NOW REPORTING FROM BALTIMORE. A private, non-commercial blog begun in support of the federal Meaningful Use REC initiative, and Health IT and Heathcare improvement more broadly. Moving now toward important broader STEM and societal/ethics topics. Formerly known as "The REC Blog."
NOTE: Comments are moderated, thanks to trolls and bots.
Notwithstanding having begun my day gig work using microcomputers in the mid-1980's in the 10-bit DOS (2.1), Intel world in a lab in Oak Ridge(where I also installed and admin'd an Intel based Unix server/thin client "dumb terminals" network to run an Oracle platform LIMS), it has long been total Mac Snobbery in our house.
I came to Macs in 1991 upon joining a West Knoxville digital industrial diagnostics startup firm as their Technical Editor. Our department was basically an in-house digital ad agency running then- state of the art Macs doing publication-quality 4-color pre-press on platforms such as QuarkExpress and Photoshop. We even did our own Mac-based video production. It was a great fun time.
I compose this blog stuff on either my 13" Mac Air or 27" iMac desktop. My wife uses a 13" Mac Air. We both have iPads, iPhones and Apple watches, and our creaking 2003 21" iMac still works (running in a corner just off the kitchen), as does our old Mac PowerBook. We run a Mac Time Capsule Wifi router with Time Machine always-on silent backup. I'm currently running OS Mojave on both my iMac and Mac Air.
Now comes Mac OS Catalina. Apple keeps badgering me to upgrade, every time I get an "upgrades available" notice for other routine stuff.
2^64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616
Mac OS Catalina, 64-bit addressing. 2 raised to the 64th power. What's not to love? Lotta app power potential there.
This:
Apple has been working with developers to transition theirapps, and in 2018 Apple informed them thatmacOSMojave would be the last version ofmacOSto run32-bit apps. Apple's transition to64-bit technology is now complete. Starting withmacOS Catalina,32-bit appsare no longer compatible withmacOS
What will all of this cost me? Netted out against the improved OS functionality? (My prior OS migration to OS Mojave has proved to be a mixed blessing; they "fixed" a lot of stuff that "wasn't broke.") Don't know yet. Probably just gonna hang with Mojave a while longer (in part to let other early adopters serve as bug testers).
ERRATUM
All fun and games now, isn't? Wait til those little bastards have razor sharp claws and one bad software patch. https://t.co/v5bC2ujM0x
Yeah, the more things change, the more they remain the same. I first came to the fractious Health IT space in 2005 ("DOQ-IT"). We continue to fight a lot of the same battles. Interestingly, Dr. Embi touts Kaiser Permanente at 08:00. Cheryl and I are now KP members. So far so good.
_____________
When we have yet to even get to consistently ethical human intelligence?
Two (of four) of my current book reads. Stay tuned. Timely, important material.
Note: Henceforth you are able to click on book cover images to go straight to their respective purchase info sites in a new browser window (usually Amazon).
The field of ethics (or moral philosophy) involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. Philosophers today usually divide ethical theories into three general subject areas: metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics.Metaethicsinvestigates where our ethical principles come from, and what they mean. Are they merely social inventions? Do they involve more than expressions of our individual emotions? Metaethical answers to these questions focus on the issues of universal truths, the will of God, the role of reason in ethical judgments, and the meaning of ethical terms themselves.Normative ethicstakes on a more practical task, which is to arrive at moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct. This may involve articulating the good habits that we should acquire, the duties that we should follow, or the consequences of our behavior on others. Finally,applied ethicsinvolves examining specific controversial issues, such asabortion, infanticide,animal rights,environmental concerns,homosexuality,capital punishment, or nuclearwar.
Notwithstanding my long (albeit late-blooming) white-collar career in a variety of tech disciplines, my field of grad study was squarely in the domain of "applied ethics." My MA is in "Ethics & Policy Studies," an interdisciplinary gumbo of applied ethics ("moral philosophy"), PolySci, Jurisprudence/ConLaw, and Econ, all applied to a policy topic of interest.
So, this kind of stuff is intrinsically of interest to me.
UPDATE
Amazon's AI certainly has my number. Touted just now in my inbox:
“[Coleman] argues that the algorithms of machine learning — if they are instilled with human ethics and values — could bring about a new era of enlightenment.” —San Francisco Chronicle
The Age of Intelligent Machines is upon us, and we are at a reflection point. The proliferation of fast-moving technologies, including forms of artificial intelligence akin to a new species, will cause us to confront profound questions about ourselves. The era of human intellectual superiority is ending, and we need to plan for this monumental shift.
