Book Review: Poison Squad by Deborah Blum

A while ago, I heard an interview with author Deborah Blum on NPR, where she talked about her book The Poison Squad. Though it was six-seven  (meme intended ) years back, it left an impression on me, so I picked it up when I was browsing the aisles of Barnes & Noble last month. The book chronicles the life's work of Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley to ensure food safety in the US. This is an easy but scary read, especially since we mostly take food safety for granted compared to what was going on in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

As the author narrates, the US population was booming at the time. As a result, the need for more food was also rising, with production getting industrialized wherever possible. But since this was before the formation of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), there were no laws or rules against food adulteration, no restrictions on additives, and no requirements to maintain sanitary conditions on factory floors, or track shipments for quality, or label what was actually contained in the products being sold. Manufacturers would do anything to make a product cheaper while making it look more attractive and appetizing, paying minimal attention to quality or purity, while advertising it as wholesome and pure.

To give just one example, adding water to milk to increase volume is a well-known trick around the world. But back then, milk vendors would add whatever water they could find, including random pond water, resulting in families finding live worms in their milk! And that was just the beginning. Since adding water thinned the milk, they added things like chalk, formaldehyde, and plaster to thicken it back up. This would turn the product grayish, so to give it a yellowish, creamy look and feel, adding liquefied calf brain on top was apparently a common practice. Because formaldehyde is a poisonous substance normally used in embalming, "embalmed milk" scandals frequently broke out when people, especially children, got sick or died.

The exact same practices were in play whether the product was canned beef, bleached flour, whiskey, cough syrup, or soda. The end goal was always to hide the foul smells emanating from often-rotting food, make it visually attractive with colorful chemical additives, and sell it off. For instance, copper sulfate—a toxic chemical used as a fungicide and pesticide—was added to old, rotting peas during canning just to make them appear bright green. If anyone ever complained about getting sick, manufacturers could always claim it was because of something else the person ate or was exposed to, and there was no formal way to prove otherwise. Even if they did get caught, there was no law against adding these substances to food, so they were legally in the clear. While it might be easy to say 'no preservatives', simple things like salt did serve as preservative and so what to allow and what to ban was not clear. 

Wiley entered this world as the Chief Chemist in the Department of Agriculture, armed with a single-minded obsession to address this issue. For four decades, he fought manufacturers to force them to label products and explicitly list their ingredients. He battled to ban toxic substances from being used as additives/preservatives and finally managed to help get the "Pure Food and Drug Act" passed in 1906 under President Theodore Roosevelt, which ever so slowly started moving things in the right direction.

To get to that point, he did something that would be impossible to do today. He recruited young men from his department as volunteers. They were fed three nice, chef-prepared meals a day, including water and drinks, but they had to agree that half of them would secretly be fed food additives and preservatives in the form of pills, substances that could be toxic. They were not allowed to eat or drink anything outside so that what effects these chemicals had on them could be assessed via regular medical checkups. When the press got wind of it, they dubbed the team the "Poison Squad," which provided the title for this book, strap lined: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.

Wiley became quite famous during his tenure because the public recognized his tenacity. He spoke directly with sitting US Presidents, fought often with his boss who is the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, and was regularly eulogized in newspapers. While this might sound all positive and we might think any substance proven by the poison squad to be bad for human beings will naturally be banned, that really wasn't the case. Food manufacturers fought him tooth and nail at every step. They convinced the Secretary to set up another "industry-friendly" board to override Wiley's recommendations, and they went to court and won cases because judges didn't want businesses encumbered by "unnecessary" regulations. The book is full of stories of backstabbing, Presidents siding one way or the other to make final rulings, and senators trying to sneak lines into bills stating that specific items should not be regulated to protect corrupt food manufacturers (often because those companies provided campaign contributions or local factory jobs).

