Want to do Something about Atlanta's Traffic?

If your home base is anywhere other than the Metro Atlanta area, feel free to ignore this post.

Unless you have a burning interest in state level transportation policy politics. 

There is a very important vote coming up soon.

No, not this one. 

I think we can all agree that traffic in Atlanta sucks.

This is a good day. 

How does it suck? Let me count the ways. MARTA is inefficient and bleeding money. Narrow streets are riddled with cracks and potholes. There aren't enough sidewalks. Generally, it makes living and working in Atlanta a massive pain and is apparently scaring away jobs.

I can't think of a caption good enough for this photo.
 

T-SPLOST is the proposed solution. It's a referendum that would add a 1% sales tax for the next ten years in order to pay for improving the whole transportation situation. The vote is on July 31st and it's very important that you vote.

T-SPLOST stands for Transportation - Special-purpose local-option sales tax. It's a Georgia thing.

Actually Georgia is the No. 3 peach producer. 

See, the base sales tax for the entire state of Georgia is 4%. A SPLOST allows individual areas to raise the rate in order to pay for things like roads, parks, and schools. It's the reason why I pay 6% at home in Gwinnett County and 7% when I'm at school in Athens (which I always manage to forget about for some reason).

There are conditions with any SPLOST. Georgia has a maximum sales tax rate of 8%, so I guess an area can only have 4 going at one time. They're written with expiration dates and if the money is raised faster than expected, it goes away early. Theoretically, it prevents abuse of the funds.

All we can do is try! 

Okay, so back to the upcoming vote on the T-SPLOST. If it is approved, then it would raise something like $800 million dollars to be invested into improving Atlanta roads and transportation. That's a lot of money. So much money that part of this proposal was for each county to submit a theoretical project list of what they might do with the money. Those fine 192 pages can be found right here.

Supporters claim that this will shorten commute times, reduce traffic accidents, draw more jobs to the area, and increase quality of life for everyone in the area. I certainly support repaving parts of 316 that I get to bounce over on my way to school.

Then again, it could always be worse. 

People are against the SPLOST for a lot of different reasons. Some people don't like the increased tax burden. Some people don't like what's on or not on the project list. A lot of people just don't trust state DOT after that whole 400- toll debacle.

For those of you who care, that went something like this:


GDOT in 1991: Hey, we need to widen state route 400 but it's going to cost a shit-ton of money. What do you guys think about a toll so that we can pay for it more responsibly?

People: *grumblegrumble taxes suck grumblegrumble* How much and how long?

GDOT in 1991: Eh, why don't we say 50 cents a car for 20 years? That should cover it. Then, we'll take down the toll booths and the road will be free.

People: Fine.


Channel 2 News in 2009: So we did some digging and we noticed that the tolls on 400 have collected more than enough money to pay for the road. Those tolls should have been taken down years ago.

GDOT in 2009: Uh, yeah, good catch. You see the thing is, we payed using a structured loan that doesn't allow us to pay it off faster. We have to keep them up until 2011 even though that's going to cost more.

People: ಠ_ಠ


People in 2011: Okay, time for those tolls to come down

Sonny Perdue and State Toll and Roadway Authority: Yeah, about that. These tolls make a lot of money and we don't really want to get rid of them. So we voted to keep them up until 2020. But its okay because the money is going towards more highway projects.

People: What th-how can you- IS THIS EVEN LEGAL?

Sonny Perdue and State Toll and Roadway Authority: Yep. On another note, have you heard of this great thing call Peach Pass?

People: ಠ_ಠ

Is it just me or does that sound like a threat?

Nathan Deal in 2012: Hey, so remember when this last governor refused to take down the tolls on 400? That guy sucked. I'm not that guy. Instead I'm going to take down the tolls (in 2013). Isn't that awesome?

People: You want to be re-elected don't you?

Nathan Deal in 2012: Pretty much.

Okay, I hope that was an amusing look a some transportation political history.

