A couple of months ago, this happened: a post lauding the university for winning the 2012 CIO 100 Award for mobile-friendly sites, using Flash as the only content on the page:

The irony.

To top it off, guess what the mobile site shows on a phone?

Mobile friendly, my ass.

Yeah, that’s right. A blank article.

I wouldn’t be so mad if it were a one-time thing. But then this illustration of our commencement speakers was published this week:

You can’t think of a way to present this well with a table?

Again, a blank article shows on mobile. And it’s not just my phone that does this: development of Flash for mobile was halted nearly 2 years ago, and iOS has clearly not had Flash since the start.

But my gripe isn’t with Flash itself, or even with mobile compatibility — I’m just upset that people are using a medium that doesn’t make sense for things that shouldn’t even be interactive. I get it; college kids like to play around with software, or whatever. But you guys gotta stop this.

Namecheap, a domain registrar and web services provider, is currently running a Twitter contest with tech/domain/company trivia, awarding free domain registrations to participants, and top prizes of a Macbook Air and iPads to the top of the leaderboard. To be clear, I am not competing in this contest, and my first involvement with it was with this question. In other words, I’m not posting this because I want anything out of it—I’m posting it just to point out the mistakes.

[#115] What record does one need to edit on his/her DNS settings to speed up domain propagation?

— Namecheap.com (@Namecheap) December 21, 2012

Inconsistent tenses aside (one… his/her), the most important parts to emphasize are:

• what record
• domain propagation

The best answer, although not necessarily the 100% correct answer (see below), as I answered in my tweet, is the Start of Authority (SOA) record. About three other individuals on Twitter agreed with me, facing hundreds with a different answer.

In fact, the Refresh and Minimum TTL data entries in the SOA record are responsible for domain zone propagation, whether to a secondary nameserver or to the broader Internet.

Twitter users giving the “TTL” answer, which should be wrong.

Hundreds of others poured in their answers, most lending their support to the answer that Namecheap ultimately declared correct: Time to Live (TTL).

This is (mostly) wrong. For two reasons:

1. TTL is not a DNS record. It is a setting within the SOA record, and an attribute attached to other records such as A and AAAA host records. Given the question, this should disqualify it as a potential answer.
2. TTL whenever applied to non-SOA records affects particular records, not domain propagation (e.g. the lifetime of the ‘www.namecheap.com’ A record, not of all entries in ‘namecheap.com’).

Ultimately, the question posed was a bad one. The traditional understanding of the SOA minimum TTL is that it is the shortest frequency with which other nameservers will check against the authoritative/primary nameserver—at least according to this DNS service provider. While the original specification, RFC 1912, would completely agree with me here in declaring…

Minimum: The default TTL … This is by far the most important timer. Set this as large as is comfortable given how often you update your nameserver.

RFC 2308 changed things so that the minimum TTL in the SOA record affects only negative caching: e.g. you visit ‘doesntexist.namecheap.com’, it doesn’t work, the ISP’s nameserver caches it, and the minimum TTL specifies how long before your ISP’s nameserver fetches that data again. It’s not supposed to be used as a lower bound for update frequency anymore.

That having been said, given the constraints of record and domain propagation, we can be certain that TTL on individual resource records is an incorrect answer that was erroneously, but not maliciously, accepted.

</rant>

Without speaking to the many rational arguments both supporting and opposing gun rights, specifically in the context of the United States, I wanted to point out the illogicality¹ of the modes of argument adopted by some in this debate.

¹ Look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary.

un-American

Generally, the label of “un-American” is applied to people and policies that are perceived to be contrary to “American values”—whatever they may be for the speaker who uses this label.

There is no shortage of recent news articles highlighting someone’s usage of this label:

• “Attacks on religion are un-American”
• “Republican position on tax hike is un-American”
• “Few things are more inherently un-American than drones”
• “… Kasich’s deeply un-American remarks”

As these examples illustrate, the users of this label are not limited to one party or view. They are often the worst self-evident cases of ad hominem attacks on the person who holds a view rather than the merits of the view.

In another more subtle form, this argument is stated like “gun rights are a part of American identity; refusal to accept that is incompatible with being American”. This comment on a CNN article exemplifies this point of view:

An expression of the un-American attack

The problems with this are in its implications:

1. Gun rights are unquestionably integral to American values.
   I’ll address this below under the constitutionality argument. Nevertheless, the fact that there is any domestic debate on the issue naturally refutes this.
2. It’s wrong not to embrace American values.
   There’s two ways to address this. First, there should be no obligation for a non-American (by birth, citizenship, etc) like myself to accept American values, whether I live in the US or not. Second, even American citizens are members of a pluralistic society that should respect differences even if they do not conform to norms.
3. Dissent is invalid unless it conforms to American values.
   Isn’t dissent and discussion a part of liberty and democracy—actual values that most Americans embrace and share? Why should moral views on specific issues be uniform?

Nothing to learn

Furthermore, the comment above espouses the view that America has nothing to learn from other nations and cultures, a supremely arrogant and unacceptable view for any member of any nation.

