Quotulatiousness

August 5, 2010

Examining DNA testing from the client’s point of view

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Health, Media, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:19

Mary Carmichael is writing a multi-part series about DNA testing:

On July 22, Congress held a hearing on direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic tests, services that analyze your DNA and interpret the results in exchange for a few hundred bucks — no doctor necessary. The hearing could have been a thoughtful national conversation about science, business, and ethics. Alas, it devolved instead into a series of gotcha moments, starring a General Accounting Office sting operation that came off like a cross between the ACORN videos and the world’s worst ad for snake oil.

Time and again, on tape, an undercover agent called up an unidentified testing company and asked an ill-informed question. (“Is it OK if I stop taking my cholesterol meds and instead take the nutritional supplements you sell? If I can manage to get hold of my fiancé’s saliva without him knowing, will you run it through your machines so I can surprise him with the ‘gift’ of his own data?”) And time and again, the phone rep sank to the occasion and made the company look awful. (Sure, lay off the pills and take our supplements! Of course we’ll analyze your fiancé’s spit without his permission even though that’s illegal, unethical, and weird!)

I listened to the tape several times the day it was released, despairing at the way people were taking advantage of gullible, albeit fictional consumers, which was clearly how the congressmen who held the hearing wanted me to react. Then I started to worry about something else. How much time did I even have left to decide whether I was going to take a test myself? Even before the hearing, the FDA had announced its plans to regulate all DTC genetic tests, possibly so heavily as to keep them off the market; the hearing was just the sort of thing that could push it to move faster. What if, by the time I finally decided if I wanted one of these tests, I couldn’t buy one anymore? My credit card was sitting next to my laptop. I did something that in retrospect seems a bit rash. There’s a DNA-collection kit on my desk now, taunting me — because although I bought the thing, I still can’t decide whether I actually want to use it.

The sheer volume of misinformation on DNA testing — combined with public belief in the amazing accuracy of DNA testing (probably induced by watching too many crime investigation TV shows) — leaves the legitimate companies in an awkward situation. The actual DNA self-tests don’t tell you what you might expect, and can tell you things you don’t want to know. Politicians jumping in now (at the prompting of bureaucrats who want more power to regulate) will only make the situation more confused.

H/T to BoingBoing for the link.

August 4, 2010

The costly San Antonio class

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:08

Strategypage recounts the sad story of the LPD 17 class:

The U.S. Navy is having major problems with its LPD 17 class amphibious ships. Originally, the plan was for twelve of these ships to replace 41 smaller, older and retiring amphibious ships. Then, disaster struck. Five years ago, the USS San Antonio (the first LPD 17 class ship) entered service. Or at least tried to. The builders had done a very shoddy job, and it took the better part of a year to get the ship in shape. The second of the class, the USS New Orleans, was also riddled with defects that required several hundred million dollars to fix. This pattern of shoddy workmanship, incompetent management and outright lies (from the ship builders) continued with the five LPD 17 class ships now in service. Now the order has been cut to ten ships, partly because of all these problems. To add insult to injury, the last ship in the class is being named after politician John P. Murtha, who is generally hated by soldiers and marines for the way he politically exploited and defamed the troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is particularly painful because the LPD 17s carry marines into combat.

Many consider the San Antonio class as a poster child for all that’s wrong with American warship construction. The ships are being delivered late, and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. The list of problems with the ships is long and embarrassing. Although the San Antonio did get into service, it was then brought in for more inspections and sea trials, and failed miserably. It cost $36 million and three months to get everything fixed. The workmanship and quality control was so poor that it’s believed that the San Antonio will always be a flawed ship and will end up being retired early.

August 3, 2010

Japan’s centenarians are going missing

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Health, Japan — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:36

After the discovery that the oldest man in Tokyo had actually been dead for years, it should come as no surprise that the oldest woman in Tokyo has apparently been missing for decades:

Fusa Furuya, aged 113, had been registered as living with her daughter.

But the daughter says she has not seen her mother since the 1980s.

According to government data, there are more than 40,000 centenarians in Japan. But the discoveries in Tokyo have cast doubt on the accuracy of the figures.

