Life Is Tough.

From ABC news: “Two men who believe they were switched at birth nearly 80 years ago are suing a Roman Catholic diocese in West Virginia, alleging negligence and breach of duty by the hospital where they were born.”

One of the men discovered through a DNA test that he was not related to people he thought were his family. He learned the identity of the other man and found his “real” family by searching hospital records from 1942. Together the two are suing. They claim to have “suffered a ‘lifetime of consequences’ from the switch and are seeking unspecified damages.” 

One of the men has blue eyes and says he “looks different from the family that raised him and always felt out of place.”

This falls into the category of news that is hard to distinguish from satire. Have these people really suffered over the past 78 years because they were not blood relatives of the people who raised them? Would there have been any distress had he not uncovered the facts? Does not looking like the rest of your family lead to psychological damage? Finally, what do these claims say about adopted children?

According to Wikipedia, a parent is “a caregiver of the offspring in their own species. The most common types of parents are mothers, fathers, stepparents, and grandparents.” Including stepparents extends family relationships to beyond blood relatives and to people the children may not look like.

Furthermore, since both sets of parents were ignorant of the error, there would have been no reason for them to treat the “switched” sons any differently. It’s hard to imagine what damage was done.

An adoption website points out that there are “hundreds of thousands of adoptive families in the world who all represent wonderful families….” Chances are most of these children don’t look like their parents or siblings either, but they are members of the family. 

From another source: “Adoptive families can be transracial, international, or have members of the same family from different parts of the country.  Adoptive families look different. Adoptive families are beautiful!  They are a picture of what happens when one part of the human race decides to care for another human being.” 

To most of us, family means more than a blood relationship, but rather a source of love and support.

But these concepts are not good enough for the two and their lawyers. Like many Americans they believe life is tough, and those who suffer from the most trivial problems or minor irritations deserve sympathy and compensation whenever possible. Look at the emotional support animal industry (not to be confused with service animals).

Yes, it is an industry. There are websites that offer, for a fee, certificates and vests to meet an "epidemic" demand for support animals. Technically only mental health professionals can provide documentation.  Some sites skirt the issue by employing counselors to do a quick interview or review a questionnaire. Still the person not the animal’s behavior is evaluated, and counselors would not be qualified to do so. That places thousands of untrained, unpredictable animals in public with presumed special privileges, although the certification only allows the pet on an airplane or in housing that forbids animals. It is not blanket permission to take the animal anywhere.

The government accommodates these people with special laws without scientific evidence. Wikipedia reveals, “Researchers have not established that untrained emotional support animals provide any significant benefit to people with mental or emotional disabilities…the scientific research is limited and of low scientific quality.” 

See the parallel? This lawsuit is not an isolated incident. It’s a reflection of the times. These two elderly gentlemen claim to have suffered consequences all their lives. No one dares ask why they failed to take charge at some point over 60 years of their adult lives. We have no expectations of responsibility from victims. They suffer a wrong and seek (monetary) relief 78 years later. Like the growing number that require emotional support animals, they are comforted rather than confronted. And life goes on.

People act like victims. They need and expect to get their settlements, their furry crutches or whatever without question. Anyone critical is branded as unfeeling.

Two hundred years ago they’d all be dead. At one time life was tough, and you had to be tougher just to survive. Today life is significantly (significantly!) easier, but it’s also easier to play the victim and complain rather than to be responsible in taking on life’s challenges. Doing so is hard and might even lead to personal growth and maturity, but don't expect the government or society to take that view!

Flashback – Price Deception

[On New Year’s Eve 2012 I posted a look at the various ways advertisers use prices to convey a false impression. Make prices appear low to suggest a bargain; jack them up to give the impression of special quality or luxury items. Because of the date, I ended with a brief note on champagne. Though it’s only June, why not read this and then find something to celebrate?]

We are deceived by a lot of things, by ourselves and by others, especially advertisers. We are all familiar with the pricing scheme of marking items as $19.99 instead of $20 to make them seem like a bargain, even though many people, when asked, will describe the $19.99 shirt as a $20 shirt.  Consciously we are not fooled, but subconsciously it registers as a better deal. Consider that  nine-tenths of a penny per gallon on the price of gasoline.