At times, the detailed quotes from multiple letters and newspaper articles used to make just one point feel a bit excessive, but that doesn't happen too often in the narrative. The initial few pages talking about how bad the meat delivered to the US military and general public was also felt a bit long and slow. But once Upton Sinclair enters the narrative with his book The Jungle, the pace picks up. It is intriguing how much Sinclair's book, originally written to push for better working conditions for Chicago meatpacking district workers, ended up pushing the cause for safe food instead. As Sinclair famously quipped, he aimed for the public's heart but hit them in the stomach instead.

When you read books like this, many surprising little factoids roll out. The chapter on ketchup talks about how its origin story is an ancient mystery. While there are competing claims that it originated in China, Fiji, the West Indies, or Vietnam, one ancient Chinese recipe went like this: Take the intestine, stomach, and bladder of the yellow fish, shark, and mullet; wash them well, mix them with salt, seal them into a jar, and let it sit in the sun for up to one hundred days! Over a few centuries, this fish sauce morphed into various iterations made of mushrooms, oysters, and walnuts before finally settling on tomatoes (which was mistakenly thought of as poisonous once). The Heinz company actually worked with Wiley to eliminate harmful substances from their ketchup, creating a preservative-free, high-quality product using tomatoes, and marketed the hell out of it—to such an extent that we now all assume ketchup is naturally a thick, bright red, syrupy liquid derived from tomatoes.

Naturally, ensuring food safety, making sure labeling is correct, are all on going endeavors that need to continue with enough vigilance. Though we have quite far from where we were 100 years ago, food adulteration is a big problem not only in countries like India, but also in the US where chemical food coloring, various preservatives are all still in wide usage. This warrants worldwide implementation of rules and enforcement. On the whole, it is well worth reading. The material is fascinating, the prose is simple, and at less than 300 pages, it isn't a massive commitment. PBS also made a documentary out of the book for their American Experience series. If you don't want to read the book, you can check that out instead, as it is available for free on YouTube.

Though this book is focusing on food safety, I am particularly interested in higher level meta learnings. Because food safety and banning toxins in our food supply is the norm now, and every country has an organization equivalent to the FDA in the US, all of this might sound obvious to us today. But when there is no regulation in a newly identified domain (think of Artificial Intelligence today) how do you go about developing a new model, process, or set of rules to ensure the general public isn't harmed when there is no existing template or playbook?

Any attempt to monitor and control AI technology today is often criticized by its supporters in one of many ways: as unnecessary government interference in technological progress, OR that competing countries will get ahead of us, OR claim that regulations will prevent the virtues of the new tech from improving people's lives faster. Food manufacturers were making the exact same arguments a century ago. Balancing regulation to ensure progress isn't impeded while making sure the public isn't harmed is incredibly tricky in uncharted fields, whether it's AI or gene editing. Hats off to those who work in the trenches to create frameworks that can scale to support whole nations and can be sustained for decades. 

Book Review: Hacking Planet Earth by Thomas M. Kostigen

Over the years, we all have read several articles on geoengineering proposals to "save the planet". Simultaneously those ideas appear as audacious, phenomenally effective approaches to addressing massive problems, and as terrifying prospects that could go totally and irrevocably wrong, messing up our only home. Because Hacking Planet Earth: Technologies That Can Counteract Climate Change and Create a Better Future is a book discussing exactly these types of solutions, I picked it up during a recent visit to Barnes & Noble. After finishing it, I came away with mixed feelings—not so much about the technology itself, but about the book. 

As we all know, human activities have caused the planet to warm up year after year. The solutions proposed in decades past focused on reducing carbon emissions, which often meant slowing down economic activity and transitioning to renewable energy. However, these recommendations haven't had much of an impact. With a growing global population and more countries transitioning from abject poverty to the middle-income bracket, energy consumption has only increased in recent years, accelerating global warming. Since halting this trend is neither easy nor practical, scientists and governments have been looking at alternative options to cool the Earth more efficiently, which is exactly what geoengineering is all about. The book explores various proposals, such as reflecting sunlight back into space or blocking sunbeams from reaching the Earth. Given that we are failing phenomenally to meet our carbon reduction goals—and with major contributors like the US not pulling their weight but pulling out of international agreements like the Paris Accord—these "hacking" ideas are both timely and necessary, provided they don't mess things up further.