If another nation is better at ensuring widespread access, low costs, and high quality of health care, or then there is something for America to learn, even if that system is socialist.

If another nation achieves a lower crime rate without granting unrestricted gun ownership, there is something to learn.

Or I could accept her argument that anyone seeking to make America better in any way by modelling changes on other nations should just leave. In that case, see ya, suckers. Feel free to let your beloved country suffer from all of its problems.

Constitutional ≠ righteous

I don’t care how you interpret the Second Amendment, but either way, a legal document does not, by itself, provide a moral basis. Laws are formed from morals and to uphold morality, but are not themselves sources of morality.

Just to remind you of that, the University of Pennsylvania’s motto:

Leges sine moribus vanae
Laws without morals are in vain

Not the most eloquent motto in English, but 1) I’m sure it loses something in translation, and 2) the actual importance of this statement is deep.

Just because the Constitution can be interpreted to protect the “right to keep and bear arms” doesn’t mean that the amendment should exist. That would be begging the question (that is, asking whether it’s morally right to have firearms by relying to a document which itself relies on a judgement of whether it’s correct to have the right). The very fact that laws are changed over time reflects the fact that laws come from the values of the populace, which can and do change.

In the midst of all our Olympic furor*, it is wise to reflect upon earlier times. A giant statue in the opening ceremony of the Athens Summer Olympics in 2004, onto which laser images of geometrical shapes and scientific concepts were projected, was only one of many powerful reminders of an era past. Ancient Greece was a birthplace of logical thought, education, mathematics, science… and democracy.

The Renaissance, a golden era in history, was marked by an explosion in the diffusion of ideas, and the naissance of the scientific method that has allowed us to explore this world. We should remember, too, that this was the time of Copernicus, Galileo, Michelangelo, and da Vinci — the last of which, far from being just a scientist and artist, was also an engineer and writer: the stunning definition of a Renaissance man.

Let’s not forget that one of the founding fathers of the United States of America, Benjamin Franklin — also the founder of our alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania — was a polymath himself. Politician, scientist, writer… there is a reason we honour and respect figures like da Vinci and Franklin, even if we, enlightened with 21st century practicality, do not expect to educate the entire populace in their image.

Hence, it was shocking to read a genuine proposal by an educator at the City University of New York for the lowering of educational standards and the removal of mathematics from standard curricula.

We agree that there are serious deficits in the North American educational system that are in need of redress. We also concur that it is impractical to teach higher math effectively to every high school and college or university student. But we are firm in our belief that lowering the bar isn’t the answer. Andrew Hacker has a limited view of mathematics that fails to appreciate its value, and his solution of removing math from standards is flawed.

* Remember, this was initially written in July…

Math isn’t just for STEM

It’s true that the most visible applications for higher level math are in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). A seemingly simple statement like , which even a typical 8th grader should be able to grasp as an algebraic equation with four variables, has bountiful implications in biology and chemistry.

But math has its uses outside of STEM, too. On the simplest levels, arithmetic serves practical purposes in life: personal budgeting, figuring out how much your bank is gouging you on your mortgage, calculating your smartphone bill, and so on. Basic algebra might be useful in, say, preparing for a road trip — how far will you get before your tank of gas runs out? Calculus finds applications in economics, financial modelling, etc. Take out calculus, and there go derivative pricing models. Probability/statistics seem to have even broader implications: they form the bases for all kinds of “analyses”, from presidential elections to life insurance.

None of these examples are STEM applications. We don’t need to rely on standard arguments, like the contention that theoretical calc and linear algebra, detached from physical application, develop certain modes of thinking.

Indeed, the following recording illustrates what happens when people fail at basic numeracy. Is this irrelevant to daily life? We really don’t think so.

Frederick: better pedagogy

The importance is that, when courses are taught at the general level (i.e. K-12), instructors should make the effort to connect seemingly useless proofs like with applications. Some teachers call this “motivating the lesson”, and the best ones always find something for the students to grasp onto, whether it’s a municipal water tower leaking onto the streets or optimizing the speed at which you drive a 10-year-old truck for fuel efficiency.

Of course, this applies not only in math—if the justification that math builds logical thinkers isn’t sufficient for mandating this education (as it generally isn’t), then an English teacher, too, should justify how analyzing Shakespearean literary themes or postmodern novels will help a student who hopes to be a biology researcher or a future nurse. There is room for pedagogy in all fields.

The lowest common denominator?

It is an uncontroversial position that statistics find broader uses in non-STEM fields than, say, calculus or linear algebra (here at Penn, statistics are taught in the business school in their own department independent of math). Yet, as some commentators point out in the NYT comments section, one cannot comprehend how standard deviation works without algebra skills. (How does make sense without understanding algebra?) Take out an algebra foundation, and all one becomes is an automaton applying an equation that someone else supplies.

Take out the algebra foundation, and quite possibly the student will never have what it takes to decide to become a chemist, an engineer, a financier, or a Nate Silver. We should retain such foundations because they enable decisions that would not otherwise be possible.

Yet the op-ed chooses this example to support its argument:

“… a definitive analysis by the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce forecasts that in the decade ahead a mere 5 percent of entry-level workers will need to be proficient in algebra or above.”