Surprisingly, the opposite strategy is also used. When paying a higher price, we often believe we are buying better quality even when we are really getting substantially the same thing. In prior postings I brought your attention to tests of (more expensive) organic foods showing that they are not nutritionally superior. Recently we learned that family cars outperformed luxury cars in the new crash tests. I have seen many Consumers Digest-type articles saying that ordinary moisturizers help your skin as well as the high-priced brands that claim to be superior. Higher-priced brand name drugs continue to sell well against similar or even identical generics by virtue of perceived quality. “When served microwaved food from the frozen food section in the setting of a fine restaurant, most people never notice.”

I remembered some time ago seeing a story about wine judging. Experts were asked to rate a certain group of wines. Later, in what they thought was a different event, they were presented with the same wines. The ratings of the same wines by the same judges came out completely different – no correlation whatsoever. I couldn’t find that source, but was overwhelmed by similar stories.  One told of wine tasting experts fooled in general, recommending wines with expensive labels with eloquent descriptions of their superiority over the same wine poured out of an different bottle. Experts also gave differing descriptions when served a white wine and the same wine with red food coloring added. Others couldn’t tell if a wine was red or white when they drank them from black-colored glasses.

It’s not only the experts who are fooled. “Expensive wine is like anything else that is expensive, the expectation it will taste better actually makes it taste better.” This article gave even more examples.  HDTV clarity and cheese tasting elicited the same perception errors based on price. A January 2008 study showed that adults rated the same wine as tasting better when it came from bottles labeled $45 than from ones labeled $5.

How would this apply to the art world? Experts always want to tell us what to think and what is real art. We often look at the work and scratch our heads. Here is a comment from a friend who visited an exhibition of what was proclaimed to be a major contemporary British artist at the Aberdeen (Scotland) Art Museum. “Imagine a giant empty exhibit hall with nearly-blank canvases, each about 7 feet square, or painted unevenly in reddish-orange oil. A life-size bronze casting of a rumpled sleeping bag.” I'm sure most of us would be equally puzzled at the praise for such an exhibit, but in the art world there is so much hype, and it’s so easy for the experts to pompously fall back on the accusation that others "just don’t get it." We buy that logic and that’s why we get what we get. (For an amusing spoof on contemporary art check out a film called Untitled).)

The effects of high price and over-reliance on so-called experts apply in many other fields. So before you buy something based on the name or the price, do the research. Whether it’s food, art, drugs, wine, cosmetics or cars, more expensive is not necessarily better. When all you have to go on is expert opinion rather than evidence, you are usually safe to trust your own taste.

Which brings us to the real topic for today – champagne. It is, after all, New Year’s Eve.  In this case I have done the research for you, and guess what?  More expensive is not necessarily better. As this British source says, “In a blind test that has thrilled the marketing departments of the major retailers and perturbed at least one of the grande marques, six wine experts gave a resounding vote of support to some of the less glamorous bottles.”

So buy what you like and save a little cash. Happy Critical Thinking in the New Year [or Independence Day], and Cheers!

And Speaking of Sugar

Last Friday I flashed back to an entry from February 2012 where I showed how eager the media is to help us blame sugar for the obesity and the diabetes epidemics instead of the taking responsibility for our own choices.

Shortly after deciding to feature those comments I came across this related news report. “The Sugar Association is asking the Food and Drug Administration to require more detailed information about artificial sweeteners on packaging.”

The problem as they see it is that, because sweeteners do not provide nutrition or calories, they are not required to be listed on nutrition facts labels. Instead they are listed under ingredients in smaller print on the side of the package.

The industry argument is, “Consumers deserve to know what is in their food so they can make informed decisions for themselves and their families.” By making these changes, the FDA “will bring the complete transparency in sweetener labeling that we know consumers want, deserve and should expect.” 

They innocently portray themselves as merely calling for transparency by putting the information on food labels as “sweetener,” followed by the name. This is similar to the tactics of the anti-GMO crowd. By forcing producers to list an ingredient on the package, they hope that past misinformation will give shoppers the impression that a safe ingredient, because it is highlighted, is really dangerous. It’s a subtle scare tactic dressed up as transparency that they have pulled off elsewhere*, but it’s not based on science!

I referred to information sources I trust like WebMD and the Mayo Clinic rather than believing folks like Global Healing, Nutralegacy or Doctors Jocker and Axe. Here is what the real doctors at Mayo Clinic have to say. 

Under the heading of possible health benefits, they state, “Artificial sweeteners don't contribute to tooth decay and cavities. Artificial sweeteners may also help with: Weight Loss and Diabetes.”

