Most geeks already know about Charles Babbage‘s Difference Engine, but there was a nice piece on NPR this morning about it:
Charles Babbage, the man whom many consider to be the father of modern computing, never got to complete any of his life’s work. The Victorian gentleman was a brilliant mathematician, but he wasn’t very good at politics and fundraising, so he never got the financial backing to finish any of his elaborate machine designs. For decades, even his fans weren’t certain whether his computing machines would have worked.
But Doron Swade, a former curator at the Science Museum in London, has proven that Babbage wasn’t just an eccentric dreamer. Using nothing but materials that would have been available to Babbage in the 1840s, Swade and a group of engineers successfully built Babbage’s Difference Engine — and a version is now on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.
Having just watched “Longitude” about the construction and restoration of the first functional marine chronometers (and having seen reproduction of same at Greenwich), this seems, er, timely.
Jim Downey
Filed under: ACLU, Civil Rights, Government, NPR, Politics, Predictions, Privacy, Science, Society, tech
And the march of progress continues:
‘Insecurity Cameras’ To Track All Of Town’s Traffic
A little town in California has a big and controversial idea: It wants to install security cameras on roads leading into town so that it can screen and record every license plate that comes inside city limits. The plan could effectively turn Tiburon into perhaps the nation’s first public gated community.
* * *
“Tiburon is unusual because there are only two roads going in and out of the town,” says Mayor Alice Fredericks.
It’s quite easy, she says, to keep track of every car along those two roads. Last week, the Town Council decided to spend $200,000 to place six security cameras at strategic points along the road. For now, the plan is to make sure none of the cars coming into town are stolen. Crime statistics are low in Tiburon, but in a small town, Fredericks says, even a few crimes make an impact.
* * *
Police run license-plate checks all the time, says Jennifer King, an expert in technology and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Tiburon’s plan is to just run many plate checks. The problem, she says, is that once the equipment is installed, safeguards to protect privacy can change. For instance, the license plate information is supposed to be purged after eight hours, but what if a crime occurs and suddenly that information becomes more important?
“They may start today by keeping it eight hours, but I’ll almost bet you that what they’ll find is that somebody will come back and go, ‘If only we had the data from those cameras,'” she says. “We call it ‘scope creep’ in the technology world. That scope can really crawl, really grow very quickly.”
Nah, that’d never happen, would it? I mean, the police would never seek to use the collected data in an inappropriate or unethical fashion, would they?
Police routinely arresting people to get DNA, inquiry claims
Police officers are now routinely arresting people in order to add their DNA sample to the national police database, an inquiry will allege tomorrow.
The review of the national DNA database by the government’s human genetics commission also raises the possibility that the DNA profiles of three-quarters of young black males, aged 18 to 35, are now on the database.
* * *
The crime and security bill published last week by the home secretary, Alan Johnson, proposes to keep DNA profiles of people arrested but not convicted of any offence on the database for six years. This follows a landmark European court judgment last December, ruling illegal the current blanket policy of indefinite retention of DNA profiles whether or not the person has been convicted of an offence.
It adds that parliament never formally debated the establishment of the DNA database. Its evolution involved a “function creep” from being used to confirm police suspicions to identifying suspects. This resulted in the addition of more and more profiles without being clearly matched by an improvement in convictions.
Gods, what are people thinking? In my own hometown there is once again an effort to put “security cameras” in place in our downtown area, a subject I have written about previously. Last spring our City Council decided to put a stop to it, but proponents have gathered enough signatures to now have the matter put on the ballot for a special election next year. It’s like the damned “red light cameras” which cost more than they’re worth, do not lead to improved safety at intersections, and just decrease everyone’s privacy.
But hey, they make people feel good, right? And all that matters is good security theatre, not actual security. Don’t scare the sheep, or they’ll panic and run.
Jim Downey
PS: since I’ve been told that sometimes I need to be less subtle, let me be bloody obvious – I chose the title intentionally. Yes, I think that religion and the perceived need for security theatre come from the same source: that reassurance that someone else is watching over you to make sure you are safe. What else is the Abrahamic God but a paranormal surveillance system?
