When I wrote recently that my predictions for 2020 would include some things I hoped would happen, this was the column I had in mind. What follows is a prediction that will definitely not happen unless someone decides to make a change.
Everybody dies.
But not everybody has to die young or in middle age from many of the diseases that afflict our society. In the United States, our single leading cause of death is heart disease with 650,000 deaths per year. Heart attacks cause more than 400,000 deaths alone. With approximately 800,000 heart attacks per year in the U.S., 50 percent of heart attacks lead directly to death.
Nobody has to die of a heart attack. But 400,000 Americans (four million people on the planet) die of heart attacks every year. This is mostly because of a glaring flaw in the business of medicine — a flaw that could be easily fixed.
The CDC estimates the economic impact of heart attacks each year is $220 billion in medical care and lost productivity. Who wouldn’t want to save $220 billion per year?
My father died of a heart attack on my birthday in 1991, so this is personal.
I am not a doctor, but I am also not a fool, so take this information, do your own research, and decide for yourself what to do.
When you have a heart attack, the simple story is that your heart can’t get enough oxygen so your heart muscle goes into spasms and begins to die. If the heart attack is mild or caught soon enough you will survive. Most heart attacks don’t lead to instant death. Heck, 20 percent of first heart attacks aren’t even detected. But pretty much all heart attacks include permanent damage to the heart muscle. This damage makes another heart attack more likely. Two hundred thousand heart attacks per year in the U.S. aren’t the patient’s first. And a damaged heart makes disability and death both more likely.
Your chances of ever being able to work again are directly related to whether your heart muscle is permanently damaged.
Here is where this story gets interesting.
Chloramphenicol is an antibiotic used mainly to treat eye infections, though it was originally developed 70 years ago to treat bubonic plague. Chloramphenicol is an ancient medicine, its patent long ago expired. Any generic drug company can make it in any country. Overseas it costs under $2 per dose ($40+ in America — why is that?).
When administered in a large intravenous dose within a couple hours of a heart attack, Chloramphenicol seems to prevent the heart muscle from being damaged. The mechanism by which Chloramphenicol works still isn’t well understood, but it seems to bump the heart into autophagy, which is a condition where the heart muscle cells eat their own cellular garbage for energy, thus avoiding damage. Autophagy is the direct physical benefit of fasting, in this case, imposed on the heart, thus saving it.
Every hospital, every emergency room, every EMT and ambulance should have a big dose of Chloramphenicol ready for those 800,000 heart attack victims per year. Doing so would not only save 400,000 lives per year, it would send 400,000 people back to whatever it was they were doing before their heart attack.
Emergency treatment is not a substitute for treating coronary artery disease, but it would save lives and allow second chances.
Published a decade ago, these facts have saved no lives. Four million Americans have died who didn’t have to die.
Four million Americans died because Chloramphenicol is off-patent so no drug company will touch it.
Chloramphenicol is an approved drug, but not approved for this purpose. Approving Chloramphenicol as a coronary treatment requires human trials that will probably cost $25 million.
That’s $25 million spent once to save 400,000 lives per year in the U.S. alone.
Such an expense would be a no-brainer for Big Pharma if they could somehow re-patent Chloramphenicol for this new purpose and charge $1000 per dose ($800 million per year) for a medicine that costs essentially nothing to produce.
But that’s not how patents work, so no company or government has been willing to fund human trials.
Finally, the prediction!
Here’s the especially sad part of this story, though it also offers some hope. As an approved drug (though for another purpose) any doctor can prescribe Chloramphenicol for any purpose. Of course, they don’t know to do this. And — perhaps more importantly — such bold action can get American doctors sued for malpractice.
There is a way around this loophole — just a PR campaign to educate doctors. But it still has attendant legal liability. Approving Chloramphenicol for this new purpose would reduce malpractice liability. Then American patients would sue if doctors didn’t prescribe it.
My prediction is that this year some philanthropists will pony-up $25 million for human drug trials even though it won’t lead to a pharmaceutical bonanza.
Sometimes good people do things just to save lives.
It seems this would be a no-brainer for Bill and Melinda Gates; it has international impact.
This piece is a wonderful demonstration of what happens when you let non-scientists talk science. See: anti-vaxxers, et. al.
There have been several published studies of use of chloramphenicol for the reduction of coronary tissue damage post heart attack, as recently as 2017. The reason nobody is jumping on this band-wagon is because many of those studies have shown that any drug that acts as a CYP inhibitor may have the same effect, including not only routine statins that many coronary patients are already taking but a number of drugs that have fewer side effects than chloramphenicol such as cimetidine and sulfaphenazoles. In point of fact, in the broadest study done, sulfaphenazoles were the most effective at reducing infarct size (https://www.pnas.org/content/101/5/1321). But, since many people have allergy reactions to sulfaphenazoles, more study is needed.
Meanwhile, with the concern of increasingly antibiotic-resistant bacteria, no smart doctor is going to prescribe a strong antibiotic for a non-approved use.
Dear friend:
1) antibiotics destroy bacteria, only the body destroy viruses (a sequence of complex molecules destroy a molecule -that is what a virus is, hence so hard to waste).
2) fact is (in my opinion) quality of lifem that is the goal of technology, increase number of humans does not ensure quality of life.
3) people design virus in order to lower the quantity of humans (that waste natural resources and polute the world, consume trees, increase deceases… no benefit in keeping human race increasing in number.
4) practice a sport: I do row, I’m a rower. Don’t drink alcohol. Don’t smoke (anything). Eat healthy food.
5) why do you insist in writing on subjects outside IT technology ? Why not address the fact that Big Brother is in all SSN (stupid social networks) ? why all we use must be manufactured in china ? so many far more interesting subjects to think about…
Is it you Cringeley ? Or just a fake one ?
IT !!!
Isn’t prevention the best medicine for heart attacks? Clinical studies have repeatedly and demonstrably shown that the cause of heart attacks is our crazy diet coupled with a lack of exercise.
And yet, we don’t act on this. We’re literally killing ourselves.
