Hit by a Car

I was recently hit by a car when crossing the street in Davis, California. This explains why I haven't posted anything on this blog this month until now (late in the month) and why I may be slower to post next month too. I'm sure I will have much more to say about this at a later date, but for now, for legal reasons, this is all I can say.

A Reminder about Remote White-Collar Work and Loss during this Pandemic

As always, please note that I have no expertise in public health, and please follow relevant guidelines from public health officials regarding this pandemic.

This is a short post about the effects of this pandemic on white-collar workers, although the needs of essential blue-collar & service workers during this pandemic should not be ignored either. Over the last several months, I have read many op-eds about how the huge shift to remote work for white-collar jobs may or may not last after this pandemic, and on the whole, those op-eds basically saw this shift as a giant social experiment to see how well people could work in white-collar jobs when physically separated from each other, with very little mention of the broader context of this pandemic (beyond narrow questions of hygiene & safety in offices). It was tempting for me to think about this pandemic in such abstract terms too. However, I recently experienced a death in my family due to this coronavirus, and especially as I was very close to that person, it reminded me of a more basic fact, as follows.

This coronavirus is killing many people, and it is irreparably damaging the health of many others; in turn, it is severely damaging the mental (and in some cases physical) well-being of people whose loved ones are directly affected. Thus, white-collar workers aren't simply working from home in a giant social experiment; many of them are dealing with these tragedies among their relatives & friends. Given this, even though it might be tempting for employers, managers, and supervisors to think that workers are accustomed to the situation, I hope that many of them start (if they haven't done so thus far) or continue to be empathetic to the problems that many of their workers face outside of work, giving those workers time & space as appropriate to deal with those problems; of course, many white-collar workers had to deal with caregiving responsibilities as well as illnesses among family members & friends before this pandemic, but this pandemic has drastically increased the number of such people dealing with such problems at any given time, the magnitude of such problems, and the uncertain course of such problems (as the disease itself has such an uncertain course).

Reflection: A Week of Downward-Spiraling Public Health News Culminating in Unexpected Adjustments

Please note: this is about the current widespread disease outbreak that is dominating the news. I will not mention the name of this disease or other common words used to describe its spread, because for good reason, popular search engines are cracking down on articles and videos other than those from official public health agencies and related well-established organizations to stop the spread of misinformation. I have no background in epidemiology or public health. This post is merely my musings about the last week, and the implications for my near-future plans. Please consult public health agencies and other governmental agencies for guidance regarding responses to this crisis.

This post is the first in a series of three posts about the end of my time as a PhD student in Princeton University (in this post henceforth referred to simply as "the university"). As a write this, I am still technically a PhD student enrolled full-time in the university. The second and third posts will be somewhat more traditional reflections for the end of my time, but this first one has been precipitated by the current public health crisis. Follow the jump to see more; it is effectively a chronological history of the developments of this crisis from my very narrow perspective, and my own (in hindsight, arguably delusional) reactions to these developments.

Book Review: "I Contain Multitudes" by Ed Yong

I've recently read the book I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong. It is a very broad and reasonably (for a general-audience text) deep exposition of the history and recent work in microbiology and biochemistry, covering the multitude of ways that microbes originated, shaped, and continue to affect life on Earth. In particular, it covers the impact of microbes on diverse ecosystems from shallow coral reefs to island jungles, and frames analysis of human digestive and immune systems in terms of island ecosystems as well after accounting for the associated microbiomes. Its broad goal is to show just how essential microbial life is to other life (often with reference to how model animals can be bred to be sterile but consequently have health problems), to the extent that organisms cannot really be characterized to have the functions that give them their identity without their microbiomes.

This book is moderately long, but it is quite engaging and reads quickly. One of the things that I really liked about this book was that the author was careful to be nuanced about developments in the field, without dampening his obvious enthusiasm for the subject as a whole. Whether it was through descriptions of the scientific controversies over "hologenomes", accounts of the problems with probiotic dietary supplements in general consumer markets, or the subtle ways that different forms of symbiosis (mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism) exist on a sliding scale, blend into each other depending on context, and are almost always built on foundations of managed/tamed conflict & cheating (even in the case of mutualism, which is too often cast with Pollyanna-ish connotations), he didn't try to cover up such issues, yet that didn't detract from the overall narrative. One thing that did seem weird was that the author at various points cautioned against using militaristic imagery for describing the immune system given the complexities of the immune system microbiome, yet there are a few places where he falls into that trap anyway; it isn't clear whether this is by accident, or if this is an acknowledgment of how entrenched such imagery is in the popular imagination that there aren't any suitable alternatives for writing to a general audience. Another was that the author, at a few points, repeated a few sentences or a short passage at the beginning of a chapter nearly verbatim near its end, though I will say that because he didn't overdo this, it added to the narrative by underscoring key ideas rather than seeming like bad writing. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in science, nature, or human health.