Well 

By the way, I hope I haven't given the impression that I'm urging everyone to vote 'YES.' I don't even know how I'm going to vote yet. The most important issue here is to become educated on the issue, form an opinion, and then vote. I'd suggest the AJC coverage page as a good starting point. Off course, you can Google and find dozens of groups devoted to this issue.

If you don't vote because you're not registered, please register right away. There's an important election coming up.

Yes, that one.

Complicated Chemicals Seek Some Corporate Lovin'

Thanks to my first post on organ donations and executions, the stories generated by my news algorithm have taken on a capital-punishment-y nature. Thus I was first alerted to the problem with Sodium thiopental, one of the three drugs used in executions (the other two are Pancuronium bromide and Potassium chloride). Hospira was apparently the only company in America that produced the drug and when they stopped production in 2009, various states turned to a London based company.

Apparently the drugs produced by that company, Dream Pharma, are of  questionable quality and legality, prompting the DEA to size various states' sodium thiopental supplies and delaying executions across the country. My home state, Georgia, was first to be investigated, followed by Tennessee and Kentucky because they apparently bought from Georgia's supply. Other states are either giving up their supply to the DEA or switching their drug cocktail (which can cause its own problems).

Depending on your views on capital punishment, you may think this shortage is a good thing. But it's indicative of a larger, troubling trend of drug shortages because cost of production exceeds profits. If you live in Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Texas, or any of the other states that the coral snake is found in, be extra careful. The last vial of anti-venom expired in October of 2010 with no signs of a replacement source appearing anytime soon. Occasionally, the problem is with a shaky supply chain. For instance, Arizona ran out of scorpion anti-venom because only Marilyn Bloom was producing it and she retired. But by far, the most common culprit is economics. There are maybe 100 coral snake bites a year that require the anti-venom, so the cure was never destined to be a big money maker. But now that Wyeth has stopped production completely, any company looking to be the new source has to pay and pass the multi-million dollar hurdles involved with getting a drug past the FDA approval process. But why would any company do that if it has been clearly proven that this product has no chance of ever being profitable?

This begs the question: Who should be responsible for producing things that are not profitable, yet are still necessary? The first thought that springs to mind is that the government should subsidize it, like they do for mass transit, parks, museums, and other infrastructure and amenities. However, if the government did pay to manufacture anti-venom or other unprofitable but necessary drugs, it would cross a line that would be difficult to re-draw. Would the government limit itself to just production of already known drugs or would it also take on the extremely expensive task of searching for new ones? Would it only produce drugs with expired patents or would it be allowed to ignore patents completely if there isn't a profit to be had and essentially become rogue generic manufacturer? Why would drug companies, the so called "Big Pharma," continue to chase after those ever increasingly more expensive cures if there is some other source that can constantly afford a loss? Except (currently policies notwithstanding) the government can't operate at a loss indefinitely and eventually the whole structure will come crashing down.

So. We need to come up with a solution. Ideas? For now the most effective thing I can think of is avoiding anything that might be venomous and rare. If that fails, kill it with fire. Long term outlooks on this strategy are not so good, so other suggesting are eagerly welcome.

One last note on sodium thiopental. The shortage is occurring because Hospira and many other companies that manufacture the drug are facing boycotts from European governments that belong to the EU. As the EU is opposed to execution, member countries refuse to buy from those companies unless the company can ensure that none of its drugs will be used in lethal injections. However, states have mostly side-stepped this issue by using other barbiturates, and sodium thiopental has other uses. In fact, it is listed in the WHO's list of essential medicines, meaning that it is needed for a basic health care system. I hope that no one has been adversely affected because of this shortage.

NOTE: This post DOES NOT mean that I am for or against capital punishment. It merely means that I am interested in the economics of drug design. 

The Trouble with Internships

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine was updating me on his summer job search. One posting, he said, was from a guy who wanted people to come sit at his kitchen table and work eight hours a day on building his website. Unpaid.

"Like an internship?" I asked in disgust.