It is certainly posible for average patients and expert-patients to work with doctors to create solutions and improvements. The problem is you really need to know your stuff. Not everyone does. I have no clue about this drug and would haveto look deeper and read around the subject and listen to other people and look for studies and other evidence before hving an opinion. Given this and Cringely track record i have to agree with the bogus cience alert.
.
A whole lot of things are aleady known. Fast response times arethe biggest saver of lives. Better diet and appropriate exercise and lifestyle saves lives.
.
Better diet and changes in food production as a response to food safety and animal welfare and population pressures and climate change will have positive impacts too.
.
I have no idea what motivated Cringely to write this article.I’m assuming he’s getting his ego back and has realised he’s a busted flush with IT and branching out a little. I’m being generous herebecause he’s written about IT and planes and medical stuff before. I also feel slightly insulted like this article is an idiot test.
I agree, Bill Coleman. This is literally “ambulance at the bottom of the cliff” stuff. The real solution is to stop people falling off the cliff in the first place
Cringely’s solution seems more like being run over by the ambulance but I like your phrasing! That’s a good one.
This is… a really strange article to be posting.
.
It has nothing to do with either IT or aerospace. Instead, it’s just one of those “all the doctors in the world are stupid because they don’t use this one drug that only I know about that would save MILLIONS of lives!” screeds that one would normally associate with one’s mentally ill uncle who posts a lot on Facebook.
.
So.. no mention of the fact that you lied about purchasing all the Mach 2.2+ aircraft in the world? We’re just supposed to forget that ever happened?
Cringely seems to be rapidly losing the plot.
Interesting article.
So, like just about anytime I read something like this – I went to Wikipedia and didn’t find anything about using Chloramphenicol to treat post-heart-attack patients.
So, my backup plan… try Google… nothing.
OK, so I went to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3355994/
as sited by Bob. And that research (using pigs as test subjects) is sited by a lot of other research.
It will be interesting to see if a human research trial is initiated.
The funny thing is that the big deal that is repeatedly reported on lately is how antibiotics are bad for the heart. So, for example, it has been shown that patients who receive a lot of IV antibiotics after a heart attack don’t do as well as patients who do not receive IV antibiotics.
Cringely has finally jumped the shark!
Finally?
Chloramphenicol is in the USA virtuatly unused because it is rarely associaed with APLASTIC ANEMIA. Lawyers are aware of this and an MD would lose everything should a patient develop the disease after the doctor prescribed its use.
Dan Kurt
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing…
Cringely obviously didn’t bother to speak to any medical professionals or researchers before writing this article. You’d think that would be a pretty basic thing for a professional journalist to do.
Also, as bad as big pharma is, a lot of medical research is done in universities, and in countries other than the US.
In fact, most first-world countries have far better public health systems than the US, at less cost, with better outcomes and higher life expectancy.
The US is 35th in terms of life expectancy – below countries like Slovenia, Costa Rica, and Chile. When it comes to public health, America is distinctly third-rate and lagging far behind world trends.
Bob’s popularity rating is at an all time low right now. With every post it’s comment after comment that Bob is out of touch, doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and has potentially lost it. It makes me wonder if this is part of a long con to plead insanity as a way of justifying all of the nonsense that has been going on over the past few years. Maybe have a guest blogger (wife or child) who is like:
.
“So here’s the scoop, my husband/father is off the rails and we apologize he’s let you all down. We appreciate you being his fans over the years and apologize the KS backers never got anything, but he’s senile and it can’t be helped what he writes about. We’ll continue to let him write on his blog, as it’s all he has now, but please try to be compassionate to him, for he knows not what we does.”
.
Weirdly enough I’d more more intrigued and interested to find out that was the case, lie or not, rather than just thinking Bob is out of touch and continues to write like he is in the know regardless. As per usual though, we’ll probably never know the truth, as will continue to be dangled along, getting mostly half truths and lies, with a slice of interesting information that keeps us coming back. Oh well, we’ll always have the comments section.
@Jeremy Reimer “So.. no mention of the fact that you lied about purchasing all the Mach 2.2+ aircraft in the world? We’re just supposed to forget that ever happened?”
That’s like Bob 101. Whenever a post gets out of control in the comments he posts another article to “cover it up” and never addresses it again (or does so SO far in the future and without reference to the negative things (read: lies) in an attempt to act like they never happened).
I’m not sure if he’s crazy for his antics or if we are for expecting his behavior to change after so many years of him proving he has no intention to.
@Steve Nicks, I’ve joked with a friend and would not be completely surprised if Bob was just the biggest internet troll there was and used the failure of KS (and this blog as an outpost since he couldn’t openly do it on KS directly) to troll all of the KS backers, with no intention to ever deliver, just as part of the “Cringely” name.
Technically it would be highly illegal, but if he never admitted to it and just continued to toy with everyone here, he probably could get away with it (and clearly is), all while having a laugh at everyone else’s expense. The funny part (for him at least) is that he has such a loyal following (though that may be quickly dwindling) that he didn’t even have to defend himself. He just posts outlandish comments with name calling, to which the KS backers come out swinging and Bob’s followers were quick to defend.
It was kind of brilliant, but I think we’re seeing that even his loyal followers are starting to get over fighting on his behalf for a cause they aren’t sure they support anymore, especially when the content he’s lately providing is lackluster at best, flat out wrong at worst.
The stench of bullshit this blog is starting to carry from one post to the next is unmistakable and I think we’re ALL starting to lose interest. It’s becoming more fun to join together and hit the pinata that is Cringely, rather than to contribute anything of note to the articles themselves. I just took a few whacks and feel better. Who wants the bat next?
This article is so bad it’s not far from the kind of unworkable but plausable sounding content produced by Russian owned media who own Youtube clickbait channels. This article by Cringely isn’t just quackery or misinformation or “fake news” but dangerous.