Written by Kostigen, a professional author experienced in this genre, the book is an easy read featuring simple, accessible prose. He doesn't get into anything deeply technical, as this is aimed at a popular audience. Although the author doesn't explicitly claim to have done so, it appears like he traveled the world and interviewed the people featured in the book to provide a strong narrative, which is admirable.

The first section, titled "Humans v. Sky & Space," is probably the best. It explores efforts to limit global warming by creating artificial lightning, deploying a massive "space parasol" covering a region the size of the United States, and installing large reflectors in the desert to reduce the impact of sun heating up the planet. It is a balanced discussion, analyzing both the pros and potential cons of each grand idea. However, the final chapter of this section feels less interesting, focusing merely on painting roofs and parking lots white to improve reflectivity and reduce heat absorption. While this should certainly be part of the overall solution, it is neither a stunning new concept nor a true "planet-hacking" solution. Just a passing mention in a paragraph or two would have been adequate.

Part two, "Humans v. Land & Oceans," discusses brightening clouds by spraying a fine mist of seawater from solar-powered, boat-like structures moving through the ocean. This is a neat concept that doesn't cost an astronomical amount or rely on chemicals—just seawater, mimicking a process that already occurs naturally. The subsequent chapter on ocean fertilization is also fascinating, exploring how we might artificially revive coral reefs and eliminate oxygen-depleted dead zones. But subsequent chapters in this section, discussing Dutch dikes, building living spaces underground (creating "earthscrapers" instead of skyscrapers), and trying to stop glaciers from melting, all feel like old, well-known ideas with limited impact. They simply don't fit the definition of "earth hacking."

By the time the book reaches the final two sections, it feels as though the author ran out of planet-hacking concepts and began scraping the bottom of the ideas barrel. There is a chapter on transitioning from livestock farming to lab-grown meat, and another on recycling sewage water into drinking water (technologies already utilized in places like California and Israel). Earth hacking? Hardly.

The final section covers self-driving cars, discussing how they will reduce accidents and reshape urban life by eliminating the need for parking lots and garages. As an autonomous vehicle enthusiast, I appreciate the technology, but I can't view it as a novel earth-hacking concept. The last chapter highlights Masdar City, a UAE-funded development project, designed from the ground up to be a zero-carbon city supporting 1,500 businesses and 50,000 residents. Launched in 2005 with great intentions and interesting ideas, it was originally slated for completion by 2020. As is typical with such massive projects, delays hit, the goal shifted from "zero carbon" to "low carbon," and the book claims it would be completed by 2025. However, a quick look online (e.g. see this link) reveals that the new completion date has slipped to 2030, the scope has been further reduced, not many people & businesses are moving in, and the UAE organization behind it has shifted its primary focus to solar power, rendering the city a secondary project. It is a disappointing outcome, though the attempt remains laudable. Ultimately, because these are small, meaningful adjustments that all modern city plans should include, it again fails to feel like true earth hacking.

Books of this nature benefit immensely from illustrations to make complex concepts easier to grasp. This book does include a few hand-drawn, black-and-white pencil sketches, but the quality is quite poor, both literally and figuratively. Literally, because the annotations are written in handwriting that is barely legible; figuratively, because the drawings fail to clarify anything useful. Some illustrations are entirely pointless, such as a sketch of a self-driving car that looks just like a standard vehicle. Others are either too simple to add value or leave the reader confused about what they are even looking at. This was particularly jarring to me, as I have just spent the last year creating about 80 images for my own upcoming book. I sincerely hope my readers will find the illustrations genuinely valuable.

Despite these flaws, I would still recommend reading it. It is a quick, accessible read, and it is clear that the world is not moving fast enough to reduce carbon emissions. This reality may eventually force us to adopt these geoengineering ideas if we want to survive.

