a joint statement officially ending the conflict at a summit next week.

I’m not sure how the United States government will react to one of its forward operating bases burying the hatchet with one of its boogeymen but for everybody else this would be great news. Ending the war could open the border between the two countries, which could bring a great deal of trade. South Korean goods could filter into North Korea while North Korean labor, which already trickles into South Korea, could flow into South Korea in greater quantities. Both sides would be enriched by the market activity, which could allow North Korea to overcome its economic woes (such as struggling to feed its people) and ease the iron grip its government has over its people (which is partially justified by the state of war that continues to exist between the two countries).

Backing the Thin Blue Line

Backing the thin blue line, at least in Minnesota, is an expensive proposition:

Over the past 11 years, at least $60.8 million has been paid out statewide to people who have made misconduct allegations, according to data compiled by the Star Tribune.

From 2007 to 2017, jurisdictions in Minnesota have made at least 933 payouts to citizens for alleged misconduct. And they’re on the rise. The average has grown from about 50 payouts per year to around 100.

It’s just a few bad apples though!

If so much money is spent on police misconduct, why hasn’t the government made efforts to restrain its law enforcers? I think history can illustrate the core problem here. Let’s rewind to Ancient Rome. Ancient Rome, like pretty much every regime throughout history, declared that individuals within its territory owed it taxes. Unlike the modern United States though, Ancient Rome had no government tax collectors. Instead it contracted the job out to publicani. Tax collection contracts required collectors to raise a specified amount of money to send to Rome. What made these contracts lucrative was that the collectors were allowed to keep any additional money that they raise for themselves. If, for example, a contract required collectors to collect 1 million sestertii and the collectors collected 1.5 million sestertii, they were allowed to keep the extra half million. As you can imagine, this system was rife with corruption. Tax collectors squeeze every sestertius they could from the population. While the populations being bleed would often complain to Rome, Rome was reluctant to restrain its primary revenue generators so the abuses continued.

The same holds true for modern governments. Law enforcers are a major revenue generator for governments. While $60.8 million may sound like a lot of money even spread out over 10 years, it’s certainly a paltry sum compared to the amount of revenue generated by Minnesota law enforcers in the same span of time. Until the amount being paid out for misconduct allegations exceeds the amount being generated by law enforcers, that status quo will continue.

Winning Hearts and Minds

I swear that the airliners are competing to provide the worst customer experience possible. United is still ahead in the competition since it likes to beat passengers and kill pets but Sun Country is working to catch up:

We understand that winter weather can wreak havoc on an airline, especially a small airline like Sun Country. On Saturday, Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) received a foot of snow, which closed the airport for most of the day. This, of course, resulted in a slew of cancelled flights, including some of Sun Country’s last flights of the year on a couple seasonal routes, including flights from Mazatlan (MZT) & San Jose del Cabo (SJD). Rather than trying to work out a solution for passengers, Sun Country simply refunded passengers and told them on Facebook to find an alternative way home.

Passengers will be have to book expensive last minute flights home on another airline, and they will be required to pay for any additional lodging expenses on their own. Based on our calculations, Sun Country has abandoned two flights or around 250 of their Minneapolis-bound passengers in Mexico.

Most airliners will work with passengers when weather causes their flights to be delayed or cancelled. The impacted passengers may be put up in a hotel at the airliner’s expense, shuffled onto flights with open seats, or even transferred to a plane operated by another airliner if no other alternative is available. Sun Country takes the tough love approach by telling its passengers that life isn’t fair so you have to suck it up and deal with it.

I flew Sun Country once. While the airliner didn’t strand me in Mexico, my experience was dreadful enough that I swore to never use it again. I’m guessing these customers aren’t going to be repeat customers either.

Oftentimes Dumb is Better

The philosophy modern hardware manufacturers seem to predominantly follow is that any product can be improved by putting a chip in it. While it may be convenient to have speakers that can wirelessly connect to you phone and stream music from it, there is a significant downside to such a convenience, near future obsolesce:

But more important to me, the Nocs app — which you need to configure to use Wi-Fi networking and update firmware — hasn’t been updated since October 2014, meaning that the iOS app doesn’t work at all anymore, since Nocs never updated it with a 64-bit version. (There’s apparently an Android app, but reviews indicate that it seems to crash more often than not, so that probably isn’t a great solution, either.)

This would all be less of a problem if I had another way to use the speakers, but since I don’t have the Bluetooth model, I’m stuck with either Airplay or a 3.5mm cable (which isn’t super convenient to access, since they’re on a bookshelf). Plus, Airplay itself as a standard is on its way out, so even if the NS2 pair that I have work without any problems, they’ll be obsolete and incompatible with the new wave of speakers that will be out whenever Apple decides to finally release Airplay 2.

In this case the author has the fortune of being able to fallback to a standard 3.5mm headphone jack but many “smart” devices don’t include legacy support.

Dumb devices tend to have a longer shelf life than their smart brethren. This is because dumb device tend to operate on standards that have been around for decades. Speakers that attach to receivers using two copper cables have been around for decades and will likely be around for decades to come. What makes dumb speakers even better is that they’re modular. If a smart speaker becomes obsolete, you have to replace the whole speaker. If the receiver you plug your dumb speakers into becomes obsolete, you can replace the receiver while keeping your bitchin’ speakers.