A Human Algorithm: How Artificial Intelligence Is Redefining Who We Areexamines the immense impact intelligent technology will have on humanity. These machines, while challenging our personal beliefs and our socioeconomic world order, also have the potential to transform our health and well-being, alleviate poverty and suffering, and reveal the mysteries of intelligence and consciousness. International human rights attorney Flynn Coleman deftly argues that it is critical that we instill values, ethics, and morals into our robots, algorithms, and other forms of AI. Equally important, we need to develop and implement laws, policies, and oversight mechanisms to protect us from tech’s insidious threats.
To realize AI’s transcendent potential, Coleman advocates for inviting a diverse group of voices to participate in designing our intelligent machines and using our moral imagination to ensure that human rights, empathy, and equity are core principles of emerging technologies. Ultimately,A Human Algorithmis a clarion call for building a more humane future and moving conscientiously into a new frontier of our own design.
A groundbreaking narrative on the urgency of ethically designed AI and a guidebook to reimagining life in the era of intelligent technology."
I'm gonna go broke buying books to study. I don't get paid for these rants. Gonna have to find a gig to continue to fund this Jones.
e.g., "NLU"--Natural Language Understanding. I remain dubious. But, it's a moving target.
ANOTHER READ TO CONSIDER
...The demonstrated power of artificial intelligence has, in the last few years, led to massive media exposure and commentary. Countless news articles, books, documentary films and television programs breathlessly enumerate AI’s accomplishments and herald the dawn of a new era. The result has been a sometimes incomprehensible mixture of careful, evidence-based analysis, together with hype, speculation and what might be characterized as outright fear-mongering. We are told that fully autonomous self-driving cars will be sharing our roads in just a few years—and that millions of jobs for truck, taxi and Uber drivers are on the verge of vaporizing. Evidence of racial and gender bias has been detected in certain machine learning algorithms, and concerns about how AI-powered technologies such as facial recognition will impact privacy seem well-founded. Warnings that robots will soon be weaponized, or that truly intelligent (or superintelligent) machines might someday represent an existential threat to humanity, are regularly reported in the media. A number of very prominent public figures—none of whom are actual AI experts—have weighed in. Elon Musk has used especially extreme rhetoric, declaring that AI research is “summoning the demon” and that “AI is more dangerous than nuclear weapons.” Even less volatile individuals, including Henry Kissinger and the late Stephen Hawking, have issued dire warnings.
The purpose of this book is to illuminate the field of artificial intelligence—as well as the opportunities and risks associated with it—by having a series of deep, wide-ranging conversations with some of the world’s most prominent AI research scientists and entrepreneurs. Many of these people have made seminal contributions that directly underlie the transformations we see all around us; others have founded companies that are pushing the frontiers of AI, robotics and machine learning...
Ford, Martin. Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it (p. 2). Packt Publishing. Kindle Edition.
A call for interested, knowledgeable interviewees.
We’re making an NIH-funded podcast on a very important topic! Maybe we want to interview you! Tiffany Doherty
We are creating a podcast about science culture! Specifically, it is a podcast that will be accompanied by educational modules (all NIH funded) addressing how the “culture of science” plays into the “reproducibility crisis”.
We are focusing on the “why” behind the “how”. Meaning rather than focusing on p-hacking/image duplication/fabricated data, we’re focusing on what drives people to p-hack/duplicate images/fabricate data. We want to examine, among other things, the incentive systems put into place by universities, granting agencies, & publishers, and how that contributes to poor research.
A (non-exhaustive) list of things we plan to cover:
How quantity over quality is rewarded in hiring, tenure/promotion, funding, publishing
Media coverage (fame factor and how the media doesn’t report on null results)
Conflicts of interest (professional, ideological, financial)
Poor oversight/mentoring (including how that can trickle down scientific “generations”)
Authority structure
Particularly in terms of those last two: We want to talk to people who have felt pressure from mentors (likely during grad school or postdoc) to conduct inappropriate analyses and/or other data/publication related tasks for the sake of publishing specific and/or significant results. We want to hear from you whether you felt comfortable doing what was asked of you or not, whether you complied or did not. There is no judgement, only the wish to talk about an issue that is difficult to quantify precisely because we do not talk about it. We can take measures to anonymize you if you prefer.