The system shouldn’t be designed to push kids into “entry-level worker” positions. That would be defeatist. It would mean responding to challenge by backing down—an approach that a recent NPR piece attributes to the North American perspective that “intellectual struggle in schoolchildren is … an indicator of weakness”.

Even if we accept that some people struggle with math and won’t use it, we should look for other ways to address this perceived problem. It seems that we cannot aim to please only those who will use it, or only those who won’t need it.

Alternative Solutions for Reform

It is an easy matter to disagree. It is a far worthier challenge to find an alternative — a superior solution.

Kirill: “A German System”

The importance of math is difficult to gauge on an absolute scale; there are some professions for which it is directly applicable, some for which it helps greatly, and finally some for which, we are forced to admit, math is not particularly useful.

The fields that fall into the last category are those that, even today, do not explicitly require a college education, or even necessarily a secondary education. Workers like janitors, garbage handlers, and truck drivers comprise a necessary part of society — but whether they receive education, and to what degree, must be left to both individual choice and utilitarian economics. Indeed, an economic argument can be made that we waste resources teaching integrals and magnetic flux to students who neither appreciate that education nor require it for physical labour.

In this sense, we find ourselves accepting some of Hacker’s arguments. But these workers have no less need for math than they do Shakespeare or watercolour paint.

To be clear, we see enough benefit from teaching math to future businessmen, philosophers, historians, and artists that we reject optionalizing math in high school (or any earlier) based on intended field of study. We might, instead, think about changing the broader system and on a different scale, rather than attacking math itself.

A solution that we can propose, then — at least for secondary education — is to have a stratified education system, where students are separated by learning class into distinct groups. One such group (admission into which must occur by testing or another means of assessment) will continue to post-secondary university studies, while another group will instead pursue vocational training specific to their intended career, and bypass the (unnecessary for them) ordeal of learning advanced mathematics and sciences.

To summarize the suggested educational framework, here are a few key elements that we feel should be present:

1. A strong standardized testing system to separate students into appropriate groups at entry. This must happen sufficiently early for the differences in curriculum to have an effect.
2. Similar exit testing to differentiate members of society who have completed varying levels of secondary education.
3. The ability to move between schooling levels.

If this so far sounds like a Brave New World-style dystopia, it really is not without real world foundation. The relevant example in secondary education today is the German school system, which comes closest to accomplishing these targets in an effective way.

After the completion of primary school (age 10), students can choose from the following options:

1. Gymnasium/Gesamtschule: a type of school with a strong academic focus. Upon completion of an exit exam after grade 12 or 13, students graduate with an Abitur, which qualifies them for admission into university.
2. Realschule: an “intermediate” school, with graduation after 10th grade. Graduates are awarded the Mittlere Reife, which is similar to the American high school diploma. After receiving this degree, many go on to vocational school, while others (who qualify) may attend additional schooling to receive an Abitur if they so choose.
3. Hauptschule: the lowest level of secondary education. Students receive a diploma after 9th or 10th grade, after which they may enroll in a vocational school or begin part-time work/training. In some regions, different “levels” of the 10th grade are offered: completion of the higher level allows the student to receive the Mittlere Reife, the degree attained by Realschule graduates.

The beauty of the German system is that it allows for differentiation, but does not preclude the possibility for movement between educational levels. This differentiation has two clear goals:

1. An optimized learning environment. Students who know from an early point in their life that they do not want to perform a highly specialized and academic job need not trouble themselves with unnecessarily “difficult” educational goals. This addresses the issue that the NYT op-ed brings up: failure rates for advanced classes will be lower if the population of students taking them is restricted to the academically capable and motivated. Students who wish to pursue this lower level of education will be grouped together with those of similar interests and goals, and will likely benefit from such an environment.
2. Specialization of resources. It’s hard for a teacher to take into consideration such a wide spectrum of academic abilities as we see in the classroom today. This is inefficient for students on both ends of the bell curve: the more advanced students feel that the class is moving too slowly, as teachers are forced to move at the pace of the lowest common denominator, while those who are not quite up to academic standards may feel intimidated or discouraged by the successes of those at the top.

Detractors may question if this systematic differentiation would reduce social mobility long after the attainment of secondary education — in other words, if one would be limited by having “only” obtained a degree from the Hauptschule — but we see no reason that it would be any worse than what occurs in America when a teenager drops out of high school. Instead of setting just one standard that may be unattainable for many, this stratified educational system provides multiple paths to accommodate students’ inherent differences, and encourages them to exit secondary education with some indicator of achievement.

In our perspective, this is superior to the rigid inflexibility that North America affords at-risk high school students, and can only create more gradations to help those not currently served by a one-size-fits-all educational system.

Conclusion

The scope of this post has far exceeded a simple rebuttal to the question, “is algebra necessary?” Indeed, the answer to that problem cannot be restricted to a confined study of math — it must be in the context of other disciplines and the broader educational system.

