Thursday, February 23, 2006

Dr. Finley

Once I was taking a class recreationally, which is simply a synonym for stupidly, at least when it comes to physics. Electrodynamics I was the name of the course, and it was taught by a man well into his 100's as far as I could tell. I think he was a close friend of Mark Twain and talked exactly how I imagine he might. In addition to assigning crippling workloads and his penchant for ridiculing students at the chalkboard, his tests were designed to be passed by only three people - Paul Dirac, Richard Feynman, and Albert Einstein. I imagine if Jesus were present, he probably would have gotten a "C" even if his Father smuggled him in a divine cheat sheet.

It's no stretch to say I did poorly, which is out of character for me. My saving grace was the fact that I changed the grading option to credit/no credit. The goal was to prevent weeks of mental anguish, which of course did not happen. Being a perfectionist means perfecting the art of failing sometimes, and in extreme cases perfecting the art of transferring mental pain to the physical realm. By the end of the semester I was suffering not only from panic attacks but also the associated physical symptom - what I called "stab wounds." A debilitating and precise pain erupted deep in the left side of my chest with increasing frequency as the course progressed.

From electric potential to Legendre polynomials to multipole expansions to linear dielectrics, I struggled on working long hours on problems that could be stated in one line but whose solutions could take up pages. The whole time I had the feeling that it wasn't difficult material, which only exacerbated my frustration. The semester dragged on and finally spit me out exhausted and yet relieved. It was my last semester as an undergrad; it was amazing to have finally finished.

8 months later I still had not received my diploma. I had assumed that UNM was functioning as it typically does, in some sort of time vortex where one of their minutes is equal to 16 of ours. Finally beginning to get worried, I made the trip over to Arts + Sciences to state my case.

Coincidentally, just that morning the whole office had been working "my case." It seemed that although I had gone through the ceremony - being awarded Outstanding Senior in Applied Mathematics - I was missing one little thing and never should have been allowed to graduate...a grade in my Electrodynamics I class. Turns out it wasn't an elective at all, I had fooled myself unconsciously into thinking that just to give myself the option of credit/no credit.

Nothing tears me up more than knowning I made a mistake
simply because I was not paying attention.

Resolving the problem was not as painful as it could have been, my diploma was officially awarded, and I've subsequently forgotten everything I learned. After all, a mathematics degree does not mean you actually
learned any math, just that you have the capacity to learn it.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Comment On Se Comprend

Anna,

You're wrong about me. I have the same tendencies as dad, which is to surround myself with distraction so there is just barely not enough time in the day to get around to doing the emotionally important things that weigh so heavily.

I have lived elsewhere, one of my most poignant memories is staring through a chain-link fence at the Mediterranean on a cold night. With nothing around me but a dilapidating French resort town and palm trees that months before had lost their lustre, I was sucked into a point on the horizon. The limit of where I could see, though probably only 30 miles away, stretched into an impassable infinity between myself - alone and weary from so much introspection - and my home.

I was alone. I understand it.

We've never known each other, Anna. From the very beginning we were in competition, which is why I tormented you and why you ran to mom and dad afterwards. We turned out very different people, and now that adolescence is finally waning we have to find out how to connect with one another.

I'm sorry when my dislike for talking on the phone is misinterpreted as a lack of interest in who you are. I talk about you all the time now, in fact last night I was explaining how quickly you'd qualified for SAG membership. The whole world you entered in LA isn't something I understand very well, nor is it something I would have gone up against myself. I'm a coward, I live at home with mom and dad avoiding and sort of movement that isn't lateral.

You were lucky in one instance, something that I've realized is still a very strong force on me emotionally. When I was in France, mom and dad were going to come visit me. Mom showed up without him, and I had not been told about the debilitating depression. Little did I realize it would be his failure to complete one of my fantasies at the time - to show my parents how much I had learned and knew about life in France - that would lead to my own downward spiral. I have a 5-page journal entry that is nothing but the words "It's all my fault" repeated over and over. These problems are cyclic, from father to son and from son to sister.

I'm doing the same thing to you.

love - I promise,
your brother,
Ben

Where Vigilante Justice Goes Wrong

What single act qualifies as both the firmest fist of justice and the most heinously unrighteous airing of grievances on another person? That's right, the keying of a car.