"Exactly. Only it wouldn't be worth it because this guy and his site aren't known. So it's really more like free labor." We both immediately started on about how stupid the whole thing was and the unfairness of the internships but in the end we both just laughed it off. My friend is interviewing for a much better gig that actually pays and he already has a basic summertime job lined up plus supportive parents so he'll be okay should either plan fall through. But that got me thinking about kids who don't have supportive parents and/or flexible jobs.

Internships are temporary jobs with well-known corporations, non-profits, or the government that are intended to offer experience and networking opportunities. I never applied for an internship but I have applied for some shadowing/volunteering gigs so I assuming the two are pretty similar. You fill out an extensive application, beg the only teachers that might remember you your favorite teachers for a recommendation, and possibly face an interview or three in the hopes of being allowed to make coffee and charts for six to twelve weeks of the summer. I get the sense that for certain majors like business, journalism, or political science, internships are unofficially required in the way that shadowing and volunteering are unofficially required for pre-med and pre-vet students.  But the hidden sacrifice of internships is that the majority of them are unpaid. So really your parents you have to be able to afford to underwrite a whole summer of free work.

Okay, so let's say that you've found an internship and you're reasonable sure that you can cover all summer expenses without a steady paycheck. That's not an unreasonable assumption for a large number of middle class undergraduates (myself included). But if you receive any form of financial aid from your school, there might be more complications to consider. I found at least one college that requires any recipient of a financial aid package to earn at least $2,000 over the summer and I'm willing to bet there are similar stipulations at other institutions of higher learning. So students are forced to give up something that is important and valuable to their future in order to take on something immediate but irrelevant, like cleaning pools or flipping burgers. It seems to me like those places are making it even harder for disadvantaged students to succeed after college.

To make things even more ethically icky, a quiet but bustling business of internship placement has sprung up in the last few years. For a "modest" fee, these companies do everything from mass distributing an applicant's resume to arranging interviews or producing and releasing personalized press packages. Those fees I mentioned can range from $5,000 to $9,500, or an actual percentage of your paycheck if you're lucky enough to net a paid internship (the only type that particular company offers to its customers). For their defense, these companies claim that most of their customers are middle-class students whose parents "dig-deep" and that they offer a greater range of opportunities and experiences than the average students could find on their own. One company has even started scholarships or their own financial aid for low-class prospective customers, though when I type the company's name into Google, auto-fill wants to add "scam" or "worth it" to the entry. I can't  understand is why a company would want to even consider a candidate who needs a company like this.

But if you feel like using a placement company to give your application an edge is still to risky, you could just outright buy an internship. Apparently the economic downturn has prompted various charities to get very creative with their fundraising techniques, including auctions that offer insanely competitive internship positions with Rolling Stone, Elle, and Atlantic Records. Again, why would you want to pick an intern like this?

"I feel like the government should regulate internships somehow. But then, when is the government good at regulating anything?" I told my friend at the end our conversation. But it turns out that the government already loosely regulates internships.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division allows an employer not to pay a trainee if all of the following are true:

1. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to what would be given in a vocational school or academic educational instruction;
2. The training is for the benefit of the trainees;
3. The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under their close observation;
4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees, and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually be impeded;
5. The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period; and
6. The employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

An exception is allowed for individuals who volunteer their time, freely and without anticipation of compensation for religious, charitable, civic, or humanitarian purposes to non-profit organizations. An exception is also allowed for work performed for a state or local government agency. Some states have their own laws on the subject. Laws in the state of California, for example, require an employer to pay its interns working in California unless the intern receives college credit for the labor[1].

A gross oversimplification over the above text for all of you who thought TL:DR. 

 Source

Loopholes exist with any law, however, and there are reports of businesses forcing students to accept college credit for their internships just so that they do not have to pay them. This also limits the internships a student may take if their school does not accept the college credit. But I take bigger issue with #3: The trainees do no displace regular employees, but work under their close observation. We all know the stereotypes for internships - you spend the day assembling charts, copying reports, and making coffee. Sounds an awful lot like what an entry-level secretary could be  doing, doesn't it? In fact, both the Justice Department and the Department of Labor have opened investigations to see if, in these days of strained budgets, corporations have been cutting costs by unlawfully using interns.