There are a lot of legitimate reasons to add a chip to old products but there is also a trade off. In many cases, at least in my opinion, dumb devices enjoy enough advantages in shelf life that they remain superior to their smart brethren.

It’s Scientifically Proven

I find myself ranting more and more about modern practices in scientific communities. I don’t do this because I think science is a bad thing. The scientific method, after all, is just a tool and tools lack morality. I do this because scientism, treating science as a religion, has increasingly replaced science. It seems that many people have forgotten that science also requires a healthy dose of skepticism. Without skepticism, one can publish any old paper and people will believe its findings without question. This is rather worrisome when there are so many ways for bad or at least questionable science to get published:

This has huge implications. Evidence based medicine is completely worthless if the evidence base is false or corrupted. It’s like building a wooden house knowing the wood is termite infested. What caused this sorry state of affairs? Well, Dr. Relman another former editor in chief of the NEJM said this in 2002

“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful”

This article discusses a great deal of corruption in the scientific medical community. It turns out that much of the medical science that we take for granted is tainted. One of the most interesting forms of chicanery, at least in my opinion, is selective publishing:

Selective Publication — Negative trials (those that show no benefit for the drugs) are likely to be suppressed. For example, in the case of antidepressants, 36/37 studies that were favourable to drugs were published. But of the studies not favorable to drugs, a paltry 3/36 were published. Selective publication of positive (for the drug company) results means that a review of the literature would suggest that 94% of studies favor drugs where in truth, only 51% were actually positive.

End users, like doctors, often go by published studies. If 94 percent of published studies indicate that a drug is effective, doctors are more likely to prescribe that drug. However, if the 94 percent only exists because the large number of studies that indicated that the drug was ineffective weren’t published, the end user is often unaware. Moreover, if they are aware, they generally don’t know why the studies showing the drug to be ineffective weren’t published. Was it due to methodological failures on the part of the individuals performing the study or was it because an executive for the drug manufacturer is also on the board that decides what does and doesn’t get published? And to make matters even more difficult, just because a study was published doesn’t necessarily mean that the findings in the study are reproducible. The findings of many studies cannot be reproduced.

This wouldn’t be as big of a problem if so many people didn’t treat published research as holy scripture. But a lot of people do. Like a Christian who flips through the Bible searching for a line that supports their agenda, many people today will search for scientific papers that support their agenda. When they find it, they will throw it down as a trump card and act as if their agenda is unassailable because it’s “backed by science.” But is their agenda backed by science? Are the findings in the paper they threw down reproducible? Were several studies refuting the study they threw down rejected from publication by somebody who shares their agenda? There really is no way for you to know.

Three May Keep a Secret, If Two of Them Are Dead

Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanack wrote, “Three may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead.” This quote rings true time and time again. The most recent example is the legal mess surrounding the now shuttered website Backpage:

Carl Ferrer, the co-founder of Backpage, the notorious and now-shuttered site that once hosted a vast quantity of prostitution-related ads, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and money laundering charges.

[…]

Ferrer agreed, in combined plea deals with both Texas and California authorities, where he faced outstanding charges, that he will shut down Backpage “throughout the world,” will aid authorities in ongoing prosecutions of his co-conspirators, and will make all Backpage data available to authorities.

This outcome is very common in cases involving multiple suspects. The first suspect to offer their services as a snitch against the others is usually handed a sweetheart deal.

Benjamin Franklin’s point should be taken to heart by anybody performing illegal activities. For example, if you’re an agorist who is selling cannabis, you probably don’t want to enter a partnership with another cannabis dealer. You can’t control the actions of another person. Even if you take every precaution to avoid being caught by the authorities, you can’t guarantee that a partner will do the same. And if their mistake causes them to be arrested, there’s a good chance that they’ll offer you up in exchange for a sweetheart deal.

It’s All a Dog and Pony Show

Do you watch the news? If so, do you believe that you’re well informed because of it? If you do, I have some bad news for you. The news you’re watching is nothing more than a dog and pony show:

Earlier this month, CNN’s Brian Stelter broke the news that Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner or operator of nearly 200 television stations in the U.S., would be forcing its news anchors to record a promo about “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country.” The script, which parrots Donald Trump’s oft-declarations of developments negative to his presidency as “fake news,” brought upheaval to newsrooms already dismayed with Sinclair’s consistent interference to bring right-wing propaganda to local television broadcasts.

The funniest part about this story is that CNN, which is one of the most blatantly biased stations out there, brought this up.

What the Sinclair Broadcast Group is doing isn’t unique. It’s not uncommon for broadcasters to require their on-air personalities to record various promotions. Oftentimes the promotions are for the station’s advertisers but sometimes the promotions are to push an agenda for the higher ups of the station.

The fact that the news is a dog and pony show is best illustrated by how people tend to choose their preferred sources. A self-declared conservative will generally choose Fox News whereas a self-declared liberal will generally choose CNN and MSNBC. Their choices are dependent on their personal beliefs. If a station agrees with their beliefs, they will accept what the station feeds them. If a station disagrees with their beliefs, they will reject what the station feeds them. In either case, they aren’t seeking to be well informed, they’re seeking confirmation bias.

What can you do? My advice is to assume that everybody is lying to you. Yes, you should even assume that I’m lying to you. Keep a skeptical eye and try to dig into matters you care about yourself. Unless you do that, you will not be well informed about anything.