Swollen creek still rising

Creek is still rising.

Shellpot Creek swollen with rain movie

The torrential downpours mean a torrential creek.

Those who study history ...

In the "The Political Prisoner" by Charles Coleman Finlay in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection edit by Gardner Dozois (first appeared in F&SF, August 2008), Finlay adds a corollary to a paraphrase of the familiar aphorism about history:

"Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it"

Finlay's extension is placed in the words of Max, the story title's political prisoner:

"Those who do study history are doomed to see the repetition coming"

Prius driven 10 000 by owners

I actually bought my Prius with only 1 mile on it, so hitting 10001 is both symmetrical and significant because I put the 10000 miles on it.

So far the car still drives well. I am not getting the vaunted 50mpg (more like 40mpg) that many claim for the car, probably because my commute doesn't even give the car time to warm up the gas engine and shut it off to let the electric do some work. I am getting twice the gas mileage of the last car. I also like that the car does shut off the gas engine when you are stopped at a light. That means less emissions.

I am what I would term a comfort or convenience car buyer so my favorite features of the Prius are the bluetooth connection to my cell phone and the jack for my iPod. I also like all of the controls on the computer screen in the middle of the dashboard leaving a very clean console.

Now if only the damn thing could be plugged in and charged for even more gas savings.

Prius milestone 10 000

The prius reached 10,000 miles today, a milestone made special by being the fourth power of the base of our counting system.

One more milestone coming.

Arbitrary Prius Milestone 9999

Today the prius hit 9999 miles. More milestones to come.

Too much cancer screening can be worse than none at all

A recent article in the New York Times reports that the push for increased cancer screening may only have limited benefits. It talks especially about massive screening campaigns for rare cancers like thyroid cancer (kills only 1600/year in the US) and extending testing for breast cancer or prostate cancer to populations (younger people) where it occurs rarely or using tests that are poor screening tests.

The most insightful statement from the article:

Dr. Ned Calonge, the chairman of the United States Preventive Services Task Force said, “There are five things that can happen as a result of screening tests, and four of them are bad.”

Below is a the paraphrased and bulleted list from the article with inserted statistical names for some of these outcomes if relevant.

One good result of screening:

• Identifying a life-threatening form of cancer that actually responds to timely intervention.

Four bad results of screening:

• False Positive: Results that falsely indicate cancer and cause needless anxiety and unnecessary procedures that can lead to complications.

• False Negative: Results that fail to diagnose an existing cancer, which could lull a patient into ignoring real symptoms as the cancer progresses.

• Results that detect slow-growing or stable cancers that are not life-threatening and would not otherwise have required treatment.

• Results that detect aggressive life-threatening cancers whose outcome is not changed by early detection.

If you know the accuracy of the test and the incident rate of the cancer in the population and the cost of treatment and the value of a human life (that last one is tricky and is a minefield) then a simple cost benefit analysis will allow the determination of appropriate screening. If human lives are worth infinity then the math is impossible. When advocates of a particular approach don't understand statistics then the math is also impossible. I think the main error is the failure to understand the cost of the four bad outcomes above. Everybody focuses on the correct positives.

I think the same approach could be used with terrorism. Replace cancer with terrorism above.