We see value in mathematics across the board, from arithmetic to algebra, from calculus to statistics. We also recognize that not everyone needs to understand moment-generating functions or higher-order differentials. Rather than cutting math because it seems to confound so many students, we instead offer actual solutions: first, on the smaller scope, a pedagogical emphasis on motivating learning, and second, more broadly, a stratified structure for secondary education; in both cases, we believe we can better provide everyone with the tools they need to thrive.

The authors, Frederick Ding and Kirill Peretoltchine, are undergraduates, respectively in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Wharton School, at the University of Pennsylvania. Both use math on a daily basis.

I recently installed a OCZ Vertex 4 SSD in my Lenovo ThinkPad W520. A couple of days ago I installed Windows 8 Professional. I also have 12 GB of DDR3 1333 MHz memory…

Even though I’ve never used ReadyBoost, it’s amusing to see this message.

Two years ago, I posted that Penn’s admissions video was inspirational.

This new Penn admissions video delivers a similar message: that Penn is a university of “firsts”, one that emphasizes interdisciplinary study, and one with a vibrant student community.

Prospective students still in high school: check it out!

It’s a cleverly marketed service that tries to leverage the anxiety of freshmen and parents to sell you something you don’t need — or rather, something you need, but not from this company.

They use the same scare tactics to market the service that are used by scammers. Don’t fall for it. Scan courtesy of Hannah C.

There’s a disaster scenario — a student without backup suffers a virus infection on her laptop and… “her sleep, her composure, and her GPA all suffered… it was horrible”. There’s an alternate scenario — someone uses this company’s service, and avoids the disaster.

Yes, college students need a convenient and viable form of backup, just as all computer users do, but not from this company. This is almost a scam (but not quite). (Notice how they target “parents of incoming students”, who might be less tech-savvy than college students?)

Vinay Dinesh and I are both Information Technology Advisor Managers (ITA Managers, for short) at the University of Pennsylvania, and we are writing, as individuals, to help you find the right backup solution, whether it’s as simple as copying files to an external hard drive, or syncing files to the cloud. But Campus Backup Service isn’t right. (See our upcoming collaborative post to see how you can back up your files the right way.)

Wait, this service isn’t from Penn (or whatever university I go to)?

Let’s get a couple of facts straight:

1. This service is not operated by, endorsed by, or affiliated with, any part of the many departments that handle IT at Penn (see Penn Computing), nor any IT department at any university whose students are receiving this advertisement.
   No IT department is suggesting that you use this service.
2. This is a company that received your personal information for marketing purposes from someone or some group at your university. At Penn, a student-run business organization called Penn Student Agenciesis responsible…
   • … but PSA didn’t mean to give your information to a backup company. They originally gave your information to a company called Residence Hall Linens (by this point, you’ve probably gotten ads from them, too), which now happens to have a new product/service. Actually, that company isn’t even called RHL — their corporation name is “On Campus Marketing, LLC”.

I want to call out On Campus Marketing for shady tactics, just like I have done in the past for another company that sent mail marketing posing as some authoritative organization.

Even if it’s not from my university, it’s a good service, right?

Nope.

First of all, the unprofessional design of its Web site gave me serious concerns about both the company’s legitimacy and reliability. But that’s highly subjective — and there are better reasons…

The price. $150 for 4 school years might sound like a small investment from the beginning — but I’m always wary of long-term subscriptions. In addition, I’m aware of so many other reputable backup providers that have more economical plans, like Mozy and Dropbox — we’ll talk about those soon. Their fees aren’t ridiculously high in comparison to other services, but given the level of functionality (and the reasons below), it’s a ripoff.

The technology. Apparently, an Internet backup service mails you a CD and serial number to install its software. This isn’t looking good.

The implementation. Campus Backup Service claims, as of August 5, 2012, that “Campus Backup software will automatically backup your documents the same time every day” — and advises users to “leave your computer on and connected to the Internet”. There’s no automatic sync aside from the scheduled backup, although you can manually click on something to transmit a copy when you want to.

That’s moronic. As far as students on laptops go, changes to documents are made much more frequently than once a day — and you might very well like to keep more than a daily copy of your latest essay (especially if you’ve procrastinated until the last two days!). But without automatic syncing of changes, users will forget to click “backup” on their machines — and that’s one of the ways disaster could strike. Moreover, if Campus Backup is really scheduling backups at a given time each day, requiring laptops to be on at that time… well, let’s just say that isn’t a realistic precondition.

So how can I back up my files?

In general, there are two accepted ways of keeping backups.

1. Local storage (on an external hard drive, burning DVDs)
2. Cloud storage (syncing your files and changes to a Web service)

A comparison, and recommendations, are coming shortly — jointly authored by Vinay Dinesh and me. Check it out soon!

It’s a great example of a divisive issue between those who trust peer-reviewed science (“HIV is the cause of AIDS”), and those who would prefer ‘alternative’ dissenting views (“HIV doesn’t cause AIDS”, or “HIV doesn’t exist”) — even if that dissenting view is backed up with scarce evidence.

Conspiracy theorists assert that they are truth-finders, digging through cover-ups and challenging dogma. Others, particularly politicians untrained in the realm of science, propose, to paraphrase, that there are ‘multiple’ truths.

