A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way

Mind-Altering Bugs. 

It’s increasingly obvious that powers-that-be in football at all levels have to make some changes to protect players from head trauma.

MEMS-based accelerometers are obviously super cheap now; why aren’t these in every football helmet made, along with necessary processing and memory to cache results both instantaneous and cumulative. And with results available to a trainer on the sidelines via wireless or some other means.

And if a player’s helmet records a certain level of instantaneous or cumulative impact, then that player is out of the game or practice until evaluated by a doctor. 

Additionally this data is tracked over a player’s lifetime and if certain cumulative levels are reached, then the player is pulled for medical evaluation.

This is not some crazy new idea. VT trialed a system in 2007 based on Simbex technology. Riddell had a helmet design in 2007 with some of this. At that time the cost was quoted as $1k per helmet but with Wii controllers retailing at $20-40 MSRP, there is no reason why a lower cost system can’t be devised. Perhaps it won’t have the same level of accuracy and responsiveness as the $1K system but there must be a reasonable low cost version 1.0 compromise.

The game has to change. Measurement is a start. Rule and equipment changes must follow.

Every hour the NCAA spends chasing after athlete eligibility issues instead of chasing after helmet safety issues is an hour misspent, almost criminally so. Yes eligibility issues are important and the NCAA has to address the economics of college football, but the health of the players involved is much more important.

• If air travel was like health care
• Value added by universities. Interesting way to rank

Having spent way too much time with healthcare providers, insurance companies, etc, in the last 4 years, I certainly support change. Almost any change, change for change’s sake, is worth trying, because the system is not very satisfying right now. We should clearly try to do something. So I am inclined towards supporting the new proposals in Congress. I need to get smarter about the details.

In general, shifting power away from the monied interests — insurance companies, pharma companies, large healthcare organizations — and towards the individuals — patients and doctors — is the right thing to do. Do the proposals achieve this? I don’t know. Certainly some insurance companies are pissed off which is probably a good sign, tho other pharma and insurance companies are funding support ads which is concerning — if they are so excited about the proposals, it probably means money in their pockets, and that money is coming from someone.

I kind of hate the fact that all these large organizations — pharma, insurance cos, the various NGOs — are even participating in the discussion. My view is that only voters/citizens should participate, it should be illegal for all these other entities to fund ads and lobbying efforts.

Random posts that have caught my eye recently:

• The VC Math Problem — excellent discussion of the “macroeconomics” of the VC asset class.
• What to fear. The truth about what is going to kill you. The sensationalist news stories every night on random acts of violence and tragedy are scary, but they aren’t the threat.
• The Rhythms of My Life. One guy’s methodology for examining his life and how he lives it. Not the right methodology for everyone, but everyone probably needs some methodology.

Player safety? Bah…. (Blogging the Buckeyes). Not only do we not pay these kids, but we don’t protect them as well as we protect football-playing adults.  That is pretty sad.

Toward the end of the dentist drill? — I grew up with a great family dentist but since adulthood my experiences have not been as good, and I sure hope that technologies like this come to fruition. I hope a hundred years from now people look back at 20th century dentistry and shudder at the barbarism of it all.

• Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar by Cathcart and Klein. Philosophy lite.  A diverting bathroom book, no more.
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. A parable about being true to your dreams. Simplistic.  And so kind of appealing but kind of ridiculous. A week later, hasn’t stuck with me.
• Crash Course: Gastrointestinal System by Seidel and Long.  A western medicine reference to the gastrointestinal system. adequate overview. all trees, no forest tho.
• The Enzyme Factor by Hiromi Shinya.  Excellent sensible book on health and diet. Based on his long long experience. Contrast with the prior text, very much a forest view. Some very sensible conclusions about diet and lifestyle. Some of the details may not be fully justified (coffee enemas on a regular basis, really??) but the overall discussion is very useful.
• One False Move by Harlan Coben. Another myron bolitar tale. Snappy as always. Can’t go wrong with one of these on the beach or the plane.
• Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks. Eh. Pretty rote Bond story with a telegraphed twist.  A fine screenplay but pretty tired as a story.  Don’t understand the rave reviews this has gotten, there are like thousands of suspense and mystery books that are more interesting

Common cooking spice shows promise in combating diabetes and obesity | Science Blog — I need to learn more about ayurvedic medicine

Hurray. I hate canker sores.

• Switch Between Your Gmail Accounts — hmm this has been an impediment to spawning more accounts
• Paypal toolbar gens one-off credit card numbers — always liked the one-off credit card idea; at one point some ecommerce sites didn’t deal well with
• Generate blogrolls from google reader — need to reinstate my blogroll someday
• See if your windows box has stealth connections to the net — i’m clean
• Use Colr.org to plan out a color scheme — love color scheme tools
• AnyTV player – tried this one, actually seems to kind of work
• Visual exploration of medical terms — didn’t learn anything new but maybe useful
• Photomatix for HDR photography

Nutrition Facts and Analysis for Squash, winter, acorn, cooked, baked, with salt — great site for detailed nutrional analysis of any food product.

Mayo Clinic: Gastroenterology and hepatology options and information at mayoclinic.org — recommended if you really really need some help. Everyone we met in the gastro department was top notch, very patient-focused.

I have no idea how good the database is behind this tool — Check Interactions – DrugDigest — but a nice idea.

Great source of data on makeup of various food products — NutritionData’s Nutrition Facts Calorie Counter

• The blockbuster bestseller is dying. “…the evidence shows we are moving away from a winner-take-all society, not toward it”
• Solar powered flickering candles. Ordered for Halloween
• Great lens guidance from bob and rich. I now know infinitely more.
• Netgear launches powerline 200. Exactly what I need for connecting up the Tivo to the net.
• Quikmaps via iunknown — easy way to markup maps. Nice.
• podcast of ted videos. Subscribed.
• Cellfire mobile coupons via techcrunch. Tried to sign up but doesn’t support the blackberry, darn.
• Some Aspects of aging are out of our control.

Eric recommend Fantastic Voyage : Live Long Enough to Live Forever by Kurweil and Grossman. Interesting read. The high level recos make a lot of sense and are not particularly new — eliminate sugars and processed carbs from the diet, exercise, etc. And these guys give good science behind these recos.

The crazy stuff is the extreme supplement plan — one of the authors takes 250 oral supplements daily and also has direct transfusions weekly. I am unconvinced of the science behind this — I am not convinced that flooding the body with a bunch of chemical constituents of intermediate reactions is a good thing, nor that we understand the impact on the entire sustem. But still interesting and a worthy read.

Among other reasons, we’ve been learning lots of new medical vocabulary in our household: clostridium difficile, celiac disease, lymphocytic colitis, flagyl, budesonide, not to mention tamiflu and telithromycin. Not all this was eventually important to know but it has been an interesting winter.

Great pointer on marginal revolution to a discussion of earthquake survival — basically asserting that the duck and cover strategy is a sure way to get killed, instead you want to huddle next to massive objects. Makes a lot of sense.

Related post: Goats — nature’s herbicide

Fifteen years ago, I indentified data businesses as good place for venture capital investing. Being located in New York, I found investing in core technology to be hard. Data businesses had similar return characteristics and there were a lot more of them in places I could get to easily. And I identified three areas that I thought were particularly interesting; financial data, marketing data, and medical data.

and

But HIPAA has set the rules. And my experience in the marketing data world suggests that once the rules are set, the data starts to flow. The absence of rules is a bigger deterrent to data moving because nobody wants to do anything wrong. Now with the rules set, data is going to flow.

Very thoughtful. I aspire to be this articulate about our investment thinking.