Archive for the ‘Human Factors/Ergonomics’ Category
What is to be done for Irrational behaviors?
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 19, 2021
The Cold rational concept of Irrational behaviors.
Posted on October 4, 2014
Why most of our decisions and reactions seem to be pretty much irrational?
A Cold attempt was undertaken to remind ourselves of a few facts and realities to be taken into consideration:
1. Thinking is not a “pure process”.
2. Thinking is prone to error and this realization affects everyone
3. Highly intelligent people fall prey to the same cognitive traps as common people
4. And errors are Not randomly distributed.
5. Mankind systematically err in the same direction
6. Our mistakes are mostly predictable and can be repaired and avoided in slight degrees
7. Most of our organs function predictably, but our brain keep experiencing lapse after lapse
8. Thinking is a biological phenomenon: It does not follow an abstract mathematical logic.
9. We are still a hunter-gatherer species, but living in a totally different environment
10. Our new environment is getting increasingly complex, interdependent, and man-made functions and facilities are exacerbating the frequency of faulty behaviors
11. Evolution has stopped optimizing the behavior of this hunter-gatherer species in this new environment.
12. Our brain is designed to reproduce (persuade) rather than search for the “truth”
13. We tend to construct a reason for our compulsive decisions (intuitive reaction). a justification for a predetermined conclusion.
What is to be done?
1. When in your “circle of competence”, let your intuition lead your decisions and reactions. You had invested more than 10,000 hours on your talents and skills and you can now rely of your bodily reactions.
2. Otherwise, do your due diligence to apply the hard, slow and high energy consuming process of the rational thinking on your projects and serious decisions.
Think clear and go through the long list of behavioral biases, fallacies, illusions, myths.. and start eliminating one error after another from the list of prone error tendencies.
Rational thinking might Not give you a correct resolution, but again, you have been vaunting the superiority of mankind brain over other species who actually have far better abilities and capabilities than us in many domains.
Repeat the rational thinking process as you invested in acquiring your talents.
Note 1: Read “The Art of Thinking Clear”
Note 2: I have realized that I prefer to extend only one opinion on an issue, the best of my opinions and never give choices. Why?
1. If the opinion is found correct by the reader, the better off he is. And the reader was not disturbed and confused by contradicting alternatives and could assimilate the single opinion.
2. If the opinion is “proved” flawed, it is a marvelous opportunity for the reader to reflect deeper on the topic, reach a proper alternative and incorporate it in his unique worldview model
Reviewing Private properties concept
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 1, 2021
Can Capitalism be reformed? Part 2
Posted on September 25, 2010
This part will discuss ownership of private land properties in capitalist systems and the practical political and legal reforms needed if change is to be effective.
In the first part I wrote:
One: Capitalism is based on four foundations:
1. Private property of means of production;
2. free exchange (products, services…);
3. open free market for commerce; and
4. availability of a vast pool of people willing to work for slave salary.
The main driving force is that the owner of the means of production (the bank, the partners, the shareholder, or the family) should earn as much as the total salary that all workers receive in the business.
Consequently, an employee is hired when the owner can generate profit, at least as equal to the total salary of the hired worker.
Two: The foundations of capitalism have proven Not to function except within strong State institutions, which are almost totally controlled by the capitalist elite classes, especially the Old Money classes that generated the wealth in previous slave working system.
The judicial system obeys laws decreed by parliaments that are dominated by the richest and political “aristocracy” classes, and the executive branch is intrinsically dominated by these classes, directly and indirectly.
This whole political system is called “capitalist democracy” where people have the illusion of electing their representatives for a duration.
After election, people are to behave as spectators: Any serious disturbances are crushed in the name of Law and Order.
Three: The previous article described Communist economic systems (Russia and China) and then, capitalism in Western European social-democratic States.
Four: The one foundation that all economic systems of developed States share is free global trade; which means the liberty to exploiting the developing countries in natural resources and cheap labor.
The developed States are allowed to subsidize their agriculture, but the developing nations are not to do it and they cannot, even if they witness the need to do it .
The developed States are to flood the markets of developing countries with affordable products with No “legal rights” for the developing nations to increasing import taxes in order to safeguarding their own meager means of productions.
The developed States (colonial powers) can find financial resources at low-interest rates (at 3%, even if they accumulated far higher sovereign debts than the poorer States), but not the developing nations( at least over 7% interest rates on loans
In return for blatant exploitation, the developed States agree “voluntarily” to setting aside a small fraction of their GNP to developing the infrastructures in the poorer States; mainly, self-serving their interests to improving and facilitating exploitation and transport of raw materials efficiently.
Five: All “international” institutions such as World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Commerce Trades are dominated by the US, China, and a few European States. Thus, transparency and access to timely information and intelligence are practically denied the developing nations.
Six: Financial institutions (banks, insurance companies…) are the real owner of means of production in capitalist systems. They own 30% of the total wealth of a nation and represent only 1% of the population. This is NOT acceptable.
Fact is, financial institutions generate three times more money than the combined tax collected by the government. This is NOT acceptable.
Any reforms should first target the level of profit that financial institutions are permitted to generate. “Effective” interest rates should be lowered accordingly and tougher regulations imposed of these behemoths.
Small community banks with excellent transparency in decision process and lending policies should be the norm.
The current status of multinational financial institutions is generating abnormal profit with no risks whatsoever.
The aristocratic political family class (representing less than 10% of the population and hoarding more than 20% of the nation’s wealth or what is called “Old Money”) is the main beneficiary of the current capitalist system dominated by the financial barons.
Seven: If capitalism needs salaried people, it must secure the fundamental right to work, a wide range of jobs that satisfy varied opportunity, access to affordable education, safe workplace, universal health coverage, caring for the elderly, and justice for people who worked most of their life for a comfortable retreat.
Has capitalism satisfied the basic needs of its workforce?
Eight: States should start taxing according to the number of employees hired and net revenue (not based on financial sheet profit): These two criteria are the most objective representative of net profit and easy to investigate.
This gimmick of taxing on “net profit” is an accounting fraud that is not objective or fair.