You can have multiple hypotheses, multiple perspectives, or multiple opinions… but the scientific community is usually able to reach a consensus — a unified voice on a matter such as this.

When South African president Thabo Mbeki supported AIDS denialism, over 5000 physicians and scientific researchers lent their names and support to the Durban Declaration, published in Nature, reaffirming the community’s unified conclusion that the cause of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome is the Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

Parallels

Reading this Wikipedia entry brings to mind other similar contemporary issues, including cases when the support for the dissenting view is backed strongly by corporate lobbyists, politicians who reject scientific progress, and laypeople who have made up their minds based on secondary sources. In many of these cases, the dissenters fraudulently assert that a scientific consensus has not been reached, and selectively use (dubious) literature, or worse yet, logical fallacies and rhetorical appeals rather than evidence, to support their claims.

I’m referring to Republicans rejecting climate change, states passing laws that “teach the controversy” on evolution (what controversy?) — Indiana, Louisiana, Tennessee… just to name a few. Oh, how about the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine + autism link that has been thoroughly debunked, but which still makes headlines occasionally?

I could write a whole rant about what’s wrong with each of the above cases, but I’ll just leave you with the excellent coverage Ars Technica has already provided.

That’s so meta

The issue of AIDS denialism provoked a series of other responses in the peer-reviewed scientific realm, but on a “meta” level.

I’m deeply appreciative of a piece of correspondence published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, entitled “Professional responsibilities of biomedical scientists in public discourse“. A quotation from Making Genes, Making Waves by Jon Beckwith, a current professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School, serves as an introduction:

Scientists should be aware of the social harm that can result from the premature proclamation of claims that are weakly founded. Scientists must be particularly careful when their science deals with questions of human import. They have entered the political arena.

The author, now a professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, analyzes the consequences of dissenting scientists taking their case to the mainstream media and to the public forum of laypeople. To quote (emphasis added),

My argument thus far suggests that professionals in the biomedical sciences who hold the minority view have particular professional ethical obligations to refrain from campaigning publicly among lay audiences, for support for their professional views. These reasons have to do with the idea that professionals ought to serve the public good. The public good is not served by scientists whose views have been rejected by their peers, and who are trying to “win” the scientifically lost case in the lay public’s domain. It also seems professionally irresponsible to impose the “truth” of one’s views on a lay audience while knowing full well that this audience is not equipped to evaluate the scientific merits or otherwise of one’s arguments. At the same time, of course, nothing should prevent professionals holding minority views in their field of expertise from making their case in professional journals, provided standard procedures of anonymous peer review have been followed. This is also in the public’s best interest, because it constitutes a sound procedure for testing and (re)-evaluating scientific hypotheses and theories.

Another article in PLoS Medicine, entitled “HIV Denial in the Internet Era“, bemoans the scientific illiteracy that has enabled the spread of scientific misinformation, and challenges the denialists’ contention that the establishment is censoring their free speech.

Relevance to a broader question of free speech

Nature published a letter in October 2000 entitled “If free speech costs lives that’s a high price to pay” (subscription required; Penn community can use PennText). The authors, a French professor at the Institut Pasteur, and a British professor at UCL, satirically wrote (emphasis mine):

In an earlier life one of us was valet to the French philosopher Voltaire. I remember cleaning his room one day, coming across a letter to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As a Huguenot, I rejoiced at the remark, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. What is not widely known is the next sentence: “My only question, Sir, is whether the columns of Nature are appropriate?”.

… is Nature the appropriate place to militate in favour of the pre-Copernican model of the universe or the existence of phlogiston? After all, there is Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, when it’s not raining. To demand the right of reply or equal time on such matters is a trick the creationists have used.

HIV causes AIDS. Problems arise when the proposed alternative costs lives.

Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature 407(6806): 834, © 2000.

In other contexts (political discourse that relies on misrepresentations and falsehoods), I have advocated reasonable restraints on free speech like those instituted in Canada, the UK, and Germany. They’re necessary when well-funded media outlets like Fox News are able to spew out garbage and editorials under the guise of “fair and balanced”. (I’ve covered this before, and in another case when Krugman, PhD attacked the Wall Street Journal for resisting educated economic theories.) The American perspective on unlimited free speech is impracticable and unsustainable when it allows a biased, ill-informed, and maliciously fraudulent corporation like Fox News to become the second-most trusted television news network (and, ironically, also the most distrusted news network at the same time).

I’ve argued that the Canadian approach to rights and freedoms, “subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society“, is superior. Most civilized nations have pretty high standards for speech, restricting that which is slanderous or outright harmful. Others might go further and restrict protests and censor books, but I think that’s neither necessary nor justifiable.

Science and academia are somewhat unique: the restraints on free speech are already there, although free of government intervention. Peer review and editorial decisions are the mechanism by which free speech is permitted while integrity is upheld.

Individuals have a right to free speech — they just don’t have a right to get published in Nature or Science or other reputable journals. In fact, they don’t have a right to be published anywhere in the scientific literature at all. It’s a privilege earned through insightful thought and meticulous approach, not through vague attacks on the community’s consensus.