Despite being reputed to be Tokyo’s oldest woman, it appears no-one had bothered to check that Mrs Furuya was still alive — until now.

Local council officials have been visiting the very elderly after the body of Sogen Kato, thought to be Tokyo’s oldest man, was found last week.

The police believe he had been dead for more than 30 years.

When officials went to Ms Furuya’s home, they discovered that she had been missing for decades.

Unlike the earlier case, where the man’s family had continued to collect his pension, the family of Fusa Furuya don’t appear to have been involved in pension fraud . . . although you do wonder why they hadn’t noticed her being missing all this time.

July 31, 2010

USDOT holding back Toyota report because it’s too favourable to Toyota?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

Toyota has been claiming for quite some time that they have found no fault in their cars that could cause unintended acceleration. The US government’s report is reported to support that claim, but officials have been delaying the release of that information:

Senior officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation have at least temporarily blocked the release of findings by auto-safety regulators that could favor Toyota Motor Corp. in some crashes related to unintended acceleration, according to a recently retired agency official.

George Person, who retired July 3 after 27 years at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said in an interview that the decision to not go public with the data for now was made over the objections of some officials at NHTSA.

“The information was compiled. The report was finished and submitted,” Mr. Person said. “When I asked why it hadn’t been published, I was told that the secretary’s office didn’t want to release it,” he added, referring to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

A Transportation Department spokeswoman, Olivia Alair, said NHTSA is still reviewing data from the Toyota vehicles the agency is examining. “Its review is not yet complete. The investigation remains ongoing,” she said.

It could be suspected that the reason the government doesn’t want to release the report is that it pretty much exonerates Toyota after their trial-by-media over the sudden acceleration issue. The US government’s holdings in GM and Chrysler make them effectively competitors with Toyota, and the media has done a fine job of trying to depress Toyota sales (to indirectly benefit GM and Chrysler).

But that would be an unfair thing to suspect, wouldn’t it?

QotD: Take experts’ advice with a pinch of salt

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Food, Health, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:41

More and more, the history of dietary guidelines that our public-health authorities promulgate resembles the Woody Allen comedy Sleeper, in which the main character, awaking from a centuries-long slumber, learns that every food we once thought bad for us is actually good, starting with steak and chocolate. But you wouldn’t know that from government experts’ increasing efforts to nudge us into their approved diets. In 2006, New York City passed the nation’s first ban on the use of trans fats by restaurants, and other cities followed suit, though trans fats constitute just 2 percent of Americans’ caloric intake. Now the Bloomberg administration is trying to push food manufacturers nationwide to reduce their use of salt — and the nutrition panel advising the FDA on the new guidelines similarly recommends reducing salt intake to a maximum of 1,500 milligrams daily (down from 2,300 a day previously). Yet Dr. Michael Alderman, a hypertension specialist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, observed in the New York Times that because sodium is an essential component of our diets, the city’s effort amounts to a giant uncontrolled experiment with the public’s health that could have unintended consequences. And in 2006, Harvard Medical School professor Norman Hollenberg concluded that while some people benefit from reduced salt intake, the evidence “is too inconsistent and generally too small to mandate policy decisions at the community level.”

Steven Malanga, “Egg on Their Faces: Government dietary advice often proves disastrous”, City Journal, 2010-07

July 30, 2010

Exactly right

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 18:32

July 27, 2010

Photography is legal in Britain . . . unless they catch you at it

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:22

The continuing story of police harassment of peaceful photographers has still not come to a middle:

The Metropolitan Police Force cannot be guaranteed to abide by the law when it comes to allowing the public their right to take photographs.

That was the startling admission made last week by Met Police Commissioner John Stephenson under sharp questioning from Liberal Democrat London Assembly Member Dee Doocey during a Police Authority Meeting on 22 July in City Hall. Video footage of the exchange is available on the Metropolitan Police Authority site, with relevant footage from around the 68 minute mark.

[. . .]

He admitted that he was aware of a recent disturbing incident that took place in Romford, which according to Doocey represented “eight minutes of two of your officers intimidating somebody”.

She continued: “At one stage they say that they don’t need a law to stop them photographing, but much more worrying, they don’t need a law to take them away. It’s not a question in my view of . . . It’s so serious that it don’t think it should be somebody giving them words of advice and I don’t also agree with you that it is a question of officers using their discretion.

