The "Lone Wolf" Graphic Arts Technologist

Education: Falling Further Behind

2012-02-13T09:53:00.000-08:00

When people still cared about learning and education.

In the spring of 1963 I had a chance to spend part of the day in my future grade school.

I still recall the experience today. There was a single, large room in the basement of the local church. All of the classes were there save for some older kids who were in different rooms. Each "class" was separated by groups of desks.

There was a single teacher - a nun.

I was assigned a temporary desk where I sat. Of course, at six years old I had very little understanding of what was going on. There was "lunch" and recess.

One of the older kids showed me around the playground - right next to the grave yard.

That fall I entered school. By then a new addition to the church had been completed and the basement school room was no more. My first grade teacher, Sister Ann Joseph, was also a nun.

All the nuns lived in a rectory behind the church, next to the playground and graveyard. It was a large, forbidding-looking building - dark and scary to a six year old.

Nuns in those days were tough - some had lived and worked in South-Side Chicago schools. They didn't take any shit.

They also worked basically for room and board. You didn't pay a nun like you would a "lay teacher." The nuns provided education as part of their "calling." Not all the nuns in the rectory taught. I suppose they just lived there until they died - the younger nuns taking care of the older ones.

If you were a lay teacher in 1963 the average salary was around $5,100.00 USD per year. In 2007 dollars that would be about $34,200.00 USD. My guess is that in 1963 you got paid only for the time you worked - about 70% of the working days in a year.

In 2007, in the local Penn Hills school district, teachers are paid around $51,000.00 USD per year.

This is almost 50% over the normal inflation during the same period.

And then we find things like this. Basically states passing laws to require kids to be held back if they don't pass specific tests in third grade.

As a child there were few kids "held back" in my day. Maybe one or two I can remember in my time in Catholic grade school. To be held back your behavior was horrendous and you hand to work hard at not trying in school. Particularly because the nuns viewed your learning as something God had ordained and they were required to properly execute or burn in hell.

Almost an educational jehad, if you will. And the nuns were serious about it.

But now the jihad seems to be about ~~money~~ "federal funding." Federal law, which provides money to school districts, requires that children reach a certain level of proficiency on standardized tests in order for the district to get the money it expects.

Now this federal/school policy seems to me to be at odds with "learning."

Almost as if the adults have set a bar for the children to reach without any consideration for what the child actually learns (save test taking skills). If the child fails to reach that bar then the child is punished.

Yet isn't the job of the school to educate the child - whether or not its hard or easy, takes a little or a long time?

In 1963 the class was divided into three groups - based on your ability to learn. Fastest learns in one group, slower in the next, slowest in the last.

This ensured that groups moved along at a comfortable pace.

Today, again through laws created by adults, this is not allowed. Everyone must pretend to learn at the same pace because that way everyone is perceived by the adults as "equal." But this is simply like pretending not to keep score in a T-Ball game - the kids know the score - its only the adults creating a fiction that the score "doesn't matter."

Which is what's been done to education.

Now children will be punished by law if they "fail to take the test properly."

Seems pretty Draconian to me - kids are not all the same and certainly children struggling to keep up should not be stigmatized by law...

But that's what you get when the jihad becomes about money.

Learning ability and intelligence, just like looks, vision, hair color, facial forms, body type, stamina, over all health and so forth all vary from child to child. And each child may have gifts in some areas and deficits in others.

Isn't it our job as adults to make sure the child learns?

Another thing common in the "olden days" was to direct children into areas where they were best suited. For example, in my day farming was a key area. Some kids just liked farming and weren't interested in "higher education."

Why educate them as if they were going to college? Would these skills help them if a cow fell and was injured in the field? Many kids in my class were interested in various trades - cars, that sort of thing. Again, perhaps they were gifted body men and liked doing that work.

It seems as if education is now a business run by detached adults who care little for learning and care a lot about funding and money.

Little wonder we are falling behind the rest of the world in education.

Orwell's Big Brother in Your Pocket

2012-02-10T08:02:00.000-08:00

Criminals implicated in deforesting Central Africa (Nature)

Modern communications like Twitter, Facebook, email, cellphone, etc. offer a bounty of mechanisms to convey our thoughts and feelings to others, our spouses, friends, family.

But I think that there is a new and darker side of this: conformity memes.

First of, for those who do not know, a meme is a word meaning "idea" or "thought". It was created by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and described in a book called "The Selfish Gene." Dawkins used it to describe how things like the idea of an "arch" in building is transmitted across time and culture. In today's world its seen more like something which is almost alive or takes on a life of its own, e.g., global warming, the destruction of rain forests, the evil nature of George Bush, that sort of thing.

Typically a meme enters our culture inadvertently but spreads as those who associate themselves with the underlying idea spread that idea.

For example, Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" and its relationship to world wide interest in global warming and its consequences is a good representation of the meme "global warming is killing us."

The idea is simple - CO2 pouring out of man-made devices poisoning our world.

As I wrote in my series of posts on Kahneman the "System 1" portion of our mind can grasp this simple threat and brings it to the forefront of our consciousness, e.g., "the sky is falling." We really cannot help this.

Now even fifty years ago, prior to widespread communications, an idea like this or a movie or even a book, in order to get general traction in the mind of the public, would have to find a means to do so. Certainly Al Gore could have made this movie fifty years ago and its content, which does not rely on anything really current other than the notion of man using fossil fuels, would be just a relevant.

However, there were far fewer societal mechanisms that would allow these ideas to propagate. For example, movies by-and-large only showed up in movie theaters or on commercial network TV. Yes there were public television stations and 16mm movies at the local Rotary Club but to reach even these "markets" the movie would have to cross a significant line: cost of duplication of film, getting the movie into the right hands, and so on.

Save for 16mm black and white "stag" films from that era there were probably no other types of movies that made it on even a semi-regular basis into peoples's homes.

Similarly for audio. Virtually all audio was "manufactured" and "distributed" either via records and record companies or via the radio (AM, FM, shortwave).

The world was divided into "news" - facts like the "Cleveland Plain Dealer" farm report or editorials.

Notions of "the sky is falling" had to beat out necessary news, more immediate fears like the "Cuban Missle Crisis" and nuclear proliferation, and so forth.

There was a high hysteresis level that screened out all but the most important news. (And during this time news, being reported on FCC-licensed radio frequencies, was required to be "balanced.")

But over the last fifty years the "cost" of getting a "sky is falling" meme launched has gone from tremendous (both in terms of real dollars as well as the "cost" to overcome the media outlet hysteresis for such stories) down to basically zero.

But there is more.

In the 1972 Olympics eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team were kill by a terrorist group known as "Black September." This was remarkable to me because, prior to that, you could really only read about these types of events in newspapers or watch "second hand" B/W news footage with Walter Cronkite.

However, in 1972 the Olympics, which held a large sway on the public's imagination, brought this event directly into our homes via live "TV" coverage.

Terrorism as a "meme" moved from abstract black and white newsprint to color video.

With each new step in the "media" capability of the public - VCR, home video cameras, YouTube, cellphone video - this "meme" has made its way closer and closer to our very own pocket or purse.

But there is another effect here which also interesting.

As the meme of "terrorism" has spread and multiplied via media the very "definition" of what terrorism is has "flattened out" as well.

In 1972 "terrorism" required a "nation" or "nationals" to conduct it - it was done with guns or maybe bombs and airplanes.

But over the years the notion "flattened out" to include much more. For many years in the 1980's, for example, while you might be able to carry a bomb onto an airplane due to lax security, you always thought twice before making a "bomb" joke that someone might overhear.

Columbine brought "terrorism" to our schools and with it metal detectors.

Today metal detectors are common fair in public buildings of all sorts including many high schools.

And the "defense" against terrorism is the vigilant pursuit by the "authorities" of anything that Big Government considers such: jokes, comments, writings, and so on.

So by casting a very wide net the idea is to capture terrorists before they strike.

And because terrorists are now prevalent in our very pockets via smartphone videos we all "know" the cost of it.

Or do we?

According to this you are 390 times more likely to be killed by an automobile wreck than an international terrorist attack. In 2010 some 32,708 people died in automobiles according to Wikipedia. This leaves some 83 or so annual deaths of US citizens due to international terrorism per year.

A number dwarfed by lightening strike deaths in the US (some 750 deaths per year).

Yet today even Tweeting about "blowing up an airport" in general, i.e., tweeting to someone else in anger over a delayed flight, can get you arrested, at least in the UK, as a terrorist.

Meme's in this form are not limited to "terrorism."

Another case is the "deforestation" meme.

We all know what this is: giant corporate loggers chainsawing down huge, old-growth rain forests to install strip malls.

In the 1970's the term was only used in reference to things like Agent Orange and Vietnam.

But today the "destruction of the rain forest" is drilled into every 6 year old's head at daycare, on TV, on the internet.

Today "deforestation" is a meme that can include, well, even primitives living in ancient hunter-gather societies as well: see this Nature article.

Really, early African humans (some 3,000 years ago) "deforesting" entire swaths of central Africa?

Fifty years ago this was heralded as progress by a primitive society to pull itself from the "stone age" into modern times.

But no more - the meme of "progress" is today evil and outmoded (save for preventing terrorism I suppose). Much better to have those ancient Africans in the Nature article living in squalid, primitive huts dying young of disease and starvation than have them "deforesting" the central African plane.

And the Nature article describes this discovery as "implicated" - implicated like "I was implicated in a terrorist plot" (never mind the silly "science" described).

No, these are ancient peoples trying to live a better life through smelting iron and farming.

Not terrorists or common criminals implicated in some Ponzi scheme.

The new communications models mean that merely thinking outside a commonly accepted meme like airport terrorism or deforestation can cause big trouble.

These new memes are very powerful because modern governments act on them (such as in the Tweeting case I mentioned above) against citizens.

And you can bet that the "discovery" of those evil primitives implicated in deforesting Central Africa millenia ago was also government funded research. No doubt these primitive folks (pictured above) are contributing substantially to Global Warming as well - burning fires, smelting iron, chopping down forests. Perhaps they will be implicated in a vast African "global warming conspiracy" and have to pay reparations for their acts.

If your thinking does not "conform" to what these meme's stand for you are in trouble.

Before our very eyes George Orwell's 1984 is being implemented right in our own pockets.

Patenting YouTube - Who Pays?

2012-02-09T13:29:00.000-08:00

From the Eolas Patent

I have written here about patents before - often taking the patent to task for being silly or obviously an example were "prior art" is being patented.

During the next few weeks a new patent is going to trial: US 5,838,906 - Distributed Hypermedia Method for Automatically Invoking External Application Providing Interaction and Display of Embedded Objects within a Hypermedia System. This seems like a pretty solid patent. Not a lot of voodoo or "prior art" being ignored.

This patent claims ownership over the concept of interactive, graphical web-based software. For example, the notion of "clicking on a video image" and having the video "play." Or going to a site that sells, for example, sweaters, and placing the sweater you wish to buy on a 3D model that rotates to show you how the sweater might look.

Now this is a big thing because, for example, all of YouTube relies on this because the little screen you see with the play button is the kind of "web object" the patent talks about - and the rest of YouTube matches the remainder of the description in the patent.

The patent is owned by a company called Eolas in Tyler, Texas, USA. The company is owned by a biologist name Michael Doyle.

Doyle has been successful in pursuing these types of patent cases in the past, winning a $521 million USD verdict against Microsoft (see this). Ultimately this case was settled out of court on appeal with an estimated settlement of around $100 million USD being paid to Eolas.

Needless to say this action has created the impression that Eolas is a "patent troll" merely attacking big pockets for cash.

However, in this case Eolas's claims are not without merit.

Many people, including Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the "internet" have testified in pre-trial hearings that the patent is "significant" in that its likely to be valid. People like Berners-Lee have also presented evidence of software that pre-dates the Eolas patent in an attempt to invalidate it.

Why this is all important is, of course, money.

Eolas is expecting to extract a significant amount of money from Google, Yahoo, and others.

This action, however, also affects the rest of "us" who use the web indirectly in that if companies like Google and Yahoo have to pay Eolas royalties then they will want to collect what they pay out from somewhere else - like you and I.

One of the problems with the US Patent system is that a company like Google cannot really find out if what they are doing violates a given patent or whether or not there even is a patent covering what they are doing.

While its perhaps "not fair" that a company cannot find out if its activities cross anyone else's patent. At the same time, these are big companies with billions of dollars, and it seems to me that they should be investing in this kind of research.

Similarly, companies like Eolas have followed the law and legally obtained these patents.

However, as usual, we as the "users" of the internet are left holding the bag.

The big companies, caught using patented technology, simply threaten to take away service others depend on.

I think that while Eolas is a "patent troll" I don't see them going after small fry. So perhaps if Google/YouTube doesn't like this they should use their friends in government to get the patent law changed.

Another interesting question is this: when something becomes so ubiquitous in society, e.g., YouTube, what happens when someone later comes along and claims full ownership?

Selling Your Downloaded Music Legally...

2012-02-08T09:02:00.000-08:00

reDigi's logo from their website...

So an interesting question is being decided about your property... er, well, even if it is your property in the first place.

Many of you like me access iTunes. I periodically purchase music there.

Now the interesting question of the day is - what do you "own" if you do that?

For example, I recently purchased a used book from Amazon. It arrived in a box and its on my shelf. The question today is "do I own it?"

In the case of the book I think that the answer is an obvious "yes." I own the book.

What I do not own is the actual content - the copywritten book guts - the words on the page. Those are "owned" by the publisher or author.

If I chose I could sell you my book.

So what about iTunes?

Clearly any song that I purchase that's covered by the iTunes "Digital Rights" agreement you must click on says "no." I am allowed to play it on multiple devices that I own and have registered with Apple. But if I give you the file it won't work on your Mac or iPhone. You have to purchase your own copy.

But what about MP3 files without a Digital Rights manager?

A company called redigi has created a "market" for used iTunes MP3 files. According to the site "ReDigi™ is the online marketplace for pre-owned digital music and the only Cloud service that verifies whether each music file uploaded for storage was legally acquired from an eligible source [ underline mine ]."

There is a verifier tool you download (I didn't try it) that somehow snoops through your music files and decides how you got the file and, if its in fact "yours," lets you upload it to sell it (you can earn, according to the site, $0.32 USD per song).

How this works is clever and interesting.

I upload my song MP3 file to sell and it goes into my reDigi "locker." According to this PDF from reDigi's attorney ”When such a file is purchased by another user, the file pointer associating the Eligible File with the seller’s Cloud Locker is modified to associate the file with the purchaser’s Cloud Locker. In such a transaction only the pointer is changed; the Eligible File remains in the same location in the ReDigi Cloud and is not copied.”

So the idea here is that a digital file is not a "record" (basically a physical medium like a record or CD which the Copyright Act explicitly places restrictions on). And that, at iTunes, Apple "sells" or "you purchase" the song - you do not receive a "license."

Given this (and even if the digital copy were considered a "record" they later argue) you are entitled to sell this "work" that you have purchased under Copyright law because that is explicitly granted.

But rather than reDigi somehow physically copying the file from "your locker" to the "purchaser's locker" after a sale a link is merely set up. So if I upload a legal file to sell its never "copied" by reDigi or the purchaser.

Now so far I buy all of this.

But what about iTunes? iTunes didn't used to allow you to "re-download" a file - but that's no longer true with iOS 5 and iCloud. I can now access my file on another computer if its not already there.

(So suppose I have two authorized iTunes accounts on two computers. Anything I buy on one can be accessed and downloaded on the other.)

The real question is this. Once I buy an iTunes MP3 and I upload it to reDigi - can I ever access the file again?

As much as I like reDigi's arguments I think they are screwed with iCloud.

On the old iTunes reDigi could just delete the MP3 and I could never access it in iTunes again unless I bought it again.

Now, though, if I have another account I can just download it there.

So in some sense its Apple, I think, that's diluted Capitol Records, the defendant in this case, interest in the song - albeit it requires you to "own" two registered iTunes computers.

My guess is that Apple's agreements (both on iTunes for you and behind the scenes with the record companies) must account for this - but probably not for the "selling" of the MP3s.

Though clearly its certainly a "reasonable possibility" that someone might do it - or even sell an MP3 player with songs on it (though no one seems to care about this aspect of "sharing").

Apparently there will be a trial on this - and reDigi seems likely to win because I think that Apple has opened the door with iCloud for this to begin with - that and the fact that they "sell" you songs that you "purchase" - all things clearly recognized by Copyright law.

You can read more on this here and here.

This case, I think, will be the real bone cracker for the RIAA and the record companies in general (as well as other media).

It will establish what constitutes owners and rights under the law for things you buy that aren't physical.

reDigi is said to be confident and I can see why.

The usual "record company" arguments and threats aren't going to work as I see it. And Apple will play a pivotal roll because reDigi has based their actions on Apple's agreements. (However, I hope they've saved copies of the various Apple EULA's because they change with each daily release of a new new iTunes.)

Good luck reDigi!

I think its time someone cleared up what exactly I can do with what I legal buy on the iTunes in terms of reselling.

Hopefully this will make more clear as time goes by...

Ramona Fricosu and Your Privacy...

2012-02-07T07:36:00.000-08:00

A while back I wrote about Ramona Fricosu in "Giving Up Your Password: A Fifth Amendment Right?"

Basically she was supposedly involved in mortgage fraud and authorities believed that on her laptop was evidence. However, the laptop was encrypted.

So the court ordered her to decrypt it.

Recently, however, a new wrinkle has developed.

Ramona may have forgotten the password.

Now this might seem silly if your passwords are always things like "1234" or you wife's birthday. But these days passwords can be very hard to remember.

Consider "g7iW3pQzx5tr9."

I know that if I didn't write this one down I would forget it quickly.

Now interestingly no one, at least in the court house, knows what the password is or whether its hard to remember or not.

Not decrypting the password would likely lead to a "contempt of court" issue where Fricosu would be jailed until she complied.

What what if she had indeed forgotten the password?

On the other hand, if she cannot remember the password then the court cannot hold her in contempt.

The question is how would they know?

The judge in the case, Judge Blackburn, wrote “that encrypting all inculpatory digital evidence will serve to defeat the efforts of law enforcement officers to obtain such evidence through judicially authorized search warrants, and thus make their prosecution impossible.”

Like I wrote yesterday - apparently the only truly private information you can possess is in your head - at least as far as US law enforcement is concerned.

But what does the Fifth Amendment do? It prevents you from being a "witness against yourself." The idea being that you cannot be compelled by the court to go onto the witness stand and say "I did it." Of course, you can do this on your own if you want to, but no court can order it.

But holding private information in your own mind is an exception to the judges comment. The court accepts that private as in "in your mind" is legally excluded from the reach of law enforcement via the Fifth Amendment.

The reach of the law is viewed a "all powerful" in these cases save for the Fifth Amendment. And actions such as the destruction of evidence are violations of the law.

If Fricosu's mortgage data were merely in her head the case would be over because it would be inaccessible to the legal system.

The real issue for law enforcement is whether or not Fricosu is simply "pretending" to not remember the password or actually cannot remember.

Another way to think of this is to say that the case hinges on whether or not Fricosu can type in the password to the computer - an act compelled by the court. But this goes only as far as there is some evidence that something asked for, i.e, the password, actually exists.

Typically a "motion to compel" is used in proceedings where one side is known to be withholding evidence, i.e., there is evidence of existence prior to the motion. So, for example, I might be withholding a safety-deposit box key in the case of a divorce. My spouse, suspecting gold doubloons, asks the court to compel me to turn over the key.

If I fail to I can be jailed for contempt. If I actually had lost the key then the court has recourse in that the bank can be ordered to drill out the box and open it.

Not an option here because the key is not a physical item - its simply knowledge.

There is also a distinction between revealing the password, i.e., as in giving it to the government, and providing the decrypted hard drive contents without ever disclosing the password. Clearly the latter is what is expect in Fricosu's case.

(However, Fricosu previously disclosed there was incriminating evidence on the hard drive - an act which caused the government to pursue this avenue with her.)

This all leads to some interesting ideas.

For example, if I could somehow make the act of decrypting the drive in accordance with a court order deliver self-incriminating evidence to the court I don't see how it could be ordered. Suppose that the password on my laptop not only decrypts the drive but also sends an email to my lawyer instructing him to deliver a confession to the court. My lawyer, previously instructed in the mater, would have to fight the court order as a Fifth Amendment issue knowing that decrypting the hard drive would incriminate me.

Kind of like a Fifth Amendment deadman's switch.

Clearly if the contents of the hard drive were only in my mind the court would not be able to access it. The question is can I extend what's in my mind in such a way as to offer the "remote storage" the same protections as what's in my mind has?

Another choice would be to split the password into two parts. You and a partner each memorized your own half. You instruct your partner to not cooperate with you should you ever be arrested. Access to the content would require that partner who, without knowledge of the drive's contents, would be required to enter the second portion of the password as needed. (Obviously if you made this fact public it would be fair game to the court - but let's assume you didn't...)

Could the court require you to reveal who held the other half of the password?

Is the partner a criminal?

Another option would be to create a system whereby each day or week I had to perform some sort of access to the encrypted hard drive via a sequential set of passwords and, if I failed to, the system would simply destroy the encrypted data. So, once seized by law enforcement, my access to the laptop to trigger the daily sequential password access would cease and the contents would self destruct.

Can using a system like this be "obstructing justice?"

Probing Your iPhone for Evidence of Criminal Activity

2012-02-06T09:03:00.000-08:00

From CellDEK - A tool to analyze SIM cards.

I stumbled on to a variety of interesting "law enforcement" and other "forensic" web sites in searching for iPhone technology and apps.

The first one is this. Basically this site describes various tools for accessing data in an iPhone forensically, i.e., for finding things like phone numbers, emails, texts and so on.

Some of the tools are designed to work on an iPhone captured at the scene of a crime, i.e., basically to be on someone's pocket or in their police cruiser and to instantly dump out personal information. One example is MacLockPick II - a $499.00 USD cross-platform tool to access private information on site from a Mac or PC. Among its features are "Apple Keychain Extractor" which recovers all your passwords. It also allows most phone details, i.e., GPS history, phone call/texting history plus various cellphone data, email, notes, etc. to be extracted from your phone.

Others are more general and work "back at the office."

At the end of the day there is little on your iPhone that's private in any real sense of the word.

One interesting point which I never see discussed is what about copywritten information on your phone. Can law enforcement simply take it? Obviously music and videos but also, what about, say, work files of some sort, e.g., presentations and such.

There are various other tools available at the "iPhone Forensics" link as well to extract just about anything from an iPhone.

(Android users have no fear - most of this seems to be available in an "Android" version as well.)

It seems clear from my "Mega Oh Oh" series of posts that "law enforcement" cares little about your private information - even if it has a copyright associated with it (basically to them its simply trash and a by-product of your "criminality" - even if you are simply "stopped" and not "convicted").

How interesting.

I wonder what "rights" you might have to this information or can law enforcement simply "take" it?

There are also a number of "police" apps, for example at this site.

Many of these apps are simpler than those above (with a cost of $0.99 USD for example) and seem to be associated with making sure that the police can see (using the "flashlight" mode of the phone) while they are asking you (via scripting) about something: DUI field sobriety tests, rights, etc. Others offer, for example, images of virtually every care made in the last decade.

There is also this site as it relates to counter-efforts (in this case by hackers) to thwart police tactics such as those above.

The chief application listed in this vein is "Cop Recorder."

Basically an audio recording app. BTW, there is a free audio recorder included as part of your iPhone at least since iOS 4.0. Though use of an app like this is not without peril... (It is perfectly legal to record someone, like a police officer, on a public street.)

There are also sites dedicated to other sorts of forensics as they relate to iPhones - and a related blog.

To me this really seems like its becoming a "chess game" of sorts - various hacker types of both sides of the law working at gaining an edge over the other. The problem, however, is that no one is really standing up for the iPhone user.

Since iOS is a closed system there is no way, save for jailbreaking and even then I think its doubtful, to add a layer of user-based security to your iPhone.

(For example on Windows and Macs you can have encrypted files systems. However, even those can be penetrated by law enforcement with a court order - see "Give Up Your Password - A Fifth Amendment Issue?".)

I guess the only truly private information you can have is in your head. But fear not because I am sure that the latest medical efforts to "understand" a brain will pave the way for law enforcement to access it.

For example, today they have various scanners that show the active areas in a brain when, for example, lying versus telling the truth.

What's to stop law enforcement from getting a court order to put you in a scanner for a "lie detector" test?

I think that all this technology is running far ahead of people's privacy and its probably not a good thing...

More Impossible Objects (III)

2012-02-03T20:11:00.000-08:00

From Facebook...

FBI and Scottland Yard vs. Anonymous

2012-02-03T10:46:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across this at lunchtime (WSJ).

Apparently Anonymous ~~hacked into an FBI server~~ (Edit: intercepted this email: http://pastebin.com/8G4jLha8) and captured this audio from a conference call related to Anonymous (this is likely not an interception of the a conf. call but who knows for sure).

The YouTube video below has the recording of the call.

The dimensions of "troubling" that come from this (on both sides of the vs.) are hard to imagine or even conceive...

Originally from http://www.mmnews.de/index.php/etc/9391-telefon-konferenz-fbi-scotland-yard-veroeffentlicht.

A description of the call here: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2143768/anonymous-releases-fbi-uk-conference

Sigh...

Mega Oh Oh (Part II)

2012-02-03T08:38:00.000-08:00

Ira Rothkin - Megaupload's Counsel

If MegaUpload was supporting infringing activity on its site why didn't the copyright holders use the existing US law to request that the content on the site be removed? Why instead was a "James Bond" like commando raid used instead?

This would be similar to the police, suspecting you have been speeding, swooping onto your property with a helicopter and snatching your car instead of simply stopping you and giving you a ticket. Their reasoning? You were blatantly violating the law. (Of course, this would have yet to be proven in court, i.e., you were not convicted of speeding.) What if your work laptop was in that car? Or your child?

What right does the government have to do this? Particularly when its in lieu of existing laws that are specifically designed to deal with the issue?

Existing US copyright law supports a process whereby someone who owns content and finds it on a website notifies the sites owner via what's called at "take down notice." This is a notice to the owner of the site that the owner of the material believes that infringing material is present and formally asks the sites owner to remove it. If the site owner does not remove it there are further legal steps: conferring with the sites lawyers, filing a civil lawsuit, and so on.

Others have noted that the sites owners knew there was infringing material on the site and hence this makes them guilty.

But consider this quote from one of the co-founders of YouTube in regard to the Viacom lawsuit filed against YouTube for similar infringement: "Please stop putting stolen videos on the site. We’re going to have a tough time defending the fact that we’re not liable for the copyrighted material on the site because we didn’t put it up when one of the co-founders is blatantly stealing content from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it."

Yet Viacom lost its battle.

Presently the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) has taken up the cause of a MegaUpload user who used the site for legitimate purposes but now has his uploaded data seized and threatened.

Basically the letter says that the Constitutional rights of "free speech" have been trampled by the seizing and/or threatening with deletion of MegaUpload content by US law enforcement: "... include both commercial and personal materials. We also note that, in many instances, this material included protected expression under the First Amendment, which raises additional concerns. Many of these materials are property of the individuals involved, and they are legally entitled, not only to access, but to preservation and privacy."