I’m surprised that no one seems to have yet called out the most obvious reason why this article was written: There’s a financial motivation involved. Either someone paid for this article to be written as such, or the writer has some other financial gain from investment in the drug being sold. Why else would the article be written the way it is? To be fair, I know that I might be coming across as overly cynical here when Bob is claiming that his motivations are humanistic and altruistic, but honestly, why else would a person demand $25mil of investment in a drug that hasn’t been proven, on a space that has nothing to do with the medical or pharmaceutical branches?
I’m trying to work out if Cringely is trying to reignite his daring “innovation” persona or a previous side interest in medical issues, or a combination of both. The article may just be wild speculation and junk with no hidden agenda.
.
Having previously read months ago about poorly paid writers in Eastern-Europe paid to write misinformation for the Alt-Right and having read right wing political group/lobby/news websites with propaganda output I did ask myself what Cringely is up to on the quiet. Is Cringely so desperate for money he has a side gig writing misinformation for money? This is a genuine question.
.
Life took a few unplanned turns and I now work as an escort. It’s not my first choice but I try to be decent and genuine as possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cringely is in a similar position. I know at least one award winning writer who has done work they wouldn’t choose if given a free choice because they needed the money.
Wow, such negative comments! I’d be replying to them directly but the WordPress reply function seems to be broken here. I’m looking into that. So I’ll just make a general comment here.
1) It’s great that there are other drugs that may help in a similar way, but the fact is that nothing is really happening with any of them and, in the meantime, people continue to die.
2) Yes, it’s better to have healthy habits and not have heart disease, but I still see value in saving lives and quality of life for people who have heart attacks. Our culture and laws don’t allow us to just let these people die, so why not try a response that offers some quality-of-life and economic advantages?
3) Yes, this doesn’t have to do with IT. If that bothers you, stop reading my work. I obviously don’t care.
4) Yes, I did consult doctors before writing this. My main source is Dr. Roberta Gottleib, head of molecular cardiology at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She is one of the co-authors on the pig study I cited and continues to work in this area. If one of the top cardiac research institutions in the world isn’t mainstream enough for you then precisely who here is jumping sharks?
To be fair, trashtalk, I sometimes wonder if you post here for financially-motivated reasons as well. Surely it hasn’t escaped your thoughts that some well-off guy with some big assets might take an interest and make you an offer. I’m not judging; we’ve all done things we’d rather not do because we had to (or felt we had to), but as entertaining as the readers here find your commentary, I imagine that you’re not here to entertain us for free.
Bob, I can’t help but find it amusing that you’ve only just now noticed that the reply function is broken on your own blog. It’s been broken for several months. That shows how much attention you’ve paid to what your readers have to say. I’m sorry that we’re being so negative, but I don’t think that we’re negative without reason. Besides the Mineserver crowd (which I am not a part of as I didn’t put any money into the Kickstarter, but who I believe have reason to be very dissatisfied with how you’ve treated them over the past couple of years), we can’t help but notice that you constantly over-promise and then under-deliver, almost every single time. Most recently, you promised that you would review last year’s predictions “on Monday”, which is now more than two weeks ago. I’m not here to make personal attacks against you or try to make you feel bad about anything, but if you paid more attention to the feedback from your readers, perhaps you’d have a better understanding of just why people are so upset with you and how you could establish better relationships with them. In a position like yours, communication is key.
“Wow, such negative comments!” – What the heck did you expect? After lying about the El Dorado space thing, do you expect anyone to think very highly of you?
.
“why not try a response that offers some quality-of-life and economic advantages?” – When my kids bump their head or have a headache, my frequent response is “let’s amputate!” I always have my trusty leatherman on hand in case they stub their toe or hurt their arm or something. But I don’t think doctors (you know, actual doctors?) would think very highly of cutting off someone’s foot because they got a splinter. I’m not a doctor but I find it difficult to believe that the AMA would be all “sure, that might help, but we’re too busy playing tetris to look into it” in regards to this drug. The reality seems to be that there are other issues which make this drug unsuitable for this use but that research into why it does what it does may lead to other treatments in the future. That research appears to be happening.
.
“the WordPress reply function seems to be broken here.” – that’s been the case for a couple of years, not that you would know since you just spit out your crap and never look back.
.
Lastly, no mention of the Mineserver Jihad? I’m so disappointed. Do we, your backers, really mean so little to you? (Oh, wait, yes, we mean nothing to you.) I’m on my second kickstarter and I will say that you have been an inspiration to me as an example of how I would *never* want to run a project.
FYI, it appears that the reply function broke in March 2018, so not quite 2 years.
I agree with Bob, overly negative comments. Don’t like it, don’t read it. To me, this is cool to read about, because my dad also died of a heart attack in 2000. But to the point: I think this is one example of many drugs that could be repurposed. I think our system is broken, and doesn’t provide a good way to allow repurposing drugs. For any drug that has already been out for a while, and has shown itself to otherwise be safe, I’d like to see an abbreviated testing permitted. And that the company that does this gets some sort of limited patent on the drug – say maybe five years or whatever. I think something like that would encourage companies to attack this angle. As it stands now, no one wants to do it as they can’t make money on it. And public funds will only go so far.
Wow, Bob, I didn’t think you would ever reply in the comments again. Clearly you haven’t bothered to do so for about two years. Kind of mind-blowing if you think about it, since this is your blog, but okay.
Let’s go through your answers, then.
1. How do we know that “nothing is really happening” with the other drugs that have similar effects? Where is the proof of this? Why would doctors all over the world ignore this? You can’t say there’s some conspiracy with US pharma companies and patents, because there is a whole rest of the world out there that doesn’t use the US system.
2. Why not try a response that has some quality-of-life and economic advantages? Indeed, why not? See point 1.
3. Yes, this is your blog, and you are entitled to write about anything you want, be it IT or the historical decline of shoe-shining services in northern England. But you must then expect an appropriate response from your audience, who you have cultivated over decades, and who you now treat with utter contempt every time you write.