“This was very black and white: Two of your officers who, despite the fact that I know you have given them guidelines because I have a copy of it, who totally disregarded them and were either so completely ignorant of the law, or decided to ignore the law — they were just going to say they knew the law better than the person they were talking to — they were very seriously intimidating. I find it quite worrying that I don’t think you are taking this quite as seriously as I think you should be.”

In short, the powers-that-be have grudgingly acknowledged that photographers do indeed have the right to take photos unmolested by PC Plod, but admitted that it’s still not actually been properly communicated to Plod and the other coppers on the beat.

We asked the Met for official comment as to why, despite the numerous efforts made by Assistant Commissioner John Yates and other serving officers to get the message about photography across, such incidents kept occurring. They suggested that these incidents were a very small part of the whole story of London policing, that to expect zero incidents was unrealistic, and that when such incidents occurred, they tended to be blown up out of all proportion by the press.

An alternative explanation, suggested to us by current and recently serving police officers with whom we have spoken, is that such incidents represent a far more disturbing aspect of police culture. They suggest that a small minority of officers see the law as being “what they say it is”, and these officers are quite prepared to take their chances, on the basis that the number of times they will be caught out by being recorded is likely to be few and far between.

It’s almost as if the police are sublimating their frustrations with the out-of-control but politically favoured members of certain religious groups and instead victimizing members of the public who don’t have political favour.

July 26, 2010

McGuinty’s governing style on display again

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:05

New rules on young drivers to come into effect very soon:

Starting on Aug. 1, this coming Sunday, drivers under the age of 22 in Ontario must have a blood alcohol reading of zero, regardless of what level of licence they possess or how many years of driving experience they have. This is a major change to Ontario’s system of licensing drivers. Twenty-one-year-old drivers, who may be fully licenced and mature and experienced, will be breaking the law if they have a beer a few hours before driving to the grocery store.

And our friendly Ontario government has announced this change in the dead of summer, on a Monday before a long weekend, and given the people of Ontario exactly six days to find out they might be about to break the law. Surprise, kids! You’re a drunk driver now!

[. . .]

How many times does the McGuinty government plan on making mistakes like this this summer? First there were the maddening rule changes surrounding the G20 fence, which weren’t announced and apparently didn’t even exist at all. Then there was the eco-fee debacle, where Ontarians were hit with a tax they weren’t told was coming into effect, with predictable public outcry. But those things may pale in comparison to the completely justified outrage if this government starts suspending licences this weekend. If there is reason to think that this measure will save lives, then I’m all for it, but for heaven’s sake, you have to give people more than six days’ notice.

(Calls placed to the Ministry, and to the office of the Minister herself, were met with total confusion this morning. When asked how the rule change was enacted — through legislation that had been quietly passed, through an order-in-council or through a simple administrative amendment — a Ministry spokesperson claimed not to understand the question.)

Every time the Ontario government does something like this you have to assume either they’re afraid to take any advance heat for new laws and regulations or that they want to ambush as many unsuspecting breakers-of-new-unpublicized-rules as they possibly can. Either way, it’s no way to run a government and retain the support of the governed.

The American class system

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:01

Unlike the British class system, which notoriously has three classes, the American system has only two:

. . . the United States today is divided into (a) a ruling class, which dominates the government at every level, the schools and universities, the mainstream media, Hollywood, and a great deal else, and (b) all of the rest of us, a heterogeneous agglomeration that Codevilla dubs the country class. The ruling class holds the lion’s share of the institutional power, but the country class encompasses perhaps two-thirds of the people.

Members of the two classes do not like one another. In particular, the ruling class views the rest of the population as composed of ignoramuses who are vicious, violent, racist, religious, irrational, unscientific, backward, generally ill-behaved, and incapable of living well without constant, detailed direction by our betters; and it views itself as perfectly qualified and entitled to pound us into better shape by the generous application of laws, taxes, subsidies, regulations, and unceasing declarations of its dedication to bringing the country — and indeed the entire world — out of its present darkness and into the light of the Brave New World it is busily engineering.