Ars Technica offers some counter opinions by law professors here - but reading this makes it look somewhat less than clear.

For example, there is a comment that MegaUpload was in some way attempting to make a mirror of YouTube (from the Ars linked article): "The indictment also suggests that Megaupload engaged in extensive scraping of YouTube content. Grimmelmann argued that if Megaupload were creating an unauthorized mirror of the content on YouTube, this would be particularly damning."

Except YouTube is full of infringing content?

Thieves stealing stolen property from thieves??? (The questionable YouTube Neil Young video I mentioned a while back is still there (link: http://youtu.be/BoA5cqDSasM), for example).

There is also the question listed by the Prof's regarding "searching" and inducing people by letting them search for a video. Yet I found mine on YouTube with a search.

Everything these prof's say about MegaUpload is exactly true about YouTube and Google as well.

Again, no one seems to think this is an issue - save for MegaUpload's US lawyer Ira Rothkin.

It seems to me that the RIAA and Hollywood are happily creating a police state.

And worse, the average idiot in the street seems perfectly happy with this. Happy that the government "goes after" big infringers like MegaUpload. Happy that "blessed" sites too big to fail (like YouTube) are ignored. Happy that the same "blessed" sites serve up stolen content.

Happy that the "status quo" is kept.

How Orwellian...

No doubt history will look differently at this time than we see it ourselves today.

Hollywood and the RIAA create content to entice people to listen, to like it, to sing it to themselves while, at the very same time, preventing them from incorporating that content in any way into their lives that does not provide them profit.

Have you ever heard the expression "I can't get that song out of my head?"

Of course you have.

But in today's Orwellian society someone owns that song and even whistling it at work is a crime.

Hollywood and the RIAA are just like drug dealers.

They provide a product with people cannot resist.

Then take access away until they pay for it.

The business model is the same. And when that model is threatened (as in the case of MegaUpload) these "owners" behave like rival drug gangs - but instead of doing the dirty work themselves they get US (tax payers and those who listen or watch to their products) to punish those who make them accessible to the "masses" without giving them profit.

Certainly they could pursue these matters themselves.

But the RIAA doesn't want to do that because it makes them look bad - suing 13 year olds for "stealing" music.

So the Justice Department does it for them.

And you and I foot the bill.

The Audio Police are Listening...

2012-02-02T09:26:00.000-08:00

On the audio front arstechnica reports that Neil Young claims to have been collaborating with Steve Jobs before his death on changing the standard for audio in things like iTunes.

Today's standard is 16 bit 44.1kHz - which is what CD's are created using. That's a 16 bit (2 bytes) sample 44,100 times per second (values range from about -32,767 to +32,768).

With "lossy" compression like MP3 its at an even lower resolution that 16 bit 44.1kHz.

Neil Young apparently thinks this should be basically 24-bit (three bytes from -16.8 million to +16.8 million) at 96kHz - maybe 1,000 times the resolution of a CD.

This later resolution typically used for professional mastering of digital recordings. Now to hear differences at this level you need not only reasonably high-end studio-quality monitors but also a room where you can properly listen, i.e., one without ambient noise and one that does not color the sound too much. Not something to be found in even a high-end audiophile's home.

This higher quality would add at least 200% to the file size being uncompressed.

Interestingly most (more likely nearly all) consumers cannot tell the difference between these resolutions and its unlikely they have the same quality of audio equipment as old Neil. (I don't think, for example, you could tell much of anything on the subway with earbuds.)

So while the higher resolution would always be nice it would most likely be a waste.

At the same time we have the RIAA opposing the latest anti-piracy OPEN Act - no doubt because its not "strong enough." Piracy, of course, being any non-blessed version of these songs.

But as I posted the other day the RIAA seems to have little interest in actually pursuing obvious YouTube-based piracy.

Taken together this all leaves an almost a comical (or maybe sad) situation:

1) Folks like Mr. Young wanting to make the online music quality even better (what's on his iPod)?

2) The RIAA ready to go after any source of misuse of that music (can Neil even legally listen to his own, original masters or is he a criminal like the rest of us...)?

3) Consumers who cannot hear the difference and are perfectly happy to share low-quality audio on crappy earbuds.

4) Tons of pirated content all over the internet on "blessed" sites with very low audio quality.

Most consumers are happy to listen to "low res" audio for free on YouTube, for example while Mr. Young wants to hear only pristine 24 bit 96kHz audio presumable on an expensive home-based audio system installed by experts.

I suppose this means that consumers, if offered free or cheap "low res," would go with that as opposed to paying extra for Mr. Young's "high res."

There's another interesting aspect to "high res".

Check out this page that talks about recording Stevie Wonder's "Superstition."

There's a section at the bottom that has an MP3 with some of the original horn parts. What you will hear besides the horn parts is all kinds of noise.

In fact, according to that page, Stevie wrote out the words to the songs and had the producer read them to him over his headphones while he was singing them because he couldn't remember them. In the recordings you can supposedly hear this (the headphone sound washes into the mix) if you listen very carefully to a high res file of the original album version. (You can hear this on the MP3 but everything but the actual horn parts was cut out via faders for the final mix.)

I think that the RIAA does not understand what consumers like about music.

Its not so much the quality as it is the actual sound of the song - even with huge levels of noise and distortion.

That's why YouTube is so popular for music.

The basic sound of the song even noisy and distorted still draws out the original feeling from the listener.

Once its in the listener's head the quality becomes much less an issue - unless you're "really into it" as Mr. Young is...

Hearing even a bad rendition causes you to "play" the song in your head and if you're, for example, working in a noisy environment. You really "hear" your own mind's version triggered by the noisy distorted audio track playing on the cheap radio in the back room.

(Don't think this is true? Ask people the words to the unclear parts - there's even a TV commercial along these lines - of these songs and you'll have to agree. Elton John's "Rocket Man" - what does he say exactly? "Burning out of fuel...???")

But not knowing these exact words does not take away from your enjoyment of the song.

That's why companies like Muzak re-record songs they license. It costs more to play the original version than just license the right to use it with your own musicians. As long as the key elements are captured in the re-recording people will be happy because what they hear will trigger their internal "music player."

That's why people hang reproductions of great art in their homes - no one looks that closely and you can still enjoy the feeling the art elicits.

Though few realize it simply singing a song to yourself out loud is a violation of copyright.

If the RIAA could get away with it they'd charge you for this as well as simply "playing" the song in your mind.

Along the lines of "Thinking, Fast and Slow" I am sure there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained in understanding how people listen to and play music in their heads...

Maybe someone can do this an win a Nobel Prize like Kahneman did.

Kinecting your Future

2012-02-01T08:13:00.000-08:00

So the wonder of Microsoft's Kinect is spreading to laptops. According to this article Microsoft is working with Asus to create a laptop with an embedded Kinect technology. This will be accomplished by squeezing down the Kinect functionality to a small set of chips.

First small enough for a laptop but soon after small enough to go anywhere - because everyone will want one and demand will drive down the cost.

This is a very interesting development in the world as we know it for a couple of reasons.

For one, after more than four decades, it may one day dislodge "Typing 1" as the most valuable educational class I ever took. Back in about 1972 or so I needed an extra high school "filler" class so I took typing. It was taught by a very short woman who's goal in life was to make sure that every female in her class could get a job as a secretary. She also taught "short hand" - another now-lost communication art form - as well.

Males were tolerated in her class as long as they were well behaved.

I think it was only a semester long but in the end I could type 43 words a minute - not bad for a guy in 1972.

We used powered mechanical typewriters - another now-lost technology.

But the valuable thing I retained was the skill to type. This has served me well in the decades since when composing email, writing blogs, editing programs, using keypunch machines, you name it.

But Kinect has the ability to change that.

Even the iPad today has a "replacement" touch keyboard so the notion of mechanical keys is on its way out. The Kinect will allow other kinds of motion and movement to be used to drive computer input. For example, instead of fancy 3-D mice you will just be able to reach out over your keyboard and "grab" the 3-D object to rotate it - no more "Ctrl-Shft-Meta-F3"...

Kinect will no doubt create all kinds of other input options as well: 3-D replacements for mice, knobs, buttons, and so forth.

And once Apple gets hold of this there will be even more bizarre gestures possible: "three finger air stroke left-right" to flip the page - so no more trackpads... Turn the page with a blink of your eye.

But there will also, no doubt, be a dark side as well: bots taking over your laptop's Kinect to spy on you.

Whether for your employer or for sinister Latvian hackers your laptop will be able to report whether or not you are in front of it.

Whether or not your hands are moving.

Whether or not you are alone.

Whether or not you are drinking coffee.

Whether or not you are scratching your... the possibilities are endless.

So now, like GPS-spying, there will be need for even more privacy laws because no doubt someone will discover that there is no specific law protecting the privacy of the gesturing (direct or implied) you are doing in front of your computer.

As soon as Kinect is turned into a "chip" it will make its way into cars and smartphones as well.

So your car will be able to tell if your alone.

When you got in and out.

Were you carrying something.

Your smartphone will also know how many people are with you.

You significant other will be able to use this to spy on you.

And though today you need permission to record audio of someone, like the HAL 9000 of 2001, your Kinect-based laptop or phone will probably be able to read your lips (thanks to some do-gooder helping the challenged) - you can look it up if you don't know what happened as a result of HAL's lip reading.

Now more laws will be required: the Kinect Anti-Lip-Reading Law - for example.

Initially it will be used to replace the need to text with your hands - the phone will simply read your lips (while hearing what you say to confirm) and text for you.

There will be a slew of home-based security widgets: Instead of the security company having a visual of your kid entering the front door the Kinect will scan them for dope - oh look mom - there's a glass pipe concealed in that kids hand...

While I personally think the Kinect is a very cool innovation the more I write this blog the more I realize what level of idiocy it will create - the very least will be new "Kinect" laws.

There are enough laws already and we don't need more.

If you're a moron then "Kinect" technology will only enhance your ability to be a moron - not diminish it. So you'll become a more powerful moron - able to screw up even more with less effort.

When computers were first used commercially in the 1950's no new laws were required. It wasn't until much later that special "laws" were needed, e.g., patent law for software.

But I think that the real reason is that people's morals decayed and the computer became a tool for greed and, in response, the law changed address the problem - but only superficially because, unlike HAL, computers can only be used for evil by evil people.

The "Kinect" will be "just another brick in the wall..."

Some are More "Legally Equal" than Others...

2012-01-31T09:53:00.000-08:00

Poor Mr. Dotcom. All that copywritten material on his web site and no way to control it.

So the USA took over his Virginia server farm and now plans to "delete" all the content there (see this).

But I wonder...

Why does no one consider, say, Google's (YouTube's owners) founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page as similar sorts of "criminals"?

After all, I can jump on YouTube and enter "Neil Young" to see this (no doubt this link will fail soon so make up your own popular artist and note that this link is for the purposes of reporting on copyright infringement as well as its impact on society):

"Down by the River" - Why do I doubt that this video was placed on YouTube by the copyright owner (Ledzep69man is probably not really Neil Young, eh)?

(I chose Neil Young because as a geezer its unlikely he authorized these uploads. You can also search for "Adele" - a mere youngster of twenty something - on Google and discover videos likely to be uploaded by some group Adele-related because they have ads as well as those that were clearly not such as this with a million and a half or so views.)

But don't worry - Google's not helping you infringe - even by displaying video thumbnails.

YouTube, as a live performer, is a wonderful source of copywritten content for learning songs. The songs are always around and there are always many versions (the above link showed me 172,000 similar hits).

Yet no one cares, apparently, at least not in the same vaunted laws of legal "correctness" that followed megaupload.com to its intended legal destruction... Google/YouTube must play in the right Hollywood social circles.

Using the law as a weapon is not limited to the US Government/Big Hollywood Complex.

(I also read that Apple has negotiated its iCloud storage agreements with "Big Hollywood" to make the lawsuit-proof - as it were...)

Next consider this article.

Terrorists using EU human rights law, when captured, to claim that deportation violates their "right to family and private life" such as "studies, employment, friendships and sexuality."

Nice, eh?

The guy (a Mr. Qatada) who trained Mohammed Atta (famous for the 9/11 attacks) can't be deported from the UK because he might suffer harm at "home."

So terrorists and big Hollywood have something you and I don't...

A legal "chance" in life.

You see, we are not "legally" equal. There is no such thing as legal equiality.

Like the pigs in "Animal Farm" some, like the RIAA, are apparently more "Legally Equal" than others.

Supporting and funding terrorism these days merely means finding hard-up-for-money human rights "lawyers" to think up new and clever ways to use the law against everyone but their clients. There are so many laws and wondrous new "rights," particularly in the EU, that virtually any prosecution of a terrorist will run afoul of at least one. Hence Mr. Qatada now has a monthly government welfare stipend of £1,000 a month as well as his freedom.

Nice...

And Mr. Dotcom - as I see it no more or less guilty of copywrite infringment than Google's founders - has a heavy multinational legal battle ahead of him (I still predict his exoneration - though your files will still be victims).

And you and I, if we had anything legitimate loaded into megaupload.com, are going to have it deleted. (Everyone admits that there is a lot of non-infringing content involved.)

Would the law delete all of YouTube's US content I wonder?

Particularly without a trial or conviction.

The RIAA and Hollywood are so powerful that your megaupload files or mine can simply be deleted - not even seized like boats, houses and cars in DEA cases for auction. Not even after a trial. Simply seized and destroyed.

Destroyed without concern of rightful ownership, value, or anything else.

And last I checked Mr. Dotcom was not found guilty of anything yet. Especially here in the USA.

Still - our content will be deleted...

So now we, as citizens, are the target of weaponized law. Weaponized against us, the normal everyday joes, who don't go around blowing up building, uploaded stolen content, or anything else wrong.

Now in thinking about it there are several words that describe this as the idea is not new:

- Schmuck

- Fool

- Schlep

- Dupe

Where will this lead?

I'll tell you...

In the future you'll hear the air raid sirens - but instead of guns pointed skyward to shoot down the enemy a single lawyer will appear.

The lawyer will produce a single complaint on a sheet of paper.

And the evil doers will have us all rounded up and taken away - our property destroyed.

Weaponized law strikes again.

Not even the US IRS has this much power...

One of the reasons for all this is that law is not hierarchical in any way. Law is law. So stupid laws can lock horns with good laws leaving us, the dupes, paying the local Mohammed Atta trainer his monthly stipend.

The law was never intended to be used against citizens in this way.

Something needs to be done...

Social Media = Social Consumption

2012-01-30T07:45:00.000-08:00

This article at www.physicsworld.com caught my eye: "On-line Tools are a 'Distraction' for Scientists." In this article the author says, among other things, the following: "Few physical scientists use blogs, Twitter, Open Notebook Science, social networks, public wikis or other "public-facing" technologies to share research information, the report finds, although some particle physicists and astrophysicists use internal, private wikis."

Yet the large bar-chart above from the original article shows something quite different, at least relative to computers and IT Technology. The question asked a variety of "hard science" practitioners was "[what is ] ...the most common strategies employed for finding new research?"

Clearly Google is an "on-line tool" and 83% of the respondents (physical scientists, nuclear scientists, etc.) to the study for the article indicated that Google was a source of "new research" - whatever that is.

This blog is "Google driven" is approximately the same way - much of what I write here is indexed and researched via Google (even though I write bad things about them some times).

But the physicworld article talks about "on-line tools" as social networks, public wikis, and so on - something far different.

The underlying article describes how "hard science" scientists use software and information technology:

It also describes "soft science", e.g., humanities and shows how practitioners in those fields use software and information technology.

Its very interesting to compare the two images above.

One imagines that as you move toward a less technical audience the chart's shaded blobs move left until literally you have people who never use computers.

This as well as other comments from people like the founder of RaspberryPi (http://www.raspberrypi.org/) seem to me to indicate that what people think computers, and science too, I suppose, is changing. Ebon Upton of RaspberryPi created his company because kids no longer have interest in computers like they once did...

Things like Google (not really even a "program" in the technical sense) are no longer for the masses either, apparently.

Only "social networking."

Computers are now no longer visible to "social users." They are the means by which Facebook works.

Clearly the original article's author can't even distinguish between scientists using computers for work and scientists using computers for social networking.

To me this is an interesting phenomena. Ten years ago people were busy buying computers like mad to "go on the internet." A desktop computer might have cost $800 - $1200.

But today computer prices are dropping and dropping fast.

Why? Because they are no longer the focus of people's interests per se. Its what they bring, i.e., social networking, that people are after.

You see it even with Apple (I have many posts about Lion).

Lion seems to be an attempt to make the computer more like an iPad or iPhone - hiding the "computeresque" aspects of how it works. While this is fine if all you do is network its not if you need to create products - the very technical aspects of the computer required to make something like a Facebook are starting to disappear.

What does this all mean?

I think it means that people are vain and really only interested in themselves. Social networking driving the world economy (or what's left of it)...

The more pressing question is why?

Don't we have cellphones to keep in touch with? (Nearly every day some mad woman comes flying past me on the road while I jog cellphone pressed to her ear. Often they don't even pull away from the edge of the road - I have to run off into the weeds.)

I wonder what they are talking about that's so important as to risk killing a pedestrian?

Sooner than later they will all have smart phones so they can text as well... I see this at the local shopping mall. Women (often young) stopped at the light texting like mad.

Again - what's so important?

The country's $15 Trillion USD debt? Elvis sighted at the mall? What???

Its probably a good thing some people are not "distracted" by all of this...

Someone needs to hang around to clean up all the mess when the frenzy is over.

Destructuring Society Child by Child

2012-01-28T07:38:00.000-08:00

Alison Gopnik writes some interesting stuff in "What's Wrong with the Teenage Mind?"

The very short version is that modern culture is extending childhood well into people's thirties and, during this process, robbing children and young adults of a variety of development experiences that, in the past, made their brains develop into adult brains.

Radical stuff from a UC Berkley Professor of Philosophy.

However, readers of this blog would not be surprised by this in the least. I have written here (and on the personal blog) time and again about how modern life has changed what's important with regard to raising children and families (see "Anthropological Mom" and "Women are Insane, Men are Stupid").

But Ms. Gopnik takes these ideas a bit further and suggests that we are harming out children by abandoning how they have been traditionally raised. Harming them by not providing their brains a proper sociological context in which to grow into adulthood. (Who in adulthood is taken care of all day like you are at a modern school: breakfast, lunch, pickup before dinner? Prisoners I think...)

I think that this is simple to see today: Extended childhoods into thirties and soon forties. Lack of motivation. Uselessness.

When I was a kid life and your potential future were far different than today.

My friend in best friend through third grade lived on a far a mile away. I could ride my bike there and we could work on the farm. That's right - work. Drive tractors, milk cows, and get paid.

My grandchildren today, with similar ages, can only think about twiddling TV or game knobs.

Why? Because they live in a world where the life of their parents dominates. Not that that wasn't true in my childhood, parents obviously dominated their child's lives. But today its different.

It seems like a parents need for fulfillment, lost in their own childhood, is now replaced by the need to have a full life for themselves and by force create such a life for their child. But instead of free play and the opportunity to take on responsibility in simulated adult roles today's children are trundled off to "activities" - sports, school, daycare, and so on.

The problem is that these activities are pointless as far as making a child a proper grownup because they aren't real in the sense that they are things adults really do.

In my childhood we participated in the adult world.

For example, my father, an architect, took the kids along in the car as he went to job sites (probably a federal crime today). Many times we sat for long hours in the car but often we went with him into the construction sites. There was a lot to learn and see: plumbing, electrical, telephone, building, concrete. Now my father wasn't a doer in the sense that he did these sorts of things at home - but he designed them. So I learned (to some degree) how to draw, lay out construction activities, and so forth.

You might think that, well, your father was an educated man - you had more opportunity.

But you'd be wrong. My friend Joe (I mentioned above) farmed. He probably still does. He learned from his father in the same way.

My toys as a child after I could travel with my father involved materials scavenged from construction sites.

Gopnik's point is, I think, that this is lost today. Adults are too busy today to bother with children in this way so the children do "activities" instead.

Now even at six or seven years old it was clear to me what work was. I like talking to the various people at the construction sites - I was always treated respectfully. The men working their knew that "by example" is where future tradesmen, workers, bosses, customers, building owners and so on came from. Almost like a silent fraternity of knowledge.

I think the 60's "me" generation is to a large part responsible for this.

Parent's before this time treated their children like family members from the start - involving them in the family activities and work (and no, not in the child labor sense). This developed their brains because it gave them a context to grow into - whether they stayed in the family business or not.

Gopnik says, and I agree, that we are robbing children of this today because the faux lives we create for our children and pointless from the context of "growing up."

Powerful stuff - and well beyond the "Tiger Mom" in some ways. Though I expect that the Tiger Mom in her own way created something of the same effect.

I see this today as a grandfather. Other grandparents say - oh look, I've bought a house near little Suzy and her child so I can be with them every day to take them to swim class, day care, etc.

My actions are different. I expose my grandchildren to real things - work or play - and treat them like someone who wants to be a grown up. I'm not "so nice" as the other grandparents - I am gruff and colorful - but at the same time I keep an eye on what the kiddies are up to.

Modern life and its attendant elements like feminism have created this, I think. But Gopnik, at least in this article, does not address the causes.

As a society we have lost our way, particularly in the area of rearing children so it's little wonder we have the results we do today.

This also says a lot about UC Berkley - I guess the radical thinking has gone around full circle (or almost as no one is probing the causes of this yet) back to "traditional thinking."

Alison Gopnik at TED:

What does this say about the value of motherhood?

What if your mother is not their to support this?

What does this say about our society and what we've done to it?

This is perhaps the most profound thing I have seen so far in writing this blog.

Our modern society is doing its best to turn small children into what we think "adults" are but, in the process, actually ruining their innate ability to grow into adults.

XCode 4.2 the Lion is Crying...

2012-01-27T15:59:00.000-08:00

A couple of months ago I purchased a new Mac to run Lion as well as to do Synthodeon development on. I wanted a Lion machine to keep up with the latest Apple technologies. I also wanted it to be separate from the other machines I develop customer software on because Lion was known to have "issues," particularly with software development, and I didn't want to be in the position of not being able to service my customers or have Lion somehow pollute my products.

(This is easy to see by simply moving a relatively complex piece of software in XCode from 3.2.6 to 4.2 on Lion. Magically thousands of errors appear and currently working applications (that compile with no errors on 3.2.6 or even 4.0) won't even compile at all. I can see it now, "Why yes, Mr. Visa provider, your mail won't go out until I can debug my new Mac/Lion/XCode world..." Even in .NET things are better than this...)

I've been sidetracked from Mac development for a couple of months. An eternity in "Apple Land" - numerous software releases (on both iOS and Lion) have come and gone and I am still sitting in the now distant (epochs ago) past.

Worse, its been so long that my last developer profile expired as well.

Lastly, I upgraded my machine and OS to Lion.

So no problems with old XCode 4.0 projects on Lion - they do build and seem to work in the Simulators - but I am working on something more complex that involves porting code and other complexities.

So now its time to test my latest work on an actual iOS device...

And all hell breaks loose.

Nothing will work, bizarre KeyChain and other Organizer errors - "Oh No! You're Super Secret Magic Encryption Key Failed to Validate!!!" and so on. In actuality "Valid signing identity not found” and "XCode could not find a valid private-key/certificate pair for this profile in your KeyChain."

Huh?

Little red (!) things by each provisioning item in the Organizer.

So after some head scratching I figure that its a new machine, right? So initially I figure I probably need to go to the iOS Apple Developer portal and create a new .mobileprovision file.

I do but no dice - still "Oh No!" errors...

I am not alone...

This.

This.

So after some tinkering and an hour of Googling I resolve the issue.

Start over with setting things up. (Warning - I am a small developer with a few machines for which doing this is not a problem.)

1. Log onto the iOS Provisioning Portal.

2. Choose "Certificates" on the upper left.

3. Given a new machine, expired provisioning portals, etc. I simply "Revoked" the existing Certificate. You then have to "Apply" for a new one (this is instantaneous I guess - but you have to refresh the browser to see it).

4. You have to download this and load it into KeyChain by clicking on it (steps here).

5. Then you have to re-provision each device.

There will be a lot of "download" and "click on" things to do during this because somehow the KeyChain app works in different ways depending on the different Certificates.

I had to restart XCode and KeyChain a couple of times.

And then, in the end, you have to make sure that you've set up the right Scheme in XCode.

I finished and it finally displayed no Organizer errors but nothing worked. The first time it was some issue where the real errors just stopped coming out. The second time it built for 5.0 but my iPad had 4.3.5 on it and the errors made it appear as if the Certificate and provisioning munging had failed...

Random Google and Other Thoughts

2012-01-27T08:55:00.000-08:00

Jango Listener Profile

Your Google Profile

What your Google profile says about you: (click here) as described in arstechnica.

My profile tells Google this about me:

Search interests are Arts & Entertainment - Music & Audio - Music Equipment & Technology - Samples & Sound Libraries Computers & Electronics - Software - Multimedia Software - Desktop Publishing

Shopping in World Localities: North America (USA) - Mid-Atlantic (USA) - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA)

Not much to get steamed up about in terms of privacy - every item here is on this blog or one of the related blogs.

What's interesting is how little else it really knows about me: Age: 35-44 (Wrong) Gender: Male (Correct).

That's basically it.

Really Big File Systems

When you read this blog you are likely using something called GFS (Google File System). This, like S3 from Amazon and Hadoop (Facebook), is the backbone of today's internet - be it social media, movies, video, you name it.

Petabytes (thousands of terabytes, millions of gigabytes) of data across thousands of servers.

If you're interested in how these work see this article.

Semi Autonomous Road Trains

I found this article about chaining together collections of vehicles on the highway.

The idea is that with advanced technology you can link the control systems of modern vehicles (braking, steering, etc.) though a local WiFi. This allows the leader to pull along trailing vehicles. The "trailers" can follow very closely because the lead vehicle handles all of the braking and steering for them.

Personally I don't see lawyers letting this happen - too much could go wrong.

I have always been interested in this kind of linked-vehicle technology. I "invented" an infra-red technology years ago that you could use on "convoys" of semis. Each semi would have a infra-red transmit/receive on its front and back at a standard height. When semi's became a convoy they could switch of their CB radios and instead talk on the infra-red channel to prevent others from overhearing what they were saying.

Each truck would relay the audio to any trucks in the convoy.

I never built one but I spend a lot of time on the design.

Jango and Marketing to the Cloud

A few months ago I purchased an account on www.jango.com. Jango is a kind of world-wide internet radio station. You can pay money to have your songs injected into play-lists so people will hear your music.

This is exactly the opposite of VDP and highly targeted email and PURL marketing. I thought I would explore this because I have zero experience in mass marketing and I figured it would be good to learn something about it, especially considering that I will need this research and knowledge for my work with Synthodeon (www.synthodeon.com).

No one knows who you are and you have to induce them to listen based on the quality of your content and the cleverness of working with Jango. Jango works by having you indicate what artists your music is similar to and then when people listen to "stations" with those artists your music is inserted into the play-list.

So the first step is to figure out what your music is like, i.e., who you are marketing to. Then you use their interface to add those artists to your profile. When that's completed you purchase "plays" which cause your songs to be inserted into the play-lists as I described above.