In the final pages, the author makes an emotional plea about the need to "save the planet" in distress. This line of thinking always amuses and puzzles me; the Earth will be perfectly fine, just as it was before humans arrived, and it will endure long after we are gone. We don't even need to anthropomorphize it to say it is caring for us or struggling to survive. TBH, earth doesn't care! What we are actually worried about is the planet's conditions becoming incompatible with, or at least highly uncomfortable for, human life. We aren't saving the Earth; we are trying to save ourselves. Since we show no signs of abandoning our carbon-spewing, global-warming lifestyles, it is high time we look into alternative "earth-hacking" options—while exercising strict due diligence to ensure we don't screw things up even further in pursuit of a magic bullet. 

Guns & Graduation!

My wife and I have been watching an eponymous TV show set in the Shetland Islands, off the coast of Scotland. It is a police procedural. With so much of American police shows that flood the airwaves around the world, it stands out since the DIs (Detective Inspector) or the uniformed cops approaching criminals don't have drawn guns in their hands, that almost looks odd! Possession and use of guns is such a part & part of the US culture, that saying, "Why do we need so many guns?", even in elementary school teacher introduction type settings, will elicit responses from parents who won't agree to any kind of limitation or restrictions. (This is from a personal experience, here in PA years ago.) 

I have been serving as a (volunteer) member of the Board of Trustees for a kindergarten to 12th grade Charter School here in Allentown. Out of the 1200 students in the school, 81% are Hispanic and more than 10% are Black students and so it is predominantly a minority school. In case if you are not familiar with the US charter school system, they are publicly funded (i.e. using tax dollars) and privately run schools, that usually try to focus on some unmet need in the school district. 

On May 15th the school held a cultural function (a school dance) that was attended by students. After the event, many kids were in a nearby McDonalds hanging out to be picked up by parents. Around 9pm, somebody drove by, shot at the restaurant and one student from our school died, capitulating to the gun shot wound! He is just 18 and is a graduating student of the high school this year! 

Funeral for this student named Tymell Millan Mason, Jr. was held on June 5th. I attended the viewing and celebration of life service held in a church. Though black is the color people wear here for funerals, this family asked us to wear white and so we all did. It was so sad to see so many of his school friends in the service, crying, with his parents, younger sister, uncle and pastor paying tributes. Really depressing to see young 18 year old kid, attending a school dance, then waiting in a nearby McDs with friends, to be picked up by parents, passing away this way! So far police haven't caught the perpetrators or found any motive. 

https://www.vanderburgfh.com/obituaries/tymell-millan-mason-jr

Couple of more pictures and a short video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/gh2JWdX3ui8V5Q1V9

Local TV news report about the incident. 

In a sad coincidence, in an unrelated incident, another board member's granddaughter, who is just 18, was shot in the head by her ex-boyfriend (who is in prison now) just couple of days before! Luckily that girl is recovering ever so slowly, with years of physiotherapy ahead of her. Even before we recovered from that news, this one hit us! Sad months that will hopefully get better going forward. 

These incidences reminded me of another gun violence incidence from the 90's I was following closely, since it happened in Baton Rouge, LA where I was living as a fairly new graduate student at LSU. You can read about it on this Wikipedia page. I still remember those days vividly since it was hard for me to accept then the perpetrator getting acquitted!

Turning towards more positive updates, the high school graduation for our school (Lincoln Leadership Academy Charter School) was held last Friday (June 5th). I attended as a board member, robed and sitting on the stage! About 66 kids graduated, including Tymell Millan-Mason, Jr., the 18-year-old kid who died last month. Tributes to him were moving, with his mother & younger sister accepting the diploma. 

The overall graduation vibe was similar to our daughter's high school graduation last year, full of cheers & tears. But this being a smaller inner city school (about 1200 students across 12 grades, compared to 3200 students in across just 9-12 grades in Parkland High School) with predominantly Latina and Black students, where students were heading next was markedly different. Majority of the kids are heading to local community colleges, beauty schools, etc. with just a few heading outside the state to 4-year colleges. 