And even though the dissenters may turn to other media — mainstream media, their own Web sites, or their own periodicals — the aforementioned paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics suggests that they have a responsibility not to do so, just like the pundits in conservative and liberal media outlets have a responsibility in journalism to report accurately rather than making outright falsehoods under the shield of “free speech”.

In science, if you lie, the system is set up to stop you (forcing you to take it elsewhere). But in all other contexts, in America, apparently you can lie all you want.

My ultimate point

I know that I’ve been getting sidetracked up to this point. I’ll tie it all together.

Let’s assume, for the moment, that scientific dissenters do get published somewhere. And let’s assume the mainstream media pick up the story.

They don’t automatically deserve equal coverage or equal consideration. That must be earned through evidence and logic. Just as scientific papers have differing values and authority based on, say, the reputations of the journals in which they are respectively published and the reputations of the subsequent papers in which they are cited, no argument is automatically equal in merit by virtue of its existence.

A climate change denial based on an insignificant few papers that contradict the standing consensus is not automatically proof of “a lack of consensus”, nor a worthy rebuttal against the existence of the EPA or relevant laws.

A contention that “evolution is a theory” (a scientific theory tested by time and research, not just a conjecture or a guess), coupled with alternative beliefs based in religion, is not automatically proof of controversy, nor grounds to “teach the controversy”, nor a reasonable cause to juxtapose the verifiable claims of science with the unverifiable claims of religion.

A denial of AIDS causation by HIV is not automatically deserving of the public laypeople’s trust.

Now, instead of only considering dissents from scientific consensus, let’s also include political speech based on falsehoods. The same principles apply.

A demand for a birth certificate because its absence “proves” the illegitimacy of Obama’s presidency, or a demand for tax records because their secrecy “shows” that Romney is hiding something, isn’t automatically deserving of attention, either.

And laypeople watching campaign speeches or campaign/super PAC commercials should not immediately believe everything they claim, if FactCheck.org is any indication.

Just because you have a right to say something doesn’t mean you have a right to be taken seriously, or a right not to be criticized for it. Science is strong because of the mechanisms by which bad conclusions can be critiqued and rejected. Politics could be strong if it, too, respected the sanctity of truth.

People predominantly interested in science can have relevant views on politics too. This was just a rant that tried to connect the two. I encourage you to do even better.

I respect the majority of this article. I agree with most of it — the North American medical education system is clunky, and a ton of hurdles are thrown in the way of students who want to become doctors.

Underlying differences

I think, however, that there is a premise not shared between the rest of the world and North America: the idea that it should be “easy” to become a doctor (or, for that matter, any other profession, like a lawyer).

A document called “Medical Education in the United States and Canada” from 1910, subtitled “A Report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching” opens with an introduction that contains these words:

… the history of medical education in this country and its present status are set forth. The story is there told of the gradual development of the commercial medical school, distinctly an American product, of the modern movement for the transfer of medical education to university surroundings, and of the effort to procure stricter scrutiny of those seeking to enter the profession.

Back when the system was evolving, there was an issue of “enormous over-production of uneducated and ill trained medical practitioners”. To address it,

progress for the future would seem to require a very much smaller number of medical schools, better equipped and better conducted than our schools now as a rule are; and the needs of the public would equally require that we have fewer physicians graduated each year, but that these should be better educated and better trained. … Society forbids a company of physicians to pour out upon the community a horde of ill trained physicians.

In essence, the modern North American medical education system evolved from a much earlier time when it was necessary to reverse the trend of unqualified physicians. And though we no longer face the issue of “ill trained medical practitioners” to the same degree, the same mentality that this should be a difficult profession to enter has stuck.

And, well, it’s much harder to change this established consensus than it is to reform education.

Deciding to enter medicine

See, if it were meant to be an easy road, everyone who wants social respect and good salaries would already be a doctor, or lawyer, or whatever else is hard to become. (But perhaps the social respect and good salaries would vanish quickly.)

Premeds here don’t just decide fleetingly that they want to become doctors. It’s not as simple as flipping a coin. It’s supposed to be a decision with consequences, and one that requires an investment — an investment of time, money, and soul. And that’s why, even while we bemoan the high GPAs we need to maintain, and the debt we foresee, we persist rather than complaining that we wish we were in a system that made it easier.

A 1982 study of medical students in Australia found “that the students tended to endorse social/altruistic reasons (working with people, helping others) and the opportunity to become involved in a challenging occupation as the most important reasons for their occupational choice. Other reasons, such as satisfying one’s parents or having the opportunity to achieve high social status and to benefit financially, were rated much lower in importance.”

Another one of my high school friends said to me last summer: “Dude, you don’t become a doctor to get rich. That’s what business is for.”

Heck, even this well-known rant about why you should not go to medical school acknowledges:

And the one reason why you should go into medicine:

You have only ever envisioned yourself as a doctor and can only derive professional fulfillment in life by taking care of sick people.