If you have stuff to say about any of the above, we want to hear from you!!! You can e-mail Tiffany at tsdohert@iu.edu or DM her on Twitter @DrTiff_
We’ll likely conduct a pre-interview over the phone (less than 20 minutes) to make sure we’ll have plenty of relevant and interesting things to discuss, and if we all feel like it’s a go, we’ll get you scheduled for an interview. We’ll come to you and work around your schedule. The interview itself would be around an hour, and it’s not live, so we can edit anything. Very low pressure. We want this to be as easy on you as possible.
In addition, if you have further topics related to this angle that you think we should consider, we want to hear about it! And if you know someone who would be awesome but not likely to see this, we want to hear about them, too!
I spoke with Dr. Doherty today to encourage this initiative. All that good science stuff. Been riffing on it a lot of late. "Define 'science,'" "Why trust science?"
I first came to Medicare analytics 26 years ago in 1993, signing on with what was then called the Nevada Peer Review (shortly thereafter re-branded as the HealthInsight Medicare QIO). QIO's, "Quality Improvement Organizations," were mostly state-level non-profits contracted by the then-"HCFA" (Health Care Financing Administration / CMMS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). It would be my first of three tenures with them.
The new "QIO's" were intended to evolve past the Peer Reviews' traditional "beat cop" review / sanction function into progressive QI facilitators. The results were a mixed bag.
In addition to my duties as our Novell LAN administrator, I ground up tons of mostly UB-82 statewide hospital encounter quarterly claims data, using SAS and Stata platforms, resulting in periodic summary tabular, graphics, and narrative reports like this one (pdf).
A quarter century later, we're still fussing over stuff like "hospital readmission rates." I'm not sure that the widespread penetration of EHR's and HIE's has made all that much of a difference.
"Who knew health care could be so complicated?" - President Donald Trump
Executive Summary Implications of Climate Change for the U.S. Army
Current conversations about climate change and its impacts are often rancorous and politically charged. As an organization that is, by law, non-partisan, the Department of Defense (DoD) is precariously unprepared for the national security implications of climate change-induced global security challenges. This study examines the implications of climate change for the United States Army. This includes national security challenges associated with or worsened by climate change, and organizational challenges arising from climate change-related issues in the domestic environment. Given that, the study’s starting point is the implications of climate change for the U.S. Army, and the Army is therefore the focus of the analysis and recommendations. That said, much of the analysis involves DoD and other elements of the government, and most of the Army-specific recommendations have parallels that apply to other military services.
The study itself did not involve original research on the nature or magnitude of climate change. The analysis assumes, based on the preponderance of evidence available, that significant changes in climate have already occurred, likely to worsen in the years ahead. The study did not look to ascribe causation to climate change (man-made or natural), as causation is distinct from effects and not pertinent to the approximately 50-year horizon considered for the study. The study does, however, assume that human behavior can mitigate both the size and consequences of negative impacts that result from climate change…
Conclusion
The implications of significant, global, regional and local change produced by a general warming of the Earth’s climate are far too extensive to be addressed by this study. Therefore, the guiding principle of this study was to explore diverse areas of importance for the Army that are or will be likely affected by climate change and to develop reasonable, useful recommendations in connection with those areas. A larger and perhaps even more urgent lesson from this study is the importance of developing regular administrative and institutional structures and processes that allow the Army and the DoD to detect, evaluate, respond and regularly review the implications of systemic risk relevant to the Army’s missions and preparedness. Large scale threats like cli- mate change and mass migrations are systemic risks, with emergent features not captured by the simple summation of threat-by-threat-by-threat assessments. The Army must find governance mechanisms that generate greater flexibility, without risk of compromise to the integrity of the force, to deal with the various significant stresses on the Army inherent to a warming climate. These stresses are occurring for military and civilian institutions alike against the backdrop of exponential changes in technology, human population, resource consumption, urbanization, sea level rise, etc.
It is useful to remind ourselves regularly of the capacity of human beings to persist in stupid beliefs in the face of significant, contradictory evidence. Mitigation of new large-scale stresses requires a commitment to learning, systematically, about what is happening…
Her new book is the best place evah to safely hide a $100 bill from Donald Trump.