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Babylon 5, Emergency, Flu, Health, Iraq, NPR, Pandemic, Predictions, Preparedness, Science Fiction, Society
I’ve often written about the prospect of a pandemic flu, and how it relates to what I did with the backstory for Communion of Dreams. And I can’t help but think when I see/hear something like this that this is exactly how the first reports of such an evident would come:
Fear, anger and fatalism over swine flu in Mexico
MEXICO CITY – The schools and museums are closed. Sold-out games between Mexico’s most popular soccer teams are being played in empty stadiums. Health workers are ordering sickly passengers off subways and buses. And while bars and nightclubs filled up as usual, even some teenagers were dancing with surgical masks on.
Across this overcrowded capital of 20 million people, Mexicans are reacting with fatalism and confusion, anger and mounting fear at the idea that their city may be ground zero for a global epidemic of a new kind of flu — a strange mix of human, pig and bird viruses that has epidemiologists deeply concerned.
* * *
Scientists have warned for years about the potential for a pandemic from viruses that mix genetic material from humans and animals. This outbreak is particularly worrisome because deaths have happened in at least four different regions of Mexico, and because the victims have not been vulnerable infants and elderly.
NPR and other news outlets have picked up on it this morning, as well, with the story still lost in the ongoing economic collapse, renewed violence in Iraq, and political struggles of several stripes. Just one more story. But, finally, the big one?
We’ll see.
Jim Downey
So, I was listening to NPR yesterday afternoon, and heard their ‘letters’ bit about the show on Monday (which I missed, due to being out shooting). They had evidently done a segment speculating what would happen were marijuana legalized, and were reading some of the letters that they got in response. Most were about what you would expect – thoughtful observations and critiques of the show. Then there was the last one:
Finally, one of the few letters we received against legalization. It comes from Rose Rosetree in Virginia. She emailed to tell us she reads auras, professionally. She writes: “From my perspective, pot is very dangerous. It is a slow poison that has very specific consequences for all long-term users, as well as individual and heart breaking consequences for each user.” Ms. Rosetree goes on to say: ” Until all NPR listeners can read auras, invaluable for all forms of holistic healing, as well as many other practical uses, with all respect, non-aura-readers will only perceive the surface problems with marijuana and other recreational drugs.”
Hmm. Methinks Ms. Rosetree has books to sell. Surprise, surprise.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Expert systems, Liane Hansen, NPR, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff, YouTube
[This post contains mild spoilers about Communion of Dreams.]
One of the main characters from my novel is Seth – an advanced expert system who functions as the personal assistant for the primary character. I’ve written about him here before, and how I see this sort of “expert” developing over time. My basic premise is that it will evolve out of simpler, independent computer programs which are brought together to create an easier and more comprehensive user interface.
Well, via this morning’s Weekend Edition, Microsoft has just come out with the first real step in this process:
Microsoft’s Laura will rule your Outlook calendar, nightmares
Back in Office 97, Microsoft wowed us with Clippy, the talking paperclip that made Word tasks far more annoying than necessary. By Office 2007 he was finally out of a job, but his spirit lives on in Laura, an oddly creepy virtual digital assistant shown off as part of Microsoft’s vision for the future (video of an earlier demo is below). She’s said to be able to schedule reservations, make appointments, and maybe even get you tickets for the first Watchmen showing tonight — much the same as the company’s EVA assistant, but not in a car and not as hot. She can judge you based on what type of clothing you’re wearing and even tell if you’re engaged in a conversation, perhaps keeping the doors on an elevator open while you chat with someone getting off, thus further annoying every other person on board.
Here’s the vid:
OK, about the title – what the hell is that supposed to mean? Well, in the book I explain. So go read the book.
Yeah, yeah, here’s the summation: Seth is an “S-series” expert, the latest iteration of such an artificial personal assistant, based on the most advanced type of computer. Chances are, there is some skipping around during the periods of chaos that I stipulate for my future history, and one can never account for advertising hype, but the basic idea is that the experts were named on the basis of the alphabet. Hence, he is the 19th generation of such a development. Now, being the first such artificial personal assistant, Laura should actually be named Anne or something that starts with an “A”. But Microsoft didn’t bother to ask me about it beforehand. Figures.
Jim Downey
From NPR, word that there may have been a breakthrough in Alzheimer’s Disease research:
Mad Cow And Alzheimer’s Have Surprising Link
Scientists have discovered a surprising link between Alzheimer’s disease and mad cow disease. It turns out both diseases involve something called a prion protein.
The finding, which appears in the journal Nature, could explain one of the great mysteries in Alzheimer’s disease: How components of the plaques that form in patient’s brains are able to damage brain cells. It also could point the way to new treatments for the disease.