Companies relocating their factories or main business for cheaper workers must be taxed according to the original “national wages” of the workers.
Companies substituting workers for robots should be taxed according to the number of workers substituted.
States will be able to subsidize unemployed people until they find jobs and be imaginative enough to opening up newer job opportunities.
Nine: There is a trend for owners with strong ethics and moral values to including employees as shareholders and participating in management decisions: These companies are doing very well and not suffering from financial crashes.
Institutions and companies for profit are amoral and do not deal in ethical conducts. Ethics and morality are individual characteristics: the more such individuals gather in groups to reclaim fairness and justice in actions the more institutions will be reminded of what is best for society.
Land and private property are the basis for the emergence of the “bourgeois and merchant” classes and which initiated the major leap forward into creating wealth.
This system of private ownership lead to the abolition of feudalism and absolute monarchical powers that were backed by the clergy.
The structure of private ownership of land and properties materially weakened nobility and clergy and eventually displaced them.
Private ownership of land and properties are Not currently economically essential for capitalist system to function properly: Enterprises can lease properties and resume their business as usual.
It is the political ideology behind private properties that is the culprit. Private property ownership remains as a reminder that aristocracy image of power must not vanish in order to retain political power in “democratic” political system.
Ownership of land and real estates must be legally abolished in order to have a serious chance for political reforms. Land should be owned by communities and regulated by community councils.
Land and real estates should only be leased and never owned by individuals or enterprises. Why?
First, inheritance of private real estates and money is the main reason for the existence of aristocratic lineage in wealth and politics. The inheritance mentality encourages sustaining ancient beliefs that the aristocratic class is better fit to rule, guide, and lead simply because this class created the system that perpetuates its interests and egoistic power.
Second, land and properties leasing laws prevent inheritance problems and its successions of hate, suffering, and legal procedures.
Land and real estates should be leased for a period No longer than 30 years and never renewed for any member of the family in order to dissuade political inheritance of images and statuses.
Leases can be extended for three years under particular circumstances. For example, father, mother, and grandparents have the right to die in their property and not experience humiliation and exacerbation at old age. I guess children will make sure that their folks remain at home and not be sent to specialized rest homes in order to enjoying a free location.
Third, leases on unused properties or uninhabited could be canceled. Consequently, homes will be properly maintained and the homeless people will have the availability of shelter in unoccupied properties. Families with crippled or handicapped children will have priority for occupying uninhabited properties.
Fourth, leased land and real estates offer greater opportunities for the newer generations to different life-style in habitat, sustainable energy, and better community life.
Fifth, enterprises may be allowed to renew the lease for specific duration as long as the nature of the business did not change or will not change after the renewal. For example, transforming from a manufacturer to real estates development is Not acceptable.
The third part of this series of articles will develop on election processes and laws reforms that would shift the odds for the middle class and lower classes to acceded to legislative and executive positions.
Note: You may read about the Real Estates bubble that won’t burst and is converging to another financial crisis in https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/obama-praying-mantra-next-f-crash-not-on-my-watch/
What is this proper fasting? Meaning what is the protocol you need to adhere to? That is a cure-it-all medicine from many illnesses?
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 24, 2021
Proper fasting is a cure-it-all medicine: No food, plain water. What’s your protocol?
Posted on April 30, 2012
- In: education methods/programs | Essays | health/medicine | medicine/medical treatment | professional articles | social articles
I just read a protocol from a Japanese physician laureate that if you fast between 8 and 16 hours, without food or drinking, and do it once in a while (maybea every week or every month), your immune system will clean up your system from all the noxious cells , cancer cells, and fatty reserves.
For over 60 years, medical research have been conducted on fasting in Russia, Germany, and lately in the USA (California).
No pharmaceutical corporations and food industry ever contributed a dime on the benefits of proper fasting. Is this of any surprise to anyone?
The results are in:
First, experiments on mice with cancers revealed that the mice that fasted two days before being injected with heavy dose of chemo lived and were found very active, while 40% of non-fasting mice died. Why?
The genes of normal cells in the fasting body manage to regulate their behavior with the new state of shock of the body, while the abnormal cells tend to die. The chemo achieve the remaining abnormal cells that have barely survived…
Second, after a proper fasting period, most bodily and mental anomalies return to normal functional states and the organs recapture their normal regulatory functions in secreting the appropriate hormones.
Arterial tensions, sugar blood level, tetraglycerine…return to normal levels. Many diseases (pulmonary and others…) were cured during fasting by permitting the cells to dissipate the chemicals, medicines, and unwanted hormones that they were bloated with. How?
In the first day of fasting, all the glucose are depleted. Glucose (sugar) is the readily source of energy that is quickly transformed and absorbed: The brain needs glucose to function.
In the third day of fasting, 94% of the energy are generated from the decomposition of the body fat and 4% only from the proteins in the muscles.
Thus, a person weighing 70 kilo might have 15 kilo of fat, a source that can sustain 40 days of fasting while the muscles are practically intact.
The male penguin sits on the egg for 4 months (real fasting period) before he has to go to sea to feed on fish: By this time, the female is back to resume the hatching period…
This process is common to all mammalian animals and mankind: First glucose is consumed, then the fat, and lastly the protein…
The toughest day is the third in the fast: The person feels joint aches, headache, nausea, feeling under the weather, and craving all kinds of food that he loves…
By the fifth day, a state of euphoria and well-being submerges the fasting individual, and life is light and the tasks are very manageable…
What’s your protocol for fasting?
My protocol is to go easy and at stages.
Stage 1: You fast two days in the first week.
Stage 2: You fast 4 days a week later. Just to experiment with the aches and pains of the 3rd days and realize that you survived and doing much better.
Stage 3: You fast 5 days a week later so that you experience the state of “feeling good” and discovering how you fared on the 3rd day.
Mind you, that during all these fasting stages you are actually losing fat and your internal organs (liver, kidneys,…) are re-learning to regulate their tasks and secreting the proper amount of hormones as they were supposed to be doing normally.
Stage 4: You fast 6 days, once every month, for 3 successive months and check how this cure is benefiting your body and mind.