I still remember the school principal Dr. Michael Evans talking to me couple of months ago, when I visited the school. He pointed out to a young kid who had turned 18 and so was out of foster care system, and so the school was trying hard to make sure he still feels cared for and will graduate high school properly. Evans was saying, while test scores are no doubt important, he is not sure how to put a value on what the school staff is doing to help that kid graduate! That kid did graduate last Friday!

It is important for us to get out of our bubbles, mingle with citizenry across the spectrum, while keeping our values & outlook grounded, prioritizing the right things in life! I look forward to learning and contributing to help this school & kids grow in the forthcoming years!

Few more pictures from the graduation ceremony, showing me, another board member, Tymell on the big screen, a short video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/pi74VtuxhRcU9akc7 to let you soak in the event!

Book Review - Nexus by Harari

When I left Intel more than a year ago, my team gave me Yuval Noah Harari's Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI as one of my send-off gifts. Since I had other books ahead in the queue, it sat on my shelf for a while, but I finally got around to reading it.

Similar to his Sapiens, this book feels like a collection of historical facts and observations that are mostly easy to agree with, while lacking any truly novel thesis or groundbreaking insight. To be fair, my perspective is likely biased: As you may know, I have been delivering a lecture titled "Ethics & Emerging Technologies," for many years now, which covers the same grounds Harari treads here. Because I regularly read/watch/absorb material to incorporate into that talk, I found myself intimately familiar with a lot of material found in the book. But if you haven't looked into these areas closely, this is an easy read. Material & prose are very accessible, with nothing too complex to grok.  

The book is structured into three parts. The first section defines human networks, exploring how information was gathered and shared over past millennia. Harari repeatedly draws a contrast between religious scriptures and foundational legal texts like the US Constitution. While both are human constructs, religious texts are traditionally framed as infallible. Conversely, a constitution is living prose that can be amended as societal morals evolve, a prime example being how both the Bible and the original US Constitution treated slavery.

The second part, titled "The Inorganic Network," shifts the focus to computer networks. Harari emphasizes that because these networks are "always on" and frequently propagate misinformation, they require robust, built-in self-correcting mechanisms, that are currently missing. The final section, "Computer Politics," dives into algorithmic bias, facial recognition surveillance, and the tech-driven US-China rivalry, topics that dominate our daily headlines these days.

The book is peppered with amusing historical tidbits. For instance, Copernicus’s seminal 1543 work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, failed to sell out its initial print run of just 400 copies, earning it the historical title of a "worst-seller." Similarly, the discussion of how the Bible was canonized, and how the initial formation of the Torah subsequently required the Mishnah, which later demanded the interpretations of the Talmud, was equally amusing. However, some other broader contrarian claims feel like a stretch. One such example is the assertion that the invention of the printing press wasn't entirely a net positive because it accelerated the spread of early "fake news" (like witch-hunt manuals). Thought this is an overengineered attempt to offer a provocative counter-narrative.

That said, the dilemmas raised in the final chapters are deeply concerning. Harari highlights COMPAS, a proprietary software sold to the US justice system that judges use to predict recidivism and determine prison sentencing. While the company selling the software claims it standardizes punishments, the underlying algorithm remains a black box protected as a trade secret. If the algorithm errs and recommends a ten-year sentence instead of one, the defendant has no data on which to base an appeal. This is just one example. This lack of transparency is a pervasive existential threat in the AI era. Even if we legislate "explainable AI," that Intel Corp and other companies were promoting, the sheer volume of data and the complexity of neural networks mean that human beings may soon lose the ability to untangle the decision-making trail. He also talks about how competing interests & nations (e.g. US Vs. China Vs. Europe) may render the idea of "web" irrelevant leading us towards "cocoons" instead, where different networks & systems become siloed, refusing to interwork.

Ultimately, since these ideas are not that new, not a lot of fresh learnings for me. But this could be a good book for those who are not well versed in these topics and are looking to understand how the information networks evolved over the centuries and are getting shaped now by algorithms that require close attention to ensure they don't blow up the societies.