As far as concerns: “according to the National Cancer Institute and other health agencies, there's no sound scientific evidence that any of the artificial sweeteners approved for use in the United States cause cancer or other serious health problems. Numerous studies confirm that artificial sweeteners are generally safe in limited quantities, even for pregnant women.”

So they are safe and sometimes beneficial, but the Sugar Association has for a long time believed, “Consumers Are Confused: Decoding Artificial Sweeteners,” as that headline from ten years ago stated. The article goes on to say, “August marks the five-year anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) receipt of a petition to help clear up some of the confusion...." So this has been going on for 15 years, and they are taking another run at it. Why? Before you start feeling bad for the Sugar Association, follow the money.

“The U.S. Sugar program is the federal commodity support program that maintains a minimum price for sugar, authorized by the 2002 farm bill....” It was designed to “protect the incomes of the sugar industry-growers of sugarcane and sugar beets, and firms that process each crop into sugar.”

This Reason Magazine article from last year calls it welfare for the rich, saying that it costs Americans as taxpayers and consumers about $4 billion per year. It does this in several ways: 

1. “Subsidies when sugar prices fall below a certain level;
2. Protection from foreign competition (a limit on imports); and
3. A guarantee that prices stay high (the sugar program imposes quotas on how much sugar may be produced in America).”

They are willing to spend a lot of money lobbying to maintain this sweet deal.

This Market Watch story from 2018 confirms the $4 billion cost while pointing out, “On average, U.S. sugar prices are about twice as high as world prices.” 

So, Big Sugar is trying to subtly frighten more people into buying their product at twice the price, based on a false (but popular) notion that the alternatives cause cancer and other problems, while downplaying the truth about the health concerns around sugar itself. They are counting on only a tiny minority of critical thinkers to figure it out.

*Note how successful they have been in giving high fructose corn syrup an undeserved bad rap.

Flashback – Blame the Sugar

[In February of 2012 I provided another example of how Americans are encouraged by the media to shift the blame rather than take responsibility. Each time we do, we give politicians and regulators a new target for bans and restrictions. This in turn relieves us of the responsibility of making choices along with the risks that some of those choices might turn out to be wrong, but it also deprives otherwise responsible people from making any choices at all. At the time I wondered if sugar would be next on the list.]

In past blogs I have warned that if we don't begin to change our behavior, especially by acting responsibly, bad consequences will continue. This lax attitude can force the government to step in, threatening our freedom. The idea of a threat to freedom may seem like an abstract concept, perhaps a little difficult to pin down. Now we have another concrete example.

Published Wednesday in Nature, a study by three scientists from UC San Francisco finds that sugar is as bad for us as alcohol and tobacco and should be likewise regulated.  This article from the LA Times gives the details. The study's authors make recommendations to the Federal Government including: taxation, distribution controls, age limits, and a limit or ban on television commercials for processed foods containing any form of added sugar. This is what I mean by loss of freedom.   Besides the alcohol and tobacco restrictions, there have been local bans on transfats. Today it's sugar. What next?

This article is interesting because I find the wording, "sugar...is responsible" near the beginning and "sugar itself is to blame" further on. It's the sugar's fault and we are the victims! How long are we going to let inanimate objects take the rap for us? If we don't step up and take responsibility for our behavioral failures and begin to make some changes, well-intentioned people will call for government action and our freedoms will slowly erode. Meanwhile, we will be standing around wondering how it happened!

Is Chiropractic Effective Against COVID-19?

Everyone wants to take advantage of the pandemic; some offer products and services that lean toward quackery and others less so, but they are trying to lure in customers by playing on fear. Sometimes the connection is dubious. For example, CNN reports that the World Health Organization (WHO) “called on tobacco and nicotine industries across the world to stop taking advantage of the global pandemic and marketing directly to children and teens.” (How anyone can use the pandemic to put a positive spin on teen smoking is very puzzling, but WHO is worried.)

As another example, many chiropractors are posting information on their websites similar in wording to this one: “Regular chiropractic adjustments have been proven to boost your immune system. This is accomplished by improving the state of the nervous system which in turn improves the immune system.”

The International Chiropractic Association (ICA) found these claims troubling. Concerned with the credibility of their practice, they tried to clarify in March with a 15-page bulletin stating in part: “There are no vaccines, no drugs, no natural remedies, no alternative therapies that have been tested and the outcomes peer reviewed to meet any credible evidence-based standard in science. This includes chiropractic.” They had “previously provided clear reminders to its members of the importance of not advertising” such abilities.