When I started doing research for this post, I tried typing "the trouble with internships" into Google. It probably won't be a surprise to anyone actually employed, but the five results or so were all about the trouble with interns. Employers love to tell story on how lazy, irresponsible, and just plain stupid their worst interns rather than celebrating or helping the good ones. Granted, I scroll down a little further and it's all people complaining about how awful their internships are or how difficult it is to get one (more on that later). But it sounds like the system isn't really doing anyone any sort of good.

Ugh. I'll just leave you with this suitably adequate XKCD knockoff. Remember that feedback and comments are better than day shadowing doctors at Emory.

All Hail Our Computer Overlords

Yesterday, as an April Fool's Joke, Wizleton decided to announce to the world (via Facebook) his new relationship status. He was, for a brief twenty-four hours, in a domestic relationship with Hal Skynet, the creepy powerful computer he built himself a couple of months ago. I'm not sure who first suggested the name back when he first built it but I know it's based on the unhappy similarity the things holds to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey (notice the red glowing circles). The whole thing was mildly amusing but it got me thinking about artificial intelligence. As a big sci-fi fan myself, I'm very familiar with the various technological villains popular culture has given us ever since the first days of Asimov (or would it be from the first days of Shelley? A topic for another post perhaps). Fun personal note: I named my dad's GPS GLaDOS. The cake is quite good. But how real is the possibility of evil artificial intelligence in this era of iPods and Skype?

About two years ago, when Terminator Salvation was getting all geared up to let us all down, The Times wrote "The Future of Artificial Intelligence". The article mentions and cites a bunch of different views from mostly Silicon Valley inhabitants on when artificial intelligence might arrive and what form it might take. The answers were all over the place, some suggesting specific dates like 2045, some suggesting that computers will mesh with humans in the next step of human evolution, some suggesting that we're going to kill ourselves before we even get a chance to invent something like that.

But that was 2009 and this is 2011 2012. IBM's Watson thoroughly trounced Jeopardy Champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Writers and humanists everywhere scurried to point out how Watson was incapable of thinking outside of his programming, how much more sophisticated the human brain is, and how Watson is not plotting to kill us all. Jenninngs even wrote an interesting piece here on the experience, covering his annoyance as loosing to something that could trigger a buzzer in a millionth of second with little quips about how his own game strategy apparently inspired Watson's training. IBM has stated that they are now looking into the logistic's of Watson's use in clinical diagnosis and legal research.

But if you want to look for an easier example of artificial intelligence, you might follow the experience I had a few weeks ago with my gmail account. I was sending a file of our lab report to my lab partner for her to look over and correct. I typed up the email and hit send. Then this appeared on my screen.

  

Gahhhhhh!!!

Holy Turnips! How can it do this?

So yeah, I know it's an algorithm, the same used every day to try and hawk vanity publishers at me every day because I get a lot of emails about creative writing contests but still. Gahhhhh!!! It's only a matter of time until they get to all of us. Run!

The Therapist and The College Student

Note: This is a re-post from my old blog. 

A quick vocabulary lesson: A psychiatrist is a physician that has chosen to specialize in the study and treatment of mental health issues. It is a specialty that requires at least an extra four years of training on top of the basic four years of med school and grants the ability to prescribe medication if deemed necessary. A psychologist is someone who holds a doctorate degree in psychology and is commonly referred to as "counselor" or "therapist". It takes at least seven or eight years to obtain a Ph.D and licensing qualifications vary from state to state. A psychologist may refer a patient to a psychiatrist if they feel the patient requires drug therapy as part of an effective treatment.

The article inspiring this post is "Talk Doesn't Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy" which examines the shift in psychiatry over the past half-century from unhurried appointments and slow, careful treatments to what the profiled doctor sees as a "bus station" of patients where he is forced to make quick diagnoses, prescribe drugs, and send patients on their way in order to make a living. I have to take issue with the rather dismal view this article casts on the entire mental health field, which could possibly drive people even further away from seeking help, especially vulnerable and peer-sensitive people like college students. USA Today reports that rates of depression are rising in my peer group but I wonder if students understand their options to treat these feelings.