Where to undergo fasting cure?
I cannot see how fasting can be done at home: The family members will be unable to survive without cooking and you smelling the good food, or not eating and drinking (things other than water) in front of you…
Mind you that you are fasting 24 hours per day from all kinds of food and you are drinking only plain water…
The problem is: Which fasting clinic will allow you to perform your own fasting protocol?
My daydream project is opening a fasting clinic with the motto: “Fast your own protocol”
The client will check in the clinic and will submit to two days of learning everything on fasting, the research papers, the statistics, its consequences, the processes, the benefits, the side effects…and thorough physical tests.
The client will end up devising his own protocol for the staff in the clinic to supervise…
The fasting clinic will refrain from imposing any physical exercises or activities that the client is not hot of pursuing…
It is normal that the client be proposed a varieties of activities to undertake so that he is kept busy and to sleep like a baby after a long day of diversified tasks (physical and mental).
Fasting can become easy when experimented on stages.
Fasting longer than a week might require very specialized medical teams to supervise and follow up…I guess.
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Among the Worst 15 USA live experiments on people: Inside boundaries and outside
Posted on August 6, 2012
- In: biographies/books | Essays | Events/Cultural/Educational/Arts | health/medicine | Human Factors/Ergonomics | medicine/medical treatment | professional articles | Safety | social articles | Time for Outrage
- Mind Control in Project MKULTRA.
- The CIA-ran Project MKULTRA and paid Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron for Subproject 68 (1957 – 1964) . Cameron was to conduct experiments involving mind-altering substances. The goal was to probe examination into methods of influencing and controlling the mind and being able to extract information from resisting minds.
- Cameron took patients admitted to his Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal and conducted “therapy” on them. The patients were mostly taken in for issues like bipolar depression and anxiety disorders. The treatment they received was life-altering and scarring.
- Cameron administered electroconvulsive therapy at 30-40 times the normal power. He would put patients into a drug-induced coma for months on-end and playback tapes of simple statements or repetitive noises over and over again.
- The victims forgot how to talk, forgot about their parents, and suffered serious amnesia.
- And all of this was performed on Canadian citizens because the CIA wasn’t willing to risk such operations on Americans.
- To ensure that the project remained funded, Cameron, in one scheme, took his experiments upon admitted children and in one situation had the child engage in sex with high-ranking government officials and film it.
- Mustard Gas Tested on Soldiers via Involuntary Gas Chambers.
- As bio-weapon research intensified in the 1940’s, officials also began testing its repercussions and defenses on the Army itself. In order to test the effectiveness of various bio-weapons, officials were known to have sprayed mustard gas and other skin-burning, lung-ruining chemicals, like Lewisite, on soldiers without their consent or knowledge of the experiment happening to them.
- They also tested the effectiveness of gas masks and protective clothing by locking soldiers in a gas chamber and exposing them to mustard gas and lewisite, evoking the gas chamber image of Nazi Germany.
- EFFECTS OF LEWISITE: Lewisite is a gas that can easily penetrate clothing and even rubber. Upon contact with the skin, the gas immediately causes extreme pain, itching, swelling and even a rash.
- Large, fluid-filled blisters develop 12 hours after exposure in the form of intensely severe chemical burns. And that’s just skin contact with the gas.
- Inhaling of the gas causes a burning pain in the lungs, sneezing, vomiting, and pulmonary edema.
- EFFECTS OF MUSTARD GAS: There are no Symptoms until about 24 hours after exposure. Mustard Gas has mutagenic and carcinogenic properties that have killed many subjected to it. Its primary effects include severe burns that turn into yellow-fluid-leaking boils over a period of time.
- Although treatment is available, Mustard Gas burns heal very, very slowly and are extremely painful.
- The burns the gas leaves on the skin are sometimes irreparable.
- It was also rumored that along with the soldiers, patients at VA hospitals were being used as guinea pigs for medical experiments involving bio-warfare chemicals, but that all experiments were changed to be known as “observations” to ward off suspicions
- U.S. Grants Immunity to Involuntary-Surgery Monster.
- As head of Japan’s infamous Unit 731 (a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II), Dr. Shiro Ishii (head of medicine) carried out violent human experimentation of tens of thousands during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
- Ishii was responsible for testing vivisection techniques without any anesthesia on human prisoners. For the uninitiated, vivisection is the act of conducting experimental surgery on living creatures (with central nervousness) and examining their insides for scientific purposes.Ishii was giving unnecessary surgery to prisoners by opening them all the way up, keeping them alive and not using any anesthetic.For a disturbing video about vivisection, please go here .
- During these experiments he would also force pregnant women to abort their babies.He subjected his prisoners to change in physiological conditions and inducing strokes, heart attacks, frostbite, and hypothermia. Ishii considered these subjects “logs”.
- Following imminent defeat in 1945, Japan blew up the Unity 731 complex and Ishii ordered all the remaining “logs” to be executed. Not soon after, Ishii was arrested. And then, the respected General Douglas McArthur allegedly struck a deal with Ishii. If the U.S. granted Ishii immunity from his crimes, he must exchange all germ warfare data based on human experimentation.
- So Ishii got away with his crimes because the US became interested in the results of his research.While not directly responsible for these acts, the actions of the American government certainly illustrated it was more than willing to condone human torture for advancements in biological warfare that could kill even more people.Ishii remained alive until 1959, performing research into bio-weaponry and probably thinking up more plans to annihilate people in different ways to his dying day.
- Deadly Chemical Sprays on American Cities.
- The U.S. tends to test out worse-case scenarios by getting to them first. With the advent of biochemical warfare in the mid 20th century, the Army, CIA and government conducted a series of warfare simulations upon American cities to see how the effects would play out in the event of an actual chemical attack.They conducted the following air strikes/naval attacks:
- 1. The CIA released a whooping-cough virus on Tampa Bay, using boats, and so caused a whooping-cough epidemic. 12 people died.-
- 2. The Navy sprayed San Francisco with bacterial pathogens and in consequence many citizens developed pneumonia.3.