There are countless people every morning taking those last few naive steps toward their cars thinking this was a morning like any other. As the distance between man and vehicle is sufficiently small to allow for close inspection, the gory details engraved by a midnight vandal are resolved and the panic sets in. In terms of damage, it's amazing how 5 seconds can be worth $500. A hundred dollars per second? If I were in the auto body business I would probably have a team of thugs armed with titanium keys out every night ensuring my prosperity.

Often, though, it's not a random occurrence at all. Just like murder, car keying is linked most frequently to someone known to the victim - or at least in some how connected.

Take the case of a friend of mine. Recently, she moved into a cozy little apartment near campus, one of those places where students late for class will inevitably park regardless of consequences
just this once. What that means for the residents is the constant irritation of finding the lot they paid for completely full. Sounds frustrating, which is why there exists a perfectly reasonable punishment for these social transgressors - the common tow truck.

Having your car towed is terrible and shocking and can be expensive, but it is not the personal and moral violation that a keying is. It's like the physical damage to a paint job is akin to seeing someone kick your dog in the ribs.

Anyway, soon after she moved in she discovered a long deep key gash in her hood. A few days later, it was accompanied by the words "Don't park here" gouged in permanently. Aghast, she flew off the handle and raged to the apartment manager, which was pretty much all she could do. No matter how many experts in handwriting analysis she consulted, no one could match the perp to the crime, which was, of course, some fed up resident who had voiced her frustration with what was intended to be a punishment for someone who didn't live there.

Too bad it just ended up undermining the whole vigilante judicial process.

This anecdotal story serves as a perfect analogy for the death penalty. In the US, the ongoing debate about what purpose capital punishment serves. Arguments against it attack from many different angles.

Pragmatically speaking, it is quite expensive to execute someone thanks to lengthy appeals processes and extended jail time before the execution. In addition, there is little evidence that capital punishment deters the sorts of crimes for which it is the sentence. One could counter-argue that the execution of a murderer prevents any
future murders he might commit, but then again so does life in prison. The majority of murders are committed by first-timers anyway.

There are those who consider killing morally wrong, for personal or religious reasons.

Most poignant, from the State's position at least, is the possibility of executing an innocent person. The death penalty, unlike a prison term, cannot be overturned if new evidence presents itself which exonerates the criminal. It is the State's primary obligation to protect and more importantly
not to harm its citizens. Once there is even the remotest possibility of an innocent person's execution, the whole process should be re-evaluated.

Just as the person who keyed my friend's car should have considered the possibility that just maybe it belonged to someone paying the $500 a month to live there.

Let's take a quick look at the world. No country in Europe has the death penalty, except lone Belarus, and I bet you 100:1 you can't locate it on a map without Google. Japan doesn't have it, neither do Australia, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Colombia, and Turkey just to name a few. Don't get too worried yet, we have some brothers-in-arms. The list of our fellow executioners includes Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Cuba, and the mother of all killers - China. Note that these are all countries with which the US has spic-n-span political relations, whose governments are democratically elected, and whose people enjoy the freedom we champion every time we buy a Hummer or chomp down on some deliciously unhealthy freedom fries.

Within our community of state executioners, though, we are pretty pathetic. The US killed only 60 people in 2005, which pales in comparison to the over 3400 China performed. Chinese is unequivocally the least desirable citizenship to hold, at least in terms of fear that your own government will line you up against a cinderblock wall and pump you full of Kalashnikov rounds. But don't worry, all is not lost - we still have Texas. It's encouraging to those of us on the pro-death lobby that 2% (1/50) of the country can make up 38% of its executions. Yee haw!

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Chances Are You Don't Have HIV

In early February 2006, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that out of the 300,000,000 Americans out there, a million or so are HIV-positive. That's 1 in 300, or 0.3%.

How they came up with this figure, I have no idea. What I'm going to show you in the next 3 minutes is that if you test positive for HIV in America, you still probably don't have it. It's all in the numbers, and it's all very well known to the medical community.