A FEW OTHER RECENT RELEVANT TITLES ON THIS SCIENCE RIFF
I have lots more on "science per se," but this is enough for now.
Prior posts going to this topical thread: Define "expert." Define "evidence." Define "science."
One general pick I continue to have: the word "evidence." In Naomi's new book the word shows up more than 200 times. Not one definition. In The Scientific Attitude you get nearly 500 hits. Not one definition. And so on. We unreflectively assume we're all on the same page. Curious--unhelpfully so, given that so much of legal, scientific, and policy disagreement centers around wrangling over what counts as "evidence," no?
Notwithstanding that pedantic little gripe, I encourage you to buy and carefully read the compelling Why Trust Science?
If ["the Fourth Industrial Revolution"] strikes you as the sort of futurist buzzspeak you’d expect to hear at a rich guy conference or printed on a consultant’s slide deck, well, that’s because it is. The Fourth Industrial Revolution was the title of a 2016 book by Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, and was a theme this year at the group’s annual summit in Davos, Switzerland, which brings together the world’s jet set each winter to hob knob and listen drowsily to panel discussions before hitting very expensive private parties.
Many economists would tell you that we have lived through three industrial revolutions. The first started with the steam engine, the second was brought about by advances like electricity, and the third saw the rise of computing. Schwab says we’re at the start of a fourth, which he describes as “a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.” Think artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, self-driving cars, 3D printing, biotech, cybernetics, and such. At Davos, Schwab wanted attendees to contemplate not just how these new innovations could usher in brilliant new advances for business and humanity, but also the danger that they would lead to greater inequality…
"Ubiquitous, mobile supercomputing. Artificially-intelligent robots. Self-driving cars. Neuro-technological brain enhancements. Genetic editing. The evidence of dramatic change is all around us and it’s happening at exponential speed.
Previous industrial revolutions liberated humankind from animal power, made mass production possible and brought digital capabilities to billions of people. This Fourth Industrial Revolution is, however, fundamentally different. It is characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human."
Naomi is awesome, but sometimes I wish some of these other Serious Futurist Thinkers would get their nomenclatures straight.
In the nineteenth century, steam-powered printing and the telegraph, abundant coal, and locomotives on national rail systems meshed in a common general-purpose technology platform to manage, power, and move society, giving rise to the First Industrial Revolution. In the twentieth century, centralized electricity, the telephone, radio and television, cheap oil, and internal combustion vehicles on national road systems converged to create an infrastructure for the Second Industrial Revolution.
Now, we are in the midst of a Third Industrial Revolution. The digitalized Communication Internet is converging with a digitized Renewable Energy Internet, powered by solar and wind electricity, and a digitized Mobility and Logistics Internet of autonomous electric and fuel-cell vehicles, powered by green energy, atop an Internet of Things (IoT) platform, embedded in the commercial, residential, and industrial building stock, that will transform society and the economy in the twenty-first century. Sensors are being attached to every device, appliance, machine, and contrivance, connecting every “thing” with every human being in a digital neural network that extends across the entire global economy. Already, billions of sensors are attached to resource flows, warehouses, road systems, factory production lines, the electricity transmission grid, offices, homes, stores, and vehicles, continually monitoring their status and performance and feeding Big Data back to the emerging Communication Internet, Renewable Energy Internet, and Mobility and Logistics Internet. By 2030, there could be trillions of sensors connecting the human and natural environment in a global distributed intelligent network.
Connecting everything and everyone via the Internet of Things offers enormous economic benefits. In this expanded digital economy, individuals, families, and enterprises will be able to connect in their homes and workplaces to the IoT and access Big Data flowing across the World Wide Web that affects their supply chains, production and services, and every aspect of their social lives. They can then mine that Big Data with their own analytics and create their own algorithms and apps to increase their aggregate efficiency and productivity, reduce their carbon footprint, and lower the marginal cost of producing, distributing, and consuming goods and services and recycling waste, making their businesses and homes greener and more efficient in an emerging postcarbon global economy. (Marginal cost is the cost of producing an additional unit of a good or service after fixed costs have been absorbed.)…
Rifkin, Jeremy (2019-09-09T23:58:59). The Green New Deal. St. Martin's Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"Third?" Fourth?" Whatever.
Yeah, and that thought always takes me back to Frase's "Quadrant IV."
