Curious about the age of your kid. Mine is 3-4 yrs old, the only one. My life has changed, a lot, over those years. What you describe was the first 18 months for me. The next year was hell with zero productivity. Then 5-day a week pre-K changed everything again. I hear it will change again in a few years even better. Hoping for it.
Mine's 2, so I'm about to hit the period that didn't work for you. I'm sure a lot varies on the specific kid's disposition. Mine's now at a stage where he loves certain activities like sorting stuff into boxes, and can spend extended periods entertaining himself with those, as long as I'm in sight.
I'm more or less mentally prepared for rapid change now though. Having seen how rapidly a child's habits can change, I know that any day can mark the beginning of a particularly hectic, or quiet, period.
A good motto with kids is, if you can afford it outsource it. Part of what the US does not do well is provide a basic level of outsourcing (day care) to those who cannot afford to.
Consider that perhaps what they found is actually greater happiness. Not saying it’s true or that everyone should follow the kid path, but I’m experiencing what you describe and can confirm that the hobbies/interests were and still are fun but are turning out to be not the best part of life.
That's what I meant, to each his own.
Also, as far as finding better happiness goes, PG is careful to qualify his view by referencing the chemical changes... That makes it more complicated; some people mention it as a positive (i.e. even if it turns out to be as bad as I thought I won't feel nearly as bad); as for me, it makes me even more wary, the thinking being similar to the cult analogy in the article... I don't view such things as positives.
The article links to an original NYT publication from the 1890s. What struck me first about it was that it was a reckless police shooting of an unarmed man. And the policeman was arrested and charged and people were upset about it. History repeats itself.
Being a patent lawyer, I had to dig a little deeper because there is a record behind every patent.
As you some of you already know, the patent office does not freely give patents for impossible devices. No perpetual motion machines, no magic invisibility cloaks, nothing that an ordinary person in the relevant art could not build after reading the patent. This is a doctrine called “enablement”—the patent, plus what is already known in the art, must be enough to enable one to build a working device without undue experimentation. This is the quid pro quo of the patent system: to get ownership of the invention for 20 years, you must tell everyone enough about it to build it themselves.
This patent almost suffered the fate of non-enablement at the patent office. What led to its issuance is the interesting part because patent examiner tried and tried to reject this patent as not “enabling” the invention. Yet it issued anyways.
I cannot link directly to the patent prosecution documents, but the files are public and you can find them at the USPTO database[0] by searching for the patent's application number 15/141,270.
The patent was filed in April 2016. The first action by the USPTO was in November 2017 with the usual delay and it rejected all claims as not enabling the invention. Simply put the examiner said: “You’re claiming a perpetual motion machine, good-bye.”
The patent examiner and the applicant held an interview in January 2018, which is an ordinary event to try to convince the examiner is wrong. The examiner pointed out “that he still felt there were enablement issues.” The applicant disagreed. No agreement was reached.
A few days later, the applicant filed his formal response to the rejection. He attached a published article under his authorship in AIAA Space Forum[1]. He also cited other publications on how to “generate extremely high EM flux intensities.” Basically, he's saying I'm peer-reviewed here is some other peer-reviewed articles, and it being peer-reviewed that's all you need to know.
But most interestingly, he attached a letter from Dr. James Sheehy, Chief Technical Officer of the Naval Systems Air Command, indicating that the amount of magnetic field and electricity described as being required by the patent “can be created, and thus the invention is enabled.” Dr. James Sheehy is a real dude, with that real title and corresponding resume.[2]
Dr. Sheehy’s letter is fascinating. It asserts that the applicant is currently one year into a project to demonstrate the feasibility of high EM field-energy and flux and has begun experimenting with associated propulsion systems. Dr. Sheehy says he believes the research shows the invention will be a reality. Then he says (seriously, he says) “China is already investing significantly in this area and I would prefer we hold the patent opposed to paying forever more to use this revolutionary technology.”
The examiner at the patent office (who is typically kind of knowledgeable in the field) nevertheless called B.S. Peer-reviewed, shmear-reviewed. He rejected the application again finally in March 2018. He pointed out "for a high energy electromagnetic field to polarize a quantum vacuum as claimed it would take 10^9 teslas and 10^18 V/m." He said "these levels are not feasible with current technology so how would someone of ordinary skill be able to know how to create this craft? The largest magnetic field ever created is 10^3 teslas and a neutron star is 10^ teslas so how are you using a microwave emitter that produces a magnetic field that is three orders of magnitude greater than a neutron star?" And so on... Basically, the examiner said this is bullshit.
As is often done in this situation, the applicant filed an appeal from the patent examiner’s rejection. This is usually a procedure that is next addressed by a board of patent judges, with more briefing, typically oral argument, and takes months to years. But the appeal was never picked up after it was lodged, and it is unclear why. Two months after the appeal was filed, on October 31, 2018, the examiner (for no reason apparent in the file) allowed the patent to issue without comment and on the same day the government paid the fees it owed. The patent was issued in due course.
Whether or not the named inventor was a crank, and whether or not the invention was equally frivolous, this was a patent prosecuted by a Navy attorney, vouched for by the Navy CTO, and pushed through under atypical circumstances, in a public forum.
What's even more intriguing is that, if the Navy wanted, it could obtain the patent under a secrecy order that would keep it from the public's eyes until it was declassified.
Knowing all this, now ask yourself why this impossible sounding patent issued in a public forum with high-level brass support under tax payer dollars.
From the file wrapper (parent post reference [0]), the examiner's main point in the rejection was apparently that the generation of E-fields of 10^18 V/m and B-fields of 10^9 Tesla, as needed for the device, are impossible.
The 2018-10-31 Notice of Allowance states that the application was allowed for the reasons in the 2018-08-21 Appeal brief.
The first part of the appeal brief (in response to the 112a rejection) more or less states that the peer reviewed papers are sufficient to overcome the rejection by proving that electromagnetic flux values of 10^33 Watts/m^2 are possible, which are equivalent to the required E-field and B-field values.
The second part of the appeal brief (in response to the 112b rejection) gives a little more context on the situation with a quote from the AIA 2017-5343 paper (parent post reference [1]):
"It is a well-known facet of quantum field theory that everything can be described in quantum mechanical terms. The complex interactions between a physical system and its surroundings (environment), disrupt the quantum mechanical nature of a system and render it classical under ordinary observation. This process is known as decoherence. However, it is argued that we can retard (delay) decoherence (and possibly even suppress it – namely decouple a physical system from the environment) by accelerated spin and/or accelerated vibration of electrically charged matter under rapid acceleration transients. This may be the very condition to achieve a state of macroscopic quantum coherence, the idea being that we never let the system achieve thermodynamic equilibrium, by constantly delaying the onset of relaxation to equilibrium (hence the production of maximal entropy is delayed). The system may ‘violently’ react by generating ‘anomalous’ emergent phenomena, such as, but not limited to, inertial mass reduction."
The idea of "macroscopic quantum coherence" is fascinating. This could be the next major technological race outside of computing.
[0] https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair (search for application number 15/141,270, then click on "Image File Wrapper" tab, then click to select all and download PDF) (includes several other peer reviewed references to support the patent)
Clearly. Not only bad at statistics, and creating a straw man argument from an off handed comment from Musk, but motivated to trash Tesla. The short TLSA disclaimer should be at the top, or better yet in the headline: “Guy that profits from Tesla stock dropping says Tesla is not doing well...”
The patent laws contemplate indirect or joint infringement, that could hold multiple entities liable if there is sufficient coordination. What you propose is an interesting investigation, but would quickly run into these issues of multi-party infringement.