Basically the only real measure of success is by monitoring "Organic Plays" which are how often people listen to your music when its on in rotation on play-lists.

I've spent a couple of hundred dollars over the last several months experimenting with this and come up with what, at least for me, are counter-intuitive results.

For one, people seem to listen more to your songs if they listen to a lot of songs in general. That means that even if I mix my music into play-lists of artists who have a similar type of music I won't do as well as if I put my music into play-lists with very popular artists, e.g., Adele.

Volume is king, I suppose.

Secondly, Jango allows you to have "fans" - people that have explicitly gone out of their way to say "I like your music." My biggest listeners are younger women (18-34 -see the graphic above). I suspect this is because younger women listen a lot to Jango in general but there is no way to tell.

Again, volume is king.

So the bottom line in non-targeted marketing - with which I have zero experience - is getting a lot of people to get the message - the more the better.

Initially I was thinking that the genre of music mattered more, i.e., geezers would listen to certain types of music and younger people different types. Apparently this is not true and Hip Hop listeners, at least those who listen to a lot of music, will become fans of music outside their genre.

Frying Your Way to Good Health

2012-01-26T06:01:00.000-08:00

More than a year ago on my personal blog I wrote "Type 2 is not Diabetes." Basically the idea is that the use of bad, manufactured oils in our diet is killing us and "Type 2" diabetes is one way that's happening. (Toxic oils include vegetable oils, canola, genetically modified oils like soybean, and so on. The only "good" oils I know are olive, fish (like cod liver), hemp, flax and coconut - there are probably others but I cannot recall them off hand.)

One thing oils are used for today in the US is frying: french fries, chicken, and so on. And you will be admonished by doctors and health professionals alike not to eat fried food because its bad. Bad, of course, because frying with oil will stuff you veins full of cholesterol and you will die.

Now in Spain doctors, knowing how bad frying is, conducted a study over twelve years of those eating fried food (now remember this Spain where they use good oils for frying.) Low and behold there was not increased chance of death from heart failure (study described here).

According to the MedPage article "This result may seem surprising because frying is generally considered an unhealthy way of preparing food..."

Except in this case this is not so.

No detectable increase in coronary deaths due to frying, none.

You see, the convention wisdom in my book is totally wrong. The problem with fried food in the US is how its prepared and what its fried in - not the fact that its fried. (Certainly fried food has a lot of calories but so do a lot of other things - that's not the issue because eating too many calories regardless of where they come from is bad - studies show this as well).

No on seriously studied consumption of fried foods like before this because everyone knew they were bad.

Or, er, rather, they must be bad, right?

After all frying is evil, like cigarette smoking...

I believe that most researchers today have grown up with all sorts of "truisms" - smoking is bad, frying is bad, this is bad, that is bad... and they are taken simply as fact in the sense that no one thinks to question them. They sky is blue, after all, so there is no need to study it.

This is a problem in modern science today because its preventing science from seeing the real problem in this case: manufactured oils are killing us.

The Spaniards in the linked study ate on average 5 oz of fried food each day - potatoes, meat, fish.

However, these folks used things like olive oil and were careful not to degrade the oils by heating them too much - something else that's common in the USA. (They use a Mediterranean Diet there - see this. There is also the Paleo type of diet which uses similar ideas.)

In December of 2010 I wrote this in part:

Personally I plan to acquire some guaranteed unrefined oils immediately and add them to my diet.

The healingmatters.com fats link (again here) is particularly disconcerting because it describes how triglycerides, cholesterol, and all these usual modern medical obesity and diabetes "suspects" are systematically and routinely contorted into false and misleading information.

Some other topics touched in this article:

Cooking: "When cooking with fats and oils it is important to do so in a manner that does not destroy them. Use only butter, Coconut oil and animal fat for cooking." and "Margarine, artificial shortenings, refined oils and all Hydrogenated edible products are long term toxic to the human metabolism".

Manufacturing Cooking Oils: "It is the high temperatures used in the refining process that ruins even previously good oils."

Cholesterol: "by excluding high Cholesterol foods from our diet, our liver simply makes more Cholesterol in an attempt to maintain a homeostasis (normal level) of Cholesterol in our blood stream."

Now in the Wolf household we changed our use of oils to only healthy oils - mostly coconut and olive - though we do use animal fat as well on occasion. No more vegetable oils. No margarine.

(BTW, one of the things I think is that 30 years or so of modern TV-based margarine sales has contributed greatly to our health problems as Americans - on the scale of cigarette problems. But because margarine is considered to be "healthy" its okay that it kills us...)

This was not very easy to do because, among other things, it means you cannot buy salad dressing from a store because virtually all of them, including things like Newman's Own with Olive Oil are full of soybean oil. (Soybean is bad and its virtually all from Roundup Ready genetically modified plants.) Today we make our own with only olive oil.

But we've managed to do it. Its also more expensive because vegetable oil is far cheaper.

Manufactured oils appeared in the 1920's and their rise in the American diet coincides nicely with the rise of "obesity" and Type 2 diabetes.

(Why are "manufactured oils" bad, you ask? Read this - after which you will not use these oils either. Among other things because they are processed with petroleum-based solvents, bleached, filtered and heated to 450 degrees.)

Gamifying Your Life (Away)...

2012-01-25T07:31:00.000-08:00

Surgeons could gamify their work!

So now the software industry, dominated by geeky males for the most part, has invented a new "low" for software development: gamification. That's right, a new word meaning "to make a game of." Typically software development is a complex and tedious task: specifications, understanding, design, coding, testing - just to mention a few elements of the process.

For old school programming types like me the joy has always been in the satisfaction gained from doing the job right. Does it work like its supposed to? Is it cool? Is it written with skill and style? Is it elegant?

Good programming has always been part art, part science, part mathematics, part magic. What's the best way to write that loop? Can you optimize that code to shave off 50% of the execution time? There have never been good metrics to measure it either. Its always been "you know elegance when you see it."

So I a happened on this Wired article (here) about gamification. It seems that some programmers at Microsoft took on the task of gamifiying .NET - Microsoft's software development platform. Write "better code" - get a gold star. (It's also listed here on Reddit.) Some sort of plug-in that mindlessly applies metrics to the code to measure how "good" it is.

And its not just Microsoft. IBM, according to the linked article, has done research on the topic as well.

Are they serious?

Yes, at least to a point.

This is, I suppose, the bleeding edge of the gamification of society.

I grew up before "games" made their way into the entire consciousness of society. When I was a boy a "game" came in a box and had plastic or metal pieces that moved around on some kind of cardboard surface. Dice or spinners where often involved.

Video games showed up at the "mall" by the time I was in high school in the 1970's but the "mall" was far away and it cost a $.25 in 1970 money to play. My first real job was fixing video game boards (black and white arcade games) built from 7400-series discrete chips on 12 x 18 double-sided circuit boards. It was hard work and repair almost always involved soldering problems or bad chips.

So for me games were work.

But these days I have become more involved with iOS development: iPhone, iPad, etc.

To do this requires game skills: game-like UI ideas, motion ideas, feedback, and so on. Apple requires them - the UI must be engaging and beautiful, blah, blah, blah. I had to go out and buy a PS/3 and learn how to play games because without that insight I wouldn't be able to create the proper sort of UI or interface. I know lots of gamers and while I get the idea of the games themselves there is a lot of art and science in how they work - skills I must develop.

But all this is different from making my day-to-day "job" a game.

Making work into a game takes me back to grade school and nursery school before: sit in a circle and listen to story books about little pigs singing while they build a house. That sort of thing.

I've spent some 35 or so years writing code and I think I know what I am doing. I don't need a game to make it fun or to give me "approval" through "gold stars" for not using a GOTO. (BTW, I do occasionally use "goto" because you need to - real problems are not all solved by "simplified languages" without them.

Gamification I think is spawned from an underlying societal problem: children don't receive enough hands-on positive (or negative) feed back because adults are too busy or involved elsewhere to pay attention to them. So adults (and society) invent "systems" to provide gratification to the youngsters via other means (gold stars, etc.) - gamification being a good example.

I am happy to write good code because, in and of itself, to me that's a satisfying thing. The code works, the customer buys it, I make a living, the customer does real work.

I don't need a game for this...

What if surgeons used a system like this?

Put on a 3D VR helmet with sound effects. Oh look! You cauterized that vein neatly! A bell could ring - gold coins would rain down - cha ching - cha ching. On the other hand if you cut that nerve running to the patients finger tips a sad face with tears could appear along with the sound Pacman makes when the ghosts eat him.

Maybe I could have an iPhone app that gives me a gold star when I pick my child up from daycare on time...? When I drive from home to work without texting?

Honestly... this is totally insane.

This all stems from the fact that a generation that has spent most of their lives glued to Hi-Def game displays has now reached the work force (albeit late, say at age 35).

They simply don't know how to do much else so everything becomes a game.

What about their marriages?

Oh! I need an iPhone app for that too...

Did I kiss the spouse today? Ding Ding - hearts could appear!

Did I hug my child? Gold coins could rain down.

Did I not look at my phone or text while we had sex?

Ding Ding - my app can remind me - take out the garbage. If it detects that I didn't come home from work and sit for too long playing games I get a gold star! (Isn't GPS inside your house a wonderful thing!)

Really?

IBM research on this?

How about research on the collapse of modern society?

Where did we lose the fact that we are grown ups?

Can Your "Social Presence" Get You Hired?

2012-01-24T08:05:00.000-08:00

Nice to see where our tax dollars are going...

I guess that the internet is changing how people think about hiring, at least according to this WSJ article.

Companies interested in your "social presence" as well as your ability, or, worse, just in your "social presence." The article describes how one company uses the "web" to determine if a potential employee is a "good social fit" for his company.

There's another description of a woman who compiled "... a profile comprising her personal blog, Twitter feed, LinkedIn profile, and links to social-media sites Delicious and Dopplr, which showed places where she had traveled" in order to get a job.

(I guess I won't be getting "hired" anytime soon... "Why does he have a long beard?" "He makes small children cry when they see him!" My blog says far to much about me for that!)

To me this really doesn't seem to be about working at all. Instead it sounds much more like "we have an exclusive social club" and we only want people "like us" to work here. People seem to be less interested in raw talent or ability (which may be masked by social ineptitude) than "sameness."

One of the things I learned over many years of hiring and firing (at one time I owned a mailing company with fifty full time people) is that no amount of interviewing will ever really tell you about what another person is like. Though to that extent I have to agree that "looking elsewhere" for information on people is good.

But there's a problem with that.

What if I find things about someone I don't like but are illegal to use in making a hiring decision? Certainly I don't want trouble from the EEOC...

So what if I look over your social profiles and discover your a satanist or into death metal? Satanism's a legitimate religion (I suppose) these days. Or maybe you just like to sing about killing people... Should I hire you to help out at my daycare?

Can you sue me if I don't?

People create a lot of "fake" information about themselves on the web for many reasons: to impress the opposite sex, to stoke their own vanities, and so on. Really, what place does using material like that have to do with realtime kernal programming in C++?

Not much, I'm afraid.

Of course I am biased coming from a background were "the geekier the better" generally rules. Though I suppose in geek-driven environment would search for the "opposite" - oh oh, I can't hire you because you have a nice social profile! Look, you're wearing clean clothes in that picture! You're hair is combed...?

Then there is the issue of "bias."

If I hire people who think "differently" than me I might gain insight into things - "oh, I never thought about it that way..." If I only hire people who think "like" me then things will be great so long as I have the right vision - and its likely that no one I hire would thing outside the box - even if things were going wrong.

This seems to me to be a sort of natural form of "discrimination."

People will hire only the most "attractive" people. Wow! So-and-so is really hot... Call that one in.

And certainly in the past like-minded folks got themselves into trouble in hiring.

There is also the issue of "hacked accounts." Oh, those racist or sexually suggestive comments on my Facebook aren't really mine, my account was hacked... (Right.) Except now there is no hope of employment. (On the other hand, no one can "hack" a paper resume...)

Personally I think places like "linkedin" are a joke - sites for job seekers to "collaborate" looking for work and whine about the fact they have none. Shameless self-promoters vying for your attention.

Right now there aren't enough jobs.

The current "debt economy" has created a huge surplus of millions of workers, particularly in the realms where things like Facebook are popular, i.e., with young people. So this kind of nonsense I suppose makes sense to those using it.

"How do I weed out serious people and find people who are 'just like me...' "

No thanks.

I want people to question me as a boss. I might make mistakes. I might not see the best solution. I might forget something. If all my employees are "yes men" (or I suppose "yes persons") then what will happen to me when I make bad decisions?

Everyone will agree...

True diversity is a good thing, particularly in work environments, because it makes the work product better. Why? Different perspectives make it possible to see problems or make improvements that might not otherwise be noticed or made.

But I don't think social sameness makes for a "good thing" at work...

Of course, I'm an old geezer who thinks work is, well, work. I want to hire people that know how to do their jobs and work since my work is not socially based. For the most part I could care less what else they do so long as its not a problem that comes to roost at my door step.

If your social agenda is so overwhelming that you can't do anything else (like work) you're not much use...

From a social media perspective its hard to assess someone's "work ethic." Certainly one can be committed to a "cause" - but that doesn't mean they actually work, as in labor, at it...

At the end of the day this social presence work stuff is all nonsense.

The world is a complex, dangerous place and using nonsense like "social media" to steer your workplace future is going to be fraught with danger. Its hard enough to make a living these days without this kind of think mucking up the waters.

Its discriminatory.

Its lame.

More Lion Woes...

2012-01-23T06:55:00.000-08:00

So my daughter brings over a movie someone burned for business on a DVD. I put the DVD into Lion and it complains the media is in a format it doesn't "recognize." Nothing happens and I can't view it.

I take the same disk to Snow Leopard and viola the movie plays with no issues right in the DVD app.

Some Googling reveals various unfixed "issues" in this regard.

Next woe.

I hook up some nice monitors to a Lion laptop (MacBook Pro).

Click, pop, click...

Hmmm....

No audio playing, nothing going on to make sounds, clean signal pro path that I have used before.

More Googling...

Oops! Another Lion problem recognized by many, not resolved.

The worst one I found, though, I could not find much on.

I have a JamMan looper pedal. It has a USB port which you can connect to anything that recognizes the standard, simple "camera" file system. Basically files and folders. I have a 10.4 Mac as well as others and this has worked on all of them without a problem for a couple of years.

You simply plug in the USB and you see a mounted file system. You drag and drop files in the finder.

Except on Lion.

Lion sort of pretends this is working but in fact does not show the files you drag onto the JamMan. So suppose I have a folder of a few files. I drag it from the laptop hard drive to the JamMan.

Normally you would see a little progress window, it would process, end of story.

On Lion you see the progress window but the bar in it doesn't move. Some of the files copy, others don't and it just sits there. I gave up after a minute or two (the files were about 15 Mb and should have copied in seconds).

Lion then reports the folder copied.

Hmmm... I thought - perhaps the progress window is broken.

Nope, the folder was there but only on file in it (I had to navigate via the terminal window to discover this).

During this fiddling I had at one point renamed the folder. That didn't work either - the folder kept the old name.

Eventually the only scheme that worked was to navigate via the terminal window to /Volumes/JamMan and copy the files there.

Come on Apple... This is terrible!!

Something that worked for a decade now craps out on the vaunted Lion.

And worst of all it behaves like Windows!! No errors, randomness, and terminating in failure.

I know the JamMan works okay USB wise so I did not bother to test Lion with other USB devices.

I also did some testing with a MOTU 828 via firewire. I bought the laptop specifically to ensure I had all the right connectivity. Sadly there were more problems there.

Clicks, pops, noise on the optical line.

I've had the MOTU for probably seven or eight years - never a problem until Lion.

Maybe I'll have to check out Windows 8...

The Art of Medical Deception (Part III)

2012-01-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

So now we have a "risk" but the detailed mechanism of why they are dying are unknown to the villagers.

But there is still a definite "risk."

A "risk" just like finding out that people who have higher cholesterol also get heart attacks in ads these days.

But that does not mean the two are directly related (risk does not imply cause).

The sniper might be killing them because they are easier to see in the clearing, for example. Or because light reflects off the surface of the water being fetched. Or because those who use that particular well wear colorful clothing that makes them easy targets. Or for any other number of mysterious reasons.

No one knows except the sniper and he is not telling.

So next we have the "patent medicine man" who comes to town. He discovers the research about the well so he starts selling bottled water.

No more need to go to the well.

And the ~~million~~ ~~billion~~ trillion dollar question is: does the bottled water really reduce your chance of dying?

Now let's remember risk is a predictor of something, a chance, as I wrote about "Cholesterol, Heart Disease, and Magical Thinking" - its not concrete. So to talk about risk we have to look at the population of the village, the number of deaths, and the places where people went, i.e., the well.

So if over a year seven people die in the village (both from the sniper as well as other causes) then there is a 7% (7 out of 100) risk of death. So let's say that four people die by the well, or a 4% risk.

So 4% divided by 7%, which gives our epidemiological risk, is a 57% risk of going to the well and dying. But that's only if you're going to die.

Wow, not sure I would want to go to the well with that level of risk. But that's not the "chance" I would die - its the potential increase in chance from dying in general over dying by the well.

So let's think about how this works in advertising. A 57% risk of something bad is pretty scary. People easily deal with small risks, .01% in things like sky diving, mountain climbing, and so on. But 57% is almost 2 out of 3. That's because the chances of actually dying in these situations is small. But these ads don't talk about chances because they are unknowable in this context and everyone has a 100% chance of dying - so that's not news either.

So the ad starts out by talking about something bad - in the case of our village dying when you go to the well. "System 1" as defined by Kahneman will immediately pick up on this because its a threat and one of "System 1's" jobs is to react to threat. "System 1" cannot differentiate between "risk" and "chance" in this context. ("Danger" - whether there is a risk or chance - is simply bad as far as its concerned.)

So the first thing the ad does is get our attention because it scares us, or rather, our "System 1".

Next the ad will say something like "Our bottled water will reduce your risk of death."

Now in the sense of "truth in advertising" they will say more (either very fast or in small print) but not in a way "System" 1 will notice - and this is on purpose.

So "System 1," who feels threatened, will pick up on the solution to its fear: "reducing risk".

"System 1" hears this and things "I better by this bottled water so I can be safe."

In truth its unclear whether this will actually reduce your chance of death or keep you alive longer. For one thing, we don't know why the sniper likes the well - their can be many reasons: clothing, actions, the fact that there is a clearing, and so forth. And in fact we don't even know that it will make you safer - we know that "things staying as they are" if you go to the well less often then you may have a reduced chance of dying.

Its not that you will have a reduced chance - you might. The bottled water changes the ratio of the 4%/7% but the sniper doesn't know or care about those numbers.

So this is quite a bit different that showing pictures of "sizzling pizza" to make you hungry.

If you eat the pizza you will be less hungry - "System 1" knows this too.

Your chances of dying may not be changed by drinking the bottled water.

But that's not what the ads make you think.

And that's simply lying.

Yet from "System 1's" perspective the two types of ads seem the same: purchase X and gain satisfaction.

Personally I think ads based on the adjustment of "risk" should be banned. The cause of heart attacks is not cholesterol - its inflammation. This is well known to the medical community but you would never know based on the TV ads.

I think that the old FCC was right to ban this type of ad in the past.

People are not equipped to understand the notion of "risk" as defined by "Big Pharma."

Mega Oh Oh!

2012-01-21T08:46:00.000-08:00

www.megaupload.com

I have been reading stories about the "takedown" of megaupload.com and Kim Dotcom. (Indictment here for the "Mega Conspiracy".)

Thieves, crooks, pirates, criminals... according to various stories like this one.

So its a "free" upload site - how do you make money from that.

A little research turned up this article at howtodothings.com.

The basic idea seems pretty simple according to this.

Its an upload site - you upload material and you or anyone you tell about your upload can download it.

Alright.

So how does Kim Dotcom make $50 million USD a year doing this? After all he would be out of pocket for file storage, web costs, etc. and there would be no income.

The answer is he doesn't.

The howtodothings site reveals a much more complex scheme involving you.

First off you set up an account on megaupload.com. You pay for it. You set up a paypal account too.

Next you go around and find things to upload: books, music, movies, etc. Do you own them? No doubt there is a Terms of Service that you must click saying you do... (I would check but megaupload.com is shut down... Damn, my book on turning lead into gold along with proof is stored there along with the only scan of my original Gospel hand written by Mark, the location of three lost Da Vinci's, the document clearing you of that incident with the 16 year old babysitter a while back and my complete set of cures for cancer - but those are just gone now. No doubt the take over of megaupload will involve the FBI folks trolling through the gazzillions of terabytes steal my stuff and yours... so it will turn up on some other megaupload in a few weeks.)

Now megaupload.com offers a scheme so you get paid if someone downloads your files.

But no one is going to download your files, are they?

Why?

Because they won't know the files are there.

So you have to tell other people that you have these files uploaded that they might want.

How do you do that?

Why you have to market your uploaded content.

So, let's ask a stupid question? Who is doing all this work?

You.

Now, I can buy an amazon.com S3 storage account (like the one the FBI uses to store its seizure URL) and do the same thing.

But there is only one difference. The FBI won't shut down amazon. It will shut me down instead. The S3 account is just like a telephone carrier signal - the crime is what its used for, not the fact that criminals make phone calls. The phone company is not a criminal - you are because you used it for criminal purposes.

megaupload.com, from what I can see, is in exactly the same boat.

Yet their situation is magically different.

Perhaps its because they are enticing others to do wrong with a wink and a nod?

Maybe like the old Apple slogan "Rip. Mix. Burn."?

Of course, Apple did not suggest you "steal" anything; at least not directly. Just convert things to a format your iPod could ~~sue~~ use. Now its in mp3 format, what else can I do? ~~Maybe upload... No. No. that would be wrong.~~

So, like everything else megaupload is taking one for the team because of what other people do with their site. (I italicized you in each of the steps you needed to do to make money on megaupload.)

Let's see. Googling "megaupload games" I see things like

Download Full Version Pc Games Free Megaupload Mediafire

www.gamerslove.com/

Compressed Ripped Free Full Version PC Games Download - In Mediafire, Megaupload, Filesonic, Fileserve, Hotfile Download Links With Games Under ..."

So is Google involved too? Aren't they putting up ads while this displays to make money?

Like BitTorrent.

Seems to me like megaupload is the shlamazel. (The shlimiel is the waiter who trips, the shlamazel is the guy who the food the waiter was carrying lands on - Old Yiddish Humor).

Probably not kissing the asses of the likes of the big Hollywood studios, Johnny Depp, not saving the whales, and so on. Probably having big fun in New Zealand without inviting the required Hollywood peeps...

Because as far as I can see megaupload is just like Apple and Amazon.

Can you say "Hipocrisy?"

This is our rights being taken away. If you steal music then you are the criminal. Not the guy who manufactured the CD-R you burned with the music on it. Not the ISP who's connection you used to upload the RIPed content to the internet.

You.

But from the point of law enforcement and Hollywood tracking down all the actual criminals would be just too much work. megaupload.com supposedly had one billion hits a day and millions of customers. No doubt only a few percent were really misusing it (the site has numerous legitimate uses just like Amazon S3 and just like RIPing CDs to mp3's).

But imagine the work involved in sifting through all of that information and then weeding out the kiddies who had stolen mommy's credit card to do this (mens rea). And then there's the bad publicity the RIAA got for suing folks.

Nope, this is much better. Take this guy down as an example.

Look at this big fat guy with the last name "Dotcom."

He has to be guilty, right?

All those fancy, high class ~~hookers~~ women (and he's a fat guy), expensive cars, parties, rifles, no one will be sympathetic to him...

But I bet this back fires...

I bet Mr. Dotcom also has a crack international team of lawyers too. No doubt he never even imagined this would happen - nope - he's just a dumb crook. Just happened upon a web site for sale that did all this. Just happened to set it up in a jurisdiction where the legal idea of "intellectual property theft" are clear on the fact that its the "sharer" that's the crook - no the "dial tone."

And I bet that in various other countries the "you" I describe is probably actually the real criminal because "you" did the crime - uploaded content you didn't own, shared, made money from it.

I can see why Anonymous is busy taking revenge.

I don't want my rights taken away. I have legitimate business uses for things like S3 storage (or any of its equivalents).

And what about those that stored legit information their accounts?

No, this is big government making a big show.

To scare you...

The Art of Medical Deception (Part II)

2012-01-20T11:06:00.000-08:00

The well in the clearing...

I started this with Part I a few days ago.

I'd like to think about the difference between advertising medicine and advertising food.

Its been known since the time of Pavlov (the late 1800's) that animals (including humans) process stimulus-based links - ring the bell every time you feed the dog and soon the dog salivates when the bell is rung.

I suspect that in the Kahneman "Thinking, Fast and Slow" world of "System 1" this is how System 1 is trained. Anyone who owns a pet knows that the pet usually learns the habits of its owners. My dog knows me so well he goes and lays in the shower right before I take one...

Like Pavlov's dogs we respond directly and predictably to stimulus. Show a picture of a big, juicy hamburger or fresh, hot pizza on a TV and the phone lines start to ring with orders. Show a fantastic looking body and people call the "weight loss" clinic.

"System 1" doesn't usually wait around to figure out if calling is a good idea, it simply creates a desire for whatever it thinks would be good for you.

After all, its always, at least historically, a good idea to eat when food is available.

Similarly in the animal world. Before civilization and pets you ate when you could because you could not predict when you would be able to eat again. I think in large part this is how our thinking about things like food (which is stimulated with sight as well as other things) evolved. See the food, go after it. Those that saw food and thought about, say, taking a nap, probably didn't do as well over all.

Now let's compare this to medical ads.

First of all food is something that is driven with immediate satisfaction - no one usually goes more than eight hours with eating. The results of eating are a state of "fullness" that tells you you don't need to eat more. If you see a vacation spot that attracts your attention - you think about it or order tickets. If you see a weight loss ad you call up or go online and join up.

But in all cases there is a direct "result" - a membership, an airline ticket, a full stomach, nice memories.

Now when I think about medical ads (say something like Lipitor) I believe the model is different. Since these things are generally sold to "reduce the risk of X" its not the same as, say eating. Eating is generally good and it keeps you alive. The medical version is vague and there is no obvious immediate direct benefit, i.e, a full stomach, and long term there may or may not be a measurable benefit associated.

So let me try and make an analogy (I am going to try and pretend to be like Kahneman):

Suppose you live in a primative village on a remote ridge. You live there with one hundred or so other folks.

On a far away ridge there lives a sniper. He has a high powered rifle with a silencer that shoots magic bullets that kill you but leave no obviously identifiable marks.

On average the sniper kills five people each year. To do this he uses a high-powered scope and, sitting on his porch, he picks off one of your villagers.

In your village people are periodically found dead of no obvious cause. Your job is to study this and figure out why.

So you make up a table listing all the dead people on the left and you make columns to the right listing facts about their deaths: time of day, where they were found, various facts you can associate with each death.

Since life is primitive death is no stranger but there does seem something odd about this. One thing you notice is that, near the clearing where the well is, more people seem to die of the mysterious and unexplained cause than any other.