“It’s very exciting,” says Lennart Mucke, director of the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and a professor of neurology and neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco. “The study shines the light on a very unexpected component.”
OK, first off, I think the title of the NPR piece is somewhat misleading. Here’s what Nature has:
‘Harmless’ prion protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease
Non-infectious prion proteins found in the brain may contribute to Alzheimer’s disease, researchers have found.
The surprising new results, reported this week in Nature1, show that normal prion proteins produced naturally in the brain interact with the amyloid-β peptides that are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. Blocking this interaction in preparations made from mouse brains halted some neurological defects caused by the accumulation of amyloid-β peptide. It was previously thought that only infectious prion proteins, rather than their normal, non-infectious counterparts, played a role in brain degeneration.
The results have yet to be confirmed in humans, but suggest that targeting the non-infectious prion protein (PrPc) could provide an alternative route to treating Alzheimer’s disease. “The need is huge,” says Paul Aisen, an Alzheimer’s researcher based at the neurosciences department of the University of California, San Diego. “And it’s great news for the field when a new idea is brought forth with strong evidence that can lead to new therapeutic strategies.”
Why did NPR choose to tie it to Mad Cow? Probably because that’s the only real handle most people, even NPR’s relatively well-informed listeners, have on any kind of prion disease. So they decided to use this link. Which may be unfortunate, if it contributes to speculation and fear that somehow Mad Cow disease leads to Alzheimer’s.
But the research is quite interesting, and a significant breakthrough. For a while, amyloid plaque has been understood to play a role in Alzheimer’s, but no one could quite figure out what exactly that role was. Tying it to prions gives a mechanism that explains how the plaque damages the brain and leads to the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Furthermore, as noted in the stories cited, it offers a very promising strategy for countering the disease. And because of all the work which has been done on Mad Cow disease (and prion disease generally), these proteins are fairly well understood, meaning that it is likely that researchers will be able to come up with specific treatment regimens.
This is hopeful. Very hopeful.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to dKos.)
Usually, I tend to dismiss the supposed ‘elitist’ label applied to NPR. You don’t have to be in the upper class to be well informed, or have a wide range of interests. You don’t need an advanced degree, or a high-paying job, to listen to intelligent discussions or appreciate good artwork in any medium. In fact, I am none of those things – not upper class, no advanced degree, never held a high-paying job – and yet I am fairly well addicted to NPR and have been for almost 30 years.
But every once in a while they run a piece that just makes me scratch my head. No, I’m not talking about a segment on some obscure bit of literature or music that only a few people know enough about to appreciate. I’m talking about an attitude that is so widely divorced from my reality that I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. One piece on Weekend Edition Sunday two days ago did exactly this. It was about “food trends” for 2009, particularly discussing the impact of the recession on the topic, and contained this comment from the featured subject of the piece:
Home Cooking With A Twist
The recession has brought back home-cooked meals in a big way, Wolf says.
“It will mean an increase in cooking classes, because people will have to learn how to cook since we haven’t been cooking at home for many years,” she says.
Say what?
Who the hell never cooks at home? Nobody I know since I left college. Yeah, sure, Americans have tended towards more “prepared foods” for decades, to make our busy lives a little easier. Most people can’t spend hours each day preparing all their meals from scratch – it just isn’t practical. But that doesn’t mean we don’t cook at home. Most people I know only eat out (or bring home take-out food) a couple of times a month, at most. And while some “prepared foods” are complete meals, almost always there is some level of actual cooking involved. The notion that people will have to take cooking classes in order to manage even basic cooking at home is absurd to my mind. Sure, there are probably very few people who can manage a Julia Child level of cooking at home, but that doesn’t mean that most of us are eating out or surviving on hotdogs.
Sheesh.
Jim Downey
Filed under: ACLU, Bruce Schneier, Civil Rights, Government, NPR, Predictions, Society, Terrorism, Travel
Well, in spite of the fact that I doubt it will really change anything, this is good news:
Transportation Security Administration officials and JetBlue Airways are paying $240,000 to settle (.pdf) a discrimination lawsuit against a District of Columbia man who, as a condition of boarding a domestic flight, was forced to cover his shirt that displayed Arabic writing.
Oh noes! Not evil Arabic writing!! Next thing you know, there’ll be evil Arabic numerals, taking over our culture!
According to a civil rights lawsuit, TSA and JetBlue demanded Raed Jarrar to sit at the back of a 2006 flight from New York to Oakland because his shirt read “We Will Not Be Silent” in English and Arabic.