4. I take your claim of “consulting” with this Doctor with a grain of salt. Her name is on the paper you linked to, but I would bet that you didn’t talk to her about writing this article. Why should we believe you, when you’ve been fact-checked and found out to be lying so many times before? You lied about buying all the Mach 2.2+ aircraft in the world. What if we were to contact this doctor? Would we find out that you never talked to her at all? I don’t care enough to bother, but someone else might.
The trouble with lies is that they catch up to you, and you lose trust. That’s what you’re seeing in these comments.
To earn back trust, you must:
1. Admit that you lied before, and apologize for it
2. Make amends by doing simple things that are within your power (like updating your Kickstarter page)
3. Ask your audience to forgive you, and say that you’ve changed
4. Demonstrate that you have in fact changed by not making wild and outlandish claims anymore
So far, you’ve failed to even do Step 1. When you do, get back to us.
My understanding of the science for heart attacks versus chloramphenicol is not good enough to know whether this is a good idea or bad idea. We have the academic paper on pigs. We also know the substance carries risks. What works with pigs may not work with rats may not work with humans. As for mavaricks it is also true than novel antibiotic treatment for ulcers worked and that nitric oxide, previously considered a highly toxic poison if used intraveously, was actually responsible for controlling penile erections and could be usefully medically used in minute doses for other reasons.
.
I’m not prepared to take the word of a single journalist of variable reputation nor a single scientist whose comments are unquoted and unverified. Why? By chance a good example surfaced in mainstream media this week.
@Jeremy Reimer
This week in the UK a special advisor (SPAD) caused a scandal when it was discovered he had promoted eugenics in the past. Richard Dawkins offered comments to explain why eugenics worked but added he found the practice morrally reprehensible. This is where things got interesting. Another scientist who was head a laboratory where this work had been taught and conducted in the past waded in as did others. They explained how a simple issue like dog breeding can work but how eugenics itself was extremely flawed when you got into the detail and the claims made by politicial extremists would not work in practice. The conclusion was that eugenics was both morally reprehensible and would not work as claimed.
@paul R
.
I’m not a free speech advocate becuse I here is a responsibility to prevent harm especially when it concerns public policy. We are still paying for the lunacy perpetrated by anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers and a lot of shady types and vested interests undermining the very foundations of democracy.
.
@Adam Luoranen
.
That’s a big topic. I don’t dwell on it.
@Jeremy Reimer – In fairness, wild and outlandish claims is trademark Cringely. The fun is figuring out what is true and what isn’t. Of course that worked really well with a gossip column, but not so much when Cringely is talking about things where he is trying to raise money (whether it be Eldorado or Mineserver), or life and death subjects like heart attacks.
@Michael Kent: I suppose that might have been “fun” in the past. But I always took Bob at his word, assuming he was acting in good faith. You can be a good gossip columnist by simply reporting on cool things that are happening in the industry. That’s what Bob used to do (or at least I assumed he did!) and how he built his reputation in the first place.
Maybe it was always lies, and maybe I should have seen it sooner.
Social rules and ways of acting online change over time. Since I’ve been doing exactly this since 1997, I’ve seen a lot of these changes. Back in the 1990s, the trend was for readers to invite me to read somebody’s rant about me on a forum because there were no comments on pbs.org back then. So people had to go elsewhere to rant then try to get me to follow them there, where I was supposed to reply, get in a knife fight, whatever was most entertaining.
I never saw the appeal of “why don’t you and that guy fight?” so I didn’t do it. Instead, I paid $15,000 of my own money to add comments to Moveable Type, which was the system they used at PBS. A couple of years later, when comments were being used everywhere on the site, they repaid me.
Yes, I know that kind of change would cost almost nothing now, but that wasn’t now, it was back when any major web site started with $1+ million in hardware.
So I don’t pay much attention to comments, frankly. Any blogger of note will tell you that ignoring comments is the only way to stay sane in this business, because too many people get off on telling writers they deserve to die for having the wrong opinions or opinions at all. I could turn comments off, but I don’t. I figure that readers deserve their chance to react and respond. So I’ll fix the reply bug, but that’s as far as it goes.
Online culture loves to write-off people. “You’ve lost me as a reader — goodbye forever!” they say only to come back a few days or weeks or months later.
“You once wrote something with which I disagreed, therefore I will never believe anything you write, ever again!” That would make perfect sense if you stopped reading, but you don’t. If you don’t believe anything I write, then STOP READING.
If I was wrong once, does it really follow that I’ll never be right again? EVERY writer (yes, even you) is wrong from time to time. By that logic then there should be nobody commenting in print AT ALL.
Usually, I’m not wrong. I don’t know why someone has a burr under their saddle about Eldorado Space, but that’s going fine. We just got our first two launch orders with eight more in the pipeline. We couldn’t do that without airplanes, so watch who you believe.
And in the case of this column, where I am saying that there are ways to save lives but the economics of industrial medicine call instead for letting people die, is it better for me to just keep that to myself? Who is served by that?
If I see you are about to be hit by a car, shouldn’t I warn you? And shouldn’t you listen?
So I am sorry that my house burned down with 5000 other houses, sorry that I went blind, sorry that both events hurt Mineserver, but I didn’t burn down my house and make myself blind deliberately to hurt Mineserver backers. And dragging my family far enough out of the red and back into the black at age 67 to repay those Mineserver folks HAS been my goal — a goal you aren’t making any easier to achieve, but I am still trying.
Back in 1997, I got an e-mail from a computer science student from the University of Akron telling me how stupid I was and how smart he was. “I eat idiots like you for lunch!” he wrote. I put his message on my office wall. Every few years I go on the web and find the guy to see what he has been doing. Twenty-three years later I am still here, still writing. And he isn’t.
Quote: “We just got our first two launch orders with eight more in the pipeline. We couldn’t do that without airplanes, so watch who you believe.”
So you’re doubling down on the lie? That’s a bold strategy, Cotton, let’s see how that works out for you.
I talked directly to Rick Svetkoff. He confirmed that you did not buy Starfighters Inc (which is rather blatantly obvious now since the company still exists!). Anyone else could confirm this very easily. All I did was use a contact form on the Starfighters Inc. web page.