Where would hundreds of chiropractors get this idea? They believe that straightening a patient’s spine positively affects the nervous system by reducing stress. Stress reduction is loosely linked to immunity. As explain in the Annals of Vertebral Subluxation, which tracks chiropractic research, “It is well established that the nervous system controls and coordinates all functions and systems of the human body including immunity and the immune system.” This theoretical connection feeds an assumption that it is ethical to advertise chiropractic as a treatment and prevention during the pandemic. But it’s not.

This train of thought – less stress to nervous system to immunity – has never been proven to exist. This site quotes another ICA report warning, “there exists no credible, scientific evidence that would permit claims of effectiveness for conferring or enhancing immunity through spinal adjustment/manipulation to be made in communications by chiropractors.” Furthermore, last month “more than 150 chiropractic researchers from eleven countries criticized [any suggestion] that chiropractic care (primarily spinal manipulation), can have a meaningful impact on immune function.”

At the end of the 15-page ICA report, they make the lack of evidence clear by asking for more funding to support “necessary clinical research required to validate the role of doctors of chiropractic in promoting health and vitality by stimulating a healthy immune response.”

As these renegade chiropractors advertise viral immunity, along with several other questionable benefits, they undermine the credibility of the profession, providing more ammunition to the naysayers. Numerous skeptical publications, including this one, describe chiropractic as teetering precariously on the edge between science and pseudoscience.

Such advertising trying to get away with unsubstantiated claims, reinforces the need for critical thinking. Many chiropractors, naturopaths and others claim all sorts of peripheral health benefits. Patients walk in expecting miracles and walk out with placebo-effect satisfaction telling their friends. But wild claims and customer endorsements don’t constitute evidence. Eventually, the professional associate must move to protect the reputation of the profession before the FTA steps in to protect consumers. But none of this would be necessary, if critical thinking prevailed.

Flashback - Extending Unemployment Benefits

[Early in 2012 I used a question about the motivational aspects of unemployment benefits to show how sloppy news organizations are about data gathering. This kind of "research" continues to this day without being challenged, while Congress raises the issue of further extending unemployment benefits in light of the coronavirus lockdown. ]

First, this is not about the pros and cons of extending unemployment benefits. It’s about using critical thinking to deal with the information we receive on any subject. This just happens to be a good example. 

At the end of this CNN Money article they ask: “Do you receive unemployment insurance? Have you not been looking for a job as hard because you are getting benefits? Email [address] with your contact information and you could be contacted for an upcoming story or video.”

Two thoughts. As I have pointed out many times before, testimonials or anecdotes are not evidence. These reporters will receive e-mails and sort through them probably to find ones to support the story they want to tell. Second, even if they condensed the information received and delivered a summary, this is an extremely poor method of sampling. Their data would not be representative and any statistical conclusions would be meaningless. How many people do you seriously think will e-mail to say that they are just sitting around until their unemployment runs out, making no effort to find a job?

This practice of finding an individual example and selling it as the plight or experience of many is common among reporters, politicians and advertisers. They want to put a face on the crisis, but it borders on deception. Often the purpose is to gather support for a cause or product by eliciting an emotional reaction from the viewers or voters. It steers us away from the kind of critical thinking and analytical problem solving required to get us (the US) out of the mess we are in.

[By the way, if I had been inclined to write about the motivational effects of unemployment benefit extensions, I need look no farther than a National Bureau of Economics Research working paper in 2015 after the recession. Surprise, surprise! They estimated “the abrupt end of unemployment benefit extensions led to 1.8 million additional new US jobs....”, that is, new workers!]

A/B Testing in Education

Back on April 20 of this year, I wrote a detailed explanation of experiments. Because we so often see in the press “breaking news” of the “latest study,” it’s important for critical thinkers to have a good understanding of what makes a study valid. Sample size and composition are important. Many press releases are based on less than 100 observations from a narrow population but reported as if they apply to everyone. 

Another major flaw is that when the scientists or doctors report a correlation, a strong relationship between a drug or practice and an outcome, the news reports it as if there is a cause/effect relationship, which is much less likely and harder to prove. That’s why the most common phrase at the conclusion of these studies is that more research is needed, but this may be an afterthought in a news report if it's mentioned at all.