So in your primitive scientific mind you associate the deaths with a location. But now, what's the cause? Could the well water have something to do with it?

To find out you tell everyone to draw water from the other will in the woods - its inconvenient but the water's good and the deaths associated with the old well diminish - people still die but there is no apparent concrete cause like the well.

So for medical ads we now have an analogy for "risk."

There is a known risk with drawing water from the well in the clearing.

The root cause is unknown be there is demonstrable showing that time around the well is hazardous to your health.

So to conclude this portion of my post here is the question for you to think about for next time:

Why do more villagers die when taking water from the well in the clearing?

What could a village do to increase or decrease their risk of death?

SOPA, Your Child's School, and Vietnam

2012-01-19T07:56:00.000-08:00

War Coverage from the 1960's....

In 1969 students at an Iowa school came to school wearing black arm bands to protest the Vietnam war. The result of this was a supreme court case now know as "Tinker" (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969)). The upshot of Tinker is that school officials must demonstrate that “the forbidden conduct would materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school.”

Hence the black arm bands were allowed because they did not "materially and substantially interfere" with the discipline at the school. Did they cause discussion? Sure. But education still occurred.

Why do I bring this up?

Because social media and the modern age has rankled educational professionals today in the same way...

Consider this case: In Pennsylvania the Blue Mountain School District suspended a 14-year-old student (J. S. in the linked opinion), who mocked the principal. She created a fake MySpace profile that insinuated the principal was a pedophile and sex addict.

This was done at home, user a family computer, without the knowledge of her parents, on her own time. Apparently J. S. had had a run in with said principle recently and was upset.

The myspace profile used an image of the principal taken from a school sponsored web site. Though initially public J. S. made the profile private after a friend notified her that it was publicly visible. (The opinion does not say whether the image used was a link or a "cut and paste."

Eventually the principal discovered that the myspace existed and demanded J. S. print out a copy and bring it to school. J. S. complied. As a result of J. S. bringing the print out it was decided J. S. would be given a 10-day suspension (the printout disrupted the operation of the school in a material way).

At this point the principal considered filing legal charges against J. S. and ultimately her parents for a variety of charges.

(Personally I wonder why this is not fair use of the image as parody... especially considering what people say on TV today.)

Ultimately the US Supreme Court refused to hear this case leaving a lower court decision stand that said that the school had violated J. S. s right to free speech under the first Amendment of the Constitution.

However schools today consider that any speech by a student that "materially and substantially interfere(s)" with the school, no matter when or where its made, as a basis for action (even legal action).

To date courts have used Tinker as the decision point in considering these cases and use Tinker to block the schools efforts to expand their reach beyond the Constitution.

But schools want this to change.

So how is this like the SOPA debate?

For one thing I see the "schools" as overreaching substantially. Students, particularly in middle and high school, are developing a sense of themselves and are likely to express this in a variety of was that might be considered offensive or unpalatable by school officials. However, as the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) says, schools cannot limit free speech.

One imagines that today's principal's making hefty six figure salaries would have the required training to deal with a clever 14 year old girl - but perhaps not.

SOPA is in effect like the schools reaching out into the student's life to control it - except the control is your behavior on the internet.

And I see this as wrong.

Just like if I am stopped by the police why should they immediately suspect me of drunk driving? I don't drive drunk. But because many police stops involve this they treat everyone like a drunk driver.

SOPA says you're a thief just because some others are.

And in this case J. S. must give up her rights just because she is a student.

I was in high school from 1971 to 1975. During this time those that graduated ahead of my class went to Vietnam - which by some was considered tantamount to a death sentence. So sitting around in study hall you had a lot of 18 year old guys whose next stop was literally, as the song says, "Vietnam."

People had a lot to say about this and the point of education at that time seem to me to be developing a model of "mutual respect" for opinions about the war as well as respecting the job of the school. The school knew full well where these boys were going after graduation.

I lived in a rural area and there were no real protests or marches. (Though there was a bombing at the University of Wisconsin earlier.)

Before Vietnam there was no televised war coverage - WWII and Korea had only news reels (heavily edited by government and studios).

TV was the disrupting influence (like "social media" is today). Had there been no TV coverage of Vietnam on the nightly news I doubt very much things would have been the same.

But the same generation that graduated in those years is now in a position of power in the US.

And instead of the notion of "free speech" that was used to ensure the public knew about Vietnam and saw the reality of it we have one of censorship - probably by the same folks who openly protested the war forty years ago.

The very thing that people died at Kent State for - free speech - is now being threatened by that same generation via SOPA.

How troubling is that?

My guess is the 60's rebels have now grown comfortable with their big incomes, much like the "military industrial complex" of the 1960's, and is acting to "protect their interests."

The bottom line is new technologies will be developed regardless, like Facebook or mySpace.

And 14 year old girls will find a way to use them in unexpected ways (just like sexting and cell phones).

These new ideas will blossom into the "norm" of the next generation: in a few years kids won't remember a time without Facebook, for example.

SOPA is just a means to control - and a disingenuous one at that. No one is requiring movie studios to put movies on DVDs so they can be RIPed and burned or Torrented. Yet the law is trying to control us even if we ourselves do not do that.

Just like the principal is trying to control was J. S. does with her own resources.

Just like those in the radical 60's fought against with the military industrial complex. The war, like the revenues of DVD's to Hollywood Studios today, generated profits in the military industrial complex - profits that those in charge fought to keep.

Studios could keep their films only on actual film and supply no DVDs, strip search those who have access to the movie during production to ensure that no illegitimate copies are made, but they don't because there's too much money to be made.

So they work to take your rights away instead.

In the 1960's TV coverage changed how war was viewed, just like the internet today is changing the landscape of copyright.

My how what goes around comes around...

The Art of Medical Deception (Advertising, Part I)

2012-01-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

One of the things that's so interesting about Kahneman's book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" is the notion of "self deception."

Basically as I understand what he says there is "What You See Is All There Is" or WYSIATI. WYSIATI is what your "System 1" uses to assess your current position in the world and it does this by only using what it can see, i.e., if I can't see it I'm not worrying about it now.

Since you really cannot see that much of what's around you at any given point in time your "System 1" (the part of your mind that grabs sensory input from the outside and draws conclusions, e..g, "there's my friend Bob") manufactures the rest of the reality it needs to complete its world view (like what's behind Bob, what's Bob wearing, and so on).

Much of the first part of the book (I am now about 1/2 way through) is relegated to how this happens, experiments conducted by Kahneman that demonstrate how "System 1" leaps to conclusions with very little data and how hard it is to detect this, i.e., you don't consciously realize that you are drawing these conclusions yet you act on them.

I interpret this all to mean that your mind (at least "System 1") is a vast, holographic pattern matcher. Visual, auditory and other sensory input is continuously received and shoveled into the pattern matcher. The pattern matcher takes all of this and jumps to a simple conclusions about your current "world state" The patterns match at all levels - this is my house, my dog, the route to work, I'm hot, its raining, and so on and so forth and yield a kind of "how I am now" state in your mind.

Things that are not easily matched get "ignored" by "System 1" basically sweeping them under the rug, as it were. This is why people do double takes, why you can hide things in "plain sight" (your mind simply ignores them as if they were not there - which is why you "overlook" your keys lying right in front of you), why you can drive on "autopilot" (I don't remember driving to work yet here I am), and so on.

The patterns get matched into states of consciousness I guess, e.g., I am home, I am at work.

Your mental "model" of the world is updated - but not directly by all the sensory input - only when your actually realize something is new or different. "System 1" I think says "you are at work" - and the rest of your brain handles the model of "work." (This is why when someone moves a chair in a familiar room you have to bump into it a few times - your mind does not work off of what you see but instead a mental model of the room and the "moved chair" doesn't fit in at first. The chair is just "assumed" by "System 1" to be where it always was so it not looking for it somewhere else.)

Now what about the state of your body?

At least so far Kanheman does not relate these ideas to how "System 1" models your internal body status.

But I think it must, and in the same general way.

As I wrote in the last post new studies show that your "brain and digestive system" are connected (Duh!) in ways that modern medicine has not thought about (this article).

But it makes sense if you think about.

You don't normally have conscious recollection of, for example, the details of what your small intestines are doing while digesting your dinner - somehow your brain translates those experiences to high-level ones: I'm full, I'm sick, I have gas, and so on.

Yet clearly your brain is controlling them (either directly or indirectly).

One thing I think "System 1" does relative to your digestive system is focuses on things you need to eat, i.e., cravings. Anyone familiar with a pregnant woman knows this: "I need licorice and pickles right now, honey...". Presumably "System 1" received input to this effect.

Your mind must understand what your bodies nutritional requirements are at some level and directs your conscious mind to act on those needs. Similarly for things like thirst, going to the bathroom, and so on. At least for me when I am really thirsty I imagine or "see" images of a large glass of cold water, etc. You probably do too.

Even the dog knows when he needs to go out, eat, etc. He nudges your arm, pulls your foot, barks, scratches at the door. Clear even his animal brain is able to convert bodily needs into "higher level" functions like "scratch at the door."

"System 1" also understand about things like timing: "Should I pull over at this rest stop or the next one...?" It can provide you a model of what will happen to you if you don't pull over now: squirming, stopping at the side of the road, etc. Again your bodily needs are translated into simple high-level thoughts by your brain and body automatically and without thoughtful intervention on your part.

More intriguing is the relationship between your gut bacteria, your health and what your brain thinks is going on.

But what's the point of all of this.

I guess a couple of things.

First off, it seems pretty clear that from the perspective of what you body is doing medical science has a long, long way to go. Last post I mentioned it was like trying to understand an oil refinery with a microscope. I think that's a pretty accurate analogy.

While the microscope reveals what is going on - its only at a small scale relative to the entire refinery and its without knowledge of how what is being observed fits into the larger picture. (Of course the more microscopes and coordinated effort the more pieces you can obtain and, hopefully, correctly fit together.)

But this is like the keyhole problem - you don't know how much you don't see.

Sure you can find a wire, tap in and send in a signal to toggle a relay - but what does that do the overall refining process? Does it work better? Maybe it turns off something so the refinery works with less energy, that is, until it explodes.

I guess this is the reverse of WYSIATI: You Don't Know What You Don't See (YDKWUDS).

Our minds have to simplify what they perceive in order for us to make immediate sense of the world (another of Kahneman's points). In doing this he has shown that our minds are perfectly happy to take short cuts (often incorrect ones) without out conscious knowledge (again documented by Kahneman).

So I am thinking that our minds generally are unable to process the wealth of information that flows to them every day through all the various media sources because they are not designed to function in that way.

Our minds are not designed to handle today's information flow.

On the medical side we might see ads for various medications, read articles about various health problems, but at the end of the day our "System 1" has to pattern match all of that into something it (and the conscious you) can easily grasp and identify with.

So we get things like "cholesterol is bad," "nicotine causes cancer" and "I want to be able to have sex when I am old." All "System 1" gross generalizations of what otherwise occupies many, many researchers and millions or billions of dollars.

Secondly I see that unscrupulous marketers take advantage of that by packaging things in such a way as to amplify the generalizations - often by using a sort of "reverse placebo" effect.

You see an ad for a woman holding her stomach and looking uncomfortable. "System 1" hones in on it. "Buy my yogurt!" says Jamie Lee Curtis.

Is the yogurt going to solve my problem? "System 1" doesn't care because the image you saw relates through the pattern matching I described to how you feel about yourself (or someone else). Maybe I have gas for other reasons, but because of YDKWUDS you can't process what else might be the cause - at least not quickly. Maybe I just feel as if the product might help me because I might (reverse placebo) have the same problem. In fact, maybe I'll start to worry about it, my stomach will hurt, and I will buy the yogurt as well.

So, for example, the marketing company is literally targeting your brain/digestive system interface with these yogurt ads because of the visceral reaction you might have through "System 1".

Kahneman has shown that this reaction really cannot be controlled. Your reaction is almost fully automatic.

So if you have a gurgling stomach I believe that your mind is going to leap to the conclusion that this yogurt product is something I must buy (unless you've had a lot of conditioning to the contrary). Your "System 1" brain is linking its feelings about your internal body state (gurgling stomach) with the image on TV of a happy customer eating yogurt.

This linkage happens in milliseconds, is beyond your control and so fast that you cannot react quickly to the result (your "System 2" - the "thinking" part of your mind is lazy, according to Kahneman), and so if "System 1" thinks the yogurt is a good idea it goes on the shopping list almost outside of your control.

The same for sizzling pizza when you're hungry.

The same for Cialis if little "mr. happy" is feeling blue or troubled.

And so on.

Personally I think that medications and food are two different things as far as advertising goes.

You can decide if your hungry or not fairly easily on your own.

But what about that nagging cholesterol thing...?

Then there is the social aspect: what if I am the only person at the party not on Lipitor?

Google Ads: Old News is Bad News...

2012-01-17T16:10:00.000-08:00

Why do Google's customer's pay for old, tired data?

Several weeks ago I bought a new keyboard - the old one was on its last legs and much of it no longer worked.

So I did a lot of Googling through December for a new one and ultimately decided to purchase a Korg Kronos. No doubt Google recorded everything about my searches. Each page, how long I spent on it, etc.

I ordered it three weeks ago; it came in last week.

Now I did not buy it on line - I got a better deal somewhere else - so there is no internet "record" of the purchase - as if I purchased through somewhere like Amazon (not that Amazon shares my private data).

But since then I continue to see ads for keyboards where I go (that uses Google Ads) on the internet. Lot's of them. Very targeted toward me and my Google searches.

Ditto for some other equipment I also bought as well as ebooks (but this has gone on for a while).

I buy a lot of those one dollar jobs - and I see ads for them over and over - but at least they are advertising things I don't already have.

These ads have been running for weeks - showing me keyboards and other options that I will never use or purchase.

I wonder how much these folks are paying these ads?

Displaying ads to me, who will not purchase their products.

To me this seems to be a big flaw in the Google ad model.

How do they know when you buy something?

The keyboard I bought was expensive - its part of the Synthodeon project I am involved with - but I need it for a variety of reasons, e.g., Karma.

The answer is they don't - yet the probably run these ads because they know I am planning (or thinking) about spending a lot of money.

They don't know exactly what I write about - only that I am writing. So for mentioning health or something related up pop ads - even if I am trashing the topic.

Interesting...

Magical Medical Thinking Might Be Killing You

2012-01-17T08:33:00.000-08:00

Simple Check Lists Dramatically Reduce Surgical Errors

I have written quite a bit about medical issues and "big pharma."

One of the interesting aspects of "big pharma" (and in parallel the "big government FDA" that rules over it) is how the placebo affect comes into play with what they do and do not do. (See this as a good source of thoughtful material.)

For one thing, the placebo effect (which is that the mere suggestion that something might provide aid) is pervasive. What I mean by that is there are many studies (as linked above) that show the effect for placebos by themselves. What's I find interesting is how much you can separate placebo effects from supposedly "legitimate" medications and their effects.

One supposes that these effects are accurately measured but imagine the "placebo effect" of something like Lipitor. You tell someone this is "good for your heart" and then you proceed to measure "risk" as opposed to something concrete, as in "Lipitor reduces your risk of heart attack."

But does it? Or does the "effect" of you taking Lipitor reduce and/or affect this risk as well?

Another thing that is troubling is the concept of what I would call a "reverse placebo" effect.

Suppose I tell you that you look really bad today - peaked, pale, dark circles around your eyes...

Does that have an effect on you? How about on your mood? Are you now worried that something might be wrong? Maybe that headache was really a symptom of something more serious?

So I see the "reverse placebo" as you reacting to the suggestion that you are "less well" than you were.

I wonder if, for example, these ads for things like Lipitor have the reverse effect on people.

Making them question their health in the first place. While there is a correlation between cholesterol and heart attacks there isn't a causal link. So you are informing someone about a risk to their health, but its not a certainty.

Then we have articles like this one (I am not picking on the WSJ's health coverage - its just a handy source of material).

Medical science discovering unknown relationships between brain and digestive system. Personally I wonder if they know this little how can they say for sure that the "purple pill" is really doing the right thing as far as your health is concerned?

What if these pills are simply treating some part of what is really a larger problem?

Based on this article its really hard to believe that medical science really knows...

Now let's mix this in with this article.

This talks about a lot of things but one of the quotes that stood out for me was this one: "... as many as 25% of patients who arrive at the center with diagnoses for certain cancers such as lymphoma may receive a different diagnosis". The discussion here is about patients arriving at a particular medical center with cancer.

When you think about this that's a pretty significant error rate.

What if 25% of everything you bought at the store was wrong?

What if 25% of your house was built incorrectly.

What if 25% of your car was broken?

What if even 25% of all your car repairs (or dental work) was done for the wrong reasons?

To me this is pretty scary. Would you shop where 25% of the groceries were mistakes?

Is this even really a "science?" Or is it just ritual?

Quite honestly this does not even seem like engineering. After all one would expect that given the same series of tests two doctors ought to come to the same conclusion about what the results mean... but they don't. They have "opinions" instead.

(Like when your brother-in-law shows up and says "oh, that's the alternator" when looking at your car that's not running right... he's probably right about as often unless he's a mechanic... and even then...)

If your body's correct function is linked to your brain and what your brain does - which among other things is thinking - then if we don't understand your brain how can we understand what its telling the rest of your body to do?

At the end of the day this seems to me to be the real problem with "medical science."

While we can study chemical and biological reactions, DNA, RNA, etc. we really are just using a microscope to examine an oil refinery - there is a "big picture" as in what's controlling the oil refinery - which is going to be fairly hard to discover with the microscope.

Certainly we can see chemicals, reactions, knobs turning, electricity flowing through wires to operate values, and so on.

But how do we understand its purpose and what's controlling it?

Modern medicine has become too irresponsible and arrogant. And yes, we have less typhoid, we live longer, and so forth.

Advances in disease, for example, have been concrete, as with the creation of vaccines. Vaccines continue to work if they are specific - but look at the CDC flu shots - just mumbo jumbo about how they might be working or not (see "Flu Shots and Magical Thinking"). Is this science? Should people rely on this data?

On the other hand, the microbes are out-smarting us in the areas of antibiotics - our gains were relatively short-lived.

I think that we are missing the big picture here.

Minds are responsible for the much of how the body operates.

And medical "science" does not appreciate this nor does it account for this, e.g., placebos.

My guess is that "medical ads" drive a lot of what people think about (there were none until the last 35 or so years) - like the last explosion of catheter ads. (Catheter ads? With smiling young women explaining how they don't have to touch it?) My guess is is that the ads at least in part drive up revenue because people see the ads and believe they need catheters even if they don't - can't pass up a good deal can we?

Mostly modern medicine from the "user's" perspective (you and me) is to a large degree simply "magical thinking" on the part of those who purvey it.

Don't believe me? See "Ritual Surgery or Surgical Ritual." Huge reductions in surgical errors just by using a simple "check list." Probably another post worth of stuff on how this old post relates to Kahneman and his "Thinking, Fast and Slow" - the surgeon's mind making him believe he's on top of it and the fact that a check list reduces mistakes substantially telling the rest of us he's not...

Our minds deceive us and we don't even know it...

iPad Access to Airport Disks

2012-01-16T06:00:00.000-08:00

I have Apple Airport-based networks - they work very well.

Over the last couple of years I have been installing large USB hard-drives on them to backup my laptops and other macs. I also use them to store a variety of content so that its easily available to any mac or laptop - manuals, sample libraries, and so on.

The other day I started to wonder how I could access these Airport disks from my iDevices (iPhones, iPads). When using them for development its nice to have quick access to documents, for example.

But alas, the iPad and iPhone don't have a Finder (or Explorer for those on Windows).

Yes, I know its stupid.

But Steve Jobs felt that having things like that were "bad" and these devices should not support them directly. That's nice if you're a artsy 14 year old, I suppose, but not so nice if you're a professional who needs to get work done.

So the first question was "How should I access these drives?"

That turns out to be easy if you name them right.

You have to name the drives without spaces in the name. I know, all my graphic arts friends will be horrified, but that's the only way it seems to work (no more "Bob's Special Art Work" drive names).

I do this by formatting the drives I buy with my mac using "Applications>Disk Utility" as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and changing their name at the time of formatting. Plug in the drive, select it in Disk Utility, choose the file system type above, and "Erase."

Once that's complete I plug the drive into the Airport (there are also settings to fiddle in Airport Utility as to allow it to support attached USB drives).

With a little luck the name of the network will appear in the left pane of the Finder as whatever you've named the airport (if you're on a mac). Selecting and clicking the name will bring up the drives connected to the Airport (in 10.6.8 this is a bit flaky - the drives don't always appear right away - this flakiness may be drives spinning up but I am not sure).

But what if I don't have a mac (I have Windows or an iDevice)?

It turns out that the drives are still accessible.

You use a URL with the following general format: "smb://airport_ip/drivename."

So for, say the Airport named "Synthodeon" at "192.168.121.99" I would use "smb://192.168.121.99/Elements-01" to access the Elements-01 USB drive on a mac. (On Windows you would use "\\192.168.121.99\Elements-01".) You may have to enter a username and password if the drive has one. (It seems as if the Airport is simply presenting the drives a remotely mountable SMB drives for this purpose.)

Of course if your network can resolve the Airport name to an IP you can just use that (or you can add your Aiport's address to /etc/hosts.)

Now I can access the drives directly.

As for iDevices - there are two problems to overcome.

The first is that there isn't a Finder or Explorer equivalent on an iDevice.

The second is that there isn't a direct way to open, say, a PDF once you locate it on your Airport drive.

I tried an app called "FileBrowser" which initially failed to work as advertised. Basically you enter the IP and other info above and its supposed to access the SMB drives. At least with the Airport this initially failed to work and no useful error is provided. (This describes how it's supposed to work.)

You have to be very careful too because most apps like this seem to promise results but after you carefully read the descriptions you see that they won't ever work. For example, I thought I could use "Air Sharing". But a careful read of the description does not indicate support for SMB-type network connections.

There are a few similar apps as well - you can find them by Googling for the above apps and following the "customers also bought" links as well. The giveaway is that some people love it (probably are using it one way) and others say its a rip off (probably trying to use it some what that's not supported).

This is probably something I could write an app for but I am already behind on my apps list of things to do...

(I had written how this did not work but I was later able to figure it out.)

After some time away from FileBrowser I was finally able to get it to work.

To some degree there is a trick to it.

You have to precisely use the format that they provide for a Mac. Since they support both PC and Mac its a little hard to tell from the example provided what's expected for each. (I only was able to get the Mac format working.)

The docs call for using an SMB-based URL:

smb://IP/drivename

For the mac you have to use the exact format above with the forward slashes. In my case smb://192.168.121.123/driveA.

You cannot just use, for example, //192.168.121.123/driveA. For the mac you must have the "smb:".

Once you get this right it asks for a username and password and you are in.

FileBrowser allowed me to directly navigate to a PDF on the Airport drive and open it. It downloads it first - but its quick.

I don't know what other file types are supported for me at least PDFs are a big help.

I am not sure why this did not work the first time - yes I used the right values. It may have been because when you enter the SMB://... information you are in a text insert box. Pressing [RETURN] seems to have the effect of reformatting the field to match the Windows format.

The second time I fiddled around with this I simply navigated away from the field without pressing [RETURN] on the text edit box.

This may be a bug but I am not sure...

In any case I solved the problem.

This may also be why some people were not successful with it.

What Our Cultural Icons Say about Us

2012-01-15T10:03:00.000-08:00

Given the "peeing calvin" image its little wonder we see things like the video below.

Desecration with urine in nothing new in America...

Websites such as this offering a fully customized "design your own peeing calvin" experience.

Just Google "peeing calvin"...

Yet this US news report claims shock and outrage at the marines urinating on corpses - don't look - its horribly offensive...

Don't these reporters look out their windshields at other vehicles while they drive?

Don't small children see these images from the passenger seat?

Where do you think the marines grew up?

In America, of course.

Virtually every time I drive I see a pickup with "peeing calvin" busy peeing on something - Ford, Dodge, Chevy, NASCAR numbers, George Bush, the Obama logo, you name it.

The marines in the video above seem young... no doubt strongly influenced by a culture that thinks this is funny.

Yet no one I know has ever been questioned or pulled over for "peeing calvin"...

No one claims shock over it.

No one is disgusted.

Most likely we laugh about it.

Or no one even notices...

Until now.

Driving Your Life Away...

2012-01-13T08:44:00.000-08:00

I was reading this article in the WSJ about the future of cars and technology.

Car makers are no doubt planning on making cars "smarter" - like "smart phones" I suppose.

But what does this mean?

On the technological side it means that, like your phone, your car will know where you have been. Run off to that sexy co-worker's apartment after work? You're car will know. Listening to the latest "dubstep" tune? Your phone (or car) will be able to display ads on where to buy the full album. Go into a ditch on an icy winter road? The rescue team will know where to find you and your significant others phone will chirp in despair that your coordinates are no longer "on the map."

But there are trade-offs, as always.

But even before you think of "technological trade-offs" think about why this is even going on.

On average American's spend 1/4 of each eight hour day (that's "two hours" for those we advanced degrees) working to pay for their cars according to this article (assuming the car cost is $11,000 USD and the wage is an average of $22.00/hour).

American's spend about 100 hours a year commuting on average (according to this 2005 article).

Overall American's spend at least 500 hours a year in their cars - with some estimates as high as 1,000 hours.

On average in 2006 Americans spend more than a billion hours a week in cars (see this). The US tax system requires an average of 6.1 billion hours to comply with each year - so in six weeks of driving we could all do our taxes. Each year in Europe there are one billion sick hours off of work. So during our driving time each week we could supplement all of Europe's sick days.

So this is a lifestyle option - sitting in one of the most expensive items you will ever purchase in your lifetime doing the routine job of driving over and over. Unless you're a traveling sales person you go to the same places day in and out.

So as you while away your life each day what better to do that use gadgets.

The only problem with this is that gadgets, like smart phones, are a distraction and known to cause at least as many accidents as drinking. So they are being outlawed...

But the auto industry, not to despair, has taken up the "smart phone" mantle and will be making your billion ours of wasted time fritter away more pleasantly by using their built-in smart gadgets - or at least linking your "smart phone" to their smart car- which you will gladly buy.

I can't say I blame them - one billion mostly idle man hours a week represents a huge market for things like radio, iTunes, and other non-distracting forms of entertainment.

So think of all the people involved in the infrastructure of this - OnStar employees, iTunes employees, and so on - all employed by this wasted billion hours a week.

Come to think of it we could just "work" in our cars and save on the overlap...

Or, even better, simply not commute at all and work from home.

Why, there's probably untold trillions of wasted man hours, resources, infrastructure and costs tied up in the notion of "commuting"...

So now we have developed a vast network of internet technology to link everyone (nearly) in the country. This duplicates to a large degree our "built" infrastructure (roads, airplanes, oil, etc.) which did the same and which replaced horses and stage coaches and telegraphs and the old Bell Telephone system.

I, for example, no longer commute. As an "average man" I get an extra hour a day free.

I no longer need Starbucks, nice clothes, a car, oil changes, gas, expensive parking, roads, stores, any of that.

I still go to the bank because some customers still pay bills by check. I still need food (but if Amazon could deliver it I probably would only need to leave the house once a month to pick up items too expensive to ship... remember "PeaPod?")