Initial HIV tests are done using the Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (
ELISA) test. If a person tests positive, another more accurate test known as the Western blot is performed. Together these tests are claimed to have an accuracy of 99.5% - which is astoundingly precise for medical testing. But let's not count our chickens before they hatch. What this really means is that among people who do not have HIV, the test will yield 0.05% false positive.

Now I know this might scare you, but take a look at the diagram below.

In spite of what you're now thinking, this diagram is intended to
clarify the statistics behind the shocking conclusion I'm going to reveal in just a few sentences. Let me explain. The first set of divergent arrows represent the population, and the numbers along these arrows are percentages. We know that 99.7% of Americans are HIV-negative and 0.3% are HIV-positive. The second set of arrows orginating at HIV negative represent the test with its corresponding percentages. Now remember, every single one of these people is HIV-free, so any positives represent a mistake on the part of the test and someone who is told he has HIV and in reality is perfectly healthy aside from any number of other terrifying diseases, conditions, mutations, and disabilities not mentioned here.

This means that 0.5% of those healthy people will falesly test positive. So the
total number of positives will be the false-positives and the actual positives. The important thing to remember is that there are far more people in the healthy group, which means that even though only a tiny percentage of healthy people test positive, it's still going to be quite a large number. How large?

Let's say we test 10,000 people. We know that 30 people have HIV and 9,970 do not, but the important question is how many will
test positive? Calculator time, folks, and don't hate me for saying that. Multiplying the number of healthy people - 9,970 - by the probability they will test positive - 0.005 (0.5%) gives us just about 50.

If you're not shocked and amazed by this number, you probably zoned out right about the time I said the word "multiplying." What this means is that while only 30 people had HIV, there were a total of 80 who tested positive! So even with 99.5% accuracy, if you test positive for HIV there is a 62.5% chance you don't have it at all - that's almost 2 out of 3! Better hope your doctor knows this or you could end up paying for a lot more highly-active anti-retroviral therapy than you really need.

But wait a second, if you're not American you better look again. These conclusions are very dependent on the actual percentage of the population that has the disease. Thanks to 16 years of political isolationism under dictator Robert Mugabe, which has led to ignorance about the spread and severity of HIV/AIDS in its population of 12.5 million, the country of Zimbabwe has an estimated adult HIV infection rate of to have a 30%
or more. With the same accuracy, out of 10,000 Zimbabweans tested 35 will be false-positive but 3000 will actually have HIV. The likelihood, then, that you don't have HIV if you test positive in Zimbabwe drops to a staggeringly low 1.2%.

So now it must be fairly evident that when you get the results of a medical test back, it's very important to
know as much as possible because if for some odd reason your doctor doesn't, things can get out of hand. This analysis did not even include the much more frightening possibility of a false-negative; that is, someone who has the disease but tests negative.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Ever Cheat on Your Boss?

As far as employment goes, I'm a monogamist. Long-term relationship describes the few jobs that I have had.

Cashier at the local yuppie/hippie grocery store - 4 years
Server at faux 50s diner - 2 years
Event planner at Univeristy of NM - 3 years

None of those are one night stands, unless I include a very short stint doing promo for Camel cigarettes at the Journal Pavilion. My simple job was to pass out 2 free packs of smoke sticks to anyone willing to fill out a 3-line form. At 12 bucks an hour it was hard to pass up at the time, and I learned quickly why Camel puts so much money into their ad campaigns here - Albuquerque is Marlboro country. Never before have I encountered this level of brand loyalty, which resulted in countless refusals to accept free cigarettes. Even at the Stevie Nicks concert, where you would expect the hillbilly crowd to jump on the chance for free anything, seeing as their liquor store holdup money had been obviously squandered on leather jackets, tattoos, meth, motorcycles, pistols, and PBR leaving not a penny for dental visits or trips to the barber. But once again the ubiquitous anthem "No thanks, I'm a Marlboro Man" took precedence over white trash frugality.

More recently, I did cave in to the lure of one day's work - cheating on my day job as my father's grunt peon laborer. Thanks to Governor Bill Richardson's newly enacted incentives for the movie industry, more and more films have been produced right here in 'Burque. This had led to a sort of Hollywood hysteria among the 20-something set whose brushes with fame formerly only went as far as standing in line behind local anchorman Dick Knipfing at Starbucks. (His takes a Cafe Americano in case you were wondering.)