There’s really no other reason, and lord knows the world needs docs. Prestige, money, job security, making mom happy, proving something, can’t think of anything else to do, better than being a lawyer, etc are all incredibly bad reasons for becoming a doc.

You should become a doc because you always wanted to work for Médecins Sans Frontières and your life will be half-lived without that. You should become a doc because you want to be the psychiatrist who makes a breakthrough in schizophrenia treatment. You should become a doc because you love making sick kids feel better and being the one to reassure the parents that it’ll all be OK, and nothing else in the world measures up to that.

(The author graduated from medical school, and that rant is actually a good read. Not that this is meant to be an attack on his character, but he went on to write dating books. More lucrative than being a physician, maybe?)

I think the medical education / physician training system here in North America forces students to be more certain about their choice to enter medicine. And one might just argue that it’s a good thing the system deters my friend from going to med school. Forget whether the 4-year undergraduate is valuable educationally — I care more about whether the doctor that comes out of the entire process is as dedicated to doing his job well, after finally earning his right to practice.

It’s a rite of passage.

The important thing, and a most intriguing phenomena, is that the fact is, that once entered upon, a medical education is so very seldom abandoned for anything else. In short, it is the rarest of phenomena to encounter an ex-physician.
- Dr. Walsh McDermott, speech from the Cornell archives, quoted in ”On Entering Medicine” by David E. Rogers, MD

Disagreement

The last paragraph of Kirill’s post says:

Judging by quality-of-life indicators and worldwide assessments of healthcare standards, it doesn’t seem like this North American approach to medical education is producing better doctors. Not only do we get screwed when it comes to the costs of education, but we have to spend twice as long in school to get the same degree. All for what? Better doctors? Doesn’t seem like it. Higher salaries? Maybe by the time you’re 50. Does it somehow lead to an efficient and accessible health care system? Most certainly not.

I don’t think this last paragraph is defensible.

One cannot make an unqualified statement that the medical education system is not producing better doctors unless one corrects for all of the other factors affecting those indicators. Quality-of-life indicators and health care standards are affected by external factors. They consider a wealth of input variables, like political climate, or the fact that North Americans experience high rates of lifestyle-preventable diseases that have nothing to do with physician education…

This conclusion at the end of an otherwise well-written comparison of worldwide physician training systems is the equivalent of comparing farming apples and oranges in different climates and concluding that not one technique makes better fruit. The farming technique must suit the fruit and the climate, and the climate contributes just as much as — if not more than the technique — to the growth of the fruit.

Unless one corrects for the environmental factors (e.g. more Americans don’t currently have access to health care for economic reasons aside from physician education, in comparison to the other countries used to compare physician training), one cannot claim that the North American approach doesn’t produce better doctors.

(I’m not saying it does — I’m just pointing out that there’s not enough basis to make the claim it doesn’t.)

For the closing two lines: it might be true that the United states doesn’t have a more efficient and accessible health care system. But is this accessibility for the physician or for the patient? If it’s about accessibility for the doctors, I’ve already addressed that the underlying philosophy here isn’t meant to make it easily accessible. If it’s about accessibility for the patients, there are far bigger societal hurdles to tackle than the time and cost investment for doctors.

I don’t really have a view on how North American medical education should be

I think what we have in North America is a flawed system that deals with concerns far beyond the scope of an individual medical student. It maintains the elitism of the profession, (intentionally) increases the barriers to entry, and protects the jobs of those currently in the industry.

These aren’t things students care about — “I just want to break into this field and start my career” — but they might be relevant once students earn their right to practice. And, in a twisted way, since doctors here have all had to face their rite of passage, there is an inevitable resistance to any sort of systemic change. The same goes for lawyers, and other professions.

But in the end, I don’t have a clear idea of how it should be. I can’t imagine trying to convert the American/Canadian medical education system to what the rest of the world has — there’s simply no way to do that other than forcing all the medical schools to accept students right out of high school. Can you imagine what the backlash from current doctors and current premed/medical students would be? It would simply be impractical.

I admit there are strengths to a shorter period of training, but this post is my requisite defence of North American medical education and physician training — and a not-so-subtle reminder that, here, one needs a far better motivation to become a doctor than making money.

So I decided to do the same.

Here’s a redacted copy of my letter to CBP requesting two categories of records.

If you’re a (non-)resident alien, try it too — you can use this as a template!

Penn’s web apps, like certain features in Penn InTouch, give an “invalid browser” message when using Chrome.

It’s time they fixed this. Stop forcing me to launch Firefox!

* I apologize in advance: most of the pictures are low quality photos from my cell phone.

Purchasing Power Parity and Prices

From what I saw yesterday (let’s call it Day 0), items that are cheap in Canada and/or the United States can be insanely expensive here, while others that are reasonably expensive in Canada are dirt cheap here.

There’s a supermarket / department store chain called Carrefour that has everything imaginable, from imported milk to cell phones to oranges to suitcases. Asian ice cream bars can cost as little as $2 CAD for a package of multiple bars, while I saw a knife priced over ¥1500 and woks up to ¥809.

Really expensive wok in China -- ¥809. I guess some Westerners might be willing to pay the equivalent amount in USD for their pans, but this is still really high.