- Upon Savannah, GA and Avon Park, FL, the army released millions of mosquitoes in the hopes they would spread yellow fever and dengue fever. The swarm left Americans struggling with fevers, typhoid, respiratory problems, and the worst, stillborn children.Even worse was that after the swarm, the Army came in disguised as public health workers. Their secret intention the entire time they were giving aid to the victims was to study and chart-out the long-term effects of all the illnesses they were suffering.
- US Infects Guatemalans With syphilis STD
- In the 1940’s, with penicillin as an established cure for syphilis, the US decided to test out its effectiveness on Guatemalan citizens.To do this, they used infected prostitutes and let them loose on unknowing prison inmates, insane asylum patients and soldiers.When spreading the disease through prostitution didn’t work as well as they’d hoped, they instead went for the inoculation route.
- Researchers poured syphilis bacteria onto mens’ penises and on their forearms and faces. In some cases, they even inoculated the men through spinal punctures.After all the infections were transmitted, researchers then gave most of the subjects treatment, although as many as 1/3 of them could have been left untreated, even if that was the intention of the study in the first place.
- On October 1, 2010, Hillary Clinton apologized for the events and new research has gone on to see if anyone affected is still alive and afflicted with syphilis. Since many subjects never got penicillin, its possible and likely that someone spread it to future generations.
- 6. Harness the power of the atomic bomb.
- While testing out and trying to harness the power of the atomic bomb, U.S. scientists also secretly tested the bomb’s effects on humans. During the Manhattan Project, which gave way to the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, U.S. scientists resorted to secret human testing via plutonium injection on 18 unsuspecting, non-consenting patients.
- This test included injecting soldiers with micrograms of plutonium for Project Oak Ridge along with later injecting three patients at a Chicago hospital. Imagine you’re an admitted patient, helpless in a hospital bed, assuming that nothing is wrong when the government suddenly appears and puts weapons-grade plutonium in your blood.Out of the 18 patients, who were known only by their code-names and numbers at the time, only 5 lived longer than 20 years after injection.
- Along with plutonium, researchers also had fun with uranium. At a Massachusetts hospital, between 1946 and 1947, Dr. William Sweet injected 11 patients with uranium. He was funded by the Manhattan Project.And in exchange for the uranium he received from the government, he would keep dead tissue from the body of the people he killed for scientific analysis on the effects of uranium exposure.To the left is a video on the Manhattan Project.
- 7. Injected Prisoners with Agent Orange
- Americans used Agent Orange as a biological warfare during Vietnam. It was used on Americans, VOLUNTARILY injected into people for “testing” purposes… with the help of a very popular American company Dow Chemical Company.
- The US Army, and Johnson & Johnson, Dr. Albert Kligman used prisoners as subjects in what was deemed “dermatological research”. The dermatology aspect was testing out product the effects of Agent Orange on the skin.
- For the effects Agent Orange had on the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, please click here (WARNING images in this article may be extremely disturbing, as they include extreme human deformation, including that of infants.)Needless to say the injecting of, or exposure to, dioxidin is beyond monstrous to voluntarily do to any human. Kligman, though, injected dioxidin (a main component of Agent Orange) into the prisoners to study its effects.
- What did happen was that the prisoners developed an eruption of chloracne (all that stuff from high school combined with blackheads and cysts and pustules that looked like the picture shown to the left) that develop on the cheeks, behind the ears, armpits, and the groin — yes, the groin.Kligman was rumored to have injected 468 times the amount he was authorized to.
- Documentation of that effect has, wisely, not been distributed.The Army oversaw while Kligman continued to test out skin-burning chemicals to (in their words) “learn how the skin protects itself against chronic assault from toxic chemicals, the so-called hardening process” and test out many products whose effects were unknown at the time, but with the intent of figuring that out.During these proceedings, Kligman was reported to have said, “All I saw before me were acres of skin … It was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time.”8. Operation Paperclip While the Nuremberg trials were being conducted and the ethics and rights of humanity were under investigation, the U.S. was secretly taking in Nazi scientists and giving them American identities.
- Under Operation Paperclip, named so because of the paperclips used to attach the scientists’ new profiles to their US personnel pages…N***s worked in the infamous human experiments (which included surgically grafting twins to each other and making then conjoined, removing nerves from people’s bodies without anesthetic, and testing explosion-effects on them) in Germany brought over their talents to work on a number of top-secret projects for the US.
- Given then-President Truman’s anti-Nazi orders.The project was kept under wraps and the scientists received faked political biographies, allowing these monsters to live on not only American soil, but as free men.So while it was not direct experimentation, it was the U.S. taking some of the worst people in the world and giving them jobs here to do unknown, horrible experiments/research.
- 9. Infecting Puerto Rico With Cancer
- In 1931, Dr. Cornelius Rhoads was sponsored by the Rockefeller Institute to conduct experiments in Puerto Rico. He infected Puerto Rica citizens with cancer cells, presumably to study the effects. Thirteen of them died.The accusations stem from a note Cornelius wrote:“The Porto Ricans (sic) are the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever to inhabit this sphere… I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more… All physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of the unfortunate subjects.”
- Cornelius became vice-president of the American Cancer Society.
- 10. Pentagon Treats Black Cancer Patients with Extreme Radiation. In the 60’s, the Department of Defense performed a series of irradiation experiments on non-consenting, poor, African-American cancer patients. They were told they would be receiving treatment, but they weren’t told it would be the “Pentagon” type of treatment: meaning to study the effects of high level radiation on the human body.To avoid litigation, forms were signed only with initials so that the patients would have no way to get back at the government.In a similar case, Dr. Eugene Saenger, funded by the Defense Atomic Support Agency (fancy name), conducted the same procedure on the same type of patients.The poor, black Americans received about the same level of radiation as 7500 x-rays to their chest would, which caused intense pain, vomiting and bleeding from their nose and ears. At least 20 of the subjects died.
- 11. Operation Midnight Climax
- Operation Midnight Climax involved safe houses in New York and San Fransisco, built for the sole purpose to study LSD effects on non-consenting individuals.But in order to lure the individuals there, the CIA made these safe houses out to be, wait for it, Brothels. Prostitutes on the CIA payroll lured “clients” back the houses.Instead of having sex with them, though, they dosed them with a number of substances, most famously LSD. This also involved extensive use of marijuana.