Getting on set as a background "actor" has become everyone's favorite past time. Since there is no competition, at least compared thespian slurry of Los Angeles, getting to work background is not a difficult task. Not to mention we get paid better than extras out there do, and this information comes to me from a very reputable source - my sister Anna.

In production right now is a film titled Beerfest, which by its name only tickles quite a few college fancies. Cast as a "party-goer" in a "college party" scene, it sounded like to good bit. The first sign that things weren't going quite as planned was the disparity between the info I'd gotten beforehand - this is going to be a very Western European party - and the fact they were pasting prop Colorado license plates onto the cars out front.

The details are lengthy and comparable to a chapter out of Angela's Ashes, so I'm going to indulge myself by not remembering any of them. All except the one lesson that I imagine no one before me has ever learned - non-alcoholic beer gives you one hell of a hangover. Perplexing, isn't it?

This all leads me to my present situation. Only half-employed, considering re-entry into the academic world towards some unknown pursuit, or truding forward in search of gobs and gobs of green paper with a million and one uses. Only one of these two options will send me to Europe again, but then again only one of the two will give me intellectual bragging rights over those who chose to rest on their Bachelor of Arts laurels.

I should know by Friday.

Friday, February 17, 2006

Those Freeport-Wheeling Capitalists

Did you know that Indonesia has a population, according to the CIA world factbook, of over 240 million, making it the world's fourth most populous country?

And were you aware that 90% of Indonesians are Muslim? That's over 200 million Muslims - which means there are more future terrorists lounging around in Indonesia than Iran, Iraq, Saudia Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria
combined! The Middle East is nothing compared to the Malay Archipelago. Lucky they're so far away, because if news of this Jihad reaches the Far East, we're screwed for sure. With that many people running around, US intelligence is having as hard a time tracking Al-Qaeda cells as Cheney is tracking a quail.

Lucky for us, we've got an ally in this battle. Known as Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc, or FCX on the New York Stock Exchange, these badboys have been fighting back against Islam for decades now. How? By operating the Grasberg Mine, located in eastern Indonesia, which just happens to be the world's largest gold mine and third largest copper mine.

In 1967, an agreement was signed between Freeport-McMoRan and the Indonesian government awarding mining rights to some rich deposits of copper and gold until 2011. Originally, the agreement covered 30 square kilometers, hardly enough to dig up the gold for a single Rolex. Luckily, in 1989 the mining license was extended to include another
25,000 square kilometers. Now that's a lot of bullion! For years now, Freeport-McMoRan has been rifling through this land and selling all the goodies they find inside. Guess where all the profits went? Right into the bank accounts of CEOs and shareholders right here in the good old US of A.

I'm not talking peanuts, either. FCX has risen almost 500% since the beginning of 2002. Just this year, Freeport-McMoRan announced a record financial result for 2005 - reducing debt by $700 million, paying stock dividends of $500 million, and ending the year with $750 million in cash. In 2004, the mine's proven gold reserves were estimated at 46 million ounces. At an average price of $500 an ounce, that's $23 billion worth of gold sitting there waiting for democracy to dig it up. The problem with all that gold and copper is that it is embedded in tons of rock in a mine on top of a mountain. Even worse, the native Amungme people were living there and you know how natives can be when you're trying to rape their sacred grounds. Lucky for Jim Bob Moffett, CEO of Freeport-McMoRan, all you have to do is slip some Benjamins into the pockets of some high-level military officials and you've got the entire might of the Indonesian military whooping ass on its own native people. It also didn't hurt having former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the board to give former Indonesian president Suharto backrubs whenever he felt a little stressed.

In addition to pilfering Indonesia's natural resources and sending all the sweet profits across the Pacific so shareholders in America can afford those much-needed chrome 24-inch rims for their Cadillac Escalades, Freeport-McMoRan is also hitting them where it hurts most - below the belt. Or above it in this case - the excavation of countless tons of earth from the mountaintop where the mine is located has led to a crater that can be seen
from space. This is how Moffett describes it: "We have a volcano that's been decapitated by nature, and we're mining the esophagus, if you will." If those aren't the words of a hero, why did UT Austin name their molecular biology building after the guy?