And anyone with eyes can tell that you posted a blatant Photoshop of an airplane that belonged to Starfighters Inc. with the Eldorado logo pasted on top.
These are basic facts. Denying them doesn’t do you any favors. And yes, you can take launch orders without airplanes. That’s what CubeCab is already doing. They have plenty of orders. They just haven’t delivered on them yet.
Everyone knows that there are online trolls and most comments aren’t worth the electrons they’re printed on. Nobody cares that you had a guy insult you over email you twenty-three years ago. I was on the Internet twenty-three years ago as well. It doesn’t mean anything.
What we care about is the here and now. And we care about the truth. I know that’s not so fashionable these days, and I’ve said that I don’t really understand why I have a “burr under my saddle” about Eldorado. It smelled funny from the outset, and I did a couple of minutes’ worth of research and showed that you were flat out lying about purchasing all the Mach 2.2+ aircraft on the planet. You haven’t done so.
And you can’t admit it.
“So I am sorry that my house burned down with 5000 other houses, sorry that I went blind, sorry that both events hurt Mineserver, but I didn’t burn down my house and make myself blind deliberately to hurt Mineserver backers. And dragging my family far enough out of the red and back into the black at age 67 to repay those Mineserver folks HAS been my goal — a goal you aren’t making any easier to achieve, but I am still trying.”
.
You fucked up the project long before any of that happened, Mark.
“So I am sorry that my house burned down with 5000 other houses”
.
Did it? Did it really? Because it sure seems like it didn’t based on what I and other folks have seen. Again, as I’ve told my kids, one lie and it becomes really difficult to believe you next time.
.
“… to repay those Mineserver folks HAS been my goal”
.
Why? Very few, if any backers are demanding to be paid back or even, really, care about the MineServer itself. What folks want is an apology and an explanation. Both for what went wrong with the project and why you simply ghosted the *388* folks who supported you and your kids.
.
And, while I’m at it, where are your kids? Why couldn’t they update the project whilst you were blind? Why haven’t they been working to make it right with the folks they received money from? Are you going to just let them walk away when it got difficult or unpleasant? I mean, you raise your kids the way you think best but I’ll be honest — I don’t think much of your parenting skills.
.
“…a goal you aren’t making any easier to achieve, but I am still trying.”
.
Again with the victim-blaming. It’s our fault you couldn’t finish the project? It’s our fault you couldn’t be bothered to post anything on the kickstarter site?
.
Frankly, at this point, I just think you’re a washed-up, sick old man with some real mental problems, but, then again, I’m not a doctor. Fortunately, neither are you.
Bob, you spent more time on your sea of text comment than it would have taken you to write a quick follow-up on the KickStarter site that you have neglected to update for over 2 years. If you care so much about your backers and getting them their product (which I agree with @Roger, I don’t think anyone cares anymore), then you may want to consider gracing THEM with your presence.
.
All anyone has asked for is 5 minutes of your time for the past 2 years. You can make up all the excuses you want, but the simple fact that you won’t do even that makes anything you say more or less worthless. The fact that you try to cover it up with sob stories and pointing the finger at others is just embarrassing for you.
@Alan, I agree with everything you said. One thing: Bob last updated his Kickstarter page on November 10, 2016, so it’s actually three years now, going on four!
.
It’s funny reading the last couple of comments:
.
———————————-
Scott Woodward
12 days ago
He has an update on his blog about creating a space satellite launching company to raise money to complete the Mineserver project. Not kidding.
———————————-
Will Harden Superbacker
10 days ago
Wow! I really thought that Scott was just joking and embellishing a bit. This story was near unbelievable — seeing its debunking in the comments was a pleasant (and entertaining!) surprise!
———————————-
.
So look, Bob, you’re not fooling anyone. Not here, not on Kickstarter, not anywhere.
.
Maybe it’s time to come clean.
Cringely is censoring again or his blog is malfunctioning.
Thx Bob! Just like EpiPen..ChloraPen or such should be made available to every EMT unit
@trashtalk: It’s most likely the latter. Sometimes it will choke on longer posts and only let shorter posts in for a while.
I think it’s somewhat amusing that Bob claimed that he paid $15,000 out of his own pocket (probably another lie) to enable comments on his first blog at pbs.org, therefore obviously comments are worthless. Makes about as much sense as any of this.
There are very strange spam blocks on some obscure words. For example, whenever I try to type teggun (backwards) as in steggun of wisdom, it gets blocked. I guess Bob worries I may be trying to sell gold to users, but I’ve also noticed this with other seemingly harmless words. It’s very odd.
.
spahreP eht noitulos si ot etirw a tpircs taht seod siht ot lla fo ym txet.
@Space For Days You’re right! When it encounters a “banned” word it just refuses to post and reloads the thread as if nothing happened.
Funny how the whole community gets to debug Bob’s own blog for him. Hey Bob! You can get around the lack of paragraphs bug by typing ALT-255 on your keyboard (Windows only– there’s a Mac equivalent but I don’t know the shortcut). Or just type a period, which is one’s only choice on mobile or on keyboards without numpads.
@Jeremy Reimer “Hey Bob! You can get around the lack of paragraphs bug by typing ALT-255 on your keyboard”
If you’re lucky, in about 2-3 years Bob may even read this…
I had a long post discussing communication management with examples versus Cringely’s claims. There’s also the issue of rip-off companies selling overpriced servers to mugs to do the job of routers and network balancers. Cringely is talking gaslighting twaddle and I suspect he knows it. This can be countered by any expert which Cringely is very shy of quoting. I won’t bother reposting as editing down is a bother for what’s involved.
.