As Jarrar was waiting to board, TSA officials approached him and said he was required to remove his shirt because passengers were not comfortable with it, according to the lawsuit. The suit claimed one TSA official commented that the Arabic lettering was akin to wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, “I am a robber.”
The lawsuit claimed Jarrar, 30, invoked the First Amendment but acquiesced after it became clear to him that he would not be allowed to fly if he did not cover his shirt with one given to him by JetBlue officials.
From Jarrar’s blog, this:
“All people in this country have the right to be free of discrimination and to express their own opinions,” said Jarrar, who is currently employed with the American Friends Service Committee, an organization committed to peace and social justice. “With this outcome, I am hopeful that TSA and airlines officials will think twice before practicing illegal discrimination and that other travelers will be spared the treatment I endured.”
Nice sentiment. And not a bad settlement – I’m glad to see him get the money. But I am highly skeptical that it will really change anything – it’s not, after all, like the people who did this will be paying the money out of their own pockets. The Security Theater will continue, and there will still be instances of absurd behaviour such as we saw last week:
All Things Considered, January 2, 2009 · A Muslim-American passenger, one of nine members of a family detained and questioned at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport after fellow passengers on their AirTran flight reported hearing a suspicious conversation, says the family is trying not to be angry at what happened.
So, yeah, Jarrar’s settlement is good news, but only one small bit of good news, and mostly for him.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Health, Hospice, NPR, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Sleep, Survival
No, I don’t know what it means.
It was one of those things I woke up thinking in the middle of the night, a week or so ago. So I wrote it down.
Why did I wake up in the middle of the night, thinking such a thing? Good question. It was about 3:00, the usual time I would wake and go check on Martha Sr the last couple of years of her life. And even though it’s been almost a year since her death, I still wake about that time fairly often. I try and get back to sleep, and usually succeed. Because I know sleep is important to my recovery.
I’ve mentioned several times the steps I am taking to get my health under control, and why. For the last six weeks now my blood pressure has been stable in the 145/85 range. Still high, and next month when I see my doctor we may need to tweak my dosages again, but about 90/40 points better than it was three months ago. The meds I’m taking, a beta blocker and a calcium channel blocker, are doing their jobs and helping me detox from my cortisol and norepinephrine overloads, but I’m not past it all yet. My waking at night, even occasional bouts of insomnia, are evidence of that.
And researchers have added another level of understanding to just how dangerous this sleep disruption is:
Morning Edition December 24, 2008 · The human heart requires a certain amount of sleep every night to stay healthy, and that link between sleep and heart health is stronger than researchers suspected, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
* * *
When they put it all together, the researchers got a surprising result. Among these healthy, middle-aged volunteers, those who averaged five or fewer hours of sleep had a much bigger incidence of silent heart disease.
“Twenty-seven percent of them developed coronary artery calcification over the five years of follow-up,” Lauderdale says. “Whereas among the persons who slept seven hours or more, on average, only 6 percent developed coronary artery calcification.”
In other words, the sleep-deprived people had 4.5 times the risk of heart disease — and that’s after researchers subtracted out the effects of other known coronary risk factors, such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking.
It remains to be seen why too-little sleep is linked to clogged coronaries. Maybe it has something to do with stress hormones. Lauderdale says other studies have shown that depriving people of sleep raises their levels of cortisol, one stress hormone.
I don’t yet have any indication of serious heart disease. The preliminary checks from visiting the doctor over the last few months haven’t turned anything up, but she has been mostly concerned with getting my blood pressure under control. We’ll be doing a more complete exam in the new year, now that this other issue is less of an immediate concern.
That’s not to say that I expect that we’ll find anything. But neither would it surprise me if we did, given what else I know about what the stresses I’ve placed my body under over the last five years. I’ve been my own puppet, dancing at all hours.
Maybe that’s what it means.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Apollo program, Art, Astronomy, General Musings, NASA, NPR, Science, Space
The rocket blasted off with a huge spread of flame and hurled the men into space. They became the first earthlings to watch their home planet grow smaller and smaller and smaller, until it was floating far away and tiny in the darkness.
From this morning’s NPR coverage of the Apollo 8 mission to orbit the Moon 40 years ago. Most of the world remembers it best thanks to Earthrise, the iconic image from the mission, which gave us all a new perspective of our fragile little home.
It’s a good story. As I said elsewhere in a discussion of my memories from the event, I expect there will be few other such moments in my life.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 