- The experiments were monitored behind a two-way mirror, kind of like a sick, twisted peep show. It’s alleged that the officials who ran the experiments described them as…” it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and bidding of the All-highest?”The most horrifying part was the idea of dosing non-consenting adults with drugs they couldn’t possibly know the effects of. Embedded is a video of a soldier talking about Operation Midnight Climax and his experiences with the C.I.A. and the U.S. Government.
- 12. Fallout Radiation on Unsuspecting Pacific Territories.
- After unleashing hell upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States embarked on numerous thermonuclear bomb tests in the Pacific in response to increased Soviet bomb activity. They were intended to be a secret affair. However, this secrecy would fail.
- Detonated in 1954 over Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, Castle Bravo was the most powerful nuclear device the US ever set off. What they didn’t expect was for the fallout from the blast to inadvertently be blown up wind onto nearby residents of other islands. The suffering included birth defects and radiation sickness.The effects were greater felt in later years when many children whose parents were exposed to the fallout developed thyroid cancer and neoplasms.
- This created Project 4.1, a study to examine the effects of radiation fallout on human beings. Essentially,it was the latest in a long string of studies where humans act as guinea pigs without giving consent and a project remembered by the US as a way to gather data that would otherwise be unobtainable.
- The US moral standard that history best remembers is that even though the radiation fallout on the people of the Marshall Islands was an accident, it might as well have been intended.In addition, perhaps as nature’s way of adding insult to injury, a Japanese fishing boat was caught in the fallout. The fishermen all fell ill and one died, making the Japanese livid that the US was still affecting them with nuclear devices.
- Tuskegee
- The recent uncovering of the US exposing Guatemalans to syphilis brings back to mind this infamous study. In between 1932 and 1972, researchers recruited 400 black sharecroppers in Tuskegee, Alabama to study the natural progression of syphilis. But the scientists never told the men they had syphilis.Instead, they went around believing that they were being treated for “bad blood” disease as researchers used them to find out the extent of syphilis symptoms and effects.I
- n 1947, penicillin became the standard cure for syphilis. But along with withholding information about the disease, scientists also “forgot” to tell their subjects that what they were being treated for had a cure.The study continued for nearly 30 years more.
- Once it was discovered, the backlash to the study was so fierce that President Bill Clinton made formal apology, stating he was sorry that the government “orchestrated a study that was so racist”. Sadly enough, it would be horrific, but one of the more docile evil human experiments ever conducted by the U.S. Government. Note:
What’s that concept of Human factors in Design?
Posted on September 20, 2008 (written from 2003-2006)
What is this Human Factors profession?
Summary of Articles numbers
1. “What is your job?”
2. “Sorry, you said Human Factors in Engineering?”
3. “So, you want systems to fit people?”
4. “The rights of the beast of burden; like a donkey?”
5. “Who could afford to hire Human Factors engineers?”
6. “In peace time, why and how often are Human Factors hired?
7. “What message should the Human Factors profession transmit?”
8. “What do you design again?”
9. “Besides displays and controls, what other interfaces do you design?”
10. “How Human Factors gets involved in the Safety and Health of end users?”
11. “What kind of methods will I have to manipulate and start worrying about?”
12. “What are the error taxonomies in Human Factors?”
13. “What are the task taxonomies and how basic are they in HF?”
14. “How useful are taxonomies of methods?”
15. “Are occupational safety and health standards and regulations of any concern for the HF professionals?”
16. “Are there any major cross over between HF and safety engineering?”
17. “Tell us about a few of your teaching methods and anecdotes”
18. “What this general course in Human Factors covers?”
19. “Could one general course in Human Factors make a dent in a career behavior?”
20. “How would you like to fit Human Factors in the engineering curriculum?”
21. “How to restructure engineering curriculum to respond to end users demands?”
22. “How can a class assimilate a course material of 1000 pages?”
23. “What undergraduate students care about university courses?”
24. “Students’ feedback on my teaching method”
25. “My pet project for undergraduate engineering curriculum”
26. “Guess what my job is”
27. “Do you know what your folk’s jobs are?”
28. “How do you perceive the inspection job to mean?”
29. “How objective and scientific is a research?”
30. “How objective and scientific are experiments?”
31. “A seminar on a multidisciplinary view of design”
32. “Consumer Product Liability Engineering”
33. “How could you tell long and good stories from HF graphs?”
34. “What message has the Human Factors profession been sending?”
35. “Who should be in charge of workspace design?”
36. “Efficiency of the human body structure and mind”
37. “Psycho-physical method”
38. “Human factors performance criteria”
39. “Fundamentals of controlled experimentation methods”
40. “Experimentation: natural sciences versus people’s behavior sciences”
41. “What do Human Factors measure?”
42. “New semester, new approach to teaching the course”
43. “Controlled experimentation versus Evaluation and Testing methods”
44. “Phases in the process of system/mission analyses”
45. “Main errors and mistakes in controlled experimentations”
46. “Human Factors versus Industrial, Computer, and traditional engineering”
47. “How Human Factors are considered at the NASA jet propulsion laboratory”
48. “Efficiency of the human cognitive power or mind”
49. “Human Factors versus Artificial Intelligence”
50. Computational Rationality in Artificial Intelligence
51. “Basic Engineering and Physics Problems Transformed Mathematically”
52. Mathematics: a unifying abstraction for Engineering and Physics
53. How to optimize human potentials in businesses for profit
New semester, new approach to teaching this complex course of Human Factors in engineering?
Posted on October 26, 2008 (and written in April 6, 2006. Article #42 )
- In: auto-biography | Diaries | education methods/programs | engineering/research/experiments | Essays |
Usually, over 60 students enroll in my class, and the administration refused to split my course into 2 classes to maximize “profit”.