I’m too lazy to create my own website. I know what is involved and it’s a big step content wise. Glamourous picture albums and movies don’t make themselves. I have other ideas too but it’s an effort. Contrary to what many would expect I’d give my eyeteeth for a membership of tech savvy geeks and a sense of energy of happening things. I just love talking about and hearing this kind of stuff and meeting interesting men full of things worth hearing. I joked with one of my clients his executive summaries of classic literature were better than the real thing. They were in a way as he had a way of telling things without the effort of needing to read my way through door stops. He was a nice and considerate man too which made everything good. But I digress…
@trashtalk, I’ve tried to explain to Bob about the proper way to go about fundraising for big projects, and the absolute wrong way (which he has followed), but I suspect he doesn’t care. It’s easier to pretend to be doing something exciting, like launching satellites, rather than going through all the effort of actually doing it.
Anyone can pay the $89 to register a company in Delware, and anyone can go to a meeting and talk about slinging a rocket underneath someone else’s F-104 aircraft. It’s not even an original idea– CubeCab made a whole presentation about it in 2014!
But actually doing the hard work of raising money, designing a rocket, paying for testing, finding customers, scheduling launches… that’s hard! Much easier to just Photoshop a logo onto someone else’s picture of someone else’s airplane and call it a day.
Delusions may not pay the rent, but at least they can be comforting.
All the principles are the same whether you’re a tech start-up or senior politician or industry leader or generic random. It’s a big subject! I’ve learned a lot from listening to people explain things over the years or snippets of things mentioned in passing. One of those things is very definately doing is a lot harder than talking!
.
I’ve been watching a lot of makeup videos. There’s a huge range of skill and talent and style as well as content which at a surface level reflects on what you are saying. I won’t name names but one makeup artist has been rumoured to be discussing a billion pound buy up of her brand (which she may not sell due to ethical and business reasons). There’s others who have their well respected niche. The majority are amateur or clickbait but it goes to show the spread of things. I don’t spend as much time with this as I could but this week I bought in new supplies and have spent time experimenting with a new makeup look and fine tuning it. It’s a balancing act of what makes me feel good plus time and effort plus what is sexy and glamorous. In all honesty I can say nobody notices enough to say anything usually because they’re so turned on it’s impossible to have a sensible discussion. And this is just one thing. One. Hollywood stars do exactly the same thing only they have the money to buy in expertise to do it for them who often travel to them not the other way around. People may gasp at spending $2,000 on a simple makeup job but it makes a lot of sense especially at their level and given the intense HD scrutiny they face at awards ceremonies on 50 foot screens.
@Jeremy, I have made a point to not use my last name on this site. I know Cringely has all my contact information and KickStarter posts my name publicly but that is a small audience. At least I think the Mineserver Kickstarter site get less traffic, but I could be wrong. Please think twice before posting other peoples full name when they don’t use it.
@Scott, Sorry, I was just copy/pasting comments from the Kickstarter site and didn’t think about the names, and had no idea that was you. If this blog had an edit comments feature I would use it.
Well now I’m just confused; I thought I was the only one! (There are 122 Scott Woodwards in the US, I think you’re fine and no one is tracking you down)
I thought I was going to give one client a heart attack once. This was scary at the time. Behind a bland mask of serenity I was going “OMG OMG OH PLEASE DON’T DIE ON ME”.
.
Some clients could do with being more fit and could certainly improve their diet. It’s always a difficult topic to broach but if something is clearly off I try and let them know. Every client has their own story and sensitivities and I can never be sure how they will take it or what the proper balance is but if they can make changes which will help them be happier and healthier I would feel bad if I didn’t clue them in. Some clients mention it before I do. I usually assume the used my services to feel better about themselves and take this positively as everyone needs to feel noticed and cared for in some way. I know more about psychology and diet than many. I’m not a trained therapist but if I can be a means by which clients can resolve or improve things I see that as a plus. Stress free and happy clients who feel motivated about life must be a social good. Fewer heart attacks too!
I’m a hypocrite. The closest I get to exercise is a soft cup sports bra. I have all the sports kit. I just never use it for sport and I should really.
@trashtalk, you really should get your own blog. Call it “Trash Talk” even. You could do it on Medium or Blogger or wherever, for free. I know you said you’re too lazy to put up high-quality images and movies, but seriously, you’d just need the text. Lots of people would read it. I know I would.
.
I had some time to spare today and I went back and reviewed the Mineserver saga, reading all the updates on Kickstarter– I’d never looked at them before. There’s a whole story in there, maybe not as exciting as Chernobyl, but it definitely could share the same tagline: “What is the cost of lies?” I have some stuff to say about it, but I’ll leave it for later.
Request Jeremy & trashtalk podcast.
“Request Jeremy & trashtalk podcast” seconded!
third(ed?)
Lol, I’m willing to do a one-off podcast with trashtalk but only if she wants to. It could be a lot of fun. We could talk about Cringely, communications, the cost of lies, making a living in various ways, makeup, politics, anything. @trashtalk, you can find my email on the front page of my website by clicking on my name.
At this point, it seems like Jeremy and trashtalk should start a Kickstarter for their podcast. Or better yet, a Patreon. Patreon is like Kickstarter, except better, because Kickstarter only lets you rip people off once, whereas with Patreon, you can keep ripping people off every month. (I’m not saying that J&t WOULD rip people off, just pointing out the difference.) This seems like a lucrative side project for them considering audience demand!
@Adam Luoranen “Patreon is like Kickstarter, except better, because Kickstarter only lets you rip people off once, whereas with Patreon, you can keep ripping people off every month.”
haha, this is the greatest explanation I’ve ever heard! Bob is probably kicking himself that he chose the wrong platform for embezzlement.
I’ve read Cringely comments on quora about journalism and pitchforks. Content creation and community management are well established topics. I have no idea what Cringely’s issue is but I don’t think he’d meeting expectations with any of this. Is Cringely’s brand completely burned? I have no idea. People want the old Cringely back but the world has changed. Sometimes navigating this can be tough. Careers and fortunes have been rehabilitated before.
.
@Jeremy
.
It may be worth an experiment to have a Skype (or Linphone) and eclectic discussion over wine and nibbles. I’m not into hatchet jobs nor need publicity. There’s enough material to discuss this isn’t necessary. I also think it may help pivot discussion into where things may go and something positive for everyone could come out of this.