Aside: there’s an abundance of Engrish products, like “Woman Honey” and “Cuboid Sausage”.

Yet cab rides in Wuxi are dirt cheap. ¥15 brought four people from one side of town to the other — and I would probably estimate a bill of $15-20 USD (+tip) for the equivalent ride in Philadelphia. (I sometimes wonder how that money can possibly be enough to cover the insurance needed for such risky driving.) I’m told that public transit is even cheaper — something like ¥1 fares, not to mention seniors ride free.

The problem with the high prices here (inconsistent with purchasing power parity, which suggests that the price of a good here should be roughly the price of a good in Canada, for example, times the exchange rate) is that incomes are also lower in comparison. When nominal wages are low and prices are high, we come to the uncomfortable conclusion that real wages remain incredibly depressed for most citizens, and the inevitable result that the ordinary standard of living here still falls behind Canada and the US.

But food can be cheap

Restaurants can be pretty cheap. For breakfast today on Day 1, I went somewhere that is held in high regard for this particular type of breakfast/dim sum. ¥8 for a bowl of wonton, or for four meat buns (小笼包).

Delicious meat buns, with a unique Wuxi recipe.

Aside: to eat 小笼包:

1. Pick up carefully with chopsticks from the tray seen above.
2. Bite a small piece, preferably in the lower half, on the side.
3. Without letting go, suck out the juices inside. (Caution: may be hot!) There’s a lot of it, and it tastes so good — it would be wasted if you ate the bun normally and let it leak out.
4. Bite and chew rest of the bun as you might ordinarily do.

Aside: I thought this was tea — but it’s actually vinegar.

In essence, a delicious breakfast meal can be had for $3-4 USD — under the price of a Starbucks mocha in North America.

Road rage is normal

I’m a little afraid to be on the road here.

• As a pedestrian accustomed to drivers yielding the way, I’m likely to get injured, because here, people have to yield to cars, for the simple reason that the cars drive aggressively.
• As a rider in cabs, I’m afraid every time the taxi makes a turn, because it always feels like we’ll hit a bike or a pedestrian. Every lane change is practically cutting someone off. And on at least one occasion, the driver has gone onto the opposite side of the road to bypass really slow cars.
• There is no f’ing way I would drive here, or even survive trying.

Also, there are mopeds everywhere.

China’s learning the good and the bad from American capitalism

On the bright side, Chinese people seem to have learned that there’s money to be made from taking risks and launching small businesses. There are lots of little shops of all kinds, many of them fashion or textile shops (people love to browse them but not buy from them). Some of these stores occupy the first floor of an otherwise decrepit building — but the shops themselves are nicely renovated and decorated.

A textile and fabrics store in Wuxi

On the opposite side, the income disparity seems to be increasing rapidly. Some alleys have people labouring to survive (e.g. cleaning shoes, fixing bike tires) while nearby streets boast Louis Vuitton stores and Häagen-Dazs ice cream.

Luxury stores are all around

Interestingly, rich and poor seem to coexist in the same spaces in Wuxi. Unlike the sharp divisions between good and bad neighbourhoods in some American cities (*cough* Philadelphia), it’s hard to find lower-income citizens in a place of their own.

Alleyway of labourers

I walked by an alleyway where construction workers probably lived. There was a cluster of people around something that resembled an outdoor food cart, but it wasn’t open to the general public — it was set up so that the community of laborers could eat affordably.

Labourers getting food for brunch

Historic gardens (preview)

I’m going to post more photos from this venue in Part 2 of Day 1. We took somewhere between 250 and 300 photos of this historic site, where ancient architecture and estates from earlier eras, trees hundreds of years old, and an intricate system of stone wells that collect mountain water, have been preserved. I’m going to need some time to sort through the photos.

(My uncle, who teaches martial arts, served as a tour guide and explained the historical/cultural significance of many of the sights.)

I also saw beautiful slabs of stone with engraved calligraphy, from different eras hundreds of years past. Even hundreds of years ago, the basis for the modern written Chinese language had already been set.

Slabs of engraved calligraphy

Anyways, all that and more will come — in Part 2.

The IRS and the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue have made perhaps the most convoluted forms and instructions I’ve ever used. No wonder tax preparation software is so popular.

Also, WHY in the world would Pennsylvania make people round to the nearest dollar for all amounts? It’s a prescription for inaccuracy and accumulated rounding. I’m sure there are accountants out there cringing at the very thought.

No, that’s not how you do it!

Using compressed air to blow eraser shavings, or the simpler equivalent of blowing them off one’s desk… only move eraser shavings to the ground, where they will remain until you vacuum the floor. I don’t call that cleaning.

In the case that you don’t have a breadcrumb-type, portable handheld vacuum, try following my advice.

My solution: lint rollers

Yes, these things.

Roll one gently across the surface of a desk, and they’ll clean up eraser shavings as well as some of the dust. Peel off the sheet when you’re done and the eraser shavings will follow, into the trash, where they belong.

Another neat cleaning application

You can also use your favourite lint roller to remove dust and particles from your mousepad!