In retaliation, this semester only ten students were allowed to enrolled for my class; one is a computer engineer finishing his degree and the remaining are industrial engineers. As a reminder, this course is required for Industrial engineers IE
The other engineering disciplines managed to open up new elective courses for each one of them, and were trying to market them at the expense of the wishes of many students who wanted to take my course and their petitions were denied.
With this reduced class number, I had to capitalize on the advantages of smaller classes, once the shock is under control.
This semester, methods applied in human factors engineering are the focus: Having the previous semester in the body of varied knowledge in the course materials might encourage my class to appreciate the efforts and time invested by the pool of human factors researchers and professionals to make available practical design guidelines for the other engineering professions.
Whereas in the previous semesters I shun away from exposing my class to new methods, except teaching them explicitly the concept of controlled experimentations, like the differences among dependent, independent and controlled variables.
I endeavored to correct their misunderstanding, thinking that there was an abundance of knowledge to assimilate for a meager semester in the previous semesters, I boldly changed direction in my teaching approach by investing more time on exposing and explaining the various methods that human factors might be applying in their profession.
The first assignment was using excel to compare 40 methods used in human factors, industrial engineering, industrial psychology, and designers of intelligent machines.
This assignment was a version of article #14, about the taxonomy of methods, from 20 articles that I wrote the previous years and offered them as an introduction to the course, in addition to the course materials.
The students were supposed to select five categories from more than the dozen ways to classifying methods such as definition, purpose, applications, inputs, processes, procedures, output/product, mathematical requirements, disciplines teaching them, advantages, disadvantages, sources/links, connections with other methods, and comments.
I expected that, as engineers, they would logically select for the columns applications, input, procedure, output, and comments because they are what define a method. But somehow, they opted for applications, procedures, advantages, disadvantages, and comments mainly because it is how the internet offer information.
After 3 students submitted their assignment on time I handed them over 40 summary sheets for the 16 methods used to analyzing a system or a mission, at least 2 sheets for each of 16 methods, one sheet on the purpose, input, procedure, and output/product of the method and the other sheets as examples of what the output is expected to look for presentation.
I then asked the less performing students to concentrate on only the 16 methods for their assignment and most of them did not submit this assignment even two months later.
So far I used up six sessions for methods or related topics such as the methods applied in the process of analyzing systems’ performance, psychophysical procedures, the fundamentals of controlled experimentation methods, human factors performance criteria, and what human factors “measure/data” in their experiments.
As for the body of knowledge I extract a few facts from experiments and asked them to participate in providing me with the rationales or processes that might explain these facts.
For example, if data show that females on average are two third the strength of males then what could be the underlying causes for that discovery?
Could that fact be explained by the length of the muscles, the cross section thickness of the muscles, the number of muscle fibers, or the length of the corresponding bones?
Facts are entertaining but I figured that they are big boys to be constantly entertained while shovelful of money is being spent for their university education.
Facts are entertaining but there have to come a time when these big boys stop and wonder at the brain power, Herculean patience, and hard work behind these amusing sessions.
The next assignment was to observe the business of the main family’s bread earner, note down the minute tasks of his typical day work, learn about the business by attempting to generate detailed answers from a questionnaire they have to develop based on a set of investigative query and problems related to human factors performance criteria in the assignment sheet…
And to report back what are the routine and daily tasks that enabled the students to join a university.
Three students worked with their fathers’ in summer times and enjoyed the assignment; the remaining students could not shake off their 8th grade habits, wrote the questionnaire, mailed it, and waited for the answers.
I was expecting that the students would apply the methodology they learned in analyzing systems such as activity, decision, and task analyses… but the good stuff was not forthcoming.
To encourage them to cater to the business that they might inherit, I assigned them a lecture project that would generate the requisite analyses with a clear objective of focusing on near-accidents, foreseeable errors, safety of the workers and health conditions in the workplace.
So far, the products of the two quizzes were complete failures. Funny, although most of the questions in the second quiz were from the same chapter sources as the first quiz, it is amazing how ill prepared are the students for assimilating or focusing on the essential ideas, concepts, and methods.
With a third of the semester over, I can points to only two students who are delivering serious investment in time, hard work, and excitement and are shooting for a deserved grade of A.
Undergraduate Students’ feedback for current semester method
Posted by: adonis49 on: November 2, 2008
- In: auto-biography | Diaries | education methods/programs | Essays | Lebanon/Middle East/Near East/Levant | professional articles
- Leave a Comment
Article #24, (written on June 11, 2005. Teaching at LAU Byblos university, Lebanon)
After many unsuccessful attempts to generate students’ feedback on my teaching methods and how this course might affect their perspective and behavior in approaching the remaining core courses, before graduation and in their career I decided to include two questions in the final exam that I expected would shed some insight.
The required question, which I told class two weeks ahead of the final exam that it will be part of the exam, directed the students to focus first on the diligent A and B students and then to target the C and D students in their teaching methods in case they might have to teach a course in Human Factors in engineering.
The third part was to restructure the course materials and which chapters should have to be developed further.
Now, any logical person would expect the students to have prepared detailed answers to these questions since it is an open book and open notes exam, but unfortunately, I didn’t have any shred of evidence that any student did prepare a written answer.
You would also expect students to be lenient in teaching this course but their reaction was even harsher.
Students feedbacks required that drop quizzes be delivered on a weekly basis after students hand in a chapter summary, that case studies be debated in class, a few lab workshops and many more assignments.
A student suggested attaching a CD copy of the course material so that they would not have to carry books.
They suggested that summarizing chapters as assignments might force students to read, a suggestion that I did try in a previous semester but was discouraged because the endeavor ended up with students heavily copying from one another, and I having to carry home heavy loads and wasting more time flipping through useless pages.
I think that frequent and consistent drop quizzes are an excellent tool although it will cost me dear time for grading and from teaching time.
Actually, I didn’t expect even the most diligent students to read the whole course materials.
I provided hints and suggestions on the best way to assimilate the material that would help them navigate through the content of the course.
I encouraged them to browse through the whole course contents and focus on the graphs, tables and figures and try to comprehend the subject matters by analyzing and using them as facts in their analyses.
May be you would have a better assessment of the students’ harsh requirements, if given the opportunity to teaching, after I expose the load they shouldered throughout the semester.