So I see a pivotal change coming: no more real need for automobiles at all. None.

This is why the Chevy Volt only goes 40 miles on a charge - no need for more.

The "efficiency" of the "automobile lifestyle" has already peaked and the wasting of hours and time driving do not offer a real "return" on the investment of doing it.

So my former "work" vehicle is basically idle now - I drive it to gigs once or twice a week - it will last until it literally falls apart. Mrs. Wolf has a vehicle that we probably drive less than 30 miles a week now - save for the occasional "big trip" of 30 miles.

The internet has taken over. Unusual or work-related specialty things we need come from Amazon.

Even entertainment - like live music - will eventually go away - destroyed by ASCAP and large-screen TV.

Right now I'm ahead of the curve.

I've organized my life around not driving.

But soon others will be there in great numbers as well - choking the data freeway of the internet.

Why have an office when you have free WiFi video chat and GoTo Meeting?

Obviously these "benefits" don't apply to many things, like manufacturing.

But that will change too - all because of waste.

Waste of man hours in driving and in cars.

But then, what will the people that make cars and roads and automobile infrastructure do?

They'll be unemployed.

I'll have to make money to pay taxes to support them.

But my customers will diminish because their customers in these now obsolete lines of work will diminish...

You get the point.

The "automobile lifestyle" all really just a big fat Ponzi scheme.

And the road is running out...

So all this "piling on" by car manufacturers into technology and smart cars is probably going to backfire.

Why have a smart car when its "smarter" just to stay home and work?

But then, someone has to feed the "automobile lifestyle" Ponzi scheme - I guess its their turn.

Music: A Future Perspective

2012-01-12T08:33:00.000-08:00

The Lone Wolf and his EWI

Interesting perspectives on music today. I am writing this because of my involvement with Synthodeon (www.synthodeon.com).

My interests here include how to build and use non-traditional MIDI controls for professional music. It still a bit too soon to talk about exact details but I can say that the development target is a series of technologies to allow other types of controllers (besides keyboards and the Akai EWI) to make their way to professional stages.

The Xbox Kinect is an interesting move in that direction, with 18 million currently sold. People do all kinds of things with it including music.

While the Kinect videos you see show people playing cellos and violins I have yet to see any real performances outside of various Ableton. This stuff, while reminiscent of the old Moog theremins, doesn't yet show enough technical capability to get the job done for tight musical control.

In any case some interesting background is below...

First from Alexander Chen:

Baroque.me: J.S. Bach - Cello Suite No. 1 - Prelude from Alexander Chen on Vimeo.

Using the Microsoft Xbox Kinect:

Moullinex - Catalina from Moullinex on Vimeo.

The Kinect will be available on Windows very soon.

Here's a unique Kinect idea:

I think that the Kinect is really the first wave of "game changer" technologies for computers and music.

The Lone Wolf has been working with Synthodeon Studios on the 3i - a new type of MIDI controller along these lines.

Details will be available soon on the Sythodeon Developer Log.

I have spoken here quite a bit about change and how it affects people and things. Where have all the buggy whip manufactures gone and so forth.

I think that music will be in for a similar change over the coming decade.

Certainly at the level of, say, keyboards, the advantages of using an electronic version of an instrument have penetrated to all levels of professional music - probably save for concert halls electronic keyboards are very commonly used.

Today I play an Akai EWI. I've had one for many years.

Basically its a breath controller for MIDI - much like a keyboard but typically used to play single notes instead of chords where the velocity of your breath controls the note instead of how hard you strike the keys.

The EWI has no moving parts save for the breath sensor chip inside and a "bit sensor" that allows you to bend pitch by biting the mouthpiece. All the clarinet-like keys touch sensitive without moving.

Currently the sound libraries for the EWI are somewhat limited but that's going to be changing over the next several years. Things like Fable Sound's Broadway series and Orange Tree Sample's guitar, flute and bass series for Kontakt show the way. Another key technology here is the Korg Kronos.

Korg has spent a decade with the core Kronos technology (via Oasis). What's interesting about the Kronos is that its basically a standard embedded Linux computer system built into a keyboard platform. The Oasis software no doubt written in C or C++ ported to it makes a cost effective Oasis replacement (Oasis systems are pro-level keyboards used by the likes of Herbie Hancock).

I predict that within five years serious profession orchestra's will have synthetic instrumentation outside (beyond) of keyboards, i.e., one more iteration of Akai EWI/sampler technology. And this also depends on access to this level of technology by those interested.

Another area where I expect to see change (and I expect to make change) is on the MIDI front.

MIDI is a twenty-some year old standard - while the electrical portion is fine for something like a live professional keyboard MIDI is slowly being supplanted by what I will call "MIDI over USB."

At present this is just the transmission of MIDI data over a USB connection (or routed via internal MIDI software such as on a Mac over over ethernet). I am explicitly leaving out WiFi because latency issues render MIDI transmitted wireless useless - at least for pro-level playing of piano or EWI.

Once you accept MIDI as something that runs over faster protocols you can do more with it.

Synthodeon is working on some advanced "MIDI tunneling" technologies to allow MIDI to do a lot more work over high-speed channels.

Based on all this I see a day when more than Akai EWI's and keyboards are used live by pros in the most demanding environments: live, on stage, and jazz.

The Lone Wolf is at the forefront of this advancement and hopes very soon to report about a variety of new programs, technologies, and apps on the Sythodeon blog.

As a kid I started out building DIY synthesizers - but I didn't know anything about music. While it was fun and I built a career out of the knowledge I gained I never resolved the music angle of it. Fortunately, over the last ten years or so, I have been able to build up close (but not quite) the 10,000 hours of musical training need to be considered "serious" (at least I hope so) on the music level.

So, finally, after a decade of work, I am able to bring all of my interests together into a single product.

Binge Science: Drinking

2012-01-11T07:32:00.000-08:00

I wrote in "The Risk of the Cure" about binge drinking.

There are some even more remarkable statistics here from a CDC study.

Among the results from the link:

"17.1% said they binge drank within the past 30 days. The rate was twice as high in men as in women (23.2% versus 11.4%)"

"...binge drinking increased with household income, reaching 20.2% among those earning $75,000 or more"

"There was state-to-state variation in the rate of binge drinking, ranging from 10.9% in Utah to 25.6% in Wisconsin."

If this is true then in Wisconsin (my home state) one quarter of all adults binge drink. A quick check of this site (using the "All Arrests" section for comparison) confirms this (at least to some degree).

Very interesting - what does the state you live in have to do with how much you drink?

Certainly some states, like Utah, that have very restrictive liquor laws should have less - but there is still a wide variation among states (Texas, for example, has far more people than Wisconsin, and a reputation for a certain amount of lawlessness, yet has far fewer DUI arrests).

Perhaps its the kind of people that live in each state - if there is such a thing...

I bring this up because of this article in the WSJ: "Is Your Personality Making You Put on Pounds."

This is an interesting article and it goes into some very common personality types and what they might have to do with food consumption: Night Owl's, Stress Junkies, and so on.

Now my question is does the same hold true for drinking?

Perhaps you state and your personality type have something to do with it?

Perhaps your state to some degree controls you personality type or vice versa?

While at first these may seem like silly questions the more you think about it the more likely it must be true...

When I was in college in 1975 there was a survey in Playboy magazine about drinking in college. Various campuses were rated we read - but wait! Where was the Univerisity of Wisconsin, Madison? It wasn't listed but we knew that it had to be somewhere on the list...

At the end of the article there was a comment that the schools listed were simply drinking schools and that "professionals" like UW Madison.

These results always stuck in my mind over the last 35 or so years.

Years ago we used to return to Wisconsin once a year for Thanksgiving and I used to participate in a local "10K Turkey Run." The race was at like 9:00 AM and was held at the local Elks or other club. Post race drinking commenced by 10:00 AM for the faster runners.

In college I had dormmates from all over the country. Most picked up on the "binge drinking" model rather quickly.

Now Wisconsin in those days was rather cold - the year I married Mrs. Wolf there were at least 30 days in a row where the high was below 0 F - so this was not a personality issue.

In subsequent years we lived in other states: New York, PA and I traveled to probably 30 or more. People in general didn't seem all that different.

Yet somehow the boundaries of their states makes their behavior different.

One think may be that the more "rural" people you have the more drinking - Wisconsin - being very rural, has a lot. Or perhaps there are certain personality traits associated with where you live: city, town, country, loner, socialite, etc.

The second question the WSJ article brings to mind is "just because your personality makes you tend toward one thing or another does that mean there is something wrong with you?"

This question also seems to involve emotional driven science: "Oh My God! You're Obese!"

But are you really obese or is it just your body type or your diet?

Obesity varies by state as well... (I wrote about this in"Killing Me Softly, Part II").

(But the worst of the drinkers doesn't seem to have an obesity problem, or perhaps the most obese don't drink much...??)

I think this kind of science quickly becomes silly.

We don't understand people scientifically. We don't know what they think and why.

As I wrote last time I don't think our minds can handle modern information flow well.

But science marches on.

Making "fact" from random observation.

Is there really a drinking problem?

What is drinking "too much?"

How do we know?

Maybe drinking is a result of too much stress?

Perhaps there are too many asshole's in Wisconsin which drive people to drink.

Maybe there are more insane spouses there...

Thinking about Bungie Jumping?

2012-01-10T15:09:00.001-08:00

Evil Mr. Nicotine

2012-01-10T09:06:00.000-08:00

From the "Andromeda Strain"

I find articles like this one at the WSJ about nicotine patches disingenuous.

Smokers who used a patch to quit relapse as well as those quitting cold turkey.

The supposition here is that nicotine is the only "additive" element in smoking - its not.

I wrote a series of articles here about, among other things, the "magical thinking" associated with cigarette addiction. Cigarettes are designed to be addictive in many ways beside nicotine.

Mrs. Wolf learned a great deal about this in her extensive research last year. Some 20% of all smokers she believes are addicted to the other elements put into tobacco. So no patch is ever going to help them.

Yet somehow modern medical science ignores this aspect of cigarettes and focuses on nicotine.

I think the reason is that "nicotine" allows the "evil" of smoking to be ascribed to one word.

But, because this drum has been beaten so long and so relentlessly today's researchers have come to believe that nicotine is the "only" evil involved. Hence other data related to addiction is simply ignored.

The more I think about it the more I am coming to believe that a great deal of science today, health care, physics, virtually anything related to "government funding" now involves "magical thinking" - the replacement of logic with "emotional thinking" in a scientific context (see my last post).

Worse I am not sure that people really even understand that they are doing it.

I have been looking at a lot of "science" back from the 1950's and 1960's.

In those days there were "great unknowns" - there was "outer space" - no one knew what would happen if a human went into outer space. No one know if a human would survive weightlessness, dangerous alien life or radiation. (Recall the movie "The Andromeda Strain" from 1971. Human's trying to take control of alien life and the great unknown. How do I contain something like an alien virus?)

There was no dogma about "space" this and space "that."

As a child I recall many 1960's National Geographic magazines in which Jacques Cousteau went to places at the bottom of the ocean where no one had ever gone before - breathing helium/oxygen mixes because of the high pressure - and talking in high-pitched voices because of it.

Again, no dogma - just people out there learning and exploring.

No preconceived results.

It was all about "what if" and "why?" Science fiction of the day was about flying off into the great unknown (space, the ocean) to "learn something new." Explorers were brave because they might die doing it.

Today everything is funded by grants - if those at the NSF or other "grant" agencies don't like your work you don't get funded.

And look at today's science fiction - like the Transformers - a child's cartoon program turned into a tome about giant robots coming to babysit helpless, stupid humanity.

When did we become helpless and need babysitters? Why is a movie about babysitting good?

Sure the movie demonstrates the latest special effects - but the plot is all about how helpless we are.

None of today's work is pioneering in the same sense of fifty years ago.

(I was watching the Andromeda Strain (1971) last night. The "scientists would all probably be arrested as federal criminals for a variety of reasons - starving a child, holding people against their will, threatening to sacrifice a human to save humanity, suggesting the nuking of the alien contagion. Yet they solved the problem and life went on. The "alien" - mindless and dangerous.)

Today's its all "more of the same" dogma. Everything "evil" is corporate, e.g., the "Umbrella Corporation." There is always a fantastic set of "unknown" things which always behave in anthropomorphized ways by the end of the story.

Vaping, for example, is a pioneering step - nicotine is not bad, it may even be helpful, lets build something new and interesting to replace something old.

Pioneers are using vaping to stop smoking.

Smoking is bad, not because of nicotine, but because you breathe smoke. Could vaping be dangerous?

Yes.

But pioneers don't need nanny to help them out...

Emotional Fantasy and Science

2012-01-09T08:30:00.000-08:00

Albert Mochette (1881 -1965)

There is an article at the WSJ about Aidan Dwyer.

Aidan created a new model for collecting solar energy - basically a kind of solar collector with leaves like a tree. He published some breakthrough new science and was lauded on the internet as a genius.

Until someone discovered Aidan made a mistake and measured the wrong thing.

Now he is the focus of hate mail, vitriolic comments, and producing "bad science" according to the article. The target of "haters..."

But Aidan is just a 13 year old kid doing a science fair project.

Now from my perspective this is a perfect thing for a 13 year old interested in science. Do some science, see how it comes out... At 13 you are not a well trained researcher... Do you really understand math or logic?

The problem here is, of course, not Aidan, but the idiots out there concerned about what he's doing.

One imagines that these are adults.

So why are these adults doing this? Don't they have better things to do? Lives of their own?

To me these are people who have replaced science with their own imaginations.

In other words, they imagine Aidan's "discovery," based on their first impression, to fulfill some bizzare desire on their part for who know what? Perhaps an end to world hunger, the solution of the world's energy problems?

But this kind of "elaborate story" that goes along with learning about Aidan's work is nothing new. Albert Michotte developed a number of interesting observations around how people observe things and create stories to describe them. (Kind of related in a way to "Thinking, Fast and Slow" which I have written about several times before.)

Michotte showed people simple movies of balls doing simple things and asked for descriptions. People created elaborate stories to describe what they saw - even though what they saw as very "simple." So Michotte was delving into the perception of causation (called attribution) - basically what did people's mind's do when presented with something simple which did not follow what people deem as "normal."

For example, a two second film where a rolling an animated red ball bumps into a stationary blue ball and the blue ball rolls off versus a similar film where the blue ball remains stationary for a second before it moves. We "expect" the first case - its like billiard balls. The second case required the observer's to create "explanations" for why the blue ball did not move at first.

But what does this have to do with Aidan?

For one thing I think that people read headline's all the time and their mind's "rush to judgement" about what the think they see. "New Solar Array Promises End of Energy Problems"

Their minds leap to support what they've just read - my God! the kid's done it...

Only later does factual content create a conflicting scenario.

(Kind of like children who really believe in Santa Claus finding out the truth...)

So like Michotte's subjects observing a movie that made "sense" - the blue ball is bumped by the red ball and moves off - the readers of the article say "this New Solar Thing is it! - Now my life will be complete and wonderful!!"

But the later facts showing a mistake are dealt with using anger because now their investment in the belief is shown to be a waste of time (like now seeing that the move is like the second Michotte movie - one that makes no sense). Like small children they can become angry over the incident.

This theme is expounded on to some degree in this Wired article as well.

Instead of individuals companies are making poor "investments" (in the Wired article it describes the failed cholesterol drug torcetrapib). No one can believe that the drug fails to do what's expected even though billions are invested.

I think that what's happening here is that our minds are not making the leap form our simple, nature-based past into one where information (especially emotionally charged information) moves with lightening speed.

In nature I can hunt for a rabbit. I sit, I wait. The rabbit does not conduct "false" science to confuse me. My eyes don't lie about what I see (though the rabbit's camouflage might deceive me). I shoot my arrow - it hits or it does not.

Our minds like this because there is certainty about what's observed (whether I get the rabbit or I don't).

But stories, as told around fires for millenia, are different. They inflame the imagination. And to a large degree most "stories" from the past are simply that - stories. About wolves, castles, wars, whatever. But mostly they were disconnected from the listener in time and space. The scary wolves live in the woods - away from the listener.

Today's stories are just as emotionally charged - saving the planet, saving the world, making your illness go away. But because we view them as "factual" without any knowledge of the truth (and of "causation" as describe by Michotte as well as in the Wired article) we deceive ourselves into believing the story tells us what we want to here regardless of the truth.

My point is that our minds, used to a simple, natural world, are not designed to parse out deception (intentional or not) nor are they able to dissociate from the emotional aspects of the story.

We fall in love with Aidan's success and feel angry when its taken away.

We fall in love with the notion that manipulating cholesterol levels according to ill-conceived theories will make us billions only to feel angry when the plans fail.

We fall in love with the "stubborn" blue ball that resists the red ball's efforts to move it only to realize the movie is simply a trick on our perception system.

Its little wonder that people create "scientific fantasies" out of bits and pieces - they are like good stories - they make us feel good emotionally.

Like Kahneman says in his book - our minds leap to conclusions without real facts - we cannot help it.

I think this says that we also make significant emotional investments in these conclusions.

As well as real business dollars.

The problem here is that how does humanity separate itself from its own "mind" in order to conduct object science?

Its that separation even possible?

Or are the consequences of what we might "discover" to frightening for most people to even allow them to make such a separation?

Given this what can we really expect from science?

The Quantico Circuit (The Enemy is Listening)

2012-01-06T05:00:00.000-08:00

There is always talk of FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) and how its either "good" because it catches bad actors or "bad" because it violates your privacy. This was created by President Bush in order to deal with terrorism and, though he is often "blamed" for it it continues to be supported in the current Administration.

The basic idea is that the president can cause who and whatever it wants to be "surveyed" without a court order.

Recently I came across this tidbit related to Hepting vs. AT&T which involves FISA.

An AT&T technician named Mark Klein attested in 2002/2003 AT&T allowed the NSA to install a Narus supercomputer in its San Francisco office in order to monitor internet traffic including internet-based telephone calls.

Klien was interviewed by PBS's Frontline in 2007.

Basically he describes that the NSA put a "splitter" into the main AT&T internet feed being switched the Folsom Street office in San Francisco. The "splitter" splits off an optical copy of all the internet traffic and routes it to another floor in the Folsom office with Klien, an union telecom man, has no access to. (The union contract with AT&T basically guarantees all telecom techs access to all the equipment - but this extra room was an exception.)

Klien says of the internet traffic in the room the NSA was "... basically sweeping up, vacuum-cleaning the Internet through all the data, sweeping it all into this secret room. "

Klien describes the NSA hookup as "the Quantico Circuit" - Quantico, VA is the headquarters for the FBI.

In the end the EFF sued AT&T and the federal government for violating privacy laws - this was in 2006.

Its taken nearly six years for this case to wind its way through the courts - and it not over yet. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recent decision from this Engaget article says that AT&T and other telecoms are immune from lawsuits related to privacy.

More interest is this (from the same Engaget article). The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals "... gave the go-ahead for a separate suit against the NSA, former president George W. Bush, senior members of the Bush administration and President Obama for using AT&T's network to conduct "an unprecedented suspicionless general search," according to the filing."

What does all this say about our modern world of cell phones, PDA, iPads and the rest?

Basically that our government (through the previous and current Administration) have no problems surveying the general public in the name of security.

And, apparently, most of us either don't have a problem with it, don't know or simply don't care.

No doubt there are many, many Narus links installed all over the country, if the not the world, funneling data to the NSA for processing.

At the same time apparently these techniques work as there have been to subsequent terror attacks on the US - though "work" here may be a misnomer because in a variety of cases (example here) local law enforcement did at least as good a job with various potential terrorists.

I recall at the end of the movie "Indiana Jones" the Ark of the Covenant is wheeled off into a giant, endless government warehouse for storage at the end of the movie. This movie was made around 1979 or 1980.

Today the data bits of your telephone call are being "wheeled off" into that same warehouse.

(No doubt the Ark of the Covenant has be destroyed to prevent anyone from thinking the Government supports a specific religion.)

Except now that warehouse is an NSA server farm with hundreds of millions of terabytes of disk space.

Patenting Your Disease

2012-01-05T05:00:00.000-08:00

From Wikipedia

The geniuses at the U. S. District Court of Appeals have decided that a gene removed from your body can be patented.

The decision, which overturns this one, involves two genes: BRCA 1 and 2. The presence of these gene's can serve as a (partial) indicator of a woman's chances for breast and/or ovarian cancer. (And, according to yesterday's post, her potential for employment as well, I suppose.)

A company called Myriad Genetics has developed a test which uses these genes. They have also filed for patents on this process meaning that anyone else who attempts to examine these genes for the purpose of helping a woman determine her risk of cancer would be violating their patent.

The current court decision states (in its infinite wisdom) is that a gene removed from a human body is not the same (is different) as one that's still part of a body hence it can be patented.

Thankfully the current Administration has agreed with the ACLU and others that "the mere act of isolating something" does not make it patentable.

So imagine the consequences of this. Little Jr has horrific symptoms of some brain rotting disease but company X owns the actual gene patent on the detection of the disease and charges $1,000,000.00 USD to allow the gene to be used to test for the disease.

What does a parent do?

No doubt they don't have the $1,000,000.00.

I suppose you could try treating for the disease without actually testing for it - but that might cause more problems.

Profiting from the misery of others.

Ultimately this and other similar cases will end up in the Supreme Court (see this) and is similar to what I wrote about here: "Patently Insane Medical Patents."

So if doctors are developing these cures I wonder if they recall their Hippocratic Oath?

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
...
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability.
...

(Underlines mine.)

I suppose that making a living and working for "Big Pharma" trumps all of these silly oaths and promises...

Do these doctors take their wedding vows as seriously?

How about their promises to love and take care of their children and aged parents?

How about their credit card agreements or mortgages?

Or is money and profit more important?

One has a hard time reconciling this with Medicare and Medicaid as well...

Which is more important?

Making a buck or helping someone with cancer?

Then there is always the issue of basically free alternative treatments, e.g., iodine, as I wrote about here.

But doctors (often with huge student loans) don't make money from free advice.

Now I don't know if iodine really is helpful for anything but at least I am not suggesting someone pay me to hear about it.

Nicotine Segregation

2012-01-04T04:30:00.000-08:00

I was reading this article the other day: "Hiring Trend: Smokers Need Not Apply." It describes a new hiring (or, rather, lack of hiring practice) that says if someone fails their "smoking test" (the details of which are not specified) then that person cannot be hired for a job.

So if you're a smoker you can kiss your job opportunities goodbye.

How nice is that?

Never mind that there are lots of other behaviors just as "costly" as smoking in terms of future medical dollars.

So let's go a little deeper...

It turns out that a little research will uncover that nicotine is itself not necessarily as dangerous as you are led to believe. (Below are some quick links I whipped up - but they are only the tip of the iceberg on discrediting nicotine as an evil cancer causing substance. I remember in the 1970's it being reported that sewing dimes into the skin of mice caused cancer - so should we ban dimes too?)

First off, nicotine is commonly found in many types of food albeit not at quite the same levels as tobacco but it is present none-the-less: tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, and tea, among others, all contain nicotine. These foods have been consumed for centuries or millenia.

Secondly, nicotine has many therapeutic uses - as treatment for colitis, depression, as a cancer preventative, and many more. Tobacco was used as a medicinal by native Americans long before Europeans discovered America. Until the 1980's and the rise of the anti-smoking juggernaut research was conducted by many companies and universities into the uses of nicotine for therapeutic usage.

Third, nicotine has become synonymous with cancer. However that is not necessarily born out by research. In fact its seems that research has a hard time distinguishing between the effects of nicotine and smoking in general.

But I have written elsewhere about this and will probably do so again.

Now, given this, let's examine who smokes. A nice list relating population by race with smoking can be found here.

Unfortunately you will see that minorities reflect a disproportionate percentage of smokers. For example, in Alaska some 37% of Native Americans smoke compared to 18% of whites.

Now it seems to me that based on these kinds of figures discriminating based on smoking will, for one thing, disproportionally affect minorities.

Now let's think about how smoking and nicotine interact with your body.

You will find a reasonably simple description here. Nicotine has a half-life in your body of about 60 minutes or so and a large portion of it breaks down very quickly into cotinine. Cotinine lasts about 20 hours in your body before being excreted in your urine.

Cotinine, according to Wikipeda, has also had a life as the commercial anti-depressant Scotine. How interesting is that then? Smoking byproducts of nicotine turn into commercially available anti-depressants...

But the real problem here is that this "don't hire a smoker" campaign is really an example of a "witch hunt" or "availability cascade" for nicotine (see "Does Risk Exist?"). Kind of the tail of the witch hunt where total lack of knowledge is what's wagging the dog.

Another interesting side effect of this sort of hiring model is that the "expensive smoker" who cannot get a job is foisted off by industry on the public health system - creating a tax liability for everyone through the less-than-efficient government-run medical system.

Nicotine is available to people through a variety of perfectly legal non-smoking, non-tobacco forms.

Apparently these people are not to be hired either.

I wrote about this over a year ago in "Nicotine, Nazi's and Magical Thinking."

Toward the end of this post I describe the anti-smoking/anti-nicotine juggernaut as discrimination by genetic disposition - no different than any of the other forms of racist behavior.

Logically this argument is equivalent to not hiring women with a genetic predisposition to breast cancer.

I find it interesting that in well intentioned world of "anti-smoking" racism and discrimination has found a new and welcoming home.

The "Linda" Experiment

2012-01-03T06:59:00.000-08:00

In "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman writes about what is known as "The Linda Experiment."

Various individuals and groups are shown the text below:

Linda is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in antinuclear demonstrations.

Then each individual or group is then asked "Which alternative is more probable?"

Linda is a bank teller. (1)
Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement. (2)

(Kahneman, Daniel (2011-10-25). Thinking, Fast and Slow (p. 156,158). Macmillan. Kindle Edition. )

Respondents overwhelming choose (2) over (1) even though (1) must be more probable than (2).

(The reasoning being that if I have a group, say of 100 people in a room that are bank tellers. By definition subgroups of those people "bank tellers" and, say, people with red hair must be equal to or smaller than the group of 100, i.e., there are also blonds and brunettes in the group. You can also imagine this as a Venn diagram: a large blob of bank tellers and, within the larger blob, a smaller blob of those who are "bank tellers" and have red hair.)

This is also known as the "conjunction fallacy".

I don't like this and while I understand the strict sense of what Kahneman is saying and doing mathematically I think that his results are not clearly resolved. I have been thinking about what this means.

Kahneman's point here is that the human mind does not process the notion of "probable" in a mathematical sense. In fact, this is one of the premises of the book.

But Kahneman's also speaks about the notion of associative memory in this book, particularly in relation to "System 1" which is the part of the mind that is the first to process information like this. Certainly probable has meaning in other contexts than the purely mathematical one Kahneman uses...

So what is an "associative memory?"

We can divide types of "memory" up many different ways depending on the discipline involved. From a computer-oriented notion (or mathematical logic sense which is what I use) we can say, for example, that "regular memory" is based on an index, such as a number:

1) Fred
2) Barney
3) Wilma
4) Betty

So when we ask what's in memory at 2, i.e., do a "look-up for 2" we get "Barney."