So what happens to all the useless rock that's left after all the goodies are taken out? The inevitable side-effect of this huge mining operation is the production of massive amounts of tailings which can contain toxic heavy metals and byproducts of the ore-extraction process. But who cares? This ain't Canada, over there in Indonesia you can just dump it in the river. Since 1995, the Grasberg mine has dumped 650 million metric tons of untreated tailings into this river, the Aikwa, which now has such high deposits of copper that the fish in it have been completely wiped out. In other words, the ecosystem has been devastated and there is a lot more to come, as the mine produces over 200,000 tons of tailings
every single day.

Back in 1995 it got to the point where the Overseas Private Investment Corporation revoked Freeport-McMoRan's $100 million environmental insurance policy, something never before done. Reason cited: the mine posed "unreasonable or major environmental, health or safety hazards." Then in 1996 Freeport-McMoRan was awarded the honor of one of the world's top 10
worst corporations by Multinational Monitor magazine. Once again, these analysts have failed to note that Freeport-McMoRan has been doing all of us in the US a mighty big favor in terms of national security. Without them, Indonesians might be mining the gold themselves and you know that all the profits would be going straight into Osama's Swiss bank account.

And just in case some environmentally-minded and civil-liberty championing left-wingers come marching in to tell them that life would be better if they just packed up and came home, Freeport-McMoRan has got an ace up its sleeve - they are based in New Orleans. This means that they place an integral part in the rebuilding of the city that won all of our hearts by winning the 2005 Western Hemisphere Worst Disaster gold medal (Pakistan, of course, took the World Title). Now you've got these bleeding-heart liberals trapped in a paradox of born of their own benevolence, after all - who would want to hinder economic regrowth in the Big Easy? Mardi Gras 2007 had better kick as much ass as Burning Man.

So in the end turning international relations over to an ethically-challenged, multinational corporation is a hell of a lot better than putting Indonesia on the Axis of Evil list and coming in with a whole bunch of Marines and maybe a cruise missle or two to blow the place up. As long as your typical Indonesian is scrambling to make ends meet and worrying about whether their drinking water contains high levels of sulfuric acid, he won't have time to make it to the late night Al-Qaeda poker games. And we don't want to step in there with the military and screw up the status quo anyway. Why? Because Indonesia's most populous island is Java, and we all know that homeland security and freedom means nothing without a venti triple shot latte from Starbucks.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Enter: The Copacetic Life

Welcome, world of web-logging.

I have finally entered the world of online publishing, slightly behind schedule. And when I say slightly, take that to mean monumentally. Fortunately, there are hereditary reasons why I wasn't the first person to pioneer the digital recounting of his mundane quotidien tales. My family has always been hesitant to step into the inviting yet unknown waters at the shallow end of the modern age.

For instance, my parents received their first microwave when I was in high school in the mid 90's. Note the active word there - received. By no means would they have gone out and paid the 100 dollars or so to buy one, it took a miraculous technophile to force it into our home. Ironically, this philanthropist was also host to the same parsimonious genetic material that led to our familial frugality - I call him Grandpa.

It's embarrassing when a 68 year old man has ventured further into the modern world than you have. After all, this was the 90s - I should have been knee deep in pagers, 2400 baud modems, and Hypercolor t-shirts.

And then there was cable TV. The other kids were watching Madonna get half-naked on MTV or learning about Chester B. Arthur on the History Channel while I was trying to squint through the broadcast static to figure out what Matlock was up to. The technique I developed was similar to that for those Magic Eye posters. Slowly let your eyes relax and cross until something pops out of nowhere. I imagine this is something like Zen spiritual enlightenment, without the half-lotus.

Finally, though, the day arrived. The magic white box found itself a spot near the sink and settled there slowly. With caution, I approached. At a time when most people already knew the pleasures of nuking their hot pockets and toaster pastries in mere seconds, I was filled with whimsical discovery.

Not long after, I realized why those households who did have one hardly seemed to care. Microwaved food is mushy. If you happen to leave it in there 10 seconds too long it becomes just the opposite, condensing into a flavorless rock. In both cases it is hardly edible.

I'm back to the toaster oven.