Besides the mid-term and final exams, each student had to submit two assignments, two lengthy lab projects; three extensive take home exams that covered most of the chapters, three quizzes for 45 minutes each, two presentations to class of graphs, tables and figures, reading revised articles that I assigned them and a take home exam on a research paper concerning hand tool design.
Not a single student was exposed to a research paper before, and it was a pretty tough awakening for the students planning for higher education. (Actually, the administration promised to sign in for peered-reviewed research articles from the Human Factors society, but never delivered)
I think that the students lacked an appreciation of the time allocated to managing a class that prohibits many well meaning teaching plans.
In many instances, I had to read in class the assignments and take home exams questions and provide directions because I noticed that the students tended to dig these assignments up from their folders before a long lapse of time.
The time allocated for students’ presentation takes up more than a third of the teaching hour and fielding questions takes the best of the second third
There are no lab credit hours for this course and still students believe that they can set aside free hours for doing lab projects necessary for assimilating this course.
The alternatives restructuring of the course materials did not differ much from mine.
The optional question for bonus points asked the students to select 3 topics of interest to them, provide catchy titles and explain in two paragraphs for each topic how it might apply and improve their careers.
Although I have assigned to the students articles that I wrote as an introduction to the course materials only one student offered complete sentence titles; the rest just named the topics.
It appears that their preferred topics were: risk and errors, designing interfaces, work environmental factors that might affect performance, human-computer interface and hand tool design.
A couple students interested in medical technology engineering wanted more emphasis on the biology aspects of the body structure.
Only one student mentioned the cognitive preference for this single course.
Many students signed petitions to re-include the elective course of “risk assessment and occupational safety and health” for the fall semester but the administration refused to consider these petitions two years in a row.
Why? I still did not receive any feedback either written or verbal.
It appears that the meaning of asking students to deliver petitions for any demand is less a matter for taking their cases seriously but to erect roadblocks and present a procedural façade to secure grants as a professional institution.
Actually, students’ apathy toward the effectiveness of the student council is strikingly telling.
I had to harangue my class to grab and snatch their rights by persistent pressure on the administration for the demands in their petitions.
It is Not how many pages, but how many undergraduates are ready to read
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 29, 2021
A course material of 1000 pages? Why so much material for a single course in the first place?
Posted on November 2, 2008
Assimilating a new discipline or new methods in a single course is too strong a term.
You indeed can scarcely describe the process of comprehending a topic and assimilating it, even within a specialized discipline, without overshooting the mark.
Now that the title might have captured your attention, let me describe my teaching methods that may permit students to cover an overview of such a vast discipline as Human Factors in one semester course.
I encourage my students to learn and read as “trained engineers ” should, smartly.
They are to first locate the graphs, tables and figures in a chapter (the dependent, independent and controlled variables) , try to understand the topic by concentrating their attention on these tools of learning, and then read the preceding and following sections if they fail to comprehend the graphs, tables and figure on their own merit.
You should all know that if a picture is worth a thousand words then a graph, table or a figure might be worth ten thousands words.
I assign a graph, table or a figure to students to hand copy it, write a short presentation, and then copy it on a transparency sheet to present to class.
After the presentation of a unique graph the student will field a few questions from class and then I take over and explain and expand on the content of the transparency.
This method of training students to learn through these learning tools and giving them an opportunity to appreciate them, as engineers should, I am able to cover most of the course material throughout the semester.
Another method is by handing out two take home exams in addition to the regular exams. Take home exams are handed out three weeks in advance of the due dates and cover questions from all chapters that need to be read thoroughly and supplemented from other sources for substantiation.
Students are encouraged to take very seriously these take home assignments not only because they weight heavily in points but also because a few of the exam questions will be selected from the take home assignment.
Assignments and lab projects are other methods for revisiting the course materials and other sources.
The quizzes and regular exams are open books, open notes and whatever printouts from the internet students are willing to bring to class.
I even encouraged students to use an efficient cheat sheets technique that might convey the message effectively based on the fact that most of the chapters are interconnected.
The main subjects such as designing interfaces, displays and controls, occupational safety and health, environmental and organizational factors in the workplace, designing workstations, capabilities and limitations of human users, sensing and perception capacities, and physical and cognitive methods have links to many other chapters in addition to the main one.
Thus, if a student selects a subject as the central item he would be able to link different sections of other chapters to it by writing down the page numbers of the source section.
These cheat sheets could be excellent learning methods to answer open book exams without the need to fumble through hundreds of pages for each question.
A different technique to assimilating course materials is through questions.
The catch is that asking questions on assignments, lab projects or take home exams have to be submitted in writing.
The written question has to follow a certain process:
First, stating in complete sentences the subject matter;
Second explaining how the question was understood and
the last step is expressing the problems with links to the chapters they had to read in order to comprehend the subject.
I am still waiting for a single written question and it might be for the best because it eliminates a host of redundant questions that are asked out of laziness, failing to carefully read the whole question sheet or shirking from diligently doing their best to browse through the course materials.
Has Power the mission of Modifying the rank order of natural passions?
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 23, 2021
Scare Tactics: The Austin Texas case
Posted on April 24, 2009
A reader commented on one of my posts and informed me that the US government and police force have invented a “machine” that can modify human behavior, invade individual privacy, and control our daily habits without having to bring citizens to interrogation.
He went on to say that everyone in Austin Texas know about this machine.
Any individual or institutional power such as executive, legislative, legal, press, media, religion, financial, or economic multinational enterprise has ultimately one purpose: modifying human behavior to coincide with a set priority of natural passions for a period of time that suit the environmental and social conditions.
Strong institutions who hold real power are Not necessarily that impressed of your “free” opinions or how informed are the public. Their goal is to keep the people in a passive state and waiting for directives and guidelines through thousands of subtle means that they have total control over.
What worry most the power-to-be are people on the move. They don’t care if this movement is within the right direction of their wishes and desires: they are simply scared of active citizens marching on because the end result cannot be controlled or forecasted.