I can only really speak about the options available at the University of Georgia but I believe those options and my experiences to be pretty common to colleges and universities around the country. At UGA we have the Counseling and Psychiatric Services (CAPS) center as a resource to any student, professor, or university affiliate that needs it. There are a few steps to get started, but they're pretty easy. You need to call CAPS on a weekday between 10 and 4 p.m. for a telephone interview that takes maybe 25 minutes. Then you make an appointment to see an intake therapist who talks about everything that makes you feel stressed or uncomfortable or unhappy and then suggests what type of treatment would be best for fixing those problems. This can take the form of seeing one of psychologists or psychiatrists on staff, drug therapy, group therapy, or a combination of actions. The first appointment is free and subsequent appointments depend on the type of insurance you have (but are usually pretty affordable for those without). Unfortunately, there is a bit of a waiting period between your intake appoint and regular appoints because of the large numbers of students seeking help and the comparatively small size of the CAPS department. But all the more reason to encourage the university to develop it further.

The reason I go into such detail about CAPS at UGA is that I'm pretty sure there is a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding out there. I was describing my idea for this post to a friend as "a look at the counseling services offered here and how students use them." Her immediate response was "do we have any?" The answer is yes, we do, and if you don't go to UGA, your school probably has one too. Talking to a mental health professional does not mean immediately being diagnosed with some kind of disorder or immediately being put on some sort of drug regime. College students face isolation, academic pressure, social pressure, financial stress, body image issue, and struggles for independence (just to name a few). Many of these issues can and are treated by so-called "talk therapy," which is simply talking about your problems and stress factor to a professional for about 30-60 minutes a session and receiving advice, feedback, and coping strategies on how best to deal with those issues.

I think (and this is just wild mass guessing here) another issue is that people are afraid of the stigma of being in therapy. Of all the advancements we've made as a society in defeating bias, racism, prejudice, we haven't really done a great job of removing the stigma associated with therapy. We expect patients to by raving about crazy things or dangerous to people, unable to control themselves or function like a normal human being.You get films like Sucker Punch and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Girl Interrupted that show horrible, horrible asylums that mistreat and abuse patients....which historically they did. But numerous reforms have gone into asylums today, hopefully making places of healing instead of  mistreatment. I've gotten sidetracked again - the point I was trying to make is that people are afraid of loosing control when they start therapy. Actually the process pretty much empowers the patient to an extent that is hardly seen in other areas of medicine. The patient decides what therapist or psychiatrist they see, how often they see that person, how much of the suggested treatment they want to follow. Of course, success really only comes when a patient is comfortable and open with their doctor, sees them regularly, and communicates their opinions on treatment options. But still, the choice is there.

You don't need to feel like you are "depressed" to want to seek therapy. If you are feeling stressed or not sleeping and eating well or doing poorly on tests because you can't concentrate or having trouble making friends and adjusting to college - any number of reasons really, it's not a bad idea to explore your options and offerings of mental health care at your campus. Of course, I'm only working towards becoming a doctor, I'm not actually a doctor so take everything I write with three grains of salt before bedtime.

Should Convicted Criminals be Executed by Vivisection?

Note: This is a re-post from my old blog as part of my migration to the Blogger platform. 

Ignore for a moment any of the bigger debates about capital punishment or the American prison system or the organ transplant system. Complete harvesting of the organs after death can save over a hundred lives. Should convicted criminals be allowed to donate their vital organs after execution?

What if there was one more path to this choice? 

One such resident of the state of Oregon argues just that in this New York Times Op-Ed. Christian Longo, convicted of murdering his wife and three children eight years ago, claims that he was inspired by Will Smith's movie Seven Pounds to offer his organs up to needed recipients after his upcoming execution. His request was denied.