I read lately about a slightly different type of experiment. It is a natural experiment and has become more common in this era of big data. Instead of inviting participants into a lab, dividing them into two groups, giving a treatment to one group and leaving the other alone and  then comparing results; a natural experiment sets up different groups in real life by feeding them different information and measuring the reaction.

Google, Facebook, major advertisers and others with access to a huge population of followers can vary their messages and compare results. They don’t need volunteers, users of the sites become unknowing subjects.

An ad to one group may have a blue background and the other a green background. Which gets the most clicks or likes or referrals or sales? An advertiser may use different pictures or wording in two different regions of the country. Which gets a better response? Someone calls the number and asks for Mary, not knowing that Mary is a code for a particular radio or TV ad in Chicago as opposed to a different one there or somewhere else. This practice is called A/B testing, and it’s happening constantly, especially on the major social media platforms. What are the best colors, pictures, format, headline wording, etc. to get clicks, shares, donations or return visits? 

It sounds like sophisticated manipulation with no apologies – psychological warfare and an invasion of privacy. But there may be several positive uses for it. I thought of this while watching the Jeopardy! Teachers Tournament last week.

According to Everybody Lies, a book about big data applications, a company called EDUSTAR that makes educational software for kids did a kind of A/B test that yielded surprising results. “One lesson plan that many educators were very excited about included software that utilized games” to teach fractions. They found out that a more standard approach, not using games, yielded better student understanding.

On Jeopardy! right after the first commercial break, the teachers sometimes respond to questions by describing their methods in the classroom, and each seems to takes a different approach. They have their little tricks and games, and they are doing what they are comfortable with or what has perhaps worked for them in the past. These ideas seem to get an enthusiastic reception, but who knows if they really work or which is better for producing better-educated kids – presumably the point of our schools.

They can’t all be right about getting the best outcome. This seems like a perfect setting for a similar kind of A/B testing by increasing the sample size from one to many classrooms distributed over many different schools. Maybe some techniques work better than others. It would be interesting to find out. Of course some teachers would be uncomfortable with this, but surely the objective of education is to make kids more competent, not to make teachers comfortable. Just a thought.

Flashback - Unbelievable Numbers?

[Almost a year ago I wrote about the statistics that politicians, pundits and experts spread without any support. They are repeated to the point where everyone accepts them as gospel, and no one bothers to check. It happens often. These are just a few that I highlighted at the time.]

Politicians and other entities trying to raise awareness to one or another kind of problem or injustice love to toss out surprising numbers to gain support for their cause. In many cases these are not real numbers. They could be based on data collected by the program itself with no effort to be unbiased, in fact, the more shocking the better. They may have been based on a single survey that made no effort to confirm results, and may directly conflict with the results of similar surveys. Like the unverified number of discarded plastic straws that was really based on a small survey for a grade-school project that led to such an uproar, the numbers are often repeated so many times by so many people that everyone assumes they are correct. 

With so many examples, how can we tell what to believe?

Everyone knows that ten thousand steps per day is the recommended amount to stay healthy and to boost longevity – or do they? This NPR piece tells us “the idea of walking at least 10,000 steps a day for health goes back decades to a marketing campaign launched in Japan to promote a pedometer” and is not some kind of magic number. In a recent study published in JAMA, older women who averaged 4,400 steps per day were better off than those taking only 2,700, with little or no benefit over about 7,500 steps. This finding was confirmed elsewhere.

The myth of 10,000 daily steps is akin to 8 glasses of water daily. There is no basis. Someone made it up. The best advice, to drink when you are thirsty, continues to be drowned out by the “hydration parrots” who swear by 64 ounces.

Other examples include the unacceptably high number of school shootings. The Campus Safety Magazine puts the number for 2018 at 82, “the highest there have ever been since 1970.” They mention that the second highest was 59 in 2006, so it can hardly be called a trend, perhaps more of a blip. They then state that the majority didn’t happen on school property – indicating a rather loose definition of school shooting. Compare that to the Wikipedia list of each occurrence by location with a total of only 36 for the same year.

A Time article calls into question the widely circulated number of one in five women in the US having been raped. They call that number misleading noting “the striking disparity between CDC figures and the Justice Department’s crime statistics based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (which includes crimes unreported to the police).” This article provides much detail and there is room for doubt (as I pointed out earlier), yet we continue to hear the same number.