That is why in critical periods of unrest, because of financial or economical difficulties, the government and its various branches rely on rumors that insinuate that the government is in complete power of control over the behavior of their citizens.
This fear technique works most of the time to cow the public into passive status.
Karl Jasper wrote in his book “The German Culpability”: “The one who remained passive knows that he is morally guilty every time he failed to respond to an action for protecting the threatened citizens, for reducing injustice, and for resisting infamy”
I think the reader is confusing predictive models of human behavior with models for evaluating the performance of behavior modifications.
Institutions of power know how to modify behavior for a period, which is their main power. Institutions sublet research institutions of “scientists” in statistical design, survey, poll taking, quantitative psychologists, social scientists, political “analysts”, and so forth to present models that would corroborate the desires of the fund givers.
The “professional” scientists with many grants under their belt, know how to tamper and adjust models to be biased toward the wishes of the power fund granters.
Generally, the power institutions are more astute and fool the scientists more often than not, but it is a game that the scientist learn to grasp and play in due time.
I doubt that any model for predicting human behavior can outperform the odds of a coin flipping mechanism. What the models are predicting are the behavior of a restricted sample of people who were subjected with modification treatments, by subtle means unknown to them, but obviously known by the authorities.
No, the Austin TX. “machine” is a scare tactics disseminated by people who were worked upon. This is the time to get on the move and be vocal and active.
If this terrible machine is invading individual privacy, then an investigative panel with wide power should be constituted to deliver weekly reports on its findings and progress.
The government policies are to present the image of omnipresence and omnipotent.
As scientists have done with sight and sound
Steve Nadis 2021
In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, becoming the first person ever to record and reproduce his own voice. In 1895, the Edison Company created one of the earliest sound “movies”—a 17-second clip that showed one man playing a violin while two others danced nearby.
For 125 years, it has been possible to record audio and visual scenes and play them back with reasonably high fidelity.
But in the entire history of humanity, there has been no way of recording and reproducing the taste of a food or beverage—that is until last year with the advent of Homei Miyashita “Taste Display.” The invention by Miyashita, a scientist at Meiji University in Tokyo, is a 21st-century analogue of a phonograph—one that plays back tastes rather than sounds.
Miyashita has a longstanding interest in food and taste. His curiosity about ingredients was piqued as a child when his mother wrote a recipe book.
He has carried out his own research at Meiji University as one of the founders of the Frontier Media Science program, which explores the interface between technology and the human senses.
In 2012, he and a former PhD student Hiromi Nakamura (now on the University of Tokyo faculty), developed an “electric fork” that was originally intended to enhance the flavor of hospital food—the idea being to make food taste saltier, for instance, without actually adding salt, thereby avoiding possibly adverse health consequences.
That was an early step for Miyashita, who had ambitious plans. Whereas the electric fork could make food taste saltier or sourer, the Taste Display could reproduce any flavor one might care to conjure up.
Here’s how it works, starting with a bit of anatomy: The human tongue has separate receptors for detecting the five basic tastes—sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami. Miyashita device has five different gels, each containing an electrolyte solution that causes the tongue, upon contacting the surface, to sense one of those flavors at an intensity that is readily adjustable.
Each gel is connected to a separate (exceedingly weak) electric current, and the taste associated with that gel diminishes when the current is turned up.
A sixth, tasteless gel is also included as a buffer that keeps the overall current level—and the associated stimulation of the tongue—constant at all times.
The six different gels (including one that is tasteless) inside the part of the Taste Display that transmits flavor to the tongue.PHOTOGRAPH BY DAISUKE MIYAGI
By adjusting the current strengths for all six gels, which can be done automatically, the taste of a chocolate milkshake or a sirloin steak or any other desired treat can be experienced through the use of this device without any caloric intake.
The Taste Display initially took the form of a rod that resembles a hand-held microphone with a surface that’s designed to be licked rather than talked into. But Miyashita already has an early version of a mask, which affords a user continuous contact with the flavor-imparting surface, as part of a virtual reality system.
He also has developed a “lickable screen” that can be incorporated onto a cell phone, allowing a person to watch a cooking show, for example, while tasting various samples.
“Or someone looking at a recipe on a website could find out what that dish tastes like,” he says. “We now have smartphones with cameras, displays, microphones, and speakers. But we’ll soon be able to go further and upload and download our taste experiences.”
That’s a brief introduction to the taste reproduction part of the story, but what about the recording end of things?
Miyashita is currently using commercially available “taste sensors” that provide a quantitative measure of the five flavor components of any food that is sampled. He developed equations that convert that taste data into a corresponding current strength for each of the five flavors.
Present-day taste sensors are bulky machines that are rather slow at turning out results. Miyashita is exploring faster, more portable ways of taste recording—perhaps through the use of a thermometer-like device that can be dipped into food, giving quick readouts of the distinct flavor components.
A portable “salt-meter” like this already exists, and it could be adapted to measure other flavors too. Within 10 years, he predicts, we should be able to instantly record and reproduce taste information.
Eating, however, is about more than just sensing the five basic flavors in their myriad combinations. Smell is also an important part of the gustatory experience, and Miyashita is already experimenting with “smell displays.”
He’s also looking into the sensation of touch, examining how a particular food feels in your mouth. To this end, he’s working on 3D printing, using not just smooth plastic but a range of materials that have varying degrees of roughness. “By combining that with our taste research,” he says, “we hope to reproduce the texture you feel while eating.”
“But there’s only so much you can do,” he admits. “You could watch a travel video, but that probably won’t eliminate your desire to visit a foreign land. Nor would listening to a record necessarily satisfy your urge to hear live music.” And so, too, it is with taste.
Technology can do marvelous things—his lab being a prime example. But there’s also something to be said for a good home-cooked meal, Miyashita says, perhaps drawn from the pages of his mother’s recipe book.
Left: Homei Miyashita is a professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Mathematical Sciences at Meiji University.
Right: Professor Miyashita operates a robot as part of his wider research into entertainment computing, human-computer interaction and progressive technologies.PHOTOGRAPH BY DAISUKE MIYAGISHARETWEETEMAIL
Adonis Diaries 