The Trump "Administration" and their entrenched extractive economy status quo incumbent sectors have made absolutely no secret of their belligerent ad hominem opposition to anything they characterize as "socialism." Just in case you've not been paying attention.
“An apparent preference for ignorance is not unique to healthcare. Policies across governments at all levels are put in place without plans to to find out if they work or how to unwind them if they don’t, or how to build on them if they do.” —Aaron Carroll, MD
That quote comes at 05:39 in the video below.
Very nice segment. Kudos.
Ahhh... there's that pesky word "evidence" again. What rationally ("scientifically") counts as "evidence?"
On January 14,2019, the President signed H.R. 4174, theFoundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (pdf) of 2018, which became PublicLaw115-435. The bill passed the House, as amended, on November 15, 2017. The Senate then passed the bill with additional amendments by unanimous consent on December 19, 2018.
(6)Evidence.-The term "evidence" means information produced as a result of statistical activities conducted for a statistical purpose.
There you go, the official federal definition of "evidence" (as it pertains to "policymaking/legislating" anyway). See any potential problems there?
Further down:
(10) Statistical activities.—The term “statistical activities”— (A) means the collection, compilation, processing, or analysis of data for the purpose of describing or making estimates concerning the whole, or relevant groups or components within, the economy, society, or the natural environment; and (B) includes the development of methods or resources that support those activities, such as measurement methods, models, statistical classifications, or sampling frames. (11) Statistical agency or unit.— The term “statistical agency or unit” means an agency or organizational unit of the executive branch whose activities are predominantly the collection, compilation, processing, or analysis of information for statistical purposes, as designated by the Director under section 3562. (12) Statistical purpose.—The term “statistical purpose”— (A) means the description, estimation, or analysis of the characteristics of groups, without identifying the individuals or organizations that comprise such groups; and (B) includes the development, implementation, or maintenance of methods, technical or administrative procedures, or information resources that support the purposes described in subparagraph (A)...
All well and good, as far as it goes. Ironic that the utterly anti-science klepto-kakistocrat U.S. President currrently in office signed it into law. Problematic as well, given that he simply, routinely ignores empirical and logical evidence or advice he doesn't like. Doing credible policy science does not come on the cheap. If an administration summarily blows off politically inconvenient research findings, all we do is end up wasting more money.
"Why Trust Science?" author Dr. Naomi Oreskes notes that many people don't disbelieve science per se; they (selectively) reject its frequently disruptive policy implications--i.e., they opt for fallacious inertial "motivated reasoning." As my old IHC healthcare QI mentor Dr. Brent James liked to quip, "the only person who enjoys change is a baby with a wet diaper."
ERRATUM: A CURRENT READ
Speaking of "quant" stuff:
...In this collection, we present some of the mathematical gems from the pages of Scientific American since the turn of the millennium. We start with a collection of articles about some of the most important purely mathematical results of the past few decades, the frontiers of the field. In Section 2, we explore the body mathematic: the way mathematical modeling is helping scientists understand biology. Section 3 is about mathematics in service of physics. The two fields have been closely entwined for millennia, and their coevolution continues today. Section 4 is about the role of mathematics in the way human beings relate to each other: politics, art, and of course trying to keep or steal secrets. Though mathematics has created ever-more-powerful tools for modeling the world and computing with precision, we must also reckon with its limitations. In Section 5, we bring you one article from the deep vaults, a 1956 exploration of Kurt Gödel’s groundbreaking incompleteness theorems. He showed that there are questions mathematics will never answer, no matter what axioms we choose and how deeply we commit ourselves to studying them. Since then, mathematicians have continued to probe the limitations of the discipline, seeking to define the very boundaries of what humans can know. [Kindle Locations 55-64].
My version of a Cliff's Notes refresher, I guess.
OFF-TOPIC: A SAD NOTE
We've now been in Baltimore for 6 months. Elijah's (obviously gerrymandered) district bordered, among otther locations, the east side of York Road, a few blocks from our location in the Homeland District just west of York. I knew he'd been ill, but was not aware just how severely. RIP, Sir. Our condolences to his family and friends.
___
…A key threat to concerted action is climate skepticism, coupled with a drastic shift in the intensity of emotional responses related to climate issues. When challenging a person's position on an issue means challenging a central tenet of their identity, facts can be perceived as attacks and are easily deflected. Klein maintains, however, that enhancing communication and tying climate change to other concerns, including the economy and social justice, will help mitigate these threats.