This class divide has little to do with rich versus poor or Democrat versus Republican. At its core, it has to do with the division between, on the one hand, those whose attitudes are attuned to the views endorsed by the ruling class (especially “political correctness”) and whose fortunes are linked directly or indirectly with government programs and, on the other hand, those whose outlooks and interests derive from and focus on private affairs, especially the traditional family, religion, and genuine private enterprise. Above all, as Codevilla makes plain, “for our ruling class, identity always trumps.” These people know they are superior in every way, and they are not shy about letting us know that they are. Arrogance might as well be their middle name.

July 22, 2010

Temporary aircraft security procedures

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:14

Apparently, asking the wrong question of aircraft personnel can get you booted off the plane — but not the next flight:

United Airlines ejected a loyal first class passenger from a recent plane flight because he asked if he would be getting dinner. At least, that’s his story. He may have been ejected because he’s the sort of security threat who claims he’s talking about food when he’s really talking about the police.

United takes such threats very seriously. At least for a few minutes.

The threat to the plane and its crew was so severe that United summoned the police and escorted him from the plane. Okay, if they thought he was a clear and present danger, they arrest him and charge him, yes?

No. He’s such a potentially dangerous character that they have an elite customer service agent met him coming off the flight to book him on the very next flight.

July 17, 2010

QotD: The census as legalized theft of time and resources

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Government, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 21:01

Those defending the Census’ mandatory long form have clothed their arguments in the public interest. We need, they argue, a detailed, fair and statistically accurate count of the population to ensure that government services and programs are effectively delivered to Canadians. Without going into how useful many of these programs really are, let’s agree that the Census provides an enormously valuable store of data. Data that is used not only by all three levels of government, but also market researchers, academics, corporations and charities.

The data gathered by the Census is a vital resource for both the public and private sector. But it is not the only valuable product or service used by governments. Governments also large use large quantities cement, asphalt, paper, sophisticated electronic equipment and the services of tens of thousands of Canadians. Yet it is expected that government pay for these products and services, from Canadians who voluntarily exchange their talents and energies.

If employees of the federal government started randomly seizing cement trucks, or conscripting people off the streets to build roads, such conduct would be rightly denounced. It would be the sort of behaviour one expects of thugs like Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, not the government of a free country like Canada. The Census, for the all the recent beating of breasts and furrowing of brows, is just another service the government needs to conduct its affairs.

A mandatory cenus is less about some hazy notion of the public interest, and more about governments, corporations, academics and other consumers of Census data getting a free ride. Rather than having to conduct their own research, and make careful adjusts to compensate for possible distortions between samples and the overall popualtion, these data consumers get the government to force ordinary Canadians to save them the bother.

Publius, “The Census: Government Information Theft”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2010-07-16

July 15, 2010

QotD: Auto history repeats itself

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Humour, Quotations, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:54

In the twinkling of an eye (by the standards of bureaucratic time, which is slower than geologic time but more expensive than time spent with Madame Claude’s girls in Paris) the thing was done. On March 7, 1989, the DOT-NHTSA-ODI-TSC-OPSAD-VRTC . . . effort produced an eighty-one page report written by an eight man group of engineering savants with more than fifty years of college among them. This document presented evidence from exhaustive experiment and analysis that proved what everybody who understands how to open the hood of a car had known all along about SAIs: “Pedal misapplications are the likely cause of these incidents.”

Yes, the dumb buggers stepped on the gas instead of the brake. [. . .] Anyway, the truth was out at last. The government had released a huge report showing that there was no such thing as unintended acceleration in automobiles. Stand by for huge government reports on fairies stealing children and poker wealth gained by drawing to inside straights. Meanwhile, cars did not fly away of their own accord. They could be safely left unattended.

. . . So the truth was out, and we people who like automobiles and can tell our right foot from our elbow should have been glad. But there was, in fact, no reason to celebrate. This message from the federal bowl of Alpha-Bits had cost us taxpayers millions of dollars and came too late to save Audi from the ignorance, credulity, opportunism and sheer Luddite malice directed toward that corporation and its products. Furthermore, the Department of Transportation press release introducing the SAI report absolved the paddle-shoed, dink-wit perpetrators of sudden acceleration. It just let Betty Dumb-Toes and Joe Boat-Foot right off the hook:

NHTSA declined to characterize the cause of sudden acceleration as driver error. Driver error may imply carelessness or willfulness in failing to operate a car properly. Pedal misapplication is more descriptive. It could happen to even the most attentive driver who inadvertently selects the wrong pedal and continues to do so unwittingly.