With “Right To Try” legislation now law, there is an even more urgent philanthropic need, causing untold and needless morbidity and mortality, no one is facing because it really is embarrassing to the drug companies and “health care deliverers”:
Even though the law specifically protects drug companies from lawsuits brought by “health care deliverers” and their patients who sign waivers so as to exercise their “Right To Try” treatments that have passed clinical safety trials, no pharmaceutical executive in their right mind will take the risk. Instead, they talk about withholding treatments due to “ethical concerns” and the “health care deliverers” concur invoking the need for “evidence based medicine”.
This is really insidious because it is actually _highly_ UNethical to withhold treatment under false pretenses — but all legal precedent is on the side of the liars.
So what can a philanthropist do?
Here’s a possibility:
Invest in the lawyers required to set up a legal firewall to protect the pharmaceutical companies and “health care deliverers”. Do jurisdictional arbitrage if necessary. Figure it out.
No obit for Larry Tesler by Bob?
Just because something works on paper doesn’t mean it will work in practice. We still haven’t heard from scientists and leading doctors with enough expertise to comment. There are a distinct lack of quotes and citations around the subject.
.
Yes, legal options can exist as can funding mechanisms but no system involving people is rational. Doctors as a profession are massive conservatives and funding panels never want to spend money if they can get away with it plus all the pencil pushers want to poke their noses in and justify their jobs too. you have to remember you’re dealing with organisations including “experts” trying to look important, a million different business priorities competing for attention, careerists, empire builders, medical unions, accountants, a hundred different random levels of worldview, multiple department and profession and organisational points of view, and so on. Sometimes all it takes is one person in this process to have an issue with it and the whole system grinds to a halt.
.
This “fix” Cringely proposes is the tip of the iceberg and simply just an idea at present. Any programmer knows when pushing out code which has to work is there is no such thing as a small fix.
.
Ideally no issue should need a philanthropist to intervene and that is the real problem.
.
Even if anyone cuts through all this things still need a testing regime. Protocols need to be developed. Every scenario has to be considered. Not just scenarios where everything goes right but when things go wrong. People have to be trained. Admin systems have to be updated.
.
We are long past the age of alchemy and gentlemen scientists. It’s beyond a question of sticking a needle in someone and injecting whatever the modern equivalent of mercury is and hoping or the best.
@trashtalk I’d be up for a low-key talk over Skype (Google Meet, formerly Google Hangouts works really well). I also am not super interested in doing a hatchet job on Cringely– he does that enough to himself, right here on his website.
.
I’d prefer a more open-ended discussion about why people behave in certain ways. Talking about how good communication works and what the dos and don’ts are would be interesting as well. Like you, I’m not interested in publicity (at least not for this particular topic) but it would be a fascinating conversation.
.
At some point I’d like to do a deep dive on the MIneserver saga because I think there’s a good story in there, but I’m not ready to do it yet.
“I don’t care about this, and why should I bother to show you my diploma… I worked for 31 years as a reporter and I don’t care about your story.” [April 2001]
.
“I’ve been doing this since 1997… so i don’t pay much attention to comments, frankly… I am sorry that my house burned down… sorry that I went blind… twenty-three years later I am still here, still writing.” [Feb 2020]
.
It’s always trendy to turn factual disputes into ad-hominem gaslighting — but in this case the gaslighting IS the factual dispute. Bob waves off his misstatements with glib “I was wrong once, but I won’t always be wrong, in fact I’m usually not wrong” evasions, refusing to even face the issue. Such a Munchausen-narcissist can’t be reasoned with; it only feeds the “Universe out to get me and I’m STILL winning” mania.
Not that anyone cares, but I’ve fixed the issue with the last update date on my Mineserver tracking page. Had to dive back into Lynx to do the scraping (wget was’t getting it)… (Anyone remember SlipKnot?) So, yeah.
@Roger, wow, those are some impressive (in a sad way) stats:
.
How long has it been since Cringely’s Mineserver project was funded on Kickstarter?
.
As of February 24, 2020, it has been 4 years, 4 months, and 3 days.
.
Last update on Kickstarter: November 10, 2016 (3 years, 3 months, and 14 days ago)
Please keep in mind that Cringely has been hobbled by tragedies that occurred more than 2 years after he stopped bothering with Mineserver, but will attempt to make it right if you please stop talking about it. Trust him, know that he toils in silence on your behalf. Has the PhD Stanford professor, Three Mile Island Presidential Investigator ever lied to you?
@granville, yes, please be quiet about Mineserver, because then and only then can he finally fund the shipping on the devices that should have shipped four years ago! Except that first he has to make millions of dollars launching small satellites on rockets that exist only in Photoshop underneath planes that are also Photoshopped, that he totally bought even though the company that owns them still exists. But it’s absolutely going to happen this year for sure!
In the US, the single largest cost of all medications, and most of medicine, is legal liability!
What I call our “Legal Lottery” gives large amounts for suffering weather there is any real wrong doing.
An example:
I recently saw an add for a blood thinner. These are necessary for people who develop blood clots. The add very clearly states “THIS MEDICINE MAY CAUSE BLEADING.
The very next commercial was for lawyers. If you took this drug and you had bleeding, call us. We are suing the manufacturer.
This is a test reply to a comment…
Wow, I’m surprised that this is actually fixed.
Now are the non-breaking paragraphs fixed?
Test
1
2
3
Looks like nope.
Guess I’ll take what I can get for now. Bob delivered, he must be the greatest man ever!! He can do no wrong!