We can then describe an "associative memory" as something that works like this:

Sex          Hair Color
"Male", "Black" -> Fred
"Male",   "Blonde" -> Barney
"Female","Red" -> Wilma
"Female","Black" -> Betty

The index in this case is a "set" of things (Sex, Hair Color).

A "look-up" in this case supplies data to match in one or more columns, e.g., "Male" and "Blonde". We could also supply subsets of data, e.g., just Sex as "Male" in which case we would get two answers.

The basic notion is that we can "associate" a given attribute type (Male) with specific values to find something in our heads. "Oh, that looks like my mother's old ..."

We can also think of this in reverse, as in "What are Fred's attributes?" In this case we know Fred is Male and Fred has Black hair. So look-up in our minds can work in both directions.

In computer systems special hardware is often designed which makes this kind of look-up very, very fast. It is thought that the human mind is especially good at associations and associative look-ups functions.

So we can now think about the Linda problem using mathematical logic and sets in the same way as the associative memory system I described.

First, let's consider Linda in terms of her described attributes:

Name -> Linda
Sex -> Female
Age -> 31
Age Group -> Young
Marital Status -> Single
Intelligence -> High
Outspoken -> Yes
College -> Yes
Major -> Philosophy
Politically Active -> Yes
Nuclear Power Advocate -> No
Supports Social Justice -> Yes
...

Now let's think about what a bank teller's stereotypical attributes are:

Conservative -> Yes
Good with Money -> Yes
Reliable -> Yes
...

And now let's consider some stereotypical attributes of those of active in the "feminist movement:"

Politically Active -> Yes
Sex -> Female
College -> Yes
Marital Status -> Single
Age Group -> Young
Outspoken -> Yes
Supports Social Justice -> Yes
...

So there is a set of things we know about Linda, at least according to the given text:

{ { Name, Linda },
   { Sex, Female },
   { Age, 31 },
   { Age Group, Young },
   { Marital Status, Single },
   { Intelligence, High },
   { Outspoken, Yes },
   { College, Yes },
   { Major, Philosophy },
   { Politically Active, Yes },
   { Nuclear Power Advocate, No },
   { Supports Social Justice, Yes },
   ... << Other attributes of Linda we do not know >> }

So this set of things represents in our minds an index in an associate memory for Linda. Linda might come up in a discussion of politically active friends, or in a list of people who went to college, or in reference to someone who is involved in activities against nuclear power.

The reason, of course, is that each of these things would be part of an associative look-up, e.g., "politically active friends" = { { Politically Active, Yes } }, and so on as we described with Betty and Barney above.

Logically the notion of "politically active friends" turns into a question that says is it true that "there exists an entry in memory such that the Politically Active attribute is Yes? (We're going to skip the mathematical logic/algorthmic version of this because entering the notation into a web page is too tedious.)

So now let's think about Kahneman's experiment.

Our associated memory is going to get loaded with Linda from the text Kahneman provides - presumably we don't know Linda.

Next we are going to read about the two choices. Looking at the stereotypical info we store for bank tellers its not likely we are going to have much cross over match with Linda - though we could if we were in some way familiar with them.

Now let's look at the "feminist movement" part of Kahneman's question.

Likely it will bring up the set of things that we think about for feminist movement (at least in the stereotypical sense). Note that there is very likely (as born out by the results Kahneman reports) a good number of associative elements, e.g., Politically Active, that will be brought to mind as a result.

Now here we see what happens with the conjunctive "and" in an associative memory world.

When we search our associative memory for Linda we will bring up all her attributes. The word "and" causes our minds to also bring up all the attributes we associate with "feminist movement."

In doing so we see "and" as describing additional attributes of Linda, i.e., Linda's attributes plus the fact she is "active in the feminist movement". Our associative memory converts "active in the feminist movement" into its list of attributes.

From an associative memory perspective there is then a much large set of matching attributes for Linda (assuming bank teller attributes don't match much with Linda to begin with). Those of Linda and those with "feminist movement." But our minds, I think, combine the two sets of attributes with an "intersection" finding what attributes are shared between Linda and activity in the feminist movement. This match to our minds makes the "probability" that Linda is active in the feminist movement because its attributes match in that context with Linda.

Our minds don't easily distinguish the difference between mathematical probability in the traditional textbook sense and the notion of probability in the sense that "the more attributes that match (are common) between Linda and activity in the feminist movement" the "higher the probability."

So what I am saying is that, from the perspective of associative memories and mathematical logic, there is ambiguity about what "probability" you are being asked to consider.

Our minds map attributes and match them quickly and by providing an additional set of attributes about Linda we are fooled into considering the increase in matching attributes as "probable."

While Kanheman says "probability" with the notion of strict mathematical and statistical probability I think that rather than drawing the conclusion that our minds are weak in that strict sense the results instead should be a good example of how in fact we associate between things.

I think that's what our minds do - associate what our senses tell us in order for us to draw useful conclusions.

Instead of the questions Kahneman asked we could instead ask what I see as a more revealing set of questions:

What's the probability an anti-feminist joke would offend Linda? (1)
What's the probability an anti-bank teller joke would offend Linda? (2)

Most would answer, I think, that there would be a good chance that (1) would. And this question would use the exact same mental machinery as Kahneman did. For choice (2) basically the question becomes a non sequitur because we no nothing from the narrative about what Linda does for a living.

Probability in the mind of the untrained statistically means the probability of an associative match I think.

I think that Kahneman is fooled by his own concept (or bias) of what "probable" means.

Does Risk Exist?

2012-01-02T07:58:00.001-08:00

As I have mentioned in previous posts I have been reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman.

The book is very broad in its coverage of interesting topics. Today I want to write a bit about the concept of "public policy risk."

Kahneman covers this in his book and I think there are some important ideas there though I am not sure I agree with his conclusions.

Public policy and risk go hand in hand. Why are their extra handrails on the stairs, why are children pushed to have vaccinations before entering school, why do we have double yellow (no passing) lines on a highway where we are blind to on-coming traffic?

All of these are public policy solutions to a perceived "risk."

The risk of someone falling, the risk of a child having a disease that spreads, the risk of pulling out to pass and being struck by another car.

These are things that the government wants you to be "protected from" - so they (the government) create policies to reduce the perceived risk that these bad things will happen.

One of the things Kahenman discusses is a fellow researcher named Paul Slovic. Slovic has spent a great deal of time studying public policy risk and his conclusions are quite interesting.

To quote for Kahneman's book, Slovic concludes that:

“Risk” does not exist “out there,” independent of our minds and culture, waiting to be measured. Human beings have invented the concept of “risk” to help them understand and cope with the dangers and uncertainties of life. Although these dangers are real, there is no such thing as “real risk” or “objective risk. (Kahneman, Daniel (2011-10-25). Thinking, Fast and Slow (p. 141). Macmillan. Kindle Edition.)

Interesting - no such thing as risk...

Another point Slovic makes is that things like press coverage of unusual events dramatically color people's perception of risk.

For example, various examples are given where very unlikely events, such as botulism poisoning, are juxtaposed to comment events, say death in a car accident. The unlikely events, which often receive extensive press coverage, are often to believed to be much more likely than they really are.

I touched on this back a few months ago in "The Risk of the Cure."

People tend to panic over very unlikely things and to even make extensive investments in things which will have a very small appeal to the broader environment.

So what is risk then?

According to Wikipedia risk has many potential meanings, for example, "the effect of uncertainty on objectives" or the probability of uncertain events.

But events exist independently of any human attempt to quantify them.

Lightening strikes the earth all the time - the presence of humans has little or no effect on this.

But human's create the notion of "the risk of being struck by lightening" as a means to relate this natural and unpredictable event to themselves and their interests.

I think that one of the interesting things not said by Kahneman, which in general, at least so far, I see as an overall criticism of this book, is that relative to the human mind risk is not based on "probability" at all.

Instead the human mind sees "risk" as "difference."

Your mind views the world in from a certain perspective - things ordered in a certain way with some set of rules that your mind perceives as the "proper order" of things. When something changes that's important to your mind.

In Kahneman's terms "System 1" detects a difference which raises an alarm.

Now, throughout non-technical human history, i.e., before about 1400 or so, this was an adequate means for functioning in the world. When things were "different" they required checking into: more rain than "normal", less rain than "normal", growling at the edge of the forest, unusual symptoms, unusual actions, and so on.

You can see this today with any pack of dogs. When a single dog detects a change, i.e., someone coming down the driveway, he barks. Why? Because the "System 1" in his brain says "I see something different" so I must alert my pack-mates because difference can equal danger.

Humans as I see it are exactly the same - your mind is interested in the "something different" part of the world.

The "everyday same" part does not cause alarm at all - its what's expected.

Its only the unexpected that matters - when the brain detects what is not ordinary or normal.

Kahneman goes on to discuss the "availability cascade." According to the book "... availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, which may start from media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to public panic and large-scale government action." (Kahneman, Daniel (2011-10-25). Thinking, Fast and Slow (p. 142). Macmillan. Kindle Edition. )

The "minor event" is an event seen by the public as one involving an amount of risk the public may not wish to take, e.g., water pooling around the base of a dam or a crack in a bridge support.

The "cascade" Kahneman refers to is really what I call a "witch hunt."

Kahneman limits his discussion of the public's reaction to things based on public policy issues but in fact I believe its much wider.

The notion of a witch hunt is exactly the same. A small outlying incident, basically one which is, for example, not easily explained, i.e., attributed to witchcraft, causes panic to spread ultimately resulting in government policy. Just like someone showing up in town after seeing water at the base of the dam (the water may not indicate the dam is leaking but as news spreads that becomes irrelevant). No mother want's her children washed away in a flood when taking some form of action could easily prevent it.

Dogs react in a similar way to an unusual event - sometimes bringing the entire pack into a frenzy. For example, an unrecognized car comes down the driveway and then an unrecognized person emerges. The pack turns into a snarling mob against itself as panic spreads.

So for me most risk, and particularly public policy risk, is simply a perception by some small portion of the public that turns into a widespread panic or issue.

Now what's interesting is that often, based on misguided intentions or a poor collection of basic facts, the actions taken by government or the public have little to do with the actual supposed risk.

And often risk is not assessed where it should be, i.e., the dam that burst causing the flood. Sometimes a small percentage of the public sees the actual risk but often its the case that "no one saw it coming" as in "the big one that wipes out California."

Kahneman's mistake with risk, I think, and it also relates to some future posts I plan, is that logic and probability are tools created by man in an attempt to scientifically and mathematically quantify the risk of the "unknown." But they do not define risk as a human mind does. Differences and their potential risk in the environment are not based on calculations or science because the mind was not developed in that way. Instead minds evolved (in humans and dogs) sitting around and noticing a meaningful difference in the world.

Those that "saw it coming" and were "prepared" were rewarded with a better chance of survival.

Before 1400 or so people basically had only their own senses to assess risk with. Certainly there was some historical aspects, i.e., the river floods every year, but risk of whether the wolf burst out of the woods to snatch a child could only be mitigated by vigilance, and, in particular, the detection of "differences" from the norm, i.e., the forest became very quiet before the attack.

So I think that Kahneman is attempting to some degree to force a scientific notion of logic and risk onto what is not a logic nor mathematically driven human process.

To some degree the human mind is still using the notion that we are sitting around a fire in the dark and danger lurks outside of the light cast by the fire. The mind repeating "What's different?" over and over and looking for signs of danger.

So risk then is an scientific attempt to quantify danger with some mathematical formula, i.e., the chance the dam will break is .001%. However, if water is pooling at the base of the dam and I live downstream my mind will not be happy with the fact that "its just rainwater collecting for a larger-than-normal" run of rainy days. My mind (Kahneman's "System 1") says - "no way - water at the base of the dam = bad news for my survival."

The notion of intuition, e..g, "woman's intuition" falls along these lines. Your mind may perceive cues from the environment which don't fully penetrate your conscious mind (and Kahneman devotes a large section of the book to this idea as "priming").

But science has no ideas what cues trigger this mental "System 1" so how can it really assess what human's due with risk?

So while scientists and public policy makers attempt to quantify known risks, i.e., the probability the dam will fail if built badly, this is on the whole a different thing entirely than the perception the mind makes about risk at any given moment.

And at least so far this is the other fatal flaw in Kahneman's book - that his own notions of things - his very experiments and means of collecting data, for example, are as biased as those of the participants in his studies. Similarly, his notion that somehow science is going to understand how and why human's make decisions really isn't too meaningful if it only measures superficial results and does not probe further.

Odd Things...

2011-12-30T11:06:00.000-08:00

As a musician I see a lot of, er, odd things now and then...

"Can I photograph your hands?" things like that.

But last night I saw the oddest so far.

We're playing - in the middle of a set - and a guy walks in. Older guy, neatly dressed in a kind of "letter jacket" and jeans. He's staring at us. Not unusual because sometimes musicians come in and do that - checking out the scene or music. But he kind of runs around the bar pausing here and there like an bee buzzing from flower to flower.

So he buzzes around for a couple of minutes...

Laying in front of us on a chair was a song book of music that one of the players (not playing at the time - its an open mic as well) had brought along. Not our music (the one's playing) - but this other guy's stuff.

It has nothing to do with us or what we are playing.

So the guy comes up to the band and starts rummaging through this other guy's song book right in front of a guy singing.

No asking, just rummaging.

Flipping through the pages.

What's he thinking? Are playing this stuff?

I'm not even sure what's in the books - mostly old country songs I guess - that's what the book's owner sings.

Now normal people come up from time to time and speak to us as we play - "Can you play X?" - that sort of thing.

But not like this.

Then he goes off with a beer and hides behind the people in the bar.

By the time the set is over he is gone.

Right up there with "Can I photograph your hands...?"

Your "Rights" Diminish in 2011...

2011-12-29T12:23:00.000-08:00

As 2011 winds to a close its rather interesting to see what's happened to your "rights" under the current administration. (Note that I mention the administration only because it was advertised to be better than the last one.)

Protect IP Act was moved through the Senate - Allows the government to seize web sites and accounts related to "dedicated to infringing activities." For example, little Suzy running a music sharing BitTorrent.

The Patriot Act was extended allow more magic FISA court orders for "roving wiretaps," for Lone Wolf warrants, and a "business record" provision allowing the government to seize virtually any of your records: health, library, etc. All without your knowledge.

The administration does not think you have privacy in "public places" and has worked toward this in 2011.

It has also worked hard with Hollywood on passing laws that allow it to force ISP to shutdown internet services to various types of "intellectual property infringers."

It has also extended the governments powers for seizing web domains.

Then there is support for SOPA and COICA.

The bottom line is that as this proceeds your "right to privacy" as it relates to your location (via a cell phone), your email, your internet service, etc. are all going to "support" monitoring by the government. If something "naughty" is going on you'll have no rights and you'll lose whatever the government chooses to seize.

The good news is that "copyright trolls" were dealt a serious blow - but they are private.

Now none of this is new. Most of it was invented elsewhere and elsewhen.

But the bottom line is now the juggernaut of taking away your "freedom" has extended to include, for example, those in Hollywood.

As technology advances this will only get worse, too.

There will be more knowledge about you and what you are doing and hence more to "take" in the name of public safety.

Its easy to imagine, for example, that once there is the notion that you, a criminal, using a cell phone for something illegal, for example infringing Hollywood content, then they can take more - for example "what" you did with the cellphone - who you called, where you went, what you did on web sites, and so on.

My question is why is this acceptable?

No "Occupy" attention to your dwindling rights.

No concern at all...

All the while these same laws are no doubt being used against those that protest because they can be without the knowledge of the "Occupiers."

No, the delta for your infringement of your rights has taken a decidedly large uptick this year.

Happy New Year.

I wonder what 2012 will bring in this department?

Does Randomness Exist?

2011-12-28T10:08:00.001-08:00

The original random.org random number source (radio).

In reading the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman I came upon a section related to "random numbers."

This set my mind to thinking - what is a "random number?"

Does such a thing really exist?

I started to do some research. Among the information I found was a site called random.org.

This site provides random numbers based on some sort of atmospheric "noise." Originally the site was basically an audio sampler listening to "static" on a radio. The audio static was the "random" source of the numbers. Basically the computer running the site sampled the audio data periodically to determine a value. Since the static is supposedly random the numbers created by sampling the audio static and the result of converting those audio values to numbers is also supposedly random.

Kahneman talks a bit about this given the example of the sex of children born in a given hospital over time. Something along these lines (B = Boy, G = Girl):

BBBBBB

BGGBBG

GGGGGG

So, in the book, he discusses the difference between true randomness and what people, who, after looking at the BB/GG list, think is random. The point being that any sequence of B/G is random because each birth is unique and independent of the others.

So BBBBBB is just as random as BGGBBG in the context of hospital births.

But Kahneman's point is that your mind does not perceive these to be the same in terms of randomness: BGGBBG is always considered "more random" at first glance by your mind.

But this is an interesting point and relates to a post I did a while back called "Through the Keyhole."

Basically the notion of BGGBBG and BBBBBB or GGGGGG being equally random depends on the context in which you consider them - looking at them on screen or paper alone - them being equally random seems silly - yet offering an explanation of what they are makes it appear reasonable.

Given a set of things like the BB/GG's there are various mathematical processes to test for "randomness" - but they can only work given they are used within the proper context.

So this, in my mind, begs the question of whether anything is or truly can be random or whether instead "random" is simply an expression of the size of the keyhole you are looking through. Looking at what I am not sure though.

Or, in other words, there can't be anything random, just things that we don't as yet understand the pattern of because we don't understand the true context.

Similarly in quantum physics - are quantum effects, like radioactive decay (used by other random number sites), really random or is the keyhole we observe them through simply to narrow?

Kahneman talks about how the mind can quickly discern randomness visually. For example, from the random.org site a bitmap showing random numbers might look like this:

Your eye finds no pattern (unless you stare a long time at it...).

They compare this to a pseudo-random number generated image done using a built-in Windows-based random number generator (from the same link):

Here you see a pattern because the "random numbers" are really generated via a mathematical technique that makes numbers look random at a finer scale. Certainly there is a subset of this image which , when compared to a subset of the other image, would seem equally random - at least to human eyes and perhaps mathematically.

The question in my mind is does the random.org atmospheric noise-based image above become part of a pattern if you "zoom out" just as the second image does?

I don't know that anyone can answer this - but certainly its possible because while the atmospheric noise might seem random that's no guarantee that it really is.

All this makes me wonder if science is focused on the wrong things.

Certain behaviors, like true randomness, depends I think solely on your context.

What's acceptably random for one in one context may and does not work for another.

And given that our minds work the way that they do - its very easy to become biased and not realize this fact.

Tiger Mom (Strength, not Weakness)

2011-12-28T08:08:00.000-08:00

I have been following the "Tiger Mom" stories for almost a year. This is about Amy Chua - a mother that expects a little more than most today. (See my first post on Amy here.) Basically the philosophy is something like this:

- No sleepovers, parties, camp, TV, computer games, getting less than an A.

- Insulting and/or belittling their kids when they deserve it.

- Use what by today's Western standards would be considered abusive physical or verbal coercion.

- Expecting their child to excel.

Now a year later I found this video (though its from the spring of this year) I posted on Christmas in "Children: Assume Strength." Amy also has a book - which I have not read - which has generated a lot of controversy as well.

The video is interesting because you get to listen to the oldest daughter offer her perspective on being raised in this way.

Would the oldest daughter raise her child this way: "yes, with some minor changes."

Recently the WSJ published a follow up article to the one I mentioned in my first post.

Now what's not be reported about this and what I find most interesting is this comment about her "tiger parenting" (from the article): "... [ it ] assumes strength, not weakness, in children ..."

Amy relates her actions to the the parents of children of the "pioneers"...
And I think that, upon reflection, I was also raised with the same model.

I was expected to be self reliant, to be able to handle situations, to be able handle failure and the consequences when I failed, and I was expected to excel.

Now, in the video, Amy Chua makes a very important point: she never expects her child to excel at what she (as mom) wants the child to do, i.e., play the piano - instead she expects that, what ever the child chooses to pursue, the child must expect to excel at their choice.

Today you so often hear how little Jr. must go to college to become whatever. Almost without fail the choice is, of course, not little Jr.'s but instead some form of the parents "fantasy" lived out through the child.

When I was a kid things were far, far different - social progress, even amongst cousins, close relataives and family - required work: you had to act like a grown up. Older cousins and relatives laughed at you (belittling, insulting, abusive) when you behaved in a foolish or stupid manner. So, to be treated like a grown up, i.e., receive privileges and "perks of adulthood" you had to move forward - excel.

This made you "grow up" - you didn't want to be treated like a child - none of my peers did.

Time wasting TV, computer games and parties didn't really exist when I was a child.

Sure there were a few shows on in the morning but no one watched TV before school. There were also a few in the afternoon - reruns of Gun Smoke and things like that. Not that appealing. There were no parties either - you sat home in your room entertaining yourself.

One of the consequences of this was you had to learn to "entertain yourself." That is, read, build a model airplane, play with toys or dolls, ride your bike, whatever. No adult sat with you and made sure your day was "fun".

The point of childhood at this time was "growing up."

Today, which I think that so many find Amy's comments and book so troubling, is that there is no more "growing up" - at least not as I see it.

As I wrote, for example, yesterday about Google in their interview technique: child-like.

People today act far more like children than they did in the past: no one can "wait" for anything anymore, everyone has to have what they want "now," everyone runs out and buys the cheapest imitation of something they can find.

As a child I was admonished to "save my money" and to "buy something made with quality."

The ultimate sin was to buy some cheap foreign "junk" and to have it break in front of your friends - you were considered stupid and foolish.

Children today are considered "weak and fragile" by adults - unable to take care of business - yet one hundred years ago children were born, particularly in rural America, into very difficult circumstances. You had to be tough - to get enough food, to do what you were interested in, to survive.

Instead I think today's adults are instead "weak and fragile." They cannot expect anything from their kids - that would be too "stressful." They are busy with their lives so they make the kids feel like successes, not because they are successes, but because it makes them, the parents, feel better because they are weak.

Adults became soft as the 60's "me" generation grew into adulthood.

Its not clear exactly why.

I suppose that breaking away from traditional family structures to "find yourself" didn't require as much effort it did to "grow up".

Less self control, less discipline.

More about "them" - less about their "child."

Parent's like Amy, and those who raise me, were selfless in many ways. Not by "giving" us, the children what we wanted, but by taking on the difficulty of not giving in to our childish ways. This required an adult. It was not easy.

And this is were the 60's "me" mentality is an utter failure.

It elevates the "childish ways" to adulthood and to an art form: "it's all about me..."

To me this is a tragedy.

I think Amy is right.

Only time will tell.

Google - Bias in Hiring

2011-12-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

Daniel Kahneman

I have been reading a book called "Thinking, Fast and Slow" - a book by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. If you are interested in how you and other people think in terms of preconceptions and biases then I highly recommend this book.

Now I am writing today not about this book per se but about what this book says about how we bias out thinking out in the real world. So here is an example, from the book as described in this NY Times book review, called "the linda problem."

Participants in the experiment were told about an imaginary young woman named Linda, who is single, outspoken and very bright, and who, as a student, was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice. The participants were then asked which was more probable:

(1) Linda is a bank teller.

(2) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

The overwhelming response was that (2) was more probable; in other words, that given the background information furnished, “feminist bank teller” was more likely than “bank teller.”

The only problem with this is that set of feminist bank tellers in choice 2 is a subset of of choice 1 making it more probably than choice 2.

So to me what's interesting here is that the experiment appeals to specific aspects of people's biases.

Now, with this in mind, I was reading this WSJ article about hiring at Google.

Basically this article describes how Google interviews job candidates with tricky puzzle questions. For example, according the linked article, one question asked by Google (as described by applicants in post-interview discussions) is "You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and thrown into a blender. Your mass is reduced so that your density is the same as usual. The blades start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?"

Now, as an employer and as someone who, in a job interview context, was asked similar kinds of questions I am intrigued by the relationship between "the linda experiment" and this interview model and what it says about the interviewing company.

Basically, at least superficially, the idea of behind these kinds of questions is to use them to judge how you will react to situation. Are you "brainstorming," are you stymied, how well do you think on your feet, how well do you listen, and so on.

Google is not the only company to use these questions and, based on the article at least, the entire concept is being adopted by other companies as well.

But, after reading Kahneman's work, one starts to wonder what sort of biases might be involved in this sort of interviewing process.

For one I see that, at least in the mind of Google, the world is a small, simple place. Everyone understands a blender - whirling blades of death and destruction. You, the shrunken human, maintain your humanity and density in a smaller form.

Kind of like a story you might tell a small grandchild.

Google is interested in how you would "react" to this.

But I am not a small child taken into a magical (how I shrank) and dangerous (whirling blades of death and destruction) world.

If I magically shrank to the size of a nickle why can't I magically stop the blender?

There really isn't even the logical or probability-based aspects of the "linda experiment" here - just a bias toward a make-believe world where problems are disconnected from reality.

(Does that mean solutions have to be too - no, apparently not. SO even if you're in this magical spot why must you use rational thought to escape it??)

So in my business, which touches many large companies across the face of the earth in may countries, expressing business or technical thoughts like this would make my customers frightened. If my customer had a problem would they expect child-like wonderment about it?

Magical solutions?

Being a geezer I don't like a world run by "child-like intellects" - that's my bias.

I am a grown-up - child-like solutions are known to me not to work - so actually its not a bias. I have tried wishing problems away - but it doesn't work.

Now let's look at Google's former boss - Eric Schmidt. A while back Congress wanted to know if Google's searches favored Google's products. (See this article.)

A simple premise and question.

If you offer "free searches" are they biased, i.e., if there is product A from some other company and product B from Google - does Google try and present product B (one which Google stand's to benefit from) ahead of product A?

Everyone uses Google and Congress is trying to understand if Google is dealing itself an advantage under the table.

Schmidt's response was "…the question of whether we “favor” our “products and services” is based on an inaccurate premise. These universal search results are our search service — they are not some separate “Google content” that can be “favored.”

From my perspective a "child-like argument" - no, no we don't offer video on YouTube - we just offer "Search Results."

Really?

To me this is reminiscent of the interview question - "child-like."

Except like a small child trying to lie his way out of his hand obviously in the cook jar, e.g., how could I be reaching for a cookie - the jar is empty - he tell's mom...

But mom doesn't buy it.

From what I read about Google over the years the entire place has this quality - toys for the adult employees to play with, and so on.

I wonder how it is they make adult decisions if their model of the world and interview bias is "child like?"

To be sure technical advances are often made by those who look at problems from a different perspective. But I am not sure that a "make believe" ability is a good criteria for hiring.

I remember being in a similar interview related to some complex, high performance imaging I had worked on. Two things stand out in my mind from this.

First, they wanted me to solve some sort of stupid puzzle questions in the interview. I am not good at puzzles and puzzles don't reflect the real world which is far, far more complex. To me, at least, puzzle questions test your ability to solve puzzles, not solve real problems.

(I am biased too, I have made a living for many decades doing what I do - putting children through college, etc. So, at least in my mind, not operating with a "child-like" perspective seems to work. And, by the way, I am still able to create fantastically original products - but for this I was motivated not by child-like fantasy but instead by children needing food...)