Amid increasing tension between climate advocates and those disavowing climate change, a shift in values is occurring. Today's activists understand that to change environmental policy requires confronting the values of “rampant greed and individualism” that led to the economic crisis. Social change, Klein contends, begins with radically altering how we relate to each other (and to nature), accepting our collective responsibility to future generations, and respecting the interconnection of all life.
Economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin, whose work has inspired climate legislation in China and in various countries in the European Union (E.U.), is well positioned to advocate for this new political vision. In The Green New Deal, Rifkin confronts skepticism about the feasibility of making a transition of the scale required by countering that we are already making these changes in many global regions. It is time, he argues, for the United States to join the E.U. and China as leaders toward a zero-carbon economy…
Rifkin highlights another potential tipping point, arguing that emerging renewable energies are driving humanity to the “collapse of the fossil fuel civilization.” He cites a 2018 study (2) that concluded that a “carbon bubble”—in which fossil fuel prices will be reduced to compete with renewable prices—would lead to economic and environmental damage if not deflated early. He believes that we can avoid this with rapid decarbonization.
In the second part of the book, Rifkin describes his vision for a Green New Deal in detail, highlighting lessons learned from climate policies in the E.U. and in China…
Founder and president, Foundation on Economic Trends; former advisory board member, EarthSave International; national council member, Farm Animal Reform MovementJeremy Rifkin, the founder and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends (FOET), is the intellectual guru of the neo-Luddites, especially as their anti-technology principles apply to food. He is the author of 16 books, most of them littered with errors and false predictions. A professional scaremonger who has been called “the most hated man in science” byTIME magazine, Rifkin nonetheless has a wide following and genuine influence on public policy debates.National Journalmagazine named Rifkin one of the 150 people in the U.S. that have the most influence in shaping federal government policy for his “skillfully manipulated legal and bureaucratic procedures to slow the pace of biotechnology.”
Rifkin’s international campaigns against beef consumption and genetically enhanced crops are motivated by his anti-technology philosophy. Rifkin disparages efficiency, promotes “empathy” with nature, and thinks human beings were better off in less advanced centuries. Always prone to exaggeration, Rifkin wrote in his bookBeyond Beefthat giving up steaks and burgers “is a revolutionary act” that heralds “a new chapter in the unfolding of human consciousness.”
Hmmm... Below, his book tagline:
While I am persuaded of the exigent global anthropocene problem we face, "fossil fuel civilization collapse" nine years from now knocks my bullshit detectors a notch. I'm not sure he has the Sheet to assert that credibly (in fairness, critics could look at myheterodox late-bloomer CV [pdf] and offer up a similar gripe).
Wikipedia:
[Rifkin] was president of the graduating class of 1967 at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, where he received a Bachelor of Science in Economics at theWharton Schoolof Finance and Commerce. Rifkin was also the recipient of the University of Pennsylvania's General Alumni Association's Award of Merit 1967.He had an epiphany when one day in 1967 he walked past a group of students protesting theVietnam Warand picketing the administration building and was amazed to see, as he recalls, that "my frat friends were beating the living daylights out of them. I got very upset." He organized a freedom-of-speech rally the next day. From then on, Rifkin quickly became an active member of thepeace movement. He attended theFletcher School of Law and DiplomacyatTufts University(MA, International Affairs, 1968) where he continued anti-war activities...
Dunno. Just have some concerns at this point. Mulling buying his book for study and evaluation. Some of the "free preview" stuff is intriguing.
Rifkin on YouTube:
UPDATE: GENETIC SCIENCE, MEET POLICY "SCIENCE"
Opening on Netflix today. Trailer below.
The documentary series UNNATURAL SELECTION explores new developments in the science of gene-editing that defy evolution and raise moral, social and environmental impact questions about where we, as a society, draw the line.
I'm now a Netflix subscriber. I will watch all of this ASAP. Wonder what Mr. Rifkin would have to say about this topic. From STATnews:
Mankind’s ability to edit the fabric of human life has led to scientific upheaval, global debate, and at least one international incident. Now, it’s coming to Netflix.
“Unnatural Selection,” a four-part docuseries debuting Friday, dissects the stories, science, and ethics behind genome editing, following academics, biohackers, and patients as they move through a brave new world made possible by technologies like CRISPR…