The next time I get pulled over by the state highway patrol, I’m telling the officer, “You probably intend to ticket me for speeding, which would be driver error. But pedal misapplication is more descriptive of what occurred. It could happen to even the most attentive driver who inadvertently selects the wrong pedal and continues to do so unwittingly.”

P.J. O’Rourke, Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire US Government, 1991

July 13, 2010

Lacrosse team caught in international issue over passports

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:24

This is a confusing situation, as Aboriginal tribes/nations are sometimes considered separate political entities from the country within which they live and other times are not. The Iroquois nation apparently has been issuing their own passports, but now the British and US governments don’t want to honour them as they have in the recent past:

The Iroquois team, known as the Nationals, represents the six Indian nations that comprise the Iroquois Confederacy, which the Federation of International Lacrosse considers to be a full member nation, just like the United States or Canada. The Nationals enter this year’s tournament ranked fourth in the world.

The Nationals’ 50-person delegation had planned to travel to Manchester, England, on Sunday on their own tribal passports, as they have done for previous international competitions, team officials said.

But on Friday, the British consulate informed the team that it would only issue visas to the team upon receiving written assurance from the United States government that the Iroquois had been granted clearance to travel on their own documents and would be allowed back into the United States. Neither the State Department nor the Department of Homeland Security would offer any such promise.

If the US government has allowed the use of Iroquois travel documents before, why are they now pretending they’ve never encountered them before? Is it a formal change in policy or just a bureaucrat flexing his or her ability to cause inconvenience and delay on a whim?

Update, 14 July: The New York Times reports that the team has been allowed to travel on their Iroquois passports:

The State Department’s blessing ends a five-day standoff between the Iroquois team and the federal government over whether the players could travel on their own documents instead of United States passports, as they have done in past international competitions.

Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York, said in a statement that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally intervened in the case on Wednesday morning and that the team would be able to depart on Wednesday afternoon.

“I am extremely grateful to Secretary of State Clinton, who responded to this glitch promptly and efficiently,” Ms. Slaughter said. “Going forward, we must find a way to balance homeland security concerns with some common sense and a border policy that does not create unintended consequences.”

Part of the reason appears to have been technical: “The Iroquois passports are partly hand-written and do not include any of the security features that make United States passports resistant to counterfeiting.”

July 12, 2010

QotD: Silly census fuss

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

[. . .] isn’t it just the slightest bit embarrassing for a government whose leader has trashed libertarians for their ethical myopia to have minions and media partisans present a libertarian pretext for an action that is not literally among the first 200 policy changes that would be implemented by an intelligent libertarian given plenary power?

Colby Cosh, “Census squabble: weak arguments shouldn’t have even worse foundations”, Maclean’s, 2010-07-12

Another ploy to save the British ID card system

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

Even though they’re no longer in government, Labour is still trying to save their ID card system:

The latest group lucky enough to enter their sights just happens to be the transgendered. The Identity Documents Bill, which is intended to assert the Coalition’s new position vis-à-vis matters like identity cards is currently at the Committee stage in the House of Commons.

On Tuesday, Labour MP and one-time Identity Minister Meg Hillier was on her feet proposing an amendment, which stated: “Any ID card issued to a transgendered person, which is valid immediately before the day on which this Act is passed, shall continue to be valid until the Secretary of State has laid before both Houses of Parliament a report to the effect that the Secretary of State is satisfied that an identity document in the assigned gender is available for issue to a transgendered person.”

And the down side for transitioning transsexuals?

While the amendment was intended to prevent a particular group being “outed”, the fact that this amendment would make the transgendered the only group of UK citizens in the country still carrying identity cards would be a de facto outing by the government.

He also introduced an intriguing notion and marker for future debate, suggesting that maybe the simplest solution was not more bureaucracy, but the removal of gender identity from any documents unless it was absolutely necessary.

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