Secondly they wanted me to describe to them techniques I had developed to solve the problems they were interested in.

Sure, I'll tell you how to solve your problems and you won't need to hire me.

Except your bias toward looking at things in a simple, puzzle-like fashion will keep you from really understanding what the issues are.

I guess the bottom line is if you build a business on "child like" thinking you should expect mommy (Congress) to show up and slap your wrist when you are naughty...

Children: Assume Strength

2011-12-25T08:24:00.000-08:00

Every parent or parent-to-be should watch this:

From the WSJ for Christmas Day: Author Amy Chua, and her husband, law professor and novelist Jed Rubenfeld, shared their thoughts about raising successful children, live at the New York Public Library.

Food for Thought...

2011-12-23T10:13:00.000-08:00

This came to me through Facebook.

Its interesting food for thought.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-23T09:45:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas from all of us at the Lone Wolf!

Hopefully no one will feel inadequate after watching this...

Droning about GPS

2011-12-22T06:00:00.000-08:00

Like water, most people I know find GPS ubiquitous, available everywhere all the time. More troubling, of course, is that people have come to rely on GPS as if its water. Who doesn't have a GPS in their car (me)?

What's really hard for me to understand is why anyone who's not involved in a business or personal situation that requires driving constantly to new places would want one. I find them annoying and often wrong. If you're a "soccer mom" its hard to imagine really needing one... does the soccer field move every day? Airplanes have them as well - why? Hopefully the pilot of your average commercial airliner knows where he is going...

(Personally my strategy is to always plot my path on some mapping site, often Google, before I travel to somewhere new. I can use it to not only survey the area around the destination but, with the street view feature, see what landmarks I might need. I also use my iPhone mapping app. But the bottom line is to always know where I am going before I leave.)

There are also problems with GPS systems. They can be jammed (purposefully or by accident), they can be wrong, and they can be spoofed.

Jamming is fairly easy. GPS operates at 1.57542 GHz (L1 signal) and 1.2276 GHz (L2 signal) - so anything disrupting these frequencies will jam it. Some commercial systems, for example the proposed LightSquared 4G terrestrial-satellite-based service, supposedly disrupts GPS for aviation.

Secondly, most civilian applications of GPS require a corresponding map that the GPS signals create a correlation with, i.e., the GPS signal places you somewhere on the surface of the earth - the mapping software takes that position and shows you a street, for example.

The maps can be wrong. And because the typical car GPS is giving you directions verbally in real time a mistake in the map can cause you to be directed into something bad - a wall, over a cliff, into on coming traffic, etc.

Then there is spoofing.

The idea behind spoofing is to provide a GPS receive a "fake" GPS satellite signal that tells the receiver that it is located somewhere where its not.

The basic L1/L2 satellite signals are coming in from space and are relatively weak so, for example, an aircraft flying over a receiver could send out stronger signals with different information that would overpower the satellite GPS signals.

The GPS receiver would not be able to tell the difference (as they do not rely on signal strength - only signal timing and content).

According to this Information Week article this is what was used by Iran to capture a US drone.

This is something that apparently the US military has known about as a potential problem for many years and various GPS issues are known to be potential counter-threats to US interests. (See this 2003 paper and this UK news article.)

(Gee, let's build a multi-billion dollar system for the military and then give away access to everyone so it can be circumvented - only let's do this after we build our entire military infrastructure around it. Don't believe me, see this from msnbc.com.)

Now this should not be happening - and in particular no Iranians should be spoofing the GPS.

The reason, because when GPS was first envisioned and created and run, it had heavy encryption.

The L1/L2 satellite signals from space were encoded so that no one could duplicate them without the proper key. Thus military systems needing GPS could rely on the encrypted signals which enemies could not forge. Somewhere along the line this was either removed or relaxed - or, worse yet - the idiots building the US drones didn't use it.

I cannot tell which is the case with the captured Iranian drone.

One would sincerely hope that military drones used encrypted GPS signals.

But if the reports are true it was not... its hard to say what the truth is here. There is all sorts of stuff flying around the internet related to it (see this, and this, and video below).

There are other possibilities.

For example, depending the the speed of the drone it could simply be snatched out of the air with some sort of fast helicopter and a trapping device (net, cables, something).

I think that part of the problem is that the US is very arrogant about their technology, and, when folks like those in Iran figure it out, they pretend they didn't.

So I smell cover-up at some level. Whether the drone self-destructed failed or it was simply a bad design or whether the GPS was spoofed or whether the RSA encrypted military GPS was hacked.

There seems to be some belief that because the Iranians are not like us they are stupid.

This is a dangerous assumption.

The capture of the drone should be a wake-up call...

The Future of Music

2011-12-20T13:25:00.003-08:00

Hatsune Miku - Virtual Singing Star

In my lifetime its hard to believe where music and audio have gone.

I was born in the late 1950's. At that time music was recorded directly from human performances - often on acetate disks or single track, mono tape systems. There were no computers, multi-tracks, or other devices.

People fell in love with the sounds of voices: Elvis, Sinatra, and so on.

But today all of this is different and, no doubt, will change more rapidly than anyone can imagine.

For one, there is now something called Vocaloid2 - created by Yamaha. Vocaloid2 is a system for creating artificial singing. It can be loaded with special sounds created by a singer to create a full singing voice. This was developed around 2004 but really wasn't up to the job until recently.

Vocaloid2 is even rumored to support the extraction of these syllable. The voice of a Japanese singer, Hitoshi Ueki who died in 2007, was recently used to create a Vocaloid2 library.

Today the Vocaloid site boasts links to Vocaloid3 (see this).

Below is a Vocaloid2 English version of "Amazing Grace" - note that the song is sung with a Japanese accent.

This singer does not exist.

And while certainly not an Americal Idol-ready performance its hard to imagine that this won't find its way into music, like commercials, very, very soon where production cost is an overriding concern.

Here's another Japanese anime star "Hatsune Miku" - who is not real - singing a song on YouTube:

Again, she's not real, but she has lots of fans - some who do not believe she is not real.

I can still recall "Who Framed Rodger Rabbit" which was a modern mix of real and animated characters. This was the forerunner of much of the virtual movie effects you see today (and sadly, the original Disney technology for this such as seen in "Mary Poppins" is rarely remembered today).

Very soon plug-ins for music software will allow producers to create singing voices that will sell in the commercial market.

There will be no longer be a need for singers.

Virtually all other instruments are synthetic today - guitars, drums, string sections, pianos - so why not singers.

Recently I was reading several threads on various music forums. Many "professional musicians" claiming that they are being squeezed out of the business in various ways: ASCAP/BMI requiring local bars to pay fees which ultimately mean the bar stops having live music, various pay issues related to "union scale" work, newcomers "undercutting" established acts, and so on.

These virtual singers require no pay at all and will work tirelessly for free forever.

Hatsune Miku doesn't care how hard she works.

She's just anime.

According to this Wired article soon this technology will allow Elvis and Sinatra to do a duo of a song written after both of their deaths.

No doubt fans will love it.

Sure it will be creepy... but hey, its Elvis and Frank!

Another article (here) shows how "hits" in the UK are being analyzed by computer to determine what makes them a hit. Using this type of knowledge Hatsune Miku's creators will be able to make her songs more like "hits."

The article also describes MRI-based scans of children that show how their brains react to potential hits in an identifiable way - according to the article the children's "...ventral striatum — the brain’s reward region — was predictive of a song’s future sales."

Gives new meaning to the exploitation of children.

The future of music is technology because no one will want to drive to a bar and listen to live music - the risk will be too great:

- Pulled over for a DUI.

- You might not hear the song you want.

- You might get cold or wet.

Instead you can stay home with your 52" 3D LED TV and some nice hash or liquor and watch virtual singers do exactly what you like.

These singing voices will make their way into games as well so not only can you get these singers to sing songs you like but to perform them as you see fit.

I can see the PS/4 "Rock Band" version of this now autotuning your voice and changing it so that you can sing duets with yourself or sing like Elvis.

Turn the knob - now you're Sinatra - now you're Tom Petty - now you're Patsy Cline... (Small syllables of peoples voices are potentially not copyrightable as long as their lengths are short or they come from the public domain.)

Is that Elvis?

Is it so close no one can tell?

Elvis never sang that song... it can't be copyright infringement.

Pretty scary... huh?

Death by Retirement (Updated)

2011-12-20T12:32:00.000-08:00

Update from the original personal blog post from a year ago...

The other day I came upon an article in the WSJ about retiring (2011 article here).

From the article:

"Don't let the rally in the stock and bond markets fool you. Many Americans are still hurtling towards a retirement disaster. Few realize it. Even many of those running the big pension funds don't know.

That's the conclusion of John West and Rob Arnott at Research Affiliates, an investment management firm, in Newport Beach, Calif. In their latest report, "Hope Is Not A Strategy," they have some numbers to back it up.

"I worry a lot about people reaching their golden years and discovering, 'Oh, I should've saved more,' and 'Oh, I don't qualify for Social Security any more because it's means tested'," says Mr. Arnott, a widely respected market strategist. "We're headed for a retirement train wreck," he adds, "and it's going to get really ugly over the next 15 years."

Remember, there's something like a $55 trillion (with a "T") unfunded set of liabilities (a years worth of global GDP) - Social Security, Medicaid, etc. to be paid for. My guess is that bill will be coming due during my retirement.

Its certain to be a financial train wreck...

Do I have savings - sure. But what will the landscape in retirement be for me in say, 15 or 20 years (I'm 53 [54 in 2011]) factoring in the bigger financial picture?

The answer is it will A) not be like today, B) not offer much I am interested in, C) no amount of reasonable planning will protect me from societies great rush to catastrophic failure.

That's right - not offer much I am interested in. There's a way to post comments over there [ on the original article ]. I wrote this:

- Never retire and work at something that makes you happy.

- Accept that you will eventually die and don't waste time and money on keeping yourself alive in a state worse than death.

- Change your lifestyle to require less.

- Take better care of yourself by changing your life style.

Yes indeed. Anyone who believes in all the statistics of the financial world must also see this statistic: retirement = death. (Do your own research, start by Googling "retirement death"). Personally I think how long you live has a lot to do with how you perceive your "value" relative to the world. If your life's value is your work and you stop working - surprise - you have nothing to live for. Statistics bear this out.

The second big, and I mean really big problem, for the elderly is the disaster of modern medicine. I have written here about this before. This is going to get a lot worse and probably will never get better. My rule of thumb is this, past about 60 if you go into a hospital for anything serious you will die or end up in a nursing home within a year.

Its bad enough doctors prescribe medicine willy-nilly based on what the big Pharma sales "skirt" tells them to do. But once you're in the hospital your doomed - because - just like with heroin - you get "addicted" to the process.

How do you stay out? By doing research and learning that 99% of modern medicine is about making money for someone else from your misfortune. Pills prescribed for things you can fix by changing your behavior. More pills to avert the side effects of the pill you don't need. More pills to fix the side effects of those pills. On and on until you die. (See my previous post on "Does My Medication Really Work".)

And yes, you will die. Get over it. Everyone is going to die. The only question is "Do I want to die in the hospital or nursing home hooked up tubes, tanks, pumps, and fluids?" Do I want the "plug pulled"? Do I want to be "Left to die by people I don't know?" Modern society has created ridiculous expectations for living forever. Try valuing your life on accomplishments and goodness instead - had kids and raised them right, had a good business and made money fairly with no regrets, treated the spouse right, learned to forgive... Don't have much of this? Its not too late to change.

Before I was born society handled the elderly much differently than today. Grandma died in the back room taken care of by the family. Today grandma is trundled off to the nursing home after a broken hip where she's abused by stupid, careless 30-somethings that hate their job. If she complains out come the OC-80's until things are fine.

You can prevent this type of death - my wife is working on this - by properly training the family about what's important. As important as any retirement account is the investment you make in keeping your family intact and educated on life - from end to end. Teaching the value of having grandma around to help teach and direct the kiddies - both grandma's own kiddies as well as the grandchildren.

Modern feminism has destroyed this part of our lives. Women dealt with this part of life until about 50-60 years ago when it was ceded to modern technology. Re-assess where you are. Go to a nursing home or hospital and see what's in store for you.

The modern educational system turns out, for the most part, modern idiots. They are clueless about education, nutrition, and life. You want to have proper nutrition.

Most modern people are malnourished. I write about this a lot. You want to stay out of the hospital and nursing home? Get your nutrition right. Exercise and learn to keep moving. Most elderly sit around all day - surprise - blood clots form, etc. They eat crap and its killing them. Remain active and eat right.

The goal of the "end of life" game is to remain yourself as long as you can. I don't want to live if I am not me anymore. Modern medicine wants to take this from you so the doctor can get $22.00 US for an office visit to prescribe a drug you don't need and you can be an OC-80 zombie.

And what about stuff? Do you need all that? Is life a game where the person who dies with the most toys wins? No. I hate to say it but life as you age is not like that nonsense they show on the TV commercial - the perfect house, grandpa and grandma, fit and trim, sun shining, flying around the world to spoil grandkids. Life intervenes and the last thing you want is a lot of stuff (cars, houses, crap) that you have to worry about and manage. Its just a burden. Am I advocating living in a box under the bridge - no. But stuff = aggravation. Greedy kiddies wanting it and the related stress. You get the idea.

While all this may seem like the Borg - resistance is not futile.

Do your own research. Learn. Grow. Stop expecting nanny government to save you.

What's really ironic to me is that all the sixties hippy radical types that went on into public service, who promote universal health care, and all the rest are so dumb about what this system is doing to them.

Technology is not the answer - particularly in medicine.

Thinking for yourself is - using modern technology to make the right decisions is what needs to go on - not having some government flunky controlling your morphine drip.

For me - death will begin by enslavement to Medicare - so I want to stay as far away as I can.

I've lived a good life I can be proud of. I certainly don't want to die but when I do I do. Its certainly a lot less stressful than worrying every minute about my cholesterol level.

I enjoy my life now because I am free.

Are you?

Public Air, Public Drug Use

2011-12-20T06:00:00.000-08:00

Rome - Measurable Illegal Drugs in the Air

The prevalence of illegal drugs in our society is breathtaking (not to mention legal drugs).

(Note that in the examples I cite below either the drug or its metabolism by-products are measured. The later indicates biochemical products produced and excreted by the body that can only be present if the humans involved are consuming said drugs.)

For example (from this), in 96 Oregon cities where the sewers were tested for methamphetamines, all 96 showed traces indicating that the drug was in use in each city. Ecstacy, in Norway, peaks in the sewers during certain high school breaks during the year.

From this we see documentation of illegal drugs in our public waterways (note that there are also significant concentrations of legal prescription drugs as well).

We also know that almost 90% of the money in the US is contaminated.

These are nothing new and illegal drugs have been found in the environment for years.

Recently illegal drugs have appeared somewhere new: the air we breath.

At Wired, for example, there is a report from the Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research in Rome showing that drugs such as cocaine and marijuana are detectable directly in the atmosphere at certain points in the city of Rome.

So much so that they believe it can be used to estimate usage and plan treatment strategies.

Some studies have also found, for example, correlations between illegal drugs and disease, e.g., cancer or mental disorders.

So the "illegal drug culture" is being visited on you whether you want it or not - literally from all points in your environment - particularly if you live in a big city.

Now legal, but abused, prescription drugs, don't make it into the atmosphere, at least not yet.

But they are prevalent in the water.

So where does this all take us?

Well, based on comments in the Wired article and elsewhere I can easily see a time in the not-too-distant future where some sort of scanner is waved over you and, if you've been naughty, alarms will go off and you'll be off to jail.

The contamination of money is already used in this way by the legal system - but only if it can be isolated to an individual under prosecution.

So drug use is now so common that its detectable from the atmosphere - around the users at the level of a city block, for example.

Imagine the quantities that must be used for this - certainly far more than a couple of bumps at the local dive bar. One imagines that the concentrations within the clubs, bar and building (including apartment buildings and/or homes) to be much higher - after all no one goes outside to do this - and what's in the atmosphere in town is lower than what's going on at home.

What's outside is literally leaking out of the homes and apartments through open windows and doors.

Imagine the quantity being imported into these areas to create a measurable foot print like this.

These facts would seem to take away any possibility that drugs are merely "harmless" and "don't affect anyone else besides the user."

I guess I will get to use drugs whether I want to or not...

And so will your children.

Doctor (er, wait, SEC), Heal Thyself

2011-12-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

I want to write about the SEC investigating Freddy and Fanny as covered in this WSJ article.

But first, let's look at the government's last big, public SEC investigation...

Most will remember the Bernie Madoff scandal: a ponzi scheme involving some $50 billion USD. While the end result was Madoff's conviction the there is a long and interesting history of the SEC ignoring the Madoff problems (see this at PBS.org).

Most interesting is that, about ten years before Madoff's initial confession to his sons, Frank Casey, a Boston investment guy had heard about Madoff's supposed decades of investing success making 18% a year. So Casey asks his colleague Harry Markopolos to "reverse engineer" some information Madoff gave on his trading strategies. After a few hours Markopolos comes back and tells Casey what's being reported by Madoff is impossible and says "Frank, this is a Ponzi scheme."

About a year later Casey submits an 8-page report to the Boston SEC office.

Nothing happens.

Another, longer memo outlining Madoff's Ponzi scheme is submitted to the SEC with Harry Markopolos's conclusions in 2005 reaching the same conclusions.

Nothing happens.

After Madoff's downfall the SEC investigates itself (see this link). Reading this you'll find this interesting tidbit on page 2 "...including examining the role that former SEC Assistant Director Eric Swanson (Swanson), who eventually married Madoff’s niece, Shana Madoff (Shana), may have played in the examination or other work conducted by the SEC with respect to Madoff or related entities, and whether such role or such relationship in any way affected the manner in which the SEC conducted its regulatory oversight of Madoff and any related entities." (Underline mine.)

On page 23 we see, after a review of almost two decades of issues with Madoff including an SEC investigation in the early 90's and a series of written and email "tips" that Madoff is running a ponzi scheme, that little is done regarding this information: "During the course of both these examinations, the examination teams discovered suspicious information and evidence and caught Madoff in contradictions and inconsistencies. However, they [ the SEC investigators ] either disregarded these concerns or simply asked Madoff about them. Even when Madoff’s answers were seemingly implausible, the SEC examiners accepted them at face value." (Underline and bold mine.)

Had you mentioned to your neighbor that you made an extra $10,000 USD in the stock market on a "tip from your brother-in-law" no doubt the black helicopters and SWAT teams would be on you in a minute and you'd have a federal criminal record like poor Mr. Lawrence Lewis who I wrote about in this post.

The consequences of the Madoff scandal rendered many widows and orphans destitute.

As for the SEC staff including Madoff's relatives - not so much - slaps on the wrist, a few lost jobs, not much more really... at least with relative to the damage the Ponzi scheme cost everyone else.

So now its Freddy and Fanny's turn.

Let's look at the information available to the SEC prior to 2011.

Here is a video montage of various congressional investigations from around 2004 where the same kind of "red flags" as raised by Frank Casey and Harry Markopolos are broadcast on TV.

While partisan politics is obviously an element here, as perhaps is race, the fact remains that the financial standards for how Freddy and Fanny were conducting their business were lax to the tune of many tens or hundreds of billions of dollars.

Again, no one at the SEC apparently paid any attention to this.

Now, long after the horses are out of the barn, according to the WSJ the SEC brings charges against a couple of Freddy and Fanny execs: "[ the SEC ]... brought civil fraud charges against six former executives at the two firms, including former Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd and former Freddie CEO Richard Syron."

But, we learn from the same article, that "Before the SEC announced the charges, it reached an agreement not to charge Fannie and Freddie."

Interesting, "... reached an agreement not to charge Fannie and Freddie ..."

The government investigating itself.

No charges against itself.

Only the citizens running the agency...

And, according to the article, its unlikely these execs will face criminal charges.

Hmmmm...

Seems like there is a problem here, not only with the SEC, but with the whole notion of one government agency investigating another.

Where's the oversight?

In Congress, another government agency?

(Why in this WSJ article we learn that Congress and Senate members, as well as their staff, are exempt from insider trading laws and that, on average, their stock investments return an "astonishing" 12% per year...)

I doubt we'll see much in the way of an investigation from Congress or the Senate...

Our country is sick.

Its rotted from the inside out and these two stories tell you why.

The government folks investigating other government folks know how important a government pension is (as well as benefits) so you can bet your bottom dollar that no matter how bad things get (perhaps even with murder as in the "Fast and Furious" problems the ATF has) no one is going to be seriously punished.

About the worst it gets is someone loses their job.

Why are there no "Occupiers" out front at the SEC? After all between the SEC and Freddie and Fannie we're looking at hundreds of billions of mismanaged funds... Oh, but I guess that since its the government no greed was involved there's no need to protest...

Lions and Tigers and Bears!

Oh my...

(BTW, the WSJ does a good job of reporting on all of this but a poor one in the editorial department of connecting the all the dots... I think that the entire financial investigation and investment system of the US government has a serious problem and something should be done about it.)

Mike's Acoustic Open Mic Thursday's

2011-12-18T09:46:00.000-08:00

(724) 265-8188
2059 Saxonburg Blvd
Gibsonia, PA 15044

Hosted by "Tex" from Zig Zag

Mike's on Facebook.

Warpaint

2011-12-17T17:33:00.000-08:00

Found these while searching the local Pittsburgh Open mic listings...

Quantum Physics in Your Philadendron

2011-12-16T12:05:00.000-08:00

Chlorophyll in an "antenna" - from Ars Technica

When I was in grade school we used holidays were a good excuse to play a variety of Bell Telephone/AT&T movies from the 1950's: Our Mr. Sun, Hemo the Magnificent, The Strange Case of Cosmic Rays, and others (see this for Our Mr. Sun). The teachers happily sat at the back of the class doing whatever they did and the kiddies got to watch a movie (or sleep).

I distinctly remember one of these movies (Our Mr. Sun?) talking about photosynthesis.

There was a small plant character of some sort (a cartoon) who represented a plant. The cartoon talked about what photosynthesis was, what was involved in it: sunlight, CO2, and what it produces: sugars and organic compound.

When the actual reaction happened the character put up a small screen that covered the reaction. The reason was that no one knew how it worked so, rather than say that, they just made a small joke of it.

Of course this was in the 1960's... These movies were made in the lat 1950's.

Fast forward to today.

I found this article about how the study of photosynthesis is leading to some very interesting results.

Until fairly recently its been assumed that photosynthesis was a basic chemical process and that no quantum-level elements where involved beyond that.

But over the last several years various experiments have yielded results pointing to "more" within the context of photosynthesis.

Basically there is a bacteriochlorophyll complex, found in green sulfur bacteria, that acts as a kind of antenna to collect light very efficiently for photosynthesis. This antenna involves something called quantum coherence and allows extremely efficient transmission of energy related to the light involved in the process.

Typically quantum coherence is though of in things like the Bose-Einstein condensate - which is something observed at near-absolute zero temperatures with liquid helium wherein a large number of molecules all act as if they are a single molecule.

Study of photosynthesis has lead, however, to the observation of this same process at the molecular level in plants - obviously at room temperature.

The idea is that photons arriving for photosynthesis can simultaneously explore all the possible paths to the core of the photosynthetic process and, in the quantum sense, "choose" the shortest path. Much like the two-slit experiment where photon interfere with each other even though they don't arrive at their destination at the same time.

For a long time its been thought that quantum-level actions did not occur in the real world, i.e., at a level observable by humans.

But in fact they can.

One of the things that interests me is the notion of "Quantum Consciousness" as put forth by Rodger Penrose. David Bohm, another physicist, has written about similar concepts in "Wholeness and the Implicate Order."

Penrose claims that consciousness is not something that can be explained by simple chemical reactions in the brain.

I think that the sort of discovery above about photosynthesis makes the claim's by Penrose more likely.

Why is this important?

Because the involvement of quantum-level actions in photosynthesis and possibly consciousness make it non-deterministic - that is that given the same exact situation in terms of molecules, chemical reactions, and so on a chemical-based brain would make the exact same decision.

A quantum brain might not because the quantum-level of activity is not deterministic.

A quantum brain might be sensitive to quantum-level behavior - like entaglement - where two particles millions of miles apart act as one.

A quantum brain might be sensitive to coherence such that quantum actions of two brains or two parts of the same brain might be synchronized by some coherence mechanism as with photosynthesis.

Interesting food for thought...

Pet Peeve

2011-12-15T07:42:00.000-08:00

If you've ever wondered why US federal spending is so out of control let's take a look at this interesting research: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/17/2/10-1070_article.htm.

Here we have a very detailed study on the dangers presented by your pet.

(Recently I talked a bit about death on this blog in "The Risk of the Cure".)

So our CDC, in this report, says:

"In the Netherlands, the pet population is ≈2 million dogs and 3 million cats... The percentage of households with pets increased from 50% in 1999 to 55% in 2005. A recent study indicated that among 159 households with pets, 50% of pet owners interviewed allowed the pet to lick their face; 60% of pets visited the bedroom; 45% of dogs and 62% of cats were allowed on the bed; and 18% and 30% of the dogs and cats, respectively, were allowed to sleep with the owner in bed..."

It goes on to discuss the French (only about 25% have pets there).

The French, the Dutch? No talk of us here in the good old USA where we're paying for this report.

Next we are treated to a discourse about plague.

That's right, bubonic plague (ring around the rosey and all), and how 9 people died in the western US in 1974.

That's right, 1974... forty years ago.

(The incident of plague in the USA is about 1 one 30,222,221 according to this - so on average some 11 or 12 people are infected a year. Infection has a death rate of 50% - 90% if untreated, 15% if treated. So we would expect about one death per year.)

The article goes on to discuss how some half of the plague survivors slept in the same bed as their dog.

OH MY GOD!!!!

Today most uneducated people understand that plague is transmitted by fleas - not dogs. Though dogs have been known to transport fleas from time to time. But fleas infest other mammals as well - like deer, humans, and cats.

So if rover carries around plague-carrying fleas and he sleeps in your bed then well, you might get the plague...

Your chance of being killed by lightening is about 70 times greater than this.

Your chance of being killed by texting or cell phone usage in your car even higher.

The article then goes on to address what might happen if your pet licks your face (actually you have to have a saliva transfer so licking your face or kissing you would be more accurate). Various bacterial infections and parasites - some very nasty to be sure.

Some of the more notable ones mentioned in the article:

Cat scratch fever, mentioned in the article, infects about 22,000 US children per year though deaths are extremely rare.

Rabies - enough said.

So what's the point of the government telling us about the danger our pets present?

There are hundreds of millions of pets in the USA.

Each year very, very few pets deliberately harm their masters (see this).

Bottom line (according to the article)...

- Don't let small children sleep with pets because they are full of germs and parasites.

- Wash the children with germ killer if the pet licks them.

- Keep the pet free of fleas.

Huh?

Even though pets kill far, far US citizens than, say lightning (750 a year) or trichinosis (less than 12), the author apparently needs to whip up fear and worry.

Common sense keeps the dog and cat out of the babies room (at least hopefully and if it doesn't its not the kids fault but the parents - not the pet).

So why is this report being done by the CDC (Center for Disease Control - is my pet a disease)? What's the point?