Book Review: "Weapons of Math Destruction" by Cathy O'Neil

I've recently read Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil. It is a short but dense exposition into the various ways that computer algorithms can determine the courses of people's lives and exacerbate existing societal inequities and biases/prejudices, in areas like education, civic engagement, education, health at the workplace, and many others. It argues that while many algorithms used in big data can be used for good, many instead widen inequalities and reinforce various cycles of poverty because of their opacity, lack of accountability, poor use of statistics, and lack of critical examination by those in charge (who instead use results and predictions generated by such algorithms to fire workers, deny opportunities to potential employees, financially prey on poor people, and so on, making such predictions self-fulfilling prophecies as only confirmatory data is fed back in); in particular, many of these algorithms and models use questionable proxies to predict certain attributes or behaviors (especially when the desired attributes are hard to quantify but the proxies are easy), these models are rarely transparent in what inputs are collected and how they are manipulated to produce outputs, and further research and fine-tuning are rarely performed to correct models that most humans would recognize produce incorrect results (but which computers would miss). It concludes that extensions of existing regulations on use of health and financial data are needed to curtail the misuse of such algorithms, and that simultaneously data scientists need to be scrupulous about the ways that their work is used and developed.

I rather enjoyed reading this book: it's pretty fast-paced, yet gives many detailed examples of the abuse of these algorithms to form a compelling narrative. Additionally, it in many ways follows the book The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu (which I have previously reviewed), because as that book shows the various ways that companies collect and sell customer data, this book shows the various ways that data can be used for the benefit of those companies (even if that works against some of those customers). There are only two issues that I have with this book. One is that the few times that politics comes up, the author's political bias (in favor of liberals in the US) is obvious; perhaps this is just due to the nature of the author's passionate crusade against abuse of algorithms and for institutional action uplifting poor and marginalized people, as that would necessitate regulation of such mathematical instruments, which would be (and has been) loudly opposed by large corporations maintaining their short-term profits and long-term status quo through these algorithms as well as the conservative politicians that they support. The other is that there aren't too many examples of big data and related algorithms truly working toward greater socioeconomic equity, especially when such algorithms are finding patterns that wouldn't be found by humans; while I get that the author is trying to build a brief but dense narrative warning against the excesses and abuses of such algorithms (as she professes herself to not be a big data evangelist), I would have liked to see more nuanced examples of proper uses of big data, because as this book stands, it seems just as one-sided/polemical as uncritical big data evangelism. Overall, I certainly feel like I got a better sense of the potential dangers of unchecked and uncritical use of algorithms to shape the economy and society. Plus, now that I'm about halfway through my PhD, I've started to think more about the sorts of jobs that I'd like to take after I finish. I've decided that I don't want to go into finance because (as mentioned in this book too) I'm not comfortable with playing with other people's money, as it is too easy to be seduced by mathematical simplicity and elegance into doing questionable things. That said, one thing (among the many) that has caught my fancy has been studies of policy problems (especially as related to STEM fields, but as they affect ordinary people); however, the story in this book about the role of the Mathematica Policy Research company in developing the arbitrary and statistically unsound metrics for evaluating teachers in DC public schools has made me realize that I'll need to make sure if I end up joining a policy research organization/consultancy/think tank that the organization that I join is responsible and transparent about the data that it collects and processes as much as possible.

Random Thoughts about the Affordable Care Act

Unless you have been living under a rock these days, you know that this week, the United States Supreme Court ruled (5-4) in favor of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), more popularly known as "Obamacare". What shocked everybody was that Chief Justice John Roberts was in the majority of that ruling. Basically, he and other Justices reinterpreted the clause about the ACA mandating the purchase of health insurance as being a tax rather than forced commerce. In addition, the only major setback to the ACA was the striking down of the clause saying (if I understand this correctly) that states must expand Medicaid coverage to cover low-income people who would otherwise be unable to afford the mandated insurance or else forgo funding for health care entirely. (Please note that I am not anything close to a legal scholar. The following constitutes little more than random mumbling, so you don't have to take it for more than that.)