This is much messier and complicated than I initially suspected when starting research for this entry. Longo is now attempting to start a nationwide program called "Gifts of Anatomical Value from Everyone" to encourage other felons on death row to attempt to donate their organs among accusations that this is just another delaying tactic to put off his own execution (at time of posting I could not find a scheduled date for that event). There is also a suspiciously beneficial relationship between Longo and NYT writer Michael Finkle (whom Longo posed as while on the run), resulting in numerous story, book, and television deals for the both of them. But all of that should have no effect on the underlying idea of organ donation, which I believe to be a good one.

GOOD Infographic. 

Every year, 6,570 people die waiting for an essential organ like heart, lungs, kidney, or liver. Around 105,000 people hover on the transplant list but only 38% of licensed drivers are organ donors (note that you do not need a driver's license to be an organ donor. You don't even need to be 18). The number is heartbreakingly low for a lot of reasons, including the mistaken belief that a doctor will not work as hard to save the life of an organ donor (52% believed). Also, if donors don't make their wishes explicit to their families, those grief-stricken families may end up revoking the donation when actually confronted with the necessary paperwork. Occasionally a donation must be denied from people with HIV, actively spreading brain cancer, and severe infections like Hepatitis, but there is no law or regulation against donation from a specific group (like criminals). So why is it not an option?

Take a closer look. 

Technically, it sort of is. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has a policy that allows deceased donation by federal inmates, though details about  actual participation of this program is slim.  Convicted inmates are allowed as individuals to appeal to their state prison boards to be able to donate an organ like a kidney to a sibling or close relative (known as a directed donation). These requests are not always granted, however, and they are sometimes granted for what some might consider the wrong reason. The case of two sisters from Mississippi who were released from jail because one sister agreed to donate her kidney to the other sister recently caught national attention. The governor agreed to suspend their sentences in exchange for the donation which relieves the state of Mississippi of the burden of paying $200,000 a year for dialysis treatments. It's always about money.

Those against the undirected donations (donation given anonymously after death) by criminals talk about the prohibitive cost of the transplant and the expenses involved in testing organs to ensure their viability. Yet consider dialysis, the treatment responsible for prolonging the life of people with chronic kidney failure, which cost the United States $8.6 billion in Medicare expenses in 2007 (because anyone, regardless of age or class, qualifies for Medicare funded dialysis treatments if they have chronic kidney failure). The financial burden on society and the emotional and physical burden on a single patient on dialysis treatments decreases significantly with a single transplant.

The other money issue is the question of compensation for organs. Should people be paid for directed donations, much in the way that an egg or sperm donor is paid? Public opinion on this issue has waxed and wanned in a continuous cycle for almost as long as organ donation has been around (click here for an interesting take on the proposal by the guys behind Freakonomics). The concern with inmates is that the compensation might take the form of shortened sentences instead of money. The best rebuttal to this issue is simply the promise that there would be no compensation. Every day ordinary citizens decide to become organ donors without any promise of compensation and so it would be with death row inmates. It is a personal choice that would need to be accompanied by the standard donation counseling and the understanding that nothing is to be gained by this selfless act (check out the Indiana University for Bioethics's fantastic page that lists multiple arguments and articles for issues and resolutions proposed on both sides).

The biggest issue stopping organ donation is the current methods of execution. Electrocution fries the organs beyond use and the cocktail of three-drugs most commonly used in most lethal injections poisons the entire body so that nearly every part is useless. Longo has apparently consulted with a doctor on the subject and reports that a single drug injection would be enough to kill without rendering the organs useless. Perhaps.

I discovered the simpler solution about two years ago when I saw the video posted below. If nothing else, make sure to watch this fantastic, powerful little short.

It's true that adding death row inmates to the voluntary donation pool will not fix the large and pressing shortage of organ donations. It will probably not even make much of a dent. But to the people who do receive these organs, it will make all the difference in the world. And we as a society owe it to everyone involved to at least allow for the opportunity. A number of bills have been submitted in various states over the past twenty years or so to allow for organ donation by death row inmates. All of those bills failed.

I hope that at least some of you will consider writing your state congressman if I have inspired your interest in this matter at all.

In conclusion, I leave you with a simple comic from one of my favorite artists, Randall Munroe (of XKCD). Organ donation is great.