It’s weird that we’re at the point now that when Bob actually does something that he promised to do, no matter how small, we’re all stunned into silence.
oh, yeah???
skksks
Bob, thanks, truthfully, for fixing the replies. I’ll pause to let that be the focus. That said, can you not see how mind boggling it is for you to spend however much time doing that, but you still don’t offer up an update on the Kickstarter page for Mineserver folks? So many voices have raised up, desiring NOT a product, but merely information or closure. But you continue stringing folks along with desires to refund (or finish the project), while also lambasting people for criticizing your lack of respect and transparency. And doing that here, not on Kickstarter, no less. I truly don’t know what drives you to this behavior but you gotta see you’re not actually being a decent person about this, right? You’re not faulted for your life (house, cataracts, original server pitfalls). But you take no responsibility for ghosting the Kickstarter project, not updating anything. And generally not keeping anyone informed. And that is All. On. You. You are responsible for your actions (or lack thereof). Please own them (and without blaming outside people or forces).
^ This.
Bob continues to act like he cares every few months with empty words, but his actions are nonexistent and he never seems to do the bare minimum human thing to inform the people he wronged. Did you forget your login to Kickstarter? I can point you to the Help section to get that password reset.
Any time you claim you’re trying but haven’t had the decency to update the Kickstarter site I know you’re full of shit and just trying to appease the loyalist readers here. You may have them fooled, but those who have been following this story (for years at this point) aren’t buying it.
Well, this isn’t an update on the Kickstarter site, but it’s a little bit interesting nonetheless:
I checked the WHOIS for mineserver.com and it still says that it’s owned by Robert X. Cringely (with the same home address that other Internet sleuths discovered never burned down at all) Currently the site just has a blank page that says “Waiting for input”.
But then I noticed the banner that said:
mineserver.com is for sale!
This domain is listed for sale at one of our partner sites.
Clicking that link goes to Sedo.com, a domain marketplace, where you can bid on purchasing the domain. The minimum bid is $499 US dollars.
Interesting. I don’t know what to make of this.
Very interesting indeed. Thanks for all your detective work Jeremy!
https://qr.ae/T0R23y
@Alan — Someone in the Crookely household had the password as of July 2019 as they logged in then. DIdn’t post an update or anything, but they logged in.
btw, the bio on the project (which is attributed to Mary Alyce Neader Stephens) says:
“This is a family project. Dad (Bob Cringely) is a legendary Silicon Valley insider and VC on this project. Mom (Mary Alyce Cringely) is the family admin/goddess. Technical leadership, assembly, testing and shipping is done by Channing Cringely (13), Cole Cringely (11), and Fallon Cringely (9).”
So, even if Bob went blind and all, surely his kids or wife could post an update for him?
The trouble with discovering that Bob lied about a really big thing (say, like buying all the Mach 2.2+ aircraft on the planet) is that you start wondering what other things are also lies.
We’ve talked about the house burning down– there’s no evidence that the only known address (and it’s a real house in the correct city and associated with Mary Alyce Cringely’s name) actually burned down. The only way Bob could not be lying about this is if he is hiding his real address (and you’re not actually supposed to do that by law when you register domains… it’s an annoying rule in the age of Internet privacy concerns, but we never worried about this back in the days of telephone books)
But nobody’s ever talked about the whole blindness thing.
My father-in-law, mother-in-law, and aunt all went through cataract surgery recently. None of them went blind or went anywhere near going blind. The way the surgery works is that they do one eye, wait for a bit, and then do the other eye. I know Bob posted that there were “complications”, but it was never clear what those complications actually were. This operation is not rocket science (pun definitely intended). They pop out a lens and replace it with a new one.
I’m not saying it definitely didn’t happen. But it would fit a proven pattern of lying and Bob definitely has motive for lying about it. If his house burned down and he went blind, of course everyone would feel sorry for him. Who would want to hound such a man about Mineservers? I know I wouldn’t.
At least, not until the Mach 2.2+ aircraft whopper.
Facts getting in the way of a good story so print the story?
When you say Bob LIED, don’t you mean advertised?
People are looking at sickness and illness from the wrong platform.
Nobody just suddenly gets ill or sick unless injured or shot.
Most of the 400,000 CV deaths in the US are caused by an incorrect diet.
Ancel Keys believed heart disease was caused by high saturated fats diets and low exercise levels.
Ancel Keys was either influenced by Big Inc or was a very poor scientist.
The removal of fats from the food chain has resulted in very high levels of sugar consumption.
For all the Glories of Sugar intake read the works of Robert Lustig or John Yudkin.
The other silent CV killer is processed salts which are in all massed produced foods.
Processed salts are a know cause of CV issues. Natural salts do not cause CV or blood pressure issues.
Another serious CV demon is refined cooking oils and fake dairy products(marg and fake cheese products)
Although smoking is a poor social activity , the smoking of commercial tailor made’s is lethal long term.
The 1000’s of added chems and such make for a cocktail of harm. Smoke dope or cigars instead.(100% Nat)
By making easy simple life changes you can reduce many current and future illnesses and enjoy a pain free existence.
Among my social circle I am the only person not medicated for some medical condition. (over 60 now!)
Just by flicking All refined store products and shifting to a predominately veggie based diet you will add quality to your life. Nobody can claim years because we are not God.
But saving 1000’s on medical bills and fees is worth the change.
As a massive heart attack survivor (that is what the cardiologist called it) and with 3 stents in my heart; my best advice is be aware of your ancestry, have regular check ups, and heed the most overlooked symptom: Extreme fatigue, or what I like to call it “running out of gas.”
On a final note why in American do we have to renew our prescriptions for drugs we will be taking for life?
Meanwhile, in NYC, paramedics are told not to try and revive people with heart attacks, because Wuhan flu.
Who, what, why, when? All there, all clear. Add the new journalism of the post post modern age: With a perspective, and an opinion, and emotion. Good read.
A tightly written article, much appreciated: tells me what I *might* not know that I did not know; engage my critical thinking.
The anger: you dare to point out gaps; the reader uses their cognitive bias filters to read what is not read, to misremember, to assault you for not being perfect. Someday I may be, OMG that is a work in progress
Thanks. Keep being less than perfect. I have not read *all* of the posts to your articles, but seems like few are worth a response. And certainly not the requestor you replied to. Something about “don’t argue with a fool, he will beat you with his ignorance”, or was it “don’t argue with a fool, as most folks cannot tell the difference”?