Health Care Reform as of 25 August 2009

Things I heard on the radio and read online yesterday about health care reform included how Taiwan and Australia got through health care reform and made health care available to everyone at a low cost.
In Taiwan, apparently, doctors don't get paid nearly as much as they do here. There, they are ordinary middle class citizens (like many would otherwise want to be here) who just want to make a decent living for them and their family and help their patients out. They don't require driving a Mercedes-Benz S-Class or owning a villa in the countryside as a summer home. At the same time, medical school there has only a nominal fee, compared to the exorbitant (>$50000) yearly prices here. They modeled their system after Canada's and the liberal party pushed it as a moral obligation as Taiwan has become a rich country and thus must bring up its poor people too. The conservative party initially resisted it (though not as strongly as Republicans do here) but saw resistance as futile due to increasing push from the liberal party; in fact, the plan got so popular that the conservative party later on tried to take credit for the plan by fully supporting it. Essentially the same thing happened in Australia. Both countries have national health care plans to provide for all citizens decent care.
I wish it could happen that way in the US as well, but it probably won't. The Republican Party is too vocal and too united for it to happen; it appalls me how powerful the party is and how it can make us look like such a backwards country at times. Furthermore, all of the planted protesters at town hall meetings are supposed to gain some sort of publicity for the GOP and thus make it look like that level of dissent is present in the entire country.
It saddens me that Obama is willing to do not the right thing by forcing the issue of a public option but the expedient thing by brushing off the idea to placate his political opponents. Hopefully once some groundwork is lain for a national health care system a public option can again come to the forefront of the debate.

Really, Madame Palin?

The latest news from Sarah Palin's mouth is that Section 1233 of bill HR 3200 (please correct me on the numbers and/or terminology if they are wrong) calls for "death panels" in which ill or disabled people must stand before a set of government experts (among whom may be President Obama himself) to determine whether or not they will be able to continue living (by having or not having access to life-saving medications, machines, or other treatments).
Now, I am no expert on health care. I know SQUAT about it. You definitely know more about it than me. That's why I'm keeping this rant short.
That said, I did read the section in question, and the part that Ms. Palin characterized as mandating "death squads" actually says that if patients at or above age 65 choose to consult with a physician every 5 years or so about end-of-life medical services, then it must be covered under Medicare. There's no mandate involved unless the patient so chooses. It isn't really a mandate at all.
Here's the thing: Sarah Palin (as far as I could understand, because it was (no sarcasm here) truly tough to parse her resignation speech) decided to quit because she felt it would further Alaska, and by extension, America. The best I could make is that she felt that she could be more constructive and helpful outside of a government position. This seems to be true insofar as she can make more speeches and be more outspoken about her views now that she is technically a private citizen. However, she and other Republicans have not been constructive at all in this debate. Democrats are trying to put together an honest effort at fixing the system, and while it's far from perfect, it's also much better than the status quo. Even conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats genuinely want to fix the system, but their main concern is keeping costs down, which is totally understandable. Republicans, on the other hand, have no interest whatsoever in anything except loyally opposing any Democratic proposal, and this includes Ms. Palin. They know their position is not substantiated in any way, so all they can do is hurl insults and other epithets at the opponents. My question to those Republicans who claim to want reform is, aside from blindly opposing Obama, what would you do? Their answers probably wouldn't please me, but what would displease me more is them dodging the question.
If anyone remembers their mid-19th century US history, they would remember the history of the formation of the Republican Party, which at the time of its formation was the ideological equivalent of today's liberal Democratic Party (Blue Dogs notwithstanding). The Whigs were fading into obscurity and the Democrats were becoming more conservative; this meant that there had to be (under the Constitution and the system it has created which has essentially mandated only 2 major parties) a major relevant liberal party to compete with the conservative Democrats. Most Whigs became Republicans as the Whig party itself faded from existence, and liberal Democrats quickly became Republicans. I figure a somewhat similar thing will happen to the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has become so conservative that it is no longer ideologically or practically relevant, while the Democratic Party has expanded to include many ideologies ranging from very liberal to moderate/slightly conservative (as opposed to the Republican Party which consists simply of extreme conservatives). The moderate/conservative wing of the Democratic Party has had a lot of splits with the more mainstream liberal Democrats, probably necessitating in the future a permanent split. Thus, the Republican Party can once again include the moderates that it has badly needed.
Here's the other big problem: Sarah Palin continually rails against the very media she uses to communicate her rants. Yes, she has every right to say what she does, and I will not vote for a law that prohibits speech of her kind even if I am completely repulsed by it. However, others also have a right to not listen; they are not obligated to listen to her, and that is true of the media as well. So long as the media keep featuring her as front page news articles or top-of-the-program TV segments, she will retain relevance. Only when they start to ignore her will she lose the relevance she never deserved in the first place. This may be a bit extreme, but is it any wonder that the media do not cover KKK meetings/rallies unless they turn violent? Sarah Palin is not a hate group, but her ideas are getting awfully close to it.
On a side note, regarding all of the supposed discontent and shout-downs at rallies held by members of Congress, can any of the supporters explain to me why the demographics of the opponents look suspiciously more white on the whole than the communities in general where such events (the shout-downs, not the rallies) are occurring? Basically, it's not actual discontent/unease (because if it was, the multiple polls on approval for the health care plan would be much lower) but simply a series of (admittedly well-)orchestrated attempts to make Obama look bad. I have a feeling that the manufactured anger is going to backfire and make Republicans look bad, even though there are myriad issues with the current reform proposal.
Oops, that was a bit longer than I thought it would be. My bad!