Dying Young

What you're looking at is a graph depicting the death rates in different eras.

Take the low blue line. This is the 1900-1902 line, showing what befell the people in the United States, base on a per-100,000 live birth rate. At the left you can see that since this is live births, everyone survived to birth. There is a steep decline showing that only 89% of Americans survived to 1 year old. The next data point along that line shows another decline and only 82% of the original group survived to 5 years old. And so on.

What does this show? Well we're getting better and better at surviving to the elbow of the curve... no line shows a lower survival at any point than a previous era except in one spot. Between 1919-1921, humans in the United States survived to five years old in a lower percentage than between 1909-1911. I think that must be related to the 1917/1918 flu epidemic. It shows what a real pandemic actually looks like... imagine what it was like when children were dying at such a rate....

The other curious thing it shows is that the advantages over our very recent forebears is still holding up... in 2004 we still see the same advantage over 1989-1991 as 1909-1911 saw over 1900-1902. I would have thought we'd be compressing more than we are.

Also, while the data stops at 100, it's clear that we converge at the extreme old age... we aren't getting a greater percentage of people beyond about 95 than we ever have.

At the big bulge we can see how well we're getting people into their 50s. For Americans born in 1850 we were getting about 54% into their 50s. 94% of Americans born in 1954 were still alive in 2004.

That's pretty amazing, and shows that we seem to have gotten people over the childhood disease rate... the curve is flat until heart attacks take people out in their 50s and 60s. I suspect that cancer is killing us at the far right, and we clearly are making great strides there as well. Born in 1920? Only 14% of people made it into their 80s. Born in 1920? 54%. In 100 years we now are as good at getting people into their 80s as we used to be at getting them into their 50s.

Still, we need to crack the top end before I relax.

Jim Job Analysis

Pythagorus

Tony

Open letter to the music-writing community

To the music-writing community,

I don't care how cool you think it sounds... if you're writing or mixing a song and you put all the sound onto one speaker for even a brief period of time, it's distracting and makes that portion of the song unlistenable on headphones.

So stop it.

msd

Alternative Engineering

Engineering, in a broad sense, can be defined as the application of science to solve problems. 

We have all sorts of engineering, mechanical, electrical, software, civil, etc.  Each of these disciplines can be used to solve problems and to keep people safe, to save lives and to perform mission critical applications.  It would be hard to imagine accepting "alternative engineering".  If a company answered a request for quote from a state government by saying that they were using an alternative form of engineering, developed by ancient Chinese engineers, it really couldn't get through the process.  If the company made the claim that all of the engineering firms that normally pitch and win contracts are actually conspiring to keep bridge prices high, and to keep bridges constantly in danger of failing just to perpetuate the need for engineering bridge-building companies, the state government would most likely think of the company as cranks and would throw away their business cards.  But if they believed the company's claims, even a little, they might ask that company for evidence of those claims, and they'd certainly require a pilot study and proof of these better, cheaper bridges before they (the government) would allow their voting constituents to drive their cars on these new bridges.

The same is true for any kind of engineering that is important, like air traffic control software, medical equipment for hospitals, airframe manufacturing, etc, etc, etc.  We demand these engineers, organizations, and companies use the best practices which have been proven by science.  Stepping away from the long-standing traditional, tried-and-true path of building these things happens, but only after the process is thoroughly vetted against the traditional methods with plenty of science and testing behind it. Again, this is for mission critical or life-supporting applications.

Medicine is a kind of engineering in this sense.  It is the application of basic science to solve a life-saving or life-supporting function.  It is certainly more directly critical to those clients who seeks its services.  Why are we so much more willing to accept "alternative medicine" than we are to accept "alternative engineering"?

Energy Secretary

I have to think this is a good idea.  I'm increasingly annoyed/wary of the fact that we are ruled by a tiny class of people with an entirely homogenous eduction (law).  It's important (vital, in fact) to have sharp legal minds in government, but when 99.9% of the decision-makers in a society come from a narrow mind-training tradition, it necessarily removes some solutions from the conversation.  It's nice to think of a cabinet meeting wherein a Nobel laureate in science is evaluating the conversation.