Are these remarkable conclusions (common sense) worth the no doubt tens of thousands of dollars to write and publish the report?

Pets are far, far safer than cell phones (cell phone caused traffic deaths number around 3,000 a year currently).

No one is banning cell phones yet (though they are trying - at least while you drive).

Why is the CDC concerned about everyday pet issues? Sure I can see them caring about a widespread rabies outbreak but they don't - when we had one by my house they were no where to be found. No one in plastic space suites showed up with trucks carrying dish antennas. No one with "detectors" going "beep beep beep" to find dangerous things... No one.

Articles like the one I mention are designed to do one thing. Scare you into not having a pet or, if you do, slathering your child with antiseptic cleaner all the time - where's the article on the dangers of that?

Why does my government need to scare me about my pet?

I imagine that the death of a pet is far more traumatic than anything a pet might do.

Now you tell me...

Which is scarier? The government or your pet...

Pandas: Neurological Damage from Strep

2011-12-14T09:13:00.000-08:00

Pandas, or Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal, is a strange new twist to humanity's old enemy Strep. What we call call "strep" today is an infection by the streptococcal bacteria. There are various classifications of strep (see the link) and the most common is the "strep throat."

Before antibiotics strep was often the precursor to rheumatic fever and scarlet fever - once the strep infection took hold it spread and could cause a variety of damage to the heart, joints, and other parts of the body. Death was always a significant possibility with these ailments.

Penicillin became prevalent in the treatment of strep in the 1950's and 60's. As a child I had a number of "strep throat" episodes. This usually involved diagnoses at home via "white bumps" on your tonsils by mom. Then a trip to the doctor to get a "swab test" where a cotton swab was whipped over your tonsils and sent off to a lab. Finally you received a prescription for, at least in my case, penicillin.

With my own children this model was accelerated (1980's and early 1990's). Often doctors would simply prescribe amoxicillin for any child who even remotely complained of a sore throat or ear ache.

Today my grandchildren are bombarded with antibiotics (often much more potent than penicillin and amoxicillin) almost weekly it seems.

I have written about what I think about this process in "Antibiotics - Scourge on Humanity."

So what about Pandas?

Basically, the short form is this: Pandas is thought to be a low-level strep infection that triggers neurological problems like tics and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

A typical "Pandas" story is found here. Basically a "normal" child suddenly and inexplicably goes "wacky" - tics, OCD, mood swings, depression, all sorts of "mental health" problems. The solution, after much struggle by health practitioners to diagnose it, is typically long-term antibiotics to treat strep. These children typically have a some sort of history with strep. The remarkable thing is that the antibiotics fix the neurological problems very quickly - antibiotics typically do not treat neurological disorders in any way.

So the thinking is that the strep is causing some sort of damage to the brain.

There are many interesting points about this.

First off, this is a relatively new disorder - only identified in the medical literature during the last 15 years or so. The first cases were children who were thought initially to have Tourette's Syndrome.

Pandas is not a "recognized disease" in that no direct cause/effect relationship has been established - the link to strep is only suspected at this point. The diagnostic process is complex - see this link.

Secondly, strep has been a scourge of humanity for millenia - yet Pandas has only been known for a very short time.

Third, strep was not previusly associated with neurological problems.

Fourth, OCD can apparently be triggered by strep and such cases cured by antibiotics.

Fifth, it only seems to affect children.

Various theories abound about how strep might be involved in Pandas.

See this at the NIH.

See this at the Australian ADHD site.

But the bottom line is that no one knows.

What i find troubling is that this is something "new"...

Why?

Could it be the result of too many antibiotic prescriptions over the last several decades mutating strep into something new?

Its hard to say...

Treating children for long periods with antibiotics in my mind is a very bad things for several reasons (see my recent post, for example, related to "Fecal Transplants").

There's a good site here for parents who suspect their child suffers from Pandas.

The bottom line is that this is a new and serious problem.

Prior to this I had never heard of bacteria-related medical problems triggering these kinds of neurological problems in children.

Since its new I also have to wonder what role modern "medical science" has played in its creation.

Remarkable Tsunami Video

2011-12-13T12:30:00.000-08:00

Remarkable dashboard camera video of the Japanese tsunami...

This guy survived!

No Longer Possible to "Just Stop"...

2011-12-13T06:30:00.000-08:00

The insanity of modern life is far, far more dangerous than you might imagine. There have been some interesting crime-related stories published over at the WSJ.

The first story relates to how many criminals can be removed from active "crime duty."

A book, "Don't Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America," written by David M. Kennedy outlines a program called the "Boston Gun Project" developed in the 1990's. Basically the idea is that most serious crime is run by some seriously bad individuals. Take out the bad individuals by bringing down the full weight of the justice system on them and then just tell the rest of the criminals involved to simply "Stop!"

Kind of like the old Nancy Regan "Just Say No!" policy from the 1980's.

Except the Boston Gun Project worked and worked well - at least as long as law enforcement followed through.

The fact that this works is very interesting. Getting rid of crime by having law enforcement simply tell many of the criminals to stop.

Why does this work?

I think it works because most people - at least those not interested in running large crime syndicates (drug lords, etc.) - probably still have some fear of God left in them - some notion of right and wrong. And while it may have been easy to fall into the "criminal lifestyle" via peer pressure, outright need, etc. I would imagine that most people would not prefer this to a non-criminal lifestyle.

Who wants to be looking over their shoulder every day?

So, when the big boss goes down I imagine its easy for those who realize that they might be "next" to simply walk away if goaded by law enforcement.

In part this is easy because its clear what "criminal behavior" is to most. In this case drugs, guns, robbery, and so on.

Which leads to the WSJ second story...

This story describes the life and tribulations of Lawrence Lewis - someone who grew up in Washington DC and who saw all three of his older brothers murdered by the time he was 20.

But Lawrence is not the kind of criminal you might imagine...

No, instead Lawrence worked hard, went to school, and got a job working in DC's sewage treatment department.

Lawrence's path to criminality began when, as an employee of the sewage treatment department, he was forced to make a simple decision: whether to divert sewage, which could potentially back up into a residential building, into a storm drain or simply let it back up into the build.

Lawrence, like virtually anybody else, chose the former and the building was kept free of sewage.

Unfortunately for Lawrence he broke an EPA law related to the Clean Water Act in this process.

And now he has a Federal criminal record.

What to me is most troubling here is that Lawrence is a perfect example of what our society wants someone to do with their life given a bad situation as a child.

Grow up, make good choices, get a job, be a functioning member of society.

But in this case the law is against Lawrence.

Apparently because somehow Lawrence, even as an employee of a municipal sewage treatment facility, was personally guilty of polluting a stream by trying to keep sewage out of someone's home and/or work.

You can read the horrific details of this in the full WSJ article linked above.

So why am I writing about this?

For one, I think that there is a problem with society when a guy doing his non-criminal, everyday job is made into a criminal by the government by preventing destruction of property.

Secondly, the EPA laws that Lawrence broke lack a mens rea component. That means, unlike say shooting someone, where intent is involved, no intent is required to be guilty.

So if I shoot someone an accidentally kill them its different than shooting someone with the intent of killing someone. I still might be guilty of something but not of murder.

But EPA law is different.

There is no intent required. Either you did it or not. You don't even have to know you did it.

If the EPA can prove it was done then you are guilty.

And we are not talking about a crime here - we are talking about diverting sewage from the basement of a building into a storm drain that might lead into a river.

Now you might argue that polluting one building was better than polluting a whole river but you'd miss the point.

Somebody who is simply doing their job makes a bad decision or a decision based on lack of knowledge.

Now they are a criminal.

How do you stop criminals if they don't know they are criminals...?

This is like ASCAP and other things I have written about.

So what do we tell Lawrence - just "Stop!"???

Stop doing your grungy everyday job because you might be a criminal?

Fecal Transplants (Part II)

2011-12-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

Last year I wrote this "Fecal Transplants, er, I mean Bacteriotherapy" on my then "personal blog".

It related to my dog, poor old Mugs. And no, Mugs wasn't treated with Bacteriotherapy - at least not by me. Mugs had his intestinal floral killed of by stupid, well-meaning veterinary idiots who over-prescribed antibiotics.

We fixed Mugs digestive system with some probiotics.

But this started me to thinking...

(Gross Warning - the following is not suitable to be read while eating...)

Bacteriotherapy should be the "wonder treatment" of the 2010's for a couple of reasons.

First off, most people do no realize the importance of the bacteria that live in their guts. Most adults have about 20 to 25 pounds of bacteria in their bodies - maybe a quarter to an eighth of their body weight. Recent studies have shown that these bacteria are as varied as we are and that each person has unique bacterial elements to their gut flora.

We cannot live without these bacteria.

They are symbiotic with our digestive system in that we cannot digest our food without them.

Unfortunately, antibiotics, which do not distinguish between "good" and "bad" bacteria kill off the good bacteria while killing off the bad (see "Antibiotics - Scourge on Humanity"). Like firing a shot gun into a crowd of people when we know someone in the crowd in a criminal - the blast kills off people indiscriminately - hopefully killing the bad.

Not exactly a good idea.

Good thing this is all governed by "medical science" and a "benevolent government."

Antibiotics were invented before people had any real understanding of how the human digestive system worked - particularly with respect to their bacterial components. Then they over-prescribed them to the point of total lunacy.

Secondly, once you've damaged the good bacteria in your gut, things like Clostridium difficile, or C. diff can enter and take over. This is basically "chronic diarrhea" (and possibly a route or stop along the way to far more serious bowel diseases).

Doctors, being stupid (actually insane may be more accurate - repeatedly performing the same activity over and over and expecting a different outcome), simply apply stronger and stronger antibiotics trying to kill the C. diff without concern for what else these treatments might do to your body. Instead these compounds simply destroy more and more of the healthy bacteria and leave only the most antibiotic-resistant C. diff to reproduce.

So modern medicine is working hard at all levels to kill off your digestive bacteria.

These articles (in Wired and Scientific American) paint the picture of the future of medicine as it relates to all this.

Doctors working hard to kill you with antibiotics.

Fortunately, a fecal transplant (transplanting the bacterial flora from a healthy person into someone who's intestinal flora have been destroyed) as a very high success rate (above 80% or more). The details of how this is accomplished are available elsewhere. These bacteria are designed to live in your gut and that's what they want to do.

Fecal transplants in humans date back to at least 1958 and are commonly used by vets.

All this also makes you wonder why fido might eat poop on occasion.

Maybe he knows something about his digestive system we don't.

There are some problems with this treatment reaching main-stream medicine.

First and foremost, the FDA, NIH, and other government agencies who oversee our "healthcare" do not recognize feces as a medical "product" that can be used to treat people and so these treatments are only available from doctors whose bosses will "look the other way."

The regulations only allow specific compounds to be medical treatments.

Sadly feces do not qualify being a natural product. Though I suppose, like vitamins, feces is a "natural" or organic product.

Next, because medicine assumes that symptoms must be "treated" rather than asking why things are broken in the first place it cannot deal with the model that your ill health is caused by their medications. Hence there is resistance to this kind of therapy. (See the history of treatment of ulcers as an example - though just killing off bacteria with antibiotics is not a good idea...)

In any case I believe that there are many people I personally know who suffer from a variety of digestive misery.

No one asks if they've had (or are having) lots of antibiotics as a cause.

No one asks if their digestive system has been "broken."

No one thinks to do anything but "treat the symptoms."

Since nothing about a fecal transplant is "patentable" no medical giant or big pharma is interested in working on this sort of treatment - there's only good health in it - not money.

Fortunately this is not rocket science and as I wrote in "Why is Science Professional" folks who face certain death (for example as the woman in the linked Wired article did) will probably figure out how to do this on their own (its a natural product and well, the equipment to perform this type of procedure is available in any drug store).

So we've created a society that makes poop a horrific evil - with hand santizers and endless childhood classes in "hand washing".

All in the hope of making a quick buck off of it.

Yet living as I do with many animals one learns that poop is simply part of life. Its not like some of the better of us don't do it...

Personally I think this knowledge and treatment is something that would probably benefit millions of people.

No one wonders why animals don't suffer from all the problems people do - after all the live in the same environment - so maybe our problems are not environmental but in fact caused by us.

Patently Insane Medical Patents

2011-12-09T06:56:00.001-08:00

Patenting your right to medical privacy?

How would you like to find out that the notion of measuring some aspect of your child's bodily function via a blood test as it relates to a disease or illness in the child in order to provide a specific treatment that could heal or cure the child was "patented" and hence could not be used by you or your doctor?

Sound far fetched?

Its not - the US Supreme court is hearing arguments on this very issue.

Basically the question here is that should the US patent system be allowed to support this kind of patent?

I say no...

No matter what you do the mental decision by a human being to correlate the results of some testing process with a decisions for a treatment for a patient is not something that should be covered by a patentable process. Ever.

I am backed in my feelings by, among many, many others, the Mayo Clinic (see this PDF) and the ACLU (see this PDF).

The idea of the patent is basically 1) apply some drug, 2) monitor the results of the drug, and 3) apply some other drug based on the result of #1 and #2.

How is this unique, novel, or interesting.

The drugs involved are not being considered for the patent.

Only the idea of steps #1..#3 above.

If the Supreme Court allows this type of patent than simply substitute anything you like into these steps and viola - you have something patentable.

By simple substitution now we can 1) apply a tweak to the fuel injectors on your car, 2) monitor the result, 3) recommend a fuel additive.

Bingo - a patentable process - one that the patent police can use to come to your door and make you pay.

Think this is far fetched?

Its not - its already happening.

In "Genetic Engineering - It's What's for Dinner" I wrote about how Monsanto enforces its patents on genetic soybean engineering of folks whose farms are adjacent to those that use Monsanto's patented soybeans. The birds and bees spread the genetically engineered soybean pollen to these adjacent farms and create a liability for these farms - because they are now using Monsanto's patented genetics.

Now these folks didn't ask for this to happen - it just did.

This is also just like I wrote about with "ASCAP..." Liability is created for someone by acts they have no control over - like singing an "ASCAP" song at their place of business.

So now this will penetrate the confidentiality of the "doctor/patient relationship."

For patented processes the "owner," of the technology, Prometheus in this case, will have the right to burst into your medical examination room to determine whether the doctor is infringing its patents as he creates a treatment strategy for your disease.

Just like Monsanto.

Just like ASCAP.

Why are we, as a nation, doing this to ourselves?

The patent system is broken.

It started with software patents.

Mostly these did not impact the "average joe"... Though I did read that the average cell phone today involves 200,000 patents.

More BS because most of these patents are BS patenting things that already exist as I've written about extensively before (see my thoughts by following the "Google Patents" thread on this blog starting with this...)

The US Patent Office is broken in that no one can have enough knowledge about the world to correctly ascertain whether some idea is new and unique or not. The patent office originally required you supply a working model of your patent, i.e., a "thing" that demonstrated the patent. If you didn't do that no patent. But that all changed when the Patent Office began allowing "software patents."

So now we have mental actions by doctors subject to patents.

And there are, of course, two sides to this.

While you might consider Prometheus Labs a "big, evil corporation" remember that grandma's pension might own some Prometheus stock. So wiping out their interests might force grandma to move into your house in order to survive...

(Another write-up here...)

Big Knobs and Tristan Shone

2011-12-08T06:59:00.000-08:00

Tristan Shone has taken the idea of a "one man band" to a whole new level. He designs musical gear and plays it live as a one man bad: "Author and Punisher."

From the looks of Tristan will be changing the world of "midi control" for the next century. This guy has created some really cool, interesting and unusual types of midi controllers.

The Author site above has a lot of info on his equipment, tour, techniques, travels, and so on.

A lot of performance technology is for sale on the site - big Knobs among them - basically a rotary midi encoder.

Check it out...

Tristan Shone, Author&Punisher (LIVE-> 2008-2009 Highlight Reel) from Tristan Shone on Vimeo

The music is basically metal.

Here is "Drone Machines"

The device in the foreground is a drumming unit. As you pull it back and forth it hits the drums. There is a set of buttons on the hand grip that controls what drums and cymbals are hit on each pull.

There is a bit about Tristan and how he created these tools...

Some more performance video...

There is a good article on Tristan here at Wired along with some excellent video...

I have to say I really like a guy who can combine a bellows and midi control.

Is the USA a "Bad Influence" on Mexican Children?

2011-12-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

The array of what is considered disease by the medical profession is extremely interesting.

This link will take you to a discussion of "conduct disorder" as its associated with migrating from Mexico to the USA. The bottom line is that if you "migrate" from Mexico to the US you suffer from a much higher degree than normal of one of a frightening array of "conduct disorders" (from "forced sex" to "truancy").

Now personally I have to wonder why this is a medical issue at all.

I would think of it as a criminal issue, particularly "disorders" like "forced sex."

There are also multiple aspects of this, i.e., why does someone migrate in the first place. Of course the standard "template" for this is someone in Mexico migrates to the US for work or crime. If for work typically its someone who has a family and, once finding an under-the-table job, sends money home to bring their family here. For crime one presumes the drug cartels smuggle the person across the boarder to act at the minion of the cartel.

Personally I would not be too worried about "conduct disorder" as it relates to criminals. One would reasonably assume they already have a "conduct disorder" which is why they are a criminal in the first place.

So let's take them out of the mix.

So we are left with various forms of "migrant workers." Here the spectrum would range anywhere from some random person looking, on an individual basis, for a better life to family members pioneering into a new country for a better life with the prospect of eventually bringing across the remainder of the family.

But the article kind of goes in an unexpected direction with this zinger:

"The rate of conduct disorder increased significantly as the connection to the U.S. strengthened -- 0.9% for nonmigrant families, 1.6% for Mexicans in migrant families, 6.9% for offspring raised in the U.S. by Mexican-born parents, and 11.5% for offspring raised in the U.S. by U.S.-born parents of Mexican descent (P<0.001)."

So I guess what this means is that the stronger your "association" with the USA the worse you behave. Moving here makes your behavior the worst. Not coming at all the best.

And this as a presumably reproducible scientific "fact" - if you could call it that.

To me this says that if you stay in Mexico you are less likely to engage in various behaviors related to conduct disorder. (Which are separated into "non-aggressive," truancy I suppose, and "aggressive" - forced sex?? These details are not spelled out...)

So this means that in Mexico, if you are not a truant, a move to the USA is more likely to make you a truant. (This is only spelled out for the "non aggressive" case. Its unclear what's going on for the aggressive case and leaves on the speculate on why its not mentioned.)

Seems to mean that this instead says the US is a bad influence.

Stay in Mexico and your child is more likely to attend school.

Interesting.

The article then branches off into a weak discussion of "genetic" aspects of all this.

As if...

So what does this all mean?

Its really hard to tell, but I think it means that if you come here from Mexico (and I don't see any reason to think its just Mexico) you are on your way to "conduct disorder." Since kids are most often truant you child is being lead down the wrong road.

Seems like a sociological or justice issue to me.

I have to believe that its the same for all sorts of migrations - clearly wave of immigrants in the past to the US, say for Italy, resulted in criminal activity like the Mafia being "imported."

But this is different - in that case the Mafia existed in Sicily prior to migration to the US.

This means that those who do no have problems "acquire" them here.

I don't think its a medical issue...

I imagine that since there is no discussion of "aggressive" issues in this article it means that coming to the US makes you more likely to be a "better criminal" - forced sex = rape = felony - so a better "felon" if you would. Not mentioning it keeping it out of your mind entirely, which I think is dishonest.

Overall I fail to see the medical aspects of this...

Seems more the the USA is a bad influence for children.

What does this mean for our own children and grand children.

The article does not elaborate in this regard.

Marcellus Shale Shake Down

2011-12-06T06:00:00.000-08:00

Over at MedPageToday.com I found this very troubling article: "Special Report: Health Impacts of Shale Gas Boom Still Unproven." Apparently the result of a conference at the University of Pittsburgh last month sponsored by the Graduate School of Public Health.

Now before I launch into an "analysis" of this article let me disclose that I have two gas wells on property that I own. When they drilled the wells I was involved on a daily basis with the process - on the drilling platform, inspecting the materials brought in and out, speaking with the folks running the equipment as well as those in the management of the drilling company.

I live close to these wells and, being concerned about what they might do to my own environment, I watched over this all activity very carefully.

The wells were put in place many years ago now - long before the Marcellus Shale boom in the region.

These are relatively shallow wells - some 3,500 ft deep - drilled straight down.

My first problem with the article is that it makes it sound as if the Marcellus fracturing is somehow different than regular fracturing because the "joints" of the shale are oriented vertically. Shallower wells, like I have, are also frac'd - but since the "joints" run horizontally the frac'ing occurs in the vertical pipe.

Though horizontal drilling is use for Marcellus its no different that any other frac'ing. Horizontal drilling also allows the gas industry to use a smaller number of platforms to drill what would effectively require multiple separate wells all from one place. By this I mean that a single drilling platform, with horizontal drilling, can do the work of many without the environmental impact. The drilling runs parallel with the ground up to 10km or more away allowing one well head access to a gas in a wide area.

Next there is concern about the frac'ing fluid - which is basically water.

All the drilling I have observed over the last many years including that done on my property kept all of the waste water in a plastic-lined waste water pond set up by the drilling crew. There was no spillage into water ways, mess, mud or anything else. It was surprisingly neat and organized.

Secondly the frac'ing itself does not involve liquid spraying all over. The whole point is that its pumped through a sealed steel drill pipe down into the ground at tremendous pressure. If it was leaking into the ground water then you couldn't frac the well in the first place because you could not build up the required pressure.

Once the frac'ing is completed the water is collected so that gas can flow out of the well. If the water stayed in there there would be no gas. Since Marcellus Shale gas is at a fairly high pressures, say 400 psi or more, the frac'ing liquid will come out of the well under pressure.

If you've ever seen water pushed by 400 psi you would not believe that it was staying in the ground.

Now we have many thousands of people employed in the region in Marcellus Shale operations. The conference indicates that about a half dozen people had been injured.

The implication was that this was a concern.

Yet as many die from medical errors in the region, or from car wrecks. Perhaps even medical errors at the UPMC facilities where the conference was held.

But there is no concern about that for some reason.

Then there is concern that some are suffering sprains, broken arms, and so on....????

Perhaps its healthier to sit around on unemployment watching TV all day, under stress from having no job, and eating chips made of unhealthy oils that destroy your health.

Then the drilling operation is supported by evil diesel motors - spewing death and poison into the atmosphere - killing adults and children alike...

Oh wait...

If I look out my window, Oh My, What's That!

Why diesel trucks - running by pulling huge loads of paper or whatever...

Where's the concern????

So what's the real point of this article?

Its so the "public health monopoly" can shake down the Marcellus folks for money.

See look! The number of sprains and broken arms in our emergency rooms are increasing...

Oh no, someone might spill some dirty water on the ground....

Wake up out there - ever look into the "Three Rivers" at the actual water?

If I brought a bucket of river water and dumped it on my property my guess is that there would be far, far more supposed "danger" to the environment.

No, this is about building up fuel for a "tax" so that we don't have to pay the horrible price of progress.

I think its a shame that this kind of article is what passes for "thoughtful discourse" on the matter of Marcellus Shale.

I think that a field trip to a drilling site would be in order rather than sitting around talking about what might be going on. Its pretty clear from all this that no one "on the inside" at the Public Health school has been on site.

I think they should be - they should find out who works there and why.

Isn't that important?

Firemen do dangerous work too.

No is trying to prevent them from being firemen.

Why is Science "Professional?"

2011-12-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

An article in the WSJ describes how individuals today are taking up science on their own.

Today many issues of individual health, for example, are processed by medical businesses who then own the results. That's right, it may be your DNA but suddenly it becomes the property of those that took it - and you have no access to it.

Now personally I find this very strange.

Its my DNA.

How can someone else who takes it on my behalf for some purpose related to me and then own it?

I own it. Its me.

(Compare this to music, for example, where simply performing a copywritten work in public could involve the legal obligation to pay a royalty. Yes I own my performance - but performing someone else's song doesn't make it mine... Really consistent, huh?)

The WSJ article details many such cases.

What's interesting about the article is that it talks about how people today, frustrated with this model, are "taking science into their own hands" - as if that were something interesting or new.

Prior to the last hundred or so years a lot of science and mathematics were developed by amateurs - often using their own interest and funds. Typically these were professionals of some sort outside science with a personal outside interest in science or mathematics who spent their free time pursing these interests.

Today science is a fraternity of professionals. Those not taken in (typically by gaining a PhD from a university) to the fraternity ("us") are no longer "allowed" to do science.

Why?

Because "we" won't know how...

(All this from the very folks who, as I wrote about before in "Falsified Medical Studies the Norm", can not produce scientifically reproducible results.)

The truth, of course, has little to do with science or knowledge.

If regular folks were out discovering important new scientific and mathematical facts there would be no need of a special scientific fraternity. No more PhDs required.

We can't have that going on.

Never mind that folks doing science on their own, as described in the article, might actually be doing something important.

And another thing, us folks at home don't need grants.

I can make my own living doing what I do and spend my spare time on music or science as I see fit. I don't need any grant money - I am funding my own efforts. If I chose to work on something related to one of my children, for example, then I would bear the responsibility of any failure. No responsible parent on his way to understanding some key issue about his or her child's disease is going to run off half-cocked and treat the child without extreme caution.

Another problem is that many areas of study, say as with physics and "string theory," are controlled by those "in charge" at any given time. (See Lee Smolin's "The Trouble with Physics" as an example.) Climate "theory" as well as many other things are the result of true "group think" perpetuated by those in charge of the research directions.

And because these folks get promoted into places of power like the NSF that control grant money you had better make sure that you do research in a popular area or you'll be out of a job.

In the olden days science was pursued by amateurs - there was no axe to grind and you spent your own money - so there were no high muckety-mucks to kiss up to. If you did good science you were recognized as a scientist.

I think that like everything else people today are all to happy to cede their future to "professionals."

I guess because there is security in believing others will do a better job.

Personally, though, I don't buy this.

My experience is that, almost always, the "common understanding" is the wrong understanding.

Again and again in writing this blog I have found that peeling back the layers of "group think" always reveal a much more effective result than just "going with the flow."

My studies of iodine and sinus problems, for example, has convinced me of such.

Long ago people understood that iodine was an important nutrient.

Today its all but forgotten by the medical establishment (see my post "ADHD & A Spoon Full of Sugar").

Yet my experience with iodine has to me demonstrated that if the medical establishment simply focused on nutrition we would all be far, far better off - less money for drugs, less Medicare, less of everything except, oh no!, less jobs for medical professionals.

I listen to my mother talk about health issues. The more I hear the more I believe that by simply providing older people better nutrition and simple exercise we could eliminate half of all Medicare costs.

Yes half.

(I am starting to believe that the "gingivitis" you see today on TV is really just scurvy - particularly in older people who don't eat right. I've been busy with my own nutrition and have discovered a directly link between vitamin C and the health of my own gums. I am certain my mother is deficient of vitamin C - and she won't listen to me - only the doctor and she won't check...)

No one will listens because they all love and trust doctors.

Even if those same doctors are killing them through ignorance and stupidity.

Professionals are, I think, just an excuse for us not doing our own homework.

This is a systemic societal problem - we are all so specialized we can't tie our own shoes.