Of course everyone also knows that crime and teen pregnancy are worse than ever – not so fast! “Violent crime in the U.S. has fallen sharply over the past quarter century.” Here is a link to that Pew survey from earlier this year showing several graphs on violent and property crimes all heading in the right direction, although you’d never know it from the news coverage. That explains why the public perception is the opposite. Likewise a site called the Seeker reports, “the fact is that teen pregnancy is low and has been dropping.”

Can the recent increase in tornados be attributed to Climate Change? This article from a Carbon Brief posting calls it highly uncertain – with references to the data. “What is clear is that there is no observable increase in the number of strong tornadoes in the US over the past few decades,” adding: “Any role for climate change in affecting the conditions for tornado formation is still very much an open question and the subject of ongoing research by the scientific community.”

Finally, are there more black men in prison in the US than in colleges and universities? It’s a handy throwaway line for a speech emphasizing victimhood, but I picked that one apart very nicely about 5 years ago.

We can’t rely on the orators, advocates, media and advertisers to get it right. Use critical thinking. Question everything.

What Are The Real Solutions?

As the COVID-19 recovery grinds on, it should have become apparent that there are two kinds of epidemics. One is an actual epidemic, like the we are experiencing that spreads from one infected person to the next. The other is a metaphorical epidemic, the kind we have been hearing about from newscasters, bureaucrats and politicians every other week for many years. 

These metaphorical epidemics include teen vaping, obesity, retirement insecurity, texting while driving, gambling, drug abuse, violent videogames, sleep deprivation and any other widespread behavior that can be classified as a public health crisis. One recently pushed out of the headlines was the opioid epidemic.

Authorities bemoan the situation, wringing their hands over each of these problems, hoping to gain support for government policies and regulations to get them under control. 

These epidemics are the result of individual choices and, except for the dynamics of peer pressure, are not spread from person to person. They are behavioral choices freely made. 

That is the key; they are behavioral. And as it says in the heading above, behavior has consequences. Wise decisions generally lead to favorable outcomes; poor decisions guarantee the opposite. America does not experience metaphorical epidemics because a virus from China got out of control. Americans make choices and watch the bad outcomes spread until too many of us are overweight, struggling to make ends meet, simultaneously parenting grown children and aging parents, stumbling drowsily through each day, while filling garages and rented storage spaces with all the junk we thought we couldn’t live without.

Regulations and restrictions try to solve some behavioral problems by limiting the freedom of everyone, but they are inefficient at best and often totally ineffective with serious unintended consequences, the development of black markets, for example. (Note that teen vaping, though a problem, is much healthier than teen smoking – except if they are forced to buy supplies from street vendors; and no hard evidence exists regarding violent videogames.) 

The only Real American Solutions to these metaphorical epidemics are widespread changes in behavior, changes from destructive choices to wiser choices. What to do is not a mystery. It usually means choosing the opposite: saving instead of spending; resisting drugs and gambling along with the pressure to participate; eating and drinking moderately; going to bed on time; being materially satisfied instead of yearning for more. Either side has consequences: one leads to epidemics, the other to favorable outcomes.

Some will argue that it has always been this way. Society has always had people preaching repentance lest bad things happen. That is true, but as we have moved into a new millennium, consequences have become progressively less forgiving. The speed and reach of communications and transactions make the outcomes swifter and more far-reaching at an increasingly faster pace: computer speed doubling every 18 months allows everyone to find and buy nearly anything and having it delivered to the house the next day using the phone in your pocket – impossible, barely imaginable, 20 years ago! 

Each week I highlight a number of real examples, fitting them into one of five categories. Poor choices in a dimension can predict not only a repeat of that behavior, but also similar behavior in the same dimension. Faulty critical thinking in one area, for example, predicts problematic decisions in many other areas. Classifying behavior into dimensions makes it easier to organize an investigation and recognize trends. Those examples clearly show serious trends in the wrong direction in each of the dimensions listed above (and defined here) that lead directly to unwanted outcomes and metaphorical epidemics. 

Over nine years I have accumulated 940 examples of these trends, including some flashback reviews on recent Fridays. Sometimes I predicted news stories years ahead by just watching for patterns or likely unintended consequences. These examples are all symptoms of deeper behavioral choices.

America doesn’t need more political promises, regulations and miracle cures. Those epidemics are the accumulation of so many individual bad choices in the five key dimensions, compounded by a culture dominated by low expectations and a mood of tolerance for poor decisions. The world is moving faster; we can’t regulate our way out of behavioral problems. The only Real Solution is to set and